Mother's Day starts at midnight

As is normally the case when you have a three-year-old and a nine-year-old in the house, you're always going through a transition of some sort. In our case, Blake is transitioning from a daily afternoon nap to no nap at all. Mention this to any parent of a kid who's no longer napping, and you automatically get a look of sympathy. It's also a short-form excuse of sorts when we're out in the afternoons now and he has some sort of meltdown in a store. I just have to look slightly apologetic as I throw him under my arm and say, "He's not napping anymore."

So, this transition means that my normal afternoon nap on the weekends has been severely curtailed. Yesterday, I told George that all I wanted for Mother's Day was a nap. I should have kept my big mouth shut. Add to this the message I left on our friends' answering machine telling them we'd have Faith's birthday party on Monday night so we could have a peaceful day of doing nothing on Sunday. How could I have cursed myself so?

Yes, this year Mother's Day began at midnight when Blake woke up crying and struggling with his breathing. Croup. A fairly bad attack of it for him actually. George took him right out to the porch wrapped in a blanket and the cold night air helped straighten out his breathing almost immediately. (Thank you cold snap!) I'm not sure why it works, but I'm glad it does. Then, it was a call to TeleHealth (thank you Mike Harris...did I just type that?) to get a second opinion. Yes, we were doing the right things, and were to visit a doctor within 24 hours.

Blake spent the night in our room, in case of another attack, so I spent the night listening to his wheezing and George's snoring - a symphony to be sure. And, when 7:00 rolled around, who jumped out of bed completely refreshed and declared, "I'm all better now!" I can tell you it wasn't George and I.

But, as it was Mother's Day, the kids and George headed downstairs, and Faith brought me a bagel and juice in bed. I even got to read a little bit. Quite heavenly actually. The kids had made me cards and Faith created a paper-mache bowl, while Blake gave me a sparkly-painted tulip. George got me a card and my favourite chocolates, which promptly went into the new bowl to be shared.

Then we got back to real life. I took Blake to the on-call doctor, who told me he was fine now, and gave him a puffer for his next croup attack. Then, on to the grocery store/pharmacy to pick up said puffer, where all the other mom's were also out doing their shopping today.

Finally, back at the ranch, I headed up to bed for my now completely non-optional, I'm-going-to-fall-flat-on-my-face-I'm-so-tired nap. Blake crawled into bed with me and we both blacked out for an hour until Faith nudged me awake to make her birthday cake for tomorrow.

Yes, just another day of motherhood.

Now, here's to my two best mother's day presents....