1 Mother 2 Another

Both of my girls were born without much
hair to speak of – I guess it’s just a family thing.
And when Maddie was a baby, I didn’t want to be one of those
women who glue a bow to their bald kid’s head, so I waited
until Maddie actually needed one before trying the hairclip thing.


Big mistake. By that time, Maddie was perhaps 18 months old and had
definite opinions about what did and didn’t look good, and
hair accessories fell soundly in the latter column. I spent the
next six months trying to coax any type of hair accessory onto
Madeleine’s head, having success at first with the head band,
then alligator clips, then (still reluctantly) the elastic rubber
bands. The fights were not small, but I kept trying since the
alternative was a face full of floppy hair and a girl who kept
running blindly into walls.

Offering yet more proof that children
really do listen to what we say, Maddie’s becoming quite the
little eco-conscious consumer.


The other day I set out to pile us post-pool into the shower for a
quick chlorine rinse, and turned on the water before stripping down
the girls. With our bathroom on the second floor and the water
heater in our garage, it can sometimes take a good two minutes for
the hot water to reach us. Maddie looked at the empty, running
shower and said, “Why did you turn the water on before we get
in?”


Struggling to peel a swim diaper off a snug wet hiney, I said,
“Well, we need the water to get hot first so we’re not
cold when we get wet.”


Maddie looked anxiously at the empty shower, the water running down
the drain, and said, “But you’re wasting all that
water, Mommy! Turn it off now!”

Cora’s got a half-dozen or so
“words” going on now – Mama, Dada, ‘Amma
(Gamma), Mah-Mah (Maddie), bye-bye, ball. Or should I say,
she’s got a half-dozen or so words we can understand, since
Cora’s actual vocabulary count seems to run in the hundreds:
that girl can take a breath and talk nonstop for sixty seconds,
pointing and gesturing the whole time, before running out of steam.
I’ve learned to jump into the conversation quickly during a
breath pause, lest it become a monologue instead of a two-person
scene.


And my job, by the way, in these conversations, is simply to guess
what she’s trying to say and repeat it so she can confirm or
deny the rumors of her intentions. “A gabba gabba goo goo
durah mah!” she’ll say. “You want to go outside
and play?” I’ll guess. “Deh!” she’ll
confirm, saying yes.

We are still in the throes of nudging a
resistant Maddie into using the big-girl potty, and I’m
beginning to fear that my jokes about Maddie still wearing diapers
in kindergarten may well have a whiff of reality about them.


And on the heels of that statement, let me thoroughly confuse you
and say that my daughter is completely potty trained; she simply
refuses to use the toilet.

Between blog post comments and emails,
I’ve received quite a bit of feedback from you parents out
there on yesterday’s “Facebook Depression”
posting. Clearly, I’ve struck a familiar note with a lot of
you, as pretty much everyone was echoing some refrain of
“Sing it sister! I feel ya!”


So I’ve been stuck chewing that cud all day, still trying to
work my way through it. I had a playdate today (four hours at the
pool – and Maddie still went back after dinner for more.
Those aren’t wrinkles, they’re permanent pruney lines
from being in the water All. The. Time.) with a fellow mom
who’s definitely been there – six kids, making me feel
like the amateur as I crab about dealing with two! And while our
conversation skipped over several different topics, we kept coming
back to land on how we felt as moms, our job dissatisfaction even
as we know we wouldn’t trade it for anything. And throughout
my friend's words of wisdom and encouragement was woven a constant
stream of conversation that went something like this:


"Get out of the pool." "Why? What'd I do?" "You whined." "No I
didn't!" "Yes, you did. Speaking in an annoying, sing-songy voice
is whining. Out. And you - (to a brother) - you get out too." "What
did I do?!" "You laughed at her having to get out." "Do you see a
smile on this face?" "I see a smirk, yes I do." Then, under her
breath - "Lord help us, I don't think we're going to make it to
dinner today. This just might be the day we don't."


Huh. Guess it doesn't get any easier with practice, I think to
myself, right before I see my friend's daughter slip scarily in
the water and run sobbing to her mother to be comforted, slights
and bickerings forgotten and forgiven as need overtakes pettiness
and my friend's arms offer absolute grace, the look of muted joy
shining on her face as she is able to make her daughter feel
better.

I think I’m probably the last person
in the computer-using world to be holding out on Facebook, the
online club that everyone seems to be a member of except me. My
husband spends a not inconsiderable amount of his precious free
time surfing it, looking up acquaintances and re-connecting with
old friends, and is often shouting out to me to come look at
someone’s photo, or did I know that so-and-so is still
performing in New York?


Sometimes I’ll succumb and peek over his shoulder for a few
moments, and I admit it’s seductive. You click on one old
friend you haven’t seen in ten years, wonder if they’re
in touch with any other friends and look up their friends, then
find yourself ten degrees out and seeing folks you haven’t
thought about in a long time. I can easily see myself spending
hours wading through different pages, idly following threads and
ending up with my best friend from kindergarten staring me in the
face (hey Beth Caswell – where are you these days?).

Tuesday the three of us hit our local
library for an awesome morning of storytelling. The reader was on
fire, with props and costumes and puppets and a great sense of
timing as she worked her way through a few books. One in
particular, href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FPaper-Bag-Princess-Classic-Munsch%2Fdp%2F0920236162%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1215573261%26sr%3D8-1&tag=1mother2anoth-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325"
target="_blank">The Paper Bag Princess, was a big hit
with Maddie. It told the tale of Princess Elizabeth, whose castle
was attacked by a mean dragon; the dragon burned down the castle,
leaving her nothing to wear but a paper bag as she went in search
of her True Love Roderick, who’d been taken prisoner by the
dragon. When finally the princess found the dragon, she outsmarted
the dragon in a battle of wits and made her way to her True Love,
who had the nerve to criticize her clothing and, well, smell.
Elizabeth realized her True Love wasn’t the real deal and
went off to be happy by herself.

So I was making dinner the other day when
Brian came over with an amused look on his face. “I hear you
read Pinocchio for nap time today,” he said casually.


“Yep,” I affirmed, “I did.” I didn’t
elaborate, hoping that would be the end of the conversation. Brian
continued to study me, nearly smirking. Resigned, I put down my
spatula, faced him, and asked with absolutely no attempt at
casualness, “Did Maddie say something?”


“Let’s see,” he said, staring thoughtfully at the
ceiling. “I want to get her words down right. I believe she
said – Oh, yes, she said –and I quote –
‘Mommy read Pinocchio to me today but she left out a
lot of the words, and when I tried to correct her she shushed me
and told me not to interrupt. Mommy’s not very good at that
story and I don’t think I’ll let her read it
again.’ Does that ring a bell at all?”


Yes, I was upbraided by a three-year-old for my lack of good
reading skills.


In my defense, here’s my side of the story.

We had a fantastic three-day weekend,
everyone enjoying extra Daddy time (most of all Mommy, who is WAY
nicer in the morning when someone else is on hand to help with
getting dressed and out the door) and eating lots of ice cream.
Maddie especially wriggled excitedly like a puppy for seventy-two
hours straight, going from fun thing to fun thing, always looking
over her shoulder at Daddy. The one down side to the celebrations
– I found it difficult to explain to Maddie what all the
parties were about. Try describing fighting for independence to a
three-year-old. Heck, try explaining what a country is to a
three-year-old!

I’ve noticed that my girls are
voracious fruit-eaters over the summer – more so than during
the rest of the year. I mean, Maddie and Cora love their fruit and
eat it all day, but in the summer I find myself returning to the
grocery store at least once a week if not more, simply to stock
back up on fruit. Some of this, I know is because there’s so
much great fruit in season during the summer: oftentimes I’ll
wash a couple pints of strawberries and set them out to dry before
storing in the fridge, and Maddie will beg one berry at a time
until almost half my supply is gone, before even getting put away.
Many nights we’ll fix a bowl of mixed berries for dinner,
unable to choose between all the great in-season blackberries and
blueberries and raspberries.


Mmmm. Sounds good. But I digress.

I know I’ve mentioned before that
Cora is much more of an eat-anything-off-the-ground baby than
Maddie ever was. From the get-go, Cora would grab anything within
reach and shove it in her mouth, whereas Maddie really wasn’t
interested and didn’t have to be told twice that dirt is
icky. I did that whole spin-doctor thing parents do, looking at a
kid’s quirk in the best possible light: Oh, Cora eats
anything on the floor! That’s great – she’s just
practicing her pincer grasp! Way to go, girlie! I’m sure
she’ll stop when she can really feed herself!


