Home for Thanksgiving

It has been a huge blessing to be able to be home for Thanksgiving…even if that does mean a full house of ten adults, four kids, two cats and four dogs. I’m not sure which group is causes the most ruckus. I mean, it’s not the dogs or the four kids bringing home the Nerf machine guns!

We drove out to Indiana on Friday, making good time. Abby and her little Benny (8 months) have been here for the weekend. Katey and her two boys Jay (age 3) and Curtis (7 months), plus my grandfather, joined us Monday. Emry is the only little girl among her boy cousins. I think she’s also the smallest of them all, even if Benny and Curtis are a year or more younger. For while she’s taller than the youngest two, she weighs in about the same. Curtis doesn’t bother her (he’s smiling and easy-going), but Benny can be a bit aggressive. He doesn’t mean to be, of course…he simply wants to grab, touch, push, yank and pull up on anything. Jay is at least twice her size, being large for his age, but he loves “Aggie”. And “Aggie” loves following him around, happy to be a part of whatever the bigger kid is playing.

If she’s not following Jay around, she’s following one of the dogs or cats. The cats and Aunt Grace’s old Golden Retriever Keats are her favorite to follow about for they don’t turn around and suddenly lick her or knock her off her feet. She’s busy all day long, happily roaming about Grandma and Grandpa’s huge house, playing with the different toys and eating her weight in Clementines.

Meanwhile, Ed gets to sleep as late as he wants and nap as he wills. I get to play Scrabble and Rubikub. And we all get to enjoy a creative Thanksgiving meal, which is what happens when the oven gives out Tuesday afternoon. We quickly learn that you can make both stuffing and sweet potatoes in the crockpot. And we’re all thankful for Caleb’s girlfriend who let us use her oven to bake the pies, rolls and other things today. So, it will be a wonderful Thanksgiving meal tomorrow – a good ending to a week at home.

“Aggie” and Cousin Jay at the playground.

Emry and her Great-Grandfather Sturm.

Emry – the future artist.

 Emry and Jay drawing on Aunt Jenny’s “special wall” while Curtis and Benny provide the musical accompaniment.

My Friends

I don’t believe I was a lonely child – even when I was an only child. I’ve always been happy by myself, content to play whatever game I could find (usually to do with sorting something). So why I called my collection of Little People “my friends”, I’m not sure. But even the box Mom put them in was marked “Melissa’a Friends”.

I am happy to say that Little People were one of 2016 inductees into the National Toy Hall of Fame. They were my favorite toys when I was small. The National Toy Hall of Fame accredits their popularity (since their creation in 1959) to the small reality they bring to a child’s world. They allow children to play in miniature versions of farms, houses, schools, airports and lots of other things. And while this is very likely true, my favorite dynamic of these toys is that they can be so neatly organized.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I was a strange kid. Just ask my younger sister Katey. If we played with “my friends”, set up time was a half hour max. Why? Well, each item had to be sorted into piles – chairs in one, tables in another, vehicles in a third and people arranged by age and sex. After this fun part was done, everything had to be evenly separated between Katey and I. Only after this meticulous process was complete could playtime begin. Tedious? Let’s just say I taught Katey patience…

I was more than sorely disappointed when Little People changed. Apparently, my small little figures (the same ones Emry and her cousins now play with at Grandma and Grandpa’s house) were choking hazards. At first, Fisher Price made the “little” people bigger. (I’m sure that did not prevent any child from putting them in their mouths, but you know….) Then they started to resemble people – really short, fat, round people that were no longer one color but actually wore something resembling clothes. The ones that live in Emry’s house, and barn, and Christmas village are very cute little people with unique haircuts, facial features and outfits. I honestly think they are quite cute and love watching Emry play with them….however, they aren’t very handy if you want to sort them into categories of color, age and sex. Personally, I think that is quite sad. Emry, who is very good at cleaning up her toys but doesn’t sort anything, could care less. She just loves to play with her “people”.

19 Months

I’ve gotten so use to saying “18 months” when someone asked how old Emry is, it’s a bit surprising even to me that she is actually 19 months now. I know, that’s not a big difference (although it might be when you’re as young as she is), but it makes me realize that soon I won’t be counting her age in months anymore – all too soon I will be counting years.

18 months has been a huge time of growing and learning new things for our little girl. Not in size so much for we still wear 12-month clothes but in every other way. She walks about quite well now. Honestly, it doesn’t mean she gets into anything more than she did crawling and pulling up – it simply means her things are scattered about in every room of the house. Thankfully, she’s good about putting them away when I tell her it’s time to. She even knows where they all go.

