Tu madre

I feel like I ought to write about Mothers' Day since I'm calling this a mommy blog and all, but I'm just going to sum it up here: It was great. I woke up to cards from Mary and Anna. Tim made me a full pancake breakfast and the house just today stopped smelling like an IHOP. There are worse things for a house to smell like than maple bacon and organic blueberry pancakes. We went to a petting zoo, too, where the girls made friends with a whole mess of goats (see right), and then had a quick lunch before returning home. Then for dinner I got some fantastic clam cakes and chowder and probably gained five pounds.

So all in all, fantastic Mothers' Day.


But that was the end to a super busy weekend, because on Saturday, Mary and Anna made their debut as flower girls when our friends Jesse and Meg tied the knot. All in all, they did great, but the day was not without its adventures.

The rehearsal went off without a hitch. One girl was to carry a basket of flowers, the other a blue satin pillow with the wedding rings. I thought it would be fine, since Mary loves flowers so much and Anna'a favorite color is blue, but on Friday Anna took one look at the flower basket and set her jaw.

"I want that," she said. I knew if I asked Mary to switch, she wouldn't, so I just swapped them.

"Mary, you need to carry the rings," I said, as if I were sharing a secret. She eyed me doubtfully.

"Mary, these are princess rings," I whispered. "They're made of gold!"

"Gold?" she repeated in awe.

"Gold," I confirmed. "And if you don't bring them to the bride and groom, they can't get married, and then no one can live happily ever after. These are princess rings!"

Schmaltzy and completely past the point of what a wedding is all about? Absolutely.

And it worked like a charm.

Anna, not feeling the sash. Mary, feeling ALL THE EMOTIONS.

So the day of the wedding I kept the girls rested and happy and we arrived in good spirits. I put on their white dresses and pulled out the blue sashes Meg had made, at which point Anna decided to flip her lid over God knows what and kept trying to take it off. We cajoled. We got stern. We redirected. We pointed out how it matched the bridesmaids' dresses. Nothing doing. And then the "Princess Rings" were brought out.

"Hey, dat pillow matches my sash!"

If there were a wall, I'd have hit my head against it.

And then it was time. They walked down the aisle. Anna more or less stayed in the vicinity of the outdoor wedding. Mary loudly asked if it was "her part" yet during the ceremony. There were vows, and prayers, and generally a lovely ceremony.

And then it was over. They made it through the recessional and pictures before being whisked home by my mother in law, where they proceeded to play "brides" for the rest of the evening in their white dresses.

They behaved beautifully.

Their mother, and the rest of her table, not so much. 

We made sculptures out of the centerpieces. This is what happens when you give parents a child free evening, one of them is an engineer, one has severe ADHD, and all of them are dorks. 

At least the preschoolers acted like adults.