Mother's Day at Umstead

Alice taped this sign to my door for Mothers Day, and left the birds on the floor outside my door (not unlike offerings from a cat). 

I spent all day mulling the phrase "mother's bay" --thinking of all the ways mothers can be like bays: calm waters, a protective inlet from the rough seas, all those stereotypes that I don't think I fulfill. Mother's day is always rough for me...it's a role I'm still struggling with seven years in. Like, why am I so bad at this? Why is it so hard? Why don't I enjoy it more? Why am I so grumpy so much?

For Mother's Day, I originally wanted to drive out to Raven Rock State Park and explore somewhere new, but the weather forecast showed spotty thunderstorms, so we didn't want to drive for an hour to get rained out. We opted for the closer and familiar: a hike down to the river at nearby Umstead State Park.  We didn't get rained on at all, and the weather was quite perfect: warm (but not hot) and breezy.

Alice carried my backpack for about 30 seconds at the beginning of the walk.

We had a lovely hike down to the river, where we spotted lots of snakes.

Simon and Zac looked for crawdads.

The kids had fun rock climbing.

I am always happy and calm in the embrace of Mother Nature.

They found this really long snake skin.

Back at home, Simon was very sad to have stew for supper. Alice used to cry over this meal. Tonight was Simon's turn I guess.

Once we finally got through the tearful supper, we opened Mother's Day presents. 

Simon made this cool bag bird thing.

Translation: 

I like you.

Mothers Day.

A turkey was carrying a sack of poop.

A metaphor for life.

Park, Lunch, Library, Park

I took the kids out for the day so Zac could get stuff done.  We started at Walnut Street Park, a great playground but with little shade. There are also some paved paths that I thought would be good for the kids to bike and scooter on.   They did pretty well climbing around, while I listened to a much-interrupted podcast.

Something about having gray hair emerge makes me want to reclaim my youth and also climb the playground equipment.

Simon loved riding his bike around this loop, but Alice of course was easily distracted.

Alice couldn't resist running around this hill.

After playing a good while at the park, I took them to the Dairy Queen near our old house for lunch.  They were pretty thrilled that the kids meal came with an ice-cream cone.  Simon didn't eat much of his though, but Alice scarfed hers down, and finished up some of Simon's. It must have been all that running.

From Dairy Queen, we drove past our old house and headed to the library in downtown Cary. The kids enjoyed this work of public art.

After picking out books at the library, we went to another park that was near our old house: Urban Park.  It's a very small park squeezed between two little roads. It also had a piece of public art for the kids to play in, in addition to the more traditional playground equipment.

At the park, Simon discovered he could climb the poles.

Simon was NOT happy about being pushed in the baby swing.

I guess I fear that our playground days may be winding down in the next year or two. I'm trying to capture the moments.  Already, Alice preferred to sit next to me on the bench and read for a bit rather than playing.

looooove

Here's a card Simon made for me, somewhat randomly, but maybe because he heard rumors of Mother's Day being on the horizon.

Kids at dinner

Because someday we may be nostalgic for these days, here's a video of the kids at supper. Alice is bonkers.

Sherjery

I have no idea what prompted this, but this morning Simon gave me this note and a little present (a pen contained in stapled-together paper).  The note says, "Mom, I am sorry that you needed to have surgery."

Giant Dragon Drawing

Alice made this on a very large piece of paper. They're dragons from the movie How to Train Your Dragon.

River Work

Meanwhile, Zac kindly took on full parenting duties all weekend. While I was out gallivanting around spending all our money on fancy foods, he and the kids had a blast mucking about in rivers and creeks.

From the creek, they brought home some clay and Alice made it into a little pot in the workshop she set up on our front porch.

Later, while I was unpacking and catching up on laundry, Zac took them fishing down at the pond, but a sudden rain hit and they had to take shelter in the tunnel.

