“Momma, can I get ice cream with all the pretty colours in it?” asked Kiddo #1, in her deliciously cute Gymboree dress that I got at the local consignment shop for next-to-nothing, and pink hat I didn’t get used, but love the heck out of in a full-price sort of way. I don’t suppose you expect I’ll say no, but let me explain why.
I woke up this morning at midnight, 2am and 4:30 with Kiddo #2. This is rare, so it really messes with me when he decides to be nocturnal for an evening. But worse was that the alarm was set for 5:30 this morning because Husband had to be in London for a minor procedure by 8am.
Somehow, possibly with magic, we all were out of the house at 6:25, complete with back pack of a million toys and giant bag of munchables. We stopped for coffee and hopped on the highway for our hour and a half trip to the hospital.
Kiddo #2 was giggling the entire way while Kiddo #1 played peek-a-boo and other cute games with him. When Kiddo #1 tired of entertaining her brother, she plugged in my iPod and turned on Tangled. I think, if something ever happened to our copies of Tangled, I could possibly retell the story, with voices and songs and sound effects. But I don’t suppose that’s a real feat once you’ve had kids. I think my mom could tell Alice In Wonderland, or Annie in the same fashion. Just sayin’.
We arrived at the hospital like merchants on the Silk Road and lugged everyone up, down, over, under, around and through the maze until we could check Husband in. Then, for the next 5 hours, Wife and Kids hunkered down for the sandstorm that is waiting for someone to come out of the recovery room.
We met a wonderful woman from Iran who was waiting for her sister to come out of breast cancer surgery. She was really there for the long haul, and she carried none of our supplies with her, not even a book. We were there for half a day and brought a grocery bag full of baby cookies, pre-schooler cookies, momma crackers, cheeses, yogurt and fruit, spoons, bananas and apples, water bottles, three books in English, three in French, a magna doodle, two colouring books, pencil crayons (coloured pencils), and crayons. Oh, and my iPod but that was already mentioned. This was in the rolling Hello Kitty backpack of Kiddo #1. I was pushing Kiddo #2 in an umbrella stroller – which was not the best choice because when I took him out of it, it fell backwards from the weight of my purse on the handles but I’d forgotten to put the gigantic stroller in the back of my car at 6 am, so we had to deal.
I traded a juice box to Naveen (the Iranian lady) so she would watch Kiddo #2 while I went to the bathroom with Kiddo #1. She traded me some stories of her grown-up children for stories of my no-where-near-grown-up kids. It was quite an equitable relationship. We pretended to be deep in conversation when Crazy Guy came and stood directly between our seats, begging us (with his crazy eyes) to ask him why he was at the hospital in the first place. In fact, she even pretended she was my Auntie when Crazy Guy started asking me random things about my kids. It’s always nice to have perceived-familial-backup when Crazy Guy comes a knockin’.
At any rate, after we’d picked up Pirate Daddy (I bedazzled a patch for him to wear over his hospital issued one) and started home, Daddy asked how the children had been. I said, proudly, that both Kiddo #1 and #2 had been fantastic and that because of that, we were going to have a surprise dessert tonight after dinner.
See, that’s how I prefer to roll with bribes. It’s usually a surprise that you earn just by being good without expecting anything. Yes, I know that kids then expect that if they’re good they will be rewarded, but because I don’t do it every time, and in fact, I really don’t do it very often, the Will goes to May, and May is a mighty powerful instance of time.
The saying is April Showers bring May Flowers. Well, in our house, Good Behaviour May bring Surprises.
So, when Kiddo #1 looked at me, still smiley even though she had every right to be cranky and tired, still clean despite it being the end of the day and polite even though she knew she was getting the treat, I had to ask the poor girl behind the counter for the rainbow ice cream. She gave me a look like, “Oh please don’t really make me get slivers of all the colours and put them into this tiny paper bowl.” But my super sappy, super proud mother look euchred hers and she set to work while her co-workers chuckled their condolences.
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