Why *did* God create criminals?

Today Sam revealed to me (Susan) that he has three babies. I said, "Well, you must have a wife. Did you get married?" He said, "Yes, I married a girl named Hannah." As the conversation progressed, it developed that Hannah was twenty, and that she watches the babies so Sam can play with sisters and brothers (not clear if they are HIS sibs or the babies' sibs). Sam, however, gets up at night if the babies are sick, because Hannah is young and needs her sleep.

Hannah, by the way, is a real sport: she puts the babies to bed, but the babies hate bedtime so they play tag instead, and Hannah loves to chase them. Uh-huh. Yup. I kept quizzing Sam casually the whole time, because I was just lapping this up, and he had an answer for everything I asked.

He and Hannah both work. What is Sam's job, you may ask? "I am a boy, and I am a waitress at the Cafe." I explained that a boy waitress is a waiter. Turns out Hannah is also a waitress at the Cafe. They have lots of money: $5.20.

There also appears to be older kids in this family, and the older kids are good sleepers but the babies, unfortunately, are not. Many of the family members have allergies. Hannah herself is allergic to milk and eggs, but just the "oak" of the egg. :-) One of the babies is allergic to eggs and fire. Some are allergic to smoke.

The three babies, Amelia, Hannah (after his wife), and Sean, were later downgraded to just one baby, Amelia. This is because when we first saw Sam, he was just one baby.

Boy, they do grow up fast! I always like that Hannah, though. By the way, there's a real girl named Hannah in Sam's Montessori classroom, and I know he likes her. :-) More than I'd realized!

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Tonight Sam asked, "Why did God create dangerous things, like criminals?" Before you know it, I'm trying to explain free will to a not-quite-four-year-old.

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Sam's been complaining lately at bedtime. Like his Nana, he believes sleeping is boring, boring, boring. He's also worried about bad dreams, of which he has had a few of late. This evening he asked us to pray to tell God about a bad dream he just had in which a giant banana with peels for arms and no eyes or legs swung in a door, in which I think must have been a menacing way. The whole room, he says, was packed full of people who turned into monsters.

But also, there was a pink polka-dot monster with yellow spots and multicolored eyes.

No wonder he doesn't like sleep.

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On the weekend I (Tim) took Sam to the Play Museum, from which these photos come. The "Whack-a-Foe" game is from an exhibit on superheroes. And Sam is lying around the ground with two girls in front of a device where you place wooden balls on a conveyor belt and turn it, sending the balls onto a xylohpone, thus making music. Or noise. And if you are Sam and the girls you lie on the floor and watch the balls tumble into the hopper, and giggle wildly when they do.

The leopard suit is, btw, a hand-me-down costume from friends, which Sam prefers to the skeleton costume we purchased for him.

And that's all the news that's fit to print!