1m2aSandbox

A friend of mine wrote me a brief email
while on vacation recently, and joked about how she was enjoying
being around her kids so much, and how surprised she was by that.
This is a mom who’s the primary caregiver, but also works
part-time outside the home, so she’s always on the run. I
smiled when I read her note, picturing her having a wonderful,
no-stress time with her kids. We often imagine that a family
vacation will be more like time with the Griswolds than with some
angelic form of your own kids, and picture seven days of no breaks
from your kids as a kind of slow-water-drip torture, when the
reality is that when you get time away from the grocery shopping
and job and bill paying and errand running, you actually have a
rather fun time with your kids – quality time at its finest.


Then there’s me, on the other end of the spectrum. I’ve
had waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much quality time.

I can’t believe I’m writing
this, but I think it’s time to start buying stuff for Maddie
for school in September. Is my baby really old enough to need
things for school? Ok, preschool, but still –


I’m having to control my dewy-eyed, “Sunrise,
Sunset” tendencies because Maddie’s already preparing
to bolt from the whole school idea. She and her friend Elise, who
will be in Maddie’s class with her, both have some sort of
innate ambivalence – perhaps even dislike – of school,
and are quietly scheming to get out of it somehow. God help us if
they ever hear about the whole homeschooling concept.


But I digress.

A year ago, a friend of mine moved and I
offered to come in and help organize her kitchen – it’s
one of my “things”. She accepted, and I told her
I’d just have to find a time to come when I could get
babysitting for the two girls. My (childless) friend then
generously (but naively) said, “Why don’t you just
bring the girls with you? They can play around my new place.”


After I stopped laughing hysterically and wiped away the tears, I
explained that having a one-year-old and three-year-old underfoot
would be, um, unhelpful, and I’d get no work done on her
kitchen at all. Even more, I shuddered to think of the damage my
one-year-old Cora could inflict on her way-un-babyproofed
house.

Cora’s hit a recent patch of
stubbornness – ok, not so recent, since I can’t recall
a time when she WASN’T stubborn – and it’s become
a battle of wills over –of all things – manners.


When Cora and Maddie want to be finished with a meal, we ask them
to say, “May I be excused please?” and wait for an
assenting reply before getting down. Or, in Cora’s case,
being unsnapped from the high chair. This is not a big deal, and
something Maddie does with very little reminder now. Cora,
similarly, was well programmed and saying it quite neatly for a
while now.

Cora was up almost once an hour last
night. Good times.


What’s the deal? No teeth coming in – I probed
extensively. And she didn’t cry at night the whole first week
she gave up her pacifier, so I’m guessing that’s not
it. It comes across as a nightmare, and I’m giving in to my
instinct and going in and rocking her each exhausting time, even
though part of me knows I’m going to have to sleep train her
AGAIN because of it.


Oh, and that’s in addition to the fact that she’s had
to cry herself to sleep every nap time since she gave up her
pacifier last week. So it’s not like I’ve not been
sleep-training her recently anyway.


Me too tired to type. See you Monday.

Cora’s hit that adorable stage where
she talks extremely well and grasps complex ideas like pronouns or
the passage of time, but she still doesn’t always get
everything exactly right.


Last night the girls were dressed up in costume (there’s
something new) and dancing around (ditto) to their iPod music.
Costumes had taken some serious consideration, and Cora had, after
careful deliberation, chosen the Ariel costume. Well, the Ariel
costume is size 4-6x, so you can imagine it was a little big for
her.

Remember how I griped yesterday about not
being appreciated, and resentful that what I do never seems good
enough for the kids? Listen to this:


Maddie and I were running errands, and she saw some fallen crape
myrtle flowers on the ground. “I want to pick up some of
these flowers for Daddy!” she said, and scooped up the fallen
little buds. I acquiesced, and she gathered several more and put
them in her cupholder.