Parenting with Elizabeth Withey
Curiosity over mud, bugs, helps mom reconnect with nature
Thank you, Spring. The city has thawed and there’s a whole world for a boisterous toddler to destr—er, explore.
There are pine cones to pluck, garden gnomes to smash, pebbles to hurl at kitchen windows and perennials to flatten with basketballs. The puddles have dried, but there is dirt and sand for the eating, and nothing’s more fun than cleaning up the granular, no-bake-cookie-esque contents of a diaper midway through the playground excursion.
Like most two-year-olds, my son is infinitely fascinated with the outdoors. It makes perfect sense; if I suddenly found myself on a new planet, I’d be curious, too. (OK, actually, I’d probably be curled in a petrified ball hoping to wake up before the alien probes.)
My child’s keen interest in nature comes as no surprise, given the many (too many) months we’ve had to spend avoiding Old Man Winter’s nastier moods. Oh sure, the boy loves the snow and icicles and white jack rabbits sprinting down our street. But spring —spring is something else.
One minute, everything is black and white; the next minute, technicolour. Bam! Smells and growth and barefoot freedom. Grass stains and spider webs, leafy things shooting from the soil and wheelbarrows begging to be toppled. When you are two, it is all foreign and awesome and perfect, a sensory explosion, an endless array of potential scientific experiments, right down to the malodorous compost bin.
His insatiable curiosity has re-ignited my appreciation for the outdoors. Which I’ve always loved, but perhaps a little less than a good book and a cup of tea in bed, especially at the end of a busy work day.
On our walks to and from daycare, we talk about ants and berries and the pleated pink blossoms on tress. We talk about water hoses and ants, tulips and raindrops, sidewalk cracks and bark, ordinary things long invisible to me that parenting has rendered objects of beauty worth conversing about.
And the birds, oh, the birds, thank you, Spring, for birds, for their early-morning chatter, for their abundance and variety and messy bathing in the neighbour’s bird bath out our front window, for the pleasure they bring a child who can’t absorb life fast enough. “Mama I saw a mango!” “You mean a magpie?” “Magpie!”
On the topic of birds, publisher The Secret Mountain is about to release the English translation of a children’s picture book about classical music inspired by our feathery friends.
Listen to the Birds: An Introduction to Classical Music, written by Ana Gerhard with gorgeous illustrations by Cecilia Varela, is an imaginative, educational first foray into the classical realm that similarities between birdsong and melodies produced by musical instruments (flute, organ, harpsichord, etc.).
Robins, larks, ravens, swans, cuckoos and nightingales are just some of the bird species that have inspired classical music compositions, as children will learn in this slim, inviting hardcover. In the storybook section, the author talks about 20 different selections of music by composers such as Mozart, Vivaldi, Handel and Tchaikovsky. Kids also get a listening guide, composer bios and a glossary of musical terms.
Designed for children ages seven to nine, Listen to the Birds comes with a CD featuring excerpts of 20 different recordings by world-class orchestras.
This is an attractive, smart publication. I’m tempted to hang on to it for five or six years until my son is ready for it. (That said, I wouldn’t have minded a mention of The Thieving Magpie, by Rossini, so he could make a connection with a very vocal local species that’s all too often in our backyard.)
Listen to the Birds was originally published in Mexico in Spanish.
The book is available in Canada beginning May 28.