1m2aSandbox

There’s nothing cuter than a baby
who’s learned to a few key things adults find irresistible
– waving hello and bye-bye; feeding herself something messy
like spaghetti; and being able to show physical affection.


I’m speaking, of course, about hugs and kisses.

With both a mommy and a grandma who were professional dancers, Maddie would have been hard-pressed to avoid exposure to dance in her life. But I’ve been very careful to not push her too much in any direction, just wanting to see if she’d be interested in ballet at all. A few months ago when she began her self-flagellation kick, she’d put on one of her tutus and mope around to Mozart, saying, “I’m not very good at ballet. I don’t know any steps. I don’t look like you do when you dance.”

I tried to explain to Maddie that no one is born knowing a skill, and that everyone has to study, and that Mommy worked very hard to look the way I do when I dance. I told her she wasn’t a bad dancer, just an untrained one, and there was still joy to be found in watching her dance. And I promised her that when she was old enough, she could take ballet class herself.

All summer she’s been counting down the days until ballet class started; last week we went to the studio and met her teacher, examining all the different practice rooms and checking out the dressing room. Since then she ran through a daily countdown to the Big Ballet Day, and finally yesterday, it arrived.

Cora’s almost fifteen months now,
and about six weeks ago I was watching a video of Maddie at fifteen
months and noting how verbal Maddie was; she had a few words down
cold, and would carry on entire conversations with people using
words only she understood. A far cry from the infantile babbling
you hear in babies, this was a full-blown language and attempt to
communicate. And while I was watching this fifteen-month-old Maddie
earnestly discoursing on the phone with a grandparent, I kept
thinking that Cora was so far away from that and would never be at
that point by fifteen months.


Boy, was I wrong.

First, the good news:


MADDIE IS PEEING IN THE BIG-GIRL POTTY!


Yes, folks, for whatever reason, the light simply switched on, and
Friday morning Maddie decided she was going to start using the
grown-up potty. She simply announced at breakfast that she wanted
to pee in the potty all day, got down from her booster seat, walked
into the bathroom, and took off her pajamas and diaper all by
herself.


I tried not to get too excited – we’ve gotten this far
before, believe me. But a few moments later, the excited screams
confirmed – Houston, we had porcelain contact.

God bless the suburbs. Mock them all you want (and believe me, as a hardened New Yorker I do plenty of that), but they know how to cater to soccer moms.

Case in point- strollerskating.

I grew up going to the local roller rink for really “special” occasions – lock-ins, birthday parties, even the occasional date. Lucky for me, that same roller rink is still going strong, and apparently all my friends grew up and had babies too, because now they offer the chance to skate with your offspring every week.

I don’t know why, but my oldest girl
simply cannot keep a secret.


We’ve got her Gamma’s birthday coming up, and
we’ve been working at it for a few days, baking a cake and
decorating cards and such. This is no easy task since Gamma lives
with us and we’d like to maintain at least the illusion of
surprise, but I’ve managed to squeeze these things in while
Gamma’s not around. There’s really no point in working
too hard at this, though, since Maddie blabs the first chance she
gets.

A few years ago, a relative gave me a snow
globe with a Texas skyline in it to remind me of “home”
while living in New York. Now that we’re here, the globe
lives on a high shelf in the library, out of the way of little
hands on a destructive mission. So Maddie had never really noticed
it until yesterday when she happened to be lying on the couch in
the library, gazing pensively upwards, and the sparkles in the
globe caught her eye.


“Mommy, what’s that sparkly thing up there?” she
asked me, sitting up interestedly.


“Oh, that’s a little scene inside a glass room, like a
dollhouse behind a round window, and it’s got sparkly snow
all throughout it,” I said. Maddie was definitely hooked.