our austin trip last march: a photo report

I'm so sad about this, but we could not head to Texas this year for spring break--we are trying to get our old house market-ready, so we're keeping cool in the wintery wilds of the Mid-west, and I'm sharing these photographs from our trip last year for a virtual alternative. 

It's not the same, though--my children are a year older, as are we, and there's a baby on the other side of the womb, but we'll get ourselves down there as soon as we can, as soon as there's a little opening in our schedule and the house is either doing its on-the-market thing or maybe, just maybe, even sold, to which I'll have a whole other kind of heart-longing.

montessori in maine

Last year about this time, Maya was really bucking against learning her letters and learning to write. Now, she's leapt and bounded in language--her absorbent mind has opened and engulfed--though she is still a mite bit "behind," and her number-sense is puttering. She reminds me of me, of course--if she is engaged and passionate, she will learn faster than you can teach. If she just isn't as willing, then she will spin away in a flurry of cotton and swept hair, off to the next attractive thing.

I brought the sandpaper letters with me, having just learned them over the summer, wanting my enthusiasm to rub off on her, but alas, it did not, and she did a little demonstration for her cousin, then asked if she could please go play now. So while one could pretend this is a photograph of a very engaged Montessori scholar, it's actually my daughter, kindly doing as her mama requested, for the sake of bringing a little material to the coast. She's a good egg, this one. A good, imaginative, bright supernova of an egg.