I have arrived.....ALMOST

The day I have been awaiting for over five years finally arrived.  I packed up lunch, water toys, a picnic blanket, A BOOK, and we headed to the splash park.  We hiked up the hill, found a spot in the shade, and ate our lunch.  Of course, a bathroom break was needed within the first fifteen minutes, but then all three boys settled into playing.  They stayed in the designated play area.  They didn’t cry because the water sprayed them.  They didn’t pick a fight with other kids.  They just played.  And, for the first time ever, I pulled the book out of my bag, lounged on the picnic blanket and read.  Hallelujah!  Each page turn was a strut down the runway of motherhood.  I have arrived!

Okay, that might be overstating it just a bit.  Since my arrival yesterday to the gym’s childcare center found one of my boys sitting in timeout.  When I inquired about his offense, a very sweet college-aged girl explained that he had “gone to the bathroom” outside on the turf.  I definitely consider this an offense, but one I could understand.  Then she continued to explain he had “gone to the bathroom” on the play house that was out on the turf.  My head immediately turned into a pressure cooker, which must have been apparent because she apologetically explained that the house was all taken apart in a pile, and if she was three she would probably feel like that was a good place to go!  I should have gotten her number then and there and made her our prime babysitter!  But instead I apologized, and shuffled one shamed, crying boy and his two brothers out before they made me sign an incident report.  

Yesterday was not a shining, strut-your-stuff kind of motherhood day.  But today?  Today I will strut, enjoy my book, and pray that there are more book-reading-at-the-park days than pee’d-on-the-gym-playhouse days in my future.  Please God!  Please God!  Please God!  Let there be more reading and less peeing.  Amen.