1 Mother 2 Another

Yesterday Maddie went trick-or-treating for the first time ever, and spent several days beforehand in breathless anticipation. I’d picked up her costume a month ago and refused to let her see it, knowing she wouldn’t be able to refrain from begging to wear it and knowing that if she wore it she’d be bored with it by Halloween. But we’d talked about going trick-or-treating, and she was excited and keyed up when the big day arrived.

There are a couple reasons she was looking forward to it so much: first, my kid loves to dress up. We’ve got a big box of my old costumes in the playroom and she’ll dig into almost every day, dressing up herself and whoever else she can sucker into the game with her. Second, Maddie had never had candy and knew she was going to have some on Halloween. She didn’t know what it was, but had read about it enough in her Corduroy Halloween book to think she’d like it and couldn’t wait to try the stuff for herself.

Ever the bookworm, Maddie will get into a
rut for her bedtime readings; she’ll fixate on two specific
books and ask for them over and over and over again each time until
everyone except her is heartily sick of them. Sometimes
they’ll have nothing to do with each other –
they’ll simply be the two books she’s interested in
right now. Other times there will be a theme – both books
about birthdays, say, or two books with bunnies in them. But most
times they’ll be two books in the same series, such as the
Little Wombat books, or the Corduroy series.


Maddie’s Gamma brought home two new Corduroy books recently
– one about a beach trip, and one about Corduroy’s
Halloween party. Going into her typical obsession mode, Maddie
listened to them over and over and over until we all had them
memorized.


Including Maddie.

Cora’s now five and a half months,
and I think she’s pretty primed for solid foods.


She’s been eyeing family dinners for some time now, and is
moving from the silent observation to the begging stage. She
usually starts the meal out in her bouncy seat, where she keeps up
a persistent, nagging dialog until someone puts her on a lap. As
the meal goes on, her complaints become louder and more whiney
until she’s out-and-out stridently and piercingly saying,
“Feed me!” Ad that to the lunging towards the fork she
does every time it heads for my mouth, and I don’t need a
brick wall to fall on my head to figure out what’s going
on.

My girlfriend Renee surprised me with a
visit this weekend to help me celebrate a recent birthday.
Completely stunned, I saw my weekend go from one planned with
laundry and grocery shopping to a couple of days with brief little
stints running around the city shopping, gabbing, and eating good
food.


In the entire two days she was here, Brian only had to give Cora
one bottle – I was able to work my little forays into fun
around her schedule pretty well. But I clearly could not have done
all my fun stuff without a lot of sacrifice on the part of my mom
and husband, who both stepped up to the plate and generously
covered all childcare for the weekend. I felt rejuvenated,
refreshed, and recharged after a few simple fun outings and the
company of one of my best friends.


Which led me to think about how much my priorities have changed for
“downtime”. As Renee and I stood in Anthropologie
gleefully trying on delicate, pretty, dry-clean-only,
doesn’t-go-with-spit-up clothes, I tried to figure out the
last time I went fun shopping with a girlfriend. And other than a
few hectic trips to the outlet mall, either with Maddie in tow or
with a big belly, the last time I can come up with was another
shopping trip with Renee.


In 2003.

Cora’s over five months now and
still not sleeping all through the night: most nights she still
gets up at 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. for a nursing, rising finally around 9
a.m., though the past couple of nights she went until 4 or 5 a.m.
for her first feeding (which I much appreciated!).


It was right around this point that we sleep-trained Maddie, but
Cora’s clearly not ready for this. First and foremost,
Cora’s still being swaddled to sleep. I’m astonished
she still needs it; again, we started putting Maddie down
unswaddled before she was three months old. But Cora still flails
and startles quite a bit, which wakes her up at night unless
she’s wrapped.


A part of me has been impatient with the swaddling, wondering if
she really needs it; after all, I can’t convince myself to
sleep-train her until her hands are free to help her self-soothe,
and I’d like to get that show on the road soon. Plus, I worry
that she’ll become dependent on the swaddling and start to
need it to fall asleep, like a comfort object. So I decided to try
to wean her off the swaddling blanket, testing out the unwrapping
for nap times over the past few days.


The result? Disastrous.

I’ve always been the kind of girl
who enjoys her bedtime pampering; anytime I’d travel for a
show, you can bet my good down pillows were stuffed into my bags,
along with my down comforter if I could spare the space. Once
married, I quickly brought my husband around to my point of view
and now he’s as spoiled as I am, luxuriating in those
high-thread-count sheets that I score by religiously scouring the
clearance bins, and tucking himself under our yummy down blankets.


And I can already see Maddie following in the family footsteps. She
loves nothing more than to climb onto our big bed and snuggle
underneath the sheets, curling up on her side and stroking the
silky duvet cover. When she was younger, she’d happily pat
the fluffy, feather-filled bedding and you could see the
wistfulness in her eyes that one day she’d have a snuggly bed
like this herself.

