1 Mother 2 Another

Brian and I are recovered, though I can
tell that Cora’s hovering on the edge of falling into the
nasty cold he and I both had last week. But even though I was out
of commission, I managed to jot down a few funny comments during
the week – you never know when I’m listening with a
paper and pencil.

Sorry folks - day three of a nasty cold.
Barely surviving with the sniffles and aches. Catch ya next
week.

We were having breakfast with friends
yesterday (National Pancake Day!) when Maddie turned to me and said
matter-of-factly, “Mom, I’ve met the man I’m
going to marry.”


Excuse me?

I hope everyone's reading this early this
morning, because today, Tuesday, is National Pancake Day, and to
celebrate it, IHOP is giving away free shortstacks of pancakes from
7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Yes, it'll be a three-hour wait for five bucks
worth of free pancakes, but it's a celebration! National Pancake
Day! C'mon, people!


Click target="_blank">here to read more - and see ya after a big
plate of starch.

Cora’s going through this phase of
wanting to be someone else, and refusing to answer unless you call
her by the correct name. She’s picked a variety of made-up
names and titles (Princess, for example) but the name that’s
stuck the most is Thomas. As in, the tank engine.


Friday Cora insisted on wearing her red Thomas t-shirt and red
leggings, and declared her name was Thomas. “Cora,”
I’d say, “Come get your brown sneakers on.”
“There’s no Cora here,” she’d say in a
sing-songy voice, “Only Thomas!”

Yesterday morning, Cora and I went to the
park for some play time. We had the playground to ourselves and
Cora was happily making acorn soup when I noticed little yellow
balls mixed in with the wood chips that comprise the
“carpet” of the playground. I thought at first that
they were yellow Nerds or some similar candy that had been spilled
right there, but I quickly discovered they were throughout the
playground. They were fertilizer.


I cleaned off a slide with a particularly large pile that Cora
discovered – “Look, Mommy, candy!” - dribbling
the contents – 3 parts fertilizer to 1 part wood chips
– into my pocket, and put the whole thing into a plastic
baggie when I got home. I carefully labeled the bag with our park
name and set it aside.

A couple weeks ago, I’d had a
loooooooooong day, and rushed through the bedtime routine with
Cora. I’d come home from work to find her disguised as Naked
Girl, so I threw a nightgown on her and called it a night, already
dreaming of crashing in my own bed.


Twenty minutes later, I was replaying the bedtime scene in my mind
and realized Cora had not been wearing a diaper – she was
wearing pull-ups. Pull-ups that had been on her for several hours,
and were at least a little wet. Pull-ups, as many of you know, are
not designed to hold as much liquid, and though Cora does not pee
most nights, she does as soon as she wakes, usually in her diaper.
And it’s a lot.


Which meant that, if left in a wet pull-up all night, she’d
most likely pee again and leak all over the bed, necessitating a
complete sheet and nightgown change.


Which meant that I had to go wake a sleeping baby.

The discipline system we use at our house
is based on choices and consequences – bad choices lead to
unpopular consequences. And rather than do time outs, with a set
amount of time to be endured, we do breaks – the child goes
on a break that ends when they’ve had a change of heart and
are able to calm down. So a break can last sixty seconds, or sixty
minutes.


Like it did yesterday with Cora.

The following quotes both came out of this
weekend:


Maddie: “Daddy, is there really such a thing as a copy
cat?”


Daddy: “Of course, honey, and they aren’t always very
nice, are they?”


Maddie: “Daddy, are they as big as a regular cat, or
bigger?”



And my favorite conversation from the weekend:


My mom: “I’m going to get home and put on some sweat
pants and watch the Olympics.”


Silence. Then,


Cora: “Gamma, are you pants not sweaty now?”


Out of the mouths of babes . . .

Every year in New York, we’d look at
February as a hopeful harbinger of spring. People would start to
think that winter was winding down – and then
President’s Day weekend would hit.


It is my steadfast belief that New York will always get a pretty
decent snowstorm right around President’s Day weekend; a sort
of “surprise! Winter’s not done yet!” kind of
in-your-face gesture from Mother Nature. I always kind of liked it;
sure we were winter-weary by that time, but I always felt confident
that it’d be the last gasp from cold weather and I’d
enjoy it to the hilt. This year, to my delight, we got one down
here in Texas too.

We’ve had more than our fair share
of illness in this household recently, and one side-effect is an
over-dose of Mommyness, resulting in extra-clinginess by both
girls. And I’m beginning to feel a bit, well, like a chew toy
two dogs are fighting over.


Maddie went to school yesterday in spite of the fact that she was
on the tail end of a cold, largely because it was her class
Valentine party and she couldn’t bear to miss it. So she came
home full of sugar and completely worn out, and by the time I tried
to get her upstairs for naptime she hit Full Global Meltdown.
Sobbing and crumpled in a heap, dress front soaked from her tears,
Maddie couldn’t even articulate why she was crying after a
few minutes, but it was clear she couldn’t move on her own. I
picked her up and carried her up the stairs, calling over my
shoulder, “Come on up, Cora – it’s nap
time.”

Monday morning was quiet around the house:
Maddie was back at school, my mom was at the hospital with my
grandmother, and I had a huge list of things to get done, which
meant no going someplace “fun” for Cora. Top of my list
was working on our financial papers, because I’m meeting with
our tax accountant on Wednesday to get our taxes filed. Don’t
hate me for being early, because that’s not the point of this
story.

We had a big day on Friday, in more ways
than one. A little back-story:


Maddie’s had several urinary tract infections over the past
few months, and the doctor told us she wanted to check for
something called urinary reflux, which apparently is somewhat
common in young girls and can cause kidney scarring and kidney loss
if left undetected. So Maddie was scheduled Friday to go in for a
couple rather invasive tests, including one in which she’d be
under general anesthesia. Maddie was less than enthusiastic about
the idea, and Brian took the day off so we could both be by her
side while my mom stayed home with Cora. We went to bed Thursday
night warning Maddie she wouldn’t be able to eat the next day
until after her tests, due to be finished around 12 p.m. or so.


Thursday morning Cora began whimpering around 6 a.m., and I
sleepily brought her in with us to try to get a few more minutes of
sleep. 7 a.m. the phone rang, and we found out my grandmother had
fallen out of her bed and was on the way to the hospital. Ten
minutes later, so was my mother.


Ten minutes after that, Cora began throwing up.

Cora's RSV segued nicely into a cold she
caught from Maddie, and now the tail end of it has become one of
those tickling coughs that won't let her alone. As soon as her
breathing slows down she's coughing up a lung, and so I've been
up four to six times a night with her the past few nights.


Me so tired.

It would seem that both of my girls are
addicted to sugar. Maddie is doing the whole “silky
training” thing in an effort to keep a steady stream of
Starburst candies coming her way, and as for Cora, well,
she’s found another way.


Cora has learned how to poop on command.

“Mom, I think I want to begin silky
training now,” Maddie said to me a few days ago.


“What’s silky training?” I asked Maddie.


“You know, where I practice using it less.”


“Do you want to give up your silky, honey?” I asked,
pictures of kids teasing Maddie during quiet time at school dancing
unhappily in my head. I know that when she started school
she’d told me a couple kids had teased her about sucking her
thumb while she snuggles with her silky, and though she’d
told me then she didn’t care I thought perhaps things had
changed and she’d become aware of “fitting
in”.