The Attack is now two. No longer a baby, but a little boy. How the hell did that happen?
He has managed to get through his babyhood without allowing anybody other than me, occasionally Mark, and my mother, to pick him up. Others still do sometimes of course, but they usually set him down again pretty quick - it's not worth going deaf over.
He still loves animals. He is still reckless. He is still stubborn. He is still honest....Mostly.
He is the child that will always tell me what happened if I didn't witness it firsthand. ("Connah donked my head!" "Me poked Connah's eye." "My did it! MWAHAHAHAHA"... He never refers to himself as "I" or "Ashden", in fact, I think I've only heard him say his name three times in his whole life...)
I have observed with fascinated horror, his first epic two and a half hour meltdown... over a Youtube video that he didn't want to watch again, and Connah hit "replay" anyway.
I have fished him out from under the water when we have gone swimming, six times in one hour. He is never more than half a meter away from me, so gets yanked out pretty damn quick, but he just gets so excited that he forgets that his head has to stay above the water. Repeatedly.
He has developed a friendship with a pigeon, who was sick for a short time. It was kept in a cage for a week, and The Attack spent that week having "holds". It is a homing pigeon, so once it got well it was released back outside. He catches the thing every day, and carts it in the house. He will carry that pigeon around for hours. And it lets him.
Raising Ashden is like raising a completely different breed of human to Connah.
With Connah, I have always been very focused on his emotional and mental development. It feels like if I let my guard down for a minute - answer one question wrong, or fail to notice when something has disturbed him and he needs an explanation from me - I'm somehow dooming him to a lifetime of emotional repression and/or ignorance.
I'm very careful with his physical safety as well, but I don't really feel as though I'm fighting a constant battle with that. I just don't take unnecessary risks.
With The Attack, it's flipped. He usually responds to emotional or intellectual stuff just as I'd expect him to, and while he still questions pretty much everything in the world, I don't feel that he is bewildered by it. He just wants information.
His physical well being is a different matter.
Every morning when he wakes up, I'm a little bit surprised, and very, very grateful.
I still check on him several times every night.
I still get that thrill of fear in the pit of my stomach when he sleeps slightly longer than I expect him to.
I still call to see how he's doing when he's with my mother during the mornings, and panic if I can't get through on the phone.
I'm always so happy to see him after a few hours of separation.
This is my battle for Ashden - feeling like it's not his emotional stability, but his life that is under constant threat if my vigilance should falter.
It's not even accidents that I fear for him, it's feeling like he will disintegrate, that his very substance will slip through my fingers and evaporate while I'm not looking.
I'm pretty sure it's all in my head, and I think it stems from subconsciously remembering that there was a time when he wasn't going to exist. I just can't quite believe that he is really here for good.
After Connah was born, I very quickly re-assessed my desire to have three children, and decided that I was happy just having the one. Not because giving birth was so hideous and traumatising. (Although it kind of was.) And not because he was a difficult baby (Although, he kind of was...) But because I felt that if I had another child, I would be taking time, energy and attention away from Connah. What possible reason is there for that? Crazy talk!
I don't know what it was that changed my mind. I do know that all those reasons for only wanting one child are still logical, and valid to me. I do have less time, less energy, and less attention. Because, much as I like to think otherwise, I am not a superhero. (Only at night when no one is looking...)
And I do know that while those reasons are still valid, I can not feel anything but gratitude for whatever overrode them, because now that I know Ashden, to think of living in a reality that doesn't include him seems ludicrous - there would be huge Ashden-shaped hole in my world, and I would probably never even realize why it seemed so incomplete...
This also makes me very aware of that once-thought-of third child, and what I may be missing out on by shutting that door forever...
But that is a story for another day :)
xox
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