1m2aSandbox

Brian and I are recovered, though I can
tell that Cora’s hovering on the edge of falling into the
nasty cold he and I both had last week. But even though I was out
of commission, I managed to jot down a few funny comments during
the week – you never know when I’m listening with a
paper and pencil.

Sorry folks - day three of a nasty cold.
Barely surviving with the sniffles and aches. Catch ya next
week.

We were having breakfast with friends
yesterday (National Pancake Day!) when Maddie turned to me and said
matter-of-factly, “Mom, I’ve met the man I’m
going to marry.”


Excuse me?

I hope everyone's reading this early this
morning, because today, Tuesday, is National Pancake Day, and to
celebrate it, IHOP is giving away free shortstacks of pancakes from
7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Yes, it'll be a three-hour wait for five bucks
worth of free pancakes, but it's a celebration! National Pancake
Day! C'mon, people!


Click target="_blank">here to read more - and see ya after a big
plate of starch.

Cora’s going through this phase of
wanting to be someone else, and refusing to answer unless you call
her by the correct name. She’s picked a variety of made-up
names and titles (Princess, for example) but the name that’s
stuck the most is Thomas. As in, the tank engine.


Friday Cora insisted on wearing her red Thomas t-shirt and red
leggings, and declared her name was Thomas. “Cora,”
I’d say, “Come get your brown sneakers on.”
“There’s no Cora here,” she’d say in a
sing-songy voice, “Only Thomas!”

Yesterday morning, Cora and I went to the
park for some play time. We had the playground to ourselves and
Cora was happily making acorn soup when I noticed little yellow
balls mixed in with the wood chips that comprise the
“carpet” of the playground. I thought at first that
they were yellow Nerds or some similar candy that had been spilled
right there, but I quickly discovered they were throughout the
playground. They were fertilizer.


I cleaned off a slide with a particularly large pile that Cora
discovered – “Look, Mommy, candy!” - dribbling
the contents – 3 parts fertilizer to 1 part wood chips
– into my pocket, and put the whole thing into a plastic
baggie when I got home. I carefully labeled the bag with our park
name and set it aside.

A couple weeks ago, I’d had a
loooooooooong day, and rushed through the bedtime routine with
Cora. I’d come home from work to find her disguised as Naked
Girl, so I threw a nightgown on her and called it a night, already
dreaming of crashing in my own bed.


Twenty minutes later, I was replaying the bedtime scene in my mind
and realized Cora had not been wearing a diaper – she was
wearing pull-ups. Pull-ups that had been on her for several hours,
and were at least a little wet. Pull-ups, as many of you know, are
not designed to hold as much liquid, and though Cora does not pee
most nights, she does as soon as she wakes, usually in her diaper.
And it’s a lot.


Which meant that, if left in a wet pull-up all night, she’d
most likely pee again and leak all over the bed, necessitating a
complete sheet and nightgown change.


Which meant that I had to go wake a sleeping baby.