The Toddler Workout

Today as the kids were lying horizontally on the stairs kicking the wall rythmically with their bare feet, I overheard this conversation:

OLIVER: This is not a movie.  This is not a game.

MAGGIE:  This is exercise!

Which sounded to me exactly like a wonderful snippet of dialogue from an '80s movie about a renegade personal trainer played by Patrick Swayze.  

Seriously though.  If you do want to get in shape. I suggest you follow this regimen. Or you could just do "eggups."

In the form of. . .June Cleaver!

It's possible that I am well on my way to becoming a bitter old lady.  My cup has always been more empty than full. (I wish, I wish, I wish I were an eternal optimist.  Alas.) But lately a certain Scroogyness is becoming more apparent. I swear under my breath at people who don't use their blinkers, I pick fights with the Mister over how tightly he screws on the lids to our condiments, and I nearly had to restrain myself after reading this post by Girl's Gone Child on Babble.  Why someone else's maternal bliss should incite such ugly and unchecked anger in me, I'm not exactly sure.  

I think it's because I have struggled since the birth of my wonderful children to find the joy in motherhood that seems to come so naturally to others.  Oh, I love to sniff their hair and nibble their toes.  I am entranced by their cleverness and agog at their beauty.  But I am just as often trying my darnedest to get away from them, the little hellions. I often feel worn to a nub, disappointed in my mother-instinct, bored, exhausted, and snappish.  I wish I didn't.  I wish I found being a mother one long and constant journey down Bliss Boulevard.  I wish I had more patience and generosity and gentle mom-wisdom to impart. I wish I sometimes made macaroni and cheese from scratch.

And this doesn't help:

In the grocery story, 11 am.

OLIVER (within easy earshot of all the nice people in the produce section): Mommy, you need to buy some wine.

ME: Not today, sweetie.

OLIVER:  But Mommy, you really love wine.  You really like it a lot.

ME (voice pitched high): Oh, I do, do I?  Ha, ha. Well, we don't need any today.

OLIVER: But, mommy you love to drink wine.  You need to buy wine.

A thing I like

Hey!  Blogging is all in the family now.  The Mister just launched the new blog for Green Apple Books & Music called The Green Apple Core.  Check out his first post in which he artfully combines a poem (read by him) and some video (taken with his favorite new toy, the Flip).  Also, buy lots of books so we can send our kids to college.

Valentine making party

Our mess

When we were kids, my best friends, Sarah and Leah, and I used to get together with our mothers and their aunt Martha to make elaborate, Victorian, over-wrought Valentine's Day cards.  Someone—I think it was Sarah and Leah's late mom, Hannah—invented a technique for creating these big, stuffed fabric hearts that protruded like sentimental little pot bellies from the front of our construction paper and doily creations. 

The originals: Leah, Sarah, and Martha

We made dozens (collectively, hundreds) of them over the course of many years for many different people: boyfriends long gone, parents deceased, friends whose names we've since forgotten.  And here we still are, surrounded by rubber stamps and old magazines and bits of ribbon and scraps of fabric, making valentines.  This time with our own kids.  We don't do it every year, but yesterday we did it big.   Its kind of like our modern-suburban version of a sewing circle.  Or at least it's as close as I come to that sort of thing.

Maggie, grandma, and Georgia making valentines

A snippet from the party:

OLIVER (holding up yet another stale conversation heart): Mommy, can I eat this?

ME: No, honey, you've already had enough and that one has glue all over it.

OLIVER: No, I already licked it all off. 

Some of our handiwork.  Cute, huh?

A thing I like

This photo by Christian Chaize of a beach in Portugal.  I love the colors.  I love the composition.  I love the vibe.  You can buy a print at Jen Bekmans' 20x200 gallery here.  I would, but I'm still not buying anything.  So do it for me.  I can live vicariously.

25 random things about me

Yes, I caved.  But I have to say, it was pretty fun.

1. I like to think I didn't do this earlier because I am too aloof, but really I couldn't figure out how to. Like, technically. I still think I may have it wrong.
2. Disco will never be dead in my home.
3. I once saw Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams, Carol Burnett, Misha Barton, and Courtney Love at the same bar on the same night. 
4. I consider myself a feminist but I have probably spent about 25% of my adult life worrying about my body.
5. I berate myself out loud in the car. But only when I'm alone.
6. I still sometimes feel physical, cheek-burning humiliation about things I said or did decades ago.
7. I am strangely proud that I weighed 200 pounds at the end of my pregnancy with twins. 
8. I have a Master's in English and I've never read a novel by William Faulkner or Virginia Woolf. Sometimes I pretend I have, though. 
9. For a while in my childhood we were friends with an ex-con named Swede who drove a pale yellow Cadillac and brought us weird gifts like sets of silverware and a copper espresso machine.
10. I went to part of fourth grade in a tiny village in Mexico. I hated it at the time but now it's a source of pride. 
11. I am powerless in the face of macaroni and cheese from a box. 
12. The carpet does not match the drapes. Never has.
13. I'm pretty sure I'm not as good looking as I think I am.
14. I find motherhood way harder than wifehood.
15. I wish I liked yoga but I don't. It makes me very impatient and it hurts my feet.
16. One of my greatest pleasures is to be alone in my house, sitting on the couch with a magazine. 
17. I'm terrified of divorce, cancer, car accidents, and spiders.
18. Some of my favorite memories are of trips I've taken with my friends Kate and Lisa. Once we talked for nine hours in the car. Without stopping. Seriously.
19. Before he married me, my husband was the mellowest guy I knew.
20. I have had four step-mothers. Now I have none.
21. I fear my ambitions outweigh my talents.
22. I was once followed by the secret police in Romania. For three days.
23. I was once detained for stealing towels in Panama. I was innocent.
24. I really like my job, as jobs go.
25. I often wish I had done something more useful with my life. 

