1m2aSandbox

In my last post, I shared the rules my family put together for our first ever Independence Day – a day when the girls got to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, but had to be totally independent. They had to feed themselves, clean up after themselves, and if they wanted to go somewhere they had to get there under their own power and spend their own money.

So this past Monday we had our Independence Day, and let me tell you, it was a glorious thing.

First off, our top rule: no waking Mommy and Daddy. Unless the house was on fire.

When we finally stumbled downstairs at 9 a.m. (NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING!) we found the girls sitting on the couch watching a movie and eating candy. “Have you had breakfast?” I asked.

“No,” Maddie replied, “We wanted bagels and we knew we couldn’t use the sharp knives to cut them so we waited for you.”

Apparently Maddie woke her sister at 7 a.m. – couldn’t wait any longer – and they got down to business right away, snacking and watching Cyberchase for about an hour before picking out a movie.

But did you catch the part where they didn’t wake us up? It was beautiful.

Several months ago I read about a family that periodically does and Independence Day: one day with no restrictions and no help. Eat what you want when you want, but make your own meal, get out your own bike, solve your own fight with your sister. We were intrigued with this idea and discussed it as a family, and decided to have our own Independence Day. We looked for a date on the calendar with no commitments and settled on Memorial Day.

So for the past few months Maddie and Cora have been planning and plotting their Independence Day with all the care and precision of a military maneuver. They’ve been saving up money so they could bike to the store and buy the BIG boxes of candy Mommy never lets them buy. They’ve negotiated a complex system for determining who gets to pick each movie during the day, and worked out who will spread the peanut butter and who’s in charge of the jelly while making lunches.

They were ready.

As Memorial Day grew near, I realized I may need to spell out a few ground rules when I overheard Cora enthusing about all the friends she was going to have over. Ahem.

So Sunday night I printed out our Independence Day rules and posted them on the wall where we hang all important family communications. Here they are, in all their glory:

Dear Cora:

Today is your birthday, sweet girl. Can you believe it? Seven years old! We spent all weekend celebrating your birthday in one seemingly endless fantasia: your oldest friend came in from out of town to surprise you Saturday morning and spend the whole weekend with you; we had a fun party riding horses on Saturday afternoon; and celebrated with family Sunday night. Plus chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, favorite lunches, and more – it’s been a looong weekend honoring you in our lives.

So in some ways the whole Age Seven thing seems old news; but in other ways – in Mommy Time – it’s still startling and a teensy bit unwelcome.

Just keeping it real here.

The past few weeks I’ve been despairing of Maddie’s selfish attitude; she’s astonishingly mean to her sister, and when she’s given two pieces of candy, the first words out of her mouth are usually, “And I am NOT sharing this with Cora, so don’t ask!”

I pray nightly for her heart to be changed: that she will think first of others, then herself. I’m not trying to raise a martyr, just someone who looks to serve others – and finds that joy in serving. I don’t think Maddie’s particularly bad or horrible; I think this is a phase, and I’m trying hard not to correct the actions, but the heart behind it. Sometimes, though, it’s hard going, and I feel like I’m speaking to deaf ears.

But then sometimes, something happens to show me that my girl is listening.

A few days ago we were walking to school, chatting about the upcoming day, when Maddie brought up the subject of recess.

Li’l Bit, this is a tough time for you right now.

You, my friend, have such a big heart. And as we’ve talked about – a LOT – recently, Big Hearts tend to have Big Feelings. And sometimes those Big Feelings are hard to control.

Which means you’ve spilled more than your fair share of tears these past few weeks.

Here’s what happens: you get cranked up about something – Maddie not wearing the correct headphones, or my not remembering that you’d already cleaned the litter box – and then have a really hard time getting around it. And you feel like no one’s listening to you, and you get angrier and angrier and more and more frustrated, and you lash out. Like, physically, with your feet, or screaming, with your voice.

Yesterday morning I headed to my girls’ school for a parent-teacher conference. As I turned out of my alley, I noticed an unmarked police car going past me. When I got to the school I found a squad car in front of the door, and when I buzzed the front desk from the remote-feed camera at the door entrance, the receptionist politely told me she could not let me in at the time, and I should come back later. I figured it was a lockdown drill and left; the school practices going into lockdown mode a few times a year.

