It's been a bit of an eventful week. I've been doing fairly well continuing with my Photo a Day challenge. There's only one day that I missed, and that was Tuesday, with the theme "imperfect". Seems kinda appropriate to me.
Anyhow, there are two interesting parts to the last 10 days or so. One great, one not-so-great.
We'll start with the ugh one first, since it happened first anyhow. I finally lost my cool at soccer. Last Saturday was picture day. Now, we all know Boo doesn't like to cooperate for things like this for strangers. He doesn't want to be told what to do by anyone, let alone someone he doesn't know. So, to say photos were a disaster would be pretty accurate. I managed to get him to pose for the individual one. Of course, the death glare that he's giving me will be quite precious in several years, but right now I can't see it. Getting him to actually pose with his team? Forget it. Not happening. Not in any way, shape or form. And yes, there were tears to go along with this.
Did I mention he'd already been pushing buttons all morning about not eating his breakfast (which he chose, a cheese sandwich) and just being Mr. Grumpy-pants? Yeah. Oh, I should note, we rode the bike over. I love doing this because I can get a nice little ride in on the way over and back (it's just the other side of the park) and I don't have to fight all the other cars for parking.
Well, another little boy was being bribed to play with a donut. Boo thought this was an excellent idea. He kept asking for a snack and whining about it. I made a deal with him, that I would get him a treat if he promised he'd go play with his team. Well, it started out as "take a bite, go play and you can get another bite in a little bit". That quickly dissolved into "Fine! You can have the donut, but after you're done, you have to go play. *growl*" Well, he gladly finished his donut but after insisting on going and washing his hands, refused to play.... including tears.
This is where I lost my cool.
I told him if he didn't go play, we weren't going out to lunch with Aunt Kat. Yep, more tears, and add screaming into the mix. I told him fine, we weren't going to lunch,but to at least watch. Nope, no dice, even more screaming. So, I growled "fine" and marched him over to the bike, put our helmets on and went off on a long-ish ride. (I texted Kat to let her know we weren't going to lunch...) I didn't talk to him. I didn't ask him which way we should go, I just pedaled. Eventually we went home.
Now, I didn't yell, I didn't scream and I didn't shout. I sorely wanted to, but that would only make the crying worse. I tried to calmly explain that he didn't uphold his end of the deal, so he wasn't going to get the fun of going out to lunch with Aunt Kat, Zoe, Aunt Steph, Billy and Rachel. At least, I'd like to think it was calmly. It probably wasn't. And all I could think about was that I'd become that mom. You know, the one that forces her kids to do things they don't want to do only because she wants them to and only ends up causing a scene and making everyone uncomfortable. Sure, I may be more excited right now about Boo playing soccer than he is, but he was plenty excited about it when I asked him if he wanted to play. I'm mostly over that feeling, but since I'm human, there's still lingering doubt and I wince when I think too hard about the day.
Once we got home, I then dropped off the bike and our helmets and we ran out to get Gak's Father's Day present, which was a bit more adventure. (I got him a great cookbook. No, he doesn't cook, I do. But it was the official Game of Thrones cookbook he'd been drooling over...) I told Boo we weren't staying long and that we were there to get presents for Daddy. He wasn't happy when I made him leave the train table and go home.
Getting him to nap was even more fun since he'd fallen asleep for about 3 minutes in the car on the way home. Yeah.
Thankfully the rest of the evening went much better. We went to the AT&T store and Gak swapped out his Windows phone to go back to an iPhone. We went to Target and Best Buy to look around. I got a new basket for my bike so I don't have to put everything into a backpack when I want to carry anything with me on a ride.
Father's Day was a good day. I tried out my new bike basket by going to the grocery store for a few odds and ends for breakfast. We did laundry. We went back to Best Buy. Gak really loved his new book. We also went to Kat's house for Billy's 11th birthday party. It was a good, relaxing evening. Overall a good day.
