The Go-To Girlfriend for New Mommies
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This week the Consumer Product Safety
Commission, that helpful government agency which issues recalls on
unsafe products, sent out a press release this week on baby slings.
They’ve been researching infant deaths related to baby slings
over the past twenty years, and have found that an overwhelming
percentage of infant deaths – including three last year alone
– have been in babies under four months of age.
Precisely who is this "spring break" thing
considered a "break" for?
I haven't been this busy with entertainment programming and meal
planning since I worked on a cruise ship, calling bingo and
organizing costume masquerades for bored tanned tourists during
their "at sea" days. And at least then they were distracted by the
twelve-course buffets set out for them every two hours, with
absolutely no effort on my part.
We've been bowling. We've had play dates. We've gone out to
lunch. We've dressed up and put on full-length productions, put
together every puzzle in the house - three times, and baked copious
amounts of baked goods. When does school start up again?
Gotta run - time to pack a picnic lunch. And organize a quick bingo
game.
We went out to lunch yesterday to
celebrate Maddie’s second-ever hair-cut, and when I asked her
where she wanted to go she led us to Which Wich, the quick
restaurant that sells the exact same menu - pb&j and
ham-n-cheese- that I make, but at three times the cost. When I
asked Maddie why she wanted to go there, Maddie said,
“Because they have good chips.” Cora added,
“Yeah, and good cheese!”
I think I’ve probably got a
half-dozen blogs with that title – denial seems to be an
integral tactic in my parenting arsenal. In denial about
baby’s first birthday; about the first time she didn’t
look back when she walked away to play with a friend; about
starting preschool.
About starting kindergarten.
A few days ago, Baby Fish (Cora’s
current moniker) and I were at the outlet mall, finishing up our
spring shopping. We walked into the Children’s Place store
and Cora immediately set to work –this girl is a first-class
shopper. She’ll grab handfuls of clothing, coordinate outfits
together, the whole thing, and be astonished when I don’t buy
everything she’s got. I have to admit, she’s usually
got a good eye.
This day Cora seemed on a mission, and she was so busy that she
soon had quite a pile. She’d pick a shirt up, eye it
critically, and either put it back where she found it or add it to
her heap. A few minutes later she came over with her huge armful.
“Mommy Fish (my current moniker), I’ve got all my
clothes here.”
As I mentioned earlier in the week, I read
a few interesting articles recently about children’s health.
And I know I’m about to open up a ginormous can of worms
here, but I think these findings are important enough to bring to
your attention.
I know that autism is more prevalent today than ever, and that
there are a lot of worried parents out there. I also know that I
have two healthy girls and do not have to walk a mile in your
shoes, so I’m saying that right off the bat. But if I were a
parent with an autistic child, I know I’d be reading
everything I could get my hands on to figure out how to make my
child’s life better.
And I know that there are many people out there who choose not to
vaccinate their children, at least in part because of a concern
that vaccinations might trigger or directly cause autism in a
child. One of my best friends does not vaccinate, and we have to
agree to disagree even as I struggle to keep myself from kidnapping
her child and taking him or her to the doctor for some shots, just
because of the firsthand stories I’ve witnessed of
kindergarteners nearly dying of the mumps or adults suffering a
debilitating case of shingles because they had chicken pox as a
child. I’ve read probably more than most parents of
non-autistic children on the subject, simply out of a desire to
know, and I can understand the fear – there are a lot of
studies out there, especially in Great Britain, citing a link
between vaccinations and autism.
I blogged a few weeks ago about how Cora
likes to become someone else – say, Thomas the Tank Engine
– and will answer to no other name than that for the entire
day. It’s been cute but I have to tell you, this trend is
starting to wear out its welcome.
Last Friday Cora was “The Jazz Girl”. It’s a long
story about how she got the name, but she used it the whole day. As
in, “The Jazz Girl likes to ride in cars”, or
“Jazz Girl wants a snack”. Yesterday Cora was
Cinderella, and took it even one step further by insisting I was
the fairy godmother and only speaking to me on those terms.
“Cinderella wants the Fairy Godmother to push her on the
swings.” “Cinderella hopes the Fairy Godmother will
pick her up soon.”
I mentioned yesterday that I’d been
reading some interesting child-related articles recently. One such
article was target="_blank">Healthy Child, Healthy World’s recent
blog entitled,
target="_blank">“The Top Ten Toxic Products You Don’t
Need”.
I’m going to highly recommend that you read this article
yourself – it’s short, easy, and filled with ideas for
substitutes for supposed can’t-live-withouts like oven
cleaner (which I have never in my adult life used, and as you know
I’m quite the baker). And you know that I’m probably on
the left side of the earth-friendly, tree-hugging,
make-your-own-everything spectrum. But these things aren’t
all difficult to give up, I promise, and the benefits are
enormous.
I feel like I spend every Monday
apologizing for clocking out of the blog thing while my family
dealt with yet another cold the week before. Last week Cora and I
both came down with another cold on Tuesday night – while I
was STILL suffering symptoms of the last cold! It’s
completely insane, I tell you. And Cora had a double ear infection
while I only had a single one – I swear we’re identical
twins when it comes to illness.
We spent a couple days feeling like death warmed over, and were
back in the swing of things a bit by Friday. Sunday night found me
with a new tickle at the back of my throat which I’m
steadfastly refusing to acknowledge. And yes, I know it’s at
least partly allergies, but I’m already on allergy medication
every day of my life so I’m not sure what more can be done.
If that weren’t enough, the weather’s turned cold and
rainy after a few teasing days of glorious sunshine and balmy
temperatures. I’ve been cleaning out closets and updating
wardrobes and have swimsuits and shorts on the brain, not sweaters
and fleece.
Wherefore art thou, good weather and good health??
I spent part of last week reading a couple really interesting
child-related health articles – I’ll fill you all in on
that over the next few days. Really interesting stuff, I
promise.
During Christmas break, the family took a
trip to the GapKids outlet to get a few necessities. Big mistake,
of course, because we were still in “heck, it’s
Christmas, let’s spoil ‘em!” mode, and what I had
thought would be a ten dollar visit for socks ended up costing us
almost eighty bucks. The girls found a whole line of spring rain
gear, put on the rain jacket and rubber boots, and danced around
the store twirling their matching umbrellas. They looked so darn
cute in the yellow-with-green outfits, like big sunny daisies, that
we put up only a token fight. I reasoned weakly that they’d
need SOME sort of rain gear here, so it might as well be matching.
With bonnets. And umbrellas.
Brian and I are recovered, though I can
tell that Cora’s hovering on the edge of falling into the
nasty cold he and I both had last week. But even though I was out
of commission, I managed to jot down a few funny comments during
the week – you never know when I’m listening with a
paper and pencil.
Sorry folks - day three of a nasty cold.
Barely surviving with the sniffles and aches. Catch ya next
week.
