“Just you and me, Mommy!” are the exact words Sam said to me this week as we dropped the girls off for ballet camp. With the girls occupied with the drama of ballet camp (if you think I’m kidding about the drama, you haven’t seen our girls…or any three and six year old females. Life = drama for this subset of society), Sam and I were alone to…do whatever stay-at-home moms do all day.
For Sam and me that’s included transforming the craft room it into a nursery. And for someone who has a Y chromosome, he’s been remarkably patient with the process of sorting burp cloths into “stained with the spit-up of three children, but salvageable” and “oh, yuck! I can’t believe this spit-up soaked rag has lived in our attic for three years. Trash!”
When not sorting through piles of burp cloths (which yes, buying them brand new at Target WOULD save me some sanity, but not the trip down memory lane every time I sniff one), Sam and I did a lot errand-running and hanging out.
Hanging out, you ask. No other way to put it. Me? Gestating and trying to keep my 300-pound body off its feet. Sam? Just hanging out. Turns out he’s good at sitting on the couch and chatting.
Which is just one of the things I found out about him this week. For the first time, Ellie and Catie weren’t around, and I learned a lot about my little boy. Funny how that happens when the buffer of sisters is removed. It was kind of eerie, like the time I walked into Chick-Fil-A at noon and no other customers were in there.
Not an urban legend… it really happened. And without the buffer of seventy tables of moms sipping lemonades and fighting over nugget portioning with their kids, I learned that kids can exchange the “toy” from their meal for a free ice cream. See? A little peace and quiet and an employee took the time to teach me just one of the secrets of why Chick-Fil-A is so awesome, and why that it’s always crowded with 70 moms and their kids.
Anyway, back to Sam and what I learned about him this week…
1. He’s the dawdling culprit. You may remember I’ve been trying to understand why it takes our family an hour and a half to move from Point A to Point B, like say from the hall to the car. I suspected it was Ellie’s definite opinions on footwear or Catie’s need to go to the bathroom “one last time.”
Nope. It’s Sam. He’s so laid back. Without the shuffle of sister footwear and pottying I was able to see that he just isn’t that motivated to get to the car NOW, even when that’s what Mommy’s asked, oh, about 5,621 times.
2. Laid back is a beautiful thing. In addition to footwear and pottying, the girls have opinions about everything. Sam? Not so much. A lot of our hanging out time was me asking Sam what he wanted for lunch, if he cared which Imagination Movers episode he watched, or which songs we listened to while I sorted burp cloths.
Not a care or an opinion.
And after the drama of the girls’ recital today to conclude Ballet Camp Week, I’ll take one laid back kid.
Even though we were almost late…because he couldn’t seem to get his shoes on in time.
