So, that doctor’s appointment today?
It didn’t exactly happen.
Yes, we made a sixty-kilometre round trip for Liam to cheerfully play in the waiting room, voluntarily pull a chair over to the doctor’s desk in her office, and play happily with a set of Russian stacking dolls while she asked me about his food intake and sleep patterns. She uses a big exercise ball as an office chair, and when she went out of the room to take a call Liam rolled it around and bounced it and chortled. When she returned and asked him to come over to the other side of the room so she could start the examination, however, Liam suddenly backed into the corner of the office, slid down to crouch on the floor, and cried. Big, berry-like tears squeezed out of the eyes, and pitiful “no, no, no, no”s came between the sobs. He kept asking to go back to the car. He was miserable.
I am informed that this is very normal for children his age, as they are developing a sense of personal space. The doctor even told me that it’s a good thing, as it’s a form of self-defence. As he’s always been fine with our GP I can only surmise that the sudden refusal to go along with the appointment was probably a combination of that developing sense of personal space and the new, unfamiliar office location. He was happy all morning, repeating “going to the doctor’s house, going to the doctor’s house, see doctor!” over and over. But he asked to be carried down the stairs to the office, which is indicative of needing a bit of reassurance, and came back to me often while he explored.
We have another appointment scheduled for three weeks from now. In the meantime, we have been instructed to buy him a toy doctor’s kit and for us all to play with it a lot to accustom him to the instruments and how they’re used. (I foresee Bun-Bun being a patient in the coming weeks.) The doctor also said that it might take a couple of ‘play dates’ with her before he lets her actually do the examination. She was so unfazed by it that it must happen more often than I think.
Halfway home in the car, he asked to hold my hand. I reached back to give it to him, and he held it all the way home as long as I didn’t need it to shift gears. Five minutes away from the house he said, “I have a hug?” I promised him a big cuddle when we got home, as we were both strapped into our seats. He had a quiet lunch while watching some Beatrix Potter, but then it took over an hour to get him to nap.
On the bright side, in his exploration of the new office he found the scale and weighed himself. And it looks like yes, he’s 33 pounds, unless he’s 34; the needle was vibrating a bit, because no two and a half year old can ever, ever stand still. He is officially one-third my weight.
We’ll try again the first week of January.
Possibly some of the worst news I could have woken up to:
Five chapters of edits handled so far, or one-third of the MS. I’d like this done today but it won’t be finished by the time I have to go collect the boy. And it looks like I’m not going to get to the hearthcraft book at all, but the edits on the YA book are more time-sensitive at this point, as I want to get it out by my self-imposed deadline of the end of the year.
There are times when I really, really wish I could turn the ringer on my phone off completely. And I think people who don’t identify themselves when they say hello should be given a good hard smack. I just had someone who called the wrong number get mad at me for saying ‘obviously’ when he asked if he had the wrong number. The conversation went like this:
Today: bright sun, then snow, sun, snow. Just above the freezing mark, too. Beautiful.
As he grows older these updates are becoming very hard to do in the way I used to do them, so I’m making it easier on myself just noting things down and doing a kind of photo album instead: fewer deep observations, tighter prose. I miss the slightly more emotional tone, but I just can’t capture it the same way as he ages. I think it has something to do with how he’s becoming more and more of his own person. He moves me just as deeply, but in ways that are harder to define in a monthly post. I’ll also link posts I’ve done throughout the month with Liam-associated milestones or observations for reference. 
Lately he has jumping about like a mad thing, and both feet leave the ground. This is a great improvement over the jumping motion with the body, knees bent and all, but without the departure of soles from floor as he did a few months ago when he started ‘jumping’. Last month one foot got off the ground; now both feet do. Liam jumps about ‘like a kangaroo!’ with immense enthusiasm. His co-ordination is improving daily, probably due to the challenge of moving about in snow gear. He goes up and down stairs with ever more confidence, and improves at climbing in and out of the car daily. He can whip a kitchen chair over to the counter and handle things on the surface a bit too well now for comfort. And he brushes his teeth on his own remarkably well, although HRH still needs to do a quick follow-up to make sure everything is clean.
Liam counts things incessantly: orange slices, the ducks in the bath, stairs, chicken nuggets… We’re hearing the use of ‘mine’ and ‘my’ a lot all of a sudden. The need to classify things as belonging to someone has become very important. “That my cat,” he says of Maggie, “that my chair, that my kitchen, that my mama, that my dada; that Mama’s book, that Dada’s boots.” Also frequently heard is the exclamation of “OH NO! ROBOTS!”, which kills me every time, especially when he’s playing with his trains. Evidently robots are the antagonists of choice in Liam’s play world. The other new saying is “Let me be!”, used when we try to get him dressed or up and moving when he’s doing something.
Firsts this month include dinner at an adult friends’ house with no other children, during which he behaved himself well (thank you, Ceri and Scott), and the introduction to the joys of a ball pit (for which we thank you again, ADZO).
Total word count, hearthcraft book: 12,398