Since I’ve been blogging for over
two years now, I often find myself stopping throughout the day and
writing a piece in my head. I’ll see Maddie do something cute
or use a favorite baby product and think, “I feel a blog
coming on!” And occasionally, I have a bad day.

There are levels to bad days, only one of
which is blogworthy. There are those mildly annoying happenings
which, if you blog about it, just sounds like whining. Then there
are those situations that are so horrific you can’t talk
about it: perhaps time and distance will enable you to put it down
on paper, but for right now it’s too much.

And then there are the bad days that are
not life-changing, but so much more than mildly annoying that you
find yourself reaching for the Haagen-Daz. And even as you’re
cracking open the spoon drawer, you know that at sometime in the
near future you’re going to laugh about this, and perhaps
even dine out on this story that, with distance, will become funny
and not hair-pullingly distressing.

Or maybe you’ll just blog about
it.

When Maddie first bonded with her Silky
and we saw how truly attached to that thing, I had a spurt of
foresight and ordered a second, “backup” Silky for her.
We try to keep them in regular rotation so they wear down at about
the same rate, rather than have one become tattered and ratty and
need to pull a shiny, pristine replacement out of the drawer.
We’ve gone to great pains to keep Maddie from seeing both
Silkies at once and have successfully kept up the illusion that
Silky is truly a one-of-a-kind.


One of the benefits of having two is that we can wash the thing,
and with all the “love” it gets showered on it, a
regular bath is very much in order. I try to swap them out every
couple of weeks, getting one clean and fresh and in the backup
drawer while she’s not looking. It’s important that
this is done somewhat frequently or the difference between
“clean” Silky and “dirty” Silky will be
very evident and the jig will be up.


Apparently.

Most people who know me would agree that
I’m borderline obsessive/compulsive. I use that term in the
cute way, as in “organizational freak” or “my
look at how well her spices are alphabetized” rather than in
the “I have to touch a doorknob five times before I can use
it” kind of way. The OCD tendencies I come by honestly in my
family – my grandmother frets when you don’t hand wash
a spoon the “right” way. And I’ve always
considered a little OCD to be a good thing in a mommy; Lord knows
you’re sunk without some method of organizing your life to
get through the multi-tasking days.


But I would never wish the real thing on anyone, much less my kids,
so I’m careful to never let my compulsions (like having to
count the stairs as I go down them. Always.) show in front of the
girls. Unfortunately, I’ve seen some signs in Maddie that at
the very least, she’s got a touch of the obsessive in
her.

Cora’s nearly five months now, and I
can’t believe the time’s gone so fast. I remember that
at this point with Maddie I felt as if I’d had her forever,
but right now it seems as though Cora just came home with us.


Part of this, I know, is that I’m not a new mom and
haven’t had to adjust to such a different life –
Cora’s sort of slipped into the family stream more easily
than Maddie, mostly because adjusting to two kids is way easier
than adjusting to having one in the first place. So we travel down
our day-to-day road enjoying each other, when suddenly I look up
and she’s not a newborn anymore!

Seems like this is the time of year when
the germs are back in force; Maddie has already had two colds this
year, one a summer cold picked up at a birthday party and one
simply from playing at our playground. This wouldn’t be such
a big deal, except that means that my baby Cora has also had two
colds. And she’s only 4 ½ months old. Contrast that
with Maddie, who had her first illness at almost fourteen months,
and you can get the gist of my frustration.


There’s a lot of misinformation out there on the Internet, as
well as some old wives’ tales that are simply incorrect. So
to save us all some precious sick days this season, here’s
some info on kids and germs – use it (to stay) in good
health!

Ever the reflecting pool that shines the
unvarnished face of my parenting skills back at me, my daughter has
come up with a new game – Elmo Disobeys.


A few days ago Maddie was happily putting Elmo to sleep in my room
– she often uses Cora’s bassinet for Elmo when
it’s empty, and will entertain herself for quite some time
getting his blanket, monitor, and so on, just right. I’d
already whispered night-night to Elmo and tiptoed out, even though
he was still awake and only to the pajama stage of the ritual; I
needed to use this time to get some things done in the kitchen and
figured Maddie could handle the rest on her own.


Suddenly, I hear: “No! No, Elmo! It’s time to go to
bed, RIGHT NOW!” And then, “Mommy! Elmo’s
disobeying!” floats down the hall at me.


This I’ve got to see.

A few weeks after Cora was born, Maddie
started waking up crying. Since she had just hit two years old, I
thought perhaps nightmares were beginning. But she wasn’t
waking up screaming – just crying, almost moaning. We’d
go in and talk to her and she’d tell us she was scared of the
monsters in her room. I chalked it up to the change of having a new
baby in the house – perhaps Cora’s cries were waking
her. So we consoled her and talked about it a bit, but didn’t
worry too much.

