A gift from my boys

I was awakened early this morning by a crying baby. My crying baby. As I lay in bed, telling myself to get up and take care of her, she stopped crying. I imagined her in her crib, settling down with her pacifier in her mouth and her hand across her nose, breathing deeply like she does when she is calming herself. I sighed a happy sigh and snuggled in under the blanket, with the joy of a mother who has just received the gift of more sleep. Is there any better gift? Perhaps, but not at that time of morning.

At 6:30 am, when I got up to see the boys getting ready, Scott told me, "Elizabeth was crying this morning, but we brought her into our room and played with her until our alarm went off." AAAAWWWWWWW. I am so happy to know that my boys love their sister. Getting up early to play with her, whether or not they did it with me in mind, is one of the best ways they have shown their love for me.

The boys, by the way, have been amazingly cooperative the last few days, thanks to the ingenuity of my husband and the boys' unswerving devotion to The Pigs (Harvey and Snortey). Every night, Harvey and Snortey send to-do lists to the boys via sewer mail. When the boys get up in the morning, on their LA Sewer Mat there is a list and a note to each of them from the pigs. The lists have things like say your morning prayer, eat breakfast, drink the extra milk in your cereal bowl, put your dishes in the dishwasher, brush your teeth, get dressed, put on socks and shoes, read scriptures for 10 minutes, have family prayer, catch the bus. It's no surprise that Ethan, my little clone, loves lists, but Scott! Wow! He is not a list man, but these lists are entirely different. He loves to check them off. The pigs also send afternoon or evening lists. The boys' room is clean. The upstairs is tidy. Their homework is done. They are reading their scriptures. It's amazing.

Now if such a thing would just work on me... I'm off to tidy for a few minutes before I go get my biopsy stitches out. Happy Wednesday!