If I’d not gotten induced with Lucy four years ago, and if she’d gestated as long as Molly, she’d be a November baby. But I did, and she didn’t, so Happy Birthday, Lucy! Sorry I made you come out so early (and so small, just seven pounds and five ounces — so, not really small, just small for our family). Hope the seventeen months of breastfeeding (which you are obsessed with making sure the baby gets enough of) made it up to you!

I’m calling today to schedule a speech assessment for you. Grandpa asked me, again, if I was concerned about your language abilities. It doesn’t bother me that you can’t say your “k”s or “g”s yet; I think it’s kind of cute, and your vocabulary and comprehension are just fine. I’m pretty sure the therapist will tell me either A) There’s nothing wrong, why are you so paranoid? or B) This kid has serious problems, why didn’t you call us two years ago?

Now if they could do something about your helium-infused muchkin accent . . .

Not the first time that she asked me what it is (she doesn’t know about it yet). Not the first time I caught her in front of the mirror, trying to capture just at what angle her eye stops tracking (she hasn’t done that yet). Not the first time she wants to know why she’s different, why a doctor can’t fix it, why Heavenly Father would make her body not perfect (she thinks it is, so far).

Just the first time someone her age – that age when little kids guilelessly, relentlessly point out the fat lady withthe big bum, the girl who jumps and shouts at church, the old man whose legs don’t work — the first time someone her size asks her mom why Lucy’s eyes look funny like that, and the first time I hear a mother shush and whisper that it’s a lazy eye, and some people have eyes like that, not unkindly, both of us hoping Lucy hasn’t heard, or hasn’t understood.   

I say, it’s actually the opposite of a lazy eye (though really I don’t know what the opposite is). It’s that one of her eyes can look to the left, and look straight ahead, but it can’t look to the right.

But I don’t tell Lucy that. She doesn’t know she’s being discussed. She’s not even four yet.

It could be worse, of course it could be much, much worse. But the first time she realizes what it is, what her eye can’t do that most people’s eyes can do, won’t be the time to tell her that. I hope by that first time I’ll know the perfect thing to say, a thing that doesn’t sting her heart like this first time stung mine. 

—-

Lucy has Duane Syndrome.

Spot singing I am a Child of God from shannon johnson on Vimeo.

I don’t believe that writing and motherhood should be incompatible, in fact usually I am adamant that writing makes me a better mother, because it is how I examine motherhood (my life, at this point), and because in the examining I see both the ineffable divinity in every day and the humor (or at least reason) in even the most aggravating moments.

But the past several weeks I can hardly pull back far enough from the here and now, from the one-pound Scout jabbing me unexpectedly, from the Spot girl who says she isn’t my baby anymore “your baby’s in your tummy” in her cute munchkin voice. Now that I know kids grow out of that voice, that they learn, eventually, to say their g’s and k’s, I want to pause her so she stays with me and urgently explains every detail of her day at college the way she does her discovery that pulling on the skin around her unbent knee doesn’t hurt, today.

On Sunday as we walked to church I asked her if she’d gone to the bathroom that morning. She said, exasperated, “I peed on Saturday, Mom.” I said that’s great, but that she probably really should pee everyday, and did she pee that morning? And she said, “I didn’t pee in the tub, Mom. My bum made bubbles in the tub, but I didn’t pee.”

Then today Spot was inconsolably (also unintelligibly) distraught during the get-dressed-and-pee routine. Spot is the only person I know who can wait hours before peeing in the morning; I try to remind her after breakfast anyway, because urinary output is just one of the homeland security concerns a mother monitors.

I finally deciphered her complaint as “my hair is sticking up.” I didn’t tell her that sticking up is nothing compared to the perm she’ll beg for in seventh grade.

On Sunday Spot was on my lap for most of the 70-minute service. Not that I was counting exactly how many minutes it was. But she was there, keeping me entertained, and commenting on everything. When the deacons (12-13 year-old boys) passed the sacrament (like communion), this was Spot’s contribution to the reverence and reflection of that holy ordinance:

Spot: Hey Mommy, that’s a big boy.
Me: Uh-huh.

Spot: Hey Mommy, that’s two big boys.
Me: (nod)

Spot: Hey Mommy, that’s two big boys with water.
Me: Yes honey, shhhh.

Spot: Hey Mommy, that’s not a big boy (about the the girl in the row behind us).
Me: Can you use your church voice, sweetie?

