Hallelujah, Part 2

Happy

    Maxine and Simone and their parents came to stay with us after Christmas.  I was happily busy for weeks getting ready: shopping for toys and crafts and clothes from the resale store, making up princess beds, and collecting  lots of picture books.  On Sunday morning I waited eagerly for the sound of their voices in the driveway.  Courtney arrived with the girls after a week with her family in Los Angeles.  David came in later that day from Austin.

Courtney meets Mutt Leigh

Three nappers

     We had only a short time with Courtney; she left that evening for her flight back to Texas.  She and Judy caught up, we opened presents, and her friend Christopher came for dinner.     Meanwhile, Simone discovered the basket full of rhythm shakers and Maxine organized a rehearsal for the first of many shows.  "After I say bop bop you say bop bop,"  she directed.  Simone reminded me "Where's your instrument?"  Simone kept the beat and contributed her bop bops while Maxine sang and danced all over the kitchen.

At the playground

Quiet times

      Simone loves to sing.  She will do it for an audience, singing ABCD or Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.  She also sings to herself,  fa la la la la, or away in a manger . When she sees someone noticing her, she checks out the observers' face to see  whether she should perform or continue unselfconsciously. When Judy was a playing a video of her friend Holly singing, Simone scurried to put on her "pretty dress" (a ballerina outfit) so that she could dance and hum along with the music.
     On Monday we went to the local aquarium, where we were able to touch  sharks and manta rays.  Simone, age 2 and half, was impressed with the octopus: "Octopus turned into a rock," she reported to David's friend Mary Szybist, who presented us with broadsides of her poem about an octopus, The Lushness of It.

Texans in an Oregon cold snap

    We had saved the big box that our new washing machine came in, and that  become the girls' house.  We put a light and a mirror in it, and they stuffed the box with the two large shopping bags of  of  Christmas loot they'd brought from California. They played there for hours. Like true Americans, they had to make  auxiliary storage units for their stuff so that Maxine could sleep in the box one night.

Simone rings the dinner bell

Can I really touch a shark?

With Grandma Judy

      It was too cold to spend much time outdoors, but we did manage a short stint at a playground and a trip to the sock store.  Maxine chose purple  socks with guitars on them, and Simone chose red ones with sock monkeys.  I was surprised at David's choices of colorful striped socks.  He showed me the orange printed ones he was wearing.  Who could have guessed  that loud socks were the fashion among the avant-garde?
     Maxine planned a New Year's Eve party. She made a paper chain for the fireplace wall and turned plain brown lunch bags into elegant gift bags.  Our gift bags contained chocolate and Christmas crackers.  Daddy got a Christmas tie.  At our midnight (9 pm) we broke the crackers, put on our crowns, and banged pots and pans on the deck.  Simone was mesmerized by the music of Norwegian soprano Sissel singing Auld Lang Syne.
    At 3 AM the next morning David woke the girls.  Ever so gently and patiently he moved  them into the car and off to the airport.  I was filled with the lushness of it, but wish I had eight arms to draw them all back.