1 Mother 2 Another

While driving in the car yesterday, we
were playing Scavenger Hunt – think I Spy with a list of
items to find. Maddie stumped us with a request for a ladder, and
after a few minutes of no luck she wanted to just ignore it and
move on.


“No,” I said, “Let’s not forget it, but we
can add more items to the list while we still try to find the
ladder as well.”

So I read about this project a mom came up
with for her kids – the “Good Deeds Jar” –
where the kids worked at a list of good deeds to show Santa how
great they are. You know I love a project that keeps my girls
focused on the real meaning of Christmas, so I played around with
the original idea and have come up with the Kindness Jar.

Hey everyone - have a great and happy
holiday weekend, and safe travels to all! See you next week -

Sunday after church we stopped at the
grocery store to get donuts, a treat in which we indulge about once
a month. Believe it or not, our grocery store has really good
donuts, and we’ve decided we prefer that site to a donut
store. But walking in and out of a grocery store during post-church
hours will definitely take more time than a quick stop to a donut
store, so it was already after noon when we got the girls strapped
back into their car seats.


“By the way,” I said nonchalantly, “what time
does the Cowboy game start?”


“It actually started a few minutes ago,” Brian said as
he gritted his teeth trying to be patient.


From the back seat we heard, “WHAT??? The Cowboy game is on?
I’ve got to get home and get into my jersey!”

Sunday started as an ordinary day: a few
whining fits, scurrying to get to church, and so on. We had a quiet
lunch afterwards as we watched the Cowboys fight their way to
victory, and the girls even headed relatively uncomplainingly
towards their quiet times. Afterwards Maddie and I went grocery
shopping while Cora and Daddy played in the back yard.


And then came the question which redefined the rest of our day.


“Mommy, where’s my Silky?”

Yesterday was Maddie’s Thanksgiving
Feast at school, and family members were invited to come eat their
holiday lunch with the kids. The meal was most illuminating, and I
learned a lot.


For starters, eating with a plastic spork is just about impossible.
The shallow tines on it will barely spear a piece of turkey because
they’re only about an eighth of an inch long, and the spoon
part is less than perfect since some of the food just slides off
the tines. I get that it’s a two-fer thing: two utensils for
the price of one. I just hope I don’t have to use one again
any time soon.

Tuesday morning Cora was talking excitedly
about her upcoming ballet class – Tuesday is ballet day for
Cora. “I’m going to take the purple class today,
instead!” she announced.


For those of you who don’t know (and why should you), the
ballet classes are organized by color: the 3-year-old class wears
pink leotards, 4-year-olds wear lilac, 5-year-olds wear light blue,
and so on. Cora, obviously, is in the pink class.


“Baby, actually, you are in the pink class still –
you’ll be in purple next year. Purple is for 4-year-olds, and
you’re still 3,” I said carefully.


Cora looked at me pityingly. “But Mommy, Savannah Jane is in
my class and she’s four years old (true story, since SJ
turned four last month) and I’m better than her (true story
also). So if I can keep up with a four-year-old, I can be in the
four-year-old class.


How do you argue with that?

Yesterday I picked Maddie and her friend
Elise up after school, and due to the weather we rode in the car
rather than walking. After concentrating on maneuvering through
kindergarten traffic and getting safely out of the school zone, I
tuned into a conversation between Maddie and Elise that was already
in progress. Apparently they were discussing the creation of our
solar system, and I started listening right around the following:


Maddie: “But, Elise, if God didn’t create the Earth
then the moon wouldn’t exist because there would be no way
for it to come into being.”

Cora’s always been firmly attached
to me – head buried in my hair, hands locked around my neck,
hiney nestled into my crossed legs, whatever – and it’s
been a difficult trait for me to live with sometimes. Her
separation anxiety seemed to last an incredibly long time, even
past her third birthday, and I’d despaired of ever cracking
it.


Then I went and did a show, and Daddy got extra time at night with
the girls.

Wednesday morning Maddie came downstairs
for school with a yellow post-it note stuck to her shirt. Upon
closer examination, I saw that the note said – in
Maddie’s handwriting – “Madeleine Milner
214-555-1212”.


“Maddie, why are you wearing a note stuck to your chest with
your name and phone number on it?” I asked her. My mind, of
course, was playing through all the worst-case scenarios: she heard
a kid was bringing a gun to school and she wanted her body to be
identified later. A strange man followed her into the restroom
yesterday and asked her to write down her info on a piece of paper.


You know, the sort of things you all think about.

The following was a message left on my
cell phone yesterday by a friend:


“Hey, Jen, it’s me. I thought you’d want to know
that I was out running errands and happened to drive by the school,
and I looked at the clock and what do you know! It was recess time
for our girls! So I looked up at the playground and there they
were, arms flung out and heads thrown back, running across the
playground with abandon. They were clearly flying and having a
terrific time. Just thought you’d want to know.”


