Baby sparkles {or Gwennan's compositions}

We're on the downhill side of a challenging few weeks. My grandmother encouraged me to think of every difficult time as a stage and the pleasant times as 'normal.' Bearing that in mind, we are returning to normal after wandering through a bad stage.

I can tell we're normalizing - big one is bouncing into rooms rather than tramping, and she has resumed composing. When she's angry and belligerent, the songs stop. But when her heart is happy, she flits around making up marvelous ditties.

Sunday she sat at the piano, banging out her magnum opus, 'Baby Sparkles.' The name is a mystery to me, but she plays it any time she's in a good mood. Baby Sparkles is an ongoing work with new verses every couple weeks.

This verse started with several repeats of 'Thank you God,' followed by 'Praise you Lord,' which then unraveled into a drawn out ballad about bathing in tomato juice after encountering a skunk named Flower. One of those moments when you look over your shoulder and think, 'how in the world did we arrive here?'

Last night she composed a song just for me, inspired by my decline to give her a third cookie. She replied, 'I don't like your tone. I hate your tone.' {we're not totally out of the dark woods}

To which I said, 'Hate is too strong a word. Can you re-phrase?'

To which she wrote this little number:

'Tone, tone, I like tones,
But I don't like yours.
Turn it around and find something good.'

I was rolling.

A few weeks ago, she was headed toward black and scream-o. I'm grateful to see my goofy girl resurfacing.

Cuteness du jour

Simple post for a slammed week: the babies and their antics.

We learned "Follow the Leader" last night. Trying to exhaust some wiggles before dinner guests arrived. This morning I poke my head into their room at the sound of loud, unusually solid clapping. Big one looks at me, We playing follow da leader! We marching! and so they are, marching like organ grinder monkeys banging wooden puzzle pieces together. {grin}

Big one continues composing:

Jingle bells. Jingle bells. All through the town. {still beating puzzle pieces together}

A B C D E F G L N M ah poop - giggles to herself. Her third grade boy humor is developing early.

Happy day to you. Happy day to me. Happy day to us.

Reciting Goodnight Moon:
Goodnight sun, goodnight moon, goodnight stars. Goodnight mush and goodnight hush. Goodnight mittens and goodnight cats.

Then a craft break to speed a morning that started too early {big one asks for lunch at 10:15}. Instead we color construction paper and cut out A's and G's. Such a silly small project, but I'm working with 1 and 2 year old fine motor skills. The girls proudly wave their letters, mostly in the cat's face.

Small one, well, it's just been a messy day. Fortunately I am close when big one yells, Sissy have messy diaper.


How could she know that?


Then: OOOh, Sissy, don't eat poop.


Shoot!

It's not over. Want to see lunch?

Bath. Clean up. Reading. Both asleep within 4 songs {I time how long I've patted a booty by the cd}. I'm not bragging. I'm exhausted.

Even the Trees Praise the Lord!

The Lord or cyberspace or some other uncontrollable force saved you from my first post. Blogger froze, and I lost an hour of my life to "unsaved changes." What is it about trials common to man {at least common to bloggers} that sends the heart into self-control off/self-pity-hyperdrive?

Best part, my post was about worshipping through a hard heart. Insisting on praise to replace gripe. My self-will is being tested.

So what happened? Did I reach deep in my soul and pull out a nugget of praise for the Lord. Not so much. I shut the computer in disgust, rounded up the natives and went to Trader Joe's, still frustrated by my morning.