Last week was a rough week at our house.
My son came home from day home on Monday night and after 10 minutes in the car he was sick. All over the back of my car and everywhere sick. When we got home and I took him out of the car seat I could already feel he had a fever. It was downhill from there. My husband and I had to schedule who would go to work and who would stay home and then it hit me and I was as sick as my son was.
I never thought about what would happen if I got sick at the same time as my son. Turns out when mom gets sick life goes on exactly the same as usual, my son was not very sympathetic to my illness. Finally after a very long five days we both started feeling more like our normal selves and were able to leave the house on Sunday. We went to the farmer’s market and then to the beach to play in the sand and had a wonderful day. I decided instead of focusing on how hard this past week was I would write about some of my favourite aspects of being a mom.
As my son is growing up his personality is developing and evolving. He does things that make my husband and I burst out laughing all the time. For instance, everything he eats is his favourite food. He will take a bite of his food and then make a big production out of saying “mmmmmmm” really loud. He does not care where he is when he does this and when we eat at a restaurant he usually has the tables around us laughing at his exaggerated enthusiasm.
My son loves to dance and he loves songs with corresponding actions. His favourite song is Old MacDonald but he can only sing the E-I-E-I-O part. He will come over and start singing E-I-E-I-O until you sing the rest of the song for him. Heaven forbid you try to skip over making a animal noise because he will notice, every time and will make you start over. The first animal sound he learned was a rooster. We have a couple roosters at home and he started mimicking them. But he would then crow at random people at random times. It is always very interesting to be sitting in the pediatrician’s office with your 16 month old sitting on your lap crowing. I sat there and laughed and when he saw me laughing he crowed louder which made me laugh harder all the while parents with children who were not acting like crazy farm animals stared at us.
One thing I love about having a toddler is he is completely confident and innocent. He will try anything and is braver than I am at times. He will climb higher than he should for his skill level but he doesn’t care, if he wants to the top of the play structure at the park he’s going to find a way to get up there. There are times as adults our insecurities and lack of confidence hold us back from trying new things but my son doesn’t have any insecurities, he just jumps right in and gives it his best shot. I try very hard as a mom to give my son room to try new things on his own. I don’t want to hover over him all the time and have him feel he needs me to help him when he wants to do something. I do hover just enough he doesn’t get hurt but I also let him experience things on his own. I get a lot of satisfaction watching him try something new and I feel immense pride when he succeeds. I love seeing how proud he is when he has accomplished something he had wanted to. It can also be very funny watching him try to figure something out, like when he was starting to walk he wouldn’t hold your hand. If he was walking over uneven ground he would rather fall, get back up and try again until he figured it out. He would then stand there and clap for himself because he was so excited.
There are so many aspects of being a mom that I love. Everyday I am finding something new to enjoy. While we just had five very trying days I know there are plenty of great days just around the corner and I can’t wait to see what they have in store for us.
Christina Komives lives on a farm outside of Wetaskiwin with her family.