A Very Special Birthday Present

So, as most of you know my 37th birthday was yesterday. My son decided to give me a very cool present. We were in Kelly's classroom for the Roots of Empathy program and one of the students decided to play her flute for Tristan. He got very quiet and watched her with a smile. Then when she started playing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" he pointed at her and turned to me to smile. It was the first time he pointed at anything. Recognizing the song and trying to get my attention. It was very sweet.

Then at a very lovely lunch with girlfriends, he signed more for the first time. Well he didn't really sign it, he clapped which is close to the tapping your fingers together (see picture). But he clapped each time after eating something that he wanted more of and didn't do it the times that he refused a second bite of the food. This is the first time that he was consistently trying to communicate by not crying.

Then tonight he looked at Paolo and said, "da,da,da,da". He only did it twice, but again, it was with intent. So cool. And for the first time since he was about 4 months old, he wanted me to rock him and sing to him before he went to bed. He told me this by not doing the usual protesting and squirming as I tried to rock him. Recently, I'd even given up on trying to snuggle him, but bedtime last night was rough and I thought that maybe it was exacerbated by his new mild separation anxiety. My unsnuggly kid decided at least for tonight that listening to mom sing and snuggling in the rocking chair was actually ok. It was one of my best mommy moments since his first smile. That one made me cry. This one just made me feel warm and fuzzy.

Hey, I'm a mom and its kind of cool.