8+3=Love

By 7:30pm last night, Kenyon was completely and utterly exhausted.  The kids are always more weary on Mondays, and the Boys vs. Dad front-yard wrestling match that was gearing up just as I skipped out the door to my spinning class likely depleted Kenyon's little three-year old energy reserves. Keeping up with two older brothers is a tough job, and Kenyon has mightily risen to the occasion since way back when crawling was his preferred method of mobility.

Last night, he communicated his weariness with tears--tears that he didn't want to take his clothes off for a bath, tears that his brothers were bathing before him, tears that I told him if he spent too much time crying then we wouldn't be able to read a story.  Parental impatience morphed into motherly compassion, and I skipped the nightly bath routine, scooped up his delicious little wiped-out body and tucked him right into bed with a kiss.  Blanket?  Beary?  Done and done.  Lights out.

He shares a room with both of his older brothers, who were looking forward to some reading time before bedtime.  Alex headed to our bedroom and was immediately immersed into Harry and his TriWizard Tournament drama.  I told Jackson he could read up in his bed with his headlamp.

Twenty minutes later, I headed upstairs to give them the lights out call but was surprised to hear a voice reading softly out loud.  I opened the door to the kids' room and saw this:

Jackson, instead of delving deeper into his Norse tale, The Sea of Trolls, was reading to his little brother from our pop-up 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

As I walked back downstairs, my footsteps felt lighter; strange, considering the fact that my heart felt so impossibly full.