These three monkeys have become quite a tight little pack in the last year since Maddy moved back to Portland. It’s a rare day in our house when someone doesn’t mention Maddy, either asking if we can go and see her or remembering something fun that we did with Maddy. She’s always on their minds. When we do see her, which is usually weekly, it’s pretty much non-stop smiles and giggles. Sure there’s the occasional kid-disagreements like squabbles over toy sharing, tattling, playing nicely together, etc. but disagreements are the exception. They play happily and nicely the vast majority of the time. The girls get caught up in pretend games, usually playing school or family, and Sammy alternates between trying to keep up with them and doing his own independent thing. Then Maddy or Clare will notice that Sam is building with Tinker Toys or has a puzzle dumped out and will join him with his activity. Then we’ll turn around and notice that all three are singing back and forth some song they just made up.
One of the sweetest cousin moments that I’ve seen was at the community center a few weeks ago. There is a train table that the kids all swarm around. One little boy, who was about five, was intent on playing with the trains and pushed Maddy out of the way to get to them. Maddy came up to Grandma and told her “the big boy pushed me.” Grandma asked Clare to go and talk to him with Maddy. Clare put her arm around Mads protectively and marched right up to the boy. She tried for several minutes to catch his eye, intent on telling him that he had pushed her cousin. The poor little boy wouldn’t make eye contact with our girls and eventually left the table and went back to his mom. At that point we called off our very polite, but very insistent little crusaders.
We’re eagerly anticipating the arrival of the fourth musketeer, due to join the fun in June. Clare has nick-named the lil’ guy Darget Ahhhh! I’ve told her that JP and Debbie will probably name him something different when he’s born, but for now they’re very patient calling him Baby Darget for her.
I’ll finish with one last picture of the other set of Three Musketeers. These guys used to be the adored babies, and now they’re just as likely to get told to move out of the way as to be petted and fussed over. They’re still pretty cute though, even if they aren’t as cute as their human counterparts.
