I was going to blog with this title before today as LM had his place at primary school confirmed and will start going there for one morning a week as of Thursday, by way of an introduction to school life. He is very excited about the whole thing & whilst I'm very proud of his enthusiasm I can't help but think it wasn't that long ago that he was just a tiny scrap of a thing dependent on me for everything.
But today he showed me how fast he was growing up in an entirely different, & not at all pleasant, way.
We were at his swimming lesson & we clearly have made no headway in taming his over-competitiveness as he started screaming with fury when the others in the class reached the far side before him - in fairness to him he usually is first but today he had been messing about & not even trying, yet he had expected them all to stop & wait for him to get his act together. I took him over to the side of the pool & tried all of my tantrum taming techniques to no avail - he just kept screaming that he hated all his 'swimming friends' & that he wanted them to get out & let him swim on his own. For one brief moment I thought the threat of getting out of the pool & going home was going to do the trick as he paused his ranting only to start again when he realised the others had had the effrontery to carry on swimming without him. So we went home - it's not easy dressing a screaming child then dressing yourself whilst simultaneously trying to make sure he doesn't make a mad dash for the pool fully clothed (I even considered running for the car in my swimsuit).
LM has good lungs, I'll give him that. He kept up the screaming all the way home & even when taken up to his room. Although by this time he had changed the target of his fury to me & the house: "I hate the house. I want to ask the builder to knock it down." He even wanted me dead which was a horrible thing to hear even when you know he doesn't understand what he's saying. It was like hearing a teenage version of him. My LM had gone from being an adorable child to schoolboy to moody teenager in less than a week. That really is growing up too fast.
He eventually calmed down when I just sat on his bed not saying anything but cutting off any chance of escape (although he kept up the teenager bit for a while longer by pointedly turning his back on me).
We're all smiles now of course but it did sound like he was getting his wish on the house front a moment ago as we had a builder knocking through a window & plumbers ripping out a bathroom.
