Today:

Went to Best Buy to get a new CD player for Liam’s room, and naturally it was out of stock. This was so that we could once again use the nice relaxing CDs we played when he was much younger, before the first CD player died and left us with only the radio. (Anything to try to recapture the normal sleep routine.) What I didn’t do at Best Buy: walk through the DS games aisle to see what was there, which is a pity because I just checked on line and apparently they have Jam Session in stock! I forgot it was being released today. Argh.

Picked up a couple of small baskets at the dollar store for assorted odds and ends on my new closet shelves. Finally remembered to buy foam brushes so that I could stain the door of my office.

Did the tour of the pet store and little bookstore, as we always do while we’re running errands at the mall. Did not buy the adorable Abyssinian kitten, or the fluffy and killer-cute Golden Lab puppies that scampered back and forth with Liam and licked his hands through the glass. (Obviously they didn’t actually lick him, but he knew what they were doing and giggled and said “Puppies lick Liam!” anyway.) Did not buy books, but not for want of trying: Liam went through several but handed each back to me with a calm “Thank you, no, Mama”, and the book I was looking for wasn’t in stock.

Bought Liam a track expansion set for his trains.

Unexpectedly bought myself my first DS game: Brain Age II, as it was on sale for $15. (Why the second and not the first? Because it had a music game on the back cover.) This marks the first game I have actually purchased instead of borrowing. Now addicted; I enjoy this sort of game. I am the poster girl for casual gamers and people interested in non-games (please, someone come up with a better industry label). Must go back and buy the original Brain Age and Big Brain Academy very soon. The sale’s on for another week.

The boy went down for his nap with a minimum of fuss, only screaming for about twenty-five seconds before settling down to play and fall asleep. He napped for an hour and a half.

Stained the French door we hung in the doorway to my office months ago while the boy slept.

Played trains and Brain Age with the boy, who was very interested in helping me write letters on the touch screen. Not so helpful were his random decisions to draw letters completely unrelated to what was going on: “Letter… B!” “No, Liam we need a letter N!… Oh, drat.” “Your score is: negative six trillion.” Also, during a different exercise he kept talking at the game when the DS was trying to recognize our voice response, so we kept getting those answers wrong too. But we had lots of fun anyhow. (The game will undoubtedly be impressed when I improve astronomically when playing alone.)

Liam did his first watercolour painting with brushes. He told HRH that it was an airplane when they put it up on the fridge.

We prepared and ate dinner early at five o’clock. We wondered if the boy was feeling rushed at night, and that’s why he was having meltdowns. He ate a huge dinner (rice and barbecued sausages and a whole scrambled egg! er, we’re out of veggies, and he won’t eat tomatoes from the garden at the moment), had a popsicle for dessert, had a bath, brushed his teeth, put on a new set of Nemo jammies, and snuggled first with me then with HRH to read books. He asked halfway through the snuggling for cereal and milk ( “Hot milk, Mama” he specified, which he hasn’t had in, oh, months) so I got him a little bowl of dry kamut flakes and a sippy cup of warm milk. He polished both off while HRH read, then did the goodnight round in his room in perfect relaxation ( “Night-night, Peter and FlossieMossyCottontail, good little bunnies,” nod nod nod), and snuggled up in bed. Then he held the empty sippy cup out to HRH and said, “Oh, thank you” before snuggling back down again. HRH and I backed out of the room and gave each other a silent high-five. Not a peep has come from the room. We’d been trying to figure out what was wrong. Nothing had changed in the weekly routine earlier this week: we were doing everything at the usual times, but the way the boy was reacting we wondered if he needed more down time before bed, and backed everything up accordingly. Looks like we were right. This means HRH will have to leave work half an hour earlier than he already does in order to pick Liam up sooner on the two days when he’s in daycare and HRH is working; that way we’ll have a bit more leeway for his brain to encompass what it needs to encompass, time to decompress and fit some quiet playing, a calm sit-down family dinner, a bath, and plenty of snuggling and reading before bedtime. (It’s not as if we were skimping on or missing any of these things before, but any chance to do more of it without a family member feeling rushed is a good thing in our books.)

Then HRH made me watch the Iron Man trailer. Through the first half I was wondering why people said it was so awful, and then the second half kicked in. Atrocious. So bad it isn’t even funny. Iron Man isn’t remotely like RoboCop. Gah!

And now, I think I will have sangria and read. Or maybe curl up in bed and play the DS. Or maybe all of the above.