Pumpkins and the Abby's

A couple of weeks ago, I woke up on a Monday morning to the sun streaming through the bedroom window. Now, for a normal person, this would be cause for happiness. Not so for a Debbie. You see, it had been raining for days. And days. And more days. Our backyard wasn't so much a yard anymore. It was a mudpit. A large, wet, leaf-filled, mud pit. And I had foolishly promised Chaos & Mayhem that we could go outside and play as soon as it stopped raining. Damn you, Mother Nature! What's a Mom to do?


Simple, call a better Mother. So I called Aunt Julie. Her kids had a couple of days off of school. She suggested that we pack up the kids (my two and her four) and head over to Milburn Orchards.

Nick spent the trip over explaining to Bree that we were going to go "look at pumpkins with our cousins." Bree, at two has a fairly limited vocabulary, despite Nick's constant efforts to expand her repertoire. She couldn't grasp the word "cousins" so Nick told her their names over and over and over and... you get the picture. Apparently the only name that she could handle was Abby. So, now Bree calls all of her cousins "Abby." I'm not sure but I suspect that Aunt Julie and Uncle Aaron are also "Abby's" in BreeLand. It doesn't mean that she doesn't love Alex, Amanda and Aidan. It just means she can't say their names. She can't say Nick either, just calls him "Brovur," which is Bree-speak for "brother."
Anyway, we got to the orchard, met up with the Abby's, saw a lot of pumpkins, some seriously cute baby goats, a couple of huge pigs, a cow and walked all over the place. Nick and the youngest of the Abby’s, Aidan, tried to see who could say the word “playground” the most. I think they tied at 4,622 "playground" requests each. Julie and I each took tons of pictures of the kids and will be dragging the Dad's with us next time

xoxo

Deb

Mommy's Day Out

On many an occasion, Jason has suggested that I go out for a little while to get some time to myself. Recently however, he was forced to take matters into his own hands and essentially kick me out of the house for a Saturday. His reasons for doing so are as follows:

• He came upon me putting the following phrases into Google "boarding", "preschool" and "Switzerland."


• While I was on the phone, he overheard me gleefully refer to bathing the children as "Mommy water-boarding."


• Coming into the house after work and being greeted by his wife holding a Disney Princess sippy cup in one hand and a bottle of Jack Daniel's in the other. Oh, relax, it was for me. I was too tired to empty the dishwasher and the kid's cups were the only ones that were clean.
  

There were many, many, many, many, many other manifestations indicating that Mommy needed a time out. And to be honest, I was giddy. In the days leading up to my "day off" I was daydreaming about not being directly responsible for my children's survival for a couple of hours.

The glorious day finally arrived. I hurried through breakfast, kissed the kids and then literally pitched them to their father as I raced out to the car. Honestly, the tires squealed in the driveway as I threw the car into reverse and them slammed it into drive.

Now, I love my husband. Jason is the moon, the stars, the sun and everything else in the world beneath them to me. He's an excellent father. Often, he's a much better parent than I can ever hope to be. That being said, I had no problems sacrificing him to our children for the sake of my sanity and hoped that our homeowner's insurance would cover whatever destruction they had wrought while I was wandering around Borders. I figured Jason would play it safe, put in the "Bee Movie" (Nick's latest theatrical obsession) and change a couple of diapers. My theory was that the kids would be bored out of their minds and be so thankful that Mommy had returned that they'd be perfect angels for a few days, so happy to have me back.

Oh no, not my Jason. No copping out with the TV for his little babies.

My darling little cherubs now get all the way to about 11:30am before they start demanding to know when "Daddy is coming home so we can have fun."

I'm going back to Borders.

xoxo

Deb