Creativity and Showmanship

As you may recall, Goldie loves to decorate cakes and cookies and basically make any food look pretty. She draws page after page of "feasts" with all kinds of delicious-looking food on lovely platters. Here are the cakes she made with play dough one day.

And here is what Junie made: a "piggy pop"!

Then, I've had some air-dry clay sitting with the school supplies for a long time, waiting to be used for some school project. Goldie kept asking me to use it, and I kept saying no, it was going to be used for school. But finally I came to my senses and realized there was no point saving it forever when she was DYING to use it now! So I said yes, and she was thrilled. All three girls spent the next several days at the kitchen table making the most DARLING play food for their Calico Critters to eat. It was sooo cute!

I was really worried about the environmental impact of the air-dry clay, so I was very reassured to read that it was "SAFE MATERIAL," and even using "green environmental protection formula"! Whew! What a relief. It was also wonderful to know that all those colors would be just the thing for the girls to "fondle admiringly," and of course, to realize how well their "creativity and showmanship" would be developed in the process!

And look! Here is some creativity and showmanship now! Junie's adorable fruit assortment.

I really could not choose a favorite thing. These saffron Santa Lucia buns that Daisy made are impossibly tiny, and look just like the real thing:

And then this cake Goldie made, with a slice that really comes out so you can see the inner layers. I love it!

I loved it all. The ice cream with a little ice cream scoop to get the scoops out. The salad bowl. The cake. The bread. The watermelon. The lemonade (with lemon slice!). The fruit bowl. The eggs, whole and scrambled and fried, and the bacon. The sugar cookies. The lussekatter. And the teeny-tiny chocolate chip cookies! I want to fondle them all admiringly.

June is a good month for weddings! My cousin Nancy has two girls getting married this summer. These pictures were taken at Anna's reception, in my cousin's pretty backyard. My mom helped make and serve the brownies and strawberries and ice cream, which meant my children got to eat all they wanted! :) (And my cousin told me, "Your mom works like she's twenty years old! She never gets tired! I had to take rests more often than she did!" Yes, that is my mom.)

Poor Goldie, perhaps due to the heat (it was a scorching day), stepped out of the car, said "I don't feel good!" and promptly threw up. So I made her stay in the front yard away from everybody, poor little lamb. She was a good sport about it, and we visited her from time to time during the evening. She felt lots better after a while!

We stopped and got hamburgers afterwards, brownies and strawberries having not quite filled us up. Clementine looked rather large-footed with her little shoes on!

And Gus peeked over the booth like the jolly little rosy squishums that he is.

Speaking of that little fellow. We couldn't possibly love him more. And yet we DO keep loving him more! Every day he gets cuter and funnier and more bitable. I give him Butterfly kisses and Eskimo kisses and Fish kisses, so now he asks me to give him all kinds of hugs and kisses.—"Give me a garbage truck kiss! Give me a Caw kiss! Give me a book hug! Give me a lamp hug!"—and I have to figure out what such a hug or kiss might be. I remember Malachi doing much the same, and then asking me to give him "all the kisses" at bedtime and making me run through about 20 of them every night. (Gus and Malachi really are SO much alike. It is uncanny.)

He is a two-year-old boy. Which means he has ALWAYS got several scrapes and bumps and scabs. He got this one near his eye, which he called "mine scape."

And then through some misfortune he ALSO got a huge goose-egg on his head, which he named "mine bonk." So then he had "mine scape and mine bonk," and he would talk about them with you at length whenever you would let him, pointing gingerly in their direction and allowing you to give him gentle little kisses on each one.

Here he is still talking about them. Eventually the scab healed and fell off, but that didn't stop him pointing to the spot and changing his "this is mine scape, and this is mine bonk" spiel to "look, mine scab fell off."

Clementine gets more and more funny and interesting all the time, too! She has taken a great liking to the cloths we use to wash her up after meals. She grabs and bites them lovingly as we attempt to wash her face with them, and cries inconsolably when we take them away. So she was very pleased when we gave her a bath in the sink one evening (she had just thrown up—at our ward auction, no less, but luckily it was on the hard floor in the gym and was easy to clean up) and she got to take possession of the beloved cloth for the duration!

She was also enthralled with the running water from the faucet. She looked over at Sam so wonderingly, looking for cues from his face as to whether she should love this or fear it!

She loves to whack things with sticks (a terrifying trait in a baby, especially if one is holding it) and will sit at Sebby's feet while he plays the piano and whack-whack-whack on the floor gleefully with whatever is to hand! It serves him right, really. He's the most egregious whacker of all in this family!

She's also developed a semi-fake smile, which she deploys upon command when you smile at her. Unlike every other baby I've ever had or heard of, she did NOT get her two front teeth within days of each other, but got one, and then appeared to completely lose interest in getting the other. This gives her a lopsided, three-toothed, jack-o-lantern-like grin. Every day I expect to see that other front tooth poke out, but it never does. I never thought I'd see the day I'd be wanting my baby to get another tooth, but it's been so long now in coming, I think I actually would welcome it!

The girls sometimes get a piece of candy from their teacher after their ballet class, and Goldie had been saving hers up for WEEKS and WEEKS with grand plans for a "tea party" with her sisters. I found her writing out lengthy lists of the events and games that would take place at this elegant event—relay races and treasure hunts and go-fish games with the precious little taffies and peanut-butter cups she'd saved up for prizes. Then one day while she was gone, Ziggy got into her room, found the candy, and ate it!! Oh it was sad! She was actually very kind about it when she found out. But also very, very sad. She knew she would never have enough weeks left to save up enough more candies to make her vision of the tea party come true. It was heartbreaking.

But then Daisy got some candy at Young Women's, and Junie contributed hers from ballet for the next few weeks, and the tea party was on again! Goldie carried out all her plans, and they had a lovely time, even using Nana's real china teacups for their cocoa! It was very sweet.

A few other things. Hot days, and the the way the children cope with them:

And cool days, and the way the children coped with them! I came home from dropping someone off somewhere to find this nest of snugglers waiting for me on the porch swing.

Watching the city fireworks show, always our favorite because we can get so close to it and it's not too crowded!

Ziggy's funny drawing of a "Dog Party" (with labels by me). Zig draws everything as if it's a robot—square and boxy.

Our stake had a primary activity, and our ward had to provide four people to run a station about Esther and Caleb and Noah. My two counselors came with me, but we couldn't find anyone else after asking everyone, so my dear wonderful Sam agreed to come and be Noah! It was THE HOTTEST day. We had to sit in the church parking lot for three hours in 95-degree heat herding Activity Days children blindfolded through obstacle courses and such, and Sam wore this Noah wig and beard!! I have never loved him so much. Afterwards we got in the car, looked at each other, and said both at once, "Now we'll get gelato, of course." And we did.

On Sunday mornings while I am at Ward Council, each girl helps one of the little boys get ready so that Sam can work on his Primary lesson. On Father's Day our meetings were cancelled, so I got to see this process in action. Each girl happened to coordinate nicely with her designated brother, so I took pictures. 

And here is the Father in question. Just the best father ever. Look how safe and happy little Clementine is in his arms at church!

He loves his bright-eyed, brown-eyed baby girl. And, as you can clearly see…she loves him!