1 Mother 2 Another

My month-long marathon of rehearsals and
shows is finally over – show, closed; makeup case, put away.


Now to deal with the clean-up.

This is not my story, but it’s too
delicious not to tell. Pun intended.


Maddie’s friend Elise has historically disliked chocolate, to
the point that Elise’s friends will often choose a vanilla
cake for a birthday party so “Elise will want some
too.” This is not anything the girl has done to force her way
– it’s simply a measure of how much her friends like
her.


So when Elise asked for a chocolate bunny for Easter for the first
time, to call it huge would be an understatement. Both parents
checked in – yes, she really meant it. Rite of passage, or a
genuine taste change? Who could tell, and who cared. The bunny was
coming, and the subject of much discussion. Elise made it clear
that the bunny was hers – and ONLY hers – and she would
savor it slowly in her own time whilst it remained off-limits to
the rest of the household.

I’ve posted before about other mommy
blogs I really admire; I do enjoy reading other sites on a somewhat
regular basis, mostly just to remind myself that I’m not in
this crazy thing alone. Even words from a stranger can be
comforting when they echo my feelings.


But one site – target="_blank">Steady On, Mama – is not written by a
stranger. It’s written by my best friend Abby,
waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in New York. And I’m so thrilled
she’s started writing! She’s got an incredible talent
for saying what I’m thinking – only better. And now I
can finally keep up with her inner thoughts – and the issues
she wrestles with – along with all the other mommies out
there.


So check it out- I promise you won’t be disappointed.

For the first few years of the
girls’ lives, our only car was a 1995 Mazda with a tape deck
and hand-cranked windows. When we added a 2000 mini-van in 2009,
there was still a tape deck, and though the front windows were
powered, the back windows, alas, did not open at all.


So when we got our new car last August, the girls marveled at many
“new” technologies, like touch-screen navigation and
iPod-ready portals, but nothing excited them as much as the power
windows. They are entranced by the power at their fingertips, and
will endlessly roll the windows up and down; Cora is practically
dog-like in her love of hanging an arm or even foot out the window
whilst traveling.

Brian had to go out of town on a business
trip this week – at the last minute he headed to the
northwest early Tuesday morning, coming back last night. And
because I’ve been working so much recently, the girls have
gotten a tad used to Daddy being around.


So he was, ahem, missed.

Today is officially tax day, and to help
people celebrate (read: spend their anticipated returns) many
restaurants are offering discounts today.


I fully intend to take advantage of this.


You can Google "tax day restaurant discounts" to see what's around
you; href="http://eater.com/archives/2012/04/13/the-epic-national-tax-day-2012-dealfeed.php"
target="_blank">here is a partial list of nation-wide
stores. The two I took note of were the Maggie Moo's/Marble Slab
free scoop and the 15% off at P.F. Chang's.


I feel Chinese takeout coming on.

I’ve written before about the
afternoons Maddie and I have spent during one-on-one times at
Starbucks; we were looking for a place to rest and have a drink in
between events one day, and she quickly fell in love with the huge
leather chairs and almost-as-large cookies. She and Cora have been
having a rough time with my work schedule the past couple of weeks,
and so once a week I’ve carved out an afternoon to hit the
coffeehouse.


And let me tell you, it is absolute greatness.

As someone always looking to improve the
health of my general household, I’ve written a couple times
about candles. Several people have asked me why
“traditional” candles may not be the best option
– artificial fragrances, lead wicks, and paraffin, a
petroleum by-product, top the list of reasons – but
I’ve never really blogged about it in-depth.


I can tell you that my household uses beeswax or soy candles only,
and that we have no artificial air fresheners or even artificial
scents in the candles. If you’d like to know more about this,
read target="_blank">Keeper of the Home’s recent post
on href="http://www.keeperofthehome.org/2012/04/toxins-in-candles-sad-but-true.html"
target="_blank">using candles in the home; she links to
several more in-depth articles but in general does a great job
covering the topic.


