1 Mother 2 Another

On Memorial Day we took a quick half-day
trip to a nearby lake, hanging out with my brother and his family.
We had to time the 90-minute drive around the girls and naptime, of
course, so we planned to head back home during naptime, getting
back early evening. The morning at the lake was great, but had one
unintended side-effect: awakening the girls’ Pool Craving.
Apparently, spending the morning slugging through water
nature-style reminded them of how much they enjoy their concrete,
(relatively) sterile water fun, so we said that perhaps we’d
hit our pool that night after dinner.

Our neighborhood pool opens right around
May 1, but only the brave venture in before June; the water’s
still darn cold (says the spoiled native Hawaiian) and needs some
time to warm up. I’ve told Maddie that the pool’s
usually open right around her early June birthday –
technically not a lie – but I’ve noticed she
doesn’t quite believe me as much any more: she asks me
repeatedly, “Is the pool open yet?” To my murmured
evasion – something along the lines of, “Well,
I’m not sure – I should check!” – she
always wails, “WHEN??”

Cora’s creative side has been
blossoming over the past several months: she started with stickers
(still a huge passion for her), covering page after page with
stickers of any kind – didn’t matter to her, as long as
they stuck. Then she began noticing Maddie would make colored marks
on paper, and Cora turned to coloring pencils. Every Sunday, the
girls carry their own bag of colored pencils for drawing while we
rehearse music before the service. At first having a hard time
holding the pencils, Cora has adapted well and now scribbles with
glee.


But neither stickers nor pencils capture her attention for long now
– her fickle heart has fallen in love with a new medium.
Crayons.


But not for the reason you might think.

Yes, I survived my first ballet recital
– at least, my first recital as a Mommy. And let me tell you,
it’s a whole other animal when you’re on the other side
of the footlights.


We had dress rehearsal early that morning, and I was grateful
Maddie’s three-year-old class was first on the program
–first on the stage, no waiting for the inevitable back-log
in the rehearsal process. All our little ballerinas were there in
their pink tights and pink leotards, each assigned a row in the
audience to sit and wait. The parents were assigned seats further
back in the auditorium, and as Maddie’s class was summoned up
on stage to practice, the ballet mistress turned to the audience
and politely said, “We ask two things during rehearsal
– that you don’t sit in this front section so the
children don’t try to seek you out from stage, and that you
refrain from using flash photography so the flash doesn’t
startle the children. Thank you.” And she turned and began
instructing the girls.


At which point the parents rushed the stage, fighting for the mosh
pit, and promptly whipped out their flash cameras.

When I was a little girl, I loved getting
into my mom’s big armoire and riffling through her jewelry
boxes. She had several charm bracelets, as did most women
who’d been a teenager when she was, and she’d tell me
stories about each charm – one from a visit to China, another
from her first day of school. As she talked, I could picture her
life unfolding around the bracelet, and saw how each charm
represented milestones or memories.


As I started moving through adulthood, I began collecting a few
charms for myself to cover monumental points in my life, and when I
became pregnant I immediately thought of a charm bracelet as a way
to give my daughter something lasting – a sort of jewelry
diary, if you will. So when Maddie was born I bought her a bracelet
– her very first piece of jewelry – with a pair of baby
shoes hanging off it, her initials and birthday engraved on the
back.

Yes, it’s time to brag.

Cora requested we go to the Arboretum for her birthday party; she wanted a few friends and a picnic and the chance to wander through the flowers and pioneer town and such. I planned an easy picnic lunch for everyone and an event-less time, counting on the sights and outdoor fun to do the work for me.

Unfortunately, it rained.

We’ve had the last of Cora’s
birthday-related celebrations, and it feels as if we’ve been
celebrating for weeks. And truthfully, it’s been nearly that
long – five days of parties and family celebrations and more.
Cora’s party was an absolute blast, and I’m still
absorbing it and not quite ready to write about it, though
I’m sure that will come later in the week when I’ve
gotten the sure-to-be-adorable photos dumped onto my computer.

We’re still in the midst of the Love
Fest Known As Cora’s Birthday Celebration; we’ve had
several days of parties and dinners with family, and more yet to
come. So I won’t fill you in on the whole birthday experience
yet. But there is one aspect that deserves its own piece –


Cora’s first bite of chocolate cake.

Maddie is currently fascinated with toe
nail polish. She sees it on her friends, and began pestering me to
paint her own toes several months ago. About eight weeks ago I gave
in, and let her paint her toes as a reward for an astonishingly
great several days. She preened and walked around barefoot whenever
possible, admiring her pedicure and proclaiming it to friends and
strangers.


