It's a good thing they're cute.

Me oh my, I am sitting down with a big glass of chilled white wine after a looooooong day with the boys. The actual number of hours I flew solo through the turbulence of the boy-storm were no more than usual, but today was one of those days.

Yesterday I went on an impromptu walk with my neighbor - a mom to a one year old girl. She asked me how I handle it with three. With three boys. "Sometimes I can go crazy with one," she said. "And then I see you out in the yard with all three! How can you handle it? All the noise?"

Well, I got them one at a time. And they did start as babies. Really cute babies. So by the time they're this big and crazy, I guess I'm used to it and I love them enough that, for the most part, it really doesn't seem that crazy most of the time.

As for the noise, well I have a theory. You know how they say if you put a frog in a pot of water and slowly boil it, the frog doesn't realize the water is getting hotter and hotter and that it will eventually cook him? I think it's kind of like that.

The volume level in our home just gets louder and louder and I don't realize that it's causing my shoulders to rise to my earlobes until I REALIZE THAT I AM FRIED.

And then I freak out.

(I should note that the volume level is usually in perfect synchronicity with the chaos level.)

Anyway, so I freak out, and they cry, and then the baby laughs, and we all smile, and laugh, and go outside, and we're fine again.

And then Owen is constructing and Eli tells me "I'm just going to run around and yell Ahhhhhh!!!" and the baby is trying desperately to get the dog's attention and I am fine.

How quickly we can go from zero to sixty and then back down again without missing a beat.And the baby is still trying to talk to the dog, and the boys are now running up and down the sidewalk with these random pieces of shelving they found in the shed and I think,

It's a good thing they're cute.