Everyone, 3/19
Some phrase triggered me, and I started singing "Do You Hear the People Sing?" one afternoon. Then it occurred to me that I could introduce the girls to
Les Miserables. I found it on Pandora. Wrenny was pretty anti at first, but I made her suffer for a few songs. I started telling her and Tiny (Ever was at school) about Jean Valjean, Javert, etc. Then "I Dreamed a Dream" came on. I told the girls they'd like that one, and we listened and talked about Cosette. They really started getting into it. So many questions about all the characters. So very many. The girls were up on the island while I was cooking, and we listened and talked. Tiny declared that she wished she were Cosette. I said that Cosette had a really sad life. So there was more discussion of Cosette. When Ever got home from school, she had to be caught up on the new obsession. When Wren said she was Dorothy (because we'd just finished
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), Tiny said she was Cosette. She started requesting "I Dreamed a Dream" as her bedtime song. I was walking with Wren once, and she said, "Should we sing the Cosette song?" I heard Tiny singing it to herself in her bed after her nap once. So great.
Wren & Arden, 3/22/19
Me (as I was smothering Wren and Tiny with hugs and kisses and squeezes, unable to control myself): "What do I do about my love for you?"
Wren: "Put it away. Put it away somewhere until we want it."
Me: "When do you think you'll want it?"
Wren: "Never."
That afternoon, I was attacking Tiny. She pushed me away and said, "No. Do it another day."
Arden, 3/27/19
Tiny needed to go to the bathroom one more time before bed. I helped her onto the potty upstairs. She started talking about how big the potty was. When she was done, she said she wanted to show me something. Then she said, "I do this, and this, and this," as she shimmied off the potty and then reached her toes down to the ground. After getting off by herself, she said, "Was that majestic, Mom? Was that majestic?" I just laughed. She continued, "Is that a word?" I said it was. "Was that majestic? Was it cool?"
Wren & Arden, 4/15/19
The girls were playing with Legos together so nicely today. At one point Tiny was a little ways away trying to get her undies on (she'd just taken off the diaper from her nap), and she cried out because she couldn't get them on. Wren immediately dropped her Legos and said, "I'm coming, Tiny!" and went to help. Then they continued playing together, sharing pieces, etc. And I heard this conversation about something that had apparently been put together before:
Tiny: "Did Ever make it?"
Wren: "Jesus already made it."
Tiny: "How did He do that? He's not in our family. Did He come in our house?"
Arden, 5/23/19
Tiny: "You're a girl, and Daddy's a boy because he has ... black hair. People who have black hair are boys."
Wren, 6/3/19
I told Wren we had to be home because a door was going to be delivered.
Wren: "What color is the door?"
Me: "White."
Wren: "I don't like white doors. I only like rainbow doors."
Arden & Wren, 6/5/19
I asked Wrenzy if she wanted breakfast, and she said, "Yes, definitely." She uses "definitely" a lot, and I love it. She asked for "Honey Bunchies," and Tiny said, "You almost said cheese!"
As they ate, Wrenzy talked about how Jim and I will be a grandma and grandpa when they get married and have kids. She said she was scared of getting married because she didn't know what you have to do to get married. I explained. Then she said, "Oh, that's what getting married is?!"
Then they got back on the grandparent thing, and Tiny said to me, "When I'm a mom, you're going to be so little."
Tiny asked, "Who made our bodies?" I wasn't sure how to answer and eventually said, "Mommy and Daddy together made your body." She said excitedly, "I made Mommy and Daddy's bodies and my sisters' bodies. I made everyone's bodies!"
Arden, 6/6/19
Tiny wore warm footed pajamas to bed. Usually she likes her blanket on her, pulled all the way up to her chin, but when I tried to put it on her, she said, "It's too comforty with this [the blanket] on. My jammies are already comforty." "Comforty" is how she says "comfortable."
Arden, 6/12/19
"There are lots of bad words in English, named 'hate.' That's a bad word. It lives in English."
Wren & Arden, 6/13/19
Me, to Wren: "What's your full name?"
Wren, seeming uncertain: "Wrenzypoo-la-vee."
Me: "That's a nickname. What is your first name?"
Wren: "Wrenzy."
I coached her through first, Wren, middle, Mara, and she knew her last name. Then I asked, "So what's your full name?"
Wren: "Wrenzypoo-la-vee."
Me, to Tiny: "Tiny, what's your real name?"
Tiny: "Um, I don't know. Luke."
Me, "Lark is your middle name. What's your first name?"
Tiny: "I don't know."
Me: "Is Tiny your real name?"
Tiny: "Yeah. Tiny."
Me: "No, Tiny is your nickname."
I coached her through Arden Lark Kringel. Then Tiny said: "And my next name is Little Baby when I'm wearing jammies." (Because she still thinks she turns into a baby when she puts on her jammies.)
Arden, 6/15/19
"I just did something that little babies can't do. I rolled down the stairs. That's really scary for other people. It's only for me."
"For my birthday, I want to go ice skating. Because we never ice skate in this country. We only ice skate in other countries."
