I am woken by Dani and Tori, stuffed animals in tow, asking to snuggle. They climb into our bed around 7am, and hug, and hop, bounce around. After a few minutes, I step into the bathroom to brush my teeth. Tori sneaks in, "Happy Mother's Day!" she exclaims. I come back into the bedroom and there are presents, lots of them, wrapped in Christmas wrap, which seems to be a trend in our house. Dani has decorated a card, filled with pictures of people; when asked, she tells me, "This is you teaching me ballet, Mommy."
Daddy takes the trio downstairs, and I fall back to sleep. I wake at 9:30--as a mother of toddlers, this is an all too rare luxury. I head downstairs to check in--we all have some cereal, and I head to the shower. We have plans. Big plans. Stupidly risky plans. We are taking three toddlers to a fancy restaurant for brunch. We get dressed, do hair, Big Man sports a suit and tie. He tells me I look pretty in my dress.
We arrive--head to our table. I fix a pair of plates for the girls, while Big Man sits with Tommy. As I head to fix my own, I look over at the table, all is well. When I return, Dani says, "I don't like this, Momm-ARRRRRRGH" and she starts to puke. Thankfully she had the linen napkin on her lap. I catch most of it in my hands and the napkin, and a fair amount lands on her dress. No one seems to notice in those fleeting minutes. As the staff (and owner) notice I am cleaning, they ask if everything is okay. Big Man assures them it's no reflection on the food, as I bring Dani to the Ladies room. We rinse her dress off, wash up and are as good as new. The table now has a pink cloth napkin at her place and all is well. My plate of food is cold, but we're staying!
Mother's Day Brunch, Take 2.
Tommy masters the fork, and, thankfully, doesn't play the spoon/fork/plate banging game too loudly.
Tori sits like a little lady, drinking her orange juice from a tea cup. Dani does the same.
Tommy starts to get antsy so we head outside for some photos. Tori is determined to clown around in every pic.
When we could catch Tommy, he smiled and was a handsome little dude.
Catching the three of them? No way. Between Tommy's need to move, and Tori's constipated face, we were doomed.
They did slightly better when they posed with Daddy.
This was us, headed back to the car. Tommy was leading the charge.
Daddy and Dani paused for a photo.
It really was a lovely day.
And, I need to make a shout out to my mom. I had a childhood full of love and creativity. It was filled with playgrounds and beaches and adventures of all sorts. Of songs, and stories, and unwavering love. There were "tiger hunts" through the reeds at the beach (long before the universe was tick-paranoid) fresh air, and picnics, and just so much fun. I am the mom that I am because of the mom that I had, and I very often think that I'm not doing it as well as she did. Because she was awesome. And now, she is showing that same love to my children--on the floor with them, bouncing on the beds, in the wagon to the park, and non-stop never-ending fun. Love you Mom!
Tonight, the girls got to sit on the changing table and watch daddy snowblow. Dani wanted to "help daddy shovel".
The cutest "help" she provides nightly is sneaking into the kitchen to feed the cats. I never see her do this, but usually once I've put her to bed, I find this in the service stairwell: 
Apparently, my talented cats can open cans of food all by themselves. But that's Dani's way of helping, and I think it's adorable.
Notice the Christmas tree--it's up, there are presents underneath it, only there are NO ornaments! Well, there's one--Tara sent us a "Baby's First Christmas" which made it to the tree, but the rest are still in the basement! Oh well, the lights are pretty enough.