{life with a curious and crazy 11 yr old}
It’s been awhile since we’ve caught up with little Ms. Duende. She’s had an exciting Summer – visitations from Grammy & Poppi, a birthday with Pear, too (and Nana, Uncle Cameron & Angela, and Dave!), lots of ice cream scoops out in the world, Farmer’s Market visits, mushroom walks, tree climbing, and every chance she gets she’s either roller-skating or skateboarding (the latter a birthday gift!). Though I am sure she will tell you that her Summer has not been very exciting at all. No camping (yet, we have a trip planned for the end of the month, and likely the month after that since we prefer Fall off-season camping), no swimming (other than her toy pool, which no swimming can actually occur), and not a lot of events for us. It’s just that way. In 30 years there will be a ton of memoirs accounting for lost childhoods to the pandemic.
But that’s just an 11-yr-old perspective because she is wonderfully healthy, she has space to run and breathe and play, and she will eventually see that it is better to be safe than ‘normal’. Until then we will continue to take country drives, play lots of Taco vs. Burrito, go on forest hikes and foraging forays, and live our lives as gently as we can.
Lately she’s been into her fashion doll collection (all found at the Swap Shop) – making clothes and imagining scenarios. A bunch of her baby bicuspids are loose (I don’t remember losing a bunch of teeth at 11, do you?) and her body is changing/growing. Her balance is different but her funny bone is solid. She’s been reading the lovely cat book Grammy got her, Tribe of the Tiger, as well as her new Lumberjanes comic which she is loving (yay!). She’s really intrigued by a medieval court writer/artist named Christine de Pizan so I bought the City of Ladies for us to read together. And anything about Bastet, the Egyptian cat goddess. We’ve got some big homeskooling projekts to tackle this year – an ‘art from scratch’ plan (making paints/pencils/paper/glue to art with), a nature journal with some real identification markers, locations, and folklore (mushrooms, herbs, rocks, bugs, birds, etc!), some sort of building hands-on projekt (maybe more bat boxes, owl/bluebird boxes, bug hotels)…culminating and cultivated activities that incorporate all the other bobs and bits of skooling (reading/writing/arting/math/science/geography, etc). Sounds like fun!
Rock Bottom Homestead 