Love On My Side

Where to start?  We've had such a fun weekend so far and we still have one more whole day to go!!  WooHoo!!

I'll get to this morning's festivities in a moment.  First I have to share what happened last night with my so very sweet boy.

We were sitting in the bathroom on the floor like we do every night after he gets out of the bathtub.  I have a huge towel laying on the floor on a terry cloth pillow each night.  He clamors out of the tub with me close by to catch him, but 'don't touch him! and let him do it!'.  He sits down and always says he's cold as part of our ritual and I throw one of his hooded towels over his head and shoulders!  I then sit down and gather him up in my arms to warm him up.  We stay like that a few minutes...the best part of our evenings together many a night :).  He then wriggles away and either tries to dip his fingers in the lotion or goes to get an overnight diaper because the one I picked out isn't right or something or other.  I lotion him up, get him dressed and he hops up to play while I gather his stuff and clean out the tub.  Many a night I just watch him gallivant around having fun for a few minutes.  

Last night he was running amok, just singing to himself while I sat there and watched.  And them BAM!  He ran amok into me, thrust his arms around my neck, buried his face in my neck, squeezed tightly and shouted

"I love you!"

And immediately scampered away to continue running amok.

Totally spontaneous.  Completely out of the blue.  100% of his own volition.

I almost cried.  This is the first time he's said I love you all on his own.  It was like he was simply overcome with how much he loved me and had to tell me Right. Then. And. There.

Oh how I love this little boy as well.

My night was pretty much perfect from then on out.

I woke up this morning to his sweet face climbing into bed with me to tell me "I had a good nighttime."  I so love when he says that, which is pretty much a daily morning occurrence.  

Thus began our morning's festivities.  We participated in the Houston FAAN Walk this morning at Herman Square at City Hall.  Our little Team Tate raised almost $800 for FAAN....so very proud and so very blessed to have such wonderful friends and family who support us and know how very important FAAN's work is.  The number of children and adults with life threatening food allergies is staggering, yet so many people just do not understand how dangerous food allergies are.

In any event, we were up and raring to go.  We ate breakfast, downed lots of water and awaited the rest of our team.  Aunt Lindsey, Grandmommy, Papa, Leo's mom (Christina) and Leo were all part of Team Tate.  Everyone arrived and we loaded up the car to go walk and have a great morning of playing and hanging out!

Team Tate!

The boys played in the bouncy houses,

 

danced, 

rode the slides, 

colored, 

met Darth Vadar (Tate was clueless, but not the least bit scared!  Leo was thrilled to meet him), 

danced some more

 and all around had the fun 3 year old BFFs should have!

Lindsey, meanwhile, had volunteered to work one of the booths during the event.  What a trooper she is and amazing aunt!!!  She had gotten up to run 11 miles starting at 5:30am and still made it to work the event!

 Then it was time for the 2 mile walk!  My mom stayed behind to man Lindsey's booth for her and the rest of our team was off.  Tate and Leo had the best seats in the house.  Lucky for us, a cold front came in this morning, so even though we didn't start walking until 10am (we had arrived at 8:15), the temperatures were only in the mid 80s and the humidity had dissipated a little.  A tiny bit.

 My 72 year old dad was great and pulled those boys more than half of the 2 mile walk.  Christina, Lindsey and I tried to do our part, but he did the majority of it!!  You rock Daddy!!

 Once back at the festivities the boys played some more and even got to meet one of our local celebrities...KPRC's news anchor, Dominique Sachse.  She so kindly agreed to let us take some pictures with her...

It was just a fantastic morning.  The kind of mornings I always anticipated having as a mother.  Watching my son hang out with his friends, seeing the joy children have that is so complete and so intense and real.  Walking and talking with my sister and new friend, Christina was so very nice.  It's so fabulous to be making new friends at this stage in my life, this stage called motherhood.  And though I'm 12 years older than Christina the very fact that our children are the same age almost makes those years disappear.  I anticipate this will be the case more often than not...Tate's friends' parents are most likely going to be much younger than me.  Should be very interesting.  But I'm up for the challenge!  I'm ready to rock the worlds of these young people :)

After all I've got love on my side.  Yep, my little boy loves me!