A Day Redeemed

The day started out OK with pancakes and bacon, but it was downhill after that. Neither hubby or I wanted to do dishes, so we left them on the table. Then we retreated into the books we were reading and ignored the kids.

After they ransacked the bedroom and made a fort out of clothing in the bathroom and showed up naked in the living room, we realized that we couldn’t take a break from being parents, even for a day. So we started making snarky comments at each other and insinuating that the other parent  was the one being a deadbeat. Then I started stomping around the house (pretending to clean things up) huffing and puffing and slamming things. Then the kids decided they all needed attention at the same time, and when they all started to cry at once, that was when we gave up. Fighting was stupid and certainly not productive. And whether we felt like it or not, the kids needed us.

So we had a tea party.

It’s actually not that much work to have a tea party. All you have to do is have a teapot small enough for your kids to lift, and lots of food cut up into tiny bits. It doesn’t even matter what kind of food, it can be anything, as long as it is cut up small. So I got out the teapot.

And I cut up strawberries and bananas, and put out some cheese puffs and a pancake with jelly cut into little squares, and bread and butter with ham and cheese cut into tiny squares with a dab of ketchup on each one. And mini colored marshmallows for dessert.

And then we got dresses and lip balm on and made paper crowns and poured tea and milk into our teacups and added lots of sugar. Life doesn’t seem like such a drag when you have a tea party.

After that, Hubby took the girls to the park, while the baby and I took a nap. Then we harvested the carrots and beets out of the garden and we were all set for a quiet dinner at home, when Ms Drama stepped on my glasses. Since they looked pretty mangled and the store was closing in an hour, we ran to the mall right away to get them repaired. And since we were out, and it was dinner time, and we were starving, we went to our favorite Chinese buffet.

And that would have been the end of our day, except in the parking lot there were a bunch of local bands belting out their latest songs and the girls started dancing. Ms Action’s shirt was covered in sauce and Ms Drama was wearing Khakis under her green sundress and a too small fuzzy purple sweater on top. Ms Pooky danced like a little maniac and wore holes in the toes of her sleeper. And they were adorable. I enjoyed my first ever concert, and never worried that the beat might be satanic or that the bikers watching the show would be bad people for my children to see.

It was a refreshing day. A great day. I’m so glad we decided to redeem it.