Another Donut Friday...

The boys and I rolled pretty hard this morning after our weekly stop for ‘Donut Friday’. I had my 32 ounces of Diet Pepsi, Boy 1 had his 4^th of July festive pastry and Baby Boy had nibbles of a cinnamon roll. The windows were down due to a much welcomed break in the heat and as we cruised to their school, I bumped a classic. Pete the Cat. We looked quite thuggish as our heads bobbed up and down…..”I love my white shoes, I love my white shoes”. Donut Fridays are the best. I tried my best to fight tears back as I looked at Boy 1 in the backseat jamming. We only have one month left…one month. Then, Hubs starts to take him in the mornings as he begins elementary school. He was the co-founder of Donut Fridays. He was my first baby that I had to leave at three months old and I was introduced to a world of guilt and sadness. So we created Donut Fridays as a celebratory end of the week event. To show that we made it through five days of being away from each other and tomorrow morning we would have the weekend to bond. I remember lugging him in as he was just a little over one when we began and now…it’s almost over. It hurts. I know I will still have Baby Boy to accompany me but it won’t be the same. So for now, I will enjoy each trip and try not to think about the approaching end to our special occasions.

Preschool Graduation

Boy 1 had his preschool graduation today. It was emotional. When the music began to play and he walked in wearing a cap and gown my mind flashed to a skinny, colicky, big headed three month old baby whom I had to leave…all day….for eight plus hours a day. I cried. A lot. I felt like I was going to miss out on everything and I even recall a telephone conversation with Mom where I sobbed and asked if he would even know I was his Mother because I had to be absent so much on a daily basis. And there he was….tall, slim, with a mega watt smile on his face. He knew who I was. He didn’t hate me because I have to work. All the worries, the tears…gone. He is smart…the top of his class…social, caring and hungry to move on to Kindergarten for more knowledge. He did it. Hubs did it. I did it. We ALL did it.

Fathers...err...Family Day 2013

Who needs Mothers Day when you have Fathers Day!? The latter went much more smoothly…probably because I was in charge. *wink* Everyone was well fed with a homemade breakfast and with me in charge of all the morning chores everything was done correctly. My OCD was doing back flips as I made the beds nice and snug! We ended up, after visiting the final resting place of Hubs Dad, to make an impromptu day trip to a boutique style shopping little town, about an hour or two away from home. I was a little nervous since we did not have a stroller but lugging Baby Boy around wasn’t too bad and I rewarded myself with an extra piece of pizza at dinner since I burned…what…double the calories walking? That is what I told myself anyhow. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and to me it didn’t matter if it was Fathers Day, Mothers Day, Childrens Day (wait…that is every day)….it was a great Family Day. I did have a twinge of sadness since Daughter spent the day with her “Father” and I learned that it was less than spectacular. The highlight was when he took her to McDonalds and bought himself and girlfriend a meal but Daughter had to pay for her own. (Imma let that sink in for a minute) Hubs was ever the stellar ‘step’ Father and made sure to pick her up a few presents due to her absence on the trip. I’m definitely banking that memory for the train wreck outings to know that one time…for one day…everything went so smoothly.

Tee Ball Pride

If you are anything like me, you question your choices as a parent frequently. Am I being too hard? Am I being too lenient? Do I feed them too much junk food? Do they know how much I love them? These are all questions I ask myself almost daily. And then you have those moments, those few and far between moments where God, Allah, Buddha, Jesus, John McClane…okay so he isn’t a God (or is he?) or whomever is in charge of life…casts a light on how good you are actually doing. Last night, at Boy 1’s tee ball game, each kid on his team had an issue. Whether it was they couldn’t sit still, yelling, misbehaving, not paying attention…each of those children had some issue. Not my kid. There he sat…criss-cross applesauce, on the bench, hands in his lap…attentive to the game and minded his coach. My kid? My kid. Now, this does not always happen. Actually it happens such a small amount of the time the odds are comparable to hitting the Powerball jackpot. But last night a wave of pride flooded over me and I felt someone, something give me a pat on the back and say “Atta Mom” and it was awesome.