A Weekend Without Kids

My good friend Laura had finally nearly weaned her second child and was in desperate need of a break.  We'd been fantasizing for years about having a weekend escape from our parenting duties at some point, and this week she finally pulled the trigger.  We cobbled together a local weekend getaway at the last minute--she would fly here and we'd have a weekend of visiting and fine dining sans children.  I really enjoy spending time with Laura and we always have great conversation (although her obsession with fine dining is a bit of a strain on my frugal self).

So Friday afternoon I left work a bit early and picked her up at the airport.  We went to the art museum to walk around a bit and enjoy dinner in their restaurant. It was amazing to just hang out and have uninterrupted conversations and not have to worry about anybody but ourselves.  It's hard to believe we once lived entire years like this.

After dinner, we walked around outside the museum a bit more, but it started to rain, so we rushed back to the vehicle.  Then I took us to Milk Lab near my house to try their fancy ice cream.  It was an interesting experience, but the taste wasn't awesome. I'm glad I finally went there so at least now I know.

Laura spent the night in our basement guest room and after years of having kids waking her up at night, she couldn't believe how well she slept.  After breakfast with Zac and the kids, we headed out for a day of luxury.

We started with a little walk at Duke Gardens, although most of the time we just sat on a shady bench with a lovely view of the gardens and visited.

Then we went for afternoon tea (which apparently is a thing that exists) at the Duke Inn. It was fantastic.

Then, after all that eating, we headed down to The Fearrington House Restaurant in Chapel Hill for a super fancy dinner (for which I was atrociously underdressed). Laura wanted to do the tasting menu, so off we went, through many courses of weird food.  It was fun, but never something I'd do on my own.

Then, to enjoy peak luxury (really Laura's idea not mine since I hate spending money) we stayed at the Umstead Hotel and Spa that night. The best part was that before bed we ordered breakfast room-service.  Laura wanted it for the ridiculous time of 7am, but I was at least able to talk her down to 7:30am.

Sure enough, we were still both fast asleep at 7:30am (Laura forgot about the fact that there would be no kids to wake her up) when there was a knock on the door and a guy brought in a table (!) and set up our breakfast on it. It was the height of luxury to have someone fix us breakfast and we didn't have to plan it or clean up or anything. Then we just lazed about in the hotel room the rest of the morning, then went to the hotel restaurant for lunch, before I had to drop Laura off at the airport.  What a fun weekend...a taste of the life and freedom we'd given up because for some reason we thought it was a good idea to have children.

The Mouse that was a Rabbit

Due to having our deck rebuilt, we've had the grill sitting in the corner of our dining room all week. After supper today, Alice went to put her shoes on or something and noticed an animal under it.  I pulled the grill aside to reveal this deceased adolescent bunny. Simon said, "Yeah, mom, that's the mouse I saw yesterday that I was telling you about!"  I just looked at him.  "Simon, you said a mouse. This is a rabbit!  You saw it hopping around the house? And thought it was a mouse?  It's huge!"  Simon didn't think further explanation was necessary. It's true that it's not unusual for the cat to bring in creatures and let them loose in the house, so we don't really bat an eye when we see a rodent dart out from under the fridge or scurry across the study. But a mid-sized rabbit?  And to not realize that this is definitely not a mouse?  I worry about that boy sometimes.

I quickly wrapped it in a plastic bag and disposed of it.  Alice was surprised to realize it was gone already.  "Mom, what did you do with the rabbit?"  I told her I threw it away.  She seemed disappointed, and when I asked why, she explained, "I was thinking we could maybe cut it in half? And take it's bones out?"

My children.

Durham Day

On May 1st, there was another teacher march in downtown Raleigh. My school was closed for the day, as was the kids'.  So instead of trying to manage taking them to the march (nightmare) I took them to Durham for the day.

Since the weather was finally warm enough, I let them go into the misting part, which they hadn't been in since last summer.  It's funny how I can notice these little moments where the kids are getting older. They no longer ran around in the mist in an ecstasy the whole time.  They played in it a little, then busied themselves trying to build things out of sticks, or play hiding or chasing games with other kids there.