1 Mother 2 Another

So the first part of spring break was
awesome.


Then Cora got the flu.


Yes, it's true. Yes, she had the flu shot. Yes, she had the flu in
January. Apparently it just LOVES her.


Tuesday night Cora woke up with a raging fever and our Staycation
poster plans were blown out of the water. Maddie, for her part, was
pretty good about having to cancel everything - out the window went
the horseback riding, the shoe shopping, the movie-watching in a
REAL MOVIE THEATRE. My neglected oldest spent several days playing
around the house by herself - thank you, Barbie! - while I was
stuck like glue to Cora, who wouldn't let me leave her for more
than a few moments.


Then, to make things even better, my back went out Friday -
apparently several sleepless nights combined with sleeping next to
a fretful five-year-old don't make for a happy spine - and I
hobbled around for the rest of the weekend. The whole family -
minus me and Cora - went out to our rental cabin Friday morning
while Cora cried bitterly at being left behind. She seemed to rally
well so we drove on out Saturday morning and had most of the
weekend in the cabin blissfully fishing and feeding baby animals on
the farm.


While Mommy hobbled all around, cursing her painful back.


Not the way I'd envisioned spring break, to be sure.

So yesterday I filled you in on my past
life with Barbies – read that first if you haven’t
already. Let’s just say that I played with Barbies as a kid,
as did my mom who gave hers to me, and I had them all in a huge
steamer trunk neatly labeled “Barbies” in my garage.
The girls have seen the trunk and longed for the day I’d get
it down for them.


Monday was that day.


Monday was our Pajama Day – a day we traditionally have for
every Staycation, and this spring break is no exception. I thought
for this Pajama Day I’d bring in the Barbie trunk and let
them wallow in girl-ness for the day.


Now, on Pajama Day the girls aren’t allowed to go downstairs
until both are awake and an adult goes with them: I set up a pallet
of pillows and blankets on the floor the night before for
movie-watching, get out games and fun stuff to do, and tape up a
“chores list” for the day. No one’s allowed a
sneak peak, since the chores list says things like “Eat
cookie dough” or “finger paint” or “play
outside in your pajamas”.


Or “play with Barbies”.

My girls have not gotten hugely into
Barbie – she’s never appeared on a cake or taken over
our gameroom - but it’s definitely on Cora’s radar. I
think the plastic dolls first started coming in the house as the
Disney princesses; the actual Barbie first came across Cora’s
path as a book, I believe. You know the books – the tons of
books-from-the-movies that Barbie “stars” in, like the
dancing one and Fairytopia and the Ariel-wanna-be girl, Merliah.


Ok, so we have our fair share of Barbies in the house.


I’ve resisted buying them a lot of “Barbie”
stuff, partly because it’s stupidly expensive (what I do buy
comes from resale shops), a bit because of the whole feminist issue
(though let’s not put all the blame on Barbie for this one, O
Mouse House), but mostly because I have a whole trunk of Barbie
paraphernalia in the garage.

That’s right, baby. Read it and
weep.


When that whistle blows at 3 p.m. it’s SPRING BREAK!


We are, of course, ridiculously excited. The Staycation Poster is
up and ready to go, and the girls are eagerly awaiting our
bonanza-o-fun we’ve got coming up: a pajama day, plenty of
park play dates, a trip to the movies, LOTS of down time, and the
grand finale: two days at our favorite cabin rental just a couple
hours away.


We’re bustin’ outta school and not looking back.


Baby.

Hello, blue skies.


Hello, balmy, lazy afternoons.


Hello, cooing doves and trilling cardinals.


I’ve missed you!



Hello, allergies.


Hello, neti pot.


Hello, seasonal migraines.


I leave it to your imaginations to decide how I feel about you.

Yesterday was a glorious day outside
– high in the mid-80’s, breezy and sunny. Maddie rode
her bike to school while Cora scootered her way there, so we were
all happy as we traveled home in the gorgeous sunshine.


Maddie moves the fastest on her bike, and Cora will often choose to
scooter slowly beside me to chat, tell me about her day, and so
forth. Yesterday, though, she scootered alongside me silently for a
bit before powering on ahead to catch up with Maddie at a
crosswalk. After we’d gotten across the street and turned
down our last block, Maddie put one foot on the pedal, preparing to
take off again.


