She and Isaiah have been fascinated by familial structure and have been asking lots of questions lately. First it was marriage. When I explained me and Daddy were married, he announced he and Jenny and Kuzzles were married. "No, Isaiah---" then he amended it with "When we grow up, Isaiah and Jenny and Kuzzles get married." Josh just said "There are so many things wrong with that I don't know where to start." So we worked on marriage, and who you can and can't marry, and all of that.
Next, their interest turned to babies, struck up by the impending (still impending!) coming of number 4. They really fixated on this "Babies popping out" concept. At first, they kept asking if "Daddy popped out of Mommy's tummy?" to which they had to be straightened out, that I was not the only baby-producer in the universe.
Then Jenny grasped family connections, and delights in calling Grandma "Aunt Cathy's Mommy", and then the other day "Daddy popped out of Aunt Cathy's Mommy's tummy."
Jenny has also now given to birthing stuffed animals which she stuffs into the waistbands of her dress up skirts, and then pops dramatically up through the waistband saying "Oh, I popped duh baby out!."
She also thinks a lot about growing up.
She said "When Jenny grows up, Mommy will be a baby, and Jenny will take care of her." <3 I melted. Going to hold you to that one kiddo....
When I take forbidden things away from them, she often comments "When I grow up, I can [cut with scissors, pick up baby Kuzzles, etc]"
I had a brightly colored pump that came "free" with a walmart exercise ball, that she was playing with. Not knowing if the cheap plastic would survive a curious almost-3 yr old, I took it away. Later she opened the cabinet, and stared at it with awe, saying with so much reverence and longing "When I grow up, I can have duh pump" as if staring at her inheritance....
They've taken to crayoning recently. Jenny asked me to help her. I refused, not wanting to end in a years long struggle of having to draw thousands of beavers and iron man for someone whose artistic vision was unsatisfied by his own skill (cough, Isaiah, cough).
Josh was more amenable, and agreed.
Jenny told him she had drawn Keziah, and wanted him to draw the eyes. Josh stared at the pink blob on the paper, and drew 2 eye dots somewhere in the middle of it.
"Those are her knees" Jenny said solemnly.
So he picked up a blue crayon and drew eye dots near the top. Wanting to be helpful, he added some hair with the blue crayon.
"Now she has hair" he said.
"She already had hair" Jenny said solemnly. Then, perhaps wanting Josh to feel better she added, "That can be her hairband."
Last of all he added shoes.
Which is a good touch, because Keziah loves shoes. Really loves shoes. She picks them out, and weeps until you put them on her. She finds other peoples shoes and brings them to the right person, beaming in anticipation of your gratitude. We were at small group, and she went up to the pile of kids shoes, and picked out her siblings shoes and brought them to them.
She insisted on wearing her little pink and purple crocs until her feet were so smelly I had to hide them.
Josh has been reading the kids the "Jesus Storybook Bible" (highly recommended btw, the only children's Bible that makes me cry and gives me chills, the devotional is very good too), and its so cute how they all crowd up around him, sometimes all 3 balancing on his lap at once. The sweetest thing is how Kuzzles elbows her way through the other two, and ensconces herself onto the prime real estate of Josh's lap.
I would have more pictures, except Josh hates it when I take pictures of him and the kids interacting, he feels like I'm ruining a family moment and turning it artificial, or something....So just try to imagine all 4 of them crammed into the rocking chair with Josh seriously reading them about Jesus while wearing Isaiah's Viking Helmet, which is a standard piece for him to wear once he comes home these days, at Isaiah's insistence....
Keziah has taken to being a big kid, and joining in when I let the kids come into my room and play on my bed with the legos, while watching a couple StarCraft Wings of Liberty fan vids on loop. (Isaiah never loses interest, each time it repeated he said with so much joy 'Oh! It played again!').
Keziah has watched the big kids, and decided the way to play with legos is to break something and come to an adult asking for it to be fixed. So her way of playing is to take a lego knight, remove the head, sob dramatically while handing it to you, get it fixed, and then immediately pull the head off again, repeat. It feels all very much like a ritual that she has observed and is trying to repeat properly, with the appropriate emotion.
Jenny has a more mechanical mind. If R2D2 has more appendages, or if 3 astrometric droids are now a larger, bigger droid, it was Jenny the engineer reconstructing things.
They're all so different and bursting with their own little personalities. I can't wait to see what this next one is like.
Hurry up, Baby <3
No comments:
Post a Comment