My Non-Mother's Day

There's a hullabaloo right now about the contest that Teleflora is sponsoring to find "America's Favorite Mom." Seems they want our help buying a lot of flowers (oops, I mean, nominating candidates) and anyone can go on the website and nominate their favorite mom in the appropriate category. These categories include "Military Mom" and "Single Mom" and "Working Mom" and--until a very big and stinky stink was raised--the "Non-Mom." This category included "grandparent, step-mom, foster mom and adoptive mom." You know, Readers. Your basic Non-Moms.

Now, if you click on the link, you'll find that enough potential customers raised hell with Teleflora, NBC and esteemed hosts Donny and Marie (herself a Non-Mom, I believe) to warrant some hasty, sycophantic back-peddling on the contest website. As it should be. Grovel a little more, NBC and Teleflora. In fact, our dining room table has a great big open space eagerly awaiting your free gift of two dozen roses. It's really the least you can do after my mental distress. What's that you say? Oh, all right. No need to be impolite. Instead, you'll have to listen to me tell you about my day: My Day as a Non-Mom.

I woke up. I woke up because a herd of wildebeests passed by my bedroom door. Oh, that wasn't wildebeests. It was a 35 lb. three-year-old. She was already up because David (the Non-Dad) had woken up early to give her breakfast after she started screaming "DAAAAAD!"

So I got up. There was a lot to do, because we were going to a birthday party. We've gone to about 100 in the past 2 years. Strange, because before that I had never been to ONE. As a Non-Mom, I can't figure out what changed. I spent about 10 minutes getting ready and the rest of the time creating hairstyles, applying lotion, packing a ginormous bag with various containers of snacks (someone likes a full buffet when she's out and about) and lying on the floor discussing the finer points of an alphabet puzzle. This took around two hours, which is strange, because before I became a Non-Mom, I was able to get ready much faster.

Into the car, also odd, because someone in the back seat kept asking for toys, snacks, her "magic wand," etc. making it impossible to hear our movie podcast. What is UP with that? When we got to the park, we narrowly avoided a meltdown because the first birthday party we encountered had a jump-jump, and it was briefly unclear if ours would also. (Thankfully, it did. And this word--jump-jump--not even in my vocabulary two years ago! Where did it come from?)

It was a beautiful day in the park, and wonderful catching up with the other Non-Moms. Actually, just one other Non-Mom. The rest were actual Moms. (Not sure which category.) But we didn't have T-shirts or anything, so it didn't come up.

Afterwards, we went out to lunch with Mary, Paul and Joy--they are another Non-Mom-and-Dad family whom we traveled to China with. The kids who live at our respective houses really like to play together. We should probably just ask those two to get their own place, huh?

Mary and I did some shopping afterwards. You know, shoes and stuff. Just kidding. We meant to get to the shoes, but there were three baby shops at the outlet mall and for some reason we bought stuff at those instead. Now what the hell am I going to do with a strawberry-covered dress in 4T? While we shopped, the Non-Dads spent nearly two hours in a toy store. Well, whatever blows their skirt, I guess.

The afternoon ended with a double display of "parting is such sweet sorrow" histrionics. But I actually paid the kids to do that because before I was a Non-Mom, I saw other people's kids doing that and I just thought it looked so cool. Someone had missed her nap and I felt SOOOO guilty seeing her little tear-stained face that I offered her a big ol' hunk of chocolate. I don't know what came over me.

Back at home, the Non-Dad watched Finding Nemo with our little friend for the 257th time. It's his favorite movie, and I just can't seem to talk him into trying any others. Oh well--MEN. Who can figure them out? While they did that, I pounded some chicken and chopped some veggies for a chicken salad. I also hulled strawberries, because someone at our house goes ape for berries and cream. We had dinner, but first I cut a bunch of stuff into teeny-tiny pieces and put them on a Dora plate. I don't why--I get these whims.

During dinner, someone started crying and saying her bum hurt. That's what she said, Readers. Apparently, her bum hurt a lot. Dinner ended very abruptly so we could tend to the bum in question. Lots more crying. I felt inexplicably sad that the little bum hurt so much, and rushed around trying to find solutions. Why should I care? My bum felt fine. During the bath, I successfully negotiated--with the aid of a prominently-placed kitchen timer--for a full immersion of the sticky hair in exchange for 10 glorious minutes of "playing coffee" with the bath water. Somehow I've become a master of diplomacy in the past couple of years, and I have no idea how that happened.

Bed time. Lots of "ooohs" and "ahhhhs" about good dental hygiene, followed by books, and an under-the-covers story about The World's Largest Lemon Cupcake, which had to be baked in a kiddie swimming pool! I tell this same story every night (each night with a different color frosting) because somebody apparently prefers it. It is kind of cool to have someone prefer it, though, now that I think about it. It just wasn't the same when I was telling it to an empty crib.

Ahhh, a quiet house. Non-Dad and I in our pajamas, looking forward to watching a movie on the couch. We don't go out much anymore--inexplicably, it suddenly got WAY more expensive to go out to movies. And I better wrap this up, too, because something tells me we'll be getting up a smidge earlier than we'd like to on a Sunday morning.

Happy Mothers Day to all of you moms, Non or otherwise.