brittany, 9 pm.

We’ve been singing rounds of Wheels on the Bus, except instead of rousing odes to wheels and windows and wipers, we’re celebrating a rowdy bus of animals: cows and doggies and fish, if you’d like to know. The fish on the bus go… [mime your best fishy faces while crossing your eyes]. It’s the most requested verse and only results in a slight headache after the eighth time repeating it. Small price to pay for relative tranquility on country roads. 

The sun sets marvelously late in Brittany this time of year and to take advantage of the sun without utterly neglecting our parental responsibility to get a toddler to sleep at a reasonable hour, we’ve been taking evening drives and walks in the golden hours before sunset. Faye wears her pajamas. We all wear the same dopey expression that only late-day sunlight can conjure. I’m holding out hope that one of these nights Faye might fall asleep in the car and we’ll get to stay out until the ten pm hour when the sun finally sinks below the horizon. An adequate date night if I’ve ever heard of one.

Until then, I spend my time obsessing over the way the light hits silvered fence posts. James spends his time chasing shots of birds in flight. Poor Faye cranes her neck in an effort to spot horses [herrr], goats [ meeeeh], and cows [cow] from her carseat. Last night she was utterly enthralled by a fly on her window [ssip…Little-Fur-Family style]. You know, simple stuff.