kiwords

Is it too late for a Mother's Day wrap-up? Do you mind?

Don't worry, I'm not going to tell you some sparkly my-family-loves-me-so-much story involving a spa day and a new car or anything. My family DOES love me so much, but what I had was a very real sort of Mother's Day.

It started out with my loving family trooping in to wake me, with two new tea cups. One was full of coffee, the other had a paper flower, planted in paper "dirt," underneath which was some cash for me to spend on my garden. So I exclaimed that it was a money plant AND plant money all at the same time. Tre thought that was funny, which was a total score for me. When did I start trying to impress my son? He used to think I was brilliant when I hung a spoon off my nose. Now I'm all smug and content when I can make him chuckle.

The fun thing about the tea cups is that they gave me those very same cups for my birthday, back in March. The previous cups lasted 10 days before they were both broken. One was left where Sophia could reach it, and the other one was knocked into the toilet one morning during the pre-church rush. I was disappointed about it, because they were pretty things, and I had been especially impressed because Clay had ventured into Anthropologie all by himself to get them. So the fact that he went back, braving that bastion of girliness just for me? Awfully sweet.

"These are it, though," he warned me, "because these were the last ones on clearance."

See? Very real. [UPDATE! I just found out that this second time he bought me these cups? He took all three boys with him. INTO ANTHROPOLOGIE. I'm just saying.]

After church we went to Mom and Dad's house, where the men prepared us our very favorite food - food we didn't cook. In this case, ribs, rice, corn on the cob, and cheesecake with fresh berries. There was supposed to be broccoli, but there was a broccoli snafu. It happens to the best of us, and Clay and Dad are two of the very best of us.

I gave Mom a card wherein I accused her of being the popular one with the kids (totally true), and Mom gave me a card that totally made me laugh, not because of the card, but because of the parenthetical comments she added. You had to be there. And Max gave me the card he forgot to give me that morning. It had two original poems in it. The first one I shall spare you, because it was about him and Tre throwing up, and thanking me for my willingness to clean up. But here's the second one:

Tweety's face is red,

The rings under your eyes are blue,

Every day,

We love you.

It was accompanied by a picture of me walking the floors at night with a screaming baby.

See what I mean? A very real Mother's Day. It is good to be loved.

(Tweety is one of the many nicknames around here for Sophia. Tweety, Tweety Ann, Sweety Tweety Ann, The Tweet, Sopapilla Sam, Pumpkin Heart. Oh yes, Tinkerbell the Hun was just the tip of that particular ice burg.)