Heartfelt Mother’s Day Appreciation

With Mother’s Day a few days away, the love and accolades have already started around here. My children are showering me with homemade gifts, bouquets of flowers and spontaneously bursting into song. They’re singing Mother I Love You and I Often Go Walking so much that it’s starting to get embarrassing.

Or not.

Yesterday during school when it takes all my powers to keep everyone on task, Mark wanted to build Anakin’s star fighter. We have a big bin full of LEGOs that are all mixed together. We have in the past attempted to keep the instructions in one place but they invariably get mangled and ripped and eventually thrown away by yours truly. I wish we were organized like a certain unnamed friend (Janet) who keeps the LEGO sets and their instructions in individual Ziploc bags or in their original boxes but we’re not. Sadly no.

Mark asked for help finding the instructions. He is a tenacious and insistent kid. I value that about him and I’m sure it’s a survival instinct for the youngest in the family but it’s not so easy when I’m trying to do something else. Like teach Braeden and Emma school. I gave the room a cursory look. No, sorry Mark, no instructions. He would not be satisfied with that. I sent Braeden to look. I told him to try to build the ship anyway. All of this while trying to keep things rolling with school.

Finally, in utter despondency, Mark climbed into bed and pulled up the covers. This is my indication that he is really unhappy. Part of his successful persistence is that he is my baby and utterly charms me and there’s nothing I like more than to see him happy. I told him I’d look online for the instructions. I looked at several sites. Did several Google searches. Mark climbed on my lap and was full of enthusiasm. He kept saying, “Click on Instructions, Mom!” There was unfortunately no instructions button to click on. Braeden and Emma couldn’t sit idly by and do their school work when there was a Google search underway so soon they were also gathered around the computer, giving me search tips.

“Get back to work! I’m sorry Mark, I CAN’T do this right now.”

Then I softened a little (you would have too if he’d pointed those brown eyes your way) and I printed a picture of Anakin’s star fighter. I thought that would be helpful. He trotted off to his room, pleased…for about 2 minutes.


No, that wasn’t helping. Braeden had new ideas. (You’re supposed to be working on homophones Braeden, not coming up with new ideas.) He said to look for Obi Wan’s ship because it was similar, just different colors. I found that ship and while it didn’t have instructions either, it was a better picture. It had short-lived satisfaction as well.


I tried one last Google search. This time I typed in LEGO set instructions and I came upon a site called Brickery. It had directions on any LEGO set under the sun…or at least Anakin’s star fighter, which was all I cared about. (Braeden said, "I wonder if this is illegal?" Be quiet, Braeden. No one asked you.) The instructions were tiny but Mark assured me they were just fine and he was bubbling over with glee as I printed it off and sent him on his way. Within minutes, I could hear him hurling LEGOs around the room.

One of the tiny pages of instructions. This was the actual size.

What’s wrong Mark?

It’s too small to see.

It truly was. I was in so far already that I had Braeden show me how to enlarge each image, save it to my desktop and then print the 30 pages. One. By. One. It took forever. All pretense of focusing on school was gone. Mark was dancing around and pulling the ink drenched sheets out of the printer as soon as they were done. (I’m sure we used nearly all of the colored ink.)

By then, it was time for the mad dash of lunch and off to piano lessons. We dropped off the older two then Mark and I headed to the library. After, he wanted to play at the anemic little park by the library. I told him we had to go mail something instead. I said, “It’s the paperwork for you to be in kindergarten.” I was sure that would be exciting for him. Um. No.

He got mad and said, “The ONLY way I’m doing kindergarten is if I can go with the triplets.” The triplet boys on our street are in kindergarten this year. They also go to a private school. Mark doesn’t get that even if he went to kindergarten next year, it would not be with them. As for me, I suffer from this delusional, teetering on insane desire to home school my children so I don’t want him to go anyway.

I said, “Why do you want to go to kindergarten?”

My amiable little son who had effectively wrecked our school morning said, “So you won’t be around to bother me so much.”