Once I'd had that thought and the guilt didn't kill me, it slipped in another couple of times when he was being a handful. I started to think about what I'd do in the days between him going back to nursery and me going back to work, and the fantasies of a solo coffee without having to repeat, "Lovely cup of tea" all the way through; deep cleaning the house; taking those towels back to Primark without having to carry the buggy up a million stairs to change metro lines; actually browsing in Primark rather than running through at the speed of light because Dom has his father's aversion to clothes shops; maybe even squeezing in a morning at the beach if the weather holds; all of these thoughts took hold whenever he had a handful of the tiny hairs on the back of neck that he refused to relinquish or thought it was hilarious to bite my bum (WHERE do they get these ideas from)?
Now, however, it's the night before he starts back and I'm nowhere near ready to let him go again. Despite the fact that we've had 10 wonderful weeks and he's had plenty of fun and intellectual stimulation; despite being lucky enough to be able to give him the kind of sunshine and sand and swimming summer that I dreamed of as a kid; despite usually being patient and involved and on hand; I can't help wishing we just had one more week where it - where I - could be BETTER. Every moment I checked my emails or silently begged for just two minutes to finish something or rolled my eyes at his demands to see the mole on my back for the 50th time now feels like a precious, wasted moment.
But while I'm beating myself up about being a human being, I have moments to look back on such as this:
or this:
or this:
or this:
or this:
or this:
or this:
or this:
or this:
or this:
or this:
or this:
or this.
And I think - you know what? We did OK.
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