The Many Emotions of Janna Grace Vance

One thing I've learned about daughters: they have feelings. Last week, Jesse tried to pull Janna in a wagon that was missing a wheel (though neither of them was aware of this as they prepared for their adventure). Sure enough, when Jesse began to pull, the wagon lurched unexpectedly to the right, sinking on the side of the missing wheel. Janna shrieked and shrieked even after she had been safely removed from the faulty carriage.

Five minutes passed, and yet the soulful wailing continued. Finally, in the insensitive and blunt manner that is quickly becoming my trademark as a father, I asked her what in the world was the matter with her.

Answer: Jesse had hurt her feelings.

Chuckling insensitively to myself, I explained to her that Jesse had not hurt her feelings; he had just scared her, that's all. He didn't even know that there was no wheel. So, no problem, right?

Wrong. Janna's feelings were hurt, and there was nothing anyone could do to fix the problem. The gut-wrenching sobs continued for another ten minutes until some miracle of emotional restoration occurred and her feelings became whole once more.

I'm not really sure how I'm going to handle interacting with all of these strangely vulnerable feelings as we navigate through life as a family, but I do know one thing: if Janna has a myriad of feelings, our Heavenly Father was the one who made her that way, and so her impressive spectrum of emotional response must be an important part of her very intricate design. These photos, then, are a celebration of just a few of the many emotions of Janna Grace Vance.

We'll start off with the classic Janna emotion I like to call "bug-induced, full-body terror". Janna has capacity to be more viscerally afraid of insects than any person I have ever met. Just the sight or the idea of a bug can fling Janna into this paralytic state.

Now, I only bring this photo up first because it is the emotion we may (erroneously) associate with Janna upon first considering her many emotions. In actual fact, while she does display this fear-based response with impressive frequency, it is not a truly characteristic emotion for her. The next two emotions are far more important for understanding Janna.

I call this emotion "chilled and independent, especially while I wear your shoes". It is quite common for Janna to amuse herself in some sort of imaginative way, like here, where we found her tromping around giving the soccer moms and dads a orthopaedic fashion show. This is Janna's usual zone, and one impressive feature of this emotion is that it requires no audience. She would be just as happy to try on your shoes in the privacy of her own room.

If you really want to understand Janna, though, you must acquaint yourself with the following emotion, which I call "tremendously amused by one's own self". Janna can go through an entire day without cracking a smile at any of my jokes, but should she do something humorous, she absolutely loses it. There is actually a predictable rhythm and flow to this emotion: she pulls it out whenever I'm trying to be serious.

Especially at supper devotions. While reading the story of Noah's Ark the other night, I quizzed the kiddies on the story afterwards.
Me: Jesse, why did Noah build the ark?
Jesse (barely letting me finish the question): Because God told him he had to!
Me: Janna, what did God send to Noah as a promise?
Jesse (whispering loudly under his breathe): A RAINBOW. A RAINBOW.
Janna (staring at her fork):......
Me: Janna? Do you remember what God sent to Noah?
Janna: PLOW. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

And we've lost her. Supper devotions are an interesting experience, to say the least.

Suffice it to say, Janna is going to keep us busy. But it is a very beautiful kind of busy, even if I don't always get it.

Amused and appreciative,
Until next time...