emmy's here!

And since she is so nice, she is doing origami with Suzanne, Sonja, and Jonathan.



Paul is working on Ashley's room. He is putting the door on, so she can sleep in there tonight, even though the carpet is not down yet...the padding is there though. And she has a nice air mattress.



The two little girls are "helping" him. I am taking a break after doing major chores today: I took all the hampers out of the laundry room and sorted clothes....sorted and washed and dried and put away....then I made stew for dinner.



My Camille has a cold. That means she has gone back to being two years old for a while. She still "want you, Mama", quite frequently but when she doesn't feel so great, she wants me more. So I don't mind.



Tomorrow Mirielle has a dentist appointment, and she is going to bring Ashley to register for classes at the college she goes to. I have an appointment tomorrow too, so I will bring the two little girls.



I hate when I spend so much time doing something like sorting laundry and organizing one room, then look at the rest of the house. It doesn't just freeze and stand still while I am busy, no new messes are created continuously. Charlotte Claire took advantage of my busy-ness to take some Little People playsets out of her closet. Her room...oh my goodness...she just messes more than she is capable of picking up...she enjoys herself in there, to put it nicely. The two little girls are very happy, they play dollies and Barbies and house and store and Candyland and matching games and playdough....they make me dizzy sometimes. They ARE getting older, so today I made them pick up the Bendaroos before they could have a candy. No, I didn't exactly bribe them...I was having a few caramels and they wanted some....



Right now Camille has a dollhouse camper packed up with people, with a car on the roof, and she is crawling all over the livingroom pushing it around. She is being the voices of the people, and in her polka dotted party dress, she is looking cute.



Mirielle reminded me today of a part in the movie, "The Family Stone"....the mother woke up in the morning, went into the kitchen, and the coffee pot was empty. Her son's fiance had just taken the last cup, and before she thought about it, the mother said, "What? there is supposed to be coffee when I get up!!" And the fiancee stammered that she was just about to make another pot, and the mother said, "Oh, it's fine..." We told Ashley that lots of things like that would probably happen....I told her that when she tell the younger kids to knock it off, I will know she feels at home. Or when someone steals her spot on the couch and she stands there and snaps her fingers and tells them NO WAY, she will feel at home. I desparately want her to feel at home here. She is going to be for such a long time....



The interesting thing is that I wish I could magically transform myself into a totally longsuffering and patient and softspoken mother. A mother who never ever demands to know who was responsible for drinking the last of the orange juice and leaving the carton on the counter, a mother who just picks up the dirty socks without interrogating the boys to find out who left them there. A mother who would never think of embarrassing her children by enquiring who forgot to flush the toilet, or who used the rest of the toilet paper and didn't replace it. Because it is inevitable that one of these times it will be ASHLEY who was the perpetrator, and I am going to feel like an idiot....



But that perhaps will be the moment that defines her feeling at home.



At any rate, I shall work on thinking before I speak. I have noticed that we humans tend to fear people more than we fear God. If God was standing in the kitchen when I discovered that orange juice carton, I would certainly just humbly crush it and gargbage it myself.

Well, Jonathan is getting his homework folder out for me to see......