Friday, September 09, 2005

#75 - A New House for the Woodyettes

One of the great side-effects of the Move From Hades® is the constant state of wonder in which our Woodyettes find themselves. When we rearranged Mommy and Daddy's room, for instance, they both wanted to sleep in Mommy and Daddy's bed for the next several nights, simply out of a sense of adventure. I used to experience similar adventures as a youngster any time we could finagle Dad into letting us sleep in a tent pitched in the backyard. It's that sense of anticipation that you're experiencing something different. It doesn't matter what, just that it's different.

Likewise the family room. Before the TV got moved there, it was just a sitting room; a place where Mommy and Daddy could entertain guests, or read a book relatively undisturbed by sub-8-year-old interference. Now it is the gathering place for the whole family, and the girls are just as likely to play out there as anywhere else.

Now the Wonderwood Room© is taking shape, and a whole plethora of material previously unseen by our Junior Woodchucks is visible to them. There are, you see, books. Lots and lots of books.

I finished stocking those shelves just three hours ago. Since that time, the Woodyettes have spent quite awhile picking up random interesting books and reading them to each other. Mrs. Woody gets excited because the Woodyettes have fresh material to use and learn from. The Woodyettes are excited because there are books; a whole lot of them and, as far as they're concerned, they are brand spanking new.

In coming days, they will spend hours in here of their own volition. Oh, sure, Mrs. Woody will herd them in here for school starting Monday. (School, I must clarify, has been in session for a month already, but that was in the old, ramshackle schoolhouse built during the Reconstruction that nearly burned down during the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and which also serves as our dining room. Monday they move into the sleek, modern, new schoolhouse which was built with your tax dollars. Thank you.) But the Woodyettes will gravitate here, after the school bell rings, to explore the world through new sets of eyes.

Home may be where the heart is. But for the Woodyettes, Wonderwood is where the universe is brought into sharper focus.

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