My Little Ones

My children are just impossibly sweet and funny at the moment. We're at some sort of sweet spot in which they're both at good ages that just delight me every day, and I feel the need to gather up all the pieces of them, the moments that grandparents assure me are the best of our life, and hold them still somehow.

I read with Ellen and think to myself, "I must remember how impossibly sweet it is to have a curly-haired girl snuggled under my chin."  I watch her run across the playground and know that it would be a crime to forget how her cloth diaper makes her skirt puff out like a cupcake and that she waves her hands over her head when she runs and that her motion is more up and down than it is forward.  She bounces.  She enters the kitchen with a blanket around her neck and announces that she's a 'sup'aherio' and then the next day in the stroller she argues with her brother that she's not a baby, she's a 'wobot.'

The Bairn snuggles in my lap and promises that he will never leave me.  He sits in the backseat of the car after church, munching on snacks and informing me that he learned about 'Heavenly Father and robots and cars and trucks and monster trucks' in his class.  He explains to Steve that babies live inside their mothers until they're born and come out to drink milk from the mommies' 'milksides.'  He loves the outdoors (but not wearing pants there).  I took him hiking last week and he named all the sections of the trail - Mom's Jungle, Franklin's Forest, and The Bairn's Jungle.  He ran over the bridges and literally oohed and ahhed at everything I pointed out to him.

Not a fan of pants outside

These kids drink monkey milk (banana smoothies) every day and beg to help Steve make pizza.  They want to eat all the bread dough before I bake it and delight in picnics (even if it's just grapes on the deck).  They love playing in the sandpit at the market, visiting the beach, and going to the splash pad.  Ellen holds us by the finger and leads us around and The Bairn calls excitedly to show me the things he's built.  They both worry about bugs.

Watching the July 1st Parade

I just can't get over them.  They go to bed at night and I recount our day to Steve and I think, "Remember this.  Remember."