thursday with e. and d. (not unlike tuesdays with morrie)

Today my boys had their best friends over.  I like to watch them together.  Deanna, mom, of said best friends commented to me that she has never seen them fight.  I think that is true.

Today I watch as they videotape one another, interview each other, record each others laugh.  And then watch and listen and laugh some more.  Repeat over and over.

I watch them as they play in the neighborhood pool.  More often than not, they are in the splash area where the toddlers play, letting the buckets of water splash down on them as they lift faces to the big blue sky.  A little later, a lifeguard yells at them for covering up waterspout holes with their hands.  Like what two-year-old hasn't done that?  So what if they are tweens and teens?

I feed them quesadillas and cherries.  I leave them alone.  I came back to find them all gushing "blood" from their mouths, running down their chins.  I don't know if their mom will think it was as funny so I risk sharing this.  But it was funny and not as messy as the time they decided to have a mud war and cover our white picket fence with globs of mud.  Insanity with a water hose.

Syd approaches my bedroom doors and closes them, as I'm folding laundry inside the room.  Probably not a good sign I'm being closed in. "What now?" I ask.  "We are playing hide and scream," he says.  I decide this is okay as long as the screaming doesn't get too loud.  I get screamed at later when Ben mistakes me for Syd coming around the corner.

I'm truly thankful for these friendships, for all the friendships my boys have.  That I get to witness them now while they are under our roof.  And get to laugh as much as they do.