so today i got to be a mom for a day. if you read my earlier post, you will see that i woke up this morning at 7. today being saturday. the reason was that i had received an sms. from charles. marie is in malaysia for the weekend, and charles needed to do some shopping in semarang. with a 1 yr old, 5 yr old, and 7 yr old in tow. so he wrote to ask if i'd come along and nanny. i agreed. anything to get out of town and have an adventure.
what i didn't take into account was that i was basically going to be mommy for a day. and not just because i was taking care of 3 kids, 2 of whom are half white anyways... but also because everybody ASSUMED that i was their mom and treated me as such. that part wasn't too bad compared to people assuming that i was married to chuck. that felt a little strange. people stared at our "family" a lot. but i have to say, NOBODY bothered me. it was niiiiiice. no high school guys heckled me or asked for my phone number. no girls asked to practice their english with me. nobody asked me my country of origin. nobody asked me why i live in indonesia. nobody called me "meester".
in fact, the only person who talked to me all day was a lady at the playplace in the mall where i was watching the kids play. she came to tell me that she thought my daughter had accidentally picked up her daughter's toy, thinking it was hers. it was a happy meal toy from mcdonalds where we had eaten lunch. i knew the toy was bethanie's, because i had JUST gotten it for her out of my bag. but i called bethanie over and explained the situation - in english, so the other mom couldn't understand - and asked her to give her toy to the other little girl. i love that bethanie is at the age where she is learning logic... she understood well enough what was going on, and graciously went and handed her toy to the other girl without complaint.
we let sammy, the 1 year old, play in the playplace too... he LOVED the trampoline part (the kid has awesome balance! he hardly ever fell down, even when other kids were jumping on it!) and also the ball pit. he had a hard time walking through it though. he kept falling over and disappearing under the balls. and he's also at that age where he still has to push himself up with his hands in order to stand up. so everytime he fell, he'd disappear, then his little head would pop up. then he'd get his feet under him and reach down with his hands to push himself up, and then all you could see was his little butt sticking out of the myriad of germ infested plastic balls. josh is an awesome big brother though and kept a very watchful eye on sam.
in the grocery, bethanie ran off to go get something and came back a minute later complaning, "my dress is wet and my bum-bum smells like fish!" it took a lot of questioning to figure out that she had been running by the seafood part of the store and had slipped and fallen on some water "by the guy cutting some dead fish." haha... that's life, kid.
anyways, the day went without incident. i was exhausted by the time we got home. so i slept for 2 hours then went to a PARTY! have i ever mentioned how much i love my friends and how blessed by them i am? because it's all true. indonesia has its moments... especially lately. but i still love it. and every day is really an adventure!
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