Aug 6

Dear Avery and Kieran,

I often wonder what you will remember about this time in your lives. There have been a lot of changes in the last couple of years and they aren’t over yet.  I know you will adjust and life will settle down again as it always does. Routine inevitably falls over us like a familiar blanket. But I wonder…

…I wonder if Avery will remember her first sweetheart. A neighbour and classmate who she bonded with early in the school year and before a few months were through, had pledged to marry. Will she remember his possessive and sometimes manipulative and hurtful behaviour in order to keep her attention focused solely on him? Or will she simply remember their unabashed affection for each other and the way they simply felt comfortable playing together. Their innocent acceptance of each other and their bold plans for the future, despite any attempts by her parents to convince her that she *might* change her mind in the future.

(Yes, she looks like she’s yelling at him here, but she really wasn’t. And just seconds before they were sitting there with their arms slung around each others shoulders and it was just so cute!)

…I wonder if Kieran will remember his constant fluctuating between fear of everything from the bathroom towel to the dark to sounds in the night and putting on the bold and brave act. Will he remember telling me that he’s a “superhero” and his super powers are “killing bugs…aaand…spiders….and skeetos…and bad things” and that his super powers are “geen (green)”?

…I wonder if Avery will remember her unwavering devotion to mothering her “babies”. Each new doll was welcomed into the fold and her delight delighted me.

…I wonder if Kieran will remember roasting “smushmellows” or constantly asking “Why you doin’ dat Mommy? WHY?” with always the same format: Why_____________? Why?

…I wonder if you will remember the first time you went to the circus and neither of you blinked for the whole performance because you were so enthralled.

…I wonder if you will remember playing outside from dawn to dusk, wearing nothing but a bathing suit and only stopping for snacks and bathroom breaks. Will you remember running around with popsicles melting all over your hands and even after twelve consecutive hours of constant action, you are still reluctant to come inside, until we settle down to read stories and you fall asleep before the book is finished.

…I wonder if you will remember the way you alternately loved and hated each other. Playing for hours without a problem and then fighting like cats and dogs the next. I guess that will continue for years to come but I hope the memories of the fun you had together will be stronger.

I know I will always remember the feel of hugs from sweaty, sticky children who smell like sunshine and the way new freckles popped up on Kieran’s nose every day until he was covered just like his daddy and how Avery grew what felt like six inches in a summer and suddenly felt like such a big kid to me. I will remember birthday cakes and shaking the sand off our feet after a day at the beach and the smell of a fresh coat of sunscreen and the sound of the ocean lapping at the shore while your happy shrieks and giggles sounded in the background.

Jun 22

Avery was writing up a birthday list for her grandparents the other day. Last item on the list:

There’s nothing like a nice bribe for you birthday. Nice. Wonder what she knows about her grandparents that she’s keeping secret?

May 21

I never thought I would enjoy it as much as I did…

May 11

My daughter has this little foible. This one tiny idiosyncrasy that makes people think a perfectly normal five year old girl is completely Nutso McWackypants. What is this peculiarity? She has an irrationally strong reaction to certain textures. 

I know.  She’s completely crazy zany, right?

The things that freak her out are completely unpredictable. I’m never sure what it’s going to be.

Barnacles on rocks at the beach made her all antsy but I can kind of understand that. They make my skin crawl a little bit, too.

The other day she had to shut her eyes while eating soda crackers (the most inane food EVER) because the serrated edge was too much for her.

The first time she ordered deep-fried mozzarella sticks at a restaurant she took one bite and refused to eat anymore because they reminded her of “chubby babies”. WTF? The connection between a fat infant and deep-fried cheese is lost on me.

When we visited the Hard Rock Cafe in Boston she couldn’t sit facing this feature wall covered in cymbals. It agitated her too much.

wall-of-cymbals
I can’t wait til she loseWeight Exercises it in school over a bulletin board display or an art project and they call to tell me she has some kind of brain tumour or psychological disorder. There’s no way to explain this but to acknowledge that the crazy is already in her genetic code and this is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

Mar 29

This interview has been showing up on blogs and Facebook and it seemed like fun. I wasn’t prepared for the performance anxiety my daughter experienced when I asked her to answer questions! She was very concerned about getting the answers “right”. Isn’t it fun, seeing your neuroses handed down from generation to generation? 

