Arcane Matters

This is (sort of) Goodbye

2011-06-28T21:10:00.004-04:00

It's been a good run on Blogger, but I am closing the shutters on this place.

I have a hundred different reasons for making this move to wordpress. For example: I feel the need to protect the girls' privacy more. They are getting older and at some point I will have to explain to them why I chose to share their lives with the world wide web. It's time to narrow the audience a bit.

I am also doing it because I am tired of censoring myself. I want to write about certain people (who, incidentally, have neither computer nor access to them, and if you don't know who I am talking about, then you might not be a long-term reader!) and yet I feel nervous that somehow, in some way, my words—though honest and I stand by them—will get back to them. That's way too passive aggressive for me.

But what pushed me over the edge is the fact that I lied. It's a medium-sized lie, but it can slide into some negative consequences quickly. I'm still kinda treading water on it, and I want to write about it, but I can't. However, with password-protected posts, I can let the words flow.

So this is how this will work. For now, the blog will remain open. I may turn it into a subscriber-only blog down the road, but for now, some of it will be open for all to read. However, a majority of the posts will be password protected. This means if you want to read the post, you need to email me for the password. I will use one password to unlock all of the posts. Easy breezy!

I'm still FTPing and tweaking and designing and protecting and lots of other gerunds. I hope to have it all worked out soon. However, if you want to get a jump on it, email me for the password at niffernet at mac dot com. It might take me a day or two to respond with the password.

And now I need to figure out how to redirect people from blogspot. Anyone care to save me the google search?

Click on the title of this post and it will bring you to the new site:

www.arcanematters.wordpress.com

It's gonna get a lot more open around here. Or there, I should say.

A Picture is Worth 1,475 Words

2011-05-17T19:16:00.012-04:00

Two of my top fears: (1.) Flying and (2.) seeing pictures of myself. And I get to do both in the same month!

Anyone who knows me knows I do not like the way I look in photographs. I try to trace this back to some insensitive comment or some rude remark or some especially awful 80s permed-hair, Silver City pink, turquoise eyeliner picture, but I got nothing. I just don’t like the way my face looks huge, with eyes, nose and mouth clustered haphazardly in the middle of it, almost like an afterthought. My face is a wide, round entity that spreads like pale yellow pancake batter on a grease-slicked griddle. I am not fishing for compliments; it’s just reality. And yes, I am prone to hyperbole.

The rest of me, I’m okay with, I think. I say “think” because the constant inundation of images, advertisements, studies, comparisons, reports, special reports and very special reports makes me feel like I must constantly adjust what idea of what is “good” and “not good.” But in general, I think I’m realistic and accepting.

There are things about my body that will never be the same, thanks to that ten-month miracle called pregnancy. I am no anatomy expert (I found out in my 20s where my kidneys were located, around the same time I discovered that Bermuda was located off the shores of the Carolinas and not nestled down next to the Bahamas) but I am pretty sure that my c-section has created a stomach bubble that will never go away. I chalk this up to the fact that the doctors said they were having a hard time getting my uterus back in place — which seems an unusual thing to admit to a patient — and that conjured up an image of one doctor stuffing my uterus in while the other frantically sewed me up. Kinda like sitting on a suitcase and zipping it up. At my last sonogram (cysts, no, I’m not TTC) the technician said, and I quote: “Wow, they really botched you up, huh?” So I say this has caused a fancy little roll, and now I have this not-so-tiny reminder that flat stomachs are for people in their 20s. And yes, I am happy to trade bikini-ready for Mom jeans.

We did the family portrait this past Saturday. And on Monday, a woman from the studio showed up at our apartment, set up a projector, and beamed 25 of the best pictures from the hour-long session on the wall above out couch. It was surreal!

Surreal, and finite. We can only select one picture for the oil painting, and 8x10 photograph prints cost $300 a piece. This isn’t snapfish! So while we scrolled through the images, I realized I was watching something that I will never be able to view again, like a space shuttle launch, or Barbra Streisand singing Somewhere at Madison Square Garden. I felt possessive of the images and thought a few times how these images are juuuust over there, on the woman’s laptop. What would happen if, for example, I were walking with a disk and, hypothetically, I fell on her computer, and disk completely accidentally was inserted in her drive and I surreptitiously copied (Apple C Apple V!) the images? Believe me, I thought about doing that when she went into the girls’ bedroom to meet Avery’s goldfish, Fishy Friend. Alas, I could not move fast enough and Nicole didn’t read the look in my eyes that said “Just keep her in that room for abut four minutes.”

The sitting itself was a unique experience. The studio was in the St. Regis Hotel in New York, and our dressing room was a giant wood-paneled, mirrored enclave. It seemed more like a space were deals were closed, not bra straps adjusted. It was the largest room I ever stripped down in, I am pretty sure.

We went against the strong recommendation of back tie and instead wore something that was more us: So the girls wore their Easter outfits, Nicole dressed up like Ricardo Montalban on Fantasy Island (white linen suit!) and I wore a simple linen dress. And Madeline, much to my glee, decided to wear her socks pulled up, like Velma on Scooby-Doo. I love that she put her own stamp on this family project.

Despite the fact that Nicole and I were both sipping coffee in china cups on saucers, the girls, immune to the genteel atmosphere of the room and the spirit of white linen, were off the hook, running around, screaming, sitting on each other’s heads and generally acting as if the forthcoming session would be The Madeline & Avery Acrobatic show. “Look at us! We will not be corralled!” If I had a tranquiller gun, I would use it.

But once we went across the hall into the darkened studio, the girls were appropriately reverent and quiet and calm. Magic! I was totally entranced by the photography geekery of it all. The lights and tripods and lenses and light meters. It was like a B&H showroom. In my next life, I want to come back as a photographer. Or as my children.

We were posed in three configurations: The four of us; the two of them and the two of us. And the girls were angels. Stunningly poised and appropriate, even if they did at times look like the creepy Shining twins. They pointed their feet when they were asked to point their feet. They held hands. They smiled real smiles and not the crazy cheeeeeese smiles that they have been partial to lately.

The result was stunning. They looked awesome! But I guess I am partial.

Keep in mind that these pictures that I took are of the projected images above our couch. So they are not the best quality. But you get the idea.

Nicole was almost exactly the same in every picture. She smiled and froze and came out beautiful in each shot. She photographs really well, which made me nervous to stand next to her, with her dark and properly proportioned features.

The best picture was the last one. He decided to pose Nicole and I together on the ground, lounging, shoulder-to-shoulder. I laughed when he told Nicole to get on the ground because Nicole doesn’t get on the ground easily. It takes her about 40 seconds to arrange her bones and limbs and the look on her face when she squats down is priceless. He then settled me next to her, telling me to square my shoulders, lean in a little, point my chin, lift my head, and various other subtle directives that eventually lead me to face his groin square on. At that point, I just started laughing and couldn’t really stop. Once behind the camera, he kept admonishing me to have a “soft mouth” but the more he said that the more I laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed. All I could think was, this pose is such waste of time. There is no way we would select this over a picture of the four of us or the girls. And I can’t stop laughing.

A friend emailed me a pose I wish we did: Back-to-back with hands folded on our chests. That would have been awesome! Especially if one of us had a pencil tucked behind our ear!

And then it was over. We changed back into our clothes and headed home, stopping at a street fair, where Nicole won the girls their first pet— two goldfish! One, of course, has already died.

The saddest part of the day was going to bed, because I knew my magical blow-out, which turned out really good, would not last till morning. And that was the best hair day I have had in a decade! It looked particularly good from behind.

But the final result, the picture we chose to be converted into an oil painting was this one. Of course, Photoshop will be employed to even out socks and fix stray hairs and smooth skirts. And I did ask if they could trim about three inches out of my cheeks, so we'll see. But seeing the four of us like this, all together in one place and not scattered, was totally worth the stress and worry.

Have Boat, Will Travel

2011-04-25T18:43:00.003-04:00

Easter has come and gone. Ours was great. Despite a freak mini snowstorm the day before (an hour and a half of snow, people!) it was a beautiful day up here. We had a pancake breakfast (Nana’s Famous Yeast Pancakes!), went for a hike to Picnic Rock (that’s what I named the quarry pond, because I like to name things) and ate a late lunch in town at a restaurant that was just barely appropriate for the girls (i.e., all crystal glasses, no children’s menu, lots of cloth and two kids who think it is funny, no, hysterical to yell out POOPOO DIARRHEA). All this, followed by ice cream and a relatively smooth bedtime for the girls, which meant Nicole and I could watch not one but two episodes of Modern Family. Easter miracle: she actually laughed out loud a few times!

I was having some Easter insecurity. Last year, my niece and nephew were up here with us and their absence this year left two little holes in my heart. I did not spend nearly as much time this year basket planning as I did last year, and I wonder if this is in part because all Easter prep work made my thoughts turn to Leif and Skye. Avery asked several times if they would be with us again this year. It was so hard to tell her no, they won’t.

This year, I didn’t even have a theme. I know, the horror. Nicole reassured me by saying how many themes can there really be, without getting redundant. But still. Bugs would have made a really get theme. Our eggs were sloppy (is there some sort of trick to this? Mine were awful!) and our house decoration almost nil, though I must say that is because I am not a fan of pastel or overly cutesy decorations. And I even waited uncharacteristically to the last minute to finish up basket shopping. Still, the girls seemed happy and I can always save my “bugs” theme for next year.

While we were all about chocolate bunnies and jelly beans, a friend of mine celebrated her 40th birthday on Easter. All I could think was, wow, what a great thing! Turning 40 on Easter, a day that celebrates rebirth and renewal. Imagine focusing being ‘reborn’ on your 40th, instead of feeling ennui and dread “the end is near”, as many do? Imagine thinking, this is a new day, a new start, a new birth?

When I was younger (yes, this means my 20s) change was elusive. I was more likely to float along and see where the tide took me instead of actually steering my boat. That lead to all sorts of chaos and interesting situations. By “interesting” I mean not good. This is not a recommended nor beneficial course for one’s career, social life, or romantic life. By 30, I patched up my hull, started steering, navigating by both stars and GPS. There was wind in my sails, a back-up engine to boot, and even a pair of emergency oars to help me push out of particularly murky, sludgy spots. I still take wrong turns and sometimes spend a little too much time in Toxic Coves, but eventually I remember, oh yeah, I don’t have to wait here for someone to tow me out. I have my own engine, and I am getting the hell out of here. And I’m really trying to remember this good advice I got: You can be upset for the next hour, then move on. Because, really, life is too short.

The older I get, the more cliché I am. To wit: It really is ALL in the journey. How often are we focused on that end goal and forget all the work that leads up to it. There are lessons in that work, and value in it, and fun. And that the decision to make a change in itself, that split-second moment when enough is enough or your back is against a wall or you are just ready, carries more weight and importance then the goal itself.

Like running a marathon. The reward is usually said to be crossing that finish line and getting that foil blanket. But really, what about the hundreds of miles of training? What about all the effort and time and dedication put forth? What about the lessons one learns about prioritizing? What about the days when you pound out a bad day with a good run? What about the bonds created by sharing this journey with others? So really, is the finish line the reward? Or just the start line to a new goal?

All things I need to remember: Boat, engine, stars, power, change change change and one hour, people, just one hour.

Pictured above, look closely at Avery in that top picture and, I hate to say this, but doesn’t Avery look a little…. possessed? But so cute in her little dress! I am destined to NOT have one good picture of me with my children!

Top Nine-and-a-Half Surprises About Parenthood

2011-04-13T08:36:00.004-04:00

Arts and Crafts? What Arts and Crafts?: I am generally a crafty person. For me, the urge to craft can be acute, and if I don’t get a glue gun and some sea shells in my hand, I will explode. I always imagined myself as the mother who would idle away hours at a table with children coloring, gluing, stamping, creating, building, folding and lots of other verb gerunds. I imagine children with sticky fingers, gluey fingers, wearing Nicole’s old button down shirts as smocks. That didn’t quite happen. My girls are lucky if I toss a bunch of crayons on the floor and grab a couple of pieces of paper from the printer. OK, maybe that is a slight exaggerations (who, me?) but still. I am not nearly as creative as I should/could be.

In The Case of an Untimely Death: And I thought choosing a sperm donor was hard. Choosing a guardian for the girls spins me into a panic. I know this is because I set unbelievably high standards, higher standards, in fact, then I set for myself as a parent. I figure if Nicole and are gone, then the girls might as well upgrade in the parent department. So instead on focusing on figuring this mess out, I will instead focus on vigilantly guarding the continuation of Nicole’s and my lives. Which brings me…

Health Panic: Is it just a headache, or a slow-growing brain tumor? A slight cramp, or the beginning of uterine cancer? I’ve never been one to worry much about health (See: My 20s) but since having children, I feel particularly concerned about health and wellness, both mine and Nicole’s. Sure, I have my lapses, like that whole biopsy thing, which seemed easier to ignore than to deal with, but in general I am more apt to visit a doctor than I ever was.

Up Next, More Spongebob Squarepants: Before I had kids, I was convinced that television was The Devil and I would not let my children partake in it and its evil doings. Ha. I have since embraced television as the companion, babysitter and teacher that it is. The girls watch more television than I want them to, and I am okay with that. It is such a slippery slope: It started with “Just Sesame Street, and that’s it,” and I comforted myself with its overall educational message and alphabet teachings. The next thing I know, they are complaining that they already saw that episode of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (just kidding…). That said, they watch significantly less TV when we are in Massachusetts. But on a day like today, rainy, windy and chilly in NYC, we are stuck inside and well, I already wrote about the whole crafty thing so what else I there but TV?

Food, Glorious Processed Food: Oh, the food plans I had. You know how they say God laughs when you make a plan? Well, He must have been doubled over breaking ribs with laughter when he heard my food plans. To wit: I will breastfeed for a year, and not a drop of formula will pass these girls’ lips. The Reality: Madeline and Avery were happily drinking formula before they celebrated their 12th hour on earth. To say breastfeeding was not a successful venture is an understatement. I rallied when they started solid foods, blending and pureeing most of the food that they ate. But that stopped once they started eating finger foods. I say with pride that they have never eaten a hot dog, but they have eaten their weight ten times over in chicken nuggets. All those organic, healthy balanced meals that I vision in my head and just that: Visions. A typical meal is the aforementioned chicken, ketchup, carrots and cut-up apples. Keep in mind this is what is offered to them. What they actually eat: Usually just the ketchup, which they shovel to their mouths with a carrot stick. I am a very picky eater, so I give them wide berth when it comes to these things. When I whip myself up into a panic state I tell myself I will not be worried until their doctor tells me I should be worried. That works most of the time. But other times, I fret. Are they getting enough Omega 3s for brain growth? Am I stunting their growth by not enforcing a strict, organic, locally grow diet?

Braveheart: I killed four stink bugs the other night and didn’t even flinch. Believe me, ten years ago, I would have gone running from them. This new found bravery isn’t an instant thing. It’s not like I had kids and suddenly –POOF— I erupted with courage and fearlessness. It was a gradual onset of fortitude. I can’t stress this enough: The fact that I can sleep alone in Massachusetts with the girls is huge. Huge! It is one of the few things that I am really, really proud of. And yes, I know we have an alarm system, but let the record reflect that I started the whole sleeping there alone thing before ADT came to our house.

Now, With More Cynicism!: I think I became slightly more cynical the second those little embryos adhered themselves to my uterine wall. Politics, the planet, human rights, gay rights, war, big business, banking: Everything seems to be going downhill. This was especially obvious this past presidential election, when I refused to get on board the Obama fan train. Yes, I voted for him, but I was cynical (there’s that word again!) that change would actually come. I will admit that he has checked off a few things on the list of Good Deeds Done, but it doesn’t seem like enough. Sometimes I wonder if this is just a by-product of aging. After all, people in their 20s can be so passionate about politics. But the older we get, the more jaded we are, the more we start thinking “What’s in it for me?” Will this eventually landslide into indifference? For now, I cleave to my cynicism, as it is better than being blasé.

Who, me, Paranoid?: This is a conversation I have imagined that my children will have when they are 22 years old:
Avery: Maddie, do you ever wonder about our sperm donor?
Madeline: Yes:
Avery: I hate Momma!
Madeline: Me too!

Again with hyperbole, but it gets the message across: I worry more than ever. I wonder all the time, am I a good mother? Am I doing a good job? Am I affectionate enough? Firm enough? Loving enough? Doing enough? Are the girls going to look back and say “Yeah, we had a really good childhood?” thus setting them up to create really good childhoods for their own children. This paranoia goes beyond my parenting skills. I worry about making the best educational decisions for them, too. But that truly is another series of posts.

I Make A Lot of Sound Effects/I Scat: Jewp. Scoodely Bop. Eeeps. Dingu dingu. Jeep. My children are almost four and I still say the most ridiculous things to them. This surely will lead to malnourished, TV-addicted, uncreative, hot-dog eating teenagers who speak sound effects.

And now for one thing I do better than I thought I would: We have all been inundated with studies that say how important this reading to your child is. I have written papers about this in grad school. I would spout statistics to anyone who would listen, even way before I had kids, which I’m sure wasn’t annoying (ha!). So I always thought I would take my own advice and read to my children, but I must say I read more than I thought I would. And believe me, this is not an easy task. At this age, Madeline points to EVERY person, animal or thing on a page and asks “What’s that guy saying?” and expects me to tell her what that guy is saying. And Avery likes to trace the letters. One book of, oh, 200 words and a very limited plot could take twenty minutes to get through. And after I finish a book, Madeline likes to "reread" it for Avery and me. It can be exhausting.There are times I want to snap the book shut and flip on the TV. But I don’t, and I am proud of that.

Pictured above: I wonder if my Facebook friends get tired of seeing me post the same pictures on my blog as I do on Facebook. I am Lady Redundant Woman. There’s Avery with her Do-Do-Do-Do-Do Dora “ice cream” pop. Yet another thing I swore my kids wouldn’t eat! And Madeline and Avery sitting on a bench. Do you think Avery will hate me for posting pictures like this some day?

When Karma Takes Itself a Little Too Literally

2011-03-31T08:07:00.003-04:00

• I totally believe in karma, but didn’t realize it could sometimes be so tit-for-tit, tat-for-tat literal. About a year ago I ran into a neighbor at the bank. We both did our business at the ATMs, and he left a minute before me, as he didn’t need to hassle with rounding up toddlers. I noticed his ATM on the ground. He was long gone, so I brought it to his apartment. He was so grateful. Flash forward to yesterday. I am walking in my building and my neighbor is outside the building with his dog, chatting on his cell phone. I pull my keys out of my pocket and, apparently, my credit card falls to the ground. He yells to me, points out the card on the ground, and saves me the hassle of closing my account and getting a new card. I found his card, and he found mine. Literal karma. I had another almost literal karma incident, but that one was not as pleasant. That’s another post.

• Tomorrow is our 9th anniversary, which means starting the day after that, I will round up our “years together” to ten. As in, a decade. As in, a tenth of a century. As in, a drop in the bucket on the way to forever. We will not be celebrating officially, as Nicole is heading to New Mexico for work, and I am heading to Long Island with the girls for my niece’s confirmation. That is the beauty of having two anniversaries, I guess. This one is the anniversary we celebrated before we were officially married. I refuse to relinquish it. It seems silly to pass up a gift-giving occasion, I mean, a day to celebrate our love.

• Speaking of gifts, I got Nicole a totally symbolic gift that I am now second-guessing. Was I high when I decided this? Like, completely stoned out of my mind? It seems like an idea ripped out of the pages of one of those Harlequin romance books. Or Jane Eyre. Full of symbolism and treacle and awww, shucks. Left to my own devices, I am a total romantic who sits around dreaming up things like this. Not even sure I can give it to her with a straight face anymore. Can’t say what it is yet, but I will after Nicole gets it. If I give it to her. Ugh.

• This is the worst spring ever. Cold, windy, dreary. And snow is forecasted for tomorrow. That’s not stopping me from wearing a strapless dress to the confirmation. I willing the sun to come out by dressing as limitedly as possible. I’ll be properly covered in church, though, to shield the congregation from my heathen cleavage.

• Speaking of worst, I joined the Worst Gym in America. It is underground; has no towels; has no signal for cell phones; the treadmills are prehistoric; and its three TVs are set to SportsCenter and music videos and CNN. Oh, and there are closed captions because there are no outlets to plug your earphones into to listen. I mean, who doesn’t love watching music videos? The good part of this gym is that it is only $25 a month, which is unheard of in NYC. I tried it out for a week, and when I didn’t join right away, they emailed me, asking me to join for $70 a month. I ignored that email and they sent another. This time, $50, then $40, then $25. A waited to make sure no emails were forthcoming and then joined at that rock-bottom price.

• I find that when I am, say, cooking in the kitchen, and the girls are playing by themselves, unsupervised, in another room, it is wise to yell out “No” periodically and randomly. I usually then hear the girls scramble, then giggle, and say “OK, we won’t do that anymore,” which means I was right. They were up to no good. That’s parenting at its intuitive best.

• I signed the girls up for swimming lessons. I’ll save you the “Time is going by so fast” rant. But time really is going by so fast. 17 months till kindergarten.

Pictured above, glorious signs of spring, that were covered with fresh snow not long after this picture was taken. And more snow to come tomorrow. Longest winter ever. Silver lining is, I will totally appreciate the spring like I haven’t in a very long time. Also pictured, Avery and her cousin Isabelle (who is in costume for a play. She doesn’t normally run around with a bow like that.). You can’t tell this by this pic, but Avery worships her. Which makes me happy, as she is a perfect role model: Smart, kind, evolved, talented and beautiful!

Butter and Japan

2011-03-14T22:40:00.003-04:00

Tonight I took the girls out to eat. Dinner started with an otherwise routine adjustment period of negotiating seats; removing sharp silverware; analyzing potential water spillage patterns and arranging water glasses to minimize soaking children; tucking away the unused-ever-at-our-table wine list and asking the waitress for just two more minutes. Bread was dropped off at our table, just in time to tame the hungry toddlers, and I had a flash of annoyance when I noted that the butter was frozen solid. Don’t restaurants realize frozen butter is completely unspreadable, thus rendering is useless? This always bothers me, frozen butter.

Almost as quickly as that thought entered my head, I thought, what the f&ck is wrong with me? Annoyed by frozen butter? How petty and insignificant and trivial and stupid when measured against real problems in the world.

There are so many real problems to choose from, but the earthquake/tsunami in Japan really struck a nerve in me. Maybe because I see my sister-in-law and her sister’s face in the faces of the Japanese women and because I see my niece and nephew in the faces of the children. Those Japanese genes are powerful. The footage makes me cry. The coverage makes me angry. I have officially changed my “homepage” because I am annoyed beyond belief that CNN makes me watch a 30-second commercial before I can watch their video reports. Really, CNN.com? You are going to try to sell me a car before I can see the story about the man who escaped the path of the deadly tsunami with his three-month old child? Or the report about the mother who ran to get her son from his kindergarten class and book it to higher ground? Or the residents of a home for the elderly, sitting dazed in hard plastic seat, with looks of the saddest sadness etched on their faces? And, that video making the rounds on facebook, with the sirens and the view of the horrific water sweeping away a town, will give me nightmares tonight. If I can sleep. It’s almost 1:00 and I’m still up.

Haiti and Chile and Australia and New Orleans (so poorly handled), all recent victims of horrible, terrible, unimaginable natural disasters. And now Japan. I don’t mean to get all John Lennon and peace-y but, wow, what a different world this would be if we used our armies and resources and money and budgets helping people devastated by natural disasters, instead of “wars” and “defense.” Why can’t we mobilize our armies (which include such much needed people like doctors and nurses therapists and social workers, in other words: People who care for people) for powers of good?

It’s all so heartbreakingly sad. Tonight, after a perfectly perfect day with the girls (play school, store school, play date with a friend, dinner out, couch snuggling, book reading) I was even more grateful for home and safety and no sirens. Avery fell asleep in front of my eyes (looooong blinks to peaceful sleeeeeep) as I lay with her in her bed. And Madeline, who, an hour after she went to bed, came out into the living room and asked me for a just one more hug. Tiny, perfect moments.

Pictured above, scenes from the weekend. We tagged along with Nicole on a work trip to Boston. I am constantly amazed that my two girls have two different personalities, because I, too, sometimes fall into that trap of thinking that just because they are twins, they have the exact same personalities. Madeline’s fearless in the water. Absolutely fearless. She just jumps in, goes under, and comes up laughing. Avery loves swimming, but she requires a little more support. She will do everything Madeline does, but she needs a little more hand-holding. Just look at the looks on the faces before Nicole dunks them….Avery is so serious and focused, and Madeline is so excited and happy. Every day they teach me that mothering must be dynamic, detailed and focused. And end-user specific.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

2011-03-04T08:17:00.001-05:00

And this is exactly why my next stop is password-protected posts. Because these are the times when I cannot stand the muzzle I put on myself, and choking down the words is, well, choking me. Yet what I want to write will hurt another, so I can’t bring myself to do it. I am an open book with (most of) my life, but it is hard for me to share portions that directly involve others. So, no post. Instead, I sit here, close to midnight, unable to sleep, with this burning away inside me. Can’t call anyone this late and can’t pound out a blog post. Yeah, maybe I am being dramatic. Burning, choking, muzzles, mixed metaphors… classic me. But there are times when I feel completely overwhelmed and just not capable to dealing with situations on my own.

[and this next part was deleted this morning….]

Thursday at the Post Office, an obnoxious and disheveled man shushed the girls. The best part is, they weren’t even being loud. My last trip to the post office included the girls knocking over of velvet corral ropes and general antsy mayhem, and culminated in Avery biting my ass (literally) while I tried to make that very important decision of one-day, two-day, three-day or parcel post mail.

This time, polar opposite. Madeline sat like an angel in a chair while Avery stood next to her. They were passing a plastic Lego tree back and forth, laughing and obviously happy. Avery would pretend to take a bite out of the tree and Madeline would laugh and say “Avy, do it again!” And Avery did. (Maddie calls her Avy…)

This grinch kept shushing them, in a loud and undignified way that sent spittle spraying in their general direction. First time, I ignored it. Second time, I told the girls to quiet down, all the while thinking to myself “What am I doing? They are not being loud.” But the third time, I let loose a little. I told him that the are not being loud and he can stop shushing them, as they have been taught never to take orders from strangers.

I was angry. Maybe sort monthly chemical shift (which gets worse as we get older? WTF?) prompted that not-very-controlled response, but it was rude, and he needed to not get away with that. And he struck me as the type of man who has gotten away with a lot. I’m pissed that I had to be semi rude to him, and that I must have seemed like that defensive mom, and embarrassed that other people waiting on line had to see that. And I am pissed that I will not be able to protect my girls from losers like that. I love my girls more than anything. How will I ever be able to protect them, from spittle spraying strangers?

That’s my state of mind. Let’s hope sleep cures this. Friday has to be better.

In Defense, Yes, In Defense of Charlie Sheen (a little...)

2011-03-02T22:01:00.001-05:00

It’s been hard lately to avoid the overexposed Charlie Sheen. He is all over the morning news, which, in a lovely twist of events, I have been able to watch (the news, that is) a little of this past week. Thank you, tea set and magnets, for occupying my children’s early morning hours. I have never seen an episode of the show he is on and I’m not a follower of his film work. And I don’t know much about his life, except for the broad strokes as covered by tabloids and gossip columnists. But I won’t let that stop me from weighing in.

I have two comments, maybe three. One, it is indeed interesting that his show was halted after he insulted the producer. Make fun of management and bam! the show is shut down. Yet, beating his wife and holding a knife to her throat while threatening to kill her? Destroying a suite in The Plaza after some sort of binge? The show must go on! Interesting….

Second, if he is as messed up as everyone is saying he is, then wouldn’t the media be, you know, exploiting him? Hmm. Everyone is quick to say he is crazy or high or losing it or not sober or insane, but damn if he isn’t good for their ratings. Last time I checked, that is indeed exploitive. I find it all a little sickening. And yet I can’t stop watching either.

Third, I think that he actually has a provocative message that is getting lost in the mix of his bizarre verbiage. I am fascinated by his outspoken break with AA. Clearly, he is done with AA. Not only is his done, he is espousing deep hatred for the organization. This time, he got (is getting?) clean by doing it himself at home, without the support of AA. And, believe it or not, I admire him for this.

Let me explain: I know a few people — whose sobriety I truly admire — who are in the program, and swear by it. I wanted to be one of those people. I wanted to sit in folding chairs in a church basement with a cup of bad, lukewarm coffee in my hand. I wanted a sponsor who I could call in weak moments. I wanted a blueprint for sobriety. I wanted to tell my stories to an audience of people who would get it. Seriously, AA is a dream for emotionally needy/barnacle people like myself! Alas, I tried AA for a while and did not find a fit for me. I was very, very disappointed.

At first I had no faith that I could do it alone. But I had to. So I dug in my heels and did this stop drinking thing by, as Avery would say, my own self. Well, I did have Nicole and the support of most of my friends, but, in the realm of recovery world, I did it alone. No AA, no therapist, so counselor or social worker. No nothing. And here I am, eight years plus later, living proof that you CAN do it without AA, or a counselor, or a therapist, or anything. You CAN do this alone, in your own home, and I think that is a really important message that needs to get out there.

There are many people don’t try to get sober because AA and counselors and rehab aren’t their bag and they don’t think they can do it alone. And they can. Is Charlie Sheen the best spokesperson for this message? Right now, not really (again: that verbiage). But he has the biggest megaphone right now. Too bad a good message is getting buried in bad interviews. And, his name will most likely soon be a verb.

Coming up, mini breakdowns, compliments of Google. And, I’m looking into wordpress and its fancy easy import.

Pictured, Madeline and her Match Game.

