September

The birthday girl, not confused about how old she is,
 just doubly excited to be four

I always make it a point to get a picture with the birthday child,
to make up for avoiding the camera the rest of the year.

The Daines ladies are featured heavily in this post because September is the birthday month for Antonia and Eve both. And also, it turns out that, in the entire month of September, I only took pictures on those two days. So there's that.

People often ask about Antonia's name. Her name is partly inspired by a literary character from Willa Cather's My Antonia, a favorite book and a favorite character of mine. Here's a excerpt from the book, a description of Antonia, if you're not familiar:

She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true. I had not been mistaken....[She] still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one’s breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions. It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.

The older Antonia gets, the more it surprises me to see how much she has in common with her namesake. She's generally cheerful, not at all self conscious, irrepressible and just brimming with "a relish for life," in the words of Willa Cather. Gosh, I love the girl. I'm super excited to watch her grow up and to see what she'll be like. Except for maybe the years between 12 and 16...

We don't really do birthday parties in our family, so we always let the birthday child pick breakfast, lunch and dinner, at a restaurant, if desired. For her birthday, Antonia wanted to eat hot dogs at Costco for lunch, like the classy lady we have raised her to be. She also picked a pink (strawberry) birthday cake and salad and corn for dinner. My favorite part of the day was when Charlie gave her the present he had picked out and paid for with his own money. He managed to find something she would love without spending more of his money than he wanted, and isn't that what perfect gift-giving is all about? Also, there's nothing better than the sweet way that Antonia says "thank you" to the gift giver. I hope Charlie appreciated that as well.

It's obvious that Antonia and Dorothea
have been practicing their beauty queen smiles...

Lovely quilt, made by the talented Grandma Geri

"What do you mean 'Let's not give Eve any cake until HER birthday?!'

"Please, mum, could I have some cake?"

Random picture

Sometimes when I tell people that Eve's birthday is September 11th, I get the feeling it is considered unfortunate to have that birthday. But really, haven't terrible things happened in history on just about any day of the calendar? Let's put things in perspective, folks.

A birthday tradition that I have been rather sporadic about is snapping some photos of the birthday child first thing in the morning. Probably because when they get older they tend to be the ones getting ME out of bed, and not the other way 'round

Who wouldn't want to jump out of bed to come running in to see this face at the crack of dawn.? This picture has all the makings of a good meme. Maybe something like "I'm happy AND angry" or "I have pretty features." 

Anyway, Eve didn't really have any opinions about how to spend her birthday, so I picked for her. And what I picked was: donuts. But first, we had a cool rainstorm, and the kids wanted to play in it. Rain is kind of a big deal around here.

I don't really think that Krispy Kreme has the best donuts (if you've been to Friendly's in Henderson, you probably know what I'm talking about) but I DID think the kids would enjoy seeing the donuts made. Which they did, a little bit, until all they wanted to do was eat them.

mmmmmm.....

Charlie commemorated the occasion--with a small typo--on
the in-house Krispy Kreme chalkboard.

So instead of a birthday cake/smash cake, we gave Eve a donut with a candle in it. And here's what happened:  I put a party hat on her. She tried to pull it off, but the little elastic strap got stuck under her double chin, so every time she tried to pull the hat off, it snapped back and thwacked her in the face. She cried. We laughed at her for longer than was probably decent, then I took the hat off. We lit the candle and she cried, because all my children vehemently hate and fear fire. After singing and eating donuts we sat her down on the floor to unwrap her presents. She became VERY upset when I tried to help her open them, and kept pushing my hand away. She burst into tears when I tore the wrapping paper open a little bit. Eventually she discovered the toys underneath the wrapping paper, at which point she FINALLY started to enjoy her birthday.

The ball popper (which replaced the previous model that was killed by love) was a HUGE hit

Quotable quotes:

Me: Antonia, you need to give that back to Charlie. You didn't ask if you could take it.
Antonia:  I DID ask. He said no. That's why I'm just taking it.

Me: (After hearing that there was a man living in the attic of our chapel for several months) That exact thing happened in a book I read! Only the guy in the book was a--
Will:  Hunchback?
Me: I was going to say jewel thief...

(Driving into Twin Falls, Idaho)
Antonia: Ewwww, it smells like dinosaurs.
Me: What do dinosaurs smell like?
Antonia: Fish.

Antonia: Mom! I can hear my heart beeping!

And a few random things (filler) to round out this post:
-Antonia likes to watch herself cry in the mirror. She can't cry on command, just if she happens to be crying already, she'll go and stand on the toilet so she can see herself in the mirror, while continuing to cry.
-My ishuffle went through an entire cycle in the washing machine and came out totally unscathed. And that's my ringing endorsement for ishuffles.
-Instead of learning to crawl like normal babies, Antonia decided to be unconventional in her mode of transportation, like her sister before her.  August/September marked the beginning of the Era of Bum Scooting, of which there will be a video demonstration posted here sometime soon. Stay tuned!
-Eve started to say a few words, mainly "uh-oh" and "deet-do" (thank you) and do a few signs