Alas, that hope has not been realized.

Madeleine’s always had a fair amount
of self-confidence – it’s one of the things I love most
about her. I adore watching back video of her leaping and spinning
around the room at 2 ½ years old, yelling, “I’m
a very good dancer!” Or how about when Maddie went bowling
for the first time ever, and shouted over and over,
“I’m a champion bowler!” Getting to glimpse what
it feels like to be an uncensored kid, gloriously alive and
noncritical, is one of the great benefits of motherhood.


Over the past few weeks, though, Maddie’s taken an abrupt
turn into negativity and self-doubt. We’ll put on ballet
music and dance around for a few minutes until Maddie stops,
watches me speculatively, and says, “I can’t dance.
I’m not a very good dancer. I can’t do it. It
doesn’t look pretty.” “Oh, sweetheart,”
I’ll say, “you’re a beautiful dancer!”
“No!” she’ll cry in frustration. “I
can’t move like you do! I don’t know how to make myself
do it! I’m bad!” I’ll go on to explain that Mommy
spent several years learning how to dance like that, and that
there’s no right way to move your body joyfully. Sometimes
she’ll get back up, but more often than not the spell is
broken and the tutu comes off.

As I prepared to become a mother for the
first time, I read over and over again in books that you’re
supposed to talk constantly to your baby, even though they
don’t really understand you. When Maddie was first born and
we’d go for walks, I was very self-conscious about the whole
thing, walking down the street in New York City and talking like a
crazy lady. “Over here we have a fine example of prewar
architecture, and I understand they’ve got a 24-hour doorman
as well. And now we’re passing a bodega – that’s
where you’ll go to get milk and bread for mommy when
you’re older.”


It didn’t help that I didn’t really know how to talk to
kids.


Now, though, I jabber away constantly, pretty much completely
unaware of what I’m doing, with that refined Professional
Mommy patter down cold: “Can you stand up now like a big
girl? Look at who’s a big girl! What a great job! - Maddie,
put that down or you’re going to lose a book for naptime
– Did you see the pretty birdie outside the window?
That’s called a cardinal, and maybe it will come back so we
can see its coat! - Maddie, ok, I see, that’s fine, but keep
the water in the kitchen – Yes, Cora, a cardinal is red! What
else is red?” You get the picture.


Anyway, I’ve been talking away for over a year now to Cora,
and half of it is simply asking questions and answering them for
her. Except that over the past few weeks, something frightening has
happened.


Cora is showing signs of intelligent life.

So we’ve been wrestling with Maddie
and swim lessons all week long; we tried a group swim class a
couple times with disastrous results (see previous entries), and
I’ve begun thinking perhaps my kid’s going to be the
twelve-year-old with water wings and nose clips. In a last-ditch
effort to overcome Maddie’s fear of swim class (not to be
confused with a fear of the water, since she plays for hours on end
in our community pool) we set Maddie up for a few private swim
lessons.


The issue actually goes deeper than simply swim lessons: this is
Maddie’s first class of any kind, so her first time under
someone else’s authority, her first time in a group learning
situation, and so on. Add to that Madeleine’s reservations
about putting her face in the water, and we’ve got an
emotionally-charged half an hour on our hands. Truthfully,
we’d thought about chucking the whole thing in the garbage
and keeping Maddie out of any kind of lessons for the rest of the
summer; after the trauma she’d had the past few days, we
didn’t want to be making a bigger emotional mess than she
already was in. I mean c’mon, folks, she’s three!

I’ve spent a long time talking about
Maddie and her swimming issues, but the truth is that for all her
fear of the classes, she loves the pool. We probably end up there
six days a week, sometimes going twice a day (“I know we went
this morning, but Daddy needs to see my new trick so we have to go
after dinner Mommy!”). A perfect day for her would have the
morning spent wholly at the pool, a leisurely nap and book time, a
short video before dinner, then another hour or so at the pool
before bed.


But for as much as she enjoys swimming, there’s someone else
in our family who loves it even more – Cora.

Madeleine went to bed after her first swim
class (see yesterday’s entry) calmly declaring her preference
of not going to swim class the next day. We’d talked about
it, and she’d agreed that though she didn’t like it
she’d give it one more try. But she’d prefer not to.


We almost gave her what she requested, but in the end Brian and I
decided to have her try one more day, to see if it got any easier.


It didn’t.

Maddie’s feeling restless at three
years old – longing to be with the “big kids”, to
be doing “big-kid things” like “class” and
“school”. Ever since this spring, when she cried
bitterly on the playground because she wasn’t allowed to join
in the adjacent team soccer practices, I knew Maddie needed more
than I could give her: she needs group activities without Mommy,
just like the big kids. Her life is slowly starting to revolve
around her peers rather than Mommy, which is as it should be.


So as we looked at this summer, Brian and I decided to put Maddie
in some structured classes. We thought this would be a good
short-term way to expose Madeleine to classroom-type structure, to
listening and obeying adults other than her parents. We finally
narrowed the list down, and ended up with a summer of swim lessons,
ballet camp, and soccer camp. First up on the schedule: swim
lessons.

For those of you not up on your tot rock,
Justin Roberts has a new cd out – href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FPop-Fly-Justin-Roberts%2Fdp%2FB001543LOM%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic%26qid%3D1214190245%26sr%3D8-1&tag=1mother2anoth-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325"
target="_blank">Pop Fly. Since Madeleine loves all
things Justin Roberts, she received a copy of the album for her
birthday a few weeks ago. The verdict?


Two enthusiastic toddler thumbs up.

Bonus points to all you parents who
recognized that title as a line from a Justin Roberts song –


We went to the doctor for the first time in Texas yesterday –
Maddie for her 3-year visit, and Cora for her 1-year. The
after-shocks of this visit will, I believe, be reverberating for
quite some time.


Maddie’s been very prepared for the doctor trip –
we’ve talked about it all week. She knew she needed to go for
a well visit, that there would be weighing and measuring and poking
and prodding, and possibly a shot. I wasn’t sure if a shot
was on the menu, since there are no shots at the 3-year visit in
New York, but I know policies vary by state so didn’t want to
rule it out.


And boy am I glad I left that door open.

For whatever reason, Cora had one of those
super-clingy days yesterday: the kind where you have to take her in
while you pee, and even then she screams for the thirty seconds you
have to set her on the floor while you wipe and pull your pants up.
And don’t tell me you’ve never had a day like that.


Please.


At any rate, by the end of the day Maddie was in serious need of
some Mommy time. I’d left the dishes half-washed and was
snuggling Cora AGAIN on the couch, reading “Bear Snores
On” AGAIN, when Maddie walked in and said, “Mommy,
could you find some time to throw the beach ball with
me?”

As we get ready for our summer vacations
(or would, if we could afford the gas it takes to get there), the
last thing we want to think about is losing a child. But the truth
is that seven out of ten kids get lost at least once, so the odds
are that we’re going to experience that heart-stopping panic
of not being able to find your child in the crowd. Even if the kids
are only missing for a few minutes, those few minutes will be
forever etched in your mind, and you’d do anything to find
your child again as quickly as possible.


So I’ve been scouring the Internet trying to find some tips
to pass along to you. I keep thinking Maddie’s too young to
need the “Stranger Danger” talk, but the truth is that
as soon as your child is mobile he needs to be learning family
safety procedures. Maddie is fearless, and the sight of her plowing
blithely ahead in the middle of Times Square, with no thought for
cars or crazy people or even the occasional “Where’s
Mommy?” check-in, brings reality down hard. Here are some
ways you can try to keep the whole family “found”, and
tips you can pass on to your toddler in case she does become
lost.

When we moved to Texas from New York, we
traded our old refrigerator with its do-it-yourself ice cube trays
for a brand new fridge with an automatic ice machine in it.
Doesn’t sound like much of anything, but I’ve noticed
everyone in the family uses ice more now that we don’t have
to refill the trays or wait for the water to freeze. And even
better, our new fridge has the freezer on the bottom, with a handy
pull-out drawer that contains the ice machine. And that means the
ice machine is at the ideal tot level.


And no one loves that more than Cora.

I often look back at the end of the day
and wonder how, when both girls go through the exact same day
together, one can be in a cheerful, upbeat mood while the other is
crying and whining nonstop. I mean, they eat the same food, play
with the same toys, snuggle with the same mommy. How can it affect
them so differently?


Then I stopped and took a hard look at one day recently, and
realized what a difference perspective makes. And a couple extra
years’ experience to help you get through the difficult
parts. So I give you a side-by-side comparison of Maddie’s
day and Cora’s day. And unfortunately, this did indeed
happen, all in one day this week:

Maddie’s received a few gifts from
her friends that have revealed some rather large holes in her pop
culture literacy.


