A Boy and His Daddy

I love watching my son and my husband play together. When Daddy comes home after work, Ryan lights up like a Christmas tree. He gets so excited that he can’t even contain himself, and instead of running towards Daddy, he runs to the other side of the room, squealing, or he throws himself into Mommy’s arms and then peeks back at Daddy with a mile-wide grin. And he often follows the peeking by hurling himself out of Mommy’s arms and into Daddy’s. It a crazy love-fest between the two of them.

Ryan and I play together all the time, too, and he does love that, but there’s something different and very special about the way Daddy plays with him. The two of them play like…well, like boys. With Mommy, there are lots of hugs and kisses and naming different objects in the room and rolling balls back and forth. But with Daddy, there are chases and tickle fights and wrestling and knocking each other over and hurling balls directly at each other’s faces. There’s no fear of cracking one’s skull open or busting a lip against a table or breaking one’s nose running into a wall (well, no fear from the two of them – if Mommy is watching, that’s a whole different story). They play like boys. There’s no other way to describe it.

And they are so exactly alike. They giggle at the same things, they have the same grin, the same mannerisms, the same sparkly eyes looking for trouble. They are two peas in a pod.

And I couldn’t love either one of them more if I were twins.