Starling just padded up to me--an unzipped, pink sleeping bag draped over her head and wrapped tightly about her small arms. Unperturbed by the toy-cleaning-up task I was engaged in, she sidled herself, sleeping bag and all, around my working arms and cozily into my lap then stretched her legs out straight--revealing a small set of pink-painted toenails that she wiggled absently at the bin I was collecting blocks in. Having never had bright pink toenails before, at least in her two-and-a-half-year-old memory, she has pointed them out to us often in the week since Goldie painted them (though we've likely pointed them out oftener to her what with all our exclamations of "I like your pink toes!", "Look at your cute toenails!" and "Star! Do you have pink toenails?"). There has been some confusion, on her part, between the words "toenails" and "ponytails", which often results in her drawing attention to her tonynails. Darling.
Mike has been working a tremendous amount the past few weeks. (And will be for some time to come.) In fact, this afternoon Hans, who is needing some new snow boots, said to me, "Next time dad comes to visit us, can he take me to get some boots?" His uncertainty on whether or not Mike even lives here is a sad, but at least humorous, commentary on our current life.
We've had our mid-December birthdays. Jesse has always looked askance at teenagers. He disapprovingly calls them punkards (a word used often enough by him that most of us forget that it is not, in fact, a word, nor have we known for certain whether it applies to Daisy, Goldie and Penny). But what remains to be seen now is how Jesse will fair having now become a punkard himself.
Punkards, as we all know, have to begin shaving.
During his birthday dinner, while we were going around taking turns asking Jesse questions, Hans asked, "What's your favorite movie between Over the Garden Wall and one where LOTS of dinosaurs die?"
I was glad Abe's birthday fell on a Sunday so that he and Daisy were able to come home from BYU for the weekend. Two years of mission birthdays (and Christmases) have shown me that it just does not do trying to make those significant days feel special for a faraway child. Even Provo felt too far after those absences. So having them here was happy. Though, as usual, the contrast between having them here and then ... not here again, struck poor Anders hard. As I tucked him in bed the night before Abe and Daisy were going to be leaving again, he exclaimed, "Who ever invented missions and college and marriage!" and bitterly wiped a few tears from his eyes. Dear boy. And he isn't even a parent yet! Heaven knows how he'll manage those things when his own children fall to those awful "inventions".
Daisy and Goldie bought Abe this mini pool table. He assured them it would make his room the most popular in the dorms.
I played a game with the older four kids on the night of Abe's birthday. Penny got out fairly quickly, so it was down to me, Abe, Daisy and Goldie when Daisy played a card that forced Goldie out of the game. She could just as easily have forced me or Abe out, and Goldie knew it. When she exclaimed over the betrayal, Daisy frantically defended herself with an apologetic, "Sorry Goldie! But it's Abe's birthday, and mom's ... mom." I do have that going for me when we play cutthroat games. Who can, with clear conscience, purposely place their own mother in a losing situation?
The other day, while I was driving somewhere with the two little kids, Hans asked me, "Do you just ... say how many kids you want? And then you just get that many?"
I was a bit distracted and it didn't seem the time for a serious discussion, so I simply said, "Well, it's a little bit trickier than that. Did you know some people really want kids and can't have any? And some people don't even want kids at all!"
Hans thought for a minute and then said speculatively, "Maybe you should've just had one kid. You could've just said a prayer and said you just wanted one kid."
The idea of going back in time and claiming just such a thing is half tempting ... haha, nevertheless, I replied, "But then we'd only have Abe! I wouldn't have my Hansie or Daisy or Goldie ..."
"No," he interrupted. "I would've just been your first kid."
"Ohhh," I replied, understanding. "So we would've just had you? But wouldn't you miss Jesse and Penny and ..."
He dismissed that with an impatient wave of his hand, "I wouldn't even know their names. Why'd you have ten kids anyway?"
I suppose I have my reasons. Little stinker.