We were having breakfast with friends
yesterday (National Pancake Day!) when Maddie turned to me and said
matter-of-factly, “Mom, I’ve met the man I’m
going to marry.”
Excuse me?
I hope everyone's reading this early this
morning, because today, Tuesday, is National Pancake Day, and to
celebrate it, IHOP is giving away free shortstacks of pancakes from
7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Yes, it'll be a three-hour wait for five bucks
worth of free pancakes, but it's a celebration! National Pancake
Day! C'mon, people!
Click target="_blank">here to read more - and see ya after a big
plate of starch.
Cora’s going through this phase of
wanting to be someone else, and refusing to answer unless you call
her by the correct name. She’s picked a variety of made-up
names and titles (Princess, for example) but the name that’s
stuck the most is Thomas. As in, the tank engine.
Friday Cora insisted on wearing her red Thomas t-shirt and red
leggings, and declared her name was Thomas. “Cora,”
I’d say, “Come get your brown sneakers on.”
“There’s no Cora here,” she’d say in a
sing-songy voice, “Only Thomas!”
Yesterday morning, Cora and I went to the
park for some play time. We had the playground to ourselves and
Cora was happily making acorn soup when I noticed little yellow
balls mixed in with the wood chips that comprise the
“carpet” of the playground. I thought at first that
they were yellow Nerds or some similar candy that had been spilled
right there, but I quickly discovered they were throughout the
playground. They were fertilizer.
I cleaned off a slide with a particularly large pile that Cora
discovered – “Look, Mommy, candy!” - dribbling
the contents – 3 parts fertilizer to 1 part wood chips
– into my pocket, and put the whole thing into a plastic
baggie when I got home. I carefully labeled the bag with our park
name and set it aside.
A couple weeks ago, I’d had a
loooooooooong day, and rushed through the bedtime routine with
Cora. I’d come home from work to find her disguised as Naked
Girl, so I threw a nightgown on her and called it a night, already
dreaming of crashing in my own bed.
Twenty minutes later, I was replaying the bedtime scene in my mind
and realized Cora had not been wearing a diaper – she was
wearing pull-ups. Pull-ups that had been on her for several hours,
and were at least a little wet. Pull-ups, as many of you know, are
not designed to hold as much liquid, and though Cora does not pee
most nights, she does as soon as she wakes, usually in her diaper.
And it’s a lot.
Which meant that, if left in a wet pull-up all night, she’d
most likely pee again and leak all over the bed, necessitating a
complete sheet and nightgown change.
Which meant that I had to go wake a sleeping baby.
The discipline system we use at our house
is based on choices and consequences – bad choices lead to
unpopular consequences. And rather than do time outs, with a set
amount of time to be endured, we do breaks – the child goes
on a break that ends when they’ve had a change of heart and
are able to calm down. So a break can last sixty seconds, or sixty
minutes.
Like it did yesterday with Cora.
The following quotes both came out of this
weekend:
Maddie: “Daddy, is there really such a thing as a copy
cat?”
Daddy: “Of course, honey, and they aren’t always very
nice, are they?”
Maddie: “Daddy, are they as big as a regular cat, or
bigger?”
And my favorite conversation from the weekend:
My mom: “I’m going to get home and put on some sweat
pants and watch the Olympics.”
Silence. Then,
Cora: “Gamma, are you pants not sweaty now?”
Out of the mouths of babes . . .
Every year in New York, we’d look at
February as a hopeful harbinger of spring. People would start to
think that winter was winding down – and then
President’s Day weekend would hit.
It is my steadfast belief that New York will always get a pretty
decent snowstorm right around President’s Day weekend; a sort
of “surprise! Winter’s not done yet!” kind of
in-your-face gesture from Mother Nature. I always kind of liked it;
sure we were winter-weary by that time, but I always felt confident
that it’d be the last gasp from cold weather and I’d
enjoy it to the hilt. This year, to my delight, we got one down
here in Texas too.
We’ve had more than our fair share
of illness in this household recently, and one side-effect is an
over-dose of Mommyness, resulting in extra-clinginess by both
girls. And I’m beginning to feel a bit, well, like a chew toy
two dogs are fighting over.
Maddie went to school yesterday in spite of the fact that she was
on the tail end of a cold, largely because it was her class
Valentine party and she couldn’t bear to miss it. So she came
home full of sugar and completely worn out, and by the time I tried
to get her upstairs for naptime she hit Full Global Meltdown.
Sobbing and crumpled in a heap, dress front soaked from her tears,
Maddie couldn’t even articulate why she was crying after a
few minutes, but it was clear she couldn’t move on her own. I
picked her up and carried her up the stairs, calling over my
shoulder, “Come on up, Cora – it’s nap
time.”
Monday morning was quiet around the house:
Maddie was back at school, my mom was at the hospital with my
grandmother, and I had a huge list of things to get done, which
meant no going someplace “fun” for Cora. Top of my list
was working on our financial papers, because I’m meeting with
our tax accountant on Wednesday to get our taxes filed. Don’t
hate me for being early, because that’s not the point of this
story.
We had a big day on Friday, in more ways
than one. A little back-story:
Maddie’s had several urinary tract infections over the past
few months, and the doctor told us she wanted to check for
something called urinary reflux, which apparently is somewhat
common in young girls and can cause kidney scarring and kidney loss
if left undetected. So Maddie was scheduled Friday to go in for a
couple rather invasive tests, including one in which she’d be
under general anesthesia. Maddie was less than enthusiastic about
the idea, and Brian took the day off so we could both be by her
side while my mom stayed home with Cora. We went to bed Thursday
night warning Maddie she wouldn’t be able to eat the next day
until after her tests, due to be finished around 12 p.m. or so.
Thursday morning Cora began whimpering around 6 a.m., and I
sleepily brought her in with us to try to get a few more minutes of
sleep. 7 a.m. the phone rang, and we found out my grandmother had
fallen out of her bed and was on the way to the hospital. Ten
minutes later, so was my mother.
Ten minutes after that, Cora began throwing up.
Cora's RSV segued nicely into a cold she
caught from Maddie, and now the tail end of it has become one of
those tickling coughs that won't let her alone. As soon as her
breathing slows down she's coughing up a lung, and so I've been
up four to six times a night with her the past few nights.
Me so tired.
It would seem that both of my girls are
addicted to sugar. Maddie is doing the whole “silky
training” thing in an effort to keep a steady stream of
Starburst candies coming her way, and as for Cora, well,
she’s found another way.
Cora has learned how to poop on command.
“Mom, I think I want to begin silky
training now,” Maddie said to me a few days ago.
“What’s silky training?” I asked Maddie.
“You know, where I practice using it less.”
“Do you want to give up your silky, honey?” I asked,
pictures of kids teasing Maddie during quiet time at school dancing
unhappily in my head. I know that when she started school
she’d told me a couple kids had teased her about sucking her
thumb while she snuggles with her silky, and though she’d
told me then she didn’t care I thought perhaps things had
changed and she’d become aware of “fitting
in”.
