Winds from the Midwest

I'm listening to the sweet strains of a child sleeping, the rhythm of intake and expelling of breath. My occasional charge, little E, seemed to have been waiting for me to come down and take my accustomed spot on the flowered chair, whispering my regular lines: "I'll just sit here until you fall asleep." And then, five, four, three. . .he was out, just like that. Bea is still chatting to herself up in her crib--she's got some habitual alternate world going these days at nap time, launched today by the exclamation, "Oh, no, someone is in trouble!" (She's waaay into animal rescue shows).

The little ones should be exhausted. Personally, I'm struggling to keep my own eyelids at the alert at the moment. We had a big morning, delivering homework to the elementary school through warm gusts of wind that made us so happy we danced in the car, followed by library time, capped off by a brisk run through the park and pbjs back in the library. My intent in packing a lunch had been that we'd settle down in the unseasonably balmy sunshine on a park bench to chomp our food, but that was not to be. The lovely spring-like morning gusted into a zephyrous, snow-blowing monster that sent us scattering for shelter and pulling our collars up around our ears.

The harrowing wind from the midwest is finally reaching us, but the sight of trashcans and empty sleds blowing across streets is marked by intermittent shafts of warm sunshine, so welcome and unusual in early February. In fact, this morning, little E looked up, surprised, when the sun burst from behind a cloud, and asked, "Who turned the lights on?" And I found myself double-checking bedrooms for burning light bulbs before I left this morning, so blinded are we by natural light.

Upstairs, Bea's game has suddenly escalated into a shouting match. Perhaps a baby hippo is in distress, or a goose has a pot on her head, and Bea's coming to the rescue just in time. As long as she does it all in her crib, I'm happy.