Meet Janet

She's the one on the right. She was Whitney last week, and Annie (not Anne) before that. But I'll still refer to her as Anne.

Quoth she as we walked to school to pick up Claire and saw a man walking toward us:

"Who is that human?"

I didn't know, but was glad she clarified. For a second there I thought she was talking about a car or tree.

When we were in the bathroom brushing her hair:

"Anne, do you want to grow your hair out?" I asked.

"No, I just want jewels."

Whenever she helps me find or make something I say, "Anne, what would I do without you?"

She says, "Uh, panic."

whining time

"Nothing ever fatigues me but doing what I do not like."
~Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

1. Making Claire's tutors' schedules
2. Primary secretary work
3. Claire's therapy
4. Trying (and so far failing) to get our insurance to cover Claire's physical therapy
5. Paying bills
6. Seeing piles of stuff (papers, clothes, etc)
7. Putting away piles of stuff

Anne turned 4!

Get that pinata, Anne!

The joke that never gets old.

I need a new camera--this one doesn't do justice the expression on Anne's face. She's got some killer instinct.

musings

Maybe I'm misremembering, but isn't that skirt I'm wearing an exact replica of the skirt Frauline Maria wore on her way to meet the Von Trapp family? When they all told her how ugly her clothes were? In the mirror, I swear the skirt looked cute. This is one reason I hate pictures. From now on, I am not going to be in any more pictures. Then it won't bother me that pictures are being taken. But look at my hair: thanks to our camera's poor resolution (it was on clearance 10 years ago) you can hardly tell I've been cutting it myself for 8 months.

New topic: I discovered librivox.org recently, a site where you can download audiobooks for free or volunteer to read them into the public domain yourself. I listened to their rendition of Wives and Daughters. Some of the chapters were read by people whose voices were pleasant to listen to; some chapters were read by people whose monotone made me wonder if they were somehow making recordings postmortem. Anyway, back when I had a baby to hold (which was wonderful, don't get me wrong) I would sometimes fantasize about the days when all my kids would be grown and out of the house and how nice it would be. Then I blinked and my son was getting baptized and my youngest was four, and I realized I wasn't in such a hurry for my kids to grow up. And I started getting worried about what I would do with myself when they were. Now I know: I'm going to record books for librivox. Sure, my voice is nasally and maybe I've got no future in radio. But you should see how captivated my kids are when I read stories to them. I think there must be some talent there.

A Good Day

Damon got baptized! He's a good boy and I'm proud of him.

One of these days my hatred for taking pictures is going to finally be conquered by my desire to have pictures. I wish I had taken a picture of these fine folk who were there that day: Grandma Ethel Mae F.; Grandma and Grandpa F.; Lex and Justin; Julie, Scott and Ayda; Lynsey, Marcus, Zannah, and Max; Jen W; Rayna and Mo H; Brothers P and B from the bishopric...Lynsey, you can tell me if I missed anyone.

If you're wondering

A month or three ago, I stopped being angry and bitter about Claire having Asperger's. I was talking with a dear lady on the phone who also has a child with disabilities, and something she said, I can't remember what, finished the 6+ month long process of healing my heart. I still am astounded sometimes when I see a large family with no non-typical children, but I don't curse them and wonder what they did right and I did wrong. I still feel worn down by Claire's therapy, but I'm not angry about it. I feel happy. I accept. I'm grateful to the powers and mercies of Heaven for that.