Endless Surprise

Last week, just after Brice put Coriel to bed, I went into our bedroom. Beside my nightstand is an empty spot where I usually keep my purse and a few other items. Last night, when I passed this spot, it was filled with a teddy bear in a pot, facing the corner.

This is what I love about having a three-year-old.

There is always a new surprise, something fun to discover. Sometimes it’s a teddy bear in a pot, sometimes it’s a piece of yarn wrapped intricately through the holes in the kitchen chair, sometimes it’s an ocarina in my back pocket (yes, this actually happened; at first I couldn’t figure out why it was so uncomfortable to sit down).

A couple weeks ago, we were having a little cleaning time. I was in the living room, directing our daughter to take her toys, one by one, into her bedroom while I cleaned up other items. Later I walked past her room, and the sight made me smile. She had carefully lined up each of those toys all right inside her door, sitting next to one another. There must have been ten or fifteen of them all happily snuggled in a row.*

Sometimes her surprises are downright magical. We check lots of books out from the library, and sometimes it’s hard to keep track of them. While we can usually find them all when it comes time to return them, Clifford Goes to Dog School was particularly stubborn. We searched the entire house over and over. We renewed it until we couldn’t anymore. It became past due. Another month or so went by. We were sure it was gone for good.

Then, suddenly, one day I was reading through piles of books with my daughter in her room. I looked away from her for a moment, and when I looked back to see what she was reading, there it was, Clifford Goes to Dog School, as if it had never been gone. I still don’t know where it was hiding.

Sometimes her surprises are funny, like the time she asked if she could have a yogurt and then produced one from within a kitchen cupboard. She still doesn’t open the fridge on her own, so she must have gotten it from the fridge at some point (a day before? a week?) when Brice or I had it open. Don’t worry, I didn’t let her eat that one.

Sometimes her surprises will produce continued surprises in the future. Take, for example, our garden. A few days ago, I was planting some cantaloupe seeds. Coriel wanted one to look at, and then she wandered off with it. Suddenly I realized that she didn’t have her seed anymore, and right in front of her was a whole garden bed of lovely dirt. I’m looking forward to finding out if I have a cantaloupe growing among my onions or among my carrots.

Her tendency to fill my life with these kinds of surprises is usually a delight, but occasionally it causes a bit of frustration (read here: occasionally I want to tear my hair out and scream at the top of my lungs). I’m not much good at keeping a house clean even when I only have myself to take care of. So cleaning up after her adventures and explorations… well, let’s just say it doesn’t always happen in a timely manner. Our house is most of the time a bit chaotic (read here: a butterfly must have flapped its wings in Japan to cause our own personal tsunami here in Maryland).

And just when I want to throw all her toys out the window just so that I won’t step on one that she “put to bed” under a sock in the hallway, I discover a smiley face that she drew on a receipt or I walk into her room to find her feeding her baby doll some lunch. And it’s just so darn sweet that I can’t be angry anymore. She’s just sneaky that way, a beautiful source of endless surprise.

*I have now learned that I have to be more specific in where I ask her to put things: “In the toy bin in your room, please.”