Mother's Day

Rarely has a Mother's Day been quite so full for me. This one was really kind of nuts. And I didn't bring the camera along, so I'm afraid there isn't much in the way of photos to be had. Maybe I'll see if I can scrounge some online, just for color.

The day started nicely enough. I got out of bed and was promptly shoo-ed back into bed by Daddy. Moments later, the kids came tumbling in with presents, insisting that they should help me open them. So, I unwrapped the necklace I bought myself for the occasion, a silver bracelet from Smunch, some cool lotion soaps from Daddy and a wonderful new tabletop pancake griddle, ostensibly from Mam.

And Daddy had whipped up some pancake batter too. So we all had pancakes for breakfast...except for Daddy, who learned the hard way why I hate making pancakes. There are never enough! And when I spent all my time over at the stove shoveling pancakes for everyone else, that was really annoying. I'd finally figured out that I have to make a double batch. Unfortunately, I apparently forgot to pass this wisdom on. But seriously, who knew it'd ever be useful to him?

After some leisurely lolling around the table and the house, Daddy took the kids out to get food for a picnic lunch with my parents while I went to get flowers for my own mom. Apparently, I also forgot to pass along the wisdom that every activity takes at least twice as long when the kids are with you. We got to the park half an hour late for our lunch date. But it was O.K., everyone still had fun. The kids got to play with Daddy and Grandpa while my mom and I sat in the sun. We had lunch. We checked on a letterbox we planted at the park last month. Grandpa served his own homemade chocolate chip cookies...his specialty.

Then we were supposed to head to a benefit concert for the daughter of a friend of mine who died suddenly several months ago. We're not big fans of the guy who was performing...having been spoiled by our love of Andy Z...but I felt like it was important to go and support her family. We stopped at a $4M+ open house on the way and that made Smunch very grumpy, even though he seemed to enjoy looking around.

But when we finally parked to walk to the concert venue, Smunch did something naughty (I'm not even sure what) and Daddy took his privileges, resulting in a complete and total meltdown like I'm not sure I've ever really seen from him...uh, Smunch, that is. Daddy held his composure quite well, under the circumstances. I'm sure we got plenty of strange looks as we walked, but I cleverly hid my nose in the map, pretending I heard nothing.

I went into the concert and made the donation I'd been planning to make while Daddy stayed outside with the screaming Smunch. Mam stayed with Daddy, so I went back out and retrieved her. At least one of my kids was going to see a little bit of the concert! Smunch was still screaming and crying outside. We watched some of the concert, but we've seen this guy's show before and I'm not sure it bears watching more than once. We probably stayed for about 10 minutes, then went back outside...where Smunch was still screaming and crying next to Daddy. Poor Daddy.

We walked back to the mommymobile...with Smunch trailing behind, screaming and crying. I picked up the all-important clue and backpack, so we could go hunt down a letterbox in the area. Smunch screamed and cried the whole way. It let up just about the time I made Mam back off and forced Smunch to get the letterbox out of its hidey hole.

After that, Smunch cheered up and then insisted he wanted to go see the Native American drumming and dancing going on nearby. Of course, he didn't necessarily want to walk...and neither did Mam. A couple of times, I caught Daddy carrying both of them at once. We made it to the Pow Wow and wandered around for a little bit. Got to see lots of Native Americans in ceremonial garb. Got to see some dancing, heard some music, perused some jewelry and other artwork and finally headed back to the car again.

It was late. We went out for a cheap dinner, which fortunately featured margaritas, then zoomed home for bath and bedtime. Thank goodness.

It's great being a mom. I wouldn't trade it for anything...but sometimes, this time of night is the best part of the whole day!

Camping

To be perfectly honest, I was a little terrified of today. Smunch's behavior was so abominable yesterday that I wasn't even sure I'd be able to get out of bed this morning. It was one of those days where I just had to think, "What is wrong with this kid??" And I did...many times.

I should have paid my babysitter extra yesterday, but then, Smunch did have speech therapy, so we were gone and gave her a sweet hour and a half with an angelic little Mam. Even though the babysitter was here for 5 hours, I spent at least an hour and a half downstairs trying to placate Smunch into some kind of behavior than resembled a human being. It didn't work. He was a demon right up 'til dinner time...and then he magically became a nice little boy again.

So, yesterday was rough and I had a babysitter for 5 hours.

Today, on a whim, I decided to excavate my old tent from the storage shed. I say "old" tent, but in truth, this tent has only been used twice...both times for one-night car camping trips long before there were children in the picture. It's a very nice tent and it's in great shape.

The kids were thrilled. I decided to take them camping...in the backyard. After we all hung out in the tent for a little while this morning, we left it up, had lunch and went off to swimming class. Both kids were awesome the whole time, so we stopped for frozen yogurt while getting a prescription refilled and went to Safeway for camping supplies.

It turns out that camping supplies consist of hotdogs, graham crackers, Hershey bars and marshmallows.

Somewhere between Safeway and Curious George, there was a lot of bad behavior, including sand throwing, Lego structure-destroying and some shrill screaming. The tent came down and got packed away. The level of screaming and crying increased exponentially. In the end, I promised if they could help each other right the damages to the other's property, I'd reinstate their camping privileges.

Yeah. The kids still watched Curious George at 4:30, but at 6 o'clock the campfire (aka, barbeque) was roaring and Daddy showed the kids how to cook their own hot dogs. We moved from the campfire to the...uh...patio table. There was a good deal of screaming and crying after Mam was reassured that yes, indeed, she did have to eat all her carrots before she'd be allowed to roast marshmallows, but Smunch was so anxious to get on with the s'mores that he stood there and fed her most of the carrots.

The tent went back up.

We had our s'mores, the kids had their bath. They couldn't wait to jump in the tent and go to sleep.




But, of course, what they did was jump in the tent, get in their sleeping bags and wiggle...and giggle...and wiggle some more. "Mam woke me up!" "This is a nice tent!" "Why is it blue?" "What is that light?" "What was that sound?" And at 9:45pm, our camping trip was over. Both kids were moved, of their own accord, to their beds and I was free at last!