i'm too popular

Seriously. I'm too popular for my own good. Not socially - puh-lease, but with The Kiddos.

I have blogged often about The Boy and his clinginess. He has gotten much better this past summer, but he still sometimes cries when I leave him, especially if I am taking The Babe with me. "My go too, Mommy! My go, too!" I understand why he is upset; he thinks I am taking The Babe on some special, magical, treat of an errand and he doesn't get to go. The reality is usually that I am driving her to pre-school or ballet, but he doesn't understand that, and it makes me sad. Poor guy, thinks I'm just leaving him behind to go do something fun without him.

I have tried to remedy the situation by enrolling The Boy in a mini-gym class. Now he and I have our own special, magical errand to run, and The Babe doesn't get to come along. The Boy seems happy about it, and The Babe is old enough to understand what's really going on.

The kicker that I totally wasn't expecting came on Wednesday. The Babe has school on Wednesday afternoons, and I happened to have lunch plans with a very old friend of mine who is in town on business this week. I haven't seen her in about 2 years, and I was looking forward to lunch. As I was getting ready to go, I realized that my friend had never met The Boy, and there's no reason I shouldn't take him with me to lunch. He's a pretty well-behaved little fella, and it would be nice to get out just the two of us to lunch in the city.

OMG. The Babe. The Babe cried. She was so devastated that The Boy and I were going out to lunch and she could not join us. Her words were different, but she might just as well have been saying "My go too, Mommy! My go, too!". I was sad to leave her. It's not as though she wasn't invited, but she had school. I tried to explain... remember all the errands we run? How we sneak out of the house while The Boy is napping to run a silly errand and then we stop for a donut? I told her, that's her special time with Mommy, but now it's The Boy's turn. I think she did understand, but she was still sad and a little weepy when I left. She hasn't done that to me in years. I was so shocked, and I felt really guilty.

Today while The Boy was napping, The Babe and I had to run a legitimate errand to get her new ballet slippers. We had been planning all week to take care of this errand today, but you had better believe I made sure we stopped for a donut, too.