Monday, January 05, 2004

Sweetest Words

Mark and I tell our children many times a day how much we love them, with only one intention, letting them know that they are loved. Up until recently, those words have never been uttered back to us by our wild and crazy toddler. I'm not sure what took so long, maybe it was because this was the one phrase in which he continuously heard, that he was never prompted to echo back to us. Or maybe the time just wasn't right. Well, Friday night those three words made their debut out of his sweet little mouth, unprompted and unexpectedly.

I woke up that morning with a fever and an upset stomach and spent all day in bed away from my babies. By Friday evening, I had had just about enough of staring at the accumulation of dust on my ceiling fan blades, and trying to decipher the echo of little voices outside my door, so I made my way to the living room couch. I must have been laying there for all of 30 seconds before I was turned in to a human jungle gym. Although this may not sound pleasant, believe it or not, I was feeling slightly more human than I had all day. I was being distracted and no longer wallowing in the aches and pains that a fever can cause. So, in the middle of Alex's mommy-acrobatics he paused, looked me in the eye with his devilish grin and said slowly and precisely, "I-love-you." As I took down my toddler defense shields (the palms of my hands) my little human numchuck followed through with the BIGGEST toddler hug imaginable. He didn't get me over my bug by doing so, but he sure did help get me through it.

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