unconditional adoration

The other day as I was leaving Nick, after getting him settled for bed, he called out to me, "Sleep with me, Mommy! Sleep with me, sleep with me!" As I said to Mark later, it's not like I ever had teenaged boys clamoring at me in that way, but I imagined it being something like that: pure hunger. Then this morning he crawled into bed between Mark and me, settled down onto my pillow, and gazed into my eyes. "I love you Mommy," he smiled, and then he reached over and kissed me. We joke and call him "Baby Oedipus," but I have to admit I like it.

It's so nice to be loved. Yesterday Nick & I hung out together and I got a lot of love. I took him shopping so he could spend his birthday money. He was delighted that I took him to Walmart (he'd heard they had bey blades, his new obsession, there). He loved that there were so many choices. He loved that I helped him with the money. He adored me for putting the thing together when we got home.

And when I say he loved it, I mean he looked up at me and said, "I love you, Mommy." He is just so full of love these days, it's great.

This is not to say that he didn't whine and complain when I spent way more time in World Market than he wanted to, or that he didn't slam the door or stomp his feet or otherwise act up at various times during the day. He did. But then periodically he'd just look up from what he was doing, smile, and tell me he loved me.

I can forgive a lot of whining for that.

But there's a weird bit of narcissism in this love, I feel. I look into his eyes, and I see--me. Nick resembled me so much as a toddler that a friend said, "He looks more like you than you do!" With his new buzz cut and his stretching-out, lanky body, he resembles me less than he used to, but still. His eyes are mine, his mouth is mine, his whole facial structure is mine. So when he looks at me in love, or I at him, we are mirroring each other in an odd way. I don't know if he feels it but I do. Not that I fight it or anything. But it's new and different. Mariah's adoration at a similar age was very different, so based in need, I always felt. And looking at her was like looking at a picture--she was this beautiful little blond toddler with sparkling blue eyes, nothing like Nick's velvet brown ones. She was other, almost ethereal in her difference from me. (As she reaches my size and her hair darkens she's much more like me, though still not as similar to me as Nick.) I love having two kids if only for the insights it gives me into how unique each of us is--even Nick, my little Mini-me, who has his father's temperament built into my looks.