A Silver Lining

I have wanted a new living room sofa for a looong time, so yesterday’s potty accident during an afternoon catnap is proving to be serendipitous indeed.  (I should clarify that the potty perpetrator was Ellen, and not me, since I know my brother will be taking this opportunity to slip in a snide remark referring to the time that I was a couch potty perp.  In my defense, I was pregnant and watching “This Is Spinal Tap” at the time of the infraction.  And that is a VERY FUNNY movie).

I discovered yesterday’s accident in the worst way an accident can be discovered—that is, by sitting in it.  Since I leapt up pretty quickly and still had to change my jeans, I am declaring that our couch has reached Threat Level Yellow, meaning it has absorbed the minimum amount of urine required to justify replacement. 

I’ll keep you posted on the progress of Operation Couch Replacement.  Obviously right now it’s in the fledgling stages of my dreaming about a beautiful cozy sectional, with a chaise on one side, and the whole thing doused with three cans of Scotch Gard.

Moments

Some wise people believe that there are no good days or bad days, just days comprised of good and bad moments.  I’m with the wise people on that.  Except for the occasional day in which something so monumentally good or monumentally terrible happens and renders everything else insignificant, a day is really a collection of a zillion moments which fall basically anywhere on the “Sweet < --- > Shit” continuum.  To wit: yesterday when arriving at Kindermusik, Ellen declared “I love you Mommy – you are the BEST mommy I have ever seen.”  Sweet.  Literally the very next moment, I was stripping Cecilia down and trying to figure out what to do with the pants, shirt, and blanket on which her diaper blew out.  Shit.

Here are a few more.  I guess most of them don’t qualify as “one moment events,” but they are all examples of the little things that make up my days. 

J  Rachel and Jim have discovered that their baby is a boy.  Ellen believes that her new cousin should be named Gaston, after the villain from Beauty and the Beast.  She’s stuck with that for a few weeks now, so I’m a bit concerned as to what she will say when Baby Hatten arrives and is actually named something else.  I don’t think Gaston is on the short list. 

J  Ellen has been very interested in Science.  Just “Science” in general.  “Mom, could you tell me about Science?  Are [dogs/clouds/reindeer/sunshine/boys and girls/any noun in the dictionary] Science?” she asks.  I usually defer to Dave since it’s actually his field, but if he’s not around, I have to explain something sort of easy like how rainbows are made, and why there are different seasons.  Usually she accepts whatever information I give her, and occasionally she says, “now I know SO MUCH about Science!  THANK YOU Mom!”  Also, the word “usually.”  She uses it often, and pronounces it “oo-sually.”  Good stuff. 

J  Cecilia is signing “more” and “all done” without a doubt.  She is very good at saying “Dada.”  If she doesn’t start working more diligently on “Mama,” soon I’ll be handing off clean-up of all Cecilia-related biohazards to Dave. 

J  Ellen loves to have Cecilia choose her underwear for her in the morning.  She just puts a whole pile of them in front of her and the winner is whichever pair Cecilia first picks up and starts brandishing like a white flag.  Actually, I think the protocol is something more closely resembling Ellen picking which pair she’d like to wear, making Cecilia “choose” again and again until she happens to pick up the pair Ellen had in mind, and then running to me wearing nothing but a smile and saying, “Mom, Cecilia picked the monkey ones special just for me!” 

J  In one of her most recent time-outs, I heard Ellen saying to herself “two T’s.  T-t-time out-t-t,” as she stared at the wall.  I had to remind myself to wait until she had served her time to praise her phonics skills. 

:) No extremely bad moments come to mind.  The diaper blow-out at Kindermusik was about it.  Yes, this means I am one lucky mom.

Flirting with Karma

Auntie Rachel, Cecilia and Ellen

Not too long ago, probably about 4 or 5 months after C was born, a woman whom I would call an acquaintance approached me with a grin on her face – the sort of grin that sets off my “Uh-oh Alarm.” About .5 seconds after she began talking, my alarm was justified.  “You know,” she began, “your new baby has changed your body in…many ways [as she looked me up and down]…but one way is that you’re taller.”

“Hmm,” I said, knowing that there’s no way that a pregnancy can add vertical inches, but excusing her misinformation because her own child-bearing years took place during the decades when pregnant women drank and smoked right up until they were lying on a hospital bed, and at that point putting the cigarette down was advisable merely because a contraction might cause her to drop it and burn the bed sheets. 

“Well, today I’m wearing my tall boots, so…maybe that has something to do with it,” I responded.

“I don’t know,” she said.  “You’re definitely taller.” 

Her next once-over reminded me that, to her estimation, my “extra height” was only one of “many ways” in which my baby changed my body.  I didn’t press her for more information, but just went ahead and assumed that she meant that before my baby I was a tad chubby and misshapen, but after my baby I became a paragon of health and wellness. 

Bottom line, though – hers was a comment that probably should’ve been run through the brain filter once or twice before coming out.  Even if she was not concerned about being rude, she might have been concerned about the whole “what goes around comes around” thing.  Definite karma flirt. 

