1 Mother 2 Another

I don’t know what’s happened,
really I don’t; one minute Maddie’s happy in any
kid’s company, and the next she’s saying she
doesn’t like boys and refuses to play with them on general
principle. Great.


Before everyone starts laughing and talking about the cootie thing,
let me tell ya, that ain’t it. Maddie’s become
genuinely fearful of boys, worried they’ll hurt her during
play or be mean to her on purpose. I see her cower and shrink a bit
every time we approach a park and there are multiple boys on the
equipment, then physically steel herself to “get through
it”. I think it all started a few weeks ago, when a couple of
older boys (seven or eight) were playing on the playground. Maddie
was in her own world, happily oblivious, until she tried to go down
the twisty slide the boys had commandeered for themselves.

I know most toddlers are explorative and
messy in general, but I think Cora’s going for an exhibition
at the MOMA – Mixed Media: Mud and Sand.


Seriously, this girl’s favorite thing to do is sit down and
dig. If we’re in the back yard playing for any length of
time, she rather quickly abandons the swingset and heads round the
corner to the side yard, with its hidden pile of wet sandy dirt,
and rapidly gets going. At the playground she’ll frolic on
the twisty slide for a few minutes before settling down with the
playground wood chips, trying to see just how far down that layer
goes before she hits dirt.

It’s State Fair time here in Texas,
and for those of you who don’t live here, it’s quite a
big deal. The Texas state fair is the biggest in the country, and
kids in town are given a free ticket and a day off of school to go.
Many companies hand out tickets to employees – everyone gets
in the spirit. Brian and I grew up going, and we were eager to go
again and introduce our girls to the coolness that is the state
fair. We picked a date, Brian took a vacation day, and last week,
off we went.


We’d been talking it up to Maddie for a long time, and so by
Fair Day she was at fever pitch. One of the famous things about the
fair is the statue of Big Tex; it’s a really large (think
stories tall, not feet) Texan dressed in a cowboy shirt and boots,
standing there greeting fairgoers at the main entrance. Every few
minutes Tex speaks, waving his hand at everyone. Maddie was
particularly keen to meet Big Tex, and on the morning of the fair
she picked a specific hair ribbon “so Big Tex will see
me!”

Yes, I'm still here - just comatose. The
girls have given me a break the past couple of nights and I'm
getting a good six or seven hours a night. Yeah! But I'm fighting
Cora's monster cold and sleeping every spare minute.


All that to say - see you Monday.

Well wouldn’t you know it –
after a day of nearly clawing the walls to get away from my girls,
I had a rather sweet and eminently manageable time with them.


You know the state of mind I was in as I approached Tuesday –
if you don’t, see yesterday’s sob story – er,
entry. And I was wary of Tuesday right off the bat since it was All
Mommy All Day – no Gamma, no play dates, nothing. Just me and
the Clingy Monsters.

Cora’s down with another cold, which
seemed to morph from bad allergies last week, which came on the
heels of a tooth, which . . . . and so on. In the past six weeks
Cora’s slept eight hours in a row approximately twice,
meaning in the past six weeks I’ve slept five hours in a row
approximately twice. Cora’s cold has ratcheted the clinginess
factor way back up, and she’s now firmly stuck to my hip any
time I’m in the vicinity. And of course, she’s up every
hour or two at night, whimpering and crying for Mama, and I either
go in and comfort her or lie there staring sleeplessly at the
monitor, second-guessing my tactics and browbeating my mothering
skills.


As if this weren’t enough, Maddie’s begun requesting
that I, rather than my mother, put her down for naptimes. So far
I’ve held strong and said no; she’s offered to wait for
her nap until I’m finished putting Cora down, or begged me to
put her down first, but I’ve refused. I could, of course, do
both girls by myself; when Mom’s out of town or working I
always do, and Maddie simply sits and plays quietly by herself
while I deal with Cora. But as I look at my oldest daughter,
clinging to my leg and refusing to let go, and my youngest
daughter, clinging to my hair and refusing to let go, I want to
scream, “Can’t SOMEONE in this house get to sleep
without me?” And since I haven’t weaned Cora from
naptime yet, Maddie’s always the odd-man-out, getting
shuttled off to Gamma instead. Cue the Mommy Guilt.

Is there anything cuter than a child
trying to master a new skill?


Maddie’s been working on skipping for a long time now;
probably six months easily have been spent in hard labor on the
whole skipping thing. And that doesn’t include the year
before that, when she would see skipping and demand an explanation,
a demonstration, and (yet another) lesson. The past several months,
though, she’s been really applying herself, and Sunday
afternoon it finally paid off.

With the cost of energy rising and the
state of the economy crashing, I’ve finally taken it upon
myself to get out there and actually shop for an energy plan.
I’m in one of those de-regulated areas and so am inundated
with electrical companies vying for my dollar, and as we prepared
to move from New York to Dallas I couldn’t cope and simply
picked a month-to-month plan with a popular provider.

This week, though, I forced myself to dig
through the pages and pages of different types of offers, finding a
way to comparison shop and figure out what everyone’s really
offering. And in the end we had it narrowed down to two plans: one
was with a solid company and probably the cheapest rate I’d
found anywhere; the second was with a smaller but still good
company, cost a half-cent per kilowatt hour more, and was
electricity generated from 100% renewable resources.


We’re trying to get our monthly bills down to the bone, but
Brian and I both agreed this was a prime place to put our money
where our family mouth is, and signed up for the
“clean” energy contract. And I gotta tell you,
it’s about eighty bucks a year more, but I’m jumping
around the house for joy at the thought of living coal-free, using
sustainable, low-pollution electricity for the next twelve
months.

October is Children’s Health Month,
and one of my favorite sites, target="_blank">Healthy Child, Healthy World, has created a
calendar of tips for the month. It’s full of
easy-to-implement suggestions like, “Have your kids try a new
dip like hummus or guacamole”, or “Turn down your
thermostat”. Just the sort of small things that don’t
seem like too much effort to tackle, but which, at the end of the
month, will make you realize you can really effect a change in your
lives with baby steps.


So check out their href="http://www.healthychild.org/uploads/file/calendar.pdf"
target="_blank">calendar - print it off and get started.
And if you’re really interested in learning more, buy their
book, href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FHealthy-Child-World-Creating-Cleaner%2Fdp%2F0525950478%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1222917367%26sr%3D8-1&tag=1mother2anoth-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325"
target="_blank">Healthy Child, Healthy World: Creating a Cleaner,
Greener, Safer Home, and delve deeper.


Think we can’t make start our kids our right from the
beginning? Every time I hand Maddie something to throw away, she
asks, “Trash can or recycling, Mama?” And every time I
clean our showers with baking soda and vinegar instead of the
strong chemical sprays for soap scum or mildew or whatever (you
know the kinds – you’ve got to wear a mask and keep a
window open) and notice that our house doesn’t smell like a
chemical lab when I’m finished, I know I’m making a
difference in my kids’ lives. For the better.


Just try the calendar – baby steps.

Many of you know I subscribe to target="_blank"
href="http://www.marthastewart.com/everyday-food?src=footer">“Everyday
Food” magazine, the quick-and-easy cousin of Martha
Stewart Living. Every month when it arrives I go through and
dog-ear several pages, then go back over it throughout the month as
I do my meal-planning so my new recipes don’t languish
untried.


There’s only so many things you can do with a chicken in
under half an hour, so you occasionally despair of finding a good
“new” recipe. And I do a fair amount of stir-frying,
and often find that “Everyday Foods” stir-fry recipes
aren’t quite up to snuff; their chicken ends up dry or sheds
in the sauce or something along those lines. All the “Orange
Chicken” or “Sweet and Sour Chicken” recipes seem
to be poor stand-ins for the real thing, mostly because these poor
editors are trying to make those deep-fried meals a bit more
heart-healthy, and taste gets lost. But hope springs eternal, so I
often give their recipes a go.

When Maddie was first born, Brian and I
did all the new parent research on How To Make An Infant Sleep. We
read up on the whole “routine” thing and dutifully came
up with what we considered a sure-fire hit for inducing slumber: a
soothing massage with “night-night” lotion, a home-made
lullaby mix, rocking, nursing, prayers, and then to bed. It’s
a routine we’ve never varied, and has served us well as we
traveled; we got Maddie so used to the smell of the lotion and the
sound of the music that as long as we had those two things we could
put her to sleep in any room, anywhere.


Of course, her nighttime routine evolved, most noticeably when she
stopped nursing. We’d begun reading books while nursing, and
I was able to (somewhat) easily drop that last nursing without her
noticing. And then just before Cora came we began expanding
Maddie’s world, having Gamma or Daddy put Maddie down without
Mommy there to do the rocking, which went well. I tell you, we were
a night-night machine.

