The last few days haven’t gone as planned. My son missed school yesterday and today. I had errands to run this morning, rushed all the more with my exuberant, curious, 3 1/2-year-old boy in tow. And a blizzard on the way. Plus, my daughter’s kindergarten let out at noon for the winter holiday break. At 11:15 a.m., I was standing in a parking lot outside of the post office, wrapping presents to mail on the hood of our car in 30-degree temperatures. Meanwhile, my son bounced around inside the station wagon, disassembling the dashboard and pulling the covers off the carseats. At one point when I was affixing bows to the presents before the wind blew them away, he laid on the horn. Who knew the horn works with no keys in the ignition? I must have jumped ten feet in the air. Twenty minutes later, my son and I had managed to mail the gift package and were now inching towards my daughter’s school in bumper-to-bumper, everyone’s-gotta-buy-bread-and toilet-paper-before-the snowstorm-traffic.
The rest of the day maintained that busy clip. As evening arrived, I could see the finish line. I got dinner on the table for the children at 6:10. My daughter kept beckoning me to the dining room while I refilled juice glasses in the kitchen. Mommy? Mommmmmmy? Mommmmmy! Just a minute, I said, I’m coming. My son wanted an ice cube to cool his bowl of piping-hot soup. I pinched the ice between my fingers and grabbed the juice glasses in way the sitcom waitress Alice might have appreciated. When I got to the dining room, my daughter tapped her fingers on the tabletop at the spot where I usually sit down to eat, just as everyone else is finishing. What did she want? Mommy? Mommmmmy– she said again, as one might call after a companion in a dense fog. At my seat rested a sign she’d just penned. A humble request from my daughter. An ultimatum from God.
Aww, they know you’re working hard.
I hope your family has lots of activities (or snow angels) available while this snow debilitates the East Coast.
Your writing is completely beautiful. sit mommy.
I remember when my son was almost two he came up to me and said “all done hello? all done hello?” At the time he called a phone a “helloâ€. “All done†was simply what he said when either he was all done with something, or he wanted someone else to be all done with something. Basically, he wanted me to be “all done“ with my phone. I was a stay at home mom with an iphone and I was a little addicted to it…. Your post title fit my experience perfectly. I’m much better with the phone, now I just need to learn to sit 🙂