I do believe the worst is over – but
I also believe that if I’ve learned one thing as a mom,
it’s to never say that the worst is over.
We’re back at school today (or at least planning on it when I
wake the girls up) and getting into our regular groove. We
gradually emerged into public again over the weekend, white-faced
and anemic from lack of sun and stimulation. Ok, perhaps
that’s a slight exaggeration, but there was something
distinctly animalistic about the avidity with which my girls ran
towards fresh air and public places.
Another day home sick yesterday, and
mommy’s about done. I’ve got a lovely cold myself, and
the last thing I want to do is entertain kids hit hard with cabin
fever. But yesterday was rainy and miserable, so even a walk to the
park was out of the question. Maddie’s cold is full-on now,
with lots of snotty tissues all over the house (“In case I
want to use it again!”) and periodic denial (“I’m
not sick! I need to go to school so I can be calendar helper!
IT’S MY DAY!”) which makes my life just that much more
joyous. And Cora’s RSV seems to have segued smoothly into
Maddie’s cold as well – either that or Cora’s
taking a record amount of time getting over this RSV.
Maddie did not, indeed, wake up bright and
cheery, but arose droopy and rheumy and dragged herself into my
room to cough all over my bed. “Mommy, I’m sick, and
should definitely stay home today.”
This would seem like and astonishingly mature act of heroic
self-sacrifice, given how much Maddie loves school, except that my
kids absolutely adore being sick. To them it means two things
– television and junk food. When they’re sick –
and I mean really sick – they’re allowed to watch up to
three (THREE!) hours of television in one day (IN ONE DAY!). They
also get these graham cracker-y treats made by Keebler called Bug
Bites, which are amazingly tasty when you don’t feel good.
And to top it all off they get to drink juice (JUICE!) throughout
the day. Sure, it’s organic apple juice cut generously with
water, but it’s a heck of a lot more juice than they normally
get, which is none.
I thought we were getting better over here
– Cora’s has RSV for almost a week and a half now and I
was thinking we were moving into the home stretch, getting out a
bit and going back to church (though not the nursery!) Then Maddie
woke up Tuesday feeling “droopy” and starting to cough,
and my hopes plummeted.
I canceled her Tuesday playdate and kept her home from ballet, all
the while hoping it was just a touch of allergies or something. But
Tuesday evening saw her even droopier, and that night she began to
complain of her stomach aching a bit and running a low fever.
And of course, we got an email from her preschool saying both RSV
and strep are going around.
She’s still asleep, but if she wakes up still feeling punky
we’re going in for a strep test. I can’t deal with
Maddie having strep – she throws up and runs a fever and it
ain’t pretty. And of course, will pass it to the rest of the
family.
Let’s cross our fingers and hope she wakes up bright and
cheery.
Maddie is having a big issue with greed
right now, preschooler-style. If I give her a treat – say, a
cookie – she’ll ask for another one ten minutes later.
If I let her have a donut hole after church, she’ll ask to
stop for lunch at IHOP on the way home. And woe be unto me if Cora
gets something –perhaps a new pair of jeans to fill out a
hole in her wardrobe – and Maddie does not. Then we get the
tears and the “PLEASE!!” and the “It’s not
fair!”
We’ve spent a lot of time these past few months talking about
being content with what you have, and a few times we’ve had
to do some harsh consequences. A couple spectacular days of begging
for sweets, and Maddie lost having any kind of food treat for two
weeks. That was rough, and I thought had taught her a lesson
– treats are privileges, not rights, and should be few and
far between – but she quickly fell back into her old
ways.
Cora’s on the mend after a rough
week with RSV, and she finally began sleeping through the night
again on Friday. (Thank you, my Lord.) She’s even been
napping again, which tells me she’s still not completely
well. And sometimes she’ll wake up from a nap before
she’s really ready to, and she’ll start crying from
fatigue and achiness.
That happened Saturday afternoon, so I went in and cuddled her and
she fell back into a light sleep. I lay there holding her, going
into that dreamy Mommy mode where all’s right with the world
because you’re holding your precious baby in your arms and
she’s happy. Cora eventually woke up but wasn’t ready
to move, so we lay there snuggled up while she had me sing a few
lullabys for her.
No time to chat here - Cora's got RSV
(first time in our household) and the nights are, um, not restful,
and the days are spent with a clingy wheezy girl. Hopefully she'll
feel better tomorrow and I'll have a moment to breathe.
Prayers are appreciated!
Yesterday Maddie spent the morning playing
with a friend of hers while Cora stayed home sick. The mom called
me later to report in on Maddie’s behavior, and gave her (of
course!) a glowing report. Then she said, “You know, we did
have one conversation that I didn’t quite understand. Maddie
saw some campaign signs in someone’s front lawn and said that
her church forbids the use of those signs; she said that God
didn’t like them and they’re bad for the earth. I
didn’t quite know what to make of that.”
What?
Oh, I think I know where she got that.
Yesterday Maddie and I headed out on a
long-anticipated Mommy and Me morning, partaking of that great
mother-daughter ritual: shoe-shopping. Maddie had some money saved
up and I’d promised her a morning with just Mommy so she
could pick out whatever crazy and impractical shoes her heart
desired. (There’s more to that story, but it’s not the
focus of this entry, so check back later -)
We slept in and had a lazy morning, and I finally got myself around
to getting dressed. Maddie trailed behind, watching me get ready. I
selected a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt, and Maddie said,
“Mommy, I want to wear exactly what you wear today.”
Startled, I mentally ran through her wardrobe and reassured myself
that she had a black t-shirt, then said, “Sure, pup, no
problem.”
It’s playoff season (or at least it
was up until yesterday afternoon for us) and both girls seem to be
bitten by the football bug.
Last weekend the girls both sat on the couch with Daddy, screaming
at the television as they cheered their beloved Cowboys on.
“Go, white boys!” Maddie yelled at the screen as we ran
ourselves to a touchdown – in our white away jerseys. This
did, of course, bring on a quick lecture from Mommy, even as Brian
and I tried hard to swallow our laughter.
There’s a popular book out called
target="_blank">The Five Love Languages, which sets
forth the belief that there are five different ways we say “I
love you” to someone, and if we can learn which ways are
preferred for a person we can make them feel more loved more
easily. The five different languages are (and realize I’m
distilling an entire book into a paragraph here) Words and
Affirmation; Physical Touch; Acts of Service; Gifts; and Quality
Time. My husband, for example, is Physical Touch and Quality Time,
so he feels far more loved if we spend some time cuddling on the
couch watching a movie together than if I vacuum out his car as a
surprise. I, on the other hand, am Gifts and Acts of Service, so
the best way my husband can say “I Love You” is by
giving me money to go shopping for myself (gifts) and watching the
kids while I do it (acts of service).
