The good stuff

Toddlers are pretty great. Aside from the sometimes violent temper tantrums and the fact that poopy diapers from a 2 year old are far nastier, in my opinion, than the poopy business of a 2 month old, pretty much everything about them makes you smile. Makes you enjoy mundane moments all the more. Adds humor to your life when sometimes it feels as though it's lacking.

Gill does this for me. She does it for all of us.

I heard her call out for me this morning as I was stepping out of the shower. And when I went to her, she said:

"Hi mommy. I wake up in the morning. Oh! Are those your boobies?"

She insisted on packing a well-loved-but-starting-to-smell hard boiled Easter egg in her "packback" to take to play group this morning, along with 6 pull ups with monsters on them., and a tube of cheap chapstick.

And in the middle of my students' oral exams today, I remembered that Gillian had been rummaging through the bathroom cabinets while I dried my hair. I had intended to relay an important message to the play group teacher when I dropped my babe off, but in my haste had forgotten. I had to send her the following text:

Oops! My goodness! I meant to tell you that Gillian *insisted* on wearing that maxi pad inside her diaper. It's there for no other reason. I promise. 

Oh man, sometimes this all just feels so good.

Grocery store

The very worst part about working out a lot is what happens when you stop working out a lot. 

After every marathon, every mega event I've "trained" for, gotten really fit for, I like to sit on my butt for a good one to two months after, doing just about nothing. Because I earned it. 

And then I look in the mirror and I think, hey. Not fair. I worked hard! I don't get a free ride for, like, 60 days?

Of course, I've turned this on its head and come up with this rationale for my "in-between-events-laziness". If I worked out hard all the time, and then I felt out of shape... Well, I'd have to find ways to work out even harder just to maintain that level of fitness. 

And I'm not embarrassed to say that I'm not the kind of person who works out hard, just to work out harder. So sitting on my butt for 2 months is my way of getting out of shape just enough so that any level of activity still does its magic. 

But it's not exactly the same with nursing.

See, what I knew deep down but was refusing to acknowledge on a daily, conscious level, was that I was having my cake and eating it too. Twice a day.  And the only reason I wasn't gaining gobs of weight was because I was nursing Gillian.

Except that I'm not nursing that much anymore. And I never will again (!). And with freedom comes pounds. And fast. Sheesh.

But you thought this was going to be a long entry about post-nursing weight gain and body image. Don't worry. I'm not going to talk about my few extra pounds. I'm going to talk about the grocery store.

Because as soon as I decided that I needed to lose a couple pounds and drag my butt off the sofa, I took it straight to the grocery store. It's the first place I always go when I decide that I've been eating too much. I ask myself, what can I eat that will make me feel thinner?

This is a post about taking trips to grocery stores with hilarious 2 year olds.

Mine is called Gill. After a couple of days of icky sickness, we ventured out of the house to buy some asparagus and dandelion greens, avocados and yogurt. She had an immediate breakdown in the floral department, spurred on by a particularly fetching pink balloon. 

Crying fit number 1 over, she finally sat in the cart clutching her new bawoon and we headed for the produce department. Many shoppers, drawn to her cute, tear-stained cheeks and chubby little face, greeted her as we ambled along, but she refused to speak.

"Gillian, you should say hi to people when they say hello to you," I lectured.

Lesson learned, as we cruised aisle after aisle, any "hello!" by a stranger brought on a "Hi People" by Gill.

By the time we hit the canned tomato aisle she was clearly bored and not interested in staying in her seat. She swung her legs over the side and tried to get comfortable. "I'm sweeping, mama. I'm sweeping." 

I turned the corner and headed for the granola and she farted.

"I farted! I farted! I farted! I farted!"

I tried to acknowledge it and move past it, but she wouldn't stop chanting her secret. An innocent store clerk, unloading boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios, mused aloud "I wonder what she's trying to say?"

We had a melt down in front of the salami; the bawoon broke over her head when it touched the cold case holding the hummus, and everyone in the elevator was serenaded to the tune of 'Let It Go' from the movie Frozen.

And in the car ride on the way home, I treated us to a cookie. But just one :)

Diet schmiet. We deserved it.

