On our drive home, I commented that Matthew might be home when we get there. However, when we arrived I realized that we were an hour behind what I had thought, since I had not changed the clock in my car for daylight savings time. We talked about time changes.
I started making some plum Knodels (the "o" should have an umlaut) for dinner. Those little purple plums are in season, we had some potatoes left from our CSA (community supported agriculture) summer share, and they are special for Matthew. All excellent reasons to make them.
It ended up taking me longer to make the Knodels than anticipated. That's not unusual for me and food prep. We ate some leftovers, then Matthew and Quinn played video games while I finished making the Knodels. Quinn mostly watches or helps in the sidekick role while Matthew plays the main character in the game. Quinn can do some of the levels on her own, but they play family games that are interesting and challenging enough to be fun for Matthew too. Sometimes Quinn stands behind the couch and pretends to play the game with pretend guns she's made out of pipe cleaners.
Quinn's Seraphina doll asked if she liked school or weekends better. Quinn said, "Weekends, because I get to play with my daddy!"
Matthew's Grandma Ilse has made Knodels for Matthew and for us over the years, and her sister Herta made them for us when we visited her on our honeymoon in Vienna. They are potato dumplings with small plums or apricots inside covered in buttered bread crumbs. At least that's how Matthew's family eats them.
Matthew said mine we far better than his last attempt at making them and declared, "Mmmm, comfort food." We'll have the rest for dinner (today, as I'm still writing about yesterday at this point.)
We picked up the Halloween decorations, brought out the Christmas decorations, and rearranged furniture a bit to accommodate the tree. Matthew put on the A Very She & Him Christmas album, and Quinn and I decorated the tree. Quinn had tons of fun picking the ornaments, mostly made by her in past years. She decided to leave off probably half of them and to throw out some old cookie ornaments we had made that were falling apart.
Quinn was very emotional while decorating. She told us how much she loves us and gave several hugs and kisses. She asked if I could feel the love she was sending. She said that she is glad to be an only child, and I said that it's good to love the life you have. Then she told me that she changed her mind, and she doesn't want to be exactly like me when she grows up (she has told me often lately that she wants to be like me). I said that she gets to be her own person.
Sometime during the night I overheard her asking Matthew, "What is Mexico?" So I showed her Mexico on our globe. We looked at where we live and where the coins and bills we looked at earlier were from.
I showed Quinn the video of a murmuration that my friends had shared.
We turned off the lights except for the Christmas tree and gave Matthew goodnight kisses. Then Quinn asked if we could have a chat. She started crying saying, "Sometimes you can have sadness even though you have a happy day." She told me that her friend had hurt her feelings when the friend said she was weird for being so small for a six year old. Suddenly her comment about not wanting to be exactly like me made a lot of sense as she wished that she were taller.
The conversation with her friend had happened a couple weeks ago in our backyard. The friend told me that it was strange (that's the word I recall) that Quinn was smaller than some of the five year olds she knows. I said I didn't think it was strange, because Quinn is my daughter and I'm very small, so it makes sense that she is a small person. I asked if she had any tall friends, and she said she knew a seven year old who was almost as tall as me. I said that kid probably has tall parents, and she said, "Yeah, she does!" Then Quinn and her friends started playing a game of throwing big balls through hula hoops, but the conversation clearly stayed in Quinn's mind.
Quinn wept and wished she could be taller than her friend, so the friend would know how it feels to be smaller than others younger than her. She talked about how they used to be good friends, but now her friend had hurt her feelings. She wished that she could be tall instead of short. Some of her younger friends are starting to pass her up in height. I held her as she cried for what seemed like a long time.
I told her that she was the perfect size she was supposed to be. I shared that I was too short to hang my bag at school on the hooks that other children could reach, so I made friends with a tall boy and he hung my bag for me every day. I told her that kids nicknamed me "Shrimp" for years, because I was small like a shrimp. I talked about how everyone makes mistakes and sometimes people say things without meaning to hurt feelings. I suggested that she could tell her friend that she didn't like to be called weird and that she didn't want to talk about her height. I talked about the benefits of being small like having adequate room on airplanes and in compact cars. I talked about sometimes leaving friendships with people that don't feel good and working out bumps to maintain friendships. I told her that it makes sense to focus on things that we can change and to accept the things we can't. I told her that she is amazing in countless ways. That's a lot of talk in response to things Quinn was saying. Most of the time was spent simply holding her as she cried and acknowledging that sometimes life hurts.
After a while, Quinn asked if we could watch some television. We watched a couple episodes of Adventure Time with Finn & Jake and laughed before going to bed.
That was kind of fun to write out most of our day, once. It took a lot of time. I can see how we covered many subjects and skills, including money, dates, time, geography, history, biology, fine and gross motor skills, colors, shapes, addition, instincts, social interactions, music, dancing, velocity, and self love. I'm so grateful that I don't have to record all of those things to prove to anyone that we are learning, because it would surely get in the way of living and suck the fun out of learning.
Some days we do more or less than this day. Every day is different, and I trust that we are learning and growing everyday through living and through making connections. I love this life and feel blessed to be able to live this way with my sweet family.
No comments:
Post a Comment