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This year for Christmas I got the cutest present ever. It’s called a Rainbow Maker and yes, it makes rainbows! I wasn’t really sure how this small device was actually going to make rainbows, but I was game.
It has a small solar panel at the top, and all you do is stick it to a window that gets direct sunlight. Once the solar panel is charged, the brightly-colored gears begin to rotate, the two Swarovski elements (crystals) suspended at the bottom begin to twirl, and voila, rainbows everywhere!
Within an hour of mounting, I was standing in the center of my sunroom watching cute little circular rainbows dancing and prancing all over the walls and ceiling. As much as I was enjoying this darling contraption, I couldn’t wait to show my four-year old granddaughter Willow. She loves rainbows. She draws them and she paints them, and my daughter always points them out to Willow when they appear in the sky.
The first time she came over after the Rainbow Maker was in place, it was a cloudy day. But I took her out to the sunroom anyway to show her and explain that it made rainbows. She immediately wanted it. By that I mean she literally wanted to remove it from the window and take it home with her. She was pretty adamant about it, even moving toward it as if to remove it on her own.
I spoil this child and am proud of it. It is rare for me to even come close to disciplining her. When she comes to my house, I follow her lead and we do whatever she wants. We draw, we paint, we watch movies, we play. There is rarely any need for discipline. We are play partners and I leave the discipline to my daughter.
Willow’s Rainbow
So on this day when she wanted to abscond with my new toy, it took a lengthy discussion to “talk her down.” She’s a pretty smart little girl—she takes after her grandmother—and conversing with her is always enlightening for both of us. Anyway, we moved on to other things that day and the Rainbow Maker was forgotten for the moment.
The next time she came for a visit, the sun was out and the Rainbow Maker was doing its thing. I was pretty excited. I took her into the sunroom and we stood in the middle of the room. I told her to look around at the rainbows that were literally everywhere all around us, moving slowly, one appearing, then another and another. I was pointing at them as they would appear, directing her to look here, then there, and then there. She stood quietly. At one point a rainbow appeared on her face and I told her. Then I positioned myself so that a rainbow would appear on my face for her to see. Again, she just stood there quietly. I was waiting for some laughter and delight, and I didn’t seem to be getting that.
Willow and I stood there for a few minutes watching the swirling rainbows. She remained quiet the whole time but appeared to be carefully observing the rainbows.
Finally she turned to me, raised her arms in an expansive movement and said, “Grammy, if I grabbed all of them like this,” and she began closing her arms as if to catch them, “Then I could make a real rainbow!”
Well then.
