Why I Love My Family

A return from a year in Europe, moving into our first home with a dishwasher, and the man of the house frantically studying for the biggest exam of his life certainly merits a bona fide blog post.  But this is not it.  I just had a few simple reminders today why I love my family so much, and since I type faster than I write in my journal, all two of our faithful readers can share my joy, too. 

Why I Love Justin:  Because he's so punny.  One from dinner:  Our plumber, Mark, had just made a hasty exit after interrupting our dinner to look at a problem in the bathroom.  The girls had started in on a conversation regarding his name. Justin commented with as straight a face as possible, "You know girls, when Mark was dating his wife and trying to convince her to marry him and not that other guy, he told her, 'You just gotta stop "looking beyond the Mark"!'"  I love Justin because he said it, and I love the girls because I think they actually got it.

Why I Love Julia: She's just so sweet and loves to help me. I made bread with my Bosch for the first time and forgot you have to leave the lid on when adding flour else it just gets slung all over the kitchen.  Julia was present when I put in the fateful first scoop, and as soon as she saw it splash all over the floor she let out a distressed, "Oh, Mommy!", wet some napkins, and immediately started cleaning the mess up for me so that I wouldn't have to bend over and do it.  She also locked the door to their loft about 11 am this morning and wouldn't let anyone inside because, as she told me later, the room was a disaster and Daddy had told her if I saw a disaster I would start picking it up, but I can't pick it up because I'm so pregnant it will hurt me or the baby if I bend over too much.  "So I hurried and cleaned it up before you could see it," she said.  A few days ago she made special invitations to a tea party for Eli and Katharine and to make it as fancy as possible she used the old German schrift that she learned alongside me before my family history trip to Munich back in March for the full spelling of the girls' names.  She's so cool.

Why I Love Eli:  She's such a good sister to Katharine.  Katharine went into hysterics over a miscommunication about a song she wanted me to sing with her while I was cleaning up dinner.  I sent her to her room until she could calm down, which meant she just screamed as loud as she possibly could from the upstairs so I would know she was still angry at me.  Eli walked in from the porch where she had been listening to Justin and Julia's reading time story, heard Katharine wailing, and immediately marched up there, stuffed animal in hand, to wile some smiles and giggles out of Katharine with her ridiculous antics.  It totally worked, and they were soon chasing each other through the house amidst peals of laughter. 

Why I Love Katharine: Because she adores me.  We have to put her on my left side at dinner because she will randomly grab my right arm--even when it terminates in a hand holding a forkful of food--and hug it tightly to her little body.  Tonight her place setting was 18 inches away from mine at dinner.  It took her about 3 seconds to determine that was too far and pushed her plate and utensils over to be touching mine and then proceeded with dragging her chair over to an equal distance.  We spend most of the day being Mulan/Li-shang, Annaliese/Julian, Belle/the Beast, Ariel/Eric, continuum ad nauseam. 

Sweet little people surrounding me, these.