Except Accept: A Journey Indeed

2011-03-01T05:14:00.002-05:00

My latest philosophy—and I can say “my” with some assurance, as I have not read any self help books lately and haven’t had the benefit of therapy—is that the less you (I) fight against reality, the happier you (I) will be. Anyone smell overtones of “Que Sera Sera” here? Or the whole “..to accept the things I cannot change;  courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” OK, so many some self-help ideologies linger.

This concept can apply to 17 different areas of my life, but here’s a case in point: I mentioned this a few blogs back (study up; there will be a quiz): I really miss my niece and nephew, who have relocated, without my written consent, to China. Just thinking about them now is making me cry. I think about them every day and lament their leaving and mourn the distance and get frustrated with the time difference challenges and wish they would come back. I am wistful for the days when they lived a mere ten miles (or, 40 minutes, in NY driving time) from me. I torture myself by recalling specific memories. In other words, I have done pretty much everything… except accept.

What I should be doing is focusing my energies on care packages and hopefully Camp Cousin this summer, when they return for a while, and Skpe calls, which are all destined to be at awful and inconvenient times. That is what I should be doing. I should be striving to make sure that my children maintain a connection with them, their cousins. I should accept the fact that this seemingly sudden and drastic move across the WORLD is one of life’s latest little twists, and there is nothing I can do to change it. But I can accept it. Settle down, and settle.

Which brings me to settling into that acceptance. I love the duality of the verb “to settle.” Forget duality, there are actually almost twenty accepted definitions of this verb. One definition means to come to rest, to adjust to something. To become calm. Settle down. Settle on the couch with a good book. Settle in for a long winter’s nap. There are slight variations there, but they hover near enough the same concept, around the same core. And then there’s “to settle,” as in to settle for something. As in accepting something even though it is not the best and not what you (I) want. Accept something in spite of incomplete satisfaction. Settle for less than perfect. Amazing how one word can span such two (or twenty…) disparate ideas.

“Settled” brings to mind such a peaceful feeling. “Settling” makes me want to fight. In this particular situation, I am settled and settling for. I am doing both. The one-two punch. I am trying now to accept this situation, and stop the runaway thought train of “If only…” and “why can’t…” and “If maybe just…”. But I am also aware that this cross-world paradigm is not MY preference, that I am trying to accept it, in spite of incomplete satisfaction.

So I am trying to let these two definitions marry into one psychologically strong concept. I can be settling for something (unsatisified), and still feel settled (satisified). A paradox, no? And I can take that excess “energy” in the awful, damaging forms of torment, sadness, anger and frustration and put them to better use. Like sending my niece a birthday present (which is in two days….)

Next up, Redundant vs. tautological: What’s the Difference?” Just kidding. Maybe.

Pictured above, Leif, Skye. Not only to I love them three days past forever, I love their names.

The Secret Emotional Life of Bloggers

2011-02-28T06:55:00.001-05:00

My brilliant privacy solution: I was thinking about starting an email digest of posts. In other words, I would email posts that I worry about having WWW exposure to a select list of email addresses (that you readers must provide me) in lieu of attempting password-protected posts or starting a new blog. I like the idea of having some sort of reader transparency….if I have an email address then I know who’s reading, and can somewhat control exposure. Right? I don’t know. Jury is still out.

I will lament again how I wish I blogs could be more personal and detailed and truthful. Some people like to use blogs as a sort of Trapper Keeper of daily thoughts and events, and that’s fine. It’s their prerogative, after all. I now some bloggers in real life, whose lives are much much more layered and complex than the one they reflect on computer paper. I guess I just want more sometimes, for myself.

There are several blogs that I read that have recently just dropped bombshells: Everything is fine, fine, fine; the typical ruminations of a woman in her mid 30s or 40s. A collection of the normal ups and downs of life, spliced with witty insights and funny commentary. Then, all of the sudden, there is a break in posting, followed in due course by the Final Post. The “I’m shutting this blog down” with a quick explanation that usually involves some awful blindside of a reason that was never written about, never hinted at, never discussed. I hate reading a book and not being able to finish the ending.

Blogs used to be so interesting because they were so honest, raw, and exposing of truths that were for so long forum-less. Finally there was a place for women to talk about, say, the horrors of infertility in detail. Or the difficulties of being an alcoholic mom who is trying to get sober. And the whole mommy blogger revolution, where moms were exposed as people who—horror of horrors—were sometimes annoyed, overwhelmed, horrified or left unsatisfied by the process of raising children. Who doesn’t like to read a blog from a person who is telling it like it is?

If I can’t discuss in detail my relationship with, say, my mother, then what good is a blog, other than to record some daily events? Yet, I can understand why we all self-edit, why we all hide what we hide. I do see how one-sided blogging is, and how unfair it might be to paint a portrait of another person without their portrait of me. But, hey, they can start their own blog, right?!

Anyway, I didn’t mean to get into all this again. I was going to write this post about the duality of the verb “to settle.” But that will have to be for tomorrow.

Pictured above: Haircut Number Two.

Nobody knows where you're going; nobody cares where you've been

2011-02-22T09:14:00.003-05:00

I grew up on Long Island, and knew even in those formative years that I wanted to go to a college in a city. Not just any city; New York City. I applied to tons of schools located in bucolic settings, with squares and quads and trees and woodsy paths. And I applied to NYU. When I got into NYU, I knew without hesitation or equivocation that that is exactly where I wanted to go. That is where I belonged. I promptly started playing “You Belong In the City” on the car radio (had to rewind it to listen on repeat!) and tried to make sense of the tangled colored spaghetti lines of a subway map, even though I was initially afraid to take the subway. I bought black jeans and black turtlenecks, because my only role model for NYC Cool was the Sprockets on Saturday Night Live. I was so sure that I made the right decision and couldn’t wait for my “real” life to begin. See ya, one-horse town, I’m off to the Big City! But that wouldn't be the first time my "instinct" was wrong.

Well, not wrong. Life is one big experiment, so to look at decisions as bad or wrong seems to undermine the whole point of life. Everything is an experience, right? We learn from the good decisions and the bad. But, looking back, I think I would have been much happier in a much smaller college setting. In a leafy place in a small town with a tight-knit community. A place where I might have bumped into my professors walking across a Quad. Where connections might have been forged by the seemingly insignificant events like getting coffee at the same time every day and the same place.

NYU is very, very big and very, very easy to get lost in. And that is exactly what I did. I sort of disappeared into the chaos of the city and a giant university, and ran away from childhood issues and all that, and let the city shape me. Passive maturation at its best, and most expensive.

While most of my friends have a cadre of friends from their college days, I have just one. It’s easy to see how that happens: While my high school friends were in their dorms in their non-city schools, making friends and finding the one bar in town that served the underaged, I was roaming aimlessly around an entire city. Dorms at NYU were mainly places you slept, not places to bond with floormates. There were no campus hangouts. No one spent time in the Student Center. And, sealing my fate in the friend department, at NYU I roomed with one of my best friends from high school. I don’t regret that, but I do see how that makes it harder to find new friends.

But this city. What a love affair. I love New York, and always have. I have lived here 21 years. I feel like it is more my home than Long Island ever was. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.

Until recently, that is. This morning, on the treadmill, I was thinking about life in the city vs. life in Massachusetts. I was thinking how in just over a year in Mass, I have carved out a social life there that I never had in New York. When we are there, the girls have active, fun-filled days. We go to the play group every day. They have Store School. A backyard accessed through a door, and not from a stroller walk to a park. We are starting to make friends, which will certainly lead to play dates in our future. I have never managed to do that in NYC. Here, the girls’ play dates are with my group of high school friends. (I am, if nothing, a loyal person. In fact, today I will head to Long Island to visit with one and her three little girls.)

So it all has me thinking, is this another case of thinking NYC is the best place for me, the only place for me, but it really isn’t? Am I still blinded by the lights of the Big City? Am I still fooled into thinking this is the only place to make a happy, fulfilling life? Would my life be more rounded living full time in Massachusetts? The poignant part is, it’s not about me anymore. Now we need to make decision based on what’s best for the girls, and what makes sense for Nicole’s career. I take solace in knowing that I love both places. But there is a part of me that really wants to see how this story ends.

Right now, we have the best of both worlds. The truth is, I love New York and Massachusetts. And I am working on finding that ever elusive balance between the two. I don’t like spending too much time alone with the girls in Massachusetts, with Nicole in NYC working, because that fritters away the connections of our little family of four. Next year, the girls will most likely go to preschool, but the big question is, where? We are looking into some Mass schools, and will be applying to some in the city. And then there is kindergarten. Same thing: Where will they go? Where will our primary residence be? I feel so in control of this, and not.

Yeah, I can’t stop this blog. I just can’t. Thanks for your comments and emails. I will always need a forum to work through my thoughts and I truly do like feedback and other perspectives. Oh, except for the homophobic perspective. The big dilemma: How to be truthful without infringing on other’s privacy.

I'm being beckoned to a ball. Princess is encoded in Avery's DNA.

Pictured above, Valentine’s cupcakes.

Maybe I am Over Thinking It

2011-02-11T11:24:00.003-05:00

There seems to be an epidemic of “I’m not going to blog anymore,” and bloggers who are blogging less and less. I am swirling in it too. And there is part of me that thinks I may stop soon. There are multiple reasons for this:

1. I’ll admit it, the homophobic comment freaked me a bit. I posted about it on facebook: Someone left a nasty comment here that basically said I had issues because of my sexuality and that my children will suffer in a gay family. Nice, right? I deleted it, so I doubt anyone saw it. But it really bothered me. I get that my family is not everyone’s cup of tea, but I am not thrilled when people feel like they have the right to tell that to my face, via blog comment, that is. It made me feel very exposed, and very exposed for my children.

2. Time is at a premium: In fact as I sit here, Avery is squirting leave-in conditioner in my hair and brushing it, as Madeline builds magnet boxes next to us. Taking the time to write seems like a luxury. I feel guilty, like I should be engaged with the girls instead of engaged with my own thoughts. I don’t want to take away from their time. 18 months till Kindergarten. Yes, I’m counting.

3. Not full disclosure: One of the reasons I write is because it helps me sort out my thoughts and issues. And I really value other people’s thoughtful comments. But I am having a hard time writing about certain relationships with certain people. If you’ve read this blog for a while, you will know most likely of who I speak. There are things in my head that I am trying to sort out. For example, how awful I feel about my niece and nephew’s move to China. How I feel like my relationship with them is forever cracked, due to the distance. How upset I am that they were in the US at Christmas but I didn’t see them. However, I feel like I can write about all that in detail. “I miss Leif and Skye” isn’t exactly encompassing. It’s ok for me to expose my life, but I just don’t feel like it is my right/place to expose other people’s lives and/or issues.

4. Privacy: My girls are getting older, and I feel like I need to protect their privacy more. Down the road, they might not be thrilled with the stories and anecdotes I share. There could be a lot of retro bitterness. And more of that exposure word. Or, overexposure.

There you have it. I’m still trying to figure out what to do. I sit down and write and what I write is to personal to post. Or is it? I can’t figure it out. All I know is, I will be lost if I don’t write. It is the last thread of me, who defines who I think I am. So I need to figure it out.

Something I can post about is this: Parenthood, the television show, makes me cry every episode. Every single one. I find it to be a very realistic and well written show. I did have one issue with it, though. A few weeks ago, I saw an episode (I think from the first season) that included a story line of how the teenage daughter was so impressed with her aunt’s fancy career, but she seemed not so impressed with her stay-at-home mom. I thought it was great that a television show was addressing this. This resonates with so many moms. Every single close friend mom friend I know has expressed to me at one time or another how they feel like they aren’t contributing anything/doing anything/etc. if they stay at home. So I was thrilled when I saw this very issue on television! But then, not so much. This is what happened next: The father took the daughter to a beautiful park and said, essentially, “See this great park? This park wouldn’t be here if your mom didn’t petition some people and raise $200,000.” The message that that sends is, it’s ok to be a stay at home mom, as long as you, you know, do something important, like raise 200K to build a freaking park. Maybe I am over thinking it.

Earlier this week, my friend Jen made Chicken Lo Mein for dinner. As what usually happens with us, her cravings become my cravings, and vice versa, so naturally I had to make it. The next day, she tells me how it took her two and a half hours to make and how her kids didn’t even eat it, though she and her husband loved it, even though it was too salty. (Mental note: Chinese five spice + soy sauce + Hoisin sauce + oyster sauce = seltzer all night long.). She lamented how she spent so much time —time that she COULD have spent with her kids — and to what gain? This didn’t deter me, and I subsequently spent two and a half hours doing the same thing, and ending up with the exact same result: good, but salty; kids won’t eat it; and was it worth it? Wouldn’t that time have been better spent with the girls? Should I be cutting slivers of cabbage or reading with the girls? Maybe I am over thinking it.

On an exciting note, I won a one-hour session with a psychic, and my appointment is tomorrow. I want to be a believer, I really do, but there is a giant skeptic that lives in me. I am looking for some hard-core evidence of an after-life. Which I guess proves that I suffer from a crisis of faith. Isn’t faith, after all, believing in what can’t be proven? And yet I need proof? Maybe I am over thinking it.

Pictured above, winter and scribbled art. And Avery, at the dentist, because how cute is that?

Strange, Since I've Always Been A Self-Service Kinda Girl Anyway

2011-01-12T20:16:00.003-05:00

We are up in Massachusetts and as far as the eye can see is beautiful, fluffy, snow-white snowy snow. This is why I came up here this week, to be here for the storm, so the girls could experience Winter Wonderland, because they haven’t had much of it this year. But this is snow of the useless variety. We can’t sled on it, make good snowballs with it, or make a snow village with it. We can barely walk in it. Waist-deep for the girls; knee-deep for me, and difficult to trudge through, to say the least. A giant white blanket of tease.

That didn’t sop us from trying to make he most of it. I took the girls out in it today. It took forever putting on their socks and snow pants and mittens and boots and hats and coats. Snapping, tying, Velcroing, poking, prodding, pulling, all in an effort to cover every inch of their mini bodies to protect them from the frigid air. The girls looks ready for an Antarctic Expedition. The best part is, we almost spend more time getting ready than we do being outside! They trudged around for a little less than an hour and then started requesting “inside” and “movie” and “snacks.” So much for my dreams of taking them for a long walk in the snowy woods. I forget that their legs are like a foot long.

Still, it was a great day. And yesterday was a nearly perfect day, start to finish. I would like to take those days, Apple C them and Apple V them (copy and paste, in Mac world) on my calendar to the days that follow. I feel content and satisfied and busy. I feel like a good mom and, though Nicole is still in NYC, like a good wife, like I am keeping up my end of the unwritten, unspoken, fuzzy bargain/contract of stay-at-home mother. I felt full.

But this in not by accident. I have been working hard lately at learning how to fill up my own tank. Not easy at first, believe you me. Especially for such a Needy McNeedystein as myself . I used to have a tank that only Nicole could fill. A Nicole-shaped nozzle and hose. When I was empty, I asked her to fill me up. Not just a little….allllll the way to the tippy top. After all, we don’t put gas in our car a gallon at a time, right? All or nothing, baby.

But how can one person be solely responsible for another’s tank? It’s romantic, and practical, in some ways, but unrealistic by a mile. Maybe this would work if we were prisoners who shared a jail cell. So I added mini nozzles for the girls, thinking, oh, this will take the pressure off of Nicole. After all, I let the girls live in my womb for 38 weeks; it’s the least they could do. But filling another’s tank is way too much pressure for people who don’t even understand how to add and subtract. And besides, if I’m going to be honest here, I am not going to raise my children in a paradigm where they are responsible for the mothers’ happiness. Their very existence makes me happy. Period. And almost every night, when I go into their rooms while they are sleeping, and re-tuck them in and kiss their sleepy sleeping faces and I lay my hand over their beating hearts (I really do) and whisper that I love them and that they make me so happy. And just to be sure the message sinks in, I tell them this all day too.

This big old tank of mine, turns out, it is pretty easy to fill up. It’s obvious, I guess, to most people. But did you know that each of us are responsible for our own happiness? That we need to fill our own tanks? That there is more than one gas station? And that we can’t let people take from our tank unless we let them? There's Self Service and Full Service, and both are fine. Thunderbolt! I know I am making this all seem so simplistic, and its really not. At least, not for me. But, my goodness, I have a big tank and access to a lot of nozzles. Just sitting here, writing this blog, listening to Ingrid Michelson while also googling boxing lessons (I’ll explain later) is adding to my tank. And then, drinking some tea while I catch up on the Good Wife adds some. Tomorrow, when I take my girls to Play School and watch them run across the room and hop into the Cozy Coupe (M) and onto a trike (A) and ride around in circles for two hours fills me up twenty times more. And the best, best, best living metaphor part part? They love to play “gas station.” So I sit in my designated space on the steps of the altar (!) in the church basement and put gas (!) into my girls’ Coupe and trike tanks (!) and the realness of it, the literal, the figurative, the imagery practically makes my tank overflow. Visceral, indeed.

Pictured above, snow! Notice Avery is clutching snow balls in her mittens. They were for me, those snowballs. Also pictured, scenes from Maddie’s and my Momma/Maddie date. I love that she is holding a cupcake-to-go in a cup. Literally, a cupcake! Clever, Cupcake Cafe staffers!

I Was Feeling Part of the Scenery/I Walked Out of the Machinery

2011-01-02T20:27:00.004-05:00

This year will go down in the record books as the year that I learned that there can indeed be spaces in togetherness without causing the entropic collapse of the universe. Or even my emotional universe. My most favored state of being is that of barnacle (as wife, mother, friend, etc.) and I am really, really good at it. I require almost no alone time. Ever. Lots of therapists have had lots of theories, but I don’t need a theory. And I don’t need to force myself to spend time alone when I would rather spend time with others. I don’t need to imagine what alone time would look like/feel like/taste like. Sharing space with others is my most favorite pastime, and I can do it until someone peels themselves away from me.

I am back in NYC after spending nearly three weeks in Massachusetts. I headed up there with the girls early December and never came back. Nicole came up for long weekends and then for the week after Christmas, and then we all headed back to NYC together on January 1st. And now, I am going though a mini culture shock.

Originally, the idea of spending time up in Massachusetts without Nicole seemed preposterous. Why ever would I go up there with the girls alone when we could all be together in NYC? Why would I want to parent (The Verb) on my own when I could look forward to company/relief/help/companionship when Nicole came home from work? And why would I even think of spending the night alone in a house in the middle of the deep dark woods, outside of screaming distance of the neighbors?

But I did it, this fall, and I worked through the fear. I am proud to say that I no longer sleep with a knife, car keys, phone and flashlight under my pillow. And I even stopped sleeping with the girls and now sleep on the couch. Sleeping upstairs alone: The final frontier. One of my Christmas presents this year should help with that. Though I still think Nicole really got this because she can control the heat from her computer, thus lowering my 80 degree thermostat setting to a more reasonable and chilly 70.

And now, I’m sort of going through this period of wondering where I belong. Ah, yes, the first existential crisis of the year Twenty Eleven. Existential with a touch of narcissism, since it isn’t just about where I belong. Madeline and Avery are power players in this scenario too. And Nicole, of course. There is no “me” in family or “I” in team and all that. And yet every me and I in a family is very important.

Winter in the city scares me a little. There is a serious deterioration of quality of life as the snow banks in the city make the sidewalks even harder to navigate and the freezing weather keeps up locked inside. Our daily trips to the park/playground/zoo halt until March. Our daily wandering walks are replaced with most-direct-path errand running. Last year was rough. It was too cold to go outside and the girls were too young to take to places like movies and museums with any sort of favorable outcome. I felt cooped up in the apartment with two energetic toddlers who didn’t understand why we could go to the playground. But in Massachusetts, there is no cooped up. There’s the parent group and Store School and all that land. And there, I feel like I am a better mom. More patient and more sane and more balanced. With a huge carbon footprint.

And yet, when I am in Massachusetts, I feel like I am leaving part of me in New York. And I don’t just mean Nicole. I do like the duality of it, and love and am grateful that we can expose the girls to the best of both worlds. But the other side of me that loves consistency and routine is feeling the burn as I straddle. And I am seeing these two sides of me emerge: The fast-walking, aggressive driving New Yorker with the meandering, “no, please, after YOU” New Englander. My parenting styles are even quite different. In NYC, I need to, for example, yank Avery by the coat collar if she dashes too close to the sidewalk’s edge and traffic. There’s mere inches between children and horrific traffic accidents. But in Massachusetts, if she is running down the driveway, I can just tell her to slow down and wait for me at the end because there is not a car in sight. And now, I feel just a little less New Yorker and a tad more New Englander, and I think that’s a good thing. Although, the New Yorker side does rear its head in Mass at time, to uproarious effect. But that’s another post.

I always said that I don’t care where we are, as long as we are together as a family. And that will never change. So this is very much a work in progress. I am very much a work in progress. And the girls, bless their little hearts, are just going with the flow.

Pictured above, snow fun! And Avery, my emotional doppelganger, with Nicole, her physical doppelganger.

Out of the Cacophonous World Symphony, A Melody Emerges

2010-12-19T21:01:00.003-05:00

Geez. A month between posts. This is my longest hiatus since I started this thing. And I don’t even have a good excuse. I feel rusty, disconnected and a little lame.

The simple reason is my routine has shifted, and when my routine shifts as significantly as it has recently, it takes a while to figure out how all of my life parts fit in. The girls and I have stayed up in Massachusetts since Thanksgiving, with only one week back in NYC. Nicole comes up on the weekends, or longer, if she can. She comes back this Wednesday, and will then be here for the rest of the year.

Up here, seemingly out of the blue, the girls and I suddenly and serendipitously found a rhythm. It’s like we jumped into a fast game of double-dutch with both feet. I discovered an amazing parent’s group that meets every morning for two hours. The girls and I go there, and I get drink coffee and make mom friends while the girls start flexing their social muscles and playing. Then, we go to the library to pick out books and DVDs and color pictures at the crafts table. We take mini hikes in the woods or play outside in the yard, collecting rocks or sticks or leaves or whatever Madeline deems collection worthy. Even going to the mailbox is an adventure. I take them to the food store and shopping, two tasks that are much easier here than in the city. We pop popcorn and watch movies and take long bubbles baths. And at night, I read them two books, tuck in one (Maddie) and uncover the other (Avery), and kiss them both goodnight and then I relax on the couch, reading books luxuriously like I haven’t a care in the world or catching up on TV shows (Dexter, Nurse Jackie, Good Wife) that I have missed over the past two years of our TV-less life. It’s all very good. Except for that Nicole-in-NYC-thing. It’s hard on the girls and it’s hard on me, and it’s hard on her. After this season, we will need to find a better balance.

And now we are distracted by holiday madness. Last Monday I spent a lovely evening wrapping presents and drinking egg nog and feeling the spirit of consumerism I mean Christmas all around. It was all good, and I was merry indeed. The very next day I inconveniently became sick. I developed a dry, hacking cough, which turned into a rattle, then a wheeze, then back to a hacking cough, with low fevers sprinkled in here and there. I tried to carry on with the play group and the girls’ busy social agenda, but I think that in the long run prolonged my illness. Only now, on Sunday, a week later, am I staring to feel like I am turning the corner. Thank goodness, because there is less than a week till Christmas and there quite a few loose ends to tie up.

There’s a lot to look forward to this week. Nicole comes up Wednesday, which makes all of us happy. There will be lots of holiday baking. I can’t wait for our Christmas Eve fondue. And to make cookies for Santa with Avery and Madeline. And to for our annual screening of Love, Actually. And to see the looks on the girls’ faces when they wake up Christmas morning and see that Santa visited. This is it, the beginning of the wonder of childhood, unfolding before my very eyes. The magic reel that plays until it is replaced with the jaded version. How many years do we get until they stop believing? I want to appreciate and enjoy this while it lasts.

I also need to figure out which smoke detector is chirping in this house. It is driving me crazy!

Pictured above, Madeline meets a sure-to-be very important player of her childhood memory bank. And, while I was watching TV, Nicole was spending her evenings with Arianna Huffington. Yes, I am jealous! Very jealous!

Tis the Season For Tis The Season Blog Title Variations

2010-11-20T07:10:00.003-05:00

I have a Facebook friend who is constantly broadcasting her good deeds: How much she volunteers and how much she donates and how much she does for others, with no gain for herself. And I find it perplexingly annoying. If you do a good deed and feel the need to announce it, then that seems to make it a little less altruistic, no? And yet I feel ridiculous lambasting a person who does indeed help others.

This is something interesting I noticed: In NYC, at the food store checkout line, there are little slips of paper that you can rip off and add to your bounty. Each slip is a little under seven dollars and it buys a meal for a homebound person in the city. It is subtle and casual and oh so easy to do. Here in Mass, I was at the grocery story and I nearly ran into, literally (runaway toddler) a giant display of those now lead-filled recycled bags filled with food. You can lift one of these ten pound bags of food and put it into your cart, taking up a good quarter of your cart, then pay for it, and — this is the kicker — put the giant bag in a giant box at the front of the store, to be delivered to a food shelter. Why not just employ the same slip of paper method? Why waste so much space and effort?

This is my very unscientific survey: In the city, I am a the grocery store every day, and frequently waiting on lines, and I have not seen one person take one of those clandestine tickets and buy a homebound persona meal. Not one. But in Mass, every time I am at the food store, I see DOZENS of people lifting those big, showy bags and putting them in their carts. Sometimes, even, two bags. I know there are all sorts of studies about this. Turns out we adults are a lot like kids, and we respond well to recognition and reinforcement for good behavior. “I Voted!” stickers come to mind. And the blood donation stickers. That sort of thing.

And, as long as we re talking about giving, it has always bothered me that some celebrities refuse to do commercials or endorsements, even though they are promised millions of dollars. I always think, why CAN’T you do a commercial for a freaking jewelry line that will be aired only in Japan, and take your $5 million dollar endorsement fee and, I don’t know, build a school? Make a food shelter’s year? Support a library? The celebrities say doing commercials and endormsemt will hurt their career. So what does that say about our society? Are we really going to stop watching someone’s movies because they did a commercial in Japan? It’s all so absurd. I would think that it would help their careers. Instead, pseudo celebrities are taking money for their own gain. Those ridiculous family of sisters have their clothing line and credit cards and TV shows and will show up for the opening on an envelope, especially if they get aid for it, and they are laughing all the way to the bank. Are they sharing? I’m gonna go out on a limb and say no.

Something I love about my Massachusetts town is that they just approved in their budget to spend just over 100K to help secure housing for the “6 to 7” homeless people in town who are committed to sobriety. I love that. The local food shelter recently received a 200K donation from a local school janitor, who saved that money his entire life. I love the sense of community here.

So what is the point of this whole post? I have no idea, really. All this is running though my head and the girls are sleeping and I have the luxury to raamble on.

Pictured above, I took the girls to Friendly’s. About halfway through our meal, a Veteran (he was wearing one of those war hats) came over and gave me a coupon for a free kid’s meal. It made me cry. Here is this hunched over man, who gave his time to serve our country and even now, in his old, old age, he is still giving. What can I say? I’m feeling sentimental these days. Meanwhile, the sundae looked nothing like the picture on the menu! False advertising. Who can I sue?

Mother/Electrician/Emotional Caretaker/Mere Bystander

2010-11-17T06:45:00.006-05:00

Tonight Avery was climbing up the steps to the deck and said something when she got to the top that stopped me in my tracks, literally: “You can’t get me, monsters.” Now, there is little doubt that Avery and I share nearly identical emotional circuitry, but this particular statement is one that I used to say often (and its variation, “Monsters come and get me”) as a child. My own battle cry, of sorts, that I would declare once I was certain I was in a safe zone. And hearing Avery say it…How does that happen? How does Avery echo iterations identical to mine, thirty years later? My personal childhood soundtrack, in her three-year-old mouth?

She’s sensitive, this we know for sure. She is very loving and affectionate. She’s creative and gentle with animals and infectious with her joy. She has a sense of humor that cracks me up. And…she’s a little needy, which, of course, is adorable when one is three, but not so much when one is, say, close to 40. Life is hard when you go around with your heart stapled to your sleeve. But how do you warn a toddler about that?

Avery is also very impressionable, which was reinforced today when I introduced the Elf on A Shelf thing to her and Madeline. I told the girls the whole story (elf watches the girls all day; flies back to Santa and reports at night; relocates to new spot each morning). This highlighted Avery’s other quality silmilar to mine: She asks a LOT of questions. How does he fly, she asked. He has no wings. I said he flies by magic, like Santa. But Santa has flying reindeer, she responded. Oh. So that’s how it is now. I actually need to work on my lies. I can’t leave Grand Canyon-sized holes and assume she will not see them. I wormed my way out of that one. Just barely.

She kept an eye on that elf all day. I caught her sneaking peeks at him. She even referenced Chaco to her sister: When Maddie misbehaved, Avery warned her that Chaco saw it and Chaco would tell Santa. At the end of the day, she asked me to pick her up to see if Chaco was smiling. I assured her that Chaco would deliver a glowing report, and she seemed visibly relieved. I swear she sighed with relief. It is cute and charming and all that, but I felt terrible. I know there is a tangible reward for all of her good behavior (lots and lots of presents) but the writing is on the wall: We have a people-pleaser, an approval-seeker; keep-the-peacer on our hands. Hello, Mini Me.

We went out to dinner tonight, and meet up with Auntie Annie. The girls were both a little not tame, which is never good when spaghetti is involved. Madeline literally had a hysterically laughing Avery in a head lock and Auntie Annie told the girls that the waitress talks to Santa, so they better behave. Avery’s face went white and she became still as a stone, lips pursed, hands down at her sides. Maddie continued her hi-jinx — if not escalating said jinx — as if to pooh-pooh our waitress and her Santa connection. Then Auntie Annie delivered the best line of the night: “Maddie doesn’t care about Santa because she can make a toy out of a stick and a rock.” And that is so true. Maddie doesn’t need the toys. Or approval. Or incentive. Or even to please. I don’t mean that in a bad way; indeed those very qualities will serve her well in life. I admire that immensely. Maybe she can teach me a thing or two. But my Avery, she just sat there, almost petrified. Because she is afraid she is disappointing Santa and disappointing Santa hurts her.

