a february friday night

 This guy and his brother came to be watched while the parents went out for dinner.

It was good.

 That little dog in the middle has been here all week while her mother was in Florida living it up in the sun, hanging out with her grandparents.

Okay, I included this pictures as evidence.   Do you see Lydia, aka Kari, WALKING on the furniture to get around her brothers?

Okay.

You've seen it too.  Sigh.

 Here they are playing chess with Little Jay's old  Simpson's chess set.   He was a huge Simpson's fan from the time he was a little small boy.

I have wondered this very much---Simpson's is somewhat bad, right?  Smart-alecky, innuendos, all that.  And yet the most civilized child I ever raised was crazy for them.  We thought maybe he got it all out vicariously through Bart.

And then Twitter happened, and his raunchy tweets, his wicked sense of humor?

Actually, I was glad to know he lets it out somewhere.

Okay, and I asked Tim  how he learned to play chess?  He said, "I always knew how."

No, not possible.  I myself do not know how, so we can be pretty sure I didn't teach him.  So who did?  Julia also knows how to play chess.  This is not some lesson they absorb in the womb from a non-chess-playing mother.

Weird.

Here are the nephew babies in Tim's room, a place they love to go and raise heck.

Here's that Knex roller coaster they love.

That little brown dog was so tired, and so happy to go home with her mother tonight.  Okay, this is also an odd story.  Payton brought along a big bag of rawhides. 

That's fine.

Well, this evening, she dug through the bag and brought one to Sam, and another to Sidney, and then she took one herself out to the family room to chew.  SHE PASSED OUT RAWHIDES.

????

Speechless.

This guy asked to go to Grandpa's office, so we did.  He has several model cars down there--souvenir metal ones.  We brought them down and he opened and closed the doors, looked at the little fake motor under the hood.  Then he turned to me and said, "I would like ice cream."

Moo Jr.s

We have those.  Oh my goodness, yes.

And that's the end of that, of a fine Friday night spent hanging around with cute babies and other kids I like.  Maria came home from that pizza place with dark circles under her eyes and a fond wish for a long bath.

Apparently Friday nights and Sunday nights are their peak pizza times.  And customers aren't afraid to be rude.

Little Jay has been working retail too, and I'm fairly astonished by how mean people can be.

Okay, answer this truly:   Would you be mean to my kid over a dollar?  Over a sold-out brand of dishsoap?

I used to hear these embarrassing, absurd customer stories when the kids worked at the nursery and garden center too.

People will be mean to another lady's kid over fifty cents.  Over a dollar.

Every retail worker is some other lady's kid.  Hello.

Okay, good night.  And be kind to your pizza people, and the guys who load your sod, and the one who points you to where the bathroom is.

love always, Val