Once at home I easily did the conference by phone and hung up twenty minutes later. A couple minutes after that, a friend called and said, “The school is still on lockdown, which is weird, and there’s a helicopter circling overhead. Have you seen that?”

I ran to the window, and sure enough, there was the copter circling right over the school. As I watched out the window I saw two more squad cars go past, and I realized: this was not a drill. And I felt myself start to lose it.

Every year I kvetch about the school talent show, and every year I cry during it.

So just deal with it.

This year has been particularly stressful to me: the music teacher told students they were allowed to be in three different acts at the most, which Cora took to mean “You should really do three acts.” I would not care so much, except for the fact that Cora doesn’t really like to, how should I put this, rehearse.

Which gives me a great deal of agita and just might put me in an early grave.

We had a busy weekend with our new family business opening up Saturday morning at a farmers’ market, and while both girls had been a bit crabby about the earliness of the starting hour, it was nothing a little donut-for-breakfast couldn’t fix. By the time we’d gotten set up and ready for business, Maddie and Cora had kicked into Work Mode and were ready to go.

Ish.

We had a hard week here last week: we had to say farewell to a beloved family pet on Friday, as well as face the first anniversary of the death of a very dear friend of mine and Brian’s. Friday night Brian and I did a concert we’ve been working on for almost a year, and at the end of the evening we were exhausted. I looked at the girls, running and happy with friends when just a couple hours before they’d been sobbing about our pet, and knew that Saturday was going to be hard.

So I cancelled the weekend. All of it.

Every year for Christmas, my girls get “experience” gifts from their grandparents: tickets to a few shows each year, accompanied by the family, of course. These shows are always children’s shows, and usually a musical written out of an existing book, such as Fancy Nancy or Martha Speaks or something like that. We absolutely love going to the shows, and the girls think that seeing the book come to life is incredibly cool.

This weekend, we had tickets to go see “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”. It’s been a favorite at our house, because it’s so darn relatable: Alexander starts off his day by waking up with gum in his hair and then accidentally stepping on a skateboard, and the day goes downhill from there. You can practically see the black cloud hanging over Alexander as the day goes on, and his mood gets fouler and fouler. As little pebbles are thrown at Alexander – no dessert in lunch, a teacher who doesn’t like his drawing of an invisible castle – those pebbles become an avalanche until all he can do is go to bed and hope that the next day will be better.

We’re coming up on that yearly event when the household goes into a panic and people are frantically rushing around, sorting through songs, debating dance costumes, and arguing with friends over lyric distribution.

Yes, it’s time for the annual school talent show.

We did a lot of fun things over spring break, and spent as much time as was humanly possible outside and being active. We did little hikes, and had several day-long playdates at local parks, and practically spent the entire weekend outdoors on the farm.

But my favorite outdoor time was our Big Bike Ride.

We’ve got a lot of great jogging paths right near our house, and you can get on one and stay on it for miles without having to cross a street or deal with cars. So one day we decided to pack some snacks, get on the bike, and ride to a favorite park.

A few miles away.

There’s an article circulating the internet about one Mom’s version of Independence Day: a few times a year, her family has a day where EVERYONE does EVERYTHING for him or herself.

This is very attractive to me.

This mom started her tradition – now something they do a few times a year, for several years and counting – when she realized that all the ways she serves her children may also be holding them back from natural independence. Shoe tying, water fetching, late-homework-bringing, all the things we do because we want our kids to have a good life, can sometimes be what keeps them from figuring stuff out for themselves.

We try to eat healthy in our house. We definitely don’t eat enough vegetables, but we’re working on it. And the girls understand that I’m happy to let them have a cookie – as long as it’s one we’ve made ourselves. We’re working on understanding that homemade junk food is way better than store-bought junk food (and I use the word “food” loosely in that case).

Sometimes it’s hard; sometimes I think I’m lecturing waaaay too much, or turning my kids into those weird children who will sneak out of the house on a Friday night just to have a Twinkie. And then chew a piece of gum when they come home to disguise their breath.

I worry about finding that balance between not making food SUCH a big deal – it’s just what we use for fuel, no more, no less – and making sure they understand the importance of what we put in our bodies. I worry that they’ll fear food, and become paralyzed in a 7-11 when they’re 16 years old and off with friends. I worry they’ll develop a Dorito habit and hide the bags as they come in the house.

In short, I think about this a lot.

