Laura has been out of town for work, so Jay and I hung out together all week. Last night we visited Laura's father, aka Grampa Fred, for dinner. We had a great time, and as we got ready to leae Fred brought out a large box with an amazing train table, including track and toys. We had to rearrange Jay's car seat, the passenger front seat, and with a good bit of twisting and grunting, we got it into the Civic.
Of course when we got home, already past Jay's bedtime, the box HAD to get opened. I managed to appease him with some of the track and a couple of shiny wooden buildings, and eventually got him into bed.
One downside to these wonderful early summer days is that up here in the north country, the sun is up EARLY. At 5:10 this morning, we were up. By 5:15, the box was open and construction was underway. Let me justify this by saying that I would be leaving mid-day for a weekend-long horse show four hours away in Massachusetts, and I knew how torturous the weekend would be for Jay (and his mother) if the train table box lay in taunting mode the whole weekend. I had no idea how the table would get assembled until our early wake-up; now I had two unplanned (and yes, unwanted) hours to kill.
Okay, so by the time the table was together and I was choking down expletives with my coffee and the directions to the spiral track accessory, Jay was in full gratitude mode. "Thank you Daddy!" poured, gushed, repeatedly from his mouth with such sincerity and astonishment that it was hard not to keep pushing on. At one critical moment, trying to cram bolt B into tower 4 and the wooden block with the too-small hole, he crowded onto my lap. "I want to sit with you." He had a brand new dream toy six feet away, and he wanted to be with me. RIGHT NOW.
As for my frustration with bolt B, which any idiot knows should have been a screw, not a bolt, and could have at least been the right size and maybe easier to handle by thickened, aging, arthritic fingers, well, fuck. Fuck bolt B and the fucking block and fucking tower 4; they'll wait.
I picked Jay up, slid my chair back from the table, and plopped him into my lap. The hugfest lasted about 34 seconds, and was summarily terminated when Jay put one hand on each side of my face. He smashed my cheeks together, forcing my lips to pucker. He laid a huge, WET, seriously I'm drowning here, kiss on me. He grabbed tower 4 and took off for the table. Fuck.
Okay, so I really don't talk like that, but my inner dialogue was seriously close to the surface early this morning. Fatigue, a few days of single-parenting, and 16 bouts with bolt B's had worn down my resistance.
Who knew that a face-smashing/ near-drowning at the hands of a two-year-old could heal so thoroughly?
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