One of our favorite ways to have dinner as a family is to break out a large platter, fill it with fruit, veggies, cheese, meat, crackers or bread and place it on the ottoman (or outside on the front step). We sit on the floor and dig in, together, no plates, no forks, no tv, no music. Just enjoy the meal and company. I’m not sure if it’s the unorthodox dining method or the location but it makes for an exciting and chatty meal. Maybe it’s that we are all on the floor, at the same level. Katy labeled this event Fruity Friday, even if it’s on a Tuesday. Fruity Friday is typically completed by a rousing edition of “what is” – as in “what is your favorite animal?” “what is the best time of day?” and“what is your favorite color?” We go around the ottoman and usually end up giggling at the answers.
Katy is moving up to the big scary middle school this fall and for the month of May the 5th grade is having a practice run at 6th grade. They have padlocks on their lockers and move from class to class with different children for 4 class periods. With just 4 minutes to get from one class to the next they are carrying books with them and using a bell system for class dismissals. She thinks middle school is exciting and cannot wait to get there. It’s admittedly a little scary for me.
At nearly 7 years old, Miss Gretch has taken to a monkey. It’s a stuffed one that went through a bit of an identity crisis but eventually settled on the name Bananas. Saturday night a sleepy Gretchen came to my bed-side scared of a spidery dream. I told her to go back to bed and try to think about something else and got up to let the dog out. When I walked back upstairs she was in the hallway saying “it didn’t work” so I walked her to bed, tucked her in and explained that monkeys eat spiders and other kinds of bugs so Bananas would protect her. “Oh, okay,” she said dreamily, rolled to her side with Bananas snug under her arm and was suddenly sleeping with a faint smile on her little rosebud mouth.
Between the moments of frustration and repeated directions, of ‘what were you thinking’ and ‘how do you think that makes her feel’ are snapshots of our little family just being. I understand that the frustration and other things that are not fun are part of our family also, but it’s the little moments that I cherish. Sitting around the ottoman having dinner, chatter from the backseat about this friend and that, and quieting a bad dream with the assurance that everything would be alright.
These days are numbered. Gretchen will be 7 next month and Katy turns 11 in June. For years we have teasingly celebrated ‘only 12 more years and they’ll be out of the house!’ around their birthdays. It won’t be long and they’ll turn the table on it and start celebrating how many years until they get to move out.