So all day I found myself delivering Yoda-like speeches to Avery: “You don’t have to be perfect all of the time, but you must show remorse if you were not good.” And “Being good is its own reward sometimes.” I delivered various other statements that I am sure went over her head because the truth is, I have never been good at imparting lessons to the toddler set. It’s an art, really, and this coming from someone who is good with metaphors and similes and such.

But let the record reflect that there is a smidge of concern over here. I want Avery to be Avery, but I also want to shrink the lessons I learned after almost four decades of living to fit her. Going through life overly concerned about what others think is not the greatest way to live. How do I dial that down without overly distilling who she is? How do I cater to her emotional needs, while also showing her that she doesn’t need to be so needy? How do I let her exercise free will while also molding her? This is the parental paradox. On one hand, I am just a caretaker of this beautiful blooming flower. In a way, my job is just to protect it in the most basic way and watch it grow, because with or without me, she will. On the other hand, I am trying to add some fertilizer to the soil and help the flower be the best it can be. I love my daughter exactly how she is. But I can say with certainty that her emotional makeup will lead to quite a few sad days in her later life.

In many ways, I am proud that my daughter will grow up and be like me. In a way, seeing this girl evolve into me — especially lately — has made me feel a little more confident about myself. But I don’t want her to suffer the heartache and break that comes to those of us with such raw emotional circuitry. So I find myself scrambling a bit now, to burn the end of my own emotional circuits and disconnect a few wires that have proven to always end in sadness; to remember that while my job is to feed and bath and clothe, it is also to be a role model for my children, which is a role that often gets lost in the shuffle.

But if Avery chooses to live her life that way, then I am fine with that, too. I know how to feed that kind of soul. And I can promise her that I will always be there to help her pick up her pieces.

It is raining and I love the thud of the big drops on the roof. My girls are up now. It’s time to see where the Elf landed last night.

Pictured above, this is the face Avery had when I told her that Nicole and Maddie went for a walk alone. Avery, like me, wishes she could Velcro herself to Nicole. Alas. Also pictured, the Elf on the Shelf. And Avery, concentrating on painting her spice rack for Nana.

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice To Say

2010-11-15T21:59:00.004-05:00

If our tax dollars pay for roads and schools, then why are there all those adopt-a-highway programs and why do we subsidize school funding with lotteries? There is a Wall Street hedge fund billionaire (this guy made two billionaire last year, which means he made a million dollars 2,000 times in ONE year, which means he could spend a million years every morning and every night for a year and still not come close to tapping his bank account) who is funding the campaign of a radical candidate who believes that the Constitution should be replaced with the Old Testament and that public schools should be abolished. Billionaires can buy candidates, and that is exactly what is going to happen soon. The top .000000001 percent of our nation’s populace will pick our government officials, and I’m guessing this doesn’t bode well for the masses.

Yeah, this is the sort of stuff that runs through my head all day. Well, that among other things. But it is really easy to feel like a teeny tiny speck of not-gonna-make-a-difference-so-why-bother. I’m trying to come up with my own action plan. My first objective: Convince Nicole to close all of our Big Chinese Bank accounts and put all of our money into a local bank. And if Bloomberg decides to run for President I will totally volunteer for his campaign.

Meanwhile, when random political thoughts aren’t racing around my head, I am reeling from a gift that our neighbors in NYC gave us. They were doing a bathroom renovation, which made quite a bit of noise. As a thank you for putting up with it, our neighbor gave us a gift certificate to have a family portrait done by a professional photographer/artist. We sit for a photo session and then an oil painting is created, based on the photo. Black tie suggested, for all of us. Total cost: Five-thousand dollars. Insane! I am beyond excited, and have spent more than a few hours coming up with creative outfit ideas. I tried to convince Nicole we should all dress as equestrians. Overruled. Hey, I thought it would be kitschy. Though I am trying to figure out a way to include over-the-knee boots. I scheduled a sitting for early next year, so we have some time to figure out clothes. And color my hair. The photographer will call me a month before to discuss the color scheme for the portraits intended hanging spot. Ha! Our apartment is not a blend of mid-century or Baroque or Minimalist anything. Cute that he thinks we have a design scheme. "Pottery Barn" with touches of "Restoration Hardware" about sums it up.

Pictured above, dress idea? That is so not something I would wear, but why not have fun? Who wants to see a portrait of me in jeans and a turtleneck with a cardigan? Not hot.Not hot at all. Also pictured, a bird, with a nut in his mouth.

Nature, 2. Nuture, Zero.

2010-11-05T11:06:00.004-04:00

Avery may physically resemble Nicole, but it is becoming abundantly clear that Avery has the same emotional framework that I have.

The girls and I came up to Massachusetts early again this week. My “soaking up every last ounce of fall” rationale is evolving into “we need to be here to witness the first snowfall, which can be any time” excuse. Regardless, the girls love it, and I do too. Walks in the woods and trips to a real food store and visits to the library and running in the driveway trying to catch leaves as the fall on us does our souls good. Obviously, the biggest drawback is Mommy/Nicole withdrawal. We all know that I do not crave many spaces in togetherness, but I am at the point in life when I realize 1.) it isn’t all about me anymore and I need to remember that the girls come first and 2.) some space is a good thing and 3.) Nicole loves alone time so she benefits from an empty apartment every now and then and 4.) really interesting things happen when routines are all shook up.

Avery mentions Nicole all the time and asks when she is coming back. She misses her in an obvious and constant and wistful and occasionally visceral way. (Madeline, on the other hand, is the strong, silent type.) That alone makes her a lot like me. But our exchange the other morning really drove the point home.

Let me preface this by saying that I don’t like to yell or raise my voice to the girls, but when one spends 12 hours a day, every day, with them, sometimes I slip. And being up here alone, without Nicole, means that there is not an ounce of relief in sight. The other rainy morning, I was trying to get the girls dressed and shoed and jacketed and hooded and out the door to go to a toddler event at the library. I am never late, but having kids has definitely pushed me to the border of my lateness comfort zone. Cooperation is key, and I wasn’t getting it form Avery at all.

The more I asked Avery to cooperate, the more she too that as a license to run around like a crazy child. And she was being very picky and petulant. She had a fit and wanted to wear Maddie’s jacket, which I foolishly acquiesced to after about five minutes of listening to her whine about it. But then, after I switched the coats (Maddie is so very low key about these things), she wanted her coat back. You see where this is going. I started to loose my patience, and I spoke in a strong voice. She was jacket-less. She still didn’t have her shoes on. Maddie was ready and I was ready, so I started gathering the keys and books and told Avery to put on her shoes and meet Maddie and me at the car. Avery freaked out. She burst into tears, and ran around in circles looking for her shoes. She looked and acted terrified and was clearly in a panic. And then she broke my heart and asked me “Can you please hug me, Momma?”

She has asked for hugs before, and I know I need to hug her after a time out or a tough toddler/Momma moment, but this time it hit a chord with me. That is something I would do, demand that hug. Beg for physical contact. That is exactly how I act. I get so upset when I know (or think) I disappoint someone or even just during a difficult exchange that I feel like I need an instant and immediate physical act of proof that the other person still loves me. So while maybe I made someone mad or upset, I still feel like they love me. Childish, I know, but it is important to me. And it is why I tried to enact a rule that Nicole and I had to hold hands when we argued (I read it somewhere), but that sort of fell by the wayside. But I do think it is an important symbolic gesture.

Nothing is crueler than capitalizing on a child’s worst fears, and I won’t do it to mine. Some people, once they smell your intense fear of abandonment, really love to exploit it. This fear of mine has been exploited on quite a few occasions in my life, starting at a very early age. Was I born this way or did it evolve? I don’t know. But I do know that apathy and abandonment and even the threat of abandonment certainly added fuel to that emotional fire of mine.

While denying Avery affection or a hug certainly would drive my own point home to her, I won’t do it. There are probably 40 parenting philosophies that contradict this, but I will hug Avery on demand, no matter when she demands it. I will interrupt a time-out for a hug. And I am now starting to tell her that even when Momma is angry or upset or sad that she did something, I still love her. I don’t want her growing up thinking that love is conditional or that abandonment is normal. It’s not in my world.

In fact, I have a philosophical argument that proves that there is no such thing as abandonment, but that is another post.

And right now, at this very moment, Avery is biting her toenail with her mouth, which is something I did as a child (and can assure you I DON’T do anymore!). Nature, Point 2!

Pictured above, look who snuggled next to me as I typed this post. See….no space, physical or otherwise, in our togetherness! And also, late fall pictures.

It Might Come Cannon-Balling Outta the Sky

2010-11-02T22:36:00.003-04:00

Watching the election return coverage is making my heart race. Political discourse these days is just so petty, contentious and annoying. Fox is too FOX. CNN is too CNN. MSNBC IS too MSNBC. Everyone yells and bickers and no one answers questions anymore. Spin spin spin and push your own agenda. Oh, then make an “It Gets Better” video, but don’t actually do anything to help things get better.

I voted in the morning, and it was a harrowing experience. It feels like it never happened. First, the polls opened about 25 minutes late, and I was five minutes early anyway, so I waited about a half hour to *maybe* vote. I watched one doctor walk out without voting because he had to get back to the hospital, and wouldn't get a chance to leave later in the day. Democracy in action, folks! The scanners weren’t working so I was directed by three distracted employees, who were clustered around me and several others, reading manuals and chewing on their fingers and arguing over how we vote without scanners. It was decided we fill out the ballot and stuff it into an envelope. I feel like my vote is out there, uncounted, lost in the bureaucracy of the NYC Board of Elections. The poll workers were not very encouraging. I had to even ask the yawing poll worker to return my ID.

And now, the returns on TV are just making me feel anxious and sad. Everyone seems so defeated or smug. Plus, I really hate that they make Rachel Maddow wear makeup. Couldn’t we take her seriously in a clean face and sneakers? I could. Why can't that be a Prop to vote for?

Anyway. After voting, I hightailed it up to Massachusetts with the girls. It is decidedly past peak here, but it is still heart-stoppingly beautiful. The palette has changed again: The golds have deepened to a rusty color and the reds are a bit browner. Most of the leaves have fallen off the trees, and the ones that are left drop like torpedoes. The air is chilly, though, and you can feel winter’s icy fingertips reaching for us. I’m ready! Well, first I need to buy new gloves, but the I will be ready. I lit a fire tonight, my first one all by my own self, as Avery would say, and after some fits and starts, it was decidedly roaring, then all glowy with burning embers. The girls are sound asleep and I am lounging in partial pajamas, as it is so hot. But I don't mind.

And the stars are just beautiful. I held Avery outside, tipping her back in my arms so she could see them twinkle, and she serenaded me with her "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."

Tomorrow we will collect pine cones to make fire starters and go to story time at the library and paint with purple and red paint (their favorite colors) and make our daily trip to the food store for coffee! and cart rides! and aisle wandering! and go in search of some post-Halloween 90 percent-off bargains. I also will officially begin Christmas shopping.

There is an electric charge in the air or maybe just in my air. Or maybe it’s my lip gloss. Could be. Who knows? There's something due any day, I will know right away, soon as it shows. Etc.

Pictured above, Avery, our little Firestarter, helping with the wood. And Halloween. It was kinda a bust, as only three people in the neighborhood we traveled to opened their doors. I had NO idea there was a scientific process for picking out a neighborhood (I went with one with sidewalks....) But the girls were ecstatic anyway, so that alleviated the guilt I felt a bit. Next year, we will pick a better hood. You know, one with people that give out candy.

OK, I need to crack a window or take off more clothes. It's getting hot in here....

Triangles, Tanks, Teabags and How Does Your Garden Grow?

2010-10-27T20:38:00.006-04:00

Everyone has a few talents in life, and one of mine is metaphors. Or, if I want to be technically accurate — and who doesn’t — I am good at long, in-depth analogies that include metaphors and occasionally similes.

I was talking today to a friend — who describes herself as a go-getter, a why-waiter, a love-maker and a life-liver — and explaining my garden analogy to her. She encouraged me to write it down, along with a couple others I have shared with her.

So here it is. Maybe it will change the way you look at yards.

You can tell a lot about a person by observing how they garden. Or, as the case is often, how they don’t garden. This is impossible to understand without examples (here come the analogies and metaphors!), so here’s one: There is this….person….I know who fancies herself a gardener. When asked what activities she enjoys, she will mention gardening. Conjures up images of wet dirt and spades and shovels and piles of weeds in a wheelbarrow. Sounds nice, right? However, step into her yard and you will notice immediately that you are not in the yard of someone who truly understands the verb “garden.” The lawn is frequently not mowed; trees and bushes grow out of control, with no pruning or trimming. There is no new growth, except weeds. Seeds are never planted and new plants and trees are never cultivated. The yard looks almost the same as it did twenty years ago, when she bought the house. She simply moved in and…did nothing. The only things she does is occasionally buy showy seasonal flowers: The kind you display for a couple of months till they die. Or, in other words, the kind of beauty that requires no effort at all.

This is not to say there isn’t beauty in this yard: There is. There is a beautiful thriving blue hydrangea, which blooms each spring without fail. The lesson here is simple: Beauty can grow, sometimes without attention or effort or intent. It’s indomitable, and can thrive in the worst of circumstances. And it’s inability to be killed off often speaks more to its own tenaciousness and not always that of its groomer.

So why does this person consider herself a gardener? Who knows, but she really and truly does. And yet her efforts in the garden amount to a couple of hours every couple of months and a few afternoons of raking leaves in the fall. This is also a person who does little to change her life; a person who does not put time and attention into relationships; a person who will take credit for beauty when it is not hers to take.

There are people who plant seeds, and water and weed and nurture and grow. There are people who look at a dying plant or tree and think, I can save that, and do. There are people who plant bulbs each fall, knowing that their reward may or may not come the following spring, but they do it anyway, their patience and faith and optimism is just that solid and formed. There are people who buy expensive plants and then ignore them, leaving them to wither and die, starving for water and light and attention. There are those rose gardeners, in their neat little gloves and usually a wide-brimmed hat, who carefully and strategically snip snip snip, even taking away what seems beautiful, for the greater good. There are those who carefully remove the weeds that are choking their trees. The ones who plant the same things year after year, with amazing results. The ones who plant the same things year after year, with detrimental results. There are those with no yard at all, who have one old plant on a windowsill or fire escape, that they water faithfully for years and years. The ones who have the most amazing flowers, shrubs and trees right outside their window, but they don’t even notice. People who see the beauty in weeds. Those whose street-facing window boxes are perfect, but private back yard is a mess. I could, of course, go on and on, as there is an endless array of gardening styles out there.

Is this an infallible way of learning about a person’s character? I think not. What is, really? But I do think that every action we make speaks to who were are as people. If there is one thing I believe in with all my heart it is this: Actions speak louder than words. This is one of the reasons why all those “It Gets Better” videos bothered me. I can’t stand the hypocrisy of politicians — including the president — saying it will get better and it will be okay, and yet these politicians are not taking steps to make laws that might protect these people and make changes that just might ensure that things will indeed get better. Yes, they get their damn sticker for even making a statement, but back up all those words with some actions. I digress.

So: Actions speak louder than words. And every action we execute helps define who we are. Our words can support who we are, but sometimes they support who we want to be instead. Our intentions, as it were. But our actions don’t lie. Therefore, how a person gardens just might offer some insight into who they are. It doesn’t work across the board, and it is open to much interpretation, and, yes, it is hard to apply to city dwellers (but not impossible), but it does work on a certain level.

I could extrapolate this further and say that the type of flowers we like might also give insight into who we are. Like me, for example. I love hydrangeas. Love them. Blue or pink or white. I want a yard full of them. I have no clue why I am drawn to them, but I am. They are a little fussy and only bloom under specific circumstances and need a lot of attention. Pot, meet kettle. My friend Molly reminds me of a sunflower: Sunny, bright and heliocentric, which means she, like the sunflower, will turn her head into the sunlight. What a great way to get through life. We all need to be sunflowers sometimes. I know a few cacti, of course (who doesn’t?) and a few beautiful vines that really are toxic weeds. But most of the people I surround myself with are perennials.

What kind of gardener am I? We have had the Massachusetts house for a year, and I can now say that I am more of a gardener than I ever was before. My gardening traits are starting to show. I know I should rake, but I love to see the lawn carpeted with those golden yellow, red and brown leaves. I planted bulbs for the first time this year, but am skeptical that those brown, onion-like nuggets I threw six to eight inches into ground will actual bloom into something beautiful. How does that happen? I tend to gravitate toward planting fully grown or partially grown things. I took it personally that the sunflower seeds I planted didn’t grow, even though I literally threw a few seeds in the dirt to see what happens. I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty or get down in the mud, but I am not sure what I am doing and need lots of guidance from manuals, seed packets, other people, or the Internet. I don’t like watering plants, because I am not used to standing still for any length of time, but I do it anyway, because I know plants need it. I think weeds have a place in this world.

I want to have the most amazing, lush perfect, sanctuary-like garden by next spring, but I realize that it is going to take years of continual hard work, effort and patience, not to mention weeding, deadheading, transplanting and cultivating, before that even remotely happens. And I am okay with that.

I have gotten into the habit of checking on the girls before I turn in, and re-tucking them in and giving them another kiss or three. Three and a half years old and I still can’t kiss them enough.

Coming soon: More analogies! One about tea bags and one about impenetrable triangles and one about the tanks that we all have…

Pictured above, as someone once wrote (and named a blog!) hydrangeas ARE pretty! Below that, my little gardeners. And Madeline, in the leaves. I am so proud that she sees the beauty in fall foliage. And some of the bulbs: A big seed and a lesson in patience and faith wrapped up in one onion-like package.

I Need A Trapper Keeper For Random Thoughts

2010-10-27T09:50:00.004-04:00

A snippet of a typical toddler conversation in these here parts:

M: “Looks Avery, Tape! Tape tape tape!”
A: “Momma got brand new soap for us and it’s pink!”
M: I like tape!

Well, their conversations aren’t always this scattered. They can have full-on chat fests and they tell each other stories all the time. Pretending is big with them now. I’m grateful that they get along so well. Apparently that is a rarity in the sibling world.

I am up in Massachusetts alone. Well, not alone, with the girls too, of course. I think of us as an inseparable unit: Wherever you find them, you’ll find me, and vice versa. Not that I am complaining. I am trying to slow down the passage of time and make these days last longer, especially since my niece and nephew left for China. Time is fleeting, and forty other clichés. This precious time home with my girls will pass, and I will lament that some day. I know I will. Empty nest syndrome is going to hit me hard, in kindergarten.

Coming up here alone is no easy feat for me. I am not a fan of spending the night alone, and being in the middle of the deep, dark woods does not help. I sleep with a flashlight, cell phone and car keys under my pillow. I would put a pocket knife under there too, if I had one. I sleep in the girls room and have an escape plan, should something happen (jump out window with girls and run like the wind). I leave the car parked in the opposite direction that I usually do, to facilitate a snappy, high-speed getaway. Yes, I worry and fret and conjure up all sorts of awful scenarios that are too absurd for even a bad made-for-TV movie. Be prepared: That’s my motto. Which might serve me well in life, if it weren’t for the fact that our lives are defined by moments that we never see coming. So I may be prepared for fires and intruders and bears, oh my, but it’s the wild card scenario that will do me in.

Which remind me…a friend of mine asked me to email her my final wishes. A list of things I want to make sure will happen, should I die. Morbid, no? But smart, especially as we get up there in years.

It is worth it, though, coming up here. We miss Nicole/Mommy, but the girls have such a great time. There is more room for them. We spend so much time outdoors. There are farms and pumpkin patches and llamas to visit. Stores with free day care. Fall foliage in abundance. Today I am taking them to a toddler story hour at the library. Yes, I can do these things in the city but everything is 1,000 times easier out here.

And, starting today some time between 2 and 5, we will have cable. After almost a year of no television, we decided it might be a good idea after all.

Final thought: I hate Play Doh containers. It hurts like hell, ripping those lids off. The side of my finger all ripped up. Yet another good reason to buy a multi-use pocket knife.

Pictured above, the girls first hair cut, and fall is busting out all over. And yet we are already putting up the Xmas lights….

Turning the Shards into a Stained Glass Window...

2010-10-11T20:59:00.006-04:00

I am a mother of toddlers, which means if you looked in the giant bag I carry around (it’s a bag, not a purse. I don’t own purses) you will find extra pairs of size 4 princess undies, an extra pair of size four pants, a pink tutu, a random, awkwardly shaped toy that I was unable to negotiate leaving at home, and crushed emergency snacks in a zip lock bag. Today I brought the traveling Mom show on the road, and took the girls to visit Nicole at her office and then onto a play date with two friends and our combined seven children.

The girls lost their little minds in the glass elevator trip up to Nicole’s floor. Madeline actually gasped as we ascended, she was that excited. A few minutes later, as I sat in Nicole’s office, I wondered out loud (Nicole is used to my unedited ramblings…) if this could be one of the girls’ first memories, visiting Mommy at work. “Work” is such an esoteric concept for them, so could being in her office and putting the words with imagines make something click? I always wonder when that magic moment is going to happen, of the first memory. I hope that it is a warm, safe, cozy one. My early memories are just shards. I'm trying to arrange them into a lovely stained glass window, I really am.

Anyway, office visit did not disappoint. The girls were in heaven. Not one not two but THREE computers. A giant phone with a fancy screen and buttons. Avery pointed to various parts of the mega phone, asking Nicole what it is, because she has never seen a phone quite like this. “It’s still the phone,” Nicole said. About six times, as Avery’s finger inched a little more right, right, right. A chair that spins in circles and a round conference table to run around. A strange multi colored wall plug. And, of course, the corporate candy of choice, Twizzlers. Avery even found a Tinkerbell candy at the bottom of Nicole’s candy dish. The girls were in exploration nirvana, and I will not be surprised if they ask me to take them there every day for the next week or so.

The play date was so very pleasant. It was amazing how all of the kids played well together and actually gave their mommies time to (gasp! Can it be?) talk. Of course, she sat around talking mainly about the kids. But it was nice to do that without interruptions. We also discovered that combined the three of us would make the perfect wife: One excels at cooking, the other excels at meticulous cleaning and making a lot of money, and I bring organization to the table. That may seen insignificant compared to what the others bring to the table, but let’s remember that an organized home is a happy home. And imagine life arriving five minutes early for everything. Nice, right? Oh, and I could be the memory keeper and I am good at packing and heavy lifting. Cue up "I'm Every Woman."

Above, we went to a Fall Festival over the weekend. Maple snow-cones and fried dough with maple cream and apple pies and cider and artsy craftsy things. And one of the best caramel apples I have ever eaten (I may be wrong, but I think I tasted marshmallow is the caramel…) And the girls in Nicole’s office. Crappy picture, but I like that I am in it with them, sort of, all fuzzy in the window's reflection. Here we go again with window imagery and metaphors. I have so few pictures of the girls with me. They are my picture unicorns.

tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther....*

2010-09-30T20:40:00.002-04:00

When my girls are in bed, in cute jammies, sleeping soundly, I feel like the worst mother in the world for a thousand little reasons. Like I could have done better. Should have done better. More, better, faster, longer. I feel bad that I didn’t make magical Bento Box lunches, like the magical Briar. That they didn’t eat anything green today. I feel bad that I didn’t read enough books, and even snapped one closed when they were being too wiggly, and threatened to stop reading for good unless they adhered to my reading policiy. I let them watch too much TV, because we were stuck inside for most of the day, trapped by the threat of a massive storm named Nicole, which turned out to be not much of anything. (We made it to the playground, at least.) I let them eat way too many ice pops, mainly because I love watching Avery shuffle off to the kitchen, open the freezer, pull out a pop and hide it behind her back and then come and find me wherever I am, and say “Don’t be mad Momma. I just want a purple pop. Purple’s my favorite.” How can I say no to that? How? I can’t. But after three pops each, they explode into a sugar rush and play Let’s Move All The Cushions And Pillows into One Central Location and Jump! and I deeply regret my errors and lose patience.

But now when they are all nestled in their beds, Maddie tucked in like a bug in a rug and Avery, on top of her covers, which are already twisted up. And then I take comfort in the fact that I let them stomp in puddles at the playground, because that’s what kids do, and just gave them a bath when they got home. And I let them play “Slide” in the tub, even though it is, oh, dangerous. “Look Momma, you’re smiling” said Avery. Because it did make me smile, the way they stood up at the back of the tub and said “Let’s do it together” and then they would sliiiiide down and make a splash. The look of surprise on the faces, it made me smile. And I let them each pick out a snack at the store (Cheddar Bunnies for Avery and Scooby Snacks for Madeline). So maybe that is the balance there. I try to remember that a good mother doesn’t have to be perfect all of the time.

Back up to Massachusetts tomorrow. It is stunning up there now, with the leaves changing color. It’s bulb planting time. I think the girls are going to love doing that. Maybe almond asiago pesto pizza with farm-fresh leeks and squash and corn. Maybe a movie on the couch at night, while I wait, hopefully, to hear the owl calls. Taking lots of pictures and waiting to see if one of my pictures receives an honorable mention in a photo contest I entered. That would be nice.

* Thanks Fitzgerald. He gets credit for that quote.I always loved that. Seems an apt description of motherhood.

Political Parties, Potties, Personalities, Pink Sauce

2010-09-14T16:05:00.004-04:00

I am thinking about switching my voter registration to republican, but not really switching parties. Here is my maybe-not-logical thinking: If I register as a republican, I can vote in their primary elections. And if I vote in republican primary elections, I can select the lesser of republican evils. Before people start yelling, I am not calling republicans evil. Well, not all of them. But there is a special place in hell for Cheney, don’t you think? Also, not a fan of the recently deceased Kl.u Kl.u.x K.la.n senate member Robert Byrd. So if a republican is holding a public office, then I would prefer a liberal one, who supports gay rights and stem cell research and a woman’s right to choose, etc. And the republican party is on the cusp of change and evolution, and these divides are becoming quite prominent. They are becoming so much more dynamic than democrats.

What good is my democrat primary vote doing anyway? The democrat party is white-washed and the candidates are too close in positions to make any real difference to me that I tend to vote for The Woman, my own political version of affirmative political action. As a democrat voting in primaries, I am basically practicing feminism, and not true political decision-making. But if I were voting in the republican primaries, I am pretty certain I would be paying more attention to the subtle nuances of character and record, and looking deeper into their positions. And when it comes down to general elections, I can make an informed decision. Or, at the very least, be able to defend my selection with more facts.

All this mosque controversy and Quran-burning ridiculousness (A church with fifty followers? I feel like I could establish that by dinner. Think of the tax breaks!) and the mid-term elections and DADT and double-dip recession talk and, in international news, France and its Burqa ban, has got me in a political/religion-discussion mood. Anyone else? I miss the conversations and debates and even the flame wars that everyone was having around the presidential election time. Everyone, including myself, seemed much more engaged way back then. Now bitterness and anger and I-told-you-so’s are the flavor of the day, in both camps. There’s the “Nobama” camp and the previous Obama supporters, who are a tad more defensive than I would like. Is he a Clinton or Carter? Only time will tell, but history has proven it is too early to know that answer quite yet, so we should simmer down, live with our decision, for better or worse (after all, there’s no going back now) and focus on the critical November elections.

On a completely different note, my children cleverly justify any annoying sound they make with “But Momma, I’m trying to make music!” This makes me feel like I’m interfering with their artistic expression if I ask them to stop banging with a wooden spoon or hitting their potty with a block. Other expressions heard round here include “But Momma, I’m trying to make a cake” and “But momma, I am trying to make a pool.” These situations usually involve big messes. And then there is Maddie’s all-encompassing line: “But Momma, I’m trying to do something” and “I’m practicing.” This is what she says when she is doing anything wrong.

There are two potties here now and we are in the throes of potty training. We started last week in Massachusetts, and it was touch and go. In other words, frustrating, messy and traumatic for both of them. Then, on Sunday, something clicked with Avery. She is suddenly using the potty exclusively and using a pull up at night. Nicole warns not to get too cocky; indeed I have heard horror stories of reversals. My fingers are crossed that she is transitioned.

Madeline is taking a slower path, but she is wearing underwear and is making it to the potty 75 percent of the time, so I am grateful for that. When I start to get frustrated I remind myself that they are two different children with two different personalities and two different internal schedules. This is abundantly clear when they dance: Avery channels Bob Fosse while Madeline prefers a Twyla Tharp approach. Still, potty training is going a lot faster than I thought, which is in general how I feel about everything since having kids. It's 2010. When did that happen?

OK, time to make pink sauce for dinner.

Pictured above, scenes from last week, including a rare picture of Madeline, the Marlene Dietrich of the twin set. Well, technically, I have so few pictures of Madeline because she is so kinetic, not because she is private. It’s hard to get her to stand still, let alone smile at the camera and say cheese.

Le Grenouille Has Nothing on The Big Y

2010-09-12T15:30:00.004-04:00

On Saturday, Nicole and I had a hot date at a food store. I am not kidding. This is the fabulous Massachusetts food store that features free childcare (for up to two hours!) that the girls tried earlier in the week and loved. I guess they forgot the horror of this past winter’s “gentle separation” class. Avery calls it “store school."

While “store school” was in all likelihood created so parents can shop undistracted,and thus spend more money, we used store school for our own advantage. The catch is, we can’t actually leave the store, but that is fine. Freedom is freedom, and it is easy to find a meal in a food store. The girls waved goodbye to us and went in like they do this every day. Nicole and I held hands as we walked down the romantic pet-food aisle (nothing says I love you like a 50-pound bag of kibble) and positioned ourselves in front of the surveillance TV in the Meat Section, where we spied for a moment on our oh-so-happy children, who were playing with the Childcare Specialist like it ain’t no thing. I think I may food shop every day we are up here.

