The Lawsuit That Got Away....Maybe

About six weeks ago, I was in a major NYC food store (rhymes with “P-ristedes”) and had a bad fall. An embarrassing, flat-on-my-side kind of fall. One of the freezers along the back wall of the store was leaking and there was a big puddle, the size Lake Titicaca, that I somehow missed. In my haste to buy whatever it was I went to buy, I slid right into the puddle and fell hard on my ankle. I was a little stunned, and a couple of other shoppers came over to help me up. It hurt SO much. I got myself up and hobbled toward the exit, but my gait was slow enough that I saw one of the employees return to the scene with a mop and one of those danger cones.

I limped out of the store and back home, but the next day I was in so much pain I could barely walk. That has never happened to me before. Thirty-seven years on this planet and I have never limped. I had to hop to get around. We were going away that weekend (it was my birthday weekend) and we thought about canceling. But I didn’t want to do that so we kept our plans and hoped for the best.

Advil wasn’t cutting it. There were some extra Percocets left over from my C-section prescription. I didn’t finish the pills because I was so paranoid about breastfeeding and taking all these pain meds, even though all the doctors gave the ok, so I parsed them out and gritted through the pain, ostensibly to save my children from becoming addicted to pain meds in their first weeks of life. So I took the Percs while we were away and it help immeasurably with the pain. Within 20 minutes, I could walk with no problem. It is a miracle pill. Sure, I probably did extra damage by masking the pain and keeping on keeping on. But I am not the convalescing type. Thank you, Percoset, for getting me through hat rough week.

When it happened, one of the customers at the store mumbled that I should sue this store that rhymes with P-ristedes. But for what? I have health insurance, so any doctor visits are covered. I don’t have a physical labor job, so my income is not impacted. I had pills at home, so I didn’t even have to head to Duane Reade to get painkillers. The worst case scenario is I might have to go to the doctor and inconvenience Nicole to take a few hours off of work to stay with the girls. These things happen, and I was happy it wasn’t worse and I wasn’t going to sue. Besides, lawsuits take way too much time and money and note-taking. As my lawyer friend Jon says, lawsuits are not for the forgetful.

Except now, the pain is STILL there. A dull, throbbing pain that is intensified if I flex my foot or point the toes down. If I am sitting on the floor with the girls for a while, I feel it get tight. When I walk far distances, which I do daily in NYC, I feel a dull ache. I feel it when I run. The pain is not completely going away and I am pissed. But what’s a girl to do? Despite my revenge-driven theory that someone MUST pay for this, I am not going to sue. But I guess I have new insight into why people do sue, even when it seems like there experienced no real impact from an injury. It sucks that I have to deal with this because the store that rhymes with P-ristedes isn’t taking proper care of its freezers. (I have seen puddles there before, for the record.)

It’s Day Two of Green Monster, and I think this smoothie is better than the last: Bananas and blueberries and vanilla and milk. And the green powder. The semi-gross green power that promises oh so many things. Nicole tasted it today and declared it not undrinkable, but that very specific healthy powder flavor…well, it is a bit strong.

I am taking the powder on the road for a week, as I am heading to Long Island, where I will be hosting Camp Cousin. Leif and Skye are coming out for the week and I will be mothering four kids all. week. long. Yes, maybe I am biting off more than I can chew, but with a backyard and dens and kitchens and living rooms and dining rooms and a portable Bounce Castle, I feel empowered. I’ve created a menu for the week and will enforce a strict bedtime. There will be one movie per night, before bed, with popcorn. It is going to be difficult, but I am curious to see if the shake-in-the-morning helps me. I won’t be able to run, unless I get up WAY early and ask my mother to be in charge for that early morning hour. But we’ll see. I will be my new running shoes and maybe head to my old high school track, the site of many an embarrassing 440s and Presidential Fitness Tests.

Pictured above, Madeline in Nicole’s shoes. And the girls with Mommy.

Would You Like A Side Order of Sleek, Functional Design with That?

Today is The Day. It is Friday, August 14 and this is the day that Molly and I begin of 30-Day Challenge. Thirty days of Green Monster Smoothies for breakfast, every day, without fail, dammit. And than means we have thirty days to find out if we reap any of the oft-hyped benefits, such as increased energy, healthy skin and nails and hair and a scrubbed-out set of internal organs. I want a spotless lower intestine. I want my sparkling liver. I want hair so shiny it can be used as a mirror. Whatever this magic powder promises, I want, plus a little more. Is that too much to ask?

Yesterday, Avery presented me with an additional milestone: She apologized to me, for the first time. Maddie took her crayons and for the tenth time created some art on various walls. It is frightening how fast she is and how many walls she can cover while I go into the kitchen to get some water. This is a girl with a mission. And then I come back and yell NO and, just to spite me and show me who’s boss, she does it in double time, as she knows the crayon will quickly be pried from her sticky little fingers and put back in the crayon drawer.

Back to the milestone. So as I am scrubbing away at yet another wall that will have a hazy hint of orange on it because I am not putting enough muscle power into it, and Avery came over to me and, for some reason, said “Sowwy, Momma.” I think she could tell I was frustrated by Crayon-gate, even though she only uses crayons on paper, like good girls everywhere do. And she also apologized after a ten-minute temper tantrum she had a few hours later. That apology came with a hug. It melts the heart!

Yesterday was hectic, with four kids in this house. Anyone with more than two kids, you have my COMPLETE awe and respect. For me, two kids are manageable. I am used to that dynamic and I can handle it, most of the time. But when you start adding kids, my patience gets shorter, my temper surfaces more and my exasperation is tripled. With two two-year-olds, a four year old and a six year old, there is always something going on. Someone’s fort is invaded, someone’s flashlight is pilfered, someone’s Gameboy — apparently called DXs or something now — is running out of batteries, someone’s stuffed dog Pepper is kidnapped. And, at certain times, everyone wants to sit on my lap at the same time. Life would have been a lot easier if I could find a cartoon that spans this toddler-preschooler-first-grader age range.

I know I promised to write about Nicole’s milestone, and I wrote it all up, in glorious detail, and read it to Nicole to make sure it was okay, but Nicole redacted it. I was censored! Which is not to say that I can’t share; I just need to write a less-detailed version. This is a woman who is not as used to sharing as I am! So please stand by.

In the meantime, I am flustered and excited by a surprise that showed up last night. Yesterday, due to a house full of kids and that lowered patience level, I was not capable of making dinner. I was in the mood for a chopped salad anyway and asked Nicole to pick it up on her way home from work. She did and when she came in she gave me the bag and asked me to set it up because she was SO hungry. That should have a been a clue.

I opened the bag and pull out my salad and her wrap and some cheap forks and an iPhone! She went to the Mac Store and got us both iPhones yesterday! I have been a Mac girl since my college days and converted Nicole. We both have been coveting them since they were announced, but thought we should wait eight months until our Verizon plan expired. She is pragmatic and logical and not the type to pay the extra fee for terminating a contract early. But I am glad she had a lapse!

The modified Gift of The Magi part was I was going up to The Mac Store today with the girls to buy one for Nicole. She has been talking about getting one a lot lately, and I thought, aha, here is a gift that Nicole will love and I am going to make it happen, extra fees be damned. She is so hard to buy for so when an opportunity presents itself, I like to jump on it.

