Living and learning… and cookies

Posted on December 21, 2013 by missemtoo

Growing up in southwestern Connecticut, which only saw an average of 24″ of snow each year, was a bit rough for a snow bunny like myself. Because of the relative rarity of measurable snow, even a little bit brought everything to a halt; you could count on school being cancelled at least three times a year, sometimes at the mere prediction of snow.

Moving to Rochester was, therefore, a thrilling experience for winter lovers like Nick, the girls, and me. With an average of 100″ of snow per year here, there’s no shortage of the white stuff to go around, which is awesome for folks like us. (Lest you get the wrong idea, the volume of snow does not lessen our enjoyment of it; we still gleefully celebrate the first nighttime snowfall each year by waking the girls up and carrying them downstairs from their beds to watch the falling flakes, just like my mom used to do with me.)

This is our seventh Rochester winter, and I think I’ve finally got it figured out. Which probably sounds strange – what is there to figure out? It’s just freakin’ snowy all the time – but it’s not quite that simple. Here’s the thing: our snow doesn’t usually fall in large increments. It’s not like we get a foot of snow one day, eight inches a few days later, and another foot the following week. Although we do get a bunch of snowfalls that total over six inches each season, the majority of our snow comes in rather small amounts: an inch today, half an inch tomorrow, the two more inches the day after tomorrow. An inch of snow doesn’t sound like much – and it isn’t – but when you have an inch of snow for 10 out of 14 days, and it’s remained cold enough for the snow that’s already fallen to stick around, it adds up.

Literally.

The exception to this rule is an odd thing we have here called lake effect snow, which technically means that the Great Lakes (in our case, Lake Ontario) gather up moisture which then comes down as snow in the winter. Practically speaking, it means that even when we don’t have a storm moving through, if the conditions are right over the lakes, it can snow pretty much any time, and that snow is entirely unpredictable. Dealing with lake effect snow is like anticipating Pope Francis’s next move – he might deliver a homily in Latin or take a selfie in the Vatican square. On any given day, it can be clear and dry, and suddenly there’s a snow squall so thick you can’t see across the street for fifteen minutes – and then, just like that, the snow is done. It’s kind of cool, in a geeky weather way, but is also maddening because you never know when it might pop up next.

(Side note: I think Pope Francis rocks.)

So anyway, now that the meteorology lesson is over, I’ll get on with the actual story. Oh yes, there is an actual story. Last week, Annie was scheduled to attend an evening Girl Scout outing where we would be caroling at a retirement community. (I know, I know… I said we would be caroling, which goes against everything that the Slacker Moms stand for. But people, it was singing Christmas carols. I just couldn’t help myself.) I also say we because I’d signed up for this to be “my” activity, so I definitely needed to participate.

See, although we may be slackers, we still want our kids’ scouting experience to be a good one, and the troops don’t run themselves, so each of us agreed to be in charge of one meeting or field trip. Because my piano lessons prevent me from attending any of the meetings, I knew I’d have to do an extracurricular activity, and the caroling seemed tailor-made for me. First of all, singing. CHRISTMAS CAROLS. Check. Second, since it was an already-organized activity (our troop was tagging along with several other Girl and Boy Scout troops, one of whom had arranged all of the sing-along details), it was really easy to make it “my” event: all I had to do was bring song sheets, cookies, and hot chocolate. Check. And finally, since I was already attending a(n adults-only) Cookie Exchange later that night, I needed to be making cookies anyway, and I am nothing if not efficient. Check.

Beyond that, the only thing that Annie and I had to do was show up at the retirement community. When she got home from school, this seemed like it would be no problem; she was excited to go, the cocoa and cookies were ready, all was well. It was quite cold that day, with temperatures in the teens and twenties and a decent wind chill. Given that we’d be caroling outside from house to house, bundling up sufficiently would be necessary, but that wasn’t really a big deal. With about an hour to go before our scheduled departure, I glanced outside and noticed that it had begun snowing, but I didn’t think anything of it; no snow had been predicted for the day, so I only just barely registered the falling flakes.

Annie was in the middle of playing – nothing particularly earth-shattering, just, you know, playing – when I gave her the heads-up that we’d be leaving soon. She called back to me that she didn’t want to go because she was busy. Playing. I told her that I was sorry that she didn’t want to stop playing, but we definitely needed to attend, so we’d be out the door in a bit.

Well. Little Miss must have been in a mood, because when I told her it was time to put on her boots, she began having a world-class meltdown. Had I not heard her? She DIDN’T WANT TO GO. She’d NEVER wanted to go! SHE WOULDN’T GO.

I tried to calmly talk her down, and then glanced outside again. The flakes that had been fluttering to the ground an hour ago had apparently been gathering steam, because, in those sixty minutes, a good two inches of snow had piled up on the lawn, the driveway, the road. As I surveyed the white-out, I was momentarily confounded: I didn’t think we were supposed to get snow today. With that much already on the ground and more continuing to fall, I knew that boots wouldn’t quite cut it; she’d need full-on snow gear.

When I broke this news to Annie (who was lying on the dining room floor, writhing about as though perhaps the subject of an exorcism), she didn’t exactly take it well.

Have you ever attempted to wrestle a sobbing orangutan into a pair of overalls? It is a good time, let me tell you.

As the snow fell ever more steadily and the time of our departure drew nigh (first time I’ve ever written that word, holla!), I considered my options. More specifically, I considered that we didn’t have any options. On another night, I might have said, Ah, forget it. It’s snowing like crazy and Annie’s behaving like she’s possessed. We’ll pass. But this was MY ACTIVITY. I had vats of steaming hot chocolate (carefully packed into dispensers nestled within an insulated carrier) and dozens of cookies and had spent a good hour printing and stapling together packets of Christmas carol lyrics. Plus, the other girls in our troop were counting on us to be there and take the reins… Because it was my activity. Seeing as how Annie is the Girl Scout – not moi – she needed to come along, too.

I finally managed to get Annie into enough snow gear to cover her, but it wasn’t pretty. I can’t remember if I worked out that morning, but after the wrestling match, I’d easily burned enough calories to account for the cookie dough I’d consumed making the treats earlier in the day. After stuffing Annie into her booster seat and heading down the driveway, I attempted to reason with her. She could choose to continue to be upset, growling like a wounded animal, or she could choose to have fun. We would be spending the evening with some of her closest friends. We would be singing! THERE WERE COOKIES AND COCOA, FOR GOD’S SAKE.

Also, if she didn’t stop crying, her tears would freeze to her cheeks and then she’d really be miserable.

Crazy-mom threats. Always a good strategy.

I’d worried that, after our short drive, Annie would still be a hot mess when it came time to join the rest of the troop – but, as luck would have it, she had plenty of time to get herself under control because the road conditions were horrendous. Rochester is typically pretty good about clearing the roadways quickly and efficiently, and even in decent storms, we tend not to have much trouble getting around. This night was different. I’m not sure what happened – maybe the road maintenance crews had read the same forecast I had and didn’t know we were going to get snow, either? – but there were at least three inches of snow in the streets and nary a plow in sight.

As I crept from our street into the main drag, I could see nothing but brake lights up ahead, so I – very wisely, I was sure – chose to take the highway for our ten-minute sojourn. Wrong. The moment I merged from the on-ramp onto the freeway, the traffic was absolutely bumper to bumper. We never drove faster than 13 mph, and that’s when we were moving at all. THESE HOLIDAY CELEBRATIONS ARE SO MUCH FUN.

Forty minutes later, I exited the highway, and asked Annie if she was feeling a bit better. When she didn’t answer me, I turned to ask her the question again and saw this:

My little wounded animal had howled herself out.

After driving the wrong way – twice – at last I found our meeting spot, parked, and gently shook Annie awake. She was… not particularly happy with this development. Given that we were more than 25 minutes late, there would be no hot chocolate or cookies before the caroling, so I dragged the insulated carrier with me as we started off on our slippery jaunt around the retirement community. Naturally, the carrier had no straps, so I had to carry the enormous container in my arms, like I was toting a boulder up a mountain. (Does anyone actually do that? Perhaps I need a better metaphor…)

We joined up with the rest of our troop, trudging off through the snow that was far deeper than it had been at our house. As soon as I caught the eye of one of the other moms, she gave me a bewildered look back and said, “I didn’t realize it was supposed to snow…”

Annie came along for the ride, but she wasn’t exactly festive. Partly to defy me and partly because her body temperature hovers somewhere around volcanic, she refused to wear her hat, and within the first ten minutes, at least five adults asked her if she was okay, or offered to loan her their hat. No, that’s just my kid being defiant and stubborn. I realize it’s a blizzard out here, but I’m sure she’ll be fine. When she began literally dragging her feet and stomping on residents’ bushes, I pulled her aside and whispered violently to her that if she didn’t pull her act together, there would be a very serious consequence. I had no idea what that consequence was, mind you (another stellar parenting decision), but with my arms full of the hot chocolate and cookies, I couldn’t very well lug her around, too.

As we reached the third of seven houses, Annie’s demeanor began to change a bit. Rather than stand off to the side and murmur her “thumpity-thump-thump“s, she took the lyrics from me and sang a little louder. At the fourth house, she miraculously perked up when the residents offered the pint-sized carolers some Hershey’s kisses. By the last three houses, I could hardly even see her – partially due to the ridiculous conditions, and partially because she ran so far ahead, laughing and singing with such gusto, I could scarcely keep up.

When we had completed the final sing-along, our troop members were more than ready to hightail it out of there. We were frozen to our core and covered with snow; my feet were thoroughly soaked, because – not knowing that the snow was going to be so deep – I had worn my sneakers, which proved greatly ineffective. We Slacker Moms don’t sign up for such hardship, damn it! But there were two things that needed addressing before we could hop in our cars and inch our way back home: hot chocolate and cookies.

We – parents and girls – milled around for a good twenty minutes after everyone else had left, sipping and chomping and discussing how none of us had had any idea that it was going to snow that night… And now, here we were, with five inches on the ground in less than two hours. At last, we said goodbye, commenting about how crazy we must be to be out in this weather, how terrible the driving was…

… but also, how rather sweet it had all been. The kids, rushing from house to house, “singing” with such force that the tunes were sometimes unrecognizable. The octogenarians stepping outside and onto their porches, joining right in with the chorus despite the swirling snow. The catching of snowflakes on tongues. The richness of the chocolate, and hugs shared between friends. Knowing that we’d made people’s evenings just a little bit brighter, that we’d genuinely spread some cheer and happiness.

On our drive home, even Annie had to concede: that was really, really fun.

The return trip was much quicker than the journey there, which was a good thing because I still had a Cookie Exchange to get to. It struck me, as I crawled along the streets to my destination, that this kind of snow would have closed school in Connecticut (indeed, our friends who live in Connecticut, southern New York, and New Jersey had already had a snow day due to 4-5 inches of predicted snow), and here I was, blithely driving to a friend’s house to trade cookies.

But hey. Cookies are cookies, man. You don’t mess with cookies, not even in a blizzard.

By the time I reached my destination, the snow had largely stopped. When I left two hours later, I could glimpse the moon.

Turns out it was just lake effect snow after all. Nothing to be concerned about.
The cookies, on the other hand? So totally worth it.

Getting to know you

Posted on December 20, 2013 by missemtoo

Birth-day. 2004.

meetingmom
Ignore the lovely IV, my big zit, and my double chin, please. But I did have my nails did. Priorities.

We have been parents to Eleanor for nine years now. NINE YEARS. Nine years is a freakin’ long time. Nine years pre-dates the Obama years and the iPhone. Oprah was the queen and Ellen had barely gotten started, Friends and Sex and the City had only just gone off the air, and no one had even heard of the Kardashian sisters. Nine years ago, Abu Ghraib was in the news and Abu Nazir hadn’t been created. Miley Cyrus was not only not parading about half-naked, having split definitively from her Disney days, she hadn’t even begun her rise to ~~infamy~~ stardom, given that Hannah Montana wouldn’t premiere until 2006. Nine years is definitely before Starbucks graced the world with the wonder of the Salted Caramel Mocha.

NINE YEARS, people. Hot damn.

You’ve gotta admit… That early hair was really spectacular.

Over the course of those nine (!) years, I thought I knew Ella pretty well. I mean, I’m her mom and all, and we mothers know these things. She’s also a pretty decent conversationalist, so she’s told me a lot about herself, like how she used to dig broccoli but now she really doesn’t care for it, and how she thinks it’s crap that the snow pile in our circle is spread out in a round instead of in a big tall heap, and how she can make any number of different Rainbow Loom creations, but the triple single is one of her favorites.

I also know the things she doesn’t say, like how she prefers to be the first one downstairs in the morning because she enjoys having the house to herself. Nick and I have known forever that change is very difficult for her, and whenever we have guests or go away or Daddy’s out of town, she will react poorly or even become downright mean. I know that, for as much as she yells at me to leave her alone when she’s frustrated or angry, there are times when she desperately wants me by her side, regardless of what she says.

And so it came as quite a shock this fall to see Ella develop into an entirely different person right before our eyes, to blossom so fully and completely, she was almost a new kind of flower all together. First, came the swim team. Ella has always adored swimming, being able to swim on her own when she was three (“mermaid girl,” we called her), but this swim team thing was not at all the same as frolicking about at the lake or taking lessons at the Y.

Ella’s not inactive by any means – she likes getting outside and, as Nick would put it, blowing the stink off, and she’s done dance and gymnastics in the past, but these were always once-weekly classes, not teams, and were over with in an hour and then not thought of again until the following week. With swim team, there were honest-to-goodness weeknight practices, something I didn’t experience until I joined the cross country team in high school. Let’s just say I didn’t really add too much to the team, and even then I avoided or minimized actual practicing at all costs, so wanting to attend practice as often as possible is a foreign experience for me.

It’s not just the frequency of the practices that have made a difference in Ella, though, it’s the entire atmosphere surrounding being part of the team. She is becoming herself — Eleanor 9.0 — a deeper, truer version than Eleanor 8.0 and its previous iterations. She’s gotten to know the other swimmers (the vast majority of whom do not attend her school) and has actually been initiating conversations with them. On her own! Even when her best friend isn’t there! She’s worked up her courage to ask her coaches questions, where previously, she’d just ignore what was bothering her or would beg Nick or me to step in.

We didn’t know how meets would go; would they be too much pressure? Would they make swimming about competing, rather than swimming for swimming’s sake, and take all of the fun out of it? Nope. Ella loves meets. No pressure – once she hits the water, she comes alive. (Once I hit the water, I’d drown. Sometimes the apple falls very, very far from the tree.) Working to beat her own prior times? BRING IT ON.

Just a wee bit proud of herself – can you tell?

