1m2aSandbox

Maddie’s preschool presented their
annual Christmas concert last night, and I swore walking in there I
wouldn’t be one of THOSE parents – I’d sit there
and savor the moment rather than racing frantically to record it,
thus missing the actual moment itself.


Yeah, not so much.

Our church offers free donut holes and
coffee at the end of every service, and believe you me, it’s
the highlight of the girls’ weekly worship experience.
They’ll tear out of the service and stand salivating on the
table until I come up and give them the A-OK. Somehow I descended
down that slippery slope, and now they expect the donut hole every
Sunday.


Unless, of course, their behavior is less than exemplary during the
service. We operate on the choices-and-consequences discipline
plan, and they know that the consequence of bad choices Sunday
morning will most likely result in the loss of one of their most
precious privileges – the donut hole, the sugary light at the
end of the preaching tunnel. So usually, they try to be patient and
attentive and obedient during and around the service, and in return
they get a little bite of heaven.

I'm burning the candle at both ends -
heck, at about three or four ends right now. I'm throwing together
a show that opens Thursday night, stepping in at the last minute as
a personal favor for a friend. So I'm at rehearsal until 11 p.m.
most nights, teaching afternoons and evenings, and of course trying
to mother my kids as best I can.


Oh, and getting ready for the whole Christmas thing.


So I'm a bit tired and fighting hard to keep my time with the
girls really focused on them and not completely devoted to laundry
and errands and paperwork. Which is a long-ish way of explaining
why I may be a bit absent the next night or two.


The girls are hanging in there, but before I started this a couple
weeks ago Cora had been put down at night by someone other than me
exactly five times. Now it's almost fifteen times. Not
surprisingly, both girls are clingy and needy during the day and
I'm trying my best to be there for them.


I can't believe this sort of schedule used to be consider "fun" in
college.

As many of you know, over the past several
months we’ve been moving Cora from a crib to a big-girl bed.
We went from a toddler mattress on the floor beside the crib to a
full-sized mattress on the floor, and as the final step put
together her bed frame and raised the mattress up off the floor
this weekend.


I’m a big fan of Craig’s List and never know when what
I want will come up, so I started looking for a bed frame for her
about eight months ago. I discovered a lovely old full frame in our
price range last spring, and it’s been sitting in the garage
ever since, waiting for Cora to be old enough to climb into it.


Judging by what we’ve seen since we put the bed together,
it’s going be a really long time before Cora’s old
enough to climb into it.

Yes, you read it right. My girls came,
they saw, they kicked some dinosaur butt.


I honestly thought it would be a big deal, and both girls certainly
expressed concern at different times up until the moment we joined
the party. The host even rearranged the order in which the party
would run so the girls could skip walking the dinosaur trail with
as little humiliation as possible. But I kept them moving and tried
to make it not a big deal, just to see how far they’d go.


Apparently all the way.

You may recall that a couple months ago we
visited our local science museum’s exciting outdoor dinosaur
display, to disastrous effect. The life-sized, robotically animated
dinosaurs scared the poop out of both girls, and they swore
they’d never return to the museum again until the dinosaurs
were gone.


They’ve changed their minds – sort of.

Brian’s off work this week, and
we’re doing some holiday preparations of our own. Yesterday
we took the girls to a toy store for a meander through the aisles,
stirring the creative juices as the girls begin to ponder their
Christmas lists.


We’ve never done such things before, but truthfully
we’re having a hard time with Cora this year. What do you get
a two-year-old who already has all her sister’s old toys?
When Madeleine was two her big Christmas presents were the
trampoline, a dollhouse, and a baby care center replete with a
place to put the baby to sleep, bathe her, feed her, and more.
These things were all hits, but alas Cora already plays with
them!