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SUPERHEROES BIGTIME

Poor Kaya. There she was, by birthright the eminently worthy center of her known universe, the absolute focus of all the love and affection there was in her growing world, the only world there was, right there at the center of the universe that had her name on it; then suddenly, out of nowhere, into the midst of this ideality plunge two completely useless tiny prunelike strangers who have not earned their place, yet effortlessly suck all the attention out of her universe and into theirs, and they do not even care about her, do not even know she is there, those two shapeless pinkish objects that, curse them, can cry at will and are utterly catered to in every way.

Compared to them, and to the way things just were, Kaya is ignored, told she is big, treated like she's grown up when she knows she's not, and doesn't want to be, and as if that weren't enough, to top it off she's going through the emotionally draining Terrible Twos, a time of life when she is called upon to test the parameters of her universe, what happens when she pours water on the floor or throws food, or spits whimsically? What ARE the limits to all this?

Then into this life-essential experimentation come not one, but two olympically infantile creatures and Kaya is abruptly sidelined with the alarming knowledge that she has lost the ability to cry at length, and at will, as these two minuscule party crashers do, not to mention the burden of her aforementioned universal concerns, and so at length she practices trying to cry as of yore (but failing in total frustration), the while working in one way or another (the two-year-old mind is a very fertile garden) to drag attention to herself kicking and screaming when it won't come willingly, moreover she does not like those two little pink pruny things, at all, she will show them.

Her mother Kasumi, being as fully occupied with nursing two newborn twins as a pair of infinitely hungry and helpless infants can suddenly make a mother, is now in a life place where grandparents are superheroes, bigtime. We come from other worlds and times, we caped crusaders, to not-all-that-tirelessly battle the dark forces of infancy, bringing welcome light and balance to burgeoning lives.

Up, up and awaaaaayyyy!!