At her birthday party, Maddie received a lovely gift bag that
revealed a small stuffed dog inside a carrier purse, a la Paris
Hilton. The dog was zipped entirely inside, with just its face and
front paws peeking out. “Mommy, what is it?” Maddie
asked. “Well, honey, it’s a dog, and it’s inside
a kind of purse.” “But why would you put a dog in a
purse?” she asked worriedly. “Well, some people think
it’s cute.” A pause, while she thinks.


“Get it out, Mommy! Get it out now! Doggies don’t go in
purses! It wants to get out!”

It’s 7:45 a.m. Saturday morning. The
phone rings, and because Cora got me up an hour ago, I answer it on
the first ring. “Hello, ma’am? I’m from the Acme
Party Supply Company. We spoke last night?”


“Yes,” I reply jubilantly. “I remember
you.”


“Well, I’ve got some bad news. For some reason, the box
never left the warehouse last night, so it’s still there.
Which means it won’t be making the Saturday delivery we
promised you.”


Which is the moment I collapse over my desk, weeping.


What brought me to this state? Try a three-year-old’s
birthday party.

I'm chest-deep in birthday preparations
and the girls are not cooperating and giving me any time to do so
during the day, so I've less than ten seconds here to reassure
everyone I'm still alive, and will be sending dispatches from the
Birthday Front shortly!

Maddie’s third birthday party is
coming up, and I have to confess I’m getting a tiny bit
stressed about it.


For her first birthday, we skipped the party thing: after all,
first birthday parties are for the parents (hey! I survived the
first year!) rather than the kid. And we played her second birthday
low-key as well: all our friends had zoo memberships, and so we all
gathered at the zoo (her favorite place on earth) for a birthday
celebration. No fancy plans, no big decorations, no theme, no
snazzy goody bags to give out.


Now, though, Maddie’s been to a few parties and knows
it’s a rather big deal. In addition to being the day she gets
to eat cake and have presents, Maddie understands that birthdays
are for fun parties with her friends, and she’s looking
forward to her birthday party this weekend almost as much as she is
her actual birthday next week.

My apologies to the Beatles and
“Abby Road” . . .


Yes, it’s time once again for that smell of fake coconut oil
and the white streaks of zinc oxide on all your clothing. Crack
open a bottle of sunscreen, and slather up.


Of course, if you’re like us, you’ve already been
wearing it for several months now – I’m obsessive about
sunscreen and hats when the weather turns mildly warm – but
even the most die-hard tanners know this is not the friendly sun we
grew up with, and it’s time to get serious and protect the
kiddos (and ourselves!) from those dangerous rays.

The other night Brian and I revived
argument #27 from our Greatest Hits list, entitled “My Life
Is Harder Than Yours”. To be fair, I’m usually the one
to start said revival, when I can’t take another long day
with the two girls and feel (usually wrongly) underappreciated. You
can probably write the script yourself, so I won’t bore you
with the details; what I wanted to bring up here was actually the
point at which we got into a good, earnest discussion – the
point after all the acrimony and accusations and martyrdom (mostly
on my part).


We were lying in bed and I was trying to put myself in
Brian’s shoes, and understand how his day truly is stressful.
The weight of responsibility for this big family is heavy on his
shoulders, especially in light of our last year and its eight
income-free months. So he’s constantly working while looking
over his shoulder, fearing the axe. Then add in the usual anxieties
– job deadlines, co-workers that he doesn’t get along
with, and so on – and he really does have a stressful job. I
get that.


But I know that my job stress is different, and I struggled to put
it into words. Aside from the obvious – that he gets two days
a week off from said stress, even if those days are spent doing his
other job, which is full-time dad – I knew there was
something unique about my job stress.

When we were house-hunting here in Texas
last fall, our realtor made an executive decision for us: she
wouldn’t allow us to look at any houses in neighborhoods
where there weren’t community pools. “Because,”
she said, “Your kids are going to live at the pool during the
summer, won’t they? It’s the best place for a mommy on
a hot summer day.” I thought she was a little over-the-top
with the decision, but we had so many great places to choose from
that fit the criterion that I went along with it. Consequently, our
new home here is located near not one, but two neighborhood pools.


And boy, am I thanking my realtor now.

For Cora’s birthday, the
grandparents gave her one of those water activity tables you see in
so many back yards. We’d let it be known we were on the hunt
for used back yard toys, and so this showed up as an answer to
prayer.


In fact, I’d almost put the water table on Cora’s
official list, but the neat freak in me made me hold back. Once
both girls got a look at the box, though, I knew there was no going
back, and truthfully I was glad the decision had been made for me;
both girls love the water, and our little inflatable pool takes so
long to heat up we hardly ever get it out!

We’ve made it: Cora turned one. All
around us, friends are reminding us she’s finally a toddler.
We are officially a baby-free household now, filled only with
toddlers and tired parents. Now I can say, “As a mommy of two
toddlers . . .” or maybe, “I’ve got two toddlers
at home, and let me tell you . . .”


Because isn’t parenthood all about bragging rights? Even if
it’s simply bragging about how exhausted you are?

We’ve had almost a week of sullen
grey skies here in Texas, with air so thick you could almost roll
up in it like a soggy sleeping bag from camp days. Every day the
cloudy and overcast skies bluster threateningly, with nothing
coming from it by the end of the day but more mosquitos and the
feeling you’re in some kind of languid Tennessee Williams
play, so droopy and filled with ennui are you.


Which is why, when I left home this morning for a play date a few
blocks away, I didn’t bring an umbrella.

As part of my mommy guilt for raising Cora
in her sister’s shadow, I worry that Cora won’t grow up
loving books as much as Maddie does because I simply haven’t
has as much time to read to her as I did to Maddie.


Brian began reading two books a night to Maddie while she was still
in my tummy. When I was only taking care of one kid at a time, I
had hours to snuggle on the couch reading kids’ books with
Madeleine, so she was in love with picture books from the newborn
stage on. As I tried to wean Maddie naturally, I began reading to
her while she nursed for nap or bedtime, eventually reading instead
of nursing, with the result being that Maddie reads several books a
day and considers her book time a vital part of her evening and nap
routine. When Cora was born, we kept a basket of new books next to
my nursing chair, and Maddie would settle into her own stuffed
chair and listen to me read while I nursed. Even now, if I need to
close the door and put Cora to sleep, I’ll come out ten
minutes later to see Maddie has climbed up on the couch, pulled a
throw around herself, and is happily browsing through her favorite
books.

Warning: This article is all about poop.


So Maddie’s been constipated for about two weeks now.


Figured out the title yet?


Right around the time we went strawberry picking, we spent several
days out-of-doors for extended periods of time, in ninety-degree
heat. We all got a bit dehydrated, and pooping got a little, um,
harder.

For the past few months I’ve been
getting rather more frequent migraines- hence the sporadic missed
blogs here – and since I am after all a mother, I immediately
assumed I had a tumor and my children would grow up motherless.


Sure, I made an appointment to get my eyes checked, but it was just
a formality. The spontaneous vertigo, the motion sickness for no
apparent reason, the piercing headaches I haven’t had for
several years now – what else could it be?


Apparently, it’s my vision.

First birthdays are funny things. In some
cultures, it’s a huge party, a celebration of reaching a
milestone in an uncertain world. Other people throw lavish parties
to show their status; they’re saying, “Sure my
kid’s too young to appreciate that I’ve hired the Three
Tenors to sing at her birthday party. But it’s not really
about her anyway.”


As for me, I figure, the kid’s never going to remember it, so
let’s call a spade a spade and have a nice party to celebrate
with all our friends. Plenty of time for tots and goody bags
on subsequent birthdays, after all, and as long as Cora gets her
gifts and has a nice, relaxed day (with all the requisite photos to
prove it) then we’re all winners.


So for Cora’s birthday we went to the Arboretum for a nice
picnic lunch. Cora adores the arboretum, since it combines two of
her favorite things: nature, and the opportunity to literally
deflower nature. Yes, my kid loves to run up to a lovely bed of
impatiens and begin ripping away. Good times.

Dear Cora:


I’m having a hard time believing it’s been over a year
already since I last wrote you a letter; that letter I wrote before
you were born has been safely tucked inside your baby book for
almost thirteen months now, and at the risk of sounding like a
cliché, where has the time all gone?


