Mother's Day, 2012

I was really excited this morning for Mother's Day.

After a long, extra-hard week (culminating in me forced into cooking for a manically busy Saturday breakfast and lunch at the store, as neither of my professional cooks could/would work-- hint: it ended in many bad eggs and one forearm slashed), I came home yesterday with my hair smelling of bacon and crawled into the bosom of my sweet family.

K. kissed my forehead and said, "That's it! You're done doing anything until tomorrow afternoon!" Which was absolutely fine with me.

Until the phone rang at 7:10 this morning, with the Sunday waitress/clerk/cleaner calling in sick.

So I went to work on Sunday, on Mother's Day, and I felt pretty grim about it until a customer, who'd already ushered his wife, son, mother-in-law, and mother out of the store, came back to settle the bill and told me that his wife's Mother's Day included one of their sons shipping out to Afghanistan.

Which made spending some fairly chilled-out time in my pretty store with my kids at home "secretly" baking a surprise carrot cake seem absolutely alright.

K. took a nap the moment I got home. I went running (something this past week didn't allow) and puttered in the garden a little (first blooms on the cucumber vines, which ARE climbing the sunflowers just as I planned!), and then my babies woke up.

We ate cake. We played. Then Annaliese asked if we could go to the nail polish store so she couldn't paint her nails, something she's been dying to do, and on this soft gray afternoon, seemed like a great idea.

On the walk down to Fred's, Caspian said he wants a teddy bear for his birthday (June 3rd!). I asked why. He said in his little-boy lisp, "so I can snuggle with it when I got to sleep."

He also wants axes.

Such a delicious combination :)

So we got nail polish, and Crayons, with my tip money from Saturday (I cleaned UP. Because we were busy, or because people felt sorry for me? Who knows? Fifty tax-free bucks though!), and we walked home, and then I painted both my kids' toenails.

I am not super-into boys and nail polish but Caspian wants to do whatever Annaliese and I do, and today, that means his toes got painted.

Now the kids are sitting side-by-side in their rocking chairs watching Caillou, waiting for their toes to dry, and it feels like I'm a pretty lucky mama. Because I have good kids. Because I have a good mama myself.

Hope y'all had good days too.