Days Like Today

Today was one of those days.  It was the kind of day that makes this whole parenting thing worth it.  It’s what makes you forget the sleepless nights, the poopy diapers, the tantrums. Today was practically perfect.

The day started innocently enough.  Xander woke at his usual 6 am (which by the way, who wants to teach my kid to stop doing that?).  After a bottle he was easily convinced to go back to sleep.  Both boys woke for the day around 7:30.  We sat and played on Jack’s bed.  The boys have started wrestling.  It’s incredibly amusing.  I’m fairly certain that my heart will burst every time I watch those two little boys playing together, laughing together and pretty much just showing how much they love each other.

We had breakfast together and I ran off for a hair cut.  Yay for “mommy time” on the weekend!  I rushed home, had lunch, gathered all my boys and headed to a party.  A former coworker of my husband’s invited us and a bunch of other people with young kids over for a little kid pool party.  They had a couple kiddie pools and a slip-n-slide set up for the kids to use.

After some initial shyness, Jack jumped right in, literally.  He had a great time in the pools. He splashed and jumped and basically just had a great time.  He was by far the oldest kid there.  I think the next oldest kid was 16 months old.  He showed off his “big brother skills” by playing with the younger kids and helping out when they would drop things.

Xander had a great time too.  He found a new friend (named Jack!) who is about 8 months old.  They sat in a pool and splashed and laughed forever.  And then just like babies, they were fine one minute then the next, they decided that they were done.  I got Xander dressed and then Jack decided to try out the slip-n-slide.  To say that he loved it would be an understatement.  For a kid who constantly falls down on purpose, a slip-n-slide is pure heaven.  The laughter that came out of that child was amazing.  And even more amazing was that Xander was laughing watching his brother laugh.

We eventually packed everyone up and headed home.  As we pulled into our neighborhood, my husband offered to stop at the local church festival so that I could grab a funnel cake.  As we pulled into the lot, Jack spied a bounce house and a few other fun kid activities.  While I was grabbing my funnel cake, my husband told Jack that we could come back after dinner, which is exactly what we did.

Jack played in the bounce house and went down the huge inflatable slide until it became apparent that the fun of the day caught up with him.  Jack cried as we left but I knew that they were tired, exhausted tears.  Sometimes those tired tears are hard to take.  Sometimes they show up because Jack refuses a nap or because we were so busy with errands and other parts of life and he is just done.  That wasn’t the case today.  Today the tears didn’t bother me one little bit.  The tears meant that we rocked today.  We had fun until there was no more fun to be had.  We had fun until my kid cried. Days like today. Now that is what being a parent is all about.

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