"Why are there tears in your eyes? / Because I just love spending time with you, Daddy!" I grin at the green message as I get ready to eat lunch. For a second, I think Rainbow said that after preschool, but then I look at the time sent and realize it must have been Sweetie at lunch.
"M said that?" I type back.
"Uh huh! During lunch! I looked over and there were tears in her eyes!"
I can just imagine her sitting in his car outside her school, purple unicorn lunchbox in her lap, gazing adoringly at him. She has always been such a Daddy's Girl! I giggle. And she's soooo sensitive!
When Omicron was raging after winter break and I panicked that she'd catch Covid from the lunchroom, I realized that we could actually make it work to pull her out of school for lunch like I'd heard of some other families doing. Our nanny agreed to let Sweetie eat in her car with the windows cracked (and piles of blankets on her and Rainbow) on days Husband works on campus, and Husband would take his lunch during Sweetie's lunch on his work-from-home days. I was afraid she'd be sad about missing lunch with her friends, but she has perfectly been happy all these months to listen to Ramona audiobooks in the nanny's car with her little sister some days, and obviously ecstatic to eat with Daddy on the other days.
When I get home after school, he can't wait to expand on the story. "Yeah, we were just sitting there, talking about nothing, like cars or something, and I looked over and saw big tears welling up in her eyes!" His face glows with love. "And when I asked why, she just said, 'I just LOVE you, Daddy! I just LOVE spending time with you!'"
A few minutes later, when she gets off the bus, I say, "I heard you had happy tears at lunch with Daddy today?"
"Yes! I just LOVE him!" she repeats, and runs to wrap her arms around his neck in the den.
These 2 years have been so hard in so many ways, but when she looks back at first grade, I hope she remembers those special parking lot lunches with Daddy.
In the picture on my phone, Rainbow Girl's wide blue eyes are caught half-fixed on something in the distance and half-glancing at my dad, whose eyebrows are raised as his mouth forms "ohh" or "ooh". She points one stubby finger at something up and to her left while the pointer finger on her other hand jabs towards something to her right, both arms outstretched in opposite directions. Barely more than 1, her baby-chubbiness is encased in dinosaur pajamas with little claws on the footie toes as she perches in my dad's strong arms, wispy-fine baby hair blowing into her eyes.
In the next photo, my dad's huge hand hovers near her little hip to keep her steady on a stump as they both point down the creek in the same direction.
In another, she clings to my dad's shoulder while he holds her big sister's hand with his other arm, making sure neither of them falls into the creek as Sis's pink sparkly rain boots teeter rather precariously on a rock.
In one of my favorites, Rainbow Girl flaps her arms wildly (I can see them move in the Live photo!), mouth wide open and pink tongue sticking out, as my dad, cradling her, crouches to slip through a low gap in some bushes. His mouth is open almost as wide as hers!
In all the photos, the blue sky is doubly dazzling, above them and reflected in the creek behind them. It's a gorgeous, normal day.
<3
In all the photos, no one is wearing a mask. We are breathing casually, wildly, recklessly in each other's faces, ready to kiss and nuzzle and snuggle without a second thought.
Without any idea what was to come.
No idea that for the next few months, we'd only see each other on screens and quick peeks through the front porch windows. No idea that when we finally got to share space again, we'd be wearing masks and staying outside. No idea that those sacrifices wouldn't be enough, that other people's rushing to normal would prolong our missed moments.
And definitely no idea that 2 years later, we'd find ourselves still here. Still in masks (now upgraded masks!), still limiting activities, still reducing exposure, still weighing risk, still waiting-waiting-waiting for a vaccine for Rainbow Girl. Still worrying.
No idea that 2 years would seem like ages, that Rainbow Girl would grow from a baby into a small person almost entirely at home, with a world we couldn't have imagined raging around her.
No idea that normal would be frozen in those photos.
"We can get shale rocks! With Meemaw and Grandaddy!! I need my MASK!!!" Rainbow Girl squeals with excitement as soon as I tell her that my parents are going to meet us at our favorite park.
After packing lunches, rain boots for creeking, and extra clothes, and seemingly half the house, we choose our masks on the way out. "Pink unicorn! Pink unicorn!" she shrieks, reaching out her little arm and opening her chubby fingers.
I think back to how excited she was to finally be big enough to wear a mask. All summer and fall, she'd been watching us put on our masks to see my parents or pick up her sister's school supplies. She was pretty good about wearing the little faceshield sunhat we'd gotten her, but she knew it wasn't the same. After a few times asking if she could have a mask, she learned the answer and started announcing, "Sis is big enough! Mommy's big enough! Daddy's big enough!" whenever we got them out. It was perfect. As her birthday approached, we started hyping, "You'll be big enough soon!"
We made sure the mask pack was the first present she opened on her birthday, right away in the morning. As soon she pulled the tiny unicorn and rainbow masks out of the pack, she grabbed the pink one and held it up to her face. I cheered, "You're big enough!" and helped her pull the loops over her ears. Clenching her little fists in excitement, she tilted her head up and squinted her eyes in her happiest smile.
