Illness, Super Mario, Pokemon, Brothers, and Summer

I fell ill for several days last week. It’s not like me to get sick, and, it didn’t take much of it to remind me that all my good character traits and saintliness flee pretty quickly when tried . . . even remotely. Sigh.

(I know. I shouldn’t have been snuggling Anders with sickness surrounding me and all, but . . . there were just so many kids, and they had so many needs, and Mike wasn’t around during the majority of my illness, and this one just kept coming and squishing himself next to me, . . . and I just gave up on trying to shoo him away for his own safety. He has managed to stay healthy so far though, so perhaps no harm done.)

Also, as I stumbled into my bathroom during one of the aforementioned days, I paused and looked in the mirror. It was a rather horrifying sight. My thin hair was greasy and disheveled. My face was pale (the only color at all coming from my raw and red nose). It occurred to me that if Mrs. Bennet had been my mother, her plans to send me off in the rain (in hopes of catching an illness, and procuring the affection of some rich suitor by having to convalesce in his home) would have gone terribly terribly awry.

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The other day Daisy was playing some Super Mario something or other. I’m not sure what was happening, but things must have been going poorly because Abe laughed and told her that the way she was playing “even mom” could beat her. That, apparently, is the ultimate insult.

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As I read the scriptures the other day, Anders snuggled next to me and told me he was reading his scriptures too. It was a Pokemon handbook. I think he was reading . . . The First Book of Squirtle : Evolution 1 (or something equally inspirational).

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For having as many kids as I have, I still find it strange that it is only now that I am first really experiencing little boys together. The other day they were wrestling on the ground. Anders squawked in protest while Jesse hit him repeatedly with his (Anders’) own hand and said, “Why ya’ hittin’ yerself? Why ya’ hittin’ yerself?” I don’t know who taught them that, but it seemed like . . . just what brothers ought to be doing.

And yes . . . I know Anders probably needs a haircut someday. This whole . . . thing . . . sort of happened by accident. It wasn’t planned. It’s just . . . now that it did happen, I fear some type of heartbreak (reminiscent of the time we first cut all his baby hair off) shall befall me once we cut it again. And, as Abe said, if Anders was older and actually knew how to do his hair (or, if I did now, perhaps) rather than leave it looking like insane bedhead every day, “he’d actually have the coolest hair in the family.”

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Anywho, that’s all for now. Only . . . seriously, Summer loves looking at herself in the mirror. I love what my sister Shannon said about it when she saw this picture on Instagram: “Love love love! Absolutely fascinating . . . ‘What is this tiny little body I’m wearing here?’” Yes. Exactly. And, recently, she has finally seemed old enough and sturdy enough for me to not feel too alarmed about certain siblings carting her around the house.