Eden's Children

Let's set aside the fact, for a moment, that I don't know from memory all of my nieces and nephews' birthdays or, necessarily, their middle names.

I want to talk about my friends' children.


I have friends with children. (Note: This is a partial list, designed to target a specific subset of friends, my former Eden roommates, whose whereabouts and burgeonings I'm really, I'm realizing, behind on.)

Some I knew about:

Henry
http://autumnandbarrett.blogspot.com/





Jacob
http://mommytheo.blogspot.com/







Adri
http://jackiwalker.blogspot.com/







and, of course, Sam and Kyle's famous Kate and Owen
http://kylemillerfamily.blogspot.com/






Some, however, I did not know about:

Laine??
it turns out--see http://autumnandbarrett.blogspot.com/ but you have to scroll down a few entries






Emma??
http://philwebbfamily.blogspot.com/
(See ridiculously beautiful picture at top of blog.)

And some are predicted but not yet arrived:

Vera Jewell
http://philwebbfamily.blogspot.com/

The Bun
http://smylie.wordpress.com/

AND Jasmine and Arthur's GIRL! (This is news to me. Thank heavens for the peer pressure that Jasmine succumbed to.)
http://vanwagenen.blogspot.com/

This is what I want to say:

I think that we should seriously consider some kind of forum for us to gather these children together and let me meet them (and, for instance, meet Arthur and, too, re-see some of you, aka all of you, I haven't seen since, for instance, I got bangs). It's true--do you remember?--that BYU has some sort of a pretty baby contest each year as part of homecoming festivities. (Doesn't it? Did anyone ever go or pay attention to that? I always figured it was a No,-Wymount,-you-really-are-part-of-this-community sort of activity.) But I'm thinking it's time for us to have our own baby beauty contest.

To make it a fairer fight--let's be honest, so-and-so's baby really is the cutest--we can add other categories. Frothiest Gurgling, Realest Fake Laugh, Looks Most Like His/Her Mom, Longest Stay-Awaker, Best Kisser. Something. I'll take suggestions.

And to judge, we can maybe have those of us who still don't have children (read, single aka situationally barren) do the judging, since we're dispassionate, independent, and, the good men tell us, needing to serve.

What say? We can gather in Utah. (Everyone still has family there, yes?) Or crash Sam and Kyle's place in Las Vegas (to take advantage of the stays-in-Vegas cheap hotel rates). (Sam and Kyle, you do still live in Vegas, yes?)

And, while we're trying to sort this all out (yes, Juice, you can come, too, despite your not having ever visited us in Eden--or did you? Phil, Rebecca, your spouses--you all count, too), I want us to consider the irony/appropriateness of this: We lived in Eden. We left. Some of you got pregnant. Which thing the prophets foretold. See 2 Ne 2:22-24, Moses 5:11.

(Also consider: You used to come home to me, and now you come home to them. It's true, I don't have a lot to offer you that's better than they are so as to fight for a place to stay in your heart. I, like them, may have kept you up with my crying, may have asked you to wash my undergarments, may have spat Cheerios and apple sauce your floor (sometimes we would laugh and eat at the same time, remember?), may have wanted you to open an Otter Pop for me and scratch my back. But in all the time we lived together and/or have been friends, I have never, never, never required that you suck the mucus out of my nose with one of those squeezy tubey things. I'm just, just saying.)