Date

 

As previously mentioned, Joseph and I had a date on Friday.

 

 

Oh heavens, it was so fun.  Look at my handsome boy!  I am catching glimpses of what he will look like as a man, and it hurts my heart!  How did we get here?  And why is he still sleeping so terribly?

But, I digress.

Joseph chose to look around a local toy store, and – Brian will be pleased to hear this- we looked around for almost an hour and didn’t buy anything!  It was so hard for me, but such a good lesson too.  And, to his credit Joseph didn’t even ask! 

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The night took a momentary turn for the worse when, walking back to our car from the toy store, my baby got his FIRST BEE STING!

It went a little something like this:

He was karate chopping near a bush,

I heard him start wailing,

a bee flew away from his arm,

he clutched his wrist and bellowed!

I looked at it, saw the welt with puncture-wound center, and said, “Oh!  You got stung by a bee!”

To which he wailed louder and said, “Papa says it only hurts for 10 seconds!!! waaah!”

I half-dragged, half-carried him (I am 6.5 months pregnant after all) to the van and tried to murmur words of encouragement while Joseph continued screaming.

Finally, as I was strapping him into the carseat, I said, “Well, the good news is, Joseph, that stinkin’ bee is probably dead now!”

He looked at me with fire in his eyes and said, “Well that’s GOOD!”

And then we both burst out laughing.

Could you blame me for buying him a hot fudge sundae AND a chocolate milk shake at Red Robin after that?

(his pancreas can!)

He told me later, “I’m GLAD that I got my first bee sting!  Because now I know what it feels like!”

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At dinner, I casually asked him, “So, do you want to talk about Batman for a while??”

And, oh readers, you should have seen his face! 

Such delight!

Such enthusiasm!

So, we did!  We talked about Batman the whole rest of dinner, while my heart in equal parts sang and broke.

It sang to be sharing this time with him; to see his joy and to be able to talk about something HE cares about without being so busy with other things.

And it broke because it is just never enough!  I can never have enough patience and time and enthusiasm to give him!

Children are a bottomless pit of need (and adorableness, don’t get me wrong!) and mom guilt plagues me daily!  WAAAH! I might FAIL AT MOTHERHOOD!! (Ahem, Hormones, anyone??)

But, for that Friday night, I had enough for him.

We started a new sticker chart today- and I can’t wait for him to fill it up again.