This has a connection to parenting, I promise.
Cora’s been working hard to keep a
steady stream of M&Ms coming via the whole potty-training
thing, and it’s having an unintended side-effect: it’s
driving Maddie wild with envy.
Remember how I said yesterday that
Cora’s sort of fallen into potty training, and that every
time she goes pee on the potty she gets an M&M?
Yeah, Cora peed in the potty five times yesterday. Before lunch.
And tried unsuccessfully to pee an additional ten times. Before
lunch.
On the nights they take baths, the girls
get time afterwards to do what they call the Nakey Dance, which is
exactly what it sounds like so there’s no need to describe
it. At any rate, Cora was in mid-Nakey Dance on Saturday night when
she turned to my mom and said, “I need to go potty!”
“Well, let’s get you on the potty!” my mom said,
and hustled her to the bathroom. Mom plopped Cora down on the
toilet, and sixty seconds later Cora had gone pee in the potty,
surprising both of them no small amount. But what surprised Cora
even more was that she got a Hershey kiss because of it.
I have learned a lot as a parent. There
are the obvious things, of course: how to sleep train (maybe I
shouldn’t claim that one yet!); how to clip microscopic
toenails; how to make a cat out of playdough. Then there are the
bigger issues: how to be more patient; how to model the
“right” way to get angry; how to forgive an innocent
toddler who accidentally kicks you, hard, in the stomach. And then
of course there are the truly vital facts that I’d never have
learned if I hadn’t become a parent: the color of
Elmo’s mommy’s hair (orange); the name of the Little
Mermaid’s daughter (Melody); the name of Thomas’ best
friend (Percy). Continuing education is part of the parental job
description, and I expect it on a daily basis.
But I never stop being amazed at how much I learn about God, and my
relationship with Him, from observing and interacting with my
kids.
I spent the holidays in a frenzy of baking
– it’s just one of my loves – so all the
“regular” food I usually do from scratch sort of fell
by the wayside. Breakfast cookies, breakfast bars, and granola all
disappeared from our pantry without being replenished right away.
Cora and Maddie both enjoy granola for breakfast so they’d
complained a few times, and finally yesterday I got myself
organized enough to make another batch.
Is it just my girls? Because they’re eating the stuff by the
handfuls as it comes off the tray, still warm. Their favorite is
the tropical granola: I make it with ginger and mango, but any
tropical fruit will do. It finished baking right before dinner and
the girls kept stealing handfuls off the tray as it sat there to
cool.
Wednesday was our first day back into our
complete “normal” routine – Maddie didn’t
have school Monday, so Wednesday marked her return to school, as
well as the return of Open Gym for Cora. Maddie looked forward to
returning to school so much that she had trouble getting to sleep
Tuesday night, and Cora would’ve slept in her gym leotard if
I’d let her.
I think I’ve mentioned once or
twice, ahem, that Cora is not the best sleeper in the world. For
the past several months I’ve been cautiously optimistic at
night; she’ll sleep straight through the night five or six
nights out of the week, which is a distinct improvement over what
it used to be, and I was beginning to feel a tiny bit human with
seven uninterrupted hours at a stretch.
Then we hit Christmas vacation, and for whatever reason
Cora’s been getting up EVERY NIGHT. She wakes at least once a
night, crying and screaming, and it will escalate steadily until I
run in there. I’m thinking it’s nightmares so I grit my
teeth, but I gotta tell ya, it’s rough. A couple nights she
was awake a solid two hours at a time, and the only thing saving my
sanity was a husband who was also on vacation and could thus give
me some relief.
Maddie and Cora went to an ice-skating
birthday party on Sunday. This was stressful to me on a couple
fronts: first, there was the obvious worry – neither girl had
ever ice-skated before, and who knew how well a two-year-old would
even be able to stand up in a pair. Second, I was concerned that
Maddie would try it a bit, find it difficult, and let her fear get
the better of her, sitting down and refusing to give it another go.
We’ve had such a history of fear with new things that I was a
bit dreading adding yet another activity to the list-o-items to get
over. But both girls were keen to go – we watch the skaters
at our mall every chance we get, and Maddie’s pestered me for
over a year to try ice-skating. So try it we did.
Every year, I rant and rave about all the
noble new year’s resolutions we see flying – exercise
more; eat less; save more; spend less; save the dolphins and end
world hunger. We’re always doomed before we start, so I
always make a list I can REALLY stick to.
Here’s this year’s version – taking a stand for
mediocrity and tired parents everywhere.
I feel like such a cliché, but
I’m absolutely astonished at the fact that another year has
gone past. I find myself leaping from event to event –
birthday, Easter, swim lessons, school time, Halloween, school
fundraiser, Thanksgiving, and so on – much more than I ever
did as an adult responsible solely for myself.
Yes, it's time for the required Cute Kid Christmas Morning video.
Cora received a Thomas train that plays "Jingle Bells", and she now carries it around like her own personal karaoke machine, pressing "play" and singing along every time, most times into a microphone. Here I captured the debut performance - Cora, still sleepy and in her Christmas pjs, as she sings along with gusto and enthusiasm.
Press "play" and enjoy.
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Sorry to have left you in suspense over
the long weekend, but what kind of writer would I be without
employing a little good old fashioned cliff-hanger? Plus, of
course, there was the whole Christmas thing.
But since I know you were all worried, rest easy: baby Jesus made
it through the pageant unmolested – er, attended to. Was it
incident-free?
Ish.
Last night a friend of mine had a brief
conversation with Cora that went like this:
“Cora, are you going to be in the Christmas pageant?”
“Yep.”
“What are you going to be?”
“An angel.”
“What do the angels do?”
Cora’s big into playing with baby
dolls right now, and in fact Santa’s bringing her a cradle to
set next to her bed so her dolly can sleep near her. She takes care
of her and dresses her and rocks her, and in fact has legally
changed dolly’s name to Baby Jesus. When I say legally, I
mean she stood in the middle of the room and said, “Listen
up, guys, dolly’s name is Baby Jesus now, ok? I mean it, ok,
guys?” (And yes, she really does talk like a wise guy.) So
Baby Jesus now goes with her to the park, gets put night-night, and
so on. Cora’s quite protective of the doll.
As I mentioned yesterday, Cora’s going to be in the Christmas
pageant this year, as an angel. (Stick with me – I promise
I’m tying all this together soon). She’s quite excited
and can’t wait to do it for an audience on Thursday, and in
fact was talking to her grandfather about the big night yesterday
at lunch.
“Yep, so Papa, I’m going to dance and sing, and maybe
I’ll get to hold the baby Jesus afterwards.”
It’s Christmas pageant time, and
Maddie is once again preparing for her role as an angel in our
church’s Christmas eve service. You may recall that last year
Maddie approached the event with great trepidation, only to find
the spotlight so enchanting she broke into an impromptu dance solo
in the middle of the nativity scene, complete with curtsey at the
end. Got it on video, dontcha know.
