While eating banana bread Art popped up out of his chair and said, emphatically, “Do you know who I love the best?”

(long pause of silence)

“YOU!” and he points to… BEN. We laugh, naturally. And I kid, “What about me?”

He explains, “I love Papa and Mama the best out of everybody, but I love Papa the mostbest, NOT you! [pointing at me]. I love Papa the most best because he wrestles really hard and that’s why,” and he nods and sits back down.

So, don’t kid yourselves, all you parents out there. Your children’s love is conditional.

These are some projects Art has been making lately. He likes to work with implements – scissors, glue, pom-poms… And one of them is Ben’s, which I thought was really great.

Blogger just came out with some fun new ways to tweak layout and colors so please ignore our changing palet.

    He was laying on me snuggling after having just woken from a long nap. He eventually sat up and sleepily studied my face. "Eye!" he said. I asked him to count my eyes and, pointing back and forth, he said "One, two, one, one, one."
    But then, out of the blue, he pointed at my nose and said, "Big!"
    I laughed and asked him to clarify. "Big?" I said.
    "Uh huh, Big." Then, pausing, he pointed to my nose again and said, "Long!"

We spent a lazy long morning at the bird sanctuary near Lake Harriett. Jess had to leave after a walk in the woods but the boys and I stayed for a long time roaming around exploring and wrestling and looking for animals in holes and gathering pine cones. (photos are from my cell phone…)

Since the snow melted it’s been nearly impossible to go from the car to the house without Lewis stopping to play in the sandbox.

A photo from Jess’s outing with the boys on the lightrail train.

So, after a three hour nap today I feel a whole lot better.  Plus three and a half more bowls of soup (which, of course tasted a million times because it’s the second day.  Not to mention the addition of MORE egg noodles and some matza balls).  I have energy again!  But after reading my post from yesterday I realized there were some missing elements in the description being sick with my angelic children.  First of all, they did watch TWO episodes of Dinosaur Train AND an entire nature show.  That’s a total of two hours in front of the tube through the day.  So that was obviously easy on the sick mom.  And I haven’t put anything away in days.  It was literally getting hard to walk around in my bedroom.  The kids dumped out all the legos in the basement, which you know is a recipe for foot pain and tidying tediousness, but I let them because it meant they were busy and I didn’t have to get up and do anything.  So, it’s not all peaches and cream around here.  It actually looks like a warzone in many places. Oh, and we ate out for lunch yesterday and today, we had soup for dinner two days in a row.  So they made it easy on me, but I made it really easy on me.  Eh.  It’s what you gotta do sometimes…  But now I really got to pay the price and clean up.