1 Mother 2 Another

Since the US Department of Health and
Human Services has declared October 1 to be “National Child
Health Day”, I thought I’d take the day to mention one
of my favorite websites – href="http://healthychild.org">Healthy Child Healthy
World.


Let’s face it – we’re not living in the same
world we grew up in. I’m not one of those people that long
for the good ole days when we didn’t have to use seatbelts,
much less car seats. Kids today stand a better chance of surviving
a car crash, avoiding SIDS, and skipping the lead paint snacks. At
the same time, our environment is more crowded with pollutants and
toxins than ever before; new plastics and chemicals not tested on
kids are making their way into our mainstream life in the shape of
toys, cleaners, and even furniture; and even as we come up with
anti-bacterial soap, bacteria come up with a way to be resistant to
it.

Maddie’s long had an independent
streak in her: as soon as she could walk, it was her preferred
method of transportation, and she’d eschew the stroller
whenever possible, her chubby little 14-month-old legs doing the
two-mile-roundtrip walk to the park with determination. I barely
had to show her how to hold a spoon before she was completely
feeding herself, so it’s no surprise that she hates to have
someone else brush her teeth for her, even though she still
hasn’t gotten it quite right.


I’ve long admired this independence (can’t imagine
where she gets it) and have even encouraged it, since the more she
does the less Mommy has to do. Hi, I’m Jennifer and I’m
lazy – remember me? But the more refined her motor skills
get, the more tasks she wants to take upon herself, and the longer
these tasks take.


Which makes Mommy’s life, um, less easy.

Maddie and I ran errands yesterday and
ended up at one of Maddie’s favorite places of all time
– Target.


Keep in mind that I’m not one of those moms who buys her kid
a toy every time they enter a store; Maddie has no guaranteed
“new thing” to look forward to each time she hits a
Toys R Us or anything. My kid simply likes to shop, whether
it’s perusing all the catalogs that come for her every day
(“Did I get any mail? Any catalogs? Oooh!” she squeals
at mail call each day) or running through a store. She’s got
a vivid imagination and loves playing with all the
“new” toys, and is (mostly) content to leave them on
the shelves when she heads home (a few memorable meltdowns not
withstanding).


Let me also say that I’m not one of those moms who allows her
kids to take all the toys off the shelves, create a huge mess, and
leave it for some poor teenager making five bucks an hour. But I do
let Maddie fondle the stuffed animals, poke at the displays through
a toy’s box, and in general explore in a tidy fashion.

Maddie’s in the midst of those
terrible twos, and has several meltdowns a day, almost as if
she’s got an allotment of them and feels obligated to use
them all. I’ve got the formula for dealing with them down
pat, but Maddie’s recently thrown a little wrench into my
pattern, the clever little monkey.


First, there’s me making every effort to avoid a meltdown.
I’ve learned she does really well with plenty of warning when
a transition’s coming up, so I run through a list of upcoming
events several times: “Maddie, we’re going to eat our
lunch, play for a few minutes, then read books and take a
nap.” The more foreknowledge she has the less she reacts as
if I’ve sprung something grossly unfair on her, so I’m
happy to oblige in this.

Have you seen the new TV show, “Kid
Nation”? The reality show takes forty children aged 8 to 15
and drops them in the middle of a ghost town in Nevada, with
instructions that they’re to form themselves into a working
society. They do all the cooking, cleaning, governing,
store-running, and so on. Adults are strictly taboo and the
children are left to figure things out (like how to boil water on a
wood-burning stove) by themselves.


I’ve only seen the first episode, but it’s enough for
me. I spent the whole time vacillating between trying to imagine a
set of circumstances wherein I’d allow Madeleine to go sleep
in the desert unsupervised for a month at 8 years old, and worrying
about the kids that I’m watching. They show the children
pulling wooden wagons down two miles of dirt road to their new
home, and I’m wondering if someone made them put on
sunscreen. I watch three boys blow off steam chasing a jackrabbit
through the desert brush and I worry aloud that the producers
didn’t clear the brush of rattlesnakes ahead of time. I
notice that, in a town with only ONE outhouse for forty kids, there
seems to be a conspicuous lack of places (and motivation) to brush
your teeth.

