YO MAMA: A toddler’s simple pleasures

OPINION

One evening in the same bedroom where every evening is spent, a toddler knocks a cushion off the same exact chair where he has been read to, rocked to sleep on and cuddled a hundred times before.

This is the first time the cushion has come off, and it changes everything. Suddenly, the chair is brand new. And oh, the things it can do.

The boy climbs on the chair and jumps off onto the fallen cushion, now a marvellous crash pad. Over and over and over again, exclaiming wildly with every pounce. Climbing, jumping, springing back up again. Then, when that gets old, sliding off on his tummy. Then bum drops. Then going backwards.

And then doing it all naked.

Then pushing it like a car while making engine noises. Being a chair cushion, it doesn’t move easily, but that doesn’t matter because the boy falls down laughing and begins hugging it as if it is a dog. 

Then, he discovers the cushion's zipper, struggles until he masters opening and closing it, and moves on to putting it on his foot like a giant shoe. Then a mitten.

Then peekaboo from behind the cushion, the boy’s huge grin vanishing and appearing like a little seal bobbing in the ocean.

Finally, leaving it discarded in the middle of the room.

Turning now to the cushionless chair. It is extraordinary.

All kinds of things are hidden in that secret place: hair ties, teething rings and all the mismatched socks. A bounty of things to inspect, taste and toss around.

Then searching for a zipper. Can the chair come apart any further?

No, it cannot.

Oh well.

The chair is just a chair again, and it’s time to read a bedtime story.

— Charlotte Helston gave birth to her first child, a rambunctious little boy, in the spring of 2021. Yo Mama is her weekly reflection on the wild, exhilarating, beautiful, messy, awe-inspiring journey of parenthood.

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