Friday Fun

It has been a WILD week!  With the scavenger hunt getting ready to come to an end on Monday and doing some last minute GREAT prizes, I've been all over Facebook.  Then there was the whole Kindle Daily Deal yesterday for "Meant for You" - very exciting!  And now my mom is here visiting from New York and later on today, my older son will be home from Virginia for the weekend with his girlfriend.  I am a very happy girl right now.

It's amazing how I am trying to balance myself this weekend - part of me is super happy to have my mom here and having that time together.  It's kind of nice when she remembers stuff from my childhood and surprises me with it and get a little pampered being in daughter mode.

Then there's my son.  He'll come home and because I don't see him very often, I'll want to get into mom mode and do what I can for him - just as my mom is doing it for me!  Only...I'm the younger and hipper mom.  Lol!  I may say that to my son and see how he reacts!!  And then smack him in the head when he makes fun of me! 

My poor husband is just going to be walking around shaking his head.

All in all it's going to be a great weekend with a full house.  And the best part, I will be forced to step away from the computer and stop writing for a few days!  Woo-hoo!!  My fingers are already getting set to thank me.

So have a great weekend everybody!!!

When your baby isn't a baby anymore...

So several traumatic things happened today.  Okay, maybe not really traumatic but as a mom...traumatic.

Today was the last day of school for baby boy.  He completed his first year of high school.  The super cool thing about my boy?  He aced it.  Not like super-star acing, but for him, he aced it.  School has never been his thing and he's slightly OCD and has a couple of weird issues and we were worried that high school was going to be rough for him. 

But it wasn't.

He finished the year and he finished it well and tonight when we had our celebratory dinner, I cried a little.  He's 15.  He's not a baby anymore and time is going to damn fast.

Then, just when I was coming to grips with that the phone rang. It was the driver's ed instructor calling me to schedule baby boy's time behind the wheel.  I knew this was coming too and yet now that it's on the calendar and it's a reality?  I can't even believe it.  By the end of the month, he's going to be driving.

DRIVING!!!

Older boy was a nightmare when it came to driving.  He didn't want to do it, he fought it, he had anxiety about it.  The first time the driver's ed teacher got him behind the wheel, he refused to leave the parking lot. 

That is so NOT going to be baby boy.  Sigh. 

Part of me is GIDDY at the thought of him driving.  Someone to run errands.  Someone to run to the grocery store when I'm cooking and have forgotten a key ingredient.  And soon...no more carpool line for me.  These things make me happy.

The thought of him needing me less?  That makes me sad. 

Thoughts on Mother's Day

First off, Happy Mother's Day to all the mom's out there. 

Motherhood is exhausting.  I don't think I remember getting that warning years ago when I was pregnant with my first child.  And now, 23 years later, I am honestly and truly exhausted.  It's a full-time job.  You don't get nights and weekends off and there are no holidays.  You work 24/7, 365 days a year.  And here's the most important thing that you need to remember, the job never ends.  You don't get to wake up one day and say "I'm done".

Some people really should remember that.

However, in exchange for this never-ending job, there are many perks.  They start out small - little smiles, a tiny fist wrapped around your finger.  Then you get giggles and sloppy kisses.  You move up to some of the greatest artwork known to man in the form of finger painted hand-prints and macaroni jewelry.

Then you'll go through a downward phase - the "I hate you" and "You're an idiot" phases are not easy.  It's hard dealing with a know-it-all whose life hasn't nearly begun.  They eventually turn it back around and actually want to spend time with you again and - if you're lucky - they will admit that yes, you were right.

Sigh.

The hardest part of it all?  It goes too fast.  One minute you're wishing they were big and in the blink of an eye, they are.  You sometimes long for the days when they were small - holding your hand or just cuddling up beside you.  You miss the homemade cards (they're not nearly as cute coming from a seventeen year old!), the giggles, the innocence.

I am blessed with two amazing sons.  I look at them now - ages 23 and 15 - and can still see the little boys.  They are so different from one another and yet there are times they are exactly the same.  I love their individuality and can embrace their similarities. But more than anything, I am so thankful that I'm their mom. 

And that will never, ever go away.

The things we do for our kids...

My son is a hardcore musician.  Apparently, it's a thing.  The music is a kind of sad-screamo-hardcore genre.  Again, it's a thing.  So he has this "thing" that he likes to make people do when he gets his picture taken with them, it's called "hard styling".  Why?  I don't know.  But while on vacation, he asked - repeatedly - if I would pose like that.

I eventually agreed and here are the results:

An Attitude of Gratitude...

Okay, so did you ever plan something, anything really, and you have a lot of high expectations for it?  And then, when it actually happens, it falls really, really, really, REALLY short of what you imagined.  Yeah, that was my vacation.


I could give you all the gory details, but I'll spare you.  Let's just say there was sickness, freezing temperatures, a system failure, rain and marathoners.  Put all that in your Disney vacation and we'll just say that it was less than magical.

My son and I took this trip together and we were very excited about it.  Due to unforeseen circumstances, it wasn't the dream trip we had hoped for.  We spent a lot of time being angry and complaining and at times, just plain miserable.  By the time we got back home, we were both saying "Never again".

But here's the thing:  We got to go on vacation.  Together.  We got to spend time away.  Together.  We had the chance to sit and talk when normally life is just too hectic to allow us to do that.  Not everyone gets to get away.  Not everyone gets the opportunity to sit and talk with their child uninterrupted and hear about what's going on in their lives.  I wish that we had looked at what we had and saw the blessing rather than the disappointments.

Sometimes things are out of our control - and that's a hard pill to swallow when you are someone who likes to be in control.  Can't control the weather, can't control the crowds, can't control when you're going to get sick.  But what you can control is how you react to all those negative things. 

Lesson learned. 
I just wish I had learned it while it was actually going on instead of at the end of the trip when I was driving home from the airport.  I have a great son and it's pretty damn awesome that he wanted to spend time with me.  As a parent, what could be better than that?