It's DEFINITELY a Kind of Magic

I love Eme, but that doesn't mean that every day is a picnic.

There are some days, however, when I am convinced that Mommy Magic is a very real, very powerful force.

Of course, while I'm calling it Mommy Magic, it's not exclusive to mommies. It's that thing where you (whether you're a mommy, daddy, grandparent, aunt, uncle, and/or primary caregiver) know the child so well, that you can help bring them around to where you need them to be through the exact right mix of cajolery and responsiveness. When it works, it feels magical.

Examples: sometimes she doesn't want to put her coat on, but I magically come up with a way to get her to do it herself without a fight. Once in a while, I'm the only one who can convince her to let us buckle her into her car seat. And today, I magicked her into taking a nap.

Eme has recently stopped taking naps. The good part of this is that she goes to bed an hour and a half earlier, and pretty much gets the same amount of sleep as before. The down side is that I don't get a break in my day, which can be a little bit wearing.

Today she woke up an hour early. Both she and I were yawning by 11am. We were planning to attend a family party tonight, and I knew that we'd end up leaving early (and possibly in tears) if she didn't get a nap.

I convinced her to lay down next to me after lunch. I talked, told stories, cajoled, and after a struggle of wills to get her to stop jumping around, convinced her to close her eyes, at which point she was asleep within minutes. Me too.

The fact that both Eme and I got a 2-hour nap was real magic.

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Sometimes you don't have to hide it when you cry.

I read a poem the other day that made me cry.

http://taylormali.com/index.cfm?webid=31

I don't know if the reason I cried was because I'm hormonal (pregnancy will do that to you), or just because it was such a beautiful and moving poem.

Either way, I tried to stem the tears as quickly as possible because I didn't want Eme to get upset. Little did I know just how strong my baby is...

She saw me when I still had a few tiny tears leaking from the corners of my eyes and said, "Why crying, mama?"

I said, "Mommy's just a little bit sad today, sweet pea."

She grabbed my hand and said "It be okay, mama."

I almost cried again, but instead I laughed. She's fantastic.


[If you want to find more by Taylor Mali, the same teacher/poet who wrote the one linked above, check out taylormali.com. I don't know the guy, but I do love his poetry. My favorite is one that you may have already heard, but if not it's worth checking out: "What Teachers Make" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuBmSbiVXo0]

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Eme Dueeetsef

My baby has been turning into a toddler gradually over a number of months now, but lately she's REALLY begun asserting her independence.

She loves to say "dueetsef" (pronounced "dew EEt sef"). What she means is that she'd like to do something by herself, with no help. This exclamation is sometimes accompanied by an exhortation for mommy to "go'way," as in "Mommy go'way! Eme doeetsef!"

Eme will exclaim in this way over tasks big and small. Some days she wants to try to dress herself, hold her own cup (or my cup, which is usually bigger and made of glass, so you can imagine why I'd want to help her hold it), type on the computer, push play on the DVD player, put on shoes, take off shoes, climb onto a chair, climb into her tutu, dump something out, clean something up, and so on, and so on.

It's strange for me to feel both needed and not needed at the same time. Of course she still needs help, but she also needs to feel, and to some extent to actually be, independent.

It's becoming so that a little hug and kiss before Eme runs to her next adventure is now a boon, when I had been used to it being the norm. It's the time when mommy is increasingly the mean lady who makes Eme wear pants so that she doesn't get cold, rather than the lady I used to be who was actually in charge of wardrobe.

I guess it's time that mommy has to grow out of automatically taking things over that I used to know Eme couldn't do by herself as she becomes more adventurous, and more capable, every single day.

That's my toddler.

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Up all night. Again. But not for the reason you think...

Did I really only post once in December? Really? Just the once?

I blame The Holidays. And the funeral.

Anyway, I'm back. ish.

One of the reasons I haven't had time for my fun writing is because I've had a lot of freelance work coming in. When there's only so much time available in the day, the things that pay me (yay!) and have deadlines (boo) have to come first.

That's actually the subject of this post: deadlines. Or, really, deadlines and children. Or, reeeeaaaaally, deadlines and Eme. And being her mommy.

Ever since I made the choice not to go back to work full time, I have been trying to be a great stay-at-home mom. I spend my days eating pretend food, becoming a horse who runs and bounces her toddler jockey, and naming everything by its shape and color ("look at that orange ball!" "is that a blue triangle?"). I've also learned a bunch of different versions of the alphabet song.

