Aurora Wells

I don’t know how old Mozart was when he wrote his first piece, but his momma couldn’t have been any prouder of him than I was the day (one week ago) when Aurora first drank from a cup with no straw. A glow of euphoria settled over me that afternoon and evening, which nothing could shake.

Aurora’s been quite adamant against drinking from a cup, afraid that she might spill, or just not be good at it right off the bat (a character flaw she unfortunately inherited from yours truly). Somehow, though, our friend Laura found the antidote. I don’t know whether it was the perfect little cup, her own calming presence, or just the fact that Aurora trusts her completely in a way that kids can never trust their own parents (who sometimes have to do bad things for the good of their child – think shots or toothbrushing or discipline). Anyway, once the breakthrough was made, she couldn’t wait to repeat the feat for Daddy at dinner that night, although I had to ask in just the right way…

Our triumph was short-lived, though. As the days went by she became less and less interested in the non-sippy alternative. I’m hoping for a resurgence in the cup-drinking thing when she turns ten or so.

All it takes is faith and trust… and a little bit of pixie dust!

I have a new favourite past-time: listening to Aurora sing. Over the past two months, a remarkable change has come over our little girl, and it’s nothing but wonderful.  It’s such a turnaround from last year, when I blogged about her distaste for music. I’m glad I perservered, in a gentle way, with my music appreciation program. Even though last summer she seemed to not want to listen to any kind of music at all, once every few days I would put some nice, not-overly-loud music on, sometimes classical, pop, jazz or folk. I’d tell her what the story was about, or if there were no words, I’d tell her what I thought the composer wanted to describe with the piece. She didn’t like James Taylor’s “Our Town” until I described how it fit in with the plot of the movie Cars, and then she requested it repeatedly. We had a breakthrough when she agreed to listen to the first bit of every Great Big Sea song, choose the ones she liked, and make an Aurora-friendly (i.e. not too loud) playlist.

Then in January Aurora started dancing, to ACDC’s “Thunderstruck”, which she calls the “Hockey Song”. I’ve got to give Daddy credit for finding the right song for Aurora to rock out to. By the Valentine’s Day dance at her preschool Aurora was dancing to just about anything. We’re so happy with her new talent that we let her stand on the dining room chairs to do it if she wants to. Then she started singing, mostly the A-B-C song, with a cute little Canadian “zed” at the end. It’s quite fun to sit in the next room and listen to her sing to herself, about anything under the sun. Kind of an improvisational, stream-of-consciousness thing.

Here’s a little video of her singing to herself.

(If you’re interested in the lyrics, I’ve posted them on YouTube)

Once in a while Aurora has a special request: instead of a second story at night, after the toothbrushing, she would like to perform a “concert” with one parent while the other one listens appreciatively. Sometimes we have instruments. It’s rather hard to sing a “dudette” with someone who has neither sheet music nor any familiar tune to perform, but somehow we manage, and there is always a lot of bows and clapping.

I think that I shall never see
A thing as lovely as confetti
Shaped like a tiny spread-winged bat
I’ll never love anything as much as that.
Its hue was emerald, texture shiny,
And found on the ground, a little grimy.
My closest friend, I loved you dearly,
Alas, you did depart so early
Into a crack in a friend’s car seat,
Not to be found – such foul defeat!
I’ll curse my mother with cries of sorrow
Until I forget you, upon the morrow.

Except that Aurora didn’t forget that tiny bat-shaped piece of Halloween confetti. A week later she told Daddy how much she missed it, when she found a stray ghost-shaped confetti piece on the floor.

Right now Aurora is very busy dealing with the issues of loss and decay. The red and white tulips that wilted in a vase on the table, the tiny christmas tree we made for the mouse house, even the villain in the Disney movie “Tangled” have all decayed and caused Aurora much distress. The idea that people can decay, I’ll admit, is an alarming concept. But cut flowers?

Aurora has a very steadfast and loving personality. I just wish it wasn’t so often applied to every piece of junk she finds on the street. We have a stick “family” on the front porch (she’s not allowed to bring them inside), and a rock collection (mostly gravel) on a shelf in her room.  After she goes to bed I dispose of the receipts, plastic straws, and broken balloons that she becomes attached to throughout the day.