Cora’s vocabulary has been growing
leaps and bounds the past month or so. True, you can only
understand her if you’re around her pretty regularly, but
those few of us in her daily orbit can see a clear effort on her
part to learn the language and make herself understood.
“Yogurt,” “cereal,” “snack,”
“milk,” “finished,” “outside,”
“socks,” “shoes,” “stroller”,
and “Elmo” are amongst her favorite words – and
it should come as no surprise, by the way, that her two favorite
things to do are eat (most notably breakfast) and play outside.


But there’s one word she learned about a week ago
that’s touched all of us – “Cora.”

I may have mentioned that my mom’s
also a performer, and right now she’s doing a
children’s play based on Kevin Hencke’s Lily And the
Purple Plastic Purse. Since it’s geared for kids and
features the famous Gamma, we thought this would be the perfect
venue for Maddie’s first visit to live theatre.


To make things even better, Maddie got to go not with boring old
mom, but with her other grandparents, turning it into a full day
out for the big girl. Mom spent the week talking to Maddie, telling
her about the story and preparing her for things like the fact that
the theatre would get dark before the show started, or that Maddie
couldn’t stand up in her seat and yell, “GAMMA!”
during the show. We prepped Maddie on what the day would look like
– grandparents’ pick-up, show, lunch, home – and
covered all our bases. Maddie’s never even gone to see a
movie, so this would be a big deal for her, and we wanted her
excited and ready.


The morning of the show, Maddie woke up nearly an hour before her
usual rising time. As I stumbled blearily into her room, hoping
she’d yell, “Just kidding!” and go back to sleep,
I saw Maddie with her sheet pulled up to her nose, body vibrating
with excitement. “Mommy, is it time to get up to go see the
show? Last night Gamma said I’d have to get up a bit early in
order to get to the show on time. Has it started already? Am I
missing it?”

Since I’ve now nursed almost three
continuous years, stopping for a few brief glorious months while I
was pregnant with Cora and Maddie was weaned, I’ve got the
nursing thing down – no fumbling hands, no tired arms,
nothing. I can get into position in seconds – I’m
telling you, I’m a machine. I’ve got it down to a
science.


And let me say before I go any further that Cora is, for all
intents and purposes, weaned: she’s only nursing a couple
times a day, all snuggle or sleep-related. She’s got the
early morning nursing, which usually (hopefully) gets her back to
sleep for another precious hour; she has a nursing at nap time; and
finally a nursing for bedtime. I settle in the chair, draw the
boppy around my waist, nestle Cora on my lap, and pick up my
library book. My routine’s a well-worn groove, and apparently
I’m not the only one who’s got it down cold.


It seems Cora’s on to me, and knows exactly what I do while
nursing, because she’s been a bit clingy and needy the past
few weeks and wanting to nurse for comfort. How do I know this, you
might ask?


She brings me my library book.

I've had many of you email in response to
my posting yesterday about my friend's new website href="http://tumblon.com" target="_blank">Tumblon. You've
all expressed interest, and many have asked additional questions.
So rather than hear my interpretation of it, see what my friend
Graham, the co-founder, of Tumblon, has to say about why he started
the site and what he hopes you gain from it. Click below to read
his article on why parenting matters, and I'll see you all again
tomorrow -


Jen

So as I’ve mentioned, I’ve
been stressing over not having Maddie in preschool yet -and thanks,
by the way, to everyone who wrote in after yesterday’s blog
with encouragement! I really appreciate it. Anyway, a few weeks ago
I decided to introduce some more structured, age-appropriate
learning play into Maddie’s life to make up for the preschool
thing. I mean, we do lots of letters and sounds and colors and
such, but I wanted to challenge her a bit more, start getting her
ready for “real” learning. And I wasn’t sure
which products out there were helpful, which products were a waste
of money, and so on. Where’s a girl to turn?


Fortunately for me, I didn’t have to go far. I’ve got
my trusty Mommy Focus Group and I cracked open my address book. And
top of the list for me is my guy pal and fellow parent Graham, the
perfect person to turn to with this kind of question. Why? Because
Graham is a former high-finance guy who gave it all up to become a
public school elementary teacher, who gave that up to become a
stay-at-home dad. So he’s got some unique insight into
helping raise a child from an educational background.


Oh yes, and his wife, my friend Rebecca, is a pediatric fellows in
developmental pediatrics.

“Mommy, why haven’t I seen
Hannah at playgroup for a while?”


“Hannah’s in school now, honey, so she can’t come
to playgroup.”


“Well, Mommy, where’s Maxum?”


“He’s in school, too. So is Cody, and so is Maya.
That’s why you don’t see them at playgroup
anymore.”


Silence, then –


“Mommy, why don’t I get to go to school?”

Maddie woke up from a nap recently and,
upon my arrival into her room, launched right into the following
conversation with absolutely no preamble:


“Well, Mama, in the middle of my nap-nap I decided I needed
to get my monster socks on.” (I should explain here that
Maddie’s monster socks are special fuzzy socks with nonskid
bottoms that her Auntie Pat gave her two years ago for Christmas.
Maddie hit a point soon afterwards where she’d refuse to take
her dirty, wet, snow-crusted socks off at bedtime, convinced that
in her bare feet she’d be fair game for the monsters. Thus
the invention of the monster socks, which safely protect the feet
from said monsters, and which were deemed an acceptable alternative
to her grungy day socks. They come out every fall and heaven help
us when she can no longer stretch them over her feet. But I
digress.)

I’ve been wandering the house
listlessly, looking for something to stuff in my mouth. It’s
the whole feed-a-cold thing; when I’ve got a cold nothing
sounds good, and I lean towards bland foods like biscuits and plain
noodles. At the same time, I realize I have two kids to feed and
they’re not so interested in having pancakes for dinner. Ok,
maybe they are, but as a good mommy I can’t very well say,
“Pile in the car! We’re going to IHOP for
dinner!”


Ok, well, maybe I can, and maybe last night I was just too
exhausted from the cold to contemplate a toddler hopped up on
syrup, and settle for pretending to eat chicken with her for
dinner.


Anyway, I do some bland grazing during the day while the girls
aren’t around to see my bad eating habits and sit through
meals with token fruits and veggies on the plate. Which means that
after they go to bed I’m hungry and still looking for
something inoffensive to eat.


And last night, I found the answer.

I was speaking over the weekend with a
relative I haven’t seen for several weeks, and she said,
“The last time we talked Cora had just started sleeping a bit
more reliably at night. That has to feel good, right? Now that
you’re getting more sleep?”


I stared at her blearily and tried to remember when we’d last
spoken. This taxing mental calculation was made even more difficult
by the fact that Cora had been up fussing every TWENTY OR THIRTY
MINUTES the night before, and though I hadn’t gone in for
several hours, listening to that on the monitor is no lullaby. But
I finally managed to come up with a time in the past when Cora had
actually been sleeping nine hours in a row for a week or two, and I
figured out how long ago it had been by adding up all our recent
woes:

It seems fall has once again sneaked up on
me while I’ve been busy trying to not look too far into the
future and enjoying every minute of summer. Maddie’s friends
are all in preschool, open gym’s back in full swing, and
Madeleine’s started all her new fall projects, like ballet
class. I always think I’ll mark the passing of a season with
at least a wry little nod as I rush between diaper changes and play
dates, but when I look up from meal planning and laundry and
endless repetitions of “Brown Bear”, I see my chance at
a small salute has passed me by without so much as a backward
glance.


Since Maddie’s not in school the start of the fall
season’s not such a big deal in this household; no huge
change to our schedule, no new morning routine to be assimilated by
a cranky 3-year-old. But I seem to always see the onset of summer
as something to be both celebrated and planned: what will we
accomplish over the next three months? What do we hope to do with
those long days stretched out like jewels to admire? And since
summer’s officially over – I think they’ve even
padlocked the pool – it seems like now’s a good time to
look back and see just what we’ve done for the past three
months.

So over this past week I’ve
commented on how Maddie has given up on using the potty, and how
Cora seems to be through the worst of the poison ivy and sleepless
nights.


Me and my big mouth.


First, the good news – Maddie spontaneously decided to give
the potty a try again yesterday, using it with great success twice
in a row.


I’m sure my repeated mention of cookies had nothing to do
with it.

Before you get excited by that title, get
out the noisemakers and balloons, and throw me a cyber-potty party,
let me explain. What I mean by “no potty training” is
that there’s no potty, no training. At all.


About two weeks ago Maddie woke up one morning and, as had become
her custom, went to go potty. She sat on the training potty for a
few minutes, half-awake, and decided she didn’t need to go
after all. At which time she stood up and peed all over the
floor.