Anyway, we did eventually come up with answers of one kind or another for every question and here they are:

1. What is something mommy always says to you?
  Be careful.

2. What makes mommy happy?
 When we do something right? 

3. What makes mommy sad?
 When we do something wrong! 

4. How does your mommy make you laugh?
 By tickling me. 

5. What did your mommy like to do when she was a child?
  I think it was to maybe braid her hair because it was long?

6. How old is your mommy ?
 Twenty-eight I think? (She got it right!)

7. How tall is your mommy ?
 About this tall (jumps and reaches as high as she can). 

8. What is her favorite thing to watch on TV?
 The news. (Ummm….no! I very VERY rarely watch the news.)

9. What does your mommy do when you’re not around?
 Work on your computer 

10. If your mommy becomes famous, what will it be for?
 Concerts. 

11. What is your mommy really good at?
 Ummm….I think…getting…untying knots. (What???)

12. What is your mommy not very good at?
  She’s not very good at maybe climbing rocks, maybe? (Probably true. Still, where did she come up with that idea?)

13. What does your mommy do for her job?
 Nothing. (OUCH.)

14. What is your mommy ‘s favorite food?
 Onions. (Fail.)

15. What makes you proud of your mommy?
 When she lets us do stuff that we want to do. 

16. If your mommy were a cartoon character, who would she be?
  Buster Baxter (from the tv show Arthur).

17. What do you and your mommy do together?
 Talk. 

18. How are you and your mommy the same?
 We both have blond hair. 

19. How are you and your mommy different?
 You have glasses and I don’t. 

20. How do you know your mommy loves you?
 Cause she tells me. 

21. What does your mommy like most about your daddy?
  I think it’s his face.

22. Where is your mommy ‘s favorite place to go?
 To the jewelry store? (At least, if mommy ever went there, it would probably be her favourite place!)

Mar 26

Young love strikes again. Avery and her “special friend” COBE, or Child Of Boundless Energy, (yes, this one) have formulated a plan. Because my daughter is nothing if not completely anal about planning. Which I suppose is a good thing when it comes to family planning. So behold the plan hatched by two five year olds…

Translation: We will marry each other. Then we will have a baby. After that we will feed it. After that we will give it a nap. Then we’ll go to a baby shower. Then we will play with it. Then we will go shopping and we will buy baby clothes and we will buy baby shoes. Then we will dress it. Then we will change it’s diapers.  (And the sticky note: We will name it too.)

The sticky note was glued on for good measure because we wouldn’t want to forget the all-important step of naming the infant.  The two of them came up with this “plan” at school and as soon as we got home Avery set to work to put it in writing. Because once the young man has made promises she’s not going to let him get away with any monkey business. They have a contract, dammit! The documents were brought to school the next day to be viewed and ok-ed by the prospective husband and father and with the teacher’s seal of approval as witness (a pink sticky note with her thanks to Avery for sharing her story in class), life as we know it may never be the same.

And so, with a plan in hand and a husband and child in her future, my daughter can happily relax and enjoy the next ten years of her life. Because she’s pretty sure she needs to be at least fifteen years old before she has a baby.

EEK! I’m hoping she’ll come up with another plan before then. Maybe one that involves university? Or perhaps her fairly recent fear of childbirth will resurface before then and she’ll change her mind. Otherwise a glimpse into my future would reveal a lot prescription medications and a large glass of wine. Lots and lots of wine.

Mar 4

Mommy: You know, when we were kids we didn’t have computers at all!***

Avery: Really???

Daddy: Yes, that’s right.

Avery: Why?

Mommy: Well, lots of reasons. They cost a lot of money and they were much bigger than they are now.

Avery: But how did you check the weather???

 

***I lied. In reality, both my family and the hubby’s family had computers when we were quite young children. But I was making a point. And when we were young it was still pretty rare for people to own a computer.

Feb 7

When it comes to health issues it appears that my daughter is a friggin’ episode of House on account of the fact that she refuses to be a textbook case of – well – anything.

