Monday, May 7, 2012

A Sunday Night Walk

After dinner we let the dishes stay dirty.  We wipe faces and fingers and skedaddle to the backyard.  If we don't, it will be a long, long time until sleep consumes them.

He rides his bike.  She wants to ride the three-wheeled princess scooter handed down from the six-year-old neighbor girl but I know I'll regret letting her do this two blocks in to our walk.  So I say no.  She puts up a fight.  But not too much.  Just enough for her to let me know she's big enough now.  She takes her place at the front of the tandem double stroller anyway.

The baby is already happy to be locked and loaded.  Nary a sound escapes her mouth the whole trek.  But she sees it all.  She doesn't blink a wink.  Watching.  Waiting.  Listening.  Learning.
He bikes a block ahead of us.  Always obediently looking back to make sure he can still see me like I've asked.  And always, always stopping at intersections to wait for the all clear from me or Dad.

Lucy is loud.  And annoying.  I'm not afraid to admit it.  Whining about this and that.  Getting in and out of the stroller 1,745 times.  But I'm glad it's out here and not in the four walls of our house.

I tell her to look for bunnies to distract her complaining mind.  And the second the words escaped me we came upon a big one.  So still I wondered if she might be a lawn ornament.  We got so close.  And she didn't move.  But then we got too close and she sprung off on her hind legs and into the yard behind her.

Brian saw it first.  The gentle rustling of leaves on the exact spot the rabbit had just vacated.  He leaned in slowly and there they were.  A nest of teeny, tiny hairless bunnies.  The kids were in awe.  But careful.  Brian told them if we touched them, their mother might not come back.

Yes, because our neighborhood is severely lacking in the bunny department, I sarcastically told Brian.

After attentions ran dry we turned the corner down another street to find what surely must have been a bunny farm.  They were everywhere!  Brian told the kids he would give them five dollars if they could catch one.  So on a nearby grassy bank they chased Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail until their breaths ran out.

They came up empty-handed.  So they cut their losses and we walked the rest of the way home.

Instead of a book after her bath, Lucy opted to tell me a story about a princess and some bunnies.  And then she snuggled in with her own stuffed bunny and fell fast asleep without a single protest.

Our summer routine is starting.  And I love it.

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