In the wee small hours of the afternoon

We're not really sure when it happened, but sometime in the past few months, we realized that Caleb has become fun...as in play with me, tickle me, smiling, laughing, playing with friends, high fiving kind of fun. He interacts with us, he mimics our sounds and movements, and with his newly acquired speed-crawling skills, he even likes to play his own ten-month-old version of tag (and we're always It).

I'm sure when Abby did all this stuff we were just beside ourselves with awe and wonder. I'm fairly certain we called the grandparents and recorded every new skill on this blog. Heck, I even marked the date that each of her teeth broke through in my planner. But with the second child...not so much. (Recording anything he does in my planner would rely heavily Abby not hiding it and Caleb not ripping pages from it.) I love him just the same...it's simply too busy around here for me to notice much of anything, much less make a note of it.

And that's why my favorite time of day is right after Caleb's afternoon nap. I can count on his sister sleeping about a half an hour longer than he does, so for at least thirty precious minutes a day, I have him all to myself to cuddle and play with and enjoy. There's no crazy two-year-old running through the house like a banshee, no one to share toys with, no one to interrupt storytime. It's just me and my boy, hanging out, enjoying each other's company. I love those times, because without them I probably wouldn't know how much he loves to drop blocks into the little shoebox I cut a hole in the top of, or how much he enjoys pushing chairs around the room, or how much he adores a good game of peekaboo.

I know he won't remember these moments. But I'll never forget them.