“Maddie, can you ride more slowly so I can scooter next to
you? I’ve got some stuff to tell you,” Cora said.
Maddie moved over on the wide lane and Cora began shoving along
next to her big sister, who asked, “What do you need to tell
me?”

Last night Cora was working at our
breakfast counter, doing her homework. The assignment was to
“write five words with a short vowel sound”, and Cora
was tired, at the end of a long day, and very frustrated.


Finally, she said, “This is too hard! I can’t think of
anything good!”


Trying to be helpful I began throwing words out. “Um, how
about ‘cat’? Or ‘pet’? Or
‘cup’? Do you see how they have short vowel sounds? Or
what about –“


“Mommy,” Cora said, exasperated, “Can you please
be QUIET? I can’t concentrate!”


Meek silence.


Then, a few moments later, Cora asked while busily writing,
“Does ‘octopus’ have a ‘k’ or a
‘c’ in it?”


Clearly I was aiming too low.

I do enjoy cooking, but I don’t love
the weekly rut of meal-planning, shopping, and making
“do” in the kitchen. In a dream world, we’d hire
a personal chef to make dinners (and pack school lunches!) for us.
The only catch? I would get to tell the chef exactly what to make,
and be insanely micro-managing on the whole shopping/organic/good
produce thing.


I know, I can dream, right?


Weeknight dinners are always a little catchy: some nights I’m
teaching and leaving my mom to feed my kids – not exactly
cool to leave her with the whole “hey, what’s for
dinner? I don’t know, I’m leaving, you figure it
out” taste in her mouth. So on those nights I need to cook
the meal in advance. Then on nights I’m home I can make a
meal from scratch – but I’d much rather have extra time
for hanging with my kids.


So I’m a big fan of make-ahead meals; I usually try to double
one meal each week and freeze one for future use. I own several
great cook-and-freeze cookbooks, but I find myself returning to one
over and over – href="http://www.amazon.com/Mothers-Make-Ahead-Freeze-Cookbook-Series/dp/1558327568/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&keywords=not%20your%20mother%27s%20make%20ahead%20and%20freeze&linkCode=ur2&qid=1362022929&sr=8-1&tag=1mother2anoth-20"
target="_blank">Not Your Mother’s Make-Ahead And Freeze
Meals Cookbook.

Dear Maddie:


This weekend, my baby, you looked one of your worst fears in the
face. And you kicked its butt


Last week, reasonably out of the blue, you decided to dust off your
bicycle – not ridden in almost four years because of a
one-time fall – and give it another shot. You spent the
weekend joyfully rediscovering what it feels like to put the pedal
to the metal and truly enjoyed riding that bike – though
it’s too small for you and your nearly-eight-year-old legs.


You rode the bike to school one day, having thought about what it
would look like for a second-grader to ride a bike with training
wheels but deciding to do it anyway. I don’t know if anyone
teased you about it, but I know the training wheels have weighed
heavy on your mind all week; by Wednesday you asked me if I could
raise the wheels up a bit so you could start practicing riding on
just two wheels.


And then came Friday.

When Maddie was four years old, she fell
off her bike. She was riding in a bike-a-thon and a couple boys her
age came whizzing around the corner, skimming too close to my
slow-and-steady girl, and tipped her over. Ever since then
Maddie’s refused to ride her bike. At all. Every once in a
while I’d bring it up and suggest giving it a try and Maddie
would say, “I am too scared to. Remember the time I was
riding my bike and I fell off it?”


Yes. Yes, I do. I’ve remembered it for the past three and a
half years.

Last week Maddie came home from school and
announced, “In two days we get to go to school dressed like
our cultural heritage! So I’m going to dress Hawaiian!”


Yeah, ‘cause we look so darn Hawaiian.


Actually my mom grew up there and I was born there, so TECHNICALLY
Maddie’s descended from a Hawaiian, I guess, but we’re
the white Hawaiians. The ones that actual Polynesian Hawaiians
don’t so much like.


So I set out to put Maddie straight on our heritage and explained
why she really couldn’t dress Hawaiian. “Well,”
she pouted, “Then what can I dress up as?”


Ah, now we see. It’s called Maddie Gets To Wear A Costume To
School Day.

