Legos, blocks, and Matchbox cars. These are some of the creative mediums the boys use to express themselves. Gavin can spend hours meticulously lining up cars end to end all the way across the living room floor. Tommy just finished building a very tall sculpture out of the empty toy bins next to me. It concerns me a little that I have no idea where all 7,000 toys that belong in all 30 toy bins are. But we won't go there.

As I got down on my hands and knees tonight to pick up the above cars, I paused a minute and smiled. Someone had a lot of fun today under this table. In his own little world, some little man carefully selected each car from the toy box and decided on the position before setting each vehicle in place. He would have lined and realigned each car several times until completely satisfied. He probably had to protect his creation from younger siblings trying to get in on his fun. I glanced over at the creator of this masterpiece who is draped up over the sofa arm fast asleep. I felt a twinge of guilt as I picked up the first three cars. I paused and gently lined them back up. I admired his creation for another moment before standing back up and going to find my camera. I tiptoed over sleeping boys in the living room and snuck the batteries out of the remote control. I placed the batteries in my camera and got down on my hands and knees again to capture this latest mess.

My goal each day is to laugh more than I cry. Instead of cursing every mess I have to clean up, I try to appreciate the time and artistic effort that went into each and every piece of the mess or at least try to give a little credit to the little man that came up with the blueprints.