Feel the Love

It occurs to me that my last few blog posts have been in a very much negative frame of mind. I am stressed, I am tired, Joseph is driving me round the bend, I feel ill and I can't get a GP appointment for love nor money at the moment.
Well I've had enough of all the negative negative. Joseph hasn't managed to kill his fish - well all bar one and neon tetras are tiny sensitive little souls - and life in the tank will soon revert to normal as I spent half an hour cleaning sludge out of the filter today and replacing all the media.

I apologise in advance if this blog posting is a little bit more saccharine than usual, but I do feel that despite everything recently my little boy is always well worth all the effort I put in. He's taught me more about unconditional love than I ever thought could exist.
There's the way he bounces up when I go and get him up in the morning and he says "Hello Mummy, how are you today?" and I say "I'm fine, how are you Joseph?" and he says "I'm in my bed!!!"
There's the aggressive politeness - he always says thank-you  and if you don't say "You're welcome" quite quickly then he will keep saying thank-you until you do, in a louder and louder voice. He even started climbing across a table towards me shouting thank-you as he was annoyed I hadn't given him the correct response. If I thank him then I always get a "You're welcome" back.
He insists on holding the front door open for me. If I open the door myself, he gets annoyed and I have to close it again for him to open it. He says "Here you go Mummy." and lets me through first.
He will randomly ask for cuddles and I never turn them down - unless I'm driving, that could be a little awkward - as it makes both of us  very happy. I love it when he comes barrelling towards me with his arms stretched wide open and a big grin on his sweet little face. I know I have to brace myself as the force of it could knock a man down, but a cuddle is a cuddle.
I love our lazy afternoons, when we've had a busy morning out and we're tired we curl up on the sofa together and watch something on the telly. We've sat for an hour and a half at times, usually watching some daft kids film, sometimes under a blanket if it's a bit cold. I love the way he looks sad if I have to get up and then sits patting the empty spot on the sofa saying "Mummy sit here?"
I love the way he reacts when my husband comes home. He hears the door open and says "What's that? It's DADDY!" and then goes running. Unless Cars or Shaun the Sheep is on, sometimes it takes him a moment to notice. Poor Daddy is then not left in peace for a moment, but it often ends up with them conspiring together in Josephs bedroom and building a complicated brio track or some sort of monstrous lego creation. I love listening to the noise and the laughter.
I love that on Wednesday he dragged me upstairs to play in his room and he sat on one of his little chairs, made me sit on the bed and sat kicking his little feet saying "We're talking to each other." and his three year old lisp made the words rather unintelligible. We talked about a lot of things, everything from what the cat did to the anatomy of a steam engine. Joseph knows the valve gear from the smoke box and is getting better at saying "connecting rods". All of this has been learned from a steam train obsession and watching lots of you-tube clips about trains with his Daddy. Today I was explaining some of the basics of a formula one car to him today, he was fascinated.
I love that when we put him to be he yells "Night night!" at us through the door and doesn't stop until we respond. I love going back in on my way to bed and seeing him fast asleep and clutching his teddy.

He's a right pain most of the time, but you just gotta love him.