Steve was out of town on a business trip for a few days.  The girls are always bummed out when daddy is gone because he is the fun parent (well and because they love him and stuff).  Don’t get me wrong, he isn’t just the Fun! Dad!  He disciplines and enforces rules as much as I do.  But he is the one who rough houses (I tend to get an elbow to the lip or nose early on so my rough housing attempts usually end in me bleeding).  He is the one who plays silly games.  He is the one that at 5pm has the patience to hear the song that Sabrina has been singing for 8 hours.  He is the one who allows the occasional rule infraction because he doesn’t then have to listen to an argumentative 4 year old throw a fit when the rule is put back in place.  (E.G. One time allowing Sabrina to hang on the back of the cart instead of sitting in the basket turns into 9 months of “But daddy let me!  I don’t want to sit in the basket!”)  So I am often left feeling like the mean, boring mom blob.

I decided to take the opportunity of being single mom last week to try to be more Fun! Mom!

The first night, I told Sabrina she could sleep with me in my bed.  She didn’t go to sleep until 1 am and every time I moved, she pet me and talked to me in soothing voice.  While sweet, it wasn’t conducive to sleep.  When I rolled over at 5:30am, she was again awake and announced it was morning and time to get up.  After more petting of my arm, I finally growled (I’m not a morning person) that she wasn’t to touch me or speak to me again until the alarm went off at 7.  Of course when 7 rolled around, she was fast asleep and crabby that I had to wake her up for school.  We can call that Fun! Mom! experiment a big old FAIL.

One night, I offered the girls anything they wanted for dinner.  First Sabrina picked Red Robin (she is a sucker for balloons) but I had to veto because it is too far away.  Her second choice was bananas.  I should have let her stick with that but I pestered her for a more fun choice.  Pizza was the final idea.  She spent an hour pestering me if it was time to get pizza.  When we finally got it, I spent 45 minutes haranguing her to eat the pizza while she whined that she didn’t want it.  Fun! Mom! dinner experiment = FAIL.

When I picked her up from school on Thursday, I thought I would take the girls to a fun frozen yogurt shop.  You get to pick your yogurt flavors and choose from a couple dozen toppings.  How could that go wrong?  Yogurt was fun. We even had fun walking back to the car and playing little games.  But somewhere between getting in the car and arriving home, things went horribly wrong.  The sugar crash left me with cranky, disagreeable children who wanted nothing more than to whine and pick fights with each other.  They ended up in bed 45 minutes early.  Fun! Mom! ruining dinner experiment = FAIL.

On Friday, my moms club took the kids on a tour of a local stable.  They kids got to pet the horses, feed them carrots, watch them canter and trot and gallop, and groom them.

I really thought this would land me in the books as the Best! Mom! Ever!  I spent much of my grade school years plotting and scheming ways to get my parents to buy me a horse.  (Apparently, divorced parent guilt will score you a canopy bed and pierced ears but the line is drawn at a horse.)  But to be honest, the interest in the horses was mild and the barn cat proved to be much more awesome.

The horsey tire swing also seemed to rate pretty high.

When I prompted Sabrina to tell a friend about their day, she couldn’t remember anything remarkable.  I asked if she saw any animals and she mentioned the cat first and had to be prompted about the horses.  Fun! Mom! horsing around experiment = a wash.  Guess Daddy doesn’t have to worry about his most fun parent status being in jeopardy.