Alone together

An unexpected plot twist found Mae and me traveling alone together over the weekend.

As we zipped in and out of Whole Foods for dinner for the car, as we sped quietly along the highway listening to non-pop-music, as we snuggled closely in the guest bed usually reserved for children only, I realized that we'd never done this before. 

My family and I remarked on this repeatedly over the course of the weekend: Mae and I had never taken a trip alone together. 

It was lovely. It was harmonious. It was restful and peaceful and fuzzy and I felt like a good person. Like a decent mother. Like all the doubts I have about myself were based on nonsense.

We checked activities off our list. We enjoyed most of them. We had our favorite breakfast at our favorite spot; we went shopping for clothes; we went swimming, went out for tacos, saw some college gymnastics. We caught a movie, we rode our bikes. We napped. I napped. There was knitting. There was even wine, even adult company and conversations. And pie. Two kinds. 

My middle child is on middle ground - that peaceful lull, the eye of the storm? Between toddlerhood and pre-teen emotion. Middle Mae.

Tonight we found ourselves alone together again. With Gilli passed out on the couch after work and Bela on a trip to the DePaul Women's Basketball game, Mae and I read two chapters in Harry Potter. We ate fish sticks for dinner. We snuck ice cream. Gill woke up and we all took a strangely pleasant walk in the dark to the girls' school, to wait for Bela's bus to return from the game.

We stomped in mud. We splashed in puddles. SOME of us kicked off our boots and rode the teeter totter in the snow.

And the bus came, and from the bus descended Bela and her cloud of tweenage drama and all slowness disappeared in a puff of dramatic smoke. Things got loud and fast. There was crying and yelling and talk of skipping school due to embarrassing posters and presentations gone wrong and no one, just no one liking her. 

And I became mean mom. Tired mom. Doesn't know how to handle 9 year old drama mom. Needs a good self-help book mom.

Oh dear, sweet, dramatic Bela. I love you so. Maybe we could use some time alone together.

Signs of spring

The girls have been pestering me about Spring for days on end now, as though I had it in me to magically turn the seasons - or at the very least, to know the specific day this incredibly long winter would change its course.

Mae has been especially persistent.

How many more days? This, she asks every morning.

My response is aggravating: Same as yesterday. Minus one.

But MOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM!

Same as yesterday. Minus one.

And yet there have been signs. Robins. Yes! Robins! And we're above 20 degrees. And the sun, it's different, has more power to it. More glowy warmth, more gold in my living room after 5:00pm.

 And who can forget the Spanish Compositions?

Every Spring semester, just when I think I can't take one more day of cold and gray and drear, my students turn in their first drafts of their first compositions.

In the moments of my life when the professional burdens pile high, you will be sure to find me head first in my wool cabinet, going through my yarn. And so this too, this retreat into my wool stash, it serves as a harbinger of Spring around these parts.

How many discarded projects I came across I don't care to admit. The dollar amount in yarn alone is embarrassing, not to mention the hours spent knitting something that was never worn. Never even finished.

I brazenly scooped up all the half-finished lace scarves, the single socks and the worsted weight sweaters missing sleeves and yokes, along with the impossibly tangly and knotty bundles of unusable yarn, and I marched them into my sewing room.

And instead of grading, instead of tallying, instead of planning, I did this.

A mess of mercerized cotton.

Cotton, wool, silk. Impossible.

Winding, winding, winding.

Making progress! 

Over the course of the last week, I have spent several hours just sitting in there, untangling yarn, unwinding sweaters, winding them back into usable yarn, for a second life.

And I have been happy. So, so happy.

The sun illuminates our living room in the most beautiful of ways these days, for 13 minutes each late afternoon.

Gill shadow head

Here it comes.

Huh?

One thing we take for granted in (most of) our adult relationships is the ability to understand, and to be understood. This all gets stood on its head when your interlocutor is a 26 month old ball of chub.

Take for instance Gil's new word: at once indispensable and maddening, this word happens to be huh?

As in:
-- Gillian it's time for breakfast!
-- Huh?
-- Breakfast!

