My husband and best friend’s husband have been out of town skiing this week. They’ve had a good time I think with only one torn ACL (one of the other people on the trip, who thankfully is doing well). They’re on the way home tonight with only three delays to their trip, but at this point it looks like they will make it tonight.
My best friend and I decided to spend the afternoon together. She has four children and I have two which means we hovered somewhere between chaos and calamity for most of the afternoon. After a point I started handing out iPads so she and I could have a chance to talk.
When we realized it was about dinner time we decided neither of us wanted to deal with a meal at home so into two cars we piled, driving off in the rain to eat pizza and have no dishes to clean up afterwards. There were complaints (who complains about pizza?) but we held firm. I lost my temper once in the car because I was full up on whining for the day. And after a false start to a restaurant that was overly busy and clearly wasn’t interested in boisterous children in their refined establishment, we made it to our local pizza-by-the-slice restaurant and all settled down to an enjoyable meal.
Did you catch the sarcasm in that last sentence? There was absolutely, positively no “settling down” on the part of the children. The two adults weren’t settled downed because we were dealing with the running about, loud, ebullient (or petulant) children. And enjoyable? I’m not sure I’d call it as such. It was manageable, perhaps.
The napkin dispensers were the kind where you have to pull out one napkin before you can get a second napkin. I think we made seven or eight trips to get napkins because there is a lot of grease with pizza and garlic knots and there was a complete lack of napkin conservation from the children. But we managed.
I’m making it sound bad, but it wasn’t. I love my best friend’s children. They are sweet and fun and they like to tell me things and I do my best to listen, even when I have my two children vying for my attention at the same time. My salad was pilfered. It turns out we had lovers of olives, lettuce, salad dressing, banana peppers and cheese among the group—but not by the same children. Five trips were made to the trash can to throw away messes and make space on the table for the food arriving.
But it was fun. The boys are back tomorrow and everyone is looking forward to seeing their father. I’m looking forward to seeing my husband too.
The Big Boy Update: Every now and then my son chews on his shirt. He pulls the front part of the collar up and puts in his mouth. I was away for about an hour-and-a-half this afternoon, leaving my children with my best friend and her four girls. When I got back I don’t know if it was insecurity or something else, but he’d chewed his shirt soggy. He doesn’t do this often at all, but it was bad enough today that he asked me to get him a new shirt. After I got him a second one, he was fine for the rest of the day and had fun with everyone.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My mother was trying to put drops in my daughter’s eyes yesterday. She made several suggestions but my daughter was having nothing of it. She told Mimi firmly, “I have a plan” and would hear of nothing else. Mimi followed her lead and they were able to find a place to put the drops in that suited my daughter’s, “plan”.
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