little black journal

We got back this evening from a quick trip down to Portland for some quality time with my brother and his family.  And oooooh, girlies, why do you have to grow so fast?  Morgan and Elise continue to surprise us with how quickly they change, and while I get so much joy out of seeing them develop into little people with strong personalities and opinions and adorable little mannerisms, I also wish I could freeze time between visits, so that I don’t miss all the sweet moments in between.

Elise is still the same funny, strong-willed, giggling kid, but she’s chatting so much more now, using words to describe feelings or memories or the wild contents of her imagination.  She was singing a song this morning with a lyric that contained the word “bask” – she paused after this line to explain to me very matter-of-factly that bask means “to sit in the sun”.  Quite the vocabulary on that girl.  And don’t even bother trying to do the secret spelling thing around her (should we go to the P-A-R-K, or let her watch a M-O-V-I-E?) – she wasn’t fooled for a second.  She loves books almost as she loves the P-A-R-K, and she spent much of yesterday evening bouncing between Shane’s and my laps while we worked our way through her stack of library books.  She also loves her Uncle Shane somethin’ fierce.  And I can’t blame her – he really is the best kind of playground partner.

And Morgan… sweet, sweet Morgan.  That girl has my heart wrapped around her little finger.  She does this thing where she shrugs her shoulders while tilting her head and wrinkling that little nose and you can’t stop yourself from scooping her into your arms and kissing those soft baby cheeks.  She’s already got an imagination to match her sister’s, as she was pulling invisible food out of her toy car last night, holding it up to my mouth and making smacking noises with her lips as a cue for me to eat whatever kind of tasty meal she had prepared in her mind.  Our cuddle sessions are fewer and farther between, as she wants to constantly be on the go, but when she holds her arms out to you and lets you cradle her against your chest, you feel like the luckiest person in the world.

I suppose I can accept that growth and change and the loss of baby-hood is inevitable – the big brown eyes on these little ladies will still forever win me over.