This year, Maddie is calm and confident and ready to reprise her
role. And this year, it’ll be a family act.
The girls have had their Santa requests
down for some time now, and as I mentioned in an earlier blog
they’re not the easiest – Cora wants a real live tree,
at least partly red, and Maddie wants a specific ballet barre that
is apparently one of the hot tickets this year. I finally tracked
it down on Craig’s List and have it hidden in a bedroom,
while Cora’s real live Christmas tree is tucked around the
corner of our side yard, waiting to be decorated with the red bows
and battery-powered (!) red lights I found. I thought we had all
this wrapped up.
I thought wrong.
Both girls are walking around belting out
Christmas carols at the top of their lungs, and certainly
don’t let anything so petty as not understanding all the
words get in the way of their singing. Here recorded for posterity
are a few of my favorite malaproprisms – let’s just
call them fresh takes on classic songs.
I’m pretty strict on television for
the girls; they get one television show a day, sometime after their
naps, and only if they don’t lose the privilege due to bad
behavior. I’m similarly picky about which shows they watch,
and have a pretty narrow definition of what I consider appropriate.
I should also say here that I didn’t grow up watching
claymation shows the way my husband did, so I was a stranger to the
whole Rudolph/Santa Claus Is Coming To Town line of shows when we
had kids. The Christmas after Maddie turned two, though, I saw them
each over and over as Maddie joyfully picked one out of the lineup
each night for her “bideo”. Last year saw a fond
reunion between Girl and her Claymation Collection, and I knew this
year would be no different. In fact, this year would be even bigger
because Maddie would get to introduce Cora to the wonderful world
of singing reindeer.
I always swore I would never be the parent
who spends a ridiculous amount of money on a toy worth a fraction
of the price, just to satisfy a child’s Christmas wish.
There’s no such thing as “irreplaceable” or
“one-of-a-kind”, and I could easily find a substitute
rather than pay exorbitant prices because of high demand and low
supply. I drew a line in the sand and declared myself firmly on the
side of common sense, of right versus consumerism.
Then Maddie made up her wish list.
We had our big Christmas party this
weekend, a tradition going back years before we had kids.
We’ve always thrown open our doors and invited a big crowd,
spending weeks leading up to the event furiously cooking and
cleaning and decorating. Since having kids, though,
something’s had to give, so I finally threw in the towel and
admitted I need professional help.
No, I didn’t hire someone to bake for me. Bite your tongue.
I hired a cleaning lady.
Maddie woke up yesterday morning with a
sore throat. No big deal, except that there’d been rumors of
strep running through her preschool, and we’re having our big
Christmas party here on Saturday. So it’d probably be better
if we weren’t all contagious. I usually leave these things to
develop or go away on their own, but with those extenuating
circumstances weighing on my mind, I mentioned we might need to go
get a strep test for her.
“If I get a strep swab, will I get a lollipop?” Maddie
asked.
“Yes, of course, hon,” I answered absentmindedly,
knowing how icky those strep swabs are.
Most of you know I’m big into the
whole environmental stewardship thing, and I know I’ve
brought this up before, but I’m telling you, you gotta check
out target="_blank">Freecycle.
It’s a national network of local groups who simply give stuff
away that they no longer need. Rather than see a perfectly good
bike end up in a landfill, someone will list it on freecycle and
the first person to respond will get it. For free. The people who
participate seem to be honest and try to only take what they need,
so the greed thing stays out of it.
Maddie’s preschool presented their
annual Christmas concert last night, and I swore walking in there I
wouldn’t be one of THOSE parents – I’d sit there
and savor the moment rather than racing frantically to record it,
thus missing the actual moment itself.
Yeah, not so much.
Our church offers free donut holes and
coffee at the end of every service, and believe you me, it’s
the highlight of the girls’ weekly worship experience.
They’ll tear out of the service and stand salivating on the
table until I come up and give them the A-OK. Somehow I descended
down that slippery slope, and now they expect the donut hole every
Sunday.
Unless, of course, their behavior is less than exemplary during the
service. We operate on the choices-and-consequences discipline
plan, and they know that the consequence of bad choices Sunday
morning will most likely result in the loss of one of their most
precious privileges – the donut hole, the sugary light at the
end of the preaching tunnel. So usually, they try to be patient and
attentive and obedient during and around the service, and in return
they get a little bite of heaven.
I'm burning the candle at both ends -
heck, at about three or four ends right now. I'm throwing together
a show that opens Thursday night, stepping in at the last minute as
a personal favor for a friend. So I'm at rehearsal until 11 p.m.
most nights, teaching afternoons and evenings, and of course trying
to mother my kids as best I can.
Oh, and getting ready for the whole Christmas thing.
So I'm a bit tired and fighting hard to keep my time with the
girls really focused on them and not completely devoted to laundry
and errands and paperwork. Which is a long-ish way of explaining
why I may be a bit absent the next night or two.
The girls are hanging in there, but before I started this a couple
weeks ago Cora had been put down at night by someone other than me
exactly five times. Now it's almost fifteen times. Not
surprisingly, both girls are clingy and needy during the day and
I'm trying my best to be there for them.
I can't believe this sort of schedule used to be consider "fun" in
college.
As many of you know, over the past several
months we’ve been moving Cora from a crib to a big-girl bed.
We went from a toddler mattress on the floor beside the crib to a
full-sized mattress on the floor, and as the final step put
together her bed frame and raised the mattress up off the floor
this weekend.
I’m a big fan of Craig’s List and never know when what
I want will come up, so I started looking for a bed frame for her
about eight months ago. I discovered a lovely old full frame in our
price range last spring, and it’s been sitting in the garage
ever since, waiting for Cora to be old enough to climb into it.
Judging by what we’ve seen since we put the bed together,
it’s going be a really long time before Cora’s old
enough to climb into it.
Yes, you read it right. My girls came,
they saw, they kicked some dinosaur butt.
I honestly thought it would be a big deal, and both girls certainly
expressed concern at different times up until the moment we joined
the party. The host even rearranged the order in which the party
would run so the girls could skip walking the dinosaur trail with
as little humiliation as possible. But I kept them moving and tried
to make it not a big deal, just to see how far they’d go.
Apparently all the way.
You may recall that a couple months ago we
visited our local science museum’s exciting outdoor dinosaur
display, to disastrous effect. The life-sized, robotically animated
dinosaurs scared the poop out of both girls, and they swore
they’d never return to the museum again until the dinosaurs
were gone.
They’ve changed their minds – sort of.
Brian’s off work this week, and
we’re doing some holiday preparations of our own. Yesterday
we took the girls to a toy store for a meander through the aisles,
stirring the creative juices as the girls begin to ponder their
Christmas lists.
We’ve never done such things before, but truthfully
we’re having a hard time with Cora this year. What do you get
a two-year-old who already has all her sister’s old toys?
