The Wide World of Mommydom

Time Flies...

2010-11-14T17:52:00.003-05:00

...when you're busy.

Good news: I started a part-time teaching position last month and it has been a lot of fun even though it has taken up quite a lot of my free time. I still have yet to see a paycheck from it, too. Hmm. I continue looking for full-time employment, but as you know, it's rough out there. Add to this the fact that we're closing in on finally making this divorce final, and all I can say is that I have been stressed to the max. Just in time for the Hellidays, no less.

The one saving grace is that I have been cooking up a storm, as you can see in my other blog. One of my favorites so far has been this Pumpkin Gingerbread.

Pumpkin Gingerbread

Now my cooking as therapy routine may not be the best thing for my waistline, but it is fun and I get immediate gratification for myself and others out of it.

My main goal is to keep my shit together over the next few months as the chaos of the holidays and the turmoil of the divorce collide with my general life insecurities.

Daunting, but I have little choice. This is what it is. This is where my life is at the moment.

Give me strength, someone, please.

"I am on a horse."

2010-10-12T06:55:00.006-05:00

"Moo."

"Cow."

If you haven't seen this yet, you must.

I'll wait.

I love Grover!

Of course, now I need to see the video which inspired it:

In response to the flurry of Tweets and posts as this video went viral on the internet, OldSpiceGuy created a series of short video responses to everyone from well-known celebrities like Alyssa Milano and Ellen DeGeneres, to random folk, stormyweather21 and PingChat.

The following video response to George Stephanopolous ranks among my favorite.

The current political campaign could use a wee bit of a pleasant-smelling lift. old Spice might be just the thing.

Back to Grover, the skits where he was the waiter were always my favorite!

Happy Columbus Day!

2010-10-11T08:15:00.006-05:00

To his dying day, Columbus refused to believe he'd landed anywhere but Asia. To honor his memory this Columbus Day, if you know someone who is so wholly focused on his beliefs, so arrogantly stubborn in his refusal to entertain the notion that he *might* be wrong, despite all odds and even pesky FACTS that state otherwise, go up to that person and give him a dope-slap right on the back of his head.

Henceforth, I shall call Columbus Day Dope-slap an Asshat Day.

Spread the word. :)

Peanut Butter, Vegemite and Nutella

2010-10-02T07:01:00.017-05:00

In my travels, I've had the opportunity to try out all sorts of new foods, which I think is a wonderful habit to adopt. I am always in favor of people expanding their culinary horizons. Sampling local and exotic fare like verivorst (blood sausage) and samgyetang (chicken and ginseng soup) was always exciting, but at times I really missed some of my old standbys.

For instance, I recall when I was in Estonia how much I missed peanut butter. I hadn't realized quite how ubiquitous it was in the US until I left the country. In my long, rambling, somewhat homesick letters home, I may have mentioned my longing for peanut butter once or twice.

Well, my parents must have said something to my aunt and uncle when they talked, because that next week, I got a care package stuffed with typical American foodstuffs, most of which had a disturbingly long shelf life. Some of the things, like the big 5-pound block of Velveeta, were something of a curiosity in Estonia, where for the most part, people still cooked with and ate things that were recognizable as food - with the exception of sült. Other items, like summer sausage, cookies and a pizza mix, were distributed and devoured quickly. One item in particular made my heart beat a little faster.

You got it, my aunt sent me the largest jar of peanut butter I have ever seen in my life. It was so large that I think it almost qualified as a bucket. That first whiff of peanutty goodness that wafted out after I unscrewed the jar was as indescribable a sensation as I've ever had: reminders of home, childhood, a warm-fuzzy sensation of comfort, not to mention how it stoked my hunger.

Although my love of peanut butter is well-documented, not everyone feels the same way. My buddy Tony, another English teacher, was an Aussie, and as such, not a big fan of the sticky brown, earthy heaven-in-a-jar that is peanut butter. Instead, he grew up on Vegemite on toast. I'd first heard of Vegemite years before when I was on an exchange program in the USSR. A few floors above us in the dorm was a rowdy, rolicking bunch of students from Perth, DownUnder. They'd prepared for the deprivations in the USSR of that era by filling their suitcases with rolls of toilet paper and jars of Vegemite, whereas we Yanks had filled ours with rolls of toilet paper and jars of peanut butter.

After one evening of cross-cultural exchange with the Aussies and some of the Russians in our dorm, punctuated by many bottles of authentic Russian vodka and too many renditions of poorly-sung Russian folk songs, we each brought out the culinary treasures from our hoard for the others to try. I was the only American in our group who did not find Vegemite abhorrent. I rather liked the salty yeastiness. What's not to love about something called Concentrated Autolyzed Yeast Extract? Mmmm...

When I shared a house with two Turkish graduate students when I was teaching ages ago, I encountered another person whose love of peanut butter did not match my own. My housemate Tolga, told me that he thought that peanut butter was a vile substance with the taste and consistency of shit and that even the smell of it made him want to vomit.

Strong words, Tolga.

Instead, he liked a nice piece of toast with Nutella. What is this Nutella? I asked him. When he'd recovered from the shock, he brought out his jar of Nutella and changed my life. Sounds melodramatic, I know, but before that point, I had had no idea that hazelnuts and chocolate could be married so harmoniously and, dare I say it, orgasmically. I always came back to my beloved peanut butter, though I'd cheat on it occasionally with that dreamy chocolate spread. Last Christmas I rediscovered Nutella while I was baking up a bunch of sweet treats to give to the kids' teachers. I had found a recipe for Chocolate hazelnut sticks which called for Nutella.

Divine. To-die-for. You won't want to share them with anyone.

I still have a significant amount of the Nutella left, and I ended up shoving the jar to the back of the cabinet until recently. Lucy saw a commercial for Nutella and said, eyes huge, "Mommy, we have to get that at the store!" When I told her that I thought I still had a jar of it in the kitchen, she ran in there, shouting, "Where, where? I want to try it! Please, please... PLEASE?!"

She got her wish, and Nutella on whole wheat toast is now her preferred breakfast, and Natalie's and perhaps even mine. It is also tremendous on sliced fruit, crackers and, as my kids and I have discovered, straight out of the jar.

Isn't it great when kids try out new foods? ;-)

"I Hate You, Mommy."

2010-10-01T06:55:00.014-05:00

"...I don't want to live with you. I want to live with Daddy."

Those were the words of my 7 year-old daughter the other night.

This was no temper tantrum-fueled parting shot screamed from the doorway of her room, punctuated by the sharp crack of a slammed door. No. This was a calm comment with a follow-up list in response to my question, "What's wrong, honey?"

With those carefully enunciated words, "I hate you, Mommy," I saw my world fall apart for a second. I saw all the work I had done to limit the most negative effects of this separation and divorce on my children count for nothing. I saw a world turn against me and label me a Bad Mom. I saw my worst fears come true, that somehow, I would lose my children, that I would lose the love of my children.

After taking a deep breath, I asked her why she didn't want to live here with Mommy and why she hated Mommy. Here is her list of grievances:

She doesn't have a bunk bed like they have at their dad's house.
Her mattress springs hurt her back a little bit.
Things in the house are ripped up, like the couch.
I don't have a big tv like their dad does.
We have a lot of spiders here.
I don't let them play on my laptop.
I yell when I scold them.

I had written down her list and divided the complaints into two columns House and Mommy. Then we sat down and very calmly addressed them together. I explained why certain things were unlikely to change, and which ones we could both work on together to change.

1. The bunk bed situation is not likely to change since I really do not have the spare cash to buy her a new bedroom set. Of course, if I bought her a new bedroom set, wouldn't I then be obligated to buy her sister one too?

2. Yesterday when I switched over to the warm flannel sheets, I flipped the mattress over and covered it with a thick mattress pad. When she tried it out at bedtime last night, she said it was wonderful. There. Problem solved.

3. Ok, we have a cat, a cat named Cheetah. Cheetah still has all of his claws, because I didn't have the heart to de-claw him. As a result, some of the furniture has taken quite a beating from him, specifically the sides of the couch.

Now, eventually, it would be nice to have nice stuff, but what parent of small children reasonably expects her house to look like an interior designer's showcase? Kids wreck things, intentionally and unintentionally. I've been waiting to replace the couch, (and the area rug, and the recliner, and the coffee table...) after the cat has "moved on to a better place." What's the point of getting a brand-new couch only to have the cat treat it like a brand-new scratching post? Also, with money the way it is, I can not afford a new couch right now.

4. Apparently their dad just bought a huge HD television, while mine is just a measly 27 incher or something. It works just fine, so I don't need a new one. I really resent the idea that there needs to be some game of "Who's Got All the Cool Stuff" between the parents, because really I am losing there. They have an XBox, a playstation and satellite radio at Daddy's house. When they go to the girlfriend's house, she has full cable, a Wii, and two kids there.

I have tried to play on my strengths and give the girls other things to do. We have books, a lot of books - an obscene amount of books, actually. Plus I have a fully-stocked art studio, including plenty of kid-friendly art supplies. The girls frequently ask me to break out the clay or the paints or the poster board and glue and have a big Mommy-Daughters Art Project Day, and I am always willing to oblige.

5. Spiders. *sigh* These kids and spiders, I tell you. I don't have some $800/year to pay exterminators to treat the house for spiders like my sister does. So for now, we ignore them or kill them and remember that spiders kill all the other bugs out in the world.

6. My laptop is almost sacrosanct to me, so her complaint is true. I have a lot of important stuff on here (like the novels I am slogging through, not to mention all of my finances) and I don't want anything happening to it, sorry. They use the desktop computer upstairs, though I guess we need to create a better-defined schedule for sharing the computer up there so that they both get equal time.

7. I do yell sometimes, but I try not to blow my top. I count to 10 before yelling, sometimes counting to 10 in as many languages as I can when I am really mad, but for Pete's sake, sometimes I get angry and I yell. But, when I yell, I don't scream, I don't get abusive with the language or the body language.

Honestly, am I the only parent who ever blows her top and raises her voice? I sure as fuck recall my parents, both of them, yelling when they got angry with us.

My calm thoughts:

I know that the kid is only 7. I also know that kids can read a situation and see their parents' fears and guilt, especially in a divorce situation. I know that sometimes children will manipulate these feelings to get what they want.

I have encouraged the girls to share their feelings with me openly and I do not punish them for their feelings. I want them to come to me whenever they need to and know that I am not going to come down on them for their feelings. The problem is that her use of the word "hate" is unacceptable. I have to find some way of dealing with this without having her think that I am punishing her for the substance of her thoughts, but she needs to learn that expressing feelings in a hateful way is 100% unacceptable.

Ok, so that's the rational part of this argument, time for the melty part:

I am crushed that she would say something like this to me.

Throughout this heart-wrenching situation, I have clung desperately to the knowledge that at least my babies love me. Sure, they may not appreciate all that I do, because kids rarely do, but they love me, even though their father did not love me anymore.

Yet again, I am being punished. I did not ask for this divorce, I did not ask for this disruption to the family. No, but I am the one to bear the brunt of the meltdowns and the outbursts. I've had both kids beg me through tears, "Take it back, Mommy! Tell Daddy you're sorry! Make him come home!" No, I did not want this divorce but I still have to deal with it.

They see that one day Daddy lived here, and then the next day he moved out. They see that Daddy has new furniture and expensive toys and Mommy still has the same old crappy shit that she always had. Some days it feels as though they regard Mommy nights as a punishment.

Despite all that, until the other night, I rested safe in the assumption that I was Mommy, and children love their Mommies. When they are sick, they want me to take care of them, fetch them ginger ale and saltines and make my homemade Sickie Soup, which is just the standard chicken noodle soup made with lots of love... and homemade stock. When Lucy wakes from a nightmare in the middle of the night, she comes and crawls into bed with me and burrows into my side, knowing that she is safe there.

Never did I expect to hear the words "I hate you, Mommy, I don't want to live with you. I want to live with Daddy" from the mouth of my baby. The rational part of my brain can explain it all reasonably well. I understand that it's enmeshed with the allure of "things" and prompted by her anger at the family's being ripped apart. It makes sense.

Nevertheless, I am reeling and hurt.

It Never Gets Easier

2010-06-18T04:51:00.007-05:00

Today should be my son's 9th birthday.

Instead of a party with cake, candles and joyous children, I have a trip to the cemetery to plan.

I should be used to it by now, after all, I know the drill, but it really never gets any easier. I am stuck living my life counting the days all through the year as each year passes; still, there is this hole inside me which has not healed, which almost seems to refuse to heal. I worry that if I let go of his memory, then it will be as if he was never important, that he did not matter. As it is, he is merely a shadow of a thought to most people who have heard of him, and as each year passes, that shadow fades.

To me, he was more than a nebulous idea. He was my son, and he did matter. This family mattered to me; in fact, I still cling to that idealized image of that family, which now drifts about me in shreds and tatters.

I can not let go of any of it, the pain of his death, the anger over my husband leaving me, the unjustness of it all. Because I can not let go, I have not been able to move on.

Today, I don't give a shit whether I am moving on or not. Today, I simply replay the events of Monday, June 18, 2001 in my head again and again. I have as much chance of stopping that as I would have of halting an aneurysm mid-burst.

Today I remember, and regret.

Doctor's Note Required

2010-06-14T08:28:00.007-05:00

So, last Friday I took my daughter to the orthopedic surgeon for her follow-up appointment. To my surprise, what had been on her leg was a splint. A heavy, 5-pound splint made of layers of cotton batting and plaster, snugged up tightly with a compression bandage, but still, a splint. The nurse took it off, wheeled my daughter in for some new x-rays and removed the stitches.

Then we waited.

The surgeon came in with the good news: her leg is healing beautifully, and had the nurse come in and apply a bright-green (Natalie's favorite color) cast. The instructions were explicit: for the next two weeks, keep her weight off that leg, stay on crutches, and under no circumstances was she to get it wet. They were so adamant about this point that I was concerned more about how to keep her leg dry for the next four weeks than ask about a written note.

She'd been out of school for 2 and a half weeks, with the school's full knowledge of the circumstances - broken leg, cast, crutches, it just never occurred to me to ask for a note.

Then Monday morning arrived. Natalie was excited about getting back to school and seeing her friends. She had hobbled successfully up the stairs to the main office where the principal told my dumbfounded ex and daughter that she can not come to school on crutches without a doctor's note saying that she needs them.

