Oh, Let’s Go Fly a Kite!

T is on spring break this week, and with most of my students away for the break, we’ve had a ton of time to spend together as a family. I had really hoped we might have a week filled with sunshiny days, where we could enjoy lots of time at the local parks and playgrounds. Unfortunately, what we got was mostly a week of gray days with some rain here and there.

When Buba saw the the bright sunshine pouring through the windows this morning, he immediately wanted to go outside. He whined and cried as I explained that the weather was not actually as pleasant as it looked. With a high of roughly 53 degrees and some strong winds stirring up leaves, tipping over trash cans, and scattering recyclables all over our street, the day was less than ideal. But after days mostly filled with running errands and playing inside, T and I decided that the fresh air would do us all some good. So we grabbed a recently purchased kite and headed to a nearby field.** I sang the Let’s Go Fly A Kite song from Mary Poppins as we walked, but no one besides me seemed to get the reference (understandable for Tiny and Buba, but even T was clueless).

The weather was actually quite blustery, and I was a little concerned that there might be too much wind to enjoy some kite flying. But T did a great job getting the kite up in the air and then handing it over to Tiny or Buba (that’s the kite up in the top right corner, with T and Tiny on the bottom left).

Tiny really seemed to enjoy the experience. She ran like the wind, and did a great job (for a 3-year-old) keeping a good amount of tension on the string. Tiny took as many turns as she could get.

Buba enjoyed one good run, and then preferred to spend the rest of his time dropping pebbles into a small puddle.

I’m pretty sure a good time was had by all, including Pink Baby and Blue Baby (who Tiny found under the couch cushions of the love seat in the kids’ room!) who watched it all from their strollers. It was so much fun to see the kids enjoying the kite and running around in the field. I love that something this simple can be so much fun.

**As a funny little side story: After telling Tiny that we were going to go fly our new kite, she asked me, “But how will we get back down?” I told her, “We’ll use the string to pull the kite back down, so we can take it home.” She still looked puzzled and asked, “But how will I get back down to the ground? When Elmo flew a kite, he went up, up in the sky.” So, I had to explain how kite flying really works, after which, she seemed a little disappointed. I was glad to see that she found it quite fun after all once she got to running around with it in the field.