Beauty and the Beast

First, I'll start we the beast. Andrew woke up in quite a mood today. It was as if he had a list of naughty things he felt like he needed to accomplish and wasn't going to quit until he'd crossed everything off. If I wanted him to do something, he wanted to do the opposite. His favorite activities: Messing with the outlets, my computer, the satellite receiver, the dishwasher and the refrigerator; climbing up on the bunkbeds, scaling the pantry shelves, running out into the cul de sac (at every opportunity); dumping any small object (batteries, puzzle pieces, chalk, etc) into the water that fills the base of our basketball hoop; trying to eat vitamins and toothpaste. And that was all before lunch time. I was seriously ready to shut him in a closet just to keep him out of trouble. I had lost my temper more than once, and it was not a happy morning.

Now for the beauty. I went upstairs to grab something before heading outside, and found "mom's maolbox" taped onto Katie's door. I looked in the mailbox, and sure enough, she had left me an envelope. I opened the envelope and inside was a beatiful purple heart that said "I love mom." She totally made my day.














It didn't stop there, though. We went out on the trampoline (since that's where Andrew had escaped to and was shouting for me), and she bounced with him for over an hour. He had a great time, and she worked on her "flips"--she loves doing tricks. After an hour, it was finally naptime (hallelujah), and now we get to have a pleasant afternoon together. There are some days when I wish Katie had been a month older and could have gone to kindergarten this year. Today is not one of those days.


Katie was nice enough to leave a second envelope in my "maolbox". I opened it, expecting more loving expression. But, as I said, Katie loves tricks, and instead I found a dead caterpillar. Her response? "It was alive when I put it in there!"