1 Mother 2 Another

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.