If I Could Make Days Last Forever

If I could make days last forever

If words could make wishes come true

I'd save every day like a treasure and then

Again, I would spend them with you

But there never seems to be enough time

To do the things you want to do

Once you find them

I've looked around enough to know

That you're the one I want to go

Through time with

VisualyZen · Jim Croce - Time In A Bottle (Vinyl, 1972)

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Time in a Bottle

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Opéra Garnier Paris, France

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Last Days of Summer

Too often these days, children’s encounters with nature are dominated by a look-but-don’t-touch directive. Nature connection depends on firsthand, multisensory encounters. It’s a messy, dirty business—picking leaves and flowers, turning over rocks, holding wriggling worms, splashing in ponds. Rather than telling kids “no” all the time when they want to climb a tree, throw a rock, or step into a muddy pond, take a deep breath and offer words of encouragement. Don’t worry so much about the dirt and scrapes. Clothes and bodies can be washed, cuts heal.

from the Book "How to Raise a Wild Child: The Art and Science of Falling in Love with Nature" 

by Scott D. Sapmson

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Fresh Air and Play

"Children need art and stories and poems and music as much as they need love and food and fresh air and play." -Philip Pullman

I want to remember this so bad. 🌿 These squares are a tangible way to offer connection and to actually pause life and say, "I see you. I hear you.",  a sincere and realistic way to teach, or reveal, emotional intelligence, body awareness, and one's family values to the young and free souls. 

 JJ and Nika

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Treasure these Days

From the moment you hold your baby in your arms, you will never be the same. You might long for the person you were before. When you have freedom and time, and nothing in particular to worry about. You will know tiredness like you never knew it before. Days will run into days that are exactly the same. Full of feedings and burping, nappy changes and crying, whining and fighting, naps or a lack of naps. It might seem like a never-ending cycle. But don’t forget …

There is a last time for everything.

There will come a time when you will feed your baby for the very last time.

They will fall asleep on you after a long day. And it will be the last time you ever hold your sleeping child. One day you will carry them on your hip then set them down, and never pick them up that way again.

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You will scrub their hair in the bath one night. And from that day on they will want to bathe alone. They will hold your hand to cross the road, then never reach for it again. They will creep into your room at midnight for cuddles, and it will be the last night you ever wake to this. 

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One afternoon you will sing “the wheels on the bus” and do all the actions. Then never sing them that song again. They will kiss you goodbye at the school gate. The next day they will ask to walk to the gate alone. You will read a final bedtime story and wipe your last dirty face. They will run to you with arms raised for the very last time.

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The thing is, you won’t even know it’s the last time until there are no more times. And even then, it will take you awhile to realize. So while you are living in these times,

remember there are only so many of them and when they are gone, you will yearn for just one more day of them. For one last time.

 -Poem titled The Last Time

  

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