We had a long week last week, mostly from
anticipating- and then wallowing in – Valentine’s Day,
and by the time the girls got home on Friday we were pretty fried.
I was facing a reasonably hectic weekend, an incredibly filthy
house, and the prospect of two exhausted, bickering children.


I was not looking forward to it.


But for whatever reason, we had one of those golden afternoons,
where you hit that sweet spot and simply coast from one happiness
to the next. Not in any huge, life-changing, trip-to-Paris kind of
way, but in a sweet contentment kind of way.

No, the house hasn’t been visited by
a plague – just a crazy week this week and no time to vent
– er, blog.


But in case you were wondering how our Valentine’s Day went
yesterday, this about sums it up:


At 4:30 in the afternoon, after a long day of parties and sugar,
Maddie was up in her room asleep – crashed out after an
exhausting emotional battle over math homework that was “too
HARD!” (the equation in question: 14-2=?).


And as for Cora? Well, she was lying in a sobbing – I mean
crying-so-hard-she’s-losing-her-voice sobbing – heap on
the couch because it wasn’t her day to pick which video the
girls watched.


Yep, that about sums up our Valentines Day.

Dear Maddie:


We had a bit of a rough morning recently, didn’t we? School
mornings are never easy, but this one seemed to start out pretty
well and I had reasonably high hopes for getting you to school
relatively incident-free.


Then it came time to brush your hair.


As I approached you with the brush, you raised your arms up and
blocked me from your hair. And then I said, “Honey, you need
to let me brush your hair – and not fight me – or you
need to brush it yourself.”


I then lifted my arm up to brush again – and you pushed my
arms away.

Today our school is celebrating all the
kids’ 100th day of school. Kindergarten in particular has a
rip-roaring good time with lots of extra activities, like making a
necklace of 100 Fruit Loops or counting out 100 pieces of snack;
but the grand finale of the nearly week-long festivities is
today’s big excitement: the 100 Days Shirt.


Each kindergartener is supposed to make a shirt with 100 –
SOMETHING – on it. 100 stamps, or buttons, or stickers, or
pom-poms, whatever. And when I say a kindergartener is supposed to
make it, I mean his MOM is supposed to make it.

Last night I came in after work to snuggle
Cora after she’d already been in bed for a while. I found her
propped up on a pillow, studiously studying an open book;
she’s been “reading” very simple books for a
couple months or so – simple as in, “I sat on the mat.
The rat sat on the mat” with lots of accompanying pictures
– and she is straining hard to start deciphering more
difficult books.


“Mommy,” she said, gesturing me over, “what is
this word?”


I looked at the page.


“That word is ‘glad’,” I said. “The
‘g’ makes the hard sound, I know it can be
tricky.”


Cora huffed impatiently. “No, not that word, THAT word
–“ and she pointed more specifically.


“Oh, um, that word? That word is
‘whisker’,” I stammered.


Cora nodded thoughtfully. “Ah, the ‘h’ is kind of
silent, like in ‘whisper’. Well, not silent, more like
breathy.”


And she continued reading.


Yeah, I’m calling it – she’s officially reading.
Apparently.

The other day Maddie and I were walking to
school, Cora scootering on ahead. Maddie was holding my hand,
pausing every once and a while to give me a brief, affectionate
hug. As we neared the school Maddie grew quiet, clearly thinking
about something.


“Hey, kiddo, what’cha thinking about?” I asked
lightly.

Every Sunday Maddie brings her personal
Bible to church; her second grade class is encouraged to do so,
trying to build the kids up to actually use their Bibles and become
comfortable with them. Yesterday when Maddie ran to grab hers
before getting in the car, Cora said, “Oh! I want to bring
mine today, too!” and ran off to pick hers up – her
new-for-Christmas, very lovely but perhaps
intimidating-to-a-five-year-old grown-up Bible. I wasn’t sure
why, but was happy to go along with it.


I dropped Maddie off at her Sunday school room before walking Cora
to hers, and when Cora walked through her door she made a beeline
for the teacher, clutching her Bible to her chest. Wanting to find
out what was up, I did what any respectable parent would do: I
eavesdropped.


“Hey, teacher, do you want to know something really
interesting?” Cora peered owlishly up at her instructor.


Her teacher, of course, nodded yes.

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.