Creechy Sandcastles, etc.

So, Ethan asked me out today. Asked me out to play cows on the bridge in our woods, that is. We ended up building sand castles by the creek. It was pretty, peaceful, and cool out there...the cool, squishable, grainy sand felt so good between my fingers...like cold brown sugar. Anyone who takes time out to be with Ethan is his hero of the hour, and since I haven't done it much at all lately, it surprised me a little to find how lovable and sweet he is...although he still already knows everything I know, and more, at age four... and tells me so at every opportunity. I still find that I have influence though. The Bad Indian Fortress suddenly became a Good Indian Fortress when I began building one, and as soon as I planted a tree in my castle, he had to have one too.

The poor kid must be desperate if he thinks its fun to build sandcastles with me. I didn't even sit down in the sand, for heaven's sake...or take off my shoes. Actually, it would have felt good to sink my toes into some of that perfect dirt. As it was, I just mentally planned a creekside picnic (in swim suits) when I'll be happy to dive in and get in the dirt for a change. Yes, somebody please hold me accountable to this!

The other reason I don't see why Ethan can tolerate me as a playmate is that my architechtural and strategic capabilities are sorely lacking. My castles are partially cylindrical blobs with something akin to roads leading out of them...no fortifications, really...and random seedlings *ahem*, trees up at high points. But, can you believe it? He wants to copy my ideas! Its a good thing the poor little fella spends more time with Connor than with me. In the end we had a bunch of mysterious sandy mounds with little or no comprehensive order or use...a passing woodsman might have viewed them with the same puzzlement and awe inspired by Stonehenge (if they had been a bit bigger, that is.) Hey, maybe that's the explaination for Stonehenge after all...providing,

a) that giants did exist
and
b) that giants had the same sort of family life

maybe a sister giant went out in the woods with her little brother giant and they made sandcastles...and then the sandcastles petrified, the creek dried up (and the trees got cut down), and wa-la! Stonehenge! Yes, I'm sure that's how it happened.

Spending quality time with Ethan is something I don't do very much, and want to do more...even if its hard sometimes to pull myself out of my own little (quite little) world. There are definitely some rich rewards. I think one of my favorite things about spending time with kids in general is hearing the hilarious things they have to say- and their honest, sometimes quite humbling, opinion! I've been told recently that its much more fun to jump on the trampoline with heavy people like me, that my earrings are "very cool and look like little light bulbs," and that when I read aloud my collarbone moves up and down (in an apparently inexcusably wierd way!) Ethan told me that his Bad Indian Fortress (until it became the Good Indian Fortress) was where the indians who were "mean and creechy" lived. From my understanding, "creechy" is fits somewhere between "creepy" and "creature."

Time for supper now...adios!