Father and Son

I've just had some really awesome moments with Ben recently. 

The other night, close to his bedtime, I was laying on my bed and he was standing, leaning against me, patting my stomach.  I pulled him onto me and just looked at him as he smiled and laughed at me.  It suddenly dawned on me that at some point in his 20s, dad probably did something similar with me.  It put everything in a whole new perspective.  I mean, I know my dad, obviously, was around me when I was a baby, but I never had one of those types of moments before and gave me a whole new level of appreciation/love for my own dad.

Tonight, I was sitting on the couch with Ben on my lap.  I was handing him goldfish one at a time and also eating them myself.  He leaned back and lifted his head to look at me.  Then he raised his arm with the golfdish towards me.  He eventually just leaned back until he was lying down so he could look at me.  He would repeat the almost-offer of the goldfish several times, one time even hitting my teeth with it.  Rachel was sharing just before she turned 1, but I remember her teasing even before that. 

Tonight I also had an opportunity to read three chapters of Exodus to Ben.  He played in Rachel's bed while I read.  (Rachel was downstairs having dinner.)  I have not been as consistent with reading to him (obvious by the fact that we're just now into Exodus) but I hope that as he becomes a little more aware of the routine that I'll be able to read more regularly, and maybe even read more per night on average than I did with Rachel.

At bedtime tonight, he was just furious.  It had been a really relaxed day and he had spent a lot of time with the family when he wasn't asleep and I think he was just unhappy that we were about to leave

Cross-posting on both dad2be and tvjames.