Girl drama in the neighborhood this evening. Callie walked down the street and found Beatrice* reading a note from Hero* after an unspecified fight. The note called Beatrice “pissy.” Callie (who has previously liked both Beatrice and Hero equally) helped Beatrice write her response and delivered the second note. I heard about it when Hero’s mother (my friend and Sunbeam partner) called to ask if Callie said anything about why Beatrice wrote a mean note to Hero that included, among other epithets, the “b-i-t-c-h” word. Callie is six. (Okay, almost seven. Still. And her mother swears. But not that word!)

I asked Callie to tell me what happened. She didn’t want to. She wouldn’t look at me. We sat on the porch swing in the backyard, and she spoke to her bowl of brown fried rice (fiber! not as tasty as refined rice!).

It took awhile, but I got most of the story: that she hadn’t been told what the fight was about, but she was solidly on Beatrice’s side because Hero was mean to her friend. (Wasn’t Hero her friend too?) She confessed that she’d told Beatrice two really mean words to say to Hero, but she couldn’t tell me what they were. I did the whole “I’m not mad at you I just need to know what happened” routine and still she demurred. “You’re going to be really mad, Mom,” she said. Finally she whispered that she’d suggested the words “stupid” and “brat.”

I asked how she felt, how she thought Hero felt, Beatrice felt.

I’m aghast, of course, at such casual cruelty, but struck again by how quickly children can work their way to remorseful empathy, given only the opportunity.

And at least she’s not a sociopath.

*not their real names.

I sent her off with adorable, if unadorned, pigtails and made a trip to Hobby Lobby. Nobody puts my baby in the corner. Not even me.

My good friend Tara and her son are spending the weekend with us. Tara drove up from Arizona to attend classes from the very talented designer of my header, Alma Loveland, and to take in the BYU Homecoming football game. (It’s unfair that basketball doesn’t get homecoming festivities, isn’t it?) (And what about badminton?)

Tara scored a couple extra tickets to the game, and since we are such good friends, she didn’t bother to ask if I would like to go. (We decided last night the only way I’d voluntarily sit through a football game were if Brad Pitt — circa Legends of the Fall and Twelve Monkeys — held my hand).

So she invited Tom and Callie to go. Callie is the same age as her son, and it’s her birthday tomorrow (turning 6!) and Callie is also the only one of our girls to express an interest in team sports. (She scored her first goal in the soccer game last week!) Plus, Avery went to a Jazz game with Tom last year.

This morning Callie told me she didn’t want to go anymore; she wanted Avery to take her ticket.

Why?

“Avery says she’ll give me a birthday present if I let her go to the game.”

We told Avery that was unacceptable.

The girls did their breakfast dish chores and cleaned their rooms. I have lowered my expectations on the Saturday Morning Chores; today it was enough that I only had to ask Lucy five times (six would’ve necessitated some Very Bad Language) to pick up the Legos.

Avery vacuumed her room and Callie’s. I praised her extensively. Tom said, “Avery is being really helpful now; she was having a bad attitude earlier, but something’s changed, and she’s really working hard.”

Avery was brushing her hair in the bathroom and said Dad would find out why she was so changed soon enough.

Over lunch, Callie earnestly explained how she didn’t want to go, Avery had convinced her it would be boring.

(I couldn’t agree more, of course, but that wasn’t the point.)

Tom pointed out that if Avery really thought that she wouldn’t want to go. This level of psychology was a little sophisticated for our sweet, guileless almost-six-year old to grasp.

Callie went. Avery cried.

Then I started Wizards of Waverly Place on Netflix and told Avery she could watch as long as she held the baby.

I took a two-hour nap, showered, folded laundry, ate cookies. Avery agreed that nine episodes of tween hilarity were better than a football game.

Win, Win, and Win.

Callie: Because of the pigs. I don’t know why they can’t make them out of something else. If you have other food, then you don’t have to kill poor innocent animals.