Assured of their well being, we went to hunt and gather lunch. First we sampled a free baked clam (appetizer!) and picked up lunch at the Grinder Station. We sat in the lovely gardening section, surrounded by fall flowers, and enjoyed our childless meal. All that was missing was candle, which I could have picked some up in Aisle Four. Next time. For dessert, we sampled free Starbucks instant coffee. Cheap, convenient and tasty, like how I like my women (JUST kidding....).

It came to an abrupt end because we were paged by the Childcare Center. When we got to the Center we found a pacing and anxious Maddie. The caretaker thought she was tired, but we knew otherwise: She had to get on the potty, quick. The girls have been in intense potty training boot camp all week. We raced out to the car and improvised with a box. It’s exhausting, this potty training stuff, and sometimes requires MacGyver fixes. But they are making headway. Anyway, we didn’t get to buy the mums that we wanted, but all things considered, it was a lovely meal. We might spend our anniversary there. And unless someone wants to come up to Massachusetts and babysit, that is not a joke!

Now we are back in the city, where two hours of daycare would run us about $85 dollars and food shopping is an obstacle course with a double stroller. We were in Massachusetts for ten days and it was bliss. I was witness to the subtle shifts from summer to fall in ways that I just can't see in NYC. I have seen trees go from all green to green with spots of orangey, fiery red, in just a week and a half. Crunchy leaves fall on our driveway, and skitter across when the wind blows them. There is a chill in the air that makes me look forward to turtlenecks and sweaters and scarves. Fall is really here and I intend to appreciate every moment of it. Starting with the cardigan that arrived here in the city in my extended absence.

Pictured above: The cafe; the appetizer; the dessert. Jealous?

Thanks. I’ll Be Here All Week.

2010-09-08T14:22:00.003-04:00

We are in Massachusetts for the entire week. Nicole is working from home (perk of the new job) and, sadly, she really is working. Part of me was hoping “working” meant playing, gardening, going for walks, shopping and exploring. Ha. Instead, there are conference calls and laptops and phones and ssssshhhhhh, I’m on the phone. You know, actual work.

So the girls and I are having a fabulous week of adventures. Nicole keeps stressing about us having to keep our distance so she can work, but it isn’t bothering me at all. We are taking long drives, purposefully getting lost and letting the GPS take us home. We are getting a baseline for the soon-to-change foliage. We are going shopping. We are discovering new bakeries. We are making cookies. Playing in the yard. Even mundane activities are exciting. I took them food shopping today and they asked to go into the free daycare center there. How great is that!? Free daycare in the grocery store for up to two hours, and my children WANT to go. And there are TVs all over the store so you can spy on them. I went there for seltzer and coconut but spent a good half hour just walking the aisles and chatting on the phone while my girls made castles with a CPR-trained child specialist. They were having such a good time.

We managed to work in some fun before Nicole’s work week began. We took the girls to another fair (party carnival, as they call it) and let them eat crappy fair food (lemonade and ice cream and caramel apples) and ride on the rides. We went to the nursery and bought black-eyed susan’s and a forsytia plant, which we planted. We took them outlet shopping. OK, maybe that wasn’t fun for them, but we let them ride those coin-operated things while I waited on line for twenty minutes to buy underwear.

Everything seems better surrounded by nature. I am sitting here blogging, listening to the wind through the trees, while my children are playing outside. Leaves are literally falling on the deck. Fall is really here, and we are witness to it.

And now, we have to go to the dump….

Once Upon a Midnight Dreary

2010-09-02T22:14:00.003-04:00

It is dark here, Very, very, very dark. I am up in Massachusetts, alone with the girls for the night, and I would be lying if I didn’t admit to being slightly terrified. OK, maybe not terrified, but let’s just say I am not exactly comfortable. And I am wired and hyper-alert. So this might be a long post.

First off, it is a personal accomplishment that I am even here. I had the ultrasound today and it was, from start to finish, a pretty miserable experience. The technician was humorless. Her first comment to me, after slathering on that cold, cold gel, was “Your bladder is empty.” And then she pouted. I’m not kidding: An honest-to-goodness pout. She might as well had put her fists on her hips and stomped her foot. I pointed to my Nalgene and said that is my third one in the past hour. Plus four cups of coffee this morning. And just or good measure, I told her I had to pee. “No you don’t,” she said back to me. Which is incredible because no one has ever told me if I really had to pee or not. And I most assuredly had to pee (and did, five minutes later, before the wanding).

Her second comment: “Wow, they really botched you up inside.” She was referring to the placement of my internal organs. I am not accustomed to people talking smack about my internal appearance. Our tense conversation then went something like this:

Me: Really? You can tell that?
Her: Oh yes.
Me: It was a rough C section. Will this have any sort of effect on me in the future?
Her: [silence]
Me: I mean, it’s ok if everything is slightly askew, right?
Her: [scrunches up her mouth and nose]
Me: OK, tell me this: Does this just mean I am not pretty on the inside anymore, but it doesn’t negatively impact me any other way?
Her: Yes.

Of course the screen was turned away from me, but I could catch a reflection of it in a Plexiglas wall covering. I saw her measuring my ovary. And then something else. And then she stepped out for a minute and came back with a doctor. Who did some more measuring and looking and typed some things and left. Mr. Bedside Manner. He was gone again before I could ask him why the hell he was there. That freaked me out, because it is never good when a doctor shows up. Next up, the wanding, which was extra painful, because it seems that my uterus is quite crooked now, so I must be really probed.

I tried to fish out a morsel of info from the tech, but she was tight as a clam. I sighed and asked how long till the results make it to my doctor. She said two to three business days. That meant I would be lucky to get a call on Tuesday.

Imagine my horror/shock when I missed a call to my home number AND cell a mere two hours later (I was in the middle of a toddler fiasco). It was my doctor’s office, calling to discuss the results of the scan. My stomach flipped and my mind started racing. I called the office back but, of course, the doctor was on another call.

All this as I was about to leave for Massachusetts with the girls. I literally sat down and thought, I’m not going. I can’t get on the road and not know why my doctor is calling two hours after then scan. I can’t go anywhere until I speak with my doctor. But I got up (sticker, please) and loaded eight bags and one toddler potty onto my arms (sticker, please) and took the elevator downstairs, where Nicole was meeting me with the car (sticker for Nicole).

I tried to get Nicole to admit that the two-hour turn-around time doesn’t bode well for good results, but she was quite even. Maybe later she will admit that it was alarming, but she didn’t let me drive off thinking that that was anything less than totally routine.

How much longer can I draw this out? To be honest, there is no real answer to my medical woes, and the call was anti climatic in that of course it requires a follow up. When I spoke with my doctor, she said the report indicated what they think is a cyst. I need to follow up with my ob. My doctor asked if I had followed up yet with my ob (she even had my ob’s name) but since we just switched insurances, I said no, I am looking for a new one. I mentioned my difficulty finding one that is accepting patients before Oct/Nov, but told the doctor I would search anew and would make an appointment after the holiday weekend. Why all the details here? Because Nicole tried to assure me that if they were super concerned, they would have told me I need to see a doctor right away. But the way I see it, I said I WOULD see an ob right away, so I can’t tell if my doctor had a sense of urgency or not. Cyst? Tumor? Is it getting bigger? Smaller? Good? Bad? Don’t know.

But it comes down to this: I can’t worry if I don’t know what I am worrying about. I can worry over biopsy results or worry over will a scan show something (it did: Worry justified!) but I just need to make the next appointment and see what to worry about next. So I guess I am pulling down the covers and tucking worry in for the night. Because this week of worry really drained me and I need to get a break from it. I just wish I would stop the bleeding. It is a constant reminder that something is not quite right.

And besides, now I can worry that my transmission light on my car is blinking. What is that all about?

We are up here for the weekend and aaaaaaaaall of next week. The girls and I came up early for two reasons: To beat the holiday traffic and to counter any potential storm traffic. The combination of the two could create a veritable perfect storm of traffic woes. Nicole is taking a train up tomorrow and the girls and I will pick her up. This is my first time alone here, and it has taken me almost a year to work up to this. Yes, staying here, in the woods, alone with the girls, scares me. But I really want to get comfortable with this. I mean, it was a perfectly wonderful evening: Dinner out, followed by rousing rounds of Memory on the carpet for a half hour followed by jammies, playing house and a trip down the street to see the llamas. They went to bed fairly easily and here I sit, on the couch, blogging and reading and waiting for the sun to come up.

Pictured above, Avery in town; the girls at dinner.

I am an [Oxy] Moron

2010-08-31T20:27:00.008-04:00

It seems I haven’t heard the last of my pelvic pain. I gritted my teeth through the first round of acute pain. It was not nearly as bad as ectopic pain, but bad enough that I went looking for some Percocet and spent some time with Dr. Google. Then the sharp pain went away, and was replaced with a gentle throb. Throbs, I can ignore, deny, give the cold shoulder. After a brief but welcomed hiatus, blood returned. Now this is an entity that demands attention. No matter how many ways I attempt to explain it away, I can’t.

So I have an appointment for an ultrasound this Thursday, made after calling different places for almost an hour to find someone, anyone who would take me. I am prepared for the stoic sonogram technician and know that s/he is not allowed to offer up any info. They can go ahead and probe my most private of parts but they can’t offer a sliver of information? I know, I know, it’s the law blah blah blah. Luckily I have gotten pretty good at reading scans. At the very least, I am good at knowing when the technicians are measuring something. Plus, as long as I can see the screen I can get an idea of what is going on. And, I have been know to gently extract some information “off the record” from technicians in the past. I guess they see the panic in my eyes. That, or they just want me to stop talking.

Of course it will take a while for the scans to make their way to my doctor and my doctor to get back to me with an Official Diagnosis. My head has always gone to the worst case scenario. Nicole says I do that all the time. I think “all” is a bit of a stretch, as I did, for example, walk through an ectopic pregnancy that was excruciatingly painful without thinking I was dying, but I will agree that this is a coping mechanism I do indeed employ. I need to walk myself through, say, cancer, so everything is will be a cakewalk. If I can figure out what to do if the worst of the worst happens, then surgery to remove cysts? No problem.

I have four reasons why I am extra Cancer-worried:

1. I took so much fertility medication and, well, studies show that those meds have lead to cancer. On the other hand, studies show that those meds do not lead to cancer. Let’s just say I am not happen that there are studies, period. Where there are studies, there is justification. Somewhere, there is justification. Somewhere someone’s inside exploded from too many rounds of injectibles.

2. My mother had surgery to remove some cancerous growths form her uterus when she was about 40, two years older than I am now. I was in ninth grade I think. Let’s just say I have had a hard time finding out EXACTLY what it was and what the diagnosis was. But I do remember, clear as day, a lovely diagram she drew for me and when she had surgery and that the word pre-cancer at the very least was used. I also had to skip a field trip to see a Frederico Garcia Lorca play in the city on surgery day.

3. My c-section was so not smooth. They had a hard time stuffing my uterus back in. And then there was the whole kidneys shutting down thing. Not sure how I get from botched c-section to cancer, but there you go. Maybe that is what Nicole is talking about.

4. I am from Long Island, which is basically a 90-mile-long cancer cluster.

My back-from-Italy friend Jen is convinced that all will be fine based on her very scientific reasoning that horrific things only turn up in random appointments. Like a routine physical that turns up skin cancer. I guess I should believe her because her husband is a surgeon, so she is one heartbeat away from a medical degree and first-hand knowledge of these things.

I’m not going to lie. I am a little worried and am more than ready to have this over and done with. I could use some distraction right about now. Not the distraction that the aforementioned Jen offered today, which included a horrific story about a friend’s husband who is battling cancer. (I had to cut her short on that one!) But some sort of distraction would be good.

And I’m not going to lie about this either: There is a small part of me that wants to just blow off the entire sonogram. Just ignore the appointment. I have never done that before. I have become a person who wants medical information immediately, more so than ever before, now that the girls are here, but I am strangely, bizarrely and uncharacteristically willing to pretend that everything is fine, even when I know something is wrong. The real question is, big wrong or little wrong? Chances are very much in my favor that it is little wrong. And here I am, caring and not. An oxymoron.

Pictured above: Maddie, in Leif’s and-me-down orange sweater. It still has his Leif scent on it! Below that, a weird tree thing. And Avery holding an inchworm. This child of mine is so ready for a pet! And last but not least, my most joyous hide-and-go-seeker. Maddie looooooves this game, even though she only hides in two spots (the closet and the under a coushin in the couch).

I'd Like A Sad Sandwich with a Side Order of Angry, Please. No Mayo.

2010-08-22T22:00:00.006-04:00

I woke up this morning feeling the sharp pang of one week since my niece and nephew moved away. I had horrible, vivid, lucid dreams the night before, so that didn’t help my state of mind. I was just sad. Sad that this could be the beginning of a very slow separation process brought on by diverse geographical locations and opposite time zones, which could ultimately drive a very large wedge in my relationships with my niece and nephew. Or it could make it stronger. To recap: Hoping for the later, scared of the former. In the meantime, just happy for the phone call we had, and looking forward to more. Like now. Now is a good time. Is now a good time for you?

I love the care package idea and am already planning the October one. This involved buying black spray glitter to make bat cards. Black spray is, apparently, a rare commodity both in real stores and online. Back to the drawing board. And I better keep things light: It costs a ridiculous amount of money to send packages to China. Maybe I can just send one of the bats from near our house? They are light as a feather and can fly far. And they make great pets, if they don't carry that deadly rabies thing.

We were up in Northampton this weekend. Saturday was beautiful and almost a perfect day. We got work done around the house; I bought a new cozy sweater and pajamas; we discovered a farm five minutes from our house that sells fresh veggies and eggs and fruit and has chickens, which the girls loved. We had our favorite arugula pizza at night. Sunday, it was rainy, but there is something about rain in the woods that is awesome. I could fall asleep listening to it, if it weren’t for the fact that I have two kids running around narrating every thought that enters their little heads, thus making it quite difficult to hear anything other than their toddler drone. Avery, in particular, does not stop talking. She has hit the “why?” phase and follows up each sentence with “But why?” or “But how?” and “What’s that?” I find this quirk adorable and charming, but it can get frustrating when, say, I am trying to explain the elements of the Quaker religion to her. But why? She asks. I don’t know, I say. Ad infinitum…

Lest I seem ungrateful, I should point out that I love this stage in the girls’ lives. And now, especially after Leif and Skye left, I am even more grateful for them.

But now I need distractions. A great one will be released on Tuesday. And for tonight, I downloaded a movie to watch. But after an hour it was only halfway downloaded, so I gave up. That will be tomorrow’s distraction. This post was tonight’s uninspired distraction.

Pictured above, holding hands at the apple orchard. And Avery and Nicole trying to pinpoint, via an Owl app, which owl I just heard hooting in our woods. I am so excited to get an owl to roost in our woods!

It’s My Heart You’re Taking As You Go

2010-08-19T21:16:00.006-04:00

When I was about eleven years old, my grandparents had a garage sale. Somehow I ended up there and somehow I ended up the proprietor of my very own card table and in possession of a silver money box packed with singles and loose change. While my grandmother was selling dusty crystal and no-longer-loved knick-knacks, I was selling boxes of brand new Made in China digital clocks and pen watches. Who doesn’t love a pen with a digital clock imbedded in it? It was the 80s, after all. I think there were also phones, the kind with cords and clock radios attached to them. The assorted electronic goods came from my very own garage, some sort of surplus from my dad’s import business. I was raking in the dough, which I was most likely going to promptly deposit into my savings account, because even way back that I was a good pleasure delayer.

What stands out from this otherwise lackluster memory is a random comment from a random woman. She was browsing my wares while I stood proudly and importantly behind my table with my grandmother next to me. Random woman looks up at me and then turns to my grandmother and (speaking as if I wasn’t there) said “My, my, someday that one is going to be a heartbreaker.” She might have clucked too, but I don’t trust my memory.

To this day, I do not understand what that woman saw or why she said that. Maybe it is something she says to people to make them feel good about themselves, though that is kind of creepy, considering my age. Or maybe it is something that neighborly people say to their neighbor’s not super cute grandchildren. Because there was nothing about my appearance that would suggest “heartbreaker.” Nothing. I had buck-ish teeth with a giant space between the front two. I was in that awkward space of not thin and not fat, but “husky.” I bit my nails to the quick and I was probably wearing glasses, and since it was probably sunny, I was probably squinting in a not flattering way, with my mouth open and nose scrunched, like a rapid dog baring its teeth. Yes, I just compared myself to a rabid dog. And my sense of style at that age was very, very undeveloped. Very. And let’s remember that I was standing behind a table stacked with leftover electronics, which did nothing to enhance not-very-cool status.

The things we remember. This always stuck in my head. Something about how she said it, like it was a compliment, like it was a good thing that maybe some day I would break some hearts. We all need goals, I guess, but that one hadn’t popped up on my radar. I get that it is an expression and I get that I shouldn’t take it so literally but I did. It stuck out, probably because it was so absurd.

The thing is, I don’t think hearts break. And I don’t think I broke any. I may have trampled a few in my stampede of figuring out who I was and what I wanted out of life, but I am fairly certain no one is crouching in a dark corner, clawing at their face, screaming my name. Hearts, I think, get carved up and stolen. Janice Joplin had it right with that whole take a piece of my heart song. Broken things can be fixed, but little pieces can’t be replaced. A little piece of my heart disappeared when my niece and nephew left for China. I know it sounds so dramatic, but it’s true. I love those little people for who they are and I love that they are mine and I especially loved that they were near me. I am trying to figure out how this new dynamic will work. I spoke with them last night and it was great to hear their voices. To hear their little stories about finding a gecko and the mundane happenings in their day. It occurred to me that this story may even have an ironic twist: We may perhaps speak more and see each other more than we would if we still lived a few miles apart. Only time will tell, but I am working on manifesting that. Thank god for the internet and the postal system and digital cameras. So I will make the calls and send the emails and craft the Halloween cards and demand the pictures and hope for the best.

Pictured above, my brother (I blacked out his face....) and nephew shopping at the Chinese version of Costco. My sister in law said that people stare at them wherever they go, and follow them around. You can see that here, with all of the store workers clustered around them. It made me laugh. Also pictured, their new skyline.

Checking In, Dialing In, Ordering In,

2010-08-12T08:20:00.002-04:00

How do I deal with situations I can’t deal with? I asked my therapist this the other day and she didn’t have an answer. I want my money back. I mean, if she can’t answer every question and magically make everything better, then what good is she? $150 to anyone who can give me an answer to that question.

On my mind lately is the big C word: China. And there is another C word on my mind, but let’s start with China.

My niece and nephew are leaving for China on Sunday and I am just not dealing with it well. I knew this week would be hard, but I am finding it little more arduous than anticipated. Sort of a sucker punch, even though I knew it was coming. My mind can’t stop racing. There is no stopping point, no safe thought process that doesn’t meander right . Every thought leads to They Are Leaving. And I just feel like I am splashing around, trying to get anyone’s attention and looking for life rings, for land, for a freeking sand bar at least. And then I get angry with myself because God knows I can never deal with any emotional trauma on my own, which makes me feel weak.

I may not be dealing with some current turmoil well, but at least I can deal with historical issues much better than I did before the girls were born. It’s not like strands of my tangled, awful, bad, sad and painful memories were just plucked out of our head for all of time, in some sort of a science fiction way. I just think I have gotten a tad better with accepting things that have happened. Making peace with things I can’t change. Accepting things for how they are, or were, as the case may be. So I can look back, analyze something and pick it apart and try to pull out the lesson, and leave the rest of the mess there. Emotional evolution. And while I am sometimes guilty of the whole Woe Is Me attitude or getting lost in some negative thoughts, I think in general I am embracing the concept that it is okay to look back, but not to stare. It’s like staring at the sun: Nothing good can come from it and you may burn your retina.

So I know I will be better when this is in my rear view mirror. I just need Sunday to come, and go, the plane to land safely halfway around the world, and then look around and pick up the pieces. But right now I am stuck in a fugue. I worry how it will be possible to maintain a relationship with a five-year-old and seven-year-old from so far away. Skype with a 12-hour time difference will have its challenges. I worry that they will forget me. I worry that we won’t have the chance to create new memories. When I stop thinking about myself, I worry about how my pint-size family members will deal with such a culture shock. And then I think about my girls, who will be missing out on growing up with cousins around them. Worry worry worry. There is no peace in my mind or heart right now.

And then when my brain is saturated with all this, I start thinking about the fact that I have most of the symptoms of uterine cancer. Bombshell! At least two of the three most common symptoms. And here I am thinking dealing with this move was gonna be hard. Yes, good times over here. I feel like I am being tested, because I am always quick to say to others that old chestnut about as long as you and the people you know are healthy, then everything will be okay. Well, life might be serving up a different and difficult lesson for me. Of course, most of these health-scare situations turn out just fine, but right now my overtaxed brain is thinking the worse. I told Nicole if I die, I changed my mind and I want to have a huge funeral/memorial. I want people wailing in corners, shaking their fists at the sky and screaming how it is not fair. People giving speeches about how much I will be missed. I will make everyone wear orange, because it is sometimes my favorite color. And I like thinking about how everyone would be running around looking for orange clothes. And then I’ll look at the room from above (below?) and it will be like staring at the sun again.

So that is my current state of mind. When I stop thinking about China, I think about cancer. When I stop thinking about cancer, I think about China. Then I take a couple Advil and start the cycle all over again. I hope my next post isn’t so doom and gloom.

Motorcycles, Missing Mommy and Celebrity Blogger Guests

2010-08-11T09:10:00.001-04:00

Did I mention I was in a motorcycle accident? On the highway? Well, technically, we were on the off ramp to the LIE. I glanced in my rear view and noticed a motorcycle starting to skid out. Everything after that happened in slow motion. My instinct was to hit the brakes, but luckily I realized if I did that then the motorcycle rider would hit me faster. So I hit the accelator, and tried to swerve to the side. The rider hit us, but his bike was almost horizontal to the ground at that time, so when he hit us, he felt flying to the side, instead of through it or over it. It was awful. I pulled over and got out, just as several other cars did. Another motorcycle rider parked near me and helped too. Within two minutes there were two firetrucks and an ambulance. He was ok, thank God, and this was evidenced by the fact that he was concerned that I was waiting around to harass him about damage to my car. I wasn’t: There was no damage to my car. But it seemed poor form to ride off and leave the scene of an accident. And I did want t make sure he was okay.

The whole experience was horrifying. I was really shaken up, which, apparently, was noticed by the fire department, because kept sending strapping firemen over to me. I mean, my hands were shaking, but I thought I was quite calm, all things considered. This rider could have died. If he wasn’t wearing a helmet, I think he would have. And while it wasn’t my fault (he hit an oil slick, which the FDNY immediately covered with sand) it still is scary to think that people could die like that, so quickly and randomly, and not because of me, technically, but in a way because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thank goodness this incident had a happy ending for all.

Another happy ending: Nicole is home after a four-day birthday adventure with some friends. The girls missed her so much this time. Well, Avery did. I must say that this trip made me feel a little better about myself. When Nicole goes away, I miss her. Not just a little; a lot. Perhaps in a pathetic way. Who misses people that much? It’s not just her, it’s other people too. Like my friend Jen, who is in Italy still. But I always felt just this enormous Missing You theme was, well, pathetic. But now, now I see my daughter is afflicted with this as well. And when I see it in her, I don’t think of it as pathetic at all. It makes me feel a little better about myself.

Avery missed Nicole, and went through a range of emotions, which mirror mine in a way. But her’s played out in an adorable toddler way:

1. Denial: “Mommy is at work. Mommy is coming home soon.”
2. Anger: “Mommy is gonna be in so much trouble!”
3. Sadness: “Mommy left me. Mommy isn’t coming back!”
4. Despondence: “I need Mommy back. I want Mommy to come home now.”
5. Practical Thinking: “I want to call Mommy and say hi.”
6. Magical Thinking: “I need to take my fly boat and see Mommy now. She is going to be so excited.”

The thing is, I don’t show these emotion to the girls, necessarily. It’s not like I run around, tearing my hair out, clawing my face, screaming why why why. I suffer quietly. Not as quiet as Maddie; she misses Nicole in her own quiet way. Quite the opposite of Avery’s loud, messy, tangled Missing You emotions. But it is reassuring to realize that this is all genetic.

Of course, having an adorable houseguest and his mom staying with us helped distract all of us from the missing Mommy. Calliope was here while she was in town for the BlogHer conference. We were honored to host such a big blogging celebrity! Perhaps I will become famous by association. Time will tell.

Pictured above, scene of the accident. And the tee shirt that Nicole brought home for the girls. They each have one. I had at least ten people comment to me on the street about them.

Attention, Passenger: This Is Your Final Boarding Call

2010-08-02T09:26:00.005-04:00

There are a few things I need to remind myself over and over again these next couple of weeks:

The First: When a little hand pats my back or little arms are thrown around my neck and little voices say things like “It’s okay Momma,” I need to take a step out of my own big world of sadness and calm the eff down. I need to make my children think they are comforting me and making me feel better. Nothing sucks more than to be a child and see your mom cry or be upset and feel powerless to make her feel better. To be young and marginalized by pain, yeah, that shit sticks with you, believe you me. So even if I have to fake it (and yes, my cover will be blown when the girls get older and read this) I need to smile, wipe the tears and say thank you, momma feels much better. A little white lie like that can’t really hurt them, and may help them to grow up to be confident and to feel powerful.

The Second: Dealing with an upcoming Giant Change sucks. Having a date on the calendar makes it suck even more. Every moment feels important, huge, precious, fleeting and not well spent. Once upon a time my “Three more sleeps till…” was used to count down to happy occasions. Now I am using it to count down the days till a little part of me goes away.

The Third: This is not just happening to me. This is happening to my children, to my niece and nephew, to Nicole. Yet somehow I have the starring role in this drama.

The Fourth: Doing things with my kids does not always qualify as quality time. Yes, I have been taking them places and to the playground and to play with frousins and cousins and to swim in pools, but I feel like I haven’t had quality face-to-face time with them. Avery isn’t helping me in the kitchen. I am not sprawling out on their bedroom floor and turning myself into the human toddler jungle gym. We are so go go go that we are not snuggling on the couch to read books or taking time out of our day to play ridiculous, made-up toddler games (hallmarks include rapidly changing rules; no clear start point or end point; constantly changing props and accoutrements; easily stopped at a moment’s notice.) I miss them, and I am around them all the time.

The Fifth: A package of Zoo Pal paper plates provide more enjoyment for my children than any toy they own right now. Yes, paper plates. They get so excited when I “split” them, which basically means when I divide them evenly between the two of them.

The Sixth: I don’t need to deal with this emotional turmoil in a messy way. As soon as any conflict or negative thing, for lack of a better word, enters my world, I tend to instantly become sad, needy, unconfident. My self-esteem plummets. I feel like a bad mother/wife/friend/aunt/whatever. My mind immediately goes to “I can’t get through this.” Maybe that’s me being selfish or me being human or me being whatever, but it is really helping me to remind myself that I get to have my bad/needy days too. And that this shit doesn’t need to seep into areas of confidence and esteem. I need to put that in Al Gore’s lock box and throw away the key.

The Seventh: Yes, I am cursing more. I’m also a tad more sarcastic and pointed (barbed?) with my humor. That is usually a solid indication that my emotional tank is full. And, I am more calendar-obsessed. That makes me feel like I have a little control in situations when I clearly have none. Smoke and mirrors. All smoke and mirrors.

The Eighth: If you are taking a hearing test, make sure you turn your earphones on first. Otherwise you will spend 15 minutes convinced you are deaf because you cannot hear the sounds you are supposed to hear. Or, in my case, any sounds at all. It wasn’t till I, in a panic, made Nicole try that I realized I hadn’t turned the earphones on.

The Ninth: My hearing is indeed feeling a little worse. I notice I am employing way more coping mechanisms to hear. Guess it’s time to see the audiologist. Nicole said the worst that could happen is I need hearing aids. I said the worst that could happen is the fact that a bill for 5K will show up because insurance doesn’t cover hearing aids.

The Tenth: Life is at times hard, challenging, difficult, perplexing. Pick your own adjective. It just isn’t sunshine and roses all the time. And really, that sucks. But life is also amazing in so many different ways, and, for the record, I will state that I am beyond grateful for the children/people/advantages/spouse that I DO have. We all have checks in the Good column. The challenge is remembering in times like these that the good/sublime outweighs the bad.

Okay, now for some spinach and hummus.

Pictured above, Avery will eat anything with a little chocolate on it. And the sun, breaking through, a.k.a., the world’s first metaphor. And I think I know where I will be on Thursday. Basil custard? Veeeery intriguing.

Love is the Truth I Realize, Not a Stream of Pretty Lies

2010-07-29T14:22:00.003-04:00

I have been on a few musical binges lately. These are episodes during which I play the same song over and over and over again. Then once more, for good measure. Listening to songs on repeat is so easy now. I remember back in the day, right after college when I was commuting to NYC from Long Island (good God, this was 20 years ago), I used to have to play the song, hit rewind on my walkman, and then play it again. I had so many cassingles. I thought a Discman was the most amazing invention and was happy to endure skipping CDs for its many advantages. Don’t even get me started on how iPods changed my world. But I digress…

Songs that were/are the object of my obsession are sometimes lyrically significant, sometimes not. I once overplayed Prayer for the Dying by Seal because of one lyric: “Playing with fire and not getting burned.” Because at that time, I was playing with fire and not getting burned. How convenient. I thought I was having my cake and eating it too. (However, I did learn that being the burner and not the burnee, well, that kinda sucked too. So much for playing with fire and not getting burned.) “You Get What You Give” is tightly woven into the beginning of my relationship with Nicole, and I have been known to binge on that song, as it always puts a smile on my face. However, the lyrics of that song are not tightly wound into us at all.

