Chloe Dances

She can't help herself. She dances with spontaneity throughout her day. It's one of the things that I really cherish about her. Sometimes she will just walk in the room and strike a pose for no good reason. And we can hardly ever get her to try on clothes without her strutting her stuff back and forth with this corny "I'm a model" look on her face, always ending it with her hands one her butt... butt in our faces... and looking over one of her shoulders at us.

The kid makes me laugh.

So last night I heard Chloe kind of yell out from our stairs and start crying a little. It was one of those cries that kind of said, "I'm not really hurt, but my sister just hit me for no reason and I'm not happy about it." One of those. Anyway, I went to find out what the deal was, and I was right; Evalee had shoved her sister while she was standing on the stairs.

I did the dad thing and said, "Why'd you push her?"

Evalee said she didn't really know why, just did it. "What was she doing?" I asked. So Evalee starts telling me that Chloe had her back to her, was standing on the stairs and was just sort of flailing herself around impromtu. So while she's telling me this, Chloe's tears turn to laughter and she starts cracking up at herself. Like REALLY laughing hard... and now so is Evalee and so am I.

"What were you doing?" I ask Chloe. "Just this," she says, and starts flailing herself around.

Now the thing I love about this is, she wasn't doing it for anyone... she didn't think anyone saw her. So she's just doing this little private dance for herself, being who God has hard-wired her to be.

I'm telling you...this is the stuff of life to me. Chloe brings so much fun and spontaneous joy to our family! And I seriously hope it never goes away.