Spring! Spring!

When we got home from Liam's music class this morning I parked the car in the driveway and just sat in the driver's seat for a few minutes.  This had more to do with my current state of exhaustion than with the fact that the sun is actually shining today and it feels like spring might actually be coming.  Some time. 

When I looked back at Liam he pretended to be asleep.  This happens pretty often actually - a prolonged pause after the car is off prompting Liam to try to initiate some little game.  It's preferable to "Hurry up Mom!  Get out of the car!"  But lots of times I try to ignore it and just get Liam out of the car and into the house.  This time, since it is relatively warm out and the car was in the driveway rather than the garage I just unbuckled Liam's carseat, got out of the car and closed my door.  I headed into the house and started getting his lunch ready.

Pretty soon I heard a car door slam.  Looking out I could see him standing in the snow that is still hiding in the front landscaping, looking down at something.  But when I went outside to tell him it was time to come in and get ready for lunch he was nowhere to be seen. 

I thought he was probably hiding and started calling out to him.  When he didn't answer I got a little mad, especially after I said, "This is not a good time to hide."  That's code at our house for "Come out now or you will be in trouble."

But I thought it was possible that he actually couldn't hear me, so I headed around the garage to the back yard.  There he was, squatting between the big tree and the deck, looking at a stick, or a rock or the dirt - or something.  It's hard to stay mad at a little boy who just wants to get acquainted with his yard.

Later Liam saw that the daffodils are coming up - prompting a discussion of whether they actually come from the bushes they are in front of and what "bulbs" are.  We also noticed that the bushes themselves have some kind of buds on them.  This I really don't have any explanation for since they don't flower and I don't know about their reproductive cycle.  But surely it's a sign that spring will actually come in earnest soon. 

When we were getting in the car to come home from music class Liam commented about how nice it would be to have a time machine because he misses the summer when he was three.  I told him that we would just have to wait and enjoy the summer when he's four, but that was not what he wanted.  Time machine.  Summer when he was three.  I said it probably would nice to have a time machine, but then we would have to decide whether we wanted to go back, or forward - to say the time after the baby comes, or when the weather is nice.  "When the weather is nice" he declared. "Because that's what you want."