Today is hard......

After a fun-filled weekend and glimpses of my son's new and hysterically humorous grimaces, it's just way too hard to be here at work. I am on my lunch and missing my boy. I'd go home but I know he's in slumber land at this very moment.

Work is good and I love what I do for a living. I think I would like it moreso if I was paid three times what I currently make and if I had 3-day weekends. (A desk by a window might help too.) I managed to get a lot done this weekend (we stayed in town) and the weather was just absolutely gorgeous, the kind of weather that makes summer well worth waiting for, that makes the breezy whispers of fresh cut grass gently lift the roof off your home. The afternoons were fabulous as the sun brought light and life to the yard and inside the shaded rooms with animated curtains provided a respite from the rays outdoors.

I could breathe in deeply.

We were enjoying life.

And at night, the scent of the line-dried bed linens reminded me that the day had been a good one.

Oliver was in the best of moods on Sunday too. He smiled and made entertaining faces. Both days he got himself immersed in sand, dirt, soil and grime with a few new scrapes added in. We ended each day with a shower or a bath and all that he left behind swirled down the drain. A clean fresh toddler who explored every corner of the yard that day would face his crib without cause both nights. Content. Exhausted. Spent. A job well-done.

But last night he surprised me. I patiently waited for him to fall back asleep after his nightly 3 am waking. This time (I'm sure it was thanks to that slice of cake I ate before bedtime) he was restless and tossed and turned and could not sleep. At 5 am I asked him, finally giving in but myself no longer dead tired, if he wanted me to turn on the TV.

Mmm - huh. He said, two octaves above my voice. (WHAT?!!!!) He's been making the "yes" (a-huh) sound lately. I was never really sure if he truly meant "yes" when he said that.

So, I asked again, "Would you like me to turn on the television?"

Mmm - huh.

And this time he pointed to the TV.

O. M. G. ! He said yes! Yes! He understood me and he said YES! Wow!

I turned on the television at 5 am, with the birds eagerly awake outside and the sky a light gray-blue. He waited calmly while I found some cartoons and settled on Popeye. (Oh my goodness, I never did like that show when I was a kid and now I know why. That poor Olive Oyl. She really gets beat up and banged around, tossed and turned and split apart and treated like a wet rag. Man......) I watched Oliver flip himself horizontal, curl up at the foot of our bed and and watch the show.

That didn't work for long. And Popeye made me sick. I had to turn it off. It's 5:30 now and I tossed my Peanut in his sweet peace and put on the sign language video. I am a bad mother I feel sometimes. I would like to be home teaching Oliver to sign and yet I toss him, without a second thought when I'm sleep-craved, in front of a surrogate parent: The T.V.

Well, at least he now knows the sign for milk.

Anyway, at work now and I just can't stand the fact that I'm not home with him. Some days it's easy to be here. Some days it's downright awful.

I really miss my son.