Happy Mother's Day!

Hello, dear blog readers! I was giving Mother's Day a thought or two today, because...well, it's Mother's Day! And I do now qualify as a mother.

My day began as a frantic search for kiddie clothes. For the first time in weeks, our kids were virus-free and healthy. I was getting the kids ready for church. As I was looking for Blossom's clothes, I realized that sometime in the last one or two days, Lem put ALL of Blossom's clean clothes in the hamper with the dirty clothes. Mind you, he didn't just put them on top. He put them in and mixed them up. (I for one am not going to admit to how I got creative with her outfits. Let's just say that 2/3 of her outfit was from the "clean" bin, and I had to pull a sniff test on the other third. I was that or wearing a diaper and no pants in public.)

I find it interesting to see how people think about Mother's Day and how Mother's Day is marketed in the media and among various vendors. And, of course, I find it interesting to see how Mother's Day is marketed among other bloggers.

So far, my favorite impression of Mother's Day gifts were posted by a friend on Facebook. It was a blog post from a blog that (I think?) was called Parenting: Illustrated by Crappy Pictures. (For those of you who already offended by the word "crappy," I apologize in advance. For those of you who have been struggling parents who will ignore the word and continue on into the solidarity and humor offered within this blog, continue.)

http://crappypictures.com/

While in a number of years I might appreciate things like flowers, chocolates, and spa dates, what I really appreciated today (or yesterday!) were the simple and (FREE!) things: Hubby tended to the Toddlers yesterday morning so that I could sleep in. Today I got to take a successful afternoon nap, despite the fact that Lemmy was trying to poke his head in the room to see if I still existed in his realm. I got to take a shower, brush my teeth, and (MOST IMPORTANTLY!) use the john without a single audience! Here is the picture from the author of the afore-mentioned blog:

This evening, we ate sandwiches and went for an exploratory tour of our historic downtown area. The breeeze was bordering on cold, but the flowers were in bloom and clearly Lem was desperate to get out of the house and hop up and down the street holding my hand. (I've never been a two-year-old boy so I can't say that getting out of the house is a need, but I think it's definitely good for him.) We looked at an old train, at old buildings containing restaurants, and at old houses with old yards with flowers in full bloom.

The simplicity of these "gifts" and activities were, in my humble opinion, the BEST Mother's Day gifts! Happy Mother's Day to all of you mothers out there, dear blog readers! It is a (mostly) thankless job. I hereby salute you!