Today...

Aunt Jan and Uncle Eric came to hang out with the kids. Uncle Eric has a better developed sense of fun than the kids' parents have (which explains Rayna's unique perch!)!

In Style...

Giving new meaning to the phrase Two-Steppin'! (Doug is wearing cowboy chaps and a gunslinger's belt over his futuristic superhero suit! Rayna, meanwhile is dressed in full princess attire!) These two kids wind up spontaneously dancing together in the living room at least once every couple of days!

After the rain...

Rayna is holding three snails. To her utter delight, the littlest one is crawling down her arm!


(If you click on the photo, you can see a much bigger version.)

Wednesday...

It rained lightly most of the day, but it was a fun day, anyway! The girls played outside when the rain wasn't pouring and Rayna found a lot of little snails that she was delighted with. She washed each of them off in a puddle before setting them back where she had found them.

Our dear friend Lisa came over today, too, and we worked on restoring an old photo of husband's parents. Then we all went shopping to find the perfect frame and to print the restored digital version out at a Kodak kiosk. It was a fun, relaxing day!

Helping Rayna Find Her Motivation...

My dear friend Lisa called me between classes yesterday to say she needed photos of sad children. She is in her last semester of nursing school and her instructors are keen on social/political activism. For her latest project she has to help spearhead a movement to ban smoking in public places in Shawnee, Kansas (one of the few communities in the greater Kansas City area which has not already placed such an ordinance on the books). Lisa needed to make posters, flyers, etc. to present to the city council. Her idea was to go at it from the emotional angle of "Is it good for the children?"

Doug had vacation from school last Friday and this Monday. So, it was that he was home yesterday morning when Lisa called me. Our normal family dynamics are that Darcy DOTES on Rayna and squabbles with Doug...and Rayna ADORES Doug and Darcy equaly. Once in a while, though, for no discernible rhyme or reason, Darcy will suddenly have a "dote on Doug" day. Darcy doesn't EXCLUDE Rayna during these rare anomaly days...but, neither does she DOTE on her. Yesterday was just such a day. Doug was dancing through the day beaming happily under his older sister's praise and attention while Rayna was withering from lack of sunlight. Now, you must understand, Rayna does NOT wither away quietly. She cauterwauls...and cries great drippy tears...and generally makes it exceedingly clear to all the world that a terrible injustice has been wrought at her expense. Such was my day yesterday, when dear sweet Lisa called saying she needed photos of sad children. Two minutes after hanging up the phone, Rayna had her forty-millionith complete melt-down of the day. I found myself cradling my youngest once again as she could barely get her words out between heart-broken sobs, "I..just want...Darcy (sobbing inhale)...to treat me kind. (more uncontrollable sobbing)...I just..want...my family to LOVE me." I had little Rayna wrapped in my arms and was rocking her as I tried to explain to her once more, "Honey, your family DOES love you. No one is treating you unkindly," as the happy sound of Doug's voice drifted up to my bedroom where we sat...stinging his little sister's soul like splatters of hot grease. Afterall, he was only suppose to sound that joyful under the spotlight of HER attention!

I had JUST gotten Rayna's tears dried and her convulsing sobs quieted when it dawned on me, "DUMMY, DUMMY, DUMMY!!! Lisa needs SAD pictures! What have I just done??? Here I had SADNESS in my arms and I FIXED it. DARN!" I looked down at my comforted child. Well...at least her NOSE was still red. That was SOMETHING to work with....

So, I grabbed her up and told her, "Mommy needs a SAD picture for Lisa's poster. Let's go take your picture!" Well, of course that brightened her right up. Camera, undivided attention....all the things her little heart NEEDED in that moment of older sibling neglect. Not good. I pinched her nose to make it a little redder and then peered at her through the lense. Nope. Too happy. I told her, "Look sad, again, Rayna." So, she put her heart into it....peering from her perch in the recliner, into the dining room beyond where her older sister and older brother were absorbed with each other, she GLARED. She DID look a bit sad, too, but the furrow of her eyebrows was just ruining it all....I didn't want sad layered with mad. I wanted that reach out and rip your heart out kind of sadness. So, I did what needed to be done. I looked my daughter square in the eye and told her, "Rayna, your family DOESN'T love you. I don't even love you. No one loves you." With that her face crummpled into utter dejected heart-brokeness and I got my pictures. Later, when I told Grant and Lisa how we got such great pictures, they were utterly APPALLED. I tried to defend myself, explaining, "but I was just helping her find her MOTIVATION...that is so crucial for an actress, you know." Well, my FAMILY thinks I'm hideous, but RAYNA understands completely. The INSTANT I put the camera down, she was beaming and couldn't wait to see her "sad pictures" on the compter screen. She just danced through the rest of the day. Of couse she KNOWS her family loves her. And PLENTY of people have made a point of STRESSING that to her in the aftermath of her mother's photo shoot!

Lots going on this week...

Wow! We have been so busy lately! Darcy is playing on a soccer team for the first time this year...and absolutely LOVING every moment of it. Considering that she is a lot smaller than almost everyone else on the team and that she is just learning how to play the game for the first time, it is pretty amazing that she isn't one bit intimidated about jumping into the fray and kicking it out! That child doesn't have a timid bone in her body!