Seriously? Who invented Daylight Savings Time, anyway?

I remember when we were first confronted with the whole DST “thing”, when our firstborn was a toddler. School wasn’t an issue, no real schedule to have to follow, but I remember that feeling of panic when I thought about Maddie being up one. More. Hour. Every night. Even though the clock said “TEN” her body would still be thinking “NINE”, and do you what that would mean?

She’d be awake. And unhappy. And wanting Mommy.

And Mommy? Would just be wanting that one PRECIOUS hour of non-kid time that had been stolen from her every evening.

It feels ridiculous to type “March 4” followed by the words “Snow Day” in the middle of Texas.

Yet here we are.

A small ice storm descended Sunday afternoon making the roads undriveable. And yes, you can laugh at Texas drivers all you want, but I spent twelve years in New York and the drive home for me Sunday afternoon, which should have taken half an hour, took two hours. Mostly because it was a highway full of drivers going ten miles an hour, trying to navigate a solid sheet of ice. Every so often I’d slide gently into the lane next to me, trying not to hit my brakes or cause a car near me to freak out. I passed a few cars that had clearly spun out, and one not-great accident. I arrived home safely, but it was luck as much as skill that got me there.

Cora’s been in a rotten, terrible, no-good, horrible mood.

Since, like, CHRISTMAS.

Over the past few weeks we’ve seen our sweet, happy girl turn into a weepy, crabby, snappy, angry little brat. Over, and over, and over again.

Cora will leave school and be monosyllabic. She won’t want to talk, walk sullenly home, and head straight for her candy jar. Then she’ll ask for something ridiculous, like a trip to the Build-A-Bear store, and when I say no she’ll storm upstairs and cry and sulk and yell at me when I darken her door for a good HOUR. Then she’ll pull through it, then be cuddly and sidling up to me and wanting lots of love.

Since moving to Texas six years ago, I’ve been very fortunate to find a small group of neighborhood friends to go through parenthood with me. In our neighborhood we have seven other families with children almost exactly Maddie and Cora’s ages; moms who tolerate my crunchiness and willingly watch my kids when I have a babysitting crisis; and dads who like to play rock music and video games as much as Brian does. This core group is very dear to me: the children are rock solid besties with my kids, and will never leave each other out, and I know my gal pals ALWAYS have my back.

Yes, we are all super close. And yet my children know they are not EVER allowed to get into a car with one of those dads unless there’s someone else in the car, too.

As the weather warms up, this family spends as much time as we possibly can out-of-doors. We’ll go for bike rides; we’ll play in the park – for HOURS; we’ll take books, snacks, and a blanket to our neighborhood pond and lie on the grass for hours reading books and feeding the ducks – really, we’ll do anything to simply hang out in the great outdoors.

With all this time spent outside comes a lot of great things – fresh air, vitamin D, lots of exercise, seeing our neighbors – and one bad thing: the ice cream truck. I swear, that guy waits until we leave the house, hiding around the corner, then fires up his tinkly little music and starts stalking us. EVERY SINGLE TIME we are outdoors we hear his music, and Cora always turns to me and says, “Mommy, PLEASE may we get an ice cream? PLEASE? Just this once?”

EVERY SINGLE TIME I have to say no to the kids – and not just because I want to. But I never bring money with me on our outings; why would I need to? So every single time, I promise Cora we’ll get ice cream the next time Mommy has money when the Ice Cream Guy is around.

Yesterday was that day.

Is there anything at all more emotional than a room filled with parents watching an elementary school talent show?

I swear, the sweetness just about killed me last night at our family talent show: little legs hanging from the piano bench, head earnestly bent over the keyboard; a father and son doing a comedy act, the boy staring adoringly the whole time at his father; children all night long swallowing their fears and clutching their violins and guitars and microphones as they mounted the steps and stood, trembling, in front of EVERYONE.

We survived another Valentines Day: an entire day of poor-quality candy given out with alarming frequency and absolutely no censorship whatsoever, along with a class party filled with cupcakes and ice cream sundaes and cookies and . . . you get the picture.

Every year we walk through the Sugar Minefield, and this year it claimed Maddie as its victim; her meltdown Friday afternoon was colossal. CoLOSSal. I thought we were going to have to cancel the dinner we had planned with a near-and-dear friend in from out of town. But she pulled herself together, and admitted she could tell she’d had too much sugar.

