Mark, for one, just drips of creativity. The right side of his brain must constantly be in overdrive, because he never stops moving, dancing, drawing, singing, acting--you name it! Just yesterday, a friend of mine told me a story. She had been waiting outside the high school to pick up her son from band, and she looked over at the glass-enclosed breezeway that connects two areas of the school. There, in all of his 6'4" glory was Mark.... dancing. She said he was jumping around, and spinning on the ground, practicing his break dancing moves. I knew then that he wasn't just practicing his horn after school while waiting to drive his sister home :-)
I would never have guessed Johannah to have a sense of humor. I know that sounds cruel, but Johannah has grown up, being a very sensitive child. While the rest of us trash talk, and throw around jokes, Johannah has taken everything we say very seriously. Thus, we have always needed to be very careful around her. Too, she has always been my quietest child--people have frequently thought that I only have three children, because she has not stood out like her attention-getting siblings.
I don't know if there's something in the water, or if she needed to reach a certain height, or age, but her sense of humor has finally kicked in. And what a sense of humor it is! Just living her life now, she has a brightness in her eyes, and a smile on her face. I watch her with her friends, and it's a non-stop laugh fest. Even at home, she can dish it out, and take it just as well. Her funniest thing to do to all of us? When our phones beep, or ring, from wherever she is in the house, she will say (or yell, if need be), "Hey Mark, your phone just beeped," or "Mommy, the phone is ringing," all said with a straight face. It drives us up the wall, because we know it beeped, and we can hear it ringing, and why the heck doesn't she pick up the phone? Too, with all of our cell phones ringing and beeping, it can get crazy hearing her saying that over and over and over. However, we always, always laugh about it.
For Glo's birthday, Glo made an itemized list of birthday gifts that she would like, and hung it on the refrigerator. Both Mark and Johannah quickly recognized what a useful thing that was for Glo to do when they saw that she got basically everything on the list. Mind you, I've been telling the kids to do this for years, but even last Christmas, Mark finally told me what he wanted on December 23--just two measly days before Christmas!
Well, I now have three Christmas lists attached to the refrigerator, plenty early and plenty detailed. Johannah probably asked for the least--a new pair of roller skates, a hula hoop, and some other small things. However, at the bottom of her Christmas wish list I saw this:
BIG smiley face!
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