Do You Have A Kingdom?
We were listening to Imagine Dragons in our car today when Ever asked me, "What is a kingdom?"
"It's your space, maybe your room or your closet or a huge piece of land where lots of people live. It's a place that you are in charge of and you take care of."
Explaining words and concepts to my children? Not my specialty.
"Do you have a kingdom?" I asked Ever.
"Yes. It's my collection."
Ever's collection is this hard-to-explain-spot in Green Room--it's a planter of some sorts, but it's pretty big like six feet by three feet and two feet deep and five feet off the ground (soft as a downy white chick)? When we bought the house it was full of dirt, but we emptied it and dumped all the little toys into it, so now it's like a huge toy box. Every day or so Ever likes to climb up in that spot and organize all the toys into categories and subcategories, lining them up into groups of things, which she calls her "collection."
My Little Ponies, ballerina cake toppers, Wizard of Oz characters, animals of the Savanna, rocks and shells she couldn't bear to part with, aliens, astronauts, cars, airplanes, half-broken mini dolls she bought from DI, mermaids with sparkly tails and rows and rows of miscellaneous kids meals residuals (the fastest growing collection of all, thanks to her tired mother) line the brick outline of Ever's happy kingdom in the sunny, open-aired Green Room.
It filled me with a bit of warm joy to think my daughter understood a concept I obviously under-defined. And that's the magic of parenting.
"It's your space, maybe your room or your closet or a huge piece of land where lots of people live. It's a place that you are in charge of and you take care of."
Explaining words and concepts to my children? Not my specialty.
"Do you have a kingdom?" I asked Ever.
"Yes. It's my collection."
Ever's collection is this hard-to-explain-spot in Green Room--it's a planter of some sorts, but it's pretty big like six feet by three feet and two feet deep and five feet off the ground (soft as a downy white chick)? When we bought the house it was full of dirt, but we emptied it and dumped all the little toys into it, so now it's like a huge toy box. Every day or so Ever likes to climb up in that spot and organize all the toys into categories and subcategories, lining them up into groups of things, which she calls her "collection."
My Little Ponies, ballerina cake toppers, Wizard of Oz characters, animals of the Savanna, rocks and shells she couldn't bear to part with, aliens, astronauts, cars, airplanes, half-broken mini dolls she bought from DI, mermaids with sparkly tails and rows and rows of miscellaneous kids meals residuals (the fastest growing collection of all, thanks to her tired mother) line the brick outline of Ever's happy kingdom in the sunny, open-aired Green Room.
It filled me with a bit of warm joy to think my daughter understood a concept I obviously under-defined. And that's the magic of parenting.
