The Scampering Horse

She grabbed the mud with her little fists and smashed it into her honey colored hair, looking like she smeared  chocolate frosting on herself.  Then she reached her hands towards the bank and scraped off more mud, and threw it into the water.  Her laughter followed the ripples..  She sat with the smooth river rocks touching her bare baby buns, and slid down the river like a slide. "Welcome to hill-billy Disney Land." My Aunt Julie always sent me a dollar in the mail on my birthday, so it was easy to love her.  When I went to college, she would feed me and let me do laundry at her house.  She even updated my wardrobe from grey tee shirts to some button up ones.  Now that I am a real grown up with children of my own, she is a favorite person.. Someone I want my own children to know. Today, she took us off-roading to the river.  My two bigger girls stripped down to their underwear and explored the banks of the river, stretching their yo...

Yesterday I took my wee ones to the zoo after school.  We had gone the week before but it was Earth Day.  Earth Day at the zoo means that 500 school buses filled with half-supervised children flood the zoo ensuring  a two year old afraid of crowds wants to go home.  The three o’clock slot on a non-Earth day is much better.  We visited the reptile house. The first reptile we saw was a Komodo Dragon.  For those of you who haven’t seen a Komodo Dragon, it is a dinosaur.   There were two of them.  They are huge. Most of the exhibits were venomous snakes.  I don’t love snakes, but I don’t hate them either.  I was interested in the black and yellow striped ones, and the green mamba, black mamba wrapping themselves up on their own bodies like playdough.  There was a cute little turtle swimming around with a long neck and webbed front and back feet. And then we saw the Python.  Enter Harry Potter flashbacks....

My church building gets full quickly.  The pews fill up with large families who are on time, or at least one person is on time to save seats for the other 6 who will be there shortly.  I don't like sitting the the overflow, metal chairs.  Not comfortable.  Bad acoustics.  So many people to watch in front of me, I just... can't... concentrate. Factor in the nursing of the new baby, and the inevitable potty or water breaks from the older children, and I might as well be blind and deaf, and not the cool Helen Keller blind and deaf. In the words of my father,"I hate being late." I have a particularly naughty two year old.  One of her naughty habits involves twisting the tops off things: nail polish and lip gloss being her favorites, but she also dabbles in baby oil, toothpaste, pens and pencils, and flashlights. My pediatrician says she's mechanically inclined. That's nice. Today I got her ready for church.  She wore a new turquoise...

This weekend Julie and her dad went off on a daddy daughter adventure.  Ian is Julie's best friend.  She loves to talk to her dad, and play games with him.  She thinks he is The Man. They flew, Julie's first flight, in an airplane, to visit her Grandparents in Arizona.  She had Sprite and pretzels on the airplane and was amazed at how the flight attendants could walk on the air. As she looked down at the ground below her she said,"One thing's for sure, we aren't in America anymore." I experienced life for a few days in my daily routine without my first born baby-my little girl. It was quiet.  Less laughing, less screaming, less chattering. Somethings  missing. I can think of a hundred different ways my life could have gone differently and I wouldn't have that child fighting against the dying of the light at night-struggling not to fall asleep becuase she is afraid she's missing out. I can imagine life without Julie, but I don't want to

My first grader has homework. She doesn't look forward to homework. Every night she has homework.  I didn't enjoy this towards the beginning of the school year.  It was punishment for me, the prison warden who had to enforce homework doing. I hated homework.  We hated it together.  The 15 minutes of reading, the worksheet of math, the spelling words, the cutting and pasting of small letters to spell bigger words.  Then I decided it was her homework.  She could decide whether or not she did her homework. I did homework for  19 years, earned my own degrees. She was on her own.  And if she didn't do her homework, she would not be able to use the computer. Julie decided she wants to do her homework. She sits at the table after school to do her homework. Her homework, she's informed me, is doom tomorrow.

In the afternoons I walk up the street to pick up my first grader.  I love going on this walk.  It is uphill.  My five year old who has yet to be in kindergarten hates this walk. She reminds me that she hates it every day.  I should say, every day she reminds me that she hates it.  Either way, she never wants to go.  She would rather do anything else.  I make her go anyway.  It isn't easy to make a five-year-old almost in kindergartner do anything.  I say, "You have to come." The two year old rides in the front of the double stroller, looking for "Lulie" (Julie is her big first grade sister) and the baby rides in the back.  He never complains about the walk.  He is often my favorite. Sometimes on the way we see a lizard.  Even less often, the five year old sees the lizard.  She doesn't complain about the lizard. She marvels at it.

I was named horse by John Bennion when we were hiking through England.  Our study abroad group sat on rocks on a hill and waited to be described by our professor, our professor that we loved.  Evelyn McNeill is a horse that takes life by the throat.  Lizzie is a window.  I don't remember the twenty other wonders that surrounded me.  But, I am a horse. My pregnancies made me so sick I threw my children crackers from the couch and encouraged them to watch one more cartoon on Netflix until daddy came home, and I would think.  I am a horse.  I take life by the throat, and I would call a friend to take care of my children while I laid on the couch.  That is what horses who take life by the throat do.  And sometimes I don't want to work out after being stagnant for a time.  But, a horse doesn't sit around.  Once, or more than once, when I was hiking, I had my baby in a backpack. Then, my two year old little girl gets tired, says, "Ca...