Right now I am sitting at an octagonal table in my living room. The table sits next to a set of four windows lined with about fourteen pots of variety of cacti and succulents. Sarah and I really like houseplants. There’s more succulents scattered around the house. Our senior assistant seems to think them to be a bit excessive. The first time she came into our home she grumbled, “You guys have a lot of plants.” She clearly did not approve.

It’s supposed to unseasonably warm today, but I can tell that it is quite windy outside. And looking out my window now, it looks colder than it probably is. The sun looks to be fighting to make an appearance. But I see no blue in the sky. Only a grey ceiling of clouds.

I sit here in silence. Sarah took the girls to church and dropped off the boys to a lenten Sunday School class. She let me stay home and be by myself. Which was nice and unexpected.

I’ve been up since about 5:40 this morning. I first heard the fan turn on in the bathroom and then a loud door slam. “Probably Ezra,” I thought to myself. After a few moments of silence I started to wonder what was actually going on behind that door. I got up and went into the bathroom to see Ezra just finishing up and flushing the toilet.

He scurried back to his room through our living room and again slammed the door. I opened it quickly to see him jump into bed and get under the covers.

“Stay in bed, you two.”

Micah, who had been sitting up waiting for his brother to return from the bathroom, laid back down and I closed their door to hopefully get a few more moments of rest before having to watch them while Sarah continued to rest.

I got about twenty minutes before I heard Ezra come out of his room for the morning. It was about 6:00. Sarah and I have now established some new routines. Today is their beginnings. One of the biggest and most important elements of the new routines is that I am the one to get up with the boys every morning until it’s time for me to work with the girls at 7:20 am or so during the week. On the weekends it’s a bit later.

I got up this morning and took a couple pillows and my comforter off the bed to go rest out in the living room while the boys played with each other. I threw the pillows down in front of our door, and laid down with my blanket. I didn’t want them sneaking a chair over to the door to unlock it again, and we don’t have a long enough couch for me to lay down on, so it was the most logical place to rest.

The boys played fairly well with each other. There was some bickering and some pushing here and there. Another recent change is that if the boys fight over a toy, the toy gets taken for a time until they will be able to earn it back. I didn’t have to take away a toy because after my one prompt of them needing to share with each other or else it would be taken, they figured out a system of borrowing that appeased them both, at least for the time being.

It’s Sunday, and eventually when 8:00 rolled around I turned on CBS to watch Sunday Morning. Ezra borrowed my phone to play a game and Micah played with toy cars.

Sarah eventually got up and made a plan for church. I had forgotten about the boys having Sunday School, so we had to start the battle with Micah about getting dressed. It’s been horrible recently, and has been progressively getting worse. He refuses to put on pants and shirts because they “mess with him.” He doesn’t like tags or seams. He has given up on wearing jeans altogether. Every day it is now a battle just to get clothes on him.

Eventually we got them both dressed, but even walking out the door Micah was still complaining about his pants, threatening to take them off at any moment.

Sarah is going to have to go to the store to pick up brunch foods. We didn’t have the ingredients to cook brunch this morning. The reason why we don’t have the ingredients for brunch this morning is a story that goes back to yesterday’s adventure. An adventure I still am unsure I have the words to address quite yet. But I will soon.