Sam: What are you guys doing? Wait...I'm missing out on the hugging? Let me in there!

As he runs across the room and jumps between us, I realize this moment perfectly sums up love during the years of parenting.

So often during these years, the kids come right in between us.

A date night that never happens because someone throws up while you’re getting ready to leave. So you change from those new cute jeans, wipe off your lipstick and pull the yoga pants and stained Mom sweatshirt back on. And instead of sharing appeitzers and a cocktail, you start negotiating who will wash the kid and who will clean up vomit. #romance

A conversation cut off for the millionth time because there is a math homework emergency and a story about Minecraft and a friend crisis all interrupting your words so many times you can't even think. So you you give up and then wake up in the middle of the night realizing you never did find out what happened with your husband’s co-worker

A weekend away that never happens because there’s a sports tournament for child #3 out of town and the trip budget only supports one getaway. So instead you spend the weekend at a waterpark with a million families and have to settle a quick drink together at the hotel bar while you wait for the pizza and nachos you ordered for the kids in the pool to be done.

Yet another night where all you get to do is hold hands across your babies sleeping body because she is teething and nursing on demand is the only way.

There are so many ways our babies interrupt our love.

But see his arms wrapped around our legs?

Our babies pull us together too. We’re in the trenches together, my friends.

We remember we deal with all of these things as a team, stealing our time when we can.

Kissing in the kitchen while making lunches.

Staying up way too late watching Netflix and falling asleep in the couch.

Deciding that a trip to Target to pick up prescriptions and snacks and new towels and a $5.00 bottle of wine counts as a date because you are there without kids.

Dropping the kids off at the grandparents on an anniversary so at least we’re in our house alone...who needs a hotel?

These are the years my friends...

They want to be a part of our love. They ARE a part of our love, a wonderful, messy, interrupting, endearing, irreplacable part. They have made us a family.

These are the things we will look back on when someday the house is quiet. When we can eat together and talk together in the never ending quiet.

So today, we rejoice that he is here to wiggle in between us. It just means we have to hug each other a little bit tigher to be sure the other can feel it through our sweet boy. Not a bad deal at all.

Originally published on Hiding in the Closet with Coffee.

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