New Mercies

Yesterday was hard. Darn hard. But, as is usually the case, today started with an extra special ray of sunshine to make up for the gloominess of yesterday. Owen and I were playing in his room for a minute after dropping Caleb off at school...and he gave me a hug!!! Don't get me wrong. I've coerced LOTS of hugs out of that little one and his big brother, too. But, this is the first time ever that he actually just reached out, grabbed onto my neck and snuggled for a minute. Yay! There was no ouchy, no garbage truck [yes, my big bulldozer baby has an incredible fear of trash trucks], no fright that sent him into my arms. He did it on his own!

Overall, the entire day was far better than the day before. There were still plenty of spankings and mini-tantrums, but NOTHING like Monday. Zach had to stay home from work because he was sick. That usually means that I take the day off, too. We cuddled and took naps. After the boys woke up from their naps, we baked chocolate chip cookies and watched Monsters vs Aliens together. It was great fun!

While eating their cookies, Caleb requested a cup of milk for dipping, but there was no way I was going there while letting them have their cookies in the living room. I got them both some milk to drink from their sippy cups. However, I made the grave mistake of getting small cups of milk for both Zach and I, so that we could have some milk with our cookies, too. I sat down on the floor and was instantly bombarded on both sides by little boys with cookies in hand. They both shoved their cookies in my milk! They got a few bites in this way, but it was threatening to be a HUGE mess - little drops of milk all over. I said no more dunking, so Owen promptly dropped his entire cookie down into my cup. Little stinker. He had already eaten a good deal of his cookie, so when I got him a new one he ended up exceeding the one-cookie-limit that I had set for them. And what's worse? I wouldn't be surprised if he did it on purpose. He's shown cookie-monster-tendencies before. A few weeks ago we had dinner and fun with lots of friends from church at the Livingston's house. After dinner they broke out some ice cream and cookies for dessert. I made a cup of ice cream for each of the boys and sent them outside to devour their treats. I was inside, so I didn't witness this first hand, but... Apparently O was feigning some difficulty in getting his ice cream on his spoon. Kelly ran right over to help him scoop. While her attention was focused on feeding him his ice cream, however, she innocently let her own cookie get within his reach. He snatched it right out of her hand! Again, stinker! I can't necessarily say that I blame him, but still...