We spent a week vacationing on Bainbridge Island, in the Puget Sound near Seattle and I have so many wonderful ideas I want to write about - from seeing our old friends and their families eating out of their gardens, kayaking across the sound, exploring a fairy garden (those of you with 5 year old girls should definitely know about this!), sitting around a campfire with the kids roasting marshmallows to make ’smores and enjoying the simple pleasure of throwing rocks in the water for an hour. Or two.

First, though, I must confess what happened this morning, back in my real world where school is almost starting and I’m making decisions about what/where/when in the busyness of our lives: two babysitters showed up at my house, at the same time. Yes, I had booked two wonderful girls to care for my kids without realizing I had booked them. There’s that thing they say about losing brain cells when you have kids — well, I lost a few.

I’m fortunate to have a little time each week to myself, hopefully to nurture myself so that when I am with my kids, I’m more relaxed. Mothering with grace, as they say.

Onto fairies. My girlfriend S. told me her daughter L. started getting into fairies, so she (the girl) wrote a letter to the fairy. The fairy wrote back, this went on for about six weeks with L. writing each day to the fairy - or, actually, fairies — sometimes she wrote ten fairies in one day! She’d ask them questions, asked for a wand, and the fairy/fairies always wrote back. Finally she asked for a fairy house, and the fairy replied that she couldn’t build a house but that perhaps Grandpa could help and presto, there is now a little fairy house nestled in her back yard among the tall trees.

I love this story because first I got to witness my son and L. explore the fairy garden together, and we couldn’t pull them away. I also love it because writing and reading weren’t the primary focus, but obviously in her attempts to communicate with the fairies, L. was working on these skills. Too often when I want to “teach” my kids something, I do it literally, sitting down to practice letters or read sight words, but its so much more fun (for kids AND parents) to teach in disguise - to explore a fairy land or pirate land or outer space and do a little reading, ‘riting & ‘rithmetic along the way. Thanks to S. & L. for sharing their fairies with us.

To end today I want to share this shot of my daughter, listening for the sound of the ocean. . . . it reminds me to just stop, and listen:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 1:46 pm and is filed under capturing memories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.