No creativity left for titles anymore

Ethie proudly displays his "too many cars!"

Dylan displays his best "deer in headlights"...see header, sometimes I catch his beautiful smiles


Owen...they don't make them any happier than this one, folks.

*****

Ethan summed up how I feel about our house with uncanny insight the other day when he said, "There's too many stuff around you."

Ethan and I talk about what a good Daddy Ethan has quite a lot. Daddy is brave and capable enough to take his 3 kids out on his own (Mommy hasn't done this yet!). Daddy does things around the house without being asked (most of the time!). Daddy can fix/construct/destruct just about anything that needs to be done (just think about all the labor costs we've saved with all of our house projects!). When Daddy gets home from work, Ethan announces that he's "got a good daddy...he's a good man." Daddy was grilling the other day when we were all outside and Ethan said, "I got a good daddy. I got a good mommy too." Yep, that one gets the tears flowing.

Ethan went to the basement with daddy the other night and announced upon his return, "We went on a beer run. We got our beer and we're going to drink it all up." PSA: Ethan does not really drink the beer, but he loves to talk about beer.

There are so many funny things that he says now...some of them are only funny in his little voice, because when I start to type them up it doesn't read as funny...you just have to hear them in his voice...for example, "Will you make me a sandwich here, Mommy?"...today when I came upstairs for lunch just as Gamma and the boys were getting home from the mall. It doesn't read funny, but he said it while running over to me with a huge smile on his face and his intonation just kept going higher and higher, like people do sometimes when they ask questions, but he is practically squeaking by the end of his questions his voice is so high. It's funny...promise.

*****

When I first graduated from college, rising early in the morning was not easy. I think I only had one 8am class through my years at Olaf...Calculus, which despite my hatred of early mornings at the time, I got an A in...I love Math and am a nerd like that...Anyways, I loved to sleep in and would wait until the absolute last minute to get up and get ready for work. 8:30 was typically the earliest I could get myself to arrive at work (I typically get to work at 8:30 now too, on my office days, but that's because of the hectic-ness of my mornings, not because of late-waking!). When I was freshly graduated, someone at my job was talking about how she'd done 2 load of laundry before getting to work at 7am that day. I thought she was nuts. Yes, that's a bit extreme, and would probably require waking up around 4am, but now I fully realize just how productive one can be in the morning when you get up early!

Mornings...at least the ones where I'm working from home and don't have to bother getting myself ready, are a great time to get things done!! Today, the babies were up early...we fed them and got up for the day. I washed dishes, started the dishwasher, made coffee, Andy got some laundry started and did some ironing, I picked out clothes for the kids, got Ethan up, dressed, breakfasted...got myself breakfasted and coffeed. And logged on to my work computer promptly at 7:45! So, maybe I'm not doing 2 loads of laundry before an early start to the workday...but I understand the appeal of early-rising now. Saturdays and Sundays are exempt.

I am officially "old"...I even whined on Facebook about the neighbors' bass on Sunday night...they are two houses down, so I think whining is justified!

*****

Crazy went to jail yesterday. She got 6 months in a workhouse with work-release (although I would assume she lost her job) and 5 years of probation, along with some other stipulations (can't come near us, can't do daycare, no unsupervised contact with those 12 and under, etc). I thought I would feel better after the sentence was handed out, but I think I feel worse than ever. Did we do the right thing by agreeing to the Felony Child Endangerment guilty plea? 6 months is not enough. Should we have pressed further and gone the trial route on the Felony Assult charge? It would have been terribly emotional and painful to rehash everything, but even the Judge said that it was clear that something greater than an "accident", as she claimed, happened here even without having all the evidence presented to him. What's done is done and I think I just have to let this go and move on. But I can't help thinking about it. I also am curious about the results of the psychological evaluation that the Judge ordered. I think having her officially labeled as "crazy" might help me "understand" all of this. The idea that a sane person could abuse a child totally destroys my view of humanity. If she was clinically nuts, then at least I know "why" she did it.