Week Seven

I am now a little more than seven weeks past hip replacement surgery, and it could be that life is returning to normal (whatever that is!).  I walk unaided some of the day ("slow and deliberate; good," my doctor said on Tuesday), and I occasionally bend far enough to pick things up that have fallen to the floor.  This is still not easy, but it is coming.

I have been (most irregularly) to the studio, and I still find that to be my favorite haunt.  Yesterday the Adorables were with us after school, and I took them studio-ing with me.  It was a nice experience for all three of us— until Ethan had a Code Brown in his pull ups and we had to go inside to the changing table.  When I opened the door to the outside I saw (with horror) that it had been sleeting while we were tucked so cozily in the studio, and before I could call to him to be careful, Ethan had slipped on the ice and fallen.  I was slow-motion walking so I didn't fall, too, but Bethy, ever the agile and graceful sprite, was sliding along in her boots and enjoying herself immensely.  Granddad came out and rescued Ethan and warned me (quite unnecessarily) to be careful.  I was wishing he would throw me a rope and just pull me across the patio to the kitchen door. . .

The studio is the Adorables' favorite place to play.  Bethy wore a beautiful organdy apron trimmed in pink, a gift from Jill, and she called it her "princess skirt" (anything smacking of the royal life is grist for her mill).  There are so many interesting things in the studio that she had no problem keeping occupied; cork stoppers, empty wooden thread spools, tons of paper and pencils or crayons, her own little desk (which had been her dad's and mine as little children), beads, buttons— and when she is really really good, she can organize the pins in one of the pincushions (too many to count).  And Ethan has cars there and a small drawing board with an racing oval attached to it that he and I designed one day.  There are small lacing boards, too, that fascinate him almost as much as the shiny beads.  There are even blocks stored on their tea cart!  When all else fails, he curls into himself and rests his head on a stuffed animal.

Today they are with us the entire day, as school is cancelled in Cherokee County due to the icy conditions, and both parents are working.  They are napping now, giving my tired voice a rest from reading book after book.  When I was a child, the rare treat of having an adult read me a book was simply heavenly, and I love having them in my lap and helping to turn pages as I pass that treat on to them.  Charles laughs at the physicality of my reading(I am drawing swoops in the air, changing voices, and generally becoming one with the story), but Bethy and Ethan are rapt.  It's a good thing I'm not reading to him— how could I put any personality into a book on the American Revolution, or Jimmy Carter's White House Diary?