Mother’s Day Weekend

On Mother’s Day Baby brought me tea and biscuits to bed, with a beautiful card and a flower on the tray. It was such a beautiful gesture!

Friends came over, so we just lazed about the house. It was a nice contrast from the busy schedule we set on Saturday.

On that day, two of Baby’s friends, aged 5 and 9 spent the day with us, and it was exhausting! They ran around the house, played some computer games, read a book, and then it was off to the mall to shop for shoes for Baby, eat lunch, browse bookshops and toy stores. The shopping went well, except the girls were so energetic and curious it was hard work keeping up with them.

Lunch was stressful – they insisted we go to McDonald’s and the place was packed. I hate waiting, so I dragged them off to a number of restaurants in the food court, and which were also packed.

Restaurants where they had open seats were not suited to entertaining kids and while Baby would have been just fine ordering a green salad, I wasn’t sure about her companions. So I had to suck it in and go back to McDonald’s.

“I’m going to work,” I said to the girls when we got home around four. Baby’s friends were due to be picked up around six, and all I wanted to do was sit down.

Writing, and responding to emails didn’t protect me from constant interruptions, having to mediate arguments and the girls’ loud music but it provided a good excuse to stay seated.

I was also asked to watch the girls do handstands and to judge who screams the loudest (a necessary skill, that!)

For me, days like this are rare, and I have to take my hat off for mothers who have two or more children under the age of ten and for whom juggling the needs of different kids is the norm.

I hope you had a wonderful Mother’s Day and your children showed you how much they appreciate who and what you are to them.

RHYMING RUSSEL BY PAT THOMSON AND CAROLINE CROSSLAND
Published by Collins, an imprint of Harper Collins

Baby and I thoroughly enjoyed Rhyming Russell by Pat Thomson and Caroline Crossland, which she brought from the school library. It’s an old book, published in 1990 and it’s about a boy who couldn’t stop speaking in rhyme.

The humour had us in stitches and I appreciated the fact that the characters were not stereotypes of people’s roles.

Mum and Dad flip a coin to decide who’ll fix the fence, grandpa is fantastically good at knitting and sells his work through some expensive shops, and the sister tinkers with car engines. This is the kind of book that makes kids want to read, and I wish I’d written it.