A Mother's Weekend

Last Sunday was Mother's Day and it's always nice to be recognized now that I'm a mom.

It started out well with Saturday being dedicated to me or at least focused a bit more on how wonderful I am. Rick made breakfast for the family, but not until he took Ada out in the bike carrier for a trip to get eggs. That freed me up some time to tackle the best job ever--rinsing the cloth diapers and dragging them to the basement to the wash machine. I'm such a lucky mom!

Rick and Ada ended up running more errands and coming back with flowers and an aloe plant for me. I guess I hinted at wanting the plant months ago, and the flowers were a nice gesture -- even if I did have to then put them in a vase and add water and even if Rick thought the vase I picked wasn't big or nice enough so he got the other one out of the cabinet so I could switch it out. What a sweetie!

Since it was a Saturday, Rick had a soccer game that afternoon so he got to get out of the house while Ada and I took naps. Ada actually took a nap so that was nice. She's such a sweetheart. Until the maintenance man for the building decided that three pm on a Saturday afternoon would be a great time to demolish the ceiling under our condo unit for some repair work that needs to be done -- even though he knows we have a toddler that naps between one and four typically. It cut both of our naps short and made for a bit of a cranky mommy, to say the least. At least Rick got pelted with freezing rain while riding his bike home from the game. There is such a thing as Karma. I believe it exists.

Knowing that Rick really wanted to see the Iron Man sequel, I arranged with a neighborhood mom to swap babysitting time and we went to an early show. The movie was great and it was nice to get out. On the way home we stopped for a snack since Rick was still a little hungry from a light early dinner. Of course, he got pizza which is the death of me if I eat it these days with my heartburn. I had to endure the entire process of going into the pizzeria, ordering, waiting for them to bag it up, and having it sit on my lap the whole way home, all while salivating and cursing the heartburn this second child has forced upon me. Motherhood is so awesome!

Once we got home, he took our friend home and I got to plate his pizza. I'm such a good wife. He got rockstar parking right outside our house -- which never happens on a Saturday night, unless you go to the early movie and are home by nine when everyone else is just starting their night of fun. Now we know we are lame (or responsible) parents when we are home that early. We've clearly run out of "midnight oil".

Instead of going straight to bed and calling it a night at 9pm, I suggested we try Rick's movie rental choice of Fred Claus with Vince Vaughn. He's been in charge of renting movies lately and learned his lesson (no dramas) when he got Everybody's Fine with Robert De Niro and I cried hysterically at the end. He learned a second lesson (no stupid movies) when he rented You Don't Mess With the Zohan with Adam Sandler. Fred Claus wasn't good either, but it didn't make me cry, and I didn't feel stupider having watching it. At least it qualified as our "free rental" of the month so we didn't feel so bad having paid for it.

The Sunday portion of my Mother's Day Weekend started with another yummy breakfast by Rick. It was nice to stay in and not have to pay a bundle for brunch only to have Ada get ornery and force us to pack up and finish our meal at home. We didn't have anything really planned for the day so I was excited to work on some craft projects that I'd been eyeing for weeks. That idea was quickly stopped by Rick's suggestion that he wanted to "work on sorting out the storage room in the basement". Translated that means, "we need to go through all of Ada's stuff that is down there and make room for all of baby boy's stuff before you're going to get me to put any more boxes downstairs, including the two you have in the living room currently." Seriously? Today? But this is MY day! He says his intention wasn't to get me to help, but if I didn't, Ada and I wouldn't have seen him for three hours and he would have drug all of the boxes of her clothes upstairs to make an even bigger mess of the house, and then had to drag it all back downstairs until we had a chance to distribute it to the people we are giving it all away to. So, we spent a good portion of our day sorting the basement storage room. But it's done. That's a relief. But it isn't what I ever would have volunteered to do on MY day. Just wait until Father's Day comes buddy! Now I know why Mother's Day arrives first in the year...

After the storage room was clean, I got to sit on the couch and iron fabric for the duration of two movies. It was a lot of fabric to pre-wash before getting to cut it into the quilts I hope to get to work on in the next six weeks of my pregnancy -- in all of the free time I keep thinking I'll have since I banned all travel for the next two months. We'll see about that.

We rounded out the weekend with one final movie, Avatar. It wasn't in 3D, and it kept us up way too late on a Sunday night, but it really was very good. A definite highlight of the weekend.

The real best part of Mother's Day, was being able to spend it with my family. Even if we did chores and cleaned, we still got in a lot of quality family time and that is precisely what Mother's Day is all about.

Moral of the story: Mother's Day and Father's Day may seem like made up holidays conceived just to sell a bunch of cards, ties and flowers. Really, they should be considered as a time to reflect on what it means to be a parent and give thanks to those who sign up for one of the toughest jobs in the world.