A Mother's Day

Friday I had a list a mile long of things I needed to get done.  I needed to run several errands, do some stuff around the house.  I had an agenda, I was going cross these items off my list and head into the weekend with a clean house, a stocked pantry and diaper drawer and no need to do anything I didn't want to do.  Then I woke up.

And, the day got away from me.  But not in it's usual way- there was nothing on the dvr containing a certain high school glee club doing a mash up that had to be watched, there was no endless hitting of refresh to see the latest Facebook updates, no friends who had dropped in.  Nope, Friday it was all about this...

Life has been busy lately.  I know, I live on a little island where there isn't much to do and I only have one kid and I don't work outside of the home, but it just seems like we are always doing something (which is fine and a big preference to being at home all day, never leaving and doing nothing).  But even when we're home thanks to my dynamic time management skills it doesn't always seem like I spend good, quality time with Price.  I encourage him to play in his room while I clean the kitchen, or I let him watch 30 more minutes of TV so I can empty the fridge of the leftovers from Thanksgiving Christmas.  But we don't always do stuff together, and I sometimes (a lot) feel guilty that playing trains for hours on end isn't my favorite thing in the world and he ends up getting my very divided attention (perhaps this is good life training for him?).

Friday, when I was roused from bed before Reveille by my chirpy alarm clock saying repeatedly, "Hi Mommy!  Mommy hi! Hello!  Mommy pick you up."  I dragged myself out of bed and thought, "Well, at least we'll be able to get everything done today."  Then 7:00 rolled around and I had already put my two year old in time out once, and I thought, "This is going to be a very long day."  And I hadn't even figured out what to have for breakfast, but knew it couldn't be cereal, because that's what the kid got for dinner the night before.

So, being of sound mind and I body, I thought biscuits would be good and P wanted to help me make them and I thought that would be fun.  Suddenly, it was after 9:00 and the biscuits were just coming out of the oven.  Where had the previous two hours gone??

We sat down for biscuits and I had some legitimate stuff to do on the computer and Price wanted to color.  Great, I can do my work while he makes art work.  When I looked up from what I was doing, I realized he wasn't coloring, he was peeling all of the paper off his Crayons.

Notice that getting dressed was not something that occurred in the mysterious two hour period

When I saw that mess, it reminded me of a craft we used to do all the time when I was young and had recently seen on a blog where they bumped it up a notch- melting broken Crayons together to form large multi-colored colors.  And I thought (once again, my AMAZING sense of timing rears its ugly head), that won't take long.

So we commenced to de-paper some crappy Crayons and break them into small pieces.  Of course, once the objective was to actually remove the paper, it was no longer fun and became my job. But it was fun for both of us to break the Crayons and place them in the molds (thank you $1 aisle at Target, and thanks to my mother-in-law for spotting them and sending them to us Target deprived folks).  It was a good counting and color identifying activity for Price.

Once all the molds were filled,

We placed them on a cookie sheet and put them in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes.  We (I) talked about how heat can changes things from hard to soft, and I let him peek in the oven about half way through so he could see the changes.

When all of the Crayons were melted,

We put them into the fridge for about an hour, and I explained how sometimes cold can change liquids to solids, but the whole concept was a little advanced.

And finally, we got this-

Multi-colored heart shaped colors, that work.  I forgot to take a picture of the art that ensued from drawing with a heart.  But somehow another hour and a half disappeared.  And then it was lunch time and then it was nap time and I just gave up on getting anything that I needed to get done done.

And then it hit me, that I actually did accomplish what I needed to.  I spent most of the day with Price, listening to him, talking with him, playing with him.  We hadn't had a day like that in so long and it was needed, but it's hard when to the rest of the world those accomplishments aren't tangible.  It wasn't on my to do list to spend quality time with my kiddo and maybe it should have been, so I could have checked it off and not felt like I was being unproductive.

And Then It Was 2011....

It's amazing how a stomach bug sweeping through the house, followed by a birthday, then Christmas, then recovering from all three followed by one of the best New Year's Eves (is that grammatically correct?) our little family has celebrated in a long time (actually the first one our family has actually celebrated since becoming a family of three) can get a girl off track and keep her away from blogging.  Well, there's all of that coupled with the fact that since I spent so many years in college, that my brain automatically goes on semester break this time of year. I promise to be better- I really do.

Notice I didn't say resolve.  I don't actually believe in New Year's resolutions.  The year is new for only so long, (and if the past week is any indication, the rest of it is going to speed by) so I don't quite get the whole I'm going to do this while the year is new and then more than likely let it just fall by the wayside.  That's why I save up all my self-bettering for Lent.  But that's another topic for another day.

2010 was a pretty good year.  I was almost sad to see it go, but I'm excited about what 2011 holds (Do you say twenty-eleven or do you say two thousand-eleven?  I don't know which is right, which do you prefer?).

Hope your New Year is off to a wonderful start!