Appreciation Days

Mother's Day 2010

Mother's Day caught me slightly by surprise the first year. After all I still didn't have any biological children and wasn't entirely confident in my parental role in Isaac's life. It had been 11months since I had been a single girl on the other side of the country. I remember Isaac, who had never celebrated Mother's Day before asking Mike what exactly it was. Perhaps, that's part of the reason it started out so traditionally.

Mike and Isaac insisted I stay in bed and eventually produced breakfast. There were cards exchanged and I think we even took a picture. The next year was much the same. It was the 3rd Mother's Day when I had two children that things shifted. It sounds bad, but I told Mike not to do breakfast in bed.

It was more stressful than relaxing listening to them bang around in the kitchen. My blood sugar is always low in the morning and often between getting everyone up and to the store I'd be served a late lunch. There were incidents with spills in the sheets and such. It just wasn't worth it to me. Especially at this stage in the kids lives.

Mother's Day 2011

In fact when we discussed it we agreed that growing up mom got breakfast in bed and cards and dad got a dinner out the following month. As it turns out we decided to swap. I wanted to go out to eat and Mike wanted breakfast. It was a relief to talk about it. I didn't feel as guilty with it out in the open.

The next year went better. Mike agreed after one breakfast in bed that he'd rather just sleep in and eat at the table. Going out to eat with a toddler is a pain even when it isn't a major holiday so my mother's usually involves a meal request that Mike grills. Oddly enough that's how we did it last Father's Day too. He grilled his own steak. I cleaned up.

We weren't seeing eye to eye on gifts either and we discovered Mike had never been acknowledged in his 5years as a single dad and was harboring some resentment. Last year I gave him an awesome set of knifes he loves them. We use them all the time. Not surprisingly he wasn't as bowled over by my homemade Father's Day collage as a good set of good knives.

I love the kids cards! Sometimes there's handprints or poetry too. I adore the homemade stuff, but I also wanted some kind of token from Mike thanking me for being the mother of his children. Expectations on this front remain rather low as this request has never been granted to date. I did send him to the grocery store with a list and a 2yr old assistant this morning so dinner and desert tomorrow are well in hand.