Now that Genevieve is fully mobile, I kind of can’t believe she was ever anything but moving 100 mph and getting into trouble. She’s my first runner, ironically, and run she does, cackling maniacally while I waddle after her, sometimes pushing harder and faster than a comfortable waddle, to snatch her before she dashes into the street or sprints from playground peripheries. She be crazy. She also be unaware that she isn’t 1. a little boy and 2. 3 or 4 years old. Did an older brother just drop trau and leap into the baby pool? Check. Oh, is somebody building with legos and would like not to be assisted by tiny pounding fists and screaming? Too bad. Choleric baby dictator will see you now.
She’s so fun.
I’m a little leery of how life with #4 is going to unfold for her, at least in the early days, because patience does not seem to be her strong suit. (And I cannot imagine where she gets that…) Also, she frequently physically assaults her long-suffering next in line, John Paul, which he bears manfully. If 3 year olds can participate in redemptive suffering, then the hours he’s logged in a Costco double rider next to her are worth more than gold.
Love him.
Speaking of John Paul, we’ve recently started a little journal with his quotable musings on life as an old man trapped in the body of a preschooler. His one-liners are ridiculous, and his tiny melancholic soul is gifted with a weirdly eternal memory for stuff that happened before I thought kids had memories. Some recent gems, almost always harvested at bedtime in the quiet dark of the boy’s bedroom (and often when I think he’s already asleep):
“Today a mosquito bit me and it messed up my nipples.”
“Mommy, (whispered in a dramatic sotto voce in the Adoration chapel, 34 seconds after we entered), WHY IS JESUS HOLDING A DOLPHIN?”
you get the picture. He’s a fabulous little weirdo.
And then we have master Joseph, the lord and leader of the pack. He’s super sanguine, pushy, determined, and has an endless appetite for human interaction. He’s the extrovert to my introvert, the perpetual motion to my couch inertia (at least lately). And he’s rarely been known to sleep later than 7, no matter how hard he partied the night before. I’m fairly sure he coined Anna’s famous “the sky is awake so I’m awake” line, but I won’t begrudge Disney for it. He enjoys legos, hitting things with sticks, pretending he knows how to read, anything with a screen, (literally anything. When we lived in Rome he used to try to play with ATMs. It was so sad and so funny to the locals) and being naked. I’m super hopeful a 3rd year of preschool will cure him of his propensity for public nudity, but I also have to hand it to him for being consistent. If it’s 60 degrees or warmer, at some point during the day I can be sure I’m going to see his little white cheeks flashing in the sun. Thankfully our backyard fence is adequately tall.
I’m so excited to see who this new little person is, because it seems that we have one of every temperament so far except phlegmatic. And given the fact that I’m still pregnant now into week 39, this could just be the laissez faire offspring I’ve been waiting for.
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