Lately I have been wearing out three songs. In the car, I blast Where the Street Have No Name so much that when the song ends, Avery yells out “Again, Momma, again!” For reasons I don’t quite understand, this song makes me think of mortality and death. And, as I have said before (maybe on Facebook), I hope I hear the intro of this song in my head when that day comes that I lay dying. Morbid, no? I’ve been thinking a lot about end of life again. Lots of health scares and aging reminders and death circling around these days. But it just seems so fitting, that intro. Uplifting with juuuust a touch of sadness. If I really had my way, I would hear the intro to that song, followed by another U2 hit: Beautiful Day. That is, to this day, the only song that I had a very ugly memory attached to that I managed to turn into a happy memory song. So if I am on my death bed, someone needs to make this mash-up happen.

The second song that I can’t shake lately is Pure by the Lightning Seeds. I ran five miles the other day listening to it on repeat. That is almost 45 minutes of the same song. Torture for some; heaven for me. The lyrics get me every time, and the song itself is the very definition of infectious. It brings back good memories and makes me think happy thoughts. The third song, well, I think I need to keep that one to myself. My heart starts to beat a little faster and my stomach launches up to my throat when I start to think about it. Listening to it is bittersweet. The song makes me cry, so I need to be careful when I do play play it. But I love the ironic nature of its title.

But I can say that the third song is sort of wrapped up in my current state of insecurity. First of all, my closest friend, the one I talk to 16 times a day; the one who talks me off of my ledges and talks sense into me; the one makes my day better just by existing; she just left with her family for a three week vacation to Italy. I am not good with goodbyes, even of the temporary variety. Her twenty-one day absence will affect my daily life in a big way.

And then, in a mere two weeks, before Jen even gets back from Italy, my brother and his family are moving far, far, far away. By far, I mean a 12-hour plane ride away. About as far away as they can get on this earth. While I understand that they are just disappearing off of the face of this earth, I can’t quite get my mind to agree with that. I held Leif when he was an hour old and I swear to God he changed my life. And then came Skye, this beautiful, perfect little angel baby who almost died when she was four months old. She spent two weeks in the hospital recovering from a near-death experience and I swear that made me appreciate life and her just a little more than I did before. Both of them came in rapid fire succession after Nicole entered my world, and have brought me nothing but happiness and joy.

I was saying to Nicole recently that my relationship with them is the purest form of love I have ever experienced. This is not meant to be a slight to my own children or Nicole; but being an aunt is a different dynamic than being a mother or wife. I get to spoil them, indulge them and not enforce any boundaries. And I do all of that, in force. I have never hurt Leif and Skye and they have never hurt me. We don’t have spats or quarrels or periods of ebb. It is just love love love, pure and simple. And now, they are leaving. For good, maybe. My niece and nephew will call another country home.

This has sparked a flare up of insecurity. Insecurity is not a fun place to be, and people who don’t experience it have no idea how lucky they are. I can tell stories of insecurity that would make heads spin. Like how with one relationship, I was afraid that if certain *words* were mentioned, it would set in motion a domino effect that would end that relationship for good. I am not kidding. That is what it is like to live wrapped up in intense insecurity, which was my specialty.

I know exactly how this insecurity manifested and even when. No mystery there. And, thankfully, I can pinpoint its end date: Nicole. When she came along, the planets aligned in some perfect way and through the sheer power of her love (yes, corny, I know) I suddenly felt safe, secure and fearless. I do deserve some credit: I did plant the seeds of this change. But Nicole was the sun, fertilizer and water that made it all bloom. She might have picked a few weeds too. The point is it happened, she helped, and I maintained. I did not worry that she was going to leave or disappear. I did not feat that a word would set off those dominoes.

I extrapolated all that into all of my relationships. How great is it to walk through life feeling secure and confident in relationships. My friends for life really are friends for life. They aren’t going to walk away if I don’t return a phone call in an hour; and similarly I am not walking away if they don’t return my call right away either. Friendships are not measured in how quickly calls are returned. The relationships that I put time and effort into will reap the rewards of that time and effort. And love, well, it will be, as I told someone recently, strong and passionate sometimes. And hard and annoying sometimes. And slow and comfortable sometimes. But it will always be.

But this impending move and Jen’s loooong vacation and various other factors have reignited this insecure flame. So I am struggling to remember that this too shall pass.

Pictured above, Madeline as a bee. She ran around yelling Buzz Buzz. Avery on the beach. And the girls playing with their cousins. Both have a knack for lacrosse! Well, at least they have an interest in lacrosse. That's a start.

Balancing Equations and the Periodic Table of Emotions

2010-07-23T12:09:00.004-04:00

When Avery is doing something wrong, like stealing toothpaste to eat or commandeering a toy that Maddie has claimed, she does it stealthily. Or, the toddler version of stealthily. She will, for example, hide the toothpaste behind her back, and edge around me, going so far as to walking backwards so I can’t see what she has. Just to make sure I am distracted, she will tell me to go into another room or to not look in her hands. Her attempts at subtlety are anything but. Madeline, on the other hand, doesn’t even try to be subtle. She is an in-your-face violator of rules. She feels no need to hide anything, ever. Her attitude screams, “Yeah, I’m chewing on paper. Go ahead and try to stop me.” When I ask her to cease a certain behavior or activity, her canned response is “But Momma, I am practicing!” Practicing ripping up paper, practicing throwing cheerios, practicing taking all of the cushions off the couch.

Interesting to see their little personalities develop. More interesting is that there isn’t a single mothering approach that works for both. They keep me on my toes.

I think we all idealize parenthood to some extent. When I envisioned motherhood, the type of mother I envisioned I would be is, in retrospect, the mother of one child. That is, all those grand plans and schemes I had are more suited to a one-on-one parent/child ratio. Which is to say, I thought it would be a LOT easier than it actually is. Something so basic as needing to fine-tune discipline approaches for each child is something that just never crossed my mind. Of course, now when I think about it, it seems obvious to the point of absurdity. But my little daydreams from long ago were quite macro, a one-size-fits-all approach. I actually thought I could just read books on parenting and poof, be the perfect parent. And then, of course, infertility pushed my into Faustian territory, which had me making promises of perfection in exchange for the gift of a child. I think all those promises went out the window by the second week.

So I am not perfect. I think it is a sign of progress that I am not beating myself up as much for these infractions. The girls will sometimes watch hours of TV while I cook and clean. There are perfect weather days when we don’t go to the playground. There are those times when Avery will snatch the bag of raisonettes from the counter and I don’t stop her, even though I know this will spoil her dinner appetite. Despite my doctor’s advice to make potty training an expectation that is not rewarded with treats, I reward with treats. In a big way. The thing is, I don’t really think that these parenting gaffes are going to screw them up. I know for a fact that my children feel loved. I know they will have an amazing childhood. I know they will be raised in structure, order and routine. And I know that we are planting legacy seeds here, as we are not just raising our children, but also our someday grandchildren, because how we treat our children now is how they will treat theirs someday. There is a lot at stake. Thank God for Nicole, because all this comes so easily to her. I guess I could chalk it up to the fact that she spends a lot less time with the girls, so she is going to have more patience than I would. But I know that that is not the reason. By nature, she is calmer and more patient than I am for sure. But I feel like I am getting better. I can say that I am the type of person who is very aware of my flaws. But for the most part, the sentence and sentiment stopped there. Now I feel like I am earning the right to say that not only am I aware of my flaws, I am also actively trying to change them. What good is clarity without effort? What good is knowledge without action? How unbalanced I have been, thinking I was all that and a bag of chips because I could identify my core issues. How easy it is to fall back on these old labels, these old descriptors. I am, for example, impatient. But I don't have to be. Progress.

Pictured above, more signs of summer: Drying bathing suits and towels. Tomorrow we will head for the lake beach again. And to my favorite pizza place for then pizza with asiago almond pesto, zucchini, squash, scallions and red onions. That is all that is on the agenda, and that is just fine with me.

Controversial For Controversial’s Sake

2010-07-19T12:05:00.003-04:00

I’m rusty. Summer is by far my least favorite season, but it is my busiest, which means blogs are neglected. The girls have a demanding schedule of playgrounds and zoos and walks. And while I enjoy these activities, I find it all exhausting and way too hot. Unlike most people in the world, I cannot wait for summer to end. Bring on the fall, and its sweaters and turtlenecks and chilly weather. Bring on the comfort food meals and early sunsets. And, yes, bring on the snow. Nothing makes me happy like sunset at 4:30. For me, summer is something endured. Well, June is fine, but July and August I wish I could fast forward. I am excited that July is winding down. Yes, I know that I’m in the minority here, but what can I say. I live happily in the fringes.

And now, a bullet list:

Pre-School: Much to the consternation of several friends and countless experts, my two three-year-olds will not be attending preschool this year. This is for several reasons, some of which may ruffle some people’s feathers, so let’s go with the least controversial reason: It is way too expensive for way too little. Three mornings a week, of basically structured play and socialization, from September till June, runs 12K per child. (Which adds up to 24K, or, in pretax dollars, about 48K.) This is for just THREE mornings a week, which basically means I would be paying all that money to drop the girls off and go, say, to the gym and then pick them up again. It doesn’t even include meals. And this is one of the cheaper options: Most schools run way more than that. Five days a week at this place runs 5K more per child. When they are four, they will attend Pre K, so until then, they are attending the preschool of my kitchen table and socializing with their frousins and cousins.

Kindergarten: And as long as we are talking about school, we are not going to separate the girls when they are in kindergarten. They will be in the same class. And we will keep them in the same class for as long as they want. I have read lots of studies and literature on how this may be detrimental to their social development, but I respectfully disagree. I have no intention to ever sever the bond my girls have. I respect people who want to do it, but for us, it is not the right move. It will happen organically, perhaps, or maybe they will be super close their entire academic lives. If one wants her own class some day, then we will cross that bridge when we get there. But as far as I am concerned, they are in the same class for as long as possible. I am glad Nicole agrees with me on this.

China: My brother and his family are moving to China in less than a month and I am devastated. I don’t want them to go. Selfish, I know, but I cannot bear to think of my niece and nephew that far away. I start to panic when I think about it. I want to visit them in China, but I am not sure how possible me and two girls on a plane for 1,000 hours really is. I would have to stay a while, as a trip to China isn’t exactly a long weekend. I am hoping Nicole might have to go to Hong Kong (where they will be is about 45 minutes away from HK) for work and we can all go together. That is a slim, far-off possibility. But I need to think abut things like that because when I think about them leaving, I get a pit in my stomach. It is almost too much for my brain to comprehend. So right now I am NOT thinking about it, which means their upcoming departure will certainly smack me like a bucket of cold water.

Bats: In our house in Massachusetts. Yes, in our house. We saw the first one in the girls room, which is beyond horrifying. It flew across the room and Nicole caught it with her bare hands. Well, with her bare hands wrapped around a towel. Six bats later, we high-tailed it to a hotel for the night. I am still haunted by the supersonic screech of the bats. Turns out bats can get into holes the size of a pencil. We had some nesting in the eaves and the baby bats followed the wrong drafts and ended up in the house. Their moms came to find them, which resulted in the Night of Bats Everywhere. We had to pay a bat removal company thousands to fill up the holes and get them out. Nicole had to get her rabies vaccination, since she had contact with the bats and apparently bats can leak rabies through their membranes. So you don’t need to get bit or scratched: You just need to touch one. Nicole was fairly certain she didn’t touch any with her skin but since the end result of rabies is death, we decided that rabies shots was in order. Less than one half of one percent of all bats carry rabies but why take the chance. I am happy to report we are bat free (knock wood) and Nicole is still alive. Win/win.

Bears: In other nature news, Nicole made eye contact with a bear on our back steps. Let me repeat that: A bear. On our steps. She called me over to see, but in my frantic efforts to get the camera, I missed the bear. He trampled some ferns and left one big print as evidence. We found out they are nocturnal, so I don’t need to worry so much during the day that they are lurking around ready to snatch the girls. I am sad that I missed him, but Nicole thinks we will see him again, which is both exciting and scary at the same time.

How Does Our Garden Grow: It grows well. We have planted hostas and day lilies and butterfly bushes and basil and black-eyed susans and hydrangeas. We also planted a blueberry bush, but the fruit was already eaten by some animal or bird. I never, ever pictured myself a person who looks forward to gardening and walking around nurseries, but here I am, looking forward to gardening and walking around nurseries. Nicole has a rather organized and complex plan the entire yard that will take years to execute, but I am fine with that. It is nice to see little swatches of cultivated plants and flowers and every weekend I am excited to see what grew or bloomed or blossomed.

Pictured above, the girls, getting bigger and bigger by the minute. And the bear paw print, to the right of Nicole’s hand.

Peace to All Who Enter Sunday Bloody Sunday

2010-06-20T18:37:00.002-04:00

I did Bikram yoga for the first time today and it was not pretty. It was 90 minutes of intense, sweaty, twisted hell. I knew what I was getting myself into, but I was still not quite prepared for what it would feel like to be in an extremely small, extremely hot room with 35 nearly naked other people twisting myself into difficult poses that I was supposed to hold for five breaths, or, an eternity. My first pose was so off that I attracted the attention of the yoga teacher. I tried to copy my hot shot neighbors for the rest of the class, but this was difficult when my head was, say between my legs, looking to the left, becoming one with a fixed point. The next time the teacher came over I apologized and said this was my first time (if I had a dollar or every time I said that…), which he announced to the class, which elicited a round of applause. I think I will say that every time I go, just for the ego boost.

The teacher talked the entire time. Boy, that sure makes the time fly. And while he did have a few good things to ruminate on during the mediation portion at the end (“We become what we resent” and “change yourself and everyone and everything around you will change” come to mind) he did have a few less than savory quotes, like “I told my dad I wanted to kill him.” Interesting…on Fathers Day, no less. Those sort of unexpected death threats kept the class from being 90 minutes of listening to fortune cookie-esque talk. It ended with a bunch of Omms and a namaste, which almost made me laugh because I felt so ridiculous saying it. Such a poser, no pun intended.

Then, after all that Ommm and good karma and yoga energy, I headed back to the country ranch in time to see Avery suffer a nasty fall and split open her chin. We decided to get on the road and head back to NYC instead of seeing a doctor in Massachusetts. Nicole said she thought it would be fine, but I thought it might need stitches. Avery slept most of the way in the car. We called our doctor when we got back to the city and sure enough, she confirmed that poor Avery needed stitches. So Nicole took her back to the hospital (where she was born) for the her very first minor surgical experience. I know that Nicole is the better mom to go because I am not as calm as I should be in situations like this. Think of Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment and that is close to how I may react in any stressful hospital setting. Yet I am sad that I am not there to hold her little hand and kiss her little face and help distract her from the pain. Thinking about it now makes me cry. Will Nicole always be the go-to mom for the Big Things? Will Avery look back and remember me as not being there for her? Even though it is because I need to stay home with Madeline? And didn’t my yoga teacher say something today about letting these sort of thoughts drift into my head and then drift right back out? Breath in, breath out.

Just got the text from Nicole: Six stitches for my poor baby girl!

Pictured above, Avery and a worm and Avery watering the herb garden with a visiting Nana (Nicole’s parents visited us up in Mass). And miss Madeline. I need to Photoshop out her diaper.

How Hope Springs Eternal in Four New Beds

2010-06-18T08:53:00.004-04:00

Dare I say that we have turned a corner? Do I risk jinxing things by discussing the new and exciting developments going on here?

Bedtime and sleeping has been getting much better in some ways. The new big-girl beds, in both houses, have made a huge difference. These days, we aim to have them in their beds, tucked in, by 7:30. We each lay in a bed (me, usually with Madeline and Nicole with Avery) and we talk about the highlights of the day and usually repeat the story of the Three Little Pigs, their current favorite story. Then kisses and lights out and we leave. We usually have to come back one more time for an extra hug or kiss, but that’s it. They stay IN their beds, NO roaming, and they usually chat for a few minutes but simmer down within fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes! Two weeks ago, they wouldn’t fall asleep until 9:30 or so. This means that this week we had had such conversation starters as “What do you want to do tonight?” Nicole and I both started reading new books. It is quiet and stress-free. That is amazing.

Also amazing: Madeline no longer gets out of bed and walks into our room and climbs into our bed. She has stopped that completely. However, she still is waking up in the night, crying out for us. And while we have gone back and forth a couple times with letting her cry it out or running to her side, what usually happens is Nicole goes in there and sits with her or lays down with her. Sometimes Nicole falls asleep in her bed, but wakes up and evacuates before Madeline wakes up, which is key. We figured we are dealing with three challenges: Getting the girls to go to bed quickly; getting Madeline to not roam; and getting Madeline to sleep through the night without crying for us. Two out of three right now is pretty good, I’d say.

More changes: A little over two weeks till my birthday. Born on the fourth of July. Nicole took the week off so we will be up in Massachusetts. Then there will be a few changes in mid July that I guess I can talk about soon. And then the end of July one of my closets friends, the one I speak to 16 times a day, the one who talks me off cliffs and keeps me sane, the one who I can’t live without speaking to will be heading to Italy with her family for three weeks. I already feel abandoned. My brother and his family are a few steps closer moving to China, which makes me so sad because I can’t imagine being that far away from my niece and nephew. I got a haircut and it is kinda short. And Avery broke my iPad by hitting it with a toy hammer. Can’t quite talk about that yet, as it is devastating. Not a good day when that happened. Today I distract myself by taking the girls to see Toy Story at the Ziegfeld Theater.

Pictured above, that guy on the roof is spraying it silver. It was kind of fascinating to watch for 15 seconds. I wonder what happens when he finishes? How does he get off? But then the light turned green and I had to drive off, so I will never know I guess. Also pictured, the girls have discovered the joys of riding on the cart. Ad finally, riding in the cart at Target. Madeline was alone in the back there with nothing in there and while I talked with Aunt Mina, Avery and Skye managed to PACK it up with toys.

Nothing Like Ending Vacation With an Emergency Landing

2010-06-07T09:00:00.006-04:00

I was going to write all about of week in Florida, but our zoo adventures and elephant encounter and lake tales and gator sightings have been trumped by an emergency landing. Anyone who knows me knows that I have recently become a white knuckle flyer. I used to be the kind that didn’t like turbulence, but tolerated the rest. Now, well, pretty much start to finish is one giant stress event unless I take prescription meds to calm me. And, no, flying with the girls doesn’t make it easier, as some people said. (Yes, Jenni, I’m talking to you!) What can I say? I am not sure why this happened, this giant fear. My therapist has theories, I have a few, but that all doesn’t matter. Bottom line: I don’t like flying and I especially don’t like emergency landings.

It a rather large nutshell, it happened like this: Nicole and the girls were sitting in three seats and I was across the aisle, alone. We took off, and of course I think about how most crashes happen in the first two minutes of flight and the last two minutes. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So the first few minutes, critical for the plane and also my well being. I tried to keep calm as the little TV in front of me flickered in and out of reception. I usually counter this stress by squeezing the life out of Nicole’s hand across the aisle. I also rely heavily on the numbing effects of a little pill. Xanax, atavan, ambien, whatever. Nicole’s job is to dole out my pill before we board, and today of all days, she packed the pills in checked luggage so for the first time in, oh, six years, I was flying med-less. Yes, I know it may be unusual that Nicole I in control of the pill, but it is a dynamic that makes me feel better.

Take off was fine, but about 15 seconds after take off, lots of vibration and a weird noise started happening. A noise I never heard before. I asked Nicole is that was normal and she tried to play it off that it was the wing flaps. It wasn’t. So a few more minutes of LOTS of noise and no announcements. Then a man with a laptop walks importantly up to the cockpit and goes in. This of course set off the rest of my panic alarms. Are they goggling in there? “Plane weird news vibration fix” and search?

Then an attendant gets on with this not so helpful message: “Just so you know we are returning to Orlando.” What the eff??? That’s it. Nothing else. By this point I eschewed air safety rules and regs and jumped out of my seat and bounced across the aisle into the three seats where Nicole and girls sat. Then the pilot gets on: The landing gear is stuck. Lucky for us, it is in the down position, so we are returning to Orlando. We circled for a ridiculous amount of time and the prepared for what the pilot called “most likely a normal landing.”

Needless to say, I cried. A lot. Kept repeating things like “I want to land now. I want to land now.” I prayed. I searched my memories for plane crashes with shared characteristics. I tried to reason with myself. There were lots of people on board with Jesus tee shirts on. Certainly they have enough God love stored up to keep the plane safe. I wondered if the landing gear out for so long and circling for an hour compromised the strength of the gear. Nicole was my human xanax. She kept me relatively calm as I cried on her shoulder. She said we could rent a car and drive up 95 instead of getting on a new flight. She took care of the girls while I fell apart a little.

And then, the ground slowly got closer and we landed, amid a full parade of emergency vehicles. No bumps, no crash, no compromised wheel hubs. I was so grateful to be there. And I got on the next flight. My reasoning was simple statistics: What are the chances of being on two flights in a row with issues? If you know the answer and it isn’t good, don’t tell me. I am not sure how this will affect my next flying experience. I guess time will tell. I am grateful that the landing gear was stuck down, I can say that much. I realize the other way could have had a very different ending (though one that still ends in life). But this emergency landing, this was a stressful event for me.

I have a ton of pictures but many of them are un-postable, as Avery is going through a clothing optional stage. She has decided that skinny dipping is better than wearing a bathing suit and that being naked, in general, rocks. Anyone else have kids that go through a clothing optional stage? Does it end? So pictured above are some of the wild animals we encountered, including my favorite bird with attitude, the grackle. And a profile shot of Avery, just to give an idea of what I am dealing with. Meanwhile, I am shocked that I have three-year-olds. I have a feeling this is going to be a year of many changes. This is going to be a post-a-day kinda week.

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

2010-05-28T20:48:00.004-04:00

The other day I was telling Madeline and Avery all about the carnival that we were going to take them to when Nicole came home from work. After explaining to Avery that no, there are no dragons at carnivals (?), I filled their little heads with visions of cotton candy and whack-a-moles and mini roller-coasters designed just for their mini bodies. I even opened up the website and showed them pictures of the rides and attractions. I managed to whip them up into a fine frenzy until I clicked on “more information” and noticed that the carnival doesn’t open until the weekend. Which is when we will be in Florida. Which means no carnival for them and lots of back pedaling for me.

Thanks for all the sleeping ideas/suggestions/plans. Nicole and I talked about them and came up with a plan. Of sorts. We will enact this plan after we come back from Florida, the theory being if we get traction this week we will only lose it while (whilst?) in Florida on vacation at Nicole’s parent’s house for a week. So now we hold steady and hope we aren’t incurring more sleeping damage that can’t be undone.

One plan that is especially appealing is putting them to bed at different times. Since they share a room, it is almost absurd to expect to put them to bed and not hear a peep. They are too little for that. But I am fairly certain we can get Avery to sleep in about ten minutes and then try Madeline. This is why I love blog friends: Neither Nicole nor I EVER thought about that. That was a light bulb moment for us.

In other sleeping-related news, the girls are now almost two weeks without pacifiers. Two weeks! Madeline still sometimes looks for hers at night on her jammies, where we usually snapped it. It breaks my heart to see her searching for it. But in general taking their pacifiers away was a relatively simple task and much easier than I thought it would be. I think I have harder time with it, as it represents an end of sorts of babyhood. But take it from me: If Madeline can give up her pacifier so easily then almost any toddler can.

We leave tomorrow, which means I am having my little pre-airplane flight panic. I should be taking an ambien right about now and getting some sleep, but for some reason I always hoard those little white pills for an especially rainy day. In terms of stress levels, it doesn’t really rain much harder than this. I should be cutting one of them in half and taking it now.

And there is so much change on our horizon. We are leaving with two-year-olds and coming home with three-year-olds. I cannot believe their third birthday is next week. Already I have noticed that they are more demanding: Their requests have increased from cake to cake plus presents plus balloons plus candles. When we come back, I am hoping we will effectively change their sleep habits and reestablish a sense of evening normalcy. How we got away with years of a fuss-free 6:30 bedtimes and two-hour naps, I’ll never know. But we are going to try our hardest to recapture those glory days. And there are a couple other things that I am required to remained zipped about for the time being. None of it is bad at all, but still, I fight against change with every ounce of energy in my body. Because I am a lover of routine, a creature of habit, an organizer. Even good change rocks my world a little. And I am excited and impatient, which is never a good combo. Never. I am trying to just relax and enjoy. These next ten days should help considerably in the relax department.

Pictured above, I was at the playground and the girls were wearing these dresses and a mom came over to me and asked if I made them myself. Not sure if that was meant as a compliment or not.

Unhealthy Sleep Habits, Unhealthy Mommies

2010-05-24T09:32:00.004-04:00

Once upon a time, I had the perfect little sleepers. They took daily two- to three-hour naps and slept for thirteen hours at night. This made for happy, well adjusted babies and happy, well adjusted mommies. I didn’t appreciate it nearly enough when I had it good and when this wonderful, amazing, perfect schedule was ripped away from us about six months ago, I went into a tailspin.

It all started when we moved the girls into toddler beds. We thought this was a good move because climbing in and out of their cribs seemed more dangerous than free-range children. The girls loved their new freedom and decided two things: 1.) They would no longer take naps and 2.) they would no longer go to bed quietly each night.

Since that transition day, (remember the cupcake party we had? We were so full of hope then, like a those precious and short-lived pre-elected Obama days of hope) every bedtime has been a nightmare. Between 7:00 and 7:30 we walk them to their room and say goodnight. And every night at 7:01 or 7:31 they jump out of their beds and run around their room. At first we were okay with this. We figured they would tire out and eventually collapse in their beds. Thing is, that didn’t happen. As the minutes ticked by, they would get bolder and bolder, eventually sneaking into the living room and expanding their play boundaries and increasing their volume levels, and, despite all logic, revving up their energy levels. They invented fantastic games that only they understand the rules for. They practice jumping, spinning and climbing. They do everything but sleep. Clearly we failed somewhere in this process.

Our genius plan: Sit with them until they fall asleep. This was and continues to be a disaster. This is usually Nicole’s realm, because I think she thinks that after 12 or 13 uninterrupted hours with the girls, I need some sort of break so I don’t experience a psychotic break. Yet this is flawed, as after working all day, she could use a break too. Neither of us are thrilled to sit in the dark room and repeat “sshhhh….it’s night time. Time to go to sleep” over and over and over again.

Their bedtime edged closer to 8:00, which, again, defies exhaustion logic, since they no longer nap. She will sit in their room for an hour sometimes; sometime longer, sometimes less. This worked for a while, but then, just to make things even more challenging Madeline started waking up in the middle of the night and climbing into our bed. Nicole and I were too tired to stop her. She used to go through these sleeping-with-mommies stages every few months. It would last a week and then stop. But this time, it lasted and lasted and lasted. And has morphed from middle of the night bed trips to just starting out in our bed adventures. It has become the worst of both words: Last night Nicole sat with the girls for an hour and when she left, Avery was asleep and Maddie sort of asleep. And two minutes later, we had a little visitor in bed.

So why does this bother me? I went from having a two-hour break in the day and a few hours of evening time to myself to nothing. at. all. This affects every aspect of my life. I am so much more tired and have a hard time getting up at 4 to go the gym. I don’t have that two-hour afternoon window of time to make dinner and end up ordering in way too much. My patience level is lower than I would like it to be. And Nicole and I have no alone time together. None. Zip. Nada. I should point out that Nicole needs to go to bed herself around 9:00/9:30…. And, yes, it would be fantastic if she could push through her exhaustion and stay up to 11 so we could have time together, but she can’t. She has always been like this, and while it can be frustrating, I understand (most of the time). She physically cannot stay up, and there is no point in forcing it because the time will not be quality, alert time. If only the girls could sleep like her.

And, of course, lack of good sleeping habits is not healthy for the girls. While this is a concern, I must admit my desire to get them sleeping normally again is more for my own selfish reasons.

Please, please, please offer any advice and encouragement. I am especially interested in people who have experience with children sharing a room, like mine. I know the room sharing thing adds a special dynamic. We are thinking of going with the leading-the-child-back-to-bed silently method. But this will be tricky, since the girls share a room. And we don’t know if we should start now or wait until after or trip to Florida at the end of this week. And I am scared to think how long that will take? A week? A month? Longer?

Today, my plan was to run them into the ground by taking them to the playground not once but twice. Of course the weather may not cooperate.

Pictured above, the perpetrator of the nighttime nightmare situation. And Nicole and Avery walking in the back yard on Sunday. It looks like Jurassic woods! And behold, our baby robin. The eggs hatched and the we saw the baby birds this weekend. And also witnessed on of the baby bird’s first flight! File that under things we would never see in the city. And, a final note, the girls tend to sleep better in Massachusetts, since they spend most of the day outside playing.

Rainbows and Beauty and the Beauty of Rainbows

2010-05-19T14:01:00.004-04:00

Are children a manifestation of our own beliefs and thoughts? Are they little oracles? Are they like the intuition that we all have but don’t always listen to? Call me crazy but sometimes I feel like my children are speaking to me in visual and verbal metaphors. Sometimes it is as if God or the universe or whatever you believe in is speaking to me through them.

Let me explain, so you don’t think I am crazy: Avery walks around singing “It’s a beautiful day” over and over and over again. Most of the this is a sort of background music for me, because toddlers are wont to talk from the minute they wake up in the morning until they go to bed at night. I couldn’t possibly process all of it and remain sane. But sometimes I hear it and it sinks in and I think, is she trying to tell me something? Is she sending me a message? Is she trying to tell me to stop getting upset that we are out of butter and I have to go to the store (minor issue) or to stop focusing on, say, a family member’s lack of positive relationship with me and my children (larger issue)? Is she sending me a message, telling me to get over it all and realize that this is indeed a beautiful life, because I guarantee I will think that on my death bed?

