1m2aSandbox

As we drove to our new home from the
airport a few weeks ago, I gawked out the window at our new
neighborhood, trying to figure out where “our” spots
would be. Driving past a Starbucks, I did a double take, unable to
believe what I’d seen. A few moments later, I was
breathlessly telling my 17-year-old niece that our neighborhood had
“a Starbucks with a DRIVE-THROUGH! How amazing is
that???” I swear, my niece looked at me with a mixture of
contempt and pity and said only, “I’ve seen it.
It’s not the only one.”

Cora’s been a pickier eater than
Maddie was, and I think part of it is that I simply haven’t
had the time and energy to devote to the whole Starting Solid Foods
thing that I did the first time around. Our lives have been in such
upheaval that I haven’t exactly been the picture of
consistency about her meals, if you know what I mean; she
hasn’t had homemade baby food for several weeks, and I keep
forgetting to introduce new foods every four or five days, but the
worst is that I sometimes just forget I’ve got to feed the
poor kid!

If I had the guts, here’s an ad
I’d be placing in the local paper this week:


“Single white female seeks female of any ethnicity for good
times. I like play dates, swinging, cooking up yummy treats, and
going for long walks. YOU must love to laugh and sing, and at least
tolerate Elmo. If we hit it off, age is not an issue.”

For those of you who can’t wait
until tomorrow night’s American Idol to catch a glimpse of
all the starlets of tomorrow belting their hearts out, I give you
– Madeleine.

Since we’re still in the midst of
remodeling our new kitchen, the family is one tiny step above
dining out for every meal. We’ve finally got a refrigerator
so we’re not limited to the aptly-named mini fridge
we’ve been borrowing, but everything else is still
make-shift: no dishes have been unpacked since cabinets are still
unfinished, so we live with paper plates and plastic cutlery; and
while we have a microwave, it’s on the second floor and we
eat on the first floor, so we’re constantly running up and
down the stairs during a meal to “cook”.


When we first arrived we were doing every meal out, but as the
weeks go on I’ve been trying to save some money and inject
some health back into our diet. Which means I’m buying
rotisserie-cooked chicken from the supermarket along with a few
pints of those over-salted sides like potato salad or baked beans.
Or I’ll snatch up a couple frozen lasagnas and slave away
over a hot microwave as they cook before divvying them up onto our
paper plates.

Since today is Valentine’s Day (a
made-up holiday if I ever saw one, and one Brian and I don’t
really celebrate but can’t avoid hearing about on all the
media) I’ve been thinking about hearing those three little
words, and how satisfying they are. Sure, getting them from your
spouse is great, but in a way it’s even better when an
unsolicited “I love you, Mommy” floats up from your
toddler.


This was one of the more awkward things Brian and I had to teach
Maddie – how and when to say, “I love you!” I
mean, she hears it all the time from us, and eventually came to
understand what it meant to her, but she wasn’t able to put
words to those feelings in her little chest without our help.

Maddie entered the “why” phase
a few months ago, but Brian swears she has gotten significantly
worse – er, more intense – over the past few weeks.
Thankfully we haven’t hit too many of those really difficult
“why” questions, like, “Why is the sky blue? Why
is Daddy a boy?” but even the ones we can answer are
exhausting.


I try hard to follow her “why” lines of questioning all
the way to a satisfactory end, but they’re often thrown in
with several other tasks simultaneously and I have to confess my
patience runs thin. When I’m trying to wrestle a screaming
Cora into her clothes for the day, discussing it calmly with Maddie
isn’t always at the top of my “fun” list.