Mother May I?

I cannot thank you all enough for the encouraging and commiserating from the last post. Some days I feel like I am absolutely drowning and the screaming definitely doesn't help that. What does help is knowing that you are not the only one feeling like that.

And while I feel like I am bumbling along at mothering lately, this weekend my husband did a fantastic job of making me feel like the best mom in the world.

Friday night he took Randall out to the store to pick out some presents and when they came home and I asked what she bought me she told me it was orange and said it was a, "bah." For her, this could mean box or ball or bell or even sheep for that matter. Articulation is not her strong suit at the moment.

Saturday was a dreary day, as it has been for a while now, and we all stayed inside for the day.  Andy decided it would be a good day to give me the gifts that he and my girlie had picked out.

So, up in our attic loft we sat with our coffee and our babies and he gave me flowers and a few fun games. We love playing card and board games and it is a tradition to get new ones as gifts. Now, while I loved the new games and flowers are always fabulous, I will admit to thinking that it was a little lame as far as mother's day gifts go. But I determined not to tell him and to be happy with what I got.

After the Saturday evening service, (during which it was lovely to be able to drop both of my kids off in childcare!) and after the girl had gone to bed, I was packing up her bag for the next morning so she could go with daddy to church while I went to another location. (Some days church work is logistically complicated in my family.) I was going to pack her mini dvd player so that while he was in rehearsal she would be busy and not running amuck.

In the closet where I keep said dvd player there was a box in the way. Confusion was the first thing that set in. I often use old appliance boxes to store toys or what-have-you but this was a box for a coffee maker that we didn't own. Maybe his parents had brought it sometime? And then all of a sudden it clicked. I had stumbled upon my real mother's day gift. I hurried up to the attic and peered around looking for the coffee maker, finally finding it hidden in the back of our closet.

I went down to the studio where Andy was working.

"I have bad news."

"What?!"

"I was just packing up Randi's bag for tomorrow...and I went in to get her dvd player."

"Ok..."

"Yeah. The dvd player."

"Yeah..."

"The dvd player that is in the closet in her playroom?"

"Oh. Crap."

I'm not sure how he forgot that that is where we keep the dvd player, but he needs to work on finding a better hiding place. He had wanted me to be surprised by waking to the smell of fresh coffee since he couldn't do breakfast in bed on a Sunday morning. Bummed as he was that I ruined the surprised (how do I always ruin the surprise!?) he still had specialty coffee and dark chocolates up his sleeve as one last gift. I was well spoiled.