My Favorite Things

I listen through the bathroom door.  I listen on the videos.  I listen from the living room to the voices from the kitchen.  I hear them from the background on a video chat.

My newest most favorite thing is to listen to my children parent.  

There are encouraging screams from the sideline, behind the camera, shouting GO GO GO as a tiny six year old wallops the baseball over the infield, feet flying toward first base.

Nursery rhymes, sung in perfect harmony, entertain me as I change my clothes to the sound of bath time in the adjoining room's tub.  

Down on the floor, looking eye to eye, come soothing words of understanding and comfort as big feelings wash over a little girl who is crawling deeper and deeper into her Daddy's embrace.  

And then there's the other side, comments from the peanut gallery in Daddooooo's words.  Dad can do it.  Mom knows how.  And the definitive NO, Grandma. DADA DADA DADA from the teary face of a toddler who knows exactly who she needs.

I look at the children.... all the children..... my boy and his boy and remembering puts it all into a lovely circle of this is how it's supposed to be.

My favorite things are those sounds I hear, the noise of raising excellent human beings.  I am a lucky person, having these noises so close at hand, just a phone call away.