Paying Attention

This past Monday, Sonya was off of school. Teacher work day or parent torture day or something. Since we had the whole day together, I figured we'd do something kind of fun in order to keep her occupied and keep me from wanting to hop on the next plane to Hawaii. She gets a little crazy when she is thrown off her normally scheduled program. I decided we'd all go out to lunch for some pizza. Part of this decision was a coupon for free pizza Sonya had received from school. So, off we went to Shakey's Pizza. Not the best pizza place, but even bad pizza is still good, plus part of it would be free.

We weren't out of the driveway fifteen seconds when Sonya asked,

"Can we go get a treat after pizza?"

Now let me assure you, we do not go out to lunch all the time, so the fact that we were going out for pizza was a treat in itself. I told Sonya as much and she said,

"Pizza is not a treat. I want to go get ice cream or something." She likes to push her luck.

"Sonya this IS a treat," I told her. "Do we go out for pizza all the time?"

"No," she replied in her "so what" voice.

"Then this is a treat," I said again.

"No it's not," she continued to protest. So then I pulled out the lecture that everyone hears as a kid at least half a dozen times. You know the one. The one where you explain to them that they are lucky they get to go out for pizza at all, and there are some kids who don't ever get to go out for lunch or pizza let alone ice cream. They should be thankful for what they have. It was nice of me to even be taking them out to lunch. All I needed to add was, how I never got to do anything like this when I was a kid, and it would have been like my mom was talking through me. However we did get to do things like that from time to time when I was a kid, so I couldn't lie to her. I continued to explain that we would not be getting any other kind of treat afterward, and if she didn't think going for pizza was a treat, maybe we shouldn't go at all. This, of course, was met with her yelling,

"NOOOO!!! I want to go!"

"Okay, but do you understand what I'm saying and how this is a treat for you?" I asked.

"Yeeeessss," she replied in that, "whatever with the lecture woman", voice.

That was the end of it. Who knows if she really understood or if she was just agreeing to make sure she still got her pizza. Either way, we were going. I was up for some pizza myself.

While we were in the middle of our lunch at Shakey's, Sonya leaned over and whispered something in Lana's ear. They had been going back and forth bugging each other for about ten minutes at that point, so I thought this was another case of Sonya trying to annoy Lana. Just as I was about to scold her, the two of them looked over at me and said in unison,

"Thank your Mommy for taking us to pizza!!"

I thought I might cry. It's those times that catch me off guard that remind me of how much I do love being a mom. She actually listened to what I said in the car and put it into action. Now here she was thanking me and making sure her sister knew to thank me too. It was one of those moments when I was proud to be a mom and especially proud of my little girls. It was one of those moments that made the frustrating times disappear. It was one of those moments that made hopping on plane to Hawaii seem like a miserable option.

Then Lana proceeded to get down and run around Georgia's high chair. The moment was over, and I went back to Expedia to see if airplane tickets had gone down in the past hour.