Morphing Hats

A full life requires us all to wear a number of different hats. The repair[wo]man, the philosopher, the politician, the hand and mouth cleaner, the corner scrubber, the musician, the cook and of course the parent, spouse and friend are just a few that rotate through my life currently. Balancing these hats creates such variety and color in life.

My parents came to visit a couple of weekends ago, and it was interesting to reflect on the shifting of their hats. Their hats are still similar from my childhood, but age, energy, and a childless house have morphed, added to, and taken away some of the hats. The book club hat was certainly not around in my youth, and the kitchen counter therapist hat has morphed into the long distant therapist. Judging by the weekend, and past experiences, the Grandparent hat is one they adore and wish they could wear more often.

Who can hardly blame them, with this personality-filled girl walking around?

And this resident wearer of T-shirts and shorts amid 40 degree weather jumping up and down?

We all wore the tourist hat for the weekend, visiting museums and gorgeous fall gardens.

(Bonsai trees--not pictured--in the autumn at the Nat'l Arboretum! So cool.)

Amidst the touring and lounging, Grandpa let us all try on his skin-cancer avoiding hat,

Though we wore it in different ways,

I think we appreciated the classy fedora way of avoiding skin cancer.

I'm excited to see the continued morphing of hats in our lives--bring on fedoras!

And to watch a morphing timeline of dance hats, here are 2 videos of the same song, Allie (14 mo) and Jackson just a couple weeks ago, and an old Jackson classic (when he was 14 mo).