1 Mother 2 Another

Cora and Maddie have been hard at work
making Valentine cards for all their friends; for the past few days
our kitchen’s been a crafting disaster area, with stickers
and glitter glue and tissue paper scattered everywhere. For the
very special friends, both girls are painstakingly affixing a
Hershey kiss to the envelope, and Cora has laboriously written each
friend’s name on each and every envelope.


“There!” Cora said triumphantly yesterday morning.
“I just finished my last Valentine! I’m so
excited!”


“Good for you!” I said warmly. “Now you just need
to decorate a box for your Valentine mailbox and you’ll be
all ready for Valentine’s Day!”


Cora looked at me, confused. “Silly Mommy – I already
made a box last year! Can you get it out now?”


Um, about that.

The weather here in Texas has been eerily
spring-like: highs in the 60s and 70s have been persuading peach
trees to put forth buds and cardinals to start flying around like
mad. The gorgeous weather has also been beckoning to the girls,
tantalizing them with hints of spring. Just the other day Cora and
I were talking about how it’d soon be time to head back to
our local arboretum for their weekly Mommy and Me Tuesdays.


“Soon, Mommy,” Cora said excitedly, “the flower
park will have the special kids’ days up again, and
we’ll get to go for face-painting and the petting zoo and all
the beautiful flowers and picnics and everything!” Cora was
so happy she was wiggling.


“Yep,” I agreed, “It’s almost time for
another Mommy and Me season!” And then it hit me –


This is my last Mommy and Me season.

Maddie discovered jokes several months
ago; I know I’ve blogged about her sometimes funny, sometimes
painful forays into the world of comedy and joke-telling.
She’d buy a book of children’s jokes and read the
whole. Thing. Out. Loud.


A lot.


Then she brought home “The Adventures of Tin-Tin” from
our used bookstore last fall, and discovered the world of comics.
Unfortunately, Tin-Tin gets himself in some serious scrapes and
Maddie had to abandon the books out of fear and worry; the images
of men chasing people with guns were just too much for her. And
truthfully, I’m ok with that being too much for my
six-year-old.


But the Tin-Tin books did open Maddie’s eyes to comics, and
when she was hungrily patrolling through our family bookshelves
last month and came across Brian’s Calvin and Hobbes
collection, Maddie was intrigued and pulled a book off the shelf.


Half an hour later, she was hooked.

We’ve had a reasonably healthy
winter here so far (knock on wood), but we’ve had a couple
things come through our house – the croup, a cold –
that have reminded me just how un-fun it is to be sick. With a
virus. That no pill can cure.


Impatient to help my babies feel better but reluctant to pump them
full of chemicals that may-or-may-not help their cough (really? Why
exactly does cough syrup need food coloring in it?), I started
looking around for more natural ways to help us all get through
those miserable, can’t-sleep winter nights.


Here’s what I found.

Yesterday was a Mommy and Cora day, and
during the morning Cora suggested we play Light Sabers with our
pipecleaners. “Mommy, you be the bad guy and I’ll be
the good guy,” she said excitedly as she walked away from me,
followed by “I’m going to go looking for some bad guys
now!”


Our house has a continuous flow floor plan – you can walk
from one room to the next and eventually go in a big circle. So as
Cora started to circle around, I hid in the dining room behind the
china cabinet. I tucked myself in that alcove just as I heard Cora
come back around the corner.


“Mommy?” she said. I chuckled to myself.


“Muh-muh-muh-Mommy? I’m suh-suh-suh-scared!” she
said and I laughed, thinking she could fool me into coming out so
easily. I heard her get close to where I was hiding, and so –


“Ah-HAH!” I yelled, and jumped in front of her. Cora
screamed that awful, high-pitched child’s shriek of danger,
and on her face was the look that said she’d just realized
there actually does exist darkness and scary things in this world.


And then she burst into sobs.

It’s no secret that I am a bit of a,
um, fanatic about trying to eat organic and local foods. I have
several websites that I love and read regularly that inspire me and
give me great ideas.


I talk freely about how I shop with anyone who asks me (and even
people who don’t, if they look friendly and I’m bored)
and the number one reason people give me for not shopping more
healthily is that it’s “Too expensive. Waaaaaaaaaaay
too expensive.”


My friends, you have been proven wrong.


One of my favorite bloggers, Stephanie at href="http://www.keeperofthehome.org/">Keeper of the
Home posted a most excellent article yesterday on how
she’d plan and shop for her family on a really tight budget,
just to demonstrate that it could be done. Now, when I say tight, I
mean TIGHT. As in, she gave herself $250. Yes, $250. And she
didn’t use coupons, or go through an organic co-op, or any of
those things. And after she wrote out her shopping list and the
prices, she wrote out her meal planning for the month.


