1m2aSandbox

Maddie’s been loving her time in
pre-k, and this first year of school is really flying by fast. Her
class keeps a running count of how many days they’ve been in
school, and we’re over 80 by now, with less than six weeks to
go. She’s already lamenting the onset of summer and loss of
her precious school time.


Last week she brought home a form in her school folder for ordering
graduation pictures. Excuse me? Isn’t she four? Aren’t
we safe from that for another, oh, fourteen years??

I’ve mentioned in the past that
Cora’s somewhat enamored of my hair – it’s pretty
much her lovey, especially when she’s sad or sleepy or happy
or . . . well, whenever, really. She’ll throw her arms around
my neck, grab great fistfuls of my hair, and rub it all over her
face, making ecstatic noises and smiling.


It can be a little awkward around strangers.

I know Maddie’s learning lots of
things in her preschool, and frankly I’m grateful that
they’re doing the work that I probably should:
Madeleine’s come home with a prize she earned for knowing her
full address, her phone number – things I’d never
dreamed of drilling her on right now. I keep forgetting she’s
getting older and will need to start learning these things –
right now I still marvel at the fact that she can dress herself
every morning.


At any rate, they’ve clearly been covering how to use the
phone – which I admit, I should be teaching her. She’s
almost five, obviously capable of dialing 911 in an emergency,
should I ever bother to teach her how. I know I should be doing
this with her, but she’s such a worrier I’m afraid to
bring up the topic and watch her have nightmares for weeks about a
scenario in which Mommy’s so incapacitated that Maddie must
save them all by dialing for help.


But I digress.

A couple days ago, I was reading a
parenting magazine and Maddie asked me to read out loud to her. The
article was about ways to “green” your household
routine, and one of the suggestions was, “Turn off your water
while you brush your teeth.” Maddie looked at me, bewildered,
and said, “Why would anyone leave the water on while they
brush their teeth?”


Last week, I handed out scripts to my teenage acting class.
I’d copied them single-sided on purpose, to leave room for
them to take notes, and one of my students noticed this and said,
only half-teasing, “Way to mess up the environment, Miss Jen!
Don’t worry about the ecological inheritance you’re
leaving us!”

Strep.Throat.A.Gain.

Ah, Easter - gaily decorated eggs nestled
in the grass, sweet-faced cherubs laughing delightedly and playing
gaily in their beautiful dresses, a near-continuous stream of
chocolate and jelly beans practically guaranteed for the whole day.


But then comes the morning after, and it ain't pretty.


I tried to regulate the girls, I really did. A couple pieces before
church, a couple pieces after lunch, one piece after dinner - I
didn't think it was that much, at least compared to what I see
going on around me. But man oh man, those kids were monsters when
it was bedtime - a lethal combination of stumblingly tired and
strung out on chocolate, with a dash of manic "hey, my friends are
here! Let's jump on Mommy's back twenty times!" mixed in for good
measure.


We had our share of meltdowns, breaks, temper tantrums, hitting,
and kicking, that's for sure. And after they'd gone to bed I went
through their baskets and winnowed out over half of what they'd
received, muttering under my breath about "next year, it's going
to be all fruit and crackers in the eggs!"


Though if I do that, I can't eat the confiscated contraband, which
I use to help me get through the rest of the week.


What to do, what to do.

Cora went to a birthday party recently and
consumed only the frosting from one of those hyper-decorated cakes,
covered with sugared roses in every color of the rainbow. She was a
maniac, crabby and irritable to the nth degree the rest of the day,
and when she had a poop the next day that looked like seaweed or
spinach I thought, “Yuck! That just confirms that I want to
make my daughter’s own birthday cakes, with less artificial
frostings.”


A couple months ago, a friend of mine mentioned casually that every
time her daughter has a favorite sherbet, she’s hyper and
crazy the rest of the day – like, ten times crazier than
sugar-crazy. Her best guess was that her daughter was allergic to
the dye in the orange sherbet.


Turns out, she’s not so wrong.