shewholaughs

Aaron and I tore around all day in the heat. We went to the park, stalked bullfrogs, experimented with ants’ food preferences (honey, berries, Juicy Juice, fruit snacks), ate pudding popsicles (ohmygod, how have I never eaten one of these before today?), pressed oak leaves, ‘planted’ a row of dry-roasted sunflower seeds (I observed that Aaron shouldn’t be too hopeful for bold yellow sunflowers on his return from California next weekend…), and then we struck out for tae-kwon-do, Aaron in his immaculate white robes sitting in his little red wagon. Tae-kwon-do was priceless as far as entertainment goes. Aaron is the littlest of the lot, and the least coordinated. Every other kick and chop sent him tumbling to the (generously padded) floor, and he would grin and leap to his feet. When the other kids stood stoically with impeccable posture, Aaron bounced around on the balls of his feet and gazed inquiringly up at the ceiling tiles. He told me the little colored stripes on his white belt stand for “tegrity, severence, and self control!” Tegrity and severence really do go a long way in this life.

He also dug everything out of my purse (I reminded him never to go through a woman's purse until he had at LEAST run a few blocks away) and disassembled a tampon before I knew what he was up to. He was very curious about it, but I said it was a "girl thing, you know, like lipstick." "Boys like lipstick. Kissy, kissy." "Okay, just a girl thing like nylons, you know, 'funny legs.'" But of course, he likes 'funny legs,' too. Whenever I wear colorful tights, he can't keep from plucking at the fabric!

He totally didn’t want me to go home. He kept grabbing my hands and saying, “Sarah, you forgot something here the last time you were here, so we have to go look for it” (I hadn’t forgotten anything) and “Sarah, I have to show you this!” and “Sarah, I have to take a photograph of you, because I’m going to California and you’re not!” so I made a silly face and he snapped his photograph. I adore him. I wish he were mine. The rest of the world can be positively demented at times, but he is perfect, always, even when wetting his pants and spilling tall glasses of milk and begging non-stop for Bazooka bubble gum. At this easy age, he still plunks himself down in my lap and fashions himself blond mustaches out of locks of my long hair and shouts “Sarah! Sarah! Sarah! Banana-fana…rana…farah!” when I show up on his doorstep, and his arms are still too short for him to tickle back effectively.