This morning we pulled up outside the caregiver’s house, and another familiar car pulled in right behind us before I’d even taken the key out of the ignition.
A: Hey, look who just arrived — Grace and Fergus.
BOY: OPEN THE DOOR! OPEN THE DOOR!
It’s good to look forward to playing with friends.
The boy is finally asleep. It’s been a good morning. For the first time ever, I even got some research reading and longhand writing done while he played.
My years of absorbing and singing revival-era Disney heroine songs from the 90s were all validated today. While I made bread late this morning and Liam was lying on the floor of the kitchen playing with his trains, he began singing “under sea… under sea… under sea” over and over. Then he stopped and said, “Mama sing Ariel?”
This was a significant request, because I don’t get to sing any more. If I start singing something, I am told ‘no, Mama, no singing’. I would be a lot more upset if my goddaughter hadn’t gone through a similar brief phase when she was around the age Liam is now, because I love to sing, and I tend to do it a lot around the house whether there’s music on or not.
“You want me to sing Ariel’s song? The one where she’s in her room of treasures?” (I had to make sure. If I was wrong or had misunderstood somehow, I could damage my chances of singing ever again.)
“Yes.” (Firmly.)
And he lay there for the full three minutes it takes to sing the entire song, sneaking me quick looks from under his lashes every so often while I sang. I remembered the whole thing word for word, where to take breaths and phrasing and everything I used to have down perfectly. He was absolutely silent until I was done. Then he calmly went back to playing with his trains.
There was something very satisfying about being able to not only fulfil a child’s request for a song, but keep him spellbound through it (even if he was trying to act cool). Today, I win.
Today things are much better, thank you. I left the boy at the caregiver’s giving giggly hugs to all the other children and the flock of them jumping around like kangaroos. I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to pass out or not, now that I’ve handled my correspondence and filing. There will likely be a nap later, and my hair needs a wash. I’ll see if I can pull off a thousand words first. It may take a while, as I can’t think straight; my head feels like it’s stuffed with treacle-soaked cotton. I give myself permission to give up at some point.
Sunny out, but very cold. The car doors on the passenger side were frozen shut this morning.
I received my first Christmas present in the mail yesterday: a renewal to last year’s gift subscription of Fine Cooking! Thanks, Mum and Dad!
The day began at 5:15, when Liam woke up. Exactly three days after HRH came home with a cold, the boy has it. I discovered when I woke up at this ungodly hour in response to the boy’s pitiful wail that so do I. That makes three colds for both of us in the space of four weeks.
I do not operate well on five to six hours of sleep. I’m an eight to nine hour kind of person. There have been very few full nights of sleep for me over the past month, be it due to insomnia, illness, or something unidentifiable that kept waking me up.
Blend all of the above, and you have two cranky people in the house today. Joy.
If you want me, I’ll be in the corner muttering darkly about the injustice of it all.
ETA: Also? The Sympatico web mail log-in thing never works for me. Ever. I hate it. I should be able to access my main e-mail no matter what.
ETA #2: Oh, after an hour of searching in frustration, I discovered that it’s because web access is *not* actually bundled with my regular internet service, like it says all over the place on the web site. I have to subscribe to and pay for an extra service in order to access my mail. I hate corps and badly designed/explained services. ARGH!
Late last week, Liam came up to me and put his arms around me, saying, “I love you, Mama.”
This is a big thing, because while he has done this with prompting he’s never initiated it all on his own before. Over the past week he’s done it frequently, and it does wonders for the morale, especially coupled with the recent increase in spontaneous kissing.
And in other kissing-related news, a neighbour across the street became rather overzealous and put their Christmas lights up along their outside banisters last weekend. Liam got out of the car last Monday evening and stopped dead.
“Mama, what that?” he said. “Kissmas! That Kissmas!” he answered himself. Then he stepped out of the way of someone coming along the sidewalk ( “Uh-oh, people on the sidewalk”), and as she passed he turned and called after her, “HAPPY KISSMAS, PEOPLE!”
Two-thirds of the way through November and my son is already wishing people the joy of the upcoming season. Gah.
But… Kissmas. I love that the way Liam puts it, it’s a festival revolving around kissing. Not a bad idea at all, when it comes down to it.
Even cuter, he sang me his very own Kissmas song yesterday, which sounds suspiciously like Happy Birthday but goes: “Happy Kissmas…. to you…. Happy Kissmas, Happy Kissmas to you!”
This holiday season is going to be a lot of fun, methinks. This year he has figured out what presents are, after all. Come the beginning of December we’ll do a holiday collage, with a new picture or object to stick to it every day at breakfast, a twist on the Advent calendar thing. I’ll see if I can interest him in making paper chains, too.
In the bath last night:
A: What are the turtles eating out of the magic treasure chest tonight?
BOY: Mushrooms!
In the bath last night, Liam picked up the plastic snowman bottle that is one of his found toys.
BOY: This is the snowman.
A: Yes.
BOY: He needs a hammer.
A: What?
BOY: Like in the movie. Then he falls in the fish tank. And there’s a lady in it. Like Ariel.
Yes, he watched The Pixar Short Film Collection Vol. 1 collection. Can you tell?