Last week I allowed Maddie to paint her toes again, as another
reward for a week well done. She begged me to do my own toes in the
same color as her own, and I promised I would before seeing that
she’d picked out a particularly zombie-like shade of purple.
But a promise was a promise, and I spent several minutes at the
beginning of each acting class last week fielding questions from my
kids about why my toenails were painted like the undead.


Cora, of course, couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t
getting her toes painted, and begged for it on nearly an hourly
basis. “No, Cora, you’re too young,” Maddie would
tell her with only a trace of smugness. Cora accepted the answer,
but didn’t seem thrilled about it.


So Maddie decided to do something to make her feel better.

Dear Cora:


Your second birthday will be upon us next week, and I can’t
help but fall back on that old cliché and wonder where the
year went. You seem exactly the same to me every day –
ineffable, unchangeable, and then I blink and you’re somehow
this whole other creature, exotic and unknown. Before I look around
and discover I’m planning your graduation party, I want to
tell you a few things.

Hey – guess what! Cora’s got
strep throat!


Yep, we’ve had another trip to the doc, another positive
strep test – that makes the seventh or eighth positive since
January in this family (one loses count, you know). Did you know
that sometimes strep presents as a stomach virus?


Nor did I.


But I am heartily sick of writing these “poor me and my
family, we’re sick” blogs, so feel free to scroll
through the past few months and find one if you’re desiring
that. I won’t be writing any more about it today. Instead, I
want to share a story a friend of mine told me yesterday that made
me laugh, hard, and reminded me of something Maddie might do.

Yes, it's germ warfare time once again at
our house.


Cora got up Sunday night and began a quite prodigious run of
vomiting; the night was a blur of changing the bed, washing her
down, rocking her, doing laundry, and getting up a half hour later
to rock her. I finally got her to sleep at 7 a.m., when she fell
asleep on the floor of her room with me lying next to her. I, of
course, had to get up a half-hour later to teach, and the day was a
blur.


Cora seemed better, with no fever and a healthy appetite, so we
thought it a one-time thing until she awakend at midnight Monday
night with the same thing. Once again, Tuesday offered a happy,
well-adjusted girl with a decent appetite.


So forgive my lack of blog - the house is a wreck and I'm
bleary-eyed. Hopefully see you tomorrow.

We had that great American Hallmark
holiday yesterday – Mother’s Day. I’ve always
been a bit uncomfortable with the day: growing up I felt
resentfully as if every day were Mother’s Day (when
don’t I have to obey her?) and once I hit motherhood, it
seemed disingenuous to ask my young children to appreciate me fully
– I mean, let’s face it, kids don’t appreciate
their parents until they become one.


Don’t get me wrong – if Brian’s offering to take
over my chores for a day and pamper me, I’m not going to
complain. But as I commented to my girlfriends on Saturday, the
best Mother’s Day present I can get is time away from my
kids.

Over the past year, our family has
discovered one of the best things for kids’ entertainment out
there – those musical greeting cards. They’re good for
killing time at the grocery store, distracting toddlers while Mommy
makes dinner, or dispersing tension on a long car ride. I always
keep one in the diaper bag for emergencies, as well as one on the
car door for the same reason.


The very first card we ever got was “Conga” by Miami
Sound Machine; Maddie picked it out for Cora’s first birthday
last summer and they were both immediately entranced. As we get new
cards (and these are the only kinds of cards Maddie and Cora want
to give any more!) we add them to the stack on Mommy’s
kitchen desk. Every once in a while the girls re-discover the cards
and spend an hour or so sifting through them, dancing wildly and
singing along. I imagine it’s as close as they can come to
playing DJ right now, and they love having control over the
music.

Maddie’s decided that the best way
to deal with news she doesn’t like is to simply negate it
– swat it away like a pesky fly, sweep it under the rug like
a messy spill. In other words –


Deny, deny, deny.

Remember Maddie and Cora’s romp
through the muddy waters last week?


Yeah, so do they.

The girls are in this phase of enjoying
scaring the pants of themselves. Call it Hiding From the Giant, or
Run from the Bear, or any other derivative – the main
“plot” revolves around making a great hiding place,
then staying there and trying to stay quiet while concealing
squeals of anxiety for whatever might be lurking outside. We make
tents around couches, and caves under dining room tables, but
nothing compares to hiding in Mommy and Daddy’s bed.