Best of the year

My 2-year (crazy!) blog anniversary is tomorrow. But I don’t have anything especially fabulous or deep to say. I keep meaning to post Cool Stuff or Great Ideas or Informative Tidbits. Most days, though, it is just a relief to get from 7 to 7 without anyone in my house having some sort of physical or mental breakdown. We’ve managed that small daily achievement, for the most part, and it’s not good blog material. It’s pretty boring, actually. The “good stuff” is hanging around in draft form, waiting for me to be not quite so exhausted, not quite so perfectionist (’tis the editor in me), and to post the damn things instead of the little distractors that have kept the blog limping along: “Hey, look over there, cuteness!” “Hey, three year olds are funny!” “Hey, I met four bloggers this year!”*

I am not much for resolutions, but if I were, I’d want to take better care of myself physically (more walking, less chocolate for breakfast, figure out a way to eat kosher and organic at the same time), read more books (an upside to the TV writers’ strike!), spend less time yelling, enjoy the kids more, and finish things that I start.

As the year turns over, I’d love to know from my readers (yes, including people who mostly/exclusively lurk): What was the best/most important post you read this year from any blog? It didn’t have to be written this year, but something that you’ve read in the past 12 months that sticks with you and you want to share….links appreciated, but vague recollections are ok too.

I’ll start. My soft spots go to Julie from A Little Pregnant and CCW just for their hysterical slices of life in the face of some Really Serious Crap. Collectively, the community at Ask Moxie make me feel like a less clueless parent every day. It’s really grown this year and the gazillion comments per post can sometimes seem overwhelming, but there is so much kindness and encouragement and good will there.

But the most important post I’ve read this year is this one (see! not written this year!) from Chichimama. (No, I didn’t pick it because she let my kids trash her house.) It really changed my whole attitude about socializing–and the best Mommy friendship I’ve developed is with someone who lives in my building, no less. Playdates in pajamas! Trading off picking up the big girls at school in the icy weather while someone stays home with the toddlers. Swapping a cup of rice for an egg. Commiserating about the school vacation schedule, husbands working long hours, and preschooler attitude. It’s just…nice. And sanity saving. And who can’t use that? 

Next? Pretty please?

* True. And it was fun! The blogger meetup material does not fall into the category of placeholding!

Humor me

One Tired Ema (tickling AM and nibbling his neck): “Are you yummy and delicious?”

Miss M (severely): “Ema, AM is NOT food.”

AM (turning to me, looking hopeful): “Food?”*

* This was, of course, in ASL.

Wherefore art thou, classic daytime TV?

Picture it. You’re 10 years old, home sick from school. You’ve read a little bit, had a small bite to eat. But now you’re bored. All your friends are, obviously, in school; your assignments won’t be delivered until later.

How will you pass the time until noon, when you will eat chicken soup and then lie down?

Duh! If it’s 11:00 am, parked on the couch with a glass of orange juice (or sometimes ginger ale), watching The Price is Right. There is nothing like watching people fawning over kitschy merchandise in the hopes of getting a chance, based on their encyclopedic knowledge of the price of drugstore items, to win cash! Cars! Snowmobiles! Bedroom sets including fine linens! China cabinets filled with fine china!

(‘Fess up. Who else?)

On Christmas Day, I was washing dishes in the kitchen, Taxman was working in the living room, and the kids were wandering around doing what they do best (burying the rug beneath mounds of toys, books, food particles, and other detritus, in case you were curious). AM found the remote control for the television and started flipping channels. And wouldn’t you know it landed on CBS. The time was 11:06, and I heard the familiar command and upbeat music, “Come on down! “

I dropped my sponge and ran to the couch, scooping AM into my lap as I went. “Kids,” I crowed, “this is classic television!” Taxman grinned. “I don’t think they quite understand,” I said.

Drew Carey is the host now, but everything else is pretty much just the same. The screamers, the people who need help (? really? how helpful are they?) from the audience members, the crazy t-shirts–although no more “I heart Bob.” Drew, we guessed, is still not entirely comfortable with all the touching from the (admittedly nutty-acting) hoi polloi. But he has the right sense of fun to connect with the lady from South Dakota, who was thrilled to win a snowmobile.

Anyway, Taxman and I waxed sentimental about sick days of yore. And I realized that in the age of DVDs, DVR, and PBS kids, our kids were probably going to miss that. Not that I am bemoaning the fact that I am shielding them from 4,000 commercials a day on terrible cable programming or completely screwing them over for a chance at being pop culture wizards, but will this generation have seminal experiences like this? That don’t involve death and destruction, I mean. They’ll never have the sick day choice of The Price is Right vs. two soap operas and two scary talk shows. I would just pop in a video and that would be that.

