oh my darlins'

i've mentioned before that my boys drive me crazy, right? what's that you say? "every time you mention your boys, you explain how they make you crazy. it's getting a little old mary." well sorry. this is my life. a big 'ol pot of crazy.

a lot of the time, the brand of crazy is of the frustrated/annoying persuasion. max is a bit volatile and we're never quite sure how he's going to react to things. plus, even when the kid is happy, he sometimes headbutts me, HARD, to show his happiness. and screeches like a pterodactyl. if you hear the screeching and look over to see max grinning at you with crazy eyes: protect yourself.

max is capable of doing a lot of things, like dressing himself, but if he doesn't want to, which is most of the time, he just won't do whatever it is you want him to do and will throw a mega huge fit about it. there are also a few things that max can't do, or that i don't have the patience to allow him to do, like doing every step of making the french toast, including cracking the eggs, that he very adamantly insists he can and should be allowed to do. i've been hesitant to let him carry the one precious egg that we get every few days from our hens because i don't want it getting broken. the first time i let him carry it he kept running after ben, even after i told him to stop running, and was being silly and dropped the egg. it didn't break but i confiscated it from him because of his unfriendly to precious egg conduct. he found that majorly offensive. the next time he was with me when there was an egg, he begged to carry it and i let him, reminding him not to run with it. i was so proud of him for carefully marching next to me and making it all the way to the house without any egg offending behaviour. then he smashed the egg on the big tree stump we have by our front door. careful, careful, careful, SMASH!!! yep, that's max alright.

so sometimes, they make me crazy with frustration.

but sometimes, the craziness is of the mind blowing, totally beautiful love kind. a lot of those moments take place when they are sleeping. i love me some sleeping boys. they're so quiet when they sleep. except for when they thrash and talk in their sleep and sniff their nose eighteen times while sharing my pillow with me. but i'm not talking about those times.

i'm talking about times like tonight when ben sings me a song. we were driving home from tim's parent's house and were talking about something that reminded ben of a song from veggie tales: madam blueberry. he started singing "i'm so blue" and i started to laugh. he asked me why i was laughing and i told him that his singing made me so happy that my happiness came out as a laugh. he then said, "well, this song will make you even happier."

"i love my mom.
she is the best.
we are so happy when we are together.
she is so nice.
i love her and she loves me."
(lots of repeating)

during ben's singing max started to sing but then started to yell at ben for "erupting" him. (how appropriate that max pronounces interrupting as erupting. he certainly is our little volcano.) for about ten minutes the boys fought over who's turn it was to sing to me. i tried to intervene, but i find parenting while driving to be really difficult. i finally just turned on the radio and turned it up to block them out/distract them. it was a bluegrassish instrumental song and it caught their ears. then they started singing again, together but singing their own songs. i turned off the music so i could listen to them. i couldn't hear max very well and he kept fading in and out, but what i could hear was "i love momma" over and over. ben was singing his song again and he also sang about looking at the clouds and about how he wished we lived in metrocity where robots would take care of us.

yep. crazy beautiful. with a little dose of crazy frustrating thrown in the middle to keep me from floating away, of course.

oh those boys.