I had my surprise for her all planned out, but she beat me to the punch. The best part is the only reason why I didn’t go yesterday was because I thought four kids in the Mac Store would push me over the edge. Otherwise I might have run into her! So let the record reflect that once again, she buys what she wants and needs when she wants and need them, thus ruining every gift-giving occasion. So when she gets dish towels for her birthday, she really has no one to blame but herself.

Pictured above, the best Chop't salad I have ever had! And the kids and their digital childhood.

How to Build A Cookie Burger

Yeah, I know I promised to reveal Nicole’s Big Milestone, but I have to wait one more day. Or, specifically, until later this afternoon but the likelihood of me posting twice in one day are slim. Leif and Skye are coming over again today, and with a house full of children, it is impossible to squeeze in time for things like that. So tomorrow, tomorrow.

There is a good chance that I will have melted by tomorrow though. It is HOT in the apartment. I reason that it is on the top floor so all of the heat must rise into our home. Plus, we are under the roof, so we get that extra hit of warming sun. But it is consistently 85 degrees in this apartment. And that is not an exaggeration: I have an indoor thermometer. We have an AC in the bedroom, and used to have one I the girls’ room to, but we never put the second AC in and moved it out to LI instead. Big mistake. It gets unbelievable hot in here, and when I use the oven, forget it. If you don’t believe me, ask Ms. Unwellness
. She and Beck came over yesterday and can attest to the fact that it felt like an oven. So today, I am looking for two ACs: One for the girls’ room and one for the kitchen. I can only imagine what our electric bill will be: Right now, with one AC that is usually on just at night, our bill is $240 a month.

These days, pretty much al of my recipes come from Cooks Illustrated. I love that book/magazine/website. Amazing recipes and pretty much everything I make from it is a huge hit. So the Challah bread recipe came from there. It is way to long to type up! The website is one of those that you have t pay for, but the do have a free 14-day trial.

And here is the hamburger cookie recipe:

Hamburger Cookies With A Side Of (French or Freedom) Fries

• 1 big box (12 oz.) Nilla* wafers
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips or about 8 ounces of semisweet chocolate in bar form
• 1/3 cup milk (whole, skim, almond, whatever)
• 1/2 cup sweetened flaked coconut
• 1/2 teaspoon water
• green food coloring
• Red and yellow decorating gels, the kind usually used to write HAPPY BIRTHDAY on a cake (for ketchup and mustard)

If You Want A Sesame Seed Bun:
• Melted butter or gum Arabic
• Sesame seeds, or, if you insist on maintaining the sweet integrity of the cookie you can use marzipan or fondant to create little things that look like sesame seeds.

Directions:

Put about twenty Nilla wafers into a Ziploc or mini food processor and crush into small pieces (not a fine crumb…more like a chunky crumb). This should yield about 1½ cups. Mix wafer crumbs with powdered sugar in a bowl. I will not be pedantic and say what size bowl to use. I think you can figure it out.
Melt chocolate and milk on stove (or in the microwave). Stir to make sure it doesn’t burn. Once melted, pour chocolate mixture into wafer mixture; stir until combined. It will be chunky and kind of fudge-like, like a really thick cookie dough. Cool for 10 minutes. Then, after it has cooled a little, roll this chunky fudgey-like dough into little balls (about one tablespoon each). Then flatten them so they look like little patties.
Combine coconut, drops of water and green food coloring in a Ziplock. Seal bag and shake shake shake till it’s as green as you want.
Now build the burgers. Start with one Nilla wafer, then add the patty, then add a smidgen of green coconut, then add ketchup and mustard. I squeezed the mustard and ketchup in ovals on the patty’s tops, so it sort of dips down on the side of the bun. Put Nilla wafer on top. If you want to add sesame seeds, then melt butter and brush a little on top and drop on some seeds. Or use Gum Arabic, which is an edible adhesive used in baking that is flavorless. You can add flavor to this flavorless gum if you want by adding Colorless Vanilla. But melted butter works just fine too, and is easy.
Ideas that I may try in the future: Using fruit rolls up of a yellow or orange variety and cut into little squares to make cheese. Also, there has to be a gummi candy that can be slice to look like a tomato. And, finally, I bet you can use white chocolate and then color it to make it look like veggie burgers or chicken/turkey burgers.
The Fries:
Make sugar cookie dough OR just buy the rolled-up, ready-to-bake kind. I did the latter for my first attempt. Roll out the sugar dough on parchment paper, then sprinkle sugar all over the tops and then, using a pizza cutter, slice it into thin strips. Then — and this is very important — put the whole thing in the freezer, like you do if you are making cut-out sugar cookies. If you try to separate the pieces before freezing it, it will not work. Once frozen (I think about 15 minutes) then you can lift up the dough and break off the strips. Unbelievably easy.
Put the thin strips on a parchment-paper–covered baking sheet, spaced apart, and cook. When they are done you are going to think “This doesn’t look right” because the pieces are all puffed up and look like fat fingers and not like French fries at all. But that’s ok. As soon as you take them out of the oven, take your pizza cutter and immediately cut the puffed up pieces into thin shoestring-like strips. If you wait too long (just minutes) the cookies will harden and it will be impossible to slice into thinner strips. Also, as soon as you take it out of the oven, you can sprinkle more sugar on it to make it extra delicious and make them look like extra-crispy fries.
* I use Nilla wafers, but I am sure any old kind of vanilla wafer cookie will work.

Pictured above, cookie close-ups. And my Green Monster Smoothie! The thirty-day challenge has not officially begun yet, but I wanted to have a couple of days to try to ramp up my smoothie-making skills. My fruit combining skills begin and end at banana-strawberry. So I am trying to add blueberries and blackberries and orange and everything else. Thinking outside of the fruit box, if you will. The color is not very appealing and the taste is decidedly healthy. Let’s just say my versions won’t be mass marketed anytime soon. I made one yesterday and, this may be a revisionist history, but I had A TON of energy afterward. While watching all four kids, I cleaned the bathroom, organized the bedroom, and cleaned up the entire kitchen. I was unstoppable? Coincidence? We’ll see….

How Green was My Monster?

It was a milestone sort of day round these here parts. And each person in this family has one to share.

Avery’s Milestone: Avery put on her shoes all by herself. Her new and constanly repeated motto is “Avery do eet” and, I am proud to say, she is dabbling in personal pronouns, which translates into “I-a do eet.” Now she says this all the time, which can be charming and wonderful, but can also turn any simple task into a fifteen minute event or a thirty-minute massive inconvenience. Avery wants to pour her own Cheerios? Five minutes, including clean-up time. Avery wants to use the remote to put on Curious George? That is easily ten minutes. Because when Avery does it that mean I can’t do a thing, except bark orders like a coach on the sidelines, trying to use as many words that she understands as possible. Which sounds a whole lot like “Now touch the round button, no, the circle button, in the middle, right there, circle, circle, circle, round, right there, yes round, no touch it, oh, no, you have to point it at the TV, now touch it, touch the round button…” and just play that on a loop for ten minutes and you will get what I am up against.

Back to her milestone. Today, I couldn’t find her trust summer crocs so I dug in the bag of niece and nephew hand-me-downs and found a pair of Velcro sandals. And Avery put them on all by herself. Yes, she put them on the wrong feet, but still, progress. And she wouldn’t let me fix them. Which makes me wonder, is she already turning into a surly teenager?

