Somersaults

Right now the kids are asleep and Jeffrey is at the hospital tending to the eyes of a 10 day old infant. He is on-call, but it is the last night of a week of call and then he is ours again. He was here earlier for a perfectly wonderful evening.

He came home early, in time to mow the lawn and then teach Elise how to toss seeds on the bare spots. Elise and Zion then giggled on our slide/swing set in the backyard and tried to get in as many slides as possible before the sun 'went to sleep'. Zion can climb up the ladder to the slide all by himself now, but Elise got in three slides for each one of his by sneaking up the side of the play structure. But he didn't mind. Just like he didn't mind falling on his back after each slide. Nothing could wipe the pride off of that little face.


Then we all headed in for dinner. Strapped in his booster seat, Zion frantically used all of his limited communications skills to hurry Jeffrey up in preparing Zion's food. This included a lot of 'uh, uh!' with a fair amount of 'pease!' and 'melk!' thrown in the mix.

Elise was occupied making a design with her linguine. At least I thought the circle of pasta on her plate was a design. She said she was making a Zion, and I patiently corrected her that it is called a de-sign. Then she told me that she was putting hair on the de-Zion's head, because Zion has short hair. On second look, the perfect circle of linguine actually did resemble Zion's sweet round face. Hmm.


After dinner we pulled out every car or truck in the house for a floor full of 'brrm' sounds from Zion and organized lines of cars from Elise. Jeffrey got into the mix and grabbed a bulldozer to scoot the kids across the floor.

Then came the somersaults. Elise has just mastered this skill, and Zion is in eager pursuit. He puts his head to the floor and his hiney in the air in the classic 'downward dog' yoga position. Then he waits. Soon Jeffrey or I will notice his elevated rear and flip him over in a somersault. Meanwhile Elise is somersaulting away. Again she has three flips for every one of his, and again he doesn't seem to mind a bit. He is just pleased to be a part of the fun.


The evening concluded with footie pajamas, a little curtain peek-a-boo, and then family worship. Jeffrey had to tend to his pager part way through so I ducked out to put Zion to bed before finishing worship with Elise. But Jeffrey was soon back with Elise. While I rocked my snuggling boy in the dark of his room, I listened to his Daddy reading the children's Bible to Elise .


A good-night kiss and a tuck-in later, the kids were asleep and my day was done.


So there it is, an ordinary evening made extraordinary by capturing the memory of it for years to come. I know that our family will continue to grow and change, yet I have a hard time imagining anything better than two toddlers, a Daddy, a Mommy, and the newly discovered joy of somersaults.