Monthly Archive

My county apparently thinks (or the computer controlling such things thinks) that it’s peachy to call me and Taxman on the same day for jury duty. When our trusty grandparental babysitters are out of the country.

Nuh-uh. Can you say “postponement”? Figures this didn’t happen before we had kids, when it would have been nice to be able to hang with a pal while-u-wait.

Am off to the land of dialup, followed by the 3 day yom tov, followed by The!Plane!Flight! and 12 days abroad. Will be out of touch. See you in May! Happy Matzah (balls in my soup)!

Cake

Presents

Sweet dreams with a fuzzy friend

It hasn’t always been easy, but now he makes me laugh every day. That’s a pretty big gift.

Or: It’s the weaning, stupid.

A couple of afternoons in the warm sunshine have been good for everyone. Not being home between 3 and 5pm has been excellent for morale. Mine, at least.

Apparently the mere notion of taking a break resulted in all sorts of bloggable material.  Because that very day I had a heart-to-heart with Miss M that made me realize that as much as I am desperate to wean her, she is equally desperate not to be weaned. To the tune of being willing to give up all rights and privileges of a big kid to be a tiny baby again because they nurse.

So we’ve got to figure out a way to make this less traumatic than it’s shaping up to be. And hopefully that will take care of some of the behavior stuff we’re wading through. I could also probably eliminate more tantrums if I let her wear a skirt to school every day, and though I have planned for that for next year, for now she’s stuck with what fits. (And the daily arguments about putting on clean underwear and clean socks? WHY? WHY WHY WHY???)

But the exceptionally bloggable part was when she asked me how babies get into their emas’ tummies. She’s not even four!!!!

Oh, and AM would like the general public to know he is more well-read than I implied in my last post.

Alternate title: Hey Kate, your life? UR DOING IT WRONG.

I’ve got to take a break and attend to the Housekeeping of Life. Because I keep blowing it. I don’t want to run out of chances.

(Hey, I almost deleted the blog entirely. But I didn’t; this is the closest thing to baby books my kids have. Super top-notch parenting. Again.)

I hope to be back.

In the meantime, I wish you good reading. The children heartily recommend Curious George.

I have a lot of stuff swirling around in my head, but can’t act on most of it. To wit: it is too early to shop/cook for AM’s birthday dinner (next Sunday). It is too early to pack for Pesach. Or to even wrap my head around how tricky that will be, seeing as how it will be five days at my in-laws’ in New York (will we have even cracked 65 degrees?) and then 12 days in Israel, where I am sure it is already scorching. I will spare you my bathing suit crisis because it would make you all hate me.

But anyway, the thing that is stressing me out the most is not how the kids will acclimate to a totally foreign climate, a seven-hour time difference, new foods, and being hauled all over the country to see people and sights. Rather, it is how we will survive the plane ride. When chichimama returned from London, I did not ask her about the charms of London or how the kids did with traveling in general. No. I rather breathlessly emailed to ask about the plane flights–a mere 15 hours worth of her entire vacation.

Usually when I have things tumbling around in my brain it manifests as insomnia. I toss and turn; I can’t get comfortable. Hours pass. Sometimes I just can’t bring myself to go to bed, although I am physically exhausted, because I don’t want to just lie there waiting for sleep to arrive.

But I am so crazed about one aspect of the trip that it’s invaded my dreams. I had a vivid one a few weeks ago. The four of us were in the airport, taking one of those peoplemover cart thingies to the gate. Taxman took the kids on to the plane, leaving me with AM’s carseat and, seemingly, dozens of small bags, spilling over with toys and books. I somehow managed to gather everything and haul it on to the plane, which looked oddly like a conference room. I dropped everything at Taxman’s feet and started ticking off what we had…then realized that in our obsessive race to get everything done for the kids, we had forgotten to pack our clothes. The true crux of the dream, however, was when I turned to him and said, ”Oh, oh, oh!!!!! I don’t have snacks!”

Yes, we are an army that travels on its stomach. AM expects a snack in the car from the second he’s strapped in. I have an array of relatively healthy snacks that travel well: Cheerios, raisins, dried cranberries, pretzels, crackers, string cheese, steamed baby carrots, grapes (although I have been trying not to buy the imported ones), apple slices, bananas, popcorn, animal crackers, and even slices of bread. That would be plenty for a 12-hour plane flight.

