A grab bag ranging from syrupy sweet to rear-end kicking awesomeness.

Four more today.

One super mushy:

The other night, the day before my birthday, I was getting the kids ready for bed. Alyssa came over, gave me a big hug, and said, "I love you sooooo much. Thank you for being my Daddy!" Yeah, I didn't tear up. Nope. Not one bit. Of course.

She then followed up by telling me I could pick what book to read to her that night because the next day was my birthday. Go ahead, gag a little on the sweetness, if you need to.

One of Ethan testing me to keep from being too sweet:

Ethan was sitting at the table. He started talking about tumbleweeds. What???? I said, "What did you say?" He said, "There aren't nine tumbleweeds, Daddy." "Nine what?" "Tumbleweeds." It was the matter-of-fact way he kept saying these things that was throwing me completely. No sign he was hallucinating or anything, just talkin' about tumbleweeds. I said, "What are you talking about?" He grinned a little. "Tumbleweeds. There aren't tumbleweeds, Daddy." "What in the world are you talking about? I don't understand at all." He grinned again. "Tumbleweeds." "Ethan, you're confusing me, why are you talking about tumbleweeds?" He grinned and said nothing. Exasperated, I said, "Ethan, are you just trying to confuse me?" He gave me a huge smile. "Yep." Then he went back to eating.

Seriously? What did I do to deserve that? *Note to anyone who knew me as a kid: That's a rhetorical question. Yes, I do know what I did to deserve this. Please leave it be.

One from Addison yesterday:

I came in from working outside, walked up to her, and she grinned. Man, grinning babies are awesome. I said, "Hi, Baby Girl!" She giggled. A real, out loud, awesome baby giggle. If grinning babies are awesome, giggling babies are God's own way to tell the world that everything is great sometimes. So I said it again, she giggled again. Said it again, another giggle. She must have giggled six times just because I said, "Hi, Baby Girl!" Then Ethan asked me to pick him up to say hi to her, and she leaned on him so he could hug her. Yeah, that's pretty great.

Finally, a second-hand story from Laura today:

First, two things that seem totally unrelated, yet come together beautifully here. The first is that Ethan watches a PBS cartoon called "Dinosaur Train." It's all about (obviously) dinosaurs, and they have a couple of segments on each show where a paleontologist comes out and talks about the dinosaur featured that day, inserting little tidbits of knowledge by saying (for instance), "Point of fact: Pteranodons blah blah blah blah." The second is that Ethan loves his Superman pajamas. And he should, they're pretty sweet. Blue pants, blue shirt that comes past his waist and has the "S" shield and Superman's belt printed on it, and an extra-sweet red cape attached with velcro. And the S has little red lights that flash when you hit it. Pretty awesome, and Ethan loves to wear them.

So Laura's in the car with Ethan today, and he's going on about holding a worm outside yesterday. Talking away, telling her all about it, when he stops in the middle and says, "Point of Fact: I am Superman." And then goes on with his story. That rocks.