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Welcome to our girls only weekend.

With three extraordinary girls, that’s quite a treat.

It all began with a game night and the perfect, gooey chocolate chip cookies shared with their Aunt.

Saturday morning brought pajamas until eleven and this spur of the moment photo shoot.

I didn’t make a grocery list, plan school, or do anything else required on a normal saturday.

I did make homemade applesauce.

And we all tasted a persimmon for the first time.  Standing in the middle of a small grove of trees brimming with petite orange fruits, we peeled the skin and ate the insides, looking up at what I imagined to be dozens of tiny pumpkins dangling on the branches above us.

Our final girls’ night included a dinner of butternut squash lasagna, sauteed kale, some of that fresh applesauce, and good friends (girls only, of course).  Mix in a classic movie, way too much popcorn, and another late night.

At some point I recognized a strange feeling called being relaxed.  I haven’t felt it in a while, but it suits me just fine.  The constant smiling, the looking at my kids not just as a set of tasks to make sure we accomplish, the staying present in the moment.

Now that I have the feeling, maybe I can find it easier the next time-with a little help from my girls.

The Setting: The swing at the park

“How old is your daughter?” asked the portly but athletic gentleman in the baseball cap two swings over.  I’d already noticed a few glances our way, but I knew the glances had nothing to do with me.  His eyes traveled eagerly from my daughter to the similiarly sized pink and braided toddler of his own.  For a new parent, seeing a child within a sixth month age range of his own is the golden chance to compare achievements (can he walk, talk in a full sentence?) and stats (height, weight, bottle or sippy cup). I could see him mentally rubbing his hands together.

“Two and half years,” I answered compliantly, “and yours?”

“She just turned two,” he paused as the swings squeaked on and then, “Your daughter’s really doing great on that swing.”

He looked down at his own daughter, tucked safely into one of the enclosed toddler swings, while mine sailed toward the sky on a “big-girl swing”.

Seeing his dismay, I tried to reassure him, “She has older brothers and sisters and she tries to do everything like them.  My first child didn’t swing on this kind at two and she definitely didn’t go as fast.”

Hearing the word fast, my Squishy yelled out, “Faster, Mommy!!”

I pushed her into higher gear and I heard, “Wow, that’s high,” from the Dad and then, “Honey, look at this little girl, don’t you want to try one of those swings?”

Obviously my attempt to reassure had crashed and failed and I cringed as I pictured his already tired wife when they got back home to her. “Honey, we saw this other two year old and she could swing much better.  We better work on it….”

After a few minutes we went in search of the siblings and eventually ran into the Dad and daughter on the slide.

“So is she potty-trained and all that?” his tone working to sound casual as his eyes narrowed in on the smooth lines of Squishy’s shorts as opposed to the bulk of his daughter’s sweatpants.

Thinking of his wife, I tried hard to lower the bar. “Well, yes she is mostly potty trained, but only because she wanted to, and probably because she sees her brothers and sisters go all the time.  She’s not like any of my other children,” and just in case there was still wiggling room I added (truthfully), “My others were older, closer to three.  With our first we started trying at two and potty trained her for the next year.”

He tucked this away for a later analysis and switched focus, “Samantha, look at this little girl, look how she can climb the slide, don’t you want to climb the slide too?”

And a few minutes later it was time for us to gather the stragglers and head home.

It’s too bad we didn’t run in to him at Trader Joe’s today.  If his eyes had followed us through the store he would have found one pink croc on Squishy’s left foot and one black mary jane with a purple sock decorating the other foot.  Then, later, he could have celebrated with his wife, “At least our daughter knows how to match her shoes, and she’s six months younger!”

For myself, I had counted the cost of fighting the mismatched shoes (which I knew would be noticed and judged in favor or against by other grocery shopping mamas) with the foreknowledge that eventually she would match her shoes, just like every other child.  So for today we went with mismatched shoes and some fly by-the-seat-of-your-pants swinging.