Last night it got cool enough to light some candles in the house. And this morning, as I write this Harley is standing beside me lost in the sublime world of a good pair of headphones. She is matching the Yankee Candle lids with the correct candle by smell. She looks up at me and says over the noise that is only in her ears, "Do you like birds?"
I smile and nod, my eyes taking her in. Harley is the kind of girl that makes you feel lucky that she is talking to you.
Every night we read one page of The Awesome Book of Bible Answers for Kids by Josh McDowell and Kevin Johnson. It is a good structure for us to have important conversations with our kids. I always start by asking the question and giving the kids a chance to answer. More often than not I prefer their answers to Josh McDowell's.
"How do we know what God is like when we can't see Him?"
Each of the older boys hazards a guess with the confidence of divinity students. Zech says something designed to make everyone laugh without having any idea what the question was. He just knows it is his turn on the stage.
Harley say, "Dad, I don't know anything about that kind of stuff." She almost never feels like she has the right answer when someone asks her a question.
She loves to paint. She collects things, any and every thing.
She is tough, sometimes. If I tell her that she is going to get a spank for something she did, she just turns around matter-of-factly, pushes out her posterior and waits for the worst. Never a tear, never a word.
She is fragile, sometimes. If she feels like her brothers have left her behind, she can melt into a puddle of tears and wither there for an hour.
She is a dancer. We haven't done much to encourage it, but Heidi and I often watch her, lost in a beat, and wonder who taught her body to move like that.