-- Mommy, uppee! 
-- Oh, you want uppee?
-- Huh?
-- Uppee. Uppee! You want uppee.
-- Huh?

--Bay-wah. Mae Mae!
-- Are you looking for Bela and Mae?
--  Huh?
-- I said, are you looking for Bela and Mae?
-- Huh?
-- You said you were looking for Bela and Mae. They are ..
-- Huh?
-- ...they are up in their bedroom.
-- Huh?
-- Their -
-- Huh?
-- I said, their bedroom. Do you want them?
-- Huh?

I get it. She learned it from us. We say it all the time because we can't understand her. And she gets it, too. Say Huh? and the people in your life will begin to repeat themselves over and over for a sanity crushing eternity.

I couldn't take it anymore. I had to come up with a plan, which has simply been to ignore all requests completed with the word huh? deemed unnecessary and of little use to her growing brain.

So now our exchanges go more like this:

-- Mermaid find!
-- You want me to find your mermaid?
-- Huh?
Silence. Wait. Wait. Wait.

-- Yes.

Leakage

Yesterday was a beautiful day, underscoring how cooped up we've been feeling this cruel, mean winter. The sun was shining, the air had the faint smell of thaw to it, and the girls proclaimed that Spring had arrived.

But I couldn't keep my eyes off my ceiling. All of this snow and ice (and soon, melting) has done a number on the back of our house. We have an attic bathroom addition - part of the girls' upstairs penthouse fantasy land. In addition to some plumbing issues in the shower that caused water to cascade down the kitchen walls and through the ceiling during that first polar vortex, we also have an issue with flashings.

Oh, what's that you say? Don't know what flashing is? Neither did I until I bought this 100 year old house. Where the roof line meets the exterior (dormer) walls of the addition, they failed to properly seal. So we have water, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, wreaking havoc on our kitchen and dining room ceilings.

When the babysitter arrived yesterday, I asked her for the strangest of favors. She followed me to the girls bathroom, where I proceded to tie her up in rope. I then tied the other end around my waist, and to Gillian's astonishment climbed out on the roof of our house, through the bathroom window.

I shoveled the foot of wet, heavy snow from our back roof.

Here's hoping the ceiling plaster stays intact until this mess is gone for good.

PS - on a brighter note, this happened too.

The middle child

Somehow Mae and I - amidst the craziness of having three girls, in spite of the fact that daddy has been traveling on and off for weeks - have managed to spend some good time together lately.

She's such a funny girl, a good conversationalist when given the chance to speak, which is rare.

The girls and I started reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone several weeks ago. They love it - Bela so much so that she checked the book out from the school library and blew us out of the water in terms of speed. She's on book two now, and has little interest in sitting down with me and Mae at night to read book one. So Mae and I have been plugging along together, and got up early this morning to finish what I just could not possibly read last night. (The chapters are a wee bit long). We have 2 pages left in the book, and have a post-school date to finish.

I've enjoyed the time with her, and it somehow seems to connect us more during the day as well. She has been helping more in the kitchen, cooking with me at dinner time while Gillian "washes the dishes."

This time together has produced some funny exchanges I want to record for future Mae. And here are but a few:

In a conversation about Grandma Paula attending a baby shower, Mae asked me to explain what a baby shower was. I said something about the expectant parents and a party and gifts to welcome the new baby into the world.

"You mean like Jesus?" (and the three wise men).

Yes. Like Jesus.

When noticing that my good friend Karen had purchased for me some beautiful scissors to wear on a chain around my neck while I work on projects she smiled with a wise old smile and said:

"Oh, you two are just so connected."

And the other night, after suffering through a dramatic display at the dinner table because she was displeased with my offerings (a crustless broccoli quiche, salad, roasted potatoes) she wrote me this:

Dear Beautiful Mommy, I love you. I'm sorry for complaining about the box tops and the dinner. you are the best mom ever. Thank you for making dinner. It was very good. Mostly the salad. I bet when you were a kid you were sooooo healthy! Can you write back please on the other piece of paper? You don't have to write back. Besides, Marine came and gave me my blankey back. Love you

Oh Mae. My sweet little Mae. My middle child.