Things You'll Never See Here Part II

I remember posting before about all of the sweet little moments that you never capture on film. I feel like our day is filled with those moments; some days more than others, but each day it seems as if there is one thing that whizzes by so fast or happens so sweetly that you wish you could preserve it, but realize you can't. I guess that's part of parenting. I've spent a lot of Jack's life waiting for the next milestone. Hanging on with baited breath to hear how much he had grown since his last doctor's appointment, that first crawl, first bite of food, first step, first anything. But I've come to realize that I Must... Slow... Down. He's only going to be under 2 years old for a few more weeks. He already seems like such a big kid to me that I can't fathom that we're hitting the "terrible twos" and then careening forward into the 3's, 4's, and 5's. His first birthday party simply doesn't seem as if it was a year ago.

The little moments I speak of are sometimes undescribably sweet and intimate, but I will do my best to capture them here.

Every morning Jack still gets a bottle of milk when he wakes up (we failed at taking that one away as it turns out) and lays in the bed with us (sometimes in the wee hours) and relaxes. Sometimes he chatters, other times he rests, but each morning he is snuggled sweetly beside one of us, happy just for the nearness and love. We discuss the sunrise and the moon going down. We talk about the weather for the day and potential plans at daycare or for our weekend day. Eventually he always asks if we can "watch Baby" or "watch JoJo" or "watch Wiggles" and we do. The stillness is fleeting, but treasured by both Kyle and I each day.

Then there are the random occurences during the day of Jack's personality shining ultra-bright and unmistakably "him." He has hilarious faces- from sweet glances in your direction to wide-eyed declarations of excitement, he expresses himself so well with his face. Tonight as I took him to bed we walked through the living room to the stairs. No lights were on in the living room and he pursed his lips perfectly and tightly and then let "ooooooooh" leak from his mouth. It wasn't his usual "dark and scary" routine, but was more of an excited/surprised/animated expression and noise that stopped me in my tracks and made me start laughing. I could't walk for fear that I would pee my pants (thank you, pregnancy and childbirth!) and stood in the living room with my body wracked with laughter that was so hard it was nearly painful. He made the expression and noise several times and I was eventually able to compose myself and take him upstairs.

On the way up the stairs he said to me animatedly "watch Choo-Choo, YEAH!" and got very excited. He wasn't too disappointed when we made the turn into his room instead of ours where the TV is.

As I changed him into his dinosaur pajamas, I was made to giggle again about his proclamations of "dine-saur REOWR!" and his impression of a dinosaur chomping by bringing his arms together as if clapping, but moving them up and down instead of side to side.

Finally, we were settled into his rocking chair, just relaxing and looking at the stars and airplanes through the window. He pretended to bite my face and then proceeded to kiss me. A tiny little puckered mouth made its way to my cheek and finished with the sweet little smack of a kiss. "Muwah," if you will. He didn't stop at one kiss but kissed me on each cheek a few times and then kissed me on each arm. He then asked me to "bite armpit" so I nibbled on his armpit and made him giggle wildly.

Jack seems to be more talkative right before bed. Perhaps it's the dim bedroom lit only by the light of the moon and the street lamps or perhaps it's because there are no other distractions, but he seems to come out of his shell before bed. He babbled on and on about the Explorer, about Nathaniel (from daycare), about kicking something (and I feared that something was Nathaniel the way he talked, but decided he must have been referring to kicking something else), about the daycare providers, about dinosaurs, boo-boos, bandaids, and some things I just couldn't understand. He's so excited to be talking that I just wait for 30 or 40 minutes for him to settle down and relax against my shoulder before I worry about putting him in bed. I want to encourage him to talk about his thoughts and his day so that one day, when his jibberish starts to make more sense, he knows that he can talk to me about anything.

Yes, these sweet moments are things I'll never catch on film and will have to be satisfied with playing them over and over in the Movie of My Life that I tuck away in my mind.