Ba Ba Baby

Actually that should read ‘bye bye baby’ but then my Mother would probably have a heart attack and really, ‘ba ba’ is what he says. Sort of. If you listen carefully. Sometimes.

Anyway, so I’m off to Canada leaving the Frog and the spud alone together and while the real me is jumping up and down at the thought of the 3 full nights sleep I’ll get while I’m there (and conveniently ignoring the lurking issue of jet lag), my motherhood brain is squitting out kittens of panic. It’s only 5 days but given how pathetically excited to see him I am after 8 whole hours apart on work days, I reckon this is going to be bad. Put it this way, last night I managed to find an excuse to bring him into the big bed to sleep between us and I lay there missing him, despite the fact that he had a finger stuck in my ear and I’m not leaving until Thursday.

I was thinking this evening as I was filtering through traffic on Park Lane how much I love London and how much I am going to miss the sheer joy of cutting up cars in on her streets. I used to face the rush hour commute twice every day and to be honest, it was the best part of each one. There’s nothing like spending 10 miles on the back of a motorbike riding through the middle of the traffic streams to clear one’s head and with only one day a week in the office these days, I do miss it. I love Bayswater Road in the spring when the trees are dripping petals, or Scrubs Lane when the May is blooming and the air is thick with scent. I love it that when you cross the river it’s like being in another country – from the urban sprawl of Hammersmith to the wetlands of Barnes, or from the spires of Parliament square to the stolid modernism of the Southbank, or from the shabby elegance of Pimlico to a land where pub windows are covered in wire mesh. I love taking a short-cut and coming across a statue I’ve not seen before or taking a route through town that passes by sights that tourists are paying large sums of money to visit and photograph. I love it that I can take the spud a few tube stops and come out to show him the changing of the guard and soldiers on horseback and Peter Pan’s statue in the park and feeding ducks in the serpentine and all that corny old jazz.

And there we have it. Even in the midst of all this reverie the spud manages to thrust a sticky hand into my mind. He stops me trying to make the gap between that bus and that bin-lorry, makes me slow down and stay in my lane and not take risks. He makes London seem like a place I may have dreamed, because in reality it’s a place where teenage boys get stabbed and shot and schools have guards and metal detectors and 8-year-olds get busted for dealing smack in the playgrounds. OK, so it’s not all that bad but sadly we can’t all afford to live in lovely Dulwich or to send our boys to public schools and when one is facing the luck of the draw when it comes to schools, like we will be, it suddenly occurs to one that perhaps there are other places to live. Some things just seem more important, even if they are sticky and smelly and shouty and covered in banana.

After his performance tonight however I reckon I ought to have a little more sang froid about the prospect of leaving him behind for a few days. Tonight I arrived home reasonably late to find a hopped-up spud racing around the flat like a fly on acid and my Frog chewed into submission on the sofa. I crouched down to give my little potato a hello cuddle and he threw out his arms for a hug, ran over and puckered up for a kiss and as soon as I was within reach his little mouth opened up like something from Alien III and he took a chunk out of my chin, leaving a trail of drool and organic apple bits behind.

Still, I can’t think about saying goodbye to him without needing a prescription for digitalis and so perhaps this is a good thing for me to do. In the meantime, my Frog and I are going to bed in the hopes of a good night's rest and, perchance, to say a few goodbyes of our own.

PS, Jen and Jonny's Mommy have both tagged me for memes - I'll try to do them while I'm away, thank you both!