Now, just a few days ago, I was reminded that my dear sister is a karma flirt as well.  She came over one afternoon, and Ellen informed her that Thomas the Train was missing, and that she wanted to look for him under the couch, but needed a flashlight and couldn’t find one.

“Do you know, Monkey,” she said to Ellen, “that your bum can be a flashlight.  If you toot it will shine even brighter.” 

I didn’t hear that part, but stepped out of Cecilia’s room to find Ellen crouched over by the couch with her pants and underwear around her ankles and her bare backside shoved up against the furniture, yelling, “I can’t get out a toot, Auntie, I can’t see ANYFING!” and my sister standing in a corner laughing so hard that she was doing the nose flare. 

Seeing as Rachel is having her first baby this July, she was really taking a risk with this one.  And her baby is a boy, so this may qualify as a blatant karma come-on, and not just a flirt.  Because I can think of something else that can be used inappropriately as a flashlight.  A much more realistic-looking one at that.           

Found him after all

Hearts Grow Fonder

Last week Dave and I escaped for a quick getaway to Phoenix along with Ellen’s godfather, our friend-who-is-really-more-like-family, Pat.  Hot-tubs, margaritas, reading eight magazines and getting halfway through a new book, finding a new show to love on HGTV, sleeping so soundly that my location in Arizona took a good 10 seconds to register when my eyes first opened in the morning, and waking up when I was good and ready and not due to anything or anyone beeping, crying, or shouting “COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO MOM” into her monitor – those were the highlights.   

Ellen and Cecilia stayed with Dave’s parents, and my mother-in-law Becky sent several pictures of the girls’ mini-vacay.  Here they are, waving to us:

 

Upon our return, the babysitting report was good – apparently there were just a few tough moments which involved Ellen crying and declaring “I miss my pawents!”  We’re soaking up the fact that we are so missed when we’re away, and that we get a rip-roaring welcome when we return.  Ellen delivered her famous “running hug” to both of us multiple times, demonstrating a tireless need to remind us that she loves us – seriously, since each running hug involves carefully backing up to the perfect spot and going full-steam into the arms of the waiting recipient.  And when I first took Cecilia to give her a big hug after five days away, she immediately put her little head on my shoulder, snuggled right in, and didn’t move for a good 120 seconds.  I sort of dread the day when there isn’t such pain when we’re away, and such joy when we return.     

We Want the Funk

4:30 in the afternoon is the time of day when I am fighting the urge to text Dave with "WHAT TIME WILL YOU BE HOME" (I know that he will text back "5:30" just like every other weekday), and to put Ellen in front of a Thomas the Train episode, put Cecilia in her jumper, and put a little Bailey's in my fourth cup of coffee. 

I fight those urges with my iPod.  Music is a great way to make time go by, since you can always make it through "one more song."  Your painfully slow post-nap (or - horror - napless) afternoon can be measured and tolerated in delightful three or four minute increments.  After singing along to several songs you can look at the minute-hand's new position, mutter a satisfied "yesss" while doing an inconspicuous fist-pump, and then sing some more.  And if you get a nice long one in the mix like "Stairway to Heaven" or "Layla" (Derek and the Dominos, NOT Clapton Unplugged) or Frampton's live "Do You Feel Like I Do" then the updated minute-hand position might be so satisfying as to justify a dance around the room to some Bee Gees and Jackson 5.  The girls and I have enjoyed such revelry on many occasions.

But you gotta watch what's in your music library.   

I usually choose a safe playlist like "Ellen's Faves" for these afternoon parties.  But the other day I decided that for fun I'd do a shuffle.  We started with a few nice suprises which we hadn't heard in a while, such as Tiffany's cover of "I Think We're Alone Now" (shout-out sixth grade), Pure Prairie League's "Amie" and "Longer" by Dan Fogelberg.

After that: the title track from Red Hot Chili Pepper's album Blood Sugar Sex Magik.    

I wasn't able to get over to the iPod before it caught Ellen's ear because she said, "ooh, what's this one called?"  I decided to give her an abridged title.  "It's called Magik" [with a k], I told her.  She didn't believe me.  "It's not called Magik...what is it?"  "Yes it is," I said, "it's called Magik.  Let's go to another one.  Should we JUMP?" [with Van Halen].  "No, don't turn it off, don't turn it off!" she squealed as I got closer to the speaker.  She started dancing around.  "Do you like this one?" I asked.  "YES," she said as she wiggled around with her hands in the air.  "Does it have a cool guitar riff?" I asked.  "It DOES," she said.

Well, she's right.  I let it go.  We danced into her room and during the chorus I chatted her up about her stuffed animals and which she'll bring to pajama day at preschool next week.  For the rest of the song, Tony Kiedis is in a vocal fry and really doesn't have any inappropriate vocab for a three-year old.  Maybe some explicit ideas...but they'll go over her head.  Yes?   

