My Son's Happy Tears

If you are new to my blog I must begin this post by saying that we recently had our third boy. Now you're pretty much caught up. We heard it was a good idea to give presents from the newborn to the older kids. This worked out way better than we thought it would when our second child was born and we hoped for at least a neutral welcome into the family this time around. It seems that most siblings are jealous and we wanted to minimize those hard feelings. Now you new viewers are all caught up.

Our newest boy gave presents to his older brothers that they would like. Our intent was to soften the blow a little (in their minds, at least) that we spend a little less time with them than before. The first time we did this, our oldest fell in love with our second and they have been the best of buds ever since. I think he remembers what toy he got, though I don't know which of the gazillion things laying around our house it actually is.

Fast forward five years and imagine how much fun it was for our older boys to get cool presents from baby and from Mom and Dad. The scenery of the hospital with Mom laying in bed with tubes in her arms was probably pretty weird for them so my wife included games and stuff for them to pass the time. They loved opening the presents and all that, but now I realize that something even greater was going on that neither my wife nor I fully understood.

Our older boy was so excited to see his baby brother right from the beginning! He wanted to hold him and play with him.

All. The. Time.

He has shown so much love toward his baby brother that we are continually amazed that a child (and a boy, nonetheless) has this much affection and awareness to give it. He picks him up all the time and tries to walk around the house with him (that makes us really nervous!), loves to give huge smiles to him and even plays games and activities with him (and helps the baby write down scores).

Angie and I have loved watching all of this unfold. And this leads me to the point of this post. The other night we were gathered around the baby, watching him laugh and coo at us. It was the best, from our perspective as parents.

And then I looked at my oldest boy and noticed something totally amazing. He had tears in his eyes. They were those kind of tears that one sheds out of pure love. He noticed that something was different too. He wasn't laughing hard so I knew it wasn't laughing tears. He looked at me and said, "My eyes are watering." He is very aware of himself and is also capable to describing things like this to us. That is amazing all by itself. We had a tender moment telling him that those tears come from the deep love he feels for his family (and especially for his baby brother).

It was a very sweet moment. I'm glad I got to see it.