Madeline’s Milestone: Not to be outdone by her sister and coming in just under the wire, Madeline flung herself out of her crib tonight. This is her second time; the first being about two months ago. Nicole and I were in our bedroom and heard the whole thing on the monitor, including Avery egging Maddie on with “Go get it, Maddie.” Hmmm. And then, that unmistakable thunk of thirty pounds of toddler hitting hard wooden floor, cushioned only by a thin rug. We have no idea where she hit herself, because by the time we made it to their room, she was already standing and screaming. We soothed her and Avery the Instigator and put them back down. But, at ten, while the girls were sound asleep, I went into their dark oasis of a room, scooped up Madeline and nestled her in our bed with Nicole on one side and my pillow on the other, since I am here typing in the kitchen. I feel better having her close to us after she takes a fall like that.

My Milestone: I made mini hamburger cookies today for Leif and Skye, who are under my care tomorrow. The cookies have received praise from Nicole and several friends already. I am happy to explain how it is done, if anyone wants to know. I made them with the girls, but I gave them decoy tasks: “Here, Avery, mix these Cheerios with cranberries.” “Here Maddie, add these cranberries to Avery’s mix.” Because they like to help, and, as I pointed out before, their help is my hindrance, usually. Once they were distracted I was able to build a better cookie burger. And tomorrow, I will make its fries. Next up on my baking short list is a14-layer cake. Oh, yes I am. I just need a function to bring it to. So someone, quick, invite me over and ask me to bring dessert. And I will, and it will be a 14-layer cake.

Nicole’s Milestone: Here’s where I get to be coy. Nicole has a big milestone, but I won’t be able to announce it until tomorrow.

And, in exciting news (for me), breakfast change is a-foot. I have been struggling with the breakfast dilemma for a while now. Peanut toast became very unappealing once we went through the mouse issue, and peanut butter was used as bait. I am not a cereal eater; nor do I enjoy yogurt. Sadly, fruit is not top on my list and toast is boring without protein-packed peanut butter slathered on it. I love pancakes and French toast and such, but they are way too intense for a casual weekday meal. I was talking with my friend Molly and she is all about smoothies and Green Monsters. She has done all sorts of research and has collected anecdotal evidence of Green Monster Smoothies being The Answer to All That Ails You. After a short conversation I was convinced smoothies were the answer to everything, too: Not only are they easy to make, but they pack in a huge amount of healthy fruit and veggie servings in a teeny spoonful of powder. I ran off to Whole Foods to buy the powder and once Molly’s package arrives in the mail, we will be embarking on a 30-Day Challenge of one smoothie a day, with the intention of finding out if our nails and hair grow faster; if our skin looks all glow-y; if our energy levels increase and if we feel detoxed. Stay tuned.

Pictured above, Avery’s milestone and my milestone and the new Green Superfood. Miracle in a can? We’ll see….

Perhaps I am Overthinking This Whole Parenting Thing

I have had more than one person comment to me recently that they are not the mother they thought they would be. They then are quick enumerate the many, many ways in which they claim to be a disappointment to themselves. In the past I never gave this much thought because I have said the very same thing myself and had my own list at the ready. But now, I’ve been thinking, maybe I (we) need to let up on myself (ourselves) a little.

Yeah, I had a vision of what kind of mother I would be. But this is a vision I created before I knew what it was like to have children; a daydream I created while going through the hell of trying to get and stay pregnant; a carefully designed mirage that turned out to be pure fantasy and speculation and wishful thinking. And we are beating ourselves up because we don’t live up to this? I also thought pregnancy would be a lovely, glowing Madonna and Child(ren) experience, steeped in wonder and awe. Nope, sciatic nerve zaps and constant urination and perpetual discomfort weren’t a part of that image.

Like many people born in the seventies and earlier, there are just a handful of blurry and fading pictures and a few fuzzy home movies to encapsulate my childhood, which pales in comparison to the blogs and pictures and home movies and books that my own children have. Perhaps the girls will someday be embarrassed of this biographical bounty. Time will tell. I guess I am motivated by my personal lament for more evidence that I existed before I was ten/twelve years old, which is around when most of memories start. (I will never, ever win that “When was your earliest memory?” game.) So I observe and record and capture and document and save save save every last detail of the girls’ lives, for their sakes and for my own. Someday when one asks me what there favorite food was when they were two, I need to be able to answer it. (For the record, Avery is loving fig newtons and pizza and, suddenly, pastina, and Madeline leans toward all types of fruit.)

But for most people, memories makes up for what lacks in pictures and warping VHS tapes. This is where I fall way short. My memories are so fractured and just plain scant.
But it is, for me, impossible to parent without conjuring up how I was parented. How I parent either aligns with what was done with me or, more often than not, contradicts it. And there is a whole lot of just guessing on my part, of sort of feeling around in the dark until I find something that resembles a door knob so I can open a door and let in some light, because there is a whole lot I don’t remember. What I do remember is not so great. And it makes me feel sorry for the little me. Yeah, I know how cheesy that sounds, but it’s true. I look at my beautiful daughters every day and think how DARE everyone not love them to pieces. Did my parents think that about me?

This might be a good time to recall that actions speak much louder than words.

So I kiss the girls each a hundred times a day, at least, and despite my tendency toward hyperbole, this is not a case of exaggeration. I do it because I never remember that as a child. Specifically, I have no memories of being kissed, or hugged, or even really touched much. Therefore, “Kiss Often” is part of my Parenting Blueprint. And the rest of it, I think Nicole and I are making up as we go along, and that seems fine.

There are a million books out there and lots of unsolicited advice, but maybe parenting is such a unique and highly personal endeavor that it is impossible to define it in broad strokes or ten chapters. Maybe it’s not about enrolling the girls in dance classes or taking them to the playground every day or limiting their television viewing. And maybe my parenting prowess will not be measured by how many food groups I can get them to ingest or by the length of their afternoon nap. Maybe it won’t even be measured by the girls’ memories. Maybe it is just a new small, attainable goal each day, and striving to make sure the girls feel loved.

I have said to other people — and other people have said to me — that the very fact that you are thinking about your parenting skills makes you a good parent. Let’s hope that is true!

Pictured above, what happens when Madeline eats applesauce unsupervised! And Avery with her new hair do (introducing: Barrettes!) And Madeline with the French Toast Nicole made from the Challah bread I made. Did you follow that? It was my first try making Challah and it was pretty good!

Dreams and Houses and Dream Houses

Not a day goes by when I don’t think about where are we going to raise the girls. Yes, right now we are raising them just fine in NYC, and they enjoy the city life as much as two-year-olds can (playgrounds; Central Park Zoo; long walks). There are glitches here and there, but the experience is mostly positive, diverse, electric. We get cramped sometimes and get a little stir crazy on rainy days and oh how I am dreading the winter this year, but this is mitigated by the fact that on the weekends, we stretch out on Long Island, where they get to experience life as Country Children, running in the backyard and riding ride-on toys and watching birds and sliding down the basement doors, their makeshift slide. (Yes, they have a real slide, but they like the basement doors better). However, this Best of Both Worlds life has an expiration date, and that date is rapidly approaching.

The question is: Stay in the city or move out to the suburbs. And it is a really difficult decision to make.

There are many reasons to stay in the city: Nicole’s office is a five-minute walk from our apartment, which whittles her commute to a whopping ten minutes a day, total, and allows her to spend time with the girls in the morning and after work and occasionally have lunch with us, if her schedule permits. And, it is New York City, a place I love and have called home for the past twenty years, where I feel most at home in the world. But City Childhood is very different here and the schools are not so great. And private school runs about 30K a year per child, which equals about 720K on education BEFORE college.

