Friday 28 October 2011

A Hallowe'en trail

On a damp and cold afternoon out we went for a Hallowe'en trail at one of our local National Trust estates.  I probably would have preferred to sit in the warmth with a cup of tea and a biscuit feeling as permanently sick and exhausted as I do in this early stage of pregnancy.  This week being half-term though it was on my agenda for 'how to entertain the kids'.  So, we went and I'm glad we did.

My eldest daughter, Caitlin, just blows me away sometimes.  She is six years old but she already has certain qualities which are just so impressive to me. When she starts something like this trail she takes it very seriously, is very determined and so enthusiastic and will see it through to the end.  She ran around the trail reading the clues perfectly (excellent in-built literacy practice), she understood the next part of the trail was to read another set of questions and decide if they were true of false.  She then did the final stage of the trail where she had to collect letters hidden around the forest and rearrange them in to words which would spell an ingredient to go in to a witch's cauldron.  While her father and I were still getting the old cogs in our brain to work, she just popped out with it, "Lizard!'  We didn't know she even knew how to spell Lizard.  At what point does one's children become brighter than their parents, not at six surely?!

"This girl of mine", I thought as we walked back to the car, "she just makes me so proud of her, just for being her."  Will she ever really understand that?  Will she ever really know how in awe I am of her sometimes?  How her zest for life, her sensitivity and her intelligence just make me burst with pride?  We are blessed with these children that come in to our lives,  they're here to remind us that the world is an exciting and adventurous place to be discovered and savoured, which can always be done whilst wearing a black cat suit and running around in the mud.





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