Melt

When Jack first started going to school, we all struggled with the separation. Having two parents who don't have regular jobs, and are always around to play, snuggle, stare at you, has it's ups and downs. I'm sure when he's a teenager, he'll be like "OMG, get out of my face! Get a job, losers!". But as of right now, we remain his favorite peeps. 


We got the book, The Kissing Hand, which helped a lot. Every morning I would put some kisses in Jack's palms, and he would say he was saving them for later when he needed them. In the beginning I would walk out of the classroom with him crying, palms pressed to his cheeks. Devastating. 

But he's made friends, and grown more confident, and most days when Nipper picks him up, he doesn't want to leave. There are no more tears at drop off, and this too makes me sad. You can't win as a parent. You work so hard to help them learn to be independent, and then at the moment you realize they are doing just fine without you, you feel overwhelmingly proud, and wistful, "remember when he was just a little baby, and slept right on my shoulder?!"


Cut to 3 nights ago where I had a complete sobbing meltdown in the kitchen bc nipper told me some kid at Jack's school asked him why he was so slow on the bike path. He IS slow, and painfully cautious. There is a little hill on their playground that the bike path goes down, and if he's on it, walk-sitting his bike down the hill, there will be a 10 trike line up at the top of the hill waiting for him to get to the bottom. Some of the kids in the traffic jam are 2 years old. 

I cried bc I'm afraid we've made him that way. Or we haven't helped him overcome his natural cautiousness, and now he'll NEVER jump his motorcycle over those shark tanks. And because, even though Nip said he was fine, and didn't acknowledge this kid, maybe he wasnt, but stuffed it down, so no one would notice. (I don't know where he'd get that from...) I cried bc I want to keep him close, so he'll never get hurt (by a bike, another kid, a tsunami)... And then I cried because he's getting so independent I can't stop thinking about how much I'm gonna cry when he goes to college. I cried bc in 2 months, there's going to be another baby here, and I already feel guilty about the time that I won't be able to be with Jack. Then I cried because I'm a terrible mother that I'm already more worried about one kid than the other, and poor baby #2 is already getting the short end of the stick.

So, uhm, yeah. You ever have anything like that? I'm a hormone time bomb. Once I'm past the crazy pregnancy, post pregnancy hormone crazy, I'm not going to cry about this stuff. I'll just be all "suck it up kiddo, life is hard, and hell is other people". Right? Right?!

The other thing we did to help us all along, was to tell Jack that he's always in our hearts. That we are in his, and he is in ours. That wether we are with each other, or very far apart, the people we love are always in our hearts. Now that he's almost four, this has extended to when he is in trouble for minor infraction, (throwing crayons at mommy's face at bedtime), and he says, choking through tears "I LOVE YOU MOMMY, YOU ARE IN MY HEART!" He wants to make sure we still love him, even when we're mad. We assure him that we do. 


This morning, he came to give me a hug before he and Nipper went upstairs to rough house (thank jeebus for Nipper Knapp), he was saying hello to his baby brother in my tummy, and I said, "you know who is going to be in your heart? Baby brother." He said immediately "Mommy, he's already in my heart". And then I died...