Today! O Destiny! O Mankind!

On Sunday we rejoiced in another general conference of the Church and celebrated the Church’s 178th birthday as well as the second birthday of our second child. In addition to the multitude of princessly bibelots with which grandmothers around the world line the pockets of the Walt Disney corporation, Eli received an elegant and educational book about horse breeds from Kim Thompson and a triequirate of toy horses from an adoring mother. Eli loved the book and the toys, though she rather ingenuously allowed herself to be convinced by Julia that that maiden was and is the rightful proprietor of “the white horse.”

After conference we had our second annual April 6th celebration, inviting over a respectable cadre of ward members and their children for a potluck dinner and the singing of early Latter-day Saint hymns, ranging from W.W. Phelps’s eternal defiance to norms of political correctness, “O Stop and Tell Me Red Man” to the apocalyptic fervor of “Guide Us, O Thou, Great Jehovah” to some of the most moving anthems of the Restoration (“The Morning Breaks”; “Come, Come, ye Saints”; “Praise to the Man”). We also sang, “Happy Birthday” to Eli. Justin was supposed to film the singing but instead, camera in hand and lens firmly closed, he joined heartily in the singing, forgetting all the world without in his affectionate admiration for his second-born. Eli was at once bashful and grateful for the attentions, and she rewarded her well-wishers with a conquering smile. Julia, not one to be easily overlooked, treated our guests to a whirlwind fashion show, appearing at thirty second intervals dressed by turns as Snow White, Cinderella, and the anonymous beauty the first sight of whom convinces Mowgli that life in the man village may prove tolerable after all. It was a great celebration, a sweet mix of merriment and spirituality that strike your correspondent as the peculiar genius of Mormonism. We rejoice to belong to such a Church; to be the parents of such a child.

But life is not without its challenges. At the experienced age of two Eli waxes ever more daring, and has made an unfortunate habit of climbing onto the windowsill by means of whatever furniture she finds handy. She loves nothing better than to stand precariously on the ledge upon her tippy-toes as she bangs the glass with unwashed hands. This reckless diablerie has roused Julia’s indignation, and she insisted this afternoon that Lia decree in writing that Eli is to have no access to the red plastic table toy tomorrow. Julia has become an aficionado of lapidary proscriptions, perhaps because our chalkboard often bears one (as of this writing it reads, “No computer for Julia tomorrow”).

An additional challenge comes in the form of a Cinderella nightgown that Eli has come to love more than Cinderella itself. She won’t take it off and she won’t wear anything else unless the nightgown be placed over it. Justin has thrown it into the dirty clothes bin some three dozen times since Sunday but each time Eli has demanded, with the full fury of her formidable lungs, that it be forthwith retrieved. As of writing she is wearing it over another pair of pajamas, clinging to that turbid morass of stains and encrustations as the banner of her allegiance, the colors she carries between her heart and her armor. We may need to put Eli in the wash together with the nightgown.

[We pause while our senior editor’s mother regales the world around her with tales about her son’s own devotion to the assorted motorcycle shirts and Superman capes he tenaciously donned in his angel infancy]

Justin’s classmate, Gladriel Clayson (also a member of the singles ward), has kindly offered to babysit the girls from time to time, and she did so tonight so Lia could come to Justin’s Institute class. True to form, Justin stepped up his performance to impress the pretty lady on the front row. She must have been impressed, because she tried to impress him in turn with a series of brilliant and insightful comments and even made a pie beforehand to share with the class. Back at home the girls watched “Enchanted,” which, Gladriel assures us, took less than an hour because Julia insisted on skipping the “scary”—i.e. the non-singing—scenes. We had billed Gladriel to the girls as “our-friend-whose-name-is-kind-of-like-a-princess-name” who would come watch “Giselle” with her on Wednesday night. After asking every morning if the day just dawned was Wednesday, Julia spent most of today bouncing up and down and asking whether it was seven o’clock yet. It finally was, and she was a very happy little girl. Her parents, needless to say, were happy to get out together, and are even more excited for their big trip to Vermont tomorrow.