Sadness in my "mommy heart"

It makes me very sad when I realize that Charlie still thinks of Rainrock as "Mommy's house". I often find myself praying that my being gone for 3 months has not done any lasting damage to my precious little guy. I cannot begin to imagine what that must have felt like for a 2 year old to have his mommy just "disappear" for 3 months. And I will never forget that night 4 months ago when I put him down to bed knowing that I would be leaving before he woke in the morning and I would not be back home for a very long time. I held onto him in the darkness of his little bedroom and silently sobbed. I cried my tears into his sweet, blonde hair and thought how unfair all of this was for him. He would wake in the morning and I would not be there and he would not understand. He had no idea how drastically his world was about to change. It's almost too overwhelming for me to think about now.

Fast-forward 4 months:
Just the other day, we were playing in Charlie's bedroom. Shawn, Charlie and I were all pretending that we were at YaYa's (grandma's) house. I needed to go out into the kitchen to do the dishes, so I stood up and said, "Bye-bye, Charlie, I'm going home now!" I started out the door and turned around to look at him, and what I saw broke my heart. Charlie had this look of absolute terror and sadness on his face, a look that was way beyond his 2 years of age. Shawn and I were both looking at him and realized at the same moment that he thought I was saying I was leaving again, going back "home" to Rainrock. My heart sank. I went over to him and hugged him tightly and I reassured him, "I'm not leaving, Charlie. I'm just going into the kitchen to do some dishes. I'm not leaving you." And as I loaded the dishwasher, the tears welled up in my eyes. Lord, please protect my son. Let him know that he is safe now with his mommy and I will not ever leave him again.

In other news, we've been having lots of messy...errr..."creative" fun around here lately. Oh, how I love to explore the world through Charlie's eyes! It seems like he's learning a hundred new things every day.

Here he has decided to see just how many bowls he could "messy up" with his yogurt:

Yup, mission accomplished. He "messied" them all up real good:

Here he has made a nice pot of "soup" out of his box of raisins and my crockpot (no, I didn't give him the crockpot to play with, he went into the kitchen and got it himself):

Coloring in one of his new "learning" books. The Dollar Tree ROCKS, these books are awesome - and just a buck!

"Painting" (with little animal figures being the paintbrushes) on a big piece of "paper" (a pillow):

Watching a video with Daddy:


This is one of my favorite Charlie things - he's getting the "lint" out from between his toes. He's gotta do this at least once a day. He takes of his socks, plops himself down, and spreads each chubby little set of toes apart to get the lint out. And he often asks for help getting it out. Kinda grosses me out, but it keeps him happy!

Lint-free and happy!

We slept in and missed church. Ooops. So we decided it was a good day for a picnic at the park instead:

"QUIT taking my picture, mommy!!!"