Today's chai was actually perfect. Serious bliss.
This week is going to be insane. Anna is still in daycare in my old town, about 20 minutes away, then I have to take Kate to her day camp, which is 30 minutes from there and then I need to get my ass to work, which is about 15 minutes from day camp. It's a long morning before the work day even begins. I dread the school year because it's so busy, but I'm actually looking forward to the kids being at the same school and getting on the same bus!
I never told you about our reunion on Friday. The girls and I were so happy to see each other, we just sat on the floor talking. Anna was in my lap, absent-minded stroking my arms and Kate was feeling my legs and commenting on how smooth they were. Good thing I shaved that morning. There is something about cuddling and touch among children and mother that never really goes away after babyhood and I love that my girls are so affectionate. Sometimes is seems a little weird to be touched so frankly and without reservation, hesitation or question. Sometimes I feel like a piece of furniture that they give no thought to, but on Friday, I knew they were touching me almost out of reverence to be with their mother again and I gotta say, it felt damn good to be loved like that.
We talked about their new house with their dad and about what they did last week and they asked me what I'd been doing and it was just nice to talk, like we were friends. As much as I am a full-out mother, all teaching manners and discipline and making sure they are clean and fed and safe, Kate is turning into a little friend that I confide in and I know she feels the same about me. I hope this lasts!
I took them to their new school so they could check out the playground and they were thrilled. It's just far enough away that we had to drive because lord knows Anna would never manage to walk there and back without whinging to be carried. After we played on the play set for a bit, we wandered down the pathway to see what we could see. We found a grasshopper and held his wriggling body for a minute before he jumped away and then Anna decided to tell me how much she loved me.
"I love you all the way to Heaven and the all the way to the sky. And I love you this much," as she spread her arms wide.
"I love you to the moon and back," I said and the look of astonishment on her face made me laugh out loud.
"I love you...all the way to Waterloo. And Disneyland," she said after some thought. I wonder how many conversations like these happen because of that book?
Later, back at the play set, we were all horsing around and just to be an ass, I whacked Kate's butt, because she hates it. She gets absolutely outraged and yells, "Mooooo-ooooom!" And then she starts whacking me back. This time I just laughed at her and told her to try harder because she wasn't hurting me a bit so it became a game of how hard they could whack my butt and each other's butts. Good times. Of course, it ended in tragedy when Anna wound up to give Kate a really good one and she missed, spun around and ended up in the gravel. This tumble resulted in a big, but superficial scrape on her thigh and a deeper scrape on her elbow, which promptly began to bleed. Which, of course, promptly produced angry tears of pain from Anna. She was bleeding enough that we needed to go home to wash it out and put a bandage on it and she wailed, "But I can't go in the car, I'll get blood everywhere!" I'm glad that kid has her priorities straight about her mom's new car! I assured it was not bleeding that much and we could certainly risk the five minute drive home as long as she held her arm up, which she dutifully did.
As I buckled her in, I said, "Well, that will teach you to whack my butt, kiddo." She looked at me with great, tragic tears in her eyes and wailed, "I wasn't trying to whack you, I was trying to whack Kate." Well, okay then. Keep doing that because it turned out well. And Kate was trying not to snicker in the back seat beside her crying sister.
When we got home, Anna was still crying and she got out of the car and said, "I hate being outside. I wish there was carpet out here so I wouldn't hurt myself when I fall," and then, as she stomped up the stairs of the porch, she turned around and yelled with great defiance to the world at large, "AND I'D RATHER NOT GET A SLIVER!"
Okay.... since there were no slivers involved in this incident, I can only assume the sliver she got five weeks ago at daycare has, indeed, traumatized her for life.
-Megs
xo
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