Monday was the most awesome day of the week. Boo and I got to go to the beach for the day with Amma. Unfortunately, Gak had to work all day. So, we drop him off at work early and headed down the turnpike to pick up Mom. The drive down was uneventful. The skies started out cloudy but cleared up quite nicely by the time we got to Rehoboth. We spent a very enjoyable two hours or so on the beach.
Boo had lots and lots of fun in the sand. He has a whole pile of sand toys, including some new ones from Amma and PopPop for his birthday.
The fun, and funny, part was when we convinced him to splash in the waves. (The waves were quite something on Monday, the lifeguards were keeping everyone in close.)
In the past, we'd convince him to walk down to the water, he'd take one look and turn around and run in as straight a line as possible to our blanket. Last summer we finally convinced him to join me in the waves and he loved it our last time there. Well, this time he wasn't sure he wanted to go down to the water. So, I left him and Amma there to go down. About a minute later they came down. Boo took one look at the water and ran back to the blanket. Mom and I were laughing. He comes running back with one of his buckets, takes one look at the water and runs right back to the blanket again. Mom and I are laughing even harder now. He does this one more time, but this time Amma convinces Boo to give her the bucket and hold my hand. As you can see from the pictures, he had a blast. Eventually he decided he was cold and wanted to get out. OK. After a bit more sand play, he asks if we can go back to the water. You don't have to twist my arm hard on that one! The second trip to the waves didn't last long, he was getting cold. But we still had a lot of fun.
After a bit more sand time we decide we are hungry and head back to the car to drop off the toys, we found out that I had Mom's license plate wrong and didn't actually pay for parking for her car and we got a parking ticket. Oops. We had some lunch, wandered around a bit, went to Browseabout Books where the boy-o got a new car and a new book and played with the trains for quite some time. We then had some ice cream and headed out of town. Right as we were pulling into the parking lot at the outlet I wanted to stop at, Boo's eyes flutter closed. Mom tells me to go shop, she'll stay with the boy-o. So, I went to the store I wanted to go to, found a new shirt and a new pair of pants for a total of $13. Yep, thirteen whole dollars. Usually the shirt alone is $15 or so. I was quite happy with my find.
The drive back was uneventful and Boo slept for about an hour total. We were heading back a little earlier than usual, but I still knew that if we didn't stop and grab a bite to eat before getting to Amma's, I'd be ready to chew my arm off by the time we got home. We ended up stopping at this awesome little place in Wilmington. It was called Lucky's Coffee shop. I'd missed the turn for a Panera Bread and I really didn't want fast food. I'm so glad I decided to give Lucky's a shot. I had some of the most amazing french toast, potatoes and bacon that I've had in quite some time. Boo's grilled cheese was every bit as delicious as the one he had the week before at the Silver Diner in Maryland and Mom's eggs, bacon, biscuit and potatoes looked done just right. I ended up eating that French toast two more days for breakfast.
So, those are the highlights of the last week. The only other interesting part of the week included me battling with the Girl Scout finances (I'm still not happy with the way the numbers are working, they don't seem to match what I'm expecting, but they are what they are and I'm just turning in the paperwork and being done with it!) Work's been a drag (today especially so it seems) and I just haven't been up for much outside the normal routine. Ah well, such is life.
This weekend should be a "normal" Saturday with soccer tomorrow. I'm not holding my breath, I just hope I can hold my temper. Sunday is and isn't going to be fun. I'll get to go hang out with Mom, but we're looking at burial plots. (Dad's health is in decline, no denying that. He's made it clear he doesn't want to be cremated, too many burned Jews already; so we've got to find a place to put him whenever the time comes. No, none of us expect him to be leaving any time soon, but it just makes life easier for everyone involved if something this simple is taken care of way in advance and everyone knows what is going on. Hopefully it'll be years before we need to even think any more seriously about it.)
So, on that cheery note, I will wrap this up. I guess I really should try and get something real done in the last half hour or so of work.
Peace to all and may your weeks be full and productive, your temper steady and your adventures full of fun and sunshine.
1 comment:
This parenting stuff is so hard. I often tell my husband we shibile have stuck with dogs.
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