The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Some Things I’ve Been Doing

I crocheted this little guy today.

He’s a little tiny elephant wearing a hat.  You can’t tell from the pictures, but I used this sort of sparkly white yarn that I bought last year to make snowflakes.  I’d planned to just leave him all white, but Julia wanted him to have a hat like the one in the pattern I was following (He’s Percy the Elephant, and you can make a female version with a little bow on top instead of a hat, if you want.  If you crochet.)

He took a while to do, mostly because I’m not really all that experienced crochet-wise, but I enjoy it enough to unravel my mistakes and try all over again, so I think that’s a good sign. 

Anyway, yesterday I made this one:

The pattern for Meimei the baby elephant can be found here.  I used a multi-hued purpley chenille for the ears and feet, and a soft heathery gray for the body. 

Julia loves the two new elephants.  I think she has about a thousand stuffed animal elephants.  Maybe not quite that many, but it’s a lot.  And here I am, adding two more to the collection.

Can’t help it.  They’re cute. 

I also crocheted a couple of little baby hats, for practice and for any babies that might be coming along anywhere.  (NO, not me.  I’m all done with that business.)

Speaking of being all done with that business, I’m really enjoying – reveling in, even – my kids at this age.

Sometimes I think back on when they were babies, or toddlers, and I do miss aspects of that.  A lot of aspects.  But you can’t go backwards.

And I don’t miss diapers.  Or having to feed them, and then clean all the excess food out of their hair, off the high chair, off the walls, the table, the floor, and my own entire self.  I don’t miss sleeplessness.

I miss all the little milestones.  The smallness of them.  The little tiny voices. 

But I digress.  And I become nostalgic. 

Right now, there are lots of good things.  They are old enough to be responsible about a lot of things.  They aren’t always, but their average is good. 

They don’t get along all the time, which is fine, and normal, and can be a headache.  But when they do get along, when they are doing stuff together without being aware that I’m gazing at them with a goofy look on my face (sort of like those dreamy expressions you’d see as the opening theme song would play for some old tv shows and they’d show an actress and put her name under the image, and she wouldn’t be doing anything, she’d just be LOOKING somewhere slightly away from the camera pointed right at her.  I remember being able to mimic all the facial expressions of cast members of various favorite shows.  A long time ago.  I don’t do it now.

ANYWAY…so my kids.

Alex, as you know, has played baseball since birth, or five years old, somewhere in there.  Julia played a year of T-ball when she was five, but has been “doing gymnastics” since age three.  I think she loved the physicality of it, but was never interested in the competitive or artistic aspects of it.  Suddenly last spring she announced that she wanted to quit gymnastics and play softball now.  Now and forever. (And I just noticed after typing “now.  Now and forever” that I am still – OH THE HORROR OF IT – pressing the space bar twice after a period.  I know, that is not the way to do it.  But very old habits die hard, and when I learned to type back in the first half of my sophomore year in high school (ON A TYPEWRITER!!!!), we had to put two spaces after a period, or any other end-of-a-sentence piece of punctuation.  And I pride myself on my speedy mad typing skillz.  I swear – no disrespect to any of my other high school teachers – that typing was one of THE most useful classes I ever took.  My husband never learned to type – he does the ever-so-annoying Two Index Fingers In Search of the Next Key form of typing, and if I’m in the same room when he’s typing something I either offer to type for him or I have to leave the room because slow typing is painful to me.

Probably just like too much space after final punctuation is painful to other people.

But I love my husband, so I don’t slap his fingers or push him out of the way.  Because I know he can’t help how he types.

Just like I can’t help but type two spaces after a period.  Or an exclamation point!  Or a question mark?  See?  It’s like breathing for me.  So please don’t slap at my fingers or push me off a chair.

I digressed again, didn’t I?

My kids.  So we let Julia not go back to gymnastics and this fall she started softball.

She’s been part of the picture whenever Bill has taken Alex to a field to practice his hitting or fielding or pitching for the past bunch of years, mainly because I’d be at work and she was too young to stay home alone.  But over the years she’s picked up a few things, and she’s always had a good, aggressive swing.  (I maintain that she mostly just likes to hit things.)  And while softball and baseball have definite differences, like, why use such a huge ball for little girls with little tiny hands, and that crazy underhand pitching, there are plenty of similarities.

So now that Julia’s on a team, Alex is much more likely to ask her if she wants to go play catch or practice hitting – without Bill being involved. 

Over the summer, once Julia had said she wanted to play, yes, really really wanted to play, Bill started working with her.  He bought some softballs, we sent her to a softball camp for a week, and Bill worked with her on fielding.  With his (and Alex’s) coaching and encouragement and, sometimes, frustration, Julia made up her mind one day – and it really was as abrupt as that – to stop being afraid of the ball coming at her.  That was it.  She just stopped.  And that’s huge.  Balls hurt when they hit you!  Softball, baseball – if it’s thrown or hit hard enough and it hits you, it hurts.

But she’s not afraid.

And she’s so much fun to watch at her games and practices.  She is fearless.  She is naturally athletic, and she’s so HAPPY to be playing.  She beams. 

She’s been playing shortstop, and then last weekend she asked her coach if she could try catching.  He let her.  And she looked like a natural. 

I told her after the game that I was so proud of her and she did great, and she told me she was shaking the whole time because she was afraid the bat or a ball would hit her.  But she loved it. 

And she got to catch again today.

Alex was impressed.  He doesn’t get to all of Julia’s games because sometimes his practices or games are at the same time.

I took this picture earlier in the game – Alex was giving Julia advice or feedback on something in between innings.

I love this.

I love their interactions.  I love them sharing a love of a sport (or two very closely related sports).  I love how kind he is.  I love how she is so much more confident and proud of herself. 

They are so different in some ways, but they have so much in common, as siblings do without even trying.  They drive me crazy at times, and they amaze me all the time.  They make me laugh and they make me gaze off, dreamily, like a sap.  They are fascinating.

I love these two people.

~~~

And I guess I’ll stop here.  I’ve rambled all over the place, and while I’ve probably got more to write about, I figure this is plenty for one evening.

Good night.  Sleep tight.  Don’t let the bedbugs bite.  (My mom used to say that when she put us to bed.  Glad I never really thought that there were such things as bedbugs, and that they really might bite me.  I’d have slept in a chair.)

Growing

After one of the usual clamming trips this summer, I asked the kids what they’d like me to make with the clams for dinner that night.  With so many clam dishes in our collective repertoire, I asked the kids to tell me their favorites.

Julia’s – clamcakes.

Alex’s – chowder AND clamcakes.

I think I’d picked Alex up after a baseball practice or something when I asked him.  I seem to remember having this conversation in the car.  Anyway, he thought about it some more and said it was too bad I couldn’t put chowder inside a clamcake.

And with that, the Chowdercake was born.

I thought that by combining the flavor components of our basic clam chowder with our clamcake batter, I’d get something pretty tasty.

I took some bacon trimmings out of the freezer, diced them up and rendered the fat.

I took the crispy bacon bits out of the fat and added some diced onion.

While the onions softened, I mixed flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. To that I added chopped fresh dill and thyme.

The kitchen smelled delicious, in case you were curious.

I took our freshly dug, freshly steamed clams…

and tossed them into the food processor along with the sautéed-in-bacon-fat onions, the onion fat, and a few of the crisped bacon bits.  I pulsed everything together until the clams were chopped. 

Scratchy summoned me from the living room.

He indicated that I hadn’t taken a picture of him lately and the world might be wondering if he was okay. 

Here’s Scratchy being okay:

Back to the kitchen….

Time to put the chowder in the clamcakes!

I added eggs, the clam mixture, and clam stock to the flour mixture and started heating the oil.

I used a small ice cream scoop to drop blobs of batter into the 360F oil…

And I fried them until they were brown.  I don’t have a time – it’ll depend on the size of your clamcakes, how many you’re cooking at a time, how hot your oil stays while cooking, and how light or dark on the outside you like them.  I usually take out the biggest one in the first batch and split it open when I think it’s done.  If it’s cooked through, I take the rest out, let the oil come back up to temp if it’s dropped, and then I use a combination of The Force and Intuition and Educated Guessing to judge the frying time of subsequent batches.

Success!

Everyone liked them.  Loved them.  Ate too many of them. 

We could taste the bacon fat, of course, along with the clams, and with every bite we’d taste fresh dill or thyme or both. 

Chowder inside the clamcake.

Thanks, Alex!

~~~~

The school year has begun.  Bill went back to school a couple days before the kids did, and I had to work, so the kids were on their own.

No big deal.  They’ve been home alone before.  They have keys, they have cell phones, and, most importantly, they have good heads on their shoulders.

I checked in with them through the day via text, and I’d given them a list of stuff to do.  It’s nice having kids who can do laundry and empty the dishwasher.

Somewhere around lunch time they asked if they could go play.  The only thing left undone was a load of laundry in the dryer, and one in the washer waiting for the dryer load to get out of the way. 

I asked if they’d had lunch and one of them texted back “Yes – we made nachos.”

I stared at the phone screen for a moment. 

I’d shown them how to make nachos the night before. 

