Friday, August 25, 2006

Doing What I Can....

I have a friend that is currently separated from her husband and about a month away from divorce. The hard part for us was that “the two of them” were our friends…my husband got along great with her husband, and then the two of us got along great…even our kids were great together. The news of the separation was shocking…nobody saw it coming, including my friend. So for the past few weeks I’ve done whatever I can think of to be there for her…as you know, I am so incredibly happy with my life, and most of all my husband, that I can’t even imagine being the in position, so I feel like I’m not doing her any good. But I sit and listen, and offer times for us to do things together. Luckily she has a great group of friends and she does a lot with them, which seems to be helping her a lot.

Last night she and I agree to take our kids to some fountains in a neighboring suburb. My husband plays basketball on Thursday nights, so it was just us girls and the kids. I stopped at McDonald’s on the way over there and picked up some food for everyone (another problem she’s going through is that money is tight now that they are paying for an extra apartment and utilities, so another way I try to help is buying her dinner and stuff like that so that she doesn’t have to miss out on the stuff she used to do). We arrived in this very prestigious neighborhood that has a huge grass hill with a rock wall at the bottom and a bunch of fountains that kids run through. The kids were all in their bathing suits and they quickly ate their dinner and starting running through the water. Even my little 14 month-old son walked right into the water without even thinking twice. When the kids were done with the water they wanted to run up and down the hill. Talk about great exercise…the hill was huge! And they all wanted to take turns with me rolling down with them. We had a lot of fun!

A couple of days ago my daughter asked me if we could bake cupcakes and take them over to the babysitter’s for all of the kids to share. Being the over-committed mom that I am, of course I said “yes”. So last night after the fountains, at 8:45, we went to the store to buy cupcake mix. Now, I don’t know if this is true in all Meijer stores, but at our Meijer, they have carts with the cars that kids can get in and drive in, and they also have a tv going with Barney and Bob the Builder. The carts cost $1 to rent, and it’s more than worth it because I didn’t hear from them the whole time we were in the store! And that’s why I decided to shop at that particular store…because it was late and my kids (especially my son) were cranky! Thank you Meijer for a pleasant late-night shopping trip! We went home and baked cupcakes with baths and teeth brushing in between baking and frosting. My daughter helped out in every step of making those cupcakes, and she was so proud this morning when she took them in and showed them to her babysitter, exclaiming “I helped do everything with these”. That right there confirmed that I had made the right decision to do the cupcakes, even though they weren’t finished until 10:30 last night. I love that little girl so much!

2 comments:

Amy W said...

The shopping cart has a tv in it? And I thought our Harris Teeter was cool with the little shopping carts for Ashley to push.

Happy Working Mom said...

Yes, actual TVs...they are awesome!

Whole Foods used to have the little carts for the kids to push, and then they disappeared, so we asked what happened to them...we were told that there was an accident with one of them so they got rid of them. And where were the parents when this "accident" happened? Now my poor daughter always asks where the little carts are....she loved them!