Mom, why is mama’s milk discontinued?

— Éa

Don’t worry: The water on the floor is tears.

— Éa

upon seeing Neighbor Dave at his retirement party at The Tavern…

Scott: Do you know what retirement means?
Ea: Yeah! It means giving up.

Éa, shooting the cereal boxes with her finger, “Patchoo! Patchoo!” Carla remarks that her own gun sound when she was a little girl was equally un-gun sounding while the boys always seemed to have advanced sound machines in their repertoire. Éa responds that her gun shoots sneezes, not bullets. “Patchoo! Patchoo! That’s how it started the Cold War.”

[after Éa enters the room having found a book that had been lost for a year and half]

Carla: Oh, Éa, where did you find it?! Éa: It was where all the lost books are: in a responsible place! 📚

Éa: So when I was on my way home from the park, and old man and an old woman were walking on the path and they said, “Are you all by yourself?” So I told them, “Um, no my mom said my brother and I could go to the park and she’s just right over there,” and I pointed to my house.

Carla: But I didn’t know you were going to the park. You didn’t tell me.

Éa: I know. It was just the easiest way to get a worried old man and and old woman out of my way.

We are ready to send Everett and Oak home. But we’re not. I’m sure these are the typical feelings of a foster parent. Life is going to be different. Quieter. This evening without them because they’re with Mommy and Daddy makes that sure. But as Everett would surely reciprocate, “I will miss you, Everett.” And I will miss you, Oak. We still have three weeks with them, so let’s make them count.

We asked Éa and Sullivan today whether they’d like to foster again. Sullivan said, “I’d like a year.” And Éa said, “Yeah, in like, five thousand weeks.”

A home is fuller if you’re stretched for the sake of relationships. Let us dig in to more people. Let us “love [our] enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return” (Luke 6:35). Then I will live without regret.

Éa: I really like Country Inn & Suits [sic].
Scott: Oh, what do you like about it?
Éa: It has pools. It has Mimi and Grandpa sometimes.

Even though my feet ache, I’m still gonna rock and shake!

— Éa, in the middle of a marathon of energetic dancing at Megan’s wedding

I am grateful for the opportunity to help Janet in her time of need. But I want need not to be! Carla has visited a few times over the past several days because Janet has been loopy because of some medication she is one in connection with her perma-asthma that set in this winter like last. Apparently, MRIs at the hospital today may have revealed lymphoma.

I am grateful for the resilience and emotional maturity Éa displayed upon getting her ears pierced at Ikonic Ink downtown today. It hurt, but she displayed (and was multiply congratulated by onlookers for) stoicism while Miranda the “piercing artist” was doing her work. When it was done, she cried honest, quite-but-unashamed tears in Mommy’s arms. May all my children know what to do with their sadness and pain.

And may more families make family outings at tattoo and piercing parlors?

I am grateful today for a son who grows in maturity and relatability. It was my honor to bring him to Panera this evening to share in a cherry pastry with him. We agreed it’d be good to learn computer programming together as father and son. I set a reminder for myself to look into the best, most child-friendly among the free starter courses that are cropping up seemingly everywhere online these days. We also played chess with a Super Mario set that Schlow Library had on hand.

I am grateful today for the evening of dress-up, make-up, dancing, and bathing together that Carla tells me she and Éa shared. I am glad they got to enjoy one another.

I am grateful for Greg Boyd, whose God at War Travis is reading at my recommendation while I re-read Satan and the Problem of Evil. Travis texted me this evening to chat briefly about how much he enjoyed Boyd’s use of quantum theory in the opening pages.

Scott: Are any of my accents good?
Éa: Well, I don’t like them, so I don’t know.

Scott: So, Sullivan what laws of physics do you know?
Sullivan: Newton’s laws of physics!
Éa: Nudists know all physics?

You know what Miss Leigh calls a picture? “Pitcher.” Picture. Pitcher. She’s a very complicated woman.

— Éa, on a quirk of her teacher’s pronunciation

The Peters gave us a bound copy of Stories of the Supernatural today. And we chased Santa down on Hickory Drive, having come home too late from the Peters’ house to see him from our stoop. And we ate at Olive Garden. And I focused at work! And I (mostly) stayed God’s. And Sullivan got sad about Ponyboy and wanted to take better care of his next fish; he wants to breed gobies. And Éa was upset by Sullivan’s gift of a plastic bow and arrow to her.

Éa is a likable sick person. And Carla is an excellent nurse.

I enjoy watching my family do things I suspect other families do not but which I consider healthy. In this photo, all three of them are leaning out or about to lean out past the boardwalk rail in searching of jewelweed pods ready to pop.

It turns out the seeds are edible!

I am very proud to walk town with my children. Among several reasons that came to mind this evening, Éa insisted we take this photo of this 150-year-old magnolia tree planted by Fred Waring, the northernmost species of magnolia—because she loves her friend whose middle name is Magnolia.

“I’m as warm as a peacock!”

— Éa [context forgotten]

I like Shardas. And FarmFest.

Carla: He looks like the beggar at the Beautiful Gate.
Éa: Who?
Scott: One of the people Jesus healed. One of many.
Éa: Killed?
Scott: HEALED.
Carla: And THAT. is why I don’t want our children to read Bible stories yet.

Carla [upon delivery of Éa’s dessert at Sips Bistro]: Bon appétit!
Éa [correcting her]: Bon appé-YUM!

“Oh…

…I love cheetahs!”

— Éa, in an arrestingly genuine response to the animal-print pajamas Sullivan gave her for Christmas; she had left us because she paused about five seconds between the first and second parts, and her reply wasn’t accompanied by a smile

“I just wanted to tell you that seeing you with your daughter in the store and hearing the way you talk to her has been a gift to me today.”

— a woman in the Giant parking lot this morning at the end of a grocery trip with Éa

Éa, most of these eight swim class evenings you roamed the bleachers while Mom watched. I spectated with her twice, although the second time I came, I mostly meandered through the school lobby with you, appreciating athletic trophies and girls basketball practice with you. You were mesmerized by the girls’ dribbling skills.

Since I’m always looking for lessons, I’ll say the the main lesson I gain from yesterday evening is that there is value to meandering with someone. I felt closer to you, Éa, because of the twenty minutes we spent ambling through the North Building lobby.

Sullivan, You enjoyed yourself in the water very much. And you made friends easily, including Lily, a fellow Houservillian with purple hair with whom you always ran out ahead of Mom and Lily’s grandma after class was over and you were heading home.