Yes, it means she’s cooking every. Single. Meal. And not
buying processed “helper” foods like
mixed-rice-in-a-bag. But seriously. $250? I can’t remember
the last time I spent $250 in one month. That is pretty dang
impressive.


href="http://www.keeperofthehome.org/2012/01/what-i-would-feed-my-family-on-a-monthly-budget-of-250.html">
Take a look for yourself. And be encouraged! It can be
done.

This weekend both girls were invited to a
friend’s birthday party. The theme? Superheroes. And the
girls were invited to dress up as a superhero, should they so
choose.


Dress up? My girls? Twist their arms.


Maddie was excited because she already had a Super Girl costume,
complete with go-go boots, from two Halloweens ago. I was doubtful
it would still fit, at least booty-wise, but she was pretty excited
about it. Cora, on the other hand, had no superhero costume, and I
tried to downplay that fact as I said enthusiastically,
“Cora, that means you get to make your own superhero
costume!”


Cora chewed her cereal contemplatively for a moment, then said,
“Heck, yeah!”

One of the blogs I myself read regularly
is Momastery; I love this woman's writing style and how she lets
her inner self hang out, warts and all. I wish I wrote half as well
as she does.


Anyway, she recently wrote a post that I've loved so much I've
emailed it to half a dozen people, and I finally decided I just
need to post the dang thing on my website and be done with it.


It's all about how every single kid is gifted and talented and
amazing, and how much our kids need to KNOW that when we look at
them. They NEED us to be their biggest fan club.


Seriously, just read href="http://momastery.com/blog/2012/01/13/on-gifts-and-talents-2/"
target="_blank">this already.

The past couple of days I’ve been
recounting Maddie’s first ever trip-as-customer to our local
bank, and how reluctant she was to surrender her hard-earned cash
to someone else. That is, until the kind teller let Maddie get a
glimpse of the inner workings of the coin-sorting machine, and then
persuaded Maddie to hand over her piggy bank and they began
calculating the coinage.


Oh, the fun. Oh, the joy. As she watched the cash total rise up and
up and up, Maddie’s eyes bugged out of her head. When the
machine finally rested – on a grand total of ten dollars and
eighty-eight cents – Maddie was almost faint at the idea of
that much wealth. Who knew she’d had that much lucre inside a
sow’s belly? In pennies and nickels?


As the receipt for her cash came up, Maddie said, “Why is
there a strip of green running down my receipt?” “Well,
that’s to let us know that the paper’s running low and
needs to be changed. Do you want to help me do it?”


Um, is Kermit still green?

As I mentioned yesterday, Maddie’s
finally arrived at a place where she’s ready to trust a
financial institution with her hard-earned cash, so on Friday after
school Maddie, her piggy bank, and I took a trip to our
neighborhood bank to make a deposit.


I’d mentioned Maddie’s concern – namely, turning
her money over and never getting it back – to one of my
favorite tellers recently, and she promised to give Maddie a grand
experience at the bank. And boy, did she deliver.


Maddie and I walked in at 3 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, me
clutching Maddie’s hand and her clutching her plastic piggy
bank suspiciously. She’d agreed to come because I promised to
match anything she put in the bank and my girl is shaping up to be
quite the financial whiz. So she was there, but still rather
reluctant.


Our first stop was the coin counting machine: you place your coins
on a metal tray, then shove them into the open slot
slowly-but-rhythmically as the machine counts your cash before
giving you a receipt you can take to the teller window for either
cash or a deposit. I laid Maddie’s coins out on the tray in
preparation for sliding.

Recently Maddie asked if she could start
receiving an allowance – she read a book where the heroine
got one and her interest was piqued.


Stupid literacy.


Anyway, Brian and I talked about it and took a straw poll in our
neighborhood, and began giving Maddie the magnificent sum of one
dollar a week. She’s quite content with this, for which we
are thankful. And we decided not to tie it to chores around the
house; chores are a part of being in a family, and she’s not
going to be rewarded for doing her part, so an allowance is outside
of that. She will, however, be allowed to request extra chores to
earn extra cash.

As most of you know, I’m a
reasonably crunchy person : I make my own yogurt and cleaning
supplies, and I wash my face with honey. (Yes, just honey. You
should try it sometime – you’ll never go back.) Believe
it or not, there are other people out there even crunchier than
myself, and I read their blogs somewhat regularly to find ideas and
encouragement.


Last December, I was reading a few of my favorites looking for new
and usual (and cheap!) ideas for homemade gifts, and I stumbled
uponhref="http://www.crunchybetty.com/diy-picture-tiles-you-will-never-buy-a-photo-frame-again">
this article at href="http://www.crunchybetty.com">Crunchy Betty
(doesn’t the name say it all?) on how to make lovely pictures
on tiles – think ditch the frame and have a cool piece of
photo art to hang on your wall. I loved the idea but couldn’t
think of anyone appropriate for the gift, so I bookmarked it to
come back to later.


