Guest post by Barbara Matousek.

On our way in to town this morning, Sammy and I were talking about the clouds.  We were winding along highway 35 between the Nathan Wolfe Memorial Wildlife area where Sam recently told me “things that suck your blood live” and the Trempealeau Wildlife Refuge where Sam says “that funny duck with the big head swims.”  A half dozen white egrets stretched their necks to fish near the wild celery, and a few others sat in the crooks of a dead tree that reflected on the water.  As our Subaru slowed to let a train clear the tracks in front of us and the bright sunlight behind us created dramatic whites and grays on the clouds hanging over the bluffs, Sam told me you can’t move clouds with your mouth like you can the fuzzy tips of dandelions.

“Clouds are heavy,” he said.

“They are?  How do you know that?” I asked.

“Because…”

“I think they’re really easy to move.  You just have to get close enough,” I said.

The last car of the train bumped across the road and the red lights stopped blinking and the large semi in front of us slowly started moving.

“Go fast, Mommy.”

“I can’t.  The truck in front of us is going slow and it takes a lot of energy for him to get started.  Remember how hard it was for you to get your bike started when we were going up the hill last night?” I reminded him.

“Yah.  That was hard.”

“It’s the same.  Once he gets started we’ll get moving fast, but right now he’s got to work really hard to get going.”

He thought a while.

“Mommy, we need to get a flying pony so we can go up into the sky and blow the clouds away,” he said.  “If we flew really super fast it would not be so hard to get them started.”

This guest post, brought to you by my good friend, Barbara Matousek. She is a single mother by choice of a toddler boy and a baby girl. She writes regularly on her blog about  http://barbsproject.blogspot.com.