There are lots of new creations coming out of Tinkerwhims, I’m feeling happy, inspired and glittery. All of this creating has my two and a half year old daughter talking about things “made entirely out of crafts” and how mommy is “good at mending things”. I have no idea where she got the word mending from, but I roll with it.

It’s funny how my crafting intertwines with what I see in our daily lives, and in my sweet girl’s development. While I had a week of applying wallpaper to paper houses, D had a week of classes and playgroups. It was within these playgroups that I noticed something very interesting, and subsequently felt proud of how I’m raising my little fairy.

Many of our playgroups gather at parks with surrounding nature preserves. Lush and amazing, I’ve seen more beauty since I’ve been visiting these sites then in my whole hiking life. There is so much out there, so many patterns and changes and subtleties. It’s hard to notice these things when your intention is to cover ground and conquer, but when you move at the snails pace of a two year old it’s impossible not to notice. And it saves you.

So many of the parents I’ve met and spoken with, fear nature. They think its dirty, and wild, and will cause their progeny to fall ill. They hover on playgrounds, man-made structures covered in saliva and mucous and think their children are experiencing glory. Yet some, although not all, of these kids can’t relax on a simple hike. They rush, speed, and run, looking for the next opportunity to play. When play is all around them.

I’ve noticed D and her best friend have a fondness for trees. Chasing each other around them, over and over and over. It’s great fun. They also like “play fishing” in scummy ponds, and feeding frogs and turtles. D sometimes chews on grass, but I’m not proud of that. What’s remarkable, however, is that they never rush through a hike- they slow down. Moving more and more slowly, until we are stopped! They don’t want to leave, when they are in the midst of an environment where nothing is going on. Except they see it all.

I have considered sneaking into parks and putting inexpensively crafted fairy doors on trees. Making huts out of houses and creating ruins. Just to give pause to these kids that can’t see the forest for the trees. But really, wouldn’t it be amazing for a child to discover a fairy door, not in a museum, or in a display but rather, in the middle of nowhere? Would it occur to them to pay closer attention?