A Report from Mother's Day '08: Please Leave Me Alone Next Year

Is it wrong to want to spend Mother’s Day away from my family? Since I have escaped for two girls-only weekends recently, I purposely didn’t schedule any time spa time or shopping time or any time at all away from my family today. Big mistake.

Let’s see, my day started out at 4:30 this morning when my three-and-a-half-year old crawled into bed with me after a nightmare. Although I got her back into bed quickly, I couldn’t fall back to sleep. I just sat there making mental lists about all the things that needed to get done around the house that I was determined not to do today. Then my hopes for going to 9:30am Mass were shot when the baby had a fall-on-the-ground, kick-her-feet, wail-at-the-top-of-her-lungs, snot-running-down-her-face meltdown this morning. I really wanted to go with my family to church on Mother’s Day, but I knew it would just be more stress than joyous contemplation with a cranky one-year old and a husband who has limited patience with cranky one-year olds.

 

Ordinarily, I would have just put the baby in her crib and let her take the morning nap that we’re in the process of phasing out. But, there were men painting in her room at that moment. Yes, our house has been filled with men installing, sanding, and painting new crown molding for the past ten or so days. They are very sweet young men, but they’ve been in my house from 8am to 6pm for almost two weeks. And since the work is happening throughout the house as opposed to being confined to a single room, there is really nowhere to hide. But I digress…

The rest of the day included these lovely little tidbits:

-- My husband spending almost an hour yelling at the online florist for losing the bouquet that they were meant to deliver this weekend. While I love him for making sure that I had flowers, it also meant that I was sole kid-wrangler while he sat on the phone with customer service in his office with the door closed.

-- Our preschooler deciding that during her rest time today she was going to use crayon to draw all over her white dresser. There are so many things wrong with this. First, she did the same thing yesterday. And even though we had an entire session in which we talked about why this was wrong, and even though she had to help me clean it up, and even though we threw out the rest of the crayons (or so I thought), she did the same damn thing again today. Second, the stupid crayons were not the washable kind. What jackass gave her regular crayons?! Third, she never did this kind of thing as a two-year old. Why now when she’s two months shy of four years old?

-- The baby attempting to climb the stairs (who left the f’ing gate open again?!). Naturally, she fell off the second one and smashed her lip on the hardwood. Yes, in my home there was blood on Mother’s Day.

-- Did I mention that my house has been filled with men creating dust, generating noxious paint fumes, blocking access to the stairs with their ladders doing work?

But I have to admit there were a few really lovely moments today. The flowers finally arrived and they are absolutely gorgeous as they fill up my dust-filled home with the scent of lilies. My daughter was positively bouncing with excitement to “surprise” me with the hand-painted flower pot she made at nursery school, complete with the marigolds that she planted in there. We had a lovely dinner at my in-laws’ house where everyone was on their best behavior and no one (read: me) left annoyed. My husband rubbed my feet for me tonight without being asked to (one of the reasons I married him in the first place). And finally, I spent almost an hour in the tub reading a new book. I guess in that respect, it was pretty much like any other day: a few wonderful moments and a few really frustrating moments all mixed in together. And the end of the day I am dead tired, but feeling blessed and blissful. Even so, I am spending next Mother’s Day at Burke Williams.

Original post at Silicon Valley Moms Blog.