Andrew, Elizabeth, and Family

A corner transformed.

Hurray! The hose has a leak.

If you’ve read the Kiddie Quotes recently, you’ll remember china dolls being mentioned. Although the girls can spend hours outside in rough and dusty play, these dolls bring out all their delicate feminine instincts. By the way, the title of this post was originally about the success of Elizabeth’s hard work in landscaping, but looking at the pictures of these beautiful little girls…could we claim a little bit of success with them too?

Jen loves the china doll given her by the "nice old lady".

Melody, the devoted little mother.

I just had to write a quick description of today’s main event. Saturday has long?been “dress-up” day at our house just to keep the mess on the day that can handle it best. The costumes the girls come up with from their tote of clothes and props always end up looking interesting, but today’s play had a very definite plan. They made a wedding, and improvised to include almost everything they’ve seen at weddings so far. Melody was the bride dressed in a combination of white gowns and wraps, with a lacy apron creating the veil. She filled the part perfectly, looking very radiant, and reveled in her glorious moment as if it were real. Jenny was the guest registrar, usher, flower girl, maid of honor, musician, and the waitress for the bridal table she sat at. Does that sound like a first born? She had everything under perfect control. There was no groom, which didn’t seem to affect their pleasure in the wedding even slightly. I was the only guest since Andrew and Gabriel were in town, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching the girlish fun. I had no idea what all they had prepared when they told me I was invited, and was so glad I hadn’t told them I was too busy. It was quite a production! Someday the groom will be the most important part of their own weddings, when they make the biggest commitment of their earthly?lives, but for now I’m savoring these carefree days of girlish play with them. I don’t wish to be a little girl again, but I am so glad I have little girls to help me relive those blissful days, and even create some today.

We haven’t given you much about the little man in our family for a while. Gabriel is growing up and keeping us on our toes these days. Certain aspects of each of the girls we see repeated in him, but he’s certainly his own man. In his almost two years of life, this mama has fluctuated from thinking he could do no wrong, to thinking he does everything wrong, and we’re now somewhere in between. He is a turbocharged ball of fun, and has the most winning smile and dogged determination to accomplish what he sets out to do. His high goals can lead to frustration, but also make his accomplishments a cause for great celebration. His only calm moments are a couple short ones before and after sleeping, and he does run full throttle the rest of the day. This personality is not new to us, but it takes on a few new twists when laden with testosterone.

We were fascinated to discover that when Jenny began to read on her own, much of the frustration she had felt in life disappeared. Once she had her own avenue to search out and learn as much as her mind craved, she was satisfied and much more peaceful. I read somewhere that the stubbornness, mischief, and frustration that is often seen in toddlers is the result of their craving to learn not being fully satisfied. It is also a sign that training is needed in large doses, but these two needs can go hand in hand very satisfactorily. With that in mind, we decided to see if we could wear Gabriel out by providing him with enough mental and physical exertion. It is fascinating to see the difference this makes in his personality. If he is always being taught something, drilled on words to say, colors to point out, things to count, and actions to perform, he is a very happy, relatively calm child. If left in his own small world too long, his frustration mounts until he is behaving very poorly. This kind of training provides endless opportunities to learn obedience without even knowing that he’s practicing that. His eager participation in these learning opportunities through normal life shows that he is craving lots of it. There is so much happening in a child’s brain at this age, and it wants to be stimulated almost all the time.

I was delighted to find a DVD series that teaches babies to read, and decided to let him watch them as a help during my school times with the girls. I have no idea if it will work, but it is filling an important place for him regardless of the outcome. There is something about those words on the screen that totally captivate him. There is really very little entertainment in watching words, unless they satisfy a desire he has deep inside–the desire to know. I have a lot of that myself, and am loving the opportunities home schooling gives me to learn. If I am not learning something new, I too become stale and frustrated by life. I wonder how I would satisfy all my curiosity without the Internet. It is so enriching even to learn how to grow a new plant, prepare a new type of food, know the right way to pronounce a new word, and learn how to get an odd stain out of fabric. God help me to be selfless enough to be this resource for my children, ever filling them with all there is to know about life, and by that giving them the sweet peace of curiosity satisfied!

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1. A dog barking at 11:54 PM disrupts sleep.

2. When you walk up to a barking dachshund to pick her up and lock her away to quiet her barking, she will roll submissively over on her back, her long ears sprawling across the deck.

3. There is a right and a wrong way to pick up a cowering dachshund. The wrong way involves accidentally stepping on the dog’s ear just as you pick her up.

4. A dachshund’s ear stretches a little, but not much.

5. A dachshund doesn’t like having its ear stretched even a little.

6. A dog screaming at 11:55 PM is much worse than a dog merely barking at 11:54 PM (see fact #1 above.)

We’re fortunate to have some of the lowest gas prices in the country here in western SC. I always chuckle when I see an article listing the average price of gasoline in America, ranging from a high in Chicago to a low in South Dakota or Kansas or Georgia, because almost without fail our local price is lower than the one they list as the lowest in the nation. That said, a cartoonist for The State newspaper of Columbia has a very clever depiction of one simple solution for high gas prices. Check out Robert Ariail’s take here.