Because they’re beautiful, but if they’re giving you
asthma, who needs them? Just read a bit and you decide.

Yesterday morning as Maddie and I walked
up to the school grounds, she spied a friend of hers coming up at
the same time. “Nathan!” she shouted joyfully and ran
towards him, throwing her arms around him in a fervent embrace.


To be fair, this is how all of Maddie’s girlfriends greet
each other: even though they’ve just seen each friend the day
before, they’ll scream a name, race towards the girl, and hug
her tightly for quite some time. If there’s still a distance
to walk after the meet-up, the two girls will hold hands for the
rest of the way.


You could see that Nathan was not quite down with the public
display of affection, and he smiled and said, “Ok, ok,
OK!” as she hugged him. But he did not break out of it. And
then as they walked the rest of the way together, Maddie firmly
holding his hand through the crosswalk, you could see
Nathan’s neck turn bright red, twin spots of flame lighting
up on his cheeks.


When they got across the street Nathan, still holding on, said
haltingly, “Maddie, why so huggy today?”


Which was as close as he came to complaining.


“No reason!” Maddie responded blissfully. And then
walked him the rest of the way to the door.

I started rehearsals for a show last week.
I don’t really do shows any more; I truly love being home
with the girls and between rehearsals and performances shows are a
big time commitment – not to mention a sacrifice to everyone
else around you who is picking up the slack for you. But a show
came up with a role I’ve always wanted to do and a relatively
low commitment time-wise, and Brian encouraged me to go for it.


I only rehearse for four hours a day – but those hours happen
to be from 7-11 p.m. So while I’m home for the girls most of
the time during the day, I leave right before bedtime, which is a
crucial snuggle/wind down time for both girls. And then
there’s the fact that I get home at midnight or later, and
get up at 5:30 to fix breakfasts, pack lunches, and start the next
day.


So I am tired.

Yesterday the girls tore through their
Easter baskets, cracking open eggs in a mad dash to discover all
the candy they’d gotten. What they found was that the Easter
bunny had shopped exclusively at Whole Foods – and so the
eggs were, um, a tad less exciting.


But listen, I have issue with turning Easter into Christmas Two
– baskets replacing stockings so that they’re bulging
with gifts rather than just a few chocolates, the Easter bunny
being the guy who gets the credit for all the good deeds, and so
on. On top of that, I’m supposed to serve my
food-dye-sensitive kid a basket of food dye (a.k.a. “the
stuff that makes her ADD”) and high-fructose-corn-syrup? I
don’t think so.

Cora’s got her pre-kindergarten
Easter party today, and I have to confess I’m nervous on a
few different levels.


One, today’s party signals the opening of the refined sugar
floodgates for the extended Easter holiday. Cora’s been
bringing home jelly beans all week, and tomorrow’s just going
to ratchet up the junk food quotient exponentially. And how do you
tell your child you’re going to throw away 70% of whatever
she gets?


In secret, of course.

Overheard recently:


Maddie walked out of a restaurant, saw a stray beer bottle cap
lying on the ground, and bent to pick it up.


At which point Cora came over and said:


“Trust me, Maddie, those do NOT smell good!”


Which disturbingly implies first-hand experience with the
subject.

Brian started a new job recently –
our choice, thankfully, and not a switch made due to a layoff
– and as is standard these days, we will spend the first
ninety days of his new employment without any work-provided health
insurance.


We are not, of course, living completely without health care
– we purchased 90-day private insurance to cover anything
major that will come up. But it is, essentially, major medical
coverage, which means no “hey I think I have strep
let’s pay a little office co-pay and find out” kind of
thing. Office visits, prescription refills, all these things are
off the table until a huge deductible is met – which
hopefully it won’t be.


So we are, in essence, living without day-to-day healthcare.


We prepared as best we could: we got 90-day refills on our daily
prescriptions, made sure all our well-visits were up-to-date, that
sort of thing. So we’ve done what we can, and are generally a
healthy family and hoping we cruise through those first 90 days
relatively uneventfully.


But it does change the way we look at things.