Spot: Mommy, I need my coloring book.
Me: (rifles through bag)

Spot: Mommy, I need my coloring book with crayons.
Me: (desperate bargaining whisper) You can color as long as you’re quiet.

Spot: Hey Mommy, that’s a white boy!
Me: Have a crayon, honey.

Spot: Hey Mommey, that’s two white boys!
Me: Shhhh, sweetie, here’s some of Mommy’s special gum.

*Since white boys are not exactly scarce in Seagull Fountain, and to protect Spot from charges of reverse-anti-poly-racism, I should note that she was probably referring to the white dress shirts the boys wear.

And now for Stacy, who requested a video of Spot’s non-stop chatter, I have for your viewing pleasure a short recording of Spot in situ, as it were. It’s a bit quiet, and jumpy, which I like to call “video-realism” a la The Bourne Identity.

Spot on the trail from jane on Vimeo.

Oh, I know something she does that’s annoying. When she doesn’t want to walk any further or eat any more vegetables or go up to naptime, she’ll drop down on her knees in the middle of the store or the living room, fling herself face down, and wail, “I’m too tired.” But no, that’s unbearably cute as well — who ever heard of using “I’m too tired” as a reason to get out of naptime?

Anyway, here’s a real author in favor of sentimentality:

If something inside you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don’t worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

The truth is (and at the risk of being a boring/bragging mom) two-year olds are cute. So here’s Spot (though I promise not to use this as an audition tape for So You Think You Can Dance):

spot’s elbow dance on Vimeo.

I hope she can always return to me when she’s done.

spot’s elbow dance 2 on Vimeo.

I have three daughters. My sister has two daughters and a son. (I was going to say that she is lucky to have a mix of genders, but I don’t know how to phrase that without making it sound like I regret having three daughters, which I don’t, except when I think of poor Dick never getting to teach his own flesh and blood to write his name in the snow.)

When my youngest, Spot, and her cousin, Track, are together, they act how I would expect twins to act. One minute they are making up silly games like Touch The TV And Fall On Your Bum In Gails Of Laughter, Repeat Ad Nauseum; and the next they are pouring sand on each other and guarding their own siblings’ shoes from the nefarious clutches of That Cousin You Have To Watch Out For.

Now that Spot is racing towards potty training (on a very, very slow horse), I can tell you that I think I will probably have one more kid, despite the fact that when people warn you to “enjoy this stage because it goes by so fast,” they are completely lying.

Babyhood and toddlerhood in fact creep by, but now that it is my youngest doing the creeping, I feel an intermittent and uncontrollable craving for newborn neck to gobble.

Or maybe I am looking forward to Twilight more than I expected.

I leave it to you to guess which pieces she insisted on and which pieces Mom gently persuaded her into.

I plan to assert myself when it actually snows, though. She WILL wear socks with those flipflops, if it’s the last thing I do.

Jane

p.s. Dick was thinking to himself this morning (early, as he leaves the house at 5:30) and he realized that the camera is an important part of my blogging, and that since he’s missed seeing pictures in my last few posts, he would have one more look-see in the cushions of the couch for the missing camera (last seen the night I cut my hair). I’d told him it had to be in the couch, but apparently we hadn’t delved far enough into the couch’s innards over the weekend. So Dick went couch-diving this morning, which is much too similar to dumpster-diving at this house, and he FOUND THE CAMERA. So here is a picture post just for you, Dick. Thank you for taking the time this morning to use your Daddy eyes.

Happy Wordless Wednesday!

In case you think I sound like I’m twelve years old, the following video should remove all doubt. And also provide some clues as to why our home life is just one big, shiny rainbow.

decorating birthday cake from jane on Vimeo.

If you’re reading this when you’re thirteen and looking for a legitimate reason to hate your mother (as if you needed one), you might bring up the fact that I never mentioned that it was your birthday last month, three days after Susan’s. It’s not that I forgot that you turned two, or that we didn’t mark the occasion with the appropriate fanfare, but, well . . . I guess I’m still sore that my calculations were so off two years and ten months ago when I thought that you would be born in November.

Tonight you climbed out of your crib for the first time. Dad pushed you back in as you flung your leg over the railing a few times so you wouldn’t fall, but later, when Sally and Susan were both asleep, and the grown-ups were exploring the wonders of cable tv, you came down the stairs by yourself. You’d taken off your pajamas, again, and you looked so cute, and you’re my third child and still my baby, so I set my laptop aside and snuggled you for a few minutes. Your skin warmed up quickly as I tickled your legs and gobbled your neck.

