The other day Sean and I had a couple of errands to run.  It was an ugly sort of day, a day much better suited for staying home, but we had some things that had to be done, so off we went.

As we were driving along, we made up a game to see how many words we could come up with to describe the day.

I started with the obvious, “Damp.”

“Gray,” he countered. It was true. It was a monochrome day, gray from ground to sky.

“Cold,” I added.

“Still,” he said slowly.  The world did seem particularly still in spite of the traffic.

“Um, let’s see…melancholy.”

“What does melancholy mean?” he asked.  I told him that melancholy is sort of like when you feel damp and gray and still on the inside.

“Oh,” he said satisfied. “My turn.”

The car fell silent as he looked out the window and searched for another word to describe the day.

“Dull,” he finally said.

“Dull indeed,” I said. Dull was the mood of the sky.

“You know because when it’s sunny, the world is shiny,” he explained.  “But when it’s cloudy, the world looks a little dull.”

When I pulled up to a stop light, I turned to look at my little boy in the backseat.

He was looking out the window at the dull sky.

As we waited for the light to turn green, he pointed out a coyote slinking along the railroad tracks under the fog.  He wondered out loud where the coyote lived.  He spotted a shoe along side the road and wondered how it got there.  He thought about the person who was missing a shoe.  He pointed out the white plume of exhaust rising off a tall building and a line of black birds resting on the power lines.

This boy reminds me that from time to time, the sky may be dull, but the world around us never is.

One of the things I miss the most about having a toddler around the house is the spontaneous and exuberant affection.

As a toddler, Sean was given to fits of passion.  Without warning, his teeny tiny heart would seemingly erupt with unrestrained and irrational love.  All that slobbery affection had to go somewhere and I was his favorite target.

I miss the days when he would stand in my lap, giggling and bouncing on fat little legs.  I miss how he would wrap his ams around my head and gnaw on my face.  I miss the leg hugs.

It seems the days of unfettered expressions of love are gone forever, but every once in a while one will come out of no where.  And it’s like getting a bonus — a little end of the year reward for all the hard work of motherhood.

Last night Sean and I were sitting side by side on the sofa reading through a stack of Christmas books. He had already had his bath and was in his robe and jammies and was extra warm and snuggly and smelled of lavender shampoo.  Y’all, that is like catnip to a mommy.

The book we were reading, Santa’s Stuck, always sends him into fits of snorting giggles.  I started laughing at him laughing.  And then we were just laughing and had no idea why.

When I closed the book and set it aside, he threw himself into my lap in a fit of passion.  He wrapped his arms around my neck and chicken pecked my face with kisses while making chomping noises.

He was two again.

Then he stopped and pulled back. He looked into my face, his eyes still sparkling.

Then his expression changed.  The moment was over as quickly as it had begun.  My six-year-old was back.

“Stop goofing off mom,” he said seriously as he rolled out of my lap. “Let’s read another book.”

Maybe if I keep up the good work, I’ll get to stay on.  And maybe I’ll get another bonus next year.

About 20 years ago, someone gave me a big roll of brown paper.  I lugged it home thinking I could do something artsy with it, although I had no idea what.

So I stuck it in the back of the closet until such time as an idea came to me.  And there it stayed for about 10 years until I moved and stashed it in the back of yet another closet for another ten years.  Then I had a child.  And an idea.  And the brown paper was finally put to use.

About once a week, Sean and I will get out the big roll of brown paper and stretch out six or eight feet on the floor and make something. Because that’s what we do. We make stuff.  We’ve got crayons and markers and we are not afraid to use them.

Last year, he was really interested in the rain forest, so we read a book on the rain forest and we learned about the various animals that inhabit each layer. Then we rolled out about 8 feet of our trusty brown paper and drew a ginormous tree and worked together to create a verticle mural of the rain forest from the river to the canopy.  It was fun and educational and a great way to kill a rainy afternoon.

The year he was four,  around Christmas time, we rolled out the brown paper and I had him lay down on it so that I could trace his outline.  Then he painted and drew himself as a Santa and we cut it out and displayed it on the wall.  You deck your halls with boughs of holly, we deck ours with dwarf-sized brown paper Santas.  We made another brown paper “Seanta” last year and again this year and it’s been fun to see how he has grown, physically and artistically.

Twenty years ago, I had no idea what I would do with that roll of brown paper.   The roll is almost gone and I still don’t know what I’ll do with it from day to day, but I know it will be something.