I was in the shower, Wiley was at the kitchen table and Archer was in his highchair, they were eating breakfast while I took my usual 2 minute shower. While in the shower, Wiley asked for some water, I said, the dishwasher's clean, can you open it and get out a cup and get some water. yes, he says. Then I hear screaming, crying and Wiley yelling "there's a rat in our house, There's a rat under the door. There's a rat in the house. The rat when under the door." I jump out of the shower, by now York's downstairs with us, Wiley's standing on a kitchen chair and crying, trying to explain how when he went to open a dishwasher a rat (hopefully a mouse) ran out from under the dishwasher and ran across the kitchen floor into the bathroom. He explained that he was scared from the surprise and frightened because they were poisionous, something he thought I told him previously when the cat had left a dead mouse on the front step, I clarified for him that they just might have germs, but aren't poisonous and are more afraid of him than they are of him. He was pretty shaken up and described it's pink tail and grey body, again, I hope it was a mouse...there isn't much space under the dishwasher, in fact, I can't see any space for a mouse to get through. Later, today, however, when I went to his school to host the Valentine's day party, he made sure everyone knew he had seen a rat in our kitchen this morning, then at Costco, he told all the people waiting in line to check out that we had a rat in our house this morning.

Wiley gave out Valentines cards to his classmates and his were the only handmade ones there. They were super sweet and cute and I hope he will always like to make his own, but I'm sure peer pressure will mean at some point in the next few years we'll end up buying transformer ones. But he cut out his own hearts, put glue and glitter on them, stuck some jewels on them, wrote his name on the back and then I taped a candy bracelet to each one. I wish I'd photo graphed them, they were all so beautiful.