“I Can”
Today has been a day to follow the winds – literally. I woke up with the intention of living the truth of a song my good friend, Michelle, brought to my attention… (I invite you to play it as you read the rest of the post 
).
With the song playing on the kitchen boom box, I woke up my two older children in preparation for school. I proceeded to hold a loving space for my oldest daughter who wasn’t exactly perky upon rising. ) I hugged them all, listened to the song, and made our way to the public Montessori they attend.
My son was having a bit of a time adjusting to the kindergarten classroom this morning so my youngest and I stayed to provide some more love – just by being there. I looked around and appreciated every child and teacher, knowing everyone was doing their best. Within an hour it was clear that my son was okay so we moseyed on to do some errands.
The idea to visit the park came to my mind so I asked Azalea if she wanted to go. She answered with a resounding, “Yes!” But we still had errands to run so we enjoyed just being together in the car, noticing what we noticed, and talking about this and that.
The person we were running errands for was particularly funny today. When we dropped off the first (even though I thought it was the *only*) set of items, he asked us to just run “one more errand.” We were feeling good so we continued on with a smile. Then when we returned the second set, he asked us to make one more stop. Laughing, I asked if he thought we wouldn’t run all of the errands had he asked for them all at once! No… he just didn’t remember everything at once. ) And this is true of him so it’s actually funny that *I* asked him the question in the first place.
We pleasantly rolled down the windows as we headed to the park. Upon entering it was fun to hear Azalea laugh and say, “Ohhh… the park, I like this park.” It had been a few weeks since we visited this vast park with a wooden playground, pond, and plenty of grass to run around in.
One of the first play things AZ gravitated towards was a rope grid that one can climb up or down and see the ground underneath while doing so. As she climbed down holding onto the railing for support she said over and over very confidently, “I can.” The simplicity of the words I had started our morning with were coming out of her mouth, and it wasn’t the first time.
AZ often tells herself “I can.” We haven’t read the book about the train and although I’d like to say there’s something special and specific I’ve done to help her feel so confident I can only say that I allow her to explore her abilities and I believe in her wholeheartedly. The rest really lies within her and her choice to trust that she can and when she doubts that to remind herself…
It brought me to think about adults and how we meet challenge. When we can see the ground beneath us, waiting for us to drop, how do we meet that challenge?
Do we think “It’s too scary – I can’t?”
Or do we plunge or move carefully ahead thinking “I can?”
I do believe the simplicity of a 2 year old’s words and an old song can help us here…
Much Love,
Amy