Eme is getting old enough now that she doesn't need me every single minute she's awake any more. She'll spend 10 minutes at a time playing by herself when I cook or clean something. But the amount of time she's willing to play on her own is still little enough that I can't get a reasonable part of a project done during that time. Thus, I do all of my work during her naptimes.

Make that "most." I do most of my work during her naptimes. There are days when I've got too much to do to complete it during the two hours she naps. Of course, this is a good thing -- it means I'm getting a lot of work -- but when else can I possibly get it done? Thanks for asking.

I have found myself up until midnight, one, two in the morning a few times, trying to get everything done before deadline. A funny feeling comes over me when I'm up at two in the morning, working on a project that makes me feel worthwhile, and I know my baby is sleeping and won't need me.

It's the closest I've felt to the way I used to be before having a baby. That's an imperfect way to describe it, but it's a feeling of being good at something and having the time and freedom to do it. It's my time to be me, before the sweet weight of the responsibility for another person settles back on me and I have to be a mommy again.

It's amazing how those few free hours, even though I'm working hard for someone else, allow me to feel like me. And I think they make me a better mommy in the morning, because I've had time to be something other than a mommy. It's as if the comparison allows me to remember how much I enjoy being a chef/horse/object-namer.

So we'll see how the new year goes. Maybe I can find those few hours on my own, even when I don't have a pressing deadline. Maybe I can use them to write in my blog more often...or just to think about who I am and who I want to be.

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Really? Disney?

I certainly never planned to introduce Eme to the Disney catalog.

Yes, we had a lot of Winnie the Pooh stuff (it's just such cute nursery decoration), but that hardly counts, right?

Then we got a set of pink books -- the Disney Princess collection -- as a gift. I figured I had years before she'd even be able to handle them because they have a lot of words and thin pages.

(This is the part where I discover that Eme will like what she likes no matter what I like.)

First she was attracted to the big box of pink books on her bookshelf. I opened the books for her, but she took a look and didn't really do much with them for a month or so.

Next she pulled the books out again and asked me to read them to her, and quicker than I would have thought possible she has made them her favorites. I (and everyone else who ever enters our house) is now subjected to a read-through of all 12 books.

She knows some of the characters by name, others by what they do in the books. She says "Dot" when she wants to read the story about Dot the ant from A Bug's Life, or "shoes" and "uh-oh" when she wants to read Cinderella. Mulan is "muuuuu" and "dagn" (for dragon), or when she wants to read about Jessie from Toy Story II she says "horse!" (they ride a horse in the book).

I have even started to seek out the classic princess movies so I can show parts of them to her.

I wonder why it is that these stories caught her imagination. Is it that everyone who reads them has fun with them (because we've all seen the movies) and that fun comes through in the telling? Or is it that there really is something magical about Disney that children (even 19-month-olds who don't get to watch more than an hour of tv per week) connect with?

Either way, I'm again amazed by finding myself crossing a boundary that I'd set (granted, it was a rather arbitrary one) to accommodate something that Eme finds to be interesting. I guess that's what mommies do.

(Although, I have been amusing myself by categorizing the stories by antagonist, or by whether the princess in the given story has any parents alive, etc. I'll share those musings in another post in the future.)

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Mommy goes to the prom

I'm going to be 30 in a few weeks. That means a lot of different things. Some people feel old at 30, or like you've reached the "real" barrier to adulthood.

As you may have guessed by the title of this post, I went to Prom on Friday night. 30 wasn't making me feel old before, but I did at the prom.

The biggest thing that made me feel old? Some of those dresses were WAY too short. All of a sudden I was seeing things as a parent and I thought "did their mothers see them in those dresses?!"

I'll post them if I can get a hold of some of the pics (surprisingly, we didn't even bring a camera, but lots of other people from whom we can probably get some did, including both of our moms taking pics of us before we left -- yes, just like old times -- and the teacher in charge of yearbook took plenty during the evening).

A few other things that made me feel old:

• All of those kids (yes, I called them kids) looked like they were playing dress-up.
• But they still looked better than me in many ways. (ways that Andreas is too good of a husband to ever point out, but which I noticed anyway)
  
• Plus, I thought about what it was like at my prom and remembered taking it very seriously. Prom is such a big deal to high school students, but for me it was one night in a string of nights where I've gotten to get dressed up and be with Andreas. (Granted, this was the first big night out we've had since before the baby, but still a drop in the bucket compared to how the teens must have been feeling that night.

