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.

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.      

Teetering

Today I’m wearing a shirt that says “Balanced Mom.”  I bought it last October to complete a Halloween costume which was my recreation of Kate Gosselin (ironic since in the eyes of the public she’s one of the least balanced out there, right along with the Octo-Mom and any of the various “Susan Smith” types).  When I made the purchase, the thought crossed my mind that wearing such a T-shirt is a rather bold and presumptuous move, particularly if one can’t fall back on the excuse of Halloween, and for that reason I briefly wondered if I would wear the shirt on a regular day.  Well, obviously the problem of having a tiny (and now mostly ill-fitting) wardrobe trumps the problem of worrying over the accuracy of a T-shirt slogan – the shirt fits and at the very least does not highlight problem areas, so indeed it has been worn many times.  I figure I can get away with it if I wear it in a spirit of sarcasm.   

It’s possible that the last time I wore the “Balanced Mom” shirt was on the day when I found myself holding a handful of fruit snack wrappers from the car, with a snow drift blocking my way to the big garbage can, Dave blocking my way to the house, Cecilia crying in the car and Ellen very methodically inserting her leg almost to the knee in a second snow drift, and I just could not deal with the presence of such literal and metaphorical GARBAGE in my life.  I dealt with that overwhelming moment in a completely balanced way – by simply throwing the wrappers in a third snow drift, yelling at Dave that I really just needed to “have a GOOD CRY and then SLEEP for, like, a YEAR!!!!” and then leaving Dave to fish the garbage from the snow while I commenced the good cry on the way to preschool, with Ted Nugent and then The Who blaring so as to tune out Ellen’s repeated requests for “Wheels on the Bus.” 

I know I wore the shirt once or twice while I was pregnant with C, and so then it’s possible that “Balanced Mom” was emblazoned across my chest while I flipped Dave the bird and yelled out the door as he calmly walked away that he was “NEVER going to impregnate me AGAIN!!!!”  

I think the more often I can wear the shirt while having an irrational tantrum, the funnier it becomes.  If I plan on wearing the shirt a couple times a week, I should definitely hit an irrational tantrum or two.  However, that plan does require much more frequent laundry, so I might have to reconsider.