mindful observation or rambling?

Port2Port had a discussion on art this week that I enjoyed reading, especially the entry along the lines of art is where you want it to be, where you find it, etc. It got me thinking about my daughters' little things that are in every corner of our house. Her sweet things fill spaces that before her held nothing. For some reason this makes me emotional when I think about it. Also, her things are so cute and colorful they give me a little burst of happy when I look at them. I have recently been trying to make myself live more in the present and find happiness wherever it can be found. Looking at her kiddie accoutrements is one way I've found to do this. I've always been a neat freak. So I thought I'd be going a bit crazy with baby toys all over our space, but I was wrong. Her things are just an extension of her and I want to savor every possible bit of her. I know she will grow up so fast. Does all that sound corny? Perhaps.

The photo above is of her little tea set. It lives in our bathroom. Tea set + bathroom sounds strange, right? Well, since she got this set, she stands at the bathtub while I take a shower in the morning and plays with it. She hands me cup after cup of "tea," filling and pouring, pretending to paint. She talks non-stop about what she is doing. She has the bathroom floor soaking wet. She is dripping from head to little toe. It is part of our daily routine. When I'm done I HAVE to let her pour a cup of water over my head to "wash mommy's hair" and only after that am I allowed to turn of the water. She cleans up all her dishes and puts them back on the floor. For the rest of day every time I go into the bathroom her colorful little dishes put a smile on my face. One day she will stop playing in the water and stop playing with her tea set and stop saying, "Okay little mommy now I have to wash your hair." The day will come when she won't dare come in the bathroom with me, I'm sure, but as long as her little tea set is on the bathroom floor I know she is still my little girl and tomorrow she will be playing in my shower water.

I'm sure most would not agree that a silly plastic tea set on the bathroom floor is art. I'm not saying that it is a piece of art, or that my daughter arranges them for the purpose of giving me the pleasure of looking at them, just that their presence is an example of the footprint she has made on our life and that it fills me with emotion and it pleases my crazy head to look at them. Beauty and Art are in the eye of the beholder maybe is all I am saying or maybe it's just trying to make mindful observations. Finding the goodness of life even in the tiniest plastic tea set.