This week I am blogging every day as part of Week In My Life, a linkup hosted by Kathryn at Team Whitaker. If you missed the earlier posts, here are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
It’s Saturday and, because I have the best husband in the world, he lets me sleep in for a little while. He even gives Leo cereal and puts a can of chicken and stars soup in a pan and heats it up for Daniel.
When I get up, I serve the soup and Daniel says, “Baba’s recipe is better than yours, Mama.”
Maybe I should sleep in more often and let Baba handle breakfast preparation.
Daniel wants to wear his school uniform today, complete with belt, uniform shoes, and tucked-in shirt. He also wants to make cupcakes for Baba, so we do.
The morning goes well until the boys start tossing a football around the living room. The football is confiscated, rules reviewed, etc., and I start getting ready to go to the annual Christmas bazaar at the Motherhouse for the School Sisters of Notre Dame.
Because I love time one-on-one with our boys, I invite Daniel to come. He isn’t sure he wants to go because staying home means playtime with his brother, but I’m not really asking whether he wants to come. I’m telling him he’s coming. We stop by the ATM and head to the bazaar.
As we walk in, a woman working there greets us. I stop to tuck in Daniel’s shirt, and she says to him, “Isn’t it nice that she does that for you? She must really like you.”
“A little,” I tease him and he grins and squirms and says, “No! A lot.” He’s right, of course.
Then we shop. We find the most wonderful items you can imagine, but best of all are the interactions with the people there. Some of the older nuns are there and some of them and the other women there admire Daniel’s uniform and chat with him about his school.
“My mom went to the bank and she has $100,” he tells one nun as she bags our stuffed pink elephant.
I make most of the decisions on what we are buying, but our kindergartener handles the actual money.
On the way out we stop to buy hot dogs from the food table to enjoy at home for lunch. On the drive home Daniel proudly holds the stuffed candy corn—theoretically a purchase for Grammy, though chances of that happening are looking less likely by the minute.
We arrive home and show off our purchases. This is just some of the haul, but I don’t want to give away all our Christmas surprises. The gingerbread men are ornaments and gift card holders. I know. The little creche was 25 cents. We splurged on the $6 candy corn, but he was too wonderful to pass up. And I don’t even like candy corn.
After hot dogs at home, the boys and I head off for our soccer double-header, the first game against another boys’ team, and the second against the girls’ team from our school. In the car my passengers are in a bickering mood. I pretend I don’t notice, especially when I realize at one point they are chanting, “Pepper spray!” “Baby diapers!” “Pepper spray!” “Baby diapers!” back and forth.
The soccer games are…soccer games. I think maybe I need to become more of a sports fan to do this soccer mom thing successfully. Maybe my problem is that I don’t really care whether my son does well on the field. I want him to have a good time and feel he is contributing, and I prefer that he not score against his own team, but beyond that, I have no expectations.
That’s probably good because Daniel keeps me busy. He has found what he thinks is a Native American drawing on the field.
And he wants to play football with me, so we do. Then we realize Leo’s water bottle is in the car, so I have to head back to the parking lot to get it.
I ask my friend to keep an eye on Daniel while I am getting the bottle, and I tell him not to move from the chair. So when I get back to our chair, I find him here.
We have a good time, but I am ready for it to end so we can go home and relax and warm up. We lose the first game and win the second against the girls. Everyone seems to have fun, and most people there clearly enjoy it more than I do.
When it’s all finally over, we go home. The boys run around outside building a fort out of sticks and John and I sit inside and have a few minutes of adult conversation.
“What are you talking about?” comes the question as the boys tumble back inside. Who knows? Not Skylanders.
We watch a little TV, play a game of unorthodox Scrabble by our own rules, nap (well, some of us, and not on purpose), and eventually decide to go out to dinner.
I suggest a Greek restaurant I’ve been to once with friends, and when I mention that they serve “flaming Greek cheese,” there’s a buzz of excitement. So off we go, as Daniel and I make up a song to our stuffed candy corn on the way—definitely not worth repeating for you here. The main point is that the stuffed candy corn is amazing and he doesn’t want to be eaten.
The cheese, which is called saganaki, is not on fire by the time it reaches our table—not like at Dimitri’s in Catonsville, Md.—but it’s delicious, as is the spanakopita, and everything else.
We drop a few utensils and many pens while drawing at the table before the food arrives, but the boys behave amazingly well. It helps, of course, that the food is so good.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being what I would have made for dinner and 10 being Dimitri’s, how was that dinner?” I ask the boys.
“Twenty!” Leo says.
“Twenty and 140!” says Daniel.
That’s how I feel about our day, too. Or maybe that’s just how tired I feel—but a good kind of tired. Hooray for Saturday.