Then I have Maddie running around from room to room yelling “Light. I need light.” And then she turns on the lights. She is light, in a toddler package. She is light, in a metaphor package. Madeline actively seeks pleasure and looks for goodness. She has few tantrums and when she does, I just ask “Do you need a hug?” and she usually stops crying immediately and throws her arms around my neck. For her, bad moments can be interrupted and stopped with an extra dose of love. I hope that never stops. So when she is running around chanting “light,” is she reminding me to stand in the sun, to find my own light? To go where it is good and warm and not cold and bad? Because I can stand in that cold, dark place for a really long time. Like most people, I occasionally suffer from “The grass is greener” disease, but these little moments usually snap me right back into the present and remind me to love all that I have.

Flash forward to this morning: I took the girls to the playground after I dropped off the car to have its oxygen sensors replaced. As I was pushing Avery on the swings and trying to keep an eye on the ever wandering Madeline I looked up and saw that yet another shiny new building that has cropped up seemingly overnight. I had a split second when I thought “I need to live there.” I need to wake up in its European baths and modern kitchen and stainless steel and floor-to-ceiling glass windows. I need to walk barefoot on its cool marble floors. I need to watch storms roll in from the west from my apartment aerie. There, in that home, life would be perfect. In that home, we wouldn’t have toddler sleep issues or bad days or marital spats. The coffee would always be fresh and there would never be a crushed Cheerio on the floor. Life would be as flawless and shiny as the building’s exterior.

In case it isn’t obvious, lately I have been thinking about moving from our current apartment. I love our home, but I don’t like that there are cell towers on top of our building. And being on the top floor, I don’t like that we are literally under these controversial do-they-or-don’t-they towers. Do they cause illness and cancer and madness and mayhem? Some say yes and some say no. But a huge part of me thinks, why take the chance? If there is even a .000000001 percent chance of something negative happening, then I want to move.

So at night when I am sitting alone in the kitchen with my computer while everyone sleeps, I am on the real estate hunt. I look all over the city, but concentrate mainly on the west side. I look at new places, and pre-war places and duplexes and brownstones. I look in our price range and sometimes way, way, way above our price range. That $37 million dollar apartments (maintenance and taxes a mere $20K a month) in the Time Warner building is one that is a tad over our price range, but what a place. I am amazed that we can get 2,000 square feet in one area but 400 in another, for the same price. I am shocked by some of the condo fees. I download layouts and envision our lives within these line drawings. I am really good at that. And I thought about that this morning at the playground, staring at that new building. A life in that shiny, new building.

And this is where I tie together these two seemingly random topics in this blog: It’s a beautiful day, whether I am here or there or anywhere. And there is light anywhere and everywhere, if I choose to stand in it. There is goodness in the $37 million dollar palace and on the street and everything in between. It’s all about perspective, right? And somehow, these little children, who have been on this earth for less than three years, are able to remind me of that everyday. Their lessons don’t always stick with me, but today I guess I was listening.

Their birthday is in a couple of weeks and Madeline wants a rainbow cake. Fancy that, Maddie wanting a cake rainbow, which is essentially an edible arc of colored light caused by refraction of the sun's rays by rain. What is a rainbow if not the beauty after a storm?

And Avery, at the playground this morning, smiling and laughing as she splashed herself wet-to-the-thighs in puddles. Laughing and running to the swings, yelling "Swings, Momma, swings!" Her pure joy of just living eclipsed the annoyance of having to pay almost a thousand dollars to replace the car's oxygen filters and the aggravation of sleeping through my morning run and yes, even the imaginary perfect life in the stainless steel building.

Maddie and her light; Avery and her beauty. See what I mean?

Pictured above, clearly I need to work on self portraits. A couple of friends and I went up to Massachusetts alone for the weekend and had a great time. I got a hair cut spur of the moment, based on the terrible image of long stringy, hair staring back at me in the mirror of a changing room. This is the result, not that you can see it. Much better. And a bargain at just $12!

Sweet Sweet Sweet Divine Thing

2010-05-10T08:41:00.005-04:00

I coasted through most of my twenties not thinking about — let alone wanting — children. I buried my motherhood desires so deep down that I didn’t even know they were there. And then Nicole showed up in my life and her love was like a shovel that dug all those feeling (and others) out. Suddenly a life without children simply wouldn’t do. I can still remember the tentative conversations with Nicole about should we? Shouldn’t we? How complex will it be? (Decidedly complex, it turns out). We’re we ready?

We were. Parenthood, for me, was not about “this is the next logical step in life.” It was more about being so in love that I wanted to create more of it. Love building on love. I was ready to stop living the “what should we do this weekend?” life and begin taking turns changing diapers. I romanticized it so much, the whole having children thing. We green lighted Project Motherhood and I waited, not so patiently, for what I still considered a right and not a miracle. This was back when I thought I was the boss of me and that by simply stating “I’m ready” I would be handed a perfect little bundle of baby in 40 weeks. Ha.

Clearly this was not to be an easy or simple path but instead one scattered with miscarriages, false hopes and some of the worst emotional lows I have ever felt in my life. What started as a journey to build a family to share our love turned into me saying can we even be a family without children? Nicole never, ever said that to me, and sometimes I think of the torture I put her through for voicing those thoughts. Thank God I realized that yes, of course we could be a family, the two of us, and realized that I was speaking out of fear and frustration and entitlement, and not conviction. We would have a rewarding and happy life no matter what. But I had to drag myself to that jagged edge and look over it in order to see clearly. This is a common theme in my life, me and my cliff tendencies.

And then, on our last try, our last stab at motherhood, our “let’s just do this final IVF” I got pregnant. I could not wait to be a mother. I knew that it would be a giant responsibility and, with me being such a worrier, a giant exercise of letting go. But still, like I said before, I romanticized motherhood. I pictured long, rambling, sun dappled stroller walks in Central Park; shopping for tiny, adorable and overpriced clothes; blissful nights in bed with a tiny baby nestled between Nicole and I. My vision was so storybook perfect that I am pretty sure I even pictured one of those navy blue old-fashioned prams and silver rattles.

I didn’t picture bouncing on a yoga ball with a squirmy screaming baby in arms because I was tired of walking circles in the apartment. I didn’t picture repeating “sleep begets sleep” to anyone who would listen and talking for hours to mostly disinterested parties about sleep training children. I didn’t picture creating a special sign language with Nicole that indicated which state of drowsiness our children were at. I certainly didn’t picture a sleepy toddler showing up at our bedroom door in the middle of the night, clutching a blanket, book and toy. And yet somehow in those moments, that is when I feel most like a mother.

My life is nowhere near the childless vision I had when I was younger. But those visions, I realize, can be a sort of a caged path that can suck the joy out of life. Had I stuck to that vision, I wouldn’t be where I am now. I am glad I veered. My life is better than I could ever imagine. And to think how I got here is mind boggling. My relationship with Nicole, the lynchpin, was born from a teensy drinking problem; from a mutual friend whose dedication to friendship with both of us created a sort of guarantee that our paths would continue to cross until we fell in love; from a messengered package of Madeleine cookies to Nicole’s office. I could not have planned it if I tried. It evolved in its own way, guided along by a series of choices I made.

So here I am, living the life I never imagined and happy in ways I never expected, celebrating a Hallmark holiday that I thought I never wanted to celebrate and then thought I would never be allowed to celebrate and now think I am lucky to celebrate.

Then He Oh So Adroitly Unsnapped My Bra….

2010-04-29T22:32:00.003-04:00

Nicole better not quit her day job because clearly there is not future for me in porn writing. I have a feeling “adroitly” isn’t used very often in Penthouse. Is Penthouse even still around? See, I don’t even know the market anymore. My ONE piece of porn advice is this: Never buy porn at your local newsstand, the one you go to on a regular basis. Newsstand workers have a loooooong memory and smirky smiles. What might have seemed like a good idea at the time will come back to haunt you every time to pick up a newspaper or the latest issue of Martha Stewart Living.

Anyway, there I was, facedown on a warm bed, when my bra was unsnapped with one hand by my acupuncturist. One hand. That is talent. Not sure why I was even wearing a bra, except me told me to keep my undergarments on, and I listened. What is this, the 1800s? I get a little tired of the modestly game, how I have to wear the gown open in a certain way and then be draped with towels, all to protect the acupuncturist from seeing too much of my skin at one time. Part of me appreciates the modest touches, but a bigger part of me finds it difficult to flip from my back to my stomach and remove my shoulders from my gown, which is open to the front, in any sort of graceful way. It wasn’t pretty. Next session I will need to bring a lighting specialist if I have to continue to go out of my way to hide myself. But really, can’t we just get naked and call it a day? It is far more comfortable than having a gown scrunched down to my waist and a thick towel placed over my butt. Besides, if I were naked then he most likely wouldn’t be using my butt as a place to stack his needles. Never have been a fan of my butt being used as a side table. But I was too Zen-ed out to complain, and slightly afraid that someone with so much knowledge about body parts and channels and all that could easily switch from acupuncturist to voodoo artist if provoked.

This is my first session and I will keep gong back weekly until something changes in me physically, mentally or emotionally, dammit. It is not a chore. I loved my acupuncture guy. He was so New Age hippy, with long hair and bare feet and a really sympathetic smile and that familiar collegiate patchouli smell. He complimented me on my low resting heart rate, which, as I told Nicole, I am abnormally proud of. His assistant, a really tall, imitating German guy, asked if I was an athlete. Except it sounded like “Ahh yew ahn Ahth-leeet?” This seems a very grandiose label for someone who runs and does the occasional plank. But I guess by his definition I am indeed an athlete. I’m gonna own it, and buy myself a track suit.

Topic switch: Today Avery announced that she wanted to go pee pee on potty. Ok, this is a good step. She proceeded to sit on the potty, drinking water, eating ice chips and chatting for almost 45 minutes. In this time I finished my venti iced coffee with an extra shot and was ready to explode. I didn’t want to break Avery’s concentration so I took one for the team and waited. And Madeline was pulling me into the kitchen because she wanted to eat crushed ice. But Avery insisted I stay by her side. It was tough. I have a feeling this process is going to suck in a huge way. I promised Avery big prizes if she delivered, including an entire afternoon of free access to my iPad. She agreed to all this, but the suddenly announced she wanted off the potty and wanted her diaper back. You all know what happened next. Yep. 45 minutes and she uses the damn diaper. Is this some sort of joke? Do children try to push out buttons? Are we getting closer with her?

Thank God tomorrow is Friday and we are heading up to Mass for the weekend. I am so ready to get out of here.

Pictured above, my mother-in-law might kills me if she knew I posted this, but she doesn’t read my blog, so there. But I love that pic of her with Nicole and Nicole’s sister. I also love the picture of her teaching Avery golf. These girls have a family of golfers around them. They better like playing!

Pure Joy: My Favorite Picture Ever

2010-04-26T22:29:00.002-04:00

This is a blurry shot of Avery dancing. But no picture have I ever taken has come this close to capturing who she is. This is Avery, pure and simple. Joy, personified. Joy-in-motion. Pure joy. And clearly it is my life's ambition to be like her.

I have lots of updates but can barely keep my Ambien-ed eyes open to type. Though it COULD be an interesting post if I tried. More tomorrow....

Fall Seven Times, Stand Up Eight

2010-04-15T07:18:00.005-04:00

One of the best comments I received lately is from a friend who said, and I quote: “Sucks that your body is out to get you." That pretty much sums up how I am feeling right now. Because the thing is, Hashimotos is not a deadly disease. In fact, it is common, and manageable, and for so many people, inevitable. I have not been diagnosed with a terminal illness. And those ectopic heart beats are not uncommon, either. Most likely, they mean nothing at all. And yet, I am still frustrated and upset, and a teensy bit worried. Maybe because all of these little issues usher in a new chapter in life: the dreaded middle age. This is an era in which health issues can no longer be ignored or chalked up to a hangover or anomalies. This week has been a flurry of doctor’s appointments, and there are more on the horizon. And I am about to make it all a little more complex by setting up some acupuncture appointments. I had such a good experience with that in the past, so let’s see what it can do this time.

In between it all, I am dealing with case workers and assessors and evaluators, who are coming to determine is Madeline is qualified for any early intervention for her speech. We met with the caseworker on Tuesday, who said that it seems unlikely she will qualify. I was still skeptical, but then I took the girls to the grocery store yesterday and Madeline went up to every person she saw and said “Hey. What’s going on? This is Momma!” So just when I think she isn’t speaking enough or her vocabulary isn’t broad enough, she proves me wrong and turns into a little social chatterbox.

But, the case worker said, she does have some speech issues (lispy-like S’s. etc.) that may resolve on their own, and most likely won’t qualify for services. Her initial advice: Throw out the paci and sippy cups. Easier said than done. In the meantime, I think it is cute that her “hello” sounds like “hey whoa.” Won’t be so cute, though, when she is 12.

All of this extra pressure has got me thinking a lot lately about my old standby stress relief: Drinking. I can admit I have had a few nights lately when I thought, eff it, I am going to a bar right now. I haven’t done that, because I have the girls and sobriety and Nicole to think of. But one of the main reasons why I haven’t it because if I did, it would so have to be worth it to get me the throw eight years out the window. Like if you are on a strict diet, you aren’t going to blow it for a Twinkie. And I am not sure I can create a good enough scenario to ruin this almost decade-long streak.

A few weeks ago, I found myself standing outside of an old haunt of mine, a place of many happy drinking memories. But in the sober light, it didn’t look that great, didn’t have quite the same glow. And there were a few men there, beers in hand, watching me stare in the bar, calling me inside, laughing. Yeah, no thanks. If I drink, I want a bottle of really good scotch and some really good company. Or a cold, tall wheat beer with a sliver of lemon on a perfect spring night, in the courtyard of this bar in Chelsea I used to go to. I can still remember this one night, crammed around a table of laughter and smiles and drinks, with those little pink flowers from the trees fluttering all around us. It just wouldn’t be the same and I just can’t recreate all that. Which, thank goodness, is one of the reasons why I don’t try. But I miss it and I miss how it could release my stress and remove my worries, if only in a temporary way.

So today I will distract myself. I will take the girl to the playground this morning. I will connect with the evaluator, who is coming today to met Maddie. I am hoping the girls fall asleep on the way back from the playground, because if they do, and I have the time before the evaluator comes, I may slip into the MOMA for a half hour to see an exhibit will only be there for another month. It is going to be beautiful today, and I am going to try to experience it.

Pictured above, speaking of interventions, Madeline needs a hair intervention.And a bacon intervention, but that is another post. Can anyone offer help/help for dealing with her kind of hair? And the ladybug/bumblebee cupcakes Avery and I made this weekend. I realized afterward that I could have used almond slivers to make little wings.

Returning to the Scene of the Fertility Crime

2010-04-13T11:03:00.004-04:00

I was diagnosed with this Hashimotos disease/disorder. The bad news: Two of my levels are sky-high. Dr. Google offers some scary insight, including cancer makers and early indicators of some more scary auto-immune disorders/diseases. Yes, I find the worst-case-scenario and work backwards. My doctor (the real one, that is) says it is more of a wait-and-see game. So far, my thyroid function is within normal range, and this means even though my levels are scary high, my thyroid is still doing what it should be. Sort of. However, it is a mater of time before it implodes, or a new auto-immune disease manifests itself. This sort of diagnosis is awful for me. I prefer to know what is wrong, no matter how bad, and what I need to do to fix it. Not knowing, and waiting, is not my most favorite state of being. I see an endocrinologist on Wednesday, which, I hope, will shed more light and offer more guidance. And a magic pill. Please let there be a magic pill.

And my cardiologist: Well, that wasn’t much fun, either. I did not really like the doctor: His bedside manner was awful; he was quick and gruff, and he didn’t bother to knock when he came in, which made for an interesting view upon his entrance. And not in a good way. He had this attitude like “You are here for some ectopic beats? That’s it?” Yeah, that, and the electric jolts I get in my heart area on a daily basis. Even if this is a “hysterical hypochondriac” appointment, shouldn’t he be happy for the money my insurance company will pay? I don’t want to waste anyone’s time but my EKG was off, and listening with the stethoscope on several different visit did indeed indicate extra beats. Isn’t it worth it to follow up on these things?

He gave me a heart monitor to wear for 24 hours, and it is very annoying, not to mention endlessly fascinating to the girls. I just ripped it off, and am teetering on the verge of “I don’t care.” I will drop it off in a little bit, but haven’t committed to a follow-up appointment. It is frustrating to try to figure out health issues, and it is infinitely frustrating that science is not an exact science. Sometimes I feel like I am up for this challenge, and then other times, which is most of the time, I figure, whatever. Let me just ignore, ignore, ignore and maybe it will go away. Or maybe it won’t.

That’s just my frustration speaking. I guess I am not in the best place right now. Oh well.

And the title: A reference to the fact that my cardiologist's office is in the same building ads my first (awful) fertility specialist. Going back to the building was a little traumatizing. Sight of two failed IVF cycles and two miscarriages. On a bright note, I came home and had one of those gratitude jolts for my girls.

Pictured above, WTF? I saw this picture in a magazine I was flipping through at the doctor’s office. I guess it was supposed to make me want to book a vacation in the tropical paradise. But it had the opposite effect.

And This Is What We Call A Sugar Rush

2010-04-12T22:00:00.002-04:00

Watch this, please, and learn.

A Not-Very-Good Development on an Otherwise Fine Day

2010-04-10T22:33:00.004-04:00

Every time I go to my mother’s house, she hands me a collection of junk mail that I never need. Airline-affiliated credit card offers, catalogs and crap that you can just tell by the envelope is mass-mailed and worthless. Regardless, I flip through stack, barely looking, and toss the lot in the recycle pile. But this trip, this morning, was a little different. Right on top of the latest pile, conspicuously inconspicuous was something titled “Psychological Evaluation.” It was mine, administered to me when I was in fifth grade. On January 20th, 21st, 24th and 25th, of 1983, to be exact. There was no mention as to why it was there on top of my junk mail stack, or where it even came from, or where this copy has been living for the past almost-thirty years. But there it was, the secret life of dysfunction.

I swear it made my heart skip a beat, this folded up, slightly worn, typed-with-tabs evaluation of my eleven-year-old self. I guess most people would sit down and unfold those old papers and read them and ask their mother questions. It made me nervous and clammy. I felt that lurch in my stomach. Part of me wanted to just leave the house and leave the papers behind. I wanted to run reaaaaaallly fast. Not all people react so histrionically, but what can I say, I have a visceral reaction to evidence of those years. Third, fourth and fifth grade were not good years for my family. Neither were sixth, seventh and eight. The rest weren’t so great either. But fifth grade was a doozy.

So now, naturally, I can’t sleep and am debating if I should use a precious ambien to numb me into a prone position. I am trying to remember being evaluated. And I just can’t. I am trying to remember why I was absent for eleven days (?!) before the evaluation (it stated that under “behavioral observations”). I cannot remember a single thing. I can’t remember my third, fourth or fifth grade teachers’ names. Or what the lunchroom looked like. Or what the playground looked like. All I remember is this: making clay projects in art class, lost in a world of breakfast food, as I was obsessed with making the perfect stack of clay pancakes with a yellow pat of butter on top and little sausages and eggs, sunny side up. I think I remember thinking these would be a huge hit with my parents. I think I was planning on giving it to them as a gift. I think I thought they might keep it together, knowing that I put so much time and effort an thought into it. I have no idea what became of this art project. I can only guess it suffered the same fate as most of my childhood mementoes.

This was the year I also created my “signature” drawing: A picture of a woman holding a baby. Her rudimentary arms came down like two C’s on either side of her body. Inside the arms was a little oval of a baby. The mother’s eyes were little V’s, to indicate that she was looking at the baby, whose eyes were closed. She was smiling. The baby was smiling. To this day, when I doodle, I will doodle that picture, changing only the amount of cleavage I dole out to the mother, as indicated by the length of the line curving out of her neckline.

A courtyard, red culottes, a white shawl. Slate steps, a pond, a darkroom. A station wagon, a gravestone, honeysuckle. The clicking sound of the turn signal in a car late at night. The sound of tires crunching on gravel. Happy leaf. A giant forsythia bush that I turned into a fort. There’s all that.

So now I have a little more information about myself, to help fill in the blank spaces. I know what my IQ is, according to this report. I know statistically, mathematically, how I compared to my peers locally and nationwide. I know that my mother requested this evaluation of me. A little more information; a little more mystery.

Everyone is sleeping but me. It’s almost 11:30. The battery on my laptop is fading fast, but I am still wired. Tomorrow I am making ladybug and bumblebee cupcakes with Avery. For breakfast, Nicole is making French toast and her famous maple sugar bacon, for Madeline, who discovered bacon at the Sugar Shack in Massachusetts and has been talking about it nonstop. Which is to say she has been repeating the word “bacon” over and over again, and becoming almost inconsolable when I tell her that we don’t have any. There is ironing to do, a trip to the fruit market. Emails to respond to. Light bulbs to change. (Five, and counting….why do they always blow out around the same time?) Playground? Or zoo? Maybe a manicure? Life goes on. Despite my emotional upheaval, this was a good Saturday. And I am sure it will be a good Sunday. But this all depends on my ability to, once again, lock away/throw away the key.

I think I am finally getting sleepy.

This Just In: Proof That My Children Are Trying to Kill Me

2010-04-07T22:08:00.007-04:00

So I am on the street, walking to the doctor on this unusually hot spring day (90 degree in April? This summer may sizzle). And through the thicket of noise I hear the distinct sounds of Barry Manilow singing, in his oh so theatrical way. I look around, half expecting to see him, it was that loud. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me where it was coming from. You know where this is going….it was ME. Barry was coming from me. It was my iPhone, which magically turned itself on and started blasting Barry. And yes, I can admit that I have a few Barry Manilow songs in my music library. Weekend in New England? Could It be the Magic? Trying to Get the Feeling Again? Even Now? All amazing songs, at least lyrically. But which song did my devil phone choose to broadcast? Bandstand Boogie, a song that came with his greatest hits album that I just need to delete.

The doctor visit was not fun. I picked up a new disease/disorder today. Oh yes I did. I now have some thyroid disorder, yet to be determined, pending more blood work, which is due early next week. Basically it boils down to my TSH levels: They are supposed to between 1 and 4, but definitely under 20. My levels are 1500 on one side and just over 1000 on the other. Yep, about a million times higher than they should be. Overachiever. My doctor tried to reassure me that she has seen higher levels than mine, but admitted that most people with thyroid issues level out in the low 100s. She thinks I have Hashimotos disease; I think I am at death’s door. She listed a few of the symptoms and I can admit that some ring true for me: I do feel fatigue at times; I am very sensitive to cold; and I do have pale skin. But now for my justifications: I have twin toddlers: Of COURSE I am tired all the time. I get cold easily, but I also overheat easily: When it comes to temperatures I am always about the extremes. Just ask Nicole. And pale skin is a result of spending the winter cooped up. But it is hard to argue with those crazy TSH levels. 1500 on one side? Really? Does it have to be THAT high?

My doctor pointed out that all of this heart stuff and thyroid stuff has been ramping up since the girls were born. Meaning, my health took a turn for the worse after I had kids. Coincidence? Or are the girls trying to kill me?! I get a little bitter because I feel like I try to take care of my body: I don't drink (anymore) or smoke (anymore) and I exercise daily and eat well and walk miles and miles a day. I am personally affronted that my body breaks down!

Meanwhile, one of the reasons what I went to my doctor was to pick up some records to bring to my cardiologist on Monday, who is going to attempt to figure out why my heart does crazy extra beats and gives me electrical-like shocks almost daily. I have been dealing with those electric shocks for a very long time. I thought everyone had them. Turns out, no. Most people don't have them quite as often as I. Getting old sucks, but it beats the alternative, as they say. So while I am really kinda freaking out because we all know I live juuuust to the side of the state of paranoia, I am trying to take the attitude of let’s wait and see what this all means. Surely extra heart beats and crazy high TSH levels don’t equal instant death, right? Not easy for me, this whole let’s-be-patient-and-assume-you’re-not-dying attitude.

Let’s lighten the mood with an accidental double entendre. I was in my elevator and I was holding something with my right hand and trying to unhook my keys with my left hand from their hook on my bag handle. I tried or about 10 seconds and was getting frustrated. The man in the elevator made some silly comment, completely benign, and I blurt out “I am usually really good at doing things with one hand.” He laughed and then I laughed and then I thought about what I said and I am pretty sure I blushed because he smiled and laughed again. Nice. I am not sure if he has a dirty mind or if I have a dirty mind or if it was both of us.

Adding to my day of disappointments: I entered in the NYC marathon lottery and my name was not selected. I am bitter! I really wanted to do it, so much so that I already envisioned exactly what it would be like. I saw myself wearing that metallic blanket after I crossed the finish line. I saw that medal around my neck, which I would leave on for three weeks (“Why yes I ran the marathon!!” Just kidding…I wouldn’t do that). We would go out for a big lunch afterwards and celebrate my heroic footwork. I would sleep for three solid days afterward. Yeah, well, not gonna happen this year. My friend Molly was rejected along with me, and she has a back-up plan: She will run in the Rochester marathon. I am thinking maybe I will do that too. I just have to think about logistics, because Rochester is very far from here. And Nicole and the girls most likely wouldn’t go, because that could be a tough trip for three-year-olds. And I really wanted them to be there. But I really wanted to run the marathon with Molly, and go through the whole training process with her. I need to sort this out.

And now switching topics completely, in what may be a life-chainging move, we are thinking about cutting our cable. Completely. Meaning no more television at all. Not even basic channels. I am not insane: We will still have a DVD player and will let the girls watch DVDs. But no more TV. Nicole never watches anything and I only watch shows on my computer (The Office; Dexter and Survivor). And between the city and Massachusetts, we are paying a little more than $200 a month, just so the girl can watch DVR’d episodes of Wonder Pets. Crazy. That is about $2,500 a year. And if I saw $2,500 on the ground, I would pick it up.

I am a little nervous to cut us off completely, but I am thinking spring and summer might be the perfect time to do it, since we will be outside so much more. And I must admit the control freak in me loves that I can shield my girls from shows I don’t want them to see and I can control what they DO see.

Pictured above: This is what happens when I am singing in to the marathon web site to see if I won the marathon lottery: Avery has a sensory experience with almond butter while Maddie cheers her on. Of course, my first reaction was “Nooooooo Avery” and then a second later I thought, why not? I bet if feels fun to get all sticky. I took a deep breath, let go and got my camera. I didn’t get mad, I just told her that the fun with almond butter was over and now we had to have some fun with the sink. And she was ok with all that. And the way Maddie cheered Avery on (“Go Ave-y! Go Ave-y” while she bounced up and down on her toes) made me sad that I wouldn’t hear that from the sidelines during the NYC marathon. She is such a good little cheerleader, and I respond well to good cheers.

Flashes vs. The Whole of the Moon

2010-04-06T13:58:00.004-04:00

Yesterday was one of those manic motherhood days. A few of my close friends came over around noonish, which is huge deal, because it is hard enough to make plans to get together with one of them, let alone four at once. All six of us is an even rarer occasion that requires all sorts of planets aligning and stars exploding and schedules rearranging. We settled the kids on the couch, ordered Thai food and picked up right where we left off, which we have been doing for almost thirty years now.

But Madeline, who doesn’t quite grasp the need for adults to bond and my need to use my adult words, would have none of it. Oh no. I HAD to be with her, not with my friends. She cried and screamed and pulled me to the living room. She even went so far as to dictate exactly where I sat. So I sat out there, while my friends laughed and complained and shared stories over Pad Thai and spicy basil friend rice in the kitchen.

I tried to be okay about it, but I was annoyed. I could have let her cry it out, but I know that won’t work, and I don’t have the heart for it. And in the meantime, she would make it impossible for the us to talk and would eventually disrupt the other kids enough to create pure chaos. And the others were doing so well. So I sat in my Maddie-assigned seat and stewed. One of my friends came out and proved how she was a much better mom than I am. She was saying thing like “She just needs her Momma” and “she’s the type that needs a little extra attention when so many others are around.” She found the beauty and love and innocence in the moment; I selfishly saw my adult interaction time disappearing.

What can I say. I just needed a little me time. I wasn’t asking for much, but the chance to sit with my friends for ten minutes would have been divine. Ten minutes. All of us, at a table, talking and sharing, just for ten minutes. Giving the circumstances, ten minutes, twenty tops, was the most we could hope for anyway of uninterrupted time. But I didn’t even get that.

Later we went for a walk in the beautiful day. Pinkberry and coffee and a little stroll into Central Park. Then everyone save Jenni went back to their subways and cars and went back to their own busy lives. Jenni came back up for a while and we sat at the table, alone, for those glorious twenty minutes, talking and laughing. So in the end, I got the uninterrupted time, one-on-one, so for that I am grateful.

Nicole had a work dinner so I was on my own for girls’ bedtime. Of course it was a minor nightmare. The free-range girls were running around their room, laughing and playing and telling each other stories. Around 8:00, I had enough (at that point, after all, I had been up and active for 16 hours) and went back in again to settle them down. They both were so excited to tell me the story of Alice in Wonderland. Well, the Abby and Sesame Street version of it, that is. When Madeline speaks, you can see her mind working in her eyes, as she searches for the right words. It is adorable. “Abby feel down and lost her wand. The bunny took it. We need to get it back!” They both traded lines back and forth. It was one of those moments when you can feel childhood and its magical blend of innocence and joy. So I lay on the floor and they each snuggled up to me, one on each side and let them tell me their story. Then we covered ourselves with a big blanket and I sang them to sleep (which in itself is a huge feat because let’s just say I am no Barbra Streisand). It only took about two minutes for them to fall asleep. And then I did too, right in the middle of their bedroom floor. Where else did I have to be? It was really sweet.

