The Smile

I’m standing in the kitchen with my husband at midnight, when I hear the telltale shuffle of feet in the hallway. In comes Gabriel, my sweet little peanut, all bleary eyed, looking for someone to cuddle. So I scoop him up, he wraps his arms around my neck and I carry him back to bed. “Do you want mommy to cuddle?” I ask, knowing he does, but wanting to hear that innocent soft “Yethhh.” So I lay down with him in his bed. We face each other, I lay on my right side, he on his left. I wrap my arm over him, and facing me he puts his palms together and tucks them under his cheek. We look at each other and he gives me that huge grin of his, the smile that could power a city. Gabriel has THE most charming, engaging, heartmelting smile. It is his biggest defense when he knows he’s been mischievous. His teacher often laments that Gabriel is hard to discipline because he is SO charming and he knows exactly how and when to wield that smile.

Gabriel is four years old now, in preschool, and still adjusting to life as a middle child. His baby brother, Elijah, is almost a year old, and despite the (now mutual) jealousy, they are starting to get along. Gabriel has even begun to show affection toward the Mommy-stealer!

I can’t believe how much Gabriel has grown since he was a toddler. He started walking just before he turned three. At almost the exact same time, we discovered he loved to dance. Pregnant with Elijah, I was miserable and sick, and not a very attentive mother. So I put movies on for Nick and Gabe whilst I languished on the couch. After a couple of weeks, I grew rather weary of all things Disney, and forced the kids to watch something I liked, and I chose “Singing in the Rain” with Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds. Gabriel LOVED it! He was absolutely enthralled with all the music and dancing! He very quickly began imitating the dancing, especially the “Make ‘em Laugh” routine by with Donald O’Connor and Moses Supposes His Toeses are Roses! He must have watched that movie a hundred times over the next couple of months. We eventually moved on to Wiggles, and he quickly memorized all of their dances, and would do them when we played the music CDs! So, after Elijah was born, when Gabe was about three and a half, we enrolled him in dance class. He takes tap and ballet, and he is an absolute star in the making. He had his first recital and he was the only one who didn’t forget the steps, or get stage fright. The music started and he just started dancing! At his second recital, he didn’t miss a step, despite a too-large top hat falling down over his face, forcing him to essentially dance blind. At the end of the dance, he rightfully took the biggest bow! He has such a passion for dancing. I pray he never lets that go.

At the moment, Gabriel’s biggest challenge is his language development. He loves to talk and tell us stories, but he cannot quite form the words just yet. He does have a vocabulary of about 50 words, but they are words only his father and I understand. Box is “bothh”, Fries are “whiiithhh” Please is “weeth” I just know that when the words do come, he will be a great storyteller. He is so animated and excited when talking to us. He has the BEST facial expressions, especially when he’s looking at us like we’re dense. My favorite, of course, is the smile. Always, the smile.