And then there are many reasons to leave. The burbs have much better schools, more green grass, and if we lived on Long Island we would be significantly closer to friends and some family. That is huge. And I think it is fair to admit that we no longer take advantage of what the city has to offer. In twenty years, I have racked up my fair share of museum trips and Broadway shows and evenings at the Met and other quintessential NYC things. But these days, not so much. I beat the same paths to playgrounds, zoos and food stores, with the City That Never Sleeps at my fingertips, but just slightly out of my grasp.

What would make moving to the suburbs easier and the transition smoother, more palatable, would be finding our Dream House. Who doesn’t dream of a Dream House?

Making our lives even more complex, I want just ONE move to the Dream House that we will spend the rest of our lives living in. I am not the type that likes to move a lot. I know, I know. Boring to some, but safe and comfortable and right for me. So that means there is a lot of pressure on finding a house that we feel like we can live in for a very long time..

But this is not an easy task by any stretch. Give me, oh, ten million lottery dollars that I MUST spend on a home and I am all over the place. I could buy a brownstone in the Village or a modern, sleek apartment high in the sky or a shingled Colonial on three acres or a saltbox in the New England woods or an oceanfront bungalow with big windows and a natural waves-crashing-on-shore sound machine. My tastes are ridiculously diverse, to say the least. I am shabby chic and modern minimalist with ocean cottage sensibilities, all wrapped in one Real Estate Agent’s Nightmare package. My dream house has a checklist, which includes things such things as a rocking chair porch, built-in bookshelves, a fireplace, hydrangeas and a big, sunny kitchen with white marble countertops and one of those faucets over the stove for filling up pots because why lug it to and fro the sink, if you don’t have to? I have books filled with pages I have ripped out of magazines, so many ideas and inspirations. I challenge anyone to find one house, with my complete list of desires, in our budget. I dare say it is not possible.

But what I am wondering now is, is there REALLY a perfect dream house? Are we ever going to find it? Even if we had ten million lottery dollars to spend? And I wonder, does anyone ever really get their dream house? Because if they did, it wouldn’t really be a dream home, would it? It would be reality, and no one ever seems to be completely happy with that.

We humans are conditioned to never be happy with what we have, so no matter what we have, we will want more or better or different, right? There is always a better kitchen or a bigger yard or a sunnier living room. Obviously it would be hard to find one home with everything, but I wonder, is it time to shelve the Dream House Dream? I have watched friends house hunt and even with budgets up to three million dollars, no one is completely, utterly “I’m in my dream house!” happy. I have seen families miserable in 10,000 square feet and families deliriously happy in 400 square feet.

The lesson here? I could spend my entire life looking for my Dream Home and maybe I am just supposed to realize that there is none. Home is where the heart is, and all that. It’s who am I with, not where I am. It’s family dinners around the table and Movie Nights. White marble countertops, after all, are not really going to make a big difference in my life. It is just a pretty package.

I thought, somehow, that having children would make big decisions easier to make. If anything, having kids makes it seven hundred times harder.

Pictured above, this comes pretty close to my Dream House. Beautiful kitchen, almost two acres, four bedrooms and guest quarters above the garage and a finished playroom in the basement. Big enough to raise the girls in, but not so big that the house seems enormous when they eventually leave us. This was Nicole’s sister’s house, but they sold it about five years ago. Back then, we didn’t have the girls and I didn’t even think about leaving the city. Now I look back and think, what was I thinking? That room on the second floor, on the left, is where Nicole and I used to sleep. Also pictured, Leif and Skye in Taiwan. How cute are they?

Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say

This day is starting off blah since we missed our 5 a.m. wake-up alarm, which means I didn’t get my mind-clearing, positive day-starting, endorphin-pumping run in. It’s all downhill from here, unless something magical happens quick.

I have been writing a lot lately, just not here. Oh, how I wish I could publish a series of email exchanges with a friend-in-crisis, but that would be an invasion of privacy. Even on the Secret Blog.

One of the topics discussed in Flurry of Emails is the power and importance of how we perceive things and what is says about us. Take this true-life example of a woman I know This woman HATES her neighbors (no one else has a problem with them) over some stupid dispute about a five-foot piece of property (one survey says that it belongs to the woman and another survey says it belongs to the neighbors). The woman hates them with a passion and is happy that they are in foreclosure and that their house is going to be auctioned off. She has ringside seats to their downfall and she is giddy with delight. But her venom and hatred and anger say a lot about her and who SHE is, and not the neighbors. Know what I mean? With that simple story you can tell that she is the type of person who will never, ever be happy and content. You can’t have that much hatred and bitterness living in you without it being a part of you. Right?

I need to apply that thinking to this tedious, time-consuming and expensive second-parent adoption process. If you have read this blog closely then you already know that this process makes me oh so angry and bitter (yes, yes, I know that makes ME bitter…I’m working on it). This has involved doctor’s visits and paperwork and attorney visits and, most annoying, a home study by a social worker whose purpose is to decide if Nicole is a fit mother. We executed that on Sunday, and while I was annoyed to have to submit to such nonsense, it wasn’t actually that bad. The social worker was polite and kind and didn’t go into our drawers or open the refrigerator or check the books on our bookshelf. The visit was clearly a formality, conducted mostly from the couch in the living room, which sort of made it even harder to understand. In fact, this entire process seems to be just one giant waste of time, because the courts are going to give Nicole her parental rights. This is no equivocation on that. So why do we need to go through this? Just more bureaucracy and wasted money and wasted time.

Which reminds me…what IS Obama doing for gay rights? Anything? Anything at all? A stupid gay pride party at the White House is about the extent of his involvement.

OK, so let me swallow all the bitterness and try to find the lesson from this. What I need to work on is the whole Child-Comparison trap. The SW asked us to describe the girls and I found myself saying things like “She is the reserved one and she is the outgoing one” and “She is the adventurous eater and she is the not-so-adventurous eater.” It was impossible for me to use adjectives without using the opposite adjective to describe the other. What is wrong with me? Even those with the most rudimentary knowledge of psychology knows that this will ensure visits to therapists down the road. It doesn’t help that people ask things like “Which one is the leader?” and “Who is the more vocal one?” The temptation to compare the two, since they are, after all, the exact same age, is something I really need to work on.

Madeline is going through a Language Explosion. But it is a s-l-o-w journey to the 60,000 word adult vocabulary. All of the sudden she is repeating words back to us and asking us what things are (still, both girls say “Dada?” which means “what’s that?” and the double-meaning of that is not lost on me.). But what is funny is that Madeline declares everything — and I mean everything — hot. To wit, she just ambled over here with a flashcard with a picture of bones on it and asked what it was. I said “bones” and she responded “Owns. Hot!” “No, Maddie, not hot.” I say that at least a hundred times a day. And that is not an exaggeration. I assume she will soon outgrow her theory that everything is hot; after all, she said everything had eyes up until a week ago.

Bottom line, I am so happy that the girls are communicating more. Communication takes the guesswork out of Toddler Life, and the less guesswork, the better. Avery is very good at telling us what she wants and needs by using two-word phrases: No dancing! Sit Dare! Sing Momma! More jibbies (jibbies = tickles). Avery has clearly mastered two-word phrases, and since there is no official three-word stage in language development, more complete sentences, starting around three, is the next linguistic milestone. All this communicating makes life a lot easier, but it makes me miss their rapidly vanishing babyhood even more.

