The Go-To Girlfriend for New Mommies
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Maddie had her last swim class yesterday,
and I’m clearly going to need a Costco-sized box of Kleenex
at her graduation because I got a little teary as she completed her
final lap.
She’s three. Years. Old. And I’m misting up while she
makes her last “alligator nose”. Geez, lady, get a
grip, right?
Our whole discipline thing with Maddie is
built around the ideas of obedience, choice and consequences. If
Maddie chooses to obey, the consequences are pretty wonderful; if
not, the consequences can be hard to take. We’ve been
following this for over a year now and she’s got a very clear
understanding of it, showing she clearly grasps what’s going
on when situations come up.
I’ve talked a lot this summer about
Maddie’s trials and tribulations in the pool and swim class,
and only briefly touched on Cora’s love of the pool. But as
the summer’s gone on, her adoration of all things aquatic has
become ever more obvious, and strangers are starting to stop and
stare.
Cora spends most of Maddie’s swim lessons (when she’s
not scouring the waiting-room floor for week-old goldfish) staring
intently out the glass at her big sister. At first I thought she
was merely watching her Maddie for fun, but it’s become clear
that she is studying hard and taking mental notes. In the early
days of swim lessons when we were working so hard on getting Maddie
to put her face in the water, blowing bubbles was our big goal, and
everyone around was constantly demonstrating.
Including Cora.
Hey, remember when you had time to get
excited about the new shows coming out in the fall on t.v.? I
don’t even know what movies are out right now, thanks to my
tivo’s capability of automatically skipping commercials as I
try to catch up on “So You Think You Can Dance” at
midnight (what’s up with WILL being gone, by the way??? He
was far and away the best guy.)
So I’m not talking today about upcoming television
programming; I’m thinking of upcoming toddler activities
programming.
Most days I’m pretty ok with the
fact that my girls love their routine and love having the same food
every single day. But sometimes, I think I’d rather take
Maddie’s travel Spork and scrape all my taste buds off my
tongue one at a time than have to eat another $#@# sandwich for
lunch.
Yesterday was such a day.
So as we headed home from a play date with friends (yes, in the
car, but they live five miles away so it doesn’t count!) I
heard Chick-Fil-A’s siren song pulling me off the road, and
since unlike Odysseus I had no one to tie me up and keep me safe, I
turned the car towards the cow with the sign that says “Eat
More Chikin”.
I was sitting talking to a friend of mine
recently when the subject of her upcoming birthday came up. I
pressed D to tell me what she’d like to do to celebrate her
big day, since I’d never been in the same town when her
birthday came up before. For a while she stalled and wouldn’t
tell me anything, but finally she said to me, “To be
completely honest, I’d really like to forget all about it and
just let it go by.”
That’s her right, of course, and if that’s truly what
she wants I respect that. But I can’t help contrasting that
with Mother’s Day – D has several children, and though
shy and not ever interested in being the center of attention, D was
willing to let her children take her out to lunch to celebrate her
motherhood, to tell her how much they appreciate her as a
mother.
About a month ago Maddie watched an episode of “Davey and Goliath” in which little Sally has a dolly stroller parade with her friends. The idea enchanted Maddie and she begged for her own dolly stroller parade, so I ended up organizing one within our playgroup. We sent out the email, inviting everyone to decorate their dolly strollers or their bikes and meet us in the park for a parade to our house.
On fire with the idea, Maddie’s been talking about it almost daily ever since, and yesterday we finally had our First Annual Dolly Stroller and Bike Parade. We’ve been preparing for the past few weeks, starting with the overall “theme” to the stroller. It was a tough decision, but Maddie finally decided to allow Abby Cadabby to ride in the dolly stroller, apologizing to her several Elmos profusely – “Guys, you’re just not dollies, and this is a dolly stroller parade! Ok, guys?” We raided the crafting store (God bless Texas and our crafting mega-stores!) and bought out everything they had in pink, purple, and blue feathers, sequins, and ribbons. Maddie practiced walking around playing her kazoo while pushing the dolly stroller. We’re talking hard-core preparations here.
We were heading to church on Sunday when
Maddie and I had a conversation that reminded me once again what a
smart kid she is.
I’d spent the past few days baking, stockpiling several dozen
cookies to donate to our church for a big neighborhood outreach
project they’ve got going on. Maddie, of course, has helped
when possible, though her motives are not entirely pure since
she’s always angling to lick the beaters. And as we’ve
baked we’ve talked about why were baking, since she is deeply
interested in understanding why baked goods are going out of the
house instead of into her tummy.
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,
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.
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