Feelings....

Last night, after the usual bedtime routine, I kissed and hugged Benji goodnight and left his room.

As I go about doing my own things, I have his baby monitor on. Typically, you'd hear him talk to himself for a while, some times sing. Recently he's been "speaking" Chinese (note the quote. It's more like speaking in some sort of an unknown language). After a few minutes of his usual antics, there was a short pause. Then I heard him repeatedly say, "I feel lonely....." His tone of voice was not one of sympathy-seeking, or fussing. Lying in bed, he was just making a plain statement of how he felt - "I feel lonely....."

I don't remember us parents ever saying that in front of him. We had no clue where he learned that from. To hear Benji use the word, "lonely" by itself would have been pretty cool, but to hear him combine it with the word "feel" - now that's just hilarious. That phrase just sounded too adult coming from the lips of an almost-three year-old.

Needless to say, Benji succeeded in making me stay by his bed just a while longer. Before I left, I asked if he still felt lonely now that I went back into his room for the second time that night. Grinning, he sheepishly said, "no".