When Madeleine was two her big Christmas presents were the
trampoline, a dollhouse, and a baby care center replete with a
place to put the baby to sleep, bathe her, feed her, and more.
These things were all hits, but alas Cora already plays with
them!
As I’ve mentioned before,
we’re gradually stepping down off our recent ride on the
Refined Sugar Pony, and it’s been a little rough going. Cora
especially has developed quite a sweet tooth, and complains
vociferously – and vocally – when she doesn’t get
enough of the sweet stuff.
Fortunately, there’s Tic-Tacs.
Maddie’s been soaking up her school
lessons like a thirsty sponge, racing from new idea to new idea.
And nothing’s been embraced more heartily than her daily
encounters with the alphabet. She’s begun to make the mental
connection between what she sees on a page and words she hears out
loud, and you can tell she’s almost at that turning point to
become a reader.
So there everyone was, happily pirouetting
and leaping about, when strobe lights started flashing and an
INCREDIBLY loud siren began blaring. A dozen budding ballerinas
were herded out onto the street, more startled than scared at
first, as we waited for the fire engine to come turn the alarm off.
Cora was busy with her own “class” in other studio, and
after a brief freakout from the loud noise was happy to join the
other girls in their impromptu sidewalk ballet.
Last month was Safety Month at
Madeleine’s school, and she learned a lot. A fire truck
visited and Maddie got to climb all over, they did tornado drills,
they talked about policemen and more. The class even learned about
road safety, and gave “tickets” to all the staff at the
school.
I suppose this is the point at which Maddie became intensely
interested in all aspects of highway safety, because now
she’s a bigger worrier and more annoying back-seat driver
than my 91-year-old grandmother.
Everyone who knows me, knows that I
complain every year about Christmas’ ever-increasingly early
onslaught. I remember the good old days, when I’d crab about
the early Christmas as storekeepers decorated their aisles the day
after Thanksgiving. Ah, the good old days. Now it seems we
can’t even wait for Halloween to be over before the Yule
season takes hold; our craft store had Christmas trees and
ornaments up the beginning of OCTOBER.
Hard to believe, but many of us
penny-pinching parents are starting (or finishing if you're my
girlfriend Alison) our Christmas shopping, hoping to spread out the
cost and take advantage of early sales. So here's a heads up on a
fairly decent one.
If you happen to live near one of the half-dozen U.S. Toy stores in
the country, then this is your lucky month. For the entire month of
November, every Friday and Saturday you can take 40% off all Thomas
Wooden Railway items - cars, tracks, extra pieces, you name it. You
can also take 40% off Playmobil and 20% off Lego products.
If you don't live near a store, dig through the
target="_blank">website and see if they offer the dicount
online as well. Or find a friend that lives near a store. At the
cost of Thomas these days, it's well worth it.
When Maddie was just around five months
old and Brian and I were beginning to agonize over the whole
sleep-training thing, my best friend Abby uttered one of her wisest
sayings ever: “Welcome, my friend, to parenting. Every choice
you make will be ‘Do I pay now, or pay later?’ You have
to ask yourself: Do I do the work now and struggle through and reap
the rewards later, or do I take the easy way out now – say,
bringing the baby in bed with me – and pay for it later when
I have to sleep-train a three-year-old? Your whole life will be
making this choice, over and over again.”
Sleep-deprived as I was, I burst into tears, but Abby was
absolutely right and I’ve thought about it a lot in the past
few years as I make big and small decisions. I usually choose to
pay at that moment, grit my teeth and do something the long, hard
way so I only have to do it once; but sometimes I’ve made the
conscious decision to pay later, even though I knew the price would
be higher down the line. Holding fast when I tell a child
“no”, strictly limiting sugar and television, being
consistent in discipline, they’re all hard but make life
easier in the long run.
We took a trip last weekend to visit
relatives, and while most parts of the vacation went really well,
we did have a few small snafus. The airlines lost a bag of ours for
over twenty-four hours, the girls had a bit of difficulty adjusting
to sleeping in a room together, that sort of thing.
Oh, yes, and we discovered that Cora’s terrified of
flying.
Hold on to your hats - this is a big
recall.
Maclaren is recalling EVERY SINGLE STROLLER MADE between 1999 and
now. That's the Volo, the Techno XT, the Quest, the Twin Triumph,
and more. If it's made by Maclaren in the past ten years, it's
being recalled.
Apparently, there's a hinge that can actually amputate a kid's
fingers, and there have been twelve reported cases so far.
Naturally, they are urging everyone with a Maclaren to stop using
it immediately. The good news is that you don't have to send yours
in for a refund; simply contact Maclaren and they will send you a
free repair kit.
Call 877-688-2326 to speak with Maclaren, or visit their
target="_blank">website for more information.
Don't panic; simply get in touch with them and receive the free
fix.
Well, we’re back, and all in one
piece – though I’d say we had our share of close calls.
There was the lost luggage, which took over twenty-four hours to
find us and which, of course, contained the irreplaceable Pink
Purple Lovin’ Teddy, all the girls’ clothes, all of
Brian’s clothes, and our toiletries. On the up side, American
Airlines bought the girls new pajamas and fleece outfits.
We had our share of meltdowns and freakouts – more on
Cora’s fun with flying later – and of course the
obligatory Nap Skipping In Unfamiliar Surroundings. But Maddie and
Cora found the biggest. Leaf. Pile. Ever. And obviously took it for
a test drive. They reveled in the complimentary hotel breakfast,
where Maddie spied Fruit Loops for the first time and turned to me
wide-eyed and said, “Mommy, look at those beautiful
Cheerios!” We swam in the hotel pool and screamed with
laughter as Daddy pretended to boil himself in the hot tub like a
piece of pasta.
Well, we're just about on our way to
Wisconsin to visit family, and I'm worn out before the trip even
starts. For a four-day trip we're checking two bags - and though
I've weighed them in my bathroom, I don't think they'll care
much if I'm over the limit and I wail, "But it was under the limit
on my scale!"
We could probably have crammed everything into one checked bag with
a judicious use of carry-on allotments, since both girls get their
own tickets and hence are eligible for carry-ons and personal bags,
but I don't think we could have physically managed it. As it is,
we'll still have to navigate the airport with a stroller, a diaper
bag, a computer bag, a Britax car seat, a booster seat, and two
"real" carry-ons, not to mention the girls' own "personal bags" -
backpacks full of stuff to do. Guess who's going to wind up
carrying those. Add our big coats and purses and temper-tantrums
and, oh yes, a child who is still afraid to take her shoes off in
public, and you've got the family that makes everyone roll their
eyes in the security line.
So pray for us, for our journey there and our return trip on
Sunday. Pray our portable DVD player doesn't run out of battery
juice in the middle of the flight. Pray the girls nap on the plane.
Pray the supposedly heated pool at the hotel lives up to its hype.