On the other hand, I look back over your first year of life and
can’t believe it’s been ONLY a year. Job loss,
unemployment, selling a house, leaving New York, buying a house in
Texas: how can all of this happen in just a short twelve months? I
feel as if you’ve been with us forever, even as I still
continue to struggle to find my groove with you. Your Nana said at
your birthday party, “I bet you can’t imagine life
without her now, can you?” And I replied, “Well, I
actually can – and it involves a lot more sleep!”


Yes, my darling girl, if I have one complaint about you, it’s
the whole sleep thing. What’s the deal, kiddo?! You still
wake up whimpering a few times a night, and your attitude towards
naptime is way too insouciant. Can we work on that please?
I’d love to look back on this letter next year and say in
disbelief, “Cora wasn’t a good sleeper? I’d
totally forgotten that! She sleeps thirteen hours in a row
now!” I think it’s partly the separation anxiety
– you’ve got that thing down pat, and practice it
endlessly lest you lose your touch with it. So can we work on that,
too?


And thus endeth my complaint list. Now for the plus side:

Thursday night is usually leftovers in our
house; I do a decent amount of cooking the first few days of the
week, coast on Thursdays, and eat pizza on Fridays. And last
night’s leftovers included a great href="http://www.marthastewart.com/favorite-tortilla-and-black-bean-pie?autonomy_kw=tortilla%20and%20black%20bean%20pie&rsc=header_3"
target="_blank">Tortilla and Black-Bean Pie I made for
Tuesday, which held up so well for leftovers I thought I’d
pass the recipe on to you.


There are a few things I love about this recipe: first, it’s
vegetarian, and so is a good option to keep in your back pocket.
Second, it calls for ingredients I almost always have in my kitchen
-flour tortillas, a couple cans of black beans, a bag of frozen
corn. And if you’re like me and habitually make Tex-Mex
anyway, you’ll have those lying around as leftovers. I can
easily fudge and throw in that bit of black beans I’d already
cooked as a side two nights ago, or some such thing. Third on my
list of things I love about this recipe is that you can make it
ahead of time, leave it assembled in the fridge, and pop it in the
oven last-minute.


And finally and most importantly, the recipe’s kid-friendly.
Maddie, who hates corn, can fastidiously pick the kernels out of
her share, while Cora crams all the black beans in her mouth at
once. And what kid doesn’t like tortillas and cheese?
Maddie's happy when I mention the dish, simply because she is
going to eat pie for dinner! And in case you're worried, go ahead
and use the beer - all the alcohol cooks off and it adds a very
mild flavor.


So if you’re stuck in a rut, give the recipe a try, and let
me know what you think!

Maddie has what I consider to be a pretty
good grasp of the concept of time; she’s got the days of the
week memorized, and has learned to place them in her daily context
to understand how much time is passing or needs to pass for a
special date to come up. Saturday, for example, is Waffle Day, when
Daddy makes waffles for breakfast; Sunday is Church Day; and Monday
is Playgroup Day. If Madeleine’s trying to figure out how
long it will be until, say, her birthday, we’ll tell her that
she has five more Waffle Days until her birthday. So far this seems
to be working well, and Maddie loves to recite through the days of
the week until she arrives at something fun.


And invariably, that Something Fun is Wednesday – Gym Day!
Gym Day is Maddie’s raison d’etre, that activity which
makes all other life worthwhile. At random points in the week,
she’ll stop whatever she’s doing and say, “What
day is it today? And then what day is it tomorrow? And the day
after that?” and so on, until we hit Wednesday, at which
point Maddie says, “And that’s the day we go to the
gym!”

Cora wants to be just like her big sister in all she does, and eating is no exception. Cora cries and kicks when she sees Maddie eating strawberries but I’ve held fast, determined to wait until her birthday as suggested by doctors for allergy reasons. Strawberries are just coming into season in New York, and I’d anticipated finding a pick-your-own-strawberries farm here right after Cora’s birthday and turning her loose in the fields – a sort of coming-of-age amongst the strawberry patch thing.

Then I found out last Thursday that the growing season in Texas is a wee bit different than New York’s, and last weekend was pretty much the last hurrah for strawberries here.

So on Friday, I packed the girls in the car, threw the allergy wait-list out the window, said a small prayer, and drove to the strawberry farm.

Maddie was, of course, ecstatic about getting a chance to pick her own strawberries, and chatted the whole way down about how many she was going to pick, then eat, and bring home to show Daddy. She speculated about what sort of bucket she’d be given to use and how fast she was going to pick. Cora was, of course, clueless that her life was about to change.

When the subject of Mother’s Day
came up a few weeks ago, I told Brian I had three requests: I
wanted time to go to my favorite used bookstore – ALONE; I
wanted to take a nap; and I wanted a day off from feeding the kids
– all the dicing, shredding, steaming, cajoling, spooning,
snack preparing, the whole thing.


And the visit to the bookstore was negotiable.


So for Mother’s Day weekend we came up with a plan. Since
taking an entire day to yourself simply isn’t practical when
you’ve got a nursing child, we split my “day” up
into two days and I went to my bookstore on Saturday while the
girls were napping. And yes, they were napping when I left, but no,
they didn’t stay that way for long, so that definitely counts
as a gift.


That left Sunday for my napping and break from food duties.

You know the separation anxiety is getting
bad when your daughter cries because you’re going to the
grocery store.


Your older daughter, that is.


Since we’ve moved to Texas, both girls have become only more
clingy, more anxious when away from me. I expected it a bit when we
first moved – new environment, no friends, and so on. And
when we moved in January Cora was 8 months old and four months into
her official separation anxiety stage, so I was trying to grit my
teeth and deal with that as well. I kept thinking it would get
better – that gradually Cora would begin to become more
confident without me, let me go to the bathroom by myself, for
pete’s sake!

Maddie loves playing games, and makes up
half a dozen new ones every day: “Now we’re going to
play the Baby Game.” “Now let’s play the
Telescope Game!” “And now this is the Balloon Kite
Game.” She’ll spy an everyday object – say, the
blinds cord in a window- and be off. Her favorite games involve
someone (usually Mommy) making up rules or chores or tasks to be
accomplished, and giving them to Maddie to complete one by one.


Combine this with Maddie’s innate love of movement, dance,
and exercise, and you’ve got one hundred different versions
of Simon Says meets Imagination. So when Maddie discovered our
Twister game sitting in a pile of board games, she was immediately
intrigued.

I make this one tea periodically –
it’s a yogi tea, tastes like the chai tea lattes you buy at
Starbucks minus the sugar and milk. Anyway, I like it because
there’s no caffeine and it’s mildly sweet on its own,
so I make a few quarts at a time to keep in the fridge, adding
honey and milk as needed.


At any rate, a friend of mine is in her first trimester and having
a hard time with it nausea-wise. I gave her a quart of the tea
– one of the primary ingredients is ginger, and I thought
it’d settle her stomach. The result? Two enthusiastic thumbs
up, and a request for more tea. Kindly enough, she refrained from
calling me at 2 a.m. when she actually ran out, and waited until
the next day to make the request.

My grandmother Gypsy (about whom you’ve heard a great deal in these blogs, I know) loved nature – being outdoors, gardening, growing things, bird-watching, the whole she-bang. So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised when her great-granddaughter is the same way.

Maddie’s always loved being outside, and walks were a big part of her day from the very beginning. We’d stop and look at flowers growing in front of apartments and talk about what type they were, smell the blooms, stroke the soft petals. And Maddie has a serious thing about rocks: she can’t resist picking them up. In New York, we had a collection underneath our shoe bench of tiny rocks –sometimes just cement chips – that she’d pick up on all our walks. She’d keep the bigger ones in the back yard and exclaim over them periodically, pointing out their interesting aspects. Since we moved to Texas she’s been an even bigger fan of the outdoors, and revels in the birdfeeders we’ve got hanging by our breakfast window. Just yesterday she heard a bird cry and said, “I think that’s a morning dove! I bet he’s saying good morning to me!” (She was right, by the way!) And of course, gardening with Daddy is one of her favorite things to do. Which means I can see her great-grandmother in her on almost a daily basis.

But this article isn’t about Maddie – it’s about Cora. And if I thought I saw Gypsy in Maddie, she’s doubly magnified in Cora.

I did my final drawing over the weekend
for a free copy of the href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FHealthy-Child-World-Creating-Cleaner%2Fdp%2F0525950478%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1209357069%26sr%3D1-1&tag=1mother2anoth-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325"
target="_blank">Healthy Child, Healthy World: Creating A Cleaner,
Greener, Safer World courtesy of the Healthy Child
organization, and the winner is:


Kari Valliere! Kari, you should be getting your free copy of the
book in a couple weeks – congratulations! I’m still
loving the copy I bought myself a few weeks back.


