Flash player is required to view weather conditions. Download

site web  

There is quite a bit of excitement that builds around the dream of becoming a mother. The training begins young, with many little girls harboring an arsenal of tiny diapers and faux bottles for their lifelike dolls. Dolls, mind you, that feature real-life baby functions like filling their pants with green goo. What fun.

This motherhood fantasy is often accompanied by the perfect-husband fantasy and the pop-culture-inspired perfect-children fantasy (a boy and a girl, of course).

Then, reality.

Two boys. Sleepless nights. Refereeing sibling battles. Going to work with spit-up down the back of your clothes. Squeezing in time to brush your hair/teeth.

Just eight hours of straight sleep with no eyeballs peering at you over the top of the mattress before sunrise would be a welcome break.

"Mom! Are you awake (finger in eyes)? We want chocolate milk and to watch the 'Wiggles'!"

Nothing sounds better these days than a "mental health break." A breather from the 24/7 job of parenting.

But, when that blessed moment comes — a dinner with friends, a weekend away with the spouse (God bless grandparents) — we aren't quite sure what to do with ourselves.

"What do you want to do?"

"I dunno. What do you want to do?"

Rather than relaxing and enjoying ourselves, our thoughts directly wander to our children: "It's 8 o'clock. I hope they have their jammies on."

Recently, following an impromptu dinner with some girlfriends, we all sat at the table wondering what to do next.

A movie was out of the question. They all started at 9 p.m. — we can't stay up that late. But, heaven forbid we go home early to the daddies who so kindly gave us the evening off.

"Well, I need to buy diapers for Nick," I said.

"And I had to abandon cart at the store the other day when my daughter had a meltdown," added another mom-pal.

The decision was made.

We all charged like moms-on a mission to our airbag-side-impact-beam-equipped child safety wagons, except for our one childless friend, who casually meandered in her cute shoes to her little red sports car and instead opted for the mall instead.

Like a military convoy, we paraded to said department store to buy what? Stuff for our kids.

No more does a night out on the town look like a fashionable episode of "Sex and the City."

A long weekend away with the hubby left us staring blankly at each other within the first hour. Seventy-one hours to go, nothing to talk about, except the boys.

After a while, cruising around a big city with the top down turned into the time-of-our-lives-since-kids.

However, we called home to check in a minimum of twice a day and couldn't wait to hug the boys.

My grandmother always said "absence makes the heart grow fonder."

That couldn't be more true, and it is especially important to remember when deprogramming your children from living-with-grandparents mode.

"Why can't we have chocolate sauce on our broccoli?" Argh.

Just kidding. I don't make my kids eat broccoli.