The payoff begins?

For some time, at difficult moments with the boys we have looked forward to the time when they would play together as the payoff for some of the more challenging things about having two children. We have been getting a glimpse of this over the past few weeks. Mostly, these moments are fleeting, where Jamie finds some way to include Connor productively in his little world. Often this involves Jamie placing something on Connor's head, squirting him with water in the bath, or some other one-sided activity in which Connor is in essence transformed into a toy. But they've also been hiding together, sometimes, for hide-and-seek, for instance. Connor, of course, loves to do everything Jamie does and so he is thrilled, even when it is evident that he has no idea why, exactly, they are doing whatever it is that they are doing.

Then last night we were playing a very good energy-burning game where I stood in the kitchen on the other side of the gate that blocks Connor from the stairs. Jamie would fetch balls and throw them over the gate and I would throw them back into the living room and he would go tearing off after them. Connor got right into it and Jamie liked the sense of traffic of them both going back and forth and bombarding me. When Connor, clearly tired, took a rest on the ride-truck, Jamie actually lamented his absence and said "But now who's going to play with me?" A momentous occasion truly.