1m2aSandbox

Overheard yesterday:


Maddie: “It’s too cold to open our neighborhood pool in
May. I’m going to write to Congress and tell them to make it
a law that pools can’t open until June.” (Way to avail
yourself of our governmental system, baby. Due process, or
something, at its finest.)

Maddie’s school does an annual
talent show – something I distinctly do NOT remember from my
own childhood. Would I have jumped at the chance to get up and do
my thing, or would I have hesitated in fear? I honestly have no
idea.


But Maddie got up and did her thing.

My month-long marathon of rehearsals and
shows is finally over – show, closed; makeup case, put away.


Now to deal with the clean-up.

This is not my story, but it’s too
delicious not to tell. Pun intended.


Maddie’s friend Elise has historically disliked chocolate, to
the point that Elise’s friends will often choose a vanilla
cake for a birthday party so “Elise will want some
too.” This is not anything the girl has done to force her way
– it’s simply a measure of how much her friends like
her.


So when Elise asked for a chocolate bunny for Easter for the first
time, to call it huge would be an understatement. Both parents
checked in – yes, she really meant it. Rite of passage, or a
genuine taste change? Who could tell, and who cared. The bunny was
coming, and the subject of much discussion. Elise made it clear
that the bunny was hers – and ONLY hers – and she would
savor it slowly in her own time whilst it remained off-limits to
the rest of the household.

I’ve posted before about other mommy
blogs I really admire; I do enjoy reading other sites on a somewhat
regular basis, mostly just to remind myself that I’m not in
this crazy thing alone. Even words from a stranger can be
comforting when they echo my feelings.


But one site – target="_blank">Steady On, Mama – is not written by a
stranger. It’s written by my best friend Abby,
waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in New York. And I’m so thrilled
she’s started writing! She’s got an incredible talent
for saying what I’m thinking – only better. And now I
can finally keep up with her inner thoughts – and the issues
she wrestles with – along with all the other mommies out
there.


So check it out- I promise you won’t be disappointed.

For the first few years of the
girls’ lives, our only car was a 1995 Mazda with a tape deck
and hand-cranked windows. When we added a 2000 mini-van in 2009,
there was still a tape deck, and though the front windows were
powered, the back windows, alas, did not open at all.


So when we got our new car last August, the girls marveled at many
“new” technologies, like touch-screen navigation and
iPod-ready portals, but nothing excited them as much as the power
windows. They are entranced by the power at their fingertips, and
will endlessly roll the windows up and down; Cora is practically
dog-like in her love of hanging an arm or even foot out the window
whilst traveling.

Brian had to go out of town on a business
trip this week – at the last minute he headed to the
northwest early Tuesday morning, coming back last night. And
because I’ve been working so much recently, the girls have
gotten a tad used to Daddy being around.


So he was, ahem, missed.

Today is officially tax day, and to help
people celebrate (read: spend their anticipated returns) many
restaurants are offering discounts today.


I fully intend to take advantage of this.


You can Google "tax day restaurant discounts" to see what's around
you; href="http://eater.com/archives/2012/04/13/the-epic-national-tax-day-2012-dealfeed.php"
target="_blank">here is a partial list of nation-wide
stores. The two I took note of were the Maggie Moo's/Marble Slab
free scoop and the 15% off at P.F. Chang's.


I feel Chinese takeout coming on.

I’ve written before about the
afternoons Maddie and I have spent during one-on-one times at
Starbucks; we were looking for a place to rest and have a drink in
between events one day, and she quickly fell in love with the huge
leather chairs and almost-as-large cookies. She and Cora have been
having a rough time with my work schedule the past couple of weeks,
and so once a week I’ve carved out an afternoon to hit the
coffeehouse.


And let me tell you, it is absolute greatness.

As someone always looking to improve the
health of my general household, I’ve written a couple times
about candles. Several people have asked me why
“traditional” candles may not be the best option
– artificial fragrances, lead wicks, and paraffin, a
petroleum by-product, top the list of reasons – but
I’ve never really blogged about it in-depth.


I can tell you that my household uses beeswax or soy candles only,
and that we have no artificial air fresheners or even artificial
scents in the candles. If you’d like to know more about this,
read target="_blank">Keeper of the Home’s recent post
on href="http://www.keeperofthehome.org/2012/04/toxins-in-candles-sad-but-true.html"
target="_blank">using candles in the home; she links to
several more in-depth articles but in general does a great job
covering the topic.


