Tea for Two

Once Upon A Time...

On Wednesday, Dolly and I got a rare chance for a special Mommy/Daughter time at home. I've wanted to somehow arrange some one-on-one time with each of my kids for a while now. Ideally, I'd like to take one of them out for the day and do some window shopping or fun shopping or lunch alone or some adventure with just the two of us. But I haven't figured out a system that will work yet.

This week, it seemed like 3 hours just plopped out of the sky for Dolly and me to have a special afternoon. PC was at a friend's house and was still gone for the afternoon, Grandma C. stopped by and took Emma out for some special Grandma&Me time and Butler, Ricka and Hal were down and out for naps(you know you haven't blogged about your infant much when you have to go look up the blog name you picked out for him way back when! Because you couldn't remember it on your own after three days of pondering it!). Suddenly Dolly and I found ourselves with no distractions and a long, lazy afternoon stretched out in front of us.

So, we decided to have Tea for Two outside on the deck.


We even dressed up for the occasion. And posed for pictures.


Dolly took this one.


And I never realized how hard it was to take a picture of yourself! Centered? What's that? 3 Chins? I was pretty sure there's only supposed to be two of them. Look at the camera? We were - why does it look like we're looking over our shoulders again! Eventually we figured it out.


The challenges of Biscotti and Gloves!

It really was a lot of fun. I loved to see Dolly so excited and it was wonderful not having a million interruptions intruding on us. When I first realized that it would just be Dolly and me for the afternoon, I asked her if she wanted to have a cup of tea with me. Once I got her attention away from the book she had settled down with on the couch, she jumped at the idea. She had been asking me for a cup of tea on and off for a few days. It's just been so warm out that a hot cup of tea didn't exactly sound appealing to me.

I got to surprise her over and over again; first by having her choose some pretty tea cups out of the dish hutch (we usually just use plain old coffee mugs at the dining room table). I got to surprise her again by setting up the table outside. Once the table was set, I surprised her a third time by adding snacks to our tea menu. And finally, she was surprised that we were going to dress up all the way to necklaces and perfume just for tea by ourselves. She chattered the whole time, and we each had at least 3 cups of tea before the clock stuck twelve and we had to start putting everything back the way it usually is. But even the cleanup was a thrill for Dolly, because we didn't want to disappoint the other kids by having them see the evidence of our afternoon and the realization of what they missed out on. It was especially heart-racing since Butler woke up before the last of the table outside was cleared. He was still waking up though, so he didn't notice Dolly's suspicious behavior as she darted in the house with a wad of table cloths behind her back or sidled past him with the empty teapot disguised by a dishtowel draped over it.

And then the fairy tale ended and we had to return to Real Life where we all lived Normally-Ever-After.
The End.