One More Baby

Kami was such a fun baby! She was cute, sweet, and everyone loved playing with her. Moe made up a song he sang to her every day: “She's got big blue eyes and a little button nose, the cutest little smile and the teeny tiny toes; she's so very special, she even seems to glow, that's why she's daddy's princess,” or something like that. And she really was a little darling, helping to bring our blended family closer together.

I'd decided even before Kami was born that we needed to have one more baby, so she'd have someone to grow up with. Stephen was ten years old, and it didn't seem fair to make her be alone at the end of our family. Still, I was getting pretty old. I turned 39 that year, and Moe was 50.

The rest of the kids were also growing up. Linnea became a senior that year. She was busy in school, playing the flute in band, participating on the flag team, and she loved dance. One thing she wished was that I had let her take dance classes when she was little, but there just hadn't been enough money or time for that. The best I had been able to do was give the girls a few years of piano lessons.

Holly was a sophomore in High School. She played the cello beautifully, she even thought she might get a scholarship with it for college. She was also heavily involved in the drama club, and was in every play at school. It was obvious that she was a natural actress, and her goal was to live in Paris when she grew up.

Russell moved up to the High School that year, and although he still struggled with his classes, he seemed to enjoy school more. Moe bought him an old computer, and Russell discovered that building and working on computers was something he really enjoyed. He also found out that he was very good at it, and took classes to get even better.

Alyssa was eleven. She played the flute in band, like Linnea, and was a happy, energetic, delightful 6th grader. She always had a big smile on her face, and no matter how down I was, she could made me feel better. She was my friend, and I appreciated having her around more than she knew.

Stephen had turned into Cowboy Jim. All he wanted for Christmas was a guitar and cowboy clothes, and he was the cutest little rootin, tootin, cowboy of them all. He also loved sports, all kinds, and played football and baseball and kept us busy going to his games.

We had a great family, even if we did have three girls with PMS, three teenagers with attitudes, two preteens, a new baby, and a step-dad who meant well but ended up making the kids pretty cranky when he told them what to do or corrected them. There were times when our house sounded and felt like WWIII, but it was worth it.

Still, I was sure we needed to have one more baby, and this time Moe agreed with me from the start. I didn't really look forward to giving birth at forty, nor did I want to be pregnant when my oldest daughter graduated from high-school, but that would be better than being pregnant when she got married, right? Pregnant mother's of the bride looked pretty funny. So we began planning for our seventh baby, and by Kami's 1^st birthday I was expecting one more time, and excited to find out if it would be a girl or a boy.

One For Me, One For You

Did you ever hear the story about the two little boys who went to gather nuts?  Their mothers asked them to go out one morning and each fill a pail full of walnuts.  The first little boy told his friend that he knew where there was a huge old walnut tree with lots of nuts all around it.  "We'll be able to fill our pails all the way full," he assured his friend.

So the two boys took off to find the big walnut tree, which happened to be growing inside the city cemetery.  Now this particular cemetery had a wall all around it, so no one outside could see what was going on inside.  The boys went inside the cemetery, and sure enough, there was a the biggest walnut tree either little fellow had ever seen.  Happily they plopped down on the ground and began filling their buckets. 

After a little while one little boy said to the other,  "This isn't a very fair way to gather walnuts.  You have lots more in your bucket than I have in mine." 

The second little boy wanted to be fair, so he said, "I'll tell you what.  Let's dump all the nuts out and start over.  Then we'll put one in your bucket, and one in mine, so we'll have exactly the same."  His friend thought that was a good idea, so they dumped both pails out and began again to divide up the walnuts.

"Here's one for you,"  the little boy put a nut in his friends bucket, "and one for me," and he put a nut in his.  "One for you, one for me." 

The two boys spent all morning carefully placing walnuts into their buckets.  "One for you, one for me.  One for you, one for me."  As they worked two walnuts rolled away from them and under the fence, but they decided they would wait and get them after they finished dividing the rest of the nuts.

In the meantime, another little boy was walking down the street on the other side of the fence.  He heard voices coming from inside the cemetery, and listening closer, his eyes grew big and he turned and ran back up the street.  Pretty soon he bumped into an elderly gentleman who was out for a stroll.  Tugging on his sleeve the little boy exclaimed, "Mr., Mr., you've got to come hear this!  The devil and the Lord are both inside the cemetery, and they are dividing up the souls!"

The elderly gentleman laughed and said, "No they're not."  But the little boy insisted, tugging on the man's arm until he finally followed him down the street.  As they approached the cemetery the little boy urged, "Listen, listen!  You'll hear them!"

The old man listened, and sure enough, from inside the cemetery he heard the words, "One for you, one for me.  One for you, one for me."

The old man's eyes grew big and he looked at his young companion in astonishment. 

Inside the cemetery the two boys were just finishing filling their pails.  Standing up they dusted the dirt from their pants, and the one little boy said to the other,  "Well, I guess we're through.  Let's go get those two nuts out on the street, and then we can go home."

The elderly gentleman and the little boy looked at each other in horror, then turned and ran up the street as fast as they could go.