Mary's here!

Everyone wants a bit of Mary time

Very early on Friday morning (before the rest of us even got up), Clark quietly slipped out of the house and started off on his adventure to the beautiful island of Hawaii. This left Juniper and Linden and I almost two full days to decide what to do with ourselves before the much anticipated arrival of my mother later on Saturday. I had plans - big plans.  We were going to do a bunch of fun stuff.  But, of course, just as Clark left, I got an unexpected visitor, in the form of a pretty awful cold/flu.  Oh, and I had also just gotten a tetanus booster the day before. So I woke up on Friday, almost completely unable to function.  My whole body ached. My throat was almost too sore to talk, I couldn't use my left arm at all, and my head was in danger of completely exploding. I barely felt like I could move.  And I had two very bouncy, demanding little hooligans who had a WHOLE lot of energy to burn off.  There was no way I was getting dressed, let alone rallying to leave the house.  Friday was not a good day.

I did, however, survive, and we even made it out of the house on Saturday, and then (finally), my mom pulled into the driveway around suppertime on Saturday.  Phew!  She currently has them out for an adventure at the children's museum this morning, which is a very good thing.  Though I am nowhere nearly as badly off as I was that first day, I'm still pretty unwell. Consequently, I have a very, VERY limited reservoir of patience or ability to deal with things like appropriate clothing "discussions" or hair brushing fiascos with Juniper, or constant damage control situations with Linden.  A little space (even for a couple of hours), will likely do us all some good.

I always have a host of willing helpers in the kitchen

So, now that it is Monday, this full Clark-less week has begun, and we will see how it goes.  Hopefully it will be mostly pretty fun. Last week was also out of the ordinary, as it was school break around here, which meant that Juniper had no preschool at all.  Linden, however, still did.  This meant that for the first time in as long as I can remember, Juniper and I had a "mommy-daughter" day all to ourselves.  That was pretty darn fun, actually.  We went a nice walk, ran a bunch of errands, took some games to Starbucks and played them, Juniper got to skip her nap and do some painting instead…. what more could you ask for?  

Our walk on "girls day"

We were actually supposed to have two full days to ourselves, but Thursday got derailed - I had that doctor's appointment in the morning (complete with the evil Tetanus booster), and then we had to pick Linden up early from daycare, as he had spent the entire morning crying.  Yes, folks - I spoke too soon.  Linden's first week at daycare was (as I wrote about last week) pure bliss, and then his second week ended in full-on disaster.  Linden actually told Clark as they were driving to daycare on Thursday morning that he was going to cry, and then as they were walking up to the door, he was exclaiming, "no go to school! Let's go home - I play with toys at home, and snuggle on couch with mama"!  Ummm, talk about breaking my heart.  Who knows?  Maybe he was feeling as completely crap-tastic as me (he seems to have a version of this virus as well), and he'll be feeling much more like playing at school this week.  I sure hope so - nothing like having the emotional swing of complete success followed by complete failure. 

Fancy, fancy dancers (Juniper now enforces a "fancy dress and pantyhose" rule for all dancers in her productions. Linden is more than happy to oblige.

 Alright - I'm going to shower while I have the chance, and then prepare for a talk I'm giving at the library tonight on folklore (if I still have a voice by then, that it is).  See you next week!