Laughter in Life

I laugh every day. My husband doesn't actually believe this, but that's only because he comes home during the infamous "witching hour" - a three hour block of time spanning the end of naps, dinner, and bath time during which one would rather put a fork in one's eye than be the mother of those three little hooligans doing battle over a naked baby doll. But I really do laugh in some form or another every single day, even if it's just the hysteria-tinged laughter that one might hear coming from a mental patient staring at the blank wall of her padded room.

Of all the kids, my youngest daughter Evie makes me laugh the most. Whatever she does, she does it at full throttle and with wild abandon. As a toddler, she loved to run. She always reminded me of a baby bird making that first attempt at flight - she'd throw her arms back and take off running as fast as she could to wherever she was heading. Unfortunately she didn't have the sharpest maneuvers, so she frequently took her corners too wide and ended up plowing into the adjacent walls. She never learned to put those arms in front of her, either, so she usually smashed into the walls head-first. We could always distinguish Evie from her twin by checking their heads for bruises.


Needless to say, at two and a half Evie frequently finds herself in a pickle. Truth be told, I think that Emily is the strategist of the two, and that Evie just goes along with whatever her sister suggests. In the future, I suspect that Evie will spend a great deal of time grounded because her twin said, "Hey Evie, I have an idea..."

Of course, Evie is just as capable of creating trouble on her own as she is with her sister. Last week I sat outside the twins' bedroom door in an attempt to get them to stay in bed, which is not an easy task. My idea was to watch for one head or another to pop up, and then say in my sternest teacher voice, "Lay down!". Evie kept standing up to cram her two teddy bears Hot Tub and Beer between the wall and headboard of her bed. (The bears are actually called "Buttercup" and "Bear", but Evie has a tongue thrust that recently created far more interesting names for them.) Despite my continued reprimands, Evie kept popping up.

Finally, I went in and threatened serious punishment if she stood up again. But Evie just couldn't help herself. She must have thought her bears were having a grand time smushed up against the wall, because she stood up again and, before I could act on my threat, she wiggled her own body between the wall and headboard. Evie is stuffed a bit thicker than her bears, though, and as I walked into the room she looked up at me in distress and said, "Stuck!". And stuck she was. One leg dangled in the air behind her bed, and the other was wedged tightly into the decorative cut of her headboard. It took five minutes and the tub of Crisco to get her "unstuck."

But despite Evie's growing reputation as the "adventurous one", she is also the tender-hearted one of the group. While washing the dishes not long ago, I watched her walk upstairs to her room and reappear moments later holding Hot Tub. She carried him downstairs and walked purposefully into the playroom. A few minutes later, she repeated this same purposeful task with Beer. For the the next half-hour, she walked up and down the stairs, carrying various animals and baby dolls into the playroom. When the dishes where done and my curiosity was at its peak, I stole a glance into the playroom where Evie was lining up the last stuffed animal. Each of them was laying face down on a pillow. As I watched, Evie dug around in the toy box and pulled out a collection of baby blankets. One by one, she covered her animals with a blanket and said, "Night, night!". When she turned around and spotted me, she put her finger to her lips and and said, "Shhhhhhhhh." Then she sang what I think was "Jesus Loves Me" - the song I sing to her every night - walked over to the door, and pulled it shut behind her. "Shhhhhhh," she said again. "They sleeping!"

Since that day, Evie's sweet-spirited playacting has continued in various forms. I often catch her rocking in her pint-sized chair with a teddy or two planted in her lap, singing songs that only the experienced can interpret. When I walk into the playroom in search of missing sofa cushions, I find it's usually littered with blanket-covered playthings laid out on pillows resembling a teddy-bear ICU. And just before nap time today, I noticed every that door in the house was shut; in each room, I found a Piglet, baby doll, or teddy passed out in the corner and covered in a blanket. Of course, I had to laugh.

I didn't know that Evie was going to bring me such laughter three years ago. At that time, I was 16 weeks pregnant and hospitalized with hyperemesis. The doctor's prognosis was that I was the sickest I could possibly be in a twin pregnancy, because I was carrying two girls. My husband I were shocked and overwhelmed at the thought of raising three daughters so close together, but we were determined to name and bond with our babies as quickly as possible. We already had Ella, who was 13 months old at the time, and the name Emily was next on our list of baby names. After that, we were tapped out; it never occurred to us that we would have to come up with a third girl name!

Tyler liked the name Lauren, and for awhile that's what we called Baby "B". But in my starved and hormonal state, I became convinced that we needed another "E" name. (As one of three girls myself, I know how easy it is to find a reason to feel left out.) Tyler suggested the name Evie, but now I was torn between that and my bond with the original name Lauren.

I spent weeks going back and forth between the two names, driving my husband and everyone else around me crazy. Finally, I turned to the baby name book for help; I looked up the meaning of both names and discovered that the name Evie means "life." In that moment, it felt like God was giving us this name for our little girl. Looking back, I realize that God knew Evie was going bring great life, her vivacious spirit, and a bit of hilarity into our home. I didn't even know her name, but the One Who was knitting her together in my womb knew exactly who she was and what He was creating her to be (Psalm 139)!


God also knew that I was going to need a sense of humor to survive these early years of motherhood. It's true that I could cry when I see the mass of destruction consuming my twins' bedroom every morning - and sometimes I do. But in His mercy, God is teaching me to look beyond the housekeeping and see the great joy of raising these four sweet and hilarious children. My prayer is that He will give me the strength to laugh my way through the days and the years to come with Evie and her siblings, and be allowed to bear witness to His continued good work in the lives of these happy kids.