And pray Mommy doesn't eat the whole hidden bag of Halloween candy
before the plane gets off the ground.
We’re going to be taking a long
weekend in a couple days to visit some family, and it’ll be
the first time we’ve really traveled with Cora – the
last time she got on a plane she was eight months old and moving to
Texas. We traveled fairly often with Maddie as a baby and toddler,
flying regularly to Texas to visit family, but now there’s
neither the need nor the cash and we’ve become quite the
homebodies. So it’ll be a new experience for the family, and
I’m just a tad worried.
We had a fantastic Halloween on Saturday
night, thanks to a couple things: first off, we threw our usual
sugar restrictions out the window and let the girls have probably a
half-dozen pieces of candy each. For us, that’s huge. Second,
we had the whole daylight savings thing, which meant we could allow
the girls to eat sugar and then stay up late until it wore off. The
girls were in amazingly good and obedient moods, and our Saturday
night, blessedly, had absolutely no meltdowns and no temper
tantrums.
Those were saved for Sunday morning.
Brian and the girls had a date last
Saturday carving their Halloween pumpkins. The girls were looking
forward to picking out the perfect faces for each of their pumpkins
before getting a bit messy with the whole emptying-and-carving
thing.
My husband is a big supporter of technology, and so he decided to
look for pumpkin stencils on the Internet. He sat a girl on either
knee and did a Google search – “pumpkin
stencils”. Brian clicked on each link, looking at all the
different stencil choices and debating with the girls the merits of
each face they saw.
He’d looked at maybe half a dozen sites when he clicked on
yet another under the search phrase “pumpkin stencils”
– and came upon a porn site. There on the computer sat row
after row of x-rated pictures, of apparently some pretty hard-core
stuff. I didn’t ask for details.
Horrified, Brian slammed his hands over the girls’ eyes and
shouted, “Don’t look! Don’t look at Daddy’s
computer, girls!” He was pretty sure that neither girl really
saw anything and quickly navigated away from the page. And then
Maddie said,
“Daddy, were those people hurting each other?”
Um, can’t we wait a few more years before this
conversation?
We're headed back to the dentist this
morning - Maddie was found to have two cavities a couple weeks ago
at her regular teeth cleaning, so Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to fill
we go. We've been reading about visits to the dentist and talking
through it, but my nervous kid is, well, nervous about it. And
let's face it, when it comes to going to the dentist, those nerves
are sort of justified.
In a huge ironic twist of fate, Maddie's school Halloween party is
this afternoon, so we're filling those holes up so she can tear
them back out again with sugar. Or something like that. Anyway,
wish us luck and lots of laughing gas.
The New York Times reported last week that
Disney, who owns the Baby Einstein franchise, is offering a refund
to all their consumers. Apparently, they received a threatening
letter from a collection of public-health lawyers who are
considering a possible “deceptive advertising” lawsuit
against the franchise. They’ve got studies on their side
which show links between early childhood television-watching and
poor attention spans later down the line, and of course the
American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that there be no
television at all for children under the age of two years, for the
same reason.
So Cora, Maddie and I were driving home
from preschool pick-up on Friday and all was quiet in the car until
Cora said, “Hey, Mommy, I’ve got that green thing stuck
up my nose.”
Excuse me, what??
A couple weekends ago, we had a beautiful
Saturday morning and went on a family walk through the
neighborhood. A few streets over we walked into a garage sale and
began browsing lazily through the items. One table was devoted to
the owner’s rather large, um, collectibles collection –
several dozen Hallmark Christmas ornaments, as well as three or
four Barbies in their boxes. Brian had a firm grip on Cora, so I
began sorting through a pile of children’s clothing.
Sixty seconds later, a fellow shopper came over to me.
“Ma’am?” she said apologetically. “Your
daughter just broke that ornament over there.” I looked up,
and Maddie was running to me, tears already streaming down her
face, as the garage sale owner stood holding a Barbie ornament.
Cora wants to be exactly like her big
sister Maddie in every way, and dreams of the day she can go to
school, just like Maddie. Madeleine has explained to Cora that one
can’t go to school until one is potty-trained, which is not
exactly true, but is sort of what I led Maddie to believe in the
midst of our potty-training throes. Regardless, though, I’ve
no intention of placing Cora in school right now – especially
since my money would probably be wasted and I’d be picking
Cora up the minute she realized Mommy’s not allowed to stay
in school with her.
But Cora still wants to be like Maddie and do some sort of school,
so on the days Maddie goes to her preschool class, Cora does
schoolwork at home.
Can't talk here - too busy putting the
last touches on B Bear's journal. It goes back to Maddie's class
today as she ends her week-long possession of B Bear, as well as
her week-long extra homework assignments. The final one: keeping a
daily journal of all of B Bear (and Maddie's) activities, with
pictures glue-sticked in to go with it. I won't even pretend that
Maddie helped me with it, except to pose for the pictures.
Maddie ends her week with B Bear having spent several days in the
spotlight amongst her fellow classmates, and extremely sad that B
Bear is leaving. She's already begging me to ask the teachers
where they got him so she can buy her own exactly like him. Giving
the whole "No two bears are exactly alike, just as no two people
are exactly alike! Isn't God amazing?" speech has had no effect.
Guess what's going on her Christmas list.
I have enjoyed having the bear around, and having Maddie see her
life through his "eyes" and seeing how much fun she has. B Bear,
I'll miss you, kid.
The homework thing, not so much.
There’s a really excellent natural
science museum and wildlife refuge not far from us, and our family
membership allows us to enjoy their many miles of hiking trails
through protected wetlands, as well as their great indoors natural
science exhibits. They recently opened a limited-engagement outdoor
exhibit: nine life-size, realistic dinosaurs, complete with
animation and sound, stationed all along a hiking loop. Maddie and
Cora both enjoy dinosaur books as well as the Little Mermaid t.v.
episode where Ariel reawakens the dinosaurs from their frozen sleep
(sigh), so we decided to take in the exhibit.
At the end of last week, Maddie brought
home B Bear, the class bear. He came in his own backpack, with a
full set of clothes and a journal. Maddie is the Beary Special
Student this week, and gets the honor of taking care of B Bear all
week and carrying him everywhere. The week also serves as a
spotlight on Maddie, and every day she gets to reveal a little bit
about herself to the rest of the class. One day she turns in her
journal of her week with B Bear – complete with diary entries
and photos – and one day it’s show and tell time just
for her. On Monday, she had to bring in a poster covered with
pictures of herself, her family and friends.
Let me say in advance that I totally appreciate teachers and what
they do. I heart them in a big way, and consider them professionals
of the highest order – which is why I don’t homeschool
my kids, but leave it up to said professionals. But this poster
thing stressed me out on many levels.
I know I didn’t write anything on
Friday, and you were all waiting to hear how the bike-a-thon went.