"This is the first day I'm eating!" Tiny generally boycotts dinner because she's so picky. We had Trader Joe's chicken lime burgers, and she actually ate. It was a summer break miracle.
Arden, 6/16/19
"We're going to stay like this for a hundred years, and then we're going to die. It's taking a long time for us to die."
Wren, 6/29/19
Wren, to Jim, in anticipation of swimming in Cikaneks' pool next door: "I'm going to go to the deep end, and then I'll come back to you in the shallow part."
Jim: "How long will I have to wait?"
Wren: "I don't know. I don't even know what minutes are."
Arden, 7/5/19
Me: "What are you going to wear today?"
Tiny: "Um, my racing clothes because I'm going to race today." Then, pulling out a pair of long underwear pants that look like pink leggings, "These are racing pants. I know because I'm big. I'm going to smoke the other kids!"
Arden, all the time
"Nothing but a nuisance!" Tiny quotes that line all the time. Sometimes I just hear her saying it to herself - "It's nothing but a nuisance!" None of us could remember what book it was from. Months after she started saying it, we were reading
Angelina Ballerina, and we were thrilled when I read the line, "Oh, Angelina, your dancing is nothing but a nuisance!" Finally, mystery solved.
Wren and Arden, 8/1/19
I overheard this conversation in the playroom, all in serious tones, as the girls discussed what to do:
Wren: "That's not fun at all because we don't know how to read."
Arden: "We could just look at books."
Wren: "I don't like to look at books."
Next thing I knew, they were discussing the possibility of swimming in Nathan's pool, and Tiny said:
"I feel sad. I wish we had a pool." (Way to talk through your feelings, Tiny.)
Eventually Tiny came in asking, "Mommy, may we do anything in the make box?" We have a little container where I throw twine and popsicle sticks and a few other odds and ends of craft supplies, and they've called it the "make box" ever since they watched a show where the girl had a "make box."
Arden, 8/15/19
Tiny was singing the ABC song, and the last two lines went like this: "Now I know my ABC's. Won't you dance with me today?"
Wren and Ever, 8/18/19
I think Wren and Ever spent over an hour, maybe two, playing charades while Jim and Tiny napped and I did Primary stuff. Ever, who was stationed in the playroom, would write something on a tiny slip of paper - "kangaroo," "drawing," "stacking cups," "doing homework," "sad," "yelling," etc. Wren would run in and ask me what it said, "Whisper it!" she would say, trying to be very careful that Ever didn't hear. Then she would run into the playroom and act it out for Ever, who would guess what it was. Surprisingly, Ever generally had an easy time figuring out what Wren was doing. When they finished charades, Ever helped them both color their hair with purple hair chalk and then led some outside play (with Ever in undies because she took off off her church skirt to ensure it didn't get ruined and did not want to replace it with anything). They played so well all afternoon. It was a real triumph.
Wren, 8/19/19
Tiny went potty upstairs, and I went in as she was finishing and found that Wren had left a deposit earlier and not flushed. I told Wren she has to flush, and she got a little cry-ey and told me that she's scared to flush by herself. Tiny flushed the toilet and then went over to Wren, touched her comfortingly, and said, "It's OK, Wren. I flushed for you. Don't be so unhappy. It takes care of hisself." (I'm not really sure what she meant by the last sentence.) In
Hansel and Gretel, Hansel says, "Don't be so unhappy" and "Heaven will take care of us" to Gretel after they overhear their dad and stepmother talking about leaving them in the forest.
Shortly after that, as Tiny was putting some clothes away in her dresser, she said exultantly, "Sometimes I almost puke, but I get the pukeness back in my mouth."
Arden, 9/3/19
I'm reading
Little House in the Big Woods with all the girls, and they are loving it - even Tiny, who can't possibly understand a lot of it. As she was getting out of the bath tonight, she asked if the girls in
Little House in the Big Woods had turbie twists (hair towels). I said no and started listing some of the things we have that they didn't. Each thing I said, she said, "Oh." Then at the end, after I said they didn't have lights or running water, she said, "Oh. Well, God should have give them those things."
She also said, as she was wrapped in a towel on my lap, that she didn't feel good and her belly hurt. I said, "Do you think you need my loves?" (Because I like to use any opportunity I can find to hug and kiss her, and I pretend that that will cure everything.) She said, "Yes. I think I do. I think I need your loves. To feel better."
Arden, 9/8/19
I was unhappy with Wren when she spilled something at the table for the second time in a short period. Tiny said, "It's only Wren. We don't do it." Then, "But sometimes I hit you [Wren] on purpose."
Wren, 9/9/19
Wren loves classical music. She told me in the car the other day, as we were listening to the classical station, that she likes JoAnn's music better than ours. (Sounds as if JoAnn plays them kid music.) But then she went on to clarify that she likes the music we were listening to (classical) first, then JoAnn's, then ours.
Today I was flipping through the radio stations trying to find something to listen to. (I'm a dinosaur and don't have the ability to play music from my phone.) As I flipped, she said, "No. No. No." Then, when I landed on classical, "Yes!" The radio guy said Mozart in the Morning was coming up, and I repeated that. She exclaimed, "I love Mozart!"
