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Sharing the Great Outdoors Together
It's peak Fall and everyone loves being outside, especially the kids. Time to hit a mountain path, or at least a wildlife walk. Every town has them, so there's no excuse. You want to make a kid happy? Take him outside!
Meet for family breakfast and then head out for a hike, it will justify the extra pad of butter on a second helping of pancakes. Have you ever noticed that maple leaves (the golden ones) smell just like syrup? It's true, I scooped up a handful and tried it. They really do. (Just don't eat them.)
Anyhow, put on your sneakers, gather the family up, step outside, find a path and get moving. If you don't live near a hiking trail, every town has conservation land, parks, or public hiking trails, just check online.
Once you're out there let the kids lead the way. The wonderful thing about little people is that when you're around them time slows down. You want to live longer? Spend time with small persons.
And the benefits for kids who spend more time playing outside are endless. Kids who get to be in natural environments develop their fine and gross motor coordination, improve distance vision, and exercise their heart and lungs.
Not only that, children gain an appreciation for the great outdoors and are introduced to the wildlife living right in their own backyards. It's there, you just have to stop and look.
The best part: kids can run and jump and shout and no one will get after them for doing what comes naturally. It sure beats worrying over the glass coffee table or the white rug.
Share your outdoors together.
Good Luck!! Good Parenting!! It's All Good.
Bon :)
PS Someone once told me that luck has nothing to do with good parenting, but a little luck thrown in can't hurt, now can it?
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Excerpt from Growing Up Crazy by Bonnie J.Toomey
Freeze Pops
Winter 1972
There’s ice on my bedroom window in little cornered crescents. It’s still dark out, but it is time to get up for school anyway which I happen to like a lot.
I wriggle out of my pajamas and pull on a hand me down sweater and jeans from my aunt who works as a nurse in Boston. She was always giving us bags of clothes which I would pull apart and alter to fit my style and size. This gave my wardrobe an eccentric and eclectic look all its own which I thought was quite individual and even artsy.
I hated to leave the warmth under the pile of blankets and old coats I had layered on for extra insulation at night. It could get pretty cold upstairs this time of year, and the transition from clothes to no clothes to clothes again was a little unpleasant in the wintertime. There’s never been heat up here, Dad didn’t put it in, but instead cut a hole in the floor the size of a wood stove chimney pipe to let whatever heat rise up from our wood stove down in the kitchen.
“Heat rises,” was how Dad explained it to us. I kept thinking, well maybe it does, but I sure can’t feel it up here.
It is colder than usual this morning. My fingers don’t work as quickly as I want them to. I head downstairs where mom and dad are hunkered under some blankets on the couch which they must have dragged in front of the fireplace during the night. They’re still sleeping. Dad’s head at one end of the couch and mom curled up at the other end.
I grab my bag and step outside into the ice cold morning and my nostrils form tiny icy needles on the first breath in sticking together like metallic glue. Luckily, the bus arrives in less than a minute but long enough to finish turning my toes in my sneakers into ten freeze pops.
I slide in next to Claire careful not to break off any digits.
“Vaugn, you look really cold,” she says, very concerned. The newscaster on the bus radio says that it’s five degrees this morning over central New England, and that it warmed up from the overnight low of zero.
I explain that I think our furnace broke again and she offers me her mittens with the fancy rabbit fur cuffs.
“Thanks, Claire,” I say, and between her offering and the noisy over head heater blowing puffs of warmth into the air, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
Excerpt from Leaf Landing by Bonnie J. Toomey
French Lesson
French is not the easiest class to miss.
I missed almost two weeks straight
after Mom died
and a lot of other days before that
and now I am really behind.
Mom wanted me to take French
because she thought it would help
in ballet class.
Dad lost a couple of bids.
He says people are losing
their jobs,
the economy is bad
The TV keeps warning
unemployment is up,
gas prices are up
and people are fed up.
I don’t know why Dad
has to watch
it only makes him
yell at the TV
Dad says we need to conserve more than we have been
now the house feels cooler.
When I complain,
Dad says
to go outside and come back in ,
then I’ll feel warmer.
Harriet and I spend our time bundled in
an extra layer of clothes
or dragging an afghan around
like giant moths in cocoons.
We are out of butter again.
Dad says
to try using peanut butter.
Well, isn’t the word,
butter,
in it?
Harriett won’t eat her toast
and it just sits on the plate
getting cold
like the floors
in this house
and suddenly the one phrase
in French,
“It is cold.” comes back to me:
“Il fait froid,
la maison est fait froide."
