1 Mother 2 Another

You know I’m one of the biggest
anti-gadgets people out there, right? You know I roll my eyes when
Brian looks at our television that was old twenty years ago and
talks about getting a new one, and I say, “But this one works
just fine!” You know that, right?


Ok, good. Because I’m about to tell you about an electronics
website and I don’t want you to think I’m that kind of
girl.

Every afternoon, Maddie and Mommy and Cora
pile into Maddie’s bed and read books together as part of our
naptime routine. After a few books and some prayers, Cora and I
leave Maddie to go to sleep and proceed to Cora’s room to
finish her own nap routine. Usually, Cora’s sleepy enough by
that time that she wants me to carry her to her own room.


Yesterday, though, Cora wanted to walk so she could shut
Maddie’s door, and as she and I crept out of Maddie’s
room Cora turned around to a drowsy Maddie and said, “Wuv
you, Maddie!”


Now, this is part of Maddie’s sleep routine –
whoever’s leaving the room calls out, “I love
you!” and Maddie says “I love you!” back. But
Cora’s never said it before, and you could tell it delighted
Maddie, who sang out, “I love you too, my little
sister!”

Maddie’s got a responsibility chart
that she fills in at the end of the day: for everything she
accomplishes she gets to put a magnet in the space. Her
responsibilities include a few concrete things like clearing the
table, but are mostly intangibles like no hitting, no whining,
being obedient, and no teasing. Most days she loses one or two
magnets, but a few days out of the week she’ll have a perfect
day.


Saturday was one such day, and she came running into Cora’s
room where I was reading to Cora for bedtime. “Mommy!”
she shrieked, coming to the chair, “I had a perfect
day!”


“That’s fantastic!” I cried, “Give me a big
hug!” And I leaned down to hug Maddie.


Right as Maddie jumped up to hug me, thereby driving her skull into
my nose.

Summer’s here again, and we’re
back to hot-weather pursuits, namely, swimming. And with the return
of chlorine and pool toys comes Maddie’s good friend, Fear of
Putting the Face in the Water.


If you’ve been with me for a year or more, you know that last
year we ended up putting Maddie in private swim lessons most of the
summer; the group thing didn’t work out when Maddie’s
grave concerns with the water took up most of the
instructor’s time. By the end of the season Maddie was
happily jumping into the pool – as long as Daddy was there to
catch her and make sure her face didn’t go under water.

I’m afraid Cora’s turning into
a little biter – though pretty much limiting her culinary
excursions to her sister. Whenever cornered or frustrated, she
turns to biting to try to get Maddie out of her face, and sometimes
she actually succeeds.


Over the past year we’ve started to get a handle on it,
partly because she’s learning to deal with her frustration in
more productive ways, and partly because the girls are learning to
compromise, to give and take more graciously, thus avoiding the
“need” for biting. But just the other night Maddie took
a train away from Cora and refused to give it back, and after a few
tense seconds of both sets of hands trying to hold onto it, Cora
leaned in with a red rage and bit Maddie – hard – on
the stomach.

We did it! We survived Take Your Daughters
To Work Day!


Mostly.


So I took a couple (very) large bags of toys to the studio, along
with lunches, snacks, and the girls’ activity boxes replete
with crayons and stickers and paper. And how much of that did we
use?


Well, at least they ate the lunches.

I’ve been teaching for a local
theatre camp this summer, and the girls have had a fine time
playing with Gamma a couple mornings a week. Unfortunately for them
(and me), Gamma’s starting her own summer teaching schedule
today. And I’ve exhausted my short list of
babysitters/neighbors that Cora approves of and is (reluctantly)
willing to be left with at my house. Which leaves me with one
option:


It’s Take Your Daughters To Work Week at my household.

So a friend of mine read the vomit blog
yesterday, and was taken aback. She was thrown by the idea of being
topless the whole night so you could be an easy-clean target for
your child’s projectile vomiting, and could not imagine doing
such a thing willingly, much less instinctively.


Needless to say, she does not have kids.


I have to admit, after I wrote yesterday’s entry I read back
through it and thought about how far I’ve come. Before we had
kids, I would have gone out of my way – across a street,
against a light – to avoid a pile of dog poo, never mind
someone’s vomit puddle. Even after I got pregnant, most of my
late-night worries centered around body fluids and how I’d
get over that to be a good mom.

Since I’ve had more than my fair
share of run-ins with the vomit comet these past few months, I
thought I’d pass on some tips I’ve learned – the
hard way.


I’m assuming here that you’ve got at least one child
who is projectile vomiting, and that this is not a life-threatening
illness, but something nasty and slimy and stinky to be endured
until the ride is over.

We’ve worked deliberately to get the
girls both attached to renewable “loveys”;
nothing’s worse than having a toddler addicted to a
one-of-a-kind binky or snuggly, only to have said binky fall out of
the car and never come back. Both girls have their
“silkys” – little snuggle blankets we had made
for them right around birth – and unbeknownst to them,
we’ve got two of each one. They are regularly rotated, for
cleanliness and so they both wear down at the same rate.


