1 Mother 2 Another

Is it possible for a person to get the
flu, then strep throat, then the flu AGAIN?


In less than a month?


Cora says the answer is "yes".

Bear with me as I give you the background:


Exhibit A: Tuesday afternoon Cora came home from school with a new
library book. When Maddie saw the book she exclaimed, “Oh, I
saw that book at the library! I REALLY want to read it! Can I
please borrow it?”


Seeing Cora’s mutinous look, I hastily spoke up.
“Maddie, this is a book Cora checked out and she will get to
read it first. Please do not read the book or try to look at it
until Cora’s had a chance to read the whole thing, ok?”


Maddie agreed.

We're hitting a particularly ugly stage
in our household, where selfishness and jealousy abound.


Maddie won't share her new wings; Cora won't share her favorite
Barbie's favorite swimsuit; Maddie illicitly reads Cora's new
library book before Cora does, and then admits she did it even
though she knew it was wrong; Cora purposefully takes waaaaay
longer than her turn on the mini-trampoline.


We're working through this one baby-step at a time. Lots of
talking, lots of praying, lots of scripture, lots of Parenting
Tools use.


But I'm not so sure we'll all still be standing when this is all
over. I just don't see how it's possible.

Wednesday, as I’ve mentioned before,
is officially Mommy Day: I teach Monday and Tuesdays after school
through bedtime, so Wednesday is the first chance the girls get to
come home from school and hang with Mommy for the rest of the day.
We keep the schedule clear – no play dates, no appointments
– so we can really relax and hang out together all afternoon.


A couple weeks ago Cora was having a hard time getting back into
the school groove post-Christmas-break, and I knew she was
desperately looking forward to Wednesday. How do I know? Because
she told me so on Monday morning. While running errands that
Monday, I came across a yummy cashmere sweater on clearance at the
outlet mall, and bought it using a gift card Cora had given me for
Christmas. (This is getting somewhere, I promise).

Naomi went back to New York early
yesterday morning, and Maddie is a bit bereft. The flight out was
in the wee hours so Maddie and Naomi said their goodbyes the night
before and I woke up at 5 to get Naomi and Ingrid to the airport.
But when I got home, just as the sun started graying the sky, I
heard a rustling in Maddie’s room and came to find her wide
awake, tossing and turning.


“She’s gone, isn’t she?” Maddie asked
quietly. I nodded and snuggled into bed with her.


“I woke up earlier and ran downstairs to see if I could catch
her, but she was already gone. And then I couldn’t get back
to sleep,” Maddie said. Her eyes were dry, but I could see
sorrow there.


So yes, the visit went incredibly well. From the first fierce
embrace at the airport to a belated birthday party for Naomi on
Saturday night, the girls slid smoothly along, instantaneously back
in their friendship of five years ago.


When they were two years old.

Maddie and Omi, together again.


And all is right with the world once more.

Today is a red-letter day in our
household. Today, Maddie’s best friend from New York, Naomi,
is coming to visit.


That’s right.


If you’ve been with me that long, you’ll remember that
for the first couple years of Maddie’s life, she and Naomi
were pretty inseparable. They played together every. Single. Day.
Whether on the playground or in an apartment, the two saw each
other daily and were fast friends.


We moved in January of 2008 and the girls haven’t seen each
other since. They don’t even speak on the phone much –
just once or twice a year. So to make this clear, Maddie has not
seen Naomi in FIVE YEARS.

Cora has a love of music, which is hardly
a surprise in this family. Her two big requests for Christmas were
a big giant cheetah (don’t ask, and yes, she got it) and an
iPod touch.


Yes, she got it. Don’t judge.


We found an 8gb refurbished one for a pretty great deal, so Santa
came through. But what I didn’t realize was that since it was
“official” and from the store, it also came with the
charger and the white ear buds.


The ear buds would not be a big deal, but I’m Over-Protective
Mommy and I really really don’t want those tender ears to
have music shoved WAAAAAAAAAAAY down in there. We put a volume
control lock on the girls’ iPods, but I just started letting
Maddie use ear buds this year, and then with the music on QUIET.
Otherwise, she and Cora have been using the more traditional foam
earphones that sit a little further out. And these particular
headphones are for kids, so there’s a limit as to how many
decibels it can reach anyway.