Now, just so you know, we don’t have a microwave any more.  Our old one died and I was campaigning for us NOT to replace it, but I was outvoted initially.  We got a new one – smaller, though, because the other one took up way too much space on the counter – and it didn’t work right so we brought it back and decided to do a bit more research to find a better one.

And time went by and went by and went by…and we still don’t have one and Bill has said we don’t need one after all, so – yay!

But I digress.

So – nachos.  When we used to have a microwave, Julia learned to melt cheese on tortilla chips in the microwave all by herself.  Alex preferred to let me do the cheese melting. 

The other night after Open House at the junior high (JUNIOR HIGH!!!) Alex was hungry and asked if I’d make him some fake nachos.  We didn’t have tortilla chips, so he suggested saltines.  Okay.  Why not?

And it worked – the crackers stayed crispy.  I used a mix of shredded cheddar and mozzarella.  And when he wanted more, I brought him upstairs and showed him how to make them.  In the oven.

So that following day, my kids made themselves a hot lunch in the oven.

And they remembered to turn the oven off when they were done.

I felt this wave of emotion wash over me.  I was proud of them…and kind of proud of me, too. 

I am – like, I suspect, many parents – often wondering if I’m “doing it right.”  Am I teaching them what they need to know, am I raising good kids, hardworking kids, kids who will become good adults who can take care of themselves out there in the big wide world?  Will they be okay?

And at the same time there’s a part of me that likes being needed.  Mommy?  Can you – tie my shoe, pour the cereal, make my sandwich, bring me to the playground, get me some water, give me a hug, kiss me goodnight? 

I like being Mommy. But I know that it’s my job to raise them up so they don’t need me so much.  The only time they were mine-all-mine was when they were in the womb.  From the day they were born, it has been my job to hold them tightly and, finger by finger, hug by hug, to let them go.

Fortunately, it’s kind of a one step forward, two steps back kind of process.  Much easier on me – and them.

So.  The nachos.

I was proud of us.  I taught them.  They learned.  They did.

I told them they could go play.

~~~

Another first day of school.

My boy is now a seventh grader.  My daughter is a fifth grader.

They don’t need me to linger with them.  They don’t need me, really, to walk with them, but I still walked part of the way with Alex and all the way with Julia. 

I confess – it was unexpectedly hard to let Alex go off on his own.  But I did it.  I felt my eyes prickling, but I also felt good.  He’s a capable kid.  He’ll be fine.  Or at least that’s what I told the other Mommy in my head who kind of wanted to drive him to the bus stop and wait there until the bus carried him away.  I shut her off.  She wasn’t helping.

I walked with Julia, we found out which teacher she had, and pretty soon she and her classmates marched into the building and I stood there in the school courtyard, surrounded by countless other parents and children, and I felt…alone.

So I walked home.

And I typed all this.

New Mom

I’ve probably posted this before, but I haven’t seen the picture in ages.  I was cleaning and reorganizing today, and just now came across this picture of me with a very little Alex.

It’s one of the few pictures of me that I like.  Bill took the picture with my old film camera.

Wow.  Almost ten and a half years ago.

Time.  The part about it flying. 

Yep.

Mommy of the Morning

This morning a big bowl of Vichyssoise that Bill made last night for tomorrow night’s dinner got mostly knocked over when I closed the door after removing a bowl of dough that was under the bowl of soup.  Apparently the prior arrangement prevented a shelf on the door of the fridge from hitting the lip of the bowl of soup.  When I removed the dough bowl and moved the soup bowl lower, that changed the whole inner logistical physical set up, and the next time I opened the fridge, to get apples for the kids for their lunches, I discovered a thick, pale green leek and potato pond on one shelf and small vichyssoisefalls dribbling to the bottom of the refrigerator.

I became unhappy at the sight.

While I was trying to salvage some of the soup by – yes – herding as much of the pond back into the bowl as possible with soggy paper towels, Alex suddenly appeared in the kitchen and froze – grinning – one hand in the corner cupboard reaching for a Hershey kiss.  The caramel swirl kind, in case you’re interested.  Anyway, I snapped at him to cut it out and stop doing that and it would be nice if he LISTENED TO ME for a change.

Totally undeserved.  He slunk away sadly. 

I felt even less happy. 

I got the soup cleaned up and managed to salvage enough for us all to have a few sips tomorrow night.  We’ll call it an appetizer.

Then I went into the bathroom to help Julia with her hair.

She has long hair, like I did at her age, and, like mine at that age, it is prone to tangles.  Jungles, really.  Probably why my mother usually kept my hair confined in a braid most of my childhood.  Julia, however, is not as malleable a child as I was.  She doesn’t like braids.  She prefers her mane flowing wild and free.  Until it snags around her earring.  Then it’s all sorts of fun for both of us.  I tried unwrapping the hair from the earring, but that pulled and hurt.  So then I thought if I just took the earring out, that would solve everything.  But the back had been pushed on too tightly and my right thumbnail is very short at the moment and I couldn’t slip it in there between her delicate earlobe and the earring back…so of course THAT hurt – a lot – and she started crying and I felt horrible and at the same time, and SO frustrated that I snapped at her, too, and that, of course, elicited more tears on her part…and if I wasn’t on an antidepressant that has, apparently, dried up my tear ducts, I would have sobbed right along with her.

I suck.

I took her into the living room and we sat together on the big comfy chair, and I held her while her crying slowed and stopped.  Then I continued to hold her and kind of wished she and I could trade places, and I could be small and someone bigger could hug me. 

Finally, after a time of silence, I asked her, softly, “Do you forgive me?” 

And I pulled back a bit so I could see her face.

She pressed her lips together and shook her head.

No.

I hugged her again. 

So be it. 

A few moments later I managed to unwrap the strands of hair from her earring and then pull her tangly tresses into a ponytail.  We didn’t have time to fight the jungle any more.

I felt worn out.  Worn down.  Horrible.

The kids, of course, being resilient people, had bounced back.  Mommy’s crabby mood would pass, they knew.  Soon it was time for them to head to school.  Alex was putting his shoes on in one corner of the kitchen and Julia was behind me to my left.  She asked if I could give her a ride to school and let Alex and their friend J walk. 

I think that was her way of forgiving me.

I have such great kids.

And then I turned suddenly to shut off the light over the stove and elbowed Julia right in the eye. 

FisherMan

Bill took the kids with him while he dug for clams today.  Julia was content to just float around in the water near where Bill was digging.

Alex fished.

Layering

We were at Alex’s last regular season ball game last night.  It was a 7:30 game, which is a bit late (in my opinion) for elementary school kids to be playing ball, since the games are two hours long and that means a much later bedtime than the usual around here.

It feels even later when the rain starts falling about halfway through…but I digress.

Bill and I sat at a little picnic table just behind first base, where Alex was at the start of the game.  A chain link fence surrounds the field, of course, so we were safe from anything he might not catch.

Two other games had just ended, so the whole area near the snack bar and between the two fields was filled with kids in uniforms, parents, grandparents, coaches, and the players’ siblings, both younger and older.  Everyone milling around, talking, eating hotdogs, rehashing the games, making plans for play dates, and so on.

There was this one little boy, a round-faced, blond-haired, giggly little toddler of maybe two.  He was running across the blacktop, laughing, while his two older sisters and his father or uncle or someone chased after him.  One of them would catch the little boy, swing him up in the air and bring him back to where the rest of the family was, and then he’d take off again, on his sturdy little toddler legs, laughing with glee. 

Bill and I watched that little boy…and we watched Alex at first base.  Alex who is tall, long-limbed, slender, and runs like the wind.  He was constantly in motion, a few steps this way or that, glove ready, eyes on the pitcher, the batter, the shortstop, the coaches, the ball. 

You can see where I’m going.

I said to Bill “I’m having a Sunrise/Sunset moment.”

Our boy is ten now.  Our boy who, years ago, was very much like that blond-headed little running, laughing boy.  Only blonder.  But similar.  Rounder face, pudgy toddler body, with that…deliberate, determined way of walking and running and doing pretty much everything, because it’s still kind of new, kind of awkward. 

At ten, Alex is stretched out and fluid.  He is focused, his body does what he wants it to do automatically.  There is grace.  Not always – he’s still a kid, still has his awkward moments – but a lot of the time.

At one point a kid on the other team hit a dribbling grounder toward the pitcher, who scooped it up and threw it to Alex a bit high.  Alex had to jump to make the catch, and as he landed he was off the base, so he did this little hopping foot-to-foot thing and had his foot on the bag before the runner could make it.  I heard one of the coaches yell “Nice dancing, Alex!” 

And that’s what it is.  A dance.  You have to learn the steps.  And then practice, practice, practice until you no longer have to think “one, two, kick, ball change” or “watch, jump, catch, get back on the base.”  I see other kids, newer to the game, who are still learning the steps.  They do one thing (hopefully it’s catch the ball) and then they hesitate and look while they’re trying to remember the next step.  Meanwhile, of course, a coach or fifty are yelling “THROW TO FIRST!”

It’s not all that long ago that Alex hesitated like that.  In fact, he still has those moments.  They all do.  They’re just kids.

But they’re getting there. 

The top half of the inning ends and Alex is in the dugout with the rest of the kids, waiting for his turn at bat.  While they wait they are restless and loud, yelling out the various baseball chants they have learned along the way.

“We want a single/just a little single

S-I-N-G-L-E/single single SINGLE!

We want a double/just a little double

D-0-U-B-L-E/double double DOUBLE!”

or

“Alex takes the bat/he gives the ball a whack/ if I were you, i’d scoot yer booty back, and back, and back, until you hit the shack!” 

or the one where one kid hollers – drill-seargent-like – the first name of the kid at bat (we’ll call him Joe Baseball) and the rest of the kids have to answer with the last name…

“I say Joe, you say Baseball!  Joe!”

“Baseball!”

“Joe!”

“Baseball!”

“JOE!”

“BASEBALL!”

The boys are loud.  At times it seems like it’s more about seeing who can be loudest than it is about cheering on their teammate.  I think it’s pent-up energy while they wait their turns.

Anyway, last night I was watching them in the dugout – we had a good view from our picnic table – and I noticed that Alex was one of the loud voices leading some of these cheers/chants.  Loud voice, light in his eyes, little grin, one of the guys.

And in that moment I felt a little ripple of something, a little shimmer, a little double vision.  A layering of all the Alexes through the days and weeks and months and years, from pudgy little laughing toddler to sleek and loud ball player. 

This is who he is now, at this moment in time.  He is still – in my eyes – a newborn, a three-month-old, a crawler, a climber, a toddler, a pre-schooler, a kindergartener, and so on.  And he’s always had little friends to play with through the years.

But this is different.

He has teammates.  And he’s played baseball (or t-ball and baseball) for about half his life now, but this year is different.  This year he fits better in his skin, he is comfortable, he is rarely tentative.  He is not new, he is not shy.  He is observant and thoughtful and smart.  He catches criticism and holds it in his glove, examining it without biting his lip to keep his face a mask and the prickly feeling in his eyes at bay.  He takes what he needs from what the coach has thrown to him, and then he throws that ball back into the game as improved technique, or better focus, or holding his elbow up when he’s at bat. 

All this is a wonder to me.  And so…mature.

I know it sounds more dramatic than necessary, but…so be it.  I just…I didn’t play any sports as a kid.  I was very shy and felt very awkward, even though, like Alex now, I could run fast and I was tall.  I had a baseball glove (still have it), and a football…I could throw and catch and hit.  But I was timid and didn’t want to be on a team.

I’m so glad Alex isn’t me. 

I watch this transformation, this blossoming from little tentative rookie to a (relatively) seasoned minor league player who pitches and plays first and third and shortstop interchangeably.  And I am so proud and thrilled when I watch.

And I watch him laughing and shouting and being a part of that team, so comfortable in his position among them, so secure, so relaxed. 

The ten-year-old me I remember just marvels at this ten-year-old son of mine. 

I’m so happy for him. 

I’m so happy that even when he had awful days where he didn’t hit the ball or even swing the bat or catch anything or throw well, and the coach’s words stung, no matter how gently (rookie league, anyway) those constructively critical words were given, and he wouldn’t look at me or Bill because it took all his concentration to be a big boy (because there’s no crying in baseball, as we all know)….I’m so happy that he worked his way through all of that to become the kid he is right now.