Remember how I said that Cora had poison
ivy? And was teething at the same time? Guess how she expressed her
displeasure with these two situations.


Cora went on a sleep strike.

About a week ago we were walking out of
the house after dinner, headed towards the park for our evening
romp. Maddie began walking down the front walk with Daddy as I held
Cora and tried to the get the front door locked. Cora began to fuss
and squirm, struggling to get down – she’s at that
stage where she hates to be carried and would rather keel over from
exhaustion than ask for help – and I said, “Hang on,
Cora, you need a hand getting down off the front step.”
Maddie heard me and ran back saying, “I’ll help Cora
down the step. Here, Cora, take my hand – see? Good! Good
job! Now do you want me to hold your hand while you walk? You do?
Ok!” And the two of them walked off happily, hand in
hand.

Ok, so I’m a bit behind here –
doing an article on ways to pack lunches that are a little more
environmentally friendly, when chances are you’ve already got
day care or preschool well under way. And you’re probably
muttering under your breath right now, something to the tune of,
“Where was this article two weeks ago when I was buying all
my school supplies?”


To that I can only say, it was rattling around in my head with
about a thousand other things and this is the first time I’ve
remembered it while sitting in front of a computer. So sorry, but
better late than never.

There are many things I miss about New
York, and you’ve heard me list most of them numerous times.
The friends, my church, the museums, the food, Central Park –
it’s a long list. I even miss our sweet little house; after
all, it’s the first house we ever bought, the house where
both girls were born. We had a handkerchief-sized back yard where
we learned how to grow (and kill) things, and enjoyed spending much
of our down time.


One thing I don’t miss about New York, though, is one of the
lovely plants that grew in our back yard – poison ivy. Our
back neighbors had a huge arboretum of poison ivy and it cascaded
down our back wall, dropping its poisonous leaves over half the
back lawn. As someone deathly allergic to poison ivy – I
start to break out, and I have to run to the doctor for a cortisone
injection – the back part of our yard was a serious source of
agita for me, and we never were able to eradicate it completely. As
Maddie grew and began walking I kept her from going back there,
petrified she’d catch it and spend the next couple of weeks
in torment.


So when we sold our house I bid an enthusiastic farewell to the
poison ivy, happy to move several thousand miles away from it and
know my children would be safe. I’d spent my whole childhood
in Texas and never once saw the stuff here.

As I cross each milestone off my Maddie
list, my parental smugness grows: eating solid foods – check!
Walking – check! Not screaming when she sees the doctor with
a needle – check! Ok, yes, my child is over three and shows
no inclination to give up the diaper (more on that later), but all
in all I’m doing pretty well moving her forward.


There’s been one big milestone, though, that I’ve been
dreading ever since Maddie turned two – going to the dentist
for the first time. I didn’t wake up on her birthday dreading
it – believe me, the dentist wasn’t even on my radar
screen. But then Maddie unwrapped a present from my girlfriend
Abby: a book on going to the dentist, and an Elmo DVD where
Elmo’s thinking about the dentist that day. The enclosed note
– “Because you’re a big girl now, Maddie, and
will be going to the dentist soon!” – struck fear in my
heart.

Well, we knew this had to happen some
time. I mean, with a family like this one, it was only a matter of
time, and now there’s no going back.


Yes, Cora’s started singing.

With the big three-day weekend
approaching, there are garage sales being set up on every street
corner even as I type. For whatever reason, holidays such as Labor
Day bring out the tag sales in people. If you’re prepared for
them, they’re a great way to buy used items cheap, thus
saving not only some cash but the environment.


And on a side rant, as we were walking to the pool the other day we
discovered a $100 plastic play kitchen set put out for the TRASH by
our neighbors! I couldn’t believe it and wanted to ring the
doorbell to make sure it hadn’t been a mistake, but nope, it
was there to be thrown away. We snatched it up for use in our
church nursery, but even if we’d not known someone who needed
it I’d have taken it home for Goodwill. People, such things
don’t go in the landfill! They go to a consignment shop, or a
neighbor’s house, or at the very least, charity! Ok???


But I digress.

While I may complain about all the things
I’ve left behind in New York, Texas does have at least one
advantage over the Big Apple (aside from, of course, that awesome
Texas barbeque): down here we’re in the land of home
schooling, and so there’s no shortage of places to find
educational games and workbooks for your child. Believe me, this is
not a blog about home schooling – that’s a subject
I’m not going to weigh in on, except to say we are not doing
it. But since we’re holding Maddie out of preschool for at
least another semester and she’s showing signs of mental
restlessness, I thought I’d search for a few things we could
do together to challenge her intellectually this fall.


Which is how we ended up at a large family Christian store, popular
because of its wide selection. They’ve got huge aisles of
home-schooling books and guidelines, school supplies, teaching
aids, craft supplies, and more, all mingling with the rest of the
store’s large cd section, book area, and of course toy
selection. Maddie had never been before and I’d described it
to her in our morning briefing as a place to get her some school
supplies. “Am I going to school?” “No, kiddo, not
yet, but we can find fun school things for kids your age to play
with. Does that sound ok? The supply store also has books and
music!” “Ok, I’ll check it out.” Whew.

Maddie spiked a fever on Friday afternoon
and ran with it all weekend, staying in the 102s and 103s through
Sunday night. Hopped up on children’s Motrin, she felt fine
if a bit listless, and didn’t understand why she wasn’t
allowed out and about to play with friends. Crying bitterly when
told she couldn’t go to church and children’s chapel,
Maddie was genuinely bewildered at her enforced quarantine. For my
part, I wasn’t too worried as long as the fever stayed
manageable and no other symptoms showed up.


So for the weekend Maddie actually had it pretty good; we’ve
got her travel inflatable toddler bed, and when she’s sick we
blow it up and throw it on the floor of the gameroom. During sick
days, all restrictions on television are off – it’s the
only way to keep that busy girl down and resting. Which means that
the weekend turned into a Sesame Street and Davy and Goliath
marathon, with Maddie lying pale and contented, ice water and
crackers at her side, while the rest of us tried to keep Cora away
and prayed no one else suddenly got hot.

My grandmother was an avid bird-watcher,
with a set of binoculars and a well-thumbed bird book resting on
the kitchen windowsill out at the farm. She had several types of
feeders around the porch, including two hummingbird feeders hanging
in different spots. No matter how many times she’d seen one,
every time a hummingbird would fly up she’d inhale sharply
and say in a low voice, “Oh, look at that! Isn’t it
beautiful?” Gramma loved seeing the birds hold, motionless
except for a blur of wings, as they drank out of the feeder, their
long slender necks pulsing as they swallowed rapidly.


When we moved to Texas we set up several birdfeeders around the
house at prime watching spots, and there’s no one in the
family who enjoys them more than Cora. At first, the large feeder
hanging not far from a living room window drew the largest avian
crowd, and Cora would lean against the window, breathing foggily as
she watched the cardinals and robins hop around eating. Then the
feathered gang found the one hanging outside our breakfast room,
and every morning we had prime seats for the show; everyone would
arrive and feast, singing up a storm and throwing leftovers down on
the ground for the doves and squirrels. We’d also hung two
hummingbird feeders up in the same place, but for some reason the
word never spread and the feeders stayed unused.


Until a few weeks ago.

I know, I know, Maddie’s older than
most kids who still take a nap, so I should be grateful we’ve
had such a great run. But I can see her outgrowing it, and
I’m going to give up that “me” time in the
afternoon only by kicking and screaming.


After all, it’s only been a few short months that I’ve
had both girls reliably napping at the same time every day, and I
cherish that hour or so which I can use to start dinner, pay bills,
or on rare occasions simply sit and stare at the forbidden
television. I count on that time as my sanity saver, and need a
mental break from both girls for at least a few precious minutes a
day. Which is why I took a page from my girlfriend Abby’s
playbook, and began segueing into “quiet time”.

Hey, guess what Cora’s newest word
is?


Yep. Life officially got harder around here.


A few nights ago, Cora was sitting on the couch holding a book. My
mom walked in and started to reach for her, saying, “Cora, do
you want to go sit down and eat dinner now?”


Cora looked at my mom, leaned back cozily on the couch, opened the
book, shook her head, and smiled, “Naah.”


I stopped in my evening meal preparations and stuck my head around
the corner. “What did she just say?”

Yesterday we hit a milestone in the potty
training – a full day without using the pull-ups.


And just in time, too, because we’d hit this sort of plateau
– Maddie pees like a pro at home, but shows no interest
whatsoever in trying to potty in public, and will use her diaper
without discussion at church or the mall or even a friend’s
house. Once she tried to go at the roller rink, but that’s
the closest we’ve gotten and I’ve said she has potty
training ennui, too lazy and bored to go any further. Apparently
the lure of lollipops only gets you so far.