What the hell? I'd have thought that the cast would have made the idea of crutches a foregone conclusion. How aggravating. Also, they knew I'd need a note for the past 2 1/2 weeks, but no one ever thought to tell me that we would need a note for this? For.... permission to use crutches?!

For God's sake, the kid broke her leg, which is in a freaking CAST. Did they expect the broken leg fairies to bear her aloft and float her through the school?

Also, to add insult to injury (so to speak), the school is in no way easily handicap-accessible. In order to avoid the flights of stairs to get in and out of the school, she will have to go all the way around to the back of the school to go in through another door.

How convenient.

I am seriously aggravated today.

Broken

2010-06-10T07:50:00.003-05:00

I can blame my recent lapse in blogging on one word: Broken.

Yes. That is what it appears to be - a broken leg set with a shiny-new pin.

My older daughter snapped her ankle a few weeks ago during a soccer scrimmage while performing a slide-tackle. Unfortunately, her heel caught on the uneven ground of the playing field and she snapped the long bones of her leg right at the growth plate.

Ouch, I mean really... OUCH!

My poor baby. She saw an orthopedic surgeon the next day who took one look at the x-rays and then came in to the exam room and said, "I am going to operate on her tomorrow at noon." So there you have it, my baby's first surgery at age 11.

She's a real trooper and instead of taking it easy and keeping her foot elevated most of the time, per the doctor's orders, she tends to cruise around on her crutches, trying to do things for herself. She is out for 2 weeks of school - again, doctor's orders - and boredom has been the real obstacle, not pain.

We did have a moment of real despair when she realized that this will affect her summertime fun plans a bit, but after some finagling of the schedule, she is still set to go to 2 sleep-away camps and get in plenty of time in the pool at her swimming lessons.

*huzzah*

And there was much rejoicing.

Mantra for a Half-day of School

2010-06-09T08:37:00.006-05:00

"I will not kill and eat my young, I will not kill and eat my young..."

Listening to the dulcet tones of my two daughters bickering, nay, screaming at one another, I screwed my eyes tightly shut and silently intoned this mantra, desperately praying for a sense of zen-like calm to settle over me on this half-day in early June.

Yes. School. In June. I know that many kids across the nation have already been loosed from the prison of the public education system, bursting through the double doors, unleashed onto their parents, but we here in central New York still have 2 weeks to go until that happy day arrives.

Yesterday, our elementary schools let the kids go early so that the teaching teams could meet and work on grade assignments for next year, but what that meant for me was my two girls in close proximity, poking each other and pestering me. When we're all seated on the couch, I usually have to shift over to the middle, because it is a tragedy if one of the girls has to... *gasp* sit next to her sister instead of me! Then once we've moved around and divided the cushions and pillows into equal shares, why then, it's time for the physical stake-claiming of Mommy.

They will hug me, squeeze me, climb on me, play with my hair, tickle my feet, and all I am trying to do is read my book, do a crossword puzzle or finish a blog entry. Don't get me wrong, I am still thrilled that they are willing to engage in such overt displays of affection with their mom, but oh my GOD, I am not thrilled at being basically an amusement park ride.

Have you ever seen those nature shows of mommy lions with their cubs? I can really relate to that mommy lion somewhere on the African savannah, TRYING to snooze in the shade of a majestic acacia tree; TRYING to snooze, but she can not, because her numerous cubs are jumping all over her tail, biting her ears, or pouncing on her head in typical cub-like fashion. But them at last, she reaches out and, with a gigantic paw, cuffs them upside the head with a warning growl that signals, "Lion cubs: The other white meat."

Here:

See what I mean? I am her.

We made it through the day yesterday... just barely. Their dad swooped in just in time to take them to soccer practice. Lucky for them.

It seems that the only time my girls can agree with one another is when they gang up on me. That is likely to become less endearing once they become teenagers.

Coupons, Worth it or Not?

2010-05-17T09:00:00.005-05:00

Splashed across the header of the front page of yesterday’s newspaper in colorful text, I read “Save $210.78 with today’s coupons.” I knew that tucked deep inside the stack of glossy store flyers, which I hardly ever read, there lay page after page of coupons for brand-name items. They sit there, taunting me, the text screams from the front page, “Save, save, SAVE!”

Then, as added pressure to guilt us into using coupons, we have the self-styled Coupon Queen. Oh yes, you know who I mean. We've all seen her on television. Whenever the economy gets rough and food companies indulge in that ever-popular game of price-gouging, the news networks create the coupon challenge segment. Some reporter tags along at the grocery store with The Coupon Queen, holding an identical shopping list, and on your mark, get set, GO! They speed through the store and shop.

Afterward, at the check-out lane, when all the tallies are in, we “Oooh” and “Ahhh” at how the hapless reporter spent close to $200 on a cart full of groceries while the Coupon Queen spent $0.49 for the exact same name-brand items. “That’s right!” the reporter exclaims, “Only forty-nine cents!” With a smug smile on her face, the Coupon Queen gloats over her economically-purchased bounty packed nicely in environmentally-friendly, reusable shopping bags as I sit, gnashing my teeth, overcome by an urge to take that family-sized tube of Ben-Gay and shove it down her throat.

My question: In the end when we consider all of the costs, do we really save money by obsessively using these coupons?

When I see what they bought with that $200 or $0.49, respectively, I feel obliged to point out that you are not likely to find a single one of those items in my grocery cart. They are all name-brand, pre-packaged products, with rarely a piece of real, unadulterated food in the pile. I see absolutely no fresh produce, no bulk grains, no economical store brands.

What is the point of saving $1.00 on two boxes of Toaster Strudels (regularly $2.29) if I wouldn’t normally buy crap like that for my family? Are the bragging rights on saving money really worth the cost of feeding my kids processed food with no redeemable nutritional quality to it? The way I see it, if I used that coupon for $1.00 off 2 Toaster Strudels, I have actually wasted money. That $3.58 I spent “saving money” on Toaster Strudels could have bought a few apples, a much better food choice. Unfortunately, I can not easily get the same number of servings of a healthy alternative for the amount of money spent on crap food, and that is criminal.

When the newspapers start handing out coupons for $10.00 towards the fresh produce, then we can talk. Until then, I plan on sticking with my store-brand items and planning menus around weekly store specials to save costs.

Parenting Fail (and not my own)

2010-05-12T10:17:00.007-05:00

While reading through the Huffington Post this morning, I found a video clip currently on its way to viralness. Normally a video clip showing some oversexed dancers gyrating to Beyonce or Lady Gaga wouldn't raise my eyebrows -much - but this one had me scraping my jaw up off the floor.

A cadre of 7 year-olds dressed up as Dollar Store Hookers managed to bump and grind, twirl and high-kick their way across the stage to "Single Ladies."

My immediate reaction was that I wanted to smack the shit out of the mothers who thought that this was a good idea. Dudes, I've have been pissed off if I were the mother of a 14 year-old daughter doing that dance, but for fuck's sake, 7 year-old girls? I'm equally pissed off at the commentary at Huffington Post which reads:

"Age appropriate or not, there is denying it's one heck of a performance." -Huffington Post

I ask you, if they had taken turns dancing around a pole or dancing on a 44 year-old man's lap, would someone quip, "Well, it may not be age-appropriate, but my goodness look at the technique!"

Wrong.

As an aspiring artist, I am all for the freedom of expression, but I draw the line at the sexualization of children. Make no mistake, that routine turned some adorable 7 year-old girls into caricatures of child prostitutes.

Those mothers ought to be rightly ashamed of themselves. Let's start tying in girls' self-esteem with a false portrayal of sexuality at an earlier age!

Nothing is Sacred; Nothing is Private

2010-01-07T02:58:00.003-05:00

Alone time

2009-12-27T05:56:00.014-05:00

Since becoming a Mommy, I've suffered through countless moments bemoaning my lack of alone time. As much as I adore my daughters and love the fact that they both still want to spend time with me, whether it's snuggling on the couch, talking about their day, cooking together or working on art joint projects, there is such as thing as too much togetherness.

Lucy, in particular, enjoys just busting in on me in the bathroom, a big smirk on her face, "Watcha doin', Mommy?" or, when I'm taking a shower and I ask her why she had to stand there and watch me, she says with a woeful look on her face, "I just don't want to be away from you, Mommy."

My mom got a taste of Lucy's propensity for shadowing people over Thanksgiving. The kid stuck to her like a burr, chattering the whole time:

"Can I make the salad, Grammy? I'm good with the salad spinner!"
"I can set the table, too. Is it time to set the table?"
"Oh! Look there are the kitties! Wow, they make a mess with their food."
"Y'know what, Grammy, this is a nice house! Say, can I have a cookie?"

and so on.

Once Lucy finally went to sleep - and stopped talking - my parents were cracking up over Lucy's non-stop chatter. Her older sister, while lively, was never the motor mouth that her younger sister can be. Natalie's impishness extended to getting into things... then running away at top speed, giggling.

My Natalie is more self-sufficient and able to entertain herself, but she still comes around for some special sister-free Mommy-Daughter time, especially on nights when they sleep here. After her sister has gone to bed, Natalie likes to come downstairs and snuggle with me on the couch and "just talk about stuff," as she puts it. She enjoys hearing my recollections of when she was a baby, from what it was like when I was pregnant, to the delivery and her early years.

If she has questions or troubles, it's on these occasions that they crop up. I'm very pleased that she feels as though she can talk to me about anything; I hope that continues as she gets older.

However, when I am trying to get things done around here, the kids vie for my attention. If I'm up to my elbows in food while preparing a big holiday dinner or trying to de-clutter the house in advance of a birthday bash, they are- more often than not - underfoot, asking me to help them find a toy, come watch a movie with them, or make them something to eat.

Some days I feel as though I am being pecked to death with their incessant little requests, and I'll wail at them in mock-frustration, "Why can't you rotten babies just leave me alone for 5 minutes?!"

They giggle and pounce on me again.

After a frustrating day, I can be relieved to see them go off with their dad. Then I can have a quiet meal and watch a movie or a tv show in peace. If it's been a really bad day of them bickering with each other and driving me to exhaustion, I'll just go to bed early, even if it's before 6 pm.

You know what? Even on the worst days, I miss them before they even get to their dad's house. That's been the worst part of this separation: having the house empty of my kids for periods of time.

Right now, the house is quiet and still, not just because it's early on a Sunday. I had the girls on Christmas morning, but won't see them again until New Year's Eve because they're off with their dad while he's on his winter vacation. They are thrilled about staying up late on New Year's Eve, drinking sparkling grape juice out of champagne glasses and watching the ball drop at midnight.

I'm looking forward to all three of us snuggled up together under a blanket on the couch in our new flannel pajamas and fun fuzzy socks.

I have alone time in abundance now, but don't know what to do with myself. I ought to do something productive and creative with this free time, such as write or paint, but I will probably hold an impromptu marathon of "Scrubs," "Dexter," or "Rescue Me" instead, anything to help distract me from how much I miss my girls.

There is such a thing as too much alone time.

Expanding Kids' Palates

2009-11-21T18:14:00.005-05:00

I'm making good progress in getting the kids to try out new foods, and finally able to cook more varied dinners that the three of us will actually share. I have to say, watching Hell's Kitchen ever week has helped piqued the kids' interest quite a bit.

Joy of joys, they have come to like seafood! Specifically baked haddock with a crumb topping.

I served it with Rainbow Fries (roasted root vegetables cut into fat matchsticks - 2 beets, 1 parsnip and a sweet potato sprinkled with olive oil and Old Bay) accompanied by a dipping sauce (mayo, whole grain mustard and a few splashes of Frank's RedHot Pepper Sauce), kale ribbons sauteed in olive oil and garlic, and a rice and quinoa pilaf which the girls absolutely inhaled.

My 10 year-old, who does not usually like rice, said as she dished out her 4th serving, "This is damn-good rice, Mommy."

So there ya go.

To read more, check out the recipe in my new food blog >>> Crisis Brownies and other comfort foods

Back from the Hinterlands of Apathy

2009-10-29T14:09:00.015-05:00

Hey all, (all two of you that even read this)

I know. I've been a bad blogger. I wish I could say that I was away being fabulous and busy and successful and could spare not even 5 minutes to post updates.

Alas, it was not so.

To show you what I mean, here is the list of activities since last June:

1. End of June: Once the kids finished school - which was nearly July for Christ's sake - we had about a week or so of do-nothing time before summertime activities were due to start. I could have gone to Connecticut to visit the folks (and probably really should have, since they haven't see the girls since June 2008), but opted not to, instead telling myself the fib that the girls and I could use that time to de-clutter and organize.

Yeah, sure.

It started out well enough with a trip to the library. Lucy got to break in her brand-spanking new card, and we each got three books. The girls spent hardly any time reading their books, as it turned out, choosing instead to play Pokemon on their Nintendo/Gameboys. *grumble*

The house remained cluttered and disorganized, though I read all three of my books.

2. July: Natalie went to sleepaway camp for a week; her third year in a row. I remember picking her up the very first year and listening to her sob on the way home, certain that she'd just experienced the high point of her life and that she would never, ever make better friends or have a better time... EVER again!

Ah yes, I remember that heartbreak from my time at summer camp. *sigh*

Anyway, off she went, and with Big Sister gone that week, I promised Lucy that she and I would do lots of fun Mommy-Lucy stuff. I guess we must have, but for the life of me, aside from a trip to Friendly's, I can't recall what we did. I do know that de-cluttering wasn't part of it.

When Natalie came home, the girls started two weeks of musical theater. They did Seussical, Jr. Lucy was in dancing-heaven and Natalie had scored one of the lead roles - Horton the Elephant. The wretched child would not let me listen to her practice though. She told me that she wanted to surprise me.

She did. The kid was phenomenal. I cried.

Well, I always cry during Horton's songs. "Alone in the Universe" makes me weep unapologetically.

Unfortunately, I don't have a recording of her doing it. *dope slap* Here's someone else singing the song:

Let me get a tissue and I'll get back to you. *sniff*

OK, all better.

3. August: The girls had the option of doing another session of the theater, but they both decided that they would rather take swimming lessons with their cousin.

Mad success! Natalie took to it like a fish; a spunky, curly-haired fish who got in trouble from time to time for not listening to her instructor, but in her few weeks there she advanced a whole level to intermediate.

As if that weren't enough fun, a few afternoons a week we'd go to my sister's and hang out in the air-conditioned, cable-tv-equipped splendor of her house. I watched Project Runway, Top Chef, and numerous shows on BBC America and lolled about like a slug.

