Ah, Gwyn

Justin here. It has been (literally) years since I wrote a blog post. Indeed, a round decade has passed since the days when I posted frequently on this blog. I felt a lot younger then. I’m not sure I remember how to do this. But here goes.

Gwyndelin hit two major milestones this month. On July 5^th she became a big sister. Four days later she turned four years old. All of this has made her unusually reflective. Fortunately, she has shared some of her wisdom with the rest of us. For example, she was playing downstairs this week with her big sister Elisabeth when Gwyn noted that two of her dolls had fallen in love with one another. Elisabeth responded by making gagging noises. “Falling in love?” she observed. “Gross.” But Gwyn helped her older sister see wisdom. “Falling in love isn’t just about kissing on the lips,” she noted. Intrigued, Elisabeth asked what else it entails. “Falling in love,” Gwyn explained, “is when you hug another person and are filled with . . . LOVENESS.” Take heed, ye single, lonely souls. Hug every eligible prospect and wait for the loveness to flow. When it does, you’ll know you’ve found The One.

Another object of Gwyn’s musing has been the adversity of the Sabbath. This morning when she learned that it was Sunday, she expressed fierce displeasure.

She threatened to cancel Sunday, to throw it in the garbage, to perform all manner of violence against it. Somehow, though, we caressed and cajoled her into a dress and got her to church on time. Toward the end of sacrament meeting, she asked me, “When church is over, are we going to go home and go to bed?” (The reader should know that we have 9 o’clock church, and that she asked this question at about 10:10.) Thinking that bedtime was, as usual, her great enemy, I reassured her that, no, we would not go to bed right after church, but that there would be hours and hours in which we could play together at home.

My response quite crushed her. She wept and would not be comforted. Bedtime meant the end of Sunday, and she couldn’t bear that it should be thus postponed. Later on, in the afternoon, she revisited the theme of the awfulness of Sunday. In an uncharacteristic effort to mimic the patterns of a Good Dad, I decided to listen and learn more. “Gwyn,” I asked tenderly, “will you explain to me what it is you don’t like about Sunday?” At this point she wept again, more bitterly than before. Through her tears she said, in a voice quavering with desperation, “When you go to church . . . everyone GIVES YOU TREATS!!!”

Now it is true, I’m afraid, that Gwyn’s primary teachers had given her two chocolate-chip muffins during “little class” and that the primary presidency had given her a sucker at the end of “big class” (i.e. sharing time). And it is also true that our family, startled by the alarums against insulin resistance sounded by Dr. Ben Bikman at this week’s BYU forum assembly, had just started a new diet (an alliterative diet, moreover: control carbs, prioritize protein, don’t fear fat!). So Gwyn’s church experience really had entailed significant hardship, and her tears moved me to compassion.

A little later I took Gwyn on a walk. Feeling more composed, and even a bit chipper, she discoursed freely about all manner of things—“of shoes and ships and sealing wax, / Of cabbages and kings.” Among other things, she offered some philosophical conclusions about the Sabbath. “At the end of the day on Sunday,” she told me, “you go to bed, and you dream away all the fun things you did that Sunday, and then they are gone.” “You’re right,” I said. “And like this insubstantial pageant faded, they leave not a rack behind.”

Elinor took her first long car ride yesterday when we drove up Provo canyon and into the hills around Midway. She loathed it—at least for the first ten minutes. For Katharine, who sat next to Elinor, the ten minutes seemed like ten hours; perhaps like ten years. Katharine concluded on the basis of the available evidence that Elinor would never stop crying, and she begged me to turn around and go home. But Lia and I are old hats at this by now. We know that tired babies always fall asleep eventually. Elinor did too, and our drive was a nice reminder of how beautiful a state we live in.

Abdiel lost his first tooth this week. Unfortunately, he lost it while consuming some graham crackers and milk (these were our happy, pre-diet days). Thinking the stray tooth was a graham cracker crumb, he consumed that too. The Tooth Fairy, alas, can’t provide compensation for a swallowed tooth—and the Tooth Fairy, at least in our house, is an almost incorrigibly negligent lass—but happily the boy has another tooth wobbling on the brink of imminent extraction. He’s sure to get some cash out of that one when it goes.

One of Abdiel’s favorite things to do these days is to jump on the trampoline in our neighbors’ back yard. For better or worse, he loves this best when I jump with him. A couple weeks ago when we started jumping he joyfully observed, “A dad jumping with his boy is the best game in the world.” Unfortunately, on Thursday I gave him a bounce that he wasn’t ready for and he lost his balance in the air. He came down onto the trampoline leading with his shoulder and his face rather than his feet. Thankfully, he wasn’t injured beyond a bump and a scare. I comforted him as best I could, but through his tears he vowed never to jump on the trampoline with me again. The vow didn’t make it through the night. The next day he begged me to jump with him again, explaining that, since I had apologized, he wasn’t afraid anymore. This struck me as a non sequitur, but I didn’t argue the point. I was soon sending him into the stratosphere again, and he came down on his feet each time, laughing and begging for more.

Other fun things this week: apricot picking at Chari's and the splash pad.