The kids rode their bikes back and forth “from the fire hydrant to the second tree” (those are their boundaries) after dinner. It looked like it was about to storm but they at least got to spend 20 or 30 minutes outside riding.
“The stars will come out soon,” Carissa said, her very tiny self surverying the sky from her seat on the Strider bike.
“Well, I think it’s going to storm, so the clouds will probably cover the stars tonight,” I told her.
“It will be loud thunder,” she predicted. “Like “BAHHHHHOOOMMM!” She clapped her hands together dramatically. Something like that, Riss.
Poor Mara skinned her knee on her first ride down to the fire hydrant. David skinned his knee too–just falling on the sidewalk–but it didn’t bother him and I didn’t even realize it till I took him inside and washed him up.
The storms did come. I had put the girls to bed and I was in the boys’ room with the lights out when we heard a loud clap of thunder. Rissy came running down the hall, and light streamed into the room as she flung the door open and hissed, “Did you hear the thunder?!”
And Micah shouted, “Did you see that?! It was like someone flashed a camera across the sky!”
For the next few minutes, silhouettes of two brothers–four and one–each holding back one side of the blinds peeked expectantly out the window from the bed and the crib. . . As lightning flashed, David squealed, “ooo-OOO-ooo!” just because Micah was excited. And now that he was hyper again, David ran from end-to-end of his crib screaming, “AHHHHHHH!” the same way he does when he’s playing “monster.”
Micah, riveted to the window, exclaimed, “This time it was FINGER lightning! All across the sky!”
The wonder of childhood! I love my little storm watchers.
🙂