Tabitha at 33 months is a screamer and fighter, a wailer and crier, a kicker and runner, but also a kisser and hugger, a welcome-home-greeter, a sharer and saver, an endless complimenter, a nurturer, an imaginer, and a miss-you-whenever-you-leaver.
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This late hour of the morning finds me at the dining room table (this giant house doesn't have room to put a table in the kitchen), surrounded by susurrations: the dishwasher sloshing, the washing machine humming, the wheels of quarry trucks, dense at this hour on the rural route past the house, peeling tacky-wet off the tarmac. The company--me, ( Read more... )

The toddler version of "the unsleeping baby" looks like this, for Tabitha (who has taken the mantle over gladly; at 4 now, Ev mostly sleeps, although many nights a chunk of that sleeping still happens beside me): at somewhere around quarter-to-five (or -to-four, or once to-two), she comes in whinging about nursing, even though she knows what my ( Read more... )

Two quotations, about two minutes apart, from the two-and-four's morning big-bed snuggle-play:

T: "Mommmm, get off me. I princess. Princesses no need to be smooshed! Princesses need stretch out."

E: "Yay! My sister! I love you, with your smooshy cheeks!"

Then Daddy and I came downstairs to drink coffee in a moment of peace on the couch, and now I can ( Read more... )

Most nights, Evanny creeps unobtrusively out of her room and into ours, taking the long way to my door, like they all do, every time, and crawls into bed beside me: I lift the covers, she curls between my body and the edge, I put the warmed blankets back down over her long, little shape, I curl an arm around her, and we go back to sleep.
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The other day, I picked Evanny up and exclaimed about her bigness--like you do with 4-year-olds--and asked the way one does. "My goodness, child, why are you so big?"

In her best "well, duh" voice, my soon-to-be teenager answered "Because, birthdays!"

E: "Daddy, who wins? Lightsaber vs. wand?"

M: "Ooh, that's a good question!"

E: "Since I have magic poison in my wand, maybe I would win. But maybe she could slice the wand!"

C: "Fairy vs. Jedi?"

E: "Or maybe I could kill your BUTT!"
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This is the bath I took today, hiding in a dim room while the grey piled high and drifted down outside, trying to avoid the alternatingly happy-then-furious-then-happy-again shrieks of my daughters (the boy's away this weekend) and the hormone-induced migraine that's going to keep following me no matter where I hide.
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I found out yesterday that one of my most interesting lj friends--who was also, dazzlingly but far too briefly, a real life friend--is gone.
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At last night’s Thanksgiving-inspired get-together with total strangers (one of Matt’s students invited us over to share dessert with her and her sister, her mum and dad, and her grandmother and grandfather), because our children are who they are, they set immediately about captivating every adult in the room in turn. Caleb did this in his usual ( Read more... )