The Return of the Light

How can it be that we were puddle jumping one week, then hunkering down in a blanket fort during an ice storm a week later?

How can it be that we we're eating our lunch outside on Monday beneath enormous clumps of cumulus clouds that drifted across the sky like gargantuan cauliflower ...and now, snow today?!

In spite of all this atmospheric teasing, I know that Spring is on the way. I know because the forsythia is blooming! The "monks" have returned! I know because there are daffodils and crocus sprouting from their beds and the scent of the air is whispering that spring is near, the scent of damp soil and new growth, the breath of the earth as it sighs and awakens from its winter slumber.

I know because the light has returned and streams through the window, golden ribbons marking paths across the floor toward our favorite corners, warming baskets of wooden blocks













and illuminating Satchel's reading chair where Fraggles laugh themselves silly.



And although the Wrens and the Chickadees were marvelous company over the winter, I long for the return of the Warblers, and the Swallowtails, and the Dragonflies that dart across the pond, and the Fireflies and and and....I know Spring is near. I can't wait to go outside and play with Satch (enough with the snow already).

Did anyone else read this article in the NY Times?

"Psychologists complain that over-scheduled kids have no time left for the real business of childhood: idle, creative, unstructured free play. And everyone seems to worry that without the chance to play stickball or hopscotch out on the street, to play with dolls on the kitchen floor or climb trees in the woods, today’s children are missing out on something essential." - Robin Marantz Henig

Did you know there is a National Institute for Play?

Have a good weekend, everyone!