Moments

Not all family stories have as much universal appeal as, for example, the one about how I goosed my father-in-law because I thought he was Dave from behind; or the one about how I tried to look “demure” in my eighth grade school photo (with quite unfortunate results necessitating TWO retakes); or the one about the time that my sister, in her starring role as Maria in The Sound of Music in junior high, received a round of applause for her on-stage ad-lib due to an extremely delayed entrance by Baroness Schrader. 

No, many family stories – even our favorite family stories – fall squarely in the category of “you had to be there” or “if you knew my sister/my brother/my dad/my mom you’d be dying right now” or “this is probably only cute if you’re a mom…specifically my daughter’s mom…okay, this is only cute if you’re me.”  Still, we launch into these stories and deal with the wan praise of our audience, because it feels so good to tell, to share. 

So welcome to the first of many blog posts entitled “Moments,” in which I will recount some of the things that made me smile or laugh throughout the past week (or past month – let’s be honest).  You may or may not find them mildly amusing.  But this blog is my forum for recording my daughters’ lives – and frankly I can’t imagine, when I’m sitting in an empty nest with my girls grown and gone, that there will have been a moment which I WOULDN’T relive in a heartbeat. 

J  While on our way to drop me off for choir tour and Ellen came to the realization that I was going to load a bus which would take me away for the ENDLESS duration of three days, her eyes welled up with gigantic tears, and she opened her mouth and wailed “But I love you SO MUCH!”

J  Ellen and I were discussing Rachel and Jim’s baby, and I mentioned that I would be “Auntie Cyndy.”  Ellen looked panic-stricken for a moment and then asked “but will you still be my mommy?”

J  Cecilia is babbling a lot and is definitely saying (with meaning) “dada” and “dog” (which comes out more like “a-DAH).  She prefers standing and bouncing to the point that I would not be surprised if she bypasses crawling altogether and goes straight to walking.  Her Jenny-Jump-Up is in the doorway between the dining room and kitchen, which is a place that receives a lot of foot traffic.  (Really, I don’t think there’s a spot in our house that doesn’t receive a lot of foot traffic).  Anyone who passes through has to be pretty quick or Celie will grab his or her leg, give it a giant hug, and hold on to it until you pry her away. 

J  Ellen sang karaoke tonight at Mom and Rich’s, with cousins.  She held on to the mike and looked like Stevie Nicks while she sang hits such as Row Row Row Your Boat and ABC’s.  Next time I’ll remember to take a picture.  (BTW, I rocked the house with a cover of Warrant’s “Cherry Pie,” then slowed it down with a little Air Supply.  Yep.)

J  On the way home after Karaoke night at Mom and Rich’s, we waited at a railroad crossing for 20 minutes while a train backed up and pulled forward, presumably attempting to stop at a good spot for the night.  We would have been in extremely rough shape if we did not have Thomas and his friends to talk about while we watched the train.  The highlight of the experience – guessing if the engines would be diesels or tanks or “steamies” and counting (5 of) them as they (finally) went past.  It’s the little things.      

Over the Phone

This past weekend I enjoyed a mandatory escape from home life in the form of choir tour. From Thursday afternoon to Saturday night, I spent time getting reacquainted with my Adult Self – you know, carrying on conversations that do not include the word “potty,” climbing into bed past midnight due to a post-concert celebration rather than a post-bedtime bottle, wearing clothes that don’t have patches of dried snot on them, and singing Bach as opposed to Barney…oh, also giving three fantastic concerts with some of the most fabulous people that I know. The part of my identity that I label “Choir Member” is completely integral to my functioning as a sane human being in every other aspect of my life, so tour is not only super-duper fun, but necessary.

            I love giving my family a chance to miss me, I love having a chance to miss them, and most of all I love being hundreds of miles away and therefore conveniently unable to assist in All Matters Parenting.  Dave and I have some of our most hilariously unproductive conversations while I’m on choir tour and he’s home with E and C.  During one phone call this past weekend, I said “hey, how are you all today?” and his response was something like, “oh, we’re Ellen what are you doing over there?”  [Silence for one second and Ellen’s voice in background: “I had a li’l ackis-dent.”]  Dave: “Ellen, I just asked you one second ago if you had to go and you said no.”  [E in background: “I guess I DID have to go.  The floor is wet.”]  Then we said goodbye.

            Dave’s Over the Phone or In the Next Room parenting is one of my favorite auditory experiences.  He is famously unfaze-able in nearly any situation, which is a fantastic quality to have as both a doctor and a dad, and makes for some hilarious fly-on-the-wall listening moments for me.  With the same mature, composed tone that I imagine he uses to say something like “your MRI is normal so let’s just go ahead and start an aspirin regimen,” he says things like “when you don’t cooperate, you are not allowed to watch your poop go down,” and “if you continue screaming and running around naked instead of putting on your pajamas, I’ll have to take away all your Thomas trains.”  The visual in my mind in these moments is probably way more hysterical than the actual scene that’s unfolding...probably due in no small part to the fact that if I’m listening to it, I’m NOT the one dealing with it.  

            Good job, dear.  And thanks for letting me laugh at these moments which are way more fun for me than for you.