~~~

It’s kind of a magical experience, this motherhood thing.

Hurler

My little boy on the mound at a recent game.

Alex is home sick today, so I figured I’d write about him….

The Most Important Ingredient

Julia seemed to need a little something extra in her oatmeal this morning.

No Love Too Deep, No Pain Too Great

Busy day.  Still not feeling great, but despite (or because of) that, I spent the day – like the past several – careening around the house like a pinball from one must-do project to another.  Why?  I don’t know.  It’s how I careen.

Anyway, let’s see, I dropped Julia off at a birthday party, then about an hour and a half later Bill took Alex to his (Alex’s) ball game (fall ball), and then I picked up Julia, dropped her off at Alex’s game, and then headed to work.  Bill had told me to call in sick, but I couldn’t do it.  Anyway, I got there, and they didn’t need me, so I got to leave in order to (per one of my coworkers) have some soup and some tea with honey and lemon. 

I opted, instead, to catch the end of Alex’s game. 

Another First Day of School

School was supposed to start last week, but Hurricane Irene gave Bill and the kids an extra week of summer vacation.

Last Tuesday I had the kids doing all sorts of day-before-the-first-day-back-at-school things:  cleaning their rooms, stripping and remaking their beds (okay, I did the remaking), cleaning out their backpacks and restocking them, choosing their clothes for the next day…lots and lots of work. 

And then, at some point early in the afternoon, I learned that the first day of school wasn’t going to be tomorrow.  It might be Friday, but they weren’t sure.

So I told the kids, and they immediately dropped everything and tried to go off to play, but I stopped that nonsense and told them they still had to finish.

“Why?  We don’t even have school tomorrow!”

I don’t care.  You need to clean up this big mess that you made while you were cleaning.  Just do it now, and then it’ll be DONE.

Grumblingly, they trudged back to the dining room and finished my cruel and torturous chores.

Some days, motherhood is so much fun!

MY Boy

About halfway up the stairs I could see the little space between his bedroom door and the hall floor.

Bill said he’d just put the kids to bed, so I expected darkness, but no, that bedroom definitely had a light on.

I opened the door and he rolled quickly to a sitting position, grinning when he saw me.

“How’s the book?”  I asked.

Crashing on the Sand

Sometimes when I’m driving around I’ll write parts of posts in my head.  Or I’ll have conversations with various people, either as a rehearsal or as a “if only I’d said it THIS way” rewind kind of thing.  Sometimes I have conversations with myself.  Sometimes the conversations I think I’m having in my head with other people are, really, just more conversations with myself.  Because, after all, the words coming from the “other” people in my head are really just me with a different voice.

Sometimes I wish they’d all – me included – shut up.

So there’s that.

My Mother Isn’t Perfect

No, there’s no “but she’s perfect to me” follow up to that statement.  It says what I want it to say.  Hallmark might disagree.

My mother isn’t perfect.

For a long time, I thought she was.  Or, rather, I thought I was supposed to be. 

All She’s Askin’

Early this morning – before 4 – I awoke to the sound of Julia crying.  Sobbing.  Had to be a bad dream.  So I got out of bed and flipped the hall light on and went into her bedroom.

She was huddled under her thick pink comforter, still crying and crying and crying.  I rubbed her back and told her it was okay, I was there…but she kept crying.  I thought maybe she was still half asleep. 

Her back felt really warm, and, figuring it was partly due to the winter pajamas and the thick comforter AND all the crying, I told her we should take her jammies off.  At that point she became quite lucid and said “Mama, I have to go pee.”  She scurried to the bathroom, and I figured maybe that was part of the problem.

But no.

Message on the Glass

I was baking and cooking up a storm last night – and while I created one storm, another one raged outside – pouring rain, thunder and lightning.  Ah, Spring!

Anyway, the air was humid both inside and out, and as a result, the big front window in our living room had fogged up.

I went through that room on my way upstairs for something, and this caught my eye:

That’s MY Boy

Moments ago.

“Mom, you know what I think reading is?  It’s like…television in your head…only…better for you.”

What “Time” Did You Say?

One might think that a closed – and locked - bathroom door would be enough to deter conversation. 

But if one thought that, then one probably doesn’t have children.

When the Rose Colored Glasses Broke

When my sister fell on her bike while riding over the train tracks at the other end of our street, our friend Dolores thought she was being kidnapped.

I guess Mere, my sister, must have screamed or yelled or something from just out of view, down in the dip of the road where the trains used to run, back before the town removed the tracks and made a bike path. 

Ho Ho Heave

Well, at least it didn’t strike while she was sitting, with Alex, on Mall Santa’s lap.

Or immediately after our “picnic” dinner of burgers and broccoli and really good homemade macaroni and cheese while sitting on a blanket on the floor in front of the tv watching endless episodes of “Billy the Exterminator.”  (We are big fans of Billy.)

No, it struck shortly after midnight.  I awoke to the miserable sound of Julia wailing my name.

