Flowers For Mama

If you are like me (God help you), and you have a daughter like Sarah, you have lots of little vases of these beauties tucked around your house. Each year Sarah gets giddy when the dandelions start their decent upon our lawn. She cannot walk by even one without picking it and proclaiming that she has done so in my name and I am to immediately take this flower inside and give it a lovely new home in a vase of water (only to watch it die shortly thereafter and sprinkle my kitchen counter with it wonderful yellow pollen, which I am continuously wiping up).
Now I do not mean to sound ungrateful here, don't get me wrong, I love the tiny little hand that holds each bouquet of cheery, yellow blooms out to me with such a grin on her face. And for the first, oh, five handfuls or so, I find it endearing. Then it gets old. Then I am wrestling her baby brother, carrying a diaper bag, sippy cup, and container of cheero's just trying to make it to the car before I loose something (the baby seems to be slipping fast...) and she is begging me to take this handful of weeds from her with a pathetic frown of dissappointment on her face. A frown that says, "Don't you love me, Mommy? Why won't you take my gift for you?" And where do you suppose I have to put these flowers, when we are late for an appointment, still have to run to the bank, and I have just spilled milk down my leg? But, alas, I do always manage to take them, and, though they may be a bit wilted by the time I get them there, they do always manage to make it to the vase on the windowsil in the kitchen.