My working week

On Monday my son and I headed to my mum’s place, as we do each week. My Grandma was also there; four generations in one room. My son was more interested in playing with lightsabers in the backyard than enduring cuddles and reading books with his great-grandmother (‘GG’, she’s nicknamed herself), but I’m happy that she was able to be around for his first birthday (as she was for his actual birthday last year), even if he doesn’t appreciate the significance of their relationship just yet.

On Tuesday we went to a nearby playground. I lazed in the sunshine like a lizard while my son toddled around, charming other parents by waving at them and patting their children.

On Wednesday an old lady (her name is Maria, it turns out) from the building next door spotted us in the front yard and called, “You come my home!” So we did. She treated us like we were family, feeding us biscuits and fruit and rice pudding, introducing my son to her lorikeets and telling me not to chastise him when he threw his piece of apple to the floor. She sent us home with strawberries, a block of chocolate and another pudding for my husband.

On Thursday a voiceless friend came over because she needed to get out of her house. She got to see a Jekyll-and-Hyde-like afternoon transformation in my son: playful and cheery before his not-long-enough nap; fragile and woeful afterwards. And I got to chat to an adult about non-baby-related things, which just happens to be one of my favourite pastimes.

Today my boy and I enjoyed a rainy car trip to my mum’s place to drop off some sleeping bags for their weekend away. My iPod seemed to sense the weather and played us appropriately mellow tunes; Feeling Oblivion by Turin Brakes and Lucid by Tex Perkins were two particular offerings that fully convinced me that my iPod is a mind- and mood-reading genius who I would marry in a second if a) it was a person rather than a teeny metal music-playing object and b) I was not already hitched (should they be the other way around?). (By the by, listen to these songs on Grooveshark - they’re perfect for rainy days.) So I drove and sang and my son sucked his fingers and we arrived at Mamachi’s all chillaxed.

Then this afternoon my son pulled some books down from a bookcase, and I glanced up at one point to see him flicking through the pages of The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth by Henci Goer. It made me laugh.

I think the warmth of the spring sunshine has melted just the right parts of my brain and left me feeling richly blessed and thankful for my life right now. I’ve spent a good deal of the last four-or-so months repeatedly telling myself and occasionally telling others how hard full-time mothering can be, and very little time appreciating how much I actually enjoy it; how much I love what our weeks look like because I have the freedom to hang out with my kid all day, every day.

It’s not just my brain thawing; my son’s first birthday was also a surprising and necessary prompt to treasure this time we have together because it’s passing so very quickly. It’s still sinking in that he’s one now – that’s a whole year closer to being two, nine, seventeen. I’ve been slowing down, taking a million mental photographs in an effort to capture and remember this moment in our lives: him babbling sincerely at me as if he’s speaking in a language I understand, him initiating games and taking my hand to lead me to wherever he’d rather be, him offering open-mouthed kisses, him looking worriedly for his hand while I’m dressing him and then grinning, relieved, when it pops out through the other end of his sleeve.

Right now this stay-at-home-mothering thing feels like a pretty sweet deal.

P.S. Our tech-y friend was finally able to return the hard drive onto which he’d saved everything he retrieved from our dead computer, which means I have my photos back! Hurrah!

P.P.S. I know I post a lot of flower pictures but they're just so pirty! I'll find less botanical images for the next few posts, I promise.