Mommy was Wrong

* Warning:  This post contains a mildly graphic description of an incident involving Julia that took place today.  I am not, however, including any images.  If you are squeamish, perhaps you’d prefer to skip this post.

~~~

Julia got her ears pierced back in May, as a birthday gift.  She was a very brave girl when the earrings went in, and everything went fine with the healing process, and the daily cleaning around the site with alcohol or peroxide, and the twisting of the earrings to make sure they weren’t sticking to unhealed lobe.

The big day came in late July – the day Julia could change her earrings.  Or, rather, the day Mommy could change Julia’s earrings.

Walking Home Alone

 
I took a quick snapshot of our shadows this morning as we walked up the road.  That's me on the left, holding the camera.  Then Julia, the big girl, and over on the right, kind of hidden in the tree shadows, is Alex.

First day of school.

My Boy

There are five new Star Wars action figures lined up on the coffee table.

"I lined them up in order of episodes.  And if there are two from the same episode, like Anakin and Obi-Wan, I just put them in alphabetical order."

Encouragement

The boys on my son's baseball team range far and wide in everything from age, to height, to ability.  Some of the boys have played t-ball prior to this, others haven't.  For some, this is their second or third year in this league, others played t-ball last year and are working their way up the little league ladder.

There are several boys around Alex's height and build.  One in particular, a kid I'll call Tall Boy II, is so similar to Alex that when then they're in uniform, and you see them from a distance, and you don't see the number on the backs of their jerseys, and they're wearing their caps, not helmets, and when the brim of the cap casts their little faces in shadow, and they both have relatively short hair...sometimes it's easy to mistake one for the other for a moment.

Pardon Me While I Get Melancholy For a Moment

I am a sucker.

I am a sucker for soppy Hallmark and Kodak commercials, violins playing, "Sunrise, Sunset," tiny handprints on laminated sheets of paper alongside poems that begin something like "I know right now my hands are small/and it drives you crazy when you see handprints on the wall/but one day soon I'll be big and tall/and you'll wish you'd driven me to the mall/when I asked nicely/when I was five." 

Big Girl

She can scramble eggs, and stir them around in the pan herself.  She can also fry them, and flip them pretty well.

She likes to stand on a chair at the stove and stir ramen noodles, too. 

Lately she has been making her own peanutbutter and jam sandwiches as well.

A Little Motherhood Story

The other day I was reading very old posts from the beginning of this website - late 2003 and after that.  Alex and Julia (once Julia made her appearance in May of 2004) were very young, and I didn't always get a decent night's sleep back then.

I remember, through a fog, many nights when I was up at all hours with Julia, my small, loud nocturnal creature.  I remember drifting through the days, brain fuzzy and dull, just focusing on making it to the next place, the next task, the next meal, because I couldn't really think any farther ahead than that.

And I remember how odd it was when Julia finally, finally started to sleep through the night. 

Applause

The kids were squirmy. 

Alex, at least, looked apologetic about it, like "But I'm only 6-nearly-7!  How do you expect me to sit still on this chair?" 

Julia, true to form, had no apologies.  She just flailed and wiggled and leaned and annoyed her brother and, at one point, while I had her strapped into my lap with my arms, she arched her back so she and I were nearly eyeball to eyeball, only her face was upside down, and, while staring at me, she pulled her lower lip down (or, in this case, up) to her chin.  It was a bizarre sight.  She laughed silently as I sat her upright again and hissed at her to behave.  Sometimes she would twist her little body around and grasp my face, staring intently into my eyes and then turn my head so she could whisper in my ear. 

Have you ever had a five-year-old whisper in your ear?  For one thing, they don't always get the idea that whispering is supposed to be a quiet affair.  For another thing, there is no polite distance left between her lips and my ear.  So the effect is ticklish, slightly spitty, and louder than necessary.  "But Mom, I just have to tell you something...(dramatic pause)...I just love you."  Fine, now be quiet and sit still.

We were at a flute and classical guitar concert in a library on Friday night.  Bill, my husband, was the guitarist.  This is the second (I think) concert we've brought the kids to.  Maybe the third.  I don't think my blood pressure can take too many more of them.

At least this time I was smart enough to sit several rows back, strategically ensuring that taller people would populate the space between the musicians and the wiggly children of one of those musicians. 

Ours were the only children in attendance.  The majority of the audience was made up of older folk, probably long-time members of the community who attended the weekly concert series of their local library faithfully.  They sat straight, and still, and paid attention, and, as far as I could tell, certainly enjoyed the music - and the musicians themselves.

Bill and Barbara have been playing as a duo for about fifteen  years - longer than I've known my husband, in fact.  So long that they communicate easily with an arched brow, a slight nod, or a n0-I-can't-make-eye-contact-now-or-I'll-lose-it chemistry.  Like an old married couple, but minus the bickering.  Or the laundry.

The kids adore Barbara and her husband, too, so bringing the kids to the concert should be a fun, relaxing family-ish affair.  And it is.  Well, except for me during the concert part of it. 

I made the mistake, in my desperate attempt to keep the kids on their best pretty good not throwing things behavior, of telling them at some point that "After this one, there are only 6 more songs."  Six more songs was easier than trying to explain two more pieces of three movements each.  Well anyway, from that point on, every time there was a break in the playing, both kids would turn to me, eyes expectant, and stage-whisper "Is it only three more songs?" or whatever number it was at the time.

Silver-haired heads would turn and smile and chuckle.  I would turn red and smile weakly and pray for lightning to strike me.

Fortunately, though, Bill had introduced the kids (and me) at some point earlier in the concert, so that, I think, cut us some slack with the rest of the attendees.  "Ohhh, it's the guitar player's kids.  Well, you know what they say about the doctor's/policeman's/cobbler's children..."  And that explains it.  Bill also mentioned to the audience that the kids KNEW they needed to behave because if they did, they'd get ice cream after the concert.

Yes, we firmly believe in bribes to elicit good behavior from our children in certain situations.  This was on of them.

"Only one more song?" Alex hissed at me.

"Can we get ice cream now?" when that movement, "Night-club 1960" from Astor Piazzolla's "Tango" was finished. 

"Soon," I said.

The audience clapped, and Bill and Barbara took their bows and made their way back up the aisle toward the door to the rest of the library, where their guitar and flute cases were. 

The clapping continued, and the guy who coordinates and hosts these Friday evening concerts made his way up to the front (there was no stage) to say a few words, thanking everyone for coming, and thanking Bill and Barbara for playing...and then he kind of reached toward Bill and Barbara with one hand, beckoning them forward. 

Horrors.

I heard the word "encore" whispered somewhere.  It hovered in the air near my ear, grinning at me.  It looked a bit like Julia. 

Pleeeease no encore....

I know.  I'm totally selfish.  The encore is a gift.  It's that little extra something, like the free glass of limoncello we used to receive at the tiny Italian restaurant we loved, years ago.  And the encore is a thank you as well.  Thank you for thanking us for playing for you. 

But.  It would mean one more song.  One more period of however many minutes of holding Julia the Octopus in my lap and trying to silence her loud whispers. 

But instead of an encore, Bill and Barbara stood and smiled and bowed again and thanked everyone.  Bill mentioned that the music was on his stand, if anyone cared to look at the wild notes of Michael Daugherty's "Yo Amaba a Lucy" (I Loved Lucy) or any others, and if anyone had any questions about it, feel free to ask.

And when he said "any questions," Alex's hand shot up.  He sat as tall as he could, arm reaching for the ceiling, silent, waiting to be called on. 

I had no idea what Alex was going to say, but if you had asked me, my guess would have been something like "Now can we go out for ice cream?"

Bill was looking elsewhere at that moment, so Barbara brought his attention back around to Alex.

"Yes, Alex?"

And Alex spoke up clearly to say "I just want to say thank you for teaching me how to play guitar."

Gulp.

That's MY boy.

There was a general murmury sound of "aww" at that, and I made sure to soak it all in. 

He is a sensitive, thoughtful boy at times.  I sometimes wonder what great thing I did to deserve him.

And then, of course, Julia stuck her hand up, too.  That wasn't at ALL predictable, was it?

"Yes, Julia?"

The room waited while she thought of something to say..."I just love you."

She is sweet and sincere.  At times.  When she's not a wild, hissing octopus on my lap.

I sometimes wonder what I did to deserve her, too.  Heh, heh.

~~~

(Oh - and in case you were wondering, yes, the kids had their ice cream.  Barbara, who knows the area, brought us to a little ice cream stand not too far from the library.  Julia had a cone of vanilla, Alex had a cone of mint chocolate chip.  The cones - and Bill had ordered the "kiddie cone" size - were ENORMOUS.  They ate as much as they could, but no way could they finish.

And after that, we all went out for dinner.)

Saturday in the Kitchen

Well, I needed to make bread, first of all.  And I also needed to bake for the upcoming week's Tuesdays with Dorie post.  And, because the week AFTER that is "my" Tuesday - my recipe selection - and because I wanted to be sure to have THAT recipe made well in advance, just in case there were any problems and also so I could be sure to have the post and photos ready in plenty of time, I decided to do that TWD recipe as well.  And since I was making bread, why not make more bread.  I'd cooked the last four russet potatoes in preparation for the potato bread I'd planned to bake, and I also had three big sweet potatoes on the counter that I decided to bake, mainly to clear some space and to cook them before they started to get soft.  And, hmmm...if I'm going to make potato bread...I wonder what it would be like if I used sweet potatoes?  Do I have a sweet potato bread recipe? 

I had no idea.  I poked the sweet potato skins with a knife and popped them in the oven to bake while I flipped through a few bread books.  There were SWEET sweet potato breads - mainly quickbreads and other sweet items.  Nothing savory.  Not in the books I checked, anyway.  And no, I didn't check all of them.  I wasn't in a book-perusing mood.  I was in a cooking and baking mood.  So I made up my own sweet potato bread recipe.  And I'll post that later, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow.  I'm happy with how it turned out, I will say that.

So I made a total of four loaves of bread, a coffee cake, a batch of cookies, and - for dinner - gnocchi.  I only needed one potato for the bread, so I had three left to play with, and gnocchi sounded perfect.  Easy to make, comforting to eat.

