The healing power of boys

Today after dinner I was done in. It had been a long, challenging day at work, dinner started late and ended with Jon running out to a meeting. I dreaded the mess in the kitchen and felt totally out of steam to parent. So I did what any self-respecting mom would do- I curled up in my nice fluffy comforter and let the boys run wild. Only they didn't. Theo came in right away to join me. He snuggled under the covers and then popped back out to bring in an assortment of damp washclothes and q-tips and other wonders of his imaginative world of 'medicine'. Then Eli happened by and snuggled in. He talked to me for a brief minute and then put his head under and I heard him doing some weird breathing thing. Turns out he was trying out the 'mindful minute' that he learned from his art teacher. Then he showed me some pressure point techniques which we all practiced, including the ever popular eye pressure point developed on the fly by Theo. Don't try it. But it was all in all a delightful half an hour and I emerged from my cocoon with enough energy to clean the kitchen. They are truly the best medicine. I admit I'm still a bit leary of the eye pressure point technique. It involved damp q-tips and Theo's never-so-calculated pressure applications. Could lose an eye that way.