We’d been nervous that, if she didn’t swim as well as the other kids in her age group, she’d quit – stick-to-it-ness isn’t exactly her forte. But no, she’s not intimidated or disheartened if they swim faster than her. Sometimes, she doesn’t give one whit, caring only about how fast she, herself, swam, and whether or not she dropped her time from the previous meet. Other times, she cares a lot about what the other kids have done – and is absolutely thrilled for her teammates and their accomplishments.

She’s become so much more confident in herself and her abilities. She feels strong and capable and worthy and comfortable in her own skin. Sure, she still struts and strikes a supermodel pose in front of the mirror, checking out her earrings and throwing her hair over her shoulder, but she also now flexes her muscles and admires the lines and the newfound strength she sees before her. It’s been pretty fabulous.

Despite being underwater half the time, it’s as though, by swimming, Ella’s finally come up for air, and is taking the deepest, to-her-toes breaths imaginable, being filled to her core. About a month or so ago, I told her how much I enjoyed watching her swim, because she seems to enjoy swimming so much. Her reply? “Mommy, I just love it. I can’t quite explain it, but when I’m in the water… I’m me.”

The parenting books do not prepare you for comments like that.
Our girl has discovered what makes her feel the most like herself, and it is confounding and awe-inspiring and awesome.

25 Breaststroke; her favorite (and her best; coincidence?).

The other thing that changed Ella this fall was Harry Potter. I know… I’ve written about it a lot. But, if you could see how thoroughly Harry has taken over every aspect of our lives, you’d know that I’ve only barely scratched the surface of Harry-mentions. You don’t have to thank me, but I know you’re thinking it.

Back in September, full of Mommy-knows-best-itis, I’d said I was sure that Ella was done reading the series – the ending of the first book had frightened her so much, she didn’t want to go on, and Nick and I supported her decision. Naturally, the next day she took my smugness and wiped the floor with it, as she began the second book at school. She is now about 30% of the way through the seventh – and final – book, and the ways that reading this series have affected her are nothing short of remarkable.

The most tangible effect is that Eleanor is as bitchy and moody as a sullen teenager. Fantastic, right? Harry Potter rocks! She snaps at us at only the slightest provocation, is surly at utterly inexplicable times, and has occasionally been so grumpy, so ugly, so yucky to be around, we’ve wondered if there was something seriously wrong with her. Perhaps losing Grandpa Bill made her sadder than we’d realized?

While that’s certainly possible, I am all but sure now – after months of observation, many discussions with Nick, and expressing my confusion and frustration to my therapist – that Harry and his world have seeped so deeply into Ella’s very being, she can hardly extricate herself from it. She wants nothing more than to crawl inside the books and live there, right in a four-poster outside of the Gryffindor common room. She doesn’t read about Hermione’s exploits and adventures; she is Hermione going on adventures.

This is thrilling for her (she’s told us so many, many times), but also, I imagine, must be quite unnerving. She doesn’t know what’s going to happen, beyond that either Harry or Voldemort will have to die at the hand of the other, but she does know that any of the characters she’s come to adore could be killed off at any moment, which is terribly unsettling for her… and yet, it prompts her to want to read more, to learn more, every minute of the day.

There was a time when we debated taking the books away from her. They’d become so all-consuming, we were afraid she’d get lost inside of them; and, in the meantime, we were being greeted by a snarling, grouchy, anxious girl where our formerly even-tempered, kind, sweet-hearted Ella used to be. But we eventually came to understand that she needs to finish these books; no, I mean it, actually needs to. They are fully real to her, so authentic and true that she can smell them, and as with anything in real life, unfinished business is uncomfortable indeed. She will not fully exhale until she knows what happens, for better or for worse.

And until then, we’re all holding our collective breath. (Collective breaths? The grammar fails me on this one…)

It’s not all bad, this Harry-consumption. As avid fans ourselves, Nick and I have loved taking the journey with her, loved watching our home go from impromptu dance recitals to imagined spell-casting and wizarding duels. Through reading, Ella’s learned a hell of a lot about friendships, about determination, about what people can do when they band together. She’s seeing firsthand – again, because this is so real to her – that love wins. In the end, no matter what you’ve lost, no matter how dark and bleak things have seemed… Love. wins.

She’s also seeing magic in every aspect of her life, which makes just about anything possible. There are no closed doors, nothing that can’t be done. What an amazing thing to feel, to believe, to know about the world. I’m more than a little envious.

New dress, hand-me-down shoes, “that fancy thing those ladies wear to parties” fashioned out of a piece of scrap fabric from the dining room cupboard. SO VERY NINE.

For nine years, we’ve known our Ella. She is empathetic, almost to a fault, crying for the victims of far-away tsunamis and tornadoes and requesting that we send money to disaster relief organizations. She is smart, ahead of her grade level benchmarks in virtually every subject, but hurrying through her work, making sloppy mistakes, and giving up the moment something becomes too challenging. She is an excellent cook, having already created several of her own recipes. She still holds my hand when we’re out running errands, and asks to be checked on twice at night before she goes to sleep. A bit silly for nine? Perhaps. But I have no plans to stop.

ella 7th bday collage
As with Annie’s collage, I somehow skipped 2012, so there’s no “Eight years of Ella” collection… Ah, well. I am utterly stupendous in so many other ways, why be perfect at everything?

She is a darn good friend, putting the other person first, asking questions, being genuinely interested in the answers. She is neat and tidy, freaking out when things in her room are out of place, but leaves her jacket on the front hall floor every day. She still loves Disney and thinks that Maleficent is the greatest villain of all time. She adores her sister with a passion that is unrivaled, but shrieks the moment that Annie crosses into her bedroom uninvited.

She is our Ella Bella, our E-Bean, and we have known her so completely… Or so we thought. This fall, she showed us sides of her personality that even she didn’t know existed before, and now here she is, still her, but oh so much more so.

Eleanor 9.0, it’s damn fine to meet you. I’m so glad you found yourself. And I’m even gladder (yes, I said it) that you shared your discoveries with us. Happiest 9th Birthday, Eleanor Elizabeth. xo

Now… nine.

* This was to have been published yesterday, on her birthday, but sweet girl was sent home from school sick, and although she (thankfully) felt good for the rest of the day, getting this post out on time just wasn’t happening.

Take Me Out To The Ice Rink

Posted on December 17, 2013 by missemtoo

Living with a certified Hockey Maniac, it was inevitable that we’d introduce our girls to the sport early. They wore their first ice skates before they were two (not necessarily gracefully or skillfully; being on the ice is different from being good on the ice); they know that the NHL rules the television from November through May (which isn’t the length of the season, but is the length of the bulk of the televised games); they craft a bazillion Rainbow Loom bracelets out of Minnesota Wild colors; they await the construction of the backyard ice rink that we erect each year; they cheer Daddy on with his beer league teammates; and they have seen a good number of Rochester Americans games (our local AHL team, usually referred to as the Amerks), although they have yet to make it to see the Wild (or any NHL team, for that matter) in person.

This year, the Amerks decided to up their game (see what I did there?) and host a 10-day outdoor hockey fest on a rink that would be erected in Frontier Field, where our AAA-league Rochester Red Wings play baseball in much warmer months. Over the course of these ten days, there will be all sorts of hockey played on the rink, from high school tournaments to private skating parties, but the Amerks kicked off the festivities on Friday with a nighttime game against the Lake Erie Monsters.

An outdoor hockey game. In a baseball stadium. Opening night of a ten-day celebration. Frozen Frontier, they’re calling it. There was pretty much no way Nick was going to miss it.

That seemingly iiiiiiitty bitty little pond out there? A full-sized rink.

And, in turn, there was no way that the rest of us were going to miss it, either, because we are nothing if not all about introducing our girls to as many cultural opportunities as possible. Especially where hockey sticks and beer-wielding fans are involved.

As Friday loomed, it became increasingly clear that it was going to be a really cold night. Sitting in a baseball stadium in the middle of December in Rochester is pretty much guaranteed to be cold no matter what, but we’ve endured a particularly chilly December thus far, with temperatures not really rising much out of the teens and “real feel”s well below zero. While we Rochesterians are known for our snow, deeply frozen temperatures are not really what we’re about.

But, as much as tried to argue with Mother Nature, she gave us the cold shoulder (ah, see, I did it again!) and told us to suck it, so we had no choice but to embrace the frigid temperatures. “Bundling up” took on new meaning, as we donned shirts, sweatshirts, jackets, skiing “shells,” gloves AND mittens, our warmest socks, leggings, pants, snow pants, our winteriest boots, hats, and scarves. Actually, we didn’t don these right away, because we were meeting friends for dinner – the same fabulous friends who’d joined us for Thanksgiving – pre-game, because the idea of removing one’s gloves in order to eat a tepid hotdog in 14-degree weather just wasn’t really appetizing. And so we wore only our under layers (which still made us, how do I put it… thick) as we dined, then put on the rest of our outerwear in the car before heading off the game.

Have you ever tried that? Putting on snow pants (while you’re already wearing your snow boots) and two jackets and gloves and hats and opening up hand warmer packets and shoving them inside your mittens while you’re in your car? If you haven’t, I have a recommendation: don’t. You will need to remove your boots, which will already have snow on them, and said snow will plop unceremoniously onto your car seat or onto your daughter’s hair. Or you might slip slightly while putting on said pants – shoeless – and put an un-booted foot into a pile of snow, which will then make your feet feel oh-so-lovely for the rest of the freezing evening. You might also realize that you can only find one of the super-warm waterproof mittens you’d brought to wear over your not-at-all warm gloves, which will set you into a panic. But that panic will be nothing compared to the meltdown that will be had in the back seat as your cherubs attempt to wedge themselves into their boosters and buckle their seatbelts while essentially being unable to move. Can the Michelin Man buckle himself into his booster seat? Enough said.

While we love Rochester for many, many reasons, well-executed crowd-control is not one of them. Nick had assumed that there would be “pomp and circumstance” before the game — introductions of all of the players, some sort of commemoration of this Frozen Frontier awesomeness — and that the game would probably begin at least a half-hour late, by which time our girls would be a) icicles, b) bored, and c) begging to go home before the puck had even dropped, so we were in no hurry to arrive on time. Which was a good thing, because we got stuck just outside of the stadium in traffic so terrible – despite the police officers “directing” the cars – that it took us over twenty minutes just to move one block. We had three blocks to go. At least we got to stare out of our windows from our warm, cozy car seats, onto the chilly field… at the players zooming around on the ice, because of course the game had started absolutely on time.

Thankfully, the other blocks were quicker than the first, and we eventually found parking and tumbled out of the car. Ella announced that she had to go to the bathroom as soon as we set foot in the stadium (which was odd, considering that she’d just been given the opportunity to use the facilities when we’d left the restaurant and she’d declined; none of your children has ever done this, I assume?), but we elected to forgo the line of port-a-potties immediately inside the gates because we both wanted to at least find our seats and also, port-a-potties? No, thank you. We’ll wait for the real thing.

Finding our seats wasn’t quite as easy as we’d imagined, however, in part because they were (of course) located a good distance from where we’d entered, and also because the stadium was absolutely packed… with people layered up as though ready to tackle some black diamond slopes. You know how everyone moves in a ski lodge (even without the robot-step-inducing ski boots), with wide, just-got-off-a-horse steps, and how everyone is always bumping into one another because you’re all so padded, it’s like banging about in a slow-motion pinball machine? Imagine doing so in the bowels of a baseball stadium when it’s 15 degrees out and… yep.

This being Rochester, sufficient snow gear is not exactly in short supply, so our fellow attendees had also come prepared. Seventy-five percent of them were wearing snow pants (this is an extremely well-researched fact), fifteen percent were wearing full-body hunting gear (I had no idea that “camouflage” came in so many colors), and although it wasn’t clear what the others were wearing to stave off the chill, they were also doing the slow-motion ski-lodge walk, so they must have been sufficiently layered. The toddlers in attendance were particularly amusing, because their parents had (wisely) bundled them up so fiercely, they could scarcely bend their knees, so they waddled and tottered everywhere they went, swaying back and forth like chiming bells.

We eventually hobbled to our seats just in time to hear the announcement that the period would be ending in one minute. Fantastic. Ella still needed to use the restroom, so – hoping to avoid the crush of onlookers flooding out of their seats and toward the loos – I ushered her and Annie (just for kicks and giggles) back out in search of the toilets. We were greeted by these signs instead:

Super.

The girls and I fought through the teeming hordes all the way back to the entrance, where gigantic lines had formed in front of every port-a-potty because a) THERE WERE NO WORKING BATHROOMS (have I mentioned this yet?) and b) the majority of the crowd had – perhaps in a bid to stay warm – been consuming copious quantities of alcohol, which, having gone in one end, had to come out of the other sooner or later. Also? Port-a-potties and ridiculous amounts of snow gear do not mix. It was like trying to peel off a full-body wetsuit inside a disease-ridden gym locker; don’t touch the walls unless you want to lose a hand to gangrene.

As a result, it took approximately 4.57 minutes for every single person to do their business, which, when you multiply that by a minimum of five people in each line, meant… well, I still suck at The Math, but it meant a really long wait. By the time we finally emerged from the johns and had gotten ourselves all suited up again, both of the girls declared they were starving and freezing, so we attempted to scrounge up some food and drinks that could be consumed without needing to remove our gloves. It was almost surreal, seeing the vending stations – which we normally visit in the summer – surrounded by icicles and snow piles up to the counters.

The chili was selling like it was liquid gold.

Just a typical evening at the ballpark…

At long last, we waddled our way back to our seats – hot chocolate, a big ol’ pretzel, some popcorn, Twizzlers, and Swedish Fish in hand. The hot chocolate and the pretzel were immediately consumable, but the other items proved a bit trickier. Turns out that Twizzlers and Swedish Fish become rock-solid when the temperature hovers around 15 degrees, making each bite a bit of an adventure — who might break a tooth today? Popcorn is deceptive; it seems easy enough to scoop some up in your gloved hand and then shove a handful into your face, but apparently human beings actually use their sense of touch when they eat popcorn – a sense that is lacking when one’s hands are covered – and, as a result, we were unable to determine when the popcorn was actually in our hands and when it had fallen out. Not to worry, though; more popcorn fell into my purse than went in my mouth, so if we’re hungry later, we can go back for more.

Bladders empty, food and drink in hand (and purse), and nestled into our seats, we were finally able to just sit back and truly take in everything around us. The cliché at sporting events is that the feeling amongst the fans was electric. I could say the same, but instead, I will say it was electrified – there was such a charge running through everyone, it was as though the entire place was humming. Although there’s a certain general loyalty shown to the Red Wings and the Amerks, none of the games we’ve attended previously has been all that well-populated, so enjoying the true “roar of the crowd” has been virtually impossible. By contrast, this Frozen Frontier game was sold out; there were people almost literally hanging from the rafters and they were extremely excited to be there, which added to the carnival-like atmosphere.