It seems ridiculous to be blue about something so stupid, but sometimes I just love connecting with Taxman, or anyone my age, really, about what we were watching, or doing, or reading at a certain age. It makes me feel like part of a generation, linked to others despite growing up in different houses, in different places. Again, nothing earth shattering, but something happier than “What were you doing on January 28, 1986?”

Hot dog!

I am on fire!

Taxman and I–well, mostly me because I AM ON FIRE!–took his parents for ONE DOLLAR AND FIFTY-SIX CENTS in the annual nittel nacht poker fest. I suppose we should have shown some mercy for their 35th wedding anniversary, but we had to save face after barely squeaking out a victory last year with a mere 11 cents.

For the first time ever, I can understand the appeal–and danger–of gambling. You win a little. Then you win a little more, unexpectedly, and your bets get reckless. Sometimes you win, but mostly you lose slowly. It takes a lot of restraint to haul your mind in and think clearly. Of course, playing penny poker with relatives is as safe as it gets.

Las Vegas is still one of the last places on earth I would want to go. But I have a better appreciation of the psychology that sucks people in.

(Not) Sleeping in

The kids have reached an age where sometimes, just for a moment, they’ll play nicely together. Or even play separately in the same room peacefully for whole minutes at a time. Combine that with the fact that Taxman and I are jaded when it comes to noises emerging from the living room. Crying? Eh. Arguing? We try to resolve it from our bed.

But really, nothing makes us move so fast from under the covers at 6:45 am (on a holiday Monday!) as to hear the tinkle of shattering glass.*

Oh well. We had things to do anyway.

* Everyone’s fine.

“Shabbat is HOURS away” bullets

Yes, I should be cleaning my living room for company, but honestly this is the daytime cup of tea I have had all week.

• Miss M is by turns infuriating and cute. (What? This is BRAND NEW INFORMATION!) No, really. The cute is that she says funny things and “reads” books to all of us almost verbatim.
• The infuriating is a long list: We have caught her sucking her thumb at night because, we think, AM does it. But he started at three months old. Three and a half years seems a tad late for that, no? She has started dawdling to the max while eating or dressing. Grrr. Her latest response to being told no, or not now, or I don’t think so, is to violently throw herself to the floor. I think this is very obnoxious and will ultimately result in her really hurting herself. But she didn’t ask my opinion.
• AM is getting more defiant by the day. Still very cute, but OY! it is only a matter of time before he gets hurt or I lose my mind.
• I have had to try very hard not to respond to either/both of them with the phrase: “This is SUCH BULLSHIT!”
• Because I’d lose all of my mother of the year votes. So close to the end of the year, it seems a shame.
• We had two therapy evaluators come Wednesday to see AM. The speech therapist gave an initial diagnosis within two minutes. There were a lot of questions about his eating habits, which turned out to be related to her suspicions. He stuffs food into his mouth, which I thought was just a toddler thing, but apparently relates to his jaw musculature and oral sensation.* Also very important was Taxman’s seemingly (to me) irrelevant comment that he likes spicy/garlicky food. That was kind of the linchpin. She was afraid, though, that he would score too high in other areas to get services. “But I only hear him making vowel sounds, so that’s good.” I said, “Off the record, he does make consonant sounds while he is babbling.” “I didn’t hear that!” she exclaimed. Good grief.
• Meanwhile, the special ed teacher was shocked by how good his “play skills” are and his responsiveness and critical thinking and attention span.
• Hey, state of New York, we never said he wasn’t smart. He just doesn’t speak and now we have a good sense of why! If you don’t approve us for therapy we are NOT going to wait six months to re-evaluate. We are going to take our good health insurance benefits and use them!
• (Chichimama, thanks for the heads up on all the qualifying vs not stuff!)
• I have been obsessing about really unimportant things lately. For example, I made a meal for a family who is spending a lot of time at the hospital. I spent way too much time debating if I should make salad dressing from scratch or just pop some bottled Italian into a Dixie container. Because really, when your husband/father is battling pancreatic cancer, salad dressing is what you are going to notice. Of course I wound up making honey mustard vinaigrette from scratch and sending extra brownies; food is emotional comfort, right?
• Both my book clubs pushed their January books to the extreme end of the month. If I read now I will never remember what happens. I feel like I am at loose ends. I grabbed Girl with a Pearl Earring last night, but 15 pages in I am not sure that I will really love it.
• I think I got almost seven hours of sleep last night. Wow.
• I should be less cranky if that’s true.
• I am very torn over trying to nightwean AM. Many nights now, he does nurse but goes right back to sleep without a problem. And he really nurses, as if he is hungry, so I think it is more than just a comfort thing. (Miss M, who we nightweaned at the same age, would wake up, nurse for 10 seconds. That was not worth it.) He often goes 7p to 4a (or even 4:30), which is just so much better than 2:30, somehow. If we do it, there will just be a lot of crying and more disturbed sleep. I am not sure I am up for that.
• I really should go to bed at 10:30 every night. It makes a huge difference.
• But then we’d have to be invited out for Shabbat meals every week for the rest of our lives. Because I can’t get much done when the clowns are awake and climbing the furniture. It took me 25 minutes to put together a chicken marinade this morning–if I had done it when everyone was sleeping it would have taken less than five. So you see my dilemma.
• Ok, 20 crayons are calling me from the floor. “Put us awaaaaaayyyyyy!”
• How’s by you?

