Wild Wednesday

Ah, kids.
It's an emotional rollercoaster alright. Marital ups and downs are nothing compared to the obstacle course of emotions our feisty offspring subject us to.

Let's take a typical Wednesday, for example.
One minute I'm trying to simultaneously feed the baby, prepare a cheese sandwich and engage (enthusiastically) in a game of one-on-one football with BB. It crosses my mind that I spent a grand total of six years in higher education learning about very noble yet obscure things... and in fact maybe I would have been better advised just to learn how to do three physical tasks at once. Or, better still, clown school (they probably teach you useful stuff like balancing).

The next minute, BB is hysterical because it's time to leave the park and go home. He has become one of those horrible, red-faced, mean, snotty kids that I - in my pre-parenting naivety - used to frown upon (and steer well clear of).
I feel almost capable of tying him to the park gate and strapping a "Take him if you want him" sign around his neck.

But, somewhere in the dregs of my maternal instinct, I find the kindness required to scoop him up and carry him to the car: a move that forces me to manoeuver baby's pram one-handed through a series of non-pram-friendly obstacles like gates and wheelie bins.

Then, just a few minutes later, I'm driving along in an anger-fuelled silence when I happen to glance in the rearview mirror. There they are: my two little guys, sleeping like angels.
My heart melts. How I love them.

Later that afternoon, BB screams at me and stamps his feet because he wants to sit on the table. This is a game he learned with Nana (no judgement ;-)
Only, I'm not free to hoist him onto the table, because my hands are - yet again - tied. LB is - yet again - hungry.
I try to reason with the red-faced stamper, remembering the current theory that "kids always respond well if you explain why they can't do something, rather than just shouting".
Huh. After 30 seconds patient explanation, drowned out by BB's furious sobbing, I abandon modern child rearing methods in favour of more traditional ones: "Go to your room! NOW!"

But later still, just before bedtime, BB, snug and sweet-smelling in his pyjamas, spontaneously points to his old cot - the one that was his for two years and until only four nights ago - and says "That's baby's bed".
Without any explanation, jealousy or tantrums, he has simply understood that soon, his little brother will sleep in his old cot, right next to him in their shared bedroom.

My heart melts again. How I love them.