I'm watching Merry and Catherine do the Electric Slide in front of me, struggling a bit to follow a couple of dancers on the TV. Merry is tallest now, long and lean in a green dress and leggings. Catherine's flaxen hair falls halfway down her back and they both seem so grown up.

The two oldest girls cooked dinner tonight--tuna noodle casserole that we all ate up and toasted energetically. Merry's on a cooking streak--she baked two batches of delicious cupcakes over the weekend almost entirely by herself (she's still a bit timid about sliding hot pans out of the oven, which I sympathize with). This is energy I want to encourage as much as possible. Hopefully before too many years I'll be able to write her into the dinner-making schedule.

Beatrix just flipped her rocking chair over, rolled free and said, "I'm okay." When we first arrived in this town, Merry and Catherine were her age, stumping off to preschool together in the mornings, and now they look for all the world like young women.

I was told this would happen. But it happened fast.