The Kids are All Right

This weekend, we found a Ziploc bag of coins in one of Mal's drawers. When we took his silver piggy bank out to transfer the bounty, I noticed a date of June 3, 2017 on the side of the bank. Mal had had a bank that he LOVED, but he'd dropped it in the floor when he was carrying it around. We'd bought an identical one, then he saw a pink piggy bank at Target and expressed dismay that we hadn't gotten one. So I let him paint the silver one with some acrylic paint we had.

I distinctly remember looking at that date a lot in the year between when we did the project and its first anniversary. It felt like A LOT longer. But this past year? It hasn't felt nearly as interminable.

Yesterday, Mal and I were killing time playing with LEGOs in the Target cafe when it hit me: This feels like "normal" parenting, like I remember from when D was little. Mal has always been a bit "more" in terms of hands-on and emotionally taxing parenting, to the point that his first few years were just relentlessly sluggish. I'm sorry if that sounds like something a loving mother shouldn't say, but it is true. I've always loved him. He's always made me laugh. And he has always been a lot harder than the typical kid.

But yesterday, it seemed like we were in "this is what I expected from past experience" land. And it was super nice! I enjoy being around Mal so much, and it's nice to be able to take him places and engage with him as a bigger kid.

Which isn't to say he doesn't still have big feelings and big needs. Yesterday, he wailed at McDonald's when his friend and another kid they were playing with refused to be defeated by his various iterations of Star Wars bounty hunters. "I can't find the right one!" he wept, tears streaming down his cheeks. "I can't get a strong enough bounty hunter to defeat them!"

He didn't seem hugely comforted by my reminder that when you're playing pretend, the only way an opponent can be defeated is if they condescend to it, and that didn't seem super likely, no matter which bounty hunter he pulled out of his arsenal.

Meanwhile, D has gotten a snake, and is spending most of the day watching the new baby peek out from a hidey-hole pretty tentatively before disappearing again. Now we have a few days at home alone because James and Mal are headed off to San Antonio for the weekend on their first solo (duo?) trip.

It's all pretty great.