A Visit With My Sister
My sister is in town visiting. She goes home early tomorrow, taking her three small children and all the delicious noise and chaos and laughter and sunshine with her. It has been so great having her here, full of adventures and bodily fluids and games and tears and everything you'd expect when you shove six kids under the age of five together and tell them to have fun. Five of the children are girls, and her son Daniel is the one lone boy child. The ages are: Hallie, 5. Jill, 4. Hanna, 3. Daniel, 2. Heather, 1. Alice, 2 months.
And so we play and run and jump and squeal and there is so much energy bouncing off the walls of my home these past days that I think it will still be vibrating long after she's gone. And spring is finally starting to rouse herself and put on a show. I saw my first flower blooms yesterday, as well as a first glimpse of flowering trees. When she got here it was snowing and raining and so freezing cold that we all huddled inside my house and looked around the room at each other solemnly, wondering who would be the next to dash for the toilet. A few days of that, and then the sun popped out and began dancing through the sky, touching a bud here and a bud there, whispering gently, so gently, "now! it is time to wake up, now!"
We burst out the doors and into the sunshine, shedding layers of winter clothing, our pale skin pleading for vitamin d. Most of the kids went straight for the sandbox and happily wiled away the hours watching the tiny particles sift through their fingers. And then Daniel threw a huge rock at Hallie and she screamed and cried for a long, long, long time.
Most of the adults sort of ignored it, Hallie is going through a phase right now of not really understanding the difference between "big" hurts and "little" hurts, and I have told her a hundred times that if she screams so much when Hanna scratches her, I won't be able to recognize when she gets an "actual" hurt, so she needs to save the big crying for big hurts. Finally she convinced me to actually go look at the size of the rock thrown, and I did, and I thought, "man, how did he even lift that thing?" But one thing I've learned about little tiny boys with sunshine in their hair, and blueberries for eyes, and apple pie cheeks is that they are strong. Strong little men these boy children are. It's fun having a boy child around.
And, that's really all I have to say. Um, my sister showed me how to make picture collages, so there's those, and alrighty then. Have a nice day.
And so we play and run and jump and squeal and there is so much energy bouncing off the walls of my home these past days that I think it will still be vibrating long after she's gone. And spring is finally starting to rouse herself and put on a show. I saw my first flower blooms yesterday, as well as a first glimpse of flowering trees. When she got here it was snowing and raining and so freezing cold that we all huddled inside my house and looked around the room at each other solemnly, wondering who would be the next to dash for the toilet. A few days of that, and then the sun popped out and began dancing through the sky, touching a bud here and a bud there, whispering gently, so gently, "now! it is time to wake up, now!"
We burst out the doors and into the sunshine, shedding layers of winter clothing, our pale skin pleading for vitamin d. Most of the kids went straight for the sandbox and happily wiled away the hours watching the tiny particles sift through their fingers. And then Daniel threw a huge rock at Hallie and she screamed and cried for a long, long, long time.
Most of the adults sort of ignored it, Hallie is going through a phase right now of not really understanding the difference between "big" hurts and "little" hurts, and I have told her a hundred times that if she screams so much when Hanna scratches her, I won't be able to recognize when she gets an "actual" hurt, so she needs to save the big crying for big hurts. Finally she convinced me to actually go look at the size of the rock thrown, and I did, and I thought, "man, how did he even lift that thing?" But one thing I've learned about little tiny boys with sunshine in their hair, and blueberries for eyes, and apple pie cheeks is that they are strong. Strong little men these boy children are. It's fun having a boy child around.
Hallie, Boys can be a trial. Most of them get better with time and learning from girls.
ReplyDeletei have fun just thinking about your good times together. I admit I don't envy the vomiting period. Love you, MOM
I'm glad you guys are having so much fun! Nice collages! Maybe you can show me some day :)
ReplyDeleteI am so glad we didn't spend the whole vacation sick!! And even though I still didn't make it to the dairy store at UNL, this was the first time I've gone to the Lincoln's Children's Museum, and that was definitely fun. :)
ReplyDeleteIt was a wonderful visit. Thanks for letting us come!!! And sigh. I really hope that Danny doesn't hurt anyone at Shenandoah.
If 2 year old Danny intimidates the girls, wonder what they will do with a 2 year old Boston and a 2 year old William in a year and a half? Danny has a responsibility to train them to be alert around boy cousins. (I'm not saying the rock incident was a good thing, however.)
ReplyDelete