All I ask for is one sick day

I think one of the worst parts of motherhood is that you are not allotted any official sick days. I've been battling a minor cold this week. It's not horrible, but enough to feel under the weather and wanting to veg on the couch. My sister-in-law was coming this afternoon with one of her kids and I just wanted to get 20 minutes of rest this morning before she came. I laid down on the couch wishfully expecting my kids to quietly play in the other room. It didn't happen. Every 2 minutes one of the kids had a request, demand, tattle or something or other.

"Mommy I have to go pee pee."
"Have Emily help you."
"No, you."
"Have Emily help you."
"Oh tay."

"Mommy, Bradley's being mean!"
"I don't want to hear about it."

"Mommy, Emily hit me!"
"What did you do to make her want to hit you? Work it out between yourselves."

"Mommy, I have to go poopy."
"Hold it for 20 minutes."

"Mommy, help me." (Wendy handing me a Barbie doll and dress.)
"Mommy, help me." (Jason handing me a Barbie doll and dress.)
"I'll help you each with one Barbie dress and then leave me alone and go play quietly."

"Mommy, can I watch TV?"
"No."

All I ask for is 20 minutes to lay still and let my body doing some recovering. Then just as I began to doze for a 5 minute half awake and half asleep power nap, I felt something flop on my face followed by the giggles of Emily and Bradley. I opened my eyes to to find an overripe banana oozing from its brown peel, punctured by a toddler thumb, onto my cheek and the big blue eyes of little Jason begging me to open it for him.

"Neena?" (banana)

I gave up on my rest. I guess moms just don't get sick days.

So what do kids do when they find a stash of 200 lbs of grits?

Pretend they're beavers and build a dam.

"It's a damtastic dam!"- Bradley

Make grit art.

This one I helped them with. Just shake a 1/4 cup of grits with 5-7 drops of food coloring in a jar and glue to paper like glitter. It was a hit.

The day ended good. I watched a Discovery Channel TV show about Coney Island that I recorded back in March. I love amusement parks. I learned that the guy who invented the incubator tried selling it to hospitals all over Europe and the United States. Nobody wanted it, so he tried the amusement parks. The Luna Park at Coney Island decided to give it try and they hired registered nurses and allowed mothers to put their premature babies in the incubators. They charged $0.10 to park guests to come see the babies. It is likely the incubators saved 700-800 babies. How cool is that? A preemie baby freak show. I really like the times in which we live, but I think it would have been really cool to live back at the turn of the 20th century. They had some crazy rides back then like a big huge spinning disk on the floor that a bunch of people laid down on and it would start spinning and fling the people off. However, what would I do without blogging in the 21st century?