A conversation with my three-year-old this morning:

    Most mornings I like to step out onto our porch and feel what the weather is like.  Today we had a beautiful morning, and when I opened the door, the air smelled of a recent rain.  Ben was still sleeping in his crib upstairs, and Daddy had left early on a trip to the hardware store.  Aidan was right at my heels.

    “Come on, Aidan,” I said, “Let’s sit outside a few minutes.”

    “Mama!  I ‘ave no shoes!” he said, gesturing to his socked feet.

    “That’s okay,” I said, and knowing I could never coax him to step onto the porch with bare feet, let alone socked feet, I scooped him up and brought him over to a chair, where he sat on my lap.  We had some discussion about how I was wearing slippers and we needed to get Aidan some slippers, and then the conversation moved onto other things.

   

    Me:  “Do you see the birds over there?  Look!  There they are!  Do you hear all the birds?”
    Aidan:  “Yeah.”

    Me:  “Birds like to work hard in the mornings, so you can see a lot of them in the mornings and hear them singing.  Isn’t their singing beautiful?  They are looking for food in the mornings.”

    Aidan:  “Dada birds.  Mama birds.  Baby birds.  They eat food in birdhouses!”

    Me:  “And they also have nests in the trees.  Oh, look, Aidan!  Do you see the squirrels?  They have nests in the trees too.”

    Aidan:  “No squirrels nests.”
    Me:  “Yeah...they have nests too.  Do you hear the squirrels?  I hear the cars on the highway too and an airplane.”

    Then several birds began to chatter and swirl through the branches of our dogwood tree. 

    Aidan:  “Look!”  he pointed.  We watched them.  “I hear birds.”

    Me:  “They’re talking to each other, aren’t they?”

    Aidan:  “I hear butterflies.”

    Me: “You do?  Wow.  You must have good hearing.  I don’t even see any butterflies.”
    Aidan:  “Yeah.”

    Me:  “I bet there are some butterflies waking up right now, and they’re going to come to our butterfly bush later, aren’t they?”

    Aidan:  “Yeah.  And I hear leaves too.”

    Me:  “Yes.  The breeze is blowing the leaves, isn’t it?”

    Aidan:  “I hear trees.”

    Me:  “You do?!  Wow!”

    Aidan:  “And I hear big truck!”  (I heard that too.)

    Aidan:  “I hear flowers.  I hear bouncing balls.  There!”  He points to one of his balls, resting silently on the front porch.  “And there! Blue ball!”  He points to his blue ball sitting in another chair.  “Ooo!  Spider!”  He points to the daddy longlegs on the porch.

    Me:  “Do you hear the spider?”

    Aidan:  “Yeah.  And there!”  He points to a little spiderweb on the porch railing.  “Spider eats food.”

    Me:  “That’s right.  They catch insects in their webs, don’t they?”

    Aidan: “I hear boys playing.”
    Me:  “You do?”  (I didn’t hear any children playing at the time, but a few minutes later, we did hear some boys playing and they bicycled by.)

    Aidan:  “I hear grass!  That grass!”  And he leans forward, pointing to a patch of green grass.

    Then our conversation turned to other things.

    If we could only hear as well as our children do.