beautiful boy

So I've been reluctant to write here because I don't really want to look at my separation with Diana, but I think this is a nice story.

I had a stressful evening with the boys. Picked them up (they were not dropped off as usual, I feel like I'm traveling a lot to get to them).

Wrangled them to a pizza place. They wanted McDonalds. I know pizza is not much more healthy than McDonalds, but I think it is. They got a can of soda and then William said, "say something mean to me." I wouldn't do it. Andres did. He crushed his can. Then he was ripping it apart. "Be careful, it's easy to cut yourself with the cans edge." Of course Andres cut himself later, and was crying pitifully.

At home we struggled to do homework. Diana laid into me when I didn't notice all the homework, so I spent the whole evening doing homework, which seems wrong for a first grader. William cut himself working on a project. He did quite well. So as usual, time got away from me, and I'm so afraid of Diana's anger, and she gets angry when I'm late, so we were rushing back to their place. I was a bit frazzled.

William said to me, "Daddy, I had a good time with you tonight." And all my criticism of the night, the problems faded away. It's about being together. He just melted my heart, my anxieties, my worries. I love him so much. He's a good boy.

I've been reading Learning from the Heart by Daniel Gottlieb, and it's really touching. His advice is to chill about our expectations about our children, to understand how some of our projects are just mental confusion. I look at pictures of the boys a lot, I don't feel like I spend enough time with them. We have to accept things and just roll with things.

Thank you to Will for The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which we read together recently and I quite enjoyed.

Looking forward to going apple picking with aunt Di the weekend after this one, and Halloween.