Mom of the Year

My sister forwarded me an email the other day reminding all of us to appreciate every single day we have with our kids. You know the ones: "Forget house, play with kids". And being that it was the first day of fall, this email inspired me to make an attempt for the "Mom of the Year" award. I thought to myself, "Today, I am going to grab the kids out of school early, put on a darling orange vintage apron (inspired by Nie) and bake cookies with my kiddos." (confession: This idea was born when I found, in the very top cabinet of my kitchen, a bag of those little candy corn pumpkins....from last year! Shhh - they'll never know and anyway, I'm pretty sure the shelf life on those puppies is like a hundred years.)

So after lunch I headed to school to fetch my kids. I stopped at the office to sign them out. When I got to the "reason" section of the sign out sheet, I paused. I glanced at the what the other moms had written, "dentist, dr's apt, sick". I thought to use one of those but then thought better of it and wrote. "Cookies!" I left the office feeling rather proud of myself, and I wondered if I'd be hearing from the principle later. Bring it on baby.

For some reason it took 45 long minutes to gather up my kids (and their jackets, and lunch boxes, and homework, etc.). So by the time we got home we were only an hour early. Oh well, an hour, I thought to myself, that'll do to make cookies. I had no sooner turned on the oven to preheat and donned my darling vintage apron than the phone rang. It was Dave, and he needed my approval on a change in the tile design for the shower at the cabin. I was confused by the change and wasn't ready to part with the original idea (which apparently I had grown rather attached to). Long story short, 45 minutes, some less-than-nice words, and several tears (What can I say? I was hormonal) later we agreed that the change was unavoidable and I reluctantly gave it my blessing. And at what cost? My cookie window was just about closed and my husband was totally irritated with me. The kids had long since tired of asking when we were making cookies and, seeing that mom was not in her "happy" place, had wondered off to safer corners of the house. So much for "Mom of the Year" (not to mention "Wife of the Year"). With tears dripping onto my vintage apron, I hardly felt like June Cleaver. I certainly did not feel like making cookies. But I had promised. So I blew my nose, sent a quick note of apology to my husband and called the kids down to bake cookies. We had fun, and the cookies turned out pretty darn cute.

"Mom of the Year"? Not really. Maybe just "Mom in the Moment".

P.S. I should've just told Dave right when he called that I trusted his judgement and would love whatever he decided to do with the tile. And that's the truth. Thanks for the great advice, Mom.