Out of the Blue

You know, I love Sweeney and all, but crikey, he's a whopper challenge to me, the past few days.

Yesterday I picked him up from preschool, and he was so whiny in the car that I was inspired to pick up some wine at the supermarket. He chose that we'd go to the white supermarket, not the yellow one. Then he complained that he really wanted to go to the yellow one.

When I say "complain", I mean he bellowed, with tears, all the way from the car to the supermarket threshold. Then he hit the deck and a nice woman told me that her son did this for twenty or so minutes at a time.

Luckily, the wine section is very near the entrance, so I got him through the turnstile and could watch him yelling at me and crying as I selected. Then reselected, because my original selection made Sweeney cry harder. The manager asked me if everything was okay. I told him Sweeney really wanted to be at Pak'n'Save and he disappeared.

I figured I'd just ride it out and force a banana into him in the car, but he tried emptying things off the shelf at the checkout, so I had to make him sit in time out as a grillion slack-jawed, obviously childless winners in the game of Life made tsk noises in line around me. The checkout girl looked me deep in the eye and told me she hoped I'd have a good night and I really wanted to believe her, what with the blizzard of noise erupting from near the floor behind me.

Then I knocked the top off his banana as I peeled it, and that meant he couldn't eat it and could Go On About It for Ages.

Anyway, we got to the M-Zs for dinner, he had a big fuss made of him by everyone and ate delicious dinner, then he watched some Tom & Jerry with the kids until it looked like his eyes were on fire. He found Jean's Polly Pocket doll's house and played with it at the table, and gave me lots of cuddles during dinner, so that I didn't really mind that he should've been sitting on his own seat.

So I woke up thinking that I was a god for getting through an ordeal of that sort the night before. We parked up and watched cartoons to kick off the day, took ages over breakfast and Kimberley and Harper came for a visit.

Nice. Then it all went skewiff and we were embroiled in the same scenario as the night before, except that it went on all day and wasn't nearly so hysterical.

Long story short, he was in bed by 6.45pm and I felt rubbish about how the day had gone. I really look forward to the weekend, I plan visits to friends, interesting things for us to do, and the last few weekends have been bumpy like this.

Then I watched Out of the Blue on telly. Splendid. I was on holiday in Dunedin a few years after the massacre, and we went to Aramoana for a day of playing cricket on the beach, paddling and eating under a huge tree. Beautiful.

Anyway, the film made me stop in and give Sweeney a cuddle until he woke up slightly and said "stop it Mum, I'm sleeping".