on a roll

Camden is one nutty child!

This morning, I mentioned that someone was being mean to me, and he says "What he do to you?" Talk about melting my heart.

On our way home, he asks if he can tell me a joke. Of course I say yes!

Camden: Who drives their cars on sidewalks?
(Here we have a five minute interlude, because I say "I don't know, who?" and he gets on to me for saying anything. So he asks me again, and this time I say "dogs" and he says again that I'm not supposed to say anything. So I roll my eyes as he asks me again, but I say nothing.)
Camden: The Transformers!

Obviously, he came up with this joke himself, and I'm very proud of him for it. (My friend liked to tell the story of his sister who came up with a joke at a similar age: What has four legs and doesn't move? A horse!)

This evening's events are equally amusing.

Camden: I'm thirsty
Me: What do you want
Camden: Your blood!
Me: o.O

And a little later

Camden: Your cherry pies are the best!
(I made some little pie pockets from fresh cherries. Very exciting!)

I love my child. :)

Summer Skies

Today, I started dreaming of summer. After school, Camden and I went to play at the park. It was around 60 degrees, the sun was shining, the wind was blowing. It was cool without being cold. The grass is just beginning to really turn green. Oh, and there were clouds. Great, beautiful, puffy, white cumulus clouds. I spread out a blanket and just lay there watching them for about five minutes (before Camden was able to get me to get up and play). Watching clouds always reminds me of when I was a kid, during the summer I would watch clouds from the roof of an old milk barn that had been lost in a hillside forest. (Just recently, the owner of that hillside forest has cleared out all the trees, so it's just a hillside of scrub and cows and ruins of a house and milk barn. Such a shame, to lose all those trees.) Anyway, the sky reminded me of summer and I had/have a longing for a lazy summer afternoon, where nothing is due for class and I have nowhere to go and nowhere to be. Where time can be spent doing something as simple as lying in the grass watching the clouds go by as they morph from shape to shape. It takes me away, staring into the clouds, so that I am also a cloud, floating in the endless sea of blue skies with children running to stay in my shadow or to stay out of my shadow.

Alas, it is only just spring. We're still waiting for the soil to warm enough to plant our garden. (Which I am very excited about. I absolutely can't wait!) And waiting for it to be consistently warm enough to play outside. Ah, summer. Why must you be so far away?

Reading and SPRING!

When Camden and I read books, it usually consists of me reading through the book, then picking up another one and reading through that one. Sometimes I'll point to a picture and ask him to tell me what it is, or I'll ask him to point at something on the page.

However, last week I bought Dinner Games, which is a game that you play at dinner. Obviously. It comes in a little tin with 51 cards that have fun dinnertime activities or games. Well, a few of these are stories that someone reads, and there are questions about what happened in the story, the names of certain characters, etc. It really made me think about the way I read to Camden, and whether he's actually taking the story in. Because when we did the dinnertime story, he was unable to answer any of the questions about a story that was maybe ten sentences long.

So I think it's time to start working on his critical thinking skills! He seems pretty excited about Ostara tomorrow, goodness only knows why, so I read him a story about why the hare brings eggs to the children. I also told him that if he goes to bed on time, the hare might bring him some goodies. My mom always hid our spring baskets (okay, Easter baskets) and it was always exciting waking up and trying to find them. I'm going to hide his spring basket with a trail of little chocolate eggs and bunnies leading to it. Now I just have to figure out where to hide it.

Speaking of Ostara, tomorrow is the first day of Spring! And it's supposed to snow here. Oh, the irony! It was 58 degrees today and tomorrow's forecast is calling for a high of 34 I think. Something is horribly, horribly wrong. Ah, well, soon the snow will be but a memory, and I'll be cursing the heat.

Friendly fire

When I was a kid, I played with guns. Not actual guns, but water guns, toy guns, stick and finger and rubber band guns. Hell, my brothers and sisters and I shot bottle rockets at each other. We carried on the tradition of being children growing up in the middle of nowhere, the tradition of a world before school shooting and terrorism. And now, I have my own son, who seems intent on carrying on that tradition... Despite the fact that I would rather he didn't.

I am not a fan of guns. When a child points his obviously-play rifle at me and says "BANG," something inside me wilts and I fear I will never get it back. And now my son is doing it. I understand why, somewhat. My dad hunts with a muzzle loader. Cam watches Bugs Bunny cartoons, which are filled to the brim with guns, dynamite, and falling anvils. Last night and this morning we watched WALL-E, and as Cam was quick to point out, Eve has a gun.

