Playing Around

Today I slogged back from retirement to work at my church's Mothers' Day Out. I'd agreed a week ago as a favor and had been dreading it ever since. I'm totally spoiled, setting my own schedule, doing pretty much as I please as long as I get everything done. That's not the case on the days I work at M.D.O. On those days, I get up early, rush through breakfast, skip walking the dog, and go straight from dropping off my kids to M.D.O. I'm barely even awake yet. Today I sat in my car for five minutes not wishing to arrive looking half-asleep.

I was in the room with the three-year-olds today, a few four and five-year-olds mixed in as a result of having a mother 'teaching' in the program. And while they were all strong personalities who couldn't stay quiet longer than about five minutes for absolutely any reason at all, it was a good day. Probably because of the personalities...

A couple of favorite moments:
A group of them were make-believing with a huge tub of play food, and as kids will do, they began creating crazy concoctions for me to 'eat', including a fried egg doused with soda, chicken and waffles doused with maple syrup (I've recently discovered, via the Food Network, that this isn't so crazy in some parts of the country), and various other items. It should be noted that none of them gave me any vegetables. Midway through this process, squeezable Subway mayo and mustard bottles were put in front of me. I proceeded to fake squeeze myself some condiment on everything they put in front of me. After a minute of that, I picked up the bottles, aimed them at a little boy, made a 'Squshhhh' sound and pretended to cover him in pretend mayo and mustard. Rather than just stand there taking it (thereby deeming me an utter doofus), he threw his arms up in front of his face, and then politely took the bottles from me and preceded to start fake-squirting me. Genius.

As it had poured down rain earlier in the day, we couldn't take the kids outside due to puddles and mosquitos, so we were trying valiently to find something to do inside to fill the time. We tried stories and songs, but none of it worked--they had too much energy to burn. Then we put on Vacation Bible School music and had them show us their moves. Let me tell you, some of these kids have can dance! Between the ferocious air guitar, the hip hop dancing and some wild spinning on the floor, it was pretty cool. And they were thrilled to strut their stuff...it worked wonders.

Oh, and they really like jump up high-fives. Me too--it makes all the difference.