Concentration

Baby B slept the sleep of the righteous for nine and a half uninterrupted hours, bouncing awake in play mode at 5.15am. I, on the other hand, had lain awake through most of the night, worrying that he was too quiet, and occasionally creeping along the corridor to listen outside his bedroom.

Sigh.

Our experience with The Boy Wonder yesterday, when he ate everything that was put in front of him and asked for more ("mo-o-O-O-RE?!") had lulled us into the false belief that we had mealtimes cracked, so it came as a bit of a shock at OMG-hundred hours today to discover that Tiggers would no longer entertain any of the breakfast foods that were on offer. It was almost 8am, after several rounds of the Suggestion-Agreement-Presentation-Rejection game, and with B's blood sugar and our spirits plummeting at about the same rate, when I hit on scrambled egg. "Egg!" roared B. "Egg!! EGG!!!" - and the egg was duly demolished.

Shortly after this R - quite inadvertently - brought the sky down on our heads, by correcting a minor wardrobe malfunction without permission. He'd been upstairs while I was getting B dressed, and hadn't witnessed our negotiations over this outfit, or my decision that getting the sweatshirt more than half on was a battle that simply wasn't worth fighting. Walking into the room, and seeing B wandering around wearing the shirt like an asymmetric evening dress, R simply popped the second arm into its sleeve - and then recoiled in horror as all hell broke loose. I'm sure we must both have seen and heard crying of this magnitude at some point in the past, but our brains probably blanked out the experience to save us from psychological damage: he was utterly, utterly inconsolable, and quite undistractable. All we could do was offer love, and ride out the storm, which lasted for about ten minutes. (On the plus side, I won't need my ears syringing any time soon.)

Eventually the Boy himself seemed to realise that the day was going off track, and he set about cheering himself up with the same determination he applies to everything else. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it, but suddenly, as if a switch had been flicked, he was pottering around chatting to us about this and that, asking for help with his little push-along trucks, giving hugs, and agreeing to everything we suggested, even if it was an idea he'd previously derided. The rest of the morning then passed very cheerfully.

Our walk around the village lasted far longer than we'd expected it to, because B suddenly decided to be fascinated by two things of which he's previously been fearful: a big professional ride-on mower, and a huge caterpillar-track excavator. We expected to have to hurry him past both of these machines, but no: today we had to stand and watch them, and when the man with the mower moved from one area of common land to another we had to follow at a rapid trot, to be sure we could watch as much of it as possible being mown. When the excavator driver stopped his machine to take a break, B was actively disappointed, but he was compensated by meeting some donkeys at the farm at the end of the lane, which were extremely interesting, and also not scary at all.

The hiatus between walk and lunch was largely filled with music, at B's request. He chose this guitar, which seems to be his current favourite, and selected most of the music too: when R was playing and/or singing something he liked, B would stand very close like this, watching Granddad with great concentration, but if he didn't like the song he'd frown, shake his head, and say "No." He would then sing Row, row, row very loudly, until R switched to playing that - at which point he'd beam, and dance with great swings of his shoulders.

By lunch time, R and I felt pretty much equally trained and drained. He's a funny and charming child, and (obvs) we adore him, but some days (whisper it) he can be slightly hard work. Luckily his parents turned up at this point, rejuvenated by their spa day, and after a quick lunch they negotiated him into their car and removed him. Now that we've had a few hours to ourselves, R and I are (almost) rejuvenated too, and happy that we'll be seeing The Boy again on Saturday.