i've got the voices of Beatles ringing through my ears right now- as I sit with my laptop on the bench in my front yard, listening to my sleeping babyboy breathe in and out, huddled under a blanket in our double jogger. The sun has decided to make an appearance today in SteelTown and I couldn't be more grateful- I'm sure I have a bad case of undiagnosed seasonal affective disorder. My mood has improved about 1000% in the last two hours, having been in its dormant irritable phase since November. Pittsburgh is a fabulous place to live, with the exception of the fact that you must love the color gray (in addition to being freezing cold almost all the time)- it has got to have the most mundane pallor of all the cities in America. After the kids' bunkbeds arrived this morning (yippeee), Ben, Sethy and I hauled our happy-slappies uptown to the coffee shop for Ben's favorite snack- natural orange soda (in a real glass bottle) and a homemade blackberry muffin. Any romantic notions you may be having about some peaceful mother-son connection over lucious yummies should be put aside- Ben spent the entire time guzzling his drink like a frat boy with a beer bong, then twirling around the shop like a fairy on crack. Then, of course, while I am attempting to sip my fresh squeezed lemonade, in peace, the inquest begins "MOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMY- WHEN WE GOING TO LEAVE MOMMMMMMMMY- I BORED MOMMY- MOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMY I NEED SOME FRESH AIR- LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

But the sun is shining people and that makes it all tolerable.