I Loves You

It's early as all gettup but both kids are asleep (for now), I have a pounding headache, Armando has fallen asleep on the couch, and all I want to do is crawl into bed and get three uninterrupted hours of sleep.

Yet I'm here on the computer, because Anika has done something that's really made parenting worth all of the ick factor and exhaustion factor and hit-your-head-against-the-wall factor: she has started saying 'I love you.' It sounds more like 'I loves you' and her L is way off, but it is heart melting.

Today, playing with a set of pretend cupcakes (her) and nursing Reni (me). Wooden cupcake in hand, she runs to my side, lays her head against my shoulder: 'I loves you,' she says.

MELT.

Tonight, on her way from bath to bed, I tell her to kiss her daddy goodnight. She runs through the kitchen (which, praises be, now has relatively dust-free floors covering most of its runnable surface) and says, "Daddy, I loves you!"

MELTMELTmeltmeltmelt.

Also, Reni says I love you in his own way. Today, driving back from the furniture store, he is crying. I unbuckle my seatbelt and try not to moon the car in front of me on my shimmy to the tiny space between the kids' car seats. He grabs both of my hands, pulls them to his face, gazes at me and smiles. All tears gone. He gazes and smiles the entire ride home.

You guys are the best kids ever. We loves you too.