Cope Kids: Yeah, I'm gonna brag (and photos and other stuff)

My middle child is, well, one of the coolest kids ever. She's laugh out loud funny, observant, sociable, and more often than not wants nothing more than to make everyone around her happy. One thing I can say for certain about Nina is that she always runs either hot or cold - never lukewarm.

After her nap yesterday, she wandered into my bedroom where I was working on a scrapbook page with her hair all mussed up and pillow creases on her face and asked to sit and watch me 'work.' I was arranging and rearranging the elements on my page, never quite happy with how things looked, and she saw a stack of scrap cardstock I'd cut for her and Grace to play with. She plopped herself down and starting tearing and sorting and arranging ... The next time I looked up, she was gone.

When I came downstairs, she had made herself a little art desk with colored pencils, glue sticks, scissors and the like and was crafting away. Cut, arrange, cut some more, adjust, paste ... Never have I seen her take the initiative to do a project. She usually follows Grace's lead, or my instruction before attempting any masterpiece. Today was her day. She must've been at it for at least half an hour, and never once did she get frustrated with herself that her creation wasn't perfect. She simply created for the sheer fun of it. For the first time ever.

When I came over to ooh and aah over her work, she looked up at me and smiled and said, "I'm going to be a fun artist like you when I grow up." *heart melt*

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The girls are off to ski camp today. Hayne dropped them off bright and early. It'll be a 9 hour day for them without a break. Grace will do great, I'm sure. Nina may be nearly five years old, but she still sleeps at naptime most days. She needs sleep (or quiet time at the very least) or she gets quite cranky and disagreeable.

She'll be even more tired today than usual because she was up at 4am ready to start the day. Edison came down with a fever and a bad cough yesterday afternoon/evening, and at around 3:30 this morning got to where he was having trouble breathing. He was so tired and was making a good effort at sleeping through the coughing fits. I sat with him a while, gave him something to drink, ran a hot shower so he could sit in the steamy bathroom, coated his chest with VapoRub, and strapped him into his swing so he'd be upright. (Nothing worked.) I ended up trying to sleep on his bedroom floor so he'd see me and not get so worked up each time the coughing started up. I finally got back to bed around 5:30.

Anyway, when Nina heard the shower, she came in the bathroom and explained that I needed to hurry my shower up because it was Ski Day and they needed to get ready quickly so they wouldn't be late. I assured her that if she started getting ready at 4am, she'd have plenty of time ~ and we eventually agreed that it might be best for her to go back to sleep until I came to get her at 6:30. Bless her. She normally has a great deal of trouble getting out of bed and she was trying so hard.

So that leaves me a Hacker Boy with a day to ourselves. Hopefully he'll sleep most of it. Perhaps I will, too.

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A few photos:

I took Nina out on Saturday to look for yet another pair of house shoes for school. But we just had to stop for some sustenance while we were out. (Donuts - like these icky cream-filled ones - are only available right before Lent.)