Mother's Day Mayhem

Today, I really wanted to write about how wonderfully perfect my Mother's Day was. I wanted to say that it was relaxing and my child was a perfect angel and everything was beautiful. And I could say that. How would you know? But that's not what happened. My Mother's Day was much more memorable! This Mother's Day will always be remembered as the one with nudity at church!

After the perfect Friday morning Mommy-and-Me breakfast at Little Dude's school, I had high expectations for the rest of the weekend. Apparently, I should never set expectations any taller than my child.

To start, let me give you a brief review of the weekend. When I picked up my little angel from school on Friday, he threw a massive tantrum. He didn't want to leave and screamed all the way down the hall. Once outside, he proceeded to have a 30-minute meltdown while doing everything physically possible to keep from getting into the car. Precious Hubby called to find out what was taking so long, and after hearing the commotion, was ready to come to my rescue. But somehow I managed to reform the wild creature before me into a humanlike being and strap him into the carseat. Luckily, the rest of the evening was much better, although my self-confidence as a mother was completely shot.

Saturday, we went to the zoo where I picked up a sunburn. Ouch! And later at home I felt uggy because I didn't drink enough water. (I wanted to make sure my kid had enough to drink, so I just sipped.) Then Hubby sent me to the store to buy something to grill at a BYOM BBQ that night. But Hubby didn't like what I picked out so I made sandwiches before we loaded up our grill to take to the BBQ. (Yes, we grilled for everyone else.) Back at home, I helped Hubby move the grill back into the backyard and somehow managed to filled my wrist with a hundred tiny splinters. My son watched me tweeze out most of the splinters and then he kissed it to make it feel better. After the boys went to bed, I stayed up to do some laundry and clean before my mother-in-law came over the next day.

So Sunday morning, I woke up sunburned, sore, splintered, and tired. But it was Mother's Day and I was looking forward to it.

The day started well. Hubby made waffles for our son and eggs and toast for me. Nice! I opened my cards (Little Dude personally picked out the one he gave me) and the little guy gave me a great big hug! We all got ready for church and headed out as one big happy family.

On the way to church, Hubby stopped to get us all drinks. Red Bull for him, orange juice for me, and apple juice for Little Dude. Just before we got to church, Little Dude wanted a drink. So we opened the juice and Big Dude reached back to hand it off to Little Dude. Suddenly, I felt something wet rolling down the back of my hair and my shirt. Big Dude had unfortunately hit the ceiling with the bottle of juice spilling some on me and my seat.

Did I mention that I had to sing a special in church and had to stand up in front of everyone?

OK. The juice wasn't really too big of a deal. After all, it was the back of my hair, and most people wouldn't really notice. After band practice, I brushed out the crunchy parts and everything looked fine. Plus, who doesn't enjoy smelling like apples?

So I headed off to Bible study where I found my guys. Hubby greeted me with, "Since it's Mother's Day, you can take him [Little Dude] to class. And make sure he goes to the bathroom." No problem. I headed off with Little Dude and we stopped at the toddler bathroom, which is a small lavatory just a few feet outside our Bible study door.

Here's where things went haywire. I was standing in the bathroom with my son who had his pants around his ankles and was pitching a fit. He didn't want to pee. And he didn't want to pull up his pants. He didn't want to calm down. He didn't want me to pull up his pants for him. I tried every trick I could think of. Then I started thinking that my husband must have set me up. Seriously! When he said, "Make sure he goes to the bathroom," I thought that meant Little Dude hadn't peed yet and needed to. But I realized that was not going to happen.

The screaming started to get louder and I was losing patience. Actually I'm pretty sure I lost my patience earlier that weekend. I told Little Dude to stay in the bathroom while I marched back up to my dear precious Hubby and said, "It's Mother's Day. YOU deal with him!" Clearly, he didn't hear me.

So I grabbed all my stuff (I wasn't going to stay in class) and headed back to the toddler bathroom. As I turned, I saw that my son had waddled into class crying. He still had his pants around his ankles and was naked from the waist down. (My husband later told me, "I was pretty embarrassed to see my son's pen** in the middle of Sunday school.")

I didn't even turn to see if anyone saw. I just grabbed his arm, pulled him into the bathroom and tried to get him to calm down and pull up his pants. When Big Dude knocked on the door, I let him in and I walked out.

I needed to calm down, so I went to the car for a quick pity party. Deep breath. 1...2...3...4...5... That was when I realized how much I missed my mom. A few months ago, she moved to the other side of the country. Having her three time zones away was really hard to get used to. We sang in a gospel vocal group together for the last several years and usually had plenty of events to sing at around Mother's Day. But this year, I was pretty lonely without her. So after crying on the phone to her, I sucked up just enough dignity to be able to go back inside... where I proceeded to spill my orange juice down the front of my hair and shirt.

Eau de apples and oranges. Who doesn't want to smell like fruit salad?

After cleaning myself off, wiping my tears away, and having heartfelt chats with a couple friends, I realized that it's ok to miss my mom. And it's ok to have a bad day now and then... even if that day is on Mother's Day.

The day went on. I survived. My in-laws came over after church and we had a good time. And that night I received a totally awesome Mother's Day gift from my son. He once again become my sweet angel as he held my head between his little hands and said, "I want to give you kisses everywhere." He then gave me dozens of kisses all over my face and hands.

"I love you, Mom."

"I love you, too, Sweetie."