Yesterday, I came back and I am LOVING the results.

St. Augustine once said, “Hope has
two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger
at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain
the way they are.”


I think sometimes that he must be describing my own daughters.

The other night it was pretty cold and
Cora wanted to wear footie pajamas to bed. We went through her
pajama drawer only to discover that every pair of footie pajamas -
size four for a four-year-old - was too small. Doubtful, I opened
the size five tub and drew out a pair of fleece footies for her.


They fit.


There she stood in her size five pajamas, my baby, looking
impossibly big and impossibly babyish at the same time.


How does this always happen when my back is turned?

I blogged yesterday about my pursuit of
finding moments of grace – of gratefulness – in each
day. Of appreciating my life more, and teaching my girls to do the
same. As I said yesterday, it’s helped me be a more patient,
more compassionate parent.


But I’m not saying I’m perfect.


One of the reasons I started this website six years ago was because
having a baby is REALLY FREAKIN’ HARD, and I wanted to make
sure other parents didn’t feel alone in this big thing.
I’d hear mom s gush about how it was “love at first
sight” and “I’ve never wished I didn’t have
kids” and I’d think Really? Because I have wished that.
Mostly when I’m just trying to find thirty seconds to poop in
peace.

I spent the past few months reading href="http://www.amazon.com/One-Thousand-Gifts-Fully-Right/dp/0310321913/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326074261&sr=1-3"
target="_blank">One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp
– a dare to live life fully right where you are. It’s
been a game-changer for me as a parent and as a person. I’ve
been purposefully trying to slow down and really see
God’s goodness every day, to drink in my kids and wallow in
their awesomeness. At some point in the book Ann says, “Every
breath is a battle between gratitude and grudgery,” and I
totally know where she’s coming from.


As I use this book to change how I parent, I’ve been trying
to teach the idea to Maddie and Cora as well. The truth is,
there’s only room in our hearts for one emotion at a time,
and it could be jealousy or anger or annoyance – or
gratitude, or happiness, or joy. When the girls are driving me
RIGHT UP TO THE EDGE of my sanity, I stop and take a breath and
find something that I’m truly grateful for at that
moment – not the whole “I’m glad I’m
healthy” or “I’m grateful we have a roof over our
heads” tossed off in a dismissive way, but something I can
truly be emotionally grateful for right then. Sometimes I’m
grateful I have another room to go to while I cool off; sometimes
I’m grateful my daughters have no trouble expressing
themselves – LOUDLY. But I find something and latch on, and
sooner or later find myself calm – and grateful to have the
chance to help my girls learn how to deal with life.

The holidays are finally behind us, but
their effects are still reverberating throughout our family.


And our family’s digestive tract.


Maddie’s always had difficulty pooping – see, oh, about
a thousand of my blogs – and I warned her that eating a lot
of sugar over the holidays would have adverse affects on her
bowels. But she’s in charge of her own eating these days, and
she’s six, so I’m reasonably certain the
vegetable-to-candy ratio was reversed for the past couple of weeks.


And now Maddie’s paying the price.


My poor girl struggled to poop for three solid (no pun intended)
days, each day getting a progressively more painful stomach ache.
She’s never been a poop-a-day girl, but her last elimination
was last Thursday or Friday.


Yeah, ouch.

There are very few beings bossier than a
young girl. Which is why it may have been a mistake to tell some
new year’s resolutions to Maddie.


Every year we talk as a family about new year’s resolutions,
discussing what they are – something you’d like to
change about yourself or the world – and ways to implement
them. Last year, I told the girls I was going to work on being more
patient with them, and when I asked Maddie how she thought
I’d done with that she said thoughtfully, “Well,
you’ve gotten a bit better about it. But perhaps you should
choose that one again this year.”

We have had a fantastic holiday vacation
and truly excellent Christmas. We stayed put the entire two weeks,
save for a two-day trip to a hotel about 20 miles away – yes,
our children begged for an overnight in a hotel for their big
Christmas present this year. We were happy to oblige.


And speaking of Christmas presents, I’m going to brag here
and say that there was not a single Disney Princess nor even, I say
truthfully, any type of licensed character under our tree this
year. We had a pretty toy-free Christmas, and I could not be
happier.

Yep, that's me you hear being dragged
kicking and screaming back into our family routine.


Let me ask you something - is homeschooling just so you don't have
to set your alarm in the morning and pack a lunch every day really
such a bad reason to do it?


Seriously grumpy here. Seriously.


And the girls aren't even awake yet.