Thursday, December 27, 2007

Sometimes the best-laid Mom Plots don't work out exactly as planned. Emma got a princess tea set for Christmas, and has been incessantly bugging me to let her have a "real" tea party with it, with mint tea. The one attempt at having a tea party complete with water ended up with puddles all over the coffee table, so I wasn't too keen to let her have mint tea. Water tea parties are fine, outside in the summer. Inside, not so much.

Finally, as a compromise (read: driven to distraction, pulling my hair out, PLEASE STOP WHINING) I told her that when the weather warms up, I will make her mint tea and put it in her teapot so she can serve all her invisible princess friends tea at an outdoor tea party. I figured that would be the end of that.

Five minutes later, as I was checking the dyepot on the stove, I heard the clop-clop-clop of size 10 girl's boots on the floor. I turned around and there she is, dressed in snowpants, boots, coat, hat, and mittens.

"Cinderella and I are ready for our tea party, Mommy. Is the tea hot yet?"

I knew when I was beaten, and gracefully capitulated.



It was about 5:00pm, completely dark out, 27˚F, howling wind, and blowing snow. She sat on the back step, poured her mint tea, talked to her invisible princesses, broke icicles off the gas grill to stir the tea and cool it down (?!), and generally had a wonderful time.

She finally came in after about 45 minutes, rosy-cheeked and happy.



Parenthood is a wonderful, mysterious learning experience. Tea parties in the snow. Who knew.

6 comments:

Jackie said...

Nicole has her tea parties in the bathtub. I have one of those plastic step stools for her to reach the sink and it also doubles as the "table" in the tub. Cookies and crackers don't work so well, but mandarine oranges are always a hit!

cyndy said...

I'll take 2 lumps, thank you ;-)

....because life is sweet in Toddlerland....

Kris said...

How fabulous.

Please don't let her ever tell Anna Grace about that idea. I might just freeze to death if I had to supervise an outdoor, snow covered tea party.

Liz said...

Just wonderful, Sue.
Emma is a gem. :)

gtr said...

Awwww... that is so sweet!

Cathy said...

The joys of motherhood - the unexpected snow tea parties. Terrific!!