Happy Mother's Day to Dana and all the terrific moms on this blog. Kick up your heels as you deserve it!

This has been an unusual mother's day for me in that neither Markos or Eli are home. Markos's grandmother has been in and out of a coma this weekend, and thankfully, the two of them made it in time to visit her at the hospital in El Salvador. She recognized the two of them, too, even though she has never met Eli until now. Despite the tortuous long flight with the baby, my husband sounded grateful to have gone. They get back tomorrow night.  

In the meantime, Ari and I have been hanging out, watching Star Wars and going on playdates. He gave me the best mother's day gift ever: he let me sleep in. I am usually up at 6 a.m., so 7 a.m. is sleeping in for me. I feel GREAT!

Happy Mother's Day all!

And Happy Mother's day to you both. And to everyone else. I had a lovely one. I had blueberry pancakes and cups of tea in bed, and I wasn't allowed to move until noon. I read my book, drank tea, and occasionally asked for glasses of juice to be brought in. The mother in law is in the US at the moment, so there were no obligations at all. Love it.

My boy was hinting about it all week - even told me where he hid it "Behind the sofa, Mom, so don't look there." He also made me a bead necklance in Chinese class, as my class did later - so we exchanged bracelets!

This morning, we got the garbage and recycling together, and while I showered,he mopped the kitchen. My husband is back from his run and we will go out later for a meal. It is tricky today - college graduation means a million people in the restaurants.

It was interesting to read the origin of Mother's Day and the thrust behind the thought....but I still felt great receiving two tokens of love and appreciation from my dh and my dd this morning.  

My dh went to SF yesterday and brought home an interesting and beautiful Japanese dark wood carving of a god of happiness...awwww....and then my dd awoke and brought out a collage of pictures she made in her digital design class of photos over the years of her and me superimposed with daisies (her name marguerite, which is my Mom's name also, translates to daisy) and a hummingbird.  Hummingbirds have become especially poignant for me.  They symbolize the essence of my connection with my Mom since her death in 1997.  Whenever I see a hummingbird I remember my Mom and her beautiful spirit.

I was telling a relative about that connection of hummingbirds for me, and the next thing we knew a hummingbird followed us indoors and flew around the house for about 20 minutes until we could encourage it to fly out a window.   No words capture what that was like and all we could do was look at each other in wonder.

Happy Day to all.

and Happy Mother's Day to you both! And all the great moms around here!

I got breakfast in bed, then we went to church, then out to eat at my favorite tex-mex restaurant. Plus white roses and a gift certificate to a spa. What a great day!

Now I'm off to read the paper and maybe even nap!

Having a major broadcaster (NBC) separate "Moms" from "Adoptive Moms" on their "America's Favorite Mom" program?  Offensive.  Deeply offensive.

And that's considered an improvement!  Initially they had "Adoptive Moms" listed as a subcategory of "Non-Moms"!  Grrrrrrr.  And then they think they've "fixed" it while still breaking us away from the "Moms" category.

Dana, you'll like this...
Kelly and Liza took me out to brunch and the waitress came and said to me "Happy Mothers day" then to Kelly " Happy Mothers Day"  Liza piped up "that's momma number 3" and the waitress said 'well aren't you lucky!"  

of course later of course we had to convince that same waitress liza was INDEED a child not an adult... (the cutoff is 10 for this brunch buffet)  it was pretty funny...

This morning during my priest's sermon, I kept hearing a phone beep.  I could not believe it was mine because I'm not good about carrying it with me or keeping it charged.

During the exchange of the Peace, I checked and sure enough it was me beeping.  My daughter at college sent me a Happy Mother's Day text message.

Great timing--made me smile!

No sleep in, I made the pancakes, but DH gave me a photo frame with four photos from a "shoot" that a friend of his (a photographer) did in March. We don't have many frames as yet (hey, it's only two years since we moved in... why hurry!?), so I was really happy to have one. And Jess's creche had them doing a little photo/coloring collage project too, so I had my first homemade Mother's Day present!

Lunch at the MIL which was, dare I say it, pleasant?! All in all, a good day.

Mother's Day in DC has been cold, gray and rainy.  Yippee.  I have a head cold, and have basically acted like a slug all day.  DH, god bless him, has done the bulk of child distracting all weekend, and let me sleep a lot both yesterday and today.  DD, OTOH, has been a little demon.  Oh, the hysterics at bedtime!

I've not been very productive this weekend, at all.  Bleh.

to make Mother's Day gifts at school!  So precious.  

Very laid back day here today.  My son brought me lunch and flowers, my daughter brought home dinner.  Other daughter was here at 10:00 AM and spent the whole day in my room with me.  Another daughter is here this evening.  Saw my mother yesterday, so all in all, its been a very nice Mother's Day weekend.

that my 11 year old spent the day with a tummy bug, I had a nice day.  Poor thing, she's barely had anything to drink and nothing to eat all day. Looks like she'll blow her perfect attendance for the year tomorrow (three weeks before the end of school) - I can't imagine she'll have energy for a full day.

Our daycare provider made sure all the kids created something wonderful for their Moms for Mother's Day ... and so, she and her own kids painstakingly cut out construction-paper outlines of the kids' little hands for a special project for us.

Mine has her little handprint in paint, too, and it says "This is the hand you held when I was only 1 year old."

They also helped her paint a rock and fashion it into something that I think is supposed to be a turtle, but maybe it's a frog. Not sure, but who cares?! It's very cute.

And, Elisa, I am smiling very big about Markos' book dedication. ;)

As both my kids came home with presents for me and for their biological mother.  I made a point of thanking each of them.

Wow, what a lot of great Mother's Day stories! It's funny--while the holiday is all about the one thing that makes us the same, our motherhood (however we come by the title), I love seeing how much diversity we have within that sameness.