You may or may not remember this post from a while back when I talked showed you our new yard, and I talked about how dirt is a good thing. If you haven’t read that post it’s a good read, but I have something else to talk about today.
Almost two years ago our family moved into a new home. I was so excited, all I could think about was how this new house was going to have everything I needed. It was going to be one where everyone could have their own room, and I would have enough cabinet space for all my kitchen necessities. I remember being excited about getting to pick out carpet and tile, and lighting, and stressing about deciding whether we should go with maple or hickory. I remember picturing my children happily playing in the yard or in the playroom while I prepared dinner. I remembering thinking everyone will love this house!
Flash forward to reality. Yes we love our house, and yes it has lots of wonderful features and things, but in the heat of the move and design we may have lost sight of the fact that this is their place too. All of my children do have their own rooms, but they rarely sleep in them, in fact they tell me that they miss our old apartment because we were all so close together there. Most nights all three kiddos are sleeping in my youngest son’s room because they like to be together. We ended up going with hickory floors, and I’m glad we did because they are dirty more than they are clean and all the variation in the wood color hides the dirt well. I still don’t have enough cabinet space, and I usually find myself preparing dinner during the “witching hour” when they are all tired, and hungry and needy. But the yard… the yard! It’s finally done! It’s taken us two years to get our landscaping completed and thank goodness it did because since we’ve lived here we’ve been observing more, and listening more to their needs, and because of that we made some changes.
For two summers we had a back dirt lot, not a yard. During those two summers we got to “watch” our kids (read, strongly encourage) play outside. They found bugs, went “hiking”, learned that thorns and bare feet don’t go well together, made “soup”, and asked us almost every single day, “When are we going to get grass?” We worked tirelessly with landscape architects, collected ideas from Pinterest, and saved every penny we could. We felt like this was our one shot to get it right. We wanted it to be beautiful, and welcoming, and a place to gather. In the beginning, I was picturing this.
The thing about that, is there is really nothing there for my little ones. No place to run, or hide, or roll, or dig, or explore. So we adjusted our plans. The backyard has lots of grass, we added a hill, and a path. We planted raspberry bushes so that they could explore and pick fresh berries. We have an awesome patio that we eat at every night, and we will soon have a sandbox.
The front yard is quite small and simple. Our plans called for a tree, a patch of grass, and a planter box off the front of our front porch.
I was excited about the idea of quietly drinking a cup of coffee on my front porch as the day awoke. It was going to be perfect. So construction started and there were many exciting days filled with back hoe’s, front loaders, and concrete trucks. All was going to plan until this happened.
I got a text from my husband. “Planter box or sandbox?” I knew right then that we needed to make a change. Sandbox, most definitely. And that is what we did.
Now I sit on my front porch and quietly drink my coffee while my kids play in the morning sun in the sandbox. And in the afternoon we gather with neighbors and their children and seek shade in our front porch sandbox, and after school I cook dinner while my kids play in the sandbox. The peonies can wait, because this is their home too.