1 Mother 2 Another

Yesterday afternoon Cora came out of her
room after quiet time begging to play with her rock collection. She
and Maddie both have a jar of polished rocks they’ve bought
at various museums and tourist sites, and their glass jars are a
rainbow of smooth polished rocks.


I laid down some ground rules – keep the rocks in the living
room, don’t feed them to the cat, etc. – and opened the
jar. Then I made my big mistake – I disappeared into the
office to catch up on some emails.


Ten minutes later, I heard an ear-splitting crash followed by an
even more ear-splitting “NOOOOOOOOO!” from Cora.
Rushing out, I saw Cora and Maddie standing in our wood-floored
kitchen, Cora wailing and Maddie looking shocked. At their bare
feet was the shattered glass jar, splintered all over the kitchen,
rocks scattered everywhere.

As I mentioned earlier, both girls are at
theatre camp every morning this week and amazingly enough it marks
the first time since they’ve been born that I’ve been
home by myself – barring being ill, I suppose.


I’ve already got grand plans for the fall when Cora’s
in pre-kindergarten three days a week: one day of chores and
errands, one day of teaching, and one day available to volunteer in
both schools. I picture having all this time to do my home-work
unfettered: grocery shopping, bill paying, toilet cleaning,
vacuuming, sifting through young-child detritus that’s
accumulated under a bed – the possibilities seem endless. And
as weird and sick as it sounds, I’m looking forward to it; I
don’t heart doing laundry in any big way, but I am truly
anticipating getting all the grunt work done whilst childless, so
my time with the kids can truly be quality time with the kids as
opposed to “time doing errands while dragging children
unhappily after me.”

As I’ve written recently, I’m
in full smoothie swing this summer and have been pulverizing fruit
left and right. Recently, though, a mid-afternoon crabby episode
drove me to experiment with, um, other ingredients, and I’ve
hit on the absolute best smoothie ever.


If you like chocolate, of course.


One caveat here – I use a half can (about six to eight
ounces) of coconut milk – the thick stuff that’s full
of fat but oh-so-good. So you should like the taste of coconut
before you make this. I personally love the ice cream made with
coconut milk, so this is, to me, like a chocolate milkshake. Of
course, if you’re not dairy-allergic like I am, you can use
cow’s milk instead, but make sure it’s got some fat in
there for some delicious oomph.


Here ‘tis –

Maddie and Cora started a week-long
theatre camp yesterday at the performing arts school where I work,
and I think I may have created a two-headed monster. Or two
monsters. Or something.


The camp itself isn’t anything career-making; it’s 9 -1
every day, with some singing and dancing and acting, and a small
show on our stage at the end of the week. It’s four-year-olds
through eight-year-olds, so we’re not talking anything
incredibly complicated. My main reason for putting them into it was
really to give the girls a chance to have a week of structure and
getting up somewhat early before school gets started. Cora’s
never done school at all, and this week will be the most time
she’s ever had to concentrate in her life. Add to that things
like learning to get her own lunch in and out of a bag, and taking
care of her own potty needs, and I figured the camp would be a
great testing ground for Cora before pre-k.


I forgot how much the girls just like to perform.

So yes, we went horseback riding, and yes,
Maddie loved it.


Not LOVED loved it, as in, “Mummy, sign me up NOW! I must do
it! I want horsie curtains and horsie sheets on my bed!
NEEIIGHHH!” But loved it as in, I saw that slow smile spread
across her face as the ride began and, in spite of her fears and
challenges along the way, that smile never left.

Maddie’s had trouble with her lovey
being at school; if she brings it, she has a tendency to want to
take it out and snuggle with it. During class time. And when
Maddie’s got Silky in her hands, she goes into a coma-like
trance, only barely able to listen to the outside world. I find
that the days Maddie would leave Silky at home, she’d finish
the day much more alert and attentive, and I tried for a long time
to get her to leave it alone.


Finally I went with the tried-and-true parenting method of
bribery.

Not to brag here – more like
I’m just wanting to capture it so I don’t forget that
such days exist when the dark times come – but we had
ourselves quite an awesome day yesterday.


The morning started earlier than anticipated, when Maddie
spontaneously awoke at 7 a.m. I thought I heard her rustling around
quietly, so I stuck my head out of my room and saw her sneaking
into the game room. "Maddie?" I asked softly, a question. She
turned to me: "I finished my book last night and wanted to get
another one." And sure enough, she grabbed another chapter book and
took it downstairs, snuggling on a couch with a blanket to read.
Smiling quietly, I got out our daisy-shaped pancake griddle and
proceeded to make a fun breakfast. We had a lovely slow beginning,
reading and cooking and eating things loaded with butter and syrup.


The girls and I hit our neighborhood pool around 9:30, and had the
place entirely to ourselves until 11 a.m. Cora’s hit an
intense diving phase – as in, “for rings” –
and she spent the whole time diving for rings, diving for glass
jewels we bring for “sunken treasure”, diving for her
goggles – you name it, she swam for it. Maddie, meanwhile,
had her snorkel gear on and was practicing breathing through the
snorkel tube, swimming like a cruising shark over the entire pool
without coming up for air. It was truly greatness.

If you’re anything like me,
you’ve been madly making smoothies since all our delicious
summer fruits began coming into season. The girls love them, and I
love having a glass full of fiber and vitamins in a yummy drink.


