Pigpen

I was doing laundry. We'd just walked in the house from a birthday party and I forgot to move the clothes from the washing machine over before we left, and thus, I was trying to maneuver a large laundry basket and my larger belly through some not-so-large door jams. I was in the middle of a particularly precarious maneuver when Todd came running in for a camera and told me to, "Come see your son!" I wasn't sure how much trepidation I should muster before going out to witness whatever it was I was supposed to see, but away I went. Apparently, when a child has an affinity for a certain patch of garden (my one and only flowerbed in this case) then that affinity becomes 10-fold stronger when the bed has been freshly watered. AND, if that same child is inspecting the wet flowerbed and falls, well...

THIS is what you get. For the record, there are "good" clothes and there are "backyard" clothes. Not a single stitch of this child was prepared for an all-out assalt on my flower garden.

But then, he looked at me with that, "What Mom, nothing is going to be permanently maimed or damaged because of a little dirt!" face.

Or my favorite, when he wants to put those chubby, grimy hands all over me in a big hug... because he knows without the hug, he'll be in serious trouble!

And Cooper has discovered this one: when all else fails, he puts on a show of his many faces, until he finds one that I can't help but laugh at. Then, he knows he's golden. I'm such a sucker for my little boy!!!