Julia had helped a bit with the cookies, and when she saw me peeling a potato, she grabbed a chair from the dining room to stand on and demanded that I let her help.  Once her hair was in a pony tail and an apron was tied around her little waist, she was ready to go.  (Hands washed, too.  Yes, Mommy, with soap!)

She watched me scrape skin off the potatoes, and then helped me put them through the ricer.  She spooned salt, I scooped flour.  She cracked eggs.  I poured olive oil.  We both tossed everything together, taking turns with a fork.  Once the dough was just combined, it was time to make ropes.  Or worms.  She's nearly five.  She's quite familiar with worms.

I didn't take pictures; I've photographed the process before for this site, and I just wanted to get the gnocchi made so I could get dinner ready.

I did, however, ask Bill to take a couple of pictures while Julia and I were working. 

We were standing at the counter - me, barefoot on the floor; Julia, barefoot on her chair.  We wore aprons, our hair was pulled back and out of the way.  Our hands were dusted with flour, and we were intent on our work as we rolled sticky blobs of potato dough into long "worms" of relatively uniform thickness. 

As we worked together, mother and daughter, I had this feeling, as I sometimes do while working in the kitchen, of...of being more than just myself.  And of how, while I am "me" the whole time; I am always "Jayne" no matter how old I am or what my position is in the family - daughter granddaughter niece sister aunt wife mother - I am also NOT the same person. 

The view changes and overlaps and rewinds.  I see things through different eyes and from different perspectives.  It's disconcerting.  I am me, but suddenly I am not just me, watching my daughter's small, slightly awkward, determined hands manipulate dough in an imitation of mine.  I am also my mother watching me, her small daughter.  And I am also her mother, my grandmother, watching.  And one day, perhaps, Julia will be the mother, and she will step into this spot, standing where I am now and feeling the same sense of multiple selves that I do on occasion, while she watches her own daughter try to be a big girl. 

File Under "The Joys of Motherhood"

WARNING:  THE FOLLOWING POST MAY CONTAIN TOPICS OR GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS THAT WILL FRIGHTEN, DISGUST OR PERHAPS HORRIFY SOME PEOPLE.  PLEASE USE DISCRETION WHEN CHOOSING WHETHER OR NOT TO CONTINUE.

Trust

It was on Monday.

Bill was at work, Alex was at school.  Julia and I had an assortment of errands to run. 

First we went to Staples, one of my very favorite stores in the whole wide world.  I love office supplies. 

I had to get just a few things.  Julia asked if she could get a package of post-it notes and since she'd been almost very good in the store, I said okay.  Don't want to crush the office supply spirit in my daughter, of course.  She picked out bright pink (of course) for herself, and asked if we could get orange ones for Alex.  I said yes - I'm always happy when they want to get something for the other one. 

A bit later we went to this little shop that sells swimming gear to get Warm Belly suits for the kids.  They're taking swimming lessons at a different place now (we quit the Y - did I write about all that?  In a nutshell, we were tired of the lack of real instruction.  Too much playing around or down time, not enough actually swimming.  The new place is amazing.  One-on-one instruction and the kids are swimming or doing SOMETHING the whole time.  It's a bit of a change for Julia, especially - in this class she is challenged more, and she's having a hard time with it.  But at the same time, she loves her teacher.  So the class is chlorine and tears and hugs, over and over.  But she is learning so much more.) and the pool, I don't know, is maybe colder then the one at the Y.  Anyway, both kids' teeth chatter, and Julia's teacher suggested these suits for the kids.  She wears one herself.  So that's what Julia and I were doing on Monday morning.  Because I am a procrastinator, and their next swim class was that evening and I still hadn't bought the things yet.

We got there and picked out a purple one for Julia and red for Alex.  (The only orange one there was too small.)  They have adjustable velcro straps over the shoulders, so as Alex's genetically pre-disposed to tallness little torso grows taller, we can adjust the suit.  Julia.  Well, she's at the small end of her suit size, so she'll probably have the same one til she's twenty.

Anyway, that was the morning.  We came home and I went upstairs to work on some projects in my little work are in my bedroom.  Julia sat on the bed and tortured played with one of the cats, and eventually she crawled into the bed and, after thrashing around a bit, fell asleep. 

Woo hoo!  Uninterrupted time for me! 

She slept for an hour and a half - then I had to wake her up so we could go pick up Alex at school.  I brushed the tangle of hair from her face and kissed her, and when she woke up she immediately started crying and said her tummy didn't feel good. 

I kissed her forehead and her cheeks, and she felt hot, but she'd also been fully dressed under all the bed covers.  She was a little sweaty, too, but again, that could be from being too hot all that time.  I uncovered her and quizzed her about her not feeling well.  Did she think she was going to throw up?  Did she need to go potty?  Was she hungry?  She hadn't had lunch, really.  Just a little snack that she didn't finish.  She said she wasn't hungry. 

She kept crying, too.  I got her into her boots and coat, hat and mittens, and into the car.  She was quiet (a sure sign something was off) and whimpery and sad.  We got Alex, came home, and I brought Julia upstairs to take her temperature.

Of course, the battery had died in the digital thermometer.  So I'm kissing her head, feeling her torso, trying to decide if she truly feels HOT or if she's just over warm from crying, or what.  I attempted to take her temp the old fashioned way with a glass thermometer under her tongue, but I was too worried she'd chomp down on the glass, swallow mercury and shards, and go insane while her insides slowly shredded, that I took the thing out after only a minute.  Inconclusive.  I don't think she even kept it under her tongue.  I know I didn't like doing that as a kid either.

So what to do?  She felt on the warm side to me, and she doesn't usually wake up crying like that.  Swim class was in about an hour.  Should she stay or should she go?

She felt warm, and she just didn't seem right to me.

So I called and cancelled her lesson.  Bill could bring Alex, and I'd stay home.

About a half hour before the class, Bill called - he was nearly home, should he just go straight to the pool and meet us there?  I told him no, come home, Julia's sick.

He said "Oh." and in that word I heard a boatload of doubt and suspicion.

The previous swim class had been a hard one on Julia.  She was basically taken outside her comfort zone, and she was scared to go back.  Of course, nothing bad was going to happen to her.  Her teacher is fabulous - has Julia do a little something new - face all the way in the water, or swimming about three feet on her own - and then lots of hugs and "I'm so proud of you!" and then maybe something less scary, like swimming using the pool noodle or floating on her back.  So like I said earlier - chlorine and tears and hugs.  

She was a mixture of scared and proud, and wasn't all that excited to go back.  But we'd kept being supportive and encouraging and we told her Miss C would NEVER let anything bad happen to her.  It might be scary at times, but that was part of learning to swim.  And if you face your fears, and work through them, you'll be all the better for it.  (Of course, it doesn't work on trips to the dentist, but that's just me.)

She hadn't said anything earlier about being scared of her swim class - in fact she was VERY thrilled about her new purple Warm Belly suit (which she insisted on calling a wet suit) that day.

But.

So Bill's voice in my ear on the phone allowed some doubt to start working on me.  Julia genuinely seemed sick.  The whole waking up from the nap crying part was so unusual for her....but.

What if?  

It's not like she's never been sneaky.  She's four.  It's part of being a kid.

But she'd felt warm.  Her cheeks were flushed.

I went downstairs to where she was lying on the couch, watching tv.

I asked how she was feeling.

"Not good."

"Julia, did you say you were sick so you wouldn't have to go to swim class?"

She didn't answer.  Just snuggled under the blanket.

"Julia, are you REALLY sick, or did you SAY you were sick so you wouldn't have to go to class?"

She started crying.

"Julia?  Are you REALLY sick?"

"I don't want to go to swim class!"

Grrrr.

"Do you feel sick?"

"I don't wanna go to swim class!"  She was crying and not looking at me.

"Julia, DO YOU FEEL SICK?"

"I just don't want to go to SWIM CLASS!"

"Are you saying you feel sick because you don't want to go to swim class???!!!"  I was getting angry.  Trying to be sure she understood the question and appalled that I'd been duped.

She nodded.  Crying.

"Julia, you lied to me.  I know you're scared to go, but you can't pretend to be sick just because you don't want to do something."  (oh, really?  since when?)

She cried more.  "I don't want to go!"

"Do you feel sick?"

She shook her head.

I swallowed all the yelling that was welling up inside me.

"You can stay down here, then, and you'll go to bed right after dinner.  If you say your sick, you're going to be treated like you're sick."

I went upstairs.

I was furious.  At her for faking it SO WELL.  At me for falling for it, and at Bill for figuring it out so fast when he wasn't even here.

He got home and I filled him in and he nodded like he wasn't the least bit surprised.  I found myself defending my blindness - her warm cheeks, her sweaty head, no lunch, the crying.  I was more annoyed about being fooled than I was about Julia's deception.  I ALWAYS know when they're hiding something.  "How did you know, Mom?"  "Because I'm a Mom.  I just know."

Til now.

Bill took Alex to class, and I tried, unsuccessfully, to convey to him that I didn't want him to tell Julia's teacher of her recent confession.  Because, truth be told, I didn't want to look like an idiot Mom who can't read her kid. 

Dammit.

I made dinner.  Fish tacos.  Easy to do when you use frozen fish sticks.  I was too grumpy to be more creative than that.

