17 months.
Earlier last week I heard Jaci Valasquez say on her morning radio show on The Fish that what she wished for most on Mother’s Day was to take it easy while she and her husband watched their kids play.
I figured that sounded like a pretty good idea. So sure enough, I made sure we had the laziest Mother’s Day ever at our house.
There’s something anyway about waking up wearing a Smurfs t-shirt that says “Spaced Out” on it that leads to not taking to a shower, which somehow leads to us not leaving for church on time.
We were so slothful we not only were too late for the 9:30 and 11:00 services, but we barely made it on time for the 11:11 service.
It’s evidently designed for anyone who is just late enough that they need to watch the 11:00 service on an 11 minute delay on a giant movie screen in the big slacker room down the hall while coffee is being served.
That would be us: the slackers.
Not normally, though. Usually we’re okay to confirm to the strict and necessary weekend schedule it takes to socialize, buy groceries and run errands, go to church, and still clean the house, all with a toddler in tow, while living in a big enough town like Nashville.
But not this Mother’s Day. We chose to be as deliberately unmotivated as we could: Starbucks Frappucinos for brunch (where we pushed Jack around in one of their R2D2-looking kid stroller seats) and then had leftover pasta back at the house for a 3:00 lunch.
Jack took a 2 hour grace nap which led to us catching up on some Netlix. (We’re too cheap to ever pay for cable or satellite.)
“Hey, they have the show I Shouldn’t Be Alive now on the instant streaming…”.
Forty-three minutes later:
“That episode reminded me a lot of Lost. Umm… you want to watch Lost now?”
It was pushing Jack’s dinner time and we still had the house to clean.
In the likeness of one of those fast-forward montages in an Eighties sitcom where the characters clean up the mess real quick thanks to speed-dubbing, while zany music plays, Jill managed to get our place feng shui enough to feel comfortable while I entertained/annoyed Jack. (Pictured right.)
I took all the pillows from our couch and made a giant mountain that kept enclosing Jack as soon as he climbed to the top of it. Next I let him continually walk across our unnecessarily long couch until he got beyond giddy and delirious.
Then he discovered some forgotten (and dreadfully stale) fruit snacks in a travel-size container in the closet. I liked them better than he did.
At some point, Jack and I gave Jill her Mother’s Day care package which consisted of a card from Jack, a box of black licorice that were shaped like little hearts, and a gift certificate for a pedicure.
For us, it was a very lazy Sunday and what I have written is all I remember of it. But I already know Jill will look back on it as a good Mother’s Day; one worth repeating.
The moral of this story is to be lazy and then good things will happen.