Unfortunately, it didn’t go just absolutely superbly, and I
wasn’t really in the mood to blog about it, so sorry to leave
you hanging.
But here’s the story.
Maddie’s got a fundraiser for her
preschool today – a bike-a-thon. The school is setting the
parking lot up with cones to make a circular track, and each class
comes outside at recess time to ride laps around the track –
scooter, trike, bicycle, whatever. The children are supposed to
receive pledges for their ride – so many dollars for each
lap, that kind of thing – and try to go around as many times
as possible. The school suggests aiming for one lap for each year
of a child’s age, so Maddie should be shooting for four laps.
She stated yesterday that she feels confident she’ll reach
somewhere between ten and twenty.
This is part of my series, Staying On Top
of Family Meals. We’ve covered Planning Ahead, Cooking Ahead,
and Breakfast, and now we’re moving up the timeline to Lunch
and Snacks. You will quickly realize that everything comes back to
Planning Ahead and Cooking Ahead, but let’s get going.
Lunch. This is probably my least favorite meal, for a couple of
reasons. First, it’s the time of day when I’m fast
approaching my frazzle limit, and as I start to make lunch and the
little monkeys are dancing around my legs I feel as if I
can’t make that stupid peanut butter and jelly fast enough.
Second, I often make lunch early in the morning: packing school
lunches, packing picnics for the arboretum, packing poolside
lunches for swim time. I am heartily sick of slapping together a
huge assembly line of sandwiches, and I am even more heartily sick
of said sandwiches.
Yesterday we went to our local arboretum,
where they make every Monday a Mommy and Me Day. Because yesterday
was a holiday, they added a bonus – a local musician to come
do a kids’ concert that morning at no cost to us. We’d
been to hear this singer before and the girls liked him, so we were
excited about going back.
So we went to the park, and the time came for the concert.
It’d been raining so the park had moved the concert inside,
and we ended up spread out on the carpeted floor eating our picnic
lunches and pretending there weren’t two hundred kids all
around us doing the same thing. It’s one thing outside with
the sun shining and the grass tickling our feet, listening to music
in a big stone amphitheatre; it’s another thing when
it’s in a conference room – some of the charm is
lost.
Yes, we’re one step closer to Cora
being permanently ensconced in a big-girl bed!
So she’s been sleeping on a toddler air mattress next to her
crib for a couple weeks, and she’s handling it like a pro.
We’ve had some emotional wrestling matches over naptime
– she’s starting to give it up, and would just get up
and walk out of the room. But we’ve finally worked it out,
and now she knows she has to stay in the room and take “quiet
time” until I come get her. She usually cries and demands,
“Mommy! Come. In. Here. Right. Now!” for the entire
forty-five minutes, but at least she doesn’t leave her bed.
Other than naptime, though, it’s been smooth sailing, so
Thursday we took one more step – we went mattress
shopping.
Cora is, like any two-year-old, insanely
delicious to kiss on. We’ve come up with several different
ways of loving on her, and started saying things like,
“I’m just going to take a little nibble!” or
“I’m going to yum on you!” While this was fun and
cute for a while, Cora has declared that enough is enough.
Apparently, her legalistic two-year-old brain has decided that
“nibbling on you” means we are actually taking some
part of herself away, and she’s begun freaking out at the
thought of all her “nums” and “nibbles”
being eaten by other people. So when my mom says, “I’m
just coming in for a little nibble!” and kisses Cora’s
neck as she walks by, Cora now shrieks, “No! No! No! Put it
back! Put my nibble back on!”
Today’s blog is part of a series I
started a few weeks ago – Staying On Top of Family Meals.
We’ve already looked at Planning Ahead and Cooking Ahead, and
now we’re getting down to the nuts and bolts of each meal,
starting with breakfast.
Breakfast was never a big deal to me until Maddie started school.
Suddenly we were on a time crunch and everyone was tired; I’d
rarely awakened the girls before school started, preferring to let
them sleep until they were ready to wake up. But school waits for
no child, so we had to adapt to a schedule. And since I’m a
big believer in breakfast (and you are too, RIGHT?) I knew I had to
get organized.
Last weekend the girls and I went to see a
ballet of Peter and the Wolf. It’s one of our favorite pieces
of music, we’ve got a story of it in one of our fairy tale
books, and we’ve even found a video version of the story at
the library, so the girls know the tale inside and out. The ballet
was only twenty minutes long, and I knew it was the perfect sort of
thing for a cultural evening out.
The night went pretty predictably: the girls were entranced, only
slightly critical of the performance itself, and Cora was scared of
the wolf. She’d seen the wolf portrayed as a cartoon, and
drawn out in the book, and knew he wasn’t real, but
c’mon – that music’s pretty ominous and scary all
by itself. As we sat in the audience before the show started, Cora
told herself over and over again, “The wolf’s not
coming out here. He’s only going on stage. The wolf’s
not coming out here. He’s only going on stage.” I could
see real nerves in the white knuckles clutching my knee, but I
could also see the excitement and anticipation coming across her
face – the excitement that draws us into those
“Don’t go into that dark creepy room!” films time
after time.
When Maddie was a toddler in New York,
we’d hit our local playground every day. Every morning
– and some evenings as well – we’d be swinging
and sliding for a good hour or two. I’d chase Maddie all over
the playground, going down slides with her and hanging from bars
together. We’d kick the soccer ball and make water balloons,
and even when I was heavily pregnant with Cora I still got my daily
workout on the jungle gym.
I’d see the moms and nannies sitting on benches on the side
while their kids played and swear I’d never be THAT person
– how could I teach my child how to interact with other kids
if I wasn’t there to correct her, teach her manners and how
to behave in society? And wasn’t it, um, my job to play with
her? I mean, Maddie had her friend Naomi that she played with, but
Naomi’s mom and I still followed around and participated in
tea parties and climbed through tunnels with them. Play time
wasn’t time for Mommy to check out.
In church yesterday our pastor talked
about healing and prayer. During his kids’ sermon he started
off discussing all the ways we can prevent getting sick, or the
things we can do ourselves when we get sick to make ourselves feel
better, like taking medicine. Maddie was sitting right at his feet,
and she got excited and yelled out, “My mommy makes really
good cough syrup!” “I’m sure she does,” he
smiled indulgently, before turning to move on. Maddie pressed
forward. “No, I mean she makes REALLY good syrup,” she
insisted, causing him to look at my slightly askance.
This is the second in my series, “Staying On Top of Family Meals”. Last week I talked about the importance of planning ahead, and today we’re going to look at cooking ahead.
Now, the phrase “cooking ahead” implies there will be actual cooking involved, but even if you’re not that kind of girl, you can do the sous chef work that we all do – dicing up fruit, packaging the goldfish into small containers or Ziplocs – ahead of time, so that life doesn’t overwhelm you when you’re running late and trying to get out the door. So even if you’re a Stouffer’s or Pizza Hut kind of girl, you should keep reading this article.
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