It was awesome, although it did nothing to aid me in my goal of getting my house de-cluttered.

Also, somewhere in between the musical theater, the swimming and the Top Chef marathons, I became an un-Vegan again.

I know, I feel like a terrible person. I describe myself as a sort of self-loathing omnivore as I rush madly into the arms of my lovers, cheese and sausage, once again.

I am such a failure. A meat-eating, wretched failure. But good lord, did I create a delicious split pea and andouille soup! To die for. Especially the pigs that gave up their lives to become andouille. :/

4. September: School started, I persevered but slowly on the children's book that I keep telling people that I am writing and illustrating.

*sigh* That could be a blog entry by itself...

House, somewhat de-cluttered. The key: no kids hanging around to adjudicate on everything that goes into a trash bag.

5. October: Now I'm asking myself, "Where the HELL did October go?"

No, really!

Where did it go? It's November this weekend, I'll be starting NaNoWriMo and I still haven't done my Christmas shopping! For that matter, Hallowe'en is in two days and I have neither bought any bags of candy nor carved a single pumpkin yet.

However, I did recycle and toss out a buttload of clutter this week.

Also, I am teaching myself German again. Sprechen wir Deutsch!

So there you have it: I am not a total slacker. Just 98.5% of one, with the holidays a-looming.

Exactly the Same & The Snow Leopard Wars

2009-06-18T19:14:00.001-05:00

I have commented several times how I'm bewildered by the fact that two siblings who aren't necessarily close in age can still manage to fight over possessions. It's gotten to the point where I quite often buy them identical toys so that I won't get complaints like, "She got a webkinz kitty and I only got a webkinz doggie! *long indrawn gasp* You love her more than meeeeee!"

Yeah, sure kid. I love her more than you. *eye roll*

So unless they are with me when we pick things out or I'm buying something from a list of things which they each specifically asked for, I make a habit of buying two identical objects so that there can be no complaints.

Recently though, I have become sick of it and thought that perhaps by doing so, I have inadvertently been creating future trouble. Half of the stuff that they get ends up broken or forgotten. That must-have item of today will end up with the dust bunnies under their beds tomorrow, trust me. Besides, by buying two things, exactly the same, I am setting them up to believe that things will be easy; that they will always be treated equally with everyone else in the world, and we all know that's not the case.

Maybe I'm just cranky from having to break up yet another disagreement between them, but I am ready to open up the School of Reality for them. The first rule is "You can't always get what you want and no amount of whining is going to change that."

"Gee, your sister got the webkinz kitty and you only got the stinky webkinz doggie? Well, that kid over there has neither. I'm sure he'd love the stupid ole webkinz doggie. You want to give it to him? No? Ok then."

Part of the trouble with Kid#2 is that we all have indulged her to a degree. Another part of it is her natural cuteness. She has this ability to work her charms on anyone around her. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Snow Leopard Wars.

The Snow Leopard Wars

Several years ago, for Christmas, Natalie got a big stuffed Snow Leopard from my dad. MY first reaction was, "Oh no." Now my dad had always gotten me and my sister plush toys as gifts when he'd go out of town on business trips, often leaving them on our beds when we were asleep so that they were the first thing we'd see when we woke up. To say that we had quite a large collection of stuffed animals is putting it mildly.

I actually have no problem with the girls getting stuffed animals, the issue that Christmas was, this was the very last toy from the Christmas pile, and it was a big one; moreover, there was no corresponding toy for Lucy. My dad, bless him, had thought that Lucy was too little to notice this discrepancy, and sure, she probably was. She couldn't yet count, but as soon as she saw that enormous, soft stuffed snow leopard, her eyes boggled. She dropped the toy she had been playing with and immediately toddled over to her big sister and the snow leopard. Ruefully, my dad said, "Oh shit," as he realized that not only had Lucy noticed the toy, but she made it very clear that she wanted it!

In the beginning, she was amenable to petting it a bit and then playing with one of her toys. That did not last long. Eventually, she'd find a way to play with it whenever her sister wasn't. When Natalie went off to school, Lucy would grab that toy and roll around on the floor with it; she'd gather up a bunch of her smaller stuffed animals and convene some sort of tribal council with the snow leopard as deity or chief; often, she'd sit on its back as if she were riding it; other times, she fall asleep on top of it and take a well-needed nap.

Looking back, I know that we should have nipped this in the bud. It is not right at all to condone one sibling's usurpation of another one's toys, and she'd already laid claim to a stuffed cheetah which was originally Natalie's. I have no defense other than to say that she was the child after a lost son, in some ways a miracle baby, if only because the miracle proved that after a death, life can still emerge. Maybe I fell prey to her charming ways. Whatever the cause, we were on the verge of raising a monster child.

The situation came to a head when Lucy decided that she wanted to have the snow leopard snuggled with her in bed at night. As you can imagine, Natalie protested this. She'd been very nice about sharing her toy with her little sister up until that point, and now she wanted more?! We decided upon a compromise where they would take turns: one night Natalie would have the snow leopard, the next night, Lucy would. They agreed, but only on the surface. In reality, on the nights Lucy had the snow leopard, Natalie would be a little pouty. When Natalie had the snow leopard, Lucy seemed willing enough. She'd go to bed with no fuss, and at first we breathed a sigh of relief. but then, when their dad and I were sitting downstairs on the couch, we heard this:

Thump. Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud. *pause* Squeeeeeeeak. *pause* Thud-thud-thud. Squeeeeeeeeeeak. *pause* Thud-thud-thud.Thud-thud-thud.

Sitting below, we could follow the little thuds and squeaks from Lucy's room to her sister's. Their dad went upstairs to deal with this and when he came down, he was laughing, saying,

"I caught her just as she was coming out of Natalie's room. She had the snow leopard slung over her shoulder like she was carrying a wounded buddy out of combat!"

It really was a funny image. The snow leopard was easily the same size as her, maybe even a little bit bigger.

It took some nights of this repeated effort - she's nothing if not persistent - finally we lay down an ultimatum: the snow leopard or the cheetah. See, this fascination with the snow leopard was just a flirtation. Lucy's real love was for the stuffed cheetah she had somehow appropriated from her sister. We explained this to her, telling her that by right, both the cheetah and the snow leopard were Natalie's, and so far Natalie had been ok (kind of) with giving up the cheetah, but she wasn't remotely ok with sharing the snow leopard.

So we put it to her: if you want to keep the cheetah, no more back and forth with the snow leopard.

Her answer was decisive. She hugged the cheetah close to her, her big eyes filled with tears and she said, "Cheeeeeetahhhhhh!"

Crisis averted.

The new crisis is wondering if I am raising kids with certain unreasonably high expectations, but I suppose all parents wonder about this, right?

Why June 18th Breaks My Heart

2009-06-18T07:29:00.004-05:00

I wrote this in June, 2001.

Nathan, My Stillborn Son

On Monday, June 18, I woke up with cramping in my lower abdomen. I got up in a fog (as usual) and went off to the bathroom (as usual). I was 37 weeks along, so I was antsy about the waiting. This was my second pregnancy, though, so I felt that I had a clue about what to expect.

Well, after about fifteen minutes had passed, I realized that I'd had this cramping three times. I thought to myself, "Wow, that kind of feels like contractions." They were mild, however, and I had no back pain with them so I wasn't too worried, and I told my husband to go off to work as usual. As time passed, they immediately started to come stronger , more painfully, and started out in my lower back and spread to my abdomen. Finally, at about 7, I called the OB on-call and he said that it sounded as though I were in the beginning of labor, and to come on in to the hospital.

I called my husband at work and told him and then realized that I was starting to bleed a little. I knew that this was normal with rapid effacement and dilation, and since I had been fully closed up and not effaced at all just days earlier at my internal, I thought, "Wow! This is happening fast."

I got my daughter Natalie and went downstairs and woke up my sister-in-law, Mary (Thank God she was there, as you'll see) and told her that she needed to drive me to the hospital since I was in labor. I called a neighbor to watch Natalie and we took off. The pain got worse and worse in my back. "Oh great," I thought, "Back labor." and when we were about 7 minutes out from the hospital, I felt a warm gush as my waters broke. I started stuffing paper napkins down my shorts to keep from getting her seats all gross, when I saw that the fluid was very bloody. She floored it and I waddled into the hospital and they whisked me up to the Family Birth Center.

I got there and they saw the blood and sort of said, "Wow, you must be really dilating fast." They checked me and I was at 5 cm. Then they hooked me up to a fetal monitor and found a strong heartbeat of 120. It wasn't until they put the pulse monitor on my finger that they saw that they were picking up my heartbeat on the fetal monitor. Then, I had two OB nurses searching for my son's heart beat as we waited for my OB to arrive. She got there not long afterward (at the time it felt as though hours had passed, I was in so much pain and now was worried for my son). She checked me and attached an internal monitor, and broke my waters. What came out was a rush of bright red blood mixed with the fluid. She saw the fetal heart rate was all over the place, and I saw from the look on her face that it was bad. She ran (I'm not kidding) out of the room and I heard the words "abruption" and "emergency c-section" and I knew in my heart that my son was dead.

They wheeled me into the OR. As luck would have it, she had an entire OR staff prepared in one room to do a scheduled hysterectomy. She ran in and told them to move their asses to the next room to do an emergency section for a placental abruption. They moved fast. By now, on the operating table, I was shaking, freezing cold, seeing flashing spots and fiery arcs in the periphery of my vision, and lightheaded. As the anesthesiologist put the mask on my face to give me oxygen, my throat closed up so that I felt as if I couldn't breathe. I got more and more panicky, certain that if I let them put me out that I would die. I remember starting to shake and seize and then nothing.

My next memories are spotty. I'm being wheeled out, screaming and crying, asking to see my baby though he was lying right there on my chest. I was asking if he was ok, though I knew he was gone. Then nothing. Next, I'm in a recovery room with my husband by my side, I'm on morphine asking him if the baby was ok, and he tells me that he wasn't ok, that he was stillborn. Tears, more tears and sobbing and pain, lots of physical pain. My OB came in, crying, telling me that there was nothing that could have been done. She explained that I'd had a complete placental abruption. I had almost bled to death, and it was fortunate that I hadn't died as well. She told me that placental abruption is the number one obstetric cause of maternal deaths in labor. It came as a double shock because I was not at high risk. I'd had the perfect, beautiful pregnancy, just like my first. Not even morning sickness. I was strong and healthy, and happy.

My husband brought my tiny boy in for me to see, touch, cuddle and kiss. He was mottled purple, red and blue, but beautiful, perfect and tiny. If he'd lived there would have been nothing wrong with him. I held him a couple times, but it was too much for me to cope with, so they sent him back to the nursery, but he was there when I wanted him.

Because time was of the essence, she'd had to cut me from my navel down to the pubic bone to get in quickly to try to save the baby and me. No cute little bikini cut for me. I looked like one of Dr. Frankenstein's rejects. Still there was nothing that could have been done to save my son. She said that the placenta could have pulled away from the lining when I was in the car 7 minutes away, and by the time I got there he might already have been gone. So many people came in to tell me how lucky I was to be alive and still have my uterus (does anyone really think that I will ever want to go through labor again?). I had the entire OB nursing staff, no fewer than four anesthesiologists, two OBs and our pediatrician/ neonatologist (who worked on our son for a long time to get him to breathe to no avail) all tell me that there was nothing that could have been done, and NO WAY I could have known.

I told myself again and again that if I had only gone in earlier instead of trying to "suck it up" and deal with the pain, that someone would have seen something and our son would be here with me right now, breastfeeding. I would be sleep-deprived and hormonal and cranky, but blissfully happy to hold my little son. Instead, I am in physical pain, and emotional agony. I feel as though I am ready to fall into an abyss on some days and on others, it's as if it hadn't happened. I half expect to look down and see my beautiful, big, pregnant tummy, with my little boy kicking and punching away inside.

My recovery in the hospital was excruciating. I needed a blood transfusion, and there were a few occasions where staff came in and asked me about my baby, not knowing that he had died. I cried on just about everyone who worked there, and cried myself to sleep clutching the blue hand-knitted blanket he had been wrapped in.

Thursday I was released, and in a drugged stupor stumbled around my house as my friends and family tried to help. Friday morning was the funeral mass. Next to the moment of actually knowing that he had died, it was the most excruciating experience of my life. My husband & I cried the whole time. The priest, a man in his 50's or 60's actually started to cry during his service, and we heard constant sniffing and sobs from the congregants. My dad sat next to me and held my hand the entire time, and my husband & I clutched each other in shock and disbelief. My husband & I processed out to the hearse, I carrying the casket spray of white and purple flowers with a ribbon "To our beloved son Nathan, Love Mommy and Daddy" as he cradled the tiny white casket in his arms. No one should ever have to place a tiny casket bearing the body of their baby into a hearse. It is just so wrong.

I could go on and on about what happened next at the reception, and how I was brought to the ER that night for an anxiety attack (or mental breakdown??) and how awful it is, and how if I hear one more person say, "It's part of God's plan," I'll scream. "Yeah, well I had a plan too, and in MY plan, I got to keep my son."

Everyone says that the road to healing from a loss like this can take as long as two years. It hasn't even been two weeks. How can I live this hell, or some version of it for two years?

My traumatic experience goes on and on. I wish that mine was a birth experience which, though painful and unfortunate, ended happily with a living baby instead of a funeral and Xanax.

In the weeks afterward, I regretted only holding him on two occasions, but I realize now that even if I had held him every minute that I was in the hospital, it would not have been enough. What are the minutes of four lousy, pain-filled days compared to a lifetime that was never meant to be? I have only the memories of holding him. Although he was full-term and weighed 6 pounds, 7 ounces, it was like holding a dried husk of wheat, he was so light. I felt as though I had to hold him tightly so that a breeze could not take him away from me. We never got to see his eyes or hear his voice or even see a flicker of movement cross his face, just shadows and our tears spilling out. Also, we have the fantasies of what might have been: how Natalie would turn out to be a bossy big sister and how he would retaliate by being a pesky little brother. Family trips in the car would have been filled with commands like: "Don't touch your sister!" or "Stop looking at your brother!" Most of all, our house would have been filled with even more love and laughter than we already have. These fantasies, 7 pictures, a green knit hat, blue knitted baby afghan, and some inked footprints are among the meager possessions we have to remember him by. I look at his photos every single day, just to make sure that I don't forget his little face, which already seems like that of a stranger, yet so familiar to me.

