Happiness

Dear Beanie,

I have just had the most wonderful day with you, little one. Today I can finally pronounce us both healthy again, and the joy is palpable.

It's not really that we did anything particularly special today, it's more of a feeling. You were happy. I feel like it has been a few weeks since you have really been happy, but I know this awful illness has been hanging about in you for a while. But there was also that business with the neurologist... and things have just been pretty rough lately. But today? There was no crying, no tantrums, just giggles and talking and asking cute questions and imitating my phrases (like, 'Where's she gone?', 'Here I am!', 'Off we go,' and 'Ready, set, GO!') and dancing and smiling the whole day long.

This is happiness, right here! 

I love days like this, where we have no plans and are never rushed to go anywhere or do anything. It means that there are opportunities to do things like take out all my tea cannisters, open them, experience all the different smells with a very exaggerated sniff, give smells names like 'fruity' or 'spicy', and practice putting them all back. And then do this all over again with all of my herbs and spices. This is something that I need to do with you together, not something I can give you free rein over, and we both spent over an hour (literally!) on the kitchen tiles, exploring these scents. I fear that having places to go, people to see, things to plan and pack and cook, often gets in the way of being able to do lovely things like this with you.

The thing that made you giggle the most today? A new game of ours. You always spend the whole day calling my name in a variety of ways, whether you actually want my attention or not, and today I decided that every time you said my name, I'd say yours. Which was perhaps seven hundred times. Two days ago you started saying your own name, you see, so it must have a different kind of grandeur to you at the moment, because me responding to a drawn out "Maaammaaaa" with a drawling "Ruuuuuuuuuuubeeeeeeen" was simply hysterical to you. This would make you giggle every single time, all day long.

The cheekiest grin in the whole universe! 

It's lovely to see you happy again, my bubba! And wow, how true it is, that when you are happy, I am happy.

I love you oodles and oodles.
Love MAAAMMAAA!