Mother's Day

Having two sons is kind of a fantastic and perfect thing. 

 Same age

There are things I wish I had done, things I wish I had not done, and things I wonder how I'll do, but the best bit of advice about parenting came from my mom when she said, "In order to screw up your kids, you have to screw up the same way every day. Learning from your screw-ups won't do it properly." So there you go. 

 I spent yesterday evening at the hotel with one of my best, oldest friends (well, she's 29 - she used to be 12) and her mom. We sat on the lanai, catching up on 8 years of stories, ordered room service, made fun of the risotto and tuna tartar, and boiled our butts in the hot tub. I drove home a bit late, and stood for a moment by the car staring up at the stars before feeling my way up the stairs in the dark to throw back some cold medicince and crash into bed next to my baby. He slept until about 3am before going into coughing fits every 30 seconds, and by the time he woke up at 6am I was almost crying with sleep deprivation. Finally got up and crawled onto the couch, where Leif snuggled up, nursed, coughed, and vomited all over me. All the makings of a real Mother's Day. Gavin gave gifts; a school-crafted pen with a fake rose florist-taped to the top (surprisingly not-terrible, which I think is an infraction of the DOE Standards, to which I owe a pile of dried-shaving-cream creations), and a package of tea blossoms sent over by my mom. The man, having again forgotten to get me anything, made eggs Benedict to make up for it. We video-chatted with my mom and drove over to the hotel to crash the pool with the ladies. Leif fell in the hot tub and I had to pick him out like a dumpling. We stole the room's packages of fancy coffee, drank all the complementary sodas in the mini fridge, and everyone came back to the house for a pancake brunch (more 'unch than br') with piles of berries and cream.

 

And pretended to fill up her mom's tea cup with syrup.

 

Compared sunburns and bottom-sizes; I won. Am going to make up with the scale. Pancakes will have to go frisbee-ing off the lanai, where stoned surfers will come flipping up out of the bushes like salmon to catch them out of the air. 

 Really a good day.