There are days when I can't stand the cuteness.

Sometimes, it's almost as if Éiden has read a handbook on how to be cute. For instance, when he jumps off of the last step, after asking me to watch him, he shouts, "Whee!" I don't mean something that sounds like "whee" but "Whee!" the actual word. Of course, he'll destroy all memory of the cuteness later on tonight when he becomes a pain in my ass at bedtime, but when does things like shout "Whee!" it's all I can do to keep from squeezing his little cheeks as hard as I can.

This may have been the most repulsive even exchange I ever made.

This is the non-gross part:

I bought a new backpack yesterday for Arie since the one I'd gotten for him last month was a piece of crap and, even though it had an image of Superman on it, it fell apart, thus failing to live up to the reputation of the Man of Steel. I couldn't find another Superman backpack like Arie had requested, so I got a Batman one instead. Unfortunately, it too started tearing at the seam this morning so I had to return it, which meant I needed the receipt.

( Now this is where it starts to get nasty . . . )

My son -- the future engineer.

Inside the front pocket of Arie's new backpack is a removable keychain, which was, for him, one of the main selling points. Before he'd gone up for his bath, I asked him to transfer the contents of his old backpack to his new backpack and he did, but before he went upstairs, he ran to his junk drawer (yes, my kid has his very own junk drawer), rifled through it and grabbed something, then quickly attached it to the key chain. I assumed it was a set off unusable keys we'd given him a while back.

Later, after I'd put the boys to bed, I went to go hang the new backpack up, but before I did, I looked to see what he'd put on the key chain. It was his tiny adjustable wrench and a small keychain-sized tape measure. I'm not sure what he plans to work on with either, but it kind of broke when I saw them.