Batman and Mama's Kisses

Here's some photos and a journal entry I am going to use in an upcoming scrapbook project--I thought I would share it:

I see the top of your little blonde head. It just barely clears the neighbor's bushes from my vantage point on our front step. You ring the doorbell and wait in great anticipation. You have been begging to go to the neighbor boy's house all day, all weekend really. You adore him. He is older and just so much fun to be around. 15 minutes spent with him one afternoon was all it took, and you were hooked. It was, "Did you know what Brandon said?...and, "Brandon told me that..." After enduring days of your endless begging to go play with him again, I send you off with instructions to ring the doorbell and then ask Brandon to shoot baskets with you. Your initial plan was to ask him to play Batman and Robin, but I explain to you that Brandon is a big boy, and probably would rather shoot baskets with you. So off you go, two doors down, but it may as well have been 200 miles. Something about watching you run down the sidewalk, batman cape waving in the wind, breaks my heart a little bit. Like it's one of those moments you don't plan or mark on a calendar, but it's significant just the same. A rite of passage into boyhood. I see a head stick out of the door and a few moments later you turn and run back to me. Just then, you slip and fall on the pavement. You burst into tears and I run to you and pick you up. Your arm is hurt. Your feelings are hurt. Brandon had too much homework to play. Oh, if I could always be there to pick you up after you fall, but I know I won't always be there. Today we took one more tiny step toward that reality. My baby is becoming a full-fledged big boy.