Lucy's Corner: Peter and the Magic Dog

After General Conference today, Lucy wrote a one-act play. There was a part for each of us, so after dinner we performed it to thunderous (imagined) applause. Here's the work in its entirety:


Peter and the magic dog

narrator;Young Peter wanted a dog.VERY MUCH!!!!

Peter;MOM!!!!!!!Can we get a dog?!

Mom;NO!!!! Thats the hunddreth time you,ve asked me!!!We need as much money as we can!!!!!!!

Narrator;As you can see,they argued.But one lucky day, Peter saw a dog.

Peter: WOW! A dog.

Narrator: The dog was a Greyhound. It followed Peter home.

Peter: Mom! I found a dog!

Mom: WHAT!!!!!!!!

Dog: I don't like the shouting woman. She's loud.

Narrator: The next day, Peter's Mom let Peter keep the dog He named her Nashta. Nashta showed extraordinary powers. Whatever she bit turned to gold, she had laser vision, and could transform into mammals. COOL! But one night...

Peter: What was that? It's Nashta growling! The house is being robbed!

Nashta: These men are bad! (Turns into a tiger).

Burgler 1: AAAAAAAAAHHHH!

Burgler 2: AAAAAAAAAHHHH!

Narrator: Nashta threw the burglers out the window and they never came back again!

THE END

Lucy Q

Each of our kids had a womb name. We didn't want to refer to them as just "the Baby," and we certainly didn't want to call any of them "It." Ian was Ziggy (the Zygote) and Sage was Phoebe (the Fetus). Lucy was just Bonus, and that's what she's been. We have several theories about Lucy, one of which is that her little body is ill-equipped to contain her largeness of spirit. If you don't know what's on Lucy's mind at any given time, you must not be in the same building. A biter, a shouter, a sprinter, a hugger--Lucy has no intermediate step between feeling and action. Lucy is as Lucy does.

You'd think it would be easy to give a name to this phenomenon, but we had a hard time getting all our ducks in a row. Does this look like a Zoe Renata?

What about Katherine Midnight?

Once we settled on Lucy for a first name, finding a matching middle name was still just as hard. With an October birthdate, Lucy Octavia was always a contender:

But K. and I also liked the Portuguese variant, Lucy Beatriz:

Finally we settled on Lucy Quinn, which seemed to fit her at the time. However, as she's gotten older she hasn't seemed to grow into it in the same way that Ian has grown into Hyrum and Sage has grown into Dorothy. The saving grace is that she makes a very fine Lucy Q:

Sometimes K. and I still talk half-seriously about changing her middle name. This never gets anywhere because (1) in our state this requires a court appearance, (2) we'd have to change her church records, (3) this would surely nonplus some relative or other, (4) we still can't agree on another middle name, and (5) seriously, who changes their child's name after breaking it in for five years? After giving it some thought, I think I've got a better idea: Middle Nickname. For years we've joked that Lucy's middle name should have been an exclamation point, and while I'd never inflict that on her officially, I see no reason why it shouldn't gain some unofficial traction. In short, friends and family, you can keep sending those birthday checks to Lucy Quinn, but feel free to think of her, in your heart of hearts, as Lucy [!]. Heaven knows we do.

Feel the Love

LUCY: Dad! Dad! Feel this part! Feel this part!

DAD: Hmmm. It feels wet.

LUCY [sadly]: Yeah, I accidentally put it in the potty.

Lucy's Corner: Special Day

It was three years ago yesterday that I finished a job interview in Elsewhere, walked back to the hotel, and got the message that K. had gone into labor. Never mind that we had carefully scheduled interviews two weeks around K's due date. Never mind that my flight wasn't going to leave for another six hours--Lucy was ready to take the world by a storm.What a storm it has been. It's been only recently that we've stopped calling Lucy "Little Trouble," and I think we stopped only because she somehow got big, and so did the trouble. God made Lucy especially winsome and winning to keep the rest of us from wanting to throttle her quite so often. She's a cheerful explosion, and as the wood and plaster settles to the ground you start to make out the dimples, beaming at you through the dust. I love her dearly and want her to stay small forever.I was at work for most of Lucy's waking hours, but K. reports that the Birthday Girl has been especially happy and bright today. We didn't hire any clowns, but I think she enjoyed herself. What do you think?

Lucy's Corner: On the Move

As articulate as she can be sometimes, Lucy's not quite ready to dictate her own blog entries, so you're stuck with a narrator who's neither young nor sprightly. In honor of this inaugural edition of Lucy's Corner, here are a few of the first pictures we've taken with our new digital camera (so long, grainy webcam captures!)

K took this picture, and it's the closest we've come to expressing Lucy as a being composed fundamentally of kinetic energy:
A more representative picture would have been one in which she was entirely out of frame, but you get the idea.

This next one I took on one of the first real spring days. There's a nice state park not too far away with big meadows framed by old rock walls.
Lucy sat down and immediately began to pull up grass, so I asked her to show me what she was doing.

Lucy as superhero: This swing was high enough off the ground that I could lie down just far enough back to frame Lucy straight up against the sky on her backswing. It makes for an interesting angle except for the backlighting, but K tells me that I could have adjusted the exposure rate to compensate.
On second glance, she looks as though she might be bearing an angelic message. ("Behold, the playtime is at hand...")

Thanks for stopping by Lucy's Corner. Here's a kiss to send you on your way: