"Are you the Daddy today?"

For most of Jack's life, Daddy has worked from home and Mommy has gone into the office. This has never struck Jack as odd; what is unusual for most families, in this case, is normal for Jack.

The past few weeks, things have changed. Emily's department was eliminated at her employer (while she was on maternity leave, nice), while I've been doing some contract work in an office setting. Jack didn't notice when he was still going to daycare, but it's closed this week so he's been home. And every morning I get showered and haul myself off to work, while Emily sticks around and handles the young'uns. And since in Jack's eyes the "standard" is Daddy being home and Mommy going into an office, it's messing his world up a little bit. The other day he said to Emily, "Are you the Daddy today?"

It's hard to be sure, but the change seems to be troubling Jack a little bit. Emily says he's missed me, which is clear in some ways (yesterday he babbled to me non-stop for about 15 minutes when I got home, all about the monsters in his car and how I was in the car and that we had all the paper in the car and the toys in the car and would I close the car doors please? And watch this Daddy - he jumped on one foot for a minute -- and on and on), and less obvious, but apparent, in others.

1. When I put him to bed the other night, he didn't want to fall asleep or let me leave. This is a routine occurrence on days when he napped, because he's generally wakeful, but unprecedented on days when he didn't nap, like that day.

2. Last night, he woke me up several times, moaning. This was a change from how he normally wakes me up, by coming into the room and (if I don't immediately wake up) shaking me. Tough to ignore when the moans steadily build in intensity and I'd like to either go back to sleep or keep him from waking Kate up, neither of which happened last night. I went in to figure out what was bugging him, but could never get a straight answer, either because he was half asleep or didn't really have a reason -- odds are he just wanted me to come in.

This morning, I asked him why he was moaning last night. "Well....." That was pretty much his initial answer. When I kept pressing, suggesting he had a bad dream, that sounded like a pretty good answer to him, whether it was true or not. "Yeah....I had a bad dream." "About?" "Um....polar bears." "Polar bears?" "Yeah. Polar bears. And my puppies woke me up."

3. He wanted me to get into bed with him this morning before we went downstairs. So, we did that.

4. Finally, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep and then near-groggy from getting back into bed with him for 10 minutes, we made it to the door of his room, about to go downstairs. At which point he did something he hadn't done for, oh, about a year or two.

He turned to me and lifted his arms up in the air. "Carry?"