* Um, yeah, so I feel pretty dumb/guilty for not noticing and/or not thinking that it was relevant. In my favor, though, I did pick up on the fact that he drools more than I think he should.

tru wuv

(nude, after the bath) 

Miss M: “AM, do you want to flush my pee?”

AM (nodding enthusiastically): “Eh!”

(both clapping)

Miss M: “Hooray! Good job, AM!”

It’s like I said…

The Early Intervention (EI) people keep showing up at my house. This is fine, although they keep coming many days after my cleaning lady. I am a crappy housekeeper, so this causes no end of stress.

Anyway, a social worker came last Tuesday. She asked a lot of questions to get a general sense of how AM is, other than his speech, uh, issues. From my perspective, he’s meeting all his other milestones and is generally happy, adorable, and age-appropriate.

The social worker was a little late, so I woke AM up before she arrived. He was eating lunch when she came, and he was at his most charming, offering me cannellini beans from his bowl, wiggling happily as I offered him a clementine, and using lots of signs. “Is he always like this?” the social worker asked. I replied that he usually was pretty happy and low key. “And how does he communicate what he wants? Through signing?” Yes, I explained, but he sometimes just points and what he wants is crystal clear.

AM finished his lunch. We finished our interview. As Ms. Social Worker was gathering her things, AM marched over to the books, selected one, and handed it to her. He then clambered up to the couch and patted the cushion next to him. Heh. Charming and communicative. That’s my baby.

Feelin’ lucky

There’s some saying about divine protection for fools, right? Because I can pretty much confirm this is true.

Par for the course, this morning I could not find my wallet. It wasn’t in the coat I wore yesterday, and I hadn’t taken a diaper bag with me when I went out to stock up on missing essentials (bananas, clementines, milk). Hmm.

I had left in the car. The one that gets parked on the street. In New York City. Yes, in a safe neighborhood, but cars still get broken in to often and occasionally stolen.

And why was it still in the car? Because yesterday I had taken it out of my coat pocket to make sure that I had my Dunkin’ Donuts drink punch card–buy six, get one free!–with me; I was on the fence about stopping in for a hot chocolate or a decaf. Ultimately, AM was too close to his nap, so I came straight home, leaving my wallet on the cupholder console.

So, yeah, lucky. (And stupid!)

Let’s hope the luck extends to all of Miss M’s preschool class. Why? Because of the mom who showed up to the Chanukah party today, pronouncing herself “sick as a dog, but not contagious because I don’t have fever.”* Now, her husband, her father, and her video camera were also present for the five-minute “aren’t these kids too precious for words” song-and-dance** routine, so she could have seen the whole thing from the comfort of her bed. But then she would have missed the chance to infect 25 preschoolers, a dozen younger siblings, and at least 40 adults. Seriously! Chanukah songs! Not Nobel Prize acceptance!

* Is THAT what qualifies as contagious? Maybe once my sore throat works itself into a nice snotty cold I’ll hand her my sodden tissues. I hardly ever run a fever with a cold, so I won’t be contagious.

** Despite weeks of practice at home, Miss M sat quietly in her seat and did not participate. Hey, stage fright! She finally gets something from me!

In which non-Jewish figures featured in Jewish history are confused over dinner

Miss M, finally ceasing from her relentless performance of Oh, Chanukah: “Antiochus!”
Me: “Did you learn about him in school?”
Miss M: “He dreamed about the big cows and the little cows.”
Me: “What?”
Miss M: “He had a dream about the big cows and the little cows.”
Me: “No, sweetie, you’re thinking of Pharaoh.”*
Miss M: “Oh. Pharaoh.”

* Genesis 41 and Pharaoh’s odd dreams are part of the lengthy lead up to the Passover story. By interpreting Pharaoh’s dream, Joseph establishes himself as a star in the Egyptian community. It is only several generations later, when a Pharaoh arises who does not remember Joseph (Exodus 1:1), that the trouble begins.

I digress–the point is I was impressed that Miss M knew this. I thought she had remembered this since Pesach, which would have been impossible ridiculous until I realized that this week’s parsha (weekly Torah portion) is Mikketz (Genesis 41:1-44:17), so she had talked about it in school. Recently.