The birthday girl, finally big enough!
"MASK PARADE!" she announced gleefully, flail-dance-running in circles around the family room with Sweetie close behind.
She wore it to my parents' house. She wanted to show it to Sweetie's kindergarten friends during their school meeting. She played in it. She colored in it. She read in it. She played in it some more. Hours later, if she could've eaten her snack in it, she would have!
Now, she usually only wears a mask when needed, although we still have the occasional mask parade. But she always keeps them on so happily that people ask incredulously how old she is when they see her. (It's a fair question since she's still wearing 12-18 month clothes!)
"I'm two!" she declares proudly, often followed by an excited index finger jabbing at her face. "I have my MASK!"
creeking today with the same mask (her absolute favorite), since my parents were with us
(When Laurie first started putting on a mask for a few minutes during her Facebook Lives last spring, talking about how we could all be superheroes by wearing a mask and washing our hands, Rainbow Girl burst into tears, but soon, she was much more curious than scared!)
Sun streams through the windshield, making Rainbow Girl's hair in the mirror seem lighter than it really is. It's chilly today, but it looks deceivingly beautiful as we zip along the country roads, taking the long way home, as always. For most of last year, she hated the car (probably because the only place we went all spring and summer was to the doctor to get shots!), but in the fall, she suddenly decided riding in the car was so fun that she didn't want to get out, loudly yelling "I don't WANT head home!" when we approached our neighborhood. Suddenly, she would screech "YEAH! RIDE IN THE CAR!" when I said it was time to pick up one of Sweetie's free school lunches for remote learners, and one of our sanity-saving winter activities became driving around for an extra 20-30 minutes on any day the lunch is something Sweetie likes.
Just a few minutes from our house, we can zoom along safe, fun backroads with rolling hills, gorgeous views, and few other cars. One minute we're gliding past wide-open, placid farm fields, and around the next bend, we're winding through wooded areas where long, gated driveways lead to mansions we can barely catch glimpses of. On one of our favorite routes, we even sail past the historic, well-preserved farm where the namesake of Sweetie's school, a freed slave, became the first Black farm-owner in the county and hid escaping slaves on the Underground Railroad. Just down the road, we peer at the reservoir that now covers the riverbank caves where the escaping slaves would hide until the farm owners rang a bell that signaled safety, and we think about the courage of all involved.
When we're not contemplating history, the girls balance singing loudly along to their playlist, looking at books, and looking out the window. With her musical car mirror, Rainbow Girl can see out the front windshield too, even though she's rear-facing, and I love seeing her little finger in my rearview mirror, pointing into her mirror at something we're approaching. "LOOK!" she'll screech, "DIGGERS!" (Both girls are in love with construction vehicles of all kinds.) Or I'll see her holding up a book, tiny finger on a picture, declaring, "A rabbit! Look, a rabbit!" or "I see Brown Bear, Brown Bear!"
She also loves to introduce each song by shrieking her special nickname for it when she hears the first few notes. For example,"How Far I'll Go" from Moana is "Pig!" because she likes watching for Moana's pig friend to appear in the music video during our YouTube playlist dance parties. "For the First Time in Forever" from Frozen is "Quack Quacks!" or "Duckies!" because she loves the little family of ducks that waddles by Anna at one point in the video.
In the car, it's astonishing to see how much she's memorized each video as she narrates her favorite songs by describing what happens in the video, exactly at the right moment in the song, announcing when Moana "dives in the pool!" in "I am Moana", or when Elsa shoots off ice fireworks in "Some Things Never Change".
Even better, she narrates the Spanish ones too, and while I know she just has the songs and their videos memorized like the English ones, she's also connecting the Spanish lyrics she's learning to the pictures in her head from the videos, and starting to learn what some words mean. I'm so proud when she declares, "Nariz means nose!", "I like melon!" or shakes her body at the correct times when "Hormiguita" comes on in the car. (Sweetie loves to help by tickling her in the correct body part as the ant crawls around!) Or when she tells what each letter does in "La Ronda de Vocales": "He bring a present for her mommy! He eats! He rides her bike!" (At just over two, she's still working on English too, and one of her more adorable explorations right now is pronouns that don't always agree with themselves.)
Sweetie, who loves to be Elsa, mostly asks questions about the sights and helps make sure her little sister has the right book or her water cup... until the Frozen songs come on. Then she's fully focused on singing every word at the top of her lungs, making Elsa-ice-power motions with her hands (sometimes copied by Rainbow).
I'm glad we'll be able to start enjoying more time outdoors and using the car to really go to parks (and eventually more normal places), but these winter car rides have been a fun way to get out of the house and yard while still being safe at home together!
