Pieces

11-year-old Penny shares a room with 4-year-old Summer. I will sometimes peek in to see if Summer is sleeping (often long before Penny has come to bed) and notice that she only has one little blanket on her. But later, when Penny has headed to bed, and I check on them again, Summer will always be bundled snuggly in all her covers. I love picturing Penny going in and, before climbing in her own bed, motherly making sure her sleeping-younger sister is tucked in warm enough for the night. It’s so dear it makes me want to cry.

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The other day I went to tuck Jesse and Anders in in their bunkbeds. Anders was already sound asleep, but Jesse was awake. As I walked towards their bed, my foot kicked a gigantic copy of War and Peace.

“Why is War and Peace on the floor in here?” I asked Jesse.

“Oh,” he shrugged. “Anders was reading it.”

Anders is six.

I have a feeling it wasn’t quite what he was after as he gathered some bedtime reading. Hahaha.

(Note – added later: Anders is seven. Several days after writing this post, he mentioned that he was seven. And neither Daisy nor myself believed him for several minutes. But, we did in fact celebrate his seventh birthday earlier this month. I didn’t forget the birthday – or the presents, or the celebration. But . . . I did forget that he actually turned SEVEN! [Maybe he’s perfectly ready for War and Peace after all!])

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Summer and Mette. Doing a little painting.

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My little Hansie. I can’t tell you how dear that boy is to me! I just adore him so so much. I love how his hair stands straight up (and how Mike won’t cut it because the thought makes him too sad). I love how he says, “fuffalo” instead of buffalo (which comes up more often than you’d think -- as we often drive past a house with a giant statue of a buffalo [all painted in flowers] standing in their front yard.) I love how when he says “Penny”, it sounds like “Bunny”. I love how he often despairs, “Mean!” when anyone has not allowed anything to go his way. (The girls brought in their pumpkins off of the front porch today and didn’t immediately fork them over to him. “Mean. Pumpkin.” he explained sorrowfully to me. Yesterday he wanted me to let him hold an entire frosting-covered piece of cake rather than feed it to him as I insisted. “Mean. Mom.” he bemoaned to Daisy.) But most of all right now, I think I love that when I take him up to bed at night, no matter how wiggly he is, the minute I start to pray over him, he snuggles quietly into me with his head on my shoulder. It makes me never want to stop praying because I just love hugging that little fuzz-head so much.

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Daisy loves to make banana bread. (And, of course, I love her loving to make it.) But this love, complicated by a house filled with hungry siblings, has caused Daisy to, very often in the past, hide bananas away when we buy them so they don’t end up eaten before she finds a chance to bake. Alas, she often forgets she’s hidden them . . . until, inevitably, weeks later, I cry out something like, “Why are there a bunch of completely black, old bananas hiding above the cupboards?”

So when Mike brought home a bunch of bananas the other day and Daisy requested, “Can I hide some of those?”, she quickly added, “In plain sight?” And so she did. They currently sit on the counter above the sink with a note stuck to them reading, “Do not eat!”

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Here are the three people left behind when everyone else goes to school.

Also, . . . them pictured in the cart at IFA buying chicken feed. Again.

ALSO also . . . them with the daughter of one of my childhood friends – who happened to be dressed as Elsa from Frozen when they stopped by recently. The girls were in complete, magical, awe.

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Mette has taken to referring to me primarily as “mother”. Not “mom”. Only “mother”. I don’t know where this comes from. I can only imagine, perhaps, it stemmed from the fact that, when I put her to bed at night, she often requests we sing, “Mother tell me the Story”. (A sweet, little song with a child verse and a mother verse. She sings the child verse all on her own and then waits for me to sing my part.) Alternately, it could be because the kids recently watched Tangled. And any of you who have watched it can immediately begin singing . . . “Mother knows best.” (Though I’d prefer she think of me as the mom singing in the primary children’s hymn rather than as Mother Gothel!)

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For years our maples were too short to see over the top of our house. But this year . . . there they are! Every time I turn onto our street I feel so happy looking at those red leaves poking up behind our house! Sadly the last few leaves are barely clinging to the trees now. But I keep thinking how if we ever move and build a house, I will have to plan trees based on fall leaf color. My parents’ backyard was mostly full of yellows. Ours is mostly full of reds and oranges. One should certainly consider having every fall color in the trees they plant!

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Penny loves writing. Her nightstand is completely filled with notebooks and folders and rogue papers. Mostly there are only beginnings. Sometimes only titles. But they are everywhere. And for all ages. She even makes comic books. She makes me laugh often with her ideas. She recently started a comic book titled, Star Wars: Jedi Elementary. Book 1. Does the Force Really Awaken?

And the other day, after asking Abe what it means to “throw shade” (dis, trash, or put down – as in, “Awe man, why you gotta be throwin’ shade!”), she titled a new book, Bobby Jordan Throws Some Shade. I laughed out loud so hard when I read the title. Clever, funny girl.

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Abe looking handsome. He needed a headshot for something the other day so we quickly took these in the backyard.

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One of my favorite things is to go on a little family walk on Sunday evenings. Always in whatever is being worn by that point – pajamas, church dresses, etc. Sadly, what with the colder weather coming, the shortened hours of daylight, and the clock change accompanying fall about to hit, I fear those walks are likely nearly at an end for the year. But we managed a little one last night. (Though it was completely dark by the end. The shots of the leaf fight that erupted when we came into a small clearing blanketed with thick leaves, and the shot of all the kids at the park, were nearly impossible to get! And I lightened them a good deal afterwards in order to post them at all.) (Also, in the playground pic, all nine kids plus Mike are there. It took me a minute to find them. It’s Goldie who is tricky. A dark little shadow of a person behind Mette and Penny. [All five girls are in the same section – with Goldie at the very back.] Abe is a little tricky too – demonstrating some sort of hanging trick behind Anders.)