Since we met our sweet summer superhero a week ago today, he’s been so vivacious and energetic and full of life and joy and heart-melting smiles. He’s jumped into the trampoline-jumping, boy-wrestling, clothes-hating fray and marched to the beat of our family's chaos as if it’s been his whole life’s tune. He’s embraced every aspect of our crazy, boy-filled life and made himself at home in our family and our routines. 

But for the last week, he’s been stiff in our arms.

Two of the three little people in our house are huggers and cuddlers and right-next-to-ers and smotherers. And my first love language is physical touch. (That was a funny joke, God, when you married me to a man who is never here to TOUCH. The pillow I snuggle with and drool on every night thanks you.) So with the exception of Superhero 1, who uses cuddle time with Mama purely for negotiation purposes (I will allow you to cuddle with me for 15 minutes if you allow me to stay up LATE for those 15 minutes) and Super-Spouse (who is still in Michelle’s Hugging Bootcamp 101), we’re a bunch of on-top-of-each-other touchers in this family.

It’s how we feel love, so it’s how we SHOW love. And it was clearly strange to our summer superhero.

So for seven days, as we’ve greeted this sweet boy with morning hugs, tucked him into bed with goodnight kisses and rubbed his back and pulled him close anytime we’ve been constructing Legos or playing games or reading books or telling nighttime stories, he’s been rigid in our arms. Whether he had never experienced such affection or whether, like Superhero 1, it just wasn’t his love language or favorite thing ever, he didn’t know quite what to do with our constant cuddling and touching. And although he gave us PERMISSION to be this close, he never initiated or returned the hugs or snuggles we’ve smothered him in for seven days.

Until yesterday.