So both girls have their silkys. But Cora’s got another
lovey, and while it’s a renewable resource and is certainly
portable, it’s not, um, without limitations.


Cora is in love with my hair.

One of the things on Maddie’s birthday list was an iPod karaoke machine. Unfortunately for the future of peace and quiet in our household, she got it.

I have to admit that it’s my fault; I thought she’d like it, since she’s always asking Daddy to plug a microphone into his amp and let her sing “Twinkle Twinkle” or something. So when I found this machine I couldn’t resist: it’s a microphone and stand with a port for your MP3 player, and at the touch of a button the lead vocals are taken out and it becomes your very own karaoke machine. It’s got speakers built in, and even an outlet for a second microphone, so we knew she’d get years of use out of it.

There were two themes to last week:
Maddie’s birthday, and all that related to it; and Cora being
sick. Again.


Cora seemed to have a one-day bug, but she relapsed on Thursday
evening with a vengeance, and Friday afternoon we took her to the
doctor. Diagnosis? Strep throat.


Did you even need to ask?

What would I give if I could live out of
these Disney waters?


What would I pay to spend the day Ariel free?


Yes, Ariel Mania has descended upon our household, and no piece of
plastic crap is safe from us if it’s got the red-headed
teenager on it.

Dear Maddie:

You’ve recently had your fourth
birthday, and I don’t know where to start. First, apologies:
I wanted to get this letter to you before your actual birthday, but
with your sister spending a day projectile vomiting and never
letting me out of her sight, and then birthday preparations and
parties and all, I just ran out of time.


My love, I think I spent half your birthday morning staring at you
in disbelief. Who is this creature before me? You jumped into my
sight, dressed in your new birthday clothes, standing shyly and
proudly in your finery, and I couldn’t believe this was my
Baby Girl. You’ve transformed from a toddler to a preschooler
to, it seems, a pre-teen, in the blink of an eye. Your baby
roundness (such as is was) has stretched into a delicate girlish
coltishness, and I have to admit I feel almost shy around this new
creature.

(Ten points to anyone who recognized the
Beatles song in the title, and twenty points if you know it’s
from the Revolver album – but I digress!)


So we had open gym for the last time last week, as I mentioned, and
we closed the place down, as I also mentioned. What I failed to add
was that we stayed about thirty seconds too long, for we were there
to witness them cleaning up and shutting off the bounce house
– a big dragon in whose innards the kids would jump and
jostle. And as the coaches pulled the plug on the dragon, it did
what any suddenly stilled bounce house will do –


It collapsed.


And Cora screamed.

I try not to post every cute video I have
of the girls - that would mean I'd have hours and hours of home
movies on the internet, wouldn't it? But I couldn't resist this
one. They've been in a Sesame Street mode, and sing this at least
once a day. It's not the pitch-perfect rendition of Oscar's
signature song that gets me - though of course, it is. No, it's
how they are singing to each other, laughing and not able to take
their eyes off each other. I love seeing the sister bond in action.
And seeing Cora try to be just like her big sister.


Anyway, click below and enjoy.

We went to a friend’s house for a
group playdate the other day, where Maddie got to hang out with
several of her favorite friends from the neighborhood. There were
costumes and muffins, making it really the perfect play date ever.


Except for the attitudes.

Yesterday was our last open gym until next
fall, and unbeknownst to Maddie, her last one for longer than that.
Since she’ll be going to school on Wednesdays beginning in
September, she’ll no longer be around for that weekly
Trampolinepalooza; it’ll be just me and Cora while Maddie
slaves away at her ABC’s.


And while I did tell Maddie it was the last open gym for the
summer, I didn’t explain to her about the fall –
I’m way too much of a coward for that. So as far as
she’s concerned, we simply waved goodbye to the indoor
playground for the duration of swimming season.

A friend of mine told me last week about
target="_blank">Kids Bowl Free. I may be the last mom in
America to know about it, but in case I’m not, here’s
the deal:


You go to this website and find out if there’s a
participating bowling alley in your area – they’re all
over the country. If there is, you register each of your children
with the bowling alley, and once a week for the whole summer they
send you coupons for two free games for each child – for
EVERY DAY.


That’s right, your kids can bowl two free games every day,
all summer long.

Yes, Cora’s hit that two-year-old
stage of realizing all the “stuff” she sees
doesn’t just belong to the cosmic universe – that
there’s “mine” and “not mine”.


Though she’d rather forget that last part.


At first, Cora was happy to pass things around and share them
– too young to grasp the concept of ownership. And I was
lulled, like a sucker or rookie mom, into thinking she’d be
different than any other child in the world: she’d be the
first one EVER to be ok with sharing. My child would be different,
I smugly thought.


Stupid, stupid, stupid.