I was chatting with a friend of mine
yesterday, discussing her daughter’s impending start at
preschool. The mom is a bit nervous and already sad at the thought
of missing her daughter, and thinking to comfort her with how much
fun her daughter will have, I said, “Well, just think –
your daughter may well be in Maxum’s class and they can play
together!” Maxum is one of the boys in our playgroup, and
definitely at the top of Maddie’s friend list here in Dallas.


The other mom shrugged. “I don’t know – we played
at the park the other day and my daughter and her friend all ran
from Maxum as much as they could – oh no, a boy! Run
away!” I laughed and said, “That’s definitely not
Maddie!” The other mom said, “Oh, I know.
Maddie’s always saying, ‘I want to sit next to
Maxum!’ I swear, Jennifer, I’ve never seen a toddler
with such a crush on a boy as your Maddie on Maxum.”

I have to confess that for the past few years, I’ve watched the whole back-to-school frenzy with a kind of smugness; as a mom of babies and toddlers, I’ve been immune to the artificial season of School Is Here! Maddie’s routine never varied, and we still woke up, went to the park, took a nap, and played with her toys every day regardless of the weather or ringing of a bell. The biggest variation in our schedule was Sunday, when we went to church instead of the park.

So I’d see the moms with their shopping lists, their eyes already haggard as they tried to figure out schedules and timing and routines, and pity them, vowing it’d never be me. I mean, school starts, the schedule is obvious – how hard can that be to organize?

Shut up. I hear all you seasoned mommies laughing at me.

There’s nothing cuter than a baby
who’s learned to a few key things adults find irresistible
– waving hello and bye-bye; feeding herself something messy
like spaghetti; and being able to show physical affection.


I’m speaking, of course, about hugs and kisses.

With both a mommy and a grandma who were professional dancers, Maddie would have been hard-pressed to avoid exposure to dance in her life. But I’ve been very careful to not push her too much in any direction, just wanting to see if she’d be interested in ballet at all. A few months ago when she began her self-flagellation kick, she’d put on one of her tutus and mope around to Mozart, saying, “I’m not very good at ballet. I don’t know any steps. I don’t look like you do when you dance.”

I tried to explain to Maddie that no one is born knowing a skill, and that everyone has to study, and that Mommy worked very hard to look the way I do when I dance. I told her she wasn’t a bad dancer, just an untrained one, and there was still joy to be found in watching her dance. And I promised her that when she was old enough, she could take ballet class herself.

All summer she’s been counting down the days until ballet class started; last week we went to the studio and met her teacher, examining all the different practice rooms and checking out the dressing room. Since then she ran through a daily countdown to the Big Ballet Day, and finally yesterday, it arrived.

Cora’s almost fifteen months now,
and about six weeks ago I was watching a video of Maddie at fifteen
months and noting how verbal Maddie was; she had a few words down
cold, and would carry on entire conversations with people using
words only she understood. A far cry from the infantile babbling
you hear in babies, this was a full-blown language and attempt to
communicate. And while I was watching this fifteen-month-old Maddie
earnestly discoursing on the phone with a grandparent, I kept
thinking that Cora was so far away from that and would never be at
that point by fifteen months.


Boy, was I wrong.

First, the good news:


MADDIE IS PEEING IN THE BIG-GIRL POTTY!


Yes, folks, for whatever reason, the light simply switched on, and
Friday morning Maddie decided she was going to start using the
grown-up potty. She simply announced at breakfast that she wanted
to pee in the potty all day, got down from her booster seat, walked
into the bathroom, and took off her pajamas and diaper all by
herself.


I tried not to get too excited – we’ve gotten this far
before, believe me. But a few moments later, the excited screams
confirmed – Houston, we had porcelain contact.

God bless the suburbs. Mock them all you want (and believe me, as a hardened New Yorker I do plenty of that), but they know how to cater to soccer moms.

Case in point- strollerskating.

I grew up going to the local roller rink for really “special” occasions – lock-ins, birthday parties, even the occasional date. Lucky for me, that same roller rink is still going strong, and apparently all my friends grew up and had babies too, because now they offer the chance to skate with your offspring every week.

I don’t know why, but my oldest girl
simply cannot keep a secret.


We’ve got her Gamma’s birthday coming up, and
we’ve been working at it for a few days, baking a cake and
decorating cards and such. This is no easy task since Gamma lives
with us and we’d like to maintain at least the illusion of
surprise, but I’ve managed to squeeze these things in while
Gamma’s not around. There’s really no point in working
too hard at this, though, since Maddie blabs the first chance she
gets.

A few years ago, a relative gave me a snow
globe with a Texas skyline in it to remind me of “home”
while living in New York. Now that we’re here, the globe
lives on a high shelf in the library, out of the way of little
hands on a destructive mission. So Maddie had never really noticed
it until yesterday when she happened to be lying on the couch in
the library, gazing pensively upwards, and the sparkles in the
globe caught her eye.


“Mommy, what’s that sparkly thing up there?” she
asked me, sitting up interestedly.


“Oh, that’s a little scene inside a glass room, like a
dollhouse behind a round window, and it’s got sparkly snow
all throughout it,” I said. Maddie was definitely hooked.

I’m not sure if it’s a toddler
thing or a girl thing or what, but Cora and Maddie both love purses
and bags, and have recently found a few they just adore.


It started in July – we were walking around for a July 4
celebration and saw a little girl with a water bottle carrier slung
diagonally over her shoulders. The bottle carrier was made to look
like a butterfly and was sized for a little person to wear, and
Maddie thought it was the coolest thing ever. I stopped the family
to find out where they’d gotten it, and the rest is
history.

Cora’s 14 months now, and as
misfortune of all kids with older siblings, I keep comparing her to
where Maddie was at the same age. There a deeper blog about that
somewhere out there, but today I’m thinking of one milestone
in particular – nursing.


On some levels Maddie and Cora at 14 months are much the same;
they’d both been pretty much weaned from nursing for meals by
12 months old, and it’s clear that from then on out the
nursing’s been all about routine and comfort. Somewhere
between 9 and 12 months nursing went from a mealtime thing to a
snacking/sleeping/comfort thing, with actual meals and snacks
creeping into those nursing slots. By the time we hit a year with
Maddie, she was down to four times a day – early morning,
when she’d go back to sleep for a couple more hours; nursing
when she woke up; nursing for naptime; and nursing for bedtime. On
paper, Cora’s been very similar, but in practice it’s a
bit more difficult to pin down.

Maddie had her last swim class yesterday,
and I’m clearly going to need a Costco-sized box of Kleenex
at her graduation because I got a little teary as she completed her
final lap.


She’s three. Years. Old. And I’m misting up while she
makes her last “alligator nose”. Geez, lady, get a
grip, right?

Our whole discipline thing with Maddie is
built around the ideas of obedience, choice and consequences. If
Maddie chooses to obey, the consequences are pretty wonderful; if
not, the consequences can be hard to take. We’ve been
following this for over a year now and she’s got a very clear
understanding of it, showing she clearly grasps what’s going
on when situations come up.

I’ve talked a lot this summer about
Maddie’s trials and tribulations in the pool and swim class,
and only briefly touched on Cora’s love of the pool. But as
the summer’s gone on, her adoration of all things aquatic has
become ever more obvious, and strangers are starting to stop and
stare.


Cora spends most of Maddie’s swim lessons (when she’s
not scouring the waiting-room floor for week-old goldfish) staring
intently out the glass at her big sister. At first I thought she
was merely watching her Maddie for fun, but it’s become clear
that she is studying hard and taking mental notes. In the early
days of swim lessons when we were working so hard on getting Maddie
to put her face in the water, blowing bubbles was our big goal, and
everyone around was constantly demonstrating.


Including Cora.

Hey, remember when you had time to get
excited about the new shows coming out in the fall on t.v.? I
don’t even know what movies are out right now, thanks to my
tivo’s capability of automatically skipping commercials as I
try to catch up on “So You Think You Can Dance” at
midnight (what’s up with WILL being gone, by the way??? He
was far and away the best guy.)


So I’m not talking today about upcoming television
programming; I’m thinking of upcoming toddler activities
programming.

Most days I’m pretty ok with the
fact that my girls love their routine and love having the same food
every single day. But sometimes, I think I’d rather take
Maddie’s travel Spork and scrape all my taste buds off my
tongue one at a time than have to eat another $#@# sandwich for
lunch.


Yesterday was such a day.


So as we headed home from a play date with friends (yes, in the
car, but they live five miles away so it doesn’t count!) I
heard Chick-Fil-A’s siren song pulling me off the road, and
since unlike Odysseus I had no one to tie me up and keep me safe, I
turned the car towards the cow with the sign that says “Eat
More Chikin”.

