My most favourite thing about Mother’s Day is the Super Secret Spy Missions that go on around here. About a week before, the kids decide they want to get me a gift (totally not required, but important to them, and it’s charming, and I get stuff, so that’s a win-win-win). Then they start sniffing around like they’re on Mission Impossible to try to figure out what I would like.

They’re kind of like Charlie’s Angels, with Sir Monkeypants as the suave, sexy Charlie. It’s a particularly apt comparison now that the Captain’s hair is long enough that he gets mistaken for a girl at least four or five times a week. The other day, he had a kid from his class over for “hanging out” (“We don’t call it a PLAYDATE, MOM”), and when the mom came to the door with her normal-haired son, she greeted a waiting Captain with, “Oh, are you the Captain’s sister?” All this, and still the refusal to get a haircut.

(He really would make a good Sabrina though, what with the planning and thinking and sensible long-sleeved outfits at all times. Gal Smiley would be Kelly, the one who is beautiful but also smart and who Gets Shit Done. The Little Miss was born to be Jill, the one who uses her eyelashes to flirt information out of the most hardened of bad guys. Huh. I have given birth to Charlie’s Angels, who knew.)

So what’s been going on around here the past few days are incidents where I say stuff like, “Man, I could REALLY USE a new pasta strainer. This one has been broken for ages! If only I had a NEW ONE.” Then the kids rush off to Sir Monkeypants and there is a flurry of whispering, and planning, and concocting. SO ADORABLE.

Sometimes one of them, selected for the dangerous undercover part of the plan, will slink into the kitchen and oh-so-casually ask me some related questions, like if I DID get a new strainer, should it have a handle? And by the way, no reason, what’s your favourite colour of strainer? Then it’s rush back to dad for more whispered conferring and discussing and giggling behind hands, totally convinced they have come up with a BRILLIANT GIFT IDEA all on their own, and I will NEVER GUESS what they have in mind.

SO. CUTE.

Then at the end of it, they sit beaming as I unwrap my new strainer and exclaim about how I really wanted one! And how did you know! And this is amazing!

It’s the absolute best. Happy Mother’s Day!

[Edited to add: Just got back from the farmer’s market where the honey stand vendor asked the Captain if he has been a good little girl today. HA! I’m thinking The Hair needs its own post.]