I’ve gotten a lot of feedback still from Earth Week, and I
have to confess the research I did has made me more conscious of
the choices I make. We went to the zoo over the weekend, and the
drinks they sell come in plastic cups that have an explanation on
the side: the cups are made from sustainable corn, and are
completely compostable. While this was exciting, I couldn’t
help but notice that there was nowhere to put these compostable
cups but in the trash can, wrapped up in a plastic bag! I find
myself looking down the chain of events a little further than I
used to.

There’s this television show
Maddie’s addicted to: “Davey and Goliath”.
It’s a 1970’s claymation show about a boy (Davey) and
his dog (Goliath) that the Lutherans put out as a healthy choice in
kid’s programming. It’s surprisingly progressive for
its time – Davey in 1975 has way more many multi-ethnic
friends than Maddie unfortunately does now – and with its
great gospel lessons is one of the few shows Maddie can pick from
for her daily “video”.


One particular episode has fascinated Maddie for months: Davey
learns to bowl. Of course, the show isn’t about the bowling,
it’s about learning to enjoy what you do and not have to be
perfect at everything, but Madeleine’s fixated on the
bowling. She’s nagged me endlessly about wanting to go
bowling, and I’ve put her off by telling her she’s too
young, that the balls are too big and heavy for her. But I read in
a local magazine about a 3-year-old bowling league (!!!) and,
feeling guilty, called a local alley and discovered that, indeed,
Maddie could bowl any time. I stuck the information in my back
Mommy pocket for a blah day.


Yesterday dawned sullen and blustery, with 30-mile-an-hour winds
whipping through our back yard, and I decided it was Bowling
Day.

Cora’s now somewhat confident in her
ability to feed herself; her manual skills have gotten much better;
she can pincer grasp like a pro and (almost) always gets the food
into the mouth on the first try. Combine that with a few teeth and
a lot of practice eating solid foods, and she’s become a
somewhat independent eater – I rarely have to spoon feed her,
preferring instead to simply dice up whatever we’re having
and allow her to eat with her hands.


This is well and good, except that it’s coinciding with
another shift: she’s getting less of her “meals”
from breast milk and more from solids while growing at an
astonishing rate, which means she’s hungrier more often and
moving into needing consistent snack times.


Unfortunately, those snack times often seem to be during a car
ride.

Just as a reminder – I’m
giving away another copy of href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FHealthy-Child-World-Creating-Cleaner%2Fdp%2F0525950478%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1209357069%26sr%3D1-1&tag=1mother2anoth-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325"
target="_blank">Healthy Child, Healthy World: Creating A Cleaner,
Greener, Safer World courtesy of the Healthy Child
organization. Email me if you’re interested and I’ll
draw the winner this weekend –


And today’s our final wrap-up for Earth Week. I’ve had
reader tips filtering in for several days now; many of them
I’ve covered last week in my entries. But here are a few more
for you to chew on:

No time to chat right now –
I’m busy running back to Ben and Jerry’s for their
endless Free Cone Day. But I wanted to pass two things along
–


First, it’s FREE CONE DAY AT BEN AND JERRY’S!!! Why are
you still here? Get to B&J for your free cone, pronto!


Second, I had such a great response to the href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FHealthy-Child-World-Creating-Cleaner%2Fdp%2F0525950478%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1209357069%26sr%3D1-1&tag=1mother2anoth-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325"
target="_blank">Healthy Child, Healthy World: Creating A Cleaner,
Greener, Safer World book giveaway that the
organization is graciously donating another copy to give out. If
you already emailed me saying you’d like to win, don’t
worry; you’re in this drawing (unless your name is Stephanie
Pearson and you won a copy yesterday!) If you’d like to throw
your hat in the ring this time around, email me before the weekend
and you’re good to go.


Tomorrow, if I can waddle my ice cream-satiated body to the
computer, I’ll post all the tips I received from all you
parents out there. And then it’s back to my favorite subject
– my amazing kids.

Ok, before I forget I have to tell you
this – tomorrow, Tuesday April 29, is Free Cone Day at Ben
and Jerry’s ice cream stores. All across the country, you can
get a free scoop of ice cream. Just show up! And here’s the
best part – you can get as many as you want. The only catch
is you have to get one scoop, eat it, and come back – no
getting 50 scoops at once. Totally worth going out for, huh? Click
href="http://www.benandjerrys.com/scoop_shops/store_locator/index.cfm"
target="_blank">here to find a store near you.


Now, on to the Earth Week contest results. In the contest for the
best conservation tip, the winner is Michelle Parlette!
Michelle’s tip – to take a shower with both kids and
share shampoo on each head – is inspired, saving water, time,
and shampoo. Talk about mommy multi-tasking. So congratulations,
Michelle! You’ve won a very cool “Keep It Clean”
t-shirt from target="_blank">Mamaisms.


And the winner of our random drawing for a copy of the new
“Healthy Child, Healthy World: Creating A Cleaner,
Greener, Safer World” is Stephanie Pearson!
Stephanie’s new book is a great reference book for parents
looking to raise their children in a safer, healthier environment,
and is courtesy of target="_blank">Healthy Child, Healthy World, the nonprofit
organization dedicated to supporting and informing parents like us.
Congratulations, you two!

Maddie and Cora’s adorable antics
will be back next week, but it’s Earth Week all week here at
1M2A! And don’t forget- send me an email
(Jennifer@1mother2another.com) if you’re interested in
entering to win a free copy of the new Healthy Child, Healthy
World: Creating A Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home. And to win a
cool t-shirt from Mamaisms, send or post your best tip for living a
more eco-friendly lifestyle (see Monday’s blog for more
details!)


So far this week we’ve covered the three R’s of
environmental responsibility: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Tonight
we add a fourth R that we as parents are especially responsible
for: Raising up the next generation. Whether it’s creating a
healthier home environment for our children, investigating the
materials we use on and around our children, or teaching our kids
how to be good stewards of the created earth, our job is many-fold
and never ends.

Maddie and Cora’s adorable antics
will be back next week, but it’s Earth Week all week here at
1M2A! And don’t forget- send me an email
(Jennifer@1mother2another.com) if you’re interested in
entering to win a free copy of the new Healthy Child, Healthy
World: Creating A Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home. And to win a
cool t-shirt from Mamaisms, send or post your best tip for living a
more eco-friendly lifestyle (see Monday’s blog for more
details!)


So far we’ve talked about ways to reduce the amount of waste
we produce, as well as ways to reuse what we’ve already got.
So if we’re doing this right, your trash pile is already
considerably smaller. But when things finally come to the end of
their useful life, we have to look at how to dispose of them
responsibly. Which means it’s time to talk about our
recycling options!

Maddie and Cora’s adorable antics
will be back next week, but it’s Earth Week all week here at
1M2A! And as a reminder, send me an email
(Jennifer@1mother2another.com) if you’re interested in
entering to win a free copy of the new Healthy Child, Healthy
World: Creating A Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home. And to win a cool
t-shirt from Mamaisms, send or post your best tip for living a more
eco-friendly lifestyle (see yesterday’s blog for more
details!)


Today we’re talking about how we can reuse what we’ve
already got, rather than buying new and throwing the old into the
landfill. Obviously we’d like to reduce the amount of junk
that’s out there (see yesterday’s blog), burning less
resources to create less consumables. But once you’ve got
something, here are some ideas for ways to make your things stretch
a bit further – and help stretch our resources at the same
time. And no, this isn’t an article about making picture
frames out of cd cases. Sorry – that’s just not me.

Maddie and Cora’s adorable antics
will be back next week, but it’s Earth Week all week here at
1M2A! And as a reminder, send me an email
(Jennifer@1mother2another.com) if you’re interested in
entering to win a free copy of the new Healthy Child, Healthy
World: Creating A Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home. And to win a
cool t-shirt from target="_blank">Mamaisms, send or post your best tip for
living a more eco-friendly lifestyle (see yesterday’s blog
for more details!)


Today I’m covering several ways we can reduce our impact on
the created earth. Look, everyone knows cloth diapers are better
than disposable; there’s no argument, and you’re either
going to use them or you’re not. I’m not going to wade
into that dispute or tell you to start composting your
toddler’s poops. But there are some easy lifestyle changes
you can make to begin shrinking the size of your carbon footprint
– how much of the earth’s resources you personally use
up - without sacrificing much money or time. So let’s dive
in! As a caveat – I’ve spent a good month researching
these tips and digging up statistics, but I’m way too tired
at 2 a.m. as I page-surf to write all my footnotes and sources
down. So trust me that I’m getting my info from reputable
sites. You know I do all the digging so you don’t have
to.

