My husband said he never dreamed when he taught them to play one evening that they’d fall in love with the game.

Now they beg him every evening when he gets home to play football.

I sit on the porch and play Words With Friends on my phone. Or, take pictures. I never learned to like football, but occasionally I catch some of his enthusiasm for the game.

They come inside when it grows dark, proud with their bleeding battle scars and triumphant scores. Or tears of defeat.

Yes, the girls still cry when daddy makes a sneaky play.

It makes them tough.

She took her orange juice squeeze bottle Monday morning and slung it willy nilly from the kitchen all the way down the hallway to the girls’ room. There was a trail of sticky three feet wide from here to there. It took three moppings, one on hands and knees to get it all up.

When anyone offers her a cookie, candy or gum, she always says thank you and then, “Milo does,” which means, Milo would like one too.

When she sees a bird in the yard she says, “I catch it.” And I think she really believes she can.

When we’re out of something or she’s just eaten the last cookie or had the last bit of juice she says, “Gonna go buy again?”

She just started thinking in sentences and replacing me with you. Instead of, “Hold you,” she says, “hold me.” This makes me sad.

Here hair is wispy, somewhere between curly and straight and it’s finally growing so it doesn’t look so much like a mullet anymore. She loves for me to scratch her back and she doesn’t mind modeling for pictures one bit.