Dominic’s latest trick is to waddle over to the shoe basket, dig until he finds a tiny shoe, and then carry it over and drop it in front of me. Then he plops down on his bottom and holds his foot out. If I don’t move quickly enough to please him – i.e. immediately – he kicks me, points imperiously to the door, or screams. Or all three.
He loves going outside.
I have to admit, I love it less. It’s hot here at the moment – a steamy, sticky, hot. And Dominic is so unsteady on his newly-shod feet that he has to hold my hand to get anywhere safely. Dominic, of course, doesn’t have any grasp of the concept of safely yet, so I find myself constantly saying “just looking, no touching” when he tries to stuff everything from rocks to snails into his mouth. Other things I find myself saying a lot are “yucky” and “Mummy take it” and “this way” and “the hat stays on”.
Oh, also, “Yes, Zulu is a funny dog” and “That’s a chicken” and “No! Zulu, leave the chicken alone!”
This is his favorite thing in the world to do at the moment.
Oh, and this.
This morning we went to wave at the garbage collectors who trailed the truck that somehow managed to squeeze down the dirt lane outside our house. On our way back inside we encountered Oun, our maebaan, who’d decided today was as good as any to drag a long hose over and clean the gecko droppings from the baby-height ledge running around the outside of the house.
Dominic wanted to go over and see what she was doing.
I hesitated.
I almost coaxed/carried him back inside where it was cooler, and more contained, and a whole lot cleaner, but then I shrugged and let him tug me forward.
For a minute or two I tried to keep him out of the warm rivers that were already running along the pavement (He was wearing new shoes! And if I got wet I’d have to change his clothes! I was hot!) but within seconds it became apparent that I’d either have to curtail this fun immediately or embrace a mess.
Here’s what I choose.
It was wet. It was dirty. It was hot. And it was good.
When’s the last time you spontaneously embraced a mess?
2 comments
Ohhhhhh… you have a walker. And all my sympathies! There are so many, many, MANY more things that Dominic will now be able to reach/ explore/dismantle/eat/smear and move from where they should be to God only knows where!
If it wasn’t before, mess is about to become your friend. Mostly, I don’t bother telling my toddler to get down from his chair in front of the sink, where he’s playing with the water and cups and plates and anything else that happened to be on the bench, I just put towels on the floor.
🙂
They have so much fun in the mess, don’t they? I don’t mind water messes though, still relatively ‘clean’. I do feel guilty about not lighting their creativity bonfires by letting them fling paint around or make drawings and statues with their food, but I can live with that since they get a lot of art at school (or at someone else’s house, ha!).
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