Jackie and I are two very different women. My idea of a nice day is putting on a pair of heels and going out to lunch, while she would prefer to put on a pair of hiking boots and go on an outdoor adventure. Our friendship works because it is reciprocal. We indulge each other; she comes to Buddakan with me and I go hiking with her.
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| Jackie wearing a fur trimmed cape to the farm! Yesssss! Fashion! |
This weekend she decided that we should take our kids to Harvest Moon Farm and Orchard so that Chloe could participate in an Easter Egg Hunt. The 50 minute ride to rural NY was scenic and I noticed myself beginning to breathe more deeply the farther we got outside of the city. Chloe delighted in having a fresh eager ear for her stories, while Noah read a book on his phone up front. It's almost as if the personalities of our children are reversed: Chloe is active and gregarious like Jackie, and Noah is quiet and observant like me.
When we arrived at the farm there was snow on the ground, and not a bud on a tree. Nevertheless the sun was shining, the wind was still, and I immediately perked up when I saw this:
When we arrived at the farm there was snow on the ground, and not a bud on a tree. Nevertheless the sun was shining, the wind was still, and I immediately perked up when I saw this:
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| #farmlife |
Chloe, Jackie, and I went inside to buy apple cider donuts. The donuts alone were worth the hour ride: light, fluffy, straight out of the deep-fryer, and warm.
While we were in the store, Chloe spent about a minute looking at baby chickens in an incubator and decided that she would rather be outside. That bold seven year old of mine ran off and ended up talking someone into letting her into the bouncy house without a ticket! Sometimes, I look at her in wonder. When I was her age, I would have been clinging to my mother's side in fear of the other people. She has no fear of the world or her place in it.
Afterwards Chloe found more than her fair share of eggs in the Easter Egg Hunt, rode a horse, had lunch, and played on a makeshift slide and swing set.
When it was time to get into the car to leave, we looked down and Chloe was covered in mud looking like Pigpen from Peanuts. Her jeans were splattered with a particularly foul smelling dirt and her boots were completely covered in it. She only had the boots since December (they were a Christmas gift from Grandma), but they were now unwearable and Jackie wasn't trying to have those nasty things in her car.
We decided to leave the boots in the parking lot and head to the mall to get her some new shoes. At that point I was mildly irritated, but as we walked into Nordstrom I looked at Chloe strutting around in her mix-matched dirty pink and purple socks and got heated. She was prancing around, flipping her braids like being shoeless in public was a perfectly acceptable wardrobe option. It took everything in my power not to snatch her up and tell her that she should be embarrassed (she's lucky that Grandma wasn't there).
To make things worse, when we went to the third floor to look at children's shoes, Chloe immediately ran toward the most expensive ones. When I picked out a pair of functional navy blue Converse she had the AUDACITY to pout and pretend that she couldn't get them on her feet. Then she began making this strange mewing noise- like the very act of trying them on was hurting her. I honestly felt like knocking her upside her head, but I figured that would not be a good look for Nordstrom.
Did this child realize that she should be grateful that she had a mother with the time and inclination to take her to a farm and spend $8.00 so she could sit her behind on a horse for two minutes?
Did she understand that she should be thankful for getting a new pair of shoes on a day that we were NOT celebrating the day of her birth? Did she not get that it made no sense for me to spend one hundred dollars on a pair of shoes when she did not have the sense to take care of the ones that she had?
Of course not, because despite the fact that her personality is nothing like mine, she is my daughter and she expects the best. And even though she walked out of Nordstrom with a pair of navy blue Converse, rather than the sparkly pink Sketchers that she wanted-she made them WORK!
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| Yum!! |
Afterwards Chloe found more than her fair share of eggs in the Easter Egg Hunt, rode a horse, had lunch, and played on a makeshift slide and swing set.
When it was time to get into the car to leave, we looked down and Chloe was covered in mud looking like Pigpen from Peanuts. Her jeans were splattered with a particularly foul smelling dirt and her boots were completely covered in it. She only had the boots since December (they were a Christmas gift from Grandma), but they were now unwearable and Jackie wasn't trying to have those nasty things in her car.
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| aka Chlo-Chlo |
To make things worse, when we went to the third floor to look at children's shoes, Chloe immediately ran toward the most expensive ones. When I picked out a pair of functional navy blue Converse she had the AUDACITY to pout and pretend that she couldn't get them on her feet. Then she began making this strange mewing noise- like the very act of trying them on was hurting her. I honestly felt like knocking her upside her head, but I figured that would not be a good look for Nordstrom.
Did this child realize that she should be grateful that she had a mother with the time and inclination to take her to a farm and spend $8.00 so she could sit her behind on a horse for two minutes?
Did she understand that she should be thankful for getting a new pair of shoes on a day that we were NOT celebrating the day of her birth? Did she not get that it made no sense for me to spend one hundred dollars on a pair of shoes when she did not have the sense to take care of the ones that she had?
Of course not, because despite the fact that her personality is nothing like mine, she is my daughter and she expects the best. And even though she walked out of Nordstrom with a pair of navy blue Converse, rather than the sparkly pink Sketchers that she wanted-she made them WORK!
CUTE STORY !! .... : )
ReplyDelete( Thank God for cameras in Nordstrom !!, or Chloe's fate might have been a little bit different. LOL )