My "Sweet Cheeky"

[sweetsmommy]

Okay, so I think that I have given my poor baby a bit of a bad rap lately. The truth of the matter is everyone knows how to cope when things are going well; it's when things are going bad that they need help. Seriously, think about it. When things are going well and your life is falling into place just as you planned of course you want to share your happiness with your friends and family, but you don't need others to feel necessarily feel happy for you. If you're riding on a high, you're probably pretty capable of being happy for yourself whether anyone else is happy for you or not. On the other hand, when things in your life have got you down, that's when you need the support of your nearest and dearest.

I have plenty of good days, but somehow those never seem as interesting to me as the hard ones. I don't learn as much from the good days as I do from the difficult ones. Oh, I know that I don't sound at all pleased about the difficult times, but I honestly believe that the lessons to be learned in life come from those very moments. Case in point, I have a low threshold for mess. This has been well documented in this blog and comes as a surprise to no one. And when Daniel used to spill things, I would go off the deep end. But now when it happens, I barely even flinch. Well, unless it happens on the bed because that involves stripping the bed and lots of laundry, but if it's on the floor I have learned to shrug it off.  Okay, maybe that was a bad example because most people don't care about that stuff the way I do. But my point is that I can let a lot more things go than I could even six months ago. I had to learn to let things go for his benefit as well as my own. I realized that my over-reaction to his tantrums or his tendency to make messes was only going to have an adverse affect on him and ultimately on our relationship. So we raise our voices a lot less around here than we used to. The dogs don't get scolded as often as they used to. We are trying to teach him that nothing is gained by losing his tempers by diligently working at not losing ours.

See, it is my hope that if by some miracle someone I don't know happens to read my posts about motherhood and is experiencing something similar than she or he will know they aren't alone and that someone else is dealing with it too. Writing about it helps me get a new perspective on things and almost always makes me realize something that I hadn't before. I'm not writing about the hard times as a ploy for attention, even though I deeply appreciate the comments I receive, I write about them because it helps me get through them. The icing on the cake would be that it helped someone else as well.

And now back to the real topic of this post; Daniel, my son and my muse. There aren't enough words in the English language, or any other language for that matter, for me to adequately articulate how much I love and adore my son. I truly do love everything about him. Yes, I know you've read evidence to the contrary, but the truth is that when I'm not in "the moment" of being frustrated or upset him, I actually love his rebellious nature. My rebellious nature was squelched early on, so part of me loves that he has one. It's not going to stop me from complaining about it, but I do love it. I love his smile; I love his amazing, expressive eyes and long eyelashes. I love that he has my hands, his dad legs and my booty (trust me, his is much cuter!). I love that he has my sister's dimples, the shape of my dad's head and my brother's intensity. I love, love, love hearing him say, "Mom." I love watching him when he's working on a project and how he purses his lips just like I do, and just like my dad does when he's concentrating.  I love his laugh. My gosh he has THE best laugh EVER!!!  I love how smart and clever he is. He has such an analytical mind already it's unbelievable. The other day, Will actually found him outside connecting two components on a motorcycle and actually putting them back where they belonged! I'm not making this up people, it happened! How many 26-month olds can do that? He's amazing. Today, he was with me in the kitchen standing on his step stool while I was washing dishes and he said, "Mom, where dink (binky) go?" And I said, "I don't know where dink is honey." And he smiled at me and lifted a pot lid exposing the dink underneath. I couldn't call my mom fast enough. I mean, how cute is that? He's already doing magic tricks for crying out loud.

And while there are admittedly some bouts of negative physical expression, he more than makes up for those with all of the hugs and kisses he gives me on a regular basis. In fact, lately he's started hugging his dad and me by our necks and planting kisses on both of our cheeks. The boy is so full of love that his cup runneth over. He really has earned his moniker of "sweet cheeky." He's simply the most adorable creature I have ever met. I mean, how toddlers do you know say, "Ducati" when the pass by a motorcycle? He wants to know everything and has recently begun showing me that he has not only heard what I've been saying to him; he's retained it too. Now when we read his books and he spies an animal that he recognizes and we've attached a sound or facial expression to, he makes the sound and the face. Bunnies, frogs and mice happen to be my current favorites. There's nothing like watching a toddler scrunch up his or her little nose, wiggle it and hop saying "boing, boing." Or another crowd pleaser; his shark impersonation as taught to him by his dad. This involves him putting his hand up in the air with his thumb as the shark fin, while performing the music from "Jaws."

Obviously, it's clear that I could go on and on and on with these delightful little anecdotes all in an effort to clearly illustrate just how much I love, adore and respect my son. He has without a shadow of a doubt been my greatest gift, my biggest challenge and my greatest accomplishment. Being a mother, despite my regular meltdowns, has been the best thing for me ever. I love being a mother. I really truly do. See, the thing about my meltdowns, aside from the part that I tend to over think everything and blame myself for just about everything under the sun, is that I'm a bit of a whiner/complainer anyway. I've had one job in my lifetime that I haven't complained about and I guess motherhood in that regard is no different. Besides, when you take into consideration that being a mother is by far the hardest job a person can have even when they have an easy going child, it's not hard to understand how or why someone can feel overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. That having been said, I do it all again in a heartbeat and I wouldn't change a thing. I really wouldn't. Sometimes when you get what you want to easily, you don't appreciate it as much as you would have it been a bit more difficult. If he were  a compliant child, I wouldn't be learning as much as I am about me and the areas I need work on in order to be a better mother and well just a better person overall. We grow more from life's struggles and in a lot of ways it has made me closer to Will and certainly to my family. They don't always agree with my parenting decisions, but they are there to listen to me and offer me support. This incidentally reminds me of one more amazing thing that Daniel has done, which quite honestly I would have thought was impossible, he has single-handedly repaired the relationship I had with my sister. Our relationship had been strained for years. A victim of sibling rivalry, misinformation, jealousies, you know the usual crap that can destroy a relationship with your sibling. We weren't particularly close throughout my pregnancy either, but once Daniel was born something changed inside her. The overwhelming amount of love she feels for my son is undeniable. It's so obvious, so tangible that it practically has its own presence.  And call me a sucker, but anyone who loves my son so completely and unconditionally earns my love too. The ghosts of our past relationship no longer haunt me and have been finally put to rest. Aside from the privilege of being his mom, this gift has to be one of the best ones he has ever given me. All of my life I wanted to have a close relationship with my sister, and now thanks to my darling son, I finally do. The boy really is a magician!