Mother's Day

This morning started out with Ben sticking his sleeper-clad foot in my cereal bowl while I was nursing him. I kept eating the cereal because James was upstairs showering and couldn't get me a new bowl. Then he had a nasty diaper, and inconveniently, James wasn't done getting ready yet, so I changed it. I thought briefly about letting it wait until James could do it, but it didn't seem right to let poor Ben sit in that.

And while changing Ben's diaper, I hear Rachel from the kitchen saying "Emergency! Emergency!" She didn't sound too alarmed, so I finished up with Ben and came downstairs to find her standing in the middle of the kitchen floor in just her socks and panties, with her pajamas in a heap on the floor, peach applesauce all over them. Thus started my Mother's Day.

Today is my 4th "official" Mother's Day, 5th if you count the year I was hugely pregnant with Rachel - which I do :) At the time I remember thinking "Hey, I've been giving this baby a home for the past 8 months, dealing with gestational diabetes, major indigestion, sciatica, contractions, gagging and throwing up - I think I've earned my stripes to consider myself a mom."

Yesterday Rachel and I took my mom out to lunch near her apartment. We went to Applebee's, and while that's not hugely expensive, it still adds up. Plus Ben didn't nap this morning, and I knew he would be tired and getting fussy. So I was reluctant to spend money eating out a sit-down restaurant but felt like I should be served food other people had cooked. I ended up ordering two meals to go from Azteca Mexican Restaurant, and we shared some of our meals with Rachel. (I didn't think Ben really needed rice and beans and Mexican food - he's a gassy enough boy without that kind of fuel.) It was a yummy meal, even if it felt a bit harried feeding Ben and trying to keep him happy. It's easier now that he eats a lot of solid foods, but when he's tired, he often just wants to be spoon-fed baby food, or wants that in between bites of other food that he'll feed himself.

I was able to take a nice long nap afterward (briefly interrupted by Rachel coming in to show me something she'd made out of her Dora lego pieces), and had a mellow time with Ben and Rachel after that.

Nothing major today, but it was a nice day of celebration, with church, a gift from the kids, a card and lots of love and appreciation.