We love kids! We always wanted a big family!

This is the mantra that David and I chant to each other when the kids are hanging off the chandelier and throwing cheese at each other at the dinner table; when the din starts to register on the Richter Scale and everyone needs something RIGHT NOW.  Such is life in the Branch household.  Quentin is soaking an egg in vinegar for a science experiment, and it explodes in the sink; the dog is licking the food off of Melanie's face.  David is outside hanging Christmas lights on the deck.  Melanie and Lisa are off to the tub upstairs and I am surveying the scene wondering which fire to put out first.

Then, one by one they go to bed (except the one that forgot to put his spelling words in ABC order and is sitting on the floor by my feet doing it now, way past bedtime; the same kid who swung from the shower curtain and pulled it down and broke it...BUT I DIGRESS) and the house becomes quiet.  And we feel a certain degree of satisfaction and contentment with our life; that is until we survey the damage in the kitchen and have to arm wrestle to decide who will clean it up.

Melanie and I met with the pediatric orthopedic surgeon.  Much to our relief (and surprise!) her hips are fine!  Her little bowlegs are simply a result of all that horseback riding she did in Kazakhstan (just kidding!) and a steady diet of milk and yogurt and cheese (with other stuff of course) will make her right as rain in time.  We do have to follow up with him in six months just to make sure.  I had to hold her down, stripped to her diaper, on the x-ray table.  In between screams, she looked at me as if to say, "Enough of the medical stuff already!!  The x-ray tech kept saying "Hold HIM down!" as Melanie thrashed around.  Like I said, the haircut looks a little boyish ... but in a diaper they all look pretty gender non-specific.

I am so glad that she won't have to endure anything else besides her mouth.  That will be enough.  We are going back to Dr. Rider, the wonderful orthodontist, on Thursday ... to admire his Jamaican tan.  I forget now & then that she even has the device in her mouth, she's doing so well.