Me: I was more just wondering why you ate hot dogs for breakfast.

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.”

Not enough leather for a pair of boots.

Grampa gave these horses to Spot for Christmas; Spot was kind (and naive) enough to share them with Sally and Susan. So far, so good. And then Susan had them in her room as she did not go to sleep and did not go to sleep for several hours one night last week.

Now I am not so anxious for spring to come. When the birds and squirrels and stray cats return, will we be anxiously counting the paring knives, wishing for the good old days when we thought she was merely a left-handed middle child with the timidity of a rugby player and the appetite of a long-haul trucker?

Jane

Other than that, I got nothing.

I told Grandma (yes, that Grandma) about this exchange, thinking that she and I could have a “What do men know? This is how children behave” bonding moment.

She said, “Well, you could ask your dad about it, but we just tend to think that Susan is Susan.”

Now, I am not one to say that my children are extraordinary. Not extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad, extraordinarily smart or extraordinarily mischievous. I mean, clearly they are well above-average, but nothing is more tedious than a parent who acts as though their child was the first to ever sing the alphabet or to need seventeen timeouts in one afternoon.

But, as Susan turns four and heads off to preschool (Finally! Note to self: Never give birth in October), I’m left to wonder: What exactly makes Susan Susan?

When we visited our friends in Idaho earlier this month, I remembered many meals shared with them during which we played a game with their son called “Trick Jimmy Into Eating.” On one memorable occasion we got him to eat a chicken nugget that he didn’t exactly digest, if you know what I mean.

We have never had to play “Trick Susan Into Eating.” We play “You can have one more piece of bread and then you HAVE TO GO TO BED I MEAN IT” with Susan. My friend noticed that, of all the healthy appetites in our family, Susan’s is possibly the most healthy.

How did she put it nicely? She said: “Wow, you’re lucky that Susan’s metabolism is so good.”

When I picked up Susan after her first day of preschool, her teacher asked if she’s really left-handed. As if she were going incognito and is secretly ambidextrous. Well, we tend to think that she really is left-handed. At least, nothing we’ve tried so far has cured her. No matter the teasing, the portion-control, or the Chinese water torture, Susan still picks up her fork with her left hand.

Dick likes to say that Susan is my double in looks and temperament. To be honest, I have always thought that she might be extraordinarily good-looking. But . . . I was a headstrong, um, vocal, first child. Shouldn’t Susan, as the middle child, be put-upon and down-trodden and obssessed with calf nuts?

And should she be uttering my own favorite teenage-angst questions so early? “It’s not fair!” “You’re really mean.” “I don’t like you any more.” “You don’t understaaaaaaaaaand!”

Oh, believe me, Susan, I do understand. Life isn’t fair, Mom really is that mean, and getting meaner every year.

It would hurt my feelings if I really thought you didn’t like me any more, but since you hugged me and told me that you loved me right before asking for another piece of bread tonight, I’m sure it was just a mood you were having.

Happy Birthday! Mom loves you, and so do your sisters, and so does your dad.

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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So it’s a bit disconcerting that Susan, my middle child, seems to be three going on thirteen. Why would anyone want to be thirteen? Or to mother a thirteen-year old? Perhaps I am over-dramatizing. (Would I do that?) You tell me. Is she three-and-a-half or thirteen-and-I’m-going-crazy?

Susan Knows

That Mommy Is Not the Smartest Person Alive
(I thought this illusion lasted MUCH longer)

Dick: Mommy’s a genius. [Because I know where the juice lives.]
Susan: Mommy’s not a genius, she’s a mommy.
Dick: Mommy can be both a mommy and a genius.
Susan: Mommy, you’re a mommy, right?

That Mommy is still Pretty Darn Smart

Never go to sleep with gum in your mouth.

