Oh my God, it's so fucking hot. All the time. Just hot and sticky and hot. So hot that when I headed out to do a little yard work at 9am on Saturday Josh came chasing after me with cold water and an "Extreme Heat Warning!" At 9am!
Anyway, on Sunday morning I knew I had a very small window of time to get Dash out of the house (and out from in front of the tv--no small feat on the weekends). So I devised a scavenger hunt, kinda. Instead of making a list of things for Dash to find, I settled on colors. I just painted a dot of color into each of the cups in an egg carton and set out with Dash to find an object to match each color.
Although I'm pretty sure Dash could manage a traditional scavenger hunt, I thought that getting him to see the colors in our little garden would help him to actually see it, and think of it as a part of his home and his world, rather than just as a place to fish his baseballs out of after a stray pitch. I wanted him to actually look around rather than zero in on where he knew he could find a rock or a leaf or a tree.
And you know what? It went totally differently than I expected. Rather than choose from the huge, riotously-yellow Black-Eyed Susans, he plucked a teensy, pale yellow bloom off of a weed. Instead of choosing one of the millions of river rocks that line our side yard for gray, he picked a feather off the lawn.
Every time, he chose the least obvious (to me) thing. Every time I tried to lead him to a color, he resisted and found his own, more obscure path. It's an interesting (and slightly disconcerting) realization for me--that his world is made up of things that are almost invisible to me, and likely vice-versa.
He only finished half of the colors before getting bored and giving up. But I think we'll keep trying. I'm excited to discover more of his world and the hidden things that make it up.
1 comment:
Isn't it amazing what you can find in their world. It's so different then ours.
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