She had her very first game yesterday and her second one today. I had to miss yesterday's game because I was working, but, I got to watch her in action this afternoon! Her coach says she is the best one on the team for playing defense, but, she played the forward position part of the game, too. It was a nerve-rackingly CLOSE game today. Darcy's team (The Prowlers) lost by just one goal. This photo was taken about a week ago...Violet was playing a scrimmage game of soccer with Darcy!



Last Tuesday, the kids and I took a day-trip down to Aurora, MO to visit our dear friend Laura (Lisa's sister)and her son, Tommy. We took little Violet (Lisa's puppy that we have been puppy-sitting) with us. Laura's husband has wanted to get a German Shepherd puppy their whole married life, but Laura hasn't ever wanted one. I think our visit was a pivotal point...by that evening, Laura couldn't wait to get a German Shepherd pup for their family! Violet is a good ambassador for the breed!

Chicago Girl...

Poor Rayna! She hears a phrases she likes and wants to commit to memory for her own use later on, but, somehow, they get a bit garbled in her mind! The latest instance of this is "Chicago Girl"... Last Sunday, Rayna and I had a difference of opinion about how her hair should be fixed for church. Drawing upon my seasoned child psychology skills, I shrugged my shoulders and suggested, "Or...we could style your hair like a COLLEGE GIRL..." Well, of course she enthusiastically bit that one, hook, line, and sinker...and I proceded to fix her hair exactly the way I had wanted to fix it to begin with. A few days later she came to me with a pony tail ring and implored me to please fix her hair "like a Chicago Girl". Needless to say, it took me a few baffling minutes to comprehend what she was asking for!

So, here she is...
The Chicago Girl!





















A little while later, as we were ready to back out of the driveway and head to town, I was amused to see my Chicago Girl in the backseat, obliviously bee-bopping with her MP3 player.

Batman and the Princess meet at the Ballroom!

Doug and Rayna (or should I say Batman and the Princess!) were dancing tonight to the music Darcy and her daddy were playing!

Dancing between Doug and Rayna always involves an inordinate amount of FALLING DOWN!

Home again (for a couple of days)...

Well, this morning we are back home and back to normal life...for another two days at least! Then we will be off to Branson for our family vacation. (The band is contracted to play at Silver Dollar City.) .......Darcy drug Rivie into the house for a few minutes this morning. The pup soaked up the TLC...Darcy says Rivie really missed us while we were away.

A little while later, Rayna wes looking at a book I had made for Darcy when Darcy was three years old. The book is full of pictures of Darcy at the age three and younger. Rayna brought the book to me and declared, "Where is THIS dress, Mommy? I want to wear it!" She was pointing a picture of Darcy wearing her all time favorite dress...the one that Yea Yea had bought her to wear in "Aunt" Fenhua's wedding. I got the dress out and Rayna, ever the diva of princess-fashions, exclaimed with awe as she put it on. Darcy looked up from her dreaded math lesson and protested, "But MOM, that is my FAVORITE dress." I pointed out that since the dress was size TWO, I hardly thought she would be able to wear it again at any point in the near future. Rayna, meantime, though that a photo shoot was in order! So...here are a few bazillion photos of Rayna feeling rather elegant!...

























Here is a scan of the page in the book that inspired Rayna this morning:
Darcy was about three years old in this picture. This is the most expensive dress she has ever had. When her Grandma bought it for her, she STERNLY admonished me, "That is DARCY'S dress...you let her wear it ANYTIME she wants to and anywhere she wants to. If she wants to put that dress on and go out and play in the mud, you LET her!" Thus, it became the least protected, most loved article of clothing Darcy has ever owned. She never wore it to play in a mud pile, but she did wear it all the time to play in...and when she wore it to a friend's birthday tea party and spilled red kool-aide all over it, I did my best to get the stain out, but, when it didn't come completely out, that just made it that much easier for me to let her use the dress as her grandmother had wished for her to use it. She wore it to church a million times (even after it wound up with a faint pink stain) and she wore it around the house even more times. She wore that little dress for three years before it finally got too small for her to fit into any more. And, now Rayna has discovered this magical dress for herself...

(As always, just click on the photo if you want to see an enlarged version of it!)

Suppertime:

Grant suggested we toast bratwursts over a fire tonight when he came home from work. It was a great idea. There just isn't anything quite like the smell of woodsmoke on a Autumn evening!
So, here we are in our front yard cooking our supper next to the driveway!















Our front yard has two less trees now...I managed to burn two trees last Autumn when a fire I had going got a bit out of control. It wasn't until the fire was spreading lickety split through some dead leaves that I discovered the dog had chewed our hose apart and there wasn't any way I could quickly douse the flames. By the time Dad C. had gotten a hose to supplement my furious running back and forth with pans of water, the fire had already blackened two really nice trees. They didn't survive. It was a really windy day when that happened. I should have known better than to burn that day. Oh well...at least we still have quite a few other trees.






...................(Darcy took this photo of the rest of us!)....................