A million dollars

Last night I came across a book I write in sometimes - a kind of diary about the children. I started writing it when Jack was born, and wrote in it regularly for a few years. I still do, but rarely.

I discovered amazing memories that would otherwise be lost. Oh, what I had forgotten! I had forgotten that Anna as a baby used to always twirl her dainty feet around and then freeze them in a ballet-like position. Or that the first time Ian played "Wipeout" to her on the guitar, she was so intensely interested that she went all stiff and twitchy. Or that she sung before she could talk.

I had an idea that Jack as a preschooler was a real character, because I remember people telling me that. But I really had no idea quite how funny he had been, and how he constantly lived as one book or movie character or another - Roo, or Fireman Sam, or Pingu. I laughed until I cried. And if it wasn't written it down, I would have forgotten it for good.

When he was 3 he had to wear a name badge for kindy because they had a reliever teacher. He wanted to keep it, but the head teacher told him he wouldn't need it when he came back because the normal teacher, Linda, would be there, and she knew who he was. "She knows I'm Peter Pan," he agreed.

Once I told him I loved him even when I was angry with him, and he said he loved me when he was angry with me, too. Then I heard him add quietly, "But not very much."

His beloved grandma took him, still aged 3, to see a digger, and he strode around saying "I'm the man for the job."

I kept reading until well after I should have been asleep. Talk about hard to put down. This book is worth a million dollars to me.