me

2013

My inbox is inundated with Mother’s Day Gift Guides, but they’re all being directed to the wrong person. These companies need to email my husband and my sons, if they can ever stop watching Super Mario Bros YouTube videos or if TJ could finally learn how to read, maybe they could get an idea. I already know what I want and it’s just a new watch or a magazine subscription. Those are things I would buy myself or at least passive aggressively sigh around the house and yell, “You know what time it is?! I DON’T!”

I want a Whole Foods brunch which is what I had a few years ago. I had this gorgeous plate of food plus a mimosa and it was the kind of breakfast that made me so happy. I wish I could have a champagne breakfast every weekend but because I live in the real world and not my pink fluffy fantasy where my own children do not use my shirt as a napkin, it’s a luxury I want and deserve at least three times a year (Mother’s Day, my birthday, and whatever holiday I make up because I can!).

Whole Foods is hosting two fun events for moms. On Thursday, May 9th, check out your local Whole Foods locations for Mom-O-Rama: between 10 am and 1 pm there will be offerings like wine and cheese pairings, beauty and care samples, and more, plus the first 50 moms to attend will receive a free gift bag filled with Mother’s Day goodies.

I will be working on that day (no free things for me!) but definitely not on Sunday, May 12th, when the Bellevue and Interbay locations will have Mother’s Day Brunch options and I will be there stuffing an omelette quickly into my mouth before a toddler instructs me to pass the plate over to him.

I am not being paid to say any of that. I genuinely enjoy Whole Foods and what I really want is a do-over of that Mother’s Day brunch. I love the low-key but nicer-than-Denny’s kind of meal where I can eat delicious food and still have my kids around. We had ordered our food and brought it back to our tables. After I had licked my plate clean and it was time to go, Mike decided to take TJ and Nathan, leaving me alone to clear the table. On Mother’s Day. I was frustrated at how he couldn’t see that was a foul move and later he explained that he didn’t know where all the different utensils and cups and plates went even though THERE ARE SIGNS. Also bins with dishes and plates already inside!

I have already addressed this with my husband, that I would like this brunch again and have asked kindly that I DO NOT BUS MY OWN TABLE WHEN IT IS MOTHER’S DAY. He has very kind about it even with my crabbiness and my memory bank that only keeps record of times I have been wronged, I know he wants to make it a nice day for me.

While I want food and unsolicited compliments (“Not bad for two kids!” “You gave birth to us? No way!”), Nathan had the best idea of all when he said, “You know what I’m going to give you for Mother’s Day? Sleep. You just sleep all day.”

That sounds so dreamy.

photo by TJ. Thanks kid.

Yo Gabba Gabba

2013

This past Christmas, I gifted my family with some tickets to the Yo Gabba Gabba: Get Your Sillies Out! concert in Seattle. Unfortunately, since the concert wasn’t happening right at that exact moment and my kids have no concept of time, they were very meh about their mother giving them such a wonderful experience! Nathan went back to playing his new Nintendo 3DS (which his mother also paid for!) and TJ went back to destroying everything else that I hold sacred (rest in peace, Caboodles jewelry organizer and MTV’s Party to Go Volume 2, back when music was REAL!).

It was a crazy day downtown because the Emerald City Comicon was going on, which meant I had to explain to Nathan why there was a grown man in the street wearing a horse’s head. And a grown woman in a horse’s head. That’s just something adults do, son, after years of living in their parent’s basements and saving enough money to buy a horse’s head because that’s what adults do.

We found some sanctuary in the Barnes and Noble kid’s section where the horses were on farms and not on the shoulders of thirty-somethings who work way too hard to be cool on the internet.

Nathan read from his memoir, “Farts: a story of hope.” It’s very riveting, for everyone BUT ME.

I’m always amazed at what other parents go through for their children. The theater was filled with families and little children twirling light-up toys that probably cost $20 each. Our theater concession meal came out to $40: greasy cheese sandwiches, apple juice, and chips. Forty dollars! Ugh. I hate spending that kind of money and not enjoying the food. I already cry while I eat, I try not to do that in front of the children.

I thought about going back downstairs and finding the pool of moms who were taking shots at the bar. And we would high five each other for being awesome parents and somewhere in the tequila haze, we would decide we were faded enough to enjoy a concert with a cat that has a fish tail and other characters I frankly do not understand sober. But I had a little boy in my lap the whole time and that was enough excitement for me, to see his eyes grow big in the glow of stage lights, to hear him whisper a “wowwwww” when the music began.

It was a nice break from the frenetic pace of being a family in a big city. We sat together in the dark and listened to high-pitched voices sing about not biting friends and hugs feel good. I know I’m going to miss these moments later when kid concerts no longer have any appeal and my lap is too small to fit either of my boys.

What I want for Mother’s Day

Yo Gabba Gabba

children’s therapy fund

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