Minor Miracles

Over the weekend a few things happened that not only amazed me but actually made me think that gee, my kids are actually all right sometimes. Of course there were a couple disagreements and a few snarky remarks, but I was never enraged to the point where I was thinking about running away from home or, at the very least, writing a blog post about it.

In fact, maybe all this bitching, moaning, complaining, alcohol consuming, eye-rolling, nagging, ranting, smacking and yelling is finally paying off. And then it occurred to me that Easter is coming up and they're probably hoping that a short stint of good behavior will make something besides a book and jelly beans appear in their baskets. Either way, I'll take it.

It all started when the kids had the day off from school on Friday. Despite the fact that we left the house at 10:15 a.m., drove a total of 150+ miles, waited for two appointments, watched Zach win a nighttime tennis match and our day didn't end until we walked in the door at 11:00 p.m. no one, not even Zoe, complained.

On Saturday morning, the boys had to get up early and put on dress clothes to play in a piano competition. Again, no complaints and they got in the car on time, to drive another 50 miles.

Zach had a really tough tennis match on Saturday night and Charlie watched the entire thing from beginning to end. Not only did he support his big brother, but he completely sympathized with Zach because of his opponent's playing style. (A note to those of you that know junior tennis: even in 16's, some kids still play moonball.) What impressed me the most was that even though Zach ended up losing, he played hard from beginning to end, never showed any sign of wanting to quit or give up and left the match with as much confidence as he had going into it.

I was worried about how Zoe would handle being up late two nights in a row. Somehow, even though the match didn't start until 8:15 and lasted an hour and a half she sat on the bleachers, played her DS and colored without ever complaining, yelling or having an exhaustion-induced meltdown.

While heading home at almost 10:00, I was hoping that Zoe wouldn't fall asleep. Zach, after having just played a couple hours of tennis, sat by her in the van and quietly sang songs with her for half-an-hour, letting her request songs that he had sang at his Disney-themed choir concert a week ago. It was one honestly of the coolest things I've ever heard.

While I was trying to get caught up with laundry and cleaning on Sunday, I heard four magical words: "Can I help you?"

When I put a bowl of Cheetos/kettle chips/pretzels on the table before friends came over on Sunday night, Zoe looked at it and said "Oh, well where are the carrots?"

Now that all the snow has finally melted off the bushes and the last of the Christmas lights and extension cords are accessible, Charlie not only offered to pull them off and put them away but actually managed to do the job with minimal assistance.

Since I was hardly home this weekend and drove over 300 miles, the bottle of vodka sat mostly untouched. Shockingly enough, I survived this deprivation and am even able to talk about it. Did I survive it and remain sane, though? Well, that's debatable. And as much as I've enjoyed the last few days I'm sure my real kids will be returning on Monday. Oh, and now I have to iron two dress shirts and in case you didn't know, I hate ironing.