Ok, so it’s not my first mother’s day. Last year was. And, really, the year before that I was technically a mom too. But it feels like the first time all over again because now I’m the mom of a toddler and it’s completely different than a newborn.
We started off the weekend with daddy letting me leave the little one and go garage sale-ing. While I didn’t manage to get any of the items I really wanted, like a chair for my craft desk or a plastic slide for the little one, but I did find some cute name brand pants in multiple colors for $1 each, a couple of things for Avie, Candy Land and some shoes!
Then, Avie gave me her first “present”… I was working at the dining room table, Ansen making dinner in the kitchen and Avie was playing on the floor. She starts screaming. I look over and she has a HUGE spider hanging off the end of her pointer finger! Now, the rational thing is to calmly approach the child, assure her that everything is ok, remove the offending spider, kill it with fire and then kill it again, and then comfort the child and assess the damage. Instead, I, of course, scream incoherently (Ansen later told me that by the way I was screaming, he thought something was through Avie’s skull), toss the spider, then frantically search for it to find out what kind it was, then realizing Avie is still standing there screaming, I grab her up and hug her. All the while, Ansen is telling me to calm down and tell him what on earth happened.
Finally, not screaming, we assess the two little bite marks on Avie’s finger. They’re bleeding, so I try to squeeze out a bit more, just in case there’s venom, still not knowing what kind of spider it was. On the way to find a kleenex, I found the spider (barely alive), we capture it in a jar and proceed to take care of Avie. It turns out it’s a common wolf spider, or grass spider, which are very similar and both native to our area, neither poisonous. I won’t share a picture, because I wouldn’t want to see it either. A little ice, a little tylenol and Avie was good as new.
So, back to Mother’s day weekend… This afternoon, Ansen “gifted” me with the opportunity to take a nap. Then we decided to go to the park, then get some dinner to bring home. Unfortunately, as we headed out to the car, it started raining. So, instead we drove around, admiring the part of town I’d love to live in. The rain did let up and Avie got to play and slide down the wet slide a few times. She loves slides! Then she gave me another present… an all-out screaming fit, refusing to be put in the car seat. Not once, but twice. After the park and then after we gave her delicious frozen yogurt at Cherry Berry. Silly girl.
And then we had some pizza and Skyped with some grandmas. I thought Avie might give me one last gift (a good one this time) and let me rock her to sleep, because she was so tired… but she just can’t sleep anywhere but her bed. Not a bad thing I guess. I did have some fun quality time with her before she went to sleep though. I sure love being her momma, even though she played with a spider and through a tantrum to avoid her carseat. She’s still pretty cute and I love her.