About a month ago I started doing research
for a piece I was writing for Earth Day, looking for
parent-friendly tips for recycling, reducing our impact on the
Earth, saving energy and so forth. The longer I dug, the more I
realized I simply couldn’t cover it all in one day.


Being good stewards of the created Earth is imperative, for our
kids’ generation but also for our own. I’m not going to
give you all the rousing environmental speeches here – we all
know we need to be better at this whole eco-friendly thing. But
being environmentally responsible often feels like a lot more work
and a lot more money, and the results seem intangible, so we give
up before we really start.

About a month ago I decided our family
needed a kids’ wagon: with our community pool opening in May
I’ve been planning ahead for the daily treks, ordering
swimsuits and sunscreen and cover-ups and such, and realized
I’d need something to haul all that gear back and forth.
Since it’s less than a mile to the pool I refuse to drive
there, but also have no desire to become a pack mule, laden with
droopy toddlers and squirmy babies, towels, water bottles, and so
on.


Hence the wagon decision.

Yesterday being Wednesday, we hit Open Gym
for the morning; if there’s one thing Maddie’s internal
alarm clock is set for, it’s Wednesday’s gym time. And
while we had a good time, it wasn’t just the kids who got all
worked up.


I noticed when we walked in that it was unusually crowded (I say as
if I’m some sort of seasoned veteran, since I’ve been
going there for two whole months now); it looked as if there were
at least a couple new playgroups in attendance, since there were
many unfamiliar toddlers and moms around. Several friends from my
neighborhood playgroup showed up (look at me! I have friends!) so
Maddie was in heaven, running all over the studio shouting with her
posse. It’s a big complex and toting Cora around as I trail
after Maddie becomes exhausting for me and frustrating for Cora,
who wants nothing more than to be left alone to practice her
round-off back-handsprings, so if I’ve got friends in the
studio I’ll sometimes plop down with Cora and work a
“zone”, keeping an eye on whoever’s in the area
while I know the other moms have got my back.

The girls and I drove my mom to the
airport last week, and I got lost on the way home.


Yes, I grew up here, and yes, I’ve been to the airport a
million times, but cut me some slack: first off, I’ve never
been to my NEW home from the airport (except when we first moved
here from New York and other people were driving so that
didn’t count), only to my childhood home, which is a
different highway; and second, there are a lot of $#@#ing new
highways here since I left twelve years ago!


I figured I’d wing it, not bothering to look up directions;
after all, I got TO the airport just fine, all I had to do was
reverse it! But somehow I ended up meandering through unbuilt toll
roads and half-finished state highways until I was thoroughly
confused. I knew the general direction we wanted to head –
north and east about forty miles – and figured that I’d
eventually run into SOMETHING familiar heading that way, even if it
was Oklahoma, so I just continued driving and pointing the car
towards Points East.

It seems that clothing designers have
finally figured out that moms can still be cool and funny; for the
past few years I’ve seen a rush of clever slogan t-shirts
aimed at mothers, and have even reviewed a few of my favorites. But
as the market has become saturated, I’ve been turning down
requests to review new products; there simply didn’t seem
anything new out there except more whiney t-shirts hinting at
overburdened, underappreciated mothers, and I couldn’t find a
reason to encourage you to buy them.


A few weeks ago, though, I stumbled across a new line called href="http://mamaismsgear.com/content/"
target="_blank">Mamaisms, and I liked it so much I actually
wrote to them and asked if I could review their shirts. Their
slogan, “Mamaisms: Because the World Needs A Dose Of Common
Sense” resonates with me, the shirts are good quality, and
more important, they put their money where their mouth is.

We’re officially suburbanites now:
we’ve got a backyard swing set.


I’m not sure who was looking forward to it more - Maddie, or
Daddy. He’s one of those good guys whose dream of
“making it” is being able to provide each kid with her
own room, a back yard to play in, and a swing set to while away the
hours. So with the arrival of the swing set last week, Brian is
officially living his dream life. (Though if I’m being
totally honest, there’d probably be a big screen t.v.
somewhere in his dream house, too – sorry, honey. So close to
your dream life, yet so far.)

Something’s beeping.
Something’s beeping that shouldn’t be.


I pry my eyes open and search for the noise, finally realizing
it’s Cora’s monitor. But the monitor only beeps when it
loses its base signal, so what’s going on? What time is it,
anyway? I look at my clock and see it’s out. Ah,
power’s out. Mystery solved.


But if the power’s out, why are strobe lights going off in
the room? I swing out of bed, grabbing the emergency flashlight by
my bed. And then a third question hits me – why is someone
throwing pebbles at our window?


My brain finally catches up with my senses, and I realize our
windows are banging fiercely in the wind. The hail is assaulting
the window panes, and the lightning’s flashing too fast for
us to figure out which thunder crack goes with which lightning
bolt. My husband and I look at each other, and fear starts to snake
in my belly. I look out our bedroom windows and see our pear trees,
nearly horizontal. I see the sky flashing back and forth between
pale white and sickly green. And that’s when I know.

Yeah, beep beep.


Sorry, just had to finish out the song lyric –


Yes, it’s official. At ten and a half months, Cora is
walking.

My previous entry was about feeding
finicky toddlers, and the feedback fell into two categories: 1)
“I feel terrible in comparison since you make things from
scratch and I’m serving up Kraft Mac ‘N Cheese most
nights”; and 2) “We want more details!”


So first off, don’t feel bad if you don’t do everything
just like me. Keep in mind I’m home all day and have the time
to cook that moms who work outside the home often don’t. I
make cheese crackers from scratch because a) I like to, and b)
after eight months of unemployment last year, I’m very very
cheap. And finally, don’t feel bad because I cracked open the
blue box last week myself; my kids don’t always eat like
pro-biotic, all-organic angels.


As for the request for more detailed suggestions, here goes!

Hey Jessica – this one’s for
you! Sorry it took so long for me to cover this topic – you
know how it is.


When Maddie was a baby and doing the whole pureed food thing, I
thought I was Magic Mommy: she’d eat pretty much anything I
gave her. I was pureeing broccoli, spinach, asparagus – you
name it, she’d good-naturedly allow me to spoon it into her
mouth. As per the doctor’s instructions, I was giving Maddie
a protein, a fruit, and a vegetable at every meal (with the
occasional starch thrown in as accompaniment) and I naively assumed
we’d continue this way for the rest of her life. I had hazy,
romantic visions of a four-year-old Maddie placidly eating her
lentils and brussel sprouts without comment, and honestly
couldn’t see what all the fuss was amongst my friends: picky
eaters? What??

I went into Cora’s room yesterday
morning to get her up, looked into the crib at the cooing baby, and
thought, “Who are YOU?”


Am I the only one, or does everyone else see their babies change
overnight? They go to bed looking like themselves, and wake up
looking like someone else. I mean, I know that I don’t see
changes as blatantly as people who only see my kids infrequently
– say, once a month or something. I expect to look back at
old photos and be shocked at how different Cora looks, especially
in this first year when she changes so much. But there are times
when those changes seem to happen overnight.

When we lived in New York, Maddie and I
went for play dates all across the city thanks to church friends
scattered throughout the five boroughs (and even –gasp- New
Jersey). I loved visiting our friends in their homes and getting a
chance to hang and chat in a controlled environment – no
worrying about a kid running too far away or talking to strangers
or whatever. I also enjoyed simply seeing my friends’ homes
and getting ideas for creative ways to cram more crap into a tiny
space, or new ways to make the house look cool with no cash: in New
York, it’s pretty difficult to make enough money to do the
whole “designer” decorating look, and we all had homes
filled with flea-market finds and hand-me-downs. And as much as I
my friends and I are alike, our homes were all very different.


Since I’ve been in Texas I’ve been going to a playgroup
comprised of pretty much all families in my subdivision. And while
I’ve never been much for the “Keeping Up With the
Joneses” syndrome, I can feel it creeping into my psyche
now.

I made one of my stand-by recipes last
night – a creamy fettucine with asparagus I got from href="http://www.everydayfoodmagazine.com" target="_blank">Everyday
Food a couple years ago (which, by the way, is a great
magazine to subscribe to, since they try to do seasonal foods and
under 30 minute prep times – way more realistic than Martha
Stewart!). And I realized once again what a great meal it is, and
why it’s on my short list: it can feed older babies and
finicky toddlers, but has a taste adults love as well; and
it’s got veggies built in, so all I have to do is add a side
of fruit and we’re done. I divided up the meal for Cora
– pasta, cut-up asparagus, and peaches all finger-friendly on
her tray – but left it mixed for Maddie to fork “all by
herself” in a bowl. Both of them cleaned their plates.

