There goes my heart...

   

     A few months ago one of my friends was over with her kids. Liam loves playing with her 10 year old son, and for the most part he's a good sport about it. The two of them played in our playroom for about a half hour then her son decided he was done playing, and they came upstairs. Liam kept asking her son to go back down and play some more, but he kept saying no. He was nice about it, but Liam was heartbroken. He kept telling him about all the cool toys he had and the stuff they could do, but her son still said no thanks. So, he started crying and saying why don't you want to play with me, don't you like playing with me? It broke my heart to see him so upset, I still get tear eyed just thinking about it.  I wanted to just say can't you just play with him, see how much it would mean to him. I asked once and he said no again, so I left it at that. That was his first time experiencing someone hurting his feelings, and I know there will be more of that in his future and I will not be there to protect him.
      Now that he's in preschool I think about it all the time. There are 2.5 hours a day he's gone and I don't know what he does. He doesn't tell me much about it, which I know is typical. I know there will be days his feelings get hurt and there will be some days where he may hurt someone else's feelings. It's all part of childhood and he will grow from all of these experiences. I never knew until I had kids that you can love someone so much. It's like they are my heart out walking around in this world. Any pain they feel I feel ten fold and worse then if it happened to me. Everyone always says you'll never know a love like the one a mother has for her children and now I know how true that is.
     As they get older they will be on their own more and I won't be there to protect them. All I can hope is that all the values and morals we instill in them stick and they make good decisions and feel comfortable coming to us when they have problems.
     When we talked about having a second child I was scared I wouldn't be able to love another baby as much as loved Liam. With each child though, I feel my heart has grown bigger and I have more love for each of them then I ever thought possible.
     To the three sweetest boys in the world, mommy loves you more then you will ever know.