You Are My Joy

Our three and a half year old boy leads a pretty amazing, child-centred life. For as much as we're able to offer, he lives in freedom everyday. He also goes full-tilt, non-stop all day long and literally falls asleep by bouncing off the bedroom walls or collapsing into his dinner. So it was with perplexity and anxiousness that we watched him unable to get up out of bed a few days ago, complaining of a sore neck and unable to support the weight of his head. Later that day we cradled him in the sling and drove to our country doc's house who advised that he probably had a pinched nerve and that it should resolve itself by the next day. But two more days went by and he had yet to rise, complained of pain in his neck and could not lift his head - though he felt okay otherwise and didn't complain about lying down all day long. We, on the other hand, were increasingly not so calm about things. Last night we managed to get him in the warm bath and continued to talk to him: "does it still hurt?"… "where does it hurt?"… "do you think you want to get up now (PLEASE!!!)?". At one point he said, matter-of-factly, "yup, tomorrow I'm going to get up". So this morning he woke up happy but did not get up. Instead, he cheerfully crawled his way down the stairs and started playing with his sister from his now all too familiar flat-on-back position. He was obviously feeling better. Then, just before the doc was set to come over to check him out again, and after 38 hours straight of lying down…Boom - he bounds to his feet and races his sister across the room to turn the tv on!!??!! It was time! Now we're left with wondering what the heck happened. But first we're going to cuddle him up, feed him some gummy worms at midnight and watch him tear around the house some more. And then we're going to try really hard to have increased faith in him - faith that he knows best what he needs and when he needs it - and to continue to “go with the flow” (but crickey does that ever get severely challenged in situations like these). Here's a short, poorly edited video from this evening where nothing much happens but that makes one daddy, one mama and one big sister beam with joy for all things FERGUS...