I asked you “Where’s Spot’s bed?” and pretended to put you down in the washing machine, the kitchen sink, the coat closet, and outside in the cold. You kept saying “no,” until I set you down in a brown plastic bin we have in the corner for toys. You could see the tv from there, and you said that was Spot’s bed, but Mom wasn’t really asking where your bed is. She knows your crib is upstairs in the room you share with Sally.

When I came down from settling you, again, Dad said that I’m so good at getting you kids to want to do what I want you to do. And it’s true, I can cajole you out of a bad mood or make you think that it was your idea to go to sleep or eat your dinner or put your pretty princess boots on. But a lot of the time I can’t muster the energy or time to make you want to do things. Sometimes I just want you kids to put your coats in the closet or get into your car seats without me having to make a game of it. Because sometimes I want to think about other things than how to turn every minute of the day into a “Let’s Tidy up the Nursery or Well-begun is half-done” Mary Poppins game.

Daddy says I need to hide all of the flipflops because next time you fall down the stairs while wearing mine or your older sisters’ you’re going to break your neck. I told him the carpet at the foot of the stairs is pretty thick, especially now that we have an extra rug there, but he worries about things like that, and whether I’ve turned off the stove and the iron and locked the front door. Even though I’ve ironed once in the ten and a half years that we’ve been married, you know that it would be my fault if the house ever burnt down because the iron got left plugged in.

When the weather turned cold a few weeks ago, you refused to wear a jacket or sweater, even when I did a Russian folk dance and pretended to put my head in the sleeves. Then you saw Sally and Susan wearing their new pink snow boots one morning when there was .2 millimeters of snow on the grass, and suddenly you wanted to wear your warmest coat and your boots and a fleece hat. I didn’t tell you that it wasn’t really cold enough for the stay-puff look yet; I figured it was good practice and that I shouldn’t dampen your enthusiasm. I think we’ll look for a copy of the Elmo’s Potty Time DVD this weekend for that very reason.

When you start pulling off your diaper and trying to wear your oldest sister’s panties, and excitedly showing people at church the cute bloomers that match your dress and saying “panties! panties!” loud enough to be heard over the speaker, I think it might be a sign that you’re interested in being a big girl.

Happy Birthday!

Love,

Mommy Jane

I’m not ready for another kid, and so I talked it over with my good friend Tara, because open communication is important in any marriage. One reason I’m reluctant is that I feel extremely lucky to have three perfectly healthy kids. Why push it? Do you know how many things can go wrong? The odds on having four normal kids seem almost astronomical.

Here’s my baby, Spot. Not such a baby anymore. We first noticed something ‘off’ with her eyes at six months. She’d outgrown the usual newborn cross-eyedness, but her right eye was often not tracking with the left. We hoped she’d outgrow that, along with those strange grunting noises and the diaper-wetting.

At nine months I took her to a pediatric ophthalmologist who couldn’t get her to do her eye trick. Like a recalcitrant car that insists on running smoothly the second you take it into the shop. The cross-eye doctor said her eye muscles were all equally developed and that it was probably just a baby thing that would resolve itself. Don’t you love doctor-speak?

Dick thought we should get her a patch, but I couldn’t imagine her keeping it on. Plus, the doctor hadn’t actually recommended the pirate look.

So now she’s 21 months old, and the mysterious eye thing is not resolved. It comes and goes and I call her cross-eyed baby sometimes. Today we saw a different pediatric ophthalmologist. It took his assistant approximately 46 seconds to diagnose Duane Syndrome. Okay. Can we not call things “syndromes” unless they’re seriously life-changing/threatening/coma-inducing? Also, could we not name syndromes after your beer-drinking uncle who likes to watch NASCAR?

Avoidance? Huh? Anyway, Duane Syndrome means that in the 6th week of pregnancy, her 6th cranial nerve didn’t hook up with the 6th eye muscle that it’s supposed to control. Her left eye cannot turn out past the midline. It’s completely untreatable and means (to Dick) that she will never be great at basketball and (to me) that she will never be a fighter pilot.

To Tara, it’s a good reason to have a fourth kid because, as she pointed out, we no longer have three perfectly normal children anyway.

