How to make an apple pie

The apples still grow even though the press is covered with dust.
Make friends with the frogs along the way.
Pick enough. Just enough.

Kid Music

I like to dance like a dork to this music with my kid.

Letters

She does it on her own initiative which I think is simply perfect. I just want her to play and use her imagination and cast broad strokes of gloppy finger paint across the big paper on her easel from Santa, but if she wants to sit down and practice writing letters then I'm all for it. She has a natural interest in the shape of letters. She likes to look at the Waldorphy alphabet books I bought that present letters in works of art: using a painting of a mountain with two peaks to teach the letter M, a river with two forks and a connector stream to teach R, three witches on a broomstick to teach W. For a while she has been writing her name. The S is usually backwards and I used to not say anything about it because she received such joy from the accomplishment I didn't want to ruin the experience with a criticism. But now she has written the whole alphabet, several times, and even a three word sentence once, that I feel like I can be more honest. And so the other day when she told me that they all wrote their names at preschool the other day I asked, "Did you write the S backwards?"
"Yes, I wrote it backwards, wait..no, I wrote it the right way."
I remember writing my name for the first time. I remember sitting at our dining room table with the plastic gold tablecloth in our government house in the valley. I remember the way the letters looked on the sheet of white paper. Same size. Same boxy feel. Four letters. I remember what it felt like to put letters on paper.

Water

Swimming lessons has been a hit this year. Ms Perpetual Motion has conquered her fear of getting her face wet and plunges into the pool, the lake, the shower and the rain, nose first with glee. She graduated from the Pike class and is now an Eel. She wants to swim all the time, even on windy, sunny..yet chilly, early September days at the lake. Normally I would wimp out, requiring heat, deep heat, to go swimming in my old age, but I actually found the cold immersion convenient for keeping myself awake on post-call day so I could actually hang out with my kid.
I noticed at the beginning of the summer she was more content to hang out in the sand, sifting tiny pebbles, mixing sand-pie batter, creating muffin pan after muffin pan of delectable beachy delights. Catching frogs has also been a favorite pastime this summer. She has become quite adept at sneaking up on the green spotted creatures and deftly flicking her wrist and hence the net squarely down on their amphibian shoulders. But since the water-in-the-face feat has come and gone she has come back to the water as her primary source of play at the lake. She wants to swim with someone, preferably an adult who can also launch her into the air so she flops down in the water. She wants to tool around on the big floaty lounger. She swims underwater for a distance of three, four even five feet. She works her skinny fins hard to keep her button nose just above the surface and makes that gasping sound when she comes up out of the water after being completely under.
She was born in the water, surging out with the force of a mighty wave. Now, four years later she has found her welcoming water home again. She says she doesn't want to be astronaut. But I think this summer she has found an otherworld in the under, in and on water and is exploring it to it's fullest splash extent.