Touch-a-Truck

This trip has been different from those in the past, due in large part to the fact that I have the kids with me this time. For the last few years, I've flown to see my parents for a week or so by myself or with J. Mom and I spend hours talking, shopping and lazing about, pouring over design magazines and eating chocolate. I slip into the role of daughter, allowing myself to be taken care of and indulged, forgetting {briefly} my responsibilities as wife, mother and adult.

On trips where my parents come to visit me in Arizona, I tend to launch into hostess mode with zeal. I'm eager to provide comfort and entertainment, display my skills as wife and mother {"Look how much I've grown up!"} and give them all the pleasure and relaxation I feel they need-- even if invariably my dad ends up building or installing something for me around the house. {So relaxing for him, I'm sure.}



So it's been interesting to have those two types of trips collide and merge. On the one hand, I'm in my parents house, so I can't help but feel at ease as I'm cared and provided for. On the other, I'm hyper-aware of how loud and chaotic my children are and feel the need to keep them entertained and quiet in order to minimize the upheaval to my parents lives. But then I get a little resentful, because all that time and energy Nana and I spend on the kids? That's time that could have been spent on me, me, me!



All of this is a long-winded way of saying that as I sat down to post about the Touch-a-Truck event, part of me said, Blah blah blah, they were excited and cute but how come all my vacation pictures are of the kids? And then I had to laugh at myself, because I suddenly had a vision of myself stomping my foot and pouting the way E is wont to do. I suppose that my resistance to sharing my parents affections with my own children makes me a bit of an overly-entitled child myself.



So: we went to Touch-a-Truck. They got to climb into an Army helicopter, a fire engine, a garbage truck, a city bus, a tractor, a limousine, a Hummer and honk the horn of a semi-truck. They were excited and cute {just look at E's face in the helicopter photo!} and at the end of the day, they got free ice cream which L shared with Baby R.

Now, as I look at that ice-cream covered face, I hope that someday I'm a Nana and my kids are so in love with me that they don't even want to divide my time and adoration between themselves and their own children. Which means I'd better start being less selfish so they fall in love with me now. :)