The boys and girls split up early yesterday morning. Ri and I left at 8 am for her indoor soccer game and Mario and Jon left at 8:45 am for Mario’s basketball game. Ri took me up on my advice to get more aggressive, at least somewhat. She went for the ball a few more times than last week. Slowly but surely….
After soccer, we stopped at Starbucks and got my coffee. Ri wanted to try something new so we got her a chai latte. She loved it.

We saw the boys off to go hunting (Mario was so excited) and got to work cleaning the house. All the salt and snow had been tracked in and it was driving me nuts. Ri agreed to do the toilets and I did the floors. As we began, she looked at me with a rag in her hand and mused “Susan B. Anthony would be shaking her head at us doing the cleaning in the house after everything she fought for on behalf of women.” Touché. I explained to her that we are doing it of our own choosing and the boys would definitely be folding laundry when they got home.
After finishing the household chores, we settled down for a mani/pedi in the kitchen. Ri wasn’t too concerned about this activity when I said “why should girls feel they have to get their nails done and not boys?!” Her response: “boys should get them, too.” I had told Ri that we could go to CK Nails but she responded ” why don’t we save money and just do them for each other?” That’s my girl. And so she arranged the kitchen as a nail salon with two trays and chairs and polish, clippers, files, moisturizer, towels, and bowls of water. She gave me my mani/pedi first. I have to act like I’m in her salon and she tells me about all the famous people she treats at her salon. She informed me that I had large veins in my hands which was a sign of stress. I needed to take it easy (her way of getting me to sit with her all afternoon). She finished my hands and moved onto my feet. Yowzer! She had her hands full with my feet. They are definitely runners’ feet. She kept her game face on though as she worked on them since she didn’t want to offend her customer.

By the time I finished Ri’s nails, we were starving. Ri agreed to walk to Stauf’s but only if she could scooter. Deal. I miss heading up to Stauf’s on the weekends. When the kids were little, I’d stroll or bike or carry them up to Stauf’s for a muffin or bagel at least once a weekend if not two or three times. We lived two blocks away. All those memories flooded back as I sat across from Ri and she worked on a crossword puzzle and we ate our bagels. How has she grown into such an amazing girl in what feels like three seconds?
We played tether ball on the way home and I’ve never felt so uncoordinated in my life. Ri got a kick out of seeing me so unable to play an activity. She also got a kick out of me getting slammed in the stomach by the ball. Yea, it was ugly. Not a fan.
On the way home, we decided to go see a movie at the dollar theatre. We decided on Alexander and the Horrible, Terrible, No Good Day. Before we saw that though, we had to try on Ri’s new Susan B. Anthony outfit that we ordered for her play next week. She looked like she had been blasted out of the 1800’s. She loves it.

As we drove to the movie, I remembered that Ri could not eat popcorn with her palette expander. Dang. I didn’t want to make her jealous so I had to be relegated to Milk Duds and nachos. Ri got a one quarter pound angus hot dog, God love her. The movie was bearable, which was a gift since so few are at her age.
We drove home and ended our night with a call from Jon informing us that Mario and him got a rabbit. Mario climbed through the thorn bushes to retrieve the rabbit for him.
Ri and I laid in her bed while Rocco ran back and forth from her bed to the hall chasing a ball. We laughed so hard at his crazy antics until he finally had enough and laid his head at the end of the bed. We rested our heads on her purple pillows and fell fast to sleep.