1 Mother 2 Another

My children are driving me up the wall.


Seriously up the wall.


Both spent the entire day yesterday trading off meltdown times,
alternately weeping, whining, and walking around the house going,
"I'm bored! When are we going to Colorado?"


I'm pretty much packed, and thankful for that. I'm so ready to go
on vacation.


Just somewhere other than where my offspring are going.


Wish us luck over the next week - I can't guarantee how many of us
will be returning.

Cora's been throwing up all day.


How did I not see this coming?

Alas, I've no time right now for such
luxuries as blogging - too busy packing.


And when I say packing, I mean everything BUT packing:


Laundry

Printing maps (grown-up maps this time)

Charging the camera(s)

Sorting snacks for the car

Persuading Cora not to pack fifteen books


That sort of thing. Not sure when I'll get to the packing, to be
honest.


Wish me luck.

I’m in the midst of preparing for
our trip next week and the house is starting to look a bit like the
Container Store ran into a Children’s Place and exploded. The
dining room is turning into Central Control, and I’ve got
stacks and stacks of projects started. I’ve found the plastic
tub that fits EXACTLY between the girls’ seats and the seat
in front of them, and have begun filling these tubs with snack
food, first aid kits, and more. I have zip-loc bags labeled
“Chargers” to collect our large handful of cell phone,
iPod, and camera chargers; zip-loc bags labeled “car
chargers” for almost the same thing; and notebooks with my
master plan written out in twelve easy-to-read pages.


And then there’s my laminator.

Continuing on the theme I started with
Cora’s home-grown Ballet Camp a couple weeks ago – the
theme, that is, of
mommy-wants-to-work-her-tail-off-and-entertain-you-without-you-having-to-get-out-there-and-learn-how-to-interact-with-new-people
– we had another camp last Friday:


Art Camp.


Yes, I could do ballet camp because it’s my former
profession, and no, I have absolutely no art training (or,
let’s face it, talent) BUT I do have an ace-in-the-hole: the
girls’ Aunt Nikkie is a professional,
people-pay-her-to-teach-their-kids art teacher. So I begged, and
she kindly said yes, and I got to work.

Maddie and Cora went for their well-child
visits yesterday, and everything went fairly well.


With one scary exception.


Maddie breezed through her weigh-in, measuring, and vision test.
Then they moved to the hearing test. “Raise your hand when
you hear the beep, ok, hon?” the nurse said, singing the
‘beep’. Maddie nodded. She raised her hand once. And
only once. “Raise it every time, ok, hon?” the nurse
prompted. Maddie nodded. And the hand stayed down.


The nurse re-did the test, with no more luck. Then she said,
“You know, it’s crowded and noisy here, so let’s
move into a private room to re-take this test.” We all
shuffled into a room and Maddie started again. Same results. One
hand raise, and nothing else except nervous looks from Maddie.

Maddie woke up yesterday morning, came
sleepily into my room, crept into my bed and said, “Yeah!
Today’s the day we’re going to Colorado for
vacation!”


Startled, I replied, “No, hon, we’re not leaving until
next Saturday.”


At which point she promptly burst into tears.


I found out later that Maddie had just finished a wonderful dream
about going to Colorado, and so felt deeply letdown at the news
that reality was a bit different. But even if she hadn’t been
hard on the heels of a lovely dream, Maddie would have been
desperate to get to Colorado. Both girls, in fact, have started a
countdown until vacation time, and can’t wait to reach
blast-off.


What’s behind all this? Partly a desire to have undivided
adult attention, I’m sure. Partly that we’ve been
talking up Colorado and all the fun things we’ll do there.
When I asked Maddie what she is most looking forward to about
Colorado, she said, “Going horseback riding, going fishing
with Daddy, and eating colored Cheerios for breakfast.” Yes,
we had Fruit Loops for breakfast when on vacation visiting my
grandfather last fall, and now they’re irrevocably linked.
And apparently the highlight of any vacation.


So yes, they’re excited about exploring a whole new world.
But they’re also over the moon at the thought of (in their
minds) unlimited access to cane sugar and artificial dyes.


Both girls have now asked several times a day, “How much
longer until we get to Colorado?” until I want to have an LED
countdown clock to hold up for them.


And I thought I’d escape that question until we actually got
in the car.

Most of you know I moved to Texas about
two years ago from New York. I’ve gradually adjusted back to
life here in the South, but can still be caught off-guard by the
friendliness here sometimes. Several months ago, we set our trash
out for our weekly pick-up and for whatever reason, our can was the
only one on the block not emptied. Not knowing how we were supposed
to get through another week without a trash can for our garbage, I
called sanitation services, anticipating a big argument with at
least a, “Well, you must have done something wrong to deserve
this!” Bare minimum, I was expecting a service charge to have
to deal with this.


Instead, I got “Oh, I’m so sorry! We’ll send a
truck around today to get that!” I hung up, dumbfounded.

Cora wanted to start taking
“big-girl” camps this summer, and since she’d
just turned three, the world was her oyster. With Cora’s deep
love for ballet and longing to be just like her big sister, ballet
camp seemed like a natural first step, and we signed Cora up.


Alas, Cora was apparently the only three-year-old in the area who
longed to spend a week immersed in the Prokofiev ballet
“Cinderella”, and the camp was canceled for lack of
enrollment. Cora was so crushed that I promised her I’d make
her own ballet camp for her, and last Friday I delivered.

We’ve been singing a Dave Crowder
song in church a lot recently – “How He Loves
Us”. It’s a favorite of mine, and Cora loves it as
well. She’s been singing it out lustily on Sundays, and one
recent morning I heard her singing under her breath.


