On Valentine’s Day, I wrote about the love lessons that Toad has taught me. Toad knows that love carries across distance and across time. He knows that love is a choice and that love grows when you give it away. He also demonstrates every day that you don’t have to wait to love.

I was pondering this the other day as I found myself with two extra boys in my care after baseball One of the boys is his best buddy who was coming over for a sleepover while his folks went out for the evening. The other boy, J, Toad had just met the day before when J got called up to our baseball team for a tournament. There was a last minute decision to do a team dinner after the third game and this new boy said he wanted to come but his Dad could not bring him. The Toad patted him on the back and without hesitation said “No worries – you can just come with us, right Mom?” and just like that, I was plus 2 for little boys!

Later that day the doorbell rang and one of the boys from the ‘hood showed up to play with the Toad. He was here for about 10 minutes when they arrived in the kitchen telling me he was hungry. I just smiled as I listed the options for a snack – boys are ALWAYS hungry. He happily grabbed a couple of granola bars before heading outside again.

After that, I was thinking about a conversation with the Big Bear Cubs when we were reflecting on their year here with us. We were talking about them coming back for a visit and I said: “you will always have a home with us at the Yellow Castle – the code on the front door will always work for you.” True for the Big Bear cub who has shared our home and true for the Biggest Bear cub who we adopted along the way.

I thought back to last summer when the exchange student from high school came to visit with her husband and children. It was like no time had passed and we were once again connected as a family. Our children felt that immediately as they bridged across three languages English, French and Italian to have tons of fun and adventures together. My sister reminded me recently that 30+ years ago when a high school friend had a challenging home situation he came to our house to sort through some things – and he ended up staying with us for 2 years!

Seems the Toad learned his lessons on love epigenetically!