On the one hand (more like ninety-nine out of a hundred hands), I’m grateful beyond expressing that it’s not something worse. Spot has the most common, least complicated type (I) of Duane Syndrome, and she seems to be compensating well for it. DS is more common in girls than boys (3:2) and not hereditary and usually doesn’t affect quality of life.

Unless you wanted to be a fighter pilot.

When do you tell your kids that they can’t become something when they grow up? Do you ever tell them? Do you take your son aside and tell him he’s tone deaf before he tries out for American Idol? Do you tell your daughter that the tallest ballerinas are only 5’7″ and that since she’ll most likely grow to 5’10″, she might want to pick a different dream?

When do I tell Spot she can’t be a fighter pilot?

Also, I feel bad that I complain about my kids so much, and I want you to know that if I did not think they were the most gorgeous creatures ever to grace . . . hmm, I already said that, huh? Anyway, if they weren’t beautiful, I would complain that much more. Just call me Shallow Mom. (Hey, is that domain taken?)

First day of swim lessons today. Don’t you just want to take small bites out of all that smooth skin?

Look at those eyes. Dick and I have green eyes. Sally got blue from both grandfathers and Susan got brown from one of her Grandma’s eyes. Not “one of her Grandmas,” but from one Grandma who has one green and one brown eye.

I know we’re not supposed to have favorites, but this one was my favorite for three years and eight months. She’s still my favorite whenever I see her reading a book that I loved when I was younger. Right now she’s reading Andrew Lang’s Green Fairy Book. Any nightmares will be referred to Daddy.

We call Sally freckle face, and have forcibly desensitized her to our teasing enough that she takes it as a compliment. Of course it helps that Dick and I each sport a million freckles ourselves. (And that she is still young enough to want to be like Mom and Dad).

This one, I confess, is my favorite stinker of them all. No forgotten middle child in this family.

Seriously, I hear those awful commercials on the radio for kid modelling agencies, where they probably want to charge you thousands of dollars to take a headshot, and I think, if only this kid weren’t the most recalcitrant, uncooperative, recidivist child in the universe, we could be millionaires. MILLIONAIRES!

I gotta go ferbert Susan’s arm right now. Be right back.

This one isn’t indoctrinated into the picture-posing protocol yet. Also, she doesn’t like to smile on cue. But we’ll probably keep her, at least until something better comes along.

Or until we have to start supporting her shoe habit.

Spot gets her extreme self-sacrificing nurturing of her babies at the expense of her own needs from her mom. She’s picking that strawberry FOR the baby.

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I think I’d like to hibernate for awhile and pretend this never happened. I’ll go back to lurking, and writing my letter to the world in comfortable anonymity and total obscurity.

The elephants at the zoo on Saturday wouldn’t look at us. We stared and stared at their comfortably large backsides. How great to be an elephant, and munch all day, heedless of wrinkly skin and drooping ears. Big round feet and gray hair and so careless of their audience. Come or go. Stare at my backside or go schmooze up to the zebras, who look an awful lot like donkeys.

Elephants gestate for 21 months. So that’s out.

The zoo has one of only 10 white alligators in the world. Actually, I’m starting to doubt whether we really saw the white alligator or not. Wikipedia has no knowledge of a white alligator: maybe it was the intense, Florida-like humidity and not-Florida-like chemical stink in the air of the white alligator habitat that induced visions of the white alligator.

There were plenty of other animals to meet, of course. Look at the comatose cougars! (Rise and shout the Cougars are out, along their way to fame and glory!). Oooh, the bats in their cave! (No wonder the Count on Sesame Street is so creepy!). Let’s skip the Asian highlands and reptiles and grab some lunch.

On our way out we braved the white alligator. Spot was impressed. I was mesmerized. Look at that crease in her neck. I just want to munch and munch. Dick gives the girls piranha hugs, snorting and tickling at their necks. Spot throws her head back, arching her soft white neck. It’s downy, whatever that is, and smells so sweet. I want to burrow right there, hearing her giggles, breathing in her baby skin forever. Or at least until the Ultimate Blog Party is over.

But on Saturday I finally found the Pocahontas costume I bought for 97 cents at Old Navy after last Halloween (2006) when Spot was two weeks old. We only missed this Halloween by 73 days, and there is no way Spot is fitting into this costume next year, so I made her wear it all day and even took some pictures.