Because they’re beautiful, but if they’re giving you
asthma, who needs them? Just read a bit and you decide.

Yesterday morning as Maddie and I walked
up to the school grounds, she spied a friend of hers coming up at
the same time. “Nathan!” she shouted joyfully and ran
towards him, throwing her arms around him in a fervent embrace.


To be fair, this is how all of Maddie’s girlfriends greet
each other: even though they’ve just seen each friend the day
before, they’ll scream a name, race towards the girl, and hug
her tightly for quite some time. If there’s still a distance
to walk after the meet-up, the two girls will hold hands for the
rest of the way.


You could see that Nathan was not quite down with the public
display of affection, and he smiled and said, “Ok, ok,
OK!” as she hugged him. But he did not break out of it. And
then as they walked the rest of the way together, Maddie firmly
holding his hand through the crosswalk, you could see
Nathan’s neck turn bright red, twin spots of flame lighting
up on his cheeks.


When they got across the street Nathan, still holding on, said
haltingly, “Maddie, why so huggy today?”


Which was as close as he came to complaining.


“No reason!” Maddie responded blissfully. And then
walked him the rest of the way to the door.

I started rehearsals for a show last week.
I don’t really do shows any more; I truly love being home
with the girls and between rehearsals and performances shows are a
big time commitment – not to mention a sacrifice to everyone
else around you who is picking up the slack for you. But a show
came up with a role I’ve always wanted to do and a relatively
low commitment time-wise, and Brian encouraged me to go for it.


I only rehearse for four hours a day – but those hours happen
to be from 7-11 p.m. So while I’m home for the girls most of
the time during the day, I leave right before bedtime, which is a
crucial snuggle/wind down time for both girls. And then
there’s the fact that I get home at midnight or later, and
get up at 5:30 to fix breakfasts, pack lunches, and start the next
day.


So I am tired.

Yesterday the girls tore through their
Easter baskets, cracking open eggs in a mad dash to discover all
the candy they’d gotten. What they found was that the Easter
bunny had shopped exclusively at Whole Foods – and so the
eggs were, um, a tad less exciting.


But listen, I have issue with turning Easter into Christmas Two
– baskets replacing stockings so that they’re bulging
with gifts rather than just a few chocolates, the Easter bunny
being the guy who gets the credit for all the good deeds, and so
on. On top of that, I’m supposed to serve my
food-dye-sensitive kid a basket of food dye (a.k.a. “the
stuff that makes her ADD”) and high-fructose-corn-syrup? I
don’t think so.

Cora’s got her pre-kindergarten
Easter party today, and I have to confess I’m nervous on a
few different levels.


One, today’s party signals the opening of the refined sugar
floodgates for the extended Easter holiday. Cora’s been
bringing home jelly beans all week, and tomorrow’s just going
to ratchet up the junk food quotient exponentially. And how do you
tell your child you’re going to throw away 70% of whatever
she gets?


In secret, of course.

Overheard recently:


Maddie walked out of a restaurant, saw a stray beer bottle cap
lying on the ground, and bent to pick it up.


At which point Cora came over and said:


“Trust me, Maddie, those do NOT smell good!”


Which disturbingly implies first-hand experience with the
subject.

Brian started a new job recently –
our choice, thankfully, and not a switch made due to a layoff
– and as is standard these days, we will spend the first
ninety days of his new employment without any work-provided health
insurance.


We are not, of course, living completely without health care
– we purchased 90-day private insurance to cover anything
major that will come up. But it is, essentially, major medical
coverage, which means no “hey I think I have strep
let’s pay a little office co-pay and find out” kind of
thing. Office visits, prescription refills, all these things are
off the table until a huge deductible is met – which
hopefully it won’t be.


So we are, in essence, living without day-to-day healthcare.


We prepared as best we could: we got 90-day refills on our daily
prescriptions, made sure all our well-visits were up-to-date, that
sort of thing. So we’ve done what we can, and are generally a
healthy family and hoping we cruise through those first 90 days
relatively uneventfully.


But it does change the way we look at things.

