Georgie mouth coming through

It is 1am in the morning. Smalley has just walked into our room announcing: "Let's go mummy. Georgie wake up." Ahhh yes, the joys of a teething baby.

Smalley's response to teething varies hugely depending on whether it's day or night. In the day he puts his fingers in his mouth, grizzles and cries whilst announcing in the most miserable voice you can imagine: "Teeth coming through. Owwie teeth." (Most adorable, last month it was "mouth coming through" rather than teeth.) It's quite a thing to hear your two year old be able to express pain and discomfort so clearly. I don't remember Albug having the same level of clarity but that may just be sleep deprivation and clever parental amnesia at play.

In the nighttime the response is completely different. No crying, no grizzling, he is just awake. He wakes up happy, chatty and coherent. It's almost as though it's morning time and he's waking after a full night's sleep. Almost but not quite; he looks exhausted, skin pale and eyes pink. Meanwhile my parenting skills are undermined by me stumbling around in the dark, eyes glued together with sleep, brain struggling to work out where I am and what I'm doing. At times like this I say a little prayer of thanks to Disney, more specifically to the team behind "Planes". We come downstairs, he settles in the sofa or armchair and we get the DVD set up. If it's a bad night I collapse on the floor, good nights are distinguished by my brain being awake enough to remember we have a sofa bed in the living room and manage to set it up in my half awake state.
We are now in the final lap of teething; the final two molars have cut and we are just waiting for them to fully cut. One side has come through, the other side explains why I'm currently tapping away at 2am. We've got into a little routine with the film. We cheere when Dusty makes his first arrival. We point out the characters as they appear, Smalley loud and excited, me through closed eyes echoing his words in slurred, exhausted voice.

As Smalley's vocab grows and his understanding improves out come those classic "out of the mouths of babes" statements that put a smile on your face no matter the hour. During a teething midnight party last week Smalley yawned an enourmous yawn. "You're tired" I said to him. "Georgie's tired. That's right!!" He replied in a chippy, excited voice. I laughed. Kissed his forehead and pressed play on the DVD. It was almost as cute as when he'd grabbed my hand earlier in the day and pulled me into the kitchen whilst shouting "come on mummy, it's an emergency, come on." Getting into the kitchen he pointed at his toy, just out of reach on the kitchen counter: "get it mummy. Emergency." Think I might leave it a few more years to teach him to dial 999 or I'm going to be opening my door to firefighters summoned to turn on the TV.

For now, the yawns by both of us are coming quickly. My little man is lying across me, equally exhausted and excited as he watches Dusty save Bullog. It's goodnight from me and good riddance please to the teething silliness. Sleep calls me.