Working on Mom of the Year...

For 2013. 

2012 is already blown.  I met up with one of my college friends at a park yesterday with the kids.  While the kids played, we chatted it up.  I admit I wasn't paying as much attention as I should.  Brynn did a belly flop off a 5 foot platform, but fortunately landed pretty softly on the mulch and wasn't hurt.  I did have to get the "look" from the disapproving grandmother who watched it happen though.  Whatever...she was fine.  Mom of the Year..

But later (again while chatting it up), Brynn apparently rolled down a set of stairs.  Or at least that's what Ethan said happened.  She was covered in mulch, so appeared that she actually did do quite a bit of rolling.  And her face was scratched right by her eye.  And she was crying.  But she got over it.  Went home and she took a nap and then woke up with a swollen eye that was a little but black and blue.  Later we broke in Braden's new fire pit.  While getting it going, Brynn decided to walk on the seating wall like a balance beam, and of course Clumsy fell off and scratched her face.  That time I watched her fall and yet still couldn't prevent it from happening.  Mom of the Year.

In an effort to salvage 2012, I took Brynn and Ethan to school today so I could spend the day with just one of the 3 kids.  On the way, I put in Peter Pan in the DVD player.  Before it started, there was a preview for Tinkerbell.  These days Blythe asks me 1 million questions a day and most end with "...right, Mom?".   So of course my response to her question, "Fairies aren't real are they?  Right Mom?  Are fairies real?" was "Mmm..Hmmm...No".  She asked for further clarification so I said I didn't think they were real because I had never seen one. 

She said, "Well, what about the tooth fairy?".  Crap.  Forgot about the tooth fairy.  Then Blythe said, "Maybe the tooth fairy is real.  Or maybe it's just people's moms and dads".  What the crud?  We haven't lost a single tooth in this house and already we're shooting down the tooth fairy?  Geez, can't we at least make it through a few teeth?  So of course I told her the tooth fairy was indeed real.  I hadn't seen my tooth fairy, but I wrote letters to my tooth fairy when I was a kid.  And she wrote me back and told me her name was Penny.  That seemed to suffice as believable.  At  least for now.  Mom of the Year.

I think I did salvage at least the day though.  Blythe and I had a great day.  We started at home by making a chore chart so she can start getting a weekly allowance.  We'll see how that goes, but for today it was great.  Then we took some of her birthday party invitations to mailboxes of her friends.  Then we went to a pottery painting place and spent a couple of hours painting pottery.  She painted a mug that turned out um...nice.  I painted a dog jewely box for Brynn.  Guess we'll see how they look in a week or so.  Next we went to Chick-fil-a for lunch.  Then went to the mall and hit up H&M.  This was Blythe's first experience at a trendy store and I think I am completely out of touch.  We looked at kids clothes only.  Found lots of cute things, but I swear H&M isn't as cheap as it used to be.  Blythe found a dress and some shoes she loved and I found a Lighting McQueen shirt on clearance for Ethan.  Although I could tell the dress would fit just by holding it up, Blythe wanted to try it on.  Her first experience in a fitting room.  She was so grown up today.  Makes me feel like she'll be sixteen before I know it.  But anyway, we had a great day.