Earlier this summer Coco was a flower girl in my sister’s wedding. She was quite thrilled. She got a beautiful flower girl dress and couldn’t wait to wear it. I put it in my closet and every time she saw it, in the weeks before the wedding, she would beg me to try it on. At the wedding she was non-stop. She was given her own camera and took all sorts of photos. She sprinted around the reception, chatting up other children. She even helped me give my toast. She also kept returning to Auntie’s table to hug her–I think she loved her wedding dress. At one point after a particularly enthusiastic hug, the photographer said to Kristen, “I think you should know she has butter all over her hands.”
Coco and I played hide and seek inside recently. I counted and she ran and hid. She wasn’t wearing any clothes, which she prefers on these hot days of summer. When I walked into the den looking for her, there she was lying face down on the floor with her head under the couch and the rest of her body on jutting out. She thought that was a wonderful hiding place and was surprised that I found her so quickly.
Last weekend we went camping with friends on the Connecticut river. What Coco was most excited about was roasting marshmallows. Days before we left she asked, “Mama, are we going to have the white sings [things]?” When I didn’t immediately know what she was talking about she got a bit impatient and said, “the white sings on sticks!”
We brought our kayak camping. We paddled with our friends down the river and found a bit of sandy beach to have a picnic. In some spots, there are weeds that look like fur trees fairly close to shore, making swimming unappealing. But the water at our picnic spot was perfect. Coco kept her life preserver on and was swimming along happily. When Daddy swam out a ways from shore, she began crying because she wanted to go with him. She appears to have no fear. Several times she wanted to jump out of the kayak and swim to our friends in their kayaks. When I woke her up early on Monday morning because we had to leave, she cried. “But I don’t want to go, I want to stay here.”
The summer is nearly over and it has been way too short. Coco’s last day at the family daycare she’s attended for two years was today. I was sad. Those little milestones get me…the passage of time and all that. Now we’re headed straight for pre-school in two and a half weeks and I start student teaching.
All summer I have wondered what to do about this blog. After finishing school last semester, I really had little interest in writing, though funny and wonderful things were happening all the time. I guess I will see what happens after September starts.
