Just when you think you are raising Satan's spawn...

One of the little devils goes and does something sweet. The other night when Owen was flat out "sad and mad" and lamenting about how badly his soccer team sucked his older brother Haaken could have rubbed it in and made matters worse but he didn't. He sat next to his "sad and mad" baby brother and put his arm around him and said "Owen I wish you were on our team, if we had you on our team we would be unstoppable". I kind of got choked up over this. Sometimes it is hard to remember my boys have a softer side when they spend so many hours trying to kill each other. Of course this made me remember other instances of them playing nice and showing their solidarity to each other. I offer up these gems. Moments to make a mama proud.

My oldest son Quinn and my baby son Owen are so much alike it is painful. They butt heads over EVERYTHING and most of my yelling and screaming is because I am trying to keep them from killing each other. Yet when one of them is sick or hurt the other one becomes the sweetest most thoughful brother ever. It is amazing to see in motion. For instance last summer Quinn wiped out on his bike going way too fast down a dirt and gravel road. After leaving half his hide in the dirt it appeared he had managed to break his arm. It was obvious it was broken so I loaded the gang up and off to the ER we went. It was his right arm and yeah, he is right handed. From the backseat a small anguished cry was heard "Mama! That is his wiping hand! How is Quinn gonna wipe his butt?" which then led to the offer of "Quinn I will wipe your butt if they put a cast on your arm, I will. You hollar at me and I will wipe it anytime you need me to" - and by God that child did. I tried to jump in there with offers of helping Quinn until he figured out how to do it left handed but Owen trumped me everytime. "Mama I said I would wipe it and I will, he needs me" and away he went.

Then there was the tumor scare back in April where we spent a weekend fretting over what "lesions in the bone" meant. Quinn was laid up with a sore knee and scared he was going to die (why do doctors tell you these things in front of your children?) and Owen was scared Quinn was going to die (yes my children are very dramatic) so that whole weekend Owen was as sweet as pie to Quinn and waited on him hand and foot. When we found out things were so dire the love tapered off some and eventually they went back to their Tom and Jerry routine.

And let us not forget the night before Thanksgiving when I had to take Owen to the ER for horrible abdominal pain where he was diagnosed with extreme constipation and the pain was from his dad's misguided attempt to help him by feeding him chocolate exlax and accidentally overdosing him. Owen came home with narcotics, heavy duty stool softners and a liquid diet. Quinn laid in bed rubbing Owen's sore tummy and re-heating the rice bag to help his poor tummy. He also read and re-read Skippy John Jones to his sad sore and seriously stoned little brother.

And the crowning moment of me doing something right with raising these rotten children comes with Christmas. One Christmas my nephew (who is an only child and kind of spoiled) was complaining that Santa didn't bring him enougn presents and my Quinn looks at him and says "Maybe Santa gave some of your presents to the poor kids" to which my nephew replied "I want them back" and my son says "but Zach, don't you think poor kids should get presents too?" (guess all those times I made them help buy a toy for the poor kids really sunk in) - there was also the time when a kid in Quinn's preschool class had to have surgery on a ruptured appenix and was laid up in the hospital. Quinn used his own money to buys him some art supplies to play with while he was bed bound. Didn't even have to prompt him, it was completely his own idea.

So yeah I complain a lot about how rotten my kids can be and believe me they can make the most sane person want to strip naked and run screaming into the midnight sun but deep under the little boy bravado and the layer of dirt and grime beats a heart that is bigger than you would expect. This is what makes me love being the mama of three little boys, yelling, dirt, nerf attacks and all.