I have to admit, I had set my expectations pretty high for my first mother’s day.  I imagined that I would be able to sleep in, while Tom and Dylan prepared me breakfast in bed, which would then be served to me by white doves dressed in adorable little hats.  Everyone I know would shower me with extravagant gifts, and the staff of Burke Williams would come to my home to pamper me all day while Tom and Dylan fanned me with palm fronds.  You know, a simple day spent with the ones I love.

Obviously, none of that was gonna happen.  I mean, you can’t really sleep in while still breastfeeding, and it clearly would have been a logistical nightmare to make all those tiny hats in time for Sunday.  Not to mention Dylan is pret-ty useless in the kitchen; apparently poaching the perfect egg is something that one learns AFTER walking and using both hands for simple tasks.  Who knew?

Really though, I didn’t really have any expectations, other than I expected to feel on Sunday pretty much the same as I feel everyday: blessed.  I expected to feel blessed, because let’s face it, anyone who gets to hang out with my kid all day should feel that way.  Don’t get me wrong, there are days when I literally count the seconds until she’s in bed and I can just sit on the couch staring blankly into space.  But 99.9% of the time, I enjoy the shit out of being her mom.  And that’s what I wanted most of all for Mother’s Day: another day of being her mom.

I do appreciate an entire day devoted to me though (especially one that does not entail me getting any older).  But I don’t think Mother’s Day festivities take on the same fervor for all moms.  For example, my sister’s kids are older (10 and 6), so for Mother’s Day, they get in on the fun, making cards and breakfast and such.  Dylan is 9 months old.  She didn’t know yesterday was Mother’s Day, anymore than she knows that today is Monday and a week has seven days.  It was just business as usual to her, nothing special going on here.  We did take a little day trip to Santa Barbara to mark the occasion, but again, she doesn’t know that.  All she knows is she got to nap in the car, ride on Daddy’s shoulders, eat frozen yogurt, and be outside for almost the whole day.  Hell, she probably thought is was Happy Dylan Day, and we were out celebrating her.

I can’t wait till she gets older, and makes me little cards, and says “Happy Mother’s Day” in that cute little voice of hers, and asks Daddy to help her make me breakfast in bed. It’s just another of the totally unexpected (but absolutely amazing and wonderful) windfalls of this whole motherhood business.  Sure, you’re gonna get shit on and spit on and screamed at and your boobs are gonna hurt for months and your stomach will NEVER be the same and sleep will become but a very distant memory.  But someday, you’re going to wake up one Sunday morning in May, and your baby (who isn’t really a baby anymore) is going to be standing next to your bed with a tray of lopsided pancakes and 3 tablespoons of fresh squeezed orange juice, and a handmade card where everything but their name is misspelled, and they’re going to be smiling so big you’ll think their lips may split, and they’re going to yell “Happy Mother’s Day!!!!” and scramble into bed with you to show you their card and eat all your pancakes, and you’ll realize that of all the presents and cards you’ve gotten over the years, THIS is the one you’ve been waiting for, the one you’ll never forget.  I can’t wait.

So, Dylan is starting to get a lot more mobile.  She’s not crawling, don’t get excited.  No, crawling would be stupid, when you can travel in the style that my child has apparently made it her life’s mission to perfect.  It’s sort of a scoot/roll/tipping over type movement.  Oh yeah, it’s attractive.  It gets the job done, but Christ Almighty I wish she’d just push her little ass up on her knees and be done with it.

It started out as my poor child spinning herself (and me) dizzy on the floor.  She could only seem to use one side of her body to move, like some kind of weird paraplegic.  This resulted in Dylan trying to make crop circles on my carpet.  For hours.  Hence the title of the post (hee hee).   She’s gotten to the point now where she can move from point A to point B pretty quickly.  So quickly, in fact, that I don’t take my eyes off her at all when she’s on the floor.  Especially since we haven’t exactly baby proofed the house yet.  She kicks and squirms and grunts (yes, she grunts) and before you know it, she’s got your big toe in her mouth.  If it wasn’t for the grunting, I would be convinced that she was some sort of stealthy ninja slug.

She’s also trying to hold onto things and pull herself up into a standing position, which is typically the step right before they start walking.  No desire whatsoever, it would seem, to crawl around on her hands and knees.  So maybe crawling just ain’t her bag.  Some babies don’t do the traditional crawl: I’ve seen the tummy squirm, I’ve seen babies scoot around with one leg on their butts, I’ve seen them up on the arms dragging their back half around like a paralyzed dog.  There are many, many styles of crawling, and Dylan obviously likes to fly in the face of convention.  Her strange combination of squirming/scooting/rolling/tipping over seems to work just fine for her.  And for me, now that she’s started moving in a forward motion.  I don’t think I could have stood much more of her twirling.  It was sad.  And starting to make me nauseous.