I was sitting talking to a friend of mine
recently when the subject of her upcoming birthday came up. I
pressed D to tell me what she’d like to do to celebrate her
big day, since I’d never been in the same town when her
birthday came up before. For a while she stalled and wouldn’t
tell me anything, but finally she said to me, “To be
completely honest, I’d really like to forget all about it and
just let it go by.”


That’s her right, of course, and if that’s truly what
she wants I respect that. But I can’t help contrasting that
with Mother’s Day – D has several children, and though
shy and not ever interested in being the center of attention, D was
willing to let her children take her out to lunch to celebrate her
motherhood, to tell her how much they appreciate her as a
mother.

About a month ago Maddie watched an episode of “Davey and Goliath” in which little Sally has a dolly stroller parade with her friends. The idea enchanted Maddie and she begged for her own dolly stroller parade, so I ended up organizing one within our playgroup. We sent out the email, inviting everyone to decorate their dolly strollers or their bikes and meet us in the park for a parade to our house.

On fire with the idea, Maddie’s been talking about it almost daily ever since, and yesterday we finally had our First Annual Dolly Stroller and Bike Parade. We’ve been preparing for the past few weeks, starting with the overall “theme” to the stroller. It was a tough decision, but Maddie finally decided to allow Abby Cadabby to ride in the dolly stroller, apologizing to her several Elmos profusely – “Guys, you’re just not dollies, and this is a dolly stroller parade! Ok, guys?” We raided the crafting store (God bless Texas and our crafting mega-stores!) and bought out everything they had in pink, purple, and blue feathers, sequins, and ribbons. Maddie practiced walking around playing her kazoo while pushing the dolly stroller. We’re talking hard-core preparations here.

We were heading to church on Sunday when
Maddie and I had a conversation that reminded me once again what a
smart kid she is.


I’d spent the past few days baking, stockpiling several dozen
cookies to donate to our church for a big neighborhood outreach
project they’ve got going on. Maddie, of course, has helped
when possible, though her motives are not entirely pure since
she’s always angling to lick the beaters. And as we’ve
baked we’ve talked about why were baking, since she is deeply
interested in understanding why baked goods are going out of the
house instead of into her tummy.

Both of my girls were born without much
hair to speak of – I guess it’s just a family thing.
And when Maddie was a baby, I didn’t want to be one of those
women who glue a bow to their bald kid’s head, so I waited
until Maddie actually needed one before trying the hairclip thing.


Big mistake. By that time, Maddie was perhaps 18 months old and had
definite opinions about what did and didn’t look good, and
hair accessories fell soundly in the latter column. I spent the
next six months trying to coax any type of hair accessory onto
Madeleine’s head, having success at first with the head band,
then alligator clips, then (still reluctantly) the elastic rubber
bands. The fights were not small, but I kept trying since the
alternative was a face full of floppy hair and a girl who kept
running blindly into walls.

Offering yet more proof that children
really do listen to what we say, Maddie’s becoming quite the
little eco-conscious consumer.


The other day I set out to pile us post-pool into the shower for a
quick chlorine rinse, and turned on the water before stripping down
the girls. With our bathroom on the second floor and the water
heater in our garage, it can sometimes take a good two minutes for
the hot water to reach us. Maddie looked at the empty, running
shower and said, “Why did you turn the water on before we get
in?”


Struggling to peel a swim diaper off a snug wet hiney, I said,
“Well, we need the water to get hot first so we’re not
cold when we get wet.”


Maddie looked anxiously at the empty shower, the water running down
the drain, and said, “But you’re wasting all that
water, Mommy! Turn it off now!”

Cora’s got a half-dozen or so
“words” going on now – Mama, Dada, ‘Amma
(Gamma), Mah-Mah (Maddie), bye-bye, ball. Or should I say,
she’s got a half-dozen or so words we can understand, since
Cora’s actual vocabulary count seems to run in the hundreds:
that girl can take a breath and talk nonstop for sixty seconds,
pointing and gesturing the whole time, before running out of steam.
I’ve learned to jump into the conversation quickly during a
breath pause, lest it become a monologue instead of a two-person
scene.


And my job, by the way, in these conversations, is simply to guess
what she’s trying to say and repeat it so she can confirm or
deny the rumors of her intentions. “A gabba gabba goo goo
durah mah!” she’ll say. “You want to go outside
and play?” I’ll guess. “Deh!” she’ll
confirm, saying yes.

We are still in the throes of nudging a
resistant Maddie into using the big-girl potty, and I’m
beginning to fear that my jokes about Maddie still wearing diapers
in kindergarten may well have a whiff of reality about them.


And on the heels of that statement, let me thoroughly confuse you
and say that my daughter is completely potty trained; she simply
refuses to use the toilet.

Between blog post comments and emails,
I’ve received quite a bit of feedback from you parents out
there on yesterday’s “Facebook Depression”
posting. Clearly, I’ve struck a familiar note with a lot of
you, as pretty much everyone was echoing some refrain of
“Sing it sister! I feel ya!”


So I’ve been stuck chewing that cud all day, still trying to
work my way through it. I had a playdate today (four hours at the
pool – and Maddie still went back after dinner for more.
Those aren’t wrinkles, they’re permanent pruney lines
from being in the water All. The. Time.) with a fellow mom
who’s definitely been there – six kids, making me feel
like the amateur as I crab about dealing with two! And while our
conversation skipped over several different topics, we kept coming
back to land on how we felt as moms, our job dissatisfaction even
as we know we wouldn’t trade it for anything. And throughout
my friend's words of wisdom and encouragement was woven a constant
stream of conversation that went something like this:


"Get out of the pool." "Why? What'd I do?" "You whined." "No I
didn't!" "Yes, you did. Speaking in an annoying, sing-songy voice
is whining. Out. And you - (to a brother) - you get out too." "What
did I do?!" "You laughed at her having to get out." "Do you see a
smile on this face?" "I see a smirk, yes I do." Then, under her
breath - "Lord help us, I don't think we're going to make it to
dinner today. This just might be the day we don't."


Huh. Guess it doesn't get any easier with practice, I think to
myself, right before I see my friend's daughter slip scarily in
the water and run sobbing to her mother to be comforted, slights
and bickerings forgotten and forgiven as need overtakes pettiness
and my friend's arms offer absolute grace, the look of muted joy
shining on her face as she is able to make her daughter feel
better.

I think I’m probably the last person
in the computer-using world to be holding out on Facebook, the
online club that everyone seems to be a member of except me. My
husband spends a not inconsiderable amount of his precious free
time surfing it, looking up acquaintances and re-connecting with
old friends, and is often shouting out to me to come look at
someone’s photo, or did I know that so-and-so is still
performing in New York?


Sometimes I’ll succumb and peek over his shoulder for a few
moments, and I admit it’s seductive. You click on one old
friend you haven’t seen in ten years, wonder if they’re
in touch with any other friends and look up their friends, then
find yourself ten degrees out and seeing folks you haven’t
thought about in a long time. I can easily see myself spending
hours wading through different pages, idly following threads and
ending up with my best friend from kindergarten staring me in the
face (hey Beth Caswell – where are you these days?).

Tuesday the three of us hit our local
library for an awesome morning of storytelling. The reader was on
fire, with props and costumes and puppets and a great sense of
timing as she worked her way through a few books. One in
particular, href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FPaper-Bag-Princess-Classic-Munsch%2Fdp%2F0920236162%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1215573261%26sr%3D8-1&tag=1mother2anoth-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325"
target="_blank">The Paper Bag Princess, was a big hit
with Maddie. It told the tale of Princess Elizabeth, whose castle
was attacked by a mean dragon; the dragon burned down the castle,
leaving her nothing to wear but a paper bag as she went in search
of her True Love Roderick, who’d been taken prisoner by the
dragon. When finally the princess found the dragon, she outsmarted
the dragon in a battle of wits and made her way to her True Love,
who had the nerve to criticize her clothing and, well, smell.
Elizabeth realized her True Love wasn’t the real deal and
went off to be happy by herself.

So I was making dinner the other day when
Brian came over with an amused look on his face. “I hear you
read Pinocchio for nap time today,” he said casually.


“Yep,” I affirmed, “I did.” I didn’t
elaborate, hoping that would be the end of the conversation. Brian
continued to study me, nearly smirking. Resigned, I put down my
spatula, faced him, and asked with absolutely no attempt at
casualness, “Did Maddie say something?”


“Let’s see,” he said, staring thoughtfully at the
ceiling. “I want to get her words down right. I believe she
said – Oh, yes, she said –and I quote –
‘Mommy read Pinocchio to me today but she left out a
lot of the words, and when I tried to correct her she shushed me
and told me not to interrupt. Mommy’s not very good at that
story and I don’t think I’ll let her read it
again.’ Does that ring a bell at all?”


