Dearest little Marigold! What would we do without her? Goldie is like a girl in a storybook. I am not even exaggerating a little when I say that she frequently clasps her hands at her bosom while she talks. She speaks in italics and says things like "I do hope we'll be able to go to the party!" and "Oh, how I long to see Paris someday!" She's loving and sweet and adores having pretty hairstyles (as she would say), so Daisy made sure to do something fancy in her hair for her birthday. She looked beautiful!
Goldie loves to draw and paint and create things, and she has beautiful writing. This is what her spelling tests always look like, with illustrations and checkboxes and metrics for me to circle and fill in. So cute.
She dances around the house constantly. And she loves to pick bouquets of flowers—even dandelions.
We watched a lovely golden sunset the night of Goldie's birthday and it seemed perfectly fitting ("Oh, I do so love sunsets!").
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In other goings-on. Clementine is getting very confident in her own selfhood. She often scolds other members of the family in a bossy, disapproving voice, calling them sternly by name and then rattling off a bunch of gibberish. "Dussie! Gabbajib ibitty unna dotobba door!" She strokes her own hair and says "Pitty, pitty." She sings every syllable of the "Hello, Hello" song from Primary. She demands "Bite? bite?" whenever anyone else is eating something that looks interesting. When people come over to visit, she hands them dozens of toys one by one, naming each thing in baby language, until they can't even stand up because their laps are full of cars and blocks and animals.
In short, we adore her, even if we do worry about how much of a monkey she's becoming!
Oh! She also kisses, and blows kisses, (mostly) on command. Very charming.
She quite likes Orange Baby, but most of all she likes everyone else's most special and desired toys, and seeks them out unerringly.
Her disapproving look
We had a picnic with my mom for Mother's Day (the day before) and ate this spectacular line-up of sandwiches. Yum.
This was a sad sign we saw there! :(
A rainy day. Since they were already wet from being outside weeding when the rain hit, Daisy and Junie went out in the alley and jumped gleefully in puddles.
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Ziggy soberly informed me one Sunday morning that today he was going to be "so good, he wouldn't even play with toys during church." True to his word, he spent sacrament meeting writing Improving Verses in his notebook for the benefit of the rest of us. This one admonishes us to "Luv wun unuthr and cep thu comadis." (commandments, I assume?) I'm sure we were all much the better for it.
He also became mildly obsessed for a time with writing "I surrender" on scraps of things and making them into flags and pretending to be Robert E. Lee. (We were having a school unit on the Civil War, which makes this more understandable, I suppose, but only slightly.) I found "I surrender" written on napkins, books, checks, and the utility bill. Sigh.
Mailmen making their rounds
We had the missionaries over one night (a trio of them) and before they had even left, Zig was pretending to be one of them. He ran outside, then re-entered, leaving his shoes by their at the door, and then wrote himself a nametag which he taped to his jacket. Oh how that boy loves to be a man!
He's even got his Book of Mormon in hand.
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Enjoying a lovely May morning from the porch swing!
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Seb often goes out with his shovel…or should I say, our shovel…to do something he refers to as simply "digging." I knew vaguely that this meant he and some friends were making bike jumps in a big dirt field in the neighborhood, but I had no idea the scope of it till he brought me over one day and showed me. They've made several huge jumps and a little pump track, carved steps into the top dirt hill, put up big PVC pipes for hammocks…it's practically a whole bike park now! They'll "dig" over there for hours at a time sometimes. Policemen have stopped there to see what's going on, and then stayed to visit and admire once they see what these boys have made. Pretty cool. Doesn't hurt teenagers to have holes to dig in their free time!
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The temple and the girls looking spring-y
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We made yarn dolls as part of our Civil War Unit (Nana called these, inexplicably, Yama Men, and so we do too). Junie made a Yama Man and a Yama Mama.
And we made Gus a Yama Caw!
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The big boys (before they were big) used to do this thing where they would break their crackers and then hold them up with the pieces back together and say "Broken or not?" It was never as difficult to tell as they apparently thought it was. But Gus dropped this plate and it broke so cleanly, you really couldn't tell if it was broken when you put the pieces back together!
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Caw in a snow shovel for some reason?
Clementine looking bored
Clementine climbing up to get one of the toothpaste tubes which have been taken away from her five hundred times but which she always somehow manages to hunt down, retrieve, smear on things, and lose the lids of anyway.
Needs a haircut?
Needs a haircut? Ha. Just kidding. Daisy's hair is wonderful. I love it curled like this.
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Mother's Day was so nice. Cute cards and notes from everyone.
Seb got up early and made me this amazing breakfast—oat waffles, eggs, bacon, avocado, lime curd, strawberries, whipped cream, vanilla syrup. I had no idea he was doing it, and was completely astonished when I came out into the kitchen to see what was smelling so good and Sam said "Sebastian thought of and planned all this himself." I had actually seen Seb in the living room when I went to get Clementine early in the morning, and as it was Sunday and we don't have church till 1:30 I was honestly quite concerned. I said in all seriousness, "Oh no, Seb, are you okay? Are you feeling sick?" Ha! I just couldn't believe he'd be up at 7 am on a Sunday voluntarily. Sorry about that, Seb. The breakfast was delicious!
Goldie painted this lovely sunset for me
Zig and Gus got dressed in their handsomest clothes
Combing their own hair, even!
And Zig, overcome with the holiday spirit, wrote "Muthr I luv yu" on the bottom of his Sunday pants!
Junie spent hours carving and sculpting me this little wooden bunny with the Dremel. Sam helped her a little, but mostly it was just her. It was as smooth as silk when she was done with it. I love it so much!
All the girls wore dresses in variations of my favorite yellows. (Clementine was in gold too!)
We had Sam's parents and a couple cousins over for dinner and he made an amazing Greek feast with pita, chicken souvlaki, hummus, feta sauce, pasta and potato salads, and all the toppings!
There was a beautiful lightning storm in the evening, so we all sat out the porch and watched the storm and the sky while we talked on the phone to Abe. Can you even remember when it used to be ONLY on Mother's Day (and Christmas) that missionaries could call? I am so glad we get to talk every week now!
You can see how windy it was from the girls' hair!
The girls got out Goldie's watercolors and tried to paint the storm.
It was a happy day and a beautiful night!
Well! Now that I’m at the end I can’t recall all the things I commented on in my head as I went along! But I loved hearing more about Goldie and Clementine. And I can’t believe there’s a place where one CAN just take a shovel and create a bike park of their own accord! And the “Is this broken or not” must be a childhood right-of-passage game (maybe like playing the floor is hot lava?) because my kids also often ask that with broken in half apple slices and the like. Oh! And missionaries and the old calls just on Christmas and Mother’s Day! It’s so so happy that it isn’t that way anymore! I just love so much how all the little siblings get to excitedly show them birthday gifts or crafts from the week, etc! And it’s so great that they get to feel connected to the mission of their older sibling.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, a million other happy, good things in this post!