I did it on purpose

Dean gave me a great Mother's Day present. He printed out all of my blog entries from January 2007-January 2008 and formatted them along with all of the pictures and bound them into a book for me. I was thrilled! He is working on this year's book already and we both agree that eventually we will make a copy for each of the boys to keep. I am not sure how impressed the boys will be, but I am sure their future wives will enjoy reading about them when they were babies!! I was reading the book of blog entries and realized that, much like my handwritten journal, I tend to only write when things are going really well in my life. While admittedly my life is pretty terrific and I have very little to complain about, I don't want my dear, faithful readers (or my future daughters-in-law) to think that everyday is sunshine and roses in our house. Quite the contrary! I would say that each day is a mixture of sunshine and rain...a perfect storm if you will. Take Tuesday for example. On Tuesday afternoon our next door neighbor, Mason, came over to play and the boys spent a couple hours running around. Mason is exactly 3 months younger than Ben and they, for the most part, get along very well. Once the boys whines, however, started to outnumber their giggles, I declared playtime was over and it was time for quiet time. Both boys were quite irritated with me, but we headed inside for quiet time nonetheless. After an hour or so of peacefullness, we made our way back outside. The boys, although happy to see each other, immediately started fighting over what to do. They eventually settled on baseball. I admit that I wasn't watching when "the incident" occurred. All I know is that Mason started bawling and Ben immediately put his fingers in his mouth and had a sheepish look on his face. To his credit, Mason wouldn't rat out his friend and despite his mom and my pleas to tell us what happened, he just cried and held his head...where a blotchy red spot was rapidly developing. I called Ben over and asked him if he hit Mason. He assured me that he did not. I asked him if he remembered what lying was and suggested that he think about what happened and tell me the truth. This time, upon asking him if he hit Mason, he admitted that he did. I said "Ben, was it an accident." He looked at me with wide eyes and said "Nope. I did it on purpose." I asked him if he understood what "on purpose meant" versus "on accident." He assured me that he did and that he didn't want Mason to have a turn batting so he hit him in the head with the bat and most definitely "did it on purpose!" Hmmm. I appreciated him telling me the truth, but I wasn't sure what to do with the whole hitting on purpose thing. Anyway, just thought I would share a little bit of the nasty side of our daily lives rather than all the mushy lovey dovey posts I have been sharing lately!