Gwen climbed into bed. It was early and Joe had left to go hunting. She snuggled up on Joe's side of the bed and said to me, "I love you as big as this room" in her unmistakable raspy voice. Without opening my eyes, I immediately thought of one of our favorite books Guess How Much I Love You and played along. "I love you as big as our house" I said. I expected her to go on and pick something bigger to tell me how she loved me more, but she stopped there. She seemed pleased as punch to be loved as much as a house and that suited her just fine.
She asked me if I would tell her 5 stories from when she was a baby. So I did. I told her how she use to sleep with everything under the sun in her crib when she was Henry's age. And how we decided on her name. I told her about her bald little head and how she didn't have hair like William when she was born. I told her how we left her when she was 15 months old and took a trip to Hawaii and how she didn't want me when I finally came home. When I was through telling her her stories, she said, "Read me another one."
I love it when she asks me to read her her stories. As if the stories I tell are written somewhere. They aren't exactly written anywhere. Some are. But most of the stories are just ones that I've committed to memory.
I love it when my children ask me to read them "their" stories. I try to make moments and look for opportunities to share with them stories about them. The other night I walked into the girls room to tell them that it was time to close their eyes. They had been playing with one another (each in their own bed, in the dark, without any toys) for about an hour and it was getting late.
{As a little side note, I lo-ove listening to them play at night after we've put them to bed. I never tell them to not talk to one another. I want them to have their time, just the two of them. And they have the most fun. We're not there. Their brothers aren't there. They play and talk and imagine and laugh. It honestly makes me so happy, because I know they are creating wonderful memories just as Bryn and I did.}
Anyway, when I walked into their bedroom late that night, I got to telling them some of "their" stories. I shared the story of the first time I put Gwen in her crib in the same room as Gabs. It was during the day, for their naps. Gabs was barely two and Gwen was only a few months old. I left the door slightly open so I could peek in and see what was going on. I stood at the door, nervous for how things would go. After a while, Gwen started to fuss. From where I was standing, looking through the cracked door, all I could see was chubby Gabriella standing in her crib. She was looking at little Gwen swaddled in a blanket across the room in her own crib. Then, with her little pointer finger she wagged it at Gwen and said, "Beeee patient. Beeee patient." in the sweetest, sternest two year old voice I've ever heard. Obvious to me, she was repeating to her sister what I had been saying to her many times in the months since Gwen was born.
I had the girls cracking up at this story. They loved hearing it. It made my day to sit and tell them one of their stories and laugh with them.
Then I thought about those words, "be patient". Oh, how patient Gwen is. She is so patient and so content. She is understanding and easy going. She has so many qualities that I wish I had. I admire her independence and her confidence. She's not afraid to be different. She doesn't care if it's "yellow" day at school-she'll wear black and be perfectly proud of it. She's creative and fun. She has an imagination that is always running wild. Infact, we had a birthday party for one of her stuffed animals the other day, because she declared at breakfast that he was turning three.
I am looking forward to telling her more stories from when she was four. How, when I go to check in on her at night, she always has the covers up over her head. And how she insists on wearing the shortest little shorts. Even in the dead of winter, she'd rather have her tiny little shorts on. I'll tell her how she was the only one who could get William to really, truly, belly laugh over and over again. I'll tell her that she loved meat and would request "some of daddy's deer" for dinner. I'll tell her about the fancy tricks she did on her Razor like no hands, and one leg wrapped around the bar, or her leg extended out behind her while she glided down the sidewalk with her eyes closed.
If I could, I would pause Gwen just as she is right now. She is a joy. She is patient. And Gwen, I actually love you as big as all the houses in the whole world put together.
