quality time with my son/my son and husband

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Tonight was such a pleasant night. My son and I are on spring break so tonight I made a dinner of snacks. A lot of fruits and vegetables but also some junk food thrown in and we watched a movie together. I chose one of my son's favorite older movies. He loves "Easy to Wed" with Van Johnson, Esther Williams, Lucille Ball, and Keenan Wynn. We talked off and on throughout the movie since we have both seen the movie several times. My son proceeded to tell me he enjoyed nights like tonight where he gets to spend time with just me. He talked to me about a lot of different things. He told me his favorite older actresses were Doris Day and Lucille Ball and he told me he loved that I was sharing my love of old movies with him the way my dad shared his love for them with me. He also started talking to me about his career plans and how he wants to eventually go to a two-year college and do something with programming or computers. He doesn't want to owe a fortune in debt so he thought a two-year program at a community college sounded like a good idea. After the movie was over he wanted to draw together the way we used to do when he was younger. We sometimes paint or color together. We usually find some craft to do together. I asked him on a scale of 1 to 10 how he thought I was doing as a mom he looked at me and said "Easily a solid 90" I love that kid. He told me he loved nights when it was just us. He said he loved spending time with his dad but that I was his favorite person. He said I was calm and he felt he could talk to me more easily than he can his dad. He said he doesn't know many people calmer than me. We started talking about what he gets from each of us. He told me he got his more creative interests from me and his love for computers and building things from his dad. He has always painted and drawn with me and his dad was always the guy who helped him build with LEGOs and helped with anything that had to be physically put together. His personality is a lot like mine. He has my sense of humor, my calmness, and my laid-back personality. He doesn't have much of his dad's personality which he says he's grateful for because my husband is impatient and easy to anger at times. He does have his dad's ability to talk to people. My son is the kind of person that makes friends easily. He is social like his dad but keeps friends for a long time the way I do. It was just fun talking to him and learning about him and having him ask me questions. We both realized that there was still so much we don't know about each other even though we are close. I guess as you go throughout the day you just don't think to ask some questions. It was fun hearing about what he wanted to do with his life and learning how amazing he really is. I've always known he is amazing but I learned that he has really been thinking about this future which I didn't realize he did because we don't talk about it much. We talk about it some but never to the extent we did today. My son loves talking to me more when my husband isn't around. He knows his dad loves him but he also knows how his dad can be when he's in a bad mood from work. My husband is a grouchy old man who loves us but who also gets tired from working and gets snappy. My husband can be difficult to talk to and sadly he doesn't have the bond with our son that I do. My husband loves our son more than anything he's just not good at communicating with him. He had a terrible childhood and learning how to be a father has been something he always found difficult. He just knew he wanted to do better than his dad and he has. He has never called our son stupid or called him names the way his dad did him and always tells him that he loves him which his dad seldom told him. Parenting has always come easier to me than it has to my husband. I had two decent parents and had role models when it came to knowing how to be a parent. My husband will probably always struggle with knowing how to handle parenting situations and he recognizes this and has always let me take the lead in parenting. He has always worked hard so that I could be the main parent home with our son. It's nice to know that despite it all that my son knows his dad loves him and he knows he can always come to me. He will always enjoy his time with me more than his time with his father but that doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy spending time with his dad he just enjoys it in smaller doses. I will say sometimes my husband is better with our son when I'm not around because he feels less pressure I think. I know he used to get down and play cars with our son when I'd leave him with him when he was little. My son would always be all smiles when he spent time with just dad but he told me he likes it in smaller doses since his dad doesn't have patience.