Mother’s Day Overboard

My daughter has been planning for today for a full week.   She wanted to make sure it was a special day—and she succeeded.  She enlisted the help of her braillest,  Ms. B., and her father and for a full week, I wasn't allowed into the craft room while things were prepared.   This morning I was told to stay in bed, to not do anything—particularly opening my eyes.   She was doing something in the room and I wasn't supposed to be looking.   I was told to not look, but also to not fall asleep.

At 8:26 (four minutes before 8:30) she and her father went off to begin preparations.   The preparations were mostly dad making breakfast of pancakes (in the shape of M O M) and bacon, a meal I love, regardless of the shape of the pancakes.

My daughter brought me a strip of paper with some braille on it.   She had made me a treasure hunt with each strip of paper telling me where to go and look for the next piece of paper—or present.   After several strips of paper, I'd traveled over two floors and had found a bouquet of paper flowers, a container of licorice in a glass jar conveniently hidden in the dog's cage beside the bed and a message with about as much dimensional elements as could be held by one sheet of orange (my favorite color) construction paper.



My son had helped her with the 'GIRLS RULE' message, she said.  I continued on to find a purse she had made out of more orange paper, decorated with stickers and a braided handle she'd worked on with Ms. B.  Inside was another type of licorice.   I'd been hearing about dad going to, "get lamps" all week.  Apparently 'lamps' was code for licorice, another of my favorites.



One of the places I had to look was behind the sofa in the living room.   She ran behind it for me and pulled out from underneath a huge maze made out of straws.   There are all kinds of 'traps' in the maze, she told me, as well as multiple things that were treasures.   See if you can find your way from the top left to the bottom right, final treasure.   She and I are going to do the maze with a woolen ball later to see if we can make it all the way safely in one go.



Second to last was a bracelet she made not once, but twice as the elastic broke on her and she had to start over.  here it is on the sheets of braille paper with her instructions as to where to look next in my Mother's Day treasure hunt:



The last treasure, and the one I forgot to get a picture of was a booklet, including tactile pictures she drew with her Draftsman, with all the things I love and lots of messages from her hoping I would have a happy Mother's Day and telling me how I was the best mother in the world to her.   I don't know that any mother could have been more proud than I was of my little girl this morning.

The Big Boy Update:  My son made me a card, but he was upset he didn't have as much for me so he told me in his note he hoped I liked all the things his sister had made for me.   I hugged him and told him his card meant just as much to me.   He hugged me (a rarity at this age) and then ran off to bike with friends (at a distance, of course.)

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter decided later in the day that she a) hated me and b) wished she'd never made me any of the things she did because we had to look at a spot on her inner thigh that looked like it could be another abscess brewing.   After we were done looking (which is hard to do when your strong eight-year-old is fighting you even getting a glimpse of the location that turned out to be okay) she decided she still liked her father and me.   It was touch and go for a few minutes though