My Favorite Hallmark Holiday

I love Mother's Day. LOVE it. I don't care if the actual holiday has been bastardized so much that it no longer resembles the original intent behind it. I don't care that the creator of mother's day actually despised the commercialized monstrosity it became. I love it.

Ella recently echoed me as a kid when she asked "How come there is no kids' day?" And I echoed my father's long-ago answer when I replied: "Every day is kids' day." (Man was he ever right about that!) Granted, there is a made-up Hallmark holiday called Kids' Day, but screw that. My whole life is devoted to spending meaninful time with my kids--despite the comment someone made recently about how I should quit one of my jobs since "my children would probably like to see me sometimes." Ever so helpful and constructive and yet completely impossible. I don't work two jobs because I love catching typos, believe it or not. I could do that just as easily reading the very poorly edited Twilight series.

But anyway, I digress. I love Mother's Day. I love the homemade gifts the kids make for me every year. Remember how your mother always told you that the best gifts she ever got from you were the ones you made yourself? It's actually true. No lie. There is nothing better than those cute little school crafts with the handprints on them and the cute saying. Except maybe how excited the kids are to give them to you. Ella and Sadie were all abuzz with secrets yesterday about special Mother's Day doings. As Sadie said, "Mom, we aren't making you breakfast in bed." She's great at keeping secrets, that one.

I am not much of a sentimental "cry at movies and commercials" kind of gal, but I saw this Hallmark commercial yesterday that nearly made me cry. This adult woman leaves her mom's house on Mother's Day, and the mom goes to put her most recent Mother's Day card in a box (I save all mine too). As she does so, she looks through all the cards from past years, starting with the super awesome cards when they first learn to write their own names and ending with the current year's card, which includes a photo of the daughter with HER daughter. I could cry just thinking about it.

Going into this year's Mother's Day, I find myself wondering what happened to my babies. On the one hand, I've got Ella in skinny jeans with legs six feet long, looking like she's just days away from teen angst. On the other hand, I've got Sadie, rolling her eyes at me and saying, "Mom--you do know dogs can't talk, right?" when I ask a dog a rhetorical question. I'm so glad Sadie finally clued me in on that one because I've been wondering why dogs never respond when I talk to them....

Of course, these nostalgic ramblings about my girls getting too old too fast fly out the window at times like last night when Sadie screamed at the top of her lungs from upstairs "I've got buttons! I've got buttons! I've got buttons!" until someone stopped what they were doing to undo her buttons for her. That girl is SCREECHY.