Mothers' Day and Week Two

This was my first Mothers’ Day and it was important for me to acknowledge it…but not necessarily for the reasons you’d think. When I was a child, my parents didn’t put a lot of emphasis on things like Valentine’s Day, Mothers’/Fathers’ Day, etc. We celebrated the major holidays and left the “hallmark” holidays alone. But I realized that these days were still important to my parents, or at least important to my mother. It’s just that I didn’t realize how important until I was old enough to pay attention to my intuition. As children, my brother and I depended heavily on our parents to remind us that a birthday or holiday was coming up and guide us into doing something “special”. My father never did this, so we never really did anything for my mom for either Mothers’ Day or her birthday. As an adult, this makes me sad. And while my mom was a little better at encouraging us to do things for our father, those days were still relatively unremarkable.

That being said, I never really cared about these holidays either. In my world, parents acknowledged kids’ birthday, but their own birthdays just went by the wayside. Today, it’s very difficult for me to plan ahead for birthdays and “hallmark” holidays because I wasn’t raised having to worry about them. Yet, I see people who remember and plan small, yet special gifts/events and I wish I were more like them. I try hard, but I still lack the forethought and often end up either scrambling to put something together at the last minute or forgetting all together. As a severely “Type A” personality, I don’t deal well with that kind of stress. I don’t want Kaelyn to be like me. I want her to be sensitive to what’s important to other people and I feel like Roger and I need to practice teaching her that now. So, I wanted Mothers’ Day to be acknowledged, not so much for me, but for her (although the me part was also nice). If Roger and I get in the habit of acknowledging these days, then Kaelyn will grow up to acknowledge them as well. It should be intuitive for her, what is so difficult for me.

Anyway…

Our weekend was really nice. Friday night, we met some friends, (friends we haven’t’ seen in a while) and spent the evening eating good food, drinking good wine, and laughing. We didn’t get home until after midnight and Roger had a contracting licensing class on Saturday. So poor him, for once, got up with me early in the morning. Since Roger was in class, Kaelyn and I spent the day shopping for a graduation gift for our friend’s daughter, whose graduation party we were attending that night. The late night, though, really wore on both of us and, cranky, we went home as soon as we could and took long naps. We woke up just before Roger got home from class. He was also exhausted, but unfortunately, we needed to get to our friend’s graduation party and didn’t have time to rest. Although Kaelyn was well behaved and did sleep at the party, we still came home late and exhausted. Needless to say, it didn’t take long for any of us to settle down and fall asleep for the night.

Sunday was Mothers’ Day and I woke up around 4:30 in the morning to discover that Roger was not in bed. I heard him rustling around in the house and contemplated getting up to see what he was doing. Luckily, I fell asleep again because I woke up the second time to find a pot of my favorite flowers, lilies, and a cute card from Kaelyn on my nightstand. I’m happy I didn’t ruin that surprise for him. We went out to my favorite restaurant for breakfast and then spent the afternoon playing with Kaelyn and cooking dinner and some other meals for the week.

I mentioned last week that the thing I enjoy the most about our “diet” is that we spend time cooking together. Because we are both so busy and want to make sure that we have good food to eat throughout the week, Sunday’s have turned into cooking days. We come up with menus together and then get creative in what we make. Last night Roger grilled some more chicken breasts (we use them as a base for other meals throughout the week) and a brisket…which incidentally kept him up for another long night. I concentrated on our immediate dinner which consisted of a lemony basil Orange Roughy, sweet peppers, and brown rice. As a treat, I made some stuffed mushrooms using left over chicken breast from earlier in the weekend. This week was more challenging for both of us as far as our eating. I took two day trips to Reno, which meant that I ate lunch out twice. Couple that with a dinner/wine event with friends, a graduation party, and a Mothers’ Day breakfast, and it’s a wonder we didn’t gain weight! I did, however, manage to lose another pound and a half and while nowhere near the progress I made last week, I’m still doing really well, so I’ll take it!