Journal Post. I Guess? Kind of?

This girl.

She’s a precocious little child and can tell us anything in the world that she might wish to tell us. Unfortunately most of what she wishes to tell us is that she absolutely does not want her hair in pony tails, or even the very smallest of barretts (heaven knows how this day’s hair ever managed to happen), and that she most certainly does not want to put on whatever outfit (or even multiple choices of outfits) that we might have pulled out for her (unless, of course, it is her worn and stained pair of “butterfly jammies” [and, in a pinch, her sheep jammies]).

But we like her all the same. We like sneakily listening in on the conversations her little toys have with one another; we like the magna tile houses she builds day and night; we like how she thinks she’s one of the big kids, and we like how she knows the full names of everyone in our family, and how, if she doesn’t know someone’s she just uses the name of her pediatrician/uncle as the most likely substitute (“Mommy Uncle John Harris”, “Daddy Uncle John Harris”).

In other news. Anders turned five. Daisy made him an Elmo cake just like he’d requested (again, I can not tell you how much I love not making birthday cakes anymore!). And, he didn’t: quit recognizing me as his mother, stop loving his blankie, or be unable to fit in any of his clothes or shoes! All those worries were mentioned and fretted over repeatedly as his birthday drew near, so it was a tremendous relief when it turned out he was . . . mostly just the same (only with an Incredible Hulk remote control car now in his posession).

And here is Abe – as he can often be found these days – doing homework. He’s gotten incredibly good at just tuning out the noise from one kid practicing piano, another kid crying, someone playing their allotted time on the wii, several kids running around yelling, and Jesse and I loudly working nearby on Jesse’s homework. He just writes his little essay about the Edict of Nantes as if he were in a silent chamber.

Speaking of Abe. Our church meeting this past Sunday was held at our local tabernacle. As usual, we sat in the balcony section (because balcony = fun). I spent a good portion of the meeting wandering about outside with a rather grumpy Summer and Mette (and nearly had to wade into the nearby temple fountain when Mette hurled her bottle into it – almost out of my reach). Afterwards I asked everyone what the last speaker had said. They seemed disturbingly uncertain, however, Abe did tell me that he’d figured how to save himself and Jesse (who was sitting next to him) if orcs were to suddenly storm the balcony from the stairs. It was clever, involved some scaling of stained-glass, and included returning for more of us if we weren’t all dead by the time he got Jesse down. And then Penny asked what orcs were, and Abe gave her a perfectly Tolkien explanation, and she wondered if perhaps there might be some good orcs, and I said the only good orc was a dead orc – and everyone thought that was funnier than it really was. So . . . church wasn’t a total loss.

Lastly, we decided to go on a little family walk rather spur of the moment last night. We intended to make it to some very large rock that Mike was sure the kids would love to climb on, but rather quickly the day went from this:

To this:

Luckily Mike had the foresight to bring a few flashlights and, while we missed the big rock, we did make it safely back to our car (due mostly I’m sure to Anders singing a little made up tune that mostly went, “follow the light path not the dark path” and then repeated, as he swung his light about the trail in front of us).

And, before all of that I got a few pictures of kids in the car being both happy, sad, and . . . unwilling (Abe! Grrrr.).

And also these few photos. Summer loves Mike so much. She was already a little extra fond of him and then, she was such a tiny little soul when Mette was born – and I’d just had a c-section and wasn’t even supposed to lift the poor angel for weeks – so she quickly became very close to this dad of hers. I just keep looking at these pictures of him with her and thinking that I’m glad he’s my husband and the one taking care of these kids with me.

And then we were home. And Summer tried to shut me out. And Penny let me back in.

The end. Only – side note – that month between orange, twinkly Halloween lights going down and white and/or colorful, twinkly Christmas lights going up feels . . . rather barren. Perhaps we need a few twinkling . . . pilgrim and turkey lights???