mummy??

somewhere over the weekend i've gone from being "mama" to "mummy". it sounds different, hearing it coming from N's mouth. it sounds grown up.
on Saturday we were walking home from Erindale (he walked all the way there and back without complaining!) and then out of the blue he says "i love you mummy". i told him i loved him and he smiled and said, "yeah, i love you too." i think that is the issue with going back to work - the time passes so quickly, and i hate to think of anyone else doing what i think should be the mummy's job. three weeks today until i walk back into those office doors, sit at my desk at the corner window and ponder what makes democracy work for many of our struggling neighbours. they will seem far away when i'll be wondering if Pea is sleeping, if N isn't getting into trouble and how many hours will it be until i am home with them again. the first hot coffee and chat at the cafeteria may push it all to the back of my mind... but i doubt it. :-p
the author of a blog i read regularly writes really poignantly about her 3 1/2 year old. here she is describing how she felt when her son wanted to be with his grandmother, not his mum or his dad... (she is also a freelance writer so is much more poetic than i could be in describing the same emotions of watching your son growing...)

"He comes home from the day with his Gram and Gramps who indulge his every wish: playground visits, popsicles, escaping from naps, trips to the hardware store, the library, the moon… When he gets here, he’s asleep and the rain has rinsed the heat out of the day. He’s in his car seat when they bring him, in his underpants, hair curling with sweat. We carry him inside where he sleeps on DH the way he used to before his legs were long and his knees were scraped and his heart belonged only to us. Then he wakes, and all he wants is her, his Gram, who smells like sweet perfume and has soft hugs and buys him cookies whenever they go out.
He starts to cry for her. His eyes get red and puffy and he runs away and hides in corners, sobbing. Inconsolable, he doesn’t want either one of us, only her. Snot runs from his nose in a trail, and we offer peanut butter cookies and milk and he eats them and then starts to cry again; his smile as temporary as the thunderstorm earlier today that brought nickel-sized hail and a tornado warning while I was at school....
My heart feels like the tangled strings of a marionette; like prongs in a splintered music box; like the quarters that fall under couch cushions and are forgotten. We go back inside, agreeing to ignore him for a while. Surely this has gone on long enough, this wailing, this utter ridiculousness. He’s clutching the phone. “I want to call Gram,” he says each word punctuated with a gasping sob.
I put on Jack Johnson. DH grills chicken. I make potato salad. Bean sobs, clutching the phone.
Finally we cave, after forty five minutes of sobbing...
Smiles flutter on his face like the little blue moths that kept landing on the kids hands and arms at school while we were walking in the tall grass. They’d alight, then stick their tongues out, licking the salt from the kid’s sweaty palms, everyone watching in wonderment. My little boy didn’t want anything to do with me, and now he’s sitting there at the counter, elbows up, talking on the phone like a teenager, his face wide with grins. I can only listen for a while, before I feel like I can’t breathe.
My heart feels like a bit of clay, drying in the sun, a hundred little fissures forming on the surface. Damn. No one told me about this. No one warned me that they stop loving only you. That you stop being everything, that a day comes when your kiss no longer makes it better.
I take the red metal colander to the garden with a sharp knife and cut the outer leaves of lettuce heads, all curly and green. Walking across the wet grass to the garden I cry. Then while I’m cutting the salad greens he calls for me, “Mommy, where are you?” and my heart is a trout flip flopping about with a wild helpless kind of love. He’s standing at the top of the garden path waiting for me, and I pick him a wild daisy from among the tall grasses and he grins when I hand it to him. “I love you, Mommy,” he says.
We eat dinner and finally, he’s all mine again. I feed him buttered noodles with peas and carrots and then we sit on stools by the window watching the storm move towards us across the mountain. We count bolts of lightening and he grins, eyes still red, eyelashes tangled. Then the sky changes fast from light to metallic gray. The leaves on the trees are tossed belly side up, like a thousand darting minnows caught between here and the storm tossed sky. Rain chases the wind, and DH goes about shutting windows and nursing his own form of heartache.
Bean wanted neither of us; and while he’s climbing back and forth now between our laps sharing an ice cream sandwich and watching the storm dwindle, his small betrayal still stings like salt in a cut.
So this is watching your kid grow up; becoming someone separate, like one Jupiter’s moons... Three years, and suddenly he’s clamoring for independence at the threshold of our hearts. All we can do is stand in the doorway watching the storm approach. Then suddenly, rain is pelting our skin."