That Writing is a Powerful Thing

Susan: What starts with the letter Barbie?
Mom: “b”
Susan: What starts with the letter graham cracker?
Mom: “g”
Susan: No, that starts with the letter “bah.”
What starts with the letter trash can?
Mom: What do you want me to say?
Susan: I want you to say “d.”
Mom: Okay, trash can starts with a “d.”

Her Place in the World

Middle child syndrome? And in Sally’s Dollar Store Beer Stein? Apple juice. Of course. You knew that.

Mommy Sometimes Reacts Irrationally

Susan got the blue plastic mug today, my favorite Dollar Store mug, perfect for Swiss Miss Dark Chocolate Sensation with whipped cream on top. Susan didn’t appreciate the mug; she wanted a different cup. And Mommy lost it: Dang it, I have better things to do with my life, MY LIFE, than negotiate with you over which cup you drink your milk out of today. Don’t I? DON’T I?

But Susan Doesn’t Know

That Acting Irrationally is a Sign of Maturity

Mom: Susan, quit bugging your sister.
Susan: But I’m only bugging her a little bit.

Mom: Why did you DO that? or What’s wrong honey?
Susan: I don’t KNOOOOOOOOOOW.

Words to Describe Female Anatomy

[Mom takes off her sports bra]
Susan: I can see your elbows, Mommy!

That She doesn’t Love Everybody

[Mom and Susan looking at pictures online]
Mom: This is Mommy’s friend’s baby.
Susan: Oh. This is my favorite baby.

Jane Has Learned

Old-Fashioned Stitches are Best

They’re less likely to become infected. Also, shaving is not recommended, as it irritates the skin. Taking stitches out of a hairy person takes a long time. Mommy would rather see blood gushing out of her own [insert vital organ] than out of her baby’s head.

Mood Swings and Temper Tantrums and Sweet Beseeching Looks

Are probably just age-appropriate. Whether you’re three or thirteen or thirty.

Even better is when you happen to be looking at the IM window maximized (see, I can do the computer lingo), and you see at the bottom that “Tara is typing a message.” Sometimes I see that message when I am typing myself, and then I hurry, hurry to get my message done first because I need the attention RIGHT NOW.

Last night we were both typing at the same time, and when the text appeared, hers was this long thing about being the worst mom, and mine was this long thing about being the worst mom ever. Twinner worst moms! Though I did manage to stake out a little more territory with that ever.

Then on the phone this morning another friend was telling me that she liked my post about complete strangers giving infant-feeding advice, because she gets annoying stuff like that from her mother-in-law complete strangers too.

That friend’s sister (who doesn’t even share the helpful mother-in-law), says that as long as you don’t do drugs, you are a good mother. But it was more specific that that, even. Apparently, as long as you don’t do crack when you’re pregnant, you are a good mother. Doing crack after they’re born is fine. Doing crack while you’re breastfeeding would probably be a gray area. (And here I had worried about the caffeine in one or, uh, four, Mountain Dews).

Also, we decided that we may not be perfect moms (even though we don’t really do crack, and would never, ever condone anyone ever doing crack, ever), but we are definitely FABULOUS moms, and that is way better.

This fabulous mom forgot to take the video camera to Sally and Susan’s Dance Class Performance tonight. I did drag their father there, which should count for something. Except, Dick really didn’t require dragging. He’s like the dad in those McDonalds’ commercials that ran in the early 80s — You deserve a break today . . . at McDonalds.

I left the videocam at home because I expected Sally to do fine and Susan to stand there like a post, as she did in every class the past three months. Not much scope for the imagination there. But Susan did the funniest dance which bore almost no relation to what everyone else on stage was doing.

I laughed so hard I snorted multiple times — usually after the first time I am self-conscious enough to cover my mouth or plug my nose, but tonight I couldn’t help it.

The man in front of me turned and asked, “Is yours the one off to the side?” I said, Yep, and he said, smiling, “She’s got some moves!”

I have to say that I don’t care if my kids are the smartest or the fastest or the best, as long as someone periodically turns to me and says, “Is yours the one off to the side?”

