Mint, Moth, Turtle, and NO CLOTHES!

We spent the long weekend in NH, a rejuvenating few days of quiet and fresh air and green grass under bare feet. Lucia learned several new words: mint, because Andrew discovered a vast field of wild mint growing by the driveway and we spent lots of time harvesting it and piling it in a wheelbarrow; moth (“mof”), because lots of them flutter in the windows; and turtle, because after a long night of rain we discovered a tiny black turtle that had crawled into the tray of Lucia’s bubbles. We delivered him safely to the pond.

The pond was the focus this trip. She asked for it constantly. There’s a floating dock attached by a rope to the regular dock, and this is where she wanted to be. It is not a sturdily floating structure—part of it dips down into the water when you walk to the edge, and it all tilts from side to side precariously. But Lucia loved being right down at the water’s surface, and she ran from edge to edge (stopping our hearts, even though Andrew was right there in the water beside it and could have grabbed her in a second had she fallen in), filling her bucket at one side and dumping it out at the other. She pulled out lily pad-type things by their stems and examined the gelatinous undersides. She sat on the edge and kicked her feet in the water. She greeted frogs with excited cries of “Hi! Hi!” and loved when they hopped or swam away. And she really loved when Andrew swam into the middle of the pond. “Shim! Shim!” she’d call out. “Daddy, shim!” Then she’d turn to me—“Mama, shim!”—and seemed disappointed when I’d only put my feet in.

Unfortunately, the drive home proved horrendous once again. We’ve figured out a way to manage my back pain—stopping halfway through for a stretch—but the downside is that this stop wakes up Lucia. On the way there, she fell right back to sleep. On the way home, she did not, and spent the rest of the drive throwing up. We stopped once to clean her up, and it was…everywhere. Bibi got the worst of it, Elmo took a hit, and the carseat and her shirt were a mess. We stripped her down in a parking lot. “No clothes!” she exclaimed cheerfully from the trunk of the car. “Cold!”

She got sick again just outside of Brooklyn, so we just plowed on home. At midnight she was running around the apartment in her diaper, screaming happily, “No clothes! No clothes!” Chasing a toddler around to get her into her pj’s is not what a seven-months-pregnant mama wants to be doing at that hour. Good thing the weekend was worth it.