What I Like About You

For his birthday, Pax's Grandpa Howie and Grammy Trisha sent him a card with a plastic bracelet inside. The bracelet has a pre-recorded song on it, What I Like About You (by the Romantics), that plays about 5 seconds of the song, featuring the (only, apparently,) essential "what I like about you" part.

Pax wears it incessantly.  And therefore plays it incessantly.  Three months in to dozens of daily repetitions, Pax looked at me very seriously and asked, "But Mommy, what is it they like about me?"

Turns out the Romantics got it right.  Here's what I like about you, Pax.

You keep me warm at night.  Sneaking into my bed at 3 in the morning is your regular habit, and yet the simple pleasure of waking up to see you, content and peaceful, slumbering beside me; feeling the warmth of your body tucked under the covers - in those early, quiet moments before the morning rush has begun, I drink you in like the fresh brewed coffee waiting for me downstairs...

You hold me tight.  Earlier this week, we arrived home from errands, chilled to the bone, feeling weary and spent.  You sensed, without me asking or saying, how much a hug from you would ease my chill and my worries.  You wrapped your arms around my leg, tightly, until I bent down to you.  You wrapped your arms around my shoulders and patted me gently on the back.  You said nothing to me at all; you just held me in your small arms.

You really know how to... swim.  In the bathtub.  In winter.  When it's 20 degrees, bleak and gray and making me wonder if there will ever be a day when I am anything but frozen to the core, you don your swim goggles before bath and declare it's time for you to practice.  And you do, with abandon.

..and how to have fun.  You love picnics.  You help me be spontaneous.  On the one and only day in months that the temperatures reached above 50 degrees, we decided, spur of the moment, to stop off at a favorite picnic spot for lunch and a little exploring.  The next week, we resumed our twice-weekly picnics on the floor of my office.

You tell me all the things that I want to hear.  (yeah okay and some stuff I never want to hear.... )  You tell me, again and again, I wuv you, Mommy.  You holler from one room to the next until I finally come in, slightly annoyed and wondering what on earth could prompt such a racket from you, only to have you look at me and say sweetly, again, "Mommy, I wuv you."  

Pax, you are so big and so little all at once.  Tonight, I held you again in my arms and let you drift off to sleep before transferring you to your bed.  My arms felt heavy, my back was sore, and my legs were numb... and yet I never wanna let you go.  

That's what I like about you.