I took Cora in last week for her
four-month checkup, and I have to confess I was actually looking
forward to it. Being out and about in the city with only one child
– and the one who didn’t complain or whine or beg, at
that – felt positively vacation-like. Going through the
well-baby visits the second time around are much easier: you know
what you’re doing this time (ish) and your list of questions
is much shorter. So I cruised in, smugly anticipating smooth
sailing and a quick trip home.


The check-up went well for the most part – Cora’s in
perfect health, and is growing well, eating well, yadda yadda
yadda. But then the doctor started looking at Cora’s motor
skills, checking for the four-month milestones. She put Cora on her
tummy, helped her pull up to sitting, tried to encourage her to
standing, and so on.

If you’re a parent you’ve
probably noticed that all kids’ songs have one of two tunes
– the ABC tune (also Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Ba Ba Black
Sheep, and so on) and the Thumbkin tune (also known as Frere
Jacques). This can cause no small amount of confusion to a
2-year-old.


Maddie’s had a pretty easy time with the first tune –
she can belt her way through the ABCs ten times, then segue into
Twinkle Twinkle with no problem. But she’s having a harder
time understanding that the second tune goes with more than one
song, and it’s making for a very interesting chanson.

I’ve just realized that a few weeks
ago I promised you a third installment on what to expect when your
second child arrives, so here (belatedly) it is. This installment
is the truth behind the reality of life with two kids.


First off, your memory is gone. G-O-N-E, gone. As in, I was
supposed to write this third installment two weeks ago. Seriously,
I know mommies are supposed to be pros at the whole multitasking
thing, but it gets too much even for us. You forget which one just
got changed, you forget if your child already watched a video, you
forget all your crap all over the city. One good friend of mine
(admittedly, a dad, but still) has lost all of the following since
having a second child: a diaper bag, the family camera, and the
stroller. Yes, the stroller. As in, I pulled up to the minivan,
unloaded the kids from the stroller into the car, and drove off.
Without the stroller. Which was not, of course, still there five
minutes later when I went back to look for it.


I love that story. Makes me feel a positively mnemonic genius in
comparison.

Since Maddie turned 2 a few months ago
we’ve eased up on the sugar restriction – up to that
point, she’d never had dessert as we tried to develop in her
a love for all things growing and vitamin-laden. But not wanting to
make our child into the one who hides in her closet at midnight
eating Twinkies, we started introducing her to treats a few times a
month. Maddie definitely loves cookies and ice cream but
doesn’t yet ask for them daily, which is great.


Unfortunately, the fact that she now eats sweets has serious
ramifications for Mommy. One of our favorite things to do together
on a rainy day is bake: Maddie can spoon and level flour and sugar
like nobody’s business, and recognizes a stick of unsalted
butter from across the room. If she even hears the clink of the
measuring spoons she comes running to see what’s up, and any
sighting of ingredients will lead her to start dragging her
“helper” stool out of the corner so she can climb up
and work properly. And since ninety percent of my recipes start
with the words “Cream the butter and sugar together”,
she can pretty much tell at a glance how far into the recipe
I’ve gotten without her.


In the past I could bake to my heart’s content and simply
hide the cookies away to eat later, after she’d gone to bed.
Since she’d never tasted cookies or cupcakes, she
didn’t really care what happened to them after the fun of
baking was over.


Now, though, Maddie cares deeply.

Cora is in the midst of the most horrible
stage right now – for whatever reason, the kid can’t
sleep. Which means neither can I.


