Mama(e) in Translation: My "Baby" is Back!

I think I'm doing pretty OK in the "Letting go" department, especially because in this trip, Kelvin called me 5-6 times and texted me quite a bit, including a photo! ;-) Communicating with him more often made the separation easier to bear, especially after I talked to some other parents in church and they told me they had barely heard from their own kids!

I did miss him, though, and I was sad not to be home when he got back last night, 4 days +12h after leaving. So I was actually apart from him for 5 days and a few hours. I walked into his classroom this afternoon before his robotics meeting and got to talk to him a bit and give him a hug. I was so thrilled to see him and pleased that he seemed glad to see me too. We couldn't talk much, but he asked for a water bottle and I was more than happy to go to the car to get mine and fill it with cold water. Then I picked him up 1.5 hour later and drove him to and from soccer practice -- he generally bikes, since it's at a park half a mile from our house, but today he wanted a ride.

We haven't had time to talk because he has lots of homework, but I hope to talk to him more about the trip in the next few days and take time to watch the goofy videos he made. K thought it was good that I wasn't here yesterday because he thinks that the "re-entry" is difficult for Kelvin and that he needs lots of space to acclimate back home. I understand that, but at the same time, I was in touch with him through the trip so I don't think I would/will have much trouble reconnecting. Actually, after I had finished writing this post (before publishing it) I spent about half an hour talking to Kelvin and even watching some of the videos!

I hope we'll always have a strong bond, my sons and I. I think we already do. Four and three years of breastfeeding, respectively for Kel & L, help. I love to interact with them, to buy books for them and read the same books and talk about them, to encourage their interests and try to understand at least a little bit although I really don't care much for Clash of Clans or Minecraft and, even less, Nintendo's Mario games (sigh...). I also love to hear them practice piano or just play for fun and, on occasion, to play with them. Most of all, though, I love to just cuddle with my boys in the couch and laugh and share funny stories.

Being a mother was one of my biggest desires in life and my sons are the greatest, most precious gift I've ever received. I hope to take good care of them and educate them so they can be even greater gifts to the world, caring, generous, and loving human beings.

OK, I was looking at old photos of the kids this weekend, motivated by a cute frog umbrella photo a friend of mine posted on facebook (my sons had a similar umbrella and I had some cute photos), so here are some old photos of Kelvin (I totally got carried away in looking at his baby photos! We only got a digital camera when he was 14 months, so some of these are scanned):

About 6 months old (scanned photo)

About 9 months (taken with video camera, very low resolution)

11 months old (2003) - taken with video camera too

I took this sequence of photos by our bedroom window one afternoon after he'd woken up from a nap. I couldn't decide which one to include, so I have all three because I LOVE these photos! (they were cropped and "enhanced" for his first birthday party power point)