Smiling

Its nights like these, when I slip my hand under his pillow only to have it met by the cold metal of 3 matchbox cars that he has shoved under it before bed, that I have to smile.

And pinch myself.

Because those hidden treasures of a small boy who loves everything cars and trucks and trains and dirt and wrestling - are everything that I wanted that comes with a boy.

Little girls are great, I imagine - but there is just something undeniably magical about little boys. That glint of trouble that always lays right behind their eyes somewhere between frogs in their pockets and skinned knees with hands full of mud.

And today, when my habitual line stepper leaped in the air off the planters that he was asked to get down from for the 30th time in a row, I cringed a little as his ungraceful exit left his face kissing grass, where I asked him "Did you learn anything?!" ... to which my 19 month old son stood up, with cars still in hand, spit out grass and then yelled back -

"NO!", and did it again.

And I smiled.

And when I sneezed today and he turned his head my way and said "Bless Ju", ( I didn't even know he knew Bless You),

I smiled.

(Okay so thats not really trouble-maker material but it was too freakin' cute to not share.)

And when he screamed "HELP" like he was being murdered and I ran to see what predicament he was in this time, only to find him trying to scale the counter for a bag of cookies, I smiled.

And when I wiped the mud off his face before letting him eat the cookie, because he had been wrestling with three dogs in the dirt and had a hair full of leaves ...

Yeh, I smiled then too.

I don't know why I wanted a boy, or how I knew he was a boy before he was even a boy - mostly luck probably; but he's everything thats messy and mischievous, rambunctious and rowdy, hyper and hysterical - that I imagined, and hoped he would be.

And that, well ...

It makes me smile.