When life hands you lemons....

You apparently get your mother to set you up a lemonade stand;that is if you are the MP.
It all started innocently enough. We went to Applebee’s for dinner and they handed the MP a kid’s menu and crayons.
For the uninitiated these menus usually have a theme associated with them and this one happened to be about a little girl who built a lemonade stand to raise money for charity.

We colored the picture, did the word scramble (ok, I did the word scramble he just shouted out the letter names) we talked about the lemonade stand and colored one in (the service was not that good so we had plenty of time to waste).

As we are talking about he asks me to make him some lemonade. I tell him sure, we have to hit the market on the way home anyway so I offer to pick him up some lemonade mix (you surely didn’t think I was going to make it from SCRATCH did you)?

This request for lemonade powder quickly morphs into a need for his own lemonade stand. I don’t know how that brain of his made that leap but there it is. I had to promise him, oh about 100 times, that night we would do a lemonade stand the next afternoon.

He was up at 6 a.m. and climbed into bed with us for a Sunday morning lie in. He asked me about 10 times between 6:00 and 6:02 if we were still going to do the lemonade stand. YES, YES, YES a million times yes. Cuddling is supposed to be QUIET time.

So when we are all up and at ‘em and I have at least had the opportunity to smell my coffee (I don’t think I actually got to taste any) he starts in on the lemonade stand again. It is clear to me I am not going to get out of this so I decide to make a list of everything we will need: cups, lemonade, sign, ice, cash box, chair, table, (this will act as the stand) decorations.

So I make the sign with MP supervision, he dresses it up a bit with some decoration.
I make the lemonade with MP supervision and some stirring on his part.
Scott and I round up the table, decorative lemons, ice bag, snacks to go with the lemonade, and chairs to sit in. Oh and sunscreen. We are never without sunscreen.

The MP gets the cups.

So I set all of this up outside and we wait. After about 15 minutes of the MP asking where all the customers are (we live on a quiet street with no foot traffic in the afternoon) I ask Scott to call in a ringer. Our friend Gart and his fiancé Cathy kindly stop by and purchase a cup. At this point 25 minutes has elapsed since we set up the stand and the MP has moved on to other things.

I am left manning the stand. Alone. Look, I did my retail duty in high school and college and as much as I loved it – this stand was all about HIM, not about me. He fretted and chatted, begged and whined for the stupid thing for nearly an entire day and his attention span lasted all of 20 minutes – which was five minutes longer than expected.
I have been at this mom stuff long enough to know how this was going down and who would actually be selling the lemonade but he seemed to have fun watching me do it, and really isn’t that all that matters?