Kaiya and AndrejOn weekend mornings, when everyone in the house is still asleep, I like to take Kaiya for walks in the neighborhood. I quietly get her up (she's awake anyway, just playing in her bed), change her diaper, make waffles and fruit and pour milk for us, the whole time talking about how we need to be quiet so we don't wake up mama and baby Tobi. After breakfast, we get out the door into a sleepy neighborhood.

We pick up sticks and rocks and pine cones, pause at people's gardens, kneeling down to take a few moments to admire the flowers, pointing out the pretty pink one right here and the tall purple ones in the back. We stand still to listen to the birds sing and squirrels chew. When we feel like running, we run and when we feel like sitting and playing with the sticks and rocks and pine cones we picked up, we sit down on the sidewalk and do just that.

This past Sunday morning we walked all the way to the bus stop where we sat in hopes of seeing a bus and maybe taking a ride for a few stops. As we sat there on the sidewalk, we talked about the trees and the rocks and we came to the question of who owns all of them. She knows about not running into people's yards and driveways, so I was curious how she was going to process the question…

"Who do you think owns all these trees, Kaiya? Whose are they?" I asked.

She pointed at one of the trees and answered, "the birdies!"

I was very proud of my Kaiya, that she understands what many of us grownups need to learn and relearn: no one can own nature - God made it and the birds own it just as much as Kaiya and I do. Now, I can see how this can cause trouble later on, if she decides to take the liberty to climb a tree that someone "owns," insisting that her Father made it…. But I guess I'm willing to deal with that (at least so I think now) if that's the price for Kaiya to understand how to humbly and gratefully approach creation.

Not to overload this post, but we also talked about who made the flowers and Kaiya pretty.