Bits and Pieces Form the Whole

This Moment
Sigh. If only all things that dropped or spilled onto the living room floor were Easter nerds, I'd have even less need for a vacuum. The girls are eating them, not me! You and your silly notions.... [crunch, crunch].... I'm eating the honey whole wheat bread I finally made yesterday after a week of avoidance, and it's a bit dense, hence the crunching noise.

Last Night
I am a light sleeper.

When we first moved to town, it took me nearly a year, even with draped blankets and heavy curtains, to easily fall asleep with the leftover light spilling into our room. When we moved to this place, sandwiched between two railroad tracks, I adjusted again. If my mind a'whirl cooperates, I can now fall asleep seamlessly enough with these sounds and lights, but I find that I'm still a light sleeper in all other regards.

After John soundly whomped me in a few board games before bed...
In the deep hours of last night, I came halfway back from Slumberland to hear a delicate thumpity-thump-thump (my girl is too robust for pitter-pats and prefers to thump instead, of which dissatisfied, downstairs Frances is wont to "remind" us from time to time). Five minutes later, I walked through the river to Awake and noticed a bright bathroom light. (Yet another advantage of our small apartment-- from any room, I immediately know where the girls are and in what mischief they are mired.) So, I heaved myself off the mattress and stumbled to the bathroom, where I found a Nixie Pixie, bare cheek to bare floor, sound asleep next to the light she'd just turned on.

A bit after returning to bed, I was roused by the same. That little Walker had slept her way to the bathroom again! Finally abed, I fell asleep to the rhythm of Millie's and Annie's breath, the grunts of the Bird, and my dearest Heart, murmering in his sleep, "I'll teach you how to play...." What a beautiful night to be family. Surrounded by their night noises, even when a touch of a nuisance, brings comfort just the same.

The Few Days Behind
Spring trawls through town and scatters green and growing in her wake. We've been outside enough this past week to give even a normal-complexioned person a sunburn. I had mine after the first half an hour outside, and now, instead of pasty white, I'm a pleasant shade of faded salmon.

The girls and I walked out of our scruffy railroad town into the gilded halls of Lancaster a few days ago. (Depew isn't quite Lancaster's ugly step-sister, but she certainly is the working girl of the family. John calls us Lancaster's ghetto...) Spring in town is a singular thing, not appearing with the same subtlety as it does in the country. Birdsong explodes almost without warning and trees are in full blossom just after one first notices the buds. (Except for this year, the buds arrived before winter ended, and they've been hanging around, ears tuned for the step of spring.)

Last night after John came home, we went out before supper for a walk across four footbridges to reach a Lancaster park. At the playground, we met a mother and her children. When the mother, to prevent the careless words he'd heard before, explained that her son was autistic, I replied that Millie certainly wouldn't care or even notice. She rarely gets a chance to play with children her own age, I explained, so she loves any chance to. Plus, she's a bit kooky. Sure enough, as the boy careened about with barely repressed atomic energy and making noises of excitement, Millie pursued his sister, oblivious to the obvious fact that the girl did not particularly care for a huffing, puffing shadow and was trying to lose her. If a half-hearted observer had seen this scene, he may have thought there were two autistic children running about.

And now, with the advent of spring, Millie calls herself "Sally Millie Forsythia." Wherefrom the Sally? I've no idea.

An Extra-- In praise of Susannah Wren...
She is the amazing baby. Millie and Annie (both chubby) woke me up so many times each night for bedtime meals that I stopped counting after a week or so. Equally chubby Susannah, on the blessed other hand, sleeps soundly and wakes me only once. This is especially nice now that she's begun falling asleep by 10:30. Three cheers for the wee-est!

Post Script
Just this moment, while eyeing the bag of grass seed, Millie innocently asked that if grass seed spilled (by itself, mind you) all over our living room floor, if grass would grow there. Perhaps the vacuum will yet be needed, after all...

P.P.S.
True distress is having a long, rubber snake, whose head just gave up the ghost after too many violent twirlings, coupled with a mother who says that it cannot be properly mended with scotch tape.