Hellobee

This afternoon, I’m watching my daughter play with the neighbor and she’s trying to show her friend how someone previously planted chives which appear to be perennials in our backyard and you can eat them! And her little friend (who is two years older than her and I’m sure seems super cool to an almost 3-year-old) keeps asking if they can go play inside. I want my daughter to enjoy the amazing evening and I find it’s really hands off when they’re playing outside which I love – seems like a win-win for both of us. So I just tell the girl that I like my kids to play outside in the evenings and they’re okay with it, but eventually she decides to go home. It got me thinking of the locations we choose to be and the people we are inevitably connected to and what that will mean for my children. We are in the Midwest, and it was more a practical decision based on proximity to healthcare for me and family support so it’s an odd setup for us and less representative of the values we would have imagined for our kids, even though I think we are making it work pretty well.

Friends of ours just moved to Montana and they are living the dream! It’s big and beautiful and full of constant outdoor adventures. I am really happy for them because they worked hard for so long and we went gallivanting all over Thailand while they were still nose to the grindstone. I’m not jealous thankfully but I do start to imagine what life might look like if we joined them there eventually when I see their incredible posts or talk to them on skype. They glow a little. I’m really happy for them.

It’s definitely good to have lifestyle diversity in childhood, but it also makes me realize it will be pretty important to get her around kids who are growing up with similar values. I want her to understand that being adventurous is cool. We want nature to be her first love since it will likely be key in helping the planet in her lifetime (there’s my environmentalist side coming out). That’s already been happening here with old friends of Mr. Gumdrops who got us connected to this campground-share thing not far from the city.

Mr. Gumdrop gets back from one more work trip tomorrow evening and hopefully we’ll head right back up to the land share we just opted into on some friends’ recommendation. Without him I’ve been doing our own little sanctuaries – we ate dinner on the deck and then had a fire tonight and went to a food truck festival earlier this week with my brother. We have been having some really sweet times and I hope to keep it going especially as the summer comes into full bloom.