As a newborn, Avery encountered a number of issues including jaundice, thrush, difficulty breastfeeding and colic. Any one of those could have been responsible for a baby that cried all the effing time a lot. After six weeks of this we threw up our hands in despair.  We made countless trips to our doctor’s office and three ER visits before we finally got a diagnosis of a raging urinary tract infection. Why was this missed on the previous visits? Because the child never, not once, developed a fever of any kind. Fever being one of the most important indicators of an infection, particularly in a tiny little infant, it takes special threats persistence to get doctors to listen to you when you have a baby that cries a lot but has no fever. She spent two weeks on oral antibiotics was still sick. And still had no fever. A week on IV antibiotics eventually cleared up the infection. But her temperature never went up one fraction of a degree.

In the years following she had her share of ear infections and other illnesses. The only thing that ever caused her to run a fever was teething and an occasional benign virus.  Never the more serious stuff where fever is supposed to indicate a problem.

For the past two weeks the girl has been fighting one hell of a virus with the accompanying fever and other fun but generic cold symptoms. The past week she stopped eating food and after enough days of that some mothers might get a little anxious and rush to the ER make a doctor’s appointment. Both our doctor and his supervisor examined her thoroughly. One of their first questions was if strep had been going around at school. But upon examining her throat they found very little redness and swelling and she insisted her throat was not sore. Those symptoms being the major indicators of strep, both doctors agreed she likely didn’t have it. After ruling out a variety of other illnesses they declared her healthy and suffering from a nasty virus. But just to be sure, they ran the swab and test for strep. 

She tested positive.

All of us were baffled but sure enough, after a couple of doses of antibiotics she’s well on her way to being her energetic and ravenous self.  Awesome. So next time I’ll just ask for a team of top-notch diagnosticians to examine and test my daughter and her mysterious-illnesses-that-turn-out-to-be-straightforward-problems-with-unusual-presentations.

Jan 28

It was bound to happen sooner or later. But honestly, I was not prepared to deal with this so early. How does a mother react, knowing such events have transpired which are beyond her knowledge and control?

It all started out innocently enough. My daughter had become good friends with a little boy in her kindergarten class, let’s call him Child Of Boundless Energy. As it happens, COBE’s family lives just one house over from us and back before Christmas we thought it would be nice to invite him over for pizza/movie night with our kids since the two of them were such good friends at school.

Because COBE’s mom is a delightful human being, she helped him purchase flowers to bring Avery for their DATE (COBE’s words, not mine or his mother’s)!!! I was surprised that COBE was taking this so seriously, but he was totally adorable when he showed up and handed the flowers matter-of-factly to Avery the moment he walked in the door, so what could I say?

I made the two of them pose for a picture later to capture the moment for purposes of future embarrassment historical record:

As an aside, GOOD LORD, five year old boys are a freaking force of nature! If you could bottle that energy for sale it would almost certainly be classified as an illicit drug rocket fuel. Luckily COBE is a generally well-behaved kid and the two of them got along mostly without incident – although we did not watch a movie that night as the kids were so ramped up by the excitement of playing together outside of school that they were incapable of sitting still for longer than 2 seconds to wolf down pizza. 

Cue, this Monday. COBE is once again over to play. They are tearing apart our second floor while I am making dinner. Avery comes running downstairs giggling and prancing around as 5 year old girls are wont to do.

“I have a secret!” she says.

“Oh?” I respond nonchalantly, “And what is this secret about?”

Thank the sweet baby Jesus this child is not a naturally gifted liar. “COBE kissed me! And then I kissed him! It’s supposed to be a secret!” she blurts out in a fit of giggles.

….

After I picked my jaw up the floor we had a short discussion about kissing being an activity for when she’s older and that it’s nice to show we like someone by telling them so or hugging them.  Then she ran off to play with her boy-toy some more.

OMG! Are you kidding me??? My vixen of a five year old has already talked an honest lad into giving up his virtue under my very roof! Is it too early to lock her up? And what do I tell his mother???

Cupid, have mercy!

Dec 23

Many of you have asked to see the picture of my daughter’s teacher daughter with Santa and I just wanted to say that it is coming. After a short trip out of state I am now at home with family visiting for the holidays and posting may continue to be sparse for a bit. Back to your regularly scheduled blog reading soon!

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