The majority of adults were – in Nick’s words – well-lubricated, which also gave the event a Mardi Gras flare. You know, if Mardi Gras were held in a baseball stadium in the middle of a very wintery December and onlookers threw snow, not beads. People were chanting raucously, singing with gusto whenever there was a break in the action. It was the first time that the girls got to see people at a sporting event successfully do the wave, which was awesome but looked pretty freakin’ hilarious with everyone bundled up to within an inch of their lives.

Annie and Ella were particularly taken with the Amerks’ mascot, a large moose very cleverly nicknamed The Moose. The Moose took the job of whipping the crowd into a frenzy very seriously (not that the crowd was all to hard to whip, given the level of revelry and intoxication), and became especially excited whenever the Americans scored, pumping his hooves into the air with a very un-Moose-like flare.

We jammed along with the music. We stood up and cheered like maniacs whenever the red goal light went on (which was pretty much our only indication that the puck had crossed the goal line, since we couldn’t really see the puck from where we were sitting). We threw our hands in the air and waved them like we really, really didn’t care whenever the wave came crashing our way. We clapped madly for anything and everything, which was a particularly amusing phenomenon, because gloved and mittened hands make no sound when they are smacked together. We marveled at the people who’d been smart enough to bring sleeping bags and goggled at the beer seller wearing shorts.

As for the game? Well, I know that the Amerks eventually won (in a wildly exciting and unexpected finish, as the Monsters tied the game with 0.1 seconds left – I kid you not – which had the inebriated ~~party~~ sports-goers shouting BULLLLL-SHIT!!! over and over again, to the shocked delight of our friends’ 9 year-old son, and the victor was eventually decided by a shoot-out). But the truth of the matter is that we really couldn’t see a damn thing that was happening on the ice.

In a hockey arena, the action is right there – quite literally, with only a couple of inches of glass separating the fans from the players. In a baseball stadium, the players are typically yards and yards away (save for the odd ball that is caught right at the bleachers) and the field is vast, so the hockey rink was positively dwarfed. Add to that the angle of the seats and the boards along the rink’s edge and we could only see about half of the sheet of ice, anyway. We could “follow” the play by watching the players swarming about the ice, but had no idea where the puck actually was.

But that wasn’t really the point. We weren’t there for the game; we were there to say we’d done it. We’d braved the frigid elements and donned every drop of winter gear we owned to teeter our way into a bathroom-less baseball stadium in the middle of December with a crap-ton of drunken revelers, just because. Because that was what it was all about. The hot chocolate and the singing. The wave and the bright lights. The nearly palpable joy and anticipation surging through the air. Come to think of it, it was, in fact, one of the most Christmas-y things we’ve done yet this season.

By the end of the second period, with the action stopped and The Moose taking a potty break (good luck with that), everyone seemed to realize all at once just how unbelievably cold they were. The universal Dance Of The Cold sprung up all around us, with people standing and jitterbugging about back and forth in a futile effort to get their blood pumping again. Our girls were frozen through, and asked to go home; as soon as the third period began (and the majority of fans returned to their seats, making navigating the stadium far easier), we obliged.

Naturally, Annie needed to go to the bathroom on our way out, so our departure was delayed while we waited for her to de-robe in the e-coli infested portable john, but we could still hear the patrons cheering frantically. By the time we reached our car, we could hardly feel our fingers and toes and the girls were beyond exhausted. We agreed that we had, indeed, been there, done that – just because – but we were glad that it was over.

And yet, somehow… we had a total and complete blast. Do I want to brave another Frozen Frontier game? No, thanks. Been there. Done that. But I’m awfully glad we did, because it was pretty much the best damn hockey game I’ve ever been to.

The popcorn that’s still in my purse is just a bonus.
Why are the girls not wearing their hats even though they’re allergic to the cold? I DON’T KNOW. They must have terrible parents.

Some things were meant to be

Posted on December 12, 2013 by missemtoo

This life stuff doesn’t always go as planned. I suppose that’s what makes it, you know, life, but still, when things don’t work out the way you’d thought they would, it can really be a shock to the system.

New Coke: I’m looking at you.

Nick and I had always talked of having two children, but we’d wanted them three years apart. We’d carefully reasoned it out: Ella would be out of diapers and we wouldn’t be dealing with a toddler and a baby at the same time, but she and her younger sibling would still be close enough in age to share some of the same toys, go to the same school, etc. It was going to be great.

Then, when Ella was a mere fifteen months old, I unexpectedly got pregnant. I realize that some people find it difficult to believe that a pregnancy can be “unexpected,” especially after having already birthed a child (so we clearly understood the whole birds and the bees thing, if you know what I mean), but it was. I’d carefully done the math, but – sparing you the details (you’re welcome) – The Math and I have never been real tight, and I’d gotten something wrong, and suddenly, there we were, pregnant.

For those of you who also struggle with The Math, 15 months (Ella’s age) + 9 months (gestation) = our kids would be two years apart rather than three.

Not only that, but this baby was also due in December – Ella’s birth month – which was really not cool with me. Like many teachers, I’d hoped to give birth in the spring, take my 6-8 weeks of maternity leave, and then back up the end of the leave right into summer break, giving me the maximum amount of (paid) time home with my newborn. Again, sparing you the details (and again, you’re welcome), we became pregnant with Ella sooner than we’d thought we might, and our “spring” baby arrived right before Christmas.

I had no childcare lined up, and didn’t plan to get any, because the following school year, I’d be job-sharing with Sarah, a wonderful friend of mine who’d also recently had a baby. For half of the week, each of us would teach, and for the other half, we’d watch both babies. It was a fabulous win-win, so I didn’t want to search for temporary childcare for Ella knowing I’d just give it up in a few months. Instead, Nick and I managed to cobble together a network of family members and friends, with each of us also using personal days, to watch Ella when I returned to school. We made it happen, but it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park.

Giving birth in December also meant that I was essentially homebound for three months, because our pediatrician had warned that we shouldn’t take the baby into any “crowded spaces” — malls, restaurants, libraries, stores, basically anything with walls and a roof — because of germs! And RSV! And you never know who’s carrying a deadly disease! Given that it was, you know, winter, it was too cold to be outside with the baby (and even if I’d dared to brave the elements, there was no place to go outside with a newborn in the winter; it’s not like she’d enjoy checking out the local playground). So that kind of sucked.

And then there was the whole birthday-a-week-before-Christmas thing that was a big ol’ pain in the neck. Christmas is already its own unique kind of crazy; adding a birthday to that each year seemed ridiculously daunting, and I wasn’t really excited to take on the challenge. Plus, I worried for Ella’s sake. She’d get birthday presents wrapped in Christmas paper! Her special day would be outshone by Christmas’s glare! Not fun.

We would make it work, of course, but back then if I’d had to choose, Ella wouldn’t have been born in December. So I vowed: absolutely no more December babies.

And then The Math and I had a tussle, and suddenly the little plus sign was taunting me from its perch on the bathroom sink.

I’m not going to lie: I was not excited. Nick and I have always felt that everything happens for a reason, and we never considered terminating the pregnancy, but I did wish fervently that I wasn’t pregnant right then. In fact, more than once, I peed on yet another pregnancy stick and hoped that it would come up negative. I didn’t want to lose the baby, not at all… I simply didn’t want to be pregnant at that time, if that makes any sense. Happy just wasn’t happening.

More to the point, I was downright angry. Actually, I was terrified — of having another baby so soon, of having another being growing inside me, of the whole December-baby thing, of how having a sibling would disrupt the lovely life we’d built for ourselves and Ella, of the logistics of the whole thing. The details just seemed insurmountable: we lived in a small, three-bedroom house that was just barely big enough for Nick, Ella, and me. I couldn’t possibly ask Sarah to watch the baby AND Ella when I was only watching her son, so I’d have to scrap our arrangement and return to teaching full-time, putting Ella and the baby into daycare… But, thirty miles outside of New York City, the cost of living was so high, I’d actually take home LESS working full-time and paying for daycare than I was bringing in working half-time.

It was just impossible.

In our calmer moments, Nick and I reasoned that, somehow, we’d be okay. We’d always wanted another baby. This one was just coming a little sooner than we’d expected. We would figure out the job/childcare/housing thing. Everything happens for a reason. We’d make it work.

But the part I couldn’t wrap my head around was why I got pregnant when I did. (Okay, I know why I got pregnant, because… I’ll shut up now. You’re welcome.) Why another December baby? Why NOW? The universe and God work in mysterious ways, yes, but the reason behind the timing absolutely eluded us.

Spring turned into summer and still I wasn’t excited about being pregnant. I did all of the things I should – I ate right, I took my vitamins, I exercised, I cut out caffeine, I didn’t consume a drop of alcohol – and, as my stomach expanded, we did our best to prepare Eleanor to become a big sister… but I just wasn’t into it. Summer ended and I returned to teaching and, as the months crept toward my due date, despite my own personal scolding and pleading and chiding and stern talkings-to, I simply could not muster happiness about the arrival of this baby.

And then, right around Halloween, I was watching something on TV featuring a pregnant woman who lost her baby. It wasn’t A Baby Story or anything like that, and actually may have just been a dumb sitcom, but as I watched, I felt this terror take hold of me and I realized that I did not want to not be pregnant. I could not lose this baby.

It was quite the shock, that: realizing that I no longer wanted to not be pregnant. (Yes, it took me until I was SEVEN MONTHS along… Mom of the year before I’d even given birth, that’s me…) It wasn’t exactly the same as actively being excited to have another child, but it was a helluva lot better than outright dread.

As November progressed, my indifference slowly shifted to acceptance, until finally, by December, I was – at last – looking forward to meeting this wee one who’d been renting space with me for the past 8.5 months, THANK YOU SWEET BABY JESUS AMEN. Nick and I still had no idea why the timing worked out the way it did, but at least we were psyched to become a family of four.

Being psyched, however, could not guarantee a smooth delivery. Alas, the baby was sunny-side up and became trapped in the birth canal – and so, after laboring for seven hours, completely turning down the epidural so I could “feel” where to push, then pushing for nearly three hours, an emergency c-section was ordered. (Good thing, too; poor babe came out with a bloody mark on her forehead where she’d been smooshing up against the bones of my pelvis.)

Annabelle Grace arrived at 8:11 p.m. and was healthy as could be. Damn cute, too.

Showing some ‘tude straight out of the womb.

Nick went home that night to be with Ella, and I phoned him around 2 a.m. asking if he could find any Allegra or Claritin to bring me — it seemed I’d forgotten mine and was developing hives. (Have I never mentioned that I have chronic, unexplained hives [technical term: chronic idiopathic urticaria] and, every night since I was thirteen, if I don’t take an antihistamine, I break out in full-body hives? No? Well, I do. They’re swell.) Even after taking the medication, however, the hives never abated, and it was finally determined that I was allergic to the Percocet they’d given me for pain. My other drug allergies ruled out Vicodin and the like, which meant that my only options were Advil and Tylenol.

Advil. And Tylenol. For pain from an emergency c-section, after which the doctor ordered that I remain in the hospital an extra day because, having pushed for so long and so hard, it was “as though (I’d) given birth twice.” Super fun.

The second night of my hospital stay, I received a call from Nick at 2 a.m… Ella had thrown up all over her crib. Yep, our almost two year-old had come down with her first-ever tummy bug, and there Nick was, in the middle of the night, trying to change crib sheets and clean up a pukey kid, while I was in the hospital, unable to even lift Annie from her bassinet without tearing my stitches (I’d taken to just holding her in bed with me so I could nurse her when I needed to and not bug anyone for help), all hopped up on TYLENOL AND ADVIL.

Extra super fun.

Taken in the hospital before Ella began her barf-a-thon.

The following morning, Nick’s mom – who’d flown in from Minnesota to help us out – became ill (unrelated to the stomach bug) and had to fly back home. Nick’s dad and GranMary were able to catch the next flight from Minnesota to offer their assistance, and none too soon, because the day after I returned from the hospital, Nick came down with the pukes… which meant, clearly, that he couldn’t be near Annie, because a five day-old really isn’t supposed to catch the stomach flu. And I couldn’t really help out with Ella, because I wasn’t allowed to lift anything heavier than Annie…

So, yeah. Extra super duper fun.

Still, pretty much from the moment she arrived, Annie was magnificent. I wasn’t stuck inside with her like I’d been with Ella; when you have your first December baby, you stay home for three straight months because the thought of germs is paralyzing. When you have your second December baby, you understand that your two year-old is harboring more germs on her right forefinger than the entire children’s section at Barnes and Noble, and you give up and just get on with things already.

Sometimes this works brilliantly, and sometimes your newborn develops RSV. Ah, well. Builds stamina!

It became clear almost immediately that our family, while perfectly happy, had been incomplete without her. She was a precocious baby, immediately engaging, and an obvious daredevil from the word go. Eventually, Annie would come to command the attention of everyone in the room everywhere she goes — she has the most magnetic, draw-you-in personality of anyone I’ve ever met (and she’s freakin’ hilarious, so that helps) — but in her early months, she definitely took a backseat to Ella.

It wasn’t that people weren’t interested in Annie, who was, by all accounts, an adorable and fun baby, but rather that Ella was so full of life, so talkative, so bold, people naturally gravitated toward her and didn’t pay Annie too much mind. That is, until she met my grandmother.

I don’t know what it was, but from the moment they laid eyes on each other, Annie and Phoofsy were smitten. Phoofsy had always loved Ella – there was no worry of that – but there was something special about her relationship with Annie. They lit up when they saw one another; where everyone else would be captivated by Ella’s stories and songs and dramatic reenactments, Phoofsy would go up to Annie and coo at her, instead. Annie’s biggest fan, we called her. It was pretty damn neat.

After mulling over (and over… and over…) our options post-baby, Nick and I decided that his 90 minute commute into lower Manhattan was simply too much. My going back to work full-time was too much. Finding childcare that would cost more than my half-time salary was too much. We could not stay in Bronxville any longer. As luck would have it, Nick’s company had a branch in Rochester, and because we already knew the area (with my mother and her sisters having grown up here, and my grandparents still living here, with a house on the lake where we visited each summer), we decided it made the most sense for him to change jobs and for us to move here. And so, in July of 2007, when Annie was seven months old, we did.

With “Great” in August, 2007

We split the time that summer almost evenly between moving into our new house and going to the lake. I’m pretty certain that I saw my grandparents more in those first few months than I had in the previous thirty-one years of my life. The girls had the incredible experience of spending unlimited time with their great-grandparents. Things were good.