I cannot tell you how much I love messages like that. Stolen
sneak-peeks into Maddie’s life give me that bit of
reassurance –that she is still a nice person and not running
around the playground beating kids up. That she has friends, and is
not lonely and miserable.


That she does indeed thrive without me.


I was humming happily for the rest of the afternoon, snuggling up
to that picture in my mind like it was a purring cat on a rainy
day.


Thanks, my friend!

Maddie has always been a worrier, and when
she gets stuck on something it’s almost impossible to get her
out of it before she’s good and ready. About two weeks ago,
Maddie had a scary dream in which I left her and didn’t come
back, ignoring her begging to “Come back, Mama!” as I
drove away on my motorcycle (!). Ever since then, Maddie’s
been stuck to me like glue. She cries when I leave at night –
big sobbing tears, running-in-the-rain-after-me (literally) tears,
the kind that break your heart tears. When I visit her class in
school to help out, I have to pry her off me when I leave.


This has moved into other areas of her life, to the point that
Maddie is now spectacularly unable to handle emotional
disappointments. Can’t go to a friend’s house after
school? Meltdown. Can’t choose which video to watch with
Cora? Meltdown. Lose a book for bedtime? Meltdown of epic
proportions.


Saturday, I’d had enough.

The past couple of weeks have been crazy
for me, doing the mommy thing all day and rehearsing a show late at
night. Cora’s had to go to her share of rehearsals, but
mostly the show hasn’t had a direct impact on family time.


Indirectly, though, is another story.


With every minute of nap times taken up with learning lines and
trying to stay afloat, my days have become infinitely less
productive. And with my oil burning far past midnight, my days have
become infinitely more cranky and less patient. So I’ve spent
the last two weeks coasting on the household front – four
loads of laundry FINALLY done, but sitting for over a week in my
bedroom waiting to be folded and put away. Brian uncomplainingly
went to the pile every morning and plucked a fresh pair of socks,
while I tried desperately to find a shirt that wasn’t too
wrinkled. Our supply of frozen meals I’d stocked up has
dwindled to nil, and don’t get me started on the state of the
house: books everywhere, Barbie shoes strewn all over the floor,
table surfaces buried under papers and detritus.


It is not, of course, the end of the world when your house becomes
snowed under. I work hard on my household partly so that I can
coast when necessary. But by the end of this weekend I
couldn’t stand it any more, which is why I was so grateful
for Sunday – my first day off in weeks.

Cora's rash is finally dying down, now
that she's been off the amoxicillan since Monday evening.


On the other hand, she only had six days of medication for her
strep, which is notoriously stubborn. So I called the doctor and,
when I pointed out the time frame, won a prescription for another
antibiotic, which Cora started Thursday.


Which was apparently a good thing, since Thursday evening she began
complaining that her throat hurt. Then Thursday night it took her
three hours to get to sleep because she said her ear hurt.


The antibiotic should knock out an ear infection too, right?


Seriously, how much longer will this kid be half-healthy? My heart
aches for her.

Cora's sleepless night Monday night was
explained Tuesday morning, when she woke up with a violent rash
over every inch of her body.


I am a bad Mommy.


Cora has had amoxicillan once before, a year or so ago; she got a
mild rash from it, and the doctor declared it (cleverly enough) an
Amoxicillan Rash. Turns out everyone can get it, and most people
get it every tenth time or so that they take amoxicillan. Since
Cora only had it once, she risked the rash again to try to knock
out Cora's strep.


Bad move.


This rash was in her ears, between her toes, you name it, she was
covered there. Apparently the zyrtec I'd been giving her for
allergies had slowed the onset of the reaction but when it came it
was a doozy. So now that it's happened twice, the doctor is
officially nixing the penicillan family for Cora. The good news is
that it's not a true allergy - just a sensitivity - so if she
accidentally has some she won't die. The bad news is that my kid
didn't look so good for a while, and people ran screaming from her
at open gym.


I told a friend of mine that I'd jokingly said to a mom I didn't
know, "I'm assuming your kid has had the chicken pox vaccine." It
cleared the room, and my friend I suggested I take Cora to, say,
Six Flags and enjoy her newfound ability to move us to the head of
any line.


I am a bad Mommy.

Well, the nights aren't getting any
better.


After a nice, peaceful night of no wakings on Halloween I thought
we'd licked Maddie's evening worries. But last night she was up a
record FIVE times, and Cora even caught the worry bug and got up
four times herself with nightmares. This, of course, after I got to
bed around 12:30.


Mommy is cranky. Do not get in mommy's way.