1 Mother 2 Another

Sung to the tune of “The Farmer in
the Dell”:


“Stop, drop and roll!

Stop, drop and roll!

If your clothes catch on fire,

Stop, drop and roll!”


This is what my four-year-old has been lustily singing all
afternoon. Apparently it was fire safety day at preschool, and she
has no problem singing about the possibility of her catching on
fire. This is very different than my older child.


But here’s the best part –

Yesterday was the annual fundraiser at
Maddie’s school: the children all run laps which people
(thanks, grandparents!) have pledged to sponsor. The kids love it
and our fundraising is done for the year. I enjoy going because the
kids run around a track set up on the grass outside of school;
there’s energetic music and a high-octane dj who encourages
the kids and dances along with it. The kids have a great time
boogying around the track with their friends, high-fiving their
parents.


And their parents’ friends.

In case you ever have a cat jump onto a
paper plate acting containing a rainbow of washable paint, then run
across your carpeted living room, then sit on your NEW COUCH and
stare at you, I thought you might like to know that while the title
“washable” is stretching the truth a bit, a 50/50
solution of water and rubbing alcohol neatly does the trick of
getting it out of your carpet. And new couch.


Don’t ask me how I know this.

Last week we bought a new car – our
first car purchase in fifteen years, and the very first new car
I’ve ever driven. And suddenly, the fact that we only park
one car in our two-car garage – the other side being taken up
with stuff and more stuff – seemed not the smartest idea. We
thought about Texas hailstorms and decided it was time to clean out
the garage.


As I started poking through our stored stuff on Friday, I realized
we were keeping many big toys that the girls simply don’t use
any more; I’d often put “seldom used” toys out in
the garage to bring in on a rainy day or the tail end of some
house-binding virus. But I knew it was time to clean out, so I
talked with the girls a bit and they agreed to let a couple things
go.


We only have three big items getting ready to head on to other
homes right now, but as I began to dust them off I realized
I’d used all three at once on more than one occasion.


Cue the misty-eyed Mommy reminiscence.

Cora will periodically head upstairs to
our dress-up area and come back with boxes full of costume jewelry.
She’ll then proceed to deck out the living room with
necklaces, rings, earrings, and bracelets in preparation of some
game. In months past, she’s clipped earrings on pillows,
given every member of the family a plastic bag, and told us we have
five minutes to find all the “presents”. When Cora
called “time”, whoever had the most
“presents” won a prize, usually a hug from Cora.


For the past few days, it’s been “Christmas”:
Cora has draped necklaces all over the room – fireplace set,
chair legs, anything you can think of. Bracelets and necklaces are
stretched strategically out on the coffee table, and we’re
each assigned a spot at the table. When it’s
“Christmas” time, we rush to discover our presents all
over the room, then gather at our particular spot for our regular
“gifts”. And of course, the pillows are all festooned
for the holidays with clip-on earrings.

Yesterday Cora sat on her snack stool at
our breakfast counter, happily drawing a card for a friend while I
cleaned up the kitchen. She had her paper and crayons and a pencil
and was humming a cheerful tune, drawing an elaborate story to
color in.


Cora’s pretty good about only drawing on paper –
she’s not one of those kids who will happily write all over
the wall just for the fun of it. At the same time, she’s got
an independent spirit and if she decides to do something, by golly
she’s going to do it and no consequence is going to stop her.
I have on one memorable occasion caught her cutting up her shirt
and taping it back together: she wanted to see how well the
scissors worked on fabric, and when she discovered their sharpness
(by cutting a large hole in her shirt while still wearing it) she
attempted to patch it with scotch tape so I wouldn’t notice
it.


All this to say that Cora has a bit of a history of doing something
wrong – and knowing it’s wrong – and then trying
to cover it up because she knows she’ll get in trouble.

So as Maddie and I were walking home from
school yesterday, we chatted about the different things she’d
done during the school day. The subject of recess came up –
one of the favorite times of the day, naturally – and I asked
after Maddie’s long-term project, digging to China.


“Oh,” Maddie sighed, “we aren’t doing that
any more. We had to stop.”


“Why is that?” I asked, assuming the story would have
something to do with a gentle-but-firm teacher and a lack of a
desire on said teacher’s part to have a large,
liability-laden hole in the school yard.

Remember the
fire-drill-that-wasn’t-a-drill last week? Remember Maddie not
wanting to go to school?


She came out of class with the biggest smile on her face at the end
of the day. She’d been named Student of the Week in her
classroom – and not for an academic achievement, but for
being brave during the fire “incident”. Maddie was so
proud her teacher had recognized how hard it had been for her, it
was better than ice cream.

While I was at Maddie’s school
yesterday for a volunteer meeting, the fire alarm started going
off. Startled, the teacher ushered us out of the room, cheerfully
saying something about a “surprise fire drill”. Three
minutes later we realized it wasn’t a drill when we heard
sirens and saw a fire truck pull up out front.


I scanned the parking lot for Maddie’s class, but she’d
apparently evacuated to the other side of the building and was
nowhere to be found. I told myself that she’d be fine: sure,
drills worry her to no end, but she’s bigger this year and
doing much better with her worries. Unable to do anything but worry
(yes, I see the irony), I waited out my sentence on the black
top.