This process of grieving is a rough road, parts of which you can only travel alone. Slowly, they tell us, it will get better, and you will see longer stretches of good moments among the bad ones, then the moments will turn into days, then weeks and on to months. Nevertheless, you never forget, but merely try to find some peace.

June, 2001

A Trip to the Movie Theater

2009-05-31T17:53:00.003-05:00

I recently took the kids to see Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.

I hadn't seen the first one before seeing the sequel, though I knew the general concept behind it. The girls were more than happy to fill me in on everything, since they had seen the first movie many, many times.

I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised.

One thing occurred to me when we were watching the previews. We noticed that Will Ferrell has a family-friendly movie out soon: Land of the Lost. My munchkins are already begging me to promise to take them when it comes out.

Now my first response to the thought of taking them to see a Will Ferrell movie would be: "No fucking way!" Ron Burgundy? Hello?!

But on second glance, it appears that, like Ben Stiller, Will is making the move from R-rated hysterically funny/smutty flicks to the even more lucrative kid-centered PG/PG-13 movies. A few years ago, I'd never have guessed that the same guy who'd gotten his privates caught in a zipper (There's Something About Mary) or who'd pumped up his privates (Dodgeball) would ever be in a movie I'd let my kids see.

Now I think I'm looking forward to Land of the Lost as much as the girls are, but my most-anticipated movie of the summer is Julia & Julia based on The Julie/Julia Project, which stars Amy Adams, lately of Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.

I like how things can come full-circle.

Good Food for Healthy Kids

2009-05-22T06:36:00.008-05:00

I've mentioned in previous posts how concerned I am with nutrition, both the kids' and mine. I've had a great week so far since I decided to switch to a vegan diet. I've given some thought to how I want to deal with my kids' nutrition since I've made a fairly radical change. I know that taking a dictatorial stance with the kids won't work, especially since this is a two-house household; I'm afraid that if they don't like the vegetarian food at Mommy's house, they'll go overboard with meat, dairy or other forbidden indulgences elsewhere. Even adults don't make good food choices when they're ravenous, you can hardly expect better from kids! I want to do right by my kids because the eating habits we have when we are kids set the stage for the rest of our lives.

Believe me, I am no food-saint. There have been plenty of times when I didn't feel like cooking anything elaborate and just whipped out a box of mac and cheese and threw some frozen green vegetables in it, added a cup of fruit salad as a side and called it a meal. I have also fallen prey to the Perdue dinosaur nuggets as a main course. No more. The best I can do is give them the most wholesome food that I can.

The other day Kid#2 came home from school early because her stomach was hurting. She told me that she didn't feel nauseous, but the nurse thought it best to send her home anyway. Now, this kid is more of a puker than her sister. She's a huge milk drinker and tends to be more of a grazer, eating small meals, but quite often. I decided to reduce the amount of milk she drinks to see if her stomach issues would improve. She really does not like water, and I don't want to give her a ton of juice, which is basically sugar. I thought about having her try my soy milk.

As with many things when attempting to introduce new things to kids, a lot of it is in the presentation. I asked her if she wanted to try my "vanilla milk."

"It tastes sort of like a milkshake," I told her, offering her a sip. She screwed up her face and shrunk away until finally, she sniffed. Then again. Next, a tentative sip. Her eyes flew open and she gulped it down.

"Mommy this. Is. SO. De-LI-cious!"

Score one for mom. Now both girls are glugging down Silk Very Vanilla soy milk.

Not to be outdone by her younger sister, Kid#1 has decided to give new things a try. The other day she asked me about my vegetarian diet, why I'm doing it and what I get to eat, especially since I don't eat cheese anymore (that was damned-near unfathomable to her). I mentioned that I'd had an awesome carrot salad for lunch. She perked up her ears at that and asked me what was in it. After I'd rattled off the ingredients, she thought for a second and said, "I think I want to try that. Can you make it for me?"

Color me shocked, but I'm not going to waste time over-analyzing it when this opportunity for my kid to eat better has presented itself.

Here is the kid-approved recipe. Enjoy!

Sweet and Spicy Carrot salad

Ingredients:

2 teaspoons ground flax seeds*
2 tablespoons hot water*
juice of ½ lime
minced, fresh ginger
agave nectar**
1/4 teaspoon of smoked Spanish paprika***
dash of cumin
salt and pepper to taste
2 large carrots, grated
mandarin orange segments
1/4 cup walnuts, whole or chopped****

Directions:

Put the ground flax seeds in a small bowl and add the hot water. Stir and allow to sit 10 minutes until thickened.
Add lime juice, ginger, agave nectar, smoked paprika, cumin and s&p. Taste and adjust seasoning
Put the grated carrots in a bowl.
Add the dressing and mix well.
Fold in the mandarin oranges and walnuts.
Serve chilled or at room temperature.

* The flax seeds and water are optional. I first made this dressing without the flax as a thickener.

**You can use honey in place of the agave.

***To accommodate my kids' palates, I reduced the smoked paprika, since it's got some kick to it and my kids aren't as enamored with spicy food as I am. You can substitute sweet Hungarian paprika.

****Any nuts will do. Slivered almonds and sunflower seeds also go well with this.

40 Year-old Vegan

2009-05-20T14:56:00.008-05:00

22 years ago I became a Vegan briefly.

Since that time I have run the gamut of diets and eating philosophies: low-carb, high-protein, like South Beach; low-fat, high carb, like the Ornish plan; full-fledged, indiscriminate omnivore like most people, but I've always come back to thinking about Vegetarian/Veganism.

Recently I've been feeling fatigued and cold all the time, have had problems with hair breakage and unexplained weight gain. I thought for sure that it was my thyroid, I mean seriously, I had 12 of the 14 major symptoms listed for hypothyroidism, so I scheduled an appointment to see my doctor for my yearly physical. Many blood tests and one eye-popping step on the scale later, we found that my thyroid was not the culprit, but that my cholesterol and other results were really quite good.

The verdict: I'm a lazy-ass. Gee, no kidding!

I resolved to start exercising, perhaps to take up morning yoga again. I also thought that this might be a good chance to drop the meat and dairy from my diet. When I'd adopted a vegetarian diet way back when I was 18, I lost a ton of weight fairly quickly. Unfortunately, I had not read a lot about how to maintain a vegan diet in a healthy way, and was unable to sustain it.

I've read a lot more since then, and with the powerful search tool of the internet handy, finding new recipes to test and like-minded people for support is easier than it ever was. As always, I plan on blogging about it. I'll post the new recipes that I find that are particularly appealing, plus my adaptations of old favorites.

Here's to my journey. :)

40 Year-old Vegan

Dessert Pizza

2009-05-17T09:50:00.003-05:00

At our house, we like all things pizza. We had a dinnertime play-date once with some friends and their two boys. On the menu, several homemade gourmet pizzas, including this kid-approved dessert pizza.

This is an easy, kid-friendly recipe, as much fun to make as it is to eat.

Dessert Pizza

Ingredients:
sugar cookie dough, store-bought or made from scratch
whipped cream
fresh fruit
candy

Directions:
Spray a 10-inch round pizza pan lightly with cooking spray.
Pat out the sugar cookie dough to fit the pan.
Bake at 350° for 16 -20 minutes until slightly golden on the edges
Take it out and let it cool in the pan for at least an hour.
Top with whipped cream. If you make it yourself you can experiment flavoring it with different kinds of extracts. I like coconut extract.
Let the kids then top it with pieces of candy or fruit. My kids like maraschino cherries, mandarin orange segments, slices of banana and shredded coconut
Eat and enjoy! Refrigerate any leftovers there might be and enjoy them for breakfast the next day.

Cooking with Kids

2009-05-13T08:11:00.009-05:00

How many of you have attempted this? As you may know from previous blog entries (More Homemade Takeout, and Toddler Nutrition, or How I Learned That Toddlers Can Survive for a Week on String Cheese and Grapes), I have begun to muzzle my kitchen control-freak and give the kids a chance at food preparation. So far, we've stuck to making personal pizzas on Friday night Pizza Night, pre-party mandu preparation, and letting Natalie make the occasional grilled cheese sandwich, although, trust me, I'm always hovering nearby with the fire extinguisher.

Last weekend I made two baguettes of French bread. I was in a hurry, so instead of kneading the dough by hand, I used my bread machine (a Zojirushi, the only one I will ever use again). It occurred to me that the next time I make bread when the girls are hanging around, I could let them have a whack at kneading the dough. As anger-management techniques go, you could do a lot worse. Plus, it's just plain fun!

In the meantime, I am thinking about something simpler, like making cookies with the girls soon. I mean, what kid (or mom) doesn't like cookies, right? I received The Cookie Book from my uncle for Christmas one year, and still refer to it for their butter cookies and snickerdoodles recipes. More importantly, it is written for kids, providing careful explanations of kitchen terms and items. It's out of print, but worth the trouble of searching used bookstores.

Another great book for bringing kids into the kitchen as active participants is Ready, Steady, Spaghetti. One reviewer writes:

"Ready, Steady Spaghetti is a charming and effervescent book, one that makes you want to bring a child into the kitchen and start cooking. Effervescence does not overwhelm usefulness, but adds to it, and the book will produce smiles when open to a recipe in the making, or when the recipe result is on the table. As the title indicates, the book is for kids in its selection of recipes that appeal to the younger set, and with kids in the clarity and simplicity of the written recipes. The book abounds in photographs that are so joyful that the adult will find that cooking with kids of any age is a form of entertainment, while youngsters will be inspired to copy dishes that are artistic in their presentation. Appealing to both the eye and the taste buds, a happy time in the kitchen is guaranteed. Not only a time for fun, coking together is also a time for bonding. If you don't have a young child at home, find one to borrow, and have a cooking party." - From inmamaskitchen.com

What a great review! Interested? Check out this blog for your chance to win a copy.

Now as for me, the cookies are calling, begging to be baked.

Lucy the Great

2009-05-13T06:52:00.005-05:00

Attitude. Ah yes, 'tude raises its ugly head. You may think that I am speaking of my older daughter, and while it's true that she's beginning to display some "tweenishness," I'm actually referring to the younger daughter.

Not long ago, on a sick-day, we had a few memorable exchanges. I'd spent the morning running around fetching things for the poor invalid lying on the couch, when finally, after she'd delivered another imperious command for her drink, I asked her, "How old are you anyway?"

"6" she replied.

"Really?" I asked her, "Are you sure?"

"Yes," she said. "Now where's my drink?"

The little wretch did everything but snap her little fingers at me; I swear, the kid is a like a Catherine the Great in miniature. Just as she finished slurping her milk through three curly straws, she threw off the covers, stalked to the kitchen to put the empty glass in the sink, when she said, "Hungry! I'm hungry!"

She stood in the middle of the kitchen, arms crossed, tiny foot tapping, shimmying her shoulders slightly, giving me that, "Oh yeah, whatchoo-gonna-do-about-it, Lady" look. I stared her down with "the Look," known to moms and dads everywhere. She broke eye contact, giggled, and then with a sweeping gesture, pirouetted and frolicked. Yes, frolicked.

Amazed, I watched her dance around the kitchen before I snapped, "For a sick little girl, you sure aren't acting very sick! You are never staying home from school again!"

She stopped short, gave me a stricken look and promptly burst into tears before running back to the living room to hide under blankets on the couch. Way to go, Mommy.

*sigh*

I'm not sure I'll be able to stay sane once the two girls hit their teens. That remote convent in the Swiss Alps is looking better all the time.

Drive Around the Block, Mommy!

2009-05-12T14:04:00.009-05:00

That's what Kid #2 said to me on the way home from school today as we approached the driveway. "The Logical Song," that Supertramp golden-oldie had just come on the radio, and the kid was bouncing around in her booster seat. You know the song. Go ahead and click. I'll be waiting.

See? You know that song. So back to my story: I did what I often do, turned off the blinker, turned up the volume and cruised on through the light.

Thank God my kids have good taste* in music. No Jonas brothers for them; they are more likely to ask me to turn it up and drive around the block when something by Queen, AC/DC or The Cars comes on the radio.

Those 5-hour road trips to visit my parents can be fun listening to the tunes on the various classic rock stations within listening distance of I-90. I am limited to the radio because my car still has the standard tape deck-AM/FM radio - cheap speakers it did the day it was born at the Subaru factory way back when. I've just never gotten around to buying a cd player, and you can forget a dvd player with which to ~~bribe~~ lull the girls into behaving on long trips. They can read, listen to my music or play their Nintendos. If they insist on something else, they can play their own cds on their little personal cd players.

See? It works out perfectly for everyone. Thankfully, they still think that their mom has awesome taste in music.

*Good taste in music is subjective, I know, but I will never consider boy bands as good.

Through Our Kids' Eyes

2009-05-12T06:35:00.007-05:00

This meme passed through my friends' Facebook pages not long ago. Amusing and heart-warming, it was fun for all three of us - the girls loved being interviewed. It's always interesting to hear what they think.

The Interview

1. What is something mom always says to you?

Lucy: "NO."

No hesitation there.

Natalie: "NOOOOO."

Ditto.

2. What makes mom happy?

Lucy: "Hugs, squeezes and kisses from your babies."

Aww, she's right!

Natalie: "When we hug and kiss you and you think of us as babies. and when we enjoy your food and when we sleep with you."

Actually the middle of the night "I have to sleep with Mommy because I saw a teeny spider" sessions are getting old. Otherwise she's right on.

3. What makes mom sad?

Lucy: "When we don't listen to her."

Yeah, "mad," "sad," sure. Just not "glad."

Natalie: "When she thinks of us when we're away."

True. I miss them when they're at their dad's even though it's just down the road. Literally.

4. How does your mom make you laugh?

Lucy "She does silly things and she makes silly jokes and she's silly."

I guess I'm silly.

Natalie: "By fooling around, like singing the "Bad Baby" song."

When Natalie was a baby I took the Bad Boys song from Cops and changed it to:

Bad Baby, Bad Baby, whatcha gonna dooooo, whatcha gonna do with a diaper full of poo.."
So I guess they both think I'm goofy.

5. What was your mom like as a child?

Lucy: "She was good and nice and cute."

Not to hear my parents talk about me. They say I was a holy terror.

Natalie: "I don't know."

There ya go. No speculation.

6. How old is your mom?

Lucy: "44?"

WTH?!!

Natalie: "40. She's turning 41. She's old."

Gee thanks, kid. She's right, of course.

7. How tall is your mom?

Lucy: "I don't know, um... all the way up here? Um 6'2"?"

