Stages

You know his name. It's quite important to us. But for privacy purposes, we're sending the rest of his life story as "Tummy".

Since we're so far apart, I'm sending a report on which stage each child is in. It has been fun to look at these stages because we can all relate somehow.

Tummy, as did all of his siblings at this age, is getting bigger. It's hard to say he's getting taller when the only noticeable progress has been to his girth. We're very proud of him, for no other growth is more natural or expected - especially for a mix of our two families. We thought without mother's milk, he'd be leaner, but our babies just come out ready to pack it in. Tummy takes one nap a day that is longer than 2 hours. It starts at 1am and lasts until 6am if we're lucky. Using formula and tag teaming, it's not as bad as it sounds. He tries desperately at this age to catch with his only controllable tool (his mouth) the two limbs swinging at him during the day, and hates a messy diaper. The clothes makers are WAY off on their prediction of what age their outfits are for and we're starting a grass roots campaign to remedy that. Tummy is particularly frustrated that he only gets to wear an outfit 2 or 3 times before it's shipped to a lucky relative.

Chewy is still Chewy. Only our Chewy's much more aggressive than Solo's Chewy. He hits, he pushes, he taunts and he climbs. He's as daring as a paratrooper and as remorseful as a wild bull who just bucked a rookie cowboy off his back. He plays so hard and I think Tummy's taking naps FOR him! There is no other explanation of how he can keep going as he does. He knows how to pronounce every vowel, but has a favorite consonant, "d". When we wrestle, he doesn't say, "Do it again Daddy!" He says, "Do dadden, Daddy!" So we give him more phrases so we can see how it sounds in all "d"s. Really, we're the creative ones, not him! He hasn't learned that volunteering himself can be a bad thing. So when we ask who had the cookies saved for Dad (who didn't get any while at work), he'll raise his hand in sheer joy that he's part of someone's conversation. Another example is if I get the kids cheering about fun things we want to do on a Saturday. I've got them all raising their hands at every suggestion, and then I ask who wants to jump of a cliff and he'll raise his hand in jubilation, and then realize no one else wants to do it. He'll now express something and we'll all look at each other and see who would be willing to translate!

Jojo Chavez fits all my theories. I believe he's calm because his older sibling was a girl. At 5 he is interested in fixing things because his dad gives him a few minutes with the broken item before showing what needs to be done. He's a pouter right now, but he's also a morning person. If I want a buddy at 6am, I go wake up that little guy (no, I don't really wake him up at that time, but the theory has been proven). Jojo Chavez is so very fair, so very equal, so very easy to hurt, because we'll arrive at one of his and Chewy's many squabbles and blame the older, wiser brother, when really, with any investigation at all, we'd find in 90% of the situations, it's Chewy. (If we ever get to living in Utah, watch out cousins!!!) Back to Jojo, the poor kid always defaults to the hard, slow way of doing things and it drives his parents nuts. We give him time with a task assigned but after awhile we just can't stand it anymore and we show him how painful his chore is to us! He always returns a smile with the lesson taught and digs in with the new way. That is what Jesus meant when he said to become like a little child.

Maggy is golden. She's perfect. Maybe not perfect, she is missing teeth and she did get a word misspelled once last year on her spelling test. Yeah, I'm serious, her imperfections are that ridiculous. We're sitting with the missionaries after dinner and every answer she gives them about the gospel is textbook. In primary today, she was selected as primary star and her favorite things were read. The primary president asked her to explain an odd answer she gave for a time she'd felt the Spirit. She explained that once her family was driving around looking for dad (to cheer him on) who was on a long run training for the marathon. She prayed he'd call and he called Mom's cell phone. Every public comment she makes, every picture she takes, every desire she has, is in the right place. How long can I reasonably expect this to last? There are drawbacks though. She is a daddy's girl. Whatever I say goes because she wants to please me, and it drives her mother crazy. If I voice my opinion about something before her, she will assume that opinion. She loves losing teeth and she loves to dance and sing and is now practicing the piano - uh keyboard, officially. She has unspokenly figured out about Santa, but doesn't think we know she knows. So all three of us oldest continue talking like Ol' Saint Nick's coming next year - what you'll do to not spoil the magic!

Hope you enjoyed these stages. They won't last long in life, but now they'll last on paper. We wish you a Happy Chinese New Year (very important to Dill, which makes it important to us) and we'll let you guess which animal represents each of us from the Chinese horoscope.