Kindness

B's current cold includes a horrible cough, and a huge coughing fit woke him at 10pm last night. Luckily I managed to get to him before he roused fully, and after I'd talked to him quietly for a couple of minutes and gently patted his back, he settled again and slept through the rest of the night. In fact I woke earlier than he did this morning, and thus was in a position to hear that the first thing he did on waking was to start singing to himself. When I went in to him he was standing up in the cot, half-undressed but still singing. "'Allo!" he said. "Out now!"

This charming beginning largely set the tone for the morning, though the Boy isn't quite as open to negotiation as he used to be, and can suddenly flare into anger when blocked from something he especially wants to do. I think this is largely because his sense of himself as an autonomous person is developing much faster than the speed at which his grown-ups feel able to allow him that autonomy - certainly the pronouns "I", "me", and "mine" turn up increasingly often in his conversation. A sense of self is very important, of course, and it shows up in good ways too: part way through the morning he got himself stuck under an occasional table, and after declining R's offer of help, eventually (with much grunting and muttering) managed to extricate himself. "Yay!" he said. "I did it!" I'm not sure if he was more impressed with the feat itself or with the perfectly grammatical statement, but he then repeated "I did it!" several times.

We offered various activities at the start of the morning: a walk, a game of Pooh-sticks, a trip to the playground, etc., but he declined them all in favour of noodling around at home. I think it's quite important to let children noodle from time to time, and as he was perfectly happy we stopped suggesting fun things to do and just let him be. It was a bitterly cold morning, and when I went into the garden to put out food for the birds the menfolk came with me to help - here B is putting some ground food on top of the patio wall. Back in the house he then spent a while standing on a chair by the window, watching various birds and squirrels come to the wall to eat his food, and found it very interesting. As you do, R and I used this as an opportunity to talk about about caring for wild creatures and helping them through the hard times, and B was happy to know that he'd performed this important act of kindness.

After lunch we went off back to Wales, and met up with L and G at Tredegar to effect the handover of Boy and associated equipment. After we'd had coffee together, and a little walk around the park, we all made our way back to the car park, where we were in the middle of telling B how much fun it had been having him to stay, and that we were looking forward to - "BYE!" he said, waving a vigorous dismissal.

So we went.