Avocados and What Matters Most

It ended with throw-up. Ok, apparently I like a dramatic first line. My stock line is, "it started with poop," which today it did, mind you. But I'm talking about three nights ago, so I'll back up to the beginning, which is the imperfect part. We had visitors this past week, who, thankfully, are like family, so there's no pressure. Mas is in love with the two boys (at times hugging them while gazing at them and repeating their names over and over), who are 3 and 6 years old. There was a whole troupe of us going to the awesome community center pool--which has a waterslide fit for both adults and kids, a current channel, a vortex, and a wading pool. It seemed I had planned a really fun activity for my boy.

We were to be four adults, three kids, and one baby. But I was alone in the morning. My challenge is always getting out the door. I may have mentioned before that I would have a dozen kids (not really) if I could remove poop/toileting and getting ready from the equation. It took me an hour and a half to get ready. 30 minutes of that were mediocre, 30 minutes of that were great (child happily reading books to himself), and 30 minutes were awful (avocado on the walls). So there I am absolutely losing it, again finding myself yelling: "and I planned this for you and I'm sick and don't even want to go and you don't even care and . . .."

Well of course he doesn't care! He's two! I can't figure out why I don't get that yet. Darn you, thick skull!

I knew it would be fine once we got there, and it was. He had SO much fun, as did I. Shaifali fell asleep in the loving arms of her Amber, riding around in the current channel. Mas went down each slide once and declined to go again, instead giggling and laughing as he explored the other areas. He was just plain adorable and joyful. I wish I had pictures of them--Shaifali in her orange and white striped, size 12 months (she's now two months old) bathing suit, and Mas in his orange surf shirt and swimming trunks with sharks. Water and cameras don't tend to mix well. It really was lovely.

Fast forward to the evening when we had a lot of people over for the last dinner with our friends. We had 15 people here, including babies, and Mas had about four helpings of homemade tacos and apparently the equivalent of 1.5-2 mangoes (pictured left). This kid always eats a lot and can pack down some serious fruit with no consequences. Usually. The mangoes didn't take. At 1:00 am, we peeked at him (as we often do), and he was all snuggled at the edge of his bed, butt in air. I moved him up to the top. Two minutes later there was screaming and crying. The mangoes made a return visit . . . an extremely unwelcome return visit. Poor guy threw up twice, the second time directly on me while I rocked him.

I comforted him and read to him and sang to him and bathed him and gave him tons of love. The smeared avocado was forgotten, as was my yelling at him about it. I was there for him when he needed me, and that's where I am still--and will always be--a Supermom.

Author's note: I, at least for the time being, seem to have learned something. Some years from now, I won't care about smeared avocado; if we have to retouch paint to sell the house, that will be ok. It won't matter that it took 20 minutes to leave the house all the time; someday, our kids will run out the door with their friends in .20 seconds. I'll forget about the screaming; our parents seem to have. What matters is that we have relationships with our kids where they remember: how often we told them we love them more than they remember how often we yelled at them, how many times we hugged them more than how many times we ran away to our rooms to hide, how we supported them through thick and thin, how we did our best to make them happy, how we tried to give them the best of us even if they sometimes got the worst. With this in mind, I was able to have patience until 4:00 pm today! That's a Monday record!