Since Captain Jelly Belly started school, he’s gotten a little bit rougher, a little bit tougher. He’s more likely to hit or shove or scream “No!” at the top of his lungs. So sometimes, I forgot that deep down, he’s a really sensitive guy.

This morning was talking about how, when he holds the Wee One, she likes to grab his ear as a handy handle for stability. She does the same to me, and I usually wear hoop earrings, and she can hook her little hand into my earrings real good. I’m always terrified that she’s going to rip them out of my ear, so a couple of days ago I took them out, and I told Sir Monkeypants about the earring removal over breakfast.

He asked me why I don’t put some studs in, and then I explained that one time, when the Captain was little, I had put studs in due to the same problem. And then, when we were at the grocery store, he managed to grab the front of the stud and yanked it right out of my ear and threw it away, where it was lost forever. They were quite nice earrings, a gift from my grandmother when I was a teenager, so I wasn’t too happy about it. So I’ve decided not to wear any earrings with the Wee One.

At about this time in the conversation, the Captain joined in. I should have guessed that something was wrong but I wasn’t paying close enough attention and he asked me, “Were you sad that you lost your earring?”

And I said yes, I had been sad, but that he was just a baby and he didn’t know what he was doing and didn’t mean anything by it.

But it was too much for him to think that he had made me sad, and he burst into tears, and had to spend the next 10 minutes calming him down.

Poor little guy. He’s such a softhearted sweetie, I love him so much!