It is another nice day (no rain for a change) so we will go to the Zoo or playground later. And tomorrow, a playdate with Mr. Beck in Brooklyn and then off to Long Island for a Long Weekend.

Pictured above, me and the girls in front of my favorite flower of all time, hydrangeas. (They really are pretty.) And the girls at dinner. The lighting in the pictures is awful, but I couldn’t resist the cuteness of sharing a chair (neither girls wants to be in their expensive Scandinavian chairs anymore…so much for using said chairs until they are five).

I'm Not A Doctor, But I Play One In My Life

Thanks for the comments and emails. I was secretly hoping one of you would yell at me and remind me how lucky I am and how I have this enormous responsibility to keep it together for the girls’ sake, blah blah blah. But, alas, you all are much more gentle than all that.

One of my theories about where this is coming from: I have been awful about taking the Lexapro. A while back, I decided I was Cured and would no longer need it, so I stopped taking it altogether. Cold turkey. I promptly became really Mean and Edgy and Bitchy and was forced to admit to Nicole that I stopped the pill because, despite my lack of medical degree and lack of experience in drug administration, I decided it was time to stop. She in turn got upset with me that I would try something like that without talking to her (or, I suspect, giving her a say in the decision). So I went back on the pill. Fast forward a few months and I decided to cut my dosage in half because, again, despite my lack of medical degree and lack of experience in drug administration, I decided it was time to slowly wean myself off this pill and then stop. That was going fine until recently, when I simply started forgetting to take the pill. For days in a row. You would think it isn’t too difficult to remember to take a pill once a day, but for me, apparently, it is. I will go three days without it and then finally remember. This has been going on for a while.

The thing is, the pill did work in that it really evens me out and keeps the edge at bay. But it didn’t make me feel euphoric, and that is why I hold a grudge against it. I guess I have this image that an anti-depressant is supposed to make you feel like you are pumped up like you are on Ecstasy with a bump of Special K. I thought an anti-depressant made you happy and patient as Mary Poppins and optimistic like Pollyanna and filled with Zen-like peace like Buddha. Like how just before you go under with anesthesia you feel this amazing euphoric feeling tingling through your entire body. That’s what I want, all the time. Turns out that isn’t how it works. I am giving it another chance, full dosage, and if this fog of Blah doesn’t life, I guess I need to talk to the doctor about changing pills.

In the meantime, my genius idea to snap myself out of my funk was to take myself to see My Sister’s Keeper. I will warn you: If you are a sister, a daughter or a mother (and that about covers ALL women) then you should not see this movie. I cried, literally sobbed the entire time. It’s not like this was a brilliant piece of filmmaking or anything. The film itself was not that good, and the acting was just okay, but the story line was absolutely heart-wrenching. Cancer, you are a disgusting, cruel, non-discriminating despot.

So I wake up the next day determined to distract myself by being Super Mom. I took the girls to Central Park Zoo. They laughed at the penguins and they watched the polar bears and enjoyed a walk through the hot and steamy rainforest exhibit, which I enjoyed because it made returning to the humid outside seem not so bad. The best part is later on when Nicole came home I asked Avery to tell Mommy what she saw at the zoo and she said “Pens” (penguins) and bears. And I asked what part of the body that the bear scratched with his giant paw and she remembered it was his tummy. Their little memories and minds are developing, right before our eyes.

Last night, Madeline was standing on her chair at dinner and Avery told her “Maddie, sit down!” How cute is that! I am glad to have a disciplinary assistant around. I am more than happy to play good cop/bad cop, and let Avery be the bad cop. And Madeline has started with the “Where are You’s.” Like: “Mommy, air are oo?”

Decision made: We are spending the fourth in Northampton.

Pictured above, the polar bears and the girls. That look of anxiety on their faces was bought about because I stopped pushing the stroller to snap a picture. If you can lip read then you can see clearly that Avery is saying “PUSH!”

Quick: Someone Remind Me How Lucky I Am

My children are having Raisonettes for breakfast. Actually, technically, they are having chocolate-covered raisons. We now buy the giant-size no-name tub of them, instead of teeny little boxes, since they are such huge hits with the girls. Avery wakes up nearly every morning and demands “nets.” I usually pacify her instead with yogurt (“lido”) or croissants (“sants”) or bread (“bed”) but lacking all these this morning and feeling especially tired, I surrendered quickly and set them both down on the couch with milk (Maddie) and water (Avery) and mini bowls of Nets and Sesame Street. A small price to pay for peace, for me, for almost an hour.

Nicole took a personal day today and while I like to imagine it was an elaborate rouse so she can spend the day buying huge, expensive, elaborate and thoughtful birthday presents for me, I know this is not the case (I can’t talk about what she IS doing right now. Soon.). She will be home in the afternoon, so there is that to look forward to. Anything to break up the monotony of the day, because the days are becoming so very routine. I beat the same paths daily, to the same food stores and the same Duane Reade and the same playgrounds and the same Central Park, following the same routine (in the morning: empty dishwasher; clean coffee maker; set up coffee for next morning; refill dishwasher; fill up water cups) and it is getting to me a little.

Maybe more than a little.

To be ore blunt, the tedium of day-to-day life, of the repetitive tasks that I do ad infinitum, is fraying at my nerves. My to-do list, a literal checklist with boxes for me to X out, includes things like “Pick up dry cleaning” and “laundry,” which I still put on the list, even though I am in a constant state of picking up dry cleaning or doing laundry (and here is an example of how much I hate change: Even though our dry cleaner will deliver, for free, I insist on picking up our dry cleaning instead.)

I am not sure where this is all coming from. It feels like a mini-depression, and its reach is far and wide and manifests itself in lots if un-fun ways, like indecision. My birthday is on Saturday (the 4th of July!) and we still aren’t sure what to do. I can’t make up my mind. Go to Long Island? Go to Northampton? Stay in the city? BBQ on Friday at my friend Jen’s? I am being so annoyingly, ridiculously indecisive. Every time Nicole brings it up, I say I will think about it and then don’t. Part of me feels like nothing can compete with last year’s birthday (Cape Cod. Northampton. Engaged officially on Smith campus. Seeing a bear amble across the street.) so why try? Part of me just doesn’t want to make the decision. And another part of me just thinks, whatever.

Nice, huh?

I have a few theories from where this stems, but that is another post. And maybe for the password blog.

In the meantime, if anyone can snap me out of this, please do so.

Pictured above, a weekend BBQ with the family. Is that not the epitome of summer living? And yet I still cannot wait for fall.

It’s Not The Heat; It’s the Humanity

Wow. What a week in the news. There is all this commotion in Iran, human rights and stolen elections and deadly violence and all, but that was obliterated by the Gosselin announcement of separation. What is that quote about how you can tell a lot about a society by who they worship? And then when we were knee deep in that war of words when yet another politician cheated on his wife (and got caught). Then Farrah Fawcett died, but her untimely death was eclipsed almost immediately by Michael Jackson’s untimely death.

I have thoughts about all of this but I just don’t have the energy to get into it. I have been battling something (a cold? Sinus issues? Swine flu?) for a couple of days now, and it really came down like a ton of brick last night. Meaning, my head is killing me and my throat hurts and my voice has lowered a few notches as I battle a dry, hacking cough and massive ennui. And it feels like I can’t get a real deep breath. Not helping matters is the fact that I just spent two days with two extra kids: My niece and nephew joined our household on Wednesday and Thursday. The girls loved having their cousins around, and Leif and Skye seemed to have a great time too. But four kids? It is a lot of work. I have a new respect for anyone with more than two children. I lost my patience quite a few times, but immediately repented with apologies and hugs and promises not to lose my patience again. But I failed.

