This Guy. On This Day.

"Hello, Wocco Shadow! I'm stomping on you!"

See that guy? Can you sense his determination, just from that photo?

It's his birthday tomorrow. He'll be four years old. I just put him to bed and he told me that in the morning, he'd like all of his birthday presents on the kitchen table, please. We must all then sit around and watch as he opens them.

I haven't wrapped his presents, yet - only just bought them. Tight ship, man. I'll be up late.

He is SO FUSSY about what he wears. Chooses his own clothes every single day. It's getting really cold now, so I argue with him every single morning about putting on long pants. He cries, then compromises by wearing pants over his shorts.

Today he pulled worms from the garden. He loves scaring me with bugs, especially spiders. He's not afraid. (To take a stand.)

I've felt overwhelmed all week. Not sure if it's from all of the blogging stuff, the huge changes happening around here, or the fact that Rocco's birthday is also the anniversary of my husbands cancer. (A few days ago I wished my husband a HAPPY TUMOURVERSARY, HON! Because I am romantic like that and remember important dates.)

Four years ago tonight, I crept up into my husbands cancer ward bed with him and spooned him .. as much as a nine-month pregnant woman can spoon somebody. We lay together for hours, the nurses giving us drinks of water and sad looks.

Everything was kind of off-centre and wrong, and left a mark in me that I'll never truly shake.

Rocco is a firecracker. A whirlwind of a tornado of a tsunami. I was completely, spectacularly unprepared to parent somebody with such a temperament, at such a hard time in my life. I've been willing him to get older since he was a baby .. not very fair, really. He never liked being a baby much anyway, always so pissed off that he was too little to do things.

He's big, now. And he knows it. Four? Four is big. It's running with purpose, gaining confidence, articulating needs.

I'm so relieved, and so proud. I'm throwing him his very first proper birthday party tomorrow. Outsourced it to a huge play centre down in Sydney with my sisters and his cousins. Rocco is MOST excited about the cake Aunty Linda is making ... he requested the Incredible Hulk. "Will it be green, mum? It HAS to be green."

I kissed his blonde three-year old head tonight. Then he wiped it off like he always does. He watched me look sad, so patted his head. "I put your kiss back on, mum."


I worry so much, that the circumstances and stress surrounding his birth has somehow affected him.

Then I look at all the circumstances and stress facing all of us. We get through, in the end. Us humans are pretty resilient.

I love him as fiercely and as passionately as he loves me. Mistakes and all.


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