By Jason Sutcliffe
My son and I have our moments, moments where it is clear that he loves me. However, we have these other moments where he forces me to call on the memory of our happy moments to remind myself that he does love me to some degree.
Now, I understand that as far as his needs and wants are concerned I am pretty much here to take care of his wants. There are not many of his needs that I take care of at this point, or at least not to his knowledge. I do the obvious like, buy food, pay the rent and bills, basically do my part financially to make sure that he is alive, and well, but he has no idea about any of that.
As far as feeding him, sleeping with him at night, and generally comforting him—he does not want much to do with me. Truth is he freaks out if I even try. To this point it is safe to say that he is a momma’s boy. In my defence, I would love to feed him, but sadly I have no breasts. However, I did feed him for the first time the other day, now that he is eating some regular food.
His wants—I am all over those. He wants to laugh, and I am there, he wants to crawl around, or climb me while standing on my lap, and again I am all about that.
Things happen though; he does things, things that are just mean. He is sitting/standing on my lap and everything is beautiful, then he stops smiling, stares at me, at which time I ask, “What’s wrong buddy” (In that cute baby voice every one of us uses when we talk or play with a baby), and then it happens…he tenses up his whole body, grunts and then smacks me in the face.
Unsure how to respond to such a blatant display of disrespect, I do what any parent of a 6-month-old does, I say, “That’s not nice, be nice” (In that same ridiculous voice), which he responds to by laughing, then grunting and giving me a double smack with both hands, followed by an eye-gouge. Now, the double punch fine, but now my eye is watering, it stings, my vision is blurry, his little fingers managed to get right in the corner of my eye, and he is laughing at my obvious discomfort, which apparently is bloody hilarious.
Now with one eye squinted shut, and both hands occupied; holding him upright, he sees his opportunity. For what you ask? Well, I will tell you—his opportunity to move in and bite the end of my nose, and not just bite it but to pinch the little nerve at the end of it. You know the one? The one that makes both your eyes water, and hurts just enough that you have to laugh, or you might cry. He follows that up by grabbing a handful of my face, and digging in his tiny nails.
At this point, I am a defeated man. He has left me a mess; my face is stinging from the tiny cuts that his little nails have left, the nerve in the end of my nose is less than comfortable, my one eye still shut, stinging and both eyes are watering. He has left me mess.
It is at this point that he looks at me, makes his sad face, and starts to cry and reach for his mother. He has a nerve to act as though I have done him an injustice of some kind. I pass him off to mom, and he stops crying, looks back over his shoulder at me, and hugs his mom.
While writing this he woke up crying, so I went, picked him up, and he looked at with an inquisitive face and fell asleep in my arms—I guess there is hope for us yet! Children are a blessing, and I love my little blessing very much.
jaysright2write 