Progress, I think.

This year, though, in addition to the whole sugar overload, I saw the other frightening tightrope of Valentines Day for the first time: the whole girl-boy dynamic.

Sunday night I asked Cora what she’d like for lunch at school the next day, and she said, “Can you send an omelet with me?”

I know. So cool that my kid wants an omelet for lunch. BUT –

“The thing is,” I replied, “Omelets aren’t as good when they’re three hours old, and by the time you ate it for lunch it’d have been sitting in your bag for a while. It won’t be hot anymore.”

Cora looked at me wistfully. “Well, some of my friends’ moms drop off a hot lunch for them every day . . .”

Big eyes staring at me.

Yeah, I broke down and said “yes”.

The Olympics are on, and we are one of those families that watch a lot of it. For the first time, the girls are old enough to remember the last Olympics and have been looking forward to this for a few months now.

We pre-record everything so we can a) watch it back at our leisure; and b) skip over all the commercials and filler stuff. So we’re about a day behind, which is fine by me.

Don’t get me wrong –we don’t watch just the last two minutes of a race: we watched the qualifiers for the men’s snowboarding slopestyle before the opening ceremony had even happened, and we watched every bit of the finals as well. Poor Maddie had trouble sleeping one night, worrying about Sage and how he’d hold up, and if McMorris’ rib injury would keep him off the podium.

Over the weekend I got out a big trunk of stored toys: things the girls didn’t need on a daily basis any more, but still wanted to hold on to. Maddie had asked for a glimpse of some old stuffed animals, and I thought it would be fun for the girls to see some of their old favorites.

Within minutes of my dragging the trunk into the living room, we’d had a stuffed-animal explosion.

For the rest of the weekend, the girls had an elaborate game going on consisting of several shops/stores in a small town “somewhere”. Cora opened up a toy store, while Maddie opened up a doctor’s office and a pet shelter. Cora set up a cash register, arranged her stuffed animals attractively, and hung “open” and “closed” signs, while Maddie filled out adoption certificates for the shelter stuffed animals and hung out a “the doctor is in” sign when she was home.

In short, they had a great time.

I’ve recently launched a small business selling products I make myself, and it’s come out of something I’ve been doing for a while for my family and friends. The girls have gotten used to seeing me set myself up to make something, and think it’s pretty cool that enough people like it that someone will PAY for one of Mom’s creations.

Cora’s always been interested in helping out; she loves creating things and getting in there with her hands. And yesterday Maddie came up with a way to help out, too:

Maddie’s making a commercial.

Last night for our house was Superbowl Night – or, as my kids see, it, the One Night A Year They Get To Watch Commercials.

Some of them.

Yes, we still record the game and watch it live so we can pause and skip commercials. Do I think they’ve never heard of bad guys and fires and serial killers?

I hope not. But even if they have, I’m not going to sear more images in their brains. I already get enough late-night nightmare-induced visits to my room as it is.

Cora’s been down about her best friend being out of town for two whole weeks, and if there’s one thing that’s been just as consistent as Cora’s moping, it’s her sister’s kindness.

All week Maddie’s been solicitous towards Cora, putting up with Cora’s crabby moods and showering her little sister with attention. A couple days ago Maddie made a fake restaurant in the living room and “served” Cora her afternoon snack off a tablecloth, providing a menu from which to choose and everything. Maddie’s been patient in the morning when Cora’s surly and snapping as she contemplates another day without the bff, and truly I’m seeing Maddie rise to the occasion and live out the role of Big Sister like I’ve never seen before.

Cora’s best friend has taken a leave from school for a two-week vacation, and Cora is, in a word, bereft.

She left school on Friday, climbed into my arms, and burst into tears, having just said goodbye to her friend. Cora was able to put it out of her mind for the weekend, but when Monday morning came a thundercloud followed Cora around all morning. She stalked darkly into school, and if I’d thought a day at school would help I was wrong. When she came out she was barely talking.

Our family first went to see FROZEN over Thanksgiving break, and we’ve been huge fans ever since. Such big fans, in fact, that for the first time EVER we paid to see a movie a second time IN A FIRST-RUN THEATRE, over Christmas break. The girls have matching FROZEN shirts that say “Sisters Forever”; we’ve bought (and memorized) the soundtrack; and we’ve downloaded all the karaoke tracks so the girls can do their own performances.

