My focus is beginning to change as a parent. 

When Finley was born over 2 years ago and during her first few months of life, parenthood was new to me and I spent a lot of time just getting into the next hour of it.  If I can just get her to sleep.  If I can just get this one diaper changed.  If I can just get this sandwich made while she's sitting on the floor playing, occupied for the next 30 seconds.

I felt rewarded as a parent, but that feeling stemmed mostly from the fact that we finally had a child and we were keeping her alive!  We were successful.  She was alive and well and growing, and we could do it.

But now, after two years of parenthood and a second child, I think I'm beginning to understand the meaning of the word "rewarding" when it's attached to parenthood.  

When Finley was just learning to talk and starting to put sentences together, I remember well the first time I really felt the big parental reward.  I was picking her up after work and I hadn't seen her all morning.  Her face lit up when she saw me and she wrapped her arms around my neck and said, "Isss so good see you Mama!"  Angela and I looked at each other with a crooked smile and the "did-she-just-say-what-I-think-she-said" eyebrows, and kept talking to her like that was a perfectly normal thing to say and she hadn't just strung together a masterpiece.

Yesterday at the swimming pool she said, "Mama carry you," meaning she wanted me to carry her.  Kid speak is a hoot isn't it?  She doesn't understand how to correctly reference herself with the word "me," so she always says "you."  Help you, carry you....it all means she needs something.  So when she wanted me to carry her at the pool yesterday I obliged.  As soon as she reached me in the water she hugged my neck and uttered the magic phrase, "Mama isss good see you!"  She held on for a long time.  It cracked me up because I had been at the pool with her the entire time, but perhaps I had been a bit more occupied with Kallan.  She possessed me for this brief high, and then it was on to more important things, like splashing.

Point is, Finley is starting to express love and it's such a warm fuzzy moment for a parent the first time she expresses it directly toward you.  Parenthood is often about providing, assisting, preparing--you know, dutiful things--and when the child responds on a level higher than that it just rocks.  

Have I flashed forward to imagine if I'll still be getting awesome hugs like this when she's 16?  NO!!!!  I'm savoring these toddler moments.

I feel like a true parent now.