Monday, June 27, 2011

I love you more than...

The child is a little troubled these days by various things, tiddly pom... not least of which is that, following some renewed reading of Winnie the Pooh he is having nightmares about bees and wasps.  He's also having nightmares about daleks, 'the wrong car' and other great evil beings who lurk in his bedroom, interspersed with good dreams about eating sushi in Victoria train station.

This of course means we spend our nights like the Sorcerors Apprentice racing back and forth from our room to his, carrying buckets of whatever it is that parents use to scare monsters until, inevitably, he ends up in our bed, hogging the blankets.

As he drops gently off into nightmare alley, he tells us how much he loves us which is of course the sort of thing that gets one's Motherly Love brain fluffing up its feathers and cackling inanely, so of course I have been encouraging this; however I believe it may have Gone Too Far.

It started very sweetly:  'I love you all day Mummy'; 'I'll love you always, Charlie'; 'I love you all day and all week and all year;' 'I love you more than that, sweetie'; 'I love you more than that, Mummy!' and so on... Here are a few recent examples, however:

"I love you more than toys"
"I love you more than tigers"
"I love you more than the pavement"
"I love you more than our car"

 Last night it was "I love you more than alligators!"

I feel he is stretching, at this point, to grasp the entire concept. 

Sigh.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

tick tock tick tock

The child is in bed; clutching a warm pillow to its tum... With the impending onset of school we are having some, presumably subconcious, regressing of various bits and pieces; which in the case of our son means his relationship to his innards, to which it appears he feels wholely prisoner.

Our boy will do anything to try to trap the renegade product of his own body so it can never force him to sit for those few calamatous moments when something gets away from him.  Perhaps it's a control issue - he says over and over again that he just 'can't keep it in'.  No matter how many times I tell him he shouldn't try, that he should let it out, he just won't agree.  He would rather strut around all day with an uncomfortable and possibly slightly sticky undercarriage than lose his grip on his own body for the smallest moment.

We've had this before and he always overcomes it - he's perfectly capable of managing himself, he just, at the moment, doesn't want to do it.  He also doesn't want to stay at nursery all day or dress himself or do any one of a number of things he's been doing perfectly happily for a while.

I understand, to be honest.  I'm not sure I'm ready for him to go to school either.  I'm not ready to lose our Fridays together, or to have to get up early 5 days a week for the next 12 years to ship him off, or to watch him become jaded and prone to playground economics, vocabulary and manners.

In some way I suspect we both want the world to slow down and let him be a little boy for just a bit longer.  Sadly while I am used to time taking over my life and doing whatever it wants, he's only 4 and is just trying, any way he can, to control his world.  It's just a shame that it's making him feel so dreadful.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Brixton morning


GeoTagged, [N51.45112, E0.10881]

Big Farmers Market popping up in Brixton this morning under the big Plane tree - town hall clock chiming 10am, feels quite villagey for somewhere which is largely concrete...

PS, gotta love the geotagging - it's saying that Windrush Square is somewhere in the middle of the park... that or on a side road about a mile away.  Sigh.

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Sunday, June 05, 2011

Lord of the Flies

We've just had my godson and his older brother (one of Charlie's very bestest friends) over for a sleepover and right here, I have to tip my hat to  ANYONE who has 3 boys.  The sheer volume for one thing; and the vehemence.  Anything and everything that could pose as a weapon was dragged into service against monsters and unsuspecting parental units.  I mean, I love the Nerf guns but the frenzy to which the presence of one can raise a roomful of boys is, frankly, quite disturbing - particularly considering that these are really very little boys.

I've probably said this before but I've often felt remorse at the lack of a sibling in Charlie's life; however I do resolutely feel he has the best of everything - friends, attention, comfort, boundaries, outdoorsy play, indoorsly slugging about, you name it, he's spoiled for it.  A bit too much, in fact.

The upshot of this is that when friends come over he tramps around like a little dictator ordering them about and generally pissing them off.  This time however he was entirely outgunned by the tiniest, most angelic little tot you have ever seen: my godson, two-and-a-half with a whispering lisp and the bluest eyes on the planet, my god-son whom I have only ever seen smiling and giggling, my god-son, half-a-pint of coy, armed with a badminton raquet and leading the attack with the sort of ruthless abandon one might imagine chased Piggy off that cliff... at least until the tickle monster fought back.

Tonight, our little Mussolini is extremely humbled, not to mention wiped flat.  He's eaten his dinner, said 'yes' to everything and done exactly as he was told. 

On the one hand this makes me feel even more that a sibling would be a good influence on him; however the influence on us, if tonight is anything to go buy, would be to render us even more senseless than usual...