That’s fun to. Her vocabulary has grown considerably. While she doesn’t string more than two or maybe three words together, she can communicate better. (Not perfectly, of course, as we work a lot on the asking for something versus whimpering for it.) And she understands us. I can tell her to go to a particular room and she knows where to go. I can tell her to fetch me something and she knows what to bring. She’s relating things to one another in her little world. She’s sees a picture in her books and points to the things she owns that are the same. One book reminds her of another on her shelf she pulls out to read. When we say it’s time to go to church, she says, “Silas!” (A little boy in her class.) And when I pull out the hymnal to sing, she immediately begins her rendition of “Holy, Holy, Holy”. (Which is pronounced “’Oly, ‘Oly, ‘Oly”.)

Of course the biggest thing is realizing that she is watching. Always watching. I was in the kitchen the other day, and in she comes with her thermometer in her hand, holding it to her ear like a phone and jabbering away to whomever was on the other end. She loves to talk on her “phone”, walking all around as she does so. “Just like you,” Ed told me. “You do know you walk all over this house when you’re on the phone.” Yes, I know…

She also covers up her stuffed animals with her blankets, takes them to the potty (we’ve just started the potty training process, slowly until we get back from Thanksgiving) and hugs and kisses them. She carries her little ball bag around on her arm, as frustrated at it as I am at my bag because it never stays up on my shoulder.

But today she did something I expected would come about in time. I had left my phone on my chair, so she grabbed it this morning while I was in the bathroom putting my contacts in. When she brought it into the bathroom, holding it up to me (which usually means she needs help finding the pictures of herself), I realized it was talking. Since it sounded like two people talking, I thought she had somehow gotten into one of the music apps and turned on some radio broadcast. (She has turned on the music before.) The problem was, she had tried once too often to put my passcode in (which she doesn’t know – she just hits numbers), so I was locked out for a minute. I decided just to put the phone aside when I heard a, “Hello? Hello? Melissa?” I picked it up. “Hello?” I wondered who in the world I was talking to. It was my Aunt Lynn. And I wasn’t just talking to her – I was facetiming her. Because I couldn’t get into my phone I couldn’t see her, but she could see me (in all my radiant I haven’t brushed my hair or gotten out of my pajamas splendor). And because Emry had somehow Facetimed Lynn, Lynn couldn’t hang up…and I was locked out of my phone. So, we chatted for a few minutes until I could get back into my phone and say good-bye. And we all had a good laugh…but how Emry did that, well, I simply don’t know.

It's Over!!!!!

If you look at a political map of Pennsylvania, I lived in that little blue area out west surrounded by all the red. I guess that’s as it should be since Pittsburgh (which is the entirety of Allegheny county) is a blue-collared Union city. Here, even the Republicans run as Democrats.

I have voted in many different states. I have seen lots of different things at the polls. In New Hampshire, you can easily run into one of your dozen local reps at your polling place – shaking hands, wearing different political buttons, gossiping. In Texas, I once had to e-mail the Secretary of State’s office to file a complaint when my polling station didn’t open on time because they were having trouble with their machines. (Legally they have to open on time and do paper ballots until the machines are working again.) There must be a law in Pennsylvania about campaigning outside of polling stations because you never seen anyone, only signs. But voting yesterday was certainly my most exciting adventure at the polls yet.

The polls are less than a mile away, so Emry and I jogged over. When I arrived, I thought a couple of police officers from the station across the way were simply coming over to vote. Guess not. They were actually coming over to possibly remove a purple-haired lady from the premises. Said purple-haired lady (and I don’t mean that like “little old blue-haired lady”, I mean – literally – bright purple mixed in with dark black) was causing a bit of a ruckus, declaring “we/they/whoever” were suppressing her right to vote. Since one of the voting officials was having to attend to her (she was presently on the phone talking to the secretary of state’s office insisting that she was registered even though she apparently had no card to prove it), the line moved a bit slow. For the next ten minutes, I was thankful Emry isn’t quite old enough to stare at purple-haired ladies who shout one minute about their rights, speak perfectly rationally the next as if trying to understand the situation and then burst out into teary sobs right after that. Truly, it was quite a scene. Just not enough for the cops to drag her off – for she wasn’t truly harming anyone, simply embarrassing herself. That was around 10:30. When Ed dropped by the polls an hour later, she was still there… Maybe there’s something to our Founding Fathers restricting voting privileges to people of  “a sound mind”.

Aside from that, it was not a thrilling day of voting. Even some of the Democrats I work with stared at their ballots wondering if they should vote for the person they really don’t like over the person they really, really don’t like. Of all the offices on the Pennsylvania ballot for our district, only one did I vote for with a happy, clear conscious. The rest I may as well have closed my eyes and eenie-meenie-miny-moed.

But, Ed was right. Just to have voted and have it over with was a relief. And we certainly weren’t the only ones who felt that way. Even though I know some of my workmates voted for Hillary, even they were more relieved today than upset. For, it’s over. It’s decided. It’s done. And regardless of the outcome, God remains on His sovereign throne. In the end, what more do we need?

The prayer that moves the arm of God is still a bruised and battered prayer, and only moves His arm because the sinless One, the great Mediator, has stepped in to take away the sin of our supplication.   – Charles Haddon Spurgeon