Girl Child

The quality of this snapshot is lacking, but I post it because of Piper's expression.  She asks to hold Aidan many times a day, and I'll catch her gazing at him with the truest love.  I love seeing in my children qualities I didn't have as a child.  I played with dolls for hours and had great affection for my "babies," but I grew up sandwiched between brothers and neighbor-boy-cousins.  One sister was too old, the other too young, and I had no regular playmates who were girls.  I was a thrill-seeker and a madcap, as rough-and-tumble as any of them, and took great pride in scrapes, bruises, and scars-- the badges and medals of a tomboy.  I planned to grow into a circus clown or a globe-trotting old maid and never once recall telling my mother that I wanted to get married (yuk!) when I was big so that I could have babies.  Several of my girls tell me this, though, and I know better now.

The life of a circus clown has nothin' on this.