Our first-born daughter

There is no "middle child" syndrome in a crazy family like ours. (Either that, or all we've got is middle children!!) It's all in how you count - middle child by age? By family order? By developmental age equivalence? But there are definitely some places in the family that are important - both Owen and Leah know that although their place as "oldest child" and "oldest daughter" have been taken over by others (Krassi and Bobbi are both older than Owen, and Mira and Bobbi are both sisters older than Leah), they are still our first born and first daughter, and those are special places that won't ever be taken away.

We are so grateful every day for this precious girl. She has, from a very young age, shown a very generous heart and a natural ability to anticipate and meet the needs of those around her. For years I've considered her my "right-hand woman" and she's only eleven years old now!

She's not even two and a half in this photo with her newborn brother Reuben, and you can tell she's very much in her element.

Leah and Reuben

Not to pick on Gloria (too much), but here's a photo of Gloria holding Eben for comparison. Gloria absolutely loves holding Eben ("Mine baby! Only mine, mine, mine! Me hold Eben?") but there's a definite difference in quality.

Gloria and Eben (and mom)

Here is Leah at age seven with Evania.

And a few days ago with Eben. She is so much in her element - it's second nature to her. So much so that if Matt's having a hard time getting Eb to sleep, he will pass him over to Leah, because she's just got a knack for it!

And it's not only the baby thing, either. She is the little matriarch of the stair-step of little girls that follow her around every single day.

She can handle so many things with a beautifully calm presence of mind. I remember one day when she was five, Reuben was three, and Rinnah was a year old that I had her sit with the younger two while I ran down to take a shower. She came down as soon as she heard the water turn off to let me know that Reuben had had a seizure while I was in the shower (and this was back when day time seizures were not a common thing for him), and she calmly explained to me how she'd seen his arm coming up (the tonic phase) so she'd grabbed him before he could fall off his chair, and had moved him to a safe place on the floor, and stayed with him until it was over, but didn't want to interrupt my shower, so waited until I had finished to let me know. She has taken so much of this life in stride. To honor her incredible responsibility in this area, we have given her the gift of a babysitter's training class next weekend, telling her that she will be a great babysitter for other families - and that the course should fill in the gaps between the basic "play with little kids" skills and the "seizure management and g-tube care" skills that she's learned in our family. :)

We don't get to do it as often as we would like, but I love it when she and I have the chance to spend time together just enjoying each other's company - letting her just be a little girl! One of our favorite things to do together is play Boggle. She enjoys words and writing, and has loved the game since we started playing it together when she was seven or eight years old. She has shown admirable tenacity, requesting the game herself and playing with determination despite losing to me over and over and over again. I told her right away that I wasn't going to "go easy" on her, but was going to play the game the same way I would play if I were playing it against other grownups. That way she would know that when she DID beat me, she had done it fair and square. Well, after years of toughing it out and getting beaten time after time, she got me good just a few weeks before Eben was born. I was so proud of her, not only for winning that game, but for the years of toughing it out to get there!

Well, as it turns out, she's not only a great help with the kids, but she's getting big and strong enough that she's able to be of help to Dad, too, when Owen's gone. This morning Matt's goal for the day was to get the siding boards onto the bathroom in anticipation of the roof membrane getting installed Monday or Tuesday. (That membrane has to wrap over the siding up at the parapet edge.)

Carrying the pre-drilled 4'x10' board...

...around the other side of the new bathroom (you can see two of the sheets already up on the east side facing us).

Daddy can lift these things on his own, it's just much easier to do the distance carrying with help from Leah.

However, when he inadvertently kicked over the box of screws and the impact driver, she, without being asked, stooped down (Gloria in hand), to pick it back up...

...gather all the screws that had fallen...

...and have it all ready for Dad to get the sheet secured up there.

By the end of the day, Matt had all three sides done minus one skinny strip on each that will need to be ripped, and on two sides, scribed around the profile of the existing house. Not too bad. We are sure proud of the young woman our first-born daughter is growing up to be.