Ayoub didn’t want to wear pants this morning. I let him be, on weekends, to roam the house in his diaper, but since this was a weekday and it was -14 celsius at 7 a.m. and we were at the door, in our coats and hats and shoes (and pants!!) waiting for him to get dressed, I had to fight his pants (and coat and hat) onto him today. The boots went into the back seat of the car when he kicked me rather than put them on. We drove to daycare, where I carried him in, football styles, under one arm – I find that he can inflict less damage with his kicks when I carry him football styles.

Pick up was entirely different: we got home and he was an angel – no fights getting in or out of the car, ate dinner like a champ, ordered me to sit on the family room floor and played with his brother’s new domino set and sang mama zamanha gayya and beamed at me with delight.

When he’s good, this boy is the light of my entire life. My breath catches in my throat each time he laughs; my eyes fill with wonder at his wonder; I want to eat his adorable little cheeks and kiss his fat little fingers; I want to stay frozen in time with him, in a heap on the carpet, playing, no matter the weight of my eyelids, the stiffness in my shoulders. When he’s good I want to never do anything else again.

But the good doesn’t truly last; the good isn’t good for more than 15 minutes, 20 if we’ve had a miracle, and then he wants to kick the dominoes into my gut, or hold a sharp object, or splash a cup of water on the kitchen cupboard, and how dare I stand between him and his incredibly elaborated dreams and hopes and wishes. And so I don’t feel as guilty when it’s time to sleep, when play time has to feed into bed time into me time (into grown up time; blogging and tv watching and surfing and returning to sanity time), because while he fills my heart, he also helps me lose my mind, and then I have to find it again, nightly.