WTH? I'm 5'2 1/2" lol

Natalie: "I'm guessing around 5'7".

Wow.

8. What is her favorite thing to do?

Lucy: "Play on the computer and play games with her children and help them solve their problem."

Sure. I'll buy that, as long as the "problem" doesn't involve spiders.

Natalie: "Draw and spend time with us."

YES!

9. What does your mom do when you're not around?

Lucy: "Read books, go on computer and takes a nap."

How'd she know?!

Natalie: "I don't really know."

She can be quite a literalist.

10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for?

Lucy: "To paint."

Awww, thanks sweetie!

Natalie: "Your drawing and being the best mommy ever and having the biggest eyes ever."

It's nice that they like my art. :)

11. What is your mom really good at?

Lucy: "Painting."

:)

Natalie: "Drawing and spending time with us."

I think that they are my biggest fans.

12. What is your mom not very good at?

Lucy: "Explaining things. like Indiana Jones."

I have no idea what she meant, but it was funny!Maybe she meant "exploring."

Natalie: "Being stupid."

What a glowing endorsement. :)

13. What does your mom do for a job?

Lucy:"Works on the computer."

It seems that way sometimes.

Natalie: "You don't have a job, but you used to."

The Literalist strikes again! Apparently neither of them see mothering as a job.

14. What is your mom's favorite food?

Lucy: "Chicken."

No, but that's ok.

Natalie: "Is it Mexican food? Mexican and Chinese."

Closer.

15. What makes you proud of your mom?

Lucy: "Making dinner."

Hmmm, I guess she's hungry...

Natalie: "You being my Mommy."

Aww.....

16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be?

Lucy: "Squidward!"

YEAH!

Natalie: "You wouldn't really be a cartoon character, because I don't know any that are like you."

Yeah, I guess I am one-of-a-kind.

17. What do you and your mom do together?

Lucy: "We paint together."

We need to do more of that. :)

Natalie: "Watch a movie, sometimes doing clay and sometimes drawing."

Ditto

18. How are you and your mom the same?

Lucy: "We're both white."

True. We're also both multi-cellular, carbon-based life forms.

Natalie: "It's very obvious. Everything except the glasses. And the wrinkles."

It's true. She is my Mini-me. Oh, but I do NOT have wrinkles!

19. How are you and your mom different?

Lucy:"Because you have glasses on."

True.

Natalie: "The glasses and the wrinkles and sometimes the personalities."

*sigh*

20. How do you know your mom loves you?

Lucy:"Because you always say that."

I do tell them that a lot.

Natalie: "Because you always say it and you're my mommy."

*sniff*

21. Where is your mom's favorite place to go?

Lucy: "Alaska."

It's nice, sure.

Natalie: "Alaska!"

I guess they think I really like Alaska!

Sibling Rivalry

2009-05-11T09:38:00.003-05:00

“The Rule of Sibs: If your sibling gets something you want, you (1) try to take it; (2) break it; or (3) say it's no good” -Patricia Fleming

I first wrote about sibling rivalry back in March, 1997:

"I can't understand how it is that a 4 year-old and an almost-8 year-old can have so much in common that their main form of communication is arguing over every last detail of what they're going to play, how they will do it, who will eat what, who drinks what etc." - "Sisterhood, Ain't it Grand?"

And lo, not much has changed in the intervening two years.

Just yesterday when I was chatting with my sister on the phone, she said pretty much exactly the same thing, wondering why, with the age difference being what it was, my two girls continue to fight like cats and dogs. They couldn't even call a truce for Mother's Day, for God's sake!

They fight over toys, who owns what, which identical toy horse is whose, and even who used to own what and who has primacy over an object. We've recycled toys, giving Natalie's baby and toddler toys to her little sister as she outgrew them and got Big-Girl toys, yet still pangs of possessiveness flare up.

"Hey, that's mine! I now I haven't played with Tickle-Me-Elmo in like 7 years, but still... that's mine!"

It's not even the bickering over stuff or the ever-popular, "Mom, she's looking at me!" "Yeah? Well, she's breathing near me!" that get to me, though they allot plenty of time for all of that, but it is the intentional pressing of each other's buttons that drives me nuts.

Both girls are guilty of this, but Natalie is just a bit more devoted to it than her sister is. She will do some tiny thing guaranteed to make her sister scream, howl or whine and then go off to her room, cackling about it. When ordered to apologize to her sister, she rattles off some lame "OhI'msosorryLucy" which just oozes insincerity.

*sigh*

I polled people informally about this just the other day and was assured that even though they used to fight with their sibs when they were younger, eventually they grew out of it and became friends.

I remain unconvinced for now.

Some Mother's Day Sweetness.

2009-05-09T09:45:00.005-05:00

My older daughter made this for me.

Go grab some insulin, you may need it to counteract the pure sweetness.

"Mommy, you are the BEST Mommy ever!
Others are nice, but you'er the BEST!
Mommies are warmhearted,
Mommies are warmspirited as well,
YOU ARE THE BEST MOMMY EVER!!!!!"

I may actually be doing something right with these kids.

That is good to know.

Happy Mother's Day, and let's remember to appreciate all the Mommies out there.

It's amazing the things you'll find when you're de-cluttering.

2009-05-07T07:57:00.006-05:00

I've been on a de-cluttering and organizing kick lately. Just the other day, in fact, I loaded my copy of Quicken and spent a good two days entering in all the data from three years' worth of bank statements and checkbook register notes. Sometimes it pays off to be a pack-rat. Oh yes, it's been a little bit crazy here Chez Babs.

It all started last week when, for some reason, after I finished watching Slumdog Millionaire I leaped off the couch (literally, I actually did jump up) and marched over to my little studio downstairs which has been virtually unusable since in an effort to keep the living room habitable, I have just been tossing the kids' junk in there and slamming the doors shut. "Out of sight out of mind," right? But really, by doing that, I have basically been punishing myself because I couldn't even use my special studio space to make art whenever inspiration struck me.

So, I got up, dragged all the stuff out, sorted it into big piles of things to toss, things to recycle, and things to keep. I then did a mini-reorganization of the stuff in the studio so that my work table is usable. Now, just imagine, I have quick access to art supplies. Brilliant, I know.

In my de-cluttering frenzy, I found many, many pages of the girls' school assignments. These included, as always, a fine collection of paper-plate and brown paper bag art endemic to our education system (see right for the latest example from Lucy); the crowning glory was an old assignment of Natalie's from last fall in which she had to describe her family.

Natalie is a very funny kid. She's quick-witted, lively, and quite often, very silly. She is also right on the cusp of beginning to get sarcasm and irony. I have high hopes for her maintaining a sense of humor. I remember hearing her giggling when she'd been writing this assignment, and when she'd finished, I asked her what had been so funny. She ran over to me and gave it to me with that mischievous Natalie-gleam in her eye. I sat on the couch, read it aloud and started giggling myself. Soon, all three of us were laughing, and once we'd stopped, one or another of us would get going again.

That's a good memory.

About My Family

My dad is a guitarist and a sociologist. He's 43 years old.

My mom is america's best drawer! She's 40 years old.

My brother sadly he's dead. I think he's 7 years old.

I have a tabby cat named Cheetah. I think he's either 6 or 7.

I have a pesky little sister. She's 5. She's truning 6 in December.

I'm 6th out of my family.

Heres good things about Natalie's family.

Its a good thing I have a pet.

Its a good thing I have a sister so if I'm in trouble I can blame her.

Its a good thing I have parents because - well they do lots of stuff.

Its a good thing my dad is a sociologist because he makes money so we can by food.

Mommy is amaricas best browny baker!

I left the spelling and punctuation errors in for authenticity, although I am tempted to see if there's a version of Eats, Shoots and Leaves for kids.

Have a great day, everyone.

The Parent's Lexicon

2009-04-17T12:48:00.007-05:00

I thought I might combine my love of language with my experiences as a mom to create this much-needed lexicon.

The Parent's Lexicon

"We'll see."

This means, "Stop pestering me about it and maybe the answer won't be 'No!' "
"Maybe."

This generally means, "No, but I don't feel like committing to a definite answer yet because I want to forestall the whining and tantrums."
"Because I said so, that's why!"

We trot out this gem for one of two reasons. Some parents feel that they should always have a well-reasoned answer for their kids' every ~~complaint~~ demand for an explanation, and quite often, they have no reasonable rationalization behind what they're telling their spawn to do/not do. When we consider that most parents don't feel like engaging in an extended debate on the issue, you can see how they might fall back on the time-honored "BISS,TW!"

Others among us simply harbor secret desires of world domination.
"Soon."

When I say this, like in answer to, "Mommy, when can we go back to the zoo?" I usually mean, "Hopefully never again, and I hope that by saying 'Oh, soon, honey' I can buy some time before you ask me again."
"What has the cat ever done to you?"

I mean, "Leave the animal alone before he takes out your jugular with his claws!" or "Leave the animal alone or I'll send him right back to the shelter!" <--Of course I would never actually do that, I love the furry little animal, but it is a tempting thought on those days when the kids and cat keep pestering one another.
"If you kids don't knock that off, I'm going to sell you on eBay!"

This means "Knock it off right now."

I tell my kids this all the time. My kids know that I won't actually sell them on eBay, mostly because I'm pretty sure it's illegal, but they do think it's funny and for some reason, humor often works to keep them in line.

I did get a really dirty look from another mom one time I said this in public - Wegman's I think - and I was astounded that someone might have thought that I'd really do this.
"I am going to count to three!"

This is the best thing ever. It is sort of adapted from "3-2-1-Magic." What you do is, tell them that you will count to three and if they don't stop what they're doing/do what you're asking them do by the time you say "three," then BY GOD there will be consequences.
For example: Your kid is meandering about the house aimlessly, after having made a merry mess on the living room floor with a ream of computer paper, crayons and glitter glue. You have told her to pick her stuff up, she does not listen; in fact, it seems that she is pointedly ignoring you! Once it reaches critical mass and you can't bear the idea of picking it up after her, you say, "Kid, I am going to count to three and you had better get to picking this mess up or I will start throwing all of this stuff out!"

Crucial Hint: Be strong and follow through. If you say that you will toss stuff out but cave, you have just undermined your authority. The little munchkins will never take you seriously. Believe me, all it takes is one incident with the Black Hefty Garbage Bag of Doom and your kids will be true believers. Then all you have to do is say, "I think it's time for the Black Hefty Garbage Bag of Doom," and they'll be running up the stairs with toys in hand.

Do you have any crucial translations to add? Let me know!

Thanks for reading, more entries to come!

The 24-minute Diaper Change

2009-04-17T08:00:00.002-05:00

The past few days I have been going through old blog and journal entries, partly to find new fodder for blog entries, and partly because I love reminiscing about when my kids were younger. They absolutely love it when I regale them with stories of their impishness.

Just the other morning, I stumbled across this gem from when Lucy was a baby. Our diaper days are long gone, and we've emerged on the other side of the potty training war relatively unscathed. From time to time, Baby Fever still afflicts me, especially whenever I see a newborn fresh with that New Baby smell clinging to the top of his little, hairless baby head. It's good to go back and refresh my memory with some smelly stories.

This 24-minute diaper change incident from April, 2003 ought to do it!

3:57-4:00 pm

Place child on mat, change dirty diaper, wipe baby’s butt, put on clean diaper, snap up onesie and pjs.
(Note to Self: For all its wretched stink the diaper was not heavily soiled.)

Take diaper to trash, wash hands.

4:00-4:06

Come back in, pick up baby. Nose is met with a definite stench.
Place child on mat again.
Unsnap pjs and onesie, check diaper. Yuck, very dirty.
(Note to Self: Baby’s tummy is still rather gurgly)

Take off diaper, wipe butt, put on clean diaper.
Notice stains on onesie, strip baby down, toss dirty onesie in hamper, locate clean one, change baby.
Toss dirty diaper in trash.
Scrub hands thoroughly.

4:06-4:11

Come back in, pick up baby, see red face, hear grunts, figure kid isn’t done pooping, place baby back on mat, leave room.
Go to kitchen and scour pan which has been soaking for two days in the sink.
Next, scour hands.
(Note to Self: Buy more hand soap)

4:11-4:18

Come back in, sniff the air, see a fresh poop stain on brand-new onesie.
Sigh, take off onesie, see that the pjs are also soaked through, toss them in the hamper, locate new pjs and onesie, put aside.
Take off dirty diaper, wipe butt.
Feel warmth on hand, look down to see a geyser of pee washing over hand, and soaking clean diaper and onesie.
Sigh deeply, dry butt, change diaper, undress baby.
Drop wet onesie in hamper, locate last remaining clean onesie, dress baby.
(Note to Self: do laundry)

Take wet diaper to trash.
Disinfect hands.

4:18-4:21

Come back in, pick up baby, smile back at smiling baby, get covered in a flood of curdled spit-up breast milk.
Take baby into bedroom, find new pjs for baby and new shirt for Mommy.
Get dressed, dress baby, wash hands.
Go to couch, sit down and begin breastfeeding.
(Note to Self: the vicious cycle will repeat itself in approx. 2 hours)

Of course, funny videos of dads changing diapers, including one dressed in a Hazmat suit, notwithstanding, diaper changes really aren't all that bad. If I could, I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat and have another kid, though I might hire someone to potty train them for me.

Coming soon! The Snow Leopard wars!

Name That Sound!

2009-04-16T08:49:00.010-05:00

Parenthood changes your perception of a lot things, especially what sounds can mean. If you have no kids running amok, a random "click" from a room two rooms away doesn't take on the ominous meaning that it does once you have kids underfoot.

Here are a few notable examples from my own experience.

1. Silence:

Any seasoned parent will tell you that the sound of silence coming from the next room will set off alarms. Instead of sitting back with a huge *sigh*, a parent faced with an abrupt silence one room over will immediately leap out of her chair, wondering, "What has the kid gotten into now?!"

2. Silence, followed by *thwack-thwack-thwack*:

You know this can not be good. What could it be? Is it as simple as a throw pillow whacked against a coffee table or is it something more ominous, something involving the cat? Things that make you go "Hmmm..." right before your head explodes.

3. Silence, followed by peals of laughter:

This is especially troublesome once there is more than one child in the equation. The amount of trouble increases exponentially with each additional child. The last time I heard this series of sounds, it involved my two children, a set of magic markers and a pile of blank card stock. The card stock, as it turned out, was just for show. The real artwork appeared on the littler child's face and hands.