We can pretend this is Spot at 1 year on Halloween, but really it’s Spot at 15 months with her very special (meaning she doesn’t have to share it) baby doll. She was not impressed by the authentic Native American headdress; one second after this picture was taken she ripped it off for the millionth time.

The costume really wasn’t bad as a regular dress. It’s soft and warm and fuzzy, and despite how it looks when she sits uncooperatively, it kept her knees warm. I guess the dress-up gene gets turned on around age 2, though I really can’t remember a time that Sally and Susan weren’t changing clothes five times a day.

Today I felt sklunklish. The high-pitched whining (“I’m a princess. I don’t have to bring my dishes over to the sink.”) almost tipped the sklunkish-ness over into daughter-cidal mania. Which is not to say that I would prefer boy children.

If we had a boy, we’d have to build up a whole new terminology for potty time: Susan (sitting primly on the toilet), “I don’t put my dress in the potty, I just put my poop in the potty.” Although Sally’s latest bit of candor (“Mom, if you eat all of that you’ll get fat), made me consider the possible benefit of oblivious boys.

I’m assuming (charitably, I think) that Sally was mostly trying to get me to share my cookies with her. But she’s right about the eating=fat thing. Luckily I have a plan to work on that. Goes something like “eating+exercise=not too fat.” I’ve found an exercise/babysitting partner who inspires forces me to jog about five times a week and deep clean slop around some lysol wipes and empty the dishwasher every morning before she and her kids come over.

We’re running our first 5K race in two weeks. Nothing like a race in public to shame you into actually schlepping to the treadmill. I know I’m not Yiddish, but I did live in NYC for three years; I can use the word schlep. What a great word.

We went to a beach party at Sally’s school last week. Since there was neither a beach nor a party there, it was about what you’d expect. Dick had to use the little boys room and then reminisced about throwing wet (from the sink, I hope) toilet paper on the other kids. He was reminiscing about his childhood, not about having thrown wet toilet paper just then.

At church on Sunday I taught a class of five kids ages 3 to 8. Incidentally that was our entire primary; not exactly what I envisioned when we moved to Utah. First I totally changed their lives with a lesson encouraging them to choose the right by asking themselves”What would Jesus want me to do?” (see how that is similar, yet superior, to WWJD?). Then for an activity I had them draw pictures of them doing something that Jesus would want them to do. One 7-year-old boy drew a picture of himself helping a bleeding kid get a bandaid.

Each time he showed it to me the pool of blood was bigger, but, to be fair, the bandaid he was applying as an act of mercy got bigger too.

Sally’s school party was basically an excuse for all the kids to run around screaming (don’t they get enough of that at school?). There was music and a disco ball. Sally was really excited at first, but then she got shy for a while. I was mean and said she had to get out there and dance or we’d just leave. Susan, bless her heart, was oblivious to everything but the music and her own body. Why . . . really, why do they have to grow up even that much?

Dick forced me out on the cafeteria floor (“you have to dance or we’ll just go home”) for the moms-and-daughters only song Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. I almost started crying. Ok, I did cry a little, but I don’t think anyone noticed. Why am I such a girl? And why do I sometimes want to wring the necks of these three beautiful, frustrating, silly, loving, exasperating girls? I should probably focus on how angelic they are when asleep. If only I weren’t asleep myself for most of that blissful time.

Susan used to be overly-honest, by which I mean that she admitted to every wrongdoing, including some I’m not so sure she was responsible for. Recently, though, and unfortunately, she has learned to be more creative with the truth. The other day I asked her who opened the bag of marshmallows, and she said, “Sall–” (remembers Sally is still at school) “Spot did it.”

Spot’s a little more advanced communication-wise than her sisters were at 14 months. She can say almost anything in a special morse-code-type system of grunts. She understands my answering grunts, too. Oh, and we nod our heads and smile. Perfect understanding.

Humility

Sally (6) and her cousin Olivia (5) are finally old enough to appreciate each other as kindred spirits. My sister and I appreciate how they disappear for hours on end playing pretend or Barbies when we stay at their house. There is occasional friction, though. One day Sally came upstairs complaining that she wanted to be a Lamb, but Olivia was insisting that she be a Princess. Get thee behind her, Machiavelli.

Sabbath Observance

A couple Sundays ago I asked Sally to unload the dishwasher. She objected that “we don’t work on Sunday.” Of course I, in hopes that she will be a candidate for sainthood sometime soon, told her to go rest on the couch and read her scriptures.

