Shelley commented that she thinks Emma looks like me. I don't see it, but that's because I know her mom. Emma is the spittin' image of Lisa, for better and worse. But she sure does take after me in a lot of ways.
Morgan is sweet-natured, cuddly, and very affectionate. She's also a total shit-disturber, which I encourage to our older sister's dissatisfaction. She's very active and curious, and she likes to be constantly doing things. She loves babies beyond all reason, and anytime there is a baby around you can forget about getting Morgan to do anything else, besides moon over the baby. She will do crafts and other sitting activities, but only if you sit there with her and do them. In that way, she's a lot like Stef. She follows me around the kitchen, and is getting very good at cooking activities.
Emma, on the other hand, is much more cerebral. Emma will spend hours reading or messing around on the computer. She is very artistic, painting and drawing incredible pictures and coming up with fantastic stories. She's fairly aloof, but also emotionally very fragile - the slighest thing can sometimes set off unexpected tears (like this weekend when she realized that she left her clarinet at grandma's house). She shares my sense of humor and guffaws at Monty Python, knows the words to all the songs in Spamalot, watched Clue over and over til she memorized every scene, would play Warcraft all day if I'd let her, and is very into books with a practical, matter-of-fact sensibility and tone - Nancy Drew, Lemony Snicket, The Hobbit. In fact, I'd say Emma is primed to become a nerd of epic proportions. But she also is a bit of a laggard, and could - and does - watch tv for hours on end. She doesn't need a lot of activity, attention, or interaction to be perfectly content. She hates doing her homework, and she does everything she can do to get out of helping out with chores of any sort. In that, she takes very much after her mother. I have a special place in my heart for a particular memory of Emma, six or seven years old, coming into the living room while I was watching Blazing Saddles, and laughing until she was nearly sick at the campfire farting scene.
You'd think, from my description, that I prefer Emma or relate better to her. That's not really right, though - I have a better understanding of Emma, both from our shared character and the years I've spent with her mother; but her emotional fragility and apparent selfishness really bother me, and I do what I can to counteract them. At the same time, I do everything I can to bring out her nerdish traits, and encourage her by providing her with books, movies, music, and conversation that will stimulate her interests. My fear is that she'll be as bored as I was in high school, but will get into trouble with it instead of doing something more productive, the way I did, out of laziness. I hope to guide her interests into more productive and useful channels, or at the very least less destructive ones like online gaming.
Morgan, on the other hand, is a busy girl who needs a lot of activity, and shares those traits with my older sister. Although Stef would deny it, she requires a lot of interesting goings and comings in her life. She is willing to watch tv or read magazines to entertain herself, but she's happiest when she's going places, talking to people, doing new things - especially things that have to do with animals. Stef feels about animals the way Morgan feels about babies, and is fascinated by them. Morgan is hardy and sweet, and her natural curiosity is very endearing, as is her willingness to pitch in (frequently out of boredom, I suspect) and her tendancy to cuddle whenever possible. She is truly innocent, and acts and seems very much her age, while Emma was apparently born ten years older than she is. My favorite times are when the girls are getting along fabulously, giggling with each other playing silly make-believe games. One of the earliest fun times I had with the girls was one night when I was babysitting them, and we played dress up - the girls picked the title - Models in Happy Fun Land. Their new favorite hobby is going to large stores and doing digital camera "scavenger hunts" where they have to find and take pictures of all of the objects on a list.
Being apart from the girls this summer has been one of the hardest trials of my life. The unceremonious ending of my family would have been a struggle at any rate, but having to get permission to see the girls, and being constantly under time restrictions with them, absolutely kills me. Especially when I know that their mother had absolutely no interest in them for the past year, beyond gestures at motherhood, and left all care and responsibility for them up to others; but now controls every aspect of their lives and my interaction with them. I have to say that the most impotent and helpless feeling in the world is having kids taken from you, through no fault of your own; especially when they make it clear every time we're together that they wish I was still around. If I could do anything about it I would, and every dropoff is another knife into my gut that twists there until two weeks later when I pick them up again.
