Just a quick little note about birthdays as a mom.

Yesterday I turned 36. I’m too busy these days to get into any philosophical discourse about what it feels like to be getting older so that’s probably a good thing!

Lately I am pretty bad at making plans, especially when it comes to any “free” time that I may have. For example, I might arrange a date night which usually requires the help of multiple grandparents or a bunch of text messages to find a sitter who is willing to watch our rowdy crew. Inevitably the childcare keepers ask us what our plans are and we say, “Um, we’re gonna go eat and . . .” we slowly trail off because we have made NO PLANS whatsoever beyond getting our children taken care of.

To further clarify, if our kids are going to grandparents (which is fantastic by the way!) it requires the packing of suitcases and the driving across town, at least one direction. If we decide to splurge on a sitter, it requires tidying up the house enough so that the sitter isn’t totally horrified, prepping dinner and setting them up for bedtime. The end of the day isn’t always great around here. We want our sitters to come back so we try to set them up for success. Anyway, all this goes to say that after planning all of this, I simply don’t have the energy to plan our date night. And I don’t care. We are happy to be away. It really doesn’t matter to either of us what we do.

So, my birthday. I realize that I could have taken this day to make BIG plans. I could have gone to the beach all day by myself (read: with just one kid because he depends on my body for survival) or walked around on King St all day. I could have requested to lay in bed and sleep and have my house cleaned and groceries purchased and laundry done. But these things would have required a little more planning than I am able and willing to do do right now!

The day before my birthday I had two ideas of what I wanted to do. One scenario was all about play and the other was all about work. Then we got a call from Fleet’s school that he had a fever so that ruled out my play idea. Yard work it was! Haha! That’s right folks. Yard work. We spent the day prepping a garden and it was glorious!

It has been a while since Luke and I worked on a project together so I really enjoyed that. Plus it was my birthday and he did whatever I asked and what girl doesn’t like that? He took the kids to school while I slept in. I woke to a delicious breakfast. He got right to work, outlining and prepping the garden. He called around for pine straw and then asked what I thought and I said, “Do it!” and so he did. We needed to grab a few things at Lowe’s. Normally he would do this by himself but it was my birthday and I wanted all of us to go, so we did. I got extra things at Lowe’s because this is where old people get their birthday presents (haha!). We went on a long golf cart ride and parked and sat and talked while the boys played (Elle spent the night at my parents which that alone took away about 3/4 of the work I do everyday!). We grabbed burgers at the little restaurant at the end of our street . . . still dirty from yard work. We came home and Luke rubbed my feet and we watched “This is Us” and he didn’t complain that the show was too sappy. . . it always makes us cry which I’m fine with but he gets kinda mad about it.

Anyway,  it was awesome. And I realized that it was SO nice to have everyone do things for me all day because I spend every single day doing things for everyone else.

This is not meant to be a complaint about my life. All of us, parents of young kids especially, can appreciate time for ourselves without it meaning that we don’t appreciate our families so remember that mama’s and papas! I’m thinking that Luke and I could both use a little more of this – guilt free days to do whatever we want, including asking each other to do work for us. Maybe we will start celebrating half birthdays as well.

Fleet, who was home sick, said, “At least you get to spend your birthday with me” . . . sweetest thing ever.

We have several banana plants, blueberries and a fig tree planted in this area.

I got a little birthday serenade from Fleet. If you follow me on instagram- you might have  heard him playing on my instastories.

My lovers. I couldn’t decide which of these was better . . . Charlie Mac just started giggling yesterday and it is the sweetest sound.

It was pretty close to perfect.