Julia seemed to perk up a bit while Alex and Bill were at the pool, so I squashed that quickly and efficiently.

"Julia, do you understand what a lie is?"

"Yeah."

"What is it?"

"...I don't know."

"A lie is when you tell something that isn't true.  Like when you said you didn't feel good but you really just didn't want to go to swim class.  That was a lie.  When you tell lies, it makes it hard for people to trust you.  To believe what you tell them other times.  I'm really not happy about this, Julia."

"I'm sorry." 

Bill and Alex got home - Alex did really well and got two lollipops for his efforts.  He'd eaten one in the car and was finishing up the next one as he came in the door.  Bill was full of praise for him.  He also told me Julia's teacher had suggested a make-up lesson - maybe Thursday?  I said fine.  Call her.  I was still wallowing in grumpiness and feeling like a fool.  Of course I was overreacting, but I was too busy DOING it to notice.

Bill thought I was annoyed about the make-up lesson.  No.  I was just frustrated because DIDN'T HE UNDERSTAND HOW ANGRY I WAS THAT MY FOUR-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER PUT ONE OVER ON ME SO WELL.  She SEEMED SICK. 

I don't like to be wrong.  I know.  Get over yourself, Jayne.  But honestly.  She really seemed sick.

Anyway, we sat down to dinner.  Alex told me I could win a cooking contest (because fish sticks wrapped in soft tacos are so innovative and tasty, apparently) and Julia didn't want anything to eat.  Just maybe some cheese on a taco.  I fixed that for her, but she just sat and cried.  And cried.

Something in me let go, and all the annoyance evaporated.  She really felt bad about her story.  Time to stop being the dispenser of morals and just give the girl a hug.  So I did.  Several.  She sat in her chair and I sat beside her in mine, and I just hugged her while she cried.

She finally stopped, but she still didn't feel like eating, so I told her to go ahead back downstairs and I'd sit with her in a few minutes.  She went back to watching Sponge Bob or whatever was on, and I ate dinner.

After the plates were cleared, Bill gave Alex a guitar lesson and I went downstairs.

Julia looked so tiny on the couch, all wrapped up in green blankets, her small, sad face on the pillow.

"Would you like me to lie down with you?"  I asked.

She nodded. 

I slid under the blankets beside her and gave her a kiss on the head, then turned to watch the cartoon.

And then Julia made some little noise and threw up.  Not much.  I kind of thought it was some kind of burp with benefits, but she suddently had this "OH NO" look on her face and before I could say anything, she REALLY threw up, on me, the blankets, herself.  Just liquid, but still.

She started crying.  Again.  I shot questions and orders at her:  "Do you think you're going to throw up again?  Upstairs!  Run!  To the bathroom!  Hurry!"  I ran along behind her, a Border Collie, nipping at her heels.  pleasedon'tthrowuponthestairspleasedon'tthrowuponthestairs...

She made it to the bathroom and I flipped up the lid and the seat and told her to just stay there, just in case.  I ran back downstairs and grabbed the wet blankets and tossed them in the washing machine, then went back upstairs in time for Julia to retch again - productively - a couple more times.

She was really sick.

And I have to admit - I was glad.  Not glad she was vomiting.  That's no fun for any of us. 

But I was glad she had been telling me the truth.  I thought back to my earlier interrogation - trying to figure out if she felt sick really, or if she was trying to get out of swim class.  And the answer was now fuzzier.  Less clear.  She felt sick AND she didn't want to go?  She felt sick AND SO she didn't want to go?  She felt sick BECAUSE she didn't want to go?  Who knows?  And what does it matter, at this point.

I cleaned up Julia's face and the couch, put new blankets and towels all around.  Bill brought in a bucket for her, just in case.  But she seemed a lot better.  No more crying.  She was perkier - more like her usual self.

Later, when we were rehashing things, Bill wondered if maybe she'd cried so hard she made herself throw up.  After all, she seemed SO much better immediately after....

Possible, yes, but I didn't think so.  Too much lag time in between the crying jag and the race to the bathroom. 

And I told him I'd had a couple times when I'd maybe eaten something that didn't sit well with me, and I spent several hours just not feeling right, and then, finally, I'd run my own race to a bathroom, and afterward, I felt completely fine.  Like nothing had happened.

So it was certainly possible - or probable - that Julia ate something in the morning that made her feel sick when she woke up from her nap.  She'd spent several hours feeling lousy, and then, finally, got rid of it and felt better.

And I had second guessed myself.  I'd doubted my own intuition, my motherly radar, and I'd believed the worst of Julia.  Believed that she wasn't really sick; that she was faking it and lying to me.  And that she'd been successful.

And I was wrong about that.  I was right the first time. 

And she hadn't lied.

Trust.

I need to remember to trust my own Mommy gut instincts.  And Julia's gut, too, apparently.

Trust. 

I should not have been so quick to doubt. 

To doubt myself or Julia.  Myself, especially.

Lesson learned.

Observation

You know, I love my kids. 

They are beautiful and fascinating and funny and smart and fun. 

But they're kids, and they can wear on a person. 

And that person would be me. 

And there are days when I think if I hear another ridiculous shrieky squabbly "he - no, she - no, he - no, she"-fest I will just gouge my ear drums with sharpened popsicle sticks. 

And I make this known. 

And for a while, there is silence, peace, and harmony. 

And then I hear the soft but intense tones of a dispute over something - who had that book first...who gets to play with spiderman...who gets to hold the remote...who gets to sit on the couch. 

And then it builds...and builds...and soon I hear it - a high-pitched, primal, animal-with-its-leg-in-a-trap screechy, eye-popping scream that threatens to weave into my head through one ear, chew up what's left of my brain and then scoot out the other ear. 

And I take a breath so I can holler effectively at the kids --

And then I realize that this horrible sound is actually coming from me.

Who is this crazy lady I see in my mirror? 

And why do her eyes spin in opposite directions like that?

And when was the last time she had her eyebrows waxed? 

Too long ago.

I Say Dumb Stuff

Yesterday the kids were playing outside in the snow.  Well, the ice-encrusted snow.  And of course, they were eating snow and munching on shards of ice like they were eating doughboys at a fair. 

Irrational things pop into my head - not just because I have kids - my head has always been like this.  I jump way ahead to disaster scenarios.  I'm the original mountain-out-of-a-mole-hill-maker.

So I'm watching them happily licking and gnawing on rough-edged sections of backyard ice, their little cheeks and noses red from the cold.  And isn't that ice cold?  You're cold...the ice is cold...isn't that kind of reducing the amount of fun you're having out there?  But you're kids...and you pay no attention to extreme cold, because it's too much fun to eat great pieces of ice and great scoops of snow, because it's there, and you're kids, and that's what kids do...

But I am (in theory) an adult, and more sensitive to the cold, and more aware of things like, oh, frostbite!  But of course they don't know what frostbite is, and how can I explain it without graphic pictures that I'm sure I could download if I just did a quick search....

So I open the window over the kitchen sink and yell out to my foolish, fate-tempting children the following:

"STOP EATING SO MUCH SNOW AND ICE!....YOUR MOUTHS WILL FALL OFF!"

They glance at me for a moment, then go back to their snacks.  I close the window.  I tried.   

And from behind me, downstairs, where Bill is changing water in the fish tank, he says, "your mouths will fall off?"

As I said.  I say dumb stuff.

Motherhood. O, The Glamor Of It All

We went to bed around ten.  Bill's had a sore throat and a cough, so he's been home for the past couple of days, resting his voice and drinking tea and moaning and whining and sighing and telling me he really hates being sick bravely refusing to admit anything is wrong.  He went to work today. 

Both kids have had the sniffles, too, and dry coughs, particularly Alex.  It's the weather, it's the dry air and the closed up houses and probably exposure to lots of other runny-nosed little kids at school (Alex) and at daycare (Julia).  By some miracle, I am fine.  Probably because someone has to be.

So last night...somewhere around 11:30 or so, Alex came into our room and said his arm hurt.  I think he'd probably been sleeping on it or something like that.  I said he could come in our bed for a few minutes, and then he'd have to go back in his own bed.  That worked for him.  He snuggled in between us and dozed a bit, and then I woke him up and told him time was up.  He said that was fine - his arm was all better now.

I followed him down the hall - he in his green, fuzzy, dinosaur feetie-pajamas.  He asked if he could have something to drink and I said sure, go ahead and get in bed and I'll go get you something.  He climbed onto his bed and I held up the sheet and comforter so he could scoot inside.  He's got my old double bed.  Kind of big for a five-year-old (okay, five and a half) but hey, at least there was plenty of room for the 879 stuffed animals he had arranged along 2/3 of the bed. 

I used to do that when I was little.  Try to sleep with all my dolls and stuffed animals in my bed.  But the main thing I remember - and it looks like this is one of his concerns, too - is that all the animals and people had to be lying face up, so they could breathe.  No matter that they were crammed way down near my feet - they had to be face up.  Don't want any plush corpses the next morning. 

Alex has solved some of this by heaping all the animals on top of the bed.  They have plenty of room to breathe.  And since it's a full-sized bed, he has some room to sleep.  Probably less space in his bed for him than Julia has in her toddler bed.  But it's snuggly and fun.  And it keeps the animals off the floor and tidy.

