My Favorite Game

We have a new game.

We play it every morning before our first nap of the day.  It can't be played at any other time, or in any other room but his own.

It goes like this:

After our tea cup is empty, and we have finished applying a sticky layer of oatmeal to our bib and the floor (and forehead and hands and maybe even our mouth), we go into his room to read a bedtime story.  Which might look more like him terrorizing the little bookcase, pulling all of the books off the shelves and chewing on a select few (must be the ones that taste the best), while I sit cross-legged on the floor and catch up on my Dr. Seuss.  Then, once he has sampled the finest selection of cardboard that Random House has to offer, he goes on a pre-nap jog around the house to make sure he hasn't missed anything else that might need to be chewed on.

So off he goes while I finish the last few riveting pages of Go Dog Go! or Hop on Pop.  First he takes off down the hallway.  He might make it all the way to the end, or he might pop into any of the three doorways there are.  Or he might spend five whole minutes trying to get up on his hands and knees and then, when he has finally achieved the perfect balance, will bump back down onto his little bottom.   

But no matter where he goes, how far he makes it, or how long it takes him to get there (...and here is the best part...) he always looks back every now and then and just smiles at me.

He looks back at me, lying amid a destruction zone of seventeen different books, and he smiles.  He smiles at me, and I smile back at him, and then he keeps going off to some other exciting destination.  We can spend twenty minutes like this.  He goes, and comes back - stretching the distance between us a little farther every time.  But always, the smile.  And always, the return.  

And finally, when all four of his little 'legs' get tired or he has chewed on all there is to chew on, he will come back to me one last time.  He will crawl to me slowly and stretch his little hands out to me, one at at time, and I scoop him up and give him a good, long cuddle.  And I tell him how much I love him (if such a quantity can be put into words), and put him down with his blankie and glow bug.  And he smiles up at me one last time, and falls asleep.