Also not helping maters is the fact that my apartment is 84.9 degrees. Yes, we have an indoor thermometer just so we can be specific when complaining about how hot it is. We have ceiling fans and powerful air conditioners and it still feels like hell to me. When I use the oven in the kitchen, the apartment feels so hot that I want to pass out. I think we need a third air conditioner for this place if I am to survive without melting.

And today, I have to bake. Nicole entered me in a baking contest at work, so I am making apple turnovers and triple chocolate cookies (actually, I made those last night). And then tonight, I am on my own with the little monsters, as Nicole has an appointment for a hair cut and color. And topping off this week is Saturday night, when I will be babysitting for my nephew and 12 of his classmates, as my sister-in-law and brother host a fundraiser party for Leif’s new school.

Did I mention I feel like crap?

Pictured above, the Beige Food Group, which I feed all four kids on Wednesday and Thursday because I did not have the energy to fight for Green foods. Also pictured, this is what Avery created while I was busy making cookies last night. And finally, Avery and most of her Sesame Friends.

When Life Gives You Too Many Blueberries, Make Blueberry Muffins

So we made it through our third Father’s Day without turmoil. Not that I am expecting drama quite yet, but I am bracing myself for some down the road, when the girls are older and upset over some petty injustice that only a father somehow may be able to rectify. I am waiting for the “You don’t understand!” bellows followed by a door slam and the “Do you have any idea what it’s like for us, Mom?” conversation starters that will inevitably be a part of our family history. And then I will point out that they have not one but two sparkly, shiny, loving mommies and aren’t they lucky! But deep down I know if girls are sad that they don’t have a father, then there is nothing Nicole and I can do about it. It will be many, many years before the girls understand the sad reality that no family is perfect and disappointments are part of the game of life, but I hope they can realize that life and families can still feel complete.

I told the girls several times yesterday that they don’t need no stinkin’ daddy, followed by a tickle (called jibbies in this house) to get them to laugh, but that isn’t technically, exactly how I feel. Some day they will skip home from school (yes, skip) and ask us why they don’t have a daddy like their friends, and it will break my heart a little, even though I know it will still be a few years before this innocent inquisition is tinged with real sadness. I want them to have everything, even the things I can’t wrap up in pretty paper and top with a bow. I want my daughters to have male role models, but we are severely lacking those, except for two uncles who are busy with their own families. Female role models, we have those in spades. My girls will grow up surrounded by some amazing examples of Woman. I offer them those examples on a silver platter, not as a consolation prize, but as a web of love and support and guidance. Role models, live, in the flesh, and not just in books. Our friends have so much to offer our girls. And some of them will be able to show them how to apply make-up, because we two mommies are not good with that (I apply eye shadow with my pointer finger).

Such is life, as someone used to say to me. (I think it was my babysitter growing up.) This is our reality, this two-mom-no-dad paradigm, and while mimizing the importance of strong male role models is not the most mature road, and one I won’t take when the girls are old enough to really understand what I am saying, it is my coping method right now. After all, I was raised by a single mom and understand in a sense what it is like to go through the day-to-day without a father figure around. I am fully aware that some people think my girls will be emotionally damaged by not being raised with a father. And I know that some people are all “Oh it’s FINE!” to my face, but, behind their closed doors think that it is wrong for our girls not to have a dad. (Maybe I am just good at reading people, but it is shockingly easy for me to know when people are saying one thing to me but believing another.) For me, it isn’t a matter of right or wrong. What is important is that they have two loving and supportive parents, period. That is all any child needs in life: A loving, understanding and nurturing adult. Gender (male or female) and quantity (one parent or two or three or four) is irrelevant. It’s quality, not quantity. But it took me 37 years to learn that, and I still have my bad days. I want the girls to know this by their third birthday. Fourth, tops.

Pictured above, sunset over the Long Island Sound on Friday. This is why I would love to live on the water: I could see this every night. Below, Avery sitting on her couch/sister.

All Good Things Must Come to an Abrupt End

After two weeks of having Nicole around morning, noon and night and two weeks of jet-setting between such vacation hot spots and Florida, Sesame Place and Long Island, I have returned to my solo, homebound status. Nicole’s work vacation has come to an end, and it will certainly be a rude awakening for the girls, and for me. I feel sorry for me now.

Let’s talk Sesame, or, as we call it here, Abby’s House or Elmo’s House or Big Bird’s House. It is a small and very manageable park for kids. Not overwhelming at all. After one quick walk-thru I had the layout down pat. Happy Sesame music is piped through loudspeakers. Everything is painted in bright primary colors. People are running around in bathing suits, even when it is misting out, as it was for almost our entire trip. Happyland indeed.

Our first day there we brought the girls over to a giant bounce castle and waited on line for twenty minutes only to find out the neither Madeline nor Avery would step foot onto this giant yellow marshmallow when it was their turn. They screamed like we were throwing them to the lions. And since adults are not allowed on (I was pretty sure if I showed them what to do, they would love it) we were out of luck. We then walked over to a couple rides and found out the rides weren’t “open” yet. The park isn’t run with the sort of efficiency that I would have liked to see. We were there at ten each morning, when it opened, but I was surprised to find out that many of the rides didn’t open for another hour or so. I asked one employee when one particular ride would open and she said “Around 11 or 11:30,” with a shoulder shrug, which indicated that even that estimate may be wrong. Are the employees aware that the park opens at ten??

So we ended up at a mini playground and I couldn’t help thinking we spent all this money so the girls could run around a playground in a new Sesame location. And a wet playground at that: Everything was slightly damp and puddle-y because it has been raining for at least forty days now, with no end in sight. We then ventured into one of the stores, filled with everything Sesame. We left with a handful of plush toys and books. It was hard dragging the girls out of there. Even I was seduced by the commercialism of it all.

The Merry-Go-Round saved half the day, emphasis on half: Madeline loved it, and perched on her horse with the posture of a seasoned rider. Avery, on the other hand, was scared out of her mind on the horse, and wrapped her arms around Nicole’s neck for the entire ride and screamed. The characters come out around noon, and immediately are surrounded by excited adults who were thrusting their terrified kids into The Count’s arms for a photo op. Madeline loved the giant fuzzy things but Avery was reluctant to look at them, touch them or accept hugs from them. Are you seeing a pattern here? What one loved, the other didn’t. Just as I expected. They both agreed on the shows: They loved the Big Bird show and the Elmo show, and even though I scoped out the exit in case we had to make a fast break if the girls lost their minds, we didn’t need to leave during the shows.

In a year, I think, this will be Nirvana for them. While there are lots of great things there for two-year-olds, they lack the wow factor of what they will be able to do in a year. Sure, there is a Merry-Go-round, but there is one in Central park. And there are slides and playgrounds, but we go to those every other day or so. And giant fuzzy characters: We have those in the city too. But next year, we can do the water attractions (we could have done wading pools and sprinklers, but we resisted) and the above ground obstacle courses and I think by then the girls will love doing all the nauseating rides that go in circles.

