1 Mother 2 Another

I fought mightily to keep the dreaded
Disney princesses from invading our homes, and they still made it
in. It’s really impossible to keep them out –
they’re on toothbrushes and valentines and pencils and even
macaroni and cheese. But it doesn’t mean I have to like it.


I have two problems with Ariel and her friends. First off, I am
peeved about the whole licensed character thing. I can’t
stand how ubiquitous their faces are, and how my daughters
automatically beg me to buy gum/toilet paper/cheetos just because
they have Belle and Aurora on them.


But my biggest issue is the type of role model these gals are
being. Maddie and Cora hear the stories too often –
“Someday my prince will come” is a too-often refrain,
and the heroine can do nothing but clean the house after seven
messy guys/wander through the woods picking berries, hidden away
from all other people/prepare her mean sisters’ breakfasts
and daydream about being rescued. Yes, this is a problem for
me.

Our local high school is currently
building a brand-new arts building, with a state-of-the-art theatre
as its crown jewel. They’ve been working since September and,
though it’ll be a couple years before it’s finished, we
point it out to the girls when we drive past.


Yesterday Brian did so on our way to church – “Look,
girls, there’s the new arts building going up! It’s
going to have a fantastic theatre in it by the time you two get to
go to school there!”


And from the back seat, Cora said matter-of-factly, “Yes, and
people will come from far and wide, from all across the land, to
see me upon that stage. I will be astonishingly good.”


Seriously, folks. I can’t make this up.

Remember Maddie and her in-class Romeo,
“Joe”? Well, the relationship’s only heating up.


Joe was gone over Valentine’s week, apparently at
Disneyworld. But his first act upon returning this week was to give
Maddie a valentine. A girly one, no less, because he “knew
she wouldn’t want a boy one”.


He knows my kid, I have to give him that.

When Maddie was barely a year old, she met
Naomi on a playground and the rest was history. The girls were
inseparable, playing together EVERY DAY until we moved when Maddie
was two and a half. This sounds small, I know, but three years
later Naomi still begs to see Maddie – and they haven’t
seen each other since we moved.


Even after moving here, we found a circle of friends for Maddie
relatively quickly, thanks to a pre-formed mom’s group in my
neighborhood with kids all the same age, and several kind women
ready to welcome us to their group. By the time Maddie started
kindergarten, she had a solid circle of a half-dozen truly close
friends.


So did Cora. The only problem was that they were all of
Maddie’s friends.

I’m always looking for movies for
our movie nights that will be ok for the girls to watch – and
believe me, it’s a very small list. “Finding
Nemo” was shown to Maddie accidentally, and she stressed
about being lost or flushed down a toilet for several months.
“Beauty and the Beast” – the wolf scene is too
scary. “Little Mermaid” – the girls get through
it, but Ursula is so scary they don’t sleep for a couple
nights afterwards. You get the picture.


So a couple weeks ago I started running through movie musicals in
my head, and hit upon “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor
Dreamcoat” – an old Broadway musical recorded for
television starring Donny Osmond. The show was originally written
for children and tells the story of, um Joseph, from the Old
Testament. I know the show quite well, and knew it would be a hit
for the girls.


That, my friends, is an understatement.

The other night I was putting Cora to
sleep and we were lying there snuggling, chatting desultorily and
nuzzling together. Suddenly Cora sat up abruptly and said,
“Mommy, did you know the Beatles broke up?”


For those of you who don’t know us well, my husband and I are
rather strong fans of the Beatles. I think their music is
incredible, great artists, blah blah blah. My husband can recite
all the miniscule trivia that surrounds the band – who played
which licks on the ALTERNATE takes of “Love Me Do”,
what George was eating when he came up with “Blue Jay
Way”, who “Martha My Dear” is really about (the
dog, by the way). I know it kills him that the girls like songs
like Miley Cyrus’ “Party In The USA”, and
he’d threatened recently to take charge of their musical
education.


So I wasn’t completely surprised to hear Cora talking about
the Beatles. I grew increasingly uneasy, though, as the
conversation went on.

Cora, like other kids her age, has an
unreasonable (and, I’m sure, fleeting) love of cleaning. I
remember Maddie waving briefly at this stage in passing, but Cora
has parked her car in this particular stage of life and shows no
intention of moving on.


Which is, as you can imagine, fine by me.

A few years ago, my friend Abby told me
about a new fad in greeting cards – the ones that play music
when you open them. “These,” Abby swore to me,
“are golden. They keep the boys occupied for EVER (which, in
early childhood, means ten minutes at a stretch). You’ve got
to get some.”


