The letter

Bela feeds Pumpkin kale, out of her mouth.

Although this changes a lot from year to year, I think we can say that Bela looks more like me and Mae looks more like Chris. I have always enjoyed this fact, because personality wise, it's kind of a different story. Bela resembles her Dad in a lot of ways - cheerful, a little scattered, perhaps, a little ditzy (sorry honey). And, as you could guess, Mae is a lot more like me - impatient, loud, dramatic in her happiness and her anger.

But as these girls grow, the lines keep getting blurred, the genetic hand-me-downs keep getting mixed up all over the place.

It turns out that Mae is a budding little artist. Her attention to detail and her ability to draw what she sees really impresses us. That's Chris, all the way.

And Bela, well, she has plenty of drama in her that comes from me. And as it turns out, she has a flair for melodramatic writing. Heh heh. Hmmm. 

When I was a girl, I wrote scores of little notes to my parents. Oh usually they were a means to convey some sense of wrong-doing (on their part, of course). I laid out the details of my miserable existence in them, listed the ways in which they had wronged me, and told them that my feelings would be repaired if only they would just....

In particular, I remember a series of letters I would write to my Mom and leave on my bed, where she would inevitably find them late at night when she checked on me and found me to be absent. They went something like this;

Dear Mom,


I am so alone in my room. It is not fair that you make me sleep here by myself, I really want to be with Jared. I am sleeping on the floor next to his bed, please do not move me back to my awful, lonely, room. Etc etc etc.

So you can imagine how tickled I was the other day to receive this letter from Bela. I have filed it away permanently in the folder titled: Our First Born Is More Like Me Than She Is Like You.

 (Mom, I feel like I do not have any toys to play with. All of the toys aren't my size. It feels like I do not have any toys only Mae. But please do not tell me that I have to use up all my money. So, could we go to the toy store?)

I can't stop smiling when I read this letter. 

Oh, what will Gil be like?????