A couple months ago Cora experienced some
“dire crisis” that sent her into a meltdown one fine
afternoon. She’d asked for a couple holiday cookies and
I’d said yes without checking our stash; a quick look into
the cookie jar revealed only one cookie left. One.


“But Maddie had two of these cookies yesterday! I want two
cookies!” Cora wailed, and burst into tears.


I stared at my daughter, a puddled mass of sobs on the floor, not
trying to manipulate me into magically finding a second cookie
– just unable to move past the fact that there was only one
cookie to be had.


Now, in the past, I would have handled the situation like this:

Over the holidays I loosened my
nutritional hold on my household quite a bit, and allowed more than
a modicum of sugar to course through my children’s veins. I
do love to bake, and don’t see how I can fill the house with
goodies and then not allow the girls reasonably free rein with the
cookie jar; I worry it’ll set them up to see the sweets as
something forbidden and oh-so-desirable.


Likewise, as candy comes into the house from Christmas parties and
gifts from friends, I can’t simply take the twenty cabillion
candy canes and dump them in the trash. Ok, if I’m being
truthful, more than a small amount of store candy DID end up in the
trash, but my girls were pretty free to consume whatever they
brought in the house – after checking with a grown-up, of
course. And Maddie’s big request from Santa? A gumball
machine filled with jelly beans.


I know.

Sunday afternoon Maddie came into our home
office and plopped down in Brian’s chair as I did some work
on my computer. She sat silently for a few moments, contemplatively
spinning in his wheelie chair before speaking.


“You know, Mommy, you’re a pretty decent writer,”
she finally said.


“Well, thank you,” I replied cautiously.


“I bet you could write a whole book if you wanted to,”
she continued.


“Maybe, hon – thanks for the confidence!” I
replied. More cautiously.


“I was thinking,” she said, finally swiveling around to
face me, “you could write a book about me and Cora –
our lives, the funny stuff we say, things you notice about us.
Because honestly, we’re pretty funny and I think a lot of
people would want to read about us.”


I stared at her. Had she been surfing the web and come across my
blog?

I know, I know – it’s
mid-January and I’m talking about gifts from three weeks ago.
But as you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been a bit, well,
absent these past couple weeks – partly taking family time,
and partly dealing with household sickness and me being simply too
tired or preoccupied to write about said household illness.


So I’ve still got a few things to say about the holidays. And
if it makes you feel any better, it’s not just cyber-world
where I’m slacking: I still haven’t put my Christmas
decorations away.


Baby steps.

I THINK Cora is going to school today. But
then again, I thought she'd be going yesterday until she spiked a
100.2 fever around 4 a.m. yesterday morning, so what do I know.


Sure, I could've sent her anyway - it's not like they take a
rectal temp to let her into the school - but obviously her body's
fighting something and I'm sure hundreds of parents out there are
grateful Cora stayed home and didn't share well with the other
kids.


She sure needs to go to school today, I'll tell you that. We've
hit the point where she feels fine all day and is bored out of her
skull, begging for leftover Christmas candy and an endless supply
of videos. Instead, yesterday she got leftover party crackers and
an endless supply of kindergarten workbook pages.


She was not amused.


So I think she's ready to go to school.


Here's hoping.

We're not dead yet- though I apologize
for the long silence. First, you know, two full weeks of winter
break; the kind you wallow in wholeheartedly, reveling in the lack
of a schedule and enjoying plenty of fires in the fireplace and
copious pancakes on the griddle. One of the best family vacations
ever.


Second, though, we've had a modest wave of sickness to help us
ring in the new year.


Brian's been down with the flu, then my mom (who lives with us)
came down with it a few days ago and developed bronchitis as a
complication. Then Cora - who, unlike Brian and my mom, has had her
flu shot - came down with a fever Monday afternoon and stayed home
for Tuesday, the first day back from our winter break.


Fortunately for me, Cora woke up Tuesday with no fever and is ready
to go back today. But it's been less than fun here for the past
week or so, and in the interest of full confession I'll tell you
that pretty much all my Christmas decorations are still up. I
dragged the tree out Monday night so as not to miss our city's
last day of offering free pick-up for mulching, but otherwise
we're still full of holiday cheer over here.


I'll get to it eventually. Just probably not today.


Vacation? What vacation?