Worried about my little genius

Dear Beanie,

I'm worried about you, little one. I know that comes with the territory of being a parent, but I didn't know that the kind of worry I would sometimes feel would be so all-encompassing, would make me go cold all over for hours on end, as if all the blood were rushing from my body into yours. I have always been a catastrophiser, and I fear that I always will be, so chances are that everything is perfectly normal and when we go to the doctor tomorrow you will be so perfect that all that blood will then rush to my cheeks in embarrassment of being 'that mother'.

But before any of that, I want to tell you what a genius you are! I know it goes against everything we are all being taught now to call you a genius, as I should only be praising your hard work and effort, but geez. Sometimes you have to call a spade a spade, you know? :) It seems that my months and months of babbling on and on to you about everything everywhere and reading and singing to you is really paying off. Your language skills are going gang-busters, and I couldn't be more proud! You are now nineteen months old, and you have moved well beyond saying only nouns. You now have adjectives for those nouns and are even saying sentences. And you're also speaking a lot of German too! Yikes, your brain must be exhausted. But the most amazing thing of all? You know your colours. It has just happened in the past week, but you can say yellow, orange, green, red, blue and white, and you use them appropriately. Your favourite thing is to yell out when you see an orange man at the cross-walk. But you now have labelled all your balls and cars by colour, and no longer only yell out 'bus' or 'boat', but label them as a red or yellow bus, and a red, yellow, orange, green or blue boat. I love how things like this just happen organically, and since you've been doing it, I realise how often I tell you what colour cars, flowers and buildings are as we walk.

Genius! Look at how you colour-co-ordinated your Lego!
Or.. maybe that was your daddy... 

You said 'I love you' to Daddy a little while ago at bed time, and now you often say it during out going to bed ritual. This is surely a moment that everybody dreams of, and I'm sure it is one we will never forget: your little sleepy voice in the corridor, saying back to your daddy, 'I wuh woo'.

Don't worry, I'm still happy for you to be a hair-dresser or a bus-driver.

But I'm worried about you, little muffin. Yesterday evening one of your legs started quivering while you were standing still. Your knee seemed to just repeatedly be collapsing on you. By the time you went to bed, it was affecting your walking a little, and it seemed you were walking strangely and squatting to test it out a little. Then, as I put you in your cot, you did the most enormous projectile vomit. But you slept well (as well as usual, anyhow) and were very happy today, though your leg was the same and you don't seem to be walking too readily. You also have always been a bit of a dreamer, but tonight while we were listening to music, you sat on the couch, unmoving, for about ten to fifteen minutes. I'm doing my best to not catastrophise these probably unrelated and entirely normal things into some awful neurological condition or paralysis, or epilepsy... this is where I absolutely abhor this idea of mother's instinct. My instinct always tells me everything is wrong! So we'll call the doctor at 8am tomorrow and get that leg of yours checked out and chat about the rest.

I feel a bit better now that I'm not holding all that irrationality inside. I'm sorry if I'm always a drama queen!

Still walking this afternoon by the FREEZING cold fountain,
desperate to get your hands and feet in there. 

Oh my love, you will never understand how much I love you.

Love Mummy.