I’m a bit of a protein hound, always trying to find new
smoothie recipes that will get me some blood-sugar-boosting
proteins and fats in non-dairy ways (slight allergy), and I came
across this one from target="_blank">Keeper of the Home recently. Since
I’ve been madly freezing organic fruit as it’s
available for a modest price, I’ve got a drawer full of
berries that are being seriously whittled down in this recipe. The
use of coconut milk solves my thirst for something more filling
than pure carbs, and I throw some brown rice protein powder in for
an extra boost as well.

Monday morning Cora woke up crying.
She’d had a horrible dream the night before, so I raced
upstairs to her worried that it was a continuation of that
nightmare.


“Hey, hey, Mommy’s here,” I soothed as I ran in.
Cora was still curled up in a ball, back towards me. As I lay down
next to her she rolled into me and melted, still whimpering and
sleepy.


I stroked her back. “What’s the matter, puppy?”


“I just realized,” Cora sobbed, “That when
I’m a mommy I won’t ever get a hair snuggle
again!”

“Mommy, Gamma, come see a special
show we’ve got going on! And you have to come sit on the
floor in the hallway to watch it!” Maddie and Cora called
downstairs Friday afternoon.


My mom and I came into the hall, mystified. Of the hundreds
(literally) of shows we’ve seen in my house, none have taken
place in the hallway. But there on the floor were two floor
cushions, so we obediently sat down and sat back.

Am I the only person who feels like summer
is just whizzing by?


June was a blur of teaching for me, so that hardly counts. Then it
was all-hands-on-deck getting ready for our vacation, then a week
in Florida (I know, I know, quit whining), and now that we’re
at the tail end of what feels like our first real week of summer
vacation, I’m looking at the calendar and realizing
it’s almost over.


Ok, not really almost over. But I estimate we’ve got maybe
two good weeks left before we have to start thinking about
back-to-school shopping and returning to the school morning
schedule. And frankly, that just doesn’t seem fair.


Don’t wanna, don’t wanna, don’t wanna.

I remember when I was young, and going on
vacation was inextricably linked with getting to eat
“vacation food”: junk food that would normally never
pass my mother’s inspection was allowed on vacation, and we
got to indulge in that rarest of pleasures – eating out.
I’m not saying we gorged on piles of refined white sugar, but
the usual restrictions were loosened, lifted slightly, and became
part of the pleasure of the vacation.


Ah, how things change when you get older.

Of course, Cora woke up sick on Tuesday.
Of course. My little vomit comet.


Whatever's ailing Cora, it comes out as throwing up, and yesterday
was no exception. No fever, no other symptoms - just a stomach not
even able to tolerate water. So we had to give Cora Pedialyte - one
tablespoon every fifteen minutes - all day long, while listening to
her beg for water or ice.


Did I mention the cable repair man was at the house for three
hours?


Which means my day looked like this:

When I was a kid, I felt like the world
revolved around me – in a completely non-egotistical way.
Life simply seemed to be filled with rooms full of people who
became animated when I walked in, and shut down when I left. The
whole Life Story thing was, to me, supremely interesting, and I
felt like everyone else existed to be supporting characters in my
movie.


I couldn’t have put this into words, of course; it was
something that I simply felt – a sense of being the center of
the universe. And I don’t think I felt like I deserved it or
was incredibly special or chosen for this great event as much as I
felt like it’s simply the way it was. From my point of view
– which, admittedly, was clearly biased – everything
was important as to how it related to me, or affected me. If I had
to put a title to points of my life, they’d be such things as
“Jennifer Goes to Camp” or “A Young
Ballerina” or perhaps, in an after-school special sort of
thing, “Jennifer: An Angry Teen”.


Even as I got older and realized it wasn’t so, I still felt
like I was penning a very cool story as I went about my daily life.
My travels, my shows, my life felt interesting to me, a story that
still (surprise surprise) revolved around me and, later on, my
husband – as a co-star. Though I still got first billing. I
felt like a real-life Seinfeld, or Raymond, or Dick Van Dyke, or
Mary Tyler Moore. I’m not saying I thought I was God’s
gift to anything – just felt like the story revolved around
me. In an appropriate way.


And then I had kids.

In a study just released a few days ago
that many people in the medical community are calling a "complete
game changer" on how they deal with autism, environmental influence
was found to play a much higher role in causing autism than has
ever been thought.


The study found that about 38% of autism risk comes from genetics -
with environmental factors accounting for an astonishing 63%. The
New York Times, as well as many other national papers, published
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/health/research/05autism.html?_r=2&emc=eta1"
target="_blank">articles that have rocked many people's
worlds. The medical community will be absorbing this impact for
years, and the study will result, many experts feel, in a complete
paradigm shift in how people look at - and strive to prevent -
autism.


And if that's not enough, href="http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/newscience/prenatal-vitamins-lowers-autism-risk"
target="_blank">another study just recently released shows
that taking a prenatal vitamin at the time of conception cuts the
risk of autism in HALF. Half. Talk about big numbers.


I encourage you to take some time and href="http://healthychild.org/blog/comments/new_research_links_autism_environment/"
target="_blank">read the articles - it's big stuff
happening right now.