I predict a broken bone before the age of 3.

My poor little noodle.

In just a matter of four days, he's managed to contract yet another bad cold, whack his eye against a cement block, and bloody his nose on the side of the bathtub. That child is an accident waiting to happen. He's all exuberance and no forethought.

Yesterday Abe, Soren, and I were driving up town and we looked back to see Soren sitting in his car seat, looking sadly over the cloth of his gray hoody into the cloudy scene passing by. A single tear (I kid you not) streamed across his bruised eye socket; snot trickled into his open mouth. He was staring bleakly out the window as though life no longer held any meaning for him. If anyone had noticed that little face peering though our Honda window, they probably would have called child protective services. Abe and I decided he looked like a hardened street kid who had recently been in a fight. Using a raspy manly voice, Abraham narrated Soren's thoughts: "It hasn't been an easy life, but I've gotten by. Never asked nobody for nothin'. Just made a living for myself with my own two hands, sometimes working, sometimes fighting. But I've done it alone. And I don't need nothing or nobody. I can get by just fine."

(I wish desperately that I'd gotten a picture. Soren's got such an expressive face. For illustration purposes I've taken a non-smiling picture of him and doctored it in an attempt to make him look as sad as he did yesterday. It doesn't even come close to capturing the sheer melancholy.)