Emry and Ethan

It’s been a while since I blogged about my kids. Not that they’re not always up to something. Although, fortunately, they haven’t attempted to cover the basement with powder again. But my Tupperware is usually all over my kitchen floor…courtesy of Ethan.

Everything out of place around here is usually courtesy of Ethan. Because while he might have dozens of toys, not one of them is quite as fun as pulling Mama’s books off her shelf, pulling the nightlight out of the wall, yanking the towels off the oven door, reaching for things I could have sworn were out of reach, playing with whatever Emry has and, generally, getting into everything! He is constant movement. And now that he takes more steps every day, I am foreseeing a very busy summer on my part. I’ll put in just as many miles chasing him as I will on morning runs.

In other news, Ethan finally has one front tooth. We have been able to see the two front teeth through the gums for over a month now, but one finally popped in. I’m hoping this second one is soon to follow. Ethan is no fun when he’s not feeling himself. He’s clingy and over-miserable. A little bit like his Papa. And I’m not catering to that…because I am simply not the mother who will feel sorry for him forty years from now when he calls to tell me he’s unwell. Nor am I giving him over to a wife to act like that. Because I know how that is – not fun.

Emry is fast approaching three, which is sometimes hard to believe. Everyday she comes up with something new. Her imagination grows. More and more pieces in her little world are put together to make bigger pictures. For Christmas, Unc gave her a Little People Cinderella castle with Cinderella and Rapunzel. She has seen Tangled, so I got Cinderella for her from the library. She loved it. This movie introduced a wedding to her world when Cinderella marries her prince at the end. Trying to explain marriage and weddings, I got out the photo album from Ed’s and my wedding. The first time we looked through it, she could not understand why she was not in any of the pictures. I tried to explain she wasn’t born yet, but that didn’t make a lot of sense to her. Instead, she decided there must be a photo album somewhere of when Emry got married.

It’s moments like these when communication completely breaks down. In her mind, Emry is big. So, telling her one gets married when they are bigger doesn’t make sense. In her mind, Emry has always been around. So, explaining to her yet again that Emry was born after Mama and Papa got married also makes no sense. I wanted to use this moment for “instruction in righteousness”.  To plant the seeds of the importance of marriage, the order of marriage and family, the foundation she may not understand now but, Lord willing, will treasure in the future. As usual, it’s hard to tell how much my not-quite-three-year-old was understanding. So I asked a very pertinent question:

“Emry, who did you get married to?”

Without missing a beat, she stated in her that’s-a-stupid-question-mama-voice, “A man.”

And my heart rejoiced.