Pictured above, Easter.

Fast Forward, Rewind, Play, Pause and Delete Delete Delete

2010-03-31T12:59:00.004-04:00

There is a manic quality to motherhood that I do not particularly enjoy. Or maybe there is a manic quality to my motherhood. The highs are just lovely, those moments when I think how lucky I am, when I think not only how much I love being Madeline and Avery’s mom, but also how I excel at it. But the lows really suck. I hate those not-so-great moments when I feel like I am holding on by a thread and when I feel like I am not the mother I want to be and I should have my mothering privileges taken away from me.

Like this morning: I was at a store picking up Nicole’s anniversary present and the girls were incorrigible. Full-on obnoxious toddler mode. They were both screaming and kicking (fighting over a blanket) and causing such a scene that the guard at the store came over to see what the fuss was all about. I tried to calm the girls down, which is always a challenge when there is an audience. There I was, clenched jaw, measured words, unheeded pleas, getting nowhere fast. I failed miserably at getting the girls to relax. In fact, I needed up getting kicked in the jaw by Madeline. So I gritted my teeth, made a hasty selection that I hope Nicole will like, rushed my purchased, declined gift wrap and even a bag, and high-tailed it out of there. Of course, once we were back on the busy street the girls were just fine. And I was livid.

Rewind to earlier that morning. I had an incident with Avery. She refused to get dressed. This is not new for her: This girl loves her jammies and would stay in them all day if we let her. In fact, she will often disappear in her room and take off her clothes and dress herself in jammies randomly during the day. But this morning, I needed her to get dressed. I had a long list of Things to Do: Laundry, gift, post office, food store, cleaning, phone calls, packing, picking up the car, tracking Nicole’s flight (I take this very seriously). And we needed to get started right away, and there was no time to cajole Avery into dressing.

I tried to remove Avery’s jammy pants and she kicked and screamed and flailed like she usually does. I begged, pleaded, bargained, reasoned and in general tried all the sane, Good Mommy methods I know to get her dressed. None worked. And it pushed me over the edge I was already teetering on. I got so angry. I yelled at her, and told her that she would stay here alone while Maddie and I left. I put her in her room, closed the door and concentrated on putting on Maddie’s coat and shoes, trying not to let my anger at Avery spill over to her. Avery became hysterical and cried so hard that she threw up. She wanted to go too, she yelled. She didn’t want to stay home all alone. I told her she couldn’t come because she had jammies on and because she wasn’t listening to Momma. I put her back in her room, closed the door, and continued to talk in a calm way to Madeline, who, by the way, is unfazed by Avery’s meltdowns.

Now I don’t need anyone to tell me the myriad ways this is all just so wrong. I let my anger, frustration and impatience control me. I “punished” her by threatening abandonment. Abandonment! What the f*ck? I didn’t comfort her when she was crying. And I gave her the silent treatment for about 20 seconds. I know. I felt like a monster and ended up on the floor in tears myself, hugging her and apologizing and, yes, letting her go outside with her pajamas on because I just didn’t have it in me to continue the battle. That is NOT the mother I want to be. That is NOT the method of parenting I want to pursue. I don’t want to dip into this territory of mothering ever. Or look at it this way: If I hired a babysitter who did any of this, I would fire her on the spot.

Nicole has much more patience than I do. And while I will say for certain she is, by nature, a much more patient person than I will ever be, she also is not with the girls as much as I am. She calms the girls in the same way she has calmed me when I am upset: Calm voice, hand on chest, instructions to take deep breaths together. And I try this method sometimes with the girls and it usually works. But I am not always in that place, that place that lets me approach a situation in a calm and rationale way. What can I say? I am human and sometimes I am not on my game. And when mothering is a 12-hour breakless day, I have my bad moments. (And yes, I know it is a 24-hour a day/365 days a year kind of thing).

I know yelling begets yelling and anger begets anger and impatience begets impatience. I try to think “Is this the type of mother I want my girls to be to their kids someday?” After all, they will model our behavior, for better or worse, and parent the way that they were parented. So in a way I am parenting them, and their children, and so on and so on. That’s a lot of pressure. Sometimes I take deep breaths and count backwards. Sometimes I walk out of the room/area/situation and take a moment to compose myself, even if only a few seconds. Call a friend. Call Nicole. But these days, that impatient side of me is rearing its ugly head instead.

Rewind to earlier this morning. The girls slept with me last night since Nicole was still away. This morning I woke up early and stealthily slipped into the kitchen to have some coffee and catch up on email/internet/blogs. Twenty minutes into my alone-time, Madeline scampers in, all sleepy and sad and wondering why I wasn’t in bed. So I took her hand and let her lead my back to bed. We curled up together, her little hand curled around my fingers, and I watched her fall back asleep. Avery was next to us, sprawled out in the exact space-hogging way she favored in utero. That was a good moment. I felt calm and peaceful and grateful and happy and needed. And even though the day started so good, it still deteriorated into what I described above. I wish I could rewind and tart over, or fast forward it, or, even better, just delete it.

Nicole is cruising along at 608 miles per hour (yay for tailwind) at 37,000 feet. Less than an hour and a half away. Told you I took tracking seriously. Once upon a time I used to think, an hour and a half away from reunion. Now I think an hour and a half away from relief. Ugh.

Only 780 More Weekends Till College

2010-03-31T07:06:00.005-04:00

The Easter Bunny came a week early this year, to accommodate my brother and his family’s vacation schedule. So they all came up to Massachusetts with us last weekend and we celebrated with the not-so-traditional Italian dinner the night before Early Easter and the not-so-traditional Mediterranean breakfast on Early Easter Sunday.

I love how holiday’s break up the monotony of daily living. The anticipation of a holiday adds such colors to the days and weeks preceding it. I used the holiday suggestions culled from the comments: From the photo scavenger hunt to find the baskets (b-i-g hit) to the arts and craftsy things and bubbles in the baskets. I made cookies and Mina bought some homemade chocolate lollipops. I also recycled the chewed up carrots from the Christmas reindeer (bunnies eat carrots, too!) and left those orange bits scattered by the back door. It was all great. I love that we are building traditions stolen from other families!

The girls are lucky, because the Easter Bunny will visit them again this weekend (a.k.a., Easter Proper) and will leave them a garden bucket, filled with little spades and watering cans and Gummy worms and seed packets and such. I couldn’t resist such springtime cuteness. And I have never met a theme I didn’t like.

Nicole and I went to a Carrie Underwood concert last Saturday night while we were up in Massachusetts, and left the girls with everyone at home. I think the last time Nicole and I were out together was last Easter, when we went to that Jane Fonda play. About once year. Not good. I even bought a new shirt for the occasion, one that my friend deemed “hot.” How can you not buy said shirt when you are told you look hot in it? I bought two, of course, as a little positive reinforcement is all I need, and my self-esteem has been visiting the gutter lately, as it cyclically does, so I soak up any positive image comments like a sponge. I am a salesperson’s/marketer’s dream. Anyway, I didn’t get to wear the new shirt (back in the closet). We rushed back after dinner and ice cream and had to leave in about three minutes. The concert started at 7:30, but I planned for us to get there by 9:00, as I don’t need to suffer through two opening acts. Our timing was perfect and the concert was good.

But the girls, they were not thrilled and their mommies going out. Apparently they both had moments of crying and asking for us. Madeline insisted on sleeping on the chair in the living room, which is where we found her when we got home. We scooped her up and let her sleep with us upstairs and nestled her between us. Her little head was aglow in the moonlight through the window above our bed. She twisted her head around to stare at it. She was taking those long, sleepy blinks. It was just beautiful. I completely understand why many people opt for the whole family bed thing.

We are heading back up to Massachusetts tonight, or tomorrow, depending on how Nicole feels when she gets back from San Francisco today. April 1st is our anniversary, the one we celebrated before we were married, which I insist on keeping and still celebrating. And this weekend is supposed to be gorgeous: Close to 70 degrees and sunny. I am ready for some warm weather and sunny skies and fun weekend plans. As ridiculous as this sounds, we have only 780 more weekends (yes, I calculated) before the girls go to college, and I want to make them count.

Pictured above, Early Easter. I should point out that Madeline had absolutely no interest in her Easter basket. None.

Watch Out, Annie Leibovitz, Here I Come

2010-03-24T07:37:00.005-04:00

Forget journalism, education and English: I should have been studying photography. Clearly, we should go to college in our 30s, or at the very least late 20s, when we are more fully formed humans with defined interests, passions and direction. What the hell did I know at 18? Are we really qualified at that age to determine a career path that will span our entire lives? Anyway, my weekend was great and I learned so much. I’m sure much of what I learned is what one might learn in a photography 101 class, but since I lack any formal education on this topic, I found this weekend to be quite enlightening. I was a sponge. I was that geek taking copious notes furiously and sending dagger eyes to annoying people who dared to interrupt the teacher to talk at length about their own personal experiences and brag about personal accomplishments. Every class has one of those. There were quite a few interesting characters at this conference, to say the least, including several people who had no concept of personal space.

I had a good balance of technical classes and compositional classes. I was a little uncertain if a composition class would be helpful. Can a class teach us to have an artistic eye and show us how to compose a picture? I doubt Ansel Adams or Annie Leibovitz took classes like this. And don’t we all have our own sense of style that risks being squashed if we are taught the “right” way of doing things? What if someone tried to convince Jackson Pollack that paint thrown around the canvas was not art? It turned out to be the best class I took all weekend and will completely change the way I look at taking a picture and will completely change the pictures I take. This weekend really ignited an already smoldering spark inside me. I am studying aperture values and shutter speeds like I am going to be tested on it. I can use phrases like “stopping down” and know what I am talking about. I am studying photos of famous photographers with a more critical eye. I am thinking about making the B&H Photo Superstore website my internet homepage.

I am in the process of turning my chicken-scratch notes, which fill up about half of one of those old-fashioned note pads, into computer notes. A few people have expressed interest in said notes and ideas and nuggets of knowledge. If you want to learn about the rule of thirds or implied motion or negative space or if you want to know exactly what exposure to set your camera to (aperture and shutter speed) to get those silky running water photos (ditto for sunrises and sunsets) then send me your email, if I don’t already have it.

And Burlington was such a nice city. I love a city with brick buildings, a pedestrian mall and waterfront access, from multiple points, no less. I didn’t have that much time to explore it: I was in classes all day, so I was limited to early evening walks. I would love to go back. I was going to explore it more after my last class on Sunday but instead hit the road so I could stop by my aunt’s house in New Hampshire. I was a nice break at the halfway point between Burlington and Northampton.

I missed the girls a lot while I was away. This was the most time I have spent away from them since they were born by a long shot. Naturally, the more the distance between us, the more angelic and perfect they became: I forget about all the pacifier tantrums and struggles to get them to settle down so I can dress them and diaper changing battles and just remember adorable, cuddly, innocent babies. I must say though I was underwhelmed by my welcome home. They didn’t seem excited in the least to see me. Granted, they were in the tub, but they treated my arrival back home in the most nonchalant way, like I just stepped out for a few minutes, and here I was again. I chalk this up to age-appropriate behavior but it would have been nice to get a few crushing hugs. Nicole gets a bigger welcome after a mere day a work!

My brother and SIL and the kids are coming up to Northampton with us this weekend to celebrate an early Easter. The Easter Bunny will visit out yard on Sunday morning and scatter some eggs around and hide baskets. Anyone have any good ideas for easter baskets goodies that don't involve food? I am going to make some cookies, I think, and have a couple of chocolate bunnies. But what else? Any springy ideas? Something original? Perhaps something that would occupy said children for hours on end? As I have said before, I am not above stealing your family's traditions,

Pictured above, there is a conservation area next to our house, which has lots of wide hiking trails. This makes me very excited! I picture al sorts of spring and summer and fall hikes this year. We took the girls for a mini hike on Monday before we left. Madeline loves to hike around. Loves it. She stops and collects rocks and acorns and pine cones. She climbs on tree stumps at jumps in puddles. She is such a little nature lover. Avery enjoys it to, but after a while, she prefers to enjoy nature from the vantage point of a mommy’s hip. Can’t say I blame her. I could get used to being carried, too.

Watch Out, Burlington, Here I Come

2010-03-18T07:34:00.002-04:00

The first number on my alarm wake-up time is a three. As in three in the morning. OK, it is set for 3:59, which is the very end of the three hour. I think I need to change it to 4:00 because it may make me feel less tired, psychologically.

I get up that early because it is the only time in the day that I know for certain that I can be alone. I am an early riser by nature, so it wasn’t too hard to make the early morning my me time. But believe me, it was an adjustment. I drink my two cups of coffee and catch up on blogs and email and then head to the gym by 5:00. I am home usually by 6:30 and then the day officially begins.

This weekend I have an extra-large serving of alone time. Nicole booked a photography seminar weekend for me a while back. It is in Burlington, Vermont, which is far, far away. We will drive up to Northampton on Friday, and Saturday morning I will leave at the ripe pre-sunrise hour of 4:30 and embark on a three-hour drive alone up to Vermont. I will be taking classes on white balance and lighting and such all day Saturday and Sunday, and spending the night alone in a hotel. It will be heaven, albeit a lonely one. I tried to convince Nicole that we should all go, but she thought that would defeat the purpose and also be a little too difficult with the girls. Part of me is excited to walk around a new little city and explore. And the other part of me thinks I may just go for a run after Saturday’s classes and then order a good on-demand movie. I have no idea what I will do, but that is part of the fun, I think.

Today the girls have their toddler class. They went Week One, but missed Week Two, thanks to the stomach bug. Tuesday’s class was almost like back to square one: Madeline would not let me out of her sight. So I was not able to leave (I am technically not allowed to leave until the girls are comfortable, as this is a “gentle separation” class). I used to have dreams of wandering around Union Square; now I will settle just sitting against the wall in the hallway for two hours. Avery has taken to the class quite well, I think. She even remembers the teachers’ names. She loves to paint and do crafts and is very independent. But Madeine, who is the more independent child at home, is VERY dependent one during this class time. The teachers said that since they have never been in day care or with anther person, really, it may take the entire eight week course for them to get comfortable. Part of me feels like that is ridiculous, that it can’ possibly take that long. And this tapering method seems like it won’t be effective. I feel like it would just be better to leave tem cold turkey. We’ll see.

Pictured above: We took the girls to the Museum of Natural History on Sunday, without the stroller again. Free range children in the hall of dinosaurs. They were very demanding of Nicole: They both needed Mommy and only Mommy. Which meant my hands were free to take pictures.

My Memory is Bad, But the Memories Are Good

2010-03-12T12:00:00.006-05:00

I am feeling old, again. Suddenly I need reading glasses for reading the fine print and follow-up appointments with cardiologists for an irregularly beating heart. I have my twenty year high school reunion coming up this fall, and visits planned with college friends who I haven’t seen in almost 15 years. I have friends who are talking about retirement and old flames who have died. I keep doing the math of how old I will be when the girls possibly have their own children, and have made it a top parenting priority to do all I can to get them to procreate as early in life as possible so I can enjoy my grandchildren. I have a very real sense of the upcoming End of Days and a very real fear of what could possibly be ahead of us. Oh yes, I am all about doom and gloom, and have wiled away many hours wondering what’s in store for me, my family and loved ones. Because if one thing is certain in life it is that nothing is certain.

I was holding a friend’s baby the other day (my friend’s husband, who is FORTY, just had a heart attack…see what I mean?) and I was struck with how I barely remember when my babies were that small. So much focus on the day-to-day survival that all those sweet moments, which I certainly appreciate at times, seem to melt into a background that forms the foundation of a happy past, but a forgotten one. I remember the broad strokes, but not the small ones. Thank God for this blog, otherwise I would not remember a thing. Like, who took the first tentative steps? What were their first words? What did I do when they napped on and off all day? Sometimes, I just do not recall. So many holes in my memory.

This is in part my own fault. I need to slooooooow down and be in the moment more, that ever-quoted “be present” premise that is so easy to forget/ignore when dishes need to be put away and dinner needs to be made and laundry needs to be tackled. I need to turn off the Death Kneel Reel in my head. I need to not borrow worry and trouble (I am getting better at this) and just learn to love living in the gray and truly believe that whatever happens, we will handle. Little steps, little things, little moments.

Here’s an example: I was reading about Carey and Steph’s first trip to Disneyland with their three toddlers. And they did not bring a single stroller. Three kids way under three and no stroller? At first I thought, what, are they crazy? Was this an oversight? I read their logic: How they wanted to experience Disneyland through their children’s eyes and pace and agenda. Strollers put parents in control, not kids, and we adults have a very different idea of “fun” and “interesting” than people who have been on the planet a scant two years.

Suddenly, it made complete sense. It inspired me the very next day to let the girls free roam in Central Park. We went to the playground first and then, instead of wrestling them back in the stroller and going for walk through the Park on our way home, I let them stay out of the stroller and lead me around. It was great! A little slow at times, but they loved exploring and it was so much more rewarding than just me pushing them along, dictating the direction and narrating my journey. They both picked up souvenir sticks and rocks (that they still are playing with two days later) and seemed to extract enjoyment out of every free range minute. Madeline got in the stroller herself when she got tired (so much nicer than forcing her in or bribing her with Raisonettes) and Avery chose to continue walking, holding my hand, till we reached the very southern boundary of Central Park and then I had to put her back in. So, I must say, I am a convert. Of course, many times I will still have to use the stroller because it is a matter of safety in the city. But I am learning to loosen up a little on my stroller addiction.

In the middle of writing this post, I got an email telling me someone I went to high school friend died this morning of a heart attack, leaving behind a wife and three little kids. He was 37 years old. This is the second high school classmate to die in the past five months. How life changes on a dime, and how we worry over such stupid stuff.

Pictured above, the free-range girls. A mere couple hours later, Avery was down with the stomach flu. And below that, one of those little moments, interrupted by my insistence to capture said moment with my phone.

An Otherwise Beautiful Weekend, Marred

2010-03-09T07:44:00.004-05:00

One week of toddler “gentle separation” class and my girls come home with their first art projects (decorated pictures frames and colorful, abstract paintings) and their first communal illness (the dreaded stomach flu). Madeline was the first to succumb: She woke up in the middle of the night on Friday. Nicole heard her cry a weird cry and raced down the circular stairs as fast as she could and made it to Maddie just in time for her to threw up in Nicole’s hand. Poor Maddie spent all day Saturday in various positions of repose around the house, all quiet and tired and spent. Seeing her without energy is truly bizarre, since this child is normally hard to keep up with.

I had big plans to eat my way through the weekend since it was likely that I would end up throwing up too, but decided that was not the healthiest of ideas. We drove back to the city on Sunday and I started feeling cocky that Nicole and I were going to escape this virus. No such luck. I woke up Monday and felt well enough to run five miles, but as soon as I got home the rapid decline began. And by noon I was begging Nicole to come home from work and take care of the girls because I could not stand up, and then texting her every half hour to see where she was and when she would arrive. In the meantime, I lay on the couch, trying to attend to Avery’s many needs (“I need choc milk.” “Maddie took my ________.” “I need to watch a show.” “I need to climb on Momma.”)

As soon as Nicole came home, I locked myself in the bedroom and slept the afternoon away. Around five-ish, Nicole started to feel a little dizzy, and then she was sick. I was a little disappointed that there couldn’t be a little space between our downfalls, because who will then take care of the girls? One sick parent is hard enough, but two? I guess I am not the boss of those germs. So far, only Avery has managed to escape, but we will see what happens today. Nicole is in the weak and very tired stage; I am in the dizzy recovering stage; Maddie is in the full-one energy stage and Avery is a giant, needy question mark.

Yesterday was 60 here in the city and since I was sick I could not go out. I was so excited to take the girls out in the sun; so much for that. I am more than ready for this spring, as is almost everyone else I know. I am just excited for spring in general. Lots of stuff on the calendar. Two weekends from now I am going to a photography weekend seminar, ALONE, where I will learn a little more about how to operate my camera properly. It is in Vermont, so we will all drive to Northampton and then on Saturday morning I will leave Nicole and the girls and drive up north alone. Three hours in a car without having to twist my body around to pick up a dropped cup or toy. I will be spending the night alone in a hotel, which I haven’t done since my go-go days of journalism. The alone time will be nice, but I am more excited to learn more about light metering.

I ate nothing yesterday. As in absolutely nothing. Maybe I should start a fast, since I already have the first day under my belt and absolutely no appetite. This morning I had some coffee, because I don’t need caffeine withdrawal on top of everything else. Hoping for a miraculous speedy recovery, but not holding my breath.

Pictured above, poor sickly Maddie. And a view of the trees: Can you see a very prominent symbol there in the trees? I tell you, signs everywhere. And Mommy and Momma’s upstairs lair. That is what we call it, and now that is what Avery calls it too. I must start watching what I say because Avery repeats it ALL. Which means we are treated to such gems as “Maddie is a little devil” and “I can’t take it anymore.” Gee, wonder where she got those expressions from?

Click on the Heart

2010-03-06T21:55:00.002-05:00

Solving the Mysteries of Toddler Sleep: AKA I Can't Take it Anymore

2010-02-28T00:36:00.004-05:00

Let this be a warning to parents who have sleep trained their children: It can all come to a screeching halt for no reason at all. And then your life will never be the same.

Let me explain. We worked very hard to have children who slept well. We read and followed the ridiculously titled and poorly written Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child bible. We arranged our schedule around their naps and bedtime and did everything we could to preserve these sacred times. The results were amazing: Naps daily for two to three hours and 12 to 13 hours of sleep each night, starting between 6:30 and 7:00. Life was good and we all were well rested. Until it aaaaaaaallllll stopped.

I am not sure what changed or why now. Perhaps a combination of many factors. I guess it somewhat coincides with our new schedule of heading up to Massachusetts on the weekends, as well as with taking them out of their cribs and putting them into their toddler beds (we had no choice: They were climbing out of their cribs and I even caught Avery once in a Matrix-like position, precariously balanced on the side of the crib). And since it is winter and we are cooped up inside, there are less play dates and running around and energy spent on playgrounds.

Free-range children is the horror I imagined: Two kids running around their room at night, alternating between giggling fits and crying over pulled hair. Sometimes for two hours, before going to bed. Last night, they were in bed by seven, and they stayed up until after 9:00.

And the naps? Completely not into them any more. I put them in their room anyway, for quiet time, and can keep them their for about two hours. But it is not the same. And I know they need that nap. But they are too excited to explore twin conversations (they have adorable talks together) and collaborative play (which is all good, except when it involves a crayon). Sometimes if I lay on the floor in front of their bed and model sleeping for them, they will sleep. But I can’t take naps every day with them (or can I? Hmmm…) and it doesn’t always work anyway. And bedtime, which once involved reading one book and tucking into bed, and kissing tiny foreheads, thus freeing me up for important activities such as watching Survivor or surfing the internet, now involves 46 trips into their room, finger-pointing way too much and admonishing them to lie down, stop talking and go to sleeeeeeeeeeep.

So I feel like I never get a break. Well, that is not entirely true: The alarm goes off at 4:00 for me, and I go to the gym at five (I’ve managed to log almost 150 stress-reducing miles on the treadmill), thus ensuring that I get a little break time each day. But once I get home, the girls wake up shortly and it is go-go-go all day, with no nap to look forward to and no cut-off time to anticipate. And nap times were such a break for me. I would call friends and prepare dinner and clean, uninterrupted. Sometimes I could read for pleasure, if I were feeling entitled. Or I could just decompress. Not anymore.

Does this change? If anyone can offer hope/advice, I’d appreciate it. Because I don’t understand how something that was going so right could suddenly go so wrong.

So it has come to orchestrating breaks. On a bright note, the girls are officially signed up for their first drop-off class. Twice a week for two hours each time for a grand total of eight weeks, they will be attending a gentle-separation toddler class down in Union Square. Oh, how I am looking forward to this. And dreading it. The dread part: I have never, ever left my children in a situation like this. To fend for themselves in the dog-eat-dog world of toddlerhood, with a bunch of adults I don’t know who are paid to decide who got the toy first. And don’t even get my started on all of my collection of unlikely but nonetheless scary hell scenarios, like what if there were another 9.11 event? It will break my heart to walk out that door. But when I DO walk out that door, I am smack dab in the middle of Union Square, with so many wonderful attractions, like Whole Foods and Barnes & Nobel and amazing coffee shops and Babies r Us and Trader Joe’s and the Farmer’s Market and Fishes Eddy and Union Square Park and, if I feel like taking a stroll literally down memory lane, my old NYU stomping grounds down University Place to Washington Square. I will have two hours, twice a week of strolling sans stroller. Of food shopping without destructive little shelf-clearers. Of negotiating my way through the world on my own. Maybe I will get a hackey sack and stand around in a hackey circle. (ok, that is a joke, but the point is, if I wanted to I could, if only for a couple hours). For all of March and April. March, with its ugly weather and occasional snow storm. And April, with it’s spring-is-in-the-air feel. I am so excited. And yes, a little nervous. But we need this: Me and the girls.

I am also pursuing full-force my theory that having things on the calendar makes life a little more enjoyable. So I have been adding new and exciting plans to these upcoming months. More on all that next time. It is 1:23 in the morning and I can’t sleep but I think I better try.

Pictured above, a sledding/snowboarding afternoon. Nicole and I and the girls went sledding with my brother’s family. My dad is visiting from China. It was so much fun. Avery loved sledding down the hill and Madeline enjoyed making snow castles. And it was nice to do something with our families: We usually just hang out at each other’s houses, which is fine. But it was so great to create new memories. Avery loved the snowboarding and when I asked her last night in bed what she wanted to do tomorrow she told be “Snowboarding.”

And, by the way, both girls fell asleep in the car within two minutes on our half-hour drive home. Because THEY STILL NEED THEIR NAPS, dammit.

Weekend Highlight: Escaping Lawsuit by Ten Feet

2010-02-18T07:37:00.006-05:00

We are back after spending four days in Massachusetts, but it was not without its drama. I am fairly certain we escaped an awful lawsuit and giant headache by ten feet. Let me explain. The treadmill was delivered on Friday. Our steep driveway was coated with a thin layer of snow, but since our plow guy only plows if there is an accumulation of more than three inches, we were stuck with dealing with it ourselves. I started shoveling and sanding it, but the treadmill delivery people showed up about halfway through this giant endeavor. They only made it up about half the driveway. They decided to leave their truck there and push the giant treadmill up with a hand truck. I would like to point out that they gave me a few not-so-nice looks. We were already off to a bad start.

So they bring the treadmill inside and are assembling it and I go upstairs, thinking they don’t need me hovering over them. After a few minutes, I look out the window and notice the truck is gone. Hmmm. I try to convince myself that one of the delivery people went out and moved it, but I knew this wasn’t true: I can hear both of them hammering away downstairs. I panic, and assume that a band of Country Criminals have stolen the truck. I knew I had to go downstairs and say something, but I did not want this assignment. Still, I pop down and say oh so casually, “Hey, did you guys move your truck, because it isn’t in the driveway anymore.” They both drop their screwdrivers and let out a few curses and run out the door. I follow them, and all three of us stand at the top of the driveway and are astonished by what we see: The truck, even with its emergency brake on, rolled down the driveway and into the street and stopped miraculously about ten feet from a clump of trees. They were so lucky, and so were we: I am not sure if there is a basis for a lawsuit there, but if someone can sue McDonald’s because they spill their coffee in their lap, then I am sure that they could’ve found an angle to sue us.

So our four-day weekend was off to a bad start, but it improved from there. It was mellow, because Nicole was recovering from oral surgery: A gum graft, of which I know not the details because I can’t even handle hearing about it. Friends visited us on Saturday and on Sunday, we took an exploratory Sunday Drive. And Monday, on the drive home, the girls slept through most of it, so it was a calm, peaceful just-under-three hours.

I am happy to report that Madeline is speaking up for herself much more these days. I was getting worried because she is not anywhere near as verbal as Avery. I deduced it wasn’t a cognitive issue. As she understands us for the most part, and knows her alphabet and can count up to 20 or so. When I give her directions, she is able to follow them, that is, if she feels like it. But there is not much in terms of idle chatter. But these days, I have noticed a mark improvement in this area. She comes up to us all the time and asks “Hey, what are you doing?” She also is on Ladybug Lookout patrol. We have a lot of ladybugs in our house in Massachusetts and Maddie seems to find each one.

I am so ready for winter to be over. The TV is on for the girls waaaaay more than I want. We are trapped indoors much of the times, jailed in by flurries or cold or slushy sidewalks. It is really hard to explain to the girls that no, we can’t go to the playground today because it is snowing and it will be too slippery and wet. Errands become a test of efficient route planning: I try to figure out the fastest and most direct way to accomplish tasks so as to minimize our time outdoors. I miss our long stroller walks. I am tired of spending 15 minutes getting the girls in hats and gloves and coats and socks and boots and blankets. And, on top of all that, usually need to make some accommodations fro whatever inappropriate toy Madeline wants to bring with her (usually, for example, a puzzle or one of those giant wooden toy cubes). Spring will be much celebrated round these here parts. There is lots to look forward to, besides the big thaw. And I will be embarking on a solo weekend. I haven't done that since I rolled up all of my loose change back in the mid nineties and booked myself a weekend to the Bahamas alone. My upcoming solo adventure is engineered by Nicole: Which begs the question, should I be upset that my Valentine's Day present involves sending me away for a weekend alone?!

Pictured above: The tire tracks in the street from the runaway treadmill truck. And Avery recording the birds she sees while bird watching. Ask her what her favorite bird is and she will say blue jay. Good thing we have those in spades around the bird feeders. Maddie is hard to get pictures of these days: She is always on the move. And finally, Avery “helping” me make monkey bread. We usually give her a bowl and et her mix random ingredients together while we work parallel to her with the “real” ingredients.