At the very end of September, my grandfather went in for surgery to repair an aortic aneurysm. Although that sounds scary, the location of the aneurysm and his overall good health caused his doctor(s) to predict an easy fix; they expected him home within a day or so. At 2:38 p.m. that Friday, he sent all of us the following email:

going to hospital at 4. TTYL

Very sadly, there would be no “later.” The operation wound up being much more complicated than they’d anticipated, and although they successfully repaired the aneurysm, he never woke up; we lost him on Sunday morning.

The weeks following his death were a blur, with family coming and going, but eventually, everyone left and it was just my grandmother (and my brother and sister-in-law, who were living locally at the time) and us. We made sure to see her often, both because we didn’t want her to be alone and because we really enjoyed her company. Thanksgiving eventually rolled around and my extended family came back into town to celebrate together. While I was thrilled to have them visit, it struck me that it felt a little funny with them there; we and Phoofsy had fallen into a kind of (irregular) routine, and interrupting it was a bit uncomfortable. We were the ones who were supposed to be here.

Wait a minute: we were supposed to be here. HERE, in Rochester, right exactly then. If we hadn’t moved when we did, we wouldn’t have had that summer with my grandfather. We wouldn’t have been there when he died; my brother and I wouldn’t have been the ones to stay with him in his hospital room and say goodbye to him after they turned off all of the machines. We wouldn’t have been there with my grandmother after his death, dragging her gamely along to the children’s museum and the apple orchard, and accompanying her to mother/daughter celebrations at her social club. If we hadn’t moved when we did, she certainly wouldn’t have had Annie and Ella nearby to cheer her up, to make her smile, to give her hope.

It was all so ridiculously clear: If Annie had not been born when she was, we never would have moved when we did, and life as we know it would not exist.

Everything happens for a reason, indeed.

Click on it to see it bigger; it’s worth it.

It wasn’t just my grandma who benefited from Annie’s timely birth, of course. We’ve all – everyone who meets her – been so tremendously fortunate to have Annie in our lives. She defines the word character. She is vibrant and exceedingly full of energy. She never stops talking. No, I mean it… Never. Stops. Talking. Wait, I take that back; she stops talking when she’s singing. Does that count?

She wakes up happy nearly every single day, and greets me – whether it’s first thing in the morning or when I pick her up from school – with the broadest grin imaginable and an elated, “MOMMMMMYYYYYY!!!!” She’s one of the most hilarious people I’ve ever met, as evidenced here and here. She certainly has no shortage of self-confidence and purpose, as is shown in her frequent use of phrases such as, “I’m going to give them a gift… It’s called The Awesome of Annie.”

She can turn on a dime and be the crankiest kid you’ve ever come across; and then, just like that, she’s laughing again. For three parent-teacher conferences in a row, her teachers referred to her as a “pistol.” She’s so exuberant and funny and delightful and just plain crazy, we kind of didn’t realize that she’s also crazy smart; her kindergarten and first grade teachers let us know that we’d greatly underestimated her.

I looked, but apparently I didn’t turn my “six” photo from last year into a collage… Oops.

She’s utterly exasperating in the mornings before school, when I head downstairs to let the dogs out and she’s got her pants on and is putting on her shirt and tells and will be down shortly — and then, twenty minutes later when I realize she’s never appeared, I go upstairs to check on her and discover that she’s now undressed and is rolling around on the floor, teeth still needing to be brushed. She’s similarly exasperating in the evenings before bed when it takes fifteen minutes to put on her pajamas.

She is kind and generous and sweet and a truly fabulous dinner-making partner; she now makes all of our salads every time and has, more than once, been responsible for cooking virtually all aspects of the meal. There is nothing she cannot turn into an art project (no, really, nothing; I know this from experience). She idolizes Ella and would do anything for her – just today, she earned a prize at school for twelve consecutive days of good behavior and “spent” her points to buy a gift for her sister instead of herself – but also purposely needles her – gleefully – with all of her might.

Annie is unbridled joy and to-her-core happiness. When I say that our lives wouldn’t be the same without her in it, I mean that in every possible way; we’re literally here today because of her. She fills us all with her light; we didn’t even realize how bright things could be until she came along. We may have been thrown for a loop when I got confused with The Math and became pregnant with Annie, but I’m so very glad we’re along for the ride.

And it turns out that December birthdays aren’t so bad after all. Go figure.

Seven years, Banana. Seven years of awesome.
Lucky, lucky us.

Happy Birthday!
xoxo

7 tonight

You can call me Queen Bee

Posted on December 4, 2013 by missemtoo

Let’s just get this out of the way: I really hate going to the dentist.

Which, when you’re a parent, sucks, because you have no choice but to take your kids to the dentist (especially once they reach grade school and have regular visits from the school nurse to teach about things like drugs and nutrition and fire safety and hygiene and suddenly your offspring come home talking about plaque and tartar and you realize the last time they used floss, it was to wrap their Barbies to their bedposts like spiders cocooning a meal). And you can’t tell your children that you despise the dentist, because then they’ll hate the dentist, and you don’t need any more reasons for tantrums, thanks very much.

It’s tough, carefully balancing the threat of cavities (to get them to brush) with abject terror of cavities, sending them screaming from the hygienist before they’ve even taken off their coats. BRUSH YOUR TEETH OR ELSE THEY’LL ROT AND FALL OUT! But if they do, no worries — it will be fine! Yaaaaay, dentist time!!

My hatred of the dentist is actually based on very little personal experience. Mercifully, I’ve had few dental issues over the years; aside from a couple of cavities that were filled, like, twenty years ago, I’ve pretty much only seen the dentist for cleanings. But the sounds of the drills… the smell of the drills (omg)… the grit of the toothpaste that’s whirred up from the ring worn on the hygienist’s finger (my precious, my ass), the weird plastic-y things they put in your mouth to take x-rays that taste vaguely of the tongue depressors you used to sneak as a kid while your pediatrician was making notes in the chart… No. I don’t like it. None of it. I look more forward to the stirrups at my OB-GYN’s than the plastic-lined dentist’s chair.

TMI? Sorry.

Naturally, I couldn’t hold out on needing dental work forever, and yesterday, I found myself in our dentist’s office. A few weeks ago, I’d been eating dessert – something soft, I can’t remember what, but it was definitely not anything that caused me to question whether or not it was lethal – and suddenly it felt like a piece of one of my molars just cracked off. While that didn’t make much sense to me – how could a piece of my tooth just come off?? – I visited our dentist anyway just to be certain, and sure enough, I’d broken my tooth.

Broken my tooth? WTF?

I should probably revise the story to say I was gnawing through iron chains, rather than spooning up ice cream. And then I BROKE my TOOTH. RRRAWWR.

Turns out, broken teeth don’t get casts… they get crowns. Which are really just fake teeth, but crowns sounds way cooler. Queen Emily, at your service.

So anyway, yesterday, I was at the dentist’s for my crown. I knew it would be bad… Not pain-wise, necessarily (I certainly hoped not), but anxiety-wise. The week before, when Dr. M had filed down the rough edge of my cracked tooth, the sensation of the vibrations and the smell of the drilling caused me to practically pass out; I knew I wouldn’t make it through my coronation without some assistance. I knew that Xanax would help ease my nerves, but there were still the sounds of the procedure to contend with.

And then it dawned on me: I had the solution right in my purse.

While sitting in the chair, waiting for my tooth tiara to be made (how cool is modern dentistry, BTW? They churn out those suckers right in the back. Queen Emily is very pleased), I posted the following to Facebook:

So, I’m *that* person… The one who brings the Mifi to the dentist (because I’m a wuss about dental work and music makes things better) so I can stream Christmas songs on my phone from Pandora while the dentist does his thang. And, apparently, I’m also the person who updates her FB status while sitting in the dental chair. It’s not like Nick plays hockey with our dentist, so my holiday cheer isn’t embarrassing or anything. Thank god.
K.A… The Novocain and Xanax will have worn off by the time I get the girls after school. Promise.

At least I didn’t post a dentist chair selfie. You’re welcome.

True story: Nick and our dentist play hockey together; it’s weird for me to refer to him as Dr. M. I think of him as Greg. Greg is a really good guy. I don’t dislike dentists. I just can’t stand going to the dentist – not even Greg.

Also, true story: Ella and Annie had a half-day of school and we were hosting one of Annie’s good buddies for a play date immediately after school. Or, in other words, while I was still full of Novocain. I always make excellent decisions like this. Do send your children over.

The coronation went as planned (Claire Danes was even on Kelly and Whoever She’s With Now That Regis Is Gone – handsome, engaging fellow – so I got a Homeland fix), with Greg informing me that he didn’t think I’d need a root canal — we avoided one today — but he’d put the crown on with temporary adhesive just in case. I was to call him if I experienced deep pain or throbbing. OH GOOD.

Dire warnings aside, I was out of there after just a couple of hours. And five hundred dollars. And that’s with dental insurance. No wonder Greg wears such nice ties.

I kid, I kid.
He wasn’t wearing a tie.

While listening to “Holly Jolly Christmas” and trying to ignore the thundering vibrations in my skull, I’d made an executive decision that I deserved Starbucks afterward. I called Nick to tell him about my appointment and how I was now on the lookout for throbbing pain, but that I’d avoided a root canal for the time being, so I was going to reward myself with Starbucks. Except he practically needed an interpreter to understand me, because half of my face was still entirely numb, and my lips just weren’t working the way that they should. He sagely warned me that I might not be able to drink properly, and we joked that perhaps I should get a straw.

After getting my drink (I decided against the straw; it wouldn’t fit in the little sippy hole anyway), I returned to the car to drive home, and discovered that, indeed, I was having trouble with my beverage. Specifically, I couldn’t feel the cup, so I drooled out as much liquid as I swallowed. How very royal of me. Additionally, the heat of the latte seemed to interact poorly with the adhesive on my tooth, so instead of tasting coffee, I tasted hot glue. Which is not delicious.

I attempted to drink some of the water that I had on hand in the car – out of a reusable Starbucks cup with a large straw – only to discover that using a straw was even more difficult than drinking straight from the cup, because my lips refused to fully close around the straw — which, in essence, meant that I was attempting to put water in my mouth by inhaling it from six inches away.

And so, despite my earlier entreaties, I did the only thing possible: I took selfies of inability to use a straw, and sent them to my husband.

Left… side… won’t… cooperate…

Somehow, I thought I’d look more regal with the crown…

When I arrived at school to pick up the girls thirty minutes later, the secretary gave me some sideways glances when I signed out Annie’s playmate, but she didn’t say anything. Maybe she thought I’d had a few too many Bloody Marys to steel myself for the half-day of school. (Which, FWIW, would never happen, because a) I hate Bloody Marys, and b) I’d already taken Xanax, so I needed no further steeling. Actually, the Xanax had long worn off by then, so maybe a Mimosa wouldn’t have been such a bad idea…)

I decided to preempt any possible embarrassment for Annie (or me) by explaining to her and her friend what had happened, and why Mommy was talking so strangely. Annie cocked her head to one side and declared that she thought I sounded perfectly fine.

Oh, good. I must always slur like this. Super.

When I showed her that I was incapable of whistling or rubbing my lips together to smear chapstick around, however, her eyes lit up and she nodded, “Ohhh, NOW I see it. Yeah. You definitely sound weird.”

Um… thanks?

I made lunch for the girls and settled into a plate of my own when I discovered that although the Novocain didn’t affect my appetite, it did affect my chewing capability, so it took twice as long to consume my meal because I had to put back into my mouth what had just fallen out of it with each bite. Also very queenly. Perhaps I’m not cut out for this Royals business after all.

A couple of hours later, things finally felt back to normal, and I decided to reheat my Starbucks and give it another go. I was taking my second sip when Ella, who was sitting beside me in the kitchen, reared back ever-so-slightly (not wanting to appear too horrified) and whispered to me, “Uh, mom… You just drooled. Like, all over.”

THANK YOU, LORDS AND LADIES OF THE COURT.
I proudly (albeit undeservedly) accept this coronation, and shall immediately take up my new duties as your monarch.

My first royal decree: dentistry is henceforth outlawed.
Don’t worry, Greg; I hear you play a mean Left Wing.

Setting the bar reeeeally low

Posted on December 3, 2013 by missemtoo

A couple of weeks ago, I took Annie shopping with me at Trader Joe’s. Although I typically avoid taking her to the grocery store (despite her “helping,” things are just much faster when she’s not trundling along beside me), Trader Joe’s is the exception because I don’t do our regular shopping there. When you’re only picking up pumpkin cream cheese, Peanut Butter Tracks ice cream, and Sea Salt Butterscotch Caramels, you can be in and out in a jiffy.

Annie loves coming with me to TJ’s because a) free samples, b) she can find a stuffed animal bee and receive a lollipop or an apple (guess which one she chooses every single time), and c) stickers. Each visit, the checkout person pulls out a roll of Trader Joe’s stickers and tears off five or six for my girl and she just thinks this is the best thing ever. (I, on the other hand, do not think always think that this is the best thing ever because, despite having heard the WHERE DO STICKERS BELONG? mantra for her entire life, my almost seven year-old continues to adhere stickers to the car windows. Curse you, Trader Joe’s stickers! Maybe I’ll speak with the management.)

Anyway, we were at the checkout and the conversation went like this:

“Would you like some stickers?”

(barely looking up from her lollipop; did you guess correctly earlier?) “Yes, please.”

“Here you go!”

“Thank you.”

“Wow, you’re very polite!”

“Thank you.”

“Since you used such nice manners, here are a few more stickers!”

Annie left the store with 18 stickers from three different sticker rolls and thought it might have been the greatest day of her life.

It got me to thinking, though. When on earth did simply saying please and thank you amount to being “so polite” or “such nice manners”? Not that I’m complaining; Annie did speak politely (although we still need to work on eye contact, especially when lollipops are involved) and she did use nice manners, but it’s not like she composed a sonnet on the spot about what a lovely store Trader Joe’s is, nor did she compliment the checkout lady on her stunning eyes… She just did the very basics – but still the checkout person was genuinely taken aback.

This was far from an isolated incident. Annie and Ella, both, are actually informed quite frequently that they have awesome manners. Once, we went out to eat and were surprised when the manager suddenly appeared at our table. Turned out, he happened to overhear the girls order their own meals from the server (saying please) and then, when the plates were presented, saying thank you, unprompted… and he (the manager) just wanted to let us know how much he appreciated their good manners, and how very rarely he hears kids using them. It was really cool having him come and talk to us like that (until the girls started walking around with their chests puffed out like maybe they’d rescued a litter of kittens from a burning building), but we were also like, Dude. They hardly spoke. This really called for accolades?

