We Are All Going To Be A Little Weirder

 In the first few months of the lockdown, Ella came to me and said, “Mom, I’m thinking of doing an experiment where we lock everyone in their houses with only novels and knitted animals.” She paused for a moment.  “Mom, we’re all going to be a little weirder after this.”

Thus, the prophetic words of a 13-year-old were spoken.

The other night Trixie became overcome with a strong desire to rush to Hobby Lobby and buy a plastic long-horned cow toy. She could not totally explain the compulsion, but the next day while watching online church, she designed and crocheted the bull a canary yellow cowl-neck sweater.

We are all going to be a little weirder, my friends. 

 

 

One of the first things Beatrix knit was this abominable snowman named Bumble. Now Bumble is also wearing a striped dress and a backpack which contains a crocheted corn ear that Bumble must carry with her, and whom she calls Dolly.

At Easter, we had to order an emergency supply of yarn, which took weeks to slowly make its way across the country from Oklahoma. But it served us well. Trixie has crocheted an entire fruit basket with apples, oranges, bananas, lemons, blueberries, strawberries, even a whole pineapple. Mabel has been knitting one tiny sweater ornament every night. She recently finished her 100th sweater.

At one point, Mabel also knit two brightly colored meerkats. She then decided to make a felted baby Meerkat, so the whole family had to throw a Meerkat wedding first. There was music. There was a ceremony. There were abominable snowwoman bridesmaids.

So, I know a lot of you are homeschooling or at least schooling at home for the first time. So, I just wanted to warn you about the effects of being at home with a lot of really imaginative kids. Beyond the copious amounts of crocheted and knitted animals that will appear in your house, it is not uncommon for your children to pick up interests and obsessions. Yes, there are the usual things like sloths, pandas, and every episode of every show ever made about Star Wars. But then there are the unexpected obsessions like turnips, Dolly Parton, and polka music.

These obsessions might lead you to do strange things like plant a hibiscus bush (hibiscus is sloth chocolate), know all the words to "Coat of Many Colors" with the right Dolly intonations or listen to a local polka show on the way to church every Sunday. Or it might even lead you to buy two pigs as pets. 

Mabel’s obsession with pigs began when she was around three years old and first heard the story of the three little pigs. We soon owned every book about pigs, every pig toy, and would find her poring over a book of pig breeds for the one that would be the best pet for children.  By the age of four, she had decided on the perfect breed: the kunekune, a New Zealand grazing pig that had been raised by the Maoris to live with the tribe, making them docile and friendly. She somehow convinced us that if we moved to the country, our first purchase should be a kunekune piglet that she would name Arnold and walk on a leash. So just a few weeks after we moved to the country, Brent and Mabel traveled down to Connecticut to pick up Arnold from a kunekune breeder. Thus, we became not only those weird homeschoolers, but those weird homeschoolers with pigs for pets.

Gilead’s obsession with turnips is easy to trace to his favorite book A Birthday for Cow by Jan Thomas, which he received for his birthday when he was a toddler. But his turnip obsession has held on so long that every time there is a mention of a turnip in a book the whole family has to yell out “Turnip!” He even convinced me to try and plant turnips one year. I watered and watered this luscious large plant in the garden that I truly believed was a turnip. Various members of the family would walk by and say, “That’s not a turnip. That’s a weed.” But I persisted, until I finally dug up the roots and discovered that it was, in fact, a weed. Gilead patted me on the shoulder consolingly and said, “Well, Mom, that was the most well cared for weed ever. It was watered so much. I bet it felt loved.”

 

Not to leave Ella out, whose gift comes in the way of interior design. Last year, after disappearing for a few hours down in our basement, we found that she had rearranged all of the lawn furniture and various items bound for the goodwill to make a Hobbit-esque pub, which she calls The Prancing Pony.

So buckle up kids, this strange time when we are all stuck at home with kids can only lead to one thing. Ella is right.

“We are all going to be a little weirder after this.”