I continue to struggle.

My weekends used to be filled with trying to find one hour for myself. Now they are filled with trying to find one hour for me and the kids to have together.

Maria and Mario were supposed to head to the farm with me this weekend to watch their cousin. Maria would normally never miss a chance to do this but soccer and friends got in the way. Mario, on the other hand, would not have been keen to babysit his cousin but would have liked the thought of hanging out with his mom. However, he too, decided that sticking around his friends would be a better idea.

I am getting more and more comfortable with the notion that Maria is becoming more interested in nurturing friendships than hanging with family. It is natural, and I think a positive step to see her wanting to do more things with friends and be away from the homestead. I would be concerned if she always wanted to be around me or Jon and never hung out with friends. Why is it, though, that we can never have a middle ground? Why can’t she want to hang with us at least a little bit? This year she catapulted from one extreme to the next. But again, I am glad that she’s finding camaraderie with a group of girls who I think are a good bunch.

Mario is not so much into nurturing friendships as he is into just having a good time with his buddies. He will sit on Fortnite for three hours, if possible, chatting it up with his friends online. He’s also been better about going to the park with some of his buddies and hanging out. I took a group of them to the woods the other day and they were hilarious banging bats against trees and smashing little fruits that had fallen off of trees. Destructive creatures, they are. But sure enough, when they heard some rustling in the woods, they came running to me to protect them.

It seems that I get to see Maria only when I see her with her friends. On Friday night, she met up with her girlfriends and they played in the band for football Friday night. She absolutely loves being with her friends and being at school. She actually started crying the other night with the thought that in four years they will be seniors and have to go off to different schools.

I was amazed on Saturday night when we were over at a friend’s house for the Buckeye game, and Mario asked if we could go apple picking the next morning with his friend and his friend’s parents. Seriously? Mario would typically not want to get up and spend Sunday morning that way so I agreed to do it even though I had been looking forward to sleeping in that day (after having a full day with Miss Elena at the farm).

Mario woke me up at 7:30 am and told me that we would be leaving in an hour. I took the dog for a quick walk and came home to play a little one on one with Mario. The friend and his parents arrived as I was getting whooped, and we took off to the Apple farm. It was the same farm I went to with Mario when he was in first grade. As we drove out there, I told him how I had met him out here for his school trip when he was in first grade. He actually remembered bits and pieces of it. I talked about how he held my hand through the orchard and was so excited to have me with him. He smiled. He doesn’t get to embarrassed at those stories yet. And sure enough, he held my hand again here and there as we went through the orchard to gather apples.

We competed to see who could jump the farthest from one apple tree to the next and bit into red apples and yellow apples to see which one tasted the best. We hit the market, as well, and found a candy cigar for him to act like he was smoking (I figure the less taboo I make it the less he will want to do it). We grabbed some cider and gummy bears as well. But what he really wanted to do was hit the corn maze. We drove over to it and only found a lake kids maze. We went through it in about three minutes. However, there was a big bouncy house right by the maze so we paid five dollars to go in it. I, of course, could not sit there and watch him and his friend have bounce house fun; I went in it as well. We competed to see who could get through it the quickest. The first few times we all bolted through, and did not mess with one another. But then we got aggressive and started pulling and pushing each other as we ran through the obstacles. At one point, I was climbing up the wall to slide down the slide. Mario was at the top and he was trying to push me down. I kept telling him that he needed to stop or else we would both fall down. He didn’t. We fell. We both laid on the rubber house aching in pain. I had gotten burned and he complained about his little toe.

“It’s broken. It hurts!”

I told him that he was fine and he needed to get up. He started crying that he was not fine. And it went downhill from there. He had a football game in a few hours and I knew Jon would be so irritated with me for having played around in the bounce house with Mario right before his game. So, I kept telling Mario to suck it up and to walk on it, he was just fine. Mario kept telling me that he was not just fine and it hurt. By the time we got to my friend’s car, we were not speaking to each other. Beautiful.

How can our lovely morning turn so quickly?!

When we got home, I gave him ice to put on his foot and told him to rest. I ran to Kroger’s to get food for the week with the hopes I would come back and he would be miraculously cured. Not so much. He could barely put his socks on or his football cleats. I took him to the field and told him that he needed to play hard and Jon called me about 10 minutes after I dropped him off questioning what the heck I did to him as he limped over to him on the field.

Great.

He ended up not playing at all in the football game because he told his coach that he hurt his toe and he would “try” to run as best as he could. His coaches did not seem to like the word “try “so he ended up sitting out. I think this was just fine for him but it irritated the heck out of Jon and me. We felt that he was nursing this injury so he would not have to get out and play. Was he? Who knows. When we got home, I took off his socks and looked at his toe. There was a bruise about the size of my pinky fingernail on his pinky toe but really not a lot of swelling. So, I would say that Jon and I were likely correct but whatever, we weren’t going to dwell on it. However, if I wrestle him next weekend two hours before the game, I’m in trouble.

Maria worked the concession at football all day Sunday, and then came home for two minutes to grab her book bag just to turn around and head over to her friend’s house “to study”. She arrived home at 7:30 PM and asked if we could go and find tutus for her and her friends since they had crazy day at school on Monday. I was so tired and had no desire to go out and try to find tutus. However, I had not had any alone time with my girl all weekend. So, I agreed to take her. I was tempted to drive for 45 minutes to the farthest store possible just so I could spend more time talking with her. However, as soon as we walked to the car, she asked if we could go somewhere close because she had to get to bed in order to get up early and get ready. Of course. So, we went to a store 15 minutes away – but at least I got a chance to talk with her for 30 minutes on the round-trip.

And her tutu ended up being absolutely adorable!