Let us edit that list for Pesach, however: Cheerios, raisins, dried cranberries, pretzels, crackers, string cheese, steamed baby carrots, grapes, apple slices, bananas, popcorn, animal crackers, and even slices of bread. Not so good. Perhaps New Yorkers have read of the Tam Tam travesty?  No?  It was covered in the Times! Tam Tams are matzah crackers with additions of salt and (I’m guessing) palm oil. The makers of Tam Tams were waiting on a new piece of baking equipment that did not arrive in a timely way…so now we’re all screwed, essentially. We’re also taking my Pesach brownies and small bags of Pesach potato chips. And macaroons, which probably only I will eat. But really, this will gnaw at me until we are safely on the other side of the ocean.

Because I can assure you that, just as in my dream, shelves full of peanut M&Ms in the airport newsstand will not be able to save us.

• We’ve reached that lovely point in the toddler life cycle in which 5, 5:30, 6 in the morning equals an acceptable, nay, perfect time to get up for the day. No matter that it is pitch dark, that others are sleeping. Well, why not play with trains before dawn? You only live once.
• The advantage of having an older child is knowing that as much as stage x sucks, it’s not forever. (There are many days when Miss M sleeps until 6:45 or even 7.) It will be replaced by a stage even less likeable. But maybe not as exhausting.
• I almost screwed myself over in the most idiotic way ever this morning. I was in the bathroom. (Again! I know!) AM came to visit. He brought Wolfie, his little stuffed wolf that he snuggles in bed and generally drags around. And kisses and nurses from his belly button. “You brought Wolfie?” I said, jokingly. ”Does Wolfie need to go potty?” “Yah!” he exclaimed. And turned on his heel and ran top speed to the other bathroom. Ohhhh, this was not good. “AM! AM! Come back!” I heard the toilet flip up and the sound of the potty ring.  “No no no no no!” I got there just in time. But really? Still kicking myself over the potential Wolfie crisis.
• I haven’t talked about speech therapy in a while. It’s going. Slowly. But it’s going. To my ears, AM is more imitative of speech, and will even do at home, when he thinks nobody is watching, what he refuses to do at therapy. He’s even starting to ‘fill in the blank’ of some of his favorite Laurie Berkner tunes, along the lines of…”The elephant sneezed…Ah, ah, ah-choo!” Mucho cuteness.
• I am pretty lazy when it comes to housekeeping, but when it comes to doing right by my children I try to step it up. Because they are my kids and need my advocacy and support. So I am totally confused by another mom at preschool. Her little one is about two months younger than AM and does not speak at all. I offered her my Signing Time videos a few months ago, but she said no. She told me today that he qualified for speech therapy and was going to start in a few weeks, and it was a good thing because he spends a lot of the day crying, she assumes, out of frustration. I re-offered my video collection–he is at an age when he has the fine motor skills to pick up signing really quickly–and she said that he wouldn’t watch on his own and she was “too lazy to watch with him.” Too lazy to watch TV? I can’t even imagine. I also can’t imagine just being ok with waiting when he is obviously in such distress.* My heart just aches for this little boy when I think about how much we all “talk” with AM. Really from the second he wakes up in the darkness and tells me he wants to nurse. Then he wants to play with trains. Then he wants a glass of milk. And cereal. And an orange. What if he couldn’t?
• [Update!] SQUEEEEE! Rachel Coleman (or someone writing her emails) left a comment on this post. THE Rachel Coleman, creator and star of Signing Time. I feel the burning need to tell Amalah, because she would fully appreciate my starstruck babbling, although she has like 40,000 readers and probably would filter me out as spam. All I need now is Laurie Berkner to pop in and say hi and I will rule the toddler universe!

* I am totally down with Caramama’s idea of being less judgmental of other moms. But really, when a mom says she can’t be bothered about something that I personally feel could turn this kid’s entire world around? What if he hadn’t qualified for speech therapy? What then? I am not trying to hold myself up as Ideal Mother, not at all. We found something that works. But if my child was reduced to tears over something as basic as not being able to communicate at an age appropriate level? I’d be trying to find a way. Mind reading, tea leaves, anything! And you’d think she knows because he is in physical therapy, but speech therapy is not a panacea. Progress is slow at best and measured over a course of months. So that’s a long time to have such an unhappy little one.