Squishy goodness

It's fair to say that it's been a rough week with various illnesses appearing and, in some cases, reappearing. I haven't been up so much at night since Sam was a little baby. It isn't the swine flu, but perhaps a bad case of the lesser known aardvark flu? Much coughing, much mucus, some fever-ing and that pesky pinkeye has shown tenacity previously witnessed only in Shackleton's crew.


Now maybe we'll be lucky and have built up our immune systems enough that we're amazingly healthy for the rest of the winter. I doubt it though. Flying in 2 weeks time, during the busy and germ-filled holiday season will surely open a whole new can of plague-worms.



Do these photos, from today, give you an idea of the energy level? The vim? The vigour?

That picture of Sam alone just breaks my heart. It's the first time I've had to break out the 'soother-during-the-day' for months.

Now, to get to the title of this post. I realize that "squishy goodness" sounds like a sarcastic reference to a particularly bad diaper situation, but in fact it's something good.

Tonight Sam was just too, too tired to eat dinner, have a bath or anything else for that matter. So at 6:30 I threw him in some jammies and had a lovely snuggle with him in the rocking chair in his room. He's quite a busy boy these days and hugs don't tend to last more than about 2.1 seconds, so to have a hot, little boy-bundle snuggled in for a solid 15 or 20 minutes was bliss. He was getting heavier and heavier and making lovely little-baby noises as he fell asleep.

And if that wasn't great enough, I then spent 20 minutes alone with Charley reading. I read about Thomas for the 427 time (this quarter) and then when I said "guess what time it is?" referring to bedtime, he said "hug time". Then he curled up under the cover of my bed and I cuddled in behind him and listened to him mutter back the exact words I had just read to him. Lo and behold, after a few minutes there was the tell-tale heavy breathing of a kid asleep. I just lay there for an extra 15 minutes loving his snorty breath sounds and radiating heat.

So, now it's 7:30 and they've both been out for 30 minutes, or more, and I'm just loving them up on the blog. I might not be feeling nearly as gush-y come morning when I've been up in the night for one reason ("I need a kleenex") or another ("I'm hacking up a lung"), but for now I'm just loving my snotty, coughing, squishy boys.

The end.

p.s. I'm freeeeeaking out about the impending pack-up, clean-up and departure. How did we get to December? How did we get to '2 weeks and counting'?