In The Treetops

You can’t stop a climber. If you’ve got one, you know what I mean. Of my four children, two are climbers and have occasionally scared me witless with their antics. If you don’t curtail the scaling of climb-prone kids, lots of people--friends, family, and strangers alike--will weigh in with both warnings and critical clucking. Addison was a runner and Keilana was a good-senser (I had to go to the tops of slides and retrieve her until she was six), but Connor and Scarlett are my monkeys. Today Scarlett, clad only in a diaper and bedhead, wedged her tiny toes into the crack between the tops of the cabinets and the bottom of the silverware drawer to heft herself up onto the counter that is higher than her head. When I asked her just what she thought she was doing, she said, “Go way me! I climbing!” Obviously. It’s no use arguing, apparently. My mother has always said I was a climber, and I believe it considering how much I love trees. Not in a tree-hugging way (well, not just in a tree-hugging way), but in a get-my-hands-dirty-pulling-myself-off-the-ground way. As a child, I spent far more time among the branches of the trees in our yard than I did earthbound--and my mom got to hear all about what a terrible mother she was from the neighbors. When we read Margaret Hodges’ The True Tale of Johnny Appleseed, I couldn’t help but feel glad that my mom never listened to the naysayers.

http://www.amazon.com/True-Tale-Johnny-Appleseed/dp/0823415090

http://www.library.pitt.edu/libraries/is/enroom/hodges/hodgesbio.htm

Tub Time

Scarlett loves to climb things, the higher and more hazardous, the better. There’s nothing you can do to stop a climber, so we kiss a lot of boo-boos. Just yesterday, she had a four-point fall from the kitchen table, bouncing off a chair seat and two push-toys on the way down. Since Keilana was here, three of Scarlett’s big people jumped up to love the hurt away, and I thought how nice it would be if that trend continued our whole lives. Wouldn’t it be amazing if the things that made us feel better as children didn’t fade away or lose their magic? Like the bathtub. Remember how, as a kid, you spent hours playing in the bath? There were bubbles and water toys, so many things to make getting clean just that much more fun. Having long hair most of my childhood, I could lie back in the warm water and let my tresses flow around me like a mermaid, feeling beautiful and exotic. I especially loved the tub when I was sick. Something about the tension relief of the water and the warm, foggy air of the bathroom had recuperative powers. Even when my bath was done, I would dry everything with a towel and snuggle up with blankets in the empty tub. It’s where my mom always knew to look when she couldn’t find me. In Audrey Wood’s King Bidgood’s In The Bathtub, the monarch won’t leave the tub no matter what. He might be onto something.

http://www.amazon.com/King-Bidgoods-Bathtub-Audrey-Wood/dp/0152427309

http://www.audreywood.com/mac_site/clubhouse/clubhouse_page/clubhouse.htm