1m2aSandbox

Recently I spent a few quiet moments downstairs one weekend afternoon, blissfully working away at getting a headstart on the upcoming week. Daddy was taking a well-earned nap, and as I plowed through the menu planning and grocery list, I gradually became aware that I hadn’t heard from the girls for a while.

At all.

Not one peep. Or outraged scream.

So I went upstairs to investigate, and found Cora’s door closed. Peaceful murmurs could be heard behind it, but since I was there I decided to look further. I knocked on Cora’s door and opened it.

Cora’s had a lot of milestones recently, and you can see one of the results almost constantly: she’s bursting at the seams with pride, and in her head is practically a different person that she was two weeks ago. We’ve joked that relatives won’t recognize Cora any more, and that she’s so grown up that there’s nothing left for her body to do now until high school. As we drove home from church the other day, talking in this vein, I heard Maddie say to herself quietly, “I haven’t done anything at all recently. I’m not any bigger in anything.”

I started to think about this, going back over the last few weeks, and realized that while she may not have had any spectacular fireworks moments in her life recently, Maddie is indeed a different person than she has been.

It seems the girls are moving ever-faster towards adulthood; whereas they used to give me some breathing room between developmental or physical milestones, now we seem to be knocking one down before the last one’s even in our rearview mirror.

Cora, for one thing, with her two front teeth last week. I started the week with a sweet baby girl, a smile full of milky baby teeth, and ended the week staring at a little girl with a crooked, gap-toothed grin. Losing two teeth in a row has given Cora’s face a completely different look, and even as I enjoy the sweetness of her soft lisp now, I know it’s simply a sign that she’s growing up. Friday afternoon I kept staring bemusedly at her sweet smile, thinking of how much she’d accomplished in one week.

But Cora decided she wasn’t done – and finished off the week by learning, once and for all, how to ride without training wheels.

Last week the girls played an elaborate game over several days, involving a trip around the world. Cora was a girl and Maddie was her cat, and they packed a car and went for a global drive. Included in the car was a very comfy carrier/bed for the cat, copious snacks, a reading corner in the back seat (apparently the cat was going to take a shift driving so the girl could read), and some changes of clothing.

And a first-aid kit.

At first I didn’t realize what was in the shoe box they’d packed in the “rear window” of the car, until it came time to finally break the game down and put everything away. When I grabbed the box I said, “What’s this?”

Maddie:

Yesterday morning was a very hard morning for getting to school, wasn’t it? You decided to walk, and when Cora opted to ride her scooter and you realized Cora would be (gasp!) ahead of you, well, you didn’t like that. You took off running, trying – and succeeding, for a block – to be even with/ahead of Cora, even as she tried her hardest to get out in front for once. When I saw you running so hard ahead of your sister, after you’d just said your legs were too tired to ride a bike, my heart broke a little bit. It broke for Cora, certainly, who looks up to you so much, and feels the weight of being the youngest in the family – which means she’s never as fast as you, never knows as much math, never reads books as big as yours – and who just wanted to be first down the path to school. For once. Every other time she’s ridden her scooter, she’s had to ride behind you on your bike – and be reminded once again that she can’t ride a bike, can’t keep up with you. Even if she starts out first on the sidewalk, you come up behind her, ringing your bell and saying, “Excuse me, Cora, you’re going too slow.” Today was Cora’s chance to be the leader, to know what it feels like to have some quiet time and get to the stop sign first, and when I saw you press insistently ahead of her in the alley I felt so bad for Cora.

But my heart also broke a bit for you, to see you make that choice –or, perhaps, to not even make a choice at all, and simply think “I can go fast so I will.” In which case you didn’t consider your sister at all. When I saw you do that, I became angry – angry that my two girls were going to have a rough start to the day, angry that this choice you’d made would define the rest of the trip to school, angry that there was no consideration for your sister in your choices.

Maddie and Cora absolutely love putting together long’, involved games that are played out in the house over a several-day time period. Whether it’s an elaborate, four-act show or a long, detailed mystery to be solved by the Butterfly Woman and Whisker Girl spies, the games often involve several rooms in the house, multiple costumes/disguises, and a proliferation of props.

A week ago the girls spent a good afternoon putting together their latest game – Pioneers. In our library they built a covered wagon like no other I’ve seen. There was a baby doll cradle and dolly – that’s Baby, who’s just been born but needs to travel with the family anyway, because Pa says it’s time to move. They had pillows standing up to outline the wagon, with two chairs towards the front as the bench to sit on; a freestanding drawer as their storage/kitchen table; and the love seat as the back end of the wagon, padded down with blankets so the girls could “sleep on the end of the wagon and see the stars”.

I teach a few different things – ballet, musical theatre dance, acting, pilates, and improv. Improvisation, or learning how to make up funny scenes on the spot, is one of my favorite classes, and whenever the girls come along while I teach, they watch and listen and ask lots of questions.

Since improv is a passion of mine, I don’t give the girls the “short answer”, but take the time to really explain the rules of comedy, teach them comic timing, and describe some of the great comedy scenes out there. Brian’s showed the girls Abbot and Costello’s original “Who’s on First”, and we’ve taught them a few of the best Saturday Night Live and Monty Python sketches (some censored, of course.)

I do believe Cora’s one of the few six-year-olds out there who knows the Land Shark/Candygram sketch from Saturday Night Live.

Dear Maddie:

Life’s gotten a bit more demanding on you this year; now that you’re in third grade, you’re responsible for a lot more of your daily world, like making sure your ballet shoes are in your dance bag twice a week, or being more independent with your allowance.

Or being in charge of packing your school bag every day.

Yesterday you started to pack your back pack for the day: daily folder, snack, water bottle, lunch bag, and a good book to read in independent study time. As you went to load your bag, you discovered the book you’d left in there over the weekend. “Oh, this is where I left it! It’s such a good book!” you said, and promptly opened it and read a chapter.

Sunday marked another milestone for Cora: she began receiving allowance. Maddie’s been quietly getting it for two years now, and with Cora in first grade it was time to give her more responsibility.

So I sat down with the girls and explained how the system works here. They each get a dollar a week, which we give them at the first of the month and calculate by Sundays. With five Sundays in September, they got five dollars for the month.

You should have seen Cora’s eyes pop out of her head at all the bounty.