"Hormiguita (Ant)" is one of our favorite songs, and I'm so grateful that there are amazing YouTube channels like La Gallina Pintadita with high-quality visuals (and sing-along lyrics for my budding reader) so I can give them access to a whole wider range of Spanish input! Before I discovered this and curated a playlist, Rainbow Girl (with her aversion to new things) was not a fan of me trying to use Spanish. Now, not only does she love Spanish songs, she's gleefully starting to use Spanish to communicate, just like her big Sis and Mommy!
"Ehhhh! I don't want it!" Rainbow Girl shakes her head vigorously, her smooth brown hair swirling around her head like a little hurricane. "I don't wanna go to the zoo!"
"You'll love it, Sweetie Pie!" I know she has no idea what I'm talking about, since she was only 11 months old the last time she was at the zoo for the Christmas lights of 2019, and we'd really only been a couple times before that. I figured we'd start going a lot more often during the spring of 2020... and well, we all know how that turned out. "We're going to see real animals!" I know this also means nothing to her. "Do you want to see a real brown bear, brown bear? Or a real elephant, like in the song?"
"I don't wanna see the animals!" She's in full, pouty refusal mode, and starts swiping her arms back and forth at me, not really hitting but letting me know she's kind of thinking about it. She negates every outfit I suggest. "No! Stay in 'jamas!"
"You can't wear your pajamas to the zoo! We're going to ride in the stroller, outside! You love riding in the stroller!"
"I! DON'T! WANT! IT!" When you've spent half your life at home except for walks, bike rides, and the occasional hike at a metro park, new experiences are more daunting than fun, I guess.
I give up momentarily and let her run around in my room while I get ready. Luckily, she poops and we need to change her diaper, so I'm able to use that as an opportunity to slip her mostly-distracted self into some of the clothes she rejected earlier. "Look! Kitty cat socks! The kitty cats want to see the animals!"
"I wanna wear my boot-shoes!" She's starting to warm up to the idea of going somewhere!
We videocall Husband (who's at an in-person work shift) during lunch, and by the end of the call, she's declaring, "I wanna go to the zoo!" It helps that her big sis is practically bouncing off the walls with excitement.
I'd been avoiding the zoo because they only require masks of people 10 and older, and I've seen way too many pictures on social media of people not wearing masks there. (Not just people taking them off for pictures, but like random people in the background of the picture are also not wearing them.) And before Rainbow Girl turned 2, she couldn't wear a mask, and that really made me overly cautious. But both girls now wearing their masks so well, going to the outdoor exhibits while trying to stay away from people started to seem like more of a possibility. And with many local schools heading back to all-in, 5-days-a-week learning yesterday (don't even GET me started on that!), I figured attendance would be down. Plus, tomorrow's weather is supposed to be gorgeous, so maybe people would also wait to go then, instead of today's not-quite-miserable, barely-passable for spring, damp-chilly-cloudiness. When Sweetie's teacher emailed to say that live Meets were canceled because she's sick and there's only asynchronous work today, it seemed like the perfect chance to give it a try.
When we walk up to the entrance, Rainbow Girl resumes her protest momentarily. "I don't want it! I don't want the zoo!" But by the time we chat with the ticket-taker (a former Spanish student of mine from ages ago - such a fun surprise!) and start walking up the path to the central lake, her curiosity gets the better of her.
Legs straight out, arms tensed, little hands balled into fists. Finally, a little finger starts to point at the people and things around us. "What's that? ... That?... That?" Food carts, signs, other families, a bridge, music playing. "What's that? That?!" Across the bridge, the first exhibit: 4 huge Mexican wolves, walking and lounging around their yard.
"Do you see the wolf-doggies?"
"Ehhhhh! I don't want that!!!" she exclaims one last time, waving her arms. But by the time we round the corner to the farm animals, she wants to get out of the stroller and see them.
The zoo. What a change from learning about the world beyond our backyard through books, magazines, and videos.
We're going to have so much to (re)discover, little one. The world is so much bigger than you know, and I wish I could make these germs go away so you could see it all.
¡Hola! I write in Spanish on Fridays. Feel free to paste this post's url into Google Translate if you don't speak Spanish - it's not perfect, but you'll get the main ideas! (and you'll get a peek at what happens when something is machine-translated!)
- ¡Familias! ¡Comparten sus imágenes favoritas de la academia del aprendizaje remoto! -
Desplazo la página y veo un montón de imágenes bellÃsimas: gatos y perros acurrucados en los brazos de niñes durante sus reuniones de clase, hermanites pequeñites mirando, curiosos, sobre los hombros de sus hermanes mayores, sofás con familias enteras sentadas juntas con sus computadoras, niñes pequenes con audiófonos gigantes... momentos de orgullo, alegrÃa, y comunidad. Momentos de familia. Momentos de amor.
Les dejo con una de las canciones escolares favoritas de las hermanas: ¡el alfabeto de animales!
P.S. Fellow multilingual slicers... feel free to join me in writing in another language on Fridays! :-) Watch for an official invitation next Friday on TWT! :-)
