1m2aSandbox

Warning: This article is all about poop.


So Maddie’s been constipated for about two weeks now.


Figured out the title yet?


Right around the time we went strawberry picking, we spent several
days out-of-doors for extended periods of time, in ninety-degree
heat. We all got a bit dehydrated, and pooping got a little, um,
harder.

For the past few months I’ve been
getting rather more frequent migraines- hence the sporadic missed
blogs here – and since I am after all a mother, I immediately
assumed I had a tumor and my children would grow up motherless.


Sure, I made an appointment to get my eyes checked, but it was just
a formality. The spontaneous vertigo, the motion sickness for no
apparent reason, the piercing headaches I haven’t had for
several years now – what else could it be?


Apparently, it’s my vision.

First birthdays are funny things. In some
cultures, it’s a huge party, a celebration of reaching a
milestone in an uncertain world. Other people throw lavish parties
to show their status; they’re saying, “Sure my
kid’s too young to appreciate that I’ve hired the Three
Tenors to sing at her birthday party. But it’s not really
about her anyway.”


As for me, I figure, the kid’s never going to remember it, so
let’s call a spade a spade and have a nice party to celebrate
with all our friends. Plenty of time for tots and goody bags
on subsequent birthdays, after all, and as long as Cora gets her
gifts and has a nice, relaxed day (with all the requisite photos to
prove it) then we’re all winners.


So for Cora’s birthday we went to the Arboretum for a nice
picnic lunch. Cora adores the arboretum, since it combines two of
her favorite things: nature, and the opportunity to literally
deflower nature. Yes, my kid loves to run up to a lovely bed of
impatiens and begin ripping away. Good times.

Dear Cora:


I’m having a hard time believing it’s been over a year
already since I last wrote you a letter; that letter I wrote before
you were born has been safely tucked inside your baby book for
almost thirteen months now, and at the risk of sounding like a
cliché, where has the time all gone?


On the other hand, I look back over your first year of life and
can’t believe it’s been ONLY a year. Job loss,
unemployment, selling a house, leaving New York, buying a house in
Texas: how can all of this happen in just a short twelve months? I
feel as if you’ve been with us forever, even as I still
continue to struggle to find my groove with you. Your Nana said at
your birthday party, “I bet you can’t imagine life
without her now, can you?” And I replied, “Well, I
actually can – and it involves a lot more sleep!”


Yes, my darling girl, if I have one complaint about you, it’s
the whole sleep thing. What’s the deal, kiddo?! You still
wake up whimpering a few times a night, and your attitude towards
naptime is way too insouciant. Can we work on that please?
I’d love to look back on this letter next year and say in
disbelief, “Cora wasn’t a good sleeper? I’d
totally forgotten that! She sleeps thirteen hours in a row
now!” I think it’s partly the separation anxiety
– you’ve got that thing down pat, and practice it
endlessly lest you lose your touch with it. So can we work on that,
too?


And thus endeth my complaint list. Now for the plus side:

Thursday night is usually leftovers in our
house; I do a decent amount of cooking the first few days of the
week, coast on Thursdays, and eat pizza on Fridays. And last
night’s leftovers included a great href="http://www.marthastewart.com/favorite-tortilla-and-black-bean-pie?autonomy_kw=tortilla%20and%20black%20bean%20pie&rsc=header_3"
target="_blank">Tortilla and Black-Bean Pie I made for
Tuesday, which held up so well for leftovers I thought I’d
pass the recipe on to you.


There are a few things I love about this recipe: first, it’s
vegetarian, and so is a good option to keep in your back pocket.
Second, it calls for ingredients I almost always have in my kitchen
-flour tortillas, a couple cans of black beans, a bag of frozen
corn. And if you’re like me and habitually make Tex-Mex
anyway, you’ll have those lying around as leftovers. I can
easily fudge and throw in that bit of black beans I’d already
cooked as a side two nights ago, or some such thing. Third on my
list of things I love about this recipe is that you can make it
ahead of time, leave it assembled in the fridge, and pop it in the
oven last-minute.


And finally and most importantly, the recipe’s kid-friendly.
Maddie, who hates corn, can fastidiously pick the kernels out of
her share, while Cora crams all the black beans in her mouth at
once. And what kid doesn’t like tortillas and cheese?
Maddie's happy when I mention the dish, simply because she is
going to eat pie for dinner! And in case you're worried, go ahead
and use the beer - all the alcohol cooks off and it adds a very
mild flavor.


So if you’re stuck in a rut, give the recipe a try, and let
me know what you think!

Maddie has what I consider to be a pretty
good grasp of the concept of time; she’s got the days of the
week memorized, and has learned to place them in her daily context
to understand how much time is passing or needs to pass for a
special date to come up. Saturday, for example, is Waffle Day, when
Daddy makes waffles for breakfast; Sunday is Church Day; and Monday
is Playgroup Day. If Madeleine’s trying to figure out how
long it will be until, say, her birthday, we’ll tell her that
she has five more Waffle Days until her birthday. So far this seems
to be working well, and Maddie loves to recite through the days of
the week until she arrives at something fun.


And invariably, that Something Fun is Wednesday – Gym Day!
Gym Day is Maddie’s raison d’etre, that activity which
makes all other life worthwhile. At random points in the week,
she’ll stop whatever she’s doing and say, “What
day is it today? And then what day is it tomorrow? And the day
after that?” and so on, until we hit Wednesday, at which
point Maddie says, “And that’s the day we go to the
gym!”

Cora wants to be just like her big sister in all she does, and eating is no exception. Cora cries and kicks when she sees Maddie eating strawberries but I’ve held fast, determined to wait until her birthday as suggested by doctors for allergy reasons. Strawberries are just coming into season in New York, and I’d anticipated finding a pick-your-own-strawberries farm here right after Cora’s birthday and turning her loose in the fields – a sort of coming-of-age amongst the strawberry patch thing.

Then I found out last Thursday that the growing season in Texas is a wee bit different than New York’s, and last weekend was pretty much the last hurrah for strawberries here.

So on Friday, I packed the girls in the car, threw the allergy wait-list out the window, said a small prayer, and drove to the strawberry farm.

Maddie was, of course, ecstatic about getting a chance to pick her own strawberries, and chatted the whole way down about how many she was going to pick, then eat, and bring home to show Daddy. She speculated about what sort of bucket she’d be given to use and how fast she was going to pick. Cora was, of course, clueless that her life was about to change.