Accepting Responsibility

When we were visiting Grandma last month, I told Sally to turn the pool heater on, and forgot to remind her to turn it off. The next morning the water was 101 degrees. Sally felt bad and said it was her fault. I told her not to worry; I’m the adult, it was my fault. Susan (2 1/2) heard us and insisted, “It’s my fault, it’s my fault.” I couldn’t dissuade her. Grandma, you’ll be glad to know that Susan will be saving her 50 cents-a-week allowance to pay the heating bill.

Caution and Closure

I think I like Dr. Phil, though I’m careful who I admit that to. And I think Susan has a future in the self-help-through-listening-to-gurus trade. She is obsessed with being safe (seatbelts in the car, the stroller, the high chair; she’d probably tie herself to the couch if she could) and with closing doors, cupboards, appliances, trash cans, etc. Unfortunately this obsession doesn’t translate into keeping clips in her hair or her clothes on. (But that may be a genetic thing).

Amazing Feats of Physical Endurance

Basically I don’t want Spot to look back on this post some day and wonder “Where was I?” Spot pulled up and started cruising for the first time this past week (at 9 months, 3 weeks and 4 days). She also has eight teeth. Not so good for the nursing. And we’re going to get that little cross-eyed problem looked at by a specialist this week. Don’t worry Spot, I think you’ll look great with one of those cute patches.

I hope your kids are almost as fun and hilarious as mine! Tell us all about it — check out the Makes-Me-Smile Monday link above if you have any questions. Oh, and if you don’t have rugrats of your own, a) you’re welcome to have babysit mine anytime, and b) feel free to write about any -ism that tickles you.

I knew it was bad when I started lusting after the In Touch magazine of a passenger to my left (no jealousy over the Sudoku also to my left — I wasn’t that far gone).

An olderish gentleman (old enough to know better, young enough to not require complete old-age-pandering) sitting in front of Sally kept turning around and glaring at me. I made eye contact the first couple of times, because, you know, you’re on a plane and sort of in this communal experience. Maybe the guy has a question, maybe you can help. But after a couple encounters with his sour, disapproving glare, I looked elsewhere. He said, “Ma’am, you’re going to have to get those children to stop kicking our seats.”

Dude, if you think that is kicking…

We sat on the tarmac an extra hour in Albuquerque for refueling. I was saving the life-giving waters of the portable DVD player for hour three, and while the girls colored and Spot gnawed intermittently, mostly-asleep at my breast, I managed to read 86 pages of Orson Scott Card’s Empire. The noise and movement Nazi in front of Sally was particularly upset by Susan’s exploration of large crayon stippling. Apparently he isn’t much of an art appreciator. BIG surprise.

As we waited to leave the plane, several (okay, at least two separate) passengers complimented me on how well-behaved my kids were. So there.

Perhaps, also, a certain degree of loneliness, like the artist in her garret, is necessary for the resolution of (mental?) dilemmas and conflicts. Certainly some small measure of aloneness (from adults: I’m almost never alone from children, naturally), is required for the contemplation of Big Thoughts (much less Important Thoughts). In the company of other adults of similar persuasion, I find that I am all talked out. Nothing left to say.

We’ve been swimming…

Spot is on the left (gotta love the chub rolls on the arms). Tracey’s Joseph could be her twin in coloring, if not in chub yet.

Check out that dimple (don’t know why I can’t get the picture to be bigger, but, just trust me. Joseph has the cutest dimple. For a boy, anyway. Just kidding. Boys obviously can be cute (and sweet-smelling and delightful). I am just still doing the reverse psychology on not wanting a boy child of my own).

Here are two of my great friends from high school, Tracey and Andrea, whom I still love dearly despite them having only boy-children. I was trying to think which of us looks most like we did in high school. Since I have finally given up on getting an adult hairstyle (sans bangs), perhaps it is me.

Here are our latest pictures:

Sally thought Spot needed a bandana to be a cowgirl. Spot’s this close to crawling. Unfortunately, close only counts in horseshoes and … (what else?).

My poor Susan sure does have the middle child syndrome. Here she’s wearing Sally’s panties and Spot’s hat. Maybe this conflict is why she’s so hot and cold on the potty-training.

Busch Gardens is great at night! In the summer we go from 4-9 pm. (Don’t worry, that’s ice water in my special cup).

And finally, some pictures from after church again.