Last year, when we were in Disney World, Ella and I stopped into a candy store on our way out of The Magic Kingdom. It was after dinner and the park itself had closed, so we had the store to ourselves. We also were a bit hard to miss because I was pushing Ella in a wheelchair, her recently un-casted broken foot not yet being strong enough to take on the parks. She got some Jelly Bellies for herself and Annie, and I was ordering a ridiculous caramel-peanut-butter-cup-chocolate-covered apple concoction at the checkout counter when we had the following conversation with a Cast Member:

I’d like that one, please. (I point to the monstrosity that supposedly has an apple at its center.)

“All right. And the Jelly Bellies?

Yes, please.

(The Cast Member rings up both and hands back the Jelly Bellies, putting the apple into a bag.)

“Thank you!” (Ella takes the Jelly Bellies.)

“Mommy, may I please have some of these now?”

Sure. That would be fine.

“Thanks, Mommy.”

(Cast Member stops what she’s doing and actually reaches out to touch my hand.)

“Do you have any idea how rare that is?”

Um, pardon me?

“Do you have any idea how rare it is, what your daughter just did?”

I’m not sure what… (No, seriously, WTF is happening here…?)

“She not only said ‘thank you’ to me without you reminding her, but she also politely asked you if she could have some of her candy instead of demanding it… and then she thanked you too!”

Oh, that! Uhhh, yes, she did. She uses really good manners.

“Yes, she does! I hope you appreciate how unusual and wonderful that is. You must have taught her well.”

Considering that I’m stammering my reply, I’m not sure that that’s really the case…

“We have so many extra cookies, and they make us throw them away every night. I’d really love it if you took them with you to your hotel.”

And that is how we wound up with two dozen delicious cookies that were passed around our group and enjoyed all night long. FREE COOKIES. IN DISNEY WORLD. All because Ella said thank you and asked me if she could have candy.

THAT WAS IT.
No, “My greatest appreciation to you, fine Cast Member, for your truly incredible service tonight” or a letter written in golden ink… Just the absolute bare bones in terms of respectful, polite conversation — and for that, we got free cookies. !!!

When on earth did using the very most basic manners go from being the rule to being the (apparently exceedingly rare) exception? What the heck are other kids saying — or not saying — to make my kids’ simplest manners seem so amazing?

Now, lest you think that I’m writing this to toot my girls’ horn, please let me be the first to tell you that isn’t the case. While I’m not at all above writing something to showcase how fantabulous my offspring are, I promise I’ll let you know I think it’s super and that I’m bragging. Sometimes a proud mama just needs to brag.

But this time? Not the case. I’m just thinking this through.

It’s not that I’m not proud of my girls for being polite and using good manners. Quite the contrary; some of my proudest moments as their mom have come when other people have commented on their manners. But I kinda don’t get it. You see, not having good manners really isn’t a choice in our family — unless you ask nicely, things are absolutely not going to go your way – so when the girls do it when we’re out and about, I don’t even notice. Not saying please and thank you – unprompted – would be akin to deciding to pee on the floor instead of in the toilet or eating ice cream with your fingers. It just doesn’t fly.

Which isn’t to say that Annie and Ella are perfect and always deploy spectacular manners. Believe you me, they have their fair share of floor-peeing and ice-cream finger moments. Case in point: the reason Ella and I were leaving the Magic Kingdom, just the two of us, was that she’d thrown a full-on, all out tantrum earlier in the day (despite being the oldest kid in our group, she had a fit so terrible, she was escorted back to the hotel and missed out on the second half of our day at Animal Kingdom), and by dinner time, she was just done for the day, so we left alone. Considering her behavior that morning, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d thrown the Jelly Bellies on the floor – so I was particularly pleased that she managed to pull out her lovely manners for the Cast Member helping us.

In fact, the reason I’m writing this post today is to remind myself that my kids really do know how to be sweet, polite, and kind… because Sunday was bad, y’all. BAD. Horrendous, rude, disrespectful, eye-rolling, sobbing, Mommy-yells-till-her-throat-hurts bad, the kind of bad that results in skipping out on getting the Christmas tree, threats of canceling advent activities, and tear-stained letters written to Santa apologizing for their over-the-top nastiness.

So… yeah. My kids are hardly angels. They are not well-mannered and polite every minute of the day. They definitely have their moments. Many, many of them.

But usually, they’re pretty good about it. Maybe it’s because they know that if they don’t ask politely for a snack, there will be no snack, so they’re respectful out of self-preservation (hey, pretzels are a powerful motivator). Maybe it’s because they genuinely understand that speaking kindly to others is just the right thing to do. And, heck, maybe it’s because they know that if they’re rude when we’re out and about, they’ll be sent off to Azkaban for the night… I don’t know.

But I do know that they get complimented on their manners an awful lot, and that people are well and truly floored by the simplest of pleases and thank yous.

Which, on the one hand, is really kind of sad, you know? What Ella and Annie are doing is so freakin’ minimal in terms of being polite – to think that other kiddos encountered by store managers and check-out clerks and restaurant servers are falling short of a bar set that low is just plain depressing.

But on the other hand, it makes it pretty darn easy to blow people away. Super low expectations rock!

Unfortunately for the girls, we’re not really letting them get away with just pleases and thank yous anymore. No, we’re moving on to looking people in the eye when they speak, shaking hands with a firm grip, asking questions to show someone you’re interested in them, and holding the door for the person behind you. Annie and Ella are not terribly pleased with this development.

They are catching on, however. On Sunday, Annie held the door for me at church before throwing her jacket on the floor of the Great Hall and leaving her trash on the table after coffee hour. And Ella definitely looked me in the eye while rolling her own eyes at me as I was reading her the riot act.

This is a marathon, people, not a sprint. Thank God there are stickers and free cookies at the aid stations.

Best laid plans

Posted on November 29, 2013 by missemtoo

I always start out with such high hopes and good intentions. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday – truly the very best time with my grandmother and newfound, fabulous friends, all of whom were kind enough to protest my apologies when we ate two hours past our original estimate because that the turkey took far longer to cook than I’d planned (Alton Brown – dude, you’ve never led me astray before; what gives??). It was just perfectly cozy and fun and laughter-filled and delicious, so much so that, while we were doing the dishes after everyone had gone home and girls were in bed, Nick stopped to ask me, “Am I not agreeing strongly enough with what you’re saying? Because you’ve just told me for the fifth time that this was a really great Thanksgiving…”

So, after actually getting enough sleep last night (a Thanksgiving miracle, word!), I awoke today in a delightful mood, ready to throw caution to the wind and, by God, make some pumpkin donuts; today’s breakfast will be more than just juice, in the name of sugar and cinnamon and pumpkin spice, amen. To round out the morning (and perhaps atone for the donuts), I thought I’d do some yoga – after all, the floor was freshly vacuumed for last night’s guests, and I couldn’t let a dog-hair-free carpet go to waste – so I donned new yoga pants and a kicky black yoga zip-up top (thanks, Mom!), even stopping to admire my snazzy I Might Work Out Or I Might Just Strut Around In These Because They Make Me LOOK Like I’ll Work Out clothing in the mirror before heading downstairs.

It was all going to be just wonderful, you know? Right out of a Hallmark Special. I’d make the donuts (okay, does everyone who grew up in the Northeastern US still hear the Dunkin’ Donuts’ guy’s voice in your head intoning, “Time to make the do-nuts…” every time you think of donuts?) in my fantastically clean kitchen (hosting Thanksgiving definitely has its perks) while the girls – who, naturally, would be deeply grateful for my efforts – could either assist cheerfully by my side or play bucolically together downstairs.

A fresh layer of snow had fallen last night, adding sparkle to the eight or so inches that we already have on the ground. The sunlight was streaming into the kitchen, giving the entire room a warm, soothing-but-invigorating glow. Ah, yes. A grateful morning. Joy just oozing from my being. I started to get out the ingredients.

Annie came upstairs in tears not shortly thereafter, and, still in my This Is The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of haze, I picked her up and held her close, whispering sweetly in her ear to tell me what was wrong. “Ella hit me, and also scratched my arm.” Why had Ella done so? I wanted to know. “Because she wanted to put the Legos to bed somewhere else.”

Of course.

Not wanting to break my reverie, I soothed her and apologized and reiterated that hitting and scratching are not appropriate ways to behave. I was just about to (kindly, gently, warmly) reprimand Ella for her behavior when I thought to ask Annie if she had, by chance, done anything to her sister to precipitate such an attack. Annie nodded solemnly and said, quite matter-of-factly, “Yes. I hit her really hard because she didn’t give me the Legos I wanted.”

And so came the first, If you can’t play nicely together, you’re going to be in separate rooms! of the day.

Turning back to the task at hand, I measured and whisked, mixed and stirred. I found my inner peace (or maybe it was just leftover Xanax) and breathed deeply into it, or whatever it is the yoga lady on YouTube says to do. The girls came upstairs, still grumpy, and I suggested that perhaps they were hungry. They denied that they were (even though it was 9:45 and they typically eat around 8:15), but reluctantly agreed to eat a little breakfast. Playing my Best Mommy Ever card, I offered them a slice of leftover apple pie, pumpkin bread, or a dinner roll, and when they asked if they could have little bits of all three, I said sure – it’s the day after Thanksgiving! We are so happy and thankful! We celebrate life! Of course you may have all three!

This, I assumed, would cheer them up and make them see just how very fortunate they are, not only for the abundant riches of our life, but for kick-ass moms like me who allow desserts for breakfast. We might have taken a slight scene break, but we would surely return to our Hallmark Special right after these messages. I was just piping the first globs of batter from the Ziploc bag into the donut maker when I felt this… stickiness… on my hands. Apparently, I hadn’t closed the zip on the bag tightly enough, because the enclosure came entirely open and there was now more pumpkin donut batter outside of the bag then in. And the only place to “catch” it and prevent it from falling calamitously to the floor was to sandwich it between my hands and my kicky new black yoga top.

The girls would chuckle at this, I figured. Or perhaps offer to help.
Instead, “Mommy, why are you making such a mess with our donuts?” was their charming inquiry.

With two donuts already baking in the donut machine and batter completely covering my hands, the only solution was to scrape it from my fingers and into the other donut receptacles. I was madly stuffing the sticky globs into place when the girls attempted to leave the kitchen. Mistake.

Please stay seated – I’m making donuts for you.

They didn’t leave the premises but, rather than remaining seated, they chose to horse around with the dog gate – the one that is held precariously within the door frame and that must be treated carefully – and succeeded in not only knocking themselves to the ground, but the gate as well.

I might have reminded them that they’ve been told at least a million times not to play with or hang on the gate, and I may have said that they were going to be responsible for fixing it if it took them all day to do so… But I’m not entirely sure, because I was busy checking on the donuts while also scrubbing donut batter from my hands and my now-batter-stained sweatshirt. When they finally succeeded in putting up the gate and attempted to walk away, I’m quite positive that I growled at them to return to the kitchen because I AM MAKING DONUTS FOR YOU.

After they grudgingly ate the donuts (whispering to themselves that they were as tasty as the apple donuts I’d made earlier this year, but, still angry with me for getting in trouble, not even glancing my way), they then headed off to play. Perhaps the morning isn’t all a loss, I reasoned. They’ll play happily now and I can enjoy a donut in peace…

“If you EVER touch me again, I will never speak to you!”

“I didn’t do it on PURPOSE!”

“Don’t you even know how to use your HANDS?”

“Don’t you even know how to use your MOUTH?”

THAT’S IT. YOU NEED TO PLAY SEPARATELY. AND IF I HEAR ONE MORE WORD FROM EITHER OF YOU, YOU WILL SPEND THE AFTERNOON IN YOUR ROOM.

I AM SO THANKFUL FOR THIS DELIGHTFUL MORNING.

Something is oozing from my being, but I’m pretty certain it isn’t joy. But let’s be honest: those Hallmark Specials always kind of sucked anyway.

If the YouTube yoga lady tells me to breathe into my toes, I will leave her a VERY nasty comment. Then again, can one even still do yoga if your sweatshirt contains more donut than your stomach? Surely I can burn just as many calories outside in the snow as I could Downward Dog-ing in the living room… Especially while making snowmen. Or throwing snowballs.

I know of two particularly appealing targets right about now.

Point Taken

Posted on November 15, 2013 by missemtoo

Since forever, Nick and I have used a “points” system to call the other out when we’ve unwittingly said or done something simply because we’ve just been together too damn long, and our… peculiarities… have rubbed off on each other. When we’re out with friends and someone refers to workers at the Disney Store as “employees” and Nick corrects them, saying, “Actually, they’re cast members,” I get at least ten points, because my Disney-speak wormed its way into his vocabulary. When I note that Mark Messier must have won more Stanley Cups than Wayne Gretzky because he was with the Rangers when they were the champs in ’94, Nick gets a solid fifty points because his love of hockey has caused me to remember weird hockey stats.

Were you just singing part of Les Mis while you made dinner?
“Shit. I think I was.”
OMG, a hundred points for me. Maybe one-fifty.

“Did you just shake your bag of popcorn to spread out the flavor more evenly?”
Holy crap, did I?
“That puts me in the lead for at least a month.”

Naturally, since marriage is at its best when it’s essentially a competitive sport, we are also keeping points when it comes to the girls. There are some things that Annie and Ella do – ways they behave or phrases they say – that are absolutely because they’re my daughters. Becoming frustrated when someone uses incorrect grammar? Totally my kid. Being physically unable to turn the television off when The Sound of Music is on? That’s my girl! Knowing at least two verses to every Christmas carol? Naturally. WHAT WERE THEY, RAISED BY WOLVES?

And then there are the things that they do that are a direct byproduct of having Nick for their dad. Like last week, when Ella was by herself in the dining room and I heard her cheerfully muttering, “I love scotch. Scotchy scotch scotch! Here it goes down. Down into my belly!”

How do you know all of that?
“From that thing Daddy showed me*.”
You’re actually quoting Anchor Man???
“Yes! It was really funny!”
DAMN IT, NICK, YOU GET TWENTY POINTS.

(* don’t call CPS. He only showed them the trailer for the first movie. It was super fun to avoid explaining what “quite a handful in the bedroom” means.)

Sometimes, the points are given grudgingly. When Annie, age three, returned from a potty run (while we were out. In public) and loudly proclaimed that she’d just been “dropping a deuce,” Nick earned himself a few points, but also maybe the silent treatment on the way home.

Other times, Nick has had points deducted from the Official Points Bank (which is kept in my head; it’s exceedingly accurate). Years ago, as I was changing a then-18-month-old Annie’s diaper, I removed the offending nappy and she murmured, “Fuggin’ diaper.” Making sure I’d heard her correctly, I (stupidly) asked her to repeat herself. Nope, “Fuggin’ diaper,” plain as day. (Lest you think I’m being chaste, I’m not trying to avoid writing the word “fucking” — Annie actually pronounced it as “fuggin'”.)

