Give me a Head with Hair...

Gavin loves my hair. Where other kids have security blankets or stuffies, he has my hair. (He does finally have both a blanket and a bear that he loves but so far they're a poor replacement for my hair). When he was a baby I would be nursing him and he would stretch his little arm up towards my face in search of some hair to touch. He'd pat his hand all around my face until he found a strand of hair that he could run his fingers through. Now when he's scared or hurt or sad he'll say "Pup pup Mommy" (translates to up up Mommy) and immediately shove his fingers in the back of my hair. When we're reading together he'll say "I need to touch your hair" and gently run his fingers through it. Sweet right? Well sort of.

He needs my hair most at night time. Sleep is a premium in our home (after nearly 18 months of barely getting any) and for now Gavin still needs help going to sleep. I will lie down with him and his fingers immediately go for my hair. Or, he could be in a deep sleep when I get in bed (we co-sleep) and through some bizarro sixth sense he'll roll over to immediately put his hands in my hair. He is usually quite gentle but has recently taken to pulling it at the roots and I worry that I may go bald before he grows out of this. It is both sweet and irritating at the same time.

Last night we are in bed and I can tell he is starting to fall asleep but he is still running his fingers through my hair. Sometimes just the action of it keeps him awake. So I gently push his hand away, hoping upon hope that he'll be still and drift off. Just when I think we've got success, I can sense his hand moving...slowly, ever so slowly until he very lightly places his hand on my head. Like he thinks if he does it quietly enough I won't notice. I try not to burst out laughing. I'm on to you G!

And sleep finally comes.

One of those quirky things about your child that you can never envision when you dream about what your children might some day be like. I should treasure this little connection for as long as I can right? Because some day he won't want to hold my hand, let alone touch my hair. I just hope I won't one day end up needing a wig!

A Moment in Time

"You look pretty Mommy" he says to me, completely out of the blue. I was so surprised by this that I had to ask him to repeat himself. I wonder what he saw in that moment that led him to say that. Was it the way my hair was blowing in the breeze? The way I was smiling at him as I watched him on the swing? Or maybe all little boys think their mommies are pretty and I am just completely over-thinking it. (I have a habit of doing that - of trying to figure out just exactly how his mind works).

We are all about feelings these days and so I tell him that he made Mommy feel happy when he said that. I want him to understand the power his words have to make someone feel something - both positive and negative. I find myself hoping that if he has a girlfriend or wife some day he will regularly make her feel the way I did in that moment. Special. Beautiful. Loved.

Awesome.

What's up with that Title?

I realize this is 2 posts in one day but I'm new at this and my son and husband are napping so what the heck!

I thought I might explain the title of this blog a little bit further. When I created the blog I sat for a good half an hour trying to come up with some spectacular name that would just say it all. Something that would be catchy. It would wow everyone who read it (likely just me). The more I sat there thinking about it, the worse the ideas were. Here are some that were rejected pretty quickly:

• Our Story (Too boring)

• Our Song (Huh? I'm not writing about music)

• Us (Yeah, that's real descriptive)

• G is for Gavin (Sweet but what if another kid comes along someday? Will I have to create a second blog for him or her?)

• How to Raise a Monster-Truck Obsessed Toddler: Life Lessons (I don't think this will stand the test of time).

Big No's to all of these. I couldn't get the idea of music out of my head though and started thinking about some of the songs I really love. At our wedding our first dance was to Songbird by Eva Cassidy. I love it but I didn't want anyone to think I was writing about birds (that's my husband's forte, not mine). Our last dance was to Little Wonders by Rob Thomas. Ah-hah! Not only do I love the song but I felt like it captured how I feel about life in general these days. I'm nervous about quoting song lyrics but here is just one: "Our lives are made in these small hours, these little wonders, these twists and turns of fate". You can imagine that the life of a 2-year-old is full of small wonders - on a daily basis. I count myself as fortunate to be along for the ride. It is the little wonders (as well as some of the big ones) that I hope I can capture in this blog. 

Well Here I Am

Oh no, not another mom blogging about her family! Yep, that's exactly what I am. I figure that's okay since I'll mainly be the one reading this anyway. I recently realized that I have done an abysmal job of recording life in the past 2.5 years since my son (Gavin) was born. This is my way of trying to rectify it. I have a fairly terrible long-term memory and I'm worried that if I don't write down some of this stuff it will be forever gone from me. I am raising a pretty awesome 2-year-old who is quite a character and I don't want to forget any of it...

Like the fact that his second word was Coke (we have his father to thank for that). Or that when we go to the playground he is so proud to introduce me to the other kids by saying "that's my friend mommy" (cue the Awwww's!). Or that for a long time dogs were "ogs" (and that was his first word), cats were "tats", books were "gooks", and the computer was the "pooger" and then the "compooger" and now finally it's a very carefully pronounced "com-pu-ter". Or that when he was not yet 2-years-old he looked very seriously at my mom and said "Grammy, do you have a hangnail?" (I mean come on, what 2-year-old says that?).

There are so many of these amazing gems and I hope that this will be a forum for me to write them all down. So this blog really is for me. And hopefully one day it will be for him.

I should mention that I also happen to have a really awesome husband (Brian). Maybe he'll even read this now and again too!