Yes. Thank you for noticing.

Although I am kind of concerned that the (CNA?) (Registration person?) (Triage person?) spelled sutures suchers.

We go back on Friday to get them taken out. Still in the dark as to why they used non-dissolvable. I should have asked: should not let my spelling-snobbery get in the way of the pursuit of knowledge.

Susan fell off the back of the over-stuffed chair in our living room tonight and hit her forehead on the window sill. It bled. Then it stopped bleeding quite precipitously, and I was pretty sure it needed stitches.

Since Spot has been throwing up mysteriously (well, the process isn’t very mysterious, but the cause is), I elected to stay home and Dick got to make the ER run.

I am happy to say that it was Dick’s fault (he pulled the chair out from the wall at Sally’s request without looking at Susan’s precarious perch) and that there was nothing suspicious (in terms of DCFS — I have a semi-real fear of them) about this injury.

I’m only glad it was Dick’s fault (similar to the time Sally had nursemaid’s elbow in Cairo) because usually it (the screaming, the impatience, the irrational frustration) is my fault.

The triage person looked at the cut for half a second and agreed stitches were needed. Eight of them, it turned out, along with five shots of anesthestic after Dick turned down general anesthesia. Sally and I prayed at home (why didn’t we think of doing that before they left for the ER?) and she wrote a cute letter to Susan. By cute I mean she embellished the letters with flowers and polka dots.

Dear Susan, I love you so much. I hope you are okay. Did the stitches go well? Love, your sister Sally.

We also cleaned up the house and watched some more Remington Steele. The first because cleaning (or baking) seems to be the thing to do for injuries or illness, and the second because, why not?

Susan was bouncing of the walls when she got home a couple hours later: the sign of a successful hospital run. These are our first injury-related stitches, though not our first drug overdose (Tylenol) or concussion scare (Sally had a CT scan a couple years ago). We have to go back in a couple days for inspection, and in five for stitch removal.

I don’t know if use of the old-fashioned, non-dissolvable stitches is an indication of seriousness or cheapness? Maybe some medical-type can enlighten me?

The nurse assured Dick that the cut was very good scar-wise; if it scars at all, it’ll be along the line of her natural forehead creases. As if my first concern is scarring! But I guess after the trauma is over it is a pressing concern. Wouldn’t want anything to affect her chances of being totally unblemished as a teenager.

The bandaid was completely unnecessary, but Dick had been promising her a bandaid for two hours, so, by golly, she got her bandaid. And the “rainbow care-a-bear” the nurse let her choose didn’t hurt either.

Is it better or worse for them to get injured in such a mundane way? I can make rules like Don’t run out in the street, and Don’t put your fork in the light socket. But Don’t climb on the furniture just doesn’t get much respect.

Anyway, we did remember to pray after they got home. Thank you for taking good care of our kids. We need all the help we can get.

Then Sally came home from school with a conscience, and a song. I think I may have been premature in diagnosing her as tone-deaf. She can definitely follow a tune. In more than one language, yet.

(First in English): I tell the truth, the truth is what I tell. In any situation, I can never fail with ho-nes-ty, wooo-oooo ho-nes-ty. I leave the Spanish translation to your imagination; You’d never guess from Sally’s accent that she was American.

Today’s discussion topic (Now children, when you’re home with your mom and dad, ask what they would do) was What would you do with a hundred dollars? Dick said he’d buy a microphone for his podcasts.

I said I’d . . . well, to be honest, I didn’t say anything because I was trying to block out the entire conversation. The kid’s lucky to have one parent paying attention at any given time. Two would be overkill.

Sally said she would buy a fancy house and a cat, and then give the rest to charity. I think we’re all feeling a bit freakin’ bonkers stir crazy being indoors this winter. So a fancy house means one with room to run around in AWAY FROM MOM, and the cat is a recurring refrain. Whatever. But she would give the rest to charity. Dick and I are obviously doing something right.

