he's one of them now

In the beginning, he was all mine. While his Dad bathed his brothers in the tub, I bathed him in the baby bath in the sink. While his Dad wrestled with his brothers on the living room floor, he would lay on his back under the baby gym and kick his fat little legs. While his Dad read to the older two for bedtime, I would curl up with him on the couch and nurse him to sleep.

Eventually, he graduated to the big tub. Then, his eyes started to light up when he watched them wrestle on the floor and he would scramble down from my lap to join in. I remember the look on his little face when they opened their action-figures for Christmas and he opened his...book. He looked at the book and looked at their toys and dropped the book on the floor. Like, "What the...?"

He is being inducted into boyhood everyday. But I knew it was all over when he came into the room the other day with a little stick saying, "Sword! Sword! Bad guy!" and waving it around like his brothers do, stabbing at his invisible foes. In the car, their new favorite game to play is "Cooper, can you say..." and they run down the list from "eyeballs in outer-space" to the inevitable "poop". He happily repeats everything for them, pleased with himself as they clap for him.

I know that his sweet nature will endure even when the testosterone takes over but it's still hard to see the baby disappearing. They're all my baby boys but he'll always be my baby, baby boy.