A Family Day

There are many ironies in some of the choices that I have made to 'focus on family'.

Running a daycare from home has meant that I have been an at-home mom, but unavailable for any school activities where kids would love to have a parent come along. Not working Saturdays should have allowed more time for family activities. But instead of working 6 hours a week outside of my house, I seem to be working an average of 15 hours or more per week at home. It seems that I spend less and less time being a 'present-parent figure', the more I focus on working from home.

Today wasn't like that. In fact, we've spent several 'family moments' together these past several days. A stay-at-home movie night a few evenings. And today, we left the house at 11:30 were gone for 5 hours. We saw a movie, did some Christmas shopping, splurged on a few items for ourselves, had lunch ... then came home and wrapped presents together to wind up the day.

It was a perfect day. With Kurt's growing independence, he doesn't have to come with me, every single place that I go anymore. He's developing his own circle of friends so he doesn't need me as much either. Our interests in movies and TV shows are growing wider apart, so there just isn't as much to bond us lately. Then again, I am often busy working at one project or another so I think he has given up on me a lot too.

Our intent to see an early movie was thwarted (they wouldn't accept our coupon for that particular movie), but it resulted in a much longer lasting occasion. We went to another theatre (that accepted my coupon), saw a later show and enjoyed filling the time in between.

The day turned out to be quite a gift. I like when a day unfolds as this one did. It was a perfect Sunday.