Oh wow. Where did you hear that?
“Daddy said it.”

BUS.TED. Fifty points from Gryffindor.

(Nick lost even further points as Annie – probably in response to my shocked reaction – decided that it was fun to yell “FUGGIN!!!” at the top of her lungs, especially when we were out and about. “FUGGIN’ LIBRARY!” “FUGGIN’ GROCERIES!” I quickly learned that if I responded in any way to her outbursts – whether to scold or admonish, distract or quickly zip her the heck outta dodge – she would get a charge out of it and would yell even more loudly and jubilantly. “FUGGIN’ CAR! FUGGIN’ CAR! FUGGIN CAR!!!!!” The only thing that would eventually quiet her down was to ignore her entirely, which meant that for a good three or four months — until she finally realized she wasn’t going to get a rise out of me, so it lost its luster — Annie dropped the F-bomb in every store we entered. FUN TIMES, THOSE. I was ahead in points for at least half a year.)

This isn’t to say that the girls haven’t picked up the occasional unsavory phrase from me. When Ella was frustrated with something a couple of weeks ago, she angrily yelled, “Oh, for God’s sake — JESUS CHRIST!!” Um, yeaaah. Oops. My bad.

Sometimes, they’ll tell me “secrets” just to see what I’ll do, like when they returned from a trip to Brueggers last weekend and Annie bounded up to tell me, “Guess what word Daddy taught us but we’re not allowed to tell you? GRAB-ASS!”

Isn’t that delightful.
“He said Grandpa Bill used to say it to him when he was a kid, so that makes it okay, right?”
Not really, but I’ve got to give him points for style.

And I will fully admit that I love how Ella has memorized comedienne Anjelah Johnson’s bit about Nordstrom and Ross employees’ responses** to the Raider cheerleader calendars. It slays me every time she – correctly, appropriately – drops, “I have three words for you – Fan. Tas. Tic!” into conversation. Okay, Nick. You win this round.

(** not the best recording of this, but worth a look if you don’t know who/what I’m talking about. Hilarious.)

But Nick’s greatest coup may have come when he least expected it. Last weekend, the movie Miracle was on cable, so he began to show it to the girls, starting from wherever the movie was at the time. I jumped in and said no, we had to start at the beginning — how else would they know about the Cold War? About the relationship between the United States and Russians in 1980? How could they miss Eruzione almost not making the team? How would they understand the significance of his saying that he played for The United States of America, whereas previously each player had always said they played for such-and-such college?

If we’re going to show them the movie about one of the greatest sports stories of all time – a HOCKEY story, at that – we must start from the beginning, damn it ! We need a Miracle family movie night! Oh, and totally ten points for me for standing up for the hockey movie.

Aside from watching a bit of A League of Their Own, this was the first sports movie the girls had seen, and while we hoped they’d enjoy it, we weren’t entirely sure. Our apprehensions were eased as they gasped aloud when the coach, Herb Brooks, made the team undergo a grueling practice after a half-assed effort in Norway, shouting “Again! Again!” until the players were vomiting from exhaustion. They shook their heads in bewildered disbelief as the Russians beat the Americans 10-3 in an exhibition game just three days before the start of the Olympics. And they were beside themselves during the Big Game, covering their faces with worry, screaming aloud for every goal, dancing around (literally) as Al Michaels called out, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” It was a good night.

Still, it was just a movie, and after going to bed that night, we didn’t talk more about it. The following day, we sat down to start one of Annie’s school projects, where the entire family was supposed to work together to “disguise” a paper turkey by turning it into something else, so it wouldn’t be eaten at Thanksgiving. We could use anything around the house – markers, glitter, dried pasta, feathers, scraps of paper – but we had to work together.

We began the discussion. Do you want to turn it into a Disney character? Maybe Phineas (of Phineas and Ferb)? How about a soccer player? A teacher? An artist?

Nope. Wrong, all of them. Annie had her own idea.

Once she’d decided, we all worked to help her disguise her turkey, cutting, glueing, drawing. In the end, he turned out pretty damn well.

And so, without further ado, I present you Annie’s Family Turkey:
Herb Brooks.

I am NOT a Turkey

Hi I love hockey. I coached the USA Olympic hockey team in 1980. We won the golden medal. We beat the Russians by one point because we had 4 and they had 3. They were mad because they never, ever lost. It was called the miracle on ice.

In case you thought the design was haphazard, please compare Herb-the-Turkey to Kurt Russell-as-Herb-Brooks from Miracle:

I’d completely forgotten that he’d worn plaid pants (ohhh, 1980, you really were somethin’ else), a tan blazer, a blue shirt, and a tie. Annie sure as heck didn’t.

Please also note Herb Brooks-the-Turkey’s fuzzy hair (again, 1980, you truly were a gift).

When Annie presented her turkey to the class, not one of her classmates guessed who it was (which, you know… not exactly a shocker…). But she was so dang proud of our creation, she didn’t care one bit.

Neither did her dad, who won approximately 823 points for Annie’s efforts, at least half of which were given because he hadn’t even tried to influence her choice.

So Nick’s a little ahead right now in the points department, which is fine with me. This is the 2nd first-grade family art project we’ve done, which surely means there will be others, leaving me plenty of time to plot my ~~revenge~~ course of action. A Family Snowman disguised as a Caramel Macchiato would be pretty incredible.

Which would be fitting, since both Ella and Annie could identify the Starbucks logo before they turned one. ADVANTAGE, MAMA.

Times, they are(n’t) a changin’

Posted on November 13, 2013 by missemtoo

A little bit ago, Annie had a friend over for a play date. She and this buddy get along famously, and often spend their time together doing artsy stuff. At one point, they each asked for a pair of scissors (and then looked at me rather incredulously when I asked to know why they needed said scissors, seeming almost hurt that I wouldn’t allow two six year-olds to just waltz off with some Fiskars) so that they could cut out these little… squares… they were making.

I watched as they meticulously drew dots on each square – one had a dot smack dab in the middle; another had two dots, one in the upper right and one in the upper left corner; yet another contained five dots, with one in the middle and the remaining four in the corners – and it occurred to me that they were essentially drawing dice patterns on their papers. When I voiced this to them, I was quickly admonished.

“No, Mommy! These aren’t DICE. Dice are ROUND.” (Okay, so we may need to work on our geometry.) “These are CARDS.”

Ah, playing cards! Gotcha. When I then suggested that they could simply use one of the 839 decks of Bicycle cards we have lying around the house, I was dismissed just quickly as before.

“No, we need to MAKE THESE because it’s part of the GAME. We learned it at school.”

So, first grade teaches gambling these days. Awesome.

Once the “playing cards” were drawn and cut out, it was time to write down the rules. Annie and her friend H each wrote down separate versions, then compared them, to be sure they’d each gotten it right.

To wit: Annie’s rules of the game (you can click on the photo to see it bigger)

1. Make sure that you each have 11 cards.
2. Shuffle 3 times.
3. Say “1-2-3 top it,” then have each flip over the card (whoever gets the bigger number wins <—- small print squeezed in off to the right side)
4. Keep doing it over and over
5. Until your cards are out
6. Have fun

H took her rules home with her, and I didn’t have a chance to take a photo of it before she did, but they matched Annie’s pretty closely.

What’s this game called?

“Top It.”

As I watched the girls begin to play – each turning a card over at the same time, with the person who played the higher card winning and taking both cards – I remarked that it looked an awful lot like the old-time favorite card game “War.” They looked briefly up at me and said, “It is.” When I asked why they were calling it “Top It” instead, they simply said, “Because in school we’re not allowed to say ‘war.'”

Really? REALLY?? It has come to this?

To be fair, our elementary school has, I think, done a pretty fantastic job of NOT jumping on the overreaction, EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT THESE DAYS, there-could-be-a-pedophile-around-every-corner, we must protect our children bandwagon. Loads of kids walk and bike to school (many sans parents), there is still Tag and monkey-bar-hanging at recess, the kindergarteners are taken on a bus ride — without parents! without even ASKING the parents! — when they come to meet the teachers in August, and there is still outdoor recess all through our snow-filled Rochester winters (with the stipulation that once the wind chill hits 20 below, it’s officially too cold). It’s a school that, despite the recent push toward high stakes testing and lots of homework and recent tragedies at other schools across the country, has really embraced the idea that we truly are a community, and kids should be allowed to be kids. In short, it’s a fabulous place to be.

So, maybe that was why not allowing first-graders to call “War” War struck me as so odd. Or maybe it’s simply because it’s an asinine rule. BECAUSE PLAYING A CARD GAME THAT INVOLVES THE HIGHER NUMBER “BEATING” THE LOWER NUMBER HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ACTUAL WAR, you know what I mean?!?

Yes, yes. It’s different now. Increased security, Newtown, Columbine. And our school has taken measures because of that. But I can absolutely promise you that playing “War” wasn’t at the root of any of those tragedies.

I’m trying to imagine what’s next… Since the devastating tornadoes in Joplin and Oklahoma, clearly we can no longer allow kids to play “Twister.” I suggest “Twisted” (too psycho?) or “Tangled” (save for copyright infringement).

“Candyland” obviously promotes unhealthy choices, but “Veggieland” or “Paleo-land” are probably okay.

“Battleship” encourages violence; “Sink ‘er!” or “Peg It!” are much more benign.

“Hedbanz” will soon be recalled for its glaring grammatical faux pas, with “Guess Me!” arriving in its place (or perhaps “Guess Me?” would be more apropos…?)

I know that my girls will tire of hearing me say it, and no, I didn’t walk to school uphill both ways (although I did have to endure a time when Jams were in style, and when the only way to watch cartoons was to actually find them on the television when they were showing LIVE — and then TURN THE DIAL, by hand, to the correct channel), but in many ways, life was just easier when Nick and I were kids. People didn’t second-guess everything. Nuance wasn’t read into all our interactions. We played “War” and nobody got a yen for actually hurting someone.

I guess it was a different time.
Except… not so much at all, really.

UPDATE:

Annie’s just now arrived home from school, bursting to tell me about her day. After I heard about her Morning Work and playing outside at recess (gleeful, because there was snow on the ground), she proceeded to ask Ella if she’d heard a little “song” that Annie’d learned recently. And it goes like this:

Ella and so-and-so
Sittin’ in a tree!
K-I-S-S-I-N-G

Awwww. Familiar, no? I was reminded, yet again, of just how much childhood has not changed as I chanted alongside her (in my head, not aloud; that would have been totally uncouth, in Annie’s opinion)…

First comes love!
Then comes marriage!
Then comes the baby in the bay-bee carriage!

So beautiful, the connection between the generations, the innocence of childhood. “Top It” instead of “War,” my butt.
I heard the rest of the little ditty in my head before Annie could say it out loud…

Suckin’ his thumb!
And wetting his pants!
And doing the hu-la hu-la dance!

Except… that’s not how Annie ended her version of the ever-famous schoolyard jingle. No, according to Annie, after the baby arrives , he goes on a bender:

Then comes the baby in the bay-bee carriage!
That’s not it! That’s not all!
Your baby’s playing with al-co-hol!

Adorable.

Soooo, it would appear that some things have changed just a smidge in thirty-plus years.

I’m still calling it “War,” though.
And if Annie continues to sing this jaunty tune at the top of her lungs, I’m taking away the remote and making her change the channels on the television by hand. USING THE BUTTONS ON THE TV.

And she’ll still have to walk to school.

When she tells her own kids about that, I certainly hope she lets them know it was uphill. Both ways.

Thin Ice

Posted on November 12, 2013 by missemtoo

So many people have kindly been asking how I’m doing.

And I always answer the same way: I’m okay. Some days are better than others. Thanks for asking.
But that’s only part of the (long) story.

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Previously, on Homeland (except I don’t mean Homeland, I mean in our lives, but in my head I hear Mandy Patinkin’s voice saying it. Anyhoo. Carry on)…

About a year ago, Ella broke her left foot, quite badly. She wasn’t doing anything crazy – just happened to fall off of her scooter exactly wrong – but every single one of the myriad doctors, nurses, and technicians who looked at her x-rays would literally gasp at the severity of the break, usually expressing how shocked they were that she wasn’t screaming bloody murder (always a comforting statement). She had a temporary cast put on, but we were told we’d need to revisit soon thereafter so another pediatric orthopedic surgeon could examine her foot and give his opinion.

When he took a look – again with the x-rays, and also just, you know, looking at her foot – he told us we had a decision to make: he could cast it again now and, because the foot itself didn’t look crooked (always a good sign), keep our fingers crossed that the bones would fuse together and heal properly – as children’s bones usually do – and that would be the end of it. But… if they didn’t fuse together and heal properly… if, because of the severity of the break, they healed poorly and all wonky… she’d need surgery in about a year — big, invasive, painful surgery with a nice, long recovery time. So, that was option one: cast it and hope for the best (the most likely outcome) – but recognizing that if things didn’t go well, we’d be headed down a rough road in a year or so.

Option two was to simply do surgery right then, which would probably guarantee that her foot would mend correctly. The surgery would be less intense than the one she could possibly need in a year, but would still be, you know, surgery — which would mean putting her under, plus a much longer recovery period than just putting her foot in a cast and allowing it to heal on its own. Since that was the most likely outcome anyway, this pre-emptive surgery was just an exceedingly overcautious measure… but it would be easier on her than the potential fix-it-up surgery.

Both options sucked. What on earth should we do? Make Ella go through surgery just in case? Or take things more slowly, assuming her foot would heal as it should – requiring only a few weeks in a cast – but potentially screwing her over even more in the future? THANKS SO MUCH, PARENTHOOD. THIS IS FUN.

Nick and I were unprepared to have the doctor lay it out like that, to put the decision to us. We choked. We sputtered. We were totally lost. And so, while the doctor went to gather his technicians to remove Ella’s temporary cast, I left the room, too… and called Bill. He wasn’t a doctor, but he’d had a lifetime’s worth of experience in the medical field. Surely he could help us through. (He did.)

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It’s been been nearly seven years since I was in my own classroom, and man, have I missed it. I love, love, love being home with my daughters (when they’re not maiming one another or painting the bathroom walls with nail polish or wearing my lingerie as dress-up clothes during a playdate; TRUE STORY), but I miss teaching. I miss the students. I miss having my own classrooms and the cheesy teacher posters (“Shoot for the moon! If you miss, at least you’ll land among the stars!” “CAN’T is a four letter word!” “YOU DON’T SCARE ME – I TEACH!”) and even telling the kids that if they use the xylophone mallets one more time before I say go, they’re to hand them over for the rest of the class.