4. Silence, followed by *thwack-thwack-thwack*, *skitter-skitter-crunch* + peals of laughter:

In all honesty, this made my blood run cold. In case you have no idea what that combination of sounds could possibly mean, it is the sound that a large Ziplocked bag of Cheerios makes when it is beaten to death by a Cat in the Hat Toy.

5. Snip-snip-snip:

Picture, if you will: I was up in the studio with my 5 year-old daughter. I had given her her safety scissors so she could do her collage, with strict instructions that "scissors are for paper, nothing else!" After a while, it occurred to me that the short, sharp snips I was hearing were different from the longer, drawn-out sssssssnips I should have been hearing. With the utmost trepidation, I turned around in my swivel chair, and what do I see? Natalie, hunched over, brow furrowed, lower lip bitten in extreme concentration, giving the cat a buzz cut.

6. Dribble, Dribble Thwack-Ssssplop:

That's the sound that a fleece bathrobe belt makes once it's been soaked in water, and then swung around in circles and launched at the wall/furniture/carpet.

Where in the good, green hell do kids dredge up these ideas?

"Gee, what should I do with this bathrobe belt and sinkful of water?"

"I wonder how long I can beat this big bag of Cheerios with the Cat in the Hat toy before it explodes?"

"Gee, Cheetah would look cool with a mohawk! Or shorter whiskers!"

I have weathered these incidents pretty well and can laugh at them, and the girls absolutely love hearing these stories, but I know that my days of being surprised by new sounds aren't over. These kids are nothing if not creative and resourceful.

Burning Down the House With Spiders

2009-03-27T07:23:00.014-05:00

Last night, as I was putting on my pjs, the theme from Hells' Kitchen (Fire) still stuck in my head, I heard Natalie scream in her room. I opened my door, poked my head out and shouted, "What?" only to hear her shriek "Fire!"

Paralyzed for a split second, all I could think was, "How the hell can there be a fire in her room?" My first thought was, oddly enough, a Molotov Cocktail, but, I reasoned, I would have heard the smashing glass. I took a mental inventory of all the incendiary devices in the house: we have two large lighters for the fireplace and I knew that there was a random pack of matches somewhere, but no, she couldn't be playing with matches. Could she? No. Then it hit me- an electrical fire!

As this all was racing through my head, I was tearing through the kitchen and leaping up the stairs. For a brief second I thought that I should grab the fire extinguisher from underneath the kitchen sink, but by the time I'd processed that thought I was already in the upstairs hallway.

I burst into Natalie's room, shouting "What?! What-what-what?" At the same time, I heard her saying, "It came down from the ceiling! It's on the carpet!"

Bewildered, I thought, St. Elmo's Fire? WTF?

************************************************************************

Meet Frieda.

Frieda is a Black and Yellow Garden Spider, Argiope aurantia commonly found outdoors throughout the United States.

She may be big and scary-looking, but according to all the sources I found, these spiders are harmless to humans, preferring to stay outside. They often like to anchor their web under eaves of a building, like the north-facing windows of my studio as seen in this photo.

We first saw Frieda when we were pulling into the driveway. Natalie's voice gravid with awed terror, quavered, "OMG look at that huge spider!" I had to sigh and roll my eyes. The kid has this thing about spiders. The tiniest black speck on the far reaches of her ceiling will bring out a blood-curdling shriek and she'll stand on her bed, sobbing, and beg me to kill it. So, I was skeptical. I asked her where this huge spider was. When she told me it was on the front of the house, the skepticism grew. I marched them both to the front of the house to show them there was no giant spider hanging out by our house like some disaffected James Dean smoking a cigarette and scowling when I saw her.

"Holy shit," I thought, "That's a damned big spider."

I expected screams. Instead, the girls crowded around her and said, "Cool!" "Wow, it's a girl-spider, see? There's an egg-sac!"

I ushered them inside and they immediately took off for my studio where they could watch her up close and personal... with a barrier of double-glazing between them and her. We had our own nature program broadcast live from the comfy depths of my swivel chair. They named her Freida.

I looked her up on the internet and we discovered that Black and Yellow Garden Spiders prefer to stay outdoors (good), eat small flying insects (better) and are not venomous (best of all.) So, I decreed that Frieda could stay, just as long as she does not break the cardinal rule: Do NOT come into this house. If she breaks that rule, I warned the girls, she will die. If I ever saw that monstrous thing crawling around the floors of my house, it's her or me. If I had to use the microwave to beat her to death I would do it.

That said, they sat in my studio for a good hour and watched her and reported her every move. They looked on in knowing dread as some hapless mosquito got stuck on the web. Until that point, Frieda had remained pretty much motionless. I heard Natalie saying, "Is she even alive? I think maybe she's dead."

Oh no. In a flurry of motion that had my daughters screaming, Frieda dispatched that mosquito. The girls thought that was the coolest thing of all. Frieda has since gone on to die, and her egg sac got destroyed one very windy afternoon, so, there have been no little Friedas outside my studio window, and although the girls still hope for a Frieda II, Natalie's gut-wrenching fear of teeny-tiny house spiders persists.

So last night when I burst into her room, screaming, and she babbled something about things coming down from the ceiling, instead of St. Elmo's Fire or arcs of an electrical fire raining down from the light fixture, I saw a tiny black, many-legged dot wriggling on her carpet.

"A spider?" I shrieked in disbelief.

In A Christmas Story, Ralphie described his father's cursing as "speaking in tongues." Well, when under duress, I stand guilty of this as well. I am not even aware of it as I do it, it's like an exhalation of curses. So, seeing that there was no fire, but a baby spider's itty-bitty baby, I sighed, stalked to the bathroom for a tissue, and came back to first squish and then flush the spider. The whole time, I exhaled a stream of colorful words.

I caught a glimpse of Natalie's stricken face, teary-eyed, and grabbed her in a hug. "Honey, I'm not mad at you. I was worried. I swear I heard you scream 'Fire!' instead of 'Spider!" She sobbed a bit, so I continued, "And then I got to thinking, what the heck is that kid doing, smoking cigars up there?!"

She giggled, so I knew we were ok.

Then I started to shake and see spots in front of my eyes. For a second I thought I was having a heart attack. Nope, just stress. Stress... and relief.

Ok, perhaps it was an overreaction on my part, but I have discovered that to be a parent is to live in fear some of the time.

The great fear that enters parents' lives once they have kids is that something will happen to their kids. For most parents, this fear is remote, something that happens to Other People, not them. I can tell you though that once it does happen to you, this feeling changes. It happened once, why not again? I have already buried one child, what's to keep the fates from smacking me down again?

People who say that lightning never strikes the same spot twice are woefully misinformed. Lightning is more likely to hit some spots than others because of topography, and makeup. As far as this fear of something happening to another one of my kids, I can only describe it as feeling like a lightning rod for tragedy. Part of me actually expects to bury another child in my lifetime, and I live with this soul-numbing dread every day.

I try not to let this fear rule me to the point that I smother my kids. I don't wrap them in bubble-wrap and make them wear helmets. I don't hover. I give them autonomy. Hey, I even let my older daughter walk home from school by herself on occasion, but when asked, without even thinking about it, I can rattle off a long list of possible ways for them to come to serious harm right here in our safe home: a broken neck from falling down stairs; traumatic brain injury from rough-housing with each other; choking to death on a pretzel; a back-breaking back-flip while jumping on the ~~trampoline~~ bed; a penetrating abdominal wound from running with scissors or a pencil and falling on it; even, perhaps some scenario involving a long-overdue retribution from the long-suffering cat. The list goes on and on.

I never expect fire, however, and thankfully, there was none. Last night's amusing story of miscommunication came about thanks to our rooms being at polar extremes of the house and a flannel pajama top muffling my 40 year-old ears as I pulled it over my head just as she screamed "SPIDER!" Well, that and my overactive imagination.

Underfoot

2008-11-22T03:42:00.000-05:00

Yesterday as I was moving around my kitchen making dinner for myself, I stepped on something.

Usually if I'm going to step on something small on the kitchen floor, it's a piece of kibble that the cat knocked out of his food dish and swatted around. He'll do that occasionally in protest of the brand of cat food or as a reminder that he needs a fresh can of tuna.

He's very thoughtful that way.

What I stepped on, however, was small and hard and did not go *crunch* underfoot.

It was a tiny, hard plastic cherry from one of the girls' games Hi-Ho-Cherry-O.

The game board has long since disintegrated, but the girls hung on to those little cherries tenaciously, first in a ziplock bag, then in a plastic pencil case. Eventually, I thought that the cherries had finally made it to that Great Toy Land in the Sky where missing checker pieces and Barbie's socks, stilettos and scrunchies spend their eternity decomposing.

Somehow that little guy survived and ended up, like so may other things in this house, underfoot.

Spunky Critters Underfoot:

Stepping on the cat is usually fraught with greater peril since he has a full set of claws and teeth and will use them as needed.

The kids are bigger now, so I'm not likely to stomp on them; they're more likely to tackle me these days, but they still manage to get in my hair.

Special "Offerings" Underfoot

The girls are pretty good about letting me know if they've thrown up somewhere so I'm not likely to step in it. Unfortunately, kids tend to throw up in the wee-est of wee hours of the morning, like, say, three in the morning, at which point all they want to do is cuddle with Mommy. At three a.m.

The cat, on the other hand, is not quite as diligent about keeping me informed, regardless of what time he pukes. He's just as cuddly though.

Scattered Toys Underfoot:

The catnip toys don't pose a huge danger, although the kitty-drool that saturates them may be fairly high on the Ick-o-Meter.

Stepping onto one of the kids' toys, whether it's a teeny-tiny Barbie accessory or the most dreaded of toys: the Lego, is excruciating.

Ok, so it might not be as painful as childbirth, but those Legos hurt! They just might be indestructible.

On the list of the worst children's toys to feel under your feet, I think that Legos have to be at the very top of the list, although when I was a kid, I think that jacks would have taken parents' vote for the least favorite toy to step on when they're navigating a dark house in the middle of the night.

Do kids even play with jacks or marbles anymore? I loved them. One of my most vivid memories of playing with jacks involved flushing them down the toilet to see if they'd get whisked away.

They did, in case you were wondering.

Better that than impaling your foot on one and then having to go to the Emergency Room for a tetanus shot, right?

Right. :)

Poop, Glorious Poop

2008-11-15T11:54:00.000-05:00

I swore I had blogged this here once, but as I perused the archive, I did not see it anywhere. Hmm, such are the perils of opening 678,953 blogs all over the internet. I really need to consolidate them, because truly, it would be a crying shame if this fine bit of family history were lost forever. My kids still ask me to tell them this story.

This comes from way back in March, 2001, when I was rather pregnant with my son. My older daughter Natalie was not quite 2 at the time and totally uninterested in potty-training. That was ok by me. Frankly, I'd rather just toss a dirty diaper into the trash than have to follow a half-naked kid around the house with a spray bottle of Murphy's oil soap and a roll of paper towels. Also, consider all the money, water and time saved on laundry just by tossing a soiled diaper in the trash, right?

Well, this one day, I had put Natalie down for her morning nap and decided that I would take one too. I'd been sleeping pretty poorly, being preggo and all, so I thought it would be a fantastic idea. Sure. I woke from my nap feeling refreshed, and from the gentle babble coming from her room, heard that Natalie was up too. She was just talking gently, so I wasn't expecting any sort of disaster when I opened the door.

But really, who ever expects disaster? It's a lot like the Spanish Inquisition.

First, some background. At the advanced age of not-quite-two, my darling daughter did not like wearing clothes. I didn't really mind; she would just run around with a diaper on at home. She managed not to strip in public, so I hadn't thought it would hurt anyone. Up until that fateful March day, she had been good about keeping her diaper on. Can you see where this is going?

I opened the door and this is what I saw: Natalie, curled up in a ball on her security blanket, a sodden diaper in one corner, her wet clothes, wadded up in a ball in another corner, and right next to where she lay, a big pile of (for lack of a more colorful word...) poop. I closed the door and gave my husband, the cleaning wizard, a call at work and asked him what the best cleaning strategy would be.

Some minutes later, armed with a bucket of hot, soapy water, a sponge, some carpet stain remover, roll of paper towels and baby wipes, I trudged back upstairs. Again, I opened the door and Natalie, pointing a poop-encrusted finger at the stained carpet, chirped, "Hi Mommy! Mess!" I opened the windows, got the ceiling fan going and went in for a closer look. The pile of poop had been trampled into the carpet. I think she may have even danced on it.

First step: I cleaned her off. It was caked on her legs, between her toes and fingers, on her cheeks and in her hair. Maybe she rolled in it like a dog, who knows? At this point I was not ruling anything out.

Second step: I started in on the carpet. My darling daughter tried to "help" Mommy, but I'm afraid I wasn't very appreciative. She wanted to help with (read: play in) the bucket of water, and shake the carpet cleaner, and unroll the paper towels. Oh yes, a big help indeed.

I'm afraid that the whole neighborhood knew that I could swear like a sailor on occasion- ok, so not my proudest moment, but there it is. I knew that if Natalie ended up swearing in her temper tantrums in the following week, that it'd be all on me. Oh well.

Once I got the carpet as clean as I could, and let the stain remover soak in, I hauled the child off to the tub. Somehow, I did manage to get her clean. Don't know how I did it, but I did. I took her downstairs, put her in the highchair and gave her some food while I did some dishes. Turning my back on her was, as ever, a huge mistake, because after I finished the dishes I saw that she had taken huge mouthfuls of juice and spit them out onto her tray and was splashing it all around. I couldn't even yell anymore. I just cleaned it all up, did some more laundry- her clothes, blankets, bedding, and put her in the play pen.

Next, I put some deep-cleaning foam carpet shampoo on the stains (I bought the stuff once on a whim- I'm glad I did), let it dry and vacuumed it up. I had a little lunch and logged onto the computer to tell my internet friends about Natalie's recent exploit. My head throbbed and my back ached and I felt like crying. Afterward, I had to apply yet more carpet stain remover. Still, it didn't really work.When my husband came home from work that night, he checked out the room. I had done a good job, but there was an aroma of kennel lingering in the room which was there even when we moved later that year. Some messes have a way of sticking around.

I no longer shudder when I tell this story. I smile at my kids' unholy glee at hearing this story old over and over. I suppose that a distance of 9 years is enough for even the stinkiest story to sweeten up a bit. After all, life goes on, and, as any parent will tell you, it is filled with poop

June 18

2008-06-18T12:25:00.002-05:00

Forgive me if I'm not responsive today to messages or phone calls. I may not even answer the door.