Is it hypocritical of me to allow him to watch these cartoons and yet scold him when he points his finger at someone in Wal-mart in the act of "shooting" them? I don't think allowing him to play guns will turn him into a mass murderer or anything-- but the thought of him play-shooting me still makes me squeamish. Is it even more hypocritical of me that I don't mind him dealing a killing blow with a sword, but guns are off-limits?

Is it silly of me to try to ban what is, for better or worse, a part of our culture? Should I compromise to no shooting at people. Or should I just let him play, knowing that he doesn't mean anything by it and that there will never be an actual gun in my house that could hurt him/others?

Chants, Songs, and Prayers

I made a resolution to be more religious. Or maybe not. I don't remember what I said and I'm much too lazy to go look! On Monday, I received in the mail a book I ordered sometime after Christmas (yay for gift cards!) called "A Book of Pagan Prayer" by Ceisiwr Serith. In it he writes about the importance of prayers and offerings to us Pagans. Our gods aren't omniscient, they have better things to do than stick their nose in our business every hour of the day. The gods, ancestors, and spirits are akin to our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, cousins, friends, so why shouldn't we talk to them? As for offerings, he says these are important in closing the cycle. We witches see life, nature, and history as an endless loop: birth, life, death, rebirth; summer, fall, winter, spring, summer again. When we take what the gods freely give to us but offer nothing in return, we break the cycle. It should be, the gods give to us, we take from the gods, we give to the gods, the gods take from us, und so weiter. I think this book will be elemental in helping me get more in touch with the gods as well as introducing religion into Camden's life.

I spent quite a bit of time searching online today for chants and songs, too. Handy little things, these are, when one is in need of magic or even grounding. This page has chants, rhymes, songs, and couplets on numerous topics. Very handy for when I'm in need of a little magic with no time for a "proper ritual." And for me, that's generally all the time. lol I hope these will also be useful in introducing Camden to Paganism. I grew up with "Little Miss Muffet" and "London Bridge is Falling Down." Camden will too, along with rhymes like "She changes everything She touches: Everything She touches changes" and "We are a circle; within a circle; with no beginning; and never ending."

Childhood

As a child, I had to shoulder burdens no child ought to. The day before my eighth birthday, my father was sentenced to prison for vehicular manslaughter. Even though I've now moved beyond it, I will never forget the pain I felt when I found out, the pain and the anger towards God. (For at that time, I was a "Christian" and had prayed to God to not let my dad go to prison.) This moment in time, I believe, was the beginning of the end. The beginning of my loss of faith in Christianity, the beginning of the end of a normal childhood, if my childhood could ever be said to have been normal.

Oddly, what caused me to lose my faith in Christianity caused my dad to find his. He was never a bad father, but he preferred to be not at home. I guess he had his own growing up to do. I have the deepest respect for and admiration of him, that he could find strength during such a horrible time, when all seemed, to me, hopeless.

This time began my path towards Wicca, and from Wicca to Paganism. Not to say that I began looking for new religions the year I turned eight, because I didn't know they were out there, but it opened my mind to the fact that religion wasn't just one thing. (I very much doubt my eight-year-old self had these thoughts. I am, most likely, projecting my musings onto my younger self. But, I can say with all certainty that this was when I started questioning the existence and concept of God.)

I hope beyond hope that I can spare my son the level of trauma I faced as a child. It's bad enough that he doesn't have a father, although that's an issue for another post, another time! Suffice it to say that the person who helped me create my son is not worthy of being a father for many, many reasons. I dream the American dream for my son, that he'll have a better and easier life than I did. Fortunately, though, I realise that the American dream does not necessarily need to be fulfilled through stuff. I prefer that his American dream is a life that is happy, healthy, and trusting, as opposed to owning a little pink house.

When I am with my friends, who are your typical college students, I feel absolutely ancient, though I am only a year or so older or, in some cases, younger than they. Even with my boyfriend, who is seven years older than I am, I am generally left feeling like the older person. Its very odd, because I still feel like a child at time. I don't see this as a bad thing. I think its amazing that at 22, I can still feel elation at going to a zoo, or jumping in puddles after it rains, or trying to catch lightning bugs on a summer night. (Although, I find it somewhat of a relief that I have my son and can use him as an excuse to do these things which no respectable 22 year-old would do!)

My childhood was robbed of happiness. But I am making up for that by living my life with child-like abandon. I find it both amazing and ridiculous how excited I get by some things, like going to a zoo, because I'm "adult" who is more excited than most children. I advise it to you.

Live like a child, taking utter joy from life's simple pleasures. See the wonder in a line of ants passing by with their food, without worrying that they're contaminating your kitchen. Dance in the rain. Colour with crayons. Open yourself to these experiences and you will see the magic that resides in them.