Love Out Loud

I am so in love with my boys. Even though yesterday I discovered we have six baseball mitts cluttering up our sports basket, which is five more than we have people who know how to use one. And even though I routinely find pee on the toilet seat. And even though they are (the littles ones, at least) SO. LOUD.

It is a strange thing having children with someone you are in love with. Wonderful, yes, but also strange. In the man I am in love with, I have grown to find certain bad habits endearing. Really. It took some effort and a lot of arguing in our first years of marriage, but eventually I grew to see the fact that he doesn't turn his socks the right way when they go in the laundry (as opposed to squished together in a ball with sweat and dirt) as a mark of adorable consistency in his character. I just grin and throw his mashed up sock in the laundry and then leave them in a pile for him when they come out of the dryer.

But Henry's dirty socks are a different matter. It leads to cognitive dissonance. With Henry, there is a voice in my head nagging me to nag, saying, "Do you want his future spouse to have to deal with his nasty habits?"

But then Henry also has some delightful habits, like wanting to tell me everything about everything. He starts every sentence with, "Heymommyguesswhat..." He still has a bit of a stutter so he often starts the sentence about five times before he announces the amazing thing he has just discovered. Like that the grasshopper he captured on the northshore poops a lot; that he's learned to tie his own shoes; that his Bakugan has a tail that only pops out of you turn it this particular way. I fight the urge to hurry him because he might just hurry right up into the age of not desiring to tell me anything.

Dean is at that charming age where I can forgive him anything. I remember Henry being this way, right at about 2 and a half and three years old. So affectionate and emotionally needy but also so determined to be independent and to do everything by himself. He's clever about figuring out solutions to his problems. Just a few nights ago, he began to be scared of the shadow of his ceiling fan. So now he asks me to put his pillow pet over his head when he lays down so he won't see it. With his pillow in place, he goes right to sleep without a peep. He is still obsessed with his pacifier ("shnoodle") but now he compromises when I tell him to give it to me. "I can have it for just one more minute and then you can take it, Mommy." And then seconds later (his version of a minute) he dutifully hands it over without prompting. Every night he requests the same three songs -- "Sweet Baby Dean" (Sweet Baby James), "Alakazam song" (Orange Colored Sky), and "Doggie in the Windome" and then dances and sings the whole time. He hates for me to leave in the morning and starts objecting "Don't leave!" as soon as he sees me put on my heels. When he gets into trouble, his anger spills over so fast and furious that if I pick him up at just the right second it dissolves into sadness and tears as he hugs me tightly.

They are essentially sweet, and care about each other. When Henry was crying the other night, Dean went over to him and asked him gently what was wrong and told him, "It will be okay." When they were at camp together this week, Henry observed Dean crying at naptime in the room next to Henry's and went to the teacher to tell her so she could go and settle him. As much as they bicker and do things intentionally to irritate each other, they can make each other laugh more than anyone else can. LOUDLY.