I spent yesterday morning making
individual muffin-sized breakfast casseroles for school mornings.
Somewhat time-consuming, but a good use of some leftover ham and
extra white bread slices, so I knew it was time to buckle down and
knock them out.


More importantly, though, we’ve hit that wall of
school-morning breakfast ennui. Maddie takes a good ten minutes
coming up with something she’s willing to eat for breakfast:
cereal rarely interests her any more, and yogurt-and-granola is hit
or miss right now. I have a big batch of breakfast cookies in the
freezer and I’ll happily defrost one for her, which works a
couple times a week; but many mornings she just doesn’t seem
interested in breakfast.

Maddie has a vivid imagination. And I
don’t mean that in the “Oh, I just made up a whole
pretend kingdom replete with its own monetary system and
multi-tiered governing body” kind of way. No, I mean it in a
“Give me a thumbnail sketch of a natural disaster and I can
inflate it into a play-by-play in graphic, unending detail in my
head” kind of way. Mix that quirk of her personality with her
penchant for worry over things she cannot control, and you’ve
got a recipe for some long nights.

Maddie's been cast in her very first
production of "The Nutcracker", as a Sugar Plum Fairy Attendant.
She plays a tiny fairy who never leaves the Sugar Plums side,
wearing a tiny little tutu with tiny little flowers in her hair and
lots of glitter sprayed all over her.


Translation: A way to sell a dozen more tickets.


I can't help but realize that the very first time I was in a
ballet of any kind - Christmas or otherwise - was when I was ten.
Yes, ten. I can't quite believe they start them this young these
days. Saying "no" was, of course, an option; but not a very
palatable one, since she's got this pesky habit called "reading"
and read the casting call for herself, seeing that girls age 6 and
up could audition. It's not going to be too bad at this age - a
few Saturday afternoon rehearsals and four shows. Plus I've got my
ace up my sleeve - my mom plays the grandmother in the ballet every
year, so I have a built-in carpooler and backstage babysitter (hi
mom! Love you!) for this thing.


And who am I kidding - I'm going to take more photos that day than
the papparazzi on Oscar night.

Brian and I were supposed to go away
Saturday night as a sort of anniversary celebration/hide-from-Sept
11 sort of thing. But with the credible threat going on in NYC and
all the tenth anniversary footage I couldn’t seem to get away
from, I found myself short of breath as I contemplated leaving my
mom and girls home by themselves on Sunday.


So we changed our plans.

Sixteen years ago today, I married the boy
I'd been chasing since high school.


One of the best days of my life.


Ten years ago on Sunday, my husband unexpectedly came home early
from work. If he'd lingered longer in his office after the planes
hit - if he'd made a different decision as he was walking away
from the World Trade Center - but he showed up exhausted on our
front door step after no phone calls on his side and too much news
watching on my side.


Also one of the best days of my life.

Last night I lay snuggling with Cora in
her bed when she rolled towards me, her face troubled.
“Mommy,” she said, “I don’t want to go to
preschool any more.”


What?

Last spring I mentioned that Maddie and a
couple friends had started the Green Team – a group of
environmentally “aware” kindergarteners who spent their
recesses combing the playground for trash and pushed to get
recycling cans in different parts of the school. The movement was
cute and, I thought, came out of the whole Earth Day teaching time
in April.


Then last week Maddie told me that the Green Team had been
resurrected, and they needed t-shirts. So she’d invited the
team over to our house to make shirts.


Okey dokey.

Cora, Maddie and I have all been suffering
from the season’s first cold, and as it lingered over the
weekend I found us doing just enough to stay a bit exhausted and
craving some true down time. So on Sunday night, I declared that
Monday would be a No-Labor Day: we would make it an official Pajama
Day Staycation. Pajamas all day long, with plenty of lounging
around. The girls were, um, enthusiastic.


Monday morning the girls awoke to find the living room had been
rearranged; the coffee table was moved and several blankets piled
on one another to make a picnic-blanket-like spot right in front of
our couch, with lots of big pillows lined up to lean against during
television-watching. I’d also posted the following
notice:

Wednesday night my throat began to feel a
suspicious sharpness, right about the time my shoulders began
aching. By Thursday morning, it was confirmed: I had a cold coming
on.


Now, this is not (thus far) a whopper of a cold, but it’s
clearly something non-allergy-related, and it’s just annoying
enough as it continues to come on that I got out of bed Thursday
morning dreading the day. When you’re not soooooooo sick that
you can lock yourself miserably in your bedroom, you are still
expected by your kids to perform all your Mommy Duties, and with
the same amount of good cheer and grace. Grumble, grumble.


So I got out of bed, cheered Maddie through her morning routine,
and walked her to school with little difficulty. Then I turned
around, came home, and repeated the process with Cora: finish up
breakfast, snuggle and read books, then head to preschool. I
dropped Cora off, got in the car, and sighed as I ran through my
mental to-do list, exhausted just by the thought of it: make
several mini breakfast casseroles to freeze for the girls; hit the
eye doctor; chat with a new client; return some stuff; make more
granola; clean the desk; and more.


And then I realized –


I could take a nap right now, and no one would be put out by
it.