No Tears...

How are you supposed to keep from tearing up when a four-year-old, with one hand on your cheek and the other wiping your eye, tells you "no tears" as you're strapping her into her car-seat?
I don't know where my daughter gets it from, this almost sixth sense or awareness of my emotions and my moods, but damnit she does, and really always has. The older she gets it seems she's getting better at being in tune with what's going on with me.
When she was little (comparatively speaking) she was always able to tell when I was down or had a bad day and needed a little extra attention and love to cheer me up, and now at four she's consoling me, because she knows how hard it is for me to let her go for a week.
When I sit and think about it, I'm at a loss of how I should feel, that my four-year-old is trying to console her thirty-two-year old father, and honestly at the end, I feel guilty for it.  Guilty that I'm not being stronger for her.  That I've let me emotions, and being upset show through during all this, and that she sees it all.  That instead of me holding her, petting her hair, and wiping away her tears, its her wiping my cheeks, looking at me with those beautiful blue eyes, and with a tone to her voice way older than her little four-year-old self, saying "Daddy, no tears".

Words out of anger

Well, it took nearly seven years to happen, but today was finally the day I heard words I've prepared myself to hear for a while.  Out of anger towards me, my son told me that he didn't want to be here with me and wanted to go back to his mom's.  While I say I've prepared myself to hear that, I should properly put it that I thought I had prepared myself for it, when in reality, I hadn't.  It was a swift kick to the nuts, and one I'm sure I'm going to get plenty more times down the road, from all the kids, but damn this first time from him was painful.  Of course I made the mistake of showing anger after he said it, something I regret.  I was already emotionally drained, and when he came at me with that, I wasn't prepared.
I've tried to talk to him since, and I get the feeling that he's just as sorry as I am.  He's been having a hard time with the changes, harder than he's willing to admit, and I think some of that is finally coming to the surface.  I worry about what other outbursts are in store, because he keeps most things in, especially with me, and I have a feeling once I move, it'll be something else that affects him, and it'll trigger a reaction I won't be prepared to handle.
One thing I know for sure is that those words he said, regardless of why they were said, will be ringing in my head for a while....