Hope upon hope

Yesterday AJ and I were sitting in the kitchen floor -- I love that expression, don't you? "In" the floor? It sounds like a playland -- paging through all of his artwork from November. Usually his wonderful teacher sends it home once a week, but I guess she's been busy. (Of course she has! I can't imagine being a daycare teacher. It blows my mind, what she does in one day.) There were orange pumpkins, and a spider made of two handprints pasted together with the fingers pointed outward (some October stuff, too), and a pilgrim that was colored all BROWN in long, swipey scribbles, and several letters and numbers which I will paste onto the dishwasher so we can look at them at eye level every day for a week or two.

AJ *loves* artwork. He calls it that, too. He actually seemed proud to be showing me all these things. At home, we have watercolor paints, a plastic smock, and an easel, and that has fast become his favorite activity other than watching videos. I just love watching him choose a color (always in succession, brown, purple, then green or blue, then yellow/orange/red, then black - the order they sit in the tray), then carefully choose a spot to paint (he always paints a character's eyes first), then he kind-of bounces while dipping his paintbrush in the water, dripping on the way back up to the paper -- it's so messy, and yet so purposeful. And magical.

Anyway, as we were sitting there and I watched him thumb through his pictures, I started to really hope that I am doing enough for him. Not in a down-in-the-dumps way, just because he is such a precious little person. Growing up so fast. I want to do everything, give everything, be everything that a child -- THIS particular child -- needs to grow and thrive.

I hope that sitting in the floor with you is good enough. I hope that canned vegetables are sometimes good enough. I hope that going to Publix after school is okay with you, and even fun sometimes. I hope that quiet weekends at home -- rather than family trips to children's adventure museums or the proverbial playdates -- are good enough. I hope that *I* -- me, the little person that I am, the nothing-more than my own small brain and my own heart -- am doing right by you.