A Little of November

Friday, November 8th babiest girl (“babiest” because there are lots of babies around here, but she’s the babiest of them all) officially began crawling. The “crawl date” was never quite so exact with her siblings — whose crawls developed gradually from dragging, pushing and pulling; but Starling (whose prior movements resulted primarily from rolling) had spent weeks putting herself into the crawl position ... and then just sort of staying there — unsure how to proceed. Occasionally she’d give a mighty shove with her hands — only to find herself back on her tummy and a foot further away from whatever was in front of her. But then, all at once, right arm and left leg forward followed left arm and right leg forward, and she was crawling! Just like that! With unquestioning confidence, no hesitation and no looking back. In a day’s time she went from always being right where I last left her to being practically anywhere in the house! And within another two weeks she’d even figured how to take herself up a full flight of stairs. (Though I will say, somewhat smugly, that most of her crawling is used to ... follow after me as she calls, “Maa! Maa!” like a little lost goat. [It’s the dearest thing imaginable.])

Speaking of aging: Five-year-old Summer seems quite mature lately. “Mom,” she recently told me, “I learned a new word today. It’s ‘proactive’. It doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want. It just means you just like handle it yourself.”

And then, as we watched The Grinch, this: 

“The Grinch is so dumb!” Then, before I could comment she rushed out a loudly defensive stream of, “And I know I shouldn’t say that, but he’s really mean!”

And Mette. Does she seem any older? No, not necessarily. But she did utter a rather perfect truth about life in her little world full of siblings the other day:

Mette: Daisy, are we in a movie?

Daisy: No. But if we were in a movie what would it be called?

Mette: Friends. ... And sometimes not friends.

A recent example? Mette was sitting in a time out after hurting Summer. As she sat there she sobbed, “I wish I didn’t do that!” And then, before I could mistake her wail for penitence, added, “I wish Summer did! So SHE’D be in a time out!”

Also, I recently found this while cleaning out a kitchen drawer. The beginning of what looked to be a marvelous tale Anders was conceiving. (If only he’d made it beyond the first page):

What else? Perhaps just pictures.

Here are a few kids:

And a typical Sunday evening sight:

This particular Sunday my mom joined us for dinner. I love when we have my mom or Mike’s parents over and our kids get to hear more of their stories than they typically do at big family gatherings.

Did I mention Goldie’s play finished up? (And it’s a good thing because I was near to forgetting I even had a third child with how much she was gone!)

Christmas Village. We went every Christmas growing up. At least it seems we did. And I intend to take my kids every year. But the cold and crowds and busyness of December usually mean my intentions fall flat. But these three were JUST as excited to run around to the small houses before their inner displays were even set up when we were running errands and saw them all being pulled out a few weeks ago.

Dear little Summer. She wanted desperately to create her own magic Christmas Village house when we returned home. She wanted it life sized just like the ones she’d seen that day, but eventually resigned herself to a shoe-box-sized house. Here she is: pondering how to make her vision a reality.

Jesse got his Arrow of Light (his final, big Cub Scout award) during the last ever pack meeting our church would be having:

Speaking of Jesse. Here he is. Not going to bed long after being sent there. :)

Ah. This. Hansie’s big black eye. (The old running fall into the corner of the coffee table.)

And for those of you not keeping up with Abe’s letters on his blog, here is a picture I love of him with a violin and guitar maker he has gotten to know in El Salvador. And this little paragraph from a recent letter:

“My name is Abraham Harris.

I live in El Salvador, where I walk through the jungle and on dirt roads and drink my water out of bags. I wake up every morning and go talk to strangers all day in a language I didn't speak until four months ago. I talk about the Gospel of Jesus Christ all day. I think about it all day. I live and breathe it. From 6:30 AM until 10:30 PM it is all I do. And I love it.”

And here the kids are making “Thankful Turkey Bags” to fill with little notes to be opened on Thanksgiving:

Oh, and snow! We had our first big snow today. And it is supposed to keep going for the next three days! I imagine I won’t be getting in my usual Thanksgiving run tomorrow morning (and many Turkey Bowls have, I am sure, been ruined), but I love snow when the kids are home and it’s a holiday (even if I was a little terrified to let Daisy drive to her new little seasonal job at Seagull Book this afternoon).

And that’s it for now!