Today, all is ashes in my mouth, and I can't see through the tears.

I received this not long after my son's death 7 years ago:

Oh Mother, my Mother

Oh Mother, my mother
I touch your tears
invisible fingers
soothing your skin
I know you think of me often
in the day, in the night,
in your dreams
going into an empty nursery
knowing I'll never be there
but I am... in your heart
in your soul, I shall always be
for you gave so unselfishly
of yourself.
Inside of you, you created
such a world for me
a world of laughter, of love,
of sadness, of sorrow
every emotion people come to know
you shared with me.
And even though I may never
feel your arms around me
I felt your heart beating,
like a lullaby, singing me to sleep
and your spirit giving me a safe haven
already protecting me
nurturing me
preparing me of things to come.
But sometimes the journey
of life pulls souls apart
and yes, I had to go on
to another place.
I wish I could stay
I wish this was a decision
I could make
and I know you do too.
Know this wherever you are:
I will always remember
that yours was the first love
the first joy, the first soul
I will ever know
you gave me courage to
go on in my journey
I hope I can do the same
for you
Your heart beat will always
call me to you

Love, your child

Happiness is three pairs of fuzzy socks

2008-01-03T12:38:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, in the final blow-out of our extended pajama-party/lazy-slug-fest that was Christmas vacation, the girls stumbled upon the bag of stocking presents I'd hidden away so cleverly that even I'd forgotten where I'd concealed it. (Note: not the first time that has happened...) Kids' noses are extraordinarily keen at sniffing out those presents, and my 8 year-old seems to be especially adept at it.

She went into my room for some made-up reason; I heard a rustling and then, "Hey Mommy! I think I found something that you forgot to put away!"

Well, I knew that could only mean a box of feminine hygiene products or the bag of stocking gifts which I'd been unable to find in that mad dash to pack and get the hell out of the house and on the road to my parents' house. I did a quick inventory in my head and realized that I'm very good at concealing the first items and figured she meant the gifts.

I bellowed back, "Get out of that bag! And get out of my ROOM! ARGH!"

The wretch sneaked back out with the hugest grin on her face, so I knew that she'd seen the Hello Kitty purse I'd bought her. Lucy, now aware that something was afoot, then got up off the couch as unobtrusively as a 5 year-old could manage (read: not at all) and tip-toed into my room to have a look for herself.

By her squeal, I judged that she'd found the Dora purse I'd gotten her.

"Get. Out. NOW!!" I hollered.

Giggling, she ran out. The two of them looked at me with those twinkling eyes and any hope I'd had of keeping the bag of gifts as a fall-back for Natalie's birthday in April had crashed and burned. Monstrous children.

"Ok," I sighed. "Go get the damn bag and let's see what we've got."

We had: a purse and a locket for each of the girls, some ordinary socks (hey, I'm a mom and a practical one), some Hello Kitty glamor pens, a bag of chocolate coins, a colony of chocolate santas, and three pairs of fuzzy socks. We divvied up the chocolate among the three of us, and looked at the fuzzy socks.

"Hmmm," I thought, "How do I split up three pairs of socks among two kids," when Natalie said,

"Hey Mommy! You get a pair too!"

Cool. Problem solved.

We all put on our fuzzy socks and giggled. I swear, I think we were high on chocolate, or maybe it was hypothermia, it is pretty cold here after all. For some reason, it tickled all three of us that we each had our own pair of fuzzy socks. We sat all snuggled up on the couch and admired our feet clad in slippery, fuzzy, shiny socks.

"OMG, Mommy! Take a picture!" shrieked one of them.

So I did.

I'm amazed at how happy I am lately.

Maybe I'm just high from some sort of radon leak in my house. Who the hell knows.

I do know that my times with the girls the past few months have been better, happier, more content. Sure, they still push my buttons and I send them to their rooms, but we've had so many more times all snuggled together on the couch watching cartoons, movies or reading books. On occasion, they even like to nap with me now, sucked up to me like a remora on a shark.

Could it be that they've finally adjusted to the separation and consequent bouncing back and forth between two houses? Now they're happy when they're here and not missing their dad as much as before because they know that they will see him in a few days and that they'll be back here after that and so on.

Or maybe, sometimes happiness just comes in the form of three pairs of fuzzy socks.

It's indescribably beautiful

2007-12-01T13:03:00.004-05:00

My lovely older daughter woke me at 3:30 am with repeated kicks to the kidneys, just like when she was still in my womb. Now, 8 years older and some 70-odd pounds heavier, she really packs a wallop. Long after she'd settled back into that heavy slumber only children can attain without drugs, I lay there wide awake, my mind a-whirl.

I got up after a fruitless hour of trying to re-enter my dreams and found my little Lucy awake on the couch, stuffed cheetah under one arm, and the real life, purring Cheetah on her lap.

"Mommy! You're awake!" she chirped at me.

Nodding, I plunked myself down next to her and she gave me a smack on the cheek followed by that famous Lucy Smile. She reached up and petted my hair, a sweet quirk of hers she's had since infancy and one which she reverts to in our quiet moments together. I shivered in the early December morning air, looked out the window and saw that winter had come in the night and covered the ground with pristine white crystals. The air was still thick with silent falling snow. I gave Lucy a kiss and got up to make my Marine-strong pot of coffee.

Natalie came out of my room holding her blanket. "Mommy? Is it still night or is it morning?"

"Both, actually honey. It's early," I replied. "Do you want to go back to bed? I'm just making some coffee and then I'm going to put in a movie for me and Lucy."

*yawn* "Nope. I wanna sit with you on the couch."

Some ten minutes later, there we were, all three of us girls and one content orange tabby snuggled together on the couch with a pile of pillows and a heap of blankets, afghans and comforters, watching "A Christmas Story."

No matter how many times I watch that movie, and I watch it dozens of times during the build-up to Christmas, I laugh to the point of crying, and cry to the point of hiccuping. My girls have seen that movie so many times that they rattled off bits of the dialogue with me perfectly and giggled in anticipation of favorite moments.

Lucy hooked her little arm in mine and rested her silky-haired head on my arm while Natalie looked over at me and grinned the same face-splitting smile she's had since she first gazed up at me and laughed as a fat and happy baby.

This is the color, shape, smell and touch of contentment. If I never do another great thing in my life, I know that I helped bring these two sweet, loving creatures into the world.

Life is hard, but indescribably beautiful.

Giving up the dead

2007-06-19T13:24:00.002-05:00

The rituals and rites of funerals and grieving are not for the Dead. Whether they are in an Afterlife or simply cease to exist, what we who are left behind do, we do for ourselves.

Why is it is hard, then to give up the Dead?

Yesterday was as bad as the day of my son's memorial mass the week he died.

Do I hold onto his memory so hard because he was a baby no one knew?

Adults and people who have lived a life and made friends and memories are etched into people's hearts and minds. What memory is there of a tiny doll-like figure in a satin-lined casket? For most people, it is a fleeting image or a sad note sent in an email.

For me, who remembers every kick and hiccup, and bought little boy clothes, it is so much more: a loss of what should have been, but though some cruel twist of fate, a toss of the dice by some heartless god, was not meant to be.

I have not yet accepted the unfairness of it. In the grand scheme of things, when so many people suffer and die every day, what is the tiny spark of one small infant?

To me, it was everything, and still has a hold on me at the most unexpected times.

At the gravesite, I saw the same small toy someone had left at his headstone last year. We'd asked family and friends if they'd left it, but they all denied it. It was a random act of love, understanding and kindness, possibly from a parent who also lost a child nobody else grew to love and cherish.

I cried again when I saw the little Transformer toy; exactly the sort of thing which he would be playing with now, had he survived the delivery. I get a shiver when I hear some mother call out to a little boy, "Nathan, come here," or if I see a little boy about his age and wonder what he would have been like.

I am afraid that if I give up the Dead, it will be as though he never existed. That hurts me more than anything - that those nine months of dreams and hopes were for nothing. Now, with our family disintegrated, I feel as though I have nothing on which to anchor myself.

Yesterday, of all days, was the day when I most needed a pair of loving arms around me, and someone whom I could comfort as well, but I tend to shrug off offers of solace, instead reaching for my movies, books, my laptop, and a pitcher of Gin and tonics to help ease me to sleep.

I am drained of tears. I wept all day yesterday- in the morning while writing my first blog, on the way to the cemetery, at his grave, on the way back from the graveyard, even in the grocery store when I went to buy limes and a sandwich.

Now, a day later, I am utterly numb.

How do I give him up and let him and me go? Should I do that? Is there a right answer?

Nobody can give me a definitive response. Again, I have to forge my way through this alone. SO how do I accomplish this? By writing; by vomiting out every emotion I possess in the hopes that I will purge myself of it all.

Harder Than I Thought it Would Be

2007-06-18T06:52:00.007-05:00

June 18th, 2001 fell on a Monday, one day after Father's Day, just like this year.

June 18th, 2001 was the day that changed the lives of everyone in our small family.

June 18th, 2001 I went into labor with my son Nathan.

June 18th, 2001 was the day that my son died.

As I do every June 18th, I woke up at 4:30, and began reliving the events of that day which are still as fresh in my mind, heart and soul as they were 6 years ago.

For the first time since it happened, we are going off to the cemetery separately, not as a family. A sure sign that this family is irrevocably broken.

Natalie was talking about him all weekend, and now Lucy is asking me these questions that are impossible to answer to a 4 year-old. I start crying and she says, "Mommy, don't be sad." She's holding his picture and looking at him, trying to understand why we are having no birthday party for him and why he is flying in the clouds with Jesus.
It feels every bit as bad as it did 6 years ago.
By my reckoning, right now, at 7:48 it was about the time that the nurses realized that there was something wrong. I can't stop reliving it in my mind. I'm watching the clock tick by and remembering the sequence of events. I can even almost detect the sterile alcohol smell of the pristine hospital corridors.

How many more years until it gets bearable on this day?

This is the poem on the back of Nathan's mass card:

Do not stand at my grave and weep

I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow;

I am the diamond glints on snow

I am the sunlight on ripened grain;

I am the gentle autumn rain

When you awaken in the morning's hush,

I am the swift uplifting rush,

Of quiet birds' circled flight,

I am the soft star that shines at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there; I did not die.

Crouching Tabby, Wretched Children

2007-05-14T08:13:00.004-05:00

Crouching Tabby

Cheetah has allied himself with my enemies. No longer content to spend his days sleeping on every available soft surface in the house, he has taken to "crouching" and "perching."

He perches on top of the fridge and waits for me to open the door. Then, with a yowl, he lurches forward toward my head just enough to make me jump out of my skin. I swear, the furry bastard laughs at me afterward.

He crouches on the counter by the phone, waiting for me to walk by. Then he reaches out with a paw (claws sheathed, though) and bats at me. If I turn and bat him back, he sits up on his hind legs and bats at me with both paws until one of us gives up.

He perches on the headboard of my bed after the girls come into my room in the middle of the night to snuggle. He perches, purring, until we're lulled by the sound, and then he launches himself onto me, chasing my feet under the blankets.

He crouches on a dining room chair, hidden and forgotten as I sit, typing on my laptop. When I shift and put my feet on the chair across from me, he latches onto them and gnaws...gently.

It's either cabin fever for housecats or a kitty mid-life crisis as he rediscovers his inner tiger.

Wretched Children

On nights when I have them at my house, they come down in the middle of the night, 3 am or so, and climb into bed with me. I know I need to nip this in the bud, but I keep rationalizing it by saying that it's still early in the separation and if they feel that they need my comfort, then I'll let them. It works, too... as long as they sleep. Half the time it seems as though they view this time as "Playtime with Mommy." Hell no. Not at 3 am. Despite my inability to get back to sleep, I still don't need to deal with the two monsters arguing over who got a better piece of mommy that time.

Last night I had to kick them both out of bed, fix the blankets and the pillows and then get back in bed, this time, in the middle, and then ordered them to pick a side. Just as they'd settled down, the cat came waltzing in. He batted at my hair, and chased my toes, to the delight of the girls. Finally, all nestled up against me, he snoozed, purring; my girls nodded off, clutching their blankets; I, on the other hand, lay there, eyes wide open, staring at the shadows on the ceiling until it was time to get up and start another day.

Cease-fire

2007-03-09T14:21:00.002-05:00

The Axis of Impishness and I have maintained a cease-fire this week, though I fear an outbreak in hostilities will be forthcoming this weekend. There was a slight incursion at 5 o'clock EST this morning when the 4 year-old kicked me repeatedly in the ribs as she tried to get "comfortable." The furry one attempted to take over my pillow and distracted me with numerous tail-lashes to the face. These events are likely to increase, since the s2bx has a conference down in DC, leaving me with the girls all weekend. In a pre-emptive strike, I am predicting early bedtimes for all small mammals in the vicinity (yes, I'm a Mean Mommy), although I suspect that the Axis will be launching an assault on all fronts sometime in the wee hours of Sunday morning in retaliation.

For your reference, here is a photo of 2/3 of the Axis: Lucy and Cheetah. Cheetah is the one with the whiskers. Don't let their cute and fuzzy exterior fool you: they are pure impish evil.

A battle won, but the war is still up for grabs

2007-03-02T14:19:00.004-05:00

Caving unexpectedly much to my surprise, Cheetah ate all of his new cat food.

A-ha! I emerge victorious, or... did I? Could this be simply a strategic withdrawal to give me a false sense of superiority?

In a bold move, Cheetah has allied himself with Natalie and Lucy; Bush has his Axis of Evil, I have the Axis of Impishness. Late last night, they all crept into my bed and pestered me for hours until I banished them. Nevertheless, their plan worked, and sleep eluded me. Those wretched beasts know no mercy. I may retaliate later on with more banishments so I can get in a quick nap.

They count on their youth, boundless energy, extremely sharp claws and a proclivity for perching and pouncing, while I must rely solely on my superior size, the craftiness that comes with age and my ace in the hole- the fact that I am the One Who Feeds Them.

What is their aim in all of this? As I said yesterday, I suspect that Cheetah has his eyes on my luscious liver. But my girls... what could they possibly get out of this? Perhaps they just enjoy being wretched children.

Stay tuned, more updates from the front to come.

Guess who's back to his old shenaningans?

2007-03-01T14:17:00.003-05:00

He's at it Again!

