Moms

We celebrated Mother's Day for my mom at my brother and sister-in-law's house on Saturday.  My whole family was there, my sister and her husband came down, and my nieces were all there.  It was lovely.It was the first day they'd had their pool open in their new house.  The three youngest girls - my two and my brother's youngest - did not get out of the pool except to eat, and then when we FORCED them because Grandma was opening her presents.  After the party ended, and my SIL let our girls join her youngest for hot bath in the big master tub, and then a demonstration of my brother's 3D home movie theater system (it really is better than in the public movie theater,) and a half hour drive home, it was 11:00 pm before we got the kids to bed.
Hubby had a plane to catch on Sunday morning, and had to leave at 8:30 a.m.  So breakfast was a lovely if rather quick celebration.  Everyone gave me their presents - the girls had made all of theirs this year, precluding Hubby's need to take them on a quick Saturday afternoon shopping trip that we wouldn't have had time for anyway.  And I must say the girls did a LOVELY job.  Hubby really excels in the gift giving department, though he just can't seem to avoid the jewelry stores, despite my firm lecture of "We're remodeling the house, and you brought me back that incredible fish necklace from Australia, so we just can't afford for you to blow a big wad on for me on Mother's Day, so DON'T DO IT!"
Can you believe this?  I'm complaining about getting too much jewelry for Mother's Day.    
Anyway, Hubby sprinted out the door, and I sprinted to get the girls ready for Church ("Please please please can't we skip it?  We're tired, we're so tired, and I think my stomach feels weird.  Yeah, I'm sure it does. There's something weird going on down there.  I think it's my stomach.  Please please please? No?  Did I tell you I have a toothache, too?") and we made it on time.
Both girls promptly fell asleep, one laying across my lap, one gripping my arm.
In the middle of the meeting I had to wake them up to go up to the front to sing with the rest of the kids.  Thing 2 was a little disoriented and kept trying to go the wrong way until I bodily turned her around and pointed to all the rest of the kids in the church lined up in front.  Thing 1 started whimpering and saying "I don't WANT to!" and I whispered to her in my best hushed but serious whisper; "You mean to tell me Every Other Child in this church loves their mother enough to go up there and sing to her, but you're the Only One who is refusing, and is sitting down here in the congregation?  The Only One not singing to their Mother?"  Yes.  I used guilt. I feel guilty for using guilt...  She harrumphed and started dramatically trying to get around me between the pews, refused to climb over my legs to get to the aisle, so I stood up and helped her sidle by, completely embarrassing her, as anything that draws attention to her at all embarrasses her. 

They sang. I could barely see my kids' heads between the other kids, and I don't know how much Thing 1 actually sang... but they were up there.  I was minorly frustrated that it took so much manipulation on my part.  
I sat in the congregation listening.
Based on my brief blog research, what most mothers, including myself, would really like for Mother's day can be summarized into two categories - 
1) pretending (ironically) that you don't have kids for one day (aka doing a lot of uninterrupted sleeping), and/or 
2) having no battles with the kids, either between the kids themselves or with you and the kids.
My kids rarely fight, and they don't often fight with me... much.  But the sleep thing... that I could have gotten into.  But alas, alack, I knew it was not in the cards for me.
I got a little teary.  It was very sweet.  I heard the woman on the other side behind me sniffling.  Then I started crying.  Not totally sure why.  The embarrassing thing is when it didn't stop after my eyes kind of welled up and I sat there thinking why in the world am I doing this?  Do I wipe my eyes, the gesture of which brings attention to the fact that I'm crying?  Or do I just sit there letting the tears roll down my face and hope my shirt doesn't get wet?  And of course you can't sniffle because then everyone for five pews knows you're crying... but if I don't sniffle and my nose backs up and becomes a huge problem...   Then my face got red, and I started wondering if this is a hot flash.  I haven't really started getting hot flashes yet, but I think they must feel something like this.


By the time the kids were done singing and they came back down, my face must have been Stop sign red, I had tears running down my face, and I couldn't find any Kleenex in my church bag.  Thing 2 looked me in the face and asked a couple times if I was all right.  Fine, fine, that was just sweet.  They both snuggled up to me again and fell back to sleep.  I regained control.  The meeting ended.
I let myself be talked into going home, and skipping the two other meetings. They were obviously tired, and I was too.


The skipping church bargain was that when we got home and they'd changed clothes, they had to nap until church would be over.
Thing 1 slept until well after the prescribed time, Thing 2 slept about 20 minutes then came in and laid next to me whining that she wasn't tired.  After shushing her unsuccessfully for a while as she was keeping me awake I told her to quietly play the iPad until her sister woke up.

Then because Thing 1 hadn't read the biography she was supposed to have completed by Monday I read it to her. She hadn't read it for the past two weeks because she'd been able to tell in the two pages she had read that there was a noticeable lack of magic in the book (rendering it totally uninteresting).  It really is a great biography about Wilbur and Orville Wright, which is why I chose it, and it took me two hours to read it to her.  She loved it, as I expected.

She was pretty stoked by the time we were done, I think she wanted to try out a few flying ideas in the back yard.  I was pretty tired.  
Then because Thing 2 is in the district spelling bee on Thursday and only got the words last week, I spent about 10 minutes guilting her into letting me help her spell some of the words on the list.  We worked on that for about an hour.


We read with Hubby on Skype, I ordered a pizza to be delivered, I watched part of a movie with the girls, then sent them to bed.


Mother's Day is fine, it's often nice, but it's rarely all it's cracked up to be.  Expectations are too high, the kids try so hard to give you a wonderful day but so many other things get in the way.

They looked so cute I forced them to pose in the back yard.


Because their gifts were really nice hand made treasures, I feel compelled to take pictures.


Thing 1 made this plaque in school. 

 Thing 2 made a magnet.

 

They both made a fused glass thing at the school arts festival.  It was an optional craft, neither one wanted to do it, but I reminded them repeatedly that mother's day was coming up and I like glass and THEY HAD BETTER GET OVER THERE AND MAKE ONE.  So I got these!  They're not huge and I'm not sure what to do with them... make them into necklaces, or hang them in the window... not sure.  But they're neat, and the kids were pretty excited to give them to me.  Which is even neater.

Thus ends Mother's Day for another year.