If You Give A Mama A Trip To Target...

I can remember a Mother's Day from when I was younger, probably eleven or twelve, where my dad took my sister and I to a Detroit Tigers baseball game, leaving my mom alone. At the time, I can remember thinking how sad she must have been, that her whole family was abandoning her on the most special of all days and how she must have spent the afternoon waiting by the window for us to return.

And then I became a mom myself, and I imagine now that the second our car rolled out of the driveway she was doing a little happy dance in the living room. It was probably the best damn Mother's Day she'd had in the history of ever.

On Friday, my in-laws came and scooped up Anna for a day of Costco shopping and visiting relatives in Grand Rapids. All week, I had been planning in my head what I was going to do with my temporary freedom, and it mostly involved a Starbucks run and a glorious, peaceful, toddler-free trip to Target where I meandered through the aisles and stocked up on Easter basket goodies. The only bad thing? The part where I had to pay for all the fun stuff I had blissfully thrown in my cart.

As if the day couldn't get better, my Target adventure was followed by a sushi lunch date with Mike. We sat at the bar, conversed like real grown-ups, and didn't have to stop our conversation twenty times to pick food up off the floor or flag the waitress over to bring us some more milk or more napkins. It was glorious.

And I swear to you, the rest of the weekend played out like that children's book, "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie", because it seems those few precious hours of Anna-free time were just what I needed. I finally cleaned and organized the toys that were threatening to take over our living room. I swept and mopped every floor in our house. I washed windows. Heck, I even painted my toenails. The next morning, I cleaned and vacuumed out my car. I was on fire, and all it had taken was a soy latte, that red bullseye, and some wasabi.

Sometimes, as a stay-at-home-mom, I don't feel entitled to take days off. It's so hard to remember that even though I'm not on a payroll or punching a clock, I so need those mental health days to decompress and drink coffee alone and try on twenty things without a two-year-old trying to escape the dressing room.

All my cleaning and toe-nail polishing was followed up with a visit to meet my dear friend's baby and a trip to my parents' house to celebrate Easter. We ate cheesy potatoes, eggs benedict, and lots of chocolate, and finished the day with an egg hunt out in the yard.

This is what the mullet looks like first thing in the morning.

"No pictures!"

Ready to hunt.

My Aunt Janet is the master of the egg hunt.

I hope everyone's weekend was as awesome as ours, even if you didn't get to go to Target.

This afternoon, we embark on a trip down to Florida - Mike is fishing with his brother, and Anna, my mom and I are heading down to visit my sister. I'm looking forward to the beach and the sun. And maybe even giving my mom an afternoon or two off so she can go to Target!

Happy Tuesday!

You Can't Have 'No' In Your Heart

There's a running joke around our house that Anna has, by leaps and bounds, the coolest hair of anyone in the family.

And when I say coolest, I mean "looks the most like Joe Dirt".

Leading up to her birth, I was convinced my baby would enter the world with a head full of long, flowing locks. Heartburn doesn't lie, does it? And according to all the old wives' tales, constantly reaching for the Tums during pregnancy means  your kid will pop out ready to be the next Pantene model. Well, it turns out all the old wives are full of it, because Anna had barely a fuzz covering her noggin - a fuzz that stayed put well beyond her first birthday.

Finally, though, her hair did begin to grow.

Except. Well, except for one small problem. Her hair is growing, yes. But it is only growing in the back.

People, my child has a mullet. She is business in the front and party in the back. She could get through a security checkpoint into Canada without a problem or a passport of the paper kind . I'm pretty sure any hockey team would give her a spot on their roster simply by looking at her. It's hard core.

On a good day, she resembles Florence Henderson in her Brady Bunch days.

On a bad day? Well, let's just say that she would fit right in with Billy Ray and his achy, breaky heart.

If you are ever feeling sad, I urge you to use Google Images to look up "mullet". You will be giggling the rest of the day.

She was born in the South, after all. Maybe this is her way of telling us she wants to be a country music singer when she grows up.  

Just to clarify, The Band Perry (pictured on the right) is a current band. This picture is from the last year, meaning those dudes cut their hair like that on purpose. Maybe Anna is a trendsetter?

Sure, we could cut it. But then how in the world will we torture her with pictures when she's a teenager?

We've tried putting in cute little barrettes or headbands to distract people from what's really going on - usually involving bribery in the form of gummy bears - but they never seem to last longer than an hour or two. I have to say, despite the fact that she is still mistaken for a boy (with a really bad haircut) on almost a daily basis, the idea that my daughter could easily be an extra in a White Snake video makes me smile.

If that's not love, I don't know what is.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to enroll Anna in guitar lessons and buy her some cowboy boots. And maybe add a little hair-growing serum to her milk while I'm at it...