It’s day three of rain in Richmond so I’ve been busy pulling out all the stops for fun and easy rainy day activities with my favorite being the throwing on of raincoats and rain boots and locking my kids outside. WHAT? No. They asked to go outside yesterday because that’s how awesome my rainy day activities are.
Today, I’m stepping it up a notch to the kind of parent I want to be. I’m going to begin our etherial, rainy afternoon by telling them to put away laundry before watching television. I’m also planning to include some fabulous homework and piano practice times as well as an opportunity to watch me laugh at something on Facebook that they’re too young to understand. They will have the option to practice their manners by rolling their eyes when I’m not looking and pretending to not hear me calling them to dinner.
After we settle into our half of the kitchen table since the other side is covered in week-old mail and day-one-of-rain art projects, we’ll eat an organic, healthy dinner to the tune of “this is gross,” and I’ll smile and wonder if I should add the hide-in-the-bathroom-until-my-husband-finds-me game. If not, we’ll at least do the please-hang-up-your-wet-coat-because-my-weather-app-told-me-we-will-need-them-again-tomorrow activity as I begin using our red markers to write NIAR YAWA OG all over the walls.
Suddenly it will be bedtime and not just because I changed the clocks, and I will ask what my children’s favorite part of the day was. They’ll cry out with joy: “Running around in the rain!” (which happened yesterday) and “I’m still hungry!” (which happens every night at lights out and no matter what we had for dinner or snack).
After I give into another snack, the soft sounds of raindrops and GET BACK INTO BED will lull them gently to sleep. I’ll shuffle to my bed with my laptop full of photographs of our Pinteristic day to crop and edit in an affirmation of my mug of tea shouting: WORLD’S BEST MOM.
Feel free to buy yourself one. You deserve it!
