1 Mother 2 Another

During the school year, I get up early to
work out – not because I’m a morning person, but
because if I don’t do it before the day gets going then I
don’t do it at all. And if I don’t work out regularly,
all my old dance injuries fall apart and I can barely hobble
around. So I get up a few times a week at 5:30 a.m. to work out and
shower before getting the girls up for school.


But it’s summer now and we’re not on a tight schedule,
so I’ve been setting my alarm for 7:30 instead; this lets me
sleep in and the girls are usually still asleep by the time I
finish my workout video and head for the shower.


Usually.

We went over the weekend to a swim party
at the pool where Maddie took swim lessons when she was three and
four years old. An indoor pool, the space has a nice layout, no
truly deep spots, and plenty of pool toys.


And a water slide.


This water slide was Maddie’s arch-nemesis both years of
lessons. As the grand finale of every swim class, the slide would
loom large over the entire half hour until the class would head
down towards it for the last five minutes. One by one, the children
would line up, slide down, and splash into the pool.


Except for Maddie.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about
Cora’s recent discovery of the game “Sorry”. I
won a couple times, she had a hard time dealing with it, and I was
worried it was Candyland all over – all smiles and sunshine
until Someone Other Than Cora won: then it was on to screams and
throwing of pieces and storming off. Would Sorry be simply
Candyland 2.0?


I won’t keep you hanging – the answer is no.


Cora is older and wiser, and after one night of tears and a very
good sulk, she decided there’s a better way to deal with
losing.


Learning how to win.

Maddie and a friend went back-to-school
shopping yesterday for a couple new outfits for school. In general,
Maddie’s good about letting me go shopping for her by myself;
she trusts my judgment, gives me a few pointers color- and
style-wise, and is happy to see me bring home the bags from a
consignment store. But for the first day of school, she’s
come to enjoy shopping with a friend – getting excited,
squealing over colors and fashions, and gearing herself up for the
fall. And yes, it might seem a tad early, but we’re going on
vacation (in case I haven’t mentioned it yet today) soon and
I don’t want this hanging over my head when we get back.


May I just say, I’m glad it’s over.

A few days ago, Maddie said out of the
blue, “Mom, could you set up a play date with Jonathon some
time soon?”


Jonathon, in case your memory is as bad as mine, was a boy Maddie
went to preschool with – and who she hasn’t seen since
then. While in preschool the two were great friends, and swore that
they would marry when they were grown-ups. He’s a great kid,
really sweet, but again, haven’t seen him in two years. Which
is, like, a decade to grown-ups.


So I said, “I’ll see if I can; but what made you want a
play date with him now?”


Without batting an eye, Maddie said, “Well, if I’m
going to marry him, we should probably stay in touch.”


O-kay. So I guess that’s still on the calendar.

We’ve got a big family vacation
coming up – we head out the end of next week – and I
think I may have gotten the girls TOO excited about it.


Maddie’s read the guide book cover to cover, and loves to
debate her favorite restaurants based on nearness to our rental
house and the ratings in the book. Cora’s pored over pictures
from my previous, child-free trips to the place, and will be able
to find her way around any beach blindfolded. We bought both of
them a snorkel set and have been using them at our neighborhood
pool to make sure the girls are comfortable in fins in the ocean.
Now we cannot get them to swim without their fins, which can be
disconcerting to the six-year-old playing innocently next to them.


Both girls made a countdown calendar yesterday and take great
satisfaction in x-ing off another day. Both girls daily ask me,
“When are we going to GO already?”


Meanwhile, I’ve got a growing stash of stuff-to-pack in my
bedroom, have already bought surprise treats for them, and am
maniacally planning how we’ll survive ten hours on a plane.
We’ve got a tower of sunscreen, a pile of books, and a couple
underwater cameras for good measure.


Are we there yet?

A few months ago Maddie had a play date at
a friend’s house, someone whose mother I only casually knew
from school. When she returned home a few hours later, her eyes
were shining with happiness. “I had the best play date
EVER!” she cried. “When can I go over again?”


I smiled. “I’ll talk to your friend’s mom and see
what we can set up! What was so fun about this play date?”


Maddie sparkled. “We watched television the whole time, and
her mom let us eat a LOT of candy!”


Oh.

Poor Cora was sick yesterday, waking up
with vomiting and lying listlessly on the couch all morning. She
seems to have recovered quite quickly, but it did force us to stay
home and do nothing but lie on the pull-out couch and watch
television and drink slushies.


