due to some circumstances, we had to take "J" back with us after we visited up north back in the beginning of Jan.

we left early that morning and didn't get back to our home here that night...

that night was the very first night in his life that he had been alone without his sister...

in the three short years of his life, she's been his only constant through the many different places they've stayed, she was his only consistent safetly net.

While our adventures on the long trip was fun and exciting, that night, he had a reality check when we put him in his own room which he was actually excited all day about and now he was scared and was now asking for his sister...

he cried and we tried...da wife had to go to work the next day so I asked her to go to bed while I stayed up with him...

we talked while I held him in my arms...

for the first time in my life...I felt something unfamiliar within me...it is different from wanting to protect my family or my wife...

it is something more than wanting to protect him...it is a nexus that I am still not able to explain...if I have to use the word, BONDED, then that word would have to be powered to the X...

perhaps some chemical changes happened inside me(womenopause??) when I put him back in bed and I reached out and touched and held his tiny hand...

there is something special and unexplanable when something so small is in my hand...how could something so small feel just as warm as my hand...how could something so small be so powerful...enough to make a man wanting to fight a lion...

the remnants of tears still on his face slowly dried as he began to fell asleep, his apple like cheeks a little chafed from the travel and the cold, his long eyelashes curved skyward creating a smile below each eyebrow...

...he's a thumb sucker so his lips were busy

but with the other hand, he held my hand tight...as I held his tight...

something surged through me...it connected us...at that very moment, I knew...

they were both here last October for a month and while I fell in love with them. I still wasn't totally sure that I was 100% ready
to take on two very active kids....

but at the moment that our hands touched, I knew, when the power of little fingers and soft palm rested in my cracked fingers and my big callous hand, the question of why mothers would die for their children was answered in my mind...

I closed my eyes and I told myself that I would do whatever it is that I need to do to ensure that he grows up safe and strong
and protected...

but back then, it was just a mission...

now, it's love....