There’s one upside to the boy being ill – an outpouring of affection for me, usually second place to his mum
My son is slightly poorly, which is never fun. What’s worse is that as a 16-month-old, his goldfish memory means he’s trapped in a neverending state of discovering he’s ill, so that roughly every few minutes he’ll give a rasping cough and remember all over again he doesn’t feel great. It’s sad, but it does have one practical benefit – a sudden outpouring of affection for me that’s quite a welcome change of pace.
I’ve previously described myself as being the Andrew Ridgeley of his parents – famous, yes, but also oddly anonymous given I spend more time with him than any other adult. Oh, I get affectionate play and loads of laughter, but very little of that full-strength adoration my wife gets. When he’s poorly, I get great big sympathy-generating hugs, but ordinarily I get the kind where he just collapses on to me without much in the way of emotional intent, and he can pull away at any point. It’s the toddler equivalent of those two-hand handshakes politicians do.
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