Life in the baby tornado.

I have discovered the secret to a serene morning - it's called 'waking up before bubba'.  This enables me to do all those essential things before the daily baby tornado kicks in, which include sitting up, wiping sand from my eyes and having a cup of tea.  It's been so long since I've been able to have a morning cuppa I can barely remember what it tastes like.  You can forget about coffee unless it's prepared the night before.  That must take at least thirty seconds to sort out when I only have the five.

Admittedly in the past few weeks I have been using up the entire allotment of 'mommy time' watching the Olympics.  This is where the baby sling has really repaid its cost when I can pop him in it and pace while watching the gymnastics.  He has that elusive nap and I get more mommy time.  It's a total win-win.  Shame I don't win any medals for it though, I'd swap them for some chiropractor appointments.

I still cannot believe the Olympics are being held in our own city, and even more so that we've been blessed to attend four magnificent events baby free thanks to T's family looking after Rukai.  I think we could've stayed in the Olympic Park for a week and they'd still be glad to be with him.  The joy is truly reciprocal and I love to see him grin at his relatives not only because it's just so cool, but also because they need to know how constant that grin is.  The constancy of that grin and the innate curiosity behind it shows us that he is firing full whack on all cylinders.  It takes my worry and shreds it.  One of those doctor-numptys wrote in his report 'he is a sociable baby'.  Don't need your notes to know that, dude.  So we continue to be doing something right, which in this kind of situation beats the hell out of doing something wrong.

Back to the Olympics, which we are so much enjoying we realized it would be a major act of wrong-ness to not bring Rukai to the Games at some point.  So the three of us are going to Paralympic Judo and I'm going to take Rukai alone to some Paralympic Athletics.  This latter bit has put the fear of God in me, mostly because although my seat is up pretty close to said God, and on the opposite side of the stadium to the sprint start line, Rukai will surely out-scream the starting gun at one point or another.  I can only hope that the folks around us are forgiving and celebratory and fall in love with how cute he is in his Team GB kit.  Barring that, we'll have to hang out in the walkway and do a lot of up and down the stairs.  To hell with Pee Wee, this is Mommy's Big Adventure.  It makes taking the tube across town look like a game of checkers.

It does get better.  They have finally installed the elevator in our train station.  So I no longer have to try and get up and down all those stairs with baby sling plus whichever-buggy-required-for-destination.  Although whenever I do get going across town, I got a hot tip from a friend yesterday on managing escalators which I will only try outside of rush hour.  The last thing I need is some uptight doofus in pinstripes 'ahem-ing' behind me for delaying him ten seconds by blocking the side of the thing.

But I really do love taking Rukai out there in the world.  The world that seems so big to me must seem galactic to him.  Every time we go out, his eyes are like moons, mouth always in that perfect 'O', soaking up as much as he can before the movement knocks him out again.  Then he wakes up in a station, a bus, a park, a living room, an office, a shopping mall, wondering 'where?' and 'how?' and 'mommy, are you still there?'  I peek around the stroller, or squeeze his hand in the sling, or find our reflection together.  That grin, that amazing grin, blooms like a perfect rose.

These are somewhat random thoughts but these too are somewhat random days.  Which is unsettling when you are used to routine as are we but then we realize he likes routine so let's make some.  He's getting used to it.  Barely a complaint at bed time and he giggles at the nightlight on the monitor as it soothes him to dreamland.

So simple are his joys, and so complex are his needs, and so vast is our love.  I look forward to each and every tomorrow.  Even in the funnel of that baby tornado.