Speaking of balloons, this was a tiny fraction of the reaction when despite my warnings, Aurora proceeded to play with “her favourite balloon” with knitting needles.

Or at least that’s what Aurora told us, repeatedly, when we went to the beach last weekend. It wasn’t a warm day, or even a sunny day, but the sun was in our hearts (awwww!) as Aurora laughed, hopped, tiptoed over to feed the crows, and squealed with glee when they flew down to get her cracker crumbs.

With a busy weekend approaching, and the only free family time on Saturday day, we gave Aurora a few choices on Friday night. “Would you like to go sledding in the snow? How about going to see the eagles near Squamish? Anything you want to do, kiddo.” So kiddo says, “Let’s go to the beach and build sandcastles!” Okay, sure, it’s only five degrees with a 60% chance of rain. She wanted to have a picnic, too, so we packed up some drinks and cheese and crackers, and headed out to Jericho Beach.

Luckily, the Jericho Beach Sailing Centre had covered picnic benches, and the beach was fairly sheltered from the wind. For about an hour we fed the birds. One of them Brian named “Crankypants” because although it cawed and cawed and cawed to complain about the limited food offerings, whenever Aurora placed a cracker piece on the ground, he let one of the other crows get to it first. “Piggie” the crow picked up five or six in one beakful before finally dropping the one that Crankypants managed to pick up. This waterfront entertainment is way, way cheaper than going to a musical at the Waterfront Theatre, and there’s even a place to get warm drinks next door. (Nothing against Seussical; it was a really fun play.)

We spent so much time feeding the crows that we didn’t have long to build a sandcastle before the rain started in earnest.

Daddy & Aurora’s creation ended up being more of a sand pyramid.

I took pictures of a flock of beautiful Barrow’s Goldeneye ducks. That’s it! It took me about four hours to edit together that super-fantastic video, so I hope you enjoy it!

Do you remember Coyote Party, Aurora’s first story? Charming, right? Nobody got eaten, right? Well, lately around here we’ve gotten stuck in a particular groove in the storytelling record. In almost every story Aurora tells these days, somebody gets eaten.

Wolf Story

The Big, Bad Wolf started out just eating pigs or Little Red Riding Hood, but he’s moved on, apparently, to dinosaurs, the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse guys, the Toy Story guys, Clifford the Big Red Dog, or anyone else foolhardy enough to enter a story being told jointly by Aurora and one of us. Her other favourite big eater is her crocodile puppet, who started out snapping up bratty, teasing monkey puppets, but whose massive appetite couldn’t be sated until he’d also eaten all the other felt finger puppets, including all five speckled frogs and their spotted log, an owl, Red, Grandma, the Wolf, and Horton the Elephant. Luckily, he always seemed to miss the Woodsman, who saved the day with his axe and released the victims from their reptilian holding cell.

The Big, Bad Wolf is especially persistent. Aurora likes us to take turns telling the story, so she’ll introduce a pair of characters, such as Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin. They very quickly get lost in the woods (in this case, the Hundred Acre Wood) and get eaten by the Wolf. Then it’s Mommy’s turn. I save them, by making the wolf lose his victims in one of any number of disgusting ways (there really is no good way out of a wolf)*. In Aurora’s imagination, just like in the original Red Riding Hood story, there is no such thing as digestion, so the characters pop out of the wolf still walking, talking and looking fine. Then, I hand the story back over to her, and the wolf promptly eats them again. So I save them again by some other means, and she makes them get eaten again, and again, and again. This afternoon I got totally fed up and decapitated the wolf, sending his head down the river, gone forever. She said, “Okay, that’s the end of Part One. Now it’s time for Part Two. Clifford and Emily Elizabeth were walking in the deep, dark woods when they got lost…”

* When Daddy is telling the story, he prefers less gruesome methods, such as tickling the wolf’s tummy (from inside) until he laughs, so they can jump out.

Lots of Kisses

Aurora’s fondness for reading knows no bounds!