Nothing involving reality, or awareness of the world, money, value, cost, or anything of that sort. But, still. It’s inspiring. So, does anyone want a really cute vest?

throwing the mother of all tantrums when you accidentally (on purpose, but, you know) flush the toilet so the smell will subside when she WASN’T FINISHED YET, and screaming “Mommy, you’re STOOPID” with the snot/slobber stream dripping down to her shirt for ten minutes. And speaking of apologizing–well, you can try it, but if it clearly would be rational to accept the apology over this admittedly tremendous wrong done and move on, forget it,

or

‘helping’ Mom by getting a crust of bread out of the trash to feed her baby sister,

or

lying about a little peepee accident so that when the nice man comes to fix the dishwasher and mommy sees a little puddle of yellow on the floor right by his knee she hopes it’s apple juice until she remembers that we don’t have apple juice right now,

or

unzipping the couch cushions and pulling out handfuls of stuffing,

or

fibbing (lying seems so harsh, somehow) about another potty accident that involved her baby sister trailing through the puddle with her too-long footie pajamas,

or

saying “I don’t like you mommy, I love you,” over and over and over, while trying to hand me my water bottle as I do something else with both hands. (Crave attention much?)

A few thoughts: 1) Apparently Susan has potty (not to mention honesty) issues, 2) that last one isn’t so bad, I guess, and, most importantly, 3) it’s pretty clear to me that we need to reach a consensus on what it means to be a “Sunbeam.” Because, so far, it’s not doing much for me, and I don’t know if that’s what Jesus had in mind either.

In case you were wondering, all of these things, in addition to the usual random kiddie-ness, happened in the past 36 hours. Dang, I love being a mom!!

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.

But then I remembered what I am succeeding at spectacularly daily. No, not finding the cure for cancer or even caucusing for random Baptist preachers who are the first in their family to graduate from high school (and to win in Iowa!): I’m raising three confident, content girls.

I wanted to wrap a bunch of the kids’ old toys for Christmas morning, or at least their new-ish snow clothes. Somehow we spend a lot of money on the girls but don’t always get a lot of present-opening-bang for our buck. Luckily, generous family and friends had wrapped exciting new things, and a couple days after the big day, a box of clothes from The Children’s Place (of the fantastic adjustable waist) arrived from fashionista Auntie Liz.

Sally and Susan rushed to try on their new clothes, and as Sally pirouetted in her new pink skirt, she said, “Susan and I really are princesses, huh? We have everything you could ever want. We have ponies [not live ones] and pretty clothes and games and books and coloring stuff. We really are princesses.” I’m writing this down for posterity and so that I can remind her of it when she’s 16 and wanting a car.

Here they are the morning of. Sally has been devouring the Magic Treehouse books — even to reading them as she walks through the store with one hand on the shopping cart so she doesn’t have to look up. How frustrating to try to communicate with someone completely lost in a book!!!

Susan, who is 3 and 1/6 years old, has been doing pretty well with the potty, but she is a recidivist of long-standing, so recently it has been necessary for me to remind her (Do you want to go potty or go to timeout you awful rotten wonderful sweet child?) about twice a day.

After she goes, I run down the checklist: did you 1) wipe your buns, 2) flush the toilet, 3) wash your hands? (if you’re familiar with the Elmo’s Potty Time dvd, you may remember that Prairie Dawn and Elmo argue as to whether there are three or four steps to the post-potty process. If you do remember this and/or find it remotely interesting, I’m sorry.) The other day when I asked if she was all done, she said, “No, I gotta wipe my cute buns.”

I’m writing that down for posterity too. And so that when she’s 16 (13? 11?) and complaining of fat buns or bad hair or a big nose or ugly clothes (unless Auntie Liz keeps ‘em coming) I can tell her with a perfectly straight (though too-chubby) face that she has a beautiful body and very cute buns.

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.