Camp Mommy/Spring Break - Day 5

LAST DAY OF CAMP MOMMY!!!

(For six more weeks anyway...)

We made it!

We had a Playdate today, a friend actually came to our house, which is a rare and sometimes-wonderful occasion. (It was this time.)

Policy on Playdates:
1) With three of my own children, and a dog, I have enough to deal with! I'm generally reluctant to add more children to the mix.
2) It is oft-repeated around here (in that horrible Mom-voice that only kids can falsetto): "You can't even get along with each other -- until you can, I'm not going to subject somebody else's child to this chaos!"

But, on rare occasion, or in the rare case of a child who manages to blend right in to the zoo around here, it happens. So Tiger had a Playdate today, a Kindergarden friend who rides the same school bus and lives just a couple of streets over.

It was still early enough, I was on the front porch with my coffee, finishing up the daily Sudoku puzzle in the paper -- by this time, I've completely given up on work until Monday; more probably Tuesday, to allow for a day of recovery and indulgence. The friend's Mom dropped him off, on her way to a well-deserved pedicure, having already sent her other child off for the weekend with friends, lucky Mommy!

The kids started off on the computer, which has a Net Nanny type of thing my husband set up to limit their Net surfing abilities to Cartoon Network and Disney, or so I thought. I checked on them in passing (coffee refill), and stopped to watch the "happy little friendly cartoon characters" in their little animated features...the kids were laughing hysterically...when the "happy little etc." started doing some very surprising, I would say INAPPROPRIATE, things..."Time to go play at the park!"

And we did, which was great. After an hour at the park, we walked down the street to our little "village" of shops and restaurants and met our Playdate's relaxed, pedicured, happy Mommy (no, I'm not jealous or anything! ;-) at the local pizza joint for lunch. Playdate was off to spend the afternoon at another friend's, popular little guy. The 4 Caldwells walked home, and enjoyed a couple of wonderfully quiet, peaceful hours at home with everybody doing their own thing, playing outside, enjoying the last hours of Spring Break (and Camp Mommy!).

I did manage to work a bit: I finally gave up on a review book I've been struggling through (made it the requisite 100 pages and just could not get excited about this one), and started the new book by Marian Keyes, ANYBODY OUT THERE?, which is fabulous. (More on that next week!)

We managed to get Daddy home from work early, and we all walked down to Piedmont Park for the Dogwood Festival -- an annual celebration of Spring and the blooming of the Dogwood trees in Atlanta. This is the first time we've been to the Dogwood Festival in more than a decade, because of parking and transportation issues -- it's pretty terrific living intown!!

Total Day 5 - $20 Lunch
Total Spring Break/Camp Mommy = $110
($10 over-budget, darn it!)