I’d so hoped to be back in the classroom full-time this year, what with Annie in first grade all day, but it just didn’t happen. (Although, with all that’s been going on this fall, can you even fathom if I’d been teaching all day, every day?? Oh, Universe/Karma/Fate, you foxy vixen. I’ll say it: uncle! You knew. Well played.) And then came the chance to sub, and it has been SO GOOD! Back in school again! With kids again! Arriving in the classroom to discover that the teacher didn’t realize that a qualified music sub would be in, and has left a movie, instead; oh hellz no! We will be doing recorders and yes, I CAN teach them to sing that canon in a round, thank you very much! SO VERY GOOD. Once or twice a week, I’m in that classroom, and a little bit of magic happens. LOOK AT ME, I AM SO HAPPY!!

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As school started this fall, Ella needed new shoes and we bought sneakers without incident, but when it came time to buy flats, she could find none – none! – that fit. I took her to (I am not kidding, and yes I actually counted) ELEVEN stores, from WalMart to Nordstrom, and she tried on every single damn pair of flats available, and NONE OF THEM WORKED. At first, I assumed she was just being exceedingly fussy and picky (I believe I may have actually muttered to her something along the lines of, “Sometimes, shoes don’t FEEL GOOD, but you just WEAR THEM ANYWAY!” because that’s always an awesome strategy), but finally, many tears later (both hers and mine; she’s eight, so she has an excuse; I’m just a crier), it dawned on me: her once-broken left foot was wider and shorter than her right. So, in fact, she wasn’t being fussy or picky; truly NOTHING fit.

Patted myself on the back for quite a nice long time after that one, I did. AWESOME JOB, MAMA.

Long story short, I finally tracked down some wide, impossible-to-find shoes that cost as much as the ones I wore for my wedding, and they fit and she was thrilled and the angels sang and chocolate poured forth from the heavens. But the shoe fiasco reminded me that it was nearly a year since Ella had broken her foot, so I’d better schedule her follow-up appointment with the surgeon, especially because they fill up so far in advance, I knew I’d have to book something immediately if I wanted to get her in anywhere near the twelve month mark.

Naturally, they’re not open on weekends, and afternoons are dicey because of piano lessons and Annie, so I chose a weekday appointment, smack dab in the middle of the day so that Ella would miss lunch and recess but as little actual instructional time as possible. Because of TESTING and COMMON CORE and ELA and MATH PROBLEMS THAT I CANNOT DECIPHER BECAUSE THEY SAY THINGS LIKE, “USING AN ARRAY, EXPLAIN WHY EQUAL GROUPS HELPED MIGUEL FIND OUT HOW MANY APPLES TO BRING TO THE MORTUARY.” Third grade is not what it used to be.

Anyway, I made the appointment and, knowing that this office tends to run at least an hour, if not two hours — TWO HOURS — behind, I was in constant communication with the surgeon’s receptionist, the school’s secretary, and Ella’s teacher, keeping the appointment time in flux so that she’d be there to learn how to help darling Miguel with the apples. PRIORITIES, PEOPLE.

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OH! Subbing is SUCH A JOY! Sorry for the excessive caps lock, but it is. I LOVE IT!! Have I mentioned that? No, really. I do.

But, sheesh, the scheduling. If I teach first thing in the morning, Nick needs to get the girls off to school. If I teach at a school that ends after my own kids’ classes end, I need to find someone to watch them until I can get home. All doable, but still… scheduling. If I teach on a day when I have piano lessons starting at 3:00, I need to either only teach a half-day or cancel my first piano lesson. Add to that mix Nick being out of town on a relatively frequent basis, and it’s been a hell of a thing keeping it all straight and figuring out when I am available. There have been days when I’ve received an email — not a first-thing-in-the morning, OH MY GOD WHO DIED? phone call, but just a friendly email — asking if I can sub… and I look at it, and everything in my brain gets a little wavy, like that time I was on Vicodin for knee surgery and Nick and I went to a hockey game and I asked him to get me “a drink” – you know, like a soda – and he assumed I mean an alcoholic drink and I didn’t have anything else to imbibe, so I drank that, and the booze mixed with the narcotics and suddenly I was watching the action on the ice, the teammates sliding prettily back and forth, saying to him, “Wow – the players down there look like a school of fish!”

So sometimes, my brain gets school-of-fish-y just looking at the subbing emails, and suddenly everything is so overwhelming, I can’t even beGIN to think what my schedule is next week, and I just burst into tears. Right there, in the kitchen, and the dogs are all, Was it something we did? We already apologized for eating the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter (also: true story. Except they didn’t apologize). Crying. In the kitchen. Because I just can’t think straight, not even about something I adore.

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The office told me they were running about 30 minutes behind, so I called the school secretary to let her know, then tended to some things around the house and let the dogs out one last time. I called them in and Langston came running immediately, but Jambi did not. Wondering if perhaps she had found another apple from the tree and was ignoring me, I set out to bring her in, but no, she wasn’t by the apple tree. Nor by the playhouse. Nor the garden. Nor, well, anywhere. Both gates were locked, so I knew she hadn’t gotten out of the yard that way, and although Joey (our ~~jackass~~ other dog) can both go under and climb over the chain link fence, Jambi has never indicated that she can, so I was dumbfounded. Where could she be??

I called her, over and over. I walked the perimeter of the fence to look for holes where she might have escaped. NOTHING. She was nowhere to be found. And I had to leave in three minutes to take Ella to her appointment, the one that had taken two months to properly schedule, the one where they’d tell us if all had gone well or if she’d need major surgery. But I couldn’t leave, because I couldn’t find Jambi.

See, it’s not like your own pet just running off, where maybe you could be all, She knows where she’s fed, I’m sure it’s fine! and go about your business. Because Jambi isn’t ours. I mean, she is for the next ten months, but technically she belongs to CCI; she’s just living with us. There was no way in hell I could just allow our 10 month-old service dog-in-training, who had never so much as wandered (alone) ten feet beyond our property line, to just go on an adventure through the neighborhood and assume she’d come back safely. Have fun! Smell some hydrants for me! Catch ya later! No, I had to find her — I HAD TO FIND HER RIGHT THEN — and if I couldn’t, I had to keep looking until I did.

Nick, as is always the case when something unexpectedly calamitous happens, was out of town, and although he was empathetic when I called him in hysterics, trying to calm me down and helping me to see that Jambi had to the the priority here — Ella’s appointment could, technically, be rescheduled, but Jambi needed to be found — it wasn’t long before he had to say, “My flight’s about to board — good luck!” and I was on my own. No one else could take Ella to her appointment, and I couldn’t really ask neighbors to track down Jambi; I needed to find her myself, to make sure she was okay. Minutes ticking by, Ella’s appointment slipping ever further away, I got in the car and set off around the neighborhood, screaming Jambi’s name out of the windows.

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Pinterest is a dangerous place. I don’t just pin madly; if I see stuff that I have no interest in (scrapbooking and making anything that involves a sewing machine, I’m looking at you), rather than be intimidated or self-deprecatory or vindictive or spiteful, I just move on. To each their own.

But when I find stuff that DOES grab me, hoo boy. It is ON. Hermey (our Elf on the Shelf) is going to have some mighty fine adventures this year, let me tell you, and the entire family agrees that that recipe for crockpot cilantro chicken kicked some serious boo-tay.

Such was the case when I found the pumpkins. After all these years of just carving, WHO KNEW?? There was an entire WORLD of pumpkin decorating out there, just waiting for me to bring it into my dining room. Yes, the girls oohed and ahhed over what they saw on my Pinterest page, but who are we kidding? I was the one with pumpkin-decorating fever. It took no prodding at all for me to “convince” them to go to Michael’s at 5 p.m. on a Sunday, nor did I have any trouble filling the cart with the necessary accoutrements. I CAN USE BOTH MOD PODGE AND A GLUE GUN FOR THIS DESIGN? There is a God.

The dining room was filled to the brim with pumpkins for a solid ten days, and they were GOOD days! Happy days! Each time I saw them, they made me smile, big, shit-eating, jack-o-lantern smiles. WE ARE SO HALLOWEEN-Y AND CRAFTY AND LIFE IS JUST HUMMING ALONG RIGHT NOW!!! Once soccer ended, we wound up with a free Tuesday afternoon (a free day! OMG!), and the girls and I spent THREE STRAIGHT HOURS decorating pumpkins. I could physically feel myself relaxing with the application of each sequin. Ooooh, pumpkins. I love you so!

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I drove around looking frantically for Jambi for forty-five straight minutes, until my voice was hoarse from the screaming and my eyes stung from the crying. She was nowhere. Before I could stop them, the litany of possible horror stories invaded my thinking… She’d gotten hit by a car. Someone had come by and taken her. Her collar had fallen off and no one would know who she was and we’d never get her back. We’d never get her back. What would I tell CCI? How could I ever explain? We’d never have another CCI pup again. This was it. Our darling puppy was missing.

Ella’s appointment time had long come and gone, and after leaving a watery message for the surgeon’s receptionist saying we hoped maybe we’d still get a chance to be seen, I’d told the school secretary to just send Ella off to lunch, realizing that I sounded every bit as frazzled and maniacal as I felt.

I finally came back home, hoping that perhaps Jambi had returned and wormed her way back into the yard. I stopped briefly in the kitchen, screaming out her name (no, I mean it, SCREAMING) in a way that would put Marlon Brando to shame.

I absolutely deserved an Oscar. Either that, or a padded room.

After a particularly hysterics-filled shout-out, I took a deep breath and said out loud to myself, “Holy shit. Maybe I’m actually going insane.” Wandering aimlessly into the backyard one last time, once again painstakingly walking the fence perimeter, looking behind the shed, looking in the shed (even though it was closed and locked), calling and calling and calling… I couldn’t see her anywhere.

And then, just as I’d turned to go back into the house, I heard something. It wasn’t a yelp, certainly not a bark, but maybe a little bit of whining. I whirled around, trying to see where it was coming from, and happened to notice a tiny bit of rustling behind the wisteria tree that is pressed against our house. Wedged between the tree and the house – the exact same tawny color as the tree trunk, and smaller than it by quite a bit (which would explain why she was essentially invisible) – was my girl, shaking uncontrollably, whimpering, and clearly as glad to see me as I was to see her.

She’d been there all along.

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The pumpkins were SO FREAKIN’ FUN. I genuinely loved each and every one of them, especially just relaxing (much needed) and being with the girls while we got our creativity on, and am so excited that we now have a whole bunch to add to our collection for future Halloweens, as well as a few other (fake) ones I bought on sale for next year, because heavens knows there are a whole bunch of ideas we never got around to. LONG LIVE PUMPKIN PINTEREST!!

But, oh dear god, the mess. The glue sticks that globbed onto the floor. The hot glue that burned my fingers. The paint all over the dining room table, despite careful preparations to protect it. The googly eyes and the stick-on gems and the superfine glitter — oh, sweet baby Jesus, the superfine glitter — that has seeped into EVERY SINGLE CORNER of our home. There was SO MUCH MESS, and only so many hours in which to clean it, which meant that surely I’d be going to bed MUCH TOO LATE yet again.

(For all of the tea in China [wait, is that even an appropriate metaphor anymore?], I canNOT get myself into bed at a reasonable hour. It’s not that I sleep poorly… it’s that I don’t go to bed in the first place. Just put your butt under the covers earlier, you say. And I’d agree. Except if it were that easy, I’d be under the damn covers.)

The girls helped with the clean-up, of course. They’d definitely made a good portion of the mess, so they were really good cleaners, but still a lot was left to me. The best time to do the cleaning was after they’d gone to bed, but it was just so hard. There were so many other things I needed to do — make lunches, fold laundry, answer essential emails — and then other things I wanted to do, like finally looking at YouTube links that friends and family had sent me weeks ago, or editing photos (I haven’t edited my own family’s photos SINCE MARCH, Y’ALL), and by the time I looked up, it was freakin’ 1 a.m., and the dining room was still a disaster, and it was just too much — all of it too much — and there was nothing left to do. Except cry.

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I ran over to where Jambi was, and immediately saw why I’d failed to notice her during any of my prior searches of the yard: she had curled herself into a tight ball on the ground between the wisteria tree and the house, and – being the exact same color as the tree trunk – become invisible. Hiding in plain sight for nearly an hour.

Although she whined some as I called her name, she never barked at me, nor did she leave her perch and bound up to me, which would have been typical. As I got closer, I called her again, reaching out to her, but still she didn’t budge. By now, I was beginning to think that something was seriously wrong – maybe she’d broken a leg or something? – and I leaned down to examine her hind quarters for any injuries, but could find none.

What I did, find, however, were wisteria vines — oodles of them, wrapped all around our sweet Beast and binding her in place as though she’d been tied there by a stagecoach bandit. The harder she struggled to free herself, the more the vines constricted, leaving her absolutely stuck. It took only a moment for me to reach my hand under one of the offending ropes and snap it in two, which in turn loosened the remaining coils, and Jambi sprang loose like a magic snake shooting out of a fake peanut can.

OMG I LOVE YOU!! I’VE BEEN HERE THE WHOLE TIME! YOU WERE CALLING AND CALLING AND I COULDN’T GET TO YOU! IT’S BEEN SO GODDAMN SCARY! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! YOU ARE THE BEST HUMAN EVER! DO YOU HAVE ANY TREATS FOR ME??

After all that – the driving around, the shouting until I became hoarse, the sheer panic and horror, the hysterical sobbing, the wondering if she was gone forever or dead or if we’d ever again have another CCI dog – she was right there all along, not making a sound.

(‘Course, if she’d made any noise while I was looking for her… let out even the tiniest of barks… I could have found her so much sooner… But, ah well, it’s only my sanity we’re talking about here. No worries.)

I so wanted to just play with her, to let her know that I hadn’t meant to strand her all wrapped up in wisteria vines, and I tried to hug her wriggly-fish body… but then had to usher her immediately inside and into her kennel because there was still the slightest chance that Ella could be seen that afternoon. Tears dried, purse grabbed, car started, GO.

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To put it mildly, it has been a crazy fall, with typical back-to-school nuttiness combined with new sports schedules, additional homework (Miguel isn’t going to get the apples to the mortuary alone, y’all), Nick’s MBA program, my subbing… It’s a whirlwind. And so that’s a huge part of why I’ve made very sure to make time for me as often as possible. Sometimes, it’s just a Caramel Macchiato while I answer emails (Starbucks, holla!), or extra time flipping through People while I’m on the can. Other times, it’s making sure that Nick and I watch Homeland together, or going to a concert (even if I come home smelling like a patchouli factory).

