charlotte | for mother's day.
two of my favorite mamas.
may 2017, in charlotte
luca is three years; jack is eight months
on saturday morning, i finally (finally) got to watch luca play soccer. the past two times i was in town, it was cancelled because of rain or the easter holiday. the forecast was showing raindrops for saturday and, as the rain came pouring down as i drove to charlotte on friday night, i may or may not have had a conversation with god in which i expressed my hope that this rain would be the only rain that would fall in charlotte over the weekend, since this weekend would be my last opportunity to see luca play.
it was cloudy and chilly, but there was no rain. praise.
his goal-making dance consists of rescue bots moves, which was absolutely my favorite part of the whole thing.
the other exciting thing about this weekend was that H was also in town (!!) with her new boyfriend (!!!!) who i hadn't met yet. (but already felt like i knew, because "new" is actually seven months "new.")
his name is lou, but luca calls him "woo" because he cannot pronounce his L's properly. while we all loved how cute it sounded, and took every opportunity we could to get him to say it over and over again, it's just now occurring to me how fitting it is, on multiple levels, that he's been nicknamed "woo."
that afternoon, we went to freedom park, where there is a carolina panthers' play 60 kidzone playground, with an obstacle course and 40-yard dash that times how fast you can run. there is also a regular playground, where luca climbed up the ladder to the tallest slide by himself multiple times. and then also, other park things like a pond with ducks.
before dinner, lee and H and i made a quick trip to the grocery store to pick up a few things for our mother's day meal.
H basically did all the heavy lifting in terms of shopping. i pushed the cart. lee gave directions on which aisle we needed to go down. together, we worked to complete a task H esentially could've done by herself. but, solidarity.
then, we celebrated H's birthday a couple weeks early because celebrating in person is always more fun. and also, there's cake.
with a long candlestick used as a makeshift birthday candle.
(also, it feels important to clarify that there was more cake than just that one sitting in front of H. she had her own gluten-free cake while the rest of us had gluten-filled cake.)
on sunday, lee woke up early to run out and get waffles for mother's day, which luca referred to as pie.
when lee told him they were waffles, he laughed and said, "noo, these aren't waffles, silly!" which reminds me of that time he insisted i eat oatmeal for breakfast, instead of my chocolate chip pancakes, because mommy said pantakes are a snack.
just as i was remembering this, T clarified: "these are snack waffles."
later, we spent the day outside where it was so sunny we couldn't keep our eyes open.
we actually tried four or five different locations and angles to figure out where to stand and look to keep our eyes open.
once we found it, i snapped a selfie of all of us. and then woo put his arms around H, so T put her arms around me, and that series of photos makes me laugh.
and these make my heart happy.
which, the sprinkler fun happened right before i left, so i opted to stay dry for the drive home and miss out on all the fun.
until next time.