Light on Chocolate Chips - Part 2

“Sascha? Sascha!” Waking me from heavy sleep, my son Ax calls my name into the darkness. “Yes dear one ...” I moan, face smushed into pillow. “Sascha I want pancakes and show!” “Five minutes,” I mumble.

I can feel him sitting beside me on the bed, can hear his huffy breath. Open eyes and see: pouty face, sad angry eyes, crossed arms, wrinkled nose.

“I can’t wait that long,” my usually patient, usually sunny, usually agreeable son says. He’s desperate. “Ok, ok,” I say.

I hobble out of bed. I am sore from all kinds of things, painfully sore, and tired, and maybe coming down with something.

My son has been exhibiting signs of depletion all week, particularly grouchiness where I’m used to seeing joy. Opposition where I’m used to partnership. Part of me is wondering if this is some developmental shift and now that he’s seven the good times are over forever.

And then I think: He’s acting how I feel. He’s tired. He’s toast. But it’s coming out as being a demanding little B.

“Chocolate chip Pancakes,” I say as I put them down in front of him, in front of the tv. “Thanks,” he says, and I’m glad the five hundred thousand trainings on thank you have somehow stuck through his obvious funk.

Now coffee for mama. And I notice he’s not eating the pancakes he woke me up to make.

“Honey?” I call from the kitchen, “Why aren’t you eating your pancakes?”

“What?” He says.

“Why aren’t you eating your pancakes?”

“I’m not hungry,” he says.

“I thought you were,” I say.

“Well, I am hungry but I want something else.”

“Something else?”

“Ya these pancakes have too many chocolate chips.”

When I’m tired nothing is right, and the same is true for my boy. We spent the rest of the day in, by his request, and I resisted the urge to do so many many things.

And he is sleeping, a lot, right now. And maybe today the pancakes will feel just right. And maybe they won’t.

Either way, I am grateful to be able to care for my child the way he needs me to, which sometimes is sending him out into the world and sometimes is just being with him, staying quiet while he storms.

I’m gonna keep going. www.livingeveryminuteofit.com