Anyway, I held the sheet and comforter up and he crawled toward his pillow.  He coughed - like he's been doing lately with this cold - and said "I feel sick."  Now - he's been saying that every time he coughs.  And I say yes, but you'll get better. 

So he coughed and said "I feel sick," and I said "Just go ahead and get into your bed, you're fine."

And then he threw up.

On the pillow, the sheets, and some of his unlucky little plush friends. 

I think I stood there in disbelief for a split second - he actually was sick! - and he started crying loudly, and like the bad mom that I am, my first thought at that point was "be quiet!  Don't wake up Julia!" 

So he threw up again.  Fortunately at this point he was facing away from the mattress.  Unfortunately he was standing up on the bed and the distance from mouth to floor was much greater and thus the horrible splashing radius was greatly increased.

I grabbed him from the bed and herded him into the bathroom, slammed open the lid and seat and told him if he thought he was going to throw up again, do it in there.  He immediately obeyed, and then started wailing.  He hasn't done this in a long, long time.  I think he's forgotten how horrible it is.  All kinds of goopy gunk was running from his nose and mouth, and I wiped it away with a damp washcloth and told him it was going to be okay, he was going to be okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay.

I helped him take his pajamas off and had him sit on a little footstool near the toilet while I went back to his room to clean up the mess.

Now, one would think that during all these horrible noises, and the loud crying, and the light by his bed being turned on so I could see the ABSOLUTE HORROR that awaited me, that Julia, the lightest sleeper in the universe, would wake up.  But if one thought that, one would be surprisingly mistaken.  She snoozed on, despite the noise, despite the light, and despite the horrible smell.

At first I didn't even know where to begin.  Ugh.  Just UGH.  So I started throwing all the clean and dry animals off the bed to the other side of the room.  Then I just rolled everything - all the sheets, the pillow, the comforter, and the unlucky animals near the pillow - into a giant smelly ball of navy blue, and stuffed the whole thing into a giant trash bag.  Much easier to carry that way, and nothing would - ugh - leak.

Alex said he was done throwing up and was cold.  I ushered him into our bed, where my husband lay motionless and quiet.  I must confess, I wanted to shake him.  But instead, I had Alex snuggle under the sheet and blankets, and I went back to my smelly hell.

I got a couple rolls of paper towels, another trash bag, and a cannister of Clorox disinfecting wipes, and proceeded to clean it all up.  I am not going to go into any more detail at this point - suffice to say, it was ICKY and SMELLY and I had to stop a couple times just to leave the room and breathe some air that wasn't perfumed with vomit and Clorox. 

Julia continued to sleep.

When I'd finally cleaned everything up, I got the spare crib mattress from the floor in the kids' room and made that up with some of Julia's sheets, and carried it into our bedroom.  I got a fresh pillow and some blankets, and one of Alex's teddy bears, and moved him from my bed into this cozy little nest for the night.  I got him some water and told him if he was thirsty, just to take tiny, tiny sips.  And then I got into bed.

And then Julia woke up.  She was thirsty.  She came with me down to the kitchen where I got her a sippy cup and - amazingly - was completely agreeable about going back to bed.  She NEVER goes willingly.  But last night she did.  I tucked her in and kissed her goodnight and wondered how she could stand the smell.  It was fading, but it was still there.  She didn't seem to care.  I left the room, door open so it could continue to air out, and went back to bed.  I climbed in, and Julia immediately started crying.  I got out of bed and went to find out what was wrong.  (Pleasedon'tbesickPleasedon'tbesickPleasedon'tbesick...) - She couldn't find her cup of water.  Easily solved, another few kisses and out I went.  This time she stopped me before I got to my bedroom.

"Mommy, you're a-posed to close the door!"  She has this thing about wanting the door shut.  I told her the room needed to get fresh air in it, but she was genuinely distressed and so fine, I drew the door almost closed - figuring I would get up in a few minutes and push it back open, once she nodded off again.

I got back into bed and tried not to relive the awfulness of the night but my mind kept replaying it.  Alex was still awake.  I could hear him breathing and moving around a bit on his little mattress on the floor.  I really wanted to sleep.

"Mommy?  I'm really, really hungry." 

"Okay, honey, let's find you something you can eat."  We headed downstairs.  I figured Saltines would be best - pretty bland and safe.  I put a few in a little bowl and we went downstairs and watched 45 minutes of stuff on the Food Network.  I told him to eat slowly and take tiny bites.  He nibbled like a mouse, and ultimately ate 3 and a half crackers before suddenly announcing "I'm ready to go back to bed now."  So back we went, up the stairs, to my room, to his makeshift bed.

He coughed once and threw up.  Right on my floor.  I think I whimpered and then shouted "Quick!  Run to the bathroom!" and gave him an encouraging shove from behind.  He tried, but lost the rest of his stomach contents on the hall floor right at the top of the stairs.  He made it into the bathroom and opened the lid and seat of the toilet and stood there, ready for more.

"What happened, Mama?"  Julia was awake this time, sitting up in her bed.  I told her Alex was sick. 

"And he frowed up?"  Yes, he frowed up.  You stay in bed, Julia, it's icky out here.  "Okay Mama!"  There really must be something wrong with her...she's being way too cooperative. 

I turned on the hall light and muttered "I'm in hell" in the hopes that my motionless and silent husband would leap out of bed with a valiant cry of "I'll handle this!  You go take a nice bubble bath!"  It didn't happen.  He's no dummy.

So I cleaned up the newest mess while Alex hung out in the bathroom.  By some miracle, he hadn't splashed anything on his clean pajamas, which was good.  I wiped his face off again and herded him back to bed.  Fortunately there was no smell with this batch, so my room was tolerable. 

It was after 2:00.  I got back in bed and just lay there, listening to Alex, waiting for his breathing to even out, so I'd know he was sleeping.  At last, he was asleep, snoring softly.  I fell asleep at some point, too.

Today I'm keeping him home.  So far he's only had some half apple juice/half water to drink.  And he's got a bucket to bring with him wherever he goes.  Just in case. 

(taken directly from an instant messaged conversation with my sister the other morning when i should have been working...)

me: this morning while i was getting julia dressed
me: and repeatedly asking alex to please take off his jammies and his pull up and put on his underwear and pants (over and over and over)
me: he finally took off his jammies and the pull up (which he just HAS to FLING into the air.  fortunately he is dry just about every morning now.  but still)
me: anyway
me: i'm trying to get julia's diaper on - like wrestling an octopus - and he's leaping around, happily naked for the moment - "Mommy!  I don't have any clothes on!"
me: and then he comes over toward me
me: saying
me: "my pee-pee"
me: i said "what about it"
me: and he said
me: "my pee pee is all twinkled up!"
mere: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
mere: what did you say?
me: i said "what?"
me: and he said it again, so of course i looked to see what "all twinkled up" might possibly mean
me: and i think it actually means "brrrr, it sure is cold in here"
mere: aahhhh.  Heehee
me: all twinlked up
me: twinkled, i mean
mere: Oh

me: and a julia thing
me: she LOVES the wizard of oz...or "Boz" as she calls the movie...
me: especially the singing and SKIPPING they do
mere: heehee
me: we were watching last night, alex and me on the couch and julia on the floor destroying one of alex's books...and the munchkins started singing happily because the witch was dead, and - as we have seen her do every time - julia got to her feet and started "skipping" all around the room, with a big big BIG smile on her face
mere: how cute
me: but she doesn't skip, it's more like a canter - there's one foot that always leads.  she doesn't switch back and forth.
mere: skipping is hard
me: yep
me: she thinks she's skipping.
me: bill has heard her say "kip!  kip!" while she's doing it
mere: heeheehee
me: it's extremely cute
mere: i bet
me: and at one point when some munckin is climbing out of a hole in the yellow brick road (i think it's when glinda is singing "come out come out wherever you are," etc) julia ran over to the tv and pointed at him right in the face.  she likes the little munchkin boy.  i think he's one of the lollipop guild guys...
mere: its guild?
me: yeah

mere: i thought it was lollipop kids
mere: :-[
me: there's the lullaby league (the ballerinas)...and the lollipop guild.
me: i used to think it was kids too.
me: but i read it was "guild" somewhere...
mere: i never knew it was league either
me: oh
mere: oh
me: i always thought the middle of the lollipop guild guys looked sort of like grandad.
mere: hahahaha  i'll have to take a closer look next time
me: i think it reminds me of that black and white picture of grandad in the bowler hat, with a cigar, looking like a thug...
mere: oh
me: oh
me: and
me: apparently alex had stuff on his face yesterday morning when i dropped him off at daycare.  his teacher checked his face this morning just before i left and oh it's too long to go into but jeepers crow some days i just feel so worn out after i bring him there.
me: and it's actually NOT oatmeal or milk...it's his runny nose that he wipes across his right cheek.  OKAY????
mere: that woman is so weird
me: i go through periods where i think - no - FEAR - that somehow, due to some incompetency of mine - he is going to somehow be a kid other kids make fun of.  i don't know why i do this, but i do.  and he's fine. and he has his little friends, and all that.  but still...this is what sneaks around the back of my mind...and then i've got HER bringing up something like his messy face...so...I'm sending my child in to preschool DIRTY.  IS THAT IT?

