A Mother of a Day

Mother's Day - a day for mothers to bask in the glory of our grand achievements. We are told that we should be pampered, get to sleep in, have a lazy day, and our kids will be perfect little angels. And then there's Mother's Day at my house. My darling son woke up at 7:00 (which for him is sleeping in) and Tim wouldn't get up with him. Excellent start to the day. Vaughn, however, was in good spirits and we had some excellent cuddle time in the big chair before I woke Tim up at 9:30 because I had to start getting ready to go.

At about 10:30 Tim decided he was going to start putting together Vaughn's new tricycle that my Mom and Dad got him for his 2nd birthday. It's an incredibly cool trike and I know Vaughn is going to have a lot of fun riding that bad boy around. However, it requires a lot of patience to do something like this and even more patience when you have a toddler trying to grab at all your tools. Not sure if Tim had that and I had to get going.

Leah and I decided to go out for brunch and pedicures which I thought was an awesome treat for Mother's Day. We had beer with breakfast and a lovely relaxing time at VJ's nail salon. The only thing I don't like about these "express" mani/pedi salons is how they don't even say hello to you when you come. Their greeting is "pick a colour", then "sit down here" and that's it - they get right to it and don't even really look up. But my feet are happy today because of it, so I'm not going to complain.

After that was done, I dropped Leah off and she was off to Costco - she was going to pick up Tim and take him with but when I got home he hadn't even showered yet. I decided to go along with her because I didn't want her to have gone out of her way for nothing and I did have to get a few things for our barbeque later in the afternoon. I bought Leah some flowers and she in turn bought me some flowers. At least my home would have a little brightness and a small reminder that Mother's Day did actually happen.

I got home from Costco to a red-face child who apparently had been screaming since I originally left. He didn't nap, wouldn't eat and Tim was at his wit's end. I got Vaughn a snack, sat him down and he gobbled it up. He was super happy and a cheerful earful. Huh. However, I wasn't really looking forward to taking him anywhere if he hadn't had a good sleep - we all know how a well-rested child is a happy child.

We made our way over to Leah & Steve's place and Vaughn was actually really good for the first half hour or so - we were playing Rock Band and he was sitting happily on the couch. That didn't last long and he wanted to get up and move around - he danced with Madison while I sang but then that got tedious and he decided that all the buttons on the stereo system looked really neat and the control for the game was fun and so on. Vaughn got himself banished from the family room and started to lose his little marbles.

We decided to start cooking the kids' food because we didn't think Vaughn would last very long and sent everyone outside to play. He had a great time, was having a ton of fun but of course, was testing the boundaries and touching things he wasn't supposed to. This is when Leah said to me "boy, he just goes renegade when you guys are around" which I heard "you have no control over your child". And this is where my day went completely downhill.

It's hard being a full time working mom - I don't get to see my child near as much as I would like. So maybe I am a little more relaxed with him. I certainly do not let him run wild and if he is causing problems, I have no qualms about putting him in the corner to chill out for a bit. We're at the house he comes to every day with the woman who gets far more of his time than I do and she's unintentionally making me feel like I'm the worst mother in the world. It's hard to be his mother around her because she steps in and disciplines him before I get a chance to. Her house, her rules, but when I'm there, shouldn't I get to be his mom?  It breaks my heart to hear my baby call someone else "mom" because he hears Leah's kids call her mom so isn't she mom too?  I know Leah corrects him but he still doesn't get it. 

And to top it all off, whenever Vaughn was having a mini-meltdown, Tim was trying to soothe him by offering him 20 different things to get him to calm down. What he needs to do is put him somewhere and ignore him. Toddlers don't always know what they want and the best thing for them is to not have a big deal made of their episodes and move along. The more attention you give them the more they will freak out. He was super tired and I'm sure a little confused being with both Leah and I and wondering who was the boss.

I was able to get Vaughn to sleep about 6:45 which was awesome and then we set to work on our dinner. We didn't eat until about 8 and then at 9 after the hockey game was done we headed home. Larry had puked on my bed earlier in the day and Tim took all the bedding downstairs and didn't replace it, so when I went up to bed at 9:30 there were no sheets on the bed and I had to make everything up before I could pass out.

It really truly was a Mother of a day.