Saturday, April 7, 2007

Why 8 Is Great

Although she received tons of lovely birthday gifts (and she WILL be sitting down to write thank you cards to everyone very soon), my now 8-year old went outside yesterday by herself in the freezing weather, and asked if she could use the trash in the recycling bin.

She later explained the necessity of this bird house for the birds to get out of the cold:


Of course, being the cruel parents that we are, we made her take it apart later, as we looked like the white trash neighbors.

But she recuperated quickly and had a sleepover with her good friend Anna last night; they're two peas in a pod - very dramatic. They were pooling their money last night ($28.03 thanks to recent birthday money) to try to hire the Naked Brothers Band to play Anna's birthday in May. So optimistic - when I told them it would be thousands of dollars, they said, "Well, we'll have a bake sale."

Given some cardboard and some markers, they'd have a clubhouse within minutes. I'm used to that. But today, after they'd played outside, we found this on the driveway:



I didn't ask her what it meant, because I'm sure the elaborate drama was just outside of my adult realm of understanding.

I'll miss these days as they are slowly replaced with complaining about school, and boys, and who called who a bitch on the playground. For now, I'll take cardboard birdhouses, impossible dreams, and an inexplicable SOS sign made of sticks.

1 comment:

she-who-travels-with-camera said...

That was too funny. Our boys in Haiti do the same thing -- but sadly, all they can play with is recycled trash. their kites are made of plastic bags and sticks, their trucks are made of cut bottles and bottle tops. some of their games are outside the realm of any adult understanding. But then most of the time I don't really want to understand -- especially when rocks are involved. But to your comment about missing those days -- I certainly do. Even here there is a fantastic innocence to the children that's so refreshing in the face of harsh realities.