Negative One Love

Caroline had a good start to her week.  She was invited to a birthday party on Memorial Day.  It was an underwater/aquarium theme.  During the first part, they colored and decorated aquatic creatures.  Caroline was particularly proud of her Neapolitan jellyfish.  She was a clever one weaving birthday treats into the water theme.  She had a good time.

That night the kids were to move to the next bedroom on their summer sleeping schedule.  It was the little lady's room and she had second thoughts on letting her brothers crash her pad.  As a temporary compromise, they moved mattresses into the playroom.  Then, after one night of sleeping in there, they decided they liked it enough to stay the entire summer.   

Midweek we made it out to our neighborhood pool for our first swim of the season.  Caroline has been asking to go on a near daily basis.  To boost her appeal, she's said she needed to practice her swimming for when she has lessons later in the summer.  It was a good day to go because we had the pool to ourselves the entire first hour.  Even the lifeguard just nodded at us that we could get in - no whistle blowing for him.  It was refreshing and fun.  

That evening, we headed to our friend Bobby's house.  Our kids have mutual friends through Bobby.  They've played online with them for about a year, but had never physically met.  They live in Mississippi, but come back to Texas once a year to visit family.  This year, we were all able to meet up at Bobby's house.  The boys were so excited to finally see them in person.  We recognized their voices immediately.  They played all sorts of games for hours while us parents tried our hand at Clue.  It was a good night.

We had quite the interesting weekend with our friendly opossums that live under our shed.  Friday morning, I let Benson out in the backyard like normal.  Almost immediately, I noticed a really big opossum close to our patio.  Benson, of course, noticed it, too, and immediately went checked it out.  There was a lot of sniffing and he even picked it up and moved it a foot.  I was yelling-whispering for him to come back in (it was only 7:00 a.m.), which of course he ignored.  Todd got up and was able to bring Benson in.  Fortunately Benson was so interested in the possum that he didn't try to run away when Todd got close.  The possum had already started to play dead, and because everything happened so quickly, Benson did not have a chance to injure it.  Once we got the dog inside, we watched to make sure the opossum left.  Five minutes later it stood up and waddled to the shed.  

Then the next morning, 7:00 a.m. again, Benson wanted to go out.  No opossum were spotted, but just to be safe, I sat outside with him.  Benson did his normal walking around, but then got very interested in the base of a tree.  He was nosing around the grass a lot.  I thought he may have spotted a frog as they are prevalent.  But then I heard hissing sounds.  Seeing nothing but grass, I went over to see what was hissing...really hoping it wasn't a snake.  What do I find, but a baby possum.  It was a tiny little guy making a very loud sound.  He instinct to play dead must not have been developed yet, because he just walked around.  Again, we got Benson away and inside.  We let it be to see if it would walk to the shed.  We were hopeful when it started walking in the right direction, but then he took a wrong turn and was coming back towards the house.  We got an empty flower pot and Todd rescued the little guy and put him exactly where his mother walked under the shed the day before.  This time we watched to make sure he was safe.  He was a cute little guy.  

Henry has made a special rating system for his love towards me.  He started off by saying that I'm the second best mom.  He explained it as, everyone thinks their mom is first best, so I was going to be unique and be second best.  Thank you?  A few days later he demoted me to third best.  Some people think God is the best and their moms are second best, so, logically, I was now third best.  The love I felt was palpable.  Could it get better than third best?  A few days after that he said that I was going to be -1 best.  No one's mom is negative-one-best.  All I know is that I am feeling the -1 love around here.