Reconnecting

Braeden was in rare form this morning. He started his day on a happy note, cheerfully asking for breakfast and actually eating it! I changed his diaper --pretty easily-- and we picked out CDs to play. But then he just seemed to snap. It may have been when I wiped his runny nose and mentioned that his immune system was kicking in (read: thicker mucus). He jumped up and exclaimed, "Aconite!" (I gave him aconite yesterday, a homeopathic remedy used at the beginning of a cold.) I gently said no, and started to explain why he didn't need aconite today. So there we were, Braeden shrieking, "Aconite!" as he ran through the house, with me following behind him, shrieking, "But that's not your remedy today! Now you need pulsatilla!" Thinking he needed a diversion, I opened the back door to the patio, where Braeden carefully walked around the perimeter. I looked away for a minute, heard, "Dada sledgehammer. Mama use it." Then SLAP. Braeden was flat on his back, in the small pond that used to be our backyard until the storms hit. He was covered in muddy, mucky water. "MAMA!"

I picked Braeden up and carried him into the house, holding him at arms length. He sobbed and begged to stay outside, kicking, writhing, screaming. I brought him into the bathroom and started the shower. "Shirt on! Diaper on!" he protested, as I took his clothes off. "No shower! Milk in bed!" I picked him up and carried him into the shower, where he continued to cry and scream throughout 95% of the activity. "Uppie, Mama! Water off! Water cold! Water hot!" For the last couple of minutes, however, Braeden was able to amuse himself by playing with the drain. Of course, this led to more screaming when I turned off the water. I took a deep breath, wrapped Braeden's towel around him ("No tiny towel! Big towel!"), carried him out of the shower ("Back in! No, Mama!"), and snapped on his diaper (I won't even try to replicate the protests).

Even though I was just in my bathrobe, I decided to abandon any hope of getting dried off and dressed before nursing Braeden. He was ready NOW. So we lay down, Braeden latched on, and I breathed deeply, trying to pass on some relaxed vibes. Usually, after the kind of chaos that we had experienced this morning, Braeden would pass out in about two minutes. But this morning was different. Braeden nursed for a good half hour-- on one side! Instead of twirling his fingers in my hair and then yanking, he gently played with the little hairs at the nape of my neck. He placed a thumb on my cheek and softly moved it back and forth. And every so often, he would look up at me with this calm, fixed expression on his face, like he used to look at me when he was a tiny infant. I wondered what was going on in his mind: is it absolutely clear, and free of thought? Is he thinking about the wild, frenetic morning he had? Or marveling at how much better he feels now? Is it possible that he's thinking about something completely unrelated to what's going on at that very moment-- like whether airplanes and birds are actually the same size?

I looked into Braeden's clear, blue-green eyes and tried to give the sweetest, most loving look that a mother could muster. Please, please, please, I thought, let him realize how much I love him, and that I'm not his adversary. I worry sometimes that in his almost-two-year-old mind, I have been reduced to an obstacle and a boundary. By 11:00, Braeden had drifted off to sleep, and I was left to tackle the only remaining signs of the morning's storms: breakfast dishes, the contents of my upside-down purse, Braeden's muddy shirt and diaper, blocks that have been strewn across the living room. I know that this was a pretty ordinary few hours, as far as life with a toddler goes, but I felt like I had been to another planet and back. Those thirty minutes of reconnecting with Braeden, however, made it all worth it. I got the distinct feeling that Braeden felt the same sense of relief, a realization that even when his world seems to be crumbling, he can always stop, center himself, hug his Mama or Dada, and know that he's safe.