Abby's Alley

I am getting to know these little people more and more each day, and I marvel at the interactions they have with one another. The first time Phil and I went anywhere with both of them, one of us said, "The kids are in the car. Wow! We can say that now. We've got kids."
We're a little family, a crowd, a bunch, a little gathering of people with customs and routines and traditions that no other family has. How strange!
Since the coming of Rose, Lee has become more cuddly and clingy. He requests to be held and is shy around strangers. We'll be walking down the sidewalk and he'll crawl up into the stroller when he sees someone walking the opposite direction. When away from home for long periods of time, he often looks at me and asks, "Home?"
He doesn't mind being alone and without toys. I often hear him talking to himself in his time-out box or in his crib before he goes to bed. Any sort of physical punishment on the other hand reduces him to tears.…

My parents were pretty gutsy to take four kids on a motorhome vacation for three weeks. Especially because so much of the time was spent driving and because our motorhome didn’t have four beds.
Jacob was 13, Joni was 15, Jessica was 6, and I was 11. And I recorded the entire vacation in my journal with unbiased accuracy. 
The motorhome had three beds. And that included the large twin-sized bed where my parents slept. The couch pulled out and became a bed, which had to be shared. And the kitchen table converted into the most desired bed of all. One unlucky kid slept on the floor or could sleep outside in the tent. I’m sure my mom created a system to rotate kids into all the beds, but my journal records an awful lot of times where I slept in the tent, and one sweet entry: “That night I slept on the table bed all by myself.”   I can only guess as to why all the kids slept in the tent this night.

I must commend my mom in her preparations for this trip. Every 200 miles, we were allowed one ite…