When we went for our two-month visit, I proudly told the doctor
Cora was often sleeping 10-5 uninterrupted. She was suitably
impressed, and I thought there was nowhere to go but up. As babies
get older, their sleep naturally deepens, and I foresaw a full
night’s sleep in the very near future.


Alas for me, Cora didn’t get the memo.

Continuing Maddie’s obsession with
all things Elmo, Brian and I downloaded (legally!) a CD of
Elmo’s greatest hits. Maddie and I have spent several
enjoyable (for one of us) hours dancing around to such
chart-toppers as “Elmo You Can Drive My Car” and
“Imagination”. Maddie loves to watch Sesame Street and
see the actual song performed live in front of her as she sings
along with gusto.


Not all of Elmo’s songs are on the CD (darn it), and one of
Maddie’s favorites that didn’t make the cut is
“Riding My Tricycle”. Fortunately, they seem to show
that “video” every other day on Sesame Street, so
we’ve got it Tivo’d for posterity and Maddie has tried
hard to memorize it in short spurts.

I knew going into our recent vacation that
a) it wasn’t going to be much of a vacation for Mommy; and b)
the amount of gear required would rival an Everest expedition. I
thought I was mentally prepared for that.


Alas, you can never really be prepared for that.


Here is a (partial!) list of what we brought with us for our
three-day vacation. Keep in mind that we were in a friend’s
house, so we had her toddler’s toys at our disposal but had
to fend for ourselves meal-wise:

Hi everyone – I’m back!


We went for a few days in a friend’s house on the Jersey
shore – family vacation, cheap style. I’d meant to warn
you all of this, and in fact wrote a blog right before I hopped in
the car to head out, figuring I could post once I got there. But I
arrived to find I had no way of posting, and so was out of touch
for a few days. Thanks to those who wrote making sure the girls
were ok – we were all getting some quality family time!


So coming up is what you should have read on Monday –
I’ll fill you in on how it went tomorrow.

A couple days ago I posted about how our
whole family gives Cora a bath. Since then, I’ve gotten a ton
of Google hits from new parents looking for help bathing a newborn.
So I thought I’d write a few tips here that you may not find
elsewhere.


I’m assuming you’ve got a baby book that’s told
you the basics – don’t ever leave baby alone, always
have a hand on him, don’t submerge baby until the
cord’s fallen off, that sort of stuff. If not, go out and
pick up a book like href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=1mother2anoth-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F1889392200%2Fqid%3D1139195724%2Fsr%3D2-1%2Fref%3Dpd_bbs_b_2_1%3Fs%3Dbooks%26v%3Dglance%26n%3D283155">
Baby 411 or href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=1mother2anoth-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F0316778001%2Fqid%3D1139195980%2Fsr%3D2-1%2Fref%3Dpd_bbs_b_2_1%3Fs%3Dbooks%26v%3Dglance%26n%3D283155">
The Baby Book; you’re going to need it for
lots of stuff.

A couple weeks ago, Maddie and I were
playing one of our usual games in the park: Bake Stuff. Maddie
fills a cup with water from the sprinkler, then heads to the grassy
area to put in “ingredients” like grass, rocks, and
bark. She’ll stir it up and declare it a cupcake or banana
bread, pour it out, and start again. This particular day, I asked
Maddie what she was making. “Lemonade,” she
replied.

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned
before, Maddie loves to help take care of Baby Sister. Feeding,
burping, dressing, rocking, all are special fun things to do in
Maddie’s mind. Nothing, however, is quite so fun as giving
Cora a bath.

I have a feeling this is one of the
entries that will get me in a lot of trouble when my
daughter’s old enough to be embarrassed –


All babies have gas; it’s a fact of life. As our pediatrician
says, “All that air babies swallow is going to come out one
end or the other!” I remember Maddie was a pretty decent
pooter, and we got so used to it that we hardly noticed when it
happened, until of course she let loose in public and all the
non-parents looked at us, startled and mortified.


But Cora is in another class altogether.