Pub­li­ca­tion: Free­dom — OCR — Pla­cen­tia News-Times; Date: May 10, 2012; Sec­tion: News; Page Num­ber: 4

WHAT A DAY

Price­less gift ideas for Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is this Sun­day. Have you bought the card, ordered the flow­ers, and made the restau­rant reservations?

I know it’s a man­u­fac­tured hol­i­day, but I gen­uinely appre­ci­ate the honor. It doesn’t require a day­long cel­e­bra­tion with con­fetti and a new car, but I like hav­ing a day when moms are rec­og­nized. And who would refuse a chance to eat out?

Actu­ally, although I can’t speak for all moms, I can think of a few gifts most moms would like bet­ter than flow­ers and a card. I’ve listed them here, just to give your hus­bands and chil­dren a few more options.

1. Unin­ter­rupted sleep — from the time they enter our lives, our chil­dren take a vow that their moms shall not sleep for more than four hour incre­ments. As infants, they believe they are the cen­ter of the uni­verse. We spend much of our time rein­forc­ing this by tak­ing care of their every need. This includes being awake when they are awake.

Unfor­tu­nately, we have to con­vince them that sleep is good for them. They drag their tiny feet, even after they’ve out­grown mid­night feed­ings, and resist going to bed. It’s true, as teenagers, they try to reclaim their lost sleep by nap­ping all day, but they still keep us awake, won­der­ing if we’re going to get through those years with our san­ity intact.

We grow so used to wor­ry­ing about our children’s safety, some­times we don’t know how to stop. As Mar­cus grows toward adult­hood, I real­ize I may never sleep again.

2. Bath­room time — When my son was a baby, he had a wind-up mobile over his crib. I knew I could wind that mobile all the way and have just enough time for a quick shower before it ran down and he began to fuss. This set the tone for any­thing I had to do in the bathroom.

As he grew older, I man­aged to con­tain him in other ways so that I could take care of busi­ness. But I’m sure I’m not the only mom who often saw lit­tle fin­gers under the door, fol­lowed by, “Mom? What are you doing?”

My pres­ence in the bath­room was a mag­net for prob­lem solv­ing. “Mom, I can’t find my soc­cer cleats”, “Mom, can you review my report”, “Mom, we’re out of milk” were all things I was sup­posed to be able to take care of while I was oth­er­wise occupied.

I’m just thank­ful that, hav­ing an only child, I did not have to ref­eree fights from behind the bath­room door.

3. A meal that does not involve chicken fin­gers and mac­a­roni and cheese — Sure, these things are easy to pre­pare, and there is a ninety per­cent chance the kids will eat them, but serv­ing beige food every night gets old after six or ten years.

In my own home, we didn’t enter the mac ‘n’ cheese zone until Mar­cus was eight. In his early years, he would only eat steamed veg­eta­bles and rice. This sounds really healthy, except for the absence of any pro­tein, and the fact you couldn’t take him to a birth­day party or a base­ball game and expect him to eat anything.

It’s just nice for a mom to sit down to real food with­out explain­ing what “arugula” is and why it’s not yucky.

These are just a few things I think a lot of moms would like on their spe­cial day. I’m sure many of them could add to the list. But no mat­ter how you are cel­e­brated on Sun­day, let me wish you a happy and blessed Mother’s Day.

You deserve it.