Still others, it’s making time to hang out with friends, be it chatting around the soccer field or going out for dinner with rebel Girl Scout moms. Those times have been my saving grace this season; sitting with a group of girlfriends – or just one fabulous pal – talking, sharing a bottle of wine, and laughing. Oh, the laughing! GIRL POWER, PEOPLE!! TIME SPENT WITH MY HOMIES! It is so awesome and healing and just generally fabulous.

It’s taking those moments just for me that make me remember that I still AM me. Thank God for being selfish every now and again.

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I barreled into the lobby of the school (except that you can’t “barrel” into any school these days because of heightened security measures, but anyway), doing my best to look all I’m Not Completely Insane So Sorry For Phoning You 83 Times This Morning Where Might My Daughter Eleanor Be? The secretary, ever-patient with me, directed me to the lunchroom, where Ella’s class had just gotten seated. I tried calling for her across the cafeteria, but that was as effective as trying to light a candle in a waterfall, so, whooshing past the other third-graders in a mad rush to reach her before she dug into her food, I whisper-shouted to her to Hurry up! We need to leave NOW!! Um, please.

She dutifully grabbed her tray and her jacket and we hustled out to the car. While we drove, as she balanced her lunch on her lap and chattered away about her morning, I explained why I’d been late.

“But Mom – Jambi could have gotten hit by a car!” I know, baby.
“We might never have seen her again!” I’m well aware, kiddo.
“She was by herself and stuck all that time?? Poor puppy!” Breaks my heart, too, sweetie.
“CCI might never have let us get another dog again!” Preaching to the choir, ma’am.

Once Ella was satisfied that Jambi was safe and sound, she turned her attention to the appointment at hand. What would the doctor be doing? Why did he need to check her foot again? If it hadn’t healed properly, what would happen?

I answered the first few questions, but kind of lied about the last one. “I’m not sure, honey. But I bet it’s just fine! How’s that pizza?”

I, myself – still feeling the rush of adrenaline from searching for Jambi and not forgetting my “Stella!” moments in the kitchen – had no appetite, but I ate the leftovers I’d brought, anyway. It could be a long afternoon, and I didn’t want to have an empty stomach on top of it.

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One morning, after a wonderful evening out with a friend – just a couple of hours, but so very needed and good, with each of us drinking a single beverage, talking the rest of the time about how we were both handling some fairly emotionally harrowing times – I received an email from her, asking how I was doing. The night before, I’d told her I’d been doing okay — actually, pretty fine. I felt good. I was coming out of the fog. I was feeling put together! Yay me!

But, as I answered her email, this is what I said, instead:

Today was okay. Turns out I forgot that it was Crazy Hat Day and also didn’t give Ella her allergy meds this morning, meaning I had a call from the school nurse to see if it was okay for Ella to receive the meds at school because they were having the Bus Safety demonstration, plus recess, and Ella would have turned into one enormous hive. 😐 So there was the slap in the face that, damn it, I guess I’m not as on top of all this as I’d thought. Shit.

Even when I try to take time for myself, to breathe and do right by me, something falls apart. Apparently, I truly just can’t do it all, despite my best intentions.

And then I cried.

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We got the to appointment and I took Ella’s hand as we walked into the building. Walking in, her and me; I remembered what it had been like a year ago, taking the elevator or carrying her up the stairs as she attempted to make her way on crutches. So much had happened in just twelve short months.

Ella took a seat in the waiting room – which was unexpectedly empty – and I apologized to the receptionist for the wacky phone messages I’d sent earlier. She laughed obligingly (a good sign, no?) and said that, as luck would have it, because we were late, there was a gap between appointments, and we’d be seen immediately. Ella was actually annoyed with me when I pulled her away from Toy Story II to go to the exam room.

She was weighed and had her height charted (which, thankfully, produces none of the cold sweat in her that it does in me when I see my own doctor, thanks very much), and then the doctor came in. He remembered us – remembered the severity of the break – and asked how Ella was doing. I let her answer for herself, and she told him that she was great. Aside from not finding shoes that she liked (an unforgivable crime at the age of eight), her foot wasn’t bothering her at all.

The surgeon examined Ella’s foot, turning it over slowly and carefully, and told us that although it looked good, we wouldn’t know for sure until she’d had some x-rays. And so off Ella went (no parents allowed; radiation and all), while I waited for her future to be dictated by a single black-and-white picture. I’m not sure I took a single breath while she was in that room.

Even if I could, there would have been no one I felt I could talk to at that moment. Nick’s plane had yet to land, and the person I’d called a year ago when we’d had a crisis with Ella’s foot is only reachable through a medium. And I didn’t happen to bring one with me to the doctor’s office.

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Every session, my therapist greets me by asking how I’m doing. Except it’s not the perfunctory, small-talk “How are you?” nor the weird, psycho-babble “HOW ARE YOU?” but a genuine, honest, tell me what’s up. What’s REALLY up.

Well, I began. I thought I was doing well. I thought I was doing just fine. I recounted all of the Ways In Which I Am Doing Well: The girls are good – really good. They seem to enjoy school, even when they can’t figure out how to help Miguel get the apples to the mortuary, and they love, love their extra-curricular activities. It’s been a bit wild trying to work our schedules out, but truth be told, I think that having to fit the puzzle pieces together has actually been helpful for me.

I’m subbing and I LOVE it. LOVE IT!! Nick is doing really well with his MBA. We’ve seen concerts and gone to hockey games. We’ve been doing more together as a family, from bowling to watching movies to tossing the football on the weekends, and it hasn’t felt forced or strange but really, truly good. I’ve been laughing and hanging out with friends, and Halloween preparations have been SO MUCH FUN this year. I Am Doing Well.

But… I’m also crying. Like, a lot. And it’s been just so WEIRD, because one day I’ve had such a good day — I’ve felt happy rooted all the way to my core — and I feel like I can conquer the world. And on those days, or in those hours, I make plans! I am a Pinterest fiend! I play games with the kids! I cook something new and fabulous for dinner! I AM THE KING OF THE WORLD!

And then, just like that, BAM. I’m at the very bottom, and the wind has been completely knocked out of me, and I am so Not Doing Well, I can’t even catch my breath. AND IT IS DRIVING ME CRAZY, this whiplash, this roller coaster, this back and forth. What the hell is WRONG with me??

It’s almost, I told her, as though I’m bipolar or manic-depressive, because I have friends who have battled those disorders, and their oh-so-highs, followed immediately by their oh-so-lows, seem an awful like what I’m going through. Except I’m not really bipolar… right?

I hoped the question was rhetorical.

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While we waited for the doctor to examine the x-rays, Ella and I read some of Harry Potter, which served as both a great way to pass the time and a way for me to avoid expressing my fears to her. I might have been terrified that she’d wind up in an operating room within the next few weeks, but she certainly didn’t need to know that.

He made small talk with us as he attempted to pull up the x-rays on his computer, with Ella gamely telling him about the swim team and me sending up a silent prayer to the patron saint of sports that she’d still be able to swim after this appointment. The doctor continued his chit-chat as he showed us the x-ray that had been taken the day she’d broken her foot, then a week later after it had been casted, and my anxiety quietly soared through the roof.

Please, let it have healed well. Please, let it have healed well. Please.

And then he paused over the final x-ray — the one taken just minutes ago — and ran his finger along the computer screen, up the line of her metatarsals. “You see that?” he asked us. I nodded, unsure what he was getting at.

“You can’t see a thing, can you?” Um, no. I don’t speak x-ray.

“That’s because her bone is perfectly straight. In fact, they all are perfectly straight — all three of the bones she broke. You can’t even tell there was ever a problem.

She’s healed perfectly, and she’s good to go.”

Do we need to come back any time for a follow up? I asked, as Ella put her shoes back on.

“Nope. And,” he grinned at Ella, “no offense, because you’re a delightful young lady, but I really hope I never see you again.” No offense, doc, but same here.

On the way back to school, Ella asked what would have happened if the bones hadn’t healed straight. And so, with those options now firmly off the table, I told her – about the surgery, about the choice her Daddy and I had made and why we’d made it, about the gamble we’d taken, hoping with all our might that it would pay off.

“Well…” She paused just a moment. “Looks like you’re pretty smart!”

I gave her a half-laugh that I hoped she wouldn’t hear the fear and disbelief behind it.

“The only thing I’m bummed about is now I don’t ever get to use crutches again. They were kind of fun!”

She returned to school less than an hour after I’d picked her up, with plenty of time to learn how to help Miguel with the apples, my healthy girl trotting down the hallway to her classroom.

It all worked out. She hardly missed any school. We had no wait at the doctor’s office. Her foot was great. Everything was good.

I should have felt relieved. Hell, I should have felt elated. But all I felt was numb.

—————————

My therapist’s answer was as swift as it was firm: No. No, you’re not bipolar. (Good to know.) And all of this? This almost fanatical I Must Fill My Time With Something, and the trying new projects, and the feeling so wonderful, followed by the tears and the sadness and the feeling like you don’t know what on earth is going on… it’s not you. You’re not just being impulsive. It’s not your ADD. It’s not you taking on too much because you overestimate what you can handle. It’s not you letting things slip through the cracks. It’s not your anxiety. It’s not depression.

It’s grief.

And I was all, DECORATING PUMPKINS AND FORGETTING CRAZY HAT DAY IS GRIEF??

And she was all, MMM HMM.

(Except she wasn’t quite like that, but suffice it to say she’s excellent.)

Grief, it turns out, is like an unpredictable toddler: you never know if it’s going to make your day the best ever with an enormous hug and a lisped version of the ABCs or if it’s going to take a crap in the middle of your living room and throw animal crackers at you while you’re folding laundry. It looks different in absolutely everyone, and it is no better or worse, no harder or easier, for you than it is for the next person. The worst kind of grief is your own.

And also? The manic-like highs and the deep, dark lows? They actually have a name: Manic Defense. As in, you do all of this stuff (maniacally, wildly) because you want to defend and shield yourself against whatever yuckiness is going on. In many cases, it can actually be a good thing, because it’s self-protective.

YOU HEAR THAT, SUBSTITUTE TEACHING AND THEN STAYING UP UNTIL 2 A.M.?? I’m not doing it because I’m CRAZY. I’m doing it because I am apparently INCREDIBLE at PROTECTING MYSELF.

I am a grieving ROCKSTAR.

BOO YAH.

—————————-

Nick’s plane landed shortly after Ella’s appointment ended, and because he needed to change his clothes before going to the office, I met him at the house. I told him – most importantly – about Ella’s foot, about how it was completely healed, about how we never need to visit the surgeon again. Then, I told him where Jambi had been, how frenzied I’d become, how terrible I felt that she was there all along.

“Em,” he sought to reassure me, “you know this wasn’t your fault, right? You didn’t do anything wrong. The gates were locked, the yard was safe, you checked on her regularly. You searched the neighborhood. There was absolutely no way to know that she’d become tangled up in the vines, especially if she didn’t bark at you. You did everything you could. And look – it all turned out just fine!”

I know I should have felt good about that… pleased… reassured, if nothing else. Instead, I (wait for it…) began to cry.

I’M JUST SO SICK OF IT!

Sick of what?

Sick of all this. Sick of feeling on top of the world, decorating pumpkins with the girls yesterday and feeling like it was the best afternoon I’d had in forever, and then sobbing because the dining room is a mess. Sick of being so thrilled for the girls that GranMary sent them the coolest Halloween cards of all time and then bursting into tears when they open the cards and I know that Grandpa Bill’s name isn’t on them. Sick of Jambi disappearing, and instead of taking it in stride, falling apart and screaming like a lunatic in the kitchen. Sick of some stupid crisis occurring when you’re on a plane and wanting to call your dad so much but I FUCKING CAN’T BECAUSE HE’S NOT FUCKING HERE ANYMORE AND I STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW THAT CAN POSSIBLY BE TRUE.

I’m SICK of it. I’M JUST SICK OF IT.

There were hugs, of course. Lots of them. And then these words before he left for work, promising to return home early because he understood that I was completely depleted, that I’d just had it for the rest of the day, “I’m so sorry that you’re so sad about my dad. But I’m not sorry that you had such a great relationship with him. And I’m sick of it, too.”

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When I told my therapist about the Jambi/Ella incident, I asked for her, again, to please tell me that I wasn’t crazy, because I sure as hell felt crazy when I was going all “Stellllaaaa!” in my kitchen. She looked at me like I had three heads.

No, of course you’re not crazy. YOU’RE GRIEVING.

Yes, yes. I know. Grieving.

You need to cut yourself some slack!

I know, I know. Be gentler with myself. And I am! Or, at least, I’m trying to be… I KNOW that I can’t do it all. I KNOW that I’m likely to forget stuff like Crazy Hat Day – and there’s comfort in that, in knowing it’s not my fault. But I’m still forgetting, and it’s frustrating… And I seriously freaked out about Jambi.

But, Emily… You thought you’d lost her.

I know. It was awful.

It sounded terrible! But think about it for a moment… You thought you’d lost her. FOREVER. You thought she was GONE FOREVER… which is not exactly a foreign feeling to you right now.

Oh yeah. Right.

And you lived in that state – that complete and utter state of terror – for almost an hour, all alone, AND you were worried that your daughter might need surgery.

When you put it like that…

No wonder you seriously freaked out. If you HADN’T seriously freaked out, I think that would be much more crazy.

Well, I AM a grieving rockstar, after all.

Think of it as walking on thin ice. You’re not going to fall through – don’t worry about that – but it might crack around you, and you’re never quite sure when. You can make it across… you WILL make it across… but you’re going to get your feet wet along the way.

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So… I guess that’s how I’m doing. Practicing my kick-ass Manic Defense skills, inching along, trying my damnedest not to get my feet wet but knowing that it’s inevitable.

Some days, I cover a lot of ground. Others, I slide backward. My feet are prune-y, but overall, there’s forward progress. And I manage to take time, every single day, to genuinely appreciate how beautiful the ice is, cracks and all.

I’d love to sit here and be philosophical with you some more, but there are Christmas catalogs to pore over with the girls – I LOVE ME SOME CHRISTMAS CATALOGS!! And we’re hosting friends for Thanksgiving, and I cannot WAIT to find new recipes to try! Plus, it’s almost time for Hermey the Elf to appear, which means that I have a date with Pinterest tonight.

I’m okay. Today is a good day.
Thanks for asking.

All Together in a Scattered Sort of Way

Finding humor in even the most inappropriate places

Tag Archives: parenthood

Living and learning… and cookies

Getting to know you

Take Me Out To The Ice Rink

Some things were meant to be

You can call me Queen Bee

Setting the bar reeeeally low

Best laid plans

Point Taken

Times, they are(n’t) a changin’

Thin Ice