"Who?" you ask. "The s2bx? God? The Mailman?"

No, its Cheetah, of the Crouching Tabby fame, the furry little bastard.

Forgive me the anthropomorphizing here, but this cat has a real personality. Now we're down to a true battle of wills, and I, for one, am not going to cave to some green-eyed, ginger-haired devil, no matter how nice it is to have him lying against my stomach when I nap.

He doesn't like his new dry cat food. I bought it specifically for the health of his teeth and gums, since he's prone to problems, and he's "resistant" to having his teeth brushed. Ok, you little jerk, eat this special food since you don't want me to slip on that toothbrush condom-thingy and scrape your teeth. Believe me, I have no desire to do it. If I'd wanted to be a kitty-dentist, I'd have gone to Kitty Dentist School. Yeah. The furry menace tried to bite me the last time I attempted it. Ok then, new food. Ha!

Well, he finds the new dry food offensive. He knocks one piece of kibble out of his dish and then bats it around, chasing it through the kitchen, living room and dining room. I think he purposely aims it at my feet just to annoy me. I ignore it, much like I ignore my 4 year-old's whininess. When that doesn't work, he knocks a few pieces into his water dish, where they bloat up like revolting sponges - ok, I can't really blame him for not wanting to eat it, but I bought it, so tough. With the disgusting little kibble-balloons bobbing in his water dish, he can't drink his water.

Still, I do not take the hint as he sees it, so he perches on the counter right behind where I'm seated, green cat eyes boring holes into the back of my neck, and meows plaintively from time to time, just to remind me of his plight. Whenever I get up, he's there, weaving a figure eight between my ankles as I dash to the thermos for more coffee. Is he hoping that if I trip and knock myself unconscious I'll wake up ready to go to the store for some Friskies or MeowMix or something? Maybe he's planning on snacking on me. *shudder*

Sorry, buster. I'm digging in my heels. Eventually, you will get hungry/desperate enough to eat it, just like my girls' hunger eventually outweighs their distate for the green veggies I put in their pasta. I'm a Mean Mommy, and and I'm a Mean Cat Owner. Suck it up and deal, kids. You're not winning this battle.

God help me, I'm turning into my parents!

2007-02-23T14:28:00.003-05:00

I just uttered the following words:

"You two are this close to spending the rest of the day in your rooms!"

It's official: I have become my parents.

This is the last day of the school's winter break (THANK GOD), and I'm beginning to understand in a real and very frightening way why it is that some mammals kill and eat their young. It's not because they're hungry, oh no; rather, it's because the little ones are a pain in the ass at times.

Gee, you're thinking, what a simply awful thing for a mother to say about her own kids!

Yep. Go ahead and call CPS. I dare you. I double-dare you! Call them. I'll even give you the number.

I had to take them to the grocery store with me this morning, and the two of them just would not stop poking each other and whining. Oh my God, I swear I thought I was going to blow an aneurysm in my head. The cashier was laughing at me, but in that "Hey, it's ok, I have a couple of bratty kids too" sort of way, so I could deal with that and not rip her throat out.

Even now, after they've been breakfasted and are watching Dragon Tales, the whining has not ceased. Now, I know that their bad behavior lately is largely a ploy for negative attention. The therapist says that they're likely more badly behaved for me because they feel more secure in my love for them, blah-blah-blah. I'm sick of it.

Every time I sit down with my stack of journal articles (now culled down to 6), to begin fleshing out my research paper, "something" happens. Whether it's a mini-flood in the upstairs bathroom, to a shower of 378 Cheerios all over the living room floor, it's always something that requires my immediate attention, a scolding, and an appropriate punishment.

I ask them if they behave like this for their dad. They say no. He says no. Nope. Mommy is the lucky beneficiary of this misbehavior, so once again, for the umpteenth time, I have to stop what I'm doing, making sure to hit ctrl-s to save it, get up, and kick some ass. Ok, so maybe not that severe. There is always a loss of privvies and time spent in their room, reflecting on their misdeeds. (ok, that bit was pure sarcasm)

I always try to take a break from what I'm doing to spend some "positive" time with them, reading to them, sometimes just cuddling with them on the couch, coloring with them etc. But lately with all of my coursework, I've had more to deal with and less time, but I still make sure that the evenings they're here are 100% Mommy-Daughters time before they go to bed. Still, I get the constant misbehavior when I'm doing something else, reading, writing, studying. It could get worse, too.

Anyone know a good babysitter?

2007-02-02T14:35:00.002-05:00

Today for lunch, being the Good Mommy that I am always conscious of my kids' nutritional well-being, I made the girls grilled ham & cheese sandwiches (or sammiches for the purists out there), tomato soup and a side of fresh fruit, with their choice of milk, water or chocolate milk.

Mommy's lunch, on the other hand, consisted of a Diet Coke with Lime, 5 200-mg tablets of Ibuprofen and 1-mg of Klonopin. If that doesn't kill my headache or at least make me ignore it, then nothing will. Later this afternoon, I plan to bribe my children with the promise of ice cream after supper if they will just let me nap for a bit this afternoon.

I'm sure that the child-free of you out there are appalled at my parenting techniques.

Ok.

Some parents out there must be equally disgusted.

Um, ok.

While you're muttering about my horrendous abilities, if you could shoot me over the name of a cheap, reliable, non-pedophilic baby-sitter in my neighborhood, that would be swell. Believe it or not bribery has its place. I used to be anti-bribery, thinking that kids ought to do what was right because it was the right thing to do.

Ok, stop laughing.

Now, if the promise of a pre-bedtime movie, a small dish of ice cream or 2 homemade chocolate chip cookies can guarantee me two hours of relative peace, then I say screw the naysayers... unless they're volunteering to babysit my kids for me.

The wonder of Lucy

2006-12-20T15:10:00.002-05:00

Things my youngest baby has done recently:

Two days ago, she was marching around the house, inexplicably chanting something that sounded like, "No more peacocks in my room!"

Yesterday and today, she took off the caps to all of her no-mess magic markers whose ink only appears on special paper, and put them on the tips of her fingers. She is wiggling her fingers, entranced by the colorful caps and then tapping them on every surface she passes.

Any time I do something for her: get her cereal, put the marker caps on her fingers, make her a PB sandwich with extra pb, she says, "T'ank 'ooo, Mommy. You the best. Mommy. Evah!"

When she has to go to the bathroom, she waits until the last minute so that she jitterbugs the Pee-pee dance, legs crossed, holding her butt, yelping out, "Oh no, Mommy!! I gotta go PEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Daily, she makes some mess with her Cheerios, but then always says, "I sowwy for the big mess, Mommy." Then she gives me a kiss on my cheek and all is forgiven.

When I ask her to pick something up, she stomps around, shouting, "I not do dis...EVAH!"

The kid eats as if she's got a tapeworm. I can't wait for this growth spurt to end.

She was born 18 months after our son died during the delivery. Part of me knows that I can deny her nothing, but I don't want to turn her into a spoiled brat. Her whole existence to me is proof of something almost miraculous: that I could go on and have another child after burying one; that life goes on despite how badly we are hurt; that we can pick up the pieces of our broken souls and live, love and feel again.

The Mystical Power of Loss

2004-09-11T06:59:00.002-05:00

I can never think of 9/11 without first thinking of the death of my son Nathan. On that bright September morning, I was still wrapped in grief over the loss of my son in childbirth 3 months earlier. Then, seeing the devastation of that morning, I remember feeling that now the entire country tasted the fuzzy-headed despair that had been my constant companion since the previous June.

Grieving a death can change everything: common objects shift to mystic talismans, routine actions become sacred rituals, regular dates are elevated to holy observances, and ordinary places are transformed into hallowed ground by the power of loss.

Mystical Talisman: I have a pair of sneakers which I can no longer bear to wear, nor can I toss out. They are perfectly ordinary sneakers, a little worn, maybe, but their importance stems from the fact that they are what I was wearing that morning I went to the hospital in labor. A tiny smear of blood on them prevents me from wearing them any more, not because I'm grossed out by it or that they are now ritually impure; rather, I imagine that mixed in with my blood there might be tiny fragments of my son's skin or hair. I can not bear the thought that these pieces of him might be washed away, either by accident walking in the rain, or by design.

Sacred Ritual: Even now, I mark my Monday mornings according to the schedule of that awful day. At 7:25, I think to myself, this is the time my water broke and I saw that it was bloody; at 7:35, I picture myself half-waddling, half-lurching into the ER; 8am brings the panic as I remember the nurses talking about reading my pulse, not my baby's, on the fetal monitor; 8:30 is when my OB came in and broke the last bit of my bag of water, saw the rush of blood and ran out of the room, directing the staff to a waiting OR, uttering that terrible word, "abruption;" 8:45, was when I, in the grip of a panic attack, struggled with the anesthesiologist, certain that I would die if put under; then, blackness until 10 am when my husband answered my anguished question, "Is the baby ok?" with "No, honey, he's not. He died."

Holy Observance: June 18 will always be a day for us. No school, no work on that day. We have a leisurely breakfast, go to the cemetary, and take our other children out for a nice spring drive, and do the things with them that our son will never get to do. Outsiders are not welcome on this holy day.

Hallowed Ground: Our former house, in Maryland on the Bay will always be special to me; first, because it was our first house, and it was the place where we brought home our first baby Natalie. All of her early milestones were celebrated there; it is a place filled with happy memories. What sanctifies it for me, is that it is the place where for 36 weeks, my son lived, safe and loved, in my body. The morning we left our house and moved back north, I cried, thinking that we were leaving some part of our son behind.

Smelly Cat, Smelly Cat

2004-09-10T18:36:00.002-05:00

Ok, yesterday's post got me reminiscing about all the fun involved in owning a cat. Here's a story from last year, not too long after we'd gotten Cheetah from the local SPCA.

One night I was up to my elbows in dinner preparations, when Natalie, darling child that she is, comes running in saying, "Mommy! The kitty pooped in my playroom!" Gag me. So, I turn off all the burners, grab a roll of paper towels and, like, 3 different cleaners/disinfectants and go to work.

Natalie had taken the cat into her playroom with her and closed the door so he wouldn't run away from her. She still doesn't get the fact that when the cat has to go away for a bit (to poop, pee, eat, or nap) that he will come back to her. That poor cat. *sigh* What made things worse was that Natalie's toys were scattered all over the place, and the poop was interspersed with them, so once I cleaned up the major areas, I had to inspect each stupid block, lego, stuffed animal, puzzle piece etc for poop. Darling Natalie also had some on her feet *shudder* -oooh, so gross- so I was a cleaning maniac. I even managed not to swear too much, but occasionally, the word "Shit!" did pop out of my mouth. Natalie would then respond, "That's not nice, Mommy!" Grrrrrr!

The house rule now stands, "No cats in closed rooms- ever!" I think Natalie finally understands the significance of that one. It was super-stinky stuff, not that cat poop normally smells divine, but I think that huge bag of Econo-Kat Fud from Sam's Club didn't help matters any. Add to that the fact that Cheetah is an orange tabby cat, and I have heard from many sources that orange cats stink the worst of all housecats- that is merely anecdotal, of course.

Stop Eating the Cat Food!

2004-09-09T16:57:00.003-05:00

I have always known that small children will experiment with "exotic" foods; in particular, foods not meant for human, but rather animal, consumption. Sure, the child might sneak a little kibble, give it a tentative taste, find it offensive and loathsome in her sight and then spit it out. That was the case with my older daughter Natalie when she scarfed down a handful of cat food. The look on her face was priceless. It ran along the lines of, "Holy Mother of God, what have I just done?!" I naturally assumed that meant that cat food, all cat food, was vile to small children.

Three years later, along comes Lucy, who defies this rule. For some reason, this child of mine can not pass by the cat's bowl of Meow Mix without a little sample. She eats it, too. She doesn't simply roll it around in her mouth for a bit and then let the fishy ooze dribble down her lip, ohhhh noooo, she swallows it and goes back for seconds! I never thought that the words, "Stop eating the cat food," would come out of my mouth, least of all directed at the brilliant fruit of my womb. I know that we learn something new every day, but some of these lessons are beginning to scare me, just a little.

The Deed is Done

2004-09-09T07:22:00.002-05:00

My first baby is officially a Kindergartener. I think I held up pretty well. Watching her walk down the sidewalk in her brand-new school clothes, stiff leather shoes and over-large Hello Kitty packback tugged at my heart. The backpack was so big I could probably stuff my younger daughter Lucy, now 21 months old, into it with room for the requisite school supplies. Natalie looked so little and defenseless, yet so proud of her new status as a Big Girl.

Although I did not cry, as I had feared I might, I was feeling wistful and sad as I walked back from dropping her off at school. I had hoped for a tiny show of trepidation on her part- proof that she still needs her Mommy, but no, not my fearless daughter. Her words to me after I kissed her good-bye? "Go home, Mommy!"

T-Minus 1 day and Counting...

2004-09-08T09:32:00.002-05:00

Natalie is determined to drain every last drop of worthless-tv-watching as she can before school starts tomorrow and the dreaded Cable guy comes by to shut off all but the broadcast channels.

Good-bye Spongebob Squarepants! Farewell, Kids Next Door! Sayonara Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Perhaps we'll meet on another shore.

Seriously, my kid has watched too much television this summer. We slid into this awful habit of using the tv as constant entertainment, and most other activities: making collages, painting, reading etc have fallen by the wayside. We were way too lazy this summer, though I doubt that she has been irreversibly harmed by my failing. She has been protesting this decision to cut the cord mightily, but we are confident that, in a week or so, she'll not even notice it. She'll be at school most of the day anyway. Perhaps she'll come home, bursting with play ideas. We shall see.

Kindergarten...

2004-09-07T18:08:00.002-05:00

My first child starts Kindergarten this week. How is this possible? Wasn't it only last month that I was pregnant with her? Didn't she take her first steps just a few weeks ago? How can 5 years pass so quickly?

Being a mom is a greatand scary thing. it reaffirms life for me, yet it makes me ever more aware of my own mortality. I can no longer make up stories in my head where I remain 20-something forever. Now, mychildren are the focus of my life. I measure my age in terms of theirs. As they age, so do I. With each new aggravating exploit, I gain three more gray hairs. Yet with each slobbery kiss, I feel younger.

Hello All!

2004-09-07T16:53:00.002-05:00

Welcome to the Wide World of Mommydom, companion Blog to my homepage of the same name.
I hope to have this place up and running shortly. Check back soon!

Babs