One of my favorite parts: The soft pretzels are in the shape of Elmo! Score! We avoided the rest of the food, though, mainly because I am so very picky, and ate instead outside of the park. Also, we skipped the character meals because I didn’t want to spend all that money for bad food and maybe terrified kids. (I think it was about $20 per adult and $18 per child for a buffet.) Next year, if the girls ask for it, then we can do it.

We also did Adult Things and went to New Hope and Doylestown, which was amazingly charming, and drove trough Pipersville to try to find Dorothy Parker’s old farm. We couldn’t find it, but I took a picture of the local library, saitsifed that Dorothy must have been to it at some point during her years there. All this in three days. We even checked out of the hotel a day early (we decided to leave on Friday, instead of spending the night and leaving Saturday) and headed back to the city.

And now it is Monday morning and this week is all about routine and nap schedules and getting back into the real world.

Our [Weekend] House is a Very Very Very Shared House

Some people have fancy alarm systems to guard their houses or maybe vicious dogs. Others have window and door sensors, which alert homeowners of an unauthorized entrance attempt. Not my mom. She has a better solution. Behold her do-it-yourself alarm system. Yes, those are bells. She is a regular McGyver with a dash of [insert the name of a famous bell player — there MUST be one]. Because nothing, apparently, jars my mother from a deep sleep and puts her into Danger/Protect Mode like the distant, melodious tinkle of bells. So if you weight less than 80 pounds and are trying to squeeze into my basement through that tiny rectangular window and burgle the house, your cover will be blown by Carole of the Bells. And after she takes a moment to appreciate the pretty song, she will get you. Take that, wrong-doers.

Let me introduce you to a few other curious things. In the basement, there is a corkboard with a thermometer (?); a hippo keychain (?); a business card for an Irish sweater shop (?); a “Do Not Disturb” sign (?); a plastic sign asking “Are we having fun yet?” (?); and a red plastic thing (?). The Town Calendar qualifies as useful; however, its basement location renders it decidedly not useful for the function for which it is intended. I have never seen a more eclectic corkboard in my life. Is it supposed to look random? Like things were just pinned up there in no particualr pattern for no particular reason? And it should be pointed out that this corkboard has not changed in at least a decade.

Let’s now move up to the dining room, where bottles of liquor must get cold, so they are allowed to wear fancy silk Asian jackets and poorly drawn bunny portraits are displayed in ridiculously ornamental gold frames. And this is JUST the beginning. You can see we have our work cut out for us with this house.

Some house changes are easy. Like when Nicole pruned an out-of-control bush, which hasn’t been pruned in 20 years. Or when I insisted an obsolete computer that is over a decade old (can you say “C Prompt?”) be removed from our bedroom. Or how I convinced my mother that the fake autumn leaves framing the front door need to be removed. Or, even better, when I pointed out that some flowers looked like they were dying and needed water, and then discovered that they are in fact fake. She has fake flowers that are so old and dusty that they look dead. These were removed, too. We replaced her twenty-five year old outdoor furniture set with a really nice oversized slate table and matching chairs. Put up bird feeders and invited the birds into the yard. These were relatively easy changes to accomplish.

I think it will get harder from here. It is an interesting dynamic, how we own the house that my mother lives in. Can’t say that I enjoy it much (the dynamic, it is). We have very, very different tastes. I mean, I can’t just ask her to, say, take that bunny picture down? Tell her it is tacky and ugly and useless? (Though I can imagine some ironic uses for the frame.) Can I redo the basement to create a useful and organized crafty area? What is it going to be like when the architect shows up for the inevitable remodeling? There is one thing that I will tackle this weekend: I will be removing a very offensive item from the kitchen. So offensive that I won’t even show a picture of it. But the more we go out to the house and the more we might have people visit, the greater the need to remove said offensive art NOW.

Right now, we are really focusing on the outdoors, and saving bunny pictures and clothed bottles and offensive art for rainy days. So we go outside. Nicole mows the lawn and plants hostas and day lilies and tomatoes and weeds around them all and waters plants and walks around with hedge clippers and a developing green thumb. I drag her to Home Depot to make her buy me ornamental flowers and bird feeders and bird accessories. You know, things with instant gratification. I put up the bird feeder and literally wait for the birds to show up. I also harass her about plating hydrangea bushes, apples trees and creating a garden plot. I want aisles and aisles of fresh veggies, people. And tomorrow, the fence man cometh, to telleth how much it will cost to fence in the entire property. I am bracing myself.

The thing is, this is our vacation house now. This is where we will be going to get away from the city. The girls LOVE it. Passionately. They wake up there and immediately start demanding to go “Side.” (outside, for those of you who don’t speak toddler). Madeline does not stop smiling when we are there. And Avery only stops smiling long enough to ask or more toys. They have little pools and water tables (not the torture kind) and sand tables and lots of outdoor toys. Nicole and I both have several really good friends in a five-mile radius, so we get to see loved ones. I can do laundry in a real laundry room, without having the girls running around and licking lint off the floor, like they do in the city. Shop in a grocery store that has aisles that more than one person can fit down. Hear birds sing. Sit on the front porch and read after the girls go to bed. This may be old-hat for those of you who live in the burbs already, but it is Heaven for me.

We just came back from Sesame Place. I’ll post about that in a couple of days.

Eight Things, Because Who Has Time For Listing Ten?

I was tagged
and this seemed like a nice and easy post-vacation post. If you feel like doing it, consider yourself tagged:

8 Things I'm looking forward to:

1. Sesame Place. But I reserve the right to change my mind about this if the girls turn out to be terrified by large fuzzy, three-dimensional characters and make our three days in Sesame Land a living hell.
2. The upcoming release of Melissa Gilbert’s biography. Salacious behind-the-scenes details about Little House on the Prairie! Bring it on! Also looking forward to working my way through a stack of summer reading books, including a great book about the Donner Party.
3. Julie and Christi’s wedding celebration in August.
4. Sitting in Jenni’s glider this summer and enjoying my friend Corrie’s amazingly landscaped backyard.
5. The fall. Yes, I know it is barely summer, but I love the fall. I could be a professional leaf-peeper and sweater-wearer and chowder-eater.
6. Someday having a house with a porch and porch swing; a library with a library ladder and a leather couch; a fireplace; full-grown trees in the yard and an apple tree; a garden; a craft room; a butler’s pantry; a white marble-topped kitchen table; a ridiculous amount of hydrangeas in various colors; a large tub or maybe one of those Japanese soaking tubs; and a separate room just for Nicole and her organized chaos. Not too much, right? Oh, and room on the porch for a table so we can have dinners outside.
7. Lots of mini trips this summer to Long Island, Massachusetts and Beyond.
8. Taking a class this fall at The New School or NYU in photography, specifically in understanding exposure and aperture.


8 Things I did yesterday:

1. Met Stephanie and Carey and the Trio at the Orlando airport. It was like meeting celebrities! I know so much about their lives (and vice versa) but we have never met. I was hoping Steph, the pediatrician, could do the girls’ two-year exam and Carey, the therapist, could talk e down from my flying jitters, but there wasn’t enough time, alas.
2. Flew from Florida back to New York City, managing to cry on the plane only once (take-off) and limiting my bone-crushing hand-holding sessions with Nicole to three times (all turbulence and weird noise-related).
3. Panicked when I thought the airline lost our luggage, but then calmed down when I realized that the luggage was upside down and I didn’t recognize it, even after about twelve rounds around the luggage belt.
4. Spent nearly two hours after landing working our way back to the city. Damn city traffic and unnecessary congestion.
5. Unpacked all of our bags and put away the luggage within 45 minutes of retuning home.
6. Organized the napkin/placemat/napkin ring drawer. Its chaos has been driving me crazy.
7. Ordered in dinner and got the girls to bed on time.
8. Went to the food store and bought milk, raspberries, blueberries, lemon-lime seltzer and ice cream. (It is surprisingly hard to think of eight remotely interesting things I accomplish in a day.)


