Starting the day off right

Last night, we spent the night at one of our favorite Dallas haunts, the Belmont Hotel. They were having a Fourth of July special on rooms, and the price included admission to a pool party, blues band and a great view of the fireworks around the city.

Anyway, all that only goes toward explaining that we spent the night in a strange place. We had two connecting rooms, and Wilder had one big bed to himself, and Hunter slept in a portable crib next to the bed in Jerry and I's room. We were lucky that, for the most part, he slept through the night. But when he awoke this morning, he was clearly a little upset about the strange surroundings, crying out, and so we pulled him into bed between us.

He laid there for a moment, getting his bearings, and then rolled over and climbed up on top of Jerry's chest, sleeping stomach-down on his Papa, both arms wrapped around Jerry as far as he could reach. My first thought was to smile and simply appreciate how much my boys love their Papa. My second, of course, was a little twinge of jealousy that he had not snuggled up to me. I can't help it, just a little — both boys have gone through their "only Papa will do" stages, though they feel that way about me sometimes, too. Anyway, since I was feeling a little envy, I closed my eyes and remembered all the times during Hunter's first eight months of life — when I was nursing — and we slept snuggled next to each other during most nights. I'd wake up almost every morning to his smell and his breath on my cheek or arm or chest. He'd snuggle up close as he could possibly get.

As I was remembering this, I suddenly felt a small hand patting my arm. I opened my eyes and there was Hunter, looking at me with a wistful grin, as if he was remembering the exact same thing, and wanted to assure me I was still part of his early-morning world of love. He then rolled off Jerry and snuggled up to me.

For the next 30 minutes or so, he continued to go back and forth between us. At some point it became more of a wrestling session than a snugglefest, so we turned on the lights and began stirring around. Peeked in on Wilder and he was sitting up in bed, sleepy-eyed. He looked at me, said: "Mama, I took a LONG nap in this new big bed," and rolled out of it and into our room.

This is how we started July 5th. It was pretty great.

Hope everyone had a great Independence Day. We did. I posted some pictures here.