Things I Loved In February

The month of February has been kind of grey and snowy and cold, but one afternoon this month the girls and I walked around Washingtonian Center to eat cupcakes and pick up some treats at Charming Charlies.  What is it that Jem says to Scout when she’s nervous about stepping on Boo Radley’s porch?  Something like, “I swear Scout, you act like a girl more and more everyday!” Well, on this afternoon, the H’s and I acted a lot like girls.

The girls and I were in Barnes and Noble the day before Valentine’s Day and Hadley found a Calvin and Hobbes book and said, “Mama, we HAVE to get this for daddy! I just read this in the library at school and I know Daddy would just LOVE Calvin and Hobbes!”  So we got it for Jesse for Valentine’s Day and when we got home I did a quick sweep of our bookshelves to make sure I hid the collection of Calvin and Hobbes books Jesse owns while thinking this was just more proof that Hadley and Jesse are two peas in a pod.

This is Hadley on a Saturday morning studying the comic strip because she wants to write her own: Supergirl. I snuck in her room to take this picture after she’d been in there for about an hour.  The rest of the day she was chuckling at Calvin and telling us all the things he’d done with Hobbes.  I think she’s found another friend.

Last week we had an impromptu playdate with some friends after preschool and for a while they painted together.  The two older kids painted all sorts of things, and the younger one did too, but after a bit decided he wanted to read. So he found some Dr. Seuss to relax with.

After the kids left, I started to clean up.  There was paint all over the floor and I went to clean it up but there was something sad about wiping up the mess. I can’t figure out what it was exactly, but years ago, before we had kids and we were living in South Bend, a friend of mine came over with her young son who found the sliding glass door that led to our porch fascinating.  He would tap on the glass with his hands and giggle and giggle and then point.  Maybe he was trying to get to the stadium. Or the East Race. Or Corbys.  At any rate, after they left, I saw his little finger prints on the glass but it took a long time for me to clean them off.  Come to think of it, I don’t know if I ever did.

So I’m thinking of this little guy’s finger prints and the paint splatters and I’m wondering why the first brought such delight and the second makes me feel I have to take action. I haven’t figured it out, but I left the paint on the floor for the rest of the week and each time I saw it, I thought of the little boy and the kids who came over for a few hours and that quote in Fahrenheit 451 about it not mattering so much what it is you do so long as what you touch ends up being more like you after you take your hands away.