Worry

Sometimes I worry about Lucas.

I worry that he gets lost in the shuffle of things--that we miss out on a lot with him.

A lot of it is our schedules.

The other two boys only go to school for half days, but Luke is gone all day. On the days that I work, I am gone before he gets home from school so my only time with him is 15-20 minutes in the morning. I try to make the most of that time, but in the end it just doesn't feel like enough.

On top of that he's just not a terribly chatty kid. He also doesn't get too excited about things--good or bad. Whatever happens is fine with him. It all makes for a pretty well behaved boy, but it's hard to have a good, insightful conversation with him. If you can find the right subject, though, you're golden!

I worry that one day, I'm going to suddenly realize that I don't know him anymore.

It seems a bit over exaggerated, but if he's not really telling me stuff, and I'm not asking, then I could easily miss things--big and small.   

(Mostly, though, I'm just a worrier.)

I had a break through with it all, however, about a month and a half ago.

I took a week off of work to just hang out at home. For that week, Luke was glued to my hip. 

It didn't matter what mundane, boring thing I was doing, he was happy to just sit by me and hang out. Once I started really noticing it, I also realized that what I'm really missing is the time alone with him. Alone time when we are just there to hang out--no multi-tasking, no loud brothers, no agenda to talk about--just us.

I've been making a conscience effort to have time that's just for us. There's been a lot of card games--War is our favorite--and just hang out.

I feel better about things.

I may lose sight of him every once in awhile--I'm sure it will happen with each of them at some point--but we easily come back together.

He's a great kid--I just wish he was a bit more chatty!