Yes, I was upbraided by a three-year-old for my lack of good
reading skills.


In my defense, here’s my side of the story.

We had a fantastic three-day weekend,
everyone enjoying extra Daddy time (most of all Mommy, who is WAY
nicer in the morning when someone else is on hand to help with
getting dressed and out the door) and eating lots of ice cream.
Maddie especially wriggled excitedly like a puppy for seventy-two
hours straight, going from fun thing to fun thing, always looking
over her shoulder at Daddy. The one down side to the celebrations
– I found it difficult to explain to Maddie what all the
parties were about. Try describing fighting for independence to a
three-year-old. Heck, try explaining what a country is to a
three-year-old!

I’ve noticed that my girls are
voracious fruit-eaters over the summer – more so than during
the rest of the year. I mean, Maddie and Cora love their fruit and
eat it all day, but in the summer I find myself returning to the
grocery store at least once a week if not more, simply to stock
back up on fruit. Some of this, I know is because there’s so
much great fruit in season during the summer: oftentimes I’ll
wash a couple pints of strawberries and set them out to dry before
storing in the fridge, and Maddie will beg one berry at a time
until almost half my supply is gone, before even getting put away.
Many nights we’ll fix a bowl of mixed berries for dinner,
unable to choose between all the great in-season blackberries and
blueberries and raspberries.


Mmmm. Sounds good. But I digress.

I know I’ve mentioned before that
Cora is much more of an eat-anything-off-the-ground baby than
Maddie ever was. From the get-go, Cora would grab anything within
reach and shove it in her mouth, whereas Maddie really wasn’t
interested and didn’t have to be told twice that dirt is
icky. I did that whole spin-doctor thing parents do, looking at a
kid’s quirk in the best possible light: Oh, Cora eats
anything on the floor! That’s great – she’s just
practicing her pincer grasp! Way to go, girlie! I’m sure
she’ll stop when she can really feed herself!


Alas, that hope has not been realized.

Madeleine’s always had a fair amount
of self-confidence – it’s one of the things I love most
about her. I adore watching back video of her leaping and spinning
around the room at 2 ½ years old, yelling, “I’m
a very good dancer!” Or how about when Maddie went bowling
for the first time ever, and shouted over and over,
“I’m a champion bowler!” Getting to glimpse what
it feels like to be an uncensored kid, gloriously alive and
noncritical, is one of the great benefits of motherhood.


Over the past few weeks, though, Maddie’s taken an abrupt
turn into negativity and self-doubt. We’ll put on ballet
music and dance around for a few minutes until Maddie stops,
watches me speculatively, and says, “I can’t dance.
I’m not a very good dancer. I can’t do it. It
doesn’t look pretty.” “Oh, sweetheart,”
I’ll say, “you’re a beautiful dancer!”
“No!” she’ll cry in frustration. “I
can’t move like you do! I don’t know how to make myself
do it! I’m bad!” I’ll go on to explain that Mommy
spent several years learning how to dance like that, and that
there’s no right way to move your body joyfully. Sometimes
she’ll get back up, but more often than not the spell is
broken and the tutu comes off.

As I prepared to become a mother for the
first time, I read over and over again in books that you’re
supposed to talk constantly to your baby, even though they
don’t really understand you. When Maddie was first born and
we’d go for walks, I was very self-conscious about the whole
thing, walking down the street in New York City and talking like a
crazy lady. “Over here we have a fine example of prewar
architecture, and I understand they’ve got a 24-hour doorman
as well. And now we’re passing a bodega – that’s
where you’ll go to get milk and bread for mommy when
you’re older.”


It didn’t help that I didn’t really know how to talk to
kids.


Now, though, I jabber away constantly, pretty much completely
unaware of what I’m doing, with that refined Professional
Mommy patter down cold: “Can you stand up now like a big
girl? Look at who’s a big girl! What a great job! - Maddie,
put that down or you’re going to lose a book for naptime
– Did you see the pretty birdie outside the window?
That’s called a cardinal, and maybe it will come back so we
can see its coat! - Maddie, ok, I see, that’s fine, but keep
the water in the kitchen – Yes, Cora, a cardinal is red! What
else is red?” You get the picture.


Anyway, I’ve been talking away for over a year now to Cora,
and half of it is simply asking questions and answering them for
her. Except that over the past few weeks, something frightening has
happened.


Cora is showing signs of intelligent life.

So we’ve been wrestling with Maddie
and swim lessons all week long; we tried a group swim class a
couple times with disastrous results (see previous entries), and
I’ve begun thinking perhaps my kid’s going to be the
twelve-year-old with water wings and nose clips. In a last-ditch
effort to overcome Maddie’s fear of swim class (not to be
confused with a fear of the water, since she plays for hours on end
in our community pool) we set Maddie up for a few private swim
lessons.


The issue actually goes deeper than simply swim lessons: this is
Maddie’s first class of any kind, so her first time under
someone else’s authority, her first time in a group learning
situation, and so on. Add to that Madeleine’s reservations
about putting her face in the water, and we’ve got an
emotionally-charged half an hour on our hands. Truthfully,
we’d thought about chucking the whole thing in the garbage
and keeping Maddie out of any kind of lessons for the rest of the
summer; after the trauma she’d had the past few days, we
didn’t want to be making a bigger emotional mess than she
already was in. I mean c’mon, folks, she’s three!

I’ve spent a long time talking about
Maddie and her swimming issues, but the truth is that for all her
fear of the classes, she loves the pool. We probably end up there
six days a week, sometimes going twice a day (“I know we went
this morning, but Daddy needs to see my new trick so we have to go
after dinner Mommy!”). A perfect day for her would have the
morning spent wholly at the pool, a leisurely nap and book time, a
short video before dinner, then another hour or so at the pool
before bed.


But for as much as she enjoys swimming, there’s someone else
in our family who loves it even more – Cora.

Madeleine went to bed after her first swim
class (see yesterday’s entry) calmly declaring her preference
of not going to swim class the next day. We’d talked about
it, and she’d agreed that though she didn’t like it
she’d give it one more try. But she’d prefer not to.


We almost gave her what she requested, but in the end Brian and I
decided to have her try one more day, to see if it got any easier.


It didn’t.

Maddie’s feeling restless at three
years old – longing to be with the “big kids”, to
be doing “big-kid things” like “class” and
“school”. Ever since this spring, when she cried
bitterly on the playground because she wasn’t allowed to join
in the adjacent team soccer practices, I knew Maddie needed more
than I could give her: she needs group activities without Mommy,
just like the big kids. Her life is slowly starting to revolve
around her peers rather than Mommy, which is as it should be.


So as we looked at this summer, Brian and I decided to put Maddie
in some structured classes. We thought this would be a good
short-term way to expose Madeleine to classroom-type structure, to
listening and obeying adults other than her parents. We finally
narrowed the list down, and ended up with a summer of swim lessons,
ballet camp, and soccer camp. First up on the schedule: swim
lessons.

For those of you not up on your tot rock,
Justin Roberts has a new cd out – href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FPop-Fly-Justin-Roberts%2Fdp%2FB001543LOM%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic%26qid%3D1214190245%26sr%3D8-1&tag=1mother2anoth-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325"
target="_blank">Pop Fly. Since Madeleine loves all
things Justin Roberts, she received a copy of the album for her
birthday a few weeks ago. The verdict?


Two enthusiastic toddler thumbs up.

Bonus points to all you parents who
recognized that title as a line from a Justin Roberts song –


We went to the doctor for the first time in Texas yesterday –
Maddie for her 3-year visit, and Cora for her 1-year. The
after-shocks of this visit will, I believe, be reverberating for
quite some time.


Maddie’s been very prepared for the doctor trip –
we’ve talked about it all week. She knew she needed to go for
a well visit, that there would be weighing and measuring and poking
and prodding, and possibly a shot. I wasn’t sure if a shot
was on the menu, since there are no shots at the 3-year visit in
New York, but I know policies vary by state so didn’t want to
rule it out.


And boy am I glad I left that door open.

For whatever reason, Cora had one of those
super-clingy days yesterday: the kind where you have to take her in
while you pee, and even then she screams for the thirty seconds you
have to set her on the floor while you wipe and pull your pants up.
And don’t tell me you’ve never had a day like that.


Please.


At any rate, by the end of the day Maddie was in serious need of
some Mommy time. I’d left the dishes half-washed and was
snuggling Cora AGAIN on the couch, reading “Bear Snores
On” AGAIN, when Maddie walked in and said, “Mommy,
could you find some time to throw the beach ball with
me?”

