i think about my childhood a lot these days, as i am now in charge of someone else’s (two someones, actually). and what i remember most about being so new in the world are all of the beautiful, fun, interesting, and delicious things my parents showed my brother and me. i will never forget the first time they took us to fall creek falls state park, and we got see and walk behind this waterfall:

or the time our family spent a few nights in new orleans, and my parents took my brother and me to cafe du monde for beignets. they were almost giddy when i took my first yummy bite. now i know the feeling.

but perhaps the most recurring such events in my childhood were our trips to the gulf coast, the same coast i’m looking at now as i type and as the monkey and bird sleep. my parents started by showing us the ocean. then they taught my brother and me to ride its waves, mine if for shells, and make castles in its surf. and when we got a little older, they taught us to settle down beside it with a good book.

but what i remember most about my introduction to the world’s wonders is that it felt, at the time, as if my parents had invented all of these things just for my brother and me. whether we were wading in a creek in middle tennessee, riding the tube in london, or eating my dad’s saturday morning pancakes, it felt as if my parents were letting their children in on a set of sweet secrets conjured up merely for our benefit.

my parents didn’t invent the world’s wonders for us, of course, nor are my husband and i inventing them for our boys. but there is something so accurate about my childhood idea of my parents as inventors. the world is full of so much potential for happiness, sadness, and every emotion in between. and though much of life is spent coping and grieving those things that are beyond our control, we can continue to invent lives for ourselves that embrace what is beautiful, fun, interesting, and delicious.

being a parent is a constant reminder of this redeeming truth. it takes us back to the basic goodness of life, and while we are opening our kids to this goodness, we cannot help but open up to it again ourselves.

i can tell that the monkey and bird are already starting to become inventors. not inventors of the ocean and beignets, of course, but little people who are blazing new trails to the earth’s gifts, trails to which i hope they return, again and again.

p.s. i refrained (pardon the pun) from covering the wonders of music in this post, for reasons i have stated earlier.

sunny flordia is indeed sunny. the problem is, it is also windy and cold. it is supposed to warm up tomorrow. in the meantime, the monkey would prefer to do this:

and this:

we would prefer that he not.

so, we’ve had two morning excursions to local strolling, playgrounding, and lunching spots. all have provided our fair share of respite from the wizard-of-oz-like beachside wind.

i, myself, like to find a warm, sunny corner and observe.

but these excursions are not our only makeshift moves this week. i am frequently fretting that my little bird is, well, little. he’s not even on the charts, though the doc says he’s perfectly healthy. if you are wondering just how small he is, he’s about the size of this hole on our third-story condo balcony:

within minutes of our arrival at the beach, my genius husband, creator of this makeshift-yet-fully-functional baby gate, came through again with this solution involving a nearby landscaping brick:

is it bad that our makeshifting often involves trespassing and/or stealing? 

is there anything more makeshift than a family road trip with small children? one minute you are pulling out of your driveway with carefully organized kids’ activities in tow along with deluded dreams of a three-year-old exhibiting the kind of silent focus reserved only for phD students. the next minute (okay, well, more like 15 hours later), you are knee-deep in piles of disintegrated goldfish crackers, and the only things interrupting your gratitude for the bottle of wine waiting for you in the trunk are the countless spin moves required of you to maintain back seat order.

well, now that our drive is behind us and my little bird is safely napping in his pack-n-play in the closet of the beach condo, i can say, as i always do, that the chaotic drive was worth it. especially since we found this playground equivalent of the magic kingdom just outside of jackson, ms: 

given that our usual playground stops involve scaling eight-foot chain-link fences as a family and trespassing on the private property of churches and elementary schools, this one really wowed the kids. they didn’t even seem to mind settling down in the woodchips to eat their supper:

i’d say the real low point of the car-ride was when i gave the kids suckers followed by a roll of toilet paper stolen for entertainment purposes from the previous night’s hotel. i looked back, and the one-year-old had transformed himself into a flailing, sticky mummy. oh well. lesson learned.

now, excuse me while i see about that wine…