lollipop

These days she carries around a tiny cloth lollipop from an inherited ABC pocket game - a cloth bus that you can unzip and and then sort a bunch of miniature cloth items into their respectively alphabetized pockets. There's an apple, of course. A kite. A pencil. A queen. And a lollipop with a little orange stem and a lovely red-spiraled top. She has never had a lollipop to eat, so I'm not sure what she thinks this thing is exactly, but she is utterly smitten. She gives it rides in her stroller and hands it to us to hold while she brushes her teeth. Bedtime was delayed tonight because it was missing and we had to have a hunt. "Find it!" she ordered, looking slightly panicked. Find it we did, still tucked under the covers from nap time. Her days are full of boxes turned into houses and the big wind that made all the leftover blossoms fall from the cherry trees at once. A cycle of step-climbing and slide-sliding. A plane flies over. A bird does. A squirrel on the back fence. A song in her head, a little sweet something in her hand.