A non-knitting, parenting post.

So, DS1 had an incident at preschool today that involved him clocking another kid with a toy boat. I can totally see him doing this, and I'm not shocked or even particularly worried about, it's pretty developmentally normal. The thing I am struggling with is what DS1 reported to me as the precipitating event...that he wanted this boy to be his friend and this boy said that DS1 was NOT his friend and that another boy was his friend.

Oh man. I know preschool friendships are changeable and ephemeral, but when DS1 says to me that no one likes him, or he has know friends, things like that...it just *hurts* to hear. It's not that I want him to be popular...it's just that I don't want him to be unliked. He's still so unselfconscious, and I know that can't last, but I want it to.

I saw a woman with a two-week old baby today (her first). She seemed a tad less overwhelmed than I recall being at that time, but still, it's such a shock to the system. Everything is different. Everything has changed, and in a way that you can't even fathom until you make that leap. I remember thinking that I couldn't possibly love DS1 anymore than I did at that moment, but I do. I love him more and more every day. Why is it, that when speaking of love, it always sounds clichéd or shallow, somehow? Maybe it's that words cannot convey the depth of feeling I have for my sons. I couldn't imagine loving another child as much as I do DS1, but I do. I love DS2 completely and utterly.

The thing about parenting, at least for me, is that it exposes me to how truly vulnerable I am in giving my heart this way. There's so much that I cannot control in their lives, and this only becomes more obvious to me as they get older. Since DS1 is now in school, off in the world, starting to build his own separate life, it's become very present to me that I cannot protect him from these sorts of things. I cannot protect him from having his heart broken, and in fact, I know that I shouldn't protect him from this, but yet, I still want to.

The topper tonight was when he was playing with the dishwasher, and he let the lower rack roll into the machine too quickly and it crashed loudly and both DH and I yelled NO! and STOP! He froze, and immediately ran over to me and buried his face in my legs. I sat on the kitchen floor and just held him. He didn't cry; it was almost worse because he didn't. He just did this fast breathing like he was trying really hard not to cry, and it just broke my heart. He's definitely having a rough day. His spirit is pretty tough, and he's perked back up, but it just makes me realize, yet again, how much I feel for this little being. It's so scary.

And so, completely worth it.