All Smiles

It's like they *know*.

Just when I am at my wit's end, ready to go SuperCynical on everyone within a thirty-mile radius, something wonderful happens to snap me out of it. The other night, as I sat, twitching and folding laundry on the living room floor, wondering if the children would survive if I took just one. small. nap. I heard a little scritch-scritch and saw movement out of the corner of my eye.

Two thoughts ran simultaneously through my head, jockeying for position. They were, "If that's a two-foot tall mouse, I'm out of here!" and "One of them is escaping!" (Being, presumably, the children, not the mice.) Well, either of those thoughts will fling the hope of a nap from any mother's brain, so I whipped around, only to find...



EmBaby's not such a baby anymore. And pediatric recommendations be darned, if we won't BUY her a walker, she'll improvise! We have vast stretches of empty space that don't lend themselves to cruising along with the aid of furniture, but it seems a stepstool works rather well on the laminate floor. She loves this thing, and it's stable enough that she can't push it over if it does get stuck on something.

And really, with smiles like these to greet me, I can forget about whatever it was the boys got into while I cleaned the bathroom...



Even wearing the evidence, he's so cute! How can I be mad? (Of course, ask me again when I try to make something and find they've eaten a key ingredient, right?)

This is why it's the good stuff. Someday, those two smiling faces will be the faces of adults. Hopefully, they will still smile all the way to their eyebrows like that, and hopefully, their lives will be filled with people who love those smiles just as much as (well, ok, realistically, "almost as much as") I do.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy