The Majestic Mud Puddle

After lunch yesterday, Amber employed her most persuasive devices to get me outside with her. She brought me my sandals and tried putting them on my feet. She tugged on my elbow saying "you want to go outside wif me, Mommy?" She climbed behind me in my chair at the kitchen table and pinched me all over, saying "c'we go on a walk? cu'we-cu'we-cu'we? Kleeeease!" (cu'we, c'we, or cuh-we is her funny way of saying "could we" really fast, and klease is how she says please). Finally I finished up on the computer and agreed to go on a walk together.

"Let me go get my shoes on first, ok?" I told her. 

"Kai go outside?" she asked

"Wait for me outside; I'll be right back," I called over my shoulder as I dashed downstairs to grab my running shoes (experience has taught me that sandals are not sufficient for an Amberamble). 

When I emerged from the house half a minute later, Amber was nowhere in sight. I called out to her and heard nada. Predicting her route, I began power-walking around the house toward the canal road. There she was, off in the distance, chugging along in her pink boots. With a mischievous glance over her shoulder, she gleefully maintained her distance from me, putting on a burst of speed every time she noticed me gaining on her. In a few minutes, we made it around the canal road bend and down the side hill to the ditch-creek. I named this irrigation ditch Willow Creek last summer, but due to the deep, thick suction-y mud that lines its banks in some patches, Jay has started calling it The Swamp/The Fuming Waste/The Accursed Area (depending on his mood and how deep his boots mired most recently). Amber trotted along in the bright sunshine with me ambling in her wake. Every few steps, she paused to play and after about ten minutes I realized that I had forgotten my book. It's not like I managed to read much last time we went on a ramble like this, but it is a comfort to have the possibility tucked under my arm. 

Bookless, I turned to my phone camera for entertainment. I snapped a few pictures of the lovely puffy clouds against the blue sky, then took a couple of Amber with that idyllic background. But my interest faded; it seemed like I had already taken these same pictures a hundred times. I trailed along after Amber, watching her scamper and caper about happily. I drank in the view and the fresh air. I admired clusters of tiny green specks in the bordering vineyard--embryonic grapes. Still Amber played and ran and played and ran. It was peaceful. Sometimes it's nice to simply BE. I was almost bored, but it was such a pleasant 70 degree sunny day that for the most part I was ok with just wandering through the countryside behind Amber.

Dirt, sweet dirt: Amber's one true love.

About half a mile away from home, we discovered a massive mud puddle. It rained hard for nearly 2 hours last night (a rare occurrence at this time of year here), resulting in this beauty of a puddle. Amber was enchanted. It was love at first splash. I stood back and watched the progression of her puddle-acquaintance:

• First, she skirted around the edge of the puddle, tentatively dipping her booted toe in every few paces. 
• Then she tossed rocks and dirt clumps into it, reveling in the splash.
• Next, she carefully waded across the puddle, clearly concerned about getting her boots stuck in mud. She did not want that to happen again! Amber prefers to be in charge of the situation.
• Amber knelt down at the edge of the puddle and played in the squishy wet mud there.
• Then she leaned forward and splashed her muddy hands into the puddle, ginning at the satisfying spray of water.
• She stood up, trotted down to the far end of the puddle, turned around, and slowly jogged through the long middle of the oblong puddle.
• This was so much fun, Amber started doing laps: through the puddle, turn and run back to the starting point on dry ground, then run through the puddle again. Her running became faster and more energetic with every lap, eventually splashing muddy water up over the top of her boots and down in onto her socks.
• She paused, removed her boots and emptied the water out one by one, then put them back on again and did another splashy lap through the puddle. Pause, remove boot, dump out water, remove other boot, dump out water, step back into boot 1, step into boot 2, resume running. I watched, mesmerized as she repeated this process over and over.
• Eventually, Amber left her boots off and ventured forth into the muddy lake-puddle in her previously purple Cinderella socks. Amber is proof that princesses can get muddy!
• After more stomping and wandering in her stocking-feet, Amber peeled off her socks and began washing them in the puddle in a flailing motion, clearly enjoying the effect of her movement. She rubbed her socks on the muddy bottom of the mud puddle, further changing their color from purple to brown. 
• Abandoning her socks by the wet wayside, she squelched her toes in the mud and wandered around the puddle back and forth, taking in all of the squishy sensations.
• Next, Amber sat down in the middle of the mud puddle. She scooped up mud from the bottom and painted in onto her legs.
• I stopped her right before she rubbed mud onto her face. 

