Changing of the Guard

Ella is one lucky little girl. She has three big brothers to always watch over her and take care of her. Only those brothers didn't immediately take on that responsibility when she was born, it's a honed craft that takes years to develop. We're still working on it but for years now Ella has said, "Max, always helps me" and in a lower hushed tone, never where her other brothers could hear her, she'd say, "he's my favorite." Shocking to the other two I know it would be but hey, Max worked hard for that distinction.

So last night I was putting Ella to bed and we were talking about her routine of walking to and from school and I asked her if she was going into the cafeteria in the morning and she said, "yesterday, Ben just walked me to my classroom" and I said, "what did you do when you were walking home?" and she said, "my teacher says we need to tell her goodbye everyday so that she knows we're leaving before we get up off the bench outside, so I saw MT and Ben and called their names and they came over". I asked if they both then walked her home and she said, "well, Ben did but MT just ran off. Ben is becoming a good brother," she said with a smile.

I then went out into the older boys room and was rubbing their backs praising Ben for being such a good big brother and he got this wide grin on his face that showed such pride in knowing his little sister was now depending on him more. Then Max chimed in and said, "it's an important job, guess you can take over for me now a little bit." Three big brothers, every little girl's dream! There's still hope for Mark Thomas right?!