Gadget Girls Unite!

I love my girls.  They are so so funny every day.  When they play together they pretend they are “Gadget Girls”.  They call themselves Olivia and Kelly.  Now, Peanut and Bean fight like cats all the time.  They grate each other’s nerves.  They scream and yell.  But Olivia and Kelly?  Best of friends.  Play together well, have great adventures and all that.  They are the Gadget Girls.  They are spies, pirates, gymnastics instructors, dancers with super powers.  You name it, that’s what they are.  And they love each other that Olivia and Kelly.

As soon as the game is over, and they are Peanut and Bean again, fighting commences.  They can’t stand each other.  I love Gadget Girls.  I love the way they play together.  I love how creative they are.  It’s quite an entertaining phenomenon. 

I have a little sister. I am sure I can never remember us playing that way.  We just didn’t get along; I don’t care what name we were calling each other by.  She never wanted to play school and I never wanted to play “let’s pretend we’re cats” for the millionth time.  I honestly can’t remember us every playing together with anything but Barbies.  Unless we were in the pool.  And I’m sure I was the typical bossy big sister.  Peanut is.  I see her like I was.  And it’s so funny.

In the pool my sister and I were always mermaids.  And you had to swim with your legs together.  We’d half drown trying to be authentic mermaids.  My mom would sun bathe while we played.  She’d start with her chair in one corner of the pool and slowly move it around the pool as the sun shifted in the sky.  And we swam all day long, only getting out for lunch.  If we said we were hungry, she’d throw a couple popsicles in and yell something about trash and the skimmer, and go back to sun bathing.  Occasionally we’d have watermelon, in the pool … leaning over the side to spit the seeds across the concrete.  Or the ever popular bag of cheesy poofs that got progressively soggy as the day went on because we just reached in to get some.  Eww.  Yeah, we didn’t think it was gross then.  And my dad would grill.  He’d grill whatever my mom had picked out and vacuum the pool.  My dad was always vacuuming the pool.  Perpetually.  He never got in to swim with us.  He just grilled. And vacuumed.  Until the meat was done.  Then we’d go in and have dinner and pass out from sheer exhaustion.

My kids don’t swim that much.  It’s not that they don’t want to, mind you.  It’s that we don’t have the “stay in all day” kind of pool.  We have the “it’s noon and Lawdy it’s hot out here and this is bath water” kind.  But for a few hours every day, they are in the pool.  Right now it’s a dance floor with disco lights.  The Gadget Girls are having a dance.  Together.  Olivia and Kelly.  In a few minutes it will be time to get out so I can cook dinner.  They can’t swim if I’m not outside.  That’s just good common sense.  I like having four kids, and I’d like to keep it that way to the best of my ability as God has so trusted me with them. Amen.  When I get them out, they’ll go back to being Peanut and Bean again.  And fighting again.  And “sick and tired of her” again.  The Gadget Girl phenomenon gone until tomorrow.  So for now, I’ll sit and enjoy the beauty that is Olivia and Kelly.  God bless their hearts.