Love Languages-- Baby Edition

Some of you may have read Gary Chapman's book The Five Love Languages, which tends to be popular pre-wedding reading these days. Cody and I perused it before our wedding, and we still talk frequently about our's, our family members', co-workers, and now kids' love languages. If you haven't read it, a butchered summary is as follows: Each one of us experience love in different ways. We each have certain ways we naturally express love and generally like to receive love in that same way. The author breaks it down into five areas (noting you can be strong in one area, or a combination of 2 or 3): Gifts, Words of Encouragement (or praise, I can't remember), Physical Touch, Acts of Service, and Quality Time. The book is supposed to help married couples communicate better, but in my family we frequently apply the theories to other people in our lives to help us understand them better and express appreciation, if not love, better. For example, my boss is not in any way a "words of encouragement" type, so I never expect to get verbal praise for my work. He's a major acts of service, so if he's happy with my work, I can usually judge it by him buying lunch or getting me a Starbucks on the way to the office (that is, back when there was an "office" for me to go to :)).

Cody and I (and Denise) have discussed many members of our family extensively. I am most certainly words of encouragement, and Cody tries to verbalize praise for me so I feel good. Just the other day he told me our house has been looking great since I started to stay at home, and that comment has, obviously, stuck with me! Cody is Acts of Service--- if I tell him a project he's been working on looks great, its in one ear and out the other. But, the nights that I plan dinner, make it before he gets home and make him a special dessert (dinner is usually cody's area), I can tell how flattered he is that I would serve him like that. Denise is the ultimate in gift-love-language. She not only feels loved when people spend time and energy to pick out a great gift for her, but she is great at expressing love through the perfect gifts for others, and we are always being showered with useful, pretty, fun, I've-been-wanting-that, or I-never-would-have-thought-of-that-for-myself wonderful gifts. In case you're wondering, here are a few others we've discussed: Meg is most certainly Quality Time (hence her affinity for board games--we all get to sit down together without the TV on for a few hours); If Denise is the ultimate example of Gifts, then Jamie Groeber is the same in Acts of Service. One can't leave a dirty dish or an unfinished bathroom around him long before he's humbly, quietly fixing the situation. I think Lisa might also be Gifts because she hasn't come to our house once in the last 3 years without armfuls of them, and I always love what she picks out, which means she has put thought and energy into it. My mom is Words of Encouragement, which is probably where I developed my love language from. My dad (I think) is Quality Time, evidenced by his anxiety whenever anyone wants to go to bed on vacation! As for physical touch, I think that is a more rare love language, and the best example we have of that has to be our friends Luke and Andrea who are both Physical Touch, and luckily married to each other! The idea of identifying love languages is to help express your love, affection or appreciation to someone in the language they understand--and conversely, when to recognize when someone else is trying to express love, affection or appreciation for you in a way that isn't necessarily your love language. I would love to hear what you think your love language is!

If you've made it this far into this post, congrats. Now we get to the cute stuff. I have been heard more than once over the last few months say "I think Sean's love language is Physical Touch." He's constantly patting, hugging, kissing and holding hands with James. He loves to hug and kiss mom and dad, and he loves holding hands while watching TV, on walks or in the car. He's cuddly and sweet and I LOVE it. Here are some love languages documented:

Physical Touch: holding hands with Daddy in the car-- just becuase.

Physically loving on Jamesie

Again . . .

and again.

Sean is trying to speak to Denise is her language.  He made her a gift during art time the other day and is proudly displaying it for the camera.

I'll take it for Words of Encouragement!

Spending Quality Time eating watermelon with his friend Gabe.

This has nothing to do with Acts of Service-- I just thought it was adorable :)