My neighborhood playgroup arranged to meet
at a Barnes and Noble for story hour yesterday; apparently the guy
is supposed to be really good and we thought it’d be
something different to do as a group. What with spring colds going
around and bad weather brewing, everyone bowed out and Maddie, Cora
and I were the last ones standing. Since Maddie loves books so much
though (and I’ll confess, it’s been a LONG time since
I’ve had the luxury of browsing a bookstore other than
Amazon) we decided to head over on our own. Maddie was disappointed
her new friends weren’t coming, but excited about story time.


Let me tell you something: my friends are lucky they stayed home.
Because the stories aren’t the only things that came out
during this story hour.

Following in a long and illustrious line
of family members before her, Cora is showing every inclination of
heading towards the footlights.


I shouldn’t be surprised; after all, Maddie’s favorite
thing in the world to do is put on a ballet skirt, some classical
music, and dance around the room. And when she’s not dancing
she’s coaxing music out of all the baby toys and asking me to
teach her the lyrics to the tunes. How many times can one girl sing
“Oh, Susannah”?? (Answer: current record is
twenty-seven.)

Context is everything – ask any
politician. The most radical liberal on the slate can sound like an
uber-right-wing republican if his words are lifted out of context.
But context goes beyond simply words: lift your average supermodel
out of her frame- the lights, the clothes, the carefully chosen set
– and you’ll often end up with a bizarrely dressed,
awkward, hungry-looking girl. And when you take that girl out of
the world of high fashion, out of her setting, out of her comfort
zone, and set her someplace strange and unflattering –
someplace different – chances are she’ll go from wonder
woman to wallflower, simply from a fading of self-confidence. We
need context to know how to refer to ourselves, how to think about
ourselves. As a friend of mine in the ballet world once said,
“I have to step on the scale every morning, and what it tells
me determines whether or not it’s a good day or a bad
day.” Without that frame, she didn’t know how to think
about herself.


I’m blathering on about this because I’ve lost my
setting. I find I’ve been plucked from one scene and dropped
in another, and though the costume and actions are the same, I feel
like a totally different character.

I’m not one of those mommies prone
to sitting around with other post-partum women and moaning about
baby weight; I’ve got enough stress as it is, and
there’s nearly always an element of competitiveness about
those conversations, either of the “I’m losing faster
than you” or “I’m more miserable than you”
genre.


At the same time, I know it’s something that’s
important to talk about, since celebrities paint a picture (thank
you, Heidi Klum) of instantaneous weight loss and firming, and if
we mommies don’t talk about it together we’ll all sit
there thinking we’re the only mom who is having a hard time
finding her old thighs again.

What child is THIS?


Yes, right after I blogged about my terror of an oldest child,
Madeleine delivered a day so sweet, so obedient and kind, that I
found myself wondering if she’d sneaked into the study and
read my blog, vowing then and there to turn over a new leaf and
make Mommy happy.

Our discipline structure revolves around
the idea of choices and consequences; we’ve taught Maddie
that she has almost limitless choices in front of her, but each
choice has consequences she has to live with. Choose wisely, and
she finds great freedom, for obedience often brings greater joy and
freedom than rebellion (who has the looser curfew – the
sister who’s always home on time, or the sister who’s
always sneaking out?); choose poorly, and the consequence is often
the loss of something dear to her. We’re hoping this helps
her understand how her actions directly affect her happiness level,
to be blunt.

I was unboxing some videos recently (yep,
still unpacking) and came to our family home movies. A specific,
silly memory sprang to mind and I sat down with the DVD player to
try and find it – a fun, private exchange between me and
Maddie. With the DVDs neatly labeled (OCD is a sickness, I know,
but it’s so darn useful) I was able to quickly find the
timeframe I was looking for, and I began to scan through the
appropriate disc, watching other clips in fast-motion.


I haven’t really stopped to look at home videos for a long
time – since before Cora was born, and Brian and I went back
to the newborn tapes to remind ourselves what we were in for. And
as I watched a short stretch of life speed by, I was astonished at
how much of Maddie’s daily life we’d captured on video
tape. I’d forgotten how, as a fourteen-month-old, she’d
stagger up to you with a book in her hand, turn it over to you, and
sit down in your lap uninvited, the request (demand) clear for a
snuggle and story; or how she used to wander around with a scarf
over her head, pretending to be invisible; and I smiled as I caught
a glimpse of the baby she used to be.


After finding the vignette I sought, I put the disc back with the
others and continued organizing our home movies. And I was startled
to see how much longer of a time-stretch each video covered: where
one hour used to encompass perhaps two months, recently they were
covering a good four or six months. Bring on the guilt.

We went to a Maundy Thursday service
yesterday – the service in the church calendar that
celebrates the Last Supper, and Christ’s act of washing His
disciples’ feet. As we’ve been church shopping in our
new city, we’ve looked for places that find new and
interesting ways of bringing the familiar stories to life –
new ways of celebrating what we’ve heard over and over again.
And one of the churches we’d visited previously was doing a
service woven around a meal and the foot-washing. Sounded
interesting, so we headed over.

From time to time I’m approached by
different companies asking if I’d promote their product on my
website; as my website readership grows I guess I become more of a
blip on the radar of different publicity machines. At any rate, I
toss most of those requests in the garbage, not finding it
necessary to give someone else free publicity unless I really love
their product and want to support the (usually parent-based)
company behind it.


Last week, though, I was contacted by a company hoping I’d
put the word out about casting for a new reality television show
that sounds interesting. Before you roll your eyes (as I did before
I read the thing) just check out the details – you know
I’m not going to pass it on if it doesn’t sound
somewhat legit. Basically, they’re casting a new cooking show
and seeking really really BAD cooks for a two-week boot camp with a
celebrity chef. So if you’re in New York and suck at cooking
and wanna be on t.v., follow the details and let me know if you
make it on. Here ya go, and remember that I have no affiliation
with this company whatsoever and make no guarantees that they are
legit:

I was at my weekly playgroup recently when
the talk around the mom’s table turned to crime. I’m
not sure how we got there – discussing my move from New York,
I think. At any rate, while talking about crime and fear, someone
brought up guns. In the home.


One mother said, “I’ve just never been comfortable with
the idea of having a gun in the house. I mean, I’d be so
afraid the kids would get hurt.” I was sitting there
thinking, Of course! Who WOULD be comfortable with a gun in the
house? I’d be afraid that I would get hurt! But if the
weighted, uneasy looks shared between a couple of the moms after
that statement is any indication (and I think it’s safe to
assume it is), then I’m most likely going to have a playdate
in the somewhat near future in a house that has a gun.

Yes, Cora at ten months has said her first
word. In more than one way.


First, she’s been saying Mama and Dada for a month or so now,
but just last week she pointed at Maddie and said, “Meh
Meh!”, which is what Maddie’s been trying to get Cora
to call her for a long time now. Maddie and I both looked at each
other, delighted, and both recognized it for the deliberate speech
that it was. And I have to tell you, seeing your kid’s face
light up as her baby sister yearns for her is priceless.


Second, we’ve been working on sign language with Cora for the
past several weeks, and she finally got the hang of it. First
signed word? “More.”


Tell me any other baby who knew a different word first.

Maddie turns 3 this summer, and talk on
the playground and in playgroups these days is all about preschool.
To be honest, I hadn’t even thought about it until a week or
so ago, and now it’s waking me up in a cold sweat.
Registration for next fall is either RIGHT NOW or already over, and
we’re not sure we even want to do it, much less where
we’d go.


I’m trying to sift through this rationally, but it
isn’t easy. Maddie would be one of the youngest kids in her
“class”, and while she is at the front of the
developmental curve, I know the move has been hard on her and
she’s going through an intense “mommy” phase.
I’m assuming she’ll be past that come fall, but who can
tell?


I also have to ask myself why I’d be sending Maddie to
preschool. After all, I didn’t set foot in a school until
kindergarten – not even pre-k for me – and was third in
my class. Maddie will be attending public school so we don’t
have to worry about getting into the “right” preschool
to ease us into the “right” private school. And I have
to wonder if the hundreds of dollars a month we’d be spending
on preschool wouldn’t do more good for her education, say,
stuffed into her college fund.

Yes, a week shy of her ten-month birthday,
and Cora has finally slept until 6:30 a.m., three nights in a row.


