From Baby to Boy

He has shed every ounce of being a baby and is a boy.

This age of 27 months. It’s magical. It’s fabulous. It’s exasperating. It full of emotions that I forget we are capable of as humans. Yet it is raw, real, unedited and unforgettable.

Me: Have I told you today I love you?

Brady: I wuv you too.

Glenn: I love you buddy.

Brady: I wuv you daddy…Cate too

He runs with a speed that scares me daily as he bobs and weaves around our tv, past our dining room table, over the threshold to the kitchen where he halts near the edge of the counter top by our back door while his Buzz Lightyear wings stay affixed to his body. There are bruises on his legs and arms proving the pure energy he puts in to simple things like running through our house.

And while he is rough, wild and full of energy. He gets it. He understands emotion. Sure he’s got a lot of emotion. But he gets the true meaning of emotion specifically empathy and that makes my heart full.

Brady: Mama otay? (As Cate wails in the background.)

Me: I’m okay buddy. Cate’s sad but she’s just hungry.

He walks over to her. He leans down. Rubs her head and kisses it with full sound effects as he asks her is she’s okay.

Me: She’s okay buddy. She is just hungry.

Brady: No cry Cate. Milk. Cate eat milk. She sad mama.

It's these little things make me smile.

The way his thick coarse hair, inherited from his dad, sticks up five different ways each morning when he wakes.

The dead sprint towards me when I appear at the door of his daycare room, his squeal of mommy with arms and open ready to greet me with a hug.

The rosy cheeks that let us know his poor little body is fighting yet another virus from daycare.

The way I catch him talking to her, showing her that Sophie will be her best friend.

The way he lays his head softly on Glenn’s shoulder each night as he heads to bed. He could walk up the stairs himself but insists on being carried and just for a moment I think he is a baby again.