"The Two Bubbas" and Family

For the week of Thanksgiving, my brother Ben; his wife Rebecca; and kids Lilly (6), Jeremiah (23 months), Zack (15 months), and Leo (5 months) drove out from Las Vegas to stay with us. Yep, we had 4 four kids under 4 in our house for a week. While there were moments of insanity, we had a really great time. We took all the kids to the Children's Museum at Navy Pier (unfortunately we all forgot our cameras). The older kids went to Madagascar 2, Rebecca and I got a little shopping in, and there was a lot of playtime with the kids.

Jude, Conner, and Lilly were obsessed with Spore, a fun computer game where you create a creature and help it evolve from a spore through space exploration and domination. They also built a pretty incredible city in the basement out of boxes, bins, and Legos. Leo and Avery enjoyed staring at each other and cooing. Jeremiah (nicknamed Bubba), Zack, and Asher had a love/hate relationship going on. Asher had a hard time remember the boys' names and which was which, so he quickly took to referring to them collectively as the "The Two Bubbas." The name stuck and we called them that for the rest of the week. Anyway, they loved to play together, but Asher also got annoyed frequently (understandably since The Two Bubbas are quite a bit younger than him). He did an amazing job controlling himself. I was so proud of him! Sometimes he would get so frustrated that his whole body would start to tremble and he would say is his deepest voice "I am MAD at you!" but he wouldn't physically lash out at them.

We found out shortly after their visit that Lilly will be going back to her mother in a couple of weeks (Ben & Rebecca have been her foster parents for about two years), so it was really great to be able to get to know her a little better, even if she was horrified by my son's blasphemy. It went something like this:

Asher is being possessive and won't let Bubba play with a toy. Bubba gets upset and Lilly tells Asher that he should share because "God wants us to share." Asher considers this for a moment, wondering how best to respond to the "God says so" trump card, and then he mutters, "I hate God."

Lilly was truly shocked and worried for Asher's immortal soul. I tend to think He thought it was pretty funny, but maybe that's just me assigning my sense of humor to Him.