Crawling to Me

Ever since I got back from my long trip, I have slowly been integrating myself back with my 1 year old son L. He usually has been indifferent between my wife and I, which was not the case with our other two kids (they always preferred her!). I would say L had a 49% preference for me and 51% preference for my wife. It was close and still working my way back to those averages.

There was a breakthrough one afternoon after his nap. I had been putting him to sleep and waking him up from his naps and at night. He woke up over one weekend and I grabbed him immediately. The family was downstairs on the couch hanging out. My wife was relaxing and our 6 year old daughter E and 5 year old son C were watching Pokemon (more on that another day). Of course L crawls over to my wife and starts to be all over her. He wants to cuddle and it was fine since that was his new normal.

I was getting a chance to relax for a few minutes and all of a sudden, L starts crawling over to me! He makes his way over and then wants to just lay on top of me to watch a bit of Pokemon. I would normally try to distract L so he wasn’t watching TV, especially something he didn’t understand and wasn’t age appropriate, but this time, I just enjoyed the moment. I had the biggest smile on my face and my wife was happy also (mostly for her moment of freedom, but also seeing how happy I was).

It was a small moment in time and L ended up crawling back over to my wife. It was a big moment for me though because it showed that I was slowly rebuilding my relationship with L after being away so long. I was really happy and it shows that just being present is what is important with your kids (and very important for toddlers!).