Friday, August 15, 2008

As if I had time

She's ten months old today, and she appears to be inching across the floor on her two feet, which could be, I suppose, construed as walking. Just what we need, a minute infant walking around the house instead of sitting down or lying on her back like a sensible baby.

So much is changing so quickly. E, in a fit of gender identity, decided this week that she could no longer share a room with her brothers but that there should be a "Boys Room" and a "Girls Room". Taking the posture and attitude of the Persistent Widow, she wore us down. Matt moved a big grown up twin bed into the nursery and E, quietly and disobediently, has been moving stuff into the room before I can make place. Its now almost impossible to walk the the door. I was under the mistaken impression that I would have another year or so before we had to make this move.

Regardless, she is having the time of her life. She wakes up and plays with the baby in the morning keeping them both occupied. She picks out matching clothes for them to wear and then shoves her screaming and unhappy sister into them. At night she goes in and wakes her up trying to be companionable. Meanwhile the boys fight and shout in the other room.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My first--also a girl--walked on her 10 month birthday. In slippery, footed jammies on a hardwood floor, hands extended like an ice skater just taking the ice. She fell once, picked herself up, and never looked back. And I just love the story of Emma and Gwendolyn. I am the second of two sisters. There is nothing like sister bonding.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful story! Makes me think of the comic strip, 'The Family Circus'

Anonymous said...

Just thinking about two girls in a room -- their own room -- puts me in mind of my two sisters who are twins. When they were in high school they would clean their room infrequently, but together. And when they did it, it was an all day extravaganza of sorting and classifying. One sister would work her way through the chaos with every hat she ever owned on her head, one hat stacked on top of the other like Bartholomew and his million or billion hats. And both sisters seemed intent on reading through all the paper collected since that last cleaning.

Me as the oldest, I had only me, myself and I to work with in cleaning my room. Which I let go until the world was ready to break into pieces in some kind of crystallized agony of chaos. I see that E is making sure that there will be two of them to get through their stuff. But there is such a thing as TOO MUCH STUFF. Lucky me, I've got a large space to live in right now, and not much to put in it, and it's such a release and relief.

Speaking of not quite enough to fill a space, I'm starving and nearly shaking. A case of not enough to go around at a wedding lunch hours ago downtown -- and mostly carbohydrates. So let me go hunt up some more carbs -- cinnamon toast and cocoa, or something. ME