Cora’s nearly five months (!) now,
and as she becomes increasingly alert and aware of her
surroundings, it’s become increasingly difficult to get her
to concentrate on her meal.


I remember witnessing this stage for the first time with a friend
of mine: she brought her 4 ½ month-old over for a playdate
with then-8-week-old Maddie, and we chatted while the girls stared
at each other on the carpet. When Lily got hungry, my friend began
nursing. After only a few seconds into it, Lily began pulling off,
looking around and smiling at everyone; only when my friend put a
pillow up to block the baby’s view did she get down to eating
in earnestness. Since I had a 2-month-old who at as if she’d
never had breastmilk before and thought it was the best meal EVER,
I couldn’t imagine competing for her attention.


Then, of course, Maddie hit around 4 months and began acting the
same way, and now it’s Cora’s turn.

The second time around with pregnancy, you
think you’re prepared. You know what’s going to happen
afterwards – the fact that you’ll still look six months
pregnant even after the kid comes out, the fact that your ankles
will still be swollen a couple days later. You have a good idea of
how long it’ll take you to lose that post-partum weight, and
have already vowed not to cry when you’re wearing your
“fat pants” still four months later (I type as I eat a
Newman's Own Ginger-O's. Hey, they're organic!).


All of this experience and knowledge is a good thing, but
let’s face it – we still freak out. And for me,
it’s all about the hair.

Ok. So Maddie’s been at the terrible
two’s for a while now, and I felt pretty confident that
I’ve got the hang of it. I am patient. I am kind. I am
loving. I am firm. I demonstrate love and forgiveness, while giving
her boundaries and consequences.


And I am this close sometimes to knocking her skinny hiney
into next Tuesday.

Maddie has taken pretend mothering to a
whole new level, and I’m not sure where all this will end.


In addition to all the other things she does for Elmo, Maddie now
has an exact replica of her own nighttime routine that she
steadfastly performs for him. I mean, she’s always put her
dolls and Elmos to bed, in a sort of, “Here you go Elmo! Time
to get in your cradle! Here’s the covers! Night Night!”
kind of way. But over the past few days she’s been intensely
interested in making it as exactly like her own routine as
possible

A few days ago I was working in the
kitchen. Cora was grooving in the bouncy seat while Maddie
“cooked” in her own kitchen, and after several moments
Cora became restless and started whimpering. In the midst of
cutting up raw chicken, I opted not to touch her and began singing
soothingly to her, a trick that sometimes works. Hearing the music,
Maddie came into the kitchen to investigate.


“Why are you singing like that, Mom?” she asked.
We’re a big music household so there’s often someone
singing, but she was curious why I was singing a lullaby softly.


“Well kiddo, sometimes when Cora gets fussy, she feels better
if someone sings a soft song to her. Babies can often calm down
with a quiet, pretty tune.” Satisfied with the answer, Maddie
went back to her own play.

Cora is four and a half months now, and is
driving me crazy with the sleep thing.


I know that every kid is different, and you should never compare,
but Maddie was sleeping nine or ten hours at a stretch by this
time, nursing, and going back to sleep for another three.
She’d go through these phases when she hit developmental
growth spurts where she’d wake up a couple times a night for
a month or so, then settle back down again.


Cora, on the other hand, has yet to sleep through the night.

Maddie’s in the midst of a bad patch
discipline-wise; she seems to have a mini- (or maxi-) meltdown
several times a day. We’ve got a “routine” down
for handling the blowups, which is good, since we get plenty of
opportunities to practice it. I think the world’s a tough
place for her right now: she’s incredibly bright and is
learning at an astonishing pace, and sometimes it’s hard to
keep up with everything she’s being bombarded with. Feelings,
emotions, the appropriate way to express them, are all hard to get
under her own control and channel responsibly. I can’t
imagine what it must be like to be learning how to handle yourself
and function in society while still trying to make sense of your
own tiny day-to-day world.


But Maddie’s in luck – she’s not the only one
learning something valuable through all of this. Mommy and Daddy
are having to work something new into their emotional repertoire,
as well – instant forgiveness.

One of the benefits of blogging is that
it’s an easy way for family members to keep up with you;
rather than having to find time for a decent phone chat while kids
clamor for your attention, you can simply keep relatives updated
via the Internet on your child’s daily life. And for their
part, relatives are allowed a daily glimpse into a long-distance
life of a loved one, permitting them to feel that they’re not
totally missing out on everything.


So it’s no surprise to me that many of Maddie and
Cora’s grandparents read this daily (hi, y’all). And
last week one set of grandparents enjoyed my story of Maddie riding
her “borrowed” tricycle in Target so much that they
were moved to action.