1m2aSandbox

I know I’ve mentioned before that
Cora is much more of an eat-anything-off-the-ground baby than
Maddie ever was. From the get-go, Cora would grab anything within
reach and shove it in her mouth, whereas Maddie really wasn’t
interested and didn’t have to be told twice that dirt is
icky. I did that whole spin-doctor thing parents do, looking at a
kid’s quirk in the best possible light: Oh, Cora eats
anything on the floor! That’s great – she’s just
practicing her pincer grasp! Way to go, girlie! I’m sure
she’ll stop when she can really feed herself!


Alas, that hope has not been realized.

Madeleine’s always had a fair amount
of self-confidence – it’s one of the things I love most
about her. I adore watching back video of her leaping and spinning
around the room at 2 ½ years old, yelling, “I’m
a very good dancer!” Or how about when Maddie went bowling
for the first time ever, and shouted over and over,
“I’m a champion bowler!” Getting to glimpse what
it feels like to be an uncensored kid, gloriously alive and
noncritical, is one of the great benefits of motherhood.


Over the past few weeks, though, Maddie’s taken an abrupt
turn into negativity and self-doubt. We’ll put on ballet
music and dance around for a few minutes until Maddie stops,
watches me speculatively, and says, “I can’t dance.
I’m not a very good dancer. I can’t do it. It
doesn’t look pretty.” “Oh, sweetheart,”
I’ll say, “you’re a beautiful dancer!”
“No!” she’ll cry in frustration. “I
can’t move like you do! I don’t know how to make myself
do it! I’m bad!” I’ll go on to explain that Mommy
spent several years learning how to dance like that, and that
there’s no right way to move your body joyfully. Sometimes
she’ll get back up, but more often than not the spell is
broken and the tutu comes off.

As I prepared to become a mother for the
first time, I read over and over again in books that you’re
supposed to talk constantly to your baby, even though they
don’t really understand you. When Maddie was first born and
we’d go for walks, I was very self-conscious about the whole
thing, walking down the street in New York City and talking like a
crazy lady. “Over here we have a fine example of prewar
architecture, and I understand they’ve got a 24-hour doorman
as well. And now we’re passing a bodega – that’s
where you’ll go to get milk and bread for mommy when
you’re older.”


It didn’t help that I didn’t really know how to talk to
kids.


Now, though, I jabber away constantly, pretty much completely
unaware of what I’m doing, with that refined Professional
Mommy patter down cold: “Can you stand up now like a big
girl? Look at who’s a big girl! What a great job! - Maddie,
put that down or you’re going to lose a book for naptime
– Did you see the pretty birdie outside the window?
That’s called a cardinal, and maybe it will come back so we
can see its coat! - Maddie, ok, I see, that’s fine, but keep
the water in the kitchen – Yes, Cora, a cardinal is red! What
else is red?” You get the picture.


Anyway, I’ve been talking away for over a year now to Cora,
and half of it is simply asking questions and answering them for
her. Except that over the past few weeks, something frightening has
happened.


Cora is showing signs of intelligent life.

So we’ve been wrestling with Maddie
and swim lessons all week long; we tried a group swim class a
couple times with disastrous results (see previous entries), and
I’ve begun thinking perhaps my kid’s going to be the
twelve-year-old with water wings and nose clips. In a last-ditch
effort to overcome Maddie’s fear of swim class (not to be
confused with a fear of the water, since she plays for hours on end
in our community pool) we set Maddie up for a few private swim
lessons.


The issue actually goes deeper than simply swim lessons: this is
Maddie’s first class of any kind, so her first time under
someone else’s authority, her first time in a group learning
situation, and so on. Add to that Madeleine’s reservations
about putting her face in the water, and we’ve got an
emotionally-charged half an hour on our hands. Truthfully,
we’d thought about chucking the whole thing in the garbage
and keeping Maddie out of any kind of lessons for the rest of the
summer; after the trauma she’d had the past few days, we
didn’t want to be making a bigger emotional mess than she
already was in. I mean c’mon, folks, she’s three!

I’ve spent a long time talking about
Maddie and her swimming issues, but the truth is that for all her
fear of the classes, she loves the pool. We probably end up there
six days a week, sometimes going twice a day (“I know we went
this morning, but Daddy needs to see my new trick so we have to go
after dinner Mommy!”). A perfect day for her would have the
morning spent wholly at the pool, a leisurely nap and book time, a
short video before dinner, then another hour or so at the pool
before bed.


But for as much as she enjoys swimming, there’s someone else
in our family who loves it even more – Cora.

Madeleine went to bed after her first swim
class (see yesterday’s entry) calmly declaring her preference
of not going to swim class the next day. We’d talked about
it, and she’d agreed that though she didn’t like it
she’d give it one more try. But she’d prefer not to.


We almost gave her what she requested, but in the end Brian and I
decided to have her try one more day, to see if it got any easier.


It didn’t.

Maddie’s feeling restless at three
years old – longing to be with the “big kids”, to
be doing “big-kid things” like “class” and
“school”. Ever since this spring, when she cried
bitterly on the playground because she wasn’t allowed to join
in the adjacent team soccer practices, I knew Maddie needed more
than I could give her: she needs group activities without Mommy,
just like the big kids. Her life is slowly starting to revolve
around her peers rather than Mommy, which is as it should be.


So as we looked at this summer, Brian and I decided to put Maddie
in some structured classes. We thought this would be a good
short-term way to expose Madeleine to classroom-type structure, to
listening and obeying adults other than her parents. We finally
narrowed the list down, and ended up with a summer of swim lessons,
ballet camp, and soccer camp. First up on the schedule: swim
lessons.