The Majestic Mud Puddle happened to be located a ways back behind our bishop's house, and he happened along in his family sized Gator vehicle with two of his cute grandsons who are Amber's age. Those two little boys looked on in wide-eyed amazement at Amber's antics as she swam in the murky mud. We asked them if they would do that, and they shook their heads quickly "no way!" 

When our visitors drove away, I realized that Amber was minutes away from a full frontal laying down in the mud puddle, so I hauled her out. I helped her down into the deep ditch next door and sat her in the fast moving water, scrubbing mud off of her pants, sleeves, and hands. The ditch was about six feet deep with steep rocky sides and the stream at the bottom was shallow and narrow. I was on unsteady footing as I got as much mud out of Amby's person as possible. At last I slid her boots back on and helped her up the steep bank to solid ground once more. I count it as a small miracle/major success that I did not get muddy Amb-prints all over my pants! I did get covered in mud up to my elbows as she grabbed at my arms for support as we scrambled up the ditch-bank, but my clothes stayed mostly clean.

Next step: walk half a mile home. Our kind bishop had offered us a lift home when he stopped, but we were in this for the long haul, and I politely declined so as to get Amber the most exercise and adventure as possible. She sloshed along in her galoshes, water streaming from her soaked pants and collecting in her boots. We paused twice to dump the accumulated water out of her boots. We took the short cut home: instead of going up the hill and around on the canal road, we cut across the field behind our house. I headed straight for a set of tire tracks that pressed the tall grass and weeds down and created a trail through the thick weeds, but Amber forged her own path. 

"Follow Mommy? NEVER! Shoulder-high weeds? Bring 'em on," thought Amber. 

I successfully made my way through the field and stood at the edge of our yard waiting for Amber, watching her golden curly head bobbing along through the tall weeds. Every time she tripped and fell (which was every third step or so), she disappeared from my view. She got tangled in the undergrowth several times and had to alter her course. When she was almost within arm's reach of me, she got stuck again and reached out a hand with a plaintive "help me, Mommy!" I reeeeached over, grabbed her little hand, and dragged her through the tangle out into the open. Somehow her boots stayed on.

"We made it!" Amber trilled. Home at last.

We walked up our sloping lawn to the side door, where I stripped Amber down to her skin in broad daylight (there was mud in her swollen diaper) and led her inside to the bathtub. Mud clung to her curls, dangling in front of her face where she had swiped her hair out of her eyes during her sojourn in the Majestic Mud Puddle. This was going to be a full on head-to-toe Amber-wash. I moved as quickly as possible, working against my fatigue. A quick spray-down, soap-up, scrub-down, and wash-off later, Amber was lounging contentedly in a slowly filling bathtub. In another burst of kindly maternal indulgence, I had decided to let her fill the bath tub and play for a while. The water suddenly turned yellow. 

"UGH! AMBER, you just peed in the bath! Don't do that!" I groaned.

She rolled over onto her stomach in response, more fully coating her freshly washed skin in pee-bath-water. Yuck. I braced myself and plunged my hands up to the wrists into the warm pee-water, fumbling for the plug. The thing would not come loose! I wanted my hands OUT of that water! Finally I got it unstuck and sprayed Amber down with the shower-hose again while the bath water drained, rinsing off the pee-water. At last I got her dressed and combed out her wild tangled curls. From there, I bundled Amby into her kitty blanket and tucked her in bed for a nap. 

Elapsed time: 1 hour, 45 minutes. WHEW. Maybe I need to stop running so much to train for races and just follow Amber around instead. She'd probably whip me into better shape than any of my carefully crafted training plans!

PICTURES: the muddier Amber got, the more interest in photo-taking I reclaimed.

That tiny pink speck is Amber's retreating figure. 

Amber's silhouette emerging from the shadows in the distance to the right.  

 In the absence of rocks, throw dirt into the stream.

Usually this road is pure fluffy puffy dust, but after the late night rainstorm, it was a satisfyingly damp smooth paste. Amber appreciated it greatly.

 Double-fisting that dirt

Teeny baby grapes! 

Running between the dirt and the sky, grapevines on the right and ditch-creek on the left, our house waaay out in the background.

 Starting slow...

 ...speeding up.

 Cinderella princess socks in the mud: the epitome of Amby.

 The wash-off. She was a little cold, but this saved me a lot of mess and trouble once we got home.

That tiny head bobbing through the grass in the distance! 

All tangled up and tuckered out, reaching for my hand.