![\"\"](\"http:\/\/katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/7\/jomarina.jpg\" "\\"Jo\\"")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
For the five nights my sister\u2019s family stayed with my parents on the island, Paul, Josie and I packed up our contributions to dinner and headed to their house (aka: the mother ship) at cocktail hour. The weather was beautiful and as the sun stretched long over the horizon we clustered around my parents\u2019 glass table and ate our dinners family style.<\/p>\n
The day the cousins left we planned to have a quiet dinner at home. While I cooked, Josie messed around in the carport. We\u2019d just returned from swimming in the lake and her inflatable boat was in the center of the flagstone. I looked out and she\u2019d climbed inside. I asked where she was going and she replied that she was going to Bumpa\u2019s (Grandpa\u2019s) house. OK, have a nice time (is she really playing by herself? Awesome.)<\/p>\n
A few minutes later I peek out the door again and she isn\u2019t there. I walk to the other side of the house toward the beach. She isn\u2019t there. I walk around the side of the house quietly, afraid I will disturb the rare, elusive, self-occupied toddler (I didn\u2019t know it existed!). Finally, I see her walking up our long, steep dirt driveway toward the road with her inflatable boat raised over her head. This is, of course, the same driveway that she cannot possibly walk all the way up when her parents are around to carry her. But here she is walking and holding a boat over her head. Not only is she occupied but she\u2019s wearing herself out. It\u2019s like Christmas over here. Sure, she\u2019s headed toward the road<\/em> but it\u2019ll take her a while to get there and there aren\u2019t many cars and they don\u2019t drive very fast and, well, she\u2019s playing by herself<\/em>. Needless to say, I don\u2019t want to break the spell.<\/p>\n A few minutes later when I can no longer see her I hoof it up to the end of the driveway. I expect to find her resting somewhere along the way, distracted by a bug on a leaf or maybe playing next<\/em> to the road but there she is sitting in her boat right in the middle of the road. Oh stop looking at me that way, there wasn\u2019t a car in sight and if there had been, it would have driven really slowly and have I mentioned that she was playing by herself?<\/p>\n Anyhoo, Josie tells me she\u2019s going to Bumpa\u2019s house. I explain to her that if a car comes, I\u2019m concerned the driver won\u2019t be able to see her down here in this boat. When she gets up three plastic plates, two knives, a plastic frying pan, and a plastic piece of lettuce clatter to the pavement. While I move the boat to the side of the road, she starts walking. It\u2019s about a half mile to Bumpa\u2019s house and I\u2019m pretty sure if I let her she would have made it fine without getting lost. Finally, concerned that the non-plastic dinner is burning on the stove, I talk her into returning to the house to find Daddy. Maybe after dinner Paul will carry her up the driveway, because she can\u2019t possibly make it to the top herself, and we\u2019ll all walk over to Bumpa\u2019s house.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the five nights my sister\u2019s family stayed with my parents on the island, Paul, Josie and I packed up our contributions to dinner and headed to their house (aka: the mother ship) at cocktail hour. The weather was beautiful and as the sun stretched long over the horizon we clustered around my parents\u2019 glass […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mom","category-parenting","category-the-island"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":690,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions\/690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}