Bang • Bang • Bang: Return of the Bullet List

2010-02-11T12:53:00.004-05:00

• An actual snippet of recent dialogue between Avery and me:

A: “Momma, turn off the TV.”
Me: “No, Avery, You are watching another episode of Max and Ruby.”

Let me explain myself: I have been sick, so once again I have been parenting from that prone position. It hit me like a freight train on Sunday: Within and hour I lost my voice and felt terrible chest constriction. Bad cough, sore throat, the works. The poor girls wanted to go to the playground on Monday and there was no way I could take them. I let them watch way too much TV that day. I have been feeling better each day, but suffering from extreme exhaustion. I fall asleep earlier than Nicole.

• Last night I came home from the food store with a pint of strawberries for Madeline. I left them on the counter in the kitchen and went on my merry way. Avery went in, pulled over a stool, took them out of the container, put them all in a bowl and brought them to Maddie, serving them up to her with a smile and a “Here ya go, Maddie.” Is that not the sweetest thing ever? I basked in the adorable afterglow of that for a few minutes, then freaked out that the strawberries weren’t washed and therefore most likely toxic.

• I have a secret blog. No, not the secret blog that I direct you all to when I have a password protected posts. Another one. My third one, technically. On it I am completely anonymous, mostly pictureless, and topic-focused. And writing on both is exhausting. And confusing: I need to keep switching “identities” and make sure that I leave comments as “arcane matters.” I know this is annoying, but I won’t be sharing that link quite yet.

• Nicole has oral surgery today. Some complex procedure that requires grafting skin from the roof of the mouth to be placed near a certain part of her gums. I don’t ask for any details because mouth issues are traumatizing to me. The girls’ losing teeth stage is going to destroy me. She took Friday off, so we will be heading up to Massachusetts so she can recover. It’s a four day weekend! I am hoping that when she gets back today she will feel inspired to leave tonight. I love waking up there, and she does too. But I have a feeling she will most likely want to recuperate tonight and head out tomorrow morning. A girl can dream.

• Madeline is talking a lot more these days. Her favorite phrases include: “Hey, what are you doing?” and “That’s mine” and “I be right back” and “Go this way, Momma.” She still won’t say yes, and instead says “ok.” She is starting to punctuate her requests with please, which pleases me.

• Avery’s favorite phrases include: “I need last time” and “No either” and “I need to wash my hands” and “What’s that sound, Momma?” She also can play toddler games on my iPhone like a pro. It is surreal to see her laying on the couch. Which her legs crossed, holding my phone and playing the games and calling out shapes. We never had that sort of stuff when I was her age. We had these weird little credit-card size electronic games from China that broke after like a week.

• Madeline and Avery sleep together every night now. And every nap, too. They smush into Maddie’s toddler bed together, sharing a pillow and blankets. That is the cute part. The not-so-cute part is that they play and talk and laugh and sing, sometimes for hours, before they fall asleep in a tangled mess of blankets and arms and legs. Last night they drifted off within about ten minutes. But Madeline woke up an hour later in a night terror. Figures.

• I bought a treadmill and am beyond excited. It is being delivered in Massachusetts tomorrow. I only wish we had room for one in NYC. It is so much more cost-effective than gym memberships, not to mention convenient.

• I am starting to get worried that I WILL win the NYC marathon lottery in March. What a challenge that will be to train for.

• The girls’ favorite book right now: Five Little Monkeys and Good Night, New York. They really exhaust one book before moving on to another. It can be quite tedious for me.

• I am addicted to Bog Love. I just watched all three seasons. And now I need to start Season 4. The problem is, we cancelled HBO because we never watch it. Now I need to add it again for a month so I can catch up.

Pictured above, Avery likes sushi! Well, Avery likes the salty soy sauce, that is for certain. Also pictured, Madeline the Lion, one of the dress up costumes at this great little café with an indoor play are for kids in Massachusetts. And finally, Avery yelling CHEESE as I snap a picture from the front seat. All crappy quality because I took these pictures with my phone.

My So-Called Political Life: The Making of a Jaded Citizen

2010-02-02T09:17:00.001-05:00

The Nixon Administration: I was born on the Fourth of July in 1972 into a family with not one know democrat in a community that is very, very, very republican. I may as well have arrived in an elephant onesie. If my parents were able to have “life-long republican” stamped on my birth certificate, they probably would have.

The Ford and Carter Years (the 70s): I don’t think people whose age is a single digit have much of a political life, but their political future is indeed being shaped by their family, since their young friends are also too young to have true influence. Let’s skip talking about parents and talk instead of their parents. My grandparents never taught me that I am better than another based on the color of my skin, etc. but — as I say a lot these days — actions speak louder than words. Some of the things that came out of their mouths were stunningly bigoted and some of the beliefs they held were steeped in misconceptions, generalizations and personal history. Like one grandfather, who had a hard time accepting my brother’s Japanese girlfriend (now wife) because he fought the Japanese in WWII. Or my DAR grandmother, who grew up in the South, and had some rather not very nice words to describe people born with skin darker than my own. Another grandfather had a Jewish boss who didn’t allow my grandfather to take the day off for his own father’s funeral: I bet you can see what that lead to. And homosexuality? It wasn’t even discussed.

But grandparents, I always thought, are charter members of the let-it-slide generation, which means it is nearly impossible to change what they have been indoctrinated into. I am not making excuses for them, but it is pretty difficult to find a forward-thinking person born in the early 1900s. What does this have to do with politics? I think race and gender and culture and all of their manifestations impact our political beliefs. And flash forward to my adult life, and I can say unequivocally that I am not racist, classist or homophobic (obviously) in any way. Yes, I consider this an accomplishment.

1980: I voted in my first presidential election. We third graders cast our ballots and an overwhelming number of us choose Republican Ronald Reagan over incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter. But I was in third grade, so it is safe to say that I was 1.) voting for jelly beans over peanuts or 2.) voting what my parents were voting. I mean, what third grader is capable of independent thought? This isn’t Lord of the Flies: We eight and nine year olds don’t rule the world.

1982: Boy George enters my realm of existence; fights for space with Alex P. Keaton, the republican Wunderkind. And yes, I liked them both, with equal measure, which lead to the realization that I could indeed hold in my head two diametrically opposed thoughts at the same time. In marches Madonna and Prince and Erasure and all the rest. Gender is bent, lines are blurred, homosexuality starts to get a foothold in our society’s dialogue.

The Reagan/Bush teen years: I was republican, but, sadly, only because my family was and most of my community was. I never really thought about it much. Let’s face it: I was more concerned with getting my collar to stand up just right and figuring out which tank top to wear under my off-the-shoulder sweatshirts. Finding scrunchy socks was my mission, not finding a political platform.

The First Bush Administration: I start my college life at NYU. I went from a small, undiverse high school (150 in graduating class: All white, except for two people of color) to one of the most diverse colleges in the country in one of the most diverse cities in the world. Eye-opening, to say the least. Yet I still clung to my Republican label. But mainly I was too busy exploring nightlife and drinking to think about the political system.

The Bush to Clinton Transition Between 1990 and 1994: During college, I shed my republican skin and put on a new Democrat coat. Blame it on diversity. Blame it on drinking. Blame it on feminist thought. I’d say I based most of this conversion on social criteria: Hot button issues like health care and help for the poor and a woman’s right to chose and civil rights, all of which I was firmly in favor for. Bizarre to think that things like “Homeland Security” weren’t even remotely on the radar yet. Clinton fever was sweeping the nation and I was happy to be swept up along with it. I went to my first Democratic fundraiser alone, and sat on the ground in front of Lauren Bacall and listened to Barbra Streisand sing and thought, I am with my people!

The GW Years: I am really, truly an adult. Nicole and I have commenced our relationship; I zip through two graduate degrees; we plan to have kids. All this without the protection of marriage. For the first administration, I am firmly, completely, happily on the Democrat side, even though many people I know are not. But a little political ennui seeps in during the second administration. Ideas start creeping into my thoughts like “nothing will ever change” and “everyone is in it for themselves.” Shouldn’t we all try to help each other, and look out for those who are most disadvantaged? For example, I think welfare is a flawed but necessary system. It is a life saver for a huge percentage of our population. And such a polarizing issue. I am generalizing here, but many Democrats will call it a life saver for people in need and many Republicans call it a hand out for lazy people. Would I rather shut all programs down and spend the money on things that benefit me? Sure. But I feel like that is not the right thing to do, and that we, as a society, need to think about others as well. Even if that means I need to lose out a little.

All Aboard the Hope Train: I went from being born a Republican to becoming a democrat to becoming jaded to …. It’s all about me now. I am making decisions based on what is best for me and my family now, period. f you are going to openly oppose gay marriage, I will not vote for you. Isn’t that an awful attitude? I went to from voting based on an ideology that I though you best serve the country to voting based on my own selfish wants and needs. A complete turn-around from what I used to think.

I was very politically aware during this last election. Neither candidate was overwhelmingly appealing. I liked Obama’s social issues, to an extent, but I think McCain had a sounder financial platform. I couldn’t get past McCain’s Palin choice or his anti-gay marriage ideals. I was one of the only democrats I know who was not fully in the Obama camp or slapping a bumper sticker on my car. And I am still not. My jaded-ness has reached an all-time high and I now long for a partyless race or some sort of massive change that I am unable to articulate. Because a system in which something as huge as health care can be decided by the election of one person is severely flawed.

And now, it’s national budget time. Obama’s not terribly original plan is to cut spending and raise taxes. It’s not his fault: Permutations of this formula are really the only options at any president’s disposal. For us, for me, if this all passes, that means will be paying 39.6 percent, as opposed to 35. Really??!! Almost 40 percent of our income will go to taxes? It makes me angry because I say that we pay all this money in taxes and get no special benefits. Nicole points out that we indeed take advantage of infrastructure and a police force and things like that, but still. These days, I want more to show for it.

Where does that leave me now? Socially democrat but fiscally republican? Independent? Just jaded? I am not sure. It just seems like everything is completely broken, flawed or outdated. But it is safe to safe my political bad mood is very much tied to my current bad mood.

And the groundhog predicts another six weeks of winter? Has he ever NOT predicted that? Stay tuned for more entries inspired by my sourness… But today, I am trying to drag myself out of this mood. I am trying a new schedule out with the girls. And I want to take them somewhere special.

Pictured above: Avery’s drew this spider. Isn’t that pretty good? There are clear legs and little shoes on them. Also pictured, Avery’s yoga/crayon pose.

Too, too, too. Me, me, me

2010-01-31T08:50:00.002-05:00

Here’s a Blind Item to start your Sunday morning:

Me: “Why don’t you come into the city tomorrow and hang out with me and girls? I can’t drive out there because Nicole and the car are in Massachusetts.”
Mystery Person: “I think I’ll take a pass.”

You’ll take a pass?! Who even uses that sentence construct when declining a “please visit me” request? You pass on stuffed mushrooms or chicken satay. You pass on the dutchie passed on the left hand side. You pass on a third shot of tequila. You don’t pass on people. Several excuses were rattled off. I give you, in no particular order: Too tired, too cold and too much. When will I stopped feeling stunned? My disappoint knows no boundaries, apparently. Who knows how to fence off rejection pain?

So, yes, that dark mood is still lingering.

Last night I kneeled at the girls’ bed, where they were both sleeping angelically together, put my hands on their backs to make sure they are breathing, and just cried. It was like a moment out of a movie. I could imagine a camera above me, circling around the scene. Maybe it’s hormones. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because they are so sweet and so innocent when they are at the most sleeping vulnerable, and I feel like a monster for ever losing my patience with them. Maybe I am just exhausted. Whatever it is, I am not feeling very balanced right now, but tears aren’t helping.

I put about $600 dollars worth of merchandise into my virtual shopping cart, which, of course, I ended up deleting, because that’s not going to make things better, is it? But my vices are limited.

I’ve had three cups of coffee and made big plans for the day in my caffeine high. And already I have a feeling none will see the light of day.

Pictured, Madeline, who manages to pull off a look that says both “bored” and “above you” like no one else. And Avery, happy as a lark.

Please, Please, Please Let There Be Light

2010-01-28T09:38:00.002-05:00

I replaced light bulbs in an overhead light this morning, which involved a lot of stretching and balancing, and it is as if I want a freaking medal. This has been one of those weeks when it has been hard getting things done. I have been neglecting my wifely duties. Here’s proof: Nicole, looking at the mountain of laundry overflowing from the hamper: “Do you think you can do laundry tomorrow?” Me, sighing heavily: “We’ll see.” This week, Nicole has been at work late, and she is currently in Boston for the night. My sleep has been awful: I fall asleep sometime around 1:00 and then when the alarm goes off three hours later to go to the gym, I dismiss it. So I skip my run and sleep in, but while those extra few hours of sleep are needed and appreciated, I pay a heavy price for it all day: I’m lethargic, have less energy, and experience a general feeling of run failure, which I never handle well.

The girls, of course, sensing my (hopefully temporary) weaknesses, have ganged up and overpowered me, and I find myself giving in to their many, many demands more easily. Sure, you can use that paci alllllllll day if it will make you happy. You won’t put on shoes to go to the laundry room? Fine, go barefoot. They can eat an entire pan of brownies and Avery can keep her pajama bottoms on all day. I am too tired to negotiate.

Hold on, Avery just submitted a demand: “Momma, I need plenty more Cheerios.” This “plenty more” is her latest figure of speech. I think it stems from when she asks me for something, like more crayons, when she already has 78, and I say “You have plenty.” So now, she needs “plenty more” of everything.

OK, back. So it has been a tough week, and getting through today and tomorrow solo (no gym for sure, since Nicole isn’t here) is going to be tough. I think I am taking the girls to the movies today. I have the God awful choice of that Chipmunk movie or the Disney Princess movie. Nothing against princesses, but I don’t want to introduce that into our world quite yet. Avery is already completely embracing her inner, innate girl, which I find interesting, as her exposure to things girly-girl are very limited. She sees my manicure and wants one too (in pink, she says). She turns her blankets into gowns and runs around saying “I’m a snow princess Momma!” (I think she got that from the Dora Christmas special.) So if she sees a real Disney princess, I think she may lose it, and my life will be pink pink pink and there will be demands for tiaras and wands and mini high heels for the foreseeable future. I am grateful, at least, that she is also very much into her play tool kit. It’s all about balance, right?

I left the high heels I wore to Monday’s dinner on the floor all week. It’s like I wanted to be reminded that I had the chance to wear them, that I lead this life that involves wearing them and lipstick and contour eye shadow, at least every once in a while. Or maybe I am just feeling lazy and didn’t put them away because there was no medal or reward involved.

Pictured above, the girls at the Zoo. On the entire walk up there, they talked about the penguins. We get there and head over to the penguin habitat and it is ….. closed for renovations. Try explaining that to toddlers who wanted nothing more than to visit the swimming penguins. The sleeping polar bears appeased them a little. And that is a picture of the sunrise one morning on the way to the gym. It is like I am walking into an oncoming train, which is exactly how this week has been feeling. Or is that the death light everyone talks about? Either way, I won’t be seeing that again until Saturday, when Nicole is home and I can get back to my morning run.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch....

2010-01-26T12:40:00.003-05:00

Last night, Nicole and I went out to dinner here. I had a delicious pan-seared fish that I have never heard of (white, mild, on the small side), and thanks to our waiter’s thick French accent, I still have no idea what it was called. My one year of French in college did not prepare me adequately for this. But whatever it was, it was amazing, especially with a little Riesling sauce and on a bed of rutabaga and sauerkraut. The restaurant was beautiful, the service amazing, and it was nice being called “Madame” a lot, even though I still feel like a “mademoiselle.” I love how the waiter just assumed we would have the soufflé for dessert: He phrased it like “And you will be having the soufflé, of course?” Yes, of course. And it was amazing.

The best part of dinner: No kids. How nice to not have keep two toddlers entertained and quiet long enough to shovel some food into them and then into us. Ranking up there too in the Good Parts department was the fact that we were sitting next to a table full of celebrities who have starred at one time or another on The Love Boat, or maybe Celebrity Password. Connie Stevens and Joely Fisher and Lanie Kazan. Oh yes, nothing but the brightest stars in our orbit. Once upon a time, I used to run into and see younger, more relevant celebrities. Now, it’s like, oh look, there’s Betty White! Is that Red Buttons? I could be sitting on top of a Jonas Brother or a Billy Ray Cyrus offspring and have no idea.

Today was back to reality. It is relatively mild again so I figured it was a good day to go to the playground. I told Avery to hop in her stroller so we could go to the playground, but she said “No playground. I want to go buy presents.” Well then. Isn’t someone getting a bit demanding? I guess this is what happens when I come home a couple of times in a row with little gift for them. I have created a monster, a cute, pig-tail wearing, chunky little monster.

I managed to derail Avery’s one-track present mind and get to the playground. They have officially graduated to the Big Playground, though we still take a spin around the Little Playground on our way out. There was a swing meltdown: I like to take them to an entirely different playground for swinging, but the girls freaked out when I said it was time to go there. They screamed for almost an entire block but calmed down when I went into a deli buy myself a hot tea to fortify myself for Playground, Round Two and they realized they could get chips. The chips distracted them, so I was able to skip Playground Two and head home instead. Score!

It’s gonna be along week. Nicole is home late tonight, and she will be away for work on Thursday into Friday. I think I might take the girls to this place for dinner. It is such a great, easy place for kids, and for us adults too. And they have Tater Tots! I rarely do things like this with them without Nicole, but I think it’s time I start expanding my repertoire of activities with the girls and push myself to do things that make me a little uncomfortable. Any being outnumbered by the girls anywhere in public definitely makes me a liiiiitle uncomfortable sometimes.

Pictured above, on Sunday I made deep-dish, Chicago-style pizza with Avery, who was very much into shaving the parmagian. No one can handle a microplane like my baby! And Madeline loved it. She ate an entire quarter of a nine-inch pie. Very had a decent size portion too. Also pictured, delicious mystery fish dinner from last year. Quality is not so great because I took the picture with my phone. But trust me, it looked as good as it tasted.

Maybe All Transitions Need to Be Celebrated With Cake

2010-01-21T04:46:00.006-05:00

Cake

Cake Party (Avery’s term of endearment for any event that includes cake of any sort for any reason) was a rousing success. The celebration began when Nicole came home with two You-Paid-How-Much-For-Those-Giant Balloons? The girls ran around ecstatically tugging their balloons, one shaped like Big Bird, the other like Winnie the Pooh, who Avery horrifyingly and bizarrely and instantly started liking without any formal introduction at all. I literally have no idea how she even learned that Pooh existed. But one day, she was all about Winnie the Pooh. I might need to have a talk with my niece Skye! Anyway, This was followed by a visit to their room and the formal introduction of cribs-sans-front panels, aka Big Girl Beds. Lots of “Wow! Look at your new bed! Bye-bye cribs! What big girls you are!” And the celebration was finished off with cupcakes and candles, with repeat blow-outs, as ordered by Avery.

We brought them to bed at 7:30. We read them a book (Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed) and then left. Madeline was upset at first, yelling for us and crying and shouting out her most heart-wrenching “Where’d ya go Momma?” But within about 15 looong hand-wringing minutes (I do not do cry-it-out well at all) she settled down and instead started talking with Avery. Here is a snippet of their actual conversation: .

M: Peek a Boo!
A: Peek a Boo!
M: I can’t see you!
A: I here Maddie
M: Avy
A: Maddie
M: Aaaaaaaaaavy
A: Maaaaaaaadie
M: What’s gonna work? Teeeeeam-wuk
A: Teeeeeamwuk

Yes, they are currently very much into the Wonder Pets and if you are my Facebook friend, you can watch a video Nicole uploaded of them singing this as a duet. They chatted themselves to sleep. I am fine with that. They are really starting to have this very basic, caveman like conversations. Maddie woke up once around 12:30. She didn't get out of her bed. I went in there, sort of curled onto the bed with her, which is no easy feat. She held my finger and nestled her head on my shoulder. All I could think was “This is sooooo nice but I can’t let this habit start.” I stayed with her for about 15 minutes and then went back to my own bed. And she was fine.

Of course, the success or failure of this cannot be determined in one night. I am curious to see how naptime goes today. And nighttime again, as Nicole won’t be home to participate in the brand new ritual. But I am optimistic. And also a little sad: How quickly time is going by. I remember putting them in these cribs when they came home from the hospital.

OK, off to the gym.

Pictured above, cake party. I am obsessed with macro pictures of sprinkles. I have never met a sprinkle that I didn't want to photograph. Also, to file under things I want to remember, Avery calls Nicole's cufflinks "quarters." I don't even remember her learning the word "quarter."

Bad Mood Part II: Nice to Be Reminded That I am Not Normal

2010-01-20T10:12:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, I was on my way out to Long Island, and I was checking my voicemail while stopped at a light on 9th Avenue, in stop-and-go traffic, when someone knocked on my window. Of course, I usually ignore such disturbances, as they tend to be not very savory people, but out of the corner of my eye I see the uniform. I roll (roll?) I mean, power down my window and Mr. License-and-Registration-Please opens with “On the cell phone, and you have a kid in car no less!!!” Actually, I told him, there are two kids. And I passed him my license and registration and patiently explained that yes, the car is registered to Nicole, but yes, it is my car too, because we are married. Always fun to see the pallor of lesbian-recognition cast onto another’s face.

Fine, give me the ticket. I broke the damn law. But really? I was at a stop light, meaning I was stopped. And not talking, just listening to voicemail. Me listening to a voicemail that I was about to switch to speaker phone at a stop light is not so dangerous. But whatever. I broke the law and I will pay the ridiculous fine ($130) and hope that my pullover and wasted minutes was the universe in action: Maybe if I wasn’t pulled over I would have rear-ended a truck on the LIE or something. Maybe there was a reason for this waste of time on the side of 9th Avenue beyond what I could possibly know.

Last night, Madeline refused, as usual, to sleep in her crib. I let her cry it out for about a half-hour, and then, when she was on the verge of hyperventilation, I went in. I took her out of the crib and put her and her pillow and blanket on the floor. And she was fine: She stopped crying and settled down instantly. Of course, this got Avery’s attention, who immediately gophered up and she started bellowing “I need floor, too.” So I settled Avery on the floor as well. I left the room, and they were fine. They would have fallen asleep lickety split is Avery wasn’t so excited to be free-range. She kept sliding over to Maddie and talking with her and engaging her, and when I approached the room, she would scamper back. But Madeline did not move AT ALL. It took a while, but both eventually fell asleep. I scooped up Avery and put her back in her crib and let Maddie sleep on the floor. She slept for a couple of hours and when she woke up, I picked her up and brought her to the couch and slept with her there. I could have resettled her on the floor but I was so tied and didn’t want to.

Besides, there is a new plan, culled from your various emails and comments: We are officially removing the front piece of the cribs and making the Stokke cribs toddler beds. This will be a celebration. We are having balloons and cupcakes (I made them this morning) and candles and presents and dancing and laughing. A new routine will be established, one we can stick with (I think it will be each picking one book to read together before lights out.). I have a feeling this really is what Maddie needs. She proved it last night by sleeping alone on the floor, and not in our bed or with us on the couch. It is not us she wants, it’s freedom. Avery, I have a feeling, will be the child we will need to lead back to bed 100 times an hour. But I am ready to get this party started. Wish us luck, and stay tuned for details.

And now, on to politics. Massachusetts just elected republican Scott Brown, the sure-to-be health care bill-killer. Health care reform has been destined to fail from the get-go. What gets me is not his party affiliation but rather the things he says. Take this, for example: “the idea of two women having a child is “just not normal.” You know what I think? I think people who think vile things like that are just not normal. How would you feel if someone called your family “not normal?” It makes me sad, then embarrassed, then angry. Very very angry.

Actually, I a beyond angry I in the realm of fucking pissed. Of course, this sort of stuff bothered me before, but now, these evil thoughts and opinions directly impact my children. Look my kids in the eye and tell them that they are products of a not-normal family. You be the one to tell them that they don’t deserve the same rights as everyone else, unless they grow up and can prove that they are card-carrying members of the “I Love The Opposite Sex Club.”

I am probably preaching to the choir and screaming in the wind here, but I just don’t understand how we are able to get away with saying things like that. Yes, I am all for freedom of speech, but the fact that people can say things like that and get elected say SO much about us as a society. How can we let this happen? I can’t fix this. I can’t make this better for my girls. I just wish for a better world for them.

I would love to write more but my not-normal self has to make frosting for our not-normal cupcake party and then go pick up the dry cleaning, go to the post office and stop at the book store to buy a special not-normal book gift for the girls. You know, all sorts of subversive and not-normal activities like that.

Oh, and I am keeping my eyes peeled for a baby backpack for another not-normal couple I know who are expecting a daughter in June. The kind you can hike with. If you have one and want to sell it, leave me a comment!

Pictured above, my not-normal wife and our daughter pursuing yet another not-normal activity: Learning to shovel snow. And our not-normal snowman. Our lives just scream not normal.

A Couple Reasons Wy I'm In a Bad Mood

2010-01-19T16:10:00.005-05:00

I am kinda tired of seeing earthquake survivors on TV announce to the world that they survived because God wanted them to. Riiiiiight. And he really wanted to wipe out those other 200,000 people. They all deserved to die? Was their painful deaths on top of God’s To Do list that day? I am not denying the miraculous survivals of some of these people, and I am not trying to say that they can’t have their own faith and, yes, there but for the grace of God goes I as well, but I just think these “God saved me” announcements must really sting those who lost loved ones.

Yes, people are looting and shooting and beating now. And I would too, in a New York minute, if I were in a situation like that and needed to feed my daughters. Or get them health care. I might go to any lengths necessary to get my children medical attention if they were on the verge of death, God forbid. How judgmental the world can be. And there is nothing like a disaster to bring out all the self-serving, look-at-me people.

I was listening to some talk radio program this weekend and I heard a really interesting discussion about disasters like this. The radio man (don’t know who he is) said that his uncle, who was in the military and specialized in disaster planning, told him that if ever something catastrophic occurs, like this earthquake or something like a nuclear attack, there are two things you must do. The first: Do not gather where the government tells you to gather. Yes, a military man said don’t listen to Uncle Sam. You can go your own way, as the song says. And, two, you have 72 hours to get out of town. The reason is this: In the first 24 hours, everyone is so nice and helpful and generous. By the second day, looters emerge, and gangs begin to form. By day three, gangs are running amok and anarchy rules. Again, this is in the event of a HUGE disaster, like a nuclear attack or a terrorist attack that affects more than just two towers in the city. Interesting advice.

If I ran the world, this is what I would make happen: We would make Haiti a Perfect Nation. A model country, if you will. Completely raze Port au Prince and create a green city, with parks and trees and gardens and recycling centers and humane housing for the poor and medical clinics for the sick and staffed and stocked orphanages for the children. Try to create an industry so this country would have something to export. Build playgrounds and schools (in that order) and museums and some tourist attractions. The best and brightest in every field would help create this new and improved city. New infrastructure. New policies. New everything. Most of all, new architecture: I read that when California experienced a 7.1 magnitude quake (which is TWICE the magnitude of Haiti’s 7.0) 200 died, as opposed to 200,000 And this was in a city of 2 million. The difference: Buildings in California are built to specific earthquake codes. Not so in Haiti. How awful hat so many people died because the nation is too poor to build to code.

Can you tell I’m in a bad mood?

I am also in desperate need of sleeping advice. We have been lucky thus far with naps and nighttimes: Daily two-hour naps and 7:00 p.m. bedtimes, sleeping 12 or 13 hours every night. But that has come to a screeching stop. About a month again, Madeline absolutely refused to go to bed at night in her crib. She does naps in her crib fine, and plays in it during the day, but when night comes, she screams for HOURS. And she does this in the city and in Massachusetts. She literally starts shaking when we say “OK ladies, it’s time for night-night.” Of course, we handled it all wrong: Tried to let her cry it out; did a modified Ferber method; brought her into or bed; slept with her on the couch; sat in her room holding her hand or rubbing her tummy for an hour or so. Every night, a new plan. Talk about unstable. What do we do? Does this mean she needs a twin bed? Did she have a nightmare and now is afraid to sleep at night? We tried leaving doors open and adding nightlights. Everything. I am at my wit’s end, because now my day, which usually ends with two hours or so of quiet time for me to work, relax and chill out, is now occupied with this non-sleeping paradigm. Any advice at all? Please help us! Please! I don’t think I can survive another night of hearing Madeline scream “Momma where did you go?”

And now, to lighten the mood, a few random bullets:

• Avery and Madeline got a tool kit for Christmas and they love it. They know their wrenches and screwdrivers and hammers and saws. I think our next toy for them might be a workbench.

• When I offer Avery two choices, she used to pick one. So I would say “Do you want applesauce or yogurt?” She would always pick one. Now she will say “No either.” We are in trouble!

• I am in a media heaven. I am reading two great books (Game Change and The Privileges) and enjoying the end of season one of Big Love. Life is sweeter when you are reading a good book and watching a great show.

Pictured above: Avery looks so chic in sunglasses! Also, I took Maddie on her first Momma/Maddie date this weekend. We went for ice cream at Herrell’s in Northampton. She is a very different child when she is alone and not under the spotlight/glare of her sister. She talked more, explored more, and showed little snippets of a personality I don’t see much when they are a dynamic duo. I have a feeling Avery will be the same. I really want to try to add more alone time dates with both of them, as well as with Nicole. Also pictured, the new furniture came. Avery proved how comfy the new couch is by promptly drifting into a soft slumber after sitting on it for a few minutes. And Madeline seems to think snow is a beach. All she needs is a frothy drink and a beach blanket.