She was, of course, right, and as soon as my girls heard one it was
love at first listen. Fast forward a few years, and today
we’re the proud owners of quite a collection. The girls have
never met a musical card they didn’t like, and we keep every
one given to one of us. I added them up, and we’ve got about
twenty-five of them. At five or six bucks a pop, it’s almost
a collection that needs extra theft insurance.

Clearly, I have an opinion about this
holiday.


I don’t understand what we’re celebrating, when my
daughter is sent home with a mandatory list of her entire class,
and orders to make one for each person, plus a fancy box for her
own “love letters”. Yes, this bugs me. Yes, I
understand why she had to give one to everyone in the class, and
not just her good friends. Yes, I think it’s important for
everyone to get the same amount. But here’s what I
don’t get:


Why do it in the first place?

There’s a little boy in
Maddie’s class – who shall remain nameless – who
spent most of the first of the year terrorizing Maddie. I know for
sure he was part of the group of boys who teased her so
traumatically most recently – and nearly got their asses
kicked by me because of it. And I know that his name has come up in
other stories Maddie’s told me of boys being mean, usually
with her ending in tears.


And I also know that he now has a thing for her.

Cora’s favorite place to eat out is
Panera, a quick-but-not-fast-food-food place with sandwiches and
salads. Cora loves the yogurt there, but mostly it’s the
“experience” of the dining: they’ve got these big
Starbucks-type lounge chairs covered in funky (but subdued) circle
print, and Cora loves to sit in them to eat. She makes a bee-line
for “her” circle chairs and can barely contain her
disappointment if they’re taken; fortunately for us, they
rarely are.


Now for the bad part: these circle chairs are side-by-side, with a
small occasional table between them. But because the chairs are on
rollers Cora is convinced they are meant to be repositioned, and
will insist they be turned and set so the tiny table can be used as
a lunch table, the two gigantic circle chairs crowding around it.


Now for the worse part: there are only two chairs, and there are
usually three people at Panera – me, my mom, and Cora. Which
means that someone (other than Cora) will be sitting at a different
table.

Believe me when I say that there is not
enough whiskey in all of Ireland to wash over yesterday's bad day.


Let's just say that I'm happy today is a late-start school day
because of the weather.


So happy.

With some regularity Maddie and I find
ourselves out for a doctor’s appointment or whatever and
Maddie will need a little extra one-on-one time with Mommy. I often
schedule appointments on Wednesdays and will take Maddie out of
school early, hit the appointment, and have half an hour or so
before going to Maddie’s ballet class. And just like
grown-ups with some time to kill and a bit of thirst to them,
Maddie and I head to Starbucks.

After four straight days of impassable
streets last week, the sun finally came out over the weekend and
turned our neighborhood into a community-sized slushee. And as
happy as I was to get in the car and go somewhere – anywhere,
it didn’t matter where – I still knew that one bad
thing would come with the thaw.


The return of school days.

In an attempt to prevent myself from going
all Medea on my kids, I invited a few friends over yesterday to
play Twister with us. For some crazy reason (ten degrees outside,
20 mph winds) only one person was stir-crazy enough – sorry,
I mean, oh, you know what I mean – to trek on over. Becca and
Paige walked nearly a mile to our house – and since Paige is
less than two years old, that’s quite an accomplishment
– and we had a fantastic morning together.


After playing an energetic round of Twister we sat down to enjoyed
our grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. As we ate, I pointed out
the cluster of birds just outside our kitchen door; they’d
eaten all the birdseed off our homemade pinecone birdfeeders and
with the weather so cold we’d taken to scattering seed across
our side patio. The birds seem to enjoy the easy pickings (pun
intended) and we have enjoyed seeing them come right to the door.


We spotted a couple male cardinals, which led to a discussion about
the difference between the male cardinal and the female cardinal,
which led to a discussion about the difference in coloring between
many male animals and their female counterparts.


Which led to the following conversation:

The bad news: no school again yesterday.
The good news: I avoided the Nutcracker. Narrowly.


Instead, we did our home-grown version of Twister, which involves
lots of running and physically demanding stunts like crab-walking
and skipping backwards. We baked. We painted. We baked. We read
books. We baked. And baked some more.

A winter storm moved through our area
Monday night, shutting down school for the day. Now, I’m not
a wimp and adore the outdoors, but our high temperature yesterday
was 16 degrees – with 45 mph winds on top of that. So we were
stuck indoors (though, to be fair, the girls begged to go out and
lasted nearly an hour in the back yard. With nary an adult by their
side, I might cowardly add.) for the day.


And what better way to pass the time than to put on a show?


Maddie and Cora decided to do, no surprise, the Nutcracker. Which
Cora and I had just danced start to finish the day before. But
yesterday the girls wanted to go full out, so we did costumes and
everything.


Hey, anything to take up more time.