Puddle-jumping

This started out on the main blog and then I realized I don't need my mother to read it. So here you are.

Today was my last weekday home alone with Z. until next school year. A. is going out of town this weekend to catch up on all the gossip with Lo for one wedding while Z. and I stay here for a different one, but that won't be quite the same. And it won't be an attempt to combine some level of store presence with some level of parenting. Until sometime after Z.'s second birthday, Z. was staying home a lot, often two days a week. She would be sick or just cranky, I would weigh her age and my reluctance, and she would stay home. She got some extra sleep that way and I think she probably did need the extra mama time when she was still in the immediate months after her fall, but it also gave me a good excuse to hide from the store and it meant she had no reliable schedule and didn't really know if she would be going to school when she woke up in the mornings. By the time her second birthday rolled around the disadvantages were ascendant. I got tougher, things got better, she quickly became less inclined to tantrum in the morning. All good.

Then school let out for Z. before it did for A. My mother came to take Z. for the first two days of vacation, and Z. was cranky and wild, at least when I was around. She was so excited about her GranGran being here and worried about her GranGran going home again that she made herself sort of miserable.

Today it was just us, again, for the first time in actually quite awhile. By the end of the day, when we'd been to the store twice, she was pretty fried and so was I, but the morning started out better than the past two days. We were up early, as we have been the past couple of weeks--can I just say that the last week of school, I got Z. there in time for Boker Tov EVERY SINGLE MORNING?--and we had our breakfast but we stayed in t-shirt and a diaper because why not? We read books and did aquadoodle, and played with letters while mama read (oh! duh! Phantom, I just realized the significance of BB reading the eye chart--when you live with these little prodigies they seem so normal!) It was raining hard til around 10:30 or so, then turned into a perfect day. We thought we would go puddle-jumping.

I don't think Z. has puddle-jumped before, but she latched onto the idea. She believed it would require her raincoat and her boots, but when the boots didn't turn up she was perfectly willing to substitute her sandals, and for me to carry her raincoat. See, flexibility? She carried her nobbly-wobbly--these were a big thing last year in the kid- and dog-toy aisles, and Z. has one that's maybe 2 1/2 inches across, bouncy, and day-glo.

We found our perfect puddle near the new play structure in the school's parking lot, pooled up next to the rubber matting that saves the big kids from tumbles. It was a few feet across and maybe two inches deep. Z. hopped and hopped. She pulled me in so we were hopping together. She threw the nobbly-wobbly and ran to get it, over and over, giggling every time. She threw it to me and thought it was the funniest thing in the world when I caught it. She took my hand and walked around and around and around until we were both dizzy, and she took her purple-sandaled feet and swung them through the water, in graceful splashes.

Holding her hand, socks squishing in my gardening shoes, I wondered how I would have felt during her first days--during the first hours when she was buried in wires and the respirator was still making sure she didn't miss a breath--if someone had watched us today and gone back to then to tell me about it. Don't worry: in two years, this girl will have a head full of curls the same color as yours, and make you dizzy with her love of water. I don't know if I could have heard it. I'm pretty sure I couldn't. But if I could, I think I would have been so relieved.