A long while back, I pledged to publish a post every Monday morning – nothing too weighty, just some miscellany that was bouncing around my brain – because I made a habit of easing my way into the week via lazy Monday mornings of coffee and blog reading, but few of my favorite bloggers tended to post new content on Monday mornings. So I figured, “Why not me?”

I ended up doing it a grand total of, I don’t know… maybe four times? That’s me and my stellar follow-through!

Anyway, I currently have just such a jumble of miscellany bouncing around my brain and the household conditions seem somewhat conducive to writing, so I thought I’d give the concept another stab. (This time with no promises: I have no idea what next Sunday night/Monday morning will bring.)

—1—

Let’s start with some pictures!

Isn’t that sweet? With their biggest brother now away at Kindergarten for so many (sooo… many…) hours a week, the younger two are already becoming closer. And littlest brother has begun to really look up to younger-older brother.

This morning I even caught him keeping his big brother company in time-out. (No, I’m not sure how effective that particular punishment turned out to be.)

—2—

Biggest brother has been adjusting really well to Kindergarten – much better than I’d expected. As long as the days seem and as full as they must be for him, he comes home happy. I think his personality must be well-suited to the constant stimulation of school, because if anything, he’s seemed more satisfied and pleasant in the evenings after school than he normally is. The other day, he even decided to write a book:

It’s done my worried (about him being away at school) heart so much good!

—3—

The other night I was perusing a few old blog posts on my phone that were similarly miscellaneous to this one – 7 Quick Takes and {pretty, happy, funny, real} – and I was enjoying them much more than I expected to. Until a month or so ago, I’d mostly stopped participating in those link-ups because I didn’t feel like many people were reading those posts, and if folks weren’t interested in them, then what was the point?

But now I see it! Looking back, it’s so fun to get a glimpse of what was running through my mind at the time I wrote those posts, not to mention the funny things my boys were doing and saying. So I think I’ll try to get back into writing them, even if it’s just a “Monday Morning Miscellany” every now and then. I have a feeling the little things are more worth remembering than I’d given them credit for.

—4—

Speaking of funny things my boys are saying… My second boy, this one:

He’s something of the sensitive type. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a rough and tumble boys’ boy who says things like “I wuv you so much I want to punch you!” But he’s also a great animal lover and was disturbed to learn recently that – yes – people eat animals.

Poor guy.

He’s especially fond of pigs and chickens, so he really took the news pretty hard. (By the way, I get why he never made the connection with pigs, because we don’t exactly set a plate on the table and say, “Here’s some pig fer ya!” but… um… that’s exactly what we do with chicken.)

Kiddo’s been trying to solicit promises from me that we won’t be eating any of the animals he’s become acquainted with: “Mommy, we won’t eat the babysitters’ chickens, right?” Me: “No, we definitely won’t eat the babysitters’ chickens.”

And days after my aunt and uncle’s pig roast, he was still sulking: “Mommy, I don’t want people to eat pigs,” and “Who was dat pig we cut up at Aunt Kaff’s house?”

But now!

The other day we were heading home from the grocery store at dinnertime with two hot rotisserie chickens in tow, and the very-hungry boys were admiring the smell of the chickens.

“Mmm… they smell so good! Mommy, how do you kill chickens? Do you shoot them?”

“No, you cut off their heads.”

“But where are these chickens’ heads? I don’t see them.”

“That’s because they’ve been cut off.”

The hungry tummy and the frank discussion must have caused some shift in my sensitive boy, because he suddenly shouted: “Mommy, I wuv pigs! To EAT.”

—5—

Let’s wash that down with a sweeter quote.

Last week I shared our very exciting news that Walsh baby #4 looks to be a GIRL. I’m still working on getting used to the idea (haven’t even bought anything pink yet!), but the boys are all in. The other day our second little guy put his head on my belly and said:

“Mama, I wuv your bewwy because a baby sister’s in it.” (Big cheesy grin.)

—6—

On Friday, the anniversary of September 11, I re-posted a link (on Facebook) to a piece I’d written a couple of years ago regarding my own experience of the attacks. If you haven’t read it, the story in a nutshell is that I was working about a half-mile from the Pentagon that awful morning. So in addition to the horror that most Americans felt upon learning what happened, I also experienced some of the real-world effects of those events: I saw streets fill with people and cars, I encountered heavily-armed police, I was temporarily stranded due to the public transportation shut-down, I could smell the acrid, biting smoke from the Pentagon, and the next day I saw it billowing into the sky.

The anniversaries of that day are always hard for me to bear, but for some reason this year’s really got to me. (I think because the weather was almost exactly like that of September 11, 2001 – gorgeous.) I ended up spending little time on Facebook, because all the memes and the images of the Twin Towers and the promises to “Never forget” and especially the videos – they were too much for me. I’d jump on my phone’s FB app thinking of something else and then WHAM, I’d catch a glimpse of the Twin Towers about to collapse and I swear my blood pressure would jump about a dozen points.

I can’t believe how much hold that day still has on me.

I was an awful grump on Friday, depressed and anxious despite the beautiful weather and the fact that I’m going to have a girl (!!!), and it took until mid-afternoon before I finally realized what was causing it: September 11 and that stupid, no-good, beautiful weather.

So I decided to do something about it. I took the boys straight from the bus stop to an ice cream shop, where we sat under that awful, clear-blue sky and thumbed our noses at it. We let ice cream and sprinkles and peanut butter and adorable, sticky faces work their magic.

And work, they did.

—7—

Let’s come up from that heaviness with some pics of Baby Don King:

This is what comes of finally deciding to comb all the tangles out of his hair. What am I going to do with this head of curly frizz?!

Also, have I told you that his big brothers have now Christened the poor kid “furball”?

—8—

Well, I do believe I’ll be getting in this post just past my “morning” deadline. I’d hoped to finish it up before the boys woke this morning (HA!), but instead I chose to sleep in. (No Kindergarten to get ready for this morning. Bliss…)

So, though I had no early-morning peace to enable this post’s completion, as of noon I have: given one urine-soaked baby a bath, changed his crib linens, done three loads of laundry, gotten myself and three boys fed and dressed, done dishes and loaded the dishwasher, picked up a random assortment of stuff, gotten the baby down for a nap, and yes – finally finished writing this post. I’m proud of myself!

Have a great week, everyone! I hope to “see” you back here soon.