8 Things I would like to do:

1. Take a National Park road trip. I visited many of them when I was younger and unappreciative.
2. Have some sort of encounter with an elephant. I just decided this last week. I don’t know what sort of encounter, but I am thinking either a one-on-one Zoo met-and-greet (which, I learned, some zoos let you pay to do!) or on an African safari. The first option will set me back about $50 and the second about 20K.
3. Become a really, really, really good photographer. I know I need to get a lot better before Nicole sanctions the purchase of this amazing camera. And by “a lot better” I mean borderline Annie Leibowitz, with a side of Ansel Adams and a dash of Helmut Newton.
4. Learn to appreciate what I have; forget about the past and its toxic people/events and focus more on the moment. Because in this moment, I am perfectly happy. Probably won’t be too happy when we are taking the girls to their two year check-up later in the driving rain.
5. Run a marathon. In theory, it seems possible, but every time I am in a car and on a stretch that goes for 26 miles, I think there is NO way a human can run this far without dying. But then, when I run a mile and think, all I have to do is do this 25 more times, it seems possible indeed.
6. Conquer my ridiculous fear of flying, if only to not pass it on to my girls. I think Nicole will lose her mind if she has to talk the three of us down from hyperventilating when on planes.
7. I would be remiss to not include publish a book. To that end, I need to learn to not write so autobiographically. Everything I write is way too close-to-home, which, I guess, is the purpose of a blog, but not my book. I wonder what I am waiting for?
8. This is completely random, but I would love a makeover. One of those TV kinds, where you get a haircut and color and makeup and trendy clothes. I apply eye shadow with my pointer finger, people. I need help.

8 Shows I watch. Actually, make that 5:

1. Top Chef
2. News
3. Survivor
4. The Office
5. Mad Men


Pictured above, the Trio and the my girls! Also pictured, an elephant. Behold its regal beauty and imagine me hanging with one some day. Also pictured, the little ladies at my in-law's in Florida. Just because they are SO cute, even when they aren't facing me!

Entering the So-Called Terrible Two's with New Skills, Old Traditions

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•A plane disappears of the coast of Brazil? Not comforting. I am not a happy flyer to begin with, so adding missing jumbo jet stories all over the news before we make our return flight makes me a little extra nervous. Our flight down was great and I was okay on it. The girls had their own seats, and what a difference that makes. Both slept for a good chunk of the flight: Madeline for about 45 minutes and Avery for over an hour, which is par for the course for them on a plane. Not their regular two-and-a-half to three-hour napfest but I will take what I can get at 36,000 feet.

• When I say our flight down was great, I mean the logistics of it, with us having four seats to spread out in, even though the girls spent a chunk of time on our laps. It was actually a rough descent into Orlando, which was not very great at all. It didn’t help matters that we were on a small plane (four-seats across wide) so every little bump in the air road, we felt. We have a bigger plane on the way back so that makes me feel a teeny bit better.

• When I say I was okay on the flight, what I mean is I still had to touch the outside of the plane twice and I still had to avert my eyes from the cockpit, whose door, for some insane reason, is always open while we passengers are coming on so we can see just how complex it is to fly to plane, and I still had to accost the first flight attendant I saw and tell her that I don’t like to fly, as in: “I am not a happy flyer. Is it going to be turbulent? Because I don’t like that? Do you have any Zanax?” No, I didn’t really ask for Zanax but yes, in the face of fear, I become a blabbering idiot, and obviously don’t care who knows it. Nicole and I were sitting across the aisle from each other, with the girls in the window seats, and I had to hold her hand several times during take-off. I wonder what the other passengers think of that? The plane is all quiet during take-off and there I am, clutching her hand so tight, making a little bridge across the aisle, saying over and over again “Is that noise normal? Are we going to be ok?”

• After all that, we are in Florida, where it is sunny and warm and the weather has been just great and my desire to eat citrus has caused me to drink almost a half gallon of grapefruit juice already.

• The girls’ turned TWO yesterday, which is a fact and figure that I cannot believe to be true. All day I was doing the “Exactly two years ago right now, I was having a kidney sonogram while the babies were kept from me and locked away in the nursery” thing. Yes, I am still bitter that my childbirth experience included 12 hours of kidneys failing and heart rate dropping and blood pressure rising and peeing blood and no one knowing what was going on. Nothing like seeing a TEAM of doctors discussing a diagnosis at the foot or your bed, all in white coats, with their hands on hips, arms crossed at chest, little frowns, twirling pens and a lot of “well, maybe it could be…” and still not knowing. I remember thinking. “This is perfect. We finally get our long-awaited babies and I am going to die of some mystery illness and never get to raise them.” Perhaps I was a tad emotional, it being post-birth and all.

• The girls sleep in our room while we are here in Florida in their own pack and plays and Nicole insists that Madeline cried out at 12:34 a.m., which is when they were born (Madeline at 12:33 and Avery at 12:34). I remember it too, and looked at the look, which, without contacts in or glass on, did indeed look like 12:34. Strange.

• Because our children are obviously concerned with image and milestones, they decided to ring in the New Year Two by becoming little monsters. At a naptime yesterday, we heard more than the usual amount of giggling and laughter coming from their room. Nicole peeked in their room and saw both of them running around. Which means they learned to get out of their Pack and Plays. Nature always finds a way. We learned that in “Jurassic Park.” We did not expect this to happen so soon. So we went in their and put them back in and told them to show us how they climb out and Madeline did first, easily throwing her leg over the side and dragging the over foot with her and popping onto the ground. Horrifying. Life as we know if when we are away will never be the same! I am praying that they can’t do this in their cribs at home. It is way too soon for toddler beds.

• Just to show them who’s boss, we resettled them back into their individual cribs for their nap for the second time. Sure enough, in a few minutes, lots of giggling and laughing. We open the door to discover that Madeline has joined Avery in her crib. Trouble. I don’t like to point fingers, but Madeline is the ring leader here. That child requires little to no sleep, and she has finally proven just how far she will go to avoid a nap and ruin her sister’s.

• The girls are having an amazing time. Swimming in the lake. Playing in the yard. Swimming in the pool. Playing in the house. Playing in the sand. They are in paradise, and you can tell because Madeline has not stopped smiling since she got here.

• Guess who DIDN'T call to wish the girls a happy birthday? Actually, guess which TWO people didn't call to wish the girls a happy birthday? If you need clues, see secret blog.

• I just read a book called The Help and it was amazing. I am now reading something called A Reliable Wife, which is great too.

• Pictured above, then and now: The first picture was last night. I made them an icebox cake (because who can eat any other kind in 90 plus weather?) and Madeline did NOT like the candles, as you can clearly see from this picture. Avery loved the candles and tried to blow them out. Below is last year's birthday, pre-cake eating. Below that, the girls at the Sanford Zoo. And proof of Maddie's little devilish side: There she is, in Avery's crib during her unsanctioned nap-time visit. And in the last picture, little wet babies.