February 22, 2005 - Tuesday
I loved the happy, if bewildered, looks on the boys' faces when I walked into school today with Connor. For a moment they just looked puzzled, but Harry quickly started asking questions (e.g. "are we going to Conner's house?"). I explained that Connor's mother wasn't feeling so well today (as she told me during a call to arrange a play date with Harry at their house on Friday), so Connor was going with us to the library. Connor's mother, a school counselor, has this week off for school vacation week and kept Connor and his older brother home, so I figured getting him out of the house for a couple hours would probably be welcome enough. And it was a great surprise all around. Connor seemed to get a kick out of being the surprise and the boys, having missed Connor that day at school anyway, definitely liked the idea of doing something with him. Admittedly, keeping three little boys (we were actually joined in the play room by a mother with two more boys - 5 and 3 - so there were five running around for a while) didn't really allow me to go looking around for books as I usually do. And I could see that the mother was trying to balance the desire to let boys be boys and the reality of things teetering on the edge just as I was.

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