Obviously, in the boat we’re in, it’s very weighty a lot of the time with the way the Monster is.  It’s hard – very – when we can’t tell what’s going on in his head, or when we’re trying to think about the future.

On the other hand…There is the upside.

The Monster gets very excited for his school bus in the morning.  I don’t think I know of any other child who is so excited to be going to school – he literally starts bouncing up and down at the safety gate to be released to go bounce by the door and wait for the bus.  And when it arrives, he’s off like a gunshot to get on it.  (There’s something to be said for order and schedules.)

He loves his little brother absolutely.  (No, that wasn’t an issue with my word-order.)  The same goes for his cousins, his uncles and aunts and grandparents… and probably most of his friends.  He loves to give hugs and the like to people he knows.  But most importantly, he’ll play with his little brother (or at least around him) in ways that we don’t see him doing with other kids, if only because it usually gets his baby brother squealing and bouncing and laughing too.

He has a delightful sense of humor, for who he is.  Once he finds something funny, he’ll happily loop through that thing until we’re sick of it, and then some.  I think at one point yesterday, I read the same page of a book to him for five minutes straight, just because he liked shouting out the cue lines for sound effects.

Bedtime is easy.  A lot of other kids his age whine and plead about going to bed already, especially with company over.  Him… on the mention of bedtime, he happily gets up from what he’s doing and tears up the stairs, even forgetting to say goodnight to everyone else.

And there’s quite a bit more, but the day is only so-long and I have things to be doing… 😉

It’s important to remember the upsides.  They’re what make life worth living.