mere: hahahahahahaha
mere: its HER.
me: i know
me: but it's also MEEEEE
me: because that is how my brain works sometimes
mere: yeah, but thats normal
me: oh
mere: its the naked parent moments
me: yeah
mere: you'll get used to it.
me: sometimes i can laugh about it
me: other times i can't.
mere: thats good
mere: i know
mere: i know how that is
me: but if i write about it...usually i can end up laughing about it.
me: because then i can read how silly it all really is
mere: yeah
me: plus, Alex can say - and identify - a parasauralophus.
me: Which is a dinosaur that has a weird bone thing sticking off the top of it's head...pointing toward the back.  It's one of the "bonehead" dinosaurs.
me: He knows that.
mere: thats good.  whats wrong with that?
me: NOTHING.  He knows his dinosaurs.
me: that's really cool.
mere: oh good
me: he's perfectly fine.  i'm the wack-job.
mere: too bad about the snotty face
me: yeah
mere: if it wasn't for that he'd be normal
me: :)

Mail Therapy

So I've been feeling overwhelmed and stressed and depressed and lots of other awful things lately.  Mostly while I'm at work.  Yesterday was particularly bad, actually.  There were moments throughout the day when I just wanted to say "you know what?  I just can't do this any more.  See ya."  but I didn't because I did the math and I don't think we could afford it, plus I really should discuss that sort of thing with Bill first. 

Finally the day finished and I went and got my kids and the day began to improve.

For one thing, on the ride home, out of nowhere, Alex announced "You're a banana sandwich, Mommy!"  He said it like it was some secret I'd been hiding and he'd figured it out and thought it was pretty amusing.

Later on, after we'd been home for a while, and the kids were settled down doing something relatively safe, I got the mail.

And there it was.  My "House on the Hill" catalog.  (I'd link to it but my computer's being weird and I could lose this post so I'll do the linking later...)  House on the Hill is a company that makes and sells springerle molds, among other things.  I've posted a recipe for them somewhere in my recipes category.  I need to restructure that section, now that I'm thinking about it.

Anyway, it brought me a much-needed change of focus.  Here it is, October, and guess what, it's time to start planning the Christmas cookie baking.  YAY!!!  I don't know how to explain how happy that made me, and then, the more I thought about it, mentally planning who I need to bake for, and how many batches I'll need of the different recipes...and I realized, this year will be BETTER than the previous years!!!  I can do MORE!!!  I can go back to doing some of the more time-consuming decorated giant cookies that I used to make YEARS ago!  I can make those really cool gingerbread cookie BOWLS like I did about, oh, probably ten years ago....I HAVE TO START MAKING LISTS!!!

I couldn't sleep last night.  I know I sound nuts.  It's just cookies, after all.  But no, it's way more than cookies.  It's creativity, for one thing.  It's COOKIES, for another.  It's traditions.  It's the holidays.  It's me showing off, probably.  But none of those things compare to the biggest thing of all - the thing that makes all the other elements so VERY possible this year:

My kids are toddlers. 

Both of them. 

I loved both of their babyhoods - I'm not dismissing that section of their lives.  I sort of miss it, when I see little tiny baby clothes at the stores.  But.  Now.  They can play by themselves.  I don't have to carry either one of them everywhere all the time.  They mostly sleep through the night, which means so do I.  In short - I have more time and more freedom.  I need a little of that right about now. 

And another fun thing - Alex helped me last year, cutting out the almond stars.  He will help again.  And maybe Julia can help too...though I can just see her just ignoring the whole "helping" aspect and grabbing blobs of dough off the table and shoving them into her gaping maw as fast as she can....

But still.  I am wound up now.  If I didn't have to work today, I would have stayed up last night making my lists - of cookies, of ingredients, of people I'll send these to or bring them to, of other stuff I need (cookie tins, for one thing...)...ah, the bliss of lists.

We'll bake some cookies this weekend, me and Alex.  You know, for practice.

Conversations

My best writing (about the kids, about my life and whatever's going on with it) seems to be done while I'm at work emailing my sister.  And until my daughter decides to sleep through the night again, I don't know how successful I'll be at getting up early and writing or working out or anything else just for me.

So...I started saving some of these emailed conversations, because the way my memory works, it's pretty much guaranteed that once I type it, it's gone.

So...here we go...

Me:  This morning, in the car:  "No, mommy, talk in a mad voice, like a bad guy.l"

Mere:  Was he requesting this? or telling you not to talk in a mad voice?

Me:  He was talking in a bad guy voice about the bad guys in Tarzan (which is the new favorite, by the way) and how the bad guys are NOT NICE because they're BAD GUYS but those bad guys are nice but those bad guys are BAD GUYS cuz they're NOT NICE.

And whenever he spoke of the badder of the bad guys (I'm not sure who the good bad guys were, actually) he would speak in a gruff, growly voice and make a mad, bad guy face:  brows furrowed, nose scrunched, and teeth bared in a grimace of bad-guy-ness. 

And when he'd say that the bad guys were not nice, I'd agree with him - "Yeah!" and that's when he told me to speak more like a bad guy.  And how to do so.

And another day........

Me:  If I could just get up at 4 every day, I would have plenty of free time for myself.

I honestly wanted to get up at 5 this morning and just BE up from that point...maybe do some yoga or something or write or whatever...but then Alex woke up at 4:30 or so and wanted juice and we were OUT OF JUICE OH THE HORROR OF IT ALL and I told him he could have milk or water or orange juice, BUT I WANT JUUUUUUUUUUICE we don't have any juice, you can have milk or water or orange juice, BUT I WANT JUICE...and I just went downstairs and filled one sippy cup with milk and one with water and brought them up and put them near his bed and told him if he gets thirsty, there they are, BUT I DON'T WANT THEM!!!! and on and on and finally just so Julia wouldn't wake up too and want juice even though she never wants juice, I brought the juiceman into our bed and told him he needed to be quiet until the alarm goes off and it's time for MOMMY to get up.  Of course, he was wiggly and kept whispering stuff to me, but at least it wasn't about juice.

And then finally he said, "Mommy, could I have some milk?"

Okay, perhaps it's not my best writing...but it's my most frequent, and that's got to count for something.  Actually, now that I think about it, it's my favorite writing.  The little daily bits and pieces about my kids.  I've got more, but they're buried in my email and I have to find them. 

Stocking Up

I've had a pretty happy day for myself.  We went grocery shopping this morning and got stuff to have on hand so we can throw meals together quickly during the week...especially the days when Bill works late and I'm throwing food around and juggling children at the same time.  It's like Iron Chef only there's no competition and I'd really like to see Bobby Flay try to do much of anything carrying a baby in one arm and trying to keep the older child from touching the stovetop. ("That very, VERY hot, Mommy" he says, pointing at the burner not in use and coming within a milimeter of touching it.)  (Oh, and why is he even that close to the burner to begin with?  Because we're STILL waiting for our stovetop to be fixed, so we're using the two electric burners in the basement...and so while I'm making dinner with one hand and holding Julia (who longs to dive into pasta sauce, apparently), Alex pushes a chair over and decides he's going to help me.  That's why.)

Anyway...where was I going?  Oh, yeah, stocking up.  So what I most wanted to accomplish today was to roast a whole bunch of garlic and have that on hand to add to things here and there.  So I cut 12 heads of garlic in half, dumped some olive oil on them, and wrapped them in foil and baked them at about 350 degrees or so for around an hour.  After they'd cooled a little, I squeezed out all the garlic into the food processor, poured in a little olive oil, and pureed it all.  It's stored in a little ceramic container with an airtight lid and I am so pleased about it that I'd sound like a crazy person if I continued to go on about it.

I also diced 4 big green peppers and froze them.  And julienned 5 big red peppers and froze them too.  And sliced 5 pounds of onions (in the food processor, otherwise I'd still be weeping) and froze them.  That's what I wanted to do, and it's done.  Dinner is in progress - I've got a tray of cut up beets roasting away, and also a pan of cut up potatoes roasting too.  Bill will be grilling salmon steaks in a little while, and I'll also saute the beet greens and my newest favorite vegetable - broccoli rabe - in a little olive oil with a little salt and pepper and a grating of romano cheese at the end.

So my day has been all about food, which is fine with me. 

It's also been about the garden...seeds for the early crops (HA - like we'll have acres and acres...) have been planted - Bill is in charge of the garden, pretty much, though I participate in planning what we'll grow every year.  Still, he is the master gardener.  I just pick stuff and cook it when it's ripe.  He's planted arugula, swiss chard, broccoli rabe, peas...and other things - I don't remember what his chart said.  But he's very organized about it.

And now I must go, because Julia has just realized that being in a playpen isn't half as much fun as crawling all around the living room...and she's sobbing brokenheartedly about it, which I can't ignore.

No - wait...oh, here is why I am happily married even though I will occasionally need to vent about little things about my husband...there is silence now, because he and Alex are in the living room building things with blocks, and Bill took Julia out of the playpen and Alex gave her a wooden block to gnaw on, and so there is peace.

Wow.