"Freaky Friday" Fell on a Sunday

The most peculiar thing happened yesterday. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Freaky Friday”, or at least understand its premise, Parent/Child switching bodies for an undisclosed duration of time, you will understand when I tell you that this actually happened to Caleb and I, for just about an hour Sunday afternoon.

We’ve had a stretch of glorious spring weather here in Austin, and this weekend was no exception. Mid-Seventies, blue sky, sunshine… days don’t come much better than these. Tack on the fact that it’s a weekend, and there is a ‘Kite Festival’ going on downtown Austin, and we’ve got a recipe for success! To accurately portray just HOW excited I was for the possibilities of this day, I can truly say that I wasn’t even THAT disappointed losing my hour of sleep to daylight savings time, because the day couldn’t start fast enough! (I can almost hear the gasps from those that know me well enough… Me… Not caring about losing an hour of sleep?!? I know… Shocking!)

We made it through the formalities of the morning… Church, check… Lunch, check…. Nap, check. It only got better, when, upon waking Caleb from his nap, and explaining that we were going to ride a ‘BUS’, his face truly LIT UP, eyes wide, huge smile, and from that point through the 20 minute drive downtown… All we heard was “Bus, bus, bus, bus…”.

When we arrived at the designated parking garage to catch the shuttle busses to the event, the line wrapped clear around the entire parking garage…. And Kevin wasn’t exactly thrilled with our chosen parking spot, marked tow-away zone, which I assured him was only a Mon-Fri notice. Caleb had SEEN the busses and the excitement had reached fever pitch… I HAD to get him on a BUS! Kevin worked some sense through my single minded focus of getting Caleb on a bus, and explained there are plenty of city busses, we can forgo the festival, catch a city bus, get some ice cream and hit a different park… I was able to concede holding a two year old still in an hour line didn’t seem worth the reward, plan B would work.

We found ourselves a nice parking spot, safely marked as open, and started waiting for our bus. 10 minutes or so passed, as well as two busses heading the opposite direction, and we decided to keep things moving. We’d just walk towards our ice cream destination and with the bus stops spaced about ever 200 yards, we could certainly make it to one if we saw the opportunity approaching. 20 minutes later we had walked the 7 blocks and were ordering our ice cream cones. We enjoyed our delicious treats, and as luck would have it, a city bus pulled up immediately after stepping out of the ice cream parlor…. Perfection!

If I was a betting woman, my money would be on the next moment that triggered the conversion. Logic reared its ugly head, masked as Kevin, and reminded me this was a different bus loop, we didn’t know where it went or how long we’d have to ride it before making the loop…. I watched as my serendipitous opportunity drove off, and developed just a twinge of misplaced resentment that I didn’t get my way…. (hmmmm yes, this sounds very similar to behavior I’ve seen Caleb exhibit a time or two). I’m not proud of this next part, but to finish the story, I have to disclose that the ‘tude, snowballed into a full-fledged tantrum, when we realized we had missed our other bus back and would have to walk the 7 blocks back to the car, NEVER getting to ride a bus. Caleb, during my entire meltdown, never lost his smile or the spring in his step and was far too pre-occupied with the motorcycles now driving by to even care about something as trivial as missing a bus. I got the stern “I can’t believe you’re acting like this” from Kevin and proceeded to sulk for the Car ride home.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this embarrassing conversion to the terrible two’s was thankfully short lived, and while not an excuse, I feel justified asking for clemency based on previously blogged upon crazy hormones. We managed to salvage the rest of the beautiful day, with a great All-American cook-out with friends, complete with steak, potatoes, corn on the cob, and Strawberry Shortcake to top it off!

My goal for the remaining two months of this pregnancy, maintain a maturity level at least above Caleb’s… Not sure after this last weekend, that setting a goal to ‘act my own age’ is attainable for 2 full months!