Family time

Since Jeff covered the tournament in town over the weekend, he had today off. So on the way to pick up Biscuit from day care, I called Jeff and said, "Meet us at day care, then you can ride with us."

Jeff knows better than to even ask. He just hops in the car when I tell him to, buckles his seatbelt, then waits to see where we'll end up. Back before Biscuit was even thought about, our impromptu trips might have taken us to the beach or the mountains or who knows where.

But nowadays, across town is about as far as we can make it without some pretty major planning and organizing.

I get so out of sorts the closer we get to the end of basketball season. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I also have to remind myself that even when Jeff gets to move on to something else, it takes a while for the three of us to get back into sync. It's the little things that are hardest.

Like this morning. Biscuit has a cough, and it seemed to get worse over the weekend. So this morning, I called the on-call nurse at his pediatrician's office. I had to leave a message and wait for her to call me back. I thought I would make the call, then get in the shower and let Jeff talk to the nurse if she called back before I got out of the shower.

Then it occurred to me that Jeff couldn't take the call because he wasn't home all weekend. He had no idea how often Biscuit had been having coughing fits. He didn't know that I checked Biscuit's temperature several times during the weekend. He didn't know how unusually long Biscuit's weekend naps were.

I was sad because I know Jeff hates missing out on things at home. I was mad because that kind of stuff makes me feel like a single parent. I was frustrated because I knew waiting on the call-back was going to make me late for work.

Big picture, that stuff is not a huge deal. But right now, this morning, it was a huge deal.

Anyway, that's sort of what made me change my plans of going to the grocery store after work. I decided that the three of us were going to spend the evening together. We needed the time together.

So Jeff met us at day care, and we went to the park. 

We played on the slides and the swings, and we sat on the concrete turtles and frogs and pretended they were horses. And Biscuit mastered a couple of pieces of equipment that he wasn't big enough to do last year. And with a little help from me, he slid down the fire pole three times. "THREE TIMES, MOM!" Biscuit said. "I slide down three times!"

We left the park and went to eat Mexican food. Our boy loves to get a quesadilla, black beans and chips and salsa. We were talking and enjoying our food when Biscuit made an announcement.

Biscuit has done great with the bathroom stuff, but he still doesn't understand that not everybody needs to know about his bathroom habits.

Biscuit was about halfway done with dinner when he said, "I have to poo. Guys, I have to poo." And it was loud enough that the tables around us HAD to have heard him. Of course, I'm sure nobody thinks twice about that coming from a 3-year-old. We'll just have to make sure to teach him about discretion before he gets too much older.

We came home from dinner and played a rousing game of Cootie. And for those who aren't clued in to the toddler-game scene, to play Cootie, you roll a die that gets you different body parts of a bug. The first one to complete building his or her bug wins. You have a head and body, eyes, ears or antennae, lips or tongue and six legs. Roll a 1 and get a body. Roll a 2 and get a head. Roll a 6 and get a leg.

Jeff just gave Biscuit a bath, and soon it will be bedtime.

I keep telling myself that soon enough, this will be the norm, not the exception. And until then, I'll just hold on to tonight and my time with my boys.