We’re FROZEN fans.

So when the girls got gift cards to Target for Christmas, I wasn’t surprised that Cora wanted to spend hers on the FROZEN dolls. As we walked through the store a couple days before New Year’s eve, Cora was tense with anticipation to hunt down and find the sisters.

This week’s been a bit off with school being closed on Monday, so everything’s felt a little off-schedule. I worked as usual Monday evening, allergies notwithstanding, and both girls felt it was me working “extra”, sort of like working on the weekend.

Then on Tuesday Cora stayed home while Maddie went with me for the afternoon and evening, as she had a little class of her own at my school. So for four hours Maddie tagged along to coachings and classes, hanging out quietly, doing homework, eating dinner in the corner, and having a fair amount of Mommy Time while we drove from place to place.

Which meant that by Wednesday I was feeling a little empty in the Cora column. Wednesday afternoons, I usually take Maddie to ballet while my mom stays home with Cora, but yesterday I felt like Cora was in danger of becoming the “other kid” off in the corner all the time – the “also ran”. So I asked Mom to take Maddie to ballet and Cora and I had some one-on-one time.

Yesterday Maddie told me that she can’t wait until the weekend. Amused, I asked her, “What are you looking forward to doing over the weekend?”

Maddie sighed a deep sigh. “Oh, just resting, and hanging out in the clubhouse. I really need some down time.”

Yep, we’ve got our own clubhouse here. Also known as Gramma’s room.

My mom has a very sweet window seat in her room: a nice, wide window, with a large bench built-in, deep enough for two people to sit facing each other and wide enough for them to stretch out their legs. A few months ago the girls discovered this niche and how it turns into a fantastic sun-bathing spot in the afternoon, and promptly claimed it for themselves.

Cora has an insatiable love for all things artistic and crafty. She’s got a stack of things to do in her room at bedtime, including but not limited to: a rainbow loom set; an actual cross-stich (yes, she can do it all by herself); several beginning sewing kits; several sticker mosaic sets; a stack of notebooks, maze and puzzle books, and coloring books; and a full desk set, including scissors, tape, erasers, crayons, and more.

What she does not have is a desk.

Cora has a plastic lap desk that she uses for crafting in her bed. She’s also got a very nice dressing table with a big mirror, the counter of which will quickly become buried under cut up construction paper and stacks of homemade fans, which then precludes her using the storage of her dressing table.

So I’ve been looking for a desk for Cora for nearly a year now, but I had a few requirements:
1. It has to be used. I’m big on recycling/reusing whenever possible.
2. It has to be real wood, so I can re-finish it to match the rest of her room.
3. It has to fit into a very narrow, small space that’s the only available spot for a desk.
4. It has to be cheap. ‘Cause that’s how I roll.

It’s been a wild ride this week: Maddie’s had a severe case of hives come and go – and come again on Wednsday, only to leave again Wednesday night. She’s had horrible stomach cramps all week, throwing up Tuesday night and being hungry and wanting to eat, but feeling the pains intensify every time she put water in her stomach. As a result, she’d eaten nothing since Monday morning and could barely walk.

I’ve spent the week thinking the hives were a side effect of the flu shot, and going back and forth on the stomach thing: was it a virus? Was it part of the flu shot? If this was all a reaction to the flu shot, would next year’s flu shot be high risk? Should I have insisted on getting the exact flu shot I wanted, and not the one they had when they’d run out of the one I wanted?

By Thursday morning I’d worked myself into a fine case of Mommy Worry, with a nice helping of Mommy Guilt on the side. People are dying here in Texas of the flu – relatives of friends of mine – so the flu and the shot are no small topics of conversation around here.

Maddie came into our bedroom late Sunday night complaining of being itchy all over. Myself being sleepy all over, I told her to climb in bed with me and go back to sleep.

Monday morning she woke up looking like she had little bug bites across her trunk. Unsure as to whether or not it was bites or an allergic reaction, but not seeing anything severely wrong, I sent Maddie off to school with crossed fingers.

By the time Maddie came home after school, the poor girl had giant hives – I mean, a single hive four inches across – in her armpits, across her chest and back, down her legs, and starting onto her neck. Pretty certain by this time that it was a reaction of some kind rather than bites, but wanting to be sure, I took Maddie straight to my dermatologist to get an expert’s opinion.