As we get ready for our summer vacations
(or would, if we could afford the gas it takes to get there), the
last thing we want to think about is losing a child. But the truth
is that seven out of ten kids get lost at least once, so the odds
are that we’re going to experience that heart-stopping panic
of not being able to find your child in the crowd. Even if the kids
are only missing for a few minutes, those few minutes will be
forever etched in your mind, and you’d do anything to find
your child again as quickly as possible.


So I’ve been scouring the Internet trying to find some tips
to pass along to you. I keep thinking Maddie’s too young to
need the “Stranger Danger” talk, but the truth is that
as soon as your child is mobile he needs to be learning family
safety procedures. Maddie is fearless, and the sight of her plowing
blithely ahead in the middle of Times Square, with no thought for
cars or crazy people or even the occasional “Where’s
Mommy?” check-in, brings reality down hard. Here are some
ways you can try to keep the whole family “found”, and
tips you can pass on to your toddler in case she does become
lost.

When we moved to Texas from New York, we
traded our old refrigerator with its do-it-yourself ice cube trays
for a brand new fridge with an automatic ice machine in it.
Doesn’t sound like much of anything, but I’ve noticed
everyone in the family uses ice more now that we don’t have
to refill the trays or wait for the water to freeze. And even
better, our new fridge has the freezer on the bottom, with a handy
pull-out drawer that contains the ice machine. And that means the
ice machine is at the ideal tot level.


And no one loves that more than Cora.

I often look back at the end of the day
and wonder how, when both girls go through the exact same day
together, one can be in a cheerful, upbeat mood while the other is
crying and whining nonstop. I mean, they eat the same food, play
with the same toys, snuggle with the same mommy. How can it affect
them so differently?


Then I stopped and took a hard look at one day recently, and
realized what a difference perspective makes. And a couple extra
years’ experience to help you get through the difficult
parts. So I give you a side-by-side comparison of Maddie’s
day and Cora’s day. And unfortunately, this did indeed
happen, all in one day this week:

Maddie’s received a few gifts from
her friends that have revealed some rather large holes in her pop
culture literacy.


At her birthday party, Maddie received a lovely gift bag that
revealed a small stuffed dog inside a carrier purse, a la Paris
Hilton. The dog was zipped entirely inside, with just its face and
front paws peeking out. “Mommy, what is it?” Maddie
asked. “Well, honey, it’s a dog, and it’s inside
a kind of purse.” “But why would you put a dog in a
purse?” she asked worriedly. “Well, some people think
it’s cute.” A pause, while she thinks.


“Get it out, Mommy! Get it out now! Doggies don’t go in
purses! It wants to get out!”

It’s 7:45 a.m. Saturday morning. The
phone rings, and because Cora got me up an hour ago, I answer it on
the first ring. “Hello, ma’am? I’m from the Acme
Party Supply Company. We spoke last night?”


“Yes,” I reply jubilantly. “I remember
you.”


“Well, I’ve got some bad news. For some reason, the box
never left the warehouse last night, so it’s still there.
Which means it won’t be making the Saturday delivery we
promised you.”


Which is the moment I collapse over my desk, weeping.


What brought me to this state? Try a three-year-old’s
birthday party.

I'm chest-deep in birthday preparations
and the girls are not cooperating and giving me any time to do so
during the day, so I've less than ten seconds here to reassure
everyone I'm still alive, and will be sending dispatches from the
Birthday Front shortly!

Maddie’s third birthday party is
coming up, and I have to confess I’m getting a tiny bit
stressed about it.


For her first birthday, we skipped the party thing: after all,
first birthday parties are for the parents (hey! I survived the
first year!) rather than the kid. And we played her second birthday
low-key as well: all our friends had zoo memberships, and so we all
gathered at the zoo (her favorite place on earth) for a birthday
celebration. No fancy plans, no big decorations, no theme, no
snazzy goody bags to give out.


Now, though, Maddie’s been to a few parties and knows
it’s a rather big deal. In addition to being the day she gets
to eat cake and have presents, Maddie understands that birthdays
are for fun parties with her friends, and she’s looking
forward to her birthday party this weekend almost as much as she is
her actual birthday next week.

My apologies to the Beatles and
“Abby Road” . . .


Yes, it’s time once again for that smell of fake coconut oil
and the white streaks of zinc oxide on all your clothing. Crack
open a bottle of sunscreen, and slather up.


Of course, if you’re like us, you’ve already been
wearing it for several months now – I’m obsessive about
sunscreen and hats when the weather turns mildly warm – but
even the most die-hard tanners know this is not the friendly sun we
grew up with, and it’s time to get serious and protect the
kiddos (and ourselves!) from those dangerous rays.

The other night Brian and I revived
argument #27 from our Greatest Hits list, entitled “My Life
Is Harder Than Yours”. To be fair, I’m usually the one
to start said revival, when I can’t take another long day
with the two girls and feel (usually wrongly) underappreciated. You
can probably write the script yourself, so I won’t bore you
with the details; what I wanted to bring up here was actually the
point at which we got into a good, earnest discussion – the
point after all the acrimony and accusations and martyrdom (mostly
on my part).


We were lying in bed and I was trying to put myself in
Brian’s shoes, and understand how his day truly is stressful.
The weight of responsibility for this big family is heavy on his
shoulders, especially in light of our last year and its eight
income-free months. So he’s constantly working while looking
over his shoulder, fearing the axe. Then add in the usual anxieties
– job deadlines, co-workers that he doesn’t get along
with, and so on – and he really does have a stressful job. I
get that.


But I know that my job stress is different, and I struggled to put
it into words. Aside from the obvious – that he gets two days
a week off from said stress, even if those days are spent doing his
other job, which is full-time dad – I knew there was
something unique about my job stress.

When we were house-hunting here in Texas
last fall, our realtor made an executive decision for us: she
wouldn’t allow us to look at any houses in neighborhoods
where there weren’t community pools. “Because,”
she said, “Your kids are going to live at the pool during the
summer, won’t they? It’s the best place for a mommy on
a hot summer day.” I thought she was a little over-the-top
with the decision, but we had so many great places to choose from
that fit the criterion that I went along with it. Consequently, our
new home here is located near not one, but two neighborhood pools.


And boy, am I thanking my realtor now.

For Cora’s birthday, the
grandparents gave her one of those water activity tables you see in
so many back yards. We’d let it be known we were on the hunt
for used back yard toys, and so this showed up as an answer to
prayer.


In fact, I’d almost put the water table on Cora’s
official list, but the neat freak in me made me hold back. Once
both girls got a look at the box, though, I knew there was no going
back, and truthfully I was glad the decision had been made for me;
both girls love the water, and our little inflatable pool takes so
long to heat up we hardly ever get it out!

We’ve made it: Cora turned one. All
around us, friends are reminding us she’s finally a toddler.
We are officially a baby-free household now, filled only with
toddlers and tired parents. Now I can say, “As a mommy of two
toddlers . . .” or maybe, “I’ve got two toddlers
at home, and let me tell you . . .”


Because isn’t parenthood all about bragging rights? Even if
it’s simply bragging about how exhausted you are?

We’ve had almost a week of sullen
grey skies here in Texas, with air so thick you could almost roll
up in it like a soggy sleeping bag from camp days. Every day the
cloudy and overcast skies bluster threateningly, with nothing
coming from it by the end of the day but more mosquitos and the
feeling you’re in some kind of languid Tennessee Williams
play, so droopy and filled with ennui are you.


Which is why, when I left home this morning for a play date a few
blocks away, I didn’t bring an umbrella.

As part of my mommy guilt for raising Cora
in her sister’s shadow, I worry that Cora won’t grow up
loving books as much as Maddie does because I simply haven’t
has as much time to read to her as I did to Maddie.


Brian began reading two books a night to Maddie while she was still
in my tummy. When I was only taking care of one kid at a time, I
had hours to snuggle on the couch reading kids’ books with
Madeleine, so she was in love with picture books from the newborn
stage on. As I tried to wean Maddie naturally, I began reading to
her while she nursed for nap or bedtime, eventually reading instead
of nursing, with the result being that Maddie reads several books a
day and considers her book time a vital part of her evening and nap
routine. When Cora was born, we kept a basket of new books next to
my nursing chair, and Maddie would settle into her own stuffed
chair and listen to me read while I nursed. Even now, if I need to
close the door and put Cora to sleep, I’ll come out ten
minutes later to see Maddie has climbed up on the couch, pulled a
throw around herself, and is happily browsing through her favorite
books.

Warning: This article is all about poop.


So Maddie’s been constipated for about two weeks now.


Figured out the title yet?


Right around the time we went strawberry picking, we spent several
days out-of-doors for extended periods of time, in ninety-degree
heat. We all got a bit dehydrated, and pooping got a little, um,
harder.

