Gemma.

Oh, Gemma.

She is, hands down, the busiest toddler we’ve had yet.  Quick and curious, she is into EVERYTHING. For the others, “Uh oh!” has meant “Cease and desist now” but for Gem?  For her it means “Run faster!”.

When she’s tired, this is amplified.  She has a course she runs – kitchen drawers, kitchen sink, pantry, boys room, Ellie’s drawers.  When she comes out to the living room with clean clothes in tow we know she’s ready for bed.

The kids started calling her Destructo and Ellie, unable to pronounce it, coined De-truck-o.  It has stuck. Good naturedly the kids laughingly tell her to stop and haul her away from their projects and work only to have her come back faster then they can.  It really does seem like there is more than one of her, more than two arms, more than two little hands.  Jac speaks to her like the Tasmanian Devil and she wrinkles her nose and giggles and keeps on trucking.

Today, she hit the jack pot.  A careless sibling left the door of the craft closet ajar and she unearthed a new treasure.  When Tess discovered her, she found half of a school sized jar of rainbow glitter piled in the hall, on Monday’s bed, in the bathroom (you better believe it’s not coming out of the grout) and in the girl’s room.  Awesome.  We swept, the girl’s and I, and swept and swept.  It lingered.

Then tonight, minutes after we had related the glitter story to Father Tyler, I turned the corner in the hall to find her shaking the glitter AGAIN with extreme satisfaction.

“GEMMA!”

She looked up and just kept shaking.  When I confiscated the jar, she promptly bent down, palms flat, to swish in the glitter. She wiggled her toes in it.  We all laughed and watched her watch the sparkles fall from her fingers.  She was still relishing the feel on her bare feet when Jac hauled her away.

I can’t predict what sort of trouble we have on our hands but I can say with certainty that if it’s as pretty as this, I don’t think I’ll mind.

(Jac on the other hand . . . well, he says glitter is the STD of the craft world.  He’s not so thrilled.)