Sweet Memories: They still give me Butterflies in My Stomach

March 17, 1994: Yesterday, Caleb told us that when he grew up, he wanted to buy a ship. "I will tell the sailors to take it out into the deep ocean where there are sharks, so the people can see the sharks and tell me what they look like."

Right after midnight this morning, Rebecca knocked on our door. "Mommy, Sarah wants you to come in and lay down with her." Murray, figuring that Rebecca wanted something also, asked, "And what do you want?" "I want her to stop crying so I can go back to sleep," Rebecca replied.

Some friends were playing over today, and the little boy was playing with the girls' jewelry. Sarah didn't want him to, so his mother told him, "That's their private business." Sarah said assuredly, "No it isn't, it's just jewelry.”

Tonight, Rebecca and Ping-Hwei were playing Scrabble. Rebecca said, "I'll go first." Ping-Hwei said, "No, me." Rebecca answered him, "No, Ping-Hwei, I'm the little one."

March 25, 1997: The other day Sarah was asking me questions about Jerusalem, and then she said, "Is that where our God died?"

March 25, 1997: Tonight Rebecca and Caleb sat with Murray during a church service. The lesson was on forgiveness and the preacher, making the point that we all have difficulties in our pasts, asked the rhetorical question, "Who has perfect parents?" Rebecca and Caleb raised their hands.

March 26, 1997: Before the church service tonight, Murray wandered away to talk to someone. When he came back to the kids, Sarah was sitting on the lap of our friend Brenda, who had her hands around Sarah's waist. Brenda said, "She climbed up here by herself. Then she took my hands, put them around her, and said, 'My mommy puts her hands like this.' "Brenda, who doesn't have little girls anymore, looked pretty pleased.

March 28, 1997: Rebecca looked at the shopping list tonight, and said, "You put an 'e' on the end of tomato, and that's not good, so I'm circling it."

March 30, 1997: Sarah wanted to sit on Kathy's lap the other evening because, she said, "My forehead hurts." "I'm sorry," Kathy responded, "when did your forehead start hurting?" Sarah answered, "A few days ago."

April 6, 1997: On the way to church this morning, the kids were discussing heaven. "You can eat all you want there, and it won't give you a stomach ache," said Caleb. Rebecca responded, "Yes, you do get stomach aches, but you laugh at them."

We had dinner tonight at a restaurant with many people from our church. Murray wanted Sarah to come 3 or 4 seats over to sit next to him and told her, "Sarah, there's a chair right next to me." She said, "Well, I'm already in a chair."

Caleb told Kathy today, "When I shake my hands (and arms), I can hear something shaking in there."

Tonight, Ping-Hwei looked at the return address portion of a letter Murray wrote (Murray just uses street address and zip code), and said with concern, "No Murray McKinsey."

April 9, 1997: Yesterday Sarah was playing with the Mr. Potato Head game, and she got out the sheet of paper from the game which shows which accessories to put into which heads. She told me that when she was making the potato heads, "I obeyed the recipe."

Caleb had a program at school last night, and they were supposed to dress nicely. He told me, talking about a girl in his class, "Mercedes said she was going to go home and change herself into a dress."

April 11, 1997: Last night Sarah told Murray, "You can't take your seat belt off till the car stops rumbling."