Wait, maybe there shouldn't be a law against it.

I had a bad day yesterday.


For a variety of reasons, none of which had anything to do with my
kids, a really bad day. Let’s just leave it at that.


After dinner, I fled the house to run errands, leaving my husband
to put the girls to bed while I got some space to mentally process
what was going on. By the time I came home, the girls were in bed,
but not asleep. Cora called me upstairs for a cuddle.


I snuggled into the bed next to my girl, spooning with her and
breathing in her baby smell on the back of her neck. She sighed
happily and patted my hand, and I couldn’t take any more.


“I love you so much, kiddo, some days I don’t think my
heart will be big enough to contain all that love,” I
whispered to her.


Not at all surprised, Cora replied, “Yep, your love just gets
bigger and bigger until there’s no room in your heart for
more, and so your heart starts stretching and stretching and going
all throughout your body.”


Excited now, Cora turned to me and continued. “And the love
flows everywhere, and soon there’s so much of it that
there’s no room in your body for anything else. So all the
crabbiness, all the sadness, all the tired Mommy stuff just gets
pushed out of your body and you’re full of love!” And
she rolled back over, content, and sighed into sleep.


And my day was redeemed.

We had an unexpected treat this weekend:
friends invited us over to have lunch and swim, and we ended up
staying for almost nine hours having a fantastic time. We ate lunch
by the pool, swam for hours, changed into dry clothes, let the kids
watch movies and play like puppies while dinner was readied, ate
dinner, and then swam some more. By the time we went home the girls
were exhausted – the good kind of exhausted.


Our friends have a diving board, and Maddie and Cora were all over
it. They lined up and jumped in for HOURS. Maddie did
“trick” after “trick”: jumping like a
pencil, jumping in the straddle splits, and so on. Cora was
enamored of the deep part of the pool, and would cling to the side,
take a deep breath, then dive down in her snorkel mask, pushing
herself down the wall, to touch the bottom of the pool twelve
loooooong feet away before popping up again like a cork, smiling
insanely.


The girls had a great time.

Yesterday morning Cora had a friend over
to play. While the young girls giggled happily together, Maddie a
bit of the old man out, I took advantage of the pint-sized
distraction and cleaned a couple of rooms. Maddie, bored, ambled
into where I was and said, “Mom, can I talk to Elise on the
phone?” Maddie’s friend has been out of town a couple
weeks and my daughter was clearly missing her – as well as
looking for something to do that didn’t involve helping
five-year-olds dress up the cat.


“Sure, kiddo, let me go get the phone and call Elise’s
mom on vacation for you, and she’ll hand you over to Elise if
Elise is available.” I was headed towards the house phone
when Maddie said, “And Mom? I really think I should get my
own phone for Christmas this year.”

We have celebrated July 4th several
different ways as a family over the years: when we lived in New
York, we’d throw a picnic blanket on the floor and watch the
Macy’s fireworks show out our window on the horizon. A couple
years ago we went to a minor league baseball game and had a
fabulous time, with fireworks at the end and everything. Last year
we were in Florida and watched distant fireworks from the beach.


This year we discussed our options. There are several places in our
area to see quality fireworks; the problem with them all is that
they’re all, um, outside.

Yesterday the girls and I played at the
pool all morning with friends, bringing a picnic lunch to prolong
the fun. After we got home I hustled the girls into dry clothes and
ran a few errands with them before heading back home to get Maddie
dressed for ballet. As I scurried both girls out the door, rushing
to avoid being late, I handed Cora a bag I’d packed for her
with fun stuff to do while Maddie took class: markers, coloring
books, and the like.


“Here, can you please carry your bag? I put water and a snack
in it,” I said briefly as I struggled into my shoes.

Yesterday Brian and I took the girls to a
children’s science and technology museum for the afternoon.
We had a great time learning about friction with bumper car models
and spinning on a top to bring the idea of centripetal force home.
Brian and Maddie had just finished building a very nice Lego house
and we were all meandering our way back out the door when a staff
member approached me and said, “Excuse me, our dissection of
a cow’s eyeball is going to begin in two minutes if your
daughters would like to come watch.”


I looked at Brian. He looked at me. I took anatomy and did more
than my fair share of dissecting so I was happy to go splash around
in to some vitreous humors, but what would the girls think?