How did I do this, you ask?


Child abuse.

Ever since I mentioned in an earlier blog
that Maddie and I make breakfast bars from a recipe I cooked up
(pun intended), I’ve had several requests for said recipe. So
I’m just going to post it here – feel free to email
(Jennifer@1mother2another.com) with questions, or to get an address
to send me my share. Just kidding, unless they turn out really
well, and then I’m not. And if you don’t like the
recipe, knock yourself out making it better and let me know how you
did it.

I’m always on the lookout for ways
to indulge myself without ingesting either 1) calories or 2)
chemicals of dubious healthfulness (also known as artificial
sweeteners). I recently stumbled across a real winner.


target="_blank">Metromint is a relatively new line of
flavored water that is, as you can guess, variations on mint. Most
flavored waters will have the aforementioned artificial sweeteners,
or at least a modicum of calories, in them, with my favorite href="http://www.drinkhint.com" target="_blank">Hint Water
being a notable exception. But I’ve not found any that
channel my favorite flavor – chocolate.

Remember when, a couple weeks ago, I wrote
about how amazing it is to hear your kid say, “I love
you”? How it’s the purest, sweetest thing in the world,
coming from your little baby girl?


And then they grow up and get crafty.


I’ve noticed Maddie has a disturbing habit of breaking into a
chorus of, “Mommy, I love you so much!” right when she
notices I’m becoming cross with her. I can’t help but
suspect she’s discovered how turning her big soft eyes
towards and adult and saying sweetly, “(fill in the blank), I
love you so much! I really, really, really do!” makes said
adult simply melt into a puddle at her feet. Indeed, there’s
nothing else she can say (even something more appropriate, such as,
“I’m wrong, and I’m sorry”) that would have
such an instant, reversing affect on the direction of the
conversation.

We’ve had unprecedented cold weather
here – two inches (stop the presses!) of snow a couple days
ago, then an entire day of sleet and snow yesterday. When the rain
turned to sleet, Brian was sent home early from work, so fearful
are people down here of bad weather. Which I appreciate, because no
one here knows how to drive in bad weather, and you see those big
huge trucks barreling down a slushy street at 50 miles an hour.


But I digress.

As part of my quest to get the kitchen
unpacked and organized, I’ve been setting up our kitchen
pantry for the long haul, organizing it into a user-friendly
– and, need I add, tidy – system. Maddie and Cora have
become used to seeing me in front of one open door or another,
plastic storage tubs and shelf extenders scattered everywhere. With
two kids and little time to devote to such luxuries as neatness,
it’s slow going and I’m sometimes tempted to simply
shove everything onto the shelves and be done.


Then I come to my Container Store-heightened senses and press
on.

Newton’s First Law of Motion states
that an object in motion tends to stay in motion.


Apparently, he’s met my daughter Cora.


I’m telling you, I cannot stop this child. It was bad enough
that she started crawling and pulling herself up so early, but then
came the cruising around, looking for something else to hold onto
to keep her moving forward. And now, she’s fashioned herself
a home-made walker.

With apologies to poet Browning - The
lark’s on the wing; the snail’s on the thorn;
Maddie’s in her kitchen, and all’s right with the
world.


Our kitchen remodeling is finally finished; I started unpacking my
kitchen boxes bit by bit last week as projects were completed and
space opened up. As ecstatic as I am to be back in a kitchen that
is more sophisticated than a microwave and a hot plate,
there’s someone even more excited about it: Maddie.

So we visited another new church on
Sunday, this one a small new mission church currently meeting in an
elementary school auditorium. We sat in the back as we always do so
we can sneak out with a baby if need be, and boy is it a good thing
we did.


We were perhaps fifteen minutes into the service and had reached
the point at which the entire congregation reads a psalm together.
This Sunday it was the famous 23rd Psalm, “The Lord Is My
Shepherd”. We were a few short steps away from the sermon,
which is usually my cue to take Maddie to the nursery. Both girls
had been in a good mood all morning, and I was thinking that this
two-kid thing was getting easier.


Maybe two lines into the psalm I heard Brian, who was holding Cora,
say next to me, “Are you KIDDING me?” Being reasonably
certain this was not even a loose interpretation of scripture, I
looked over at him in time to catch a sight I’ll never forget
– Cora, sitting facing him on his lap, smiling happily at him
as a veritable fountain of pee streams onto Brian’s lap and
trickles merrily to the floor.


Apparently we were going to head to the nursery a little early.

God bless Texas.


I forgot when we moved back here that we were returning to the land
of competitive gymnastics; our area’s fostered several
Olympic gymnasts over the past decade or so, and there are four
huge training facilities within perhaps five miles of us.


What does this have to do with me and a bored two-year-old? I have
two words for you –


Open. Gym.

Since moving to Texas we’ve been
“church shopping” on Sundays – going to a
different church every week as we try to find our new parish home.
We’re enjoying seeing the different types of churches out
there, but it also means Maddie is in a new environment every week.
How’s she handling it?


It’s a bit mixed.

Our new playground has some features
Maddie hasn’t encountered before, and one is a covered spiral
slide. Madeleine’s been eyeing it since we moved here; she
loves going down the regular slide, and with the spiral slide being
the tallest of the five slides on our playground here, I think she
considers it the Mount Everest of the playground – to be
trained for and conquered.


The first couple of weeks Maddie eyed the slide but wouldn’t
go near it, deeming it too high and too fast. About two weeks ago,
though, her longing looks drew her ever nearer, until she was
staring wistfully into its open mouth. I could see she wished she
had the courage to go down but simply couldn’t talk herself
into it.


And then Elmo came to the park.

Cora’s finally settled on a lovey,
and unfortunately, it’s me.


Or, to be more precise, my hair.

As we drove to our new home from the
airport a few weeks ago, I gawked out the window at our new
neighborhood, trying to figure out where “our” spots
would be. Driving past a Starbucks, I did a double take, unable to
believe what I’d seen. A few moments later, I was
breathlessly telling my 17-year-old niece that our neighborhood had
“a Starbucks with a DRIVE-THROUGH! How amazing is
that???” I swear, my niece looked at me with a mixture of
contempt and pity and said only, “I’ve seen it.
It’s not the only one.”

Cora’s been a pickier eater than
Maddie was, and I think part of it is that I simply haven’t
had the time and energy to devote to the whole Starting Solid Foods
thing that I did the first time around. Our lives have been in such
upheaval that I haven’t exactly been the picture of
consistency about her meals, if you know what I mean; she
hasn’t had homemade baby food for several weeks, and I keep
forgetting to introduce new foods every four or five days, but the
worst is that I sometimes just forget I’ve got to feed the
poor kid!

If I had the guts, here’s an ad
I’d be placing in the local paper this week:


“Single white female seeks female of any ethnicity for good
times. I like play dates, swinging, cooking up yummy treats, and
going for long walks. YOU must love to laugh and sing, and at least
tolerate Elmo. If we hit it off, age is not an issue.”

For those of you who can’t wait
until tomorrow night’s American Idol to catch a glimpse of
all the starlets of tomorrow belting their hearts out, I give you
– Madeleine.

Since we’re still in the midst of
remodeling our new kitchen, the family is one tiny step above
dining out for every meal. We’ve finally got a refrigerator
so we’re not limited to the aptly-named mini fridge
we’ve been borrowing, but everything else is still
make-shift: no dishes have been unpacked since cabinets are still
unfinished, so we live with paper plates and plastic cutlery; and
while we have a microwave, it’s on the second floor and we
eat on the first floor, so we’re constantly running up and
down the stairs during a meal to “cook”.


When we first arrived we were doing every meal out, but as the
weeks go on I’ve been trying to save some money and inject
some health back into our diet. Which means I’m buying
rotisserie-cooked chicken from the supermarket along with a few
pints of those over-salted sides like potato salad or baked beans.
Or I’ll snatch up a couple frozen lasagnas and slave away
over a hot microwave as they cook before divvying them up onto our
paper plates.

Since today is Valentine’s Day (a
made-up holiday if I ever saw one, and one Brian and I don’t
really celebrate but can’t avoid hearing about on all the
media) I’ve been thinking about hearing those three little
words, and how satisfying they are. Sure, getting them from your
spouse is great, but in a way it’s even better when an
unsolicited “I love you, Mommy” floats up from your
toddler.


This was one of the more awkward things Brian and I had to teach
Maddie – how and when to say, “I love you!” I
mean, she hears it all the time from us, and eventually came to
understand what it meant to her, but she wasn’t able to put
words to those feelings in her little chest without our help.