For the past few months I’ve been
getting rather more frequent migraines- hence the sporadic missed
blogs here – and since I am after all a mother, I immediately
assumed I had a tumor and my children would grow up motherless.


Sure, I made an appointment to get my eyes checked, but it was just
a formality. The spontaneous vertigo, the motion sickness for no
apparent reason, the piercing headaches I haven’t had for
several years now – what else could it be?


Apparently, it’s my vision.

First birthdays are funny things. In some
cultures, it’s a huge party, a celebration of reaching a
milestone in an uncertain world. Other people throw lavish parties
to show their status; they’re saying, “Sure my
kid’s too young to appreciate that I’ve hired the Three
Tenors to sing at her birthday party. But it’s not really
about her anyway.”


As for me, I figure, the kid’s never going to remember it, so
let’s call a spade a spade and have a nice party to celebrate
with all our friends. Plenty of time for tots and goody bags
on subsequent birthdays, after all, and as long as Cora gets her
gifts and has a nice, relaxed day (with all the requisite photos to
prove it) then we’re all winners.


So for Cora’s birthday we went to the Arboretum for a nice
picnic lunch. Cora adores the arboretum, since it combines two of
her favorite things: nature, and the opportunity to literally
deflower nature. Yes, my kid loves to run up to a lovely bed of
impatiens and begin ripping away. Good times.

Dear Cora:


I’m having a hard time believing it’s been over a year
already since I last wrote you a letter; that letter I wrote before
you were born has been safely tucked inside your baby book for
almost thirteen months now, and at the risk of sounding like a
cliché, where has the time all gone?


On the other hand, I look back over your first year of life and
can’t believe it’s been ONLY a year. Job loss,
unemployment, selling a house, leaving New York, buying a house in
Texas: how can all of this happen in just a short twelve months? I
feel as if you’ve been with us forever, even as I still
continue to struggle to find my groove with you. Your Nana said at
your birthday party, “I bet you can’t imagine life
without her now, can you?” And I replied, “Well, I
actually can – and it involves a lot more sleep!”


Yes, my darling girl, if I have one complaint about you, it’s
the whole sleep thing. What’s the deal, kiddo?! You still
wake up whimpering a few times a night, and your attitude towards
naptime is way too insouciant. Can we work on that please?
I’d love to look back on this letter next year and say in
disbelief, “Cora wasn’t a good sleeper? I’d
totally forgotten that! She sleeps thirteen hours in a row
now!” I think it’s partly the separation anxiety
– you’ve got that thing down pat, and practice it
endlessly lest you lose your touch with it. So can we work on that,
too?


And thus endeth my complaint list. Now for the plus side:

Thursday night is usually leftovers in our
house; I do a decent amount of cooking the first few days of the
week, coast on Thursdays, and eat pizza on Fridays. And last
night’s leftovers included a great href="http://www.marthastewart.com/favorite-tortilla-and-black-bean-pie?autonomy_kw=tortilla%20and%20black%20bean%20pie&rsc=header_3"
target="_blank">Tortilla and Black-Bean Pie I made for
Tuesday, which held up so well for leftovers I thought I’d
pass the recipe on to you.


There are a few things I love about this recipe: first, it’s
vegetarian, and so is a good option to keep in your back pocket.
Second, it calls for ingredients I almost always have in my kitchen
-flour tortillas, a couple cans of black beans, a bag of frozen
corn. And if you’re like me and habitually make Tex-Mex
anyway, you’ll have those lying around as leftovers. I can
easily fudge and throw in that bit of black beans I’d already
cooked as a side two nights ago, or some such thing. Third on my
list of things I love about this recipe is that you can make it
ahead of time, leave it assembled in the fridge, and pop it in the
oven last-minute.


And finally and most importantly, the recipe’s kid-friendly.
Maddie, who hates corn, can fastidiously pick the kernels out of
her share, while Cora crams all the black beans in her mouth at
once. And what kid doesn’t like tortillas and cheese?
Maddie's happy when I mention the dish, simply because she is
going to eat pie for dinner! And in case you're worried, go ahead
and use the beer - all the alcohol cooks off and it adds a very
mild flavor.


So if you’re stuck in a rut, give the recipe a try, and let
me know what you think!

Maddie has what I consider to be a pretty
good grasp of the concept of time; she’s got the days of the
week memorized, and has learned to place them in her daily context
to understand how much time is passing or needs to pass for a
special date to come up. Saturday, for example, is Waffle Day, when
Daddy makes waffles for breakfast; Sunday is Church Day; and Monday
is Playgroup Day. If Madeleine’s trying to figure out how
long it will be until, say, her birthday, we’ll tell her that
she has five more Waffle Days until her birthday. So far this seems
to be working well, and Maddie loves to recite through the days of
the week until she arrives at something fun.


And invariably, that Something Fun is Wednesday – Gym Day!
Gym Day is Maddie’s raison d’etre, that activity which
makes all other life worthwhile. At random points in the week,
she’ll stop whatever she’s doing and say, “What
day is it today? And then what day is it tomorrow? And the day
after that?” and so on, until we hit Wednesday, at which
point Maddie says, “And that’s the day we go to the
gym!”

Cora wants to be just like her big sister in all she does, and eating is no exception. Cora cries and kicks when she sees Maddie eating strawberries but I’ve held fast, determined to wait until her birthday as suggested by doctors for allergy reasons. Strawberries are just coming into season in New York, and I’d anticipated finding a pick-your-own-strawberries farm here right after Cora’s birthday and turning her loose in the fields – a sort of coming-of-age amongst the strawberry patch thing.

Then I found out last Thursday that the growing season in Texas is a wee bit different than New York’s, and last weekend was pretty much the last hurrah for strawberries here.

So on Friday, I packed the girls in the car, threw the allergy wait-list out the window, said a small prayer, and drove to the strawberry farm.

Maddie was, of course, ecstatic about getting a chance to pick her own strawberries, and chatted the whole way down about how many she was going to pick, then eat, and bring home to show Daddy. She speculated about what sort of bucket she’d be given to use and how fast she was going to pick. Cora was, of course, clueless that her life was about to change.

When the subject of Mother’s Day
came up a few weeks ago, I told Brian I had three requests: I
wanted time to go to my favorite used bookstore – ALONE; I
wanted to take a nap; and I wanted a day off from feeding the kids
– all the dicing, shredding, steaming, cajoling, spooning,
snack preparing, the whole thing.


And the visit to the bookstore was negotiable.


So for Mother’s Day weekend we came up with a plan. Since
taking an entire day to yourself simply isn’t practical when
you’ve got a nursing child, we split my “day” up
into two days and I went to my bookstore on Saturday while the
girls were napping. And yes, they were napping when I left, but no,
they didn’t stay that way for long, so that definitely counts
as a gift.


That left Sunday for my napping and break from food duties.

You know the separation anxiety is getting
bad when your daughter cries because you’re going to the
grocery store.


Your older daughter, that is.


Since we’ve moved to Texas, both girls have become only more
clingy, more anxious when away from me. I expected it a bit when we
first moved – new environment, no friends, and so on. And
when we moved in January Cora was 8 months old and four months into
her official separation anxiety stage, so I was trying to grit my
teeth and deal with that as well. I kept thinking it would get
better – that gradually Cora would begin to become more
confident without me, let me go to the bathroom by myself, for
pete’s sake!

Maddie loves playing games, and makes up
half a dozen new ones every day: “Now we’re going to
play the Baby Game.” “Now let’s play the
Telescope Game!” “And now this is the Balloon Kite
Game.” She’ll spy an everyday object – say, the
blinds cord in a window- and be off. Her favorite games involve
someone (usually Mommy) making up rules or chores or tasks to be
accomplished, and giving them to Maddie to complete one by one.


Combine this with Maddie’s innate love of movement, dance,
and exercise, and you’ve got one hundred different versions
of Simon Says meets Imagination. So when Maddie discovered our
Twister game sitting in a pile of board games, she was immediately
intrigued.

I make this one tea periodically –
it’s a yogi tea, tastes like the chai tea lattes you buy at
Starbucks minus the sugar and milk. Anyway, I like it because
there’s no caffeine and it’s mildly sweet on its own,
so I make a few quarts at a time to keep in the fridge, adding
honey and milk as needed.


At any rate, a friend of mine is in her first trimester and having
a hard time with it nausea-wise. I gave her a quart of the tea
– one of the primary ingredients is ginger, and I thought
it’d settle her stomach. The result? Two enthusiastic thumbs
up, and a request for more tea. Kindly enough, she refrained from
calling me at 2 a.m. when she actually ran out, and waited until
the next day to make the request.