ahh... peace reigns in our quiet little home..

lovely little day today,

oh, apart from a major meltdown at my mum's house - complete with head banging and flailing and wailing - he was completely out of control, completely lost in a maelstrom of emotional pain.
i carried him to a quiet room, and he calmed right down, and talked with me as if nothing had happened... then i brought him back to the living room (where my dad and sis and mum were), and right away he falls back into the maelstrom. i bring him back out, and he calms again.
odd huh?!
i guess it was several things... too much stimulation (dad was playing big fun games), too much attention (everyone looking at him), maybe some underlying unspoken tension (family stuff)..?

anyway, it was so brief, that the only thing that's remaining about it as i process it is... how odd? how out of place, how sudden? how he's never usually like that, apart from a few very squingy episodes over the last few days... i wonder why..
maybe, together with the bad sleep, it's a molar thing? he was biting his teeth together alot before all this, and i've spotted him clenching his jaw and looking internally a bit these days...

anyway, as i said, it was a good day, and one that reassures me that my boy is still as i know him, and i still am a good enough mum, and we enjoy each other's company, which right now feels like the most important thing.

we went to get some sushi, we hung out at the library, went to my mum's.

in the evening we played in the garden; we each grabbed a bucket, i filled mine from the washing machine, and added charlie carp. he asked for some too, so i dripped some in his bucket. then we watered our precious berries, even he tipping his bucket onto his favourite plants. and we confirmed that no berries had appeared since we last checked them yesterday.
then we played in our little playground in our beautiful front garden - lots of climbing and sliding, lots of trampolining.

our trampoline is the setting for so much joy, what would i do without it?
we lie and marvel at the vast blueness of the sky, edged all around with leaves from our beautiful tree (i do so love that tree, only that one) (it has a mix of either branches with only solid green leaves, or branches only with leaves which are variegated with cream. isn't that odd?), and kick our legs in the air to see them against the sky. we have 3 different bouncing games, a running in circles game, a pull-me-up-and-fall-down game. we call for our dog to see her running back, we squiz at her through the mat, we/i check under the trampoline to see if she's there.
then we sit/lie on it and read our junk mail, until it's dusk and mosquitoes come out.
on our way back to the door, dan runs after holly and bossily orders her to eat something he found, which she wisely ignores.

i finally borrowed a bunch of books from the library - i've been so borrowed-book starved! i generated a massive fine (from one lot, about 15 books kept a week late, massively adds up), and couldn't bear to pay it again (it's happened before), so have been waiting on andrew to get a membership that i could use and start anew on with good intentions. and he did so and gave it to me along with my xmas pressent!

i got harvey karp's "happiest toddler on the block", and robin grille's "parenting for a peaceful world" which i'm eagerly anticipating being as rockin as others have made out. dan loves the cover, squealing over the oil illustration of naked kidlets amongst gigantic sunflowers.

maybe i should grow us some sunflowers? they're pretty darn amazing things.

tonight i lay in bed reading as he fell asleep - so much better than just lying there staring into the dark! a few minutes before, he picked up one of my books, and joined me in lying on our tummies and reading.. he stared very hard into a printed page, staying very still, then gave me a cheeky humourous twinkle at his own mimicky cleverness.

then when he fell asleep, i kissed him many times on his mouth, and breathed in his milky sweetness, and ruffled his hair. i love him so much i could implode.
every day he's becoming someone "other", more separate from me... from the newborn baby of your own flesh, to the eye-gazing infant to whom you're all the universe, to the little child to whom you're the rock and foundation of the exciting out-there world.
i know him both more and less now than when he first fell out of me.. he's his own person, someone i can only try to get to know... i have to keep reminding myself that he's not an extension of myself, he is not all the best things of myself, he is just who he is. and though i love him more fiercely than i do sometimes myself, my role is only to support him in his growth.
i love this job.