Girl's Gone Child: Last Days of One: Reverie

She squints and smiles with her eyes completely closed and then hides behind a leg or a wall or a giant hat that she stood on a chair to pull off a shelf in my closet.

"Up, up!' she says with a hat that falls backwards off her head and heels that tumble to the floor with a thud.

"Down, down," she says. "Shoes. Shoes."

The other day at my parents house, Bo and Revi burst into my parents bedroom and made a beeline for the tea party Fable and my sister had set up for Rachel's old American Girl dolls. I told them they could play as long as they were careful.

"RESPECT, my girls. These are not your dolls."

Bo lasted about three minutes before she started throwing everything and thinking it was hysterical so I had to escort her out of the room to have a tantrum in the hallway. But Revi stayed for, I don't know, thirty minutes? Forty five? She was careful with every cup. And hat. She used a carpet as a napkin and dabbed the cheeks of both dolls and sang "Moon River" except instead of saying "Moon River" she said "Bo Revi" which is how she sings the song.

Bo, Reeeeeeviiiii.... and then stops. Sings it again. Stops... Booooo, Revvvviii

Everyone says she looks like Fable and I can't see it. I mean, at certain angles in pictures, yes, but Revi is so completely herself. She is left handed in a sea of righties, always off in the distance doing her own thing, little wing. Playing cars when everyone is playing dolls and dolls when everyone is playing cars. She isn't the type who feels left out. She's fine being last in line. She seems to prefer it, actually. She is strong and determined and whip smart, shouting at waves and jumping into water, dreaming away with invisible lightbulbs like balloons over her head. She likes to hold hands. With me and Hal and her sisters and Archer who she calls "Achoo." She is my baby. My cuddler. My littlest one who asks to be held and rocked before bed and says thank you when she means "you're welcome." Revi is generous with her toys and her snacks and her love. She blows kisses to all things, including signs and trees and must muah every animal in every book she reads upside down. She goes about her days in my shoes and Fable's hats and dolls slung across her chest, and in all my thirty-two years of life, never in the history of ever, have I seen a finer more detail-oriented tea party hostess.