1m2aSandbox

Bear with me as I give you the background:

Exhibit A: Tuesday afternoon Cora came home from school with a new library book. When Maddie saw the book she exclaimed, “Oh, I saw that book at the library! I REALLY want to read it! Can I please borrow it?”

Seeing Cora’s mutinous look, I hastily spoke up. “Maddie, this is a book Cora checked out and she will get to read it first. Please do not read the book or try to look at it until Cora’s had a chance to read the whole thing, ok?”

Maddie agreed.

Wednesday, as I’ve mentioned before, is officially Mommy Day: I teach Monday and Tuesdays after school through bedtime, so Wednesday is the first chance the girls get to come home from school and hang with Mommy for the rest of the day. We keep the schedule clear – no play dates, no appointments – so we can really relax and hang out together all afternoon.

A couple weeks ago Cora was having a hard time getting back into the school groove post-Christmas-break, and I knew she was desperately looking forward to Wednesday. How do I know? Because she told me so on Monday morning. While running errands that Monday, I came across a yummy cashmere sweater on clearance at the outlet mall, and bought it using a gift card Cora had given me for Christmas. (This is getting somewhere, I promise).

Naomi went back to New York early yesterday morning, and Maddie is a bit bereft. The flight out was in the wee hours so Maddie and Naomi said their goodbyes the night before and I woke up at 5 to get Naomi and Ingrid to the airport. But when I got home, just as the sun started graying the sky, I heard a rustling in Maddie’s room and came to find her wide awake, tossing and turning.

“She’s gone, isn’t she?” Maddie asked quietly. I nodded and snuggled into bed with her.

“I woke up earlier and ran downstairs to see if I could catch her, but she was already gone. And then I couldn’t get back to sleep,” Maddie said. Her eyes were dry, but I could see sorrow there.

So yes, the visit went incredibly well. From the first fierce embrace at the airport to a belated birthday party for Naomi on Saturday night, the girls slid smoothly along, instantaneously back in their friendship of five years ago.

When they were two years old.

Today is a red-letter day in our household. Today, Maddie’s best friend from New York, Naomi, is coming to visit.

That’s right.

If you’ve been with me that long, you’ll remember that for the first couple years of Maddie’s life, she and Naomi were pretty inseparable. They played together every. Single. Day. Whether on the playground or in an apartment, the two saw each other daily and were fast friends.

We moved in January of 2008 and the girls haven’t seen each other since. They don’t even speak on the phone much – just once or twice a year. So to make this clear, Maddie has not seen Naomi in FIVE YEARS.

Cora has a love of music, which is hardly a surprise in this family. Her two big requests for Christmas were a big giant cheetah (don’t ask, and yes, she got it) and an iPod touch.

Yes, she got it. Don’t judge.

We found an 8gb refurbished one for a pretty great deal, so Santa came through. But what I didn’t realize was that since it was “official” and from the store, it also came with the charger and the white ear buds.

The ear buds would not be a big deal, but I’m Over-Protective Mommy and I really really don’t want those tender ears to have music shoved WAAAAAAAAAAAY down in there. We put a volume control lock on the girls’ iPods, but I just started letting Maddie use ear buds this year, and then with the music on QUIET. Otherwise, she and Cora have been using the more traditional foam earphones that sit a little further out. And these particular headphones are for kids, so there’s a limit as to how many decibels it can reach anyway.

A couple months ago Cora experienced some “dire crisis” that sent her into a meltdown one fine afternoon. She’d asked for a couple holiday cookies and I’d said yes without checking our stash; a quick look into the cookie jar revealed only one cookie left. One.

“But Maddie had two of these cookies yesterday! I want two cookies!” Cora wailed, and burst into tears.

I stared at my daughter, a puddled mass of sobs on the floor, not trying to manipulate me into magically finding a second cookie – just unable to move past the fact that there was only one cookie to be had.

Now, in the past, I would have handled the situation like this:

Over the holidays I loosened my nutritional hold on my household quite a bit, and allowed more than a modicum of sugar to course through my children’s veins. I do love to bake, and don’t see how I can fill the house with goodies and then not allow the girls reasonably free rein with the cookie jar; I worry it’ll set them up to see the sweets as something forbidden and oh-so-desirable.

Likewise, as candy comes into the house from Christmas parties and gifts from friends, I can’t simply take the twenty cabillion candy canes and dump them in the trash. Ok, if I’m being truthful, more than a small amount of store candy DID end up in the trash, but my girls were pretty free to consume whatever they brought in the house – after checking with a grown-up, of course. And Maddie’s big request from Santa? A gumball machine filled with jelly beans.

I know.

Sunday afternoon Maddie came into our home office and plopped down in Brian’s chair as I did some work on my computer. She sat silently for a few moments, contemplatively spinning in his wheelie chair before speaking.

“You know, Mommy, you’re a pretty decent writer,” she finally said.

“Well, thank you,” I replied cautiously.

“I bet you could write a whole book if you wanted to,” she continued.

“Maybe, hon – thanks for the confidence!” I replied. More cautiously.

“I was thinking,” she said, finally swiveling around to face me, “you could write a book about me and Cora – our lives, the funny stuff we say, things you notice about us. Because honestly, we’re pretty funny and I think a lot of people would want to read about us.”

I stared at her. Had she been surfing the web and come across my blog?

I know, I know – it’s mid-January and I’m talking about gifts from three weeks ago. But as you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been a bit, well, absent these past couple weeks – partly taking family time, and partly dealing with household sickness and me being simply too tired or preoccupied to write about said household illness.

So I’ve still got a few things to say about the holidays. And if it makes you feel any better, it’s not just cyber-world where I’m slacking: I still haven’t put my Christmas decorations away.

Baby steps.