Dear Lils,
Your favorite books as of late are a series of early science readers. I’d link to the series on Amazon but I’m tired, on my second glass of wine and have my feet up on your mini IKEA art table.
To sum them up they are about how plants grow (in detail), fossils, how rainbows are made, etc. You get the drill. I am in FULL support of these amazing and well written books. In fact I’ve gone to great lengths to collect them because of your passion for them. However, extremely detailed science oriented books after a long day of motherhood, freelance writing plus an often rushed bedtime routine can be a little zzzzz. No offense honey.
Tonight at bedtime there was a HUGE thunder crash quite near the house. I literally jumped and my heart raced. I ran into your room because you screamed and it woke you up. When I went in you were mostly mad asking why the mean thunder woke you up.
I pulled from my memory a story my mother told me as a kid that when it thundered the sound was really fairies or angels having a bowling party in the sky and moving furniture. As a kid I loved the image, thought it was funny and found comfort in the humor.
You listened quietly in the dark and then just blurted out.
L: NO Mom. No fairies. WHY? Why does thunder make such loud noise?!
I attempted to skirt around the question and stick to my fairies. I even threw in some over the top embellishments – some fairies were bowling while others ate cake and moved furniture. You seemed more frustrated by the minute. I then felt like the biggest loser Mom. You actually said,
L: No Mom…let’s talk about how thunder makes a loud noise!
OK. I was busted. Time to call in the real troops. Dad. King of all facts. The math major. The person who could actually describe in detail and in an interesting way to a toddler how thunder is made.
I came out into the living room and first confessed to your father my lame attempt to distract you into going back to bed.
So…Dad went in and I clicked on American Idol – a teen singing competition. Yup. Almost forty here. Your Mom. I could hear Dad describing the nuts and bolts of thunder to you all the while using interesting specifics and terms like ‘magical electricity’.
Hey, at least I contributed one good thing to parenting today. We made some amazing puppets on this rainy afternoon. We listened to fun music and used every mixed media friendly item in the house – buttons, glitter, torn up magazines, feathers, popsicle sticks, etc.
The results were so fun!
So what does this say about us Lili…as your parents? I guess that we provide comfort to you in our own different ways and that is actually a great thing. Who knows. Maybe one rainy night in your adult future…you can comfort yourself or your own kids with tales of full bellied fairies moving furniture and bowling that cast magical electricity in the dark.