I've been to prom three times as an attendee, and now once as a chaperone. The first time is hardly worth mentioning (I was a sophomore, and split up with my then-boyfriend not long after prom). The next two times were with Andreas (yes, he and I were High School sweethearts), and chaperone duty was because he is a HS teacher, so I've now been to prom with him three times.

First prom with Andreas:

• Spent a lot of time worrying about the dress.
  
• Wondered whether he'd have a good time (we'd only been together for a few months).
• Worried about every detail including dinner (at Amy's house -- her mom's a great cook!), makeup (went to get it done at a Clinique booth at the mall), hair (sisters helped me get it right), pictures (ordered a bunch to share), dancing (how much to dance? would he want to dance with me at the slow songs?), etc, etc, etc.
  
• Had a great time.

Second prom with Andreas:

• Spent less time worrying about my dress and more about Gillianne's (it was her prom that year, too).
  
• Spent less time worrying about my dinner and more about Gillianne's date's (he chipped a tooth).
  
• Worried exactly the same about makeup and hair (I've never been great with those things).
  
• Danced about the same amount as last time, and ended up getting a hilarious video of us dancing with each other and singing to "Brown-Eyed Girl" onto the senior video.
  
• Had a great time.

Third prom with Andreas, this past Friday:

• Worried a little about my dress (how formal are chaperones supposed to be?).
  
• Worried a little about my hair (mom and I went to get our hair done; too much?).
  
• Worried a little about my makeup (I just chose not to wear much at all).
  
• Didn't have to worry about dinner -- Andreas' school provides dinner at prom, and it was very good.
• The most worrying I did was about whether Eme would go to sleep for Grandpa Guy. (Thanks for taking care of her, Dad!)
  
• Didn't dance at all (don't want to come off as inappropriate when you're a chaperone, and plus it was threatening to turn into a mosh pit), but got to watch the dancing from up on the balcony and it was amazing to see the crush of high school bodies gyrating with abandon from that angle; did we look like that at our prom?
  
• Had a great time.

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Cuffs and peaches

I am short. I don't consider it to be a big issue, but it's important that you know this about me.

Being short means that pants never fit me right. Even the "short" jeans are too long for me. I always have to roll the cuffs. I know, I could get them tailored, but I don't know how to sew and I don't really want to pay someone to do it, so I take the easy way and just cuff them.

This presents few problems. I don't think I have to wash them more often than other people -- I mean, when I go hiking and get a bunch of twigs and leaves caught in the cuffs I have to wash them (even if I've only worn them for the hike), but so does everyone wash their pants after wearing them into the woods, right?

Since becoming a mommy I have found more strange things in the cuffs of my jeans than ever before. My daughter has a way of dropping toys at the right angle and velocity so that I'll find a little Elmo finger puppet in the cuff of my pants. Or a block. Not that they stay in there for long, nor that it's a problem, but it's a funny side effect of being a mommy.

This morning, my daughter discovered the most beautiful word in a toddler's vocabulary. She's been testing the word out over the past few days, but today she really nailed it.

It's something like "fffpphhhthhhh." (I may have added an h too many, but this spelling pretty much captures it.)

What made it so beautiful today, and what caused a fit of giggles in my daughter to rival those when mommy tickles her belly with mommy's sock-covered feet, was that her mouth was full of food at the time. Cottage cheese, to be precise. You may think you know where this is going, but I assure you that there was no cottage cheese in the cuffs of my pants.

Just all over my shirt, hands, glasses, table, the high chair tray, and my daughter. It's not breakfast if she's not covered in cottage cheese, so that last one is actually pretty usual.

She innocently -- wide eyes and all -- opened her mouth when I again offered a spoonful of cottage cheese. I was thinking "now that's out of the system, she'll be hungry enough to eat some of it." Silly me. You can tell I'm a first time mom, can't you?

Again the word, but this time more like "pppfffffffthhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."

The books say not to laugh at "bad" behavior. I tried not to laugh. I did not succeed.

By this time I had determined that I'd best stop feeding her as she was clearly too enthralled with her beautiful sound to want to eat. I took her out of the high chair and hosed everyone off, cleaned my glasses, changed my shirt. We went to play with something non-food-related.

Later, what do I find in the cuff of my pants? I already told you it wasn't cottage cheese. It was a piece of the peach I'd given her to go with the cottage cheese.

This begs the question: exactly how cunning is my girl? Did she distract me with the show in order to slip a peach into my pant cuff? When did she drop it off the tray? How did I not notice it? All I know is that I have never laughed as hard in my life as I've begun to laugh since having a baby.

Stinky baby. Stinky, beautiful, wonderful angel baby.

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