Yesterday Maddie had a neighborhood friend
over to play in the back yard for a bit after school. Though she
lives on our street, the little girl is a grade ahead of Maddie and
plays a ton of sports after school, so we haven’t seen her
much this year.


When she walked through our back gate yesterday, I saw a shy and
gawky second grader.


“Hey, Anna, how are you?” I smiled at her from my pile
of weeds.


“Good,” she said, looking around.


Silence.

Maddie has been asking for a while to take
ice-skating lessons; she loves going for a free-skate with the
family, and did a mini-camp last year for a few days, learning how
to fall safely, basically. We’ve had less success with
roller-skating, though, so when she asked me if she could have a
pair of roller skates for cruising around the neighborhood I had to
think about it.


First, of course, we had to find a way to get the skates. Maddie
and I talked about different things we could work on in her life to
earn a pair of skates, and we settled on her relationship with her
sister. Since February, Maddie’s been working hard on showing
honor to her sister, putting her first, deferring to her when
there’s a choice to be made. I’m not saying it’s
perfect but she’s shown a lot of improvement just in how well
she listens to her little sister.

Maddie’s been enamoured of baseball
ever since she saw her cousin play a high school game about a month
ago; I found a bat, glove, and ball set a couple weeks later at a
consignment sale and she’s been “playing” almost
every day since then.


And when I say “playing”, I mean she is the ONLY
batter, and the grown-up pitches while Cora video-tapes and cheers
Maddie on.


So when Maddie begs to play baseball in the fall, I have to pause
and say, “Do you REALLY want to play the game? Or just bat
for a couple hours?” To which she will earnestly reply,
“Just bat! Can you do that?”

About six weeks ago I placed a big order with Mountain Rose Herbs, gathering a fair amount of dried herbs for various lotions and salves I was making for the family. One of the herbs I needed was dried lavender buds, so I ordered a bag. And since the medium-sized bag is always, like, a quarter more than the small-sized bag, I upsized it. A week later, I realized just how big a medium bag of lavender buds really is.

I’ve been casting around trying to find some uses for the dried lavender buds before they completely lose their smell and potency; I know I have around six months, but still, I want to make them count and get my quarter’s worth. I’m that cheap.

At the same time, I was wrestling with Cora having trouble getting to sleep at night – she kept complaining of growing pains. And as I searched for ways to help her out that didn’t automatically involve a shot glass of ibuprofen, someone mentioned to me the idea of hot packs for the little legs.

And I figured out how to kill two birds with one stone’s weight of lavender buds. I made sock buddies.

Last night Cora held up her smallest
stuffed panda, about two inches tall and said:


“Mom, you know my tiny tiny panda, ‘Tiny Tiny
Panda’? Well, do you know why Tiny Tiny Panda’s name is
‘Tiny Tiny Panda’? It’s because he’s VERY
tiny and is a panda. And VERY is worth two
‘tinys’.”


Thanks for clearing that up.

Every “staycation” Brian and I
try to come up with new things for the girls to try: a day-trip
somewhere new, seeing a sport live for the first time, that sort of
thing. And the girls have been asking about camping out for a while
now – one of Maddie’s best friends is a regular camper,
heading out on weekends in either a pull-along camper or a tent. So
we figured that this spring break was an ideal time for us to try
camping out – in the back yard.


And when I say “us”, I mean everyone but me.


Listen, I love me some nature. I could sit outside and watch the
crickets hop all day. I’ll go on nature walks for hours,
looking up animals in my bird books or counting the petals on a
flower to figure out its classification.


But at the end of the day, it’s time to go inside and lie
down on a nice, comfy mattress.

Yesterday we had some much-needed rain in
our area; thunderstorms all night and morning, giving the plants
the water they need but keeping me and Cora inside on one of our
precious few Cora and Mommy days.


But when the day is rainy outside, that just means it’s the
perfect day for stirring something up inside.


We did plenty of baking yesterday: we made a double batch of the
girls’ favorite (and very healthy) breakfast cookies; a batch
of raspberry granola bars; and a batch of dark chocolate, low-sugar
granola bars (those are mine, so keep your mitts off). We also
tested an extremely cool href="http://www.keeperofthehome.org/2012/03/the-battle-for-a-no-fail-nourishing-popover.html"
target="_blank">wheat-free popover recipe that we both
loved.


But by far the best recipe of the day was the recipe for Goo.