Thinking she was singing that song, I asked her what she was
singing. “My favorite song,” she said shyly. “Can
you sing it out for Mommy to hear?” Cora stood back, threw up
her head, and belted out:


“Oh, Pow! He loves us! Oh, Pow! He loves us!”


Trying hard not to laugh, I said, “Honey, that’s
awesome, but the actual words are, “Oh, how he loves us! Oh,
how he loves us!”


Cora looked at me as if I were missing a few marbles.
“Nuh-uh, that’s not how it goes. It’s 'Oh, Pow!
He loves us!' God knocks you over with his love!”


I can’t argue with that.

Maddie and Cora have become a bit, um slow
in getting ready to head out somewhere: shoes can never be located,
Silkies can never be found quickly, must have one more drink of
water, must finish game, and so on. I’ve been working on
finding a way to help them hustle a bit faster, and with a happy
heart. I’ve also been trying to plan a little more
spontaneity (hah!) into our daily lives, and I finally hit upon
something that seems to cover both bases.


“Listen up, folks, I’ve got a family
announcement,” I said at dinner last night. Everyone stared
at me apprehensively.

I went to my women’s Bible study
last night and came home after the girls had gone to bed. Yep,
missing bed time is just one of the perks of digging into the Good
Book! Anyway, I made my rounds of the rooms, knowing the girls were
“waiting up” for me. Maddie was awake and hyper and
ready to chat, so it took a few minutes to get myself out an into
Cora’s room.


I found Cora huddled almost completely under the blankets –
including the down comforter. Only the tip of her nose and part of
her eyes were showing; everything else was covered up. She was, of
course, drenched in sweat, and I could tell by the amount of sweat
on her ringlets that she was less than half an hour away from
waking herself up from being so hot, crying for a few minutes, then
going back to sleep, covers flung back.


This is a thing of Cora’s, obviously. She won’t go to
sleep unless the blankets are pulled up, and even if I go easy with
them she scrunches down. Then she gets unbearably hot, natch, and
wakes up, sweating profusely and calling for mommy.

A friend of mine had a baby last week (hi
baby Ben!) and while she was in the hospital recovering I took her
two boys for the day. I love the boys, who are wonderful, and who
love my girls. They’re well-mannered, kind, are raised
similarly to mine, and a joy to have around.


But still – four kids under the age of 5 could be hard. I
felt up to it, but was a bit worried how I’d fill a ten-hour
day. I couldn’t take the kids to the pool –
there’s no way I can watch Cora and two-year-old Nate at the
same time. But I figured out a few fun things, planned as well as I
could, and picked them up.


Everything went incredibly well the entire morning. We headed to
our outdoor nature museum and had a great time. The four kids
stayed together, were respectful and kind towards each other, and
stayed away from the poison ivy. We ate a picnic outside, examined
coyote poop on the trail, walked through the butterfly garden, and
got nice and exhausted.


Things went so well that I have to confess I got a little cocky.
All four children are blonde, and it was clear most people thought
they were all mine, and I could feel the admiring glances –
look how well this woman handles four kids! What poise! What
relaxed confidence! I fully acknowledge, by the way, that the main
reason it was so easy is that Nate and Sam have been raised
excellently, with outstanding obedience skills and great manners.
But I was more than happy to take the credit, and as I drove home
for nap time I felt a bit like Super Mom.


And then things didn’t go so well.

Cora’s quite the sensory girl:
we’ve already figured out that she is incredibly tactile,
touching and rubbing against everything in an effort to get to know
it better. Just think about my blogs describing the way she rubs my
hair over her face in ecstasy. And she’s quite a
super-taster, too – she put many more things in her mouth
(unfortunately) as a baby than Maddie ever did. And her hearing is
extraordinary –she’ll hear Brian come home late at
night, hours past her bedtime, when our door alarm chimes softly
(across the house, on another floor, through her closed door, with
her air purifier and night-night music on) and immediately begin
chanting, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”


But nothing beats that kid’s sense of smell.

A girl uses the potty, and feels big and
grown-up. A girl understands there will be other people around,
watching, crowded into the bathroom to “help”. A girl
suffers this in silence for a while, thinking it’s necessary
and thinking, frankly, that it’s a bit safer that way. But
then there comes a time when a girl just wants to use the potty by
herself, without anyone else in the room. A girl wants some
privacy.


I’m speaking, of course, of me.

I’ve done many things over the 4th
of July. In our nation’s capitol, I took a private cruise up
the Potomac and watched the Mall fireworks from there. In historic
Boston, I camped out on the Charles River along with tens of
thousands of other people. In New York, we threw a picnic blanket
down on our floor, turned off all the lights, and watched the
famous fireworks out of our big front picture window. I’ve
definitely had some good Independence Days.


But Sunday was hands down the best.

When Maddie turned a year old, I began
searching in earnest for friends for her. She had built-in friends
with my own friends; we’d all begun having children around
the same time, and Maddie had three or four children only a year or
so older than her. But I also started trolling the park, eventually
finding Maddie the first big love of her life – Naomi. They
bonded, and were BFFs until we left New York for Texas.


Once we hit Texas, I was blessed enough to fall into a mom’s
group in our neighborhood with children all roughly Maddie’s
age. She was on the youngest end of the scale, but she’s
always been happiest that way, and she’s had playmates within
walking distance ever since. Preschool has simply widened
Maddie’s circle, and she’s entering kindergarten with a
good half dozen great friends under her belt, going in with her.


And then there’s Cora.