Our Version of Mother's Day

When you're a single Mother and your kids are under the age of 4, there isn't much pomp and circumstance around Mother's Day.  I mean it isn't like there is someone else here to "take over" so I can sleep in, or bring me breakfast in bed or anything.  So the day really focuses on the joy that I get out of simply being a mother to these two amazing kids.  And that is what my day was about yesterday.

Our first stop was to celebrate with the step mother, who lost her son a year ago this last December, so we spent the day with her to try and help her through the day.  The Boy usually LOVES to play with his cousins but was uncharacteristically glued to my legs the entire time.  I think he is reacting to the changes that have been going on.  Yes, he loves his little sister, but the last few months have made HUGE changes to his life.  The biggest has been that his Gigi (my mother) basically moved in to his house and spent all of her time focusing on him and making sure that he was taken care of.  Gigi went back home on Thursday of last week, so we have been on our own all weekend long.  For The Boy, the biggest change during this entire process was NOT the birth of his sister.  It was when my mom left and went home.  So I think he was feeling a little funky about that and therefore was overly clingy to me.  Poor sweet heart.  If I could wipe away all the confusion and changes that came along with this process I would.  But I can't.  So I spend some extra time with him and give him some extra love and we soldier on.  And still, it was a little bit sweet to have my first baby needing me so much on Mother's day.

After that stop I decided that The Boy needed a "Gigi fix" so we headed over to my mom's house to have lunch.  He immediately became his old self once he spent some time with her so that made me feel better.  He ended up staying with her at her house because he was "helping" Poppy plant the flowers and busy getting his outfit sopping wet in their water fountains.  I took The Girl home and tried to clean up the house that I had left in shambles in my attempts to get out of the house on time earlier in the day.

Once The Boy returned from my mom's it was time for nap time for everyone.  He went to sleep, and I put The Girl on a blanket on my bed and fell asleep with her little hand holding onto my finger.  I heard her squeaking and making her baby noises during our entire nap together.  So unbelievably sweet.  Once she woke up and needed to eat I decided to try and put together MY present for MY wonderful mother.  She wanted a picture of my two kids together.  So I put a white blanket over a chair and her bouncy seat and sat The Girl down and started snapping pictures.  She was actually awake and had her eyes open at the time so I had to take advantage of it.  Babies make hysterical faces.  I took over 60 pictures in all and they all pretty much make me laugh, although only about 20 of them would be at all interesting for anyone besides myself to look at.  In the middle of all of that, The Boy woke up from HIS nap and I tried to bribe him into taking some cute looking pictures with his sister.  He allowed it for a very short period of time and then needed (his words, not mine) to go and play with his helicopters.  And so he did.  Here is one of the many shots I took of The Girl yesterday, all fancy in her Mother's Day little dress...

She looks like she is spying on you, doesn't she?  Like nothing is going to get by this girl!  Don't try and sneak in anything!  She cracks me up.  I could put like 15 more pictures of funny faces up of her, but I will spare you all.  Needless to say, baby faces are the best!  

Here is one of the shots of the two of them.  Those pictures were the hardest to actually accomplish.  If The Boy was looking, then The Girl was about to fall over in the chair.  If The Boy was actually smiling, you could bet it was his "fake smile" and therefore looked like he was going to plot her murder.  Now I know why I spend so much money letting the professionals make the pictures pretty...  I am not so good at it.  Here is an example of my attempts:
After we finished "shooting" the pictures, I had to load them on the computer, and try and edit them into something that would pass as a decent picture.  Then I had to print a bunch out for my mom to put in her card.  Then I had to take a moment and write something meaningful and loving inside her card, and of course then I had to factor in time to cry.  Cause a girl doesn't get enough time to cry in a day.  After that I realized that it was late and perhaps The Boy might need to eat.  

Upon confirming with him that, yes, he did think eating dinner would be a good idea, I had to prepare such dinner for him (thank God for frozen spaghetti meals).  Of course when his dinner was ready and the table had been set for him, his sister started screaming because, of course, it was time for her to eat as well.  Crap.  How the hell am I supposed to manage this whole two kid thing?  So I put The Boy into his seat at the dinner table.  Then I used the fancy new pillow that my sister had loaned me earlier in the day and actually sat at the dinner table with The Boy and breast fed The Girl while he ate.  I am rock star, multi-tasking Mommy!  As I was sitting there smug with my accomplishments, I heard my own stomach growl and realized that I hadn't eaten since brunch at my sister's house earlier in the day.  Shit.  Who has time to eat?

While I was contemplating this concept there was a knock on the door and my mom, my step dad and my grandmother came in.  They had all been out to a nice "adult" evening out for Mother's day.  They were stopping by after dinner for their kid fix.  I gave my mom her card with the pictures, which she LOVED (pretty easy to please a grandmother), handed the baby off to my grandmother, and sat back and thought about being a mother.  

It is easily the most exhausting thing I have ever taken on in my entire life.  But it is also by FAR the most amazing and rewarding and magnificent thing I have ever done.  And in honor of all the glory that is being a mother, I am breaking my rule of not putting my own picture on my  blog.  Just to illustrate the awesomeness of motherhood and how in MY family, the love of being a mother has been passed on for generations and generations, I present to you a picture of my family.  Here is four generations of mothers (provided The Girl eventually grows up to be a Mommy herself).  My fabulous 86 year old grandmother, my (number left out at request) mother, my 34 year old self and my two kids.  The Boy and The Girl.  The reason that I get out of bed each and every day and the true loves of my life.  Happy Mother's Day!