25 things about my son

25 thing about Oliver Joseph at two-and-three-quarters:

1. He called Maggie "Sissy" until very recently.

2. We call him "Oliver with the strange water-repellent hair" because his hair is strangely water-repellent.

3. He is crazy about kitties and has been since the first time he saw a picture of one when he was not yet a year old. 

4. When something captures his attention he asks us to "talk about it," as in "Mommy, talk about the traffic."

5. He's a spectacular dancer, but he can't throw.

6. I've never seen him tire of being read to.

7. He won't eat any meat, fish, or chicken but he loves tofu and cheese.

8. Sometimes he looks at me and says, "Mommy, you're the cutest."

9. He can throw a mean and prolonged tantrum.

10. He still sucks a paci when he goes to sleep and he'd like to suck it more.

11. His first sentence was "I don't know."

12. He would like the opportunity to ride more buses.

13. He says his favorite color is black.

14. He recently said to me, "I don't want you.  I want a different Mommy." It made me cry, but it was a bad day anyway.

15. He likes to figure out how things work: light switches, pulleys, gears, etc.

16. Every night he asks me to sing "Hush Little Baby."

17. I know he wants to play bunnies when he looks at me and says, "Hello, mommy bunny.

18. He is terrified of walking in parking lots or streets (I consider this an accomplishment.)

19. He's in the 17th percentile for height but he doesn't care.

20. He loves to be tickled, especially by his dad.

21. His feet are so wide I fear he may someday have to wear special shoes.

22. When he was born we were told he had a heart murmur caused by a genetic defect. Two years later we found out that his heart is completely normal.  No murmur.

23. We once had to come home early from a weekend away because he had such bad diaper rash. 

24. He is one of the funniest people I've ever met and I think he might know it.

25. For a large portion of his second year he didn't walk: he ran, hopped or jumped everywhere. 

A thing I like

My dad's new Bonsai blog.  He's a good writer, my dad.  And he knows a lot about bonsai and Japanese gardening and trees in general.  He can be kind of a know-it-all, actually.  I come by it honestly.  My brother Joseph designs the site.  He's also a know-it-all, mostly about music and books.

25 things about my daughter

This "25 things about me" thing has been going around on Facebook and I've been tagged a couple of times.  I'm tempted to do it but, I don't know, blogging seems self-indulgent enough.  I mean, how interested can people possibly be in me?  Don't answer that.

I decided I would try to do it for my children.  Mind you, I do not speak for them.  These are strictly MY things about them.

Maggie first.

1. Maggie could be seen kicking her brother in the head in utero on ultrasounds.

2. Maggie's favorite color is purple.  It's also the only one she can consistently pick out of a lineup.

3. Maggie's eyes are crazy, crazy beautiful blue.

4. She can wiggle her eyebrows like a vaudeville villian.

5. Maggie is fearless in the water but she can't yet swim.

6. So far, her dancing shows a worrisome lack of rhythm.

7. She sucks her thumb, which I love.

8. On New Year's Eve, when the Mister came home from work, she took his hand and lead him toward the cheese platter saying, "We're having a party, join us and have some cheese."

9. Maggie LOVES her grandmothers.

10.  She can imitate accents.  Her best ones are Midwestern and stuffy lady from the '40s.

11. She's been to Delaware, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Connecticut, and Hawaii.

12. She's been to Mexico twice.

13. Her first word was "agua", same as her brother's. 

14. She hates all barrettes, headbands and ponytail accouterments, much to her mother's dismay.

15. When she sings "Happy Birthday" she sounds all breathy, just like Marilyn Monroe.

16. She loves to make "bunny holes," where she goes to hide from the foxes.

17. She talks a big game about loving our dog, but there is much evidence to the contrary.

18. She often prefers her daddy.  Except when she's hurt.  Then it's mommy all the way.

19. She calls my dad "Yeah Yeah" and my step-dad "Bigotes," which means mustache in Spanish.

20. She thinks "Bigotes" means Big Gotes.

21. Maggie likes salami, brie and tofu but won't eat pizza, nuggets, french fries or ketchup.

22. She's had an astonishing throwing arm since she could sit up.

23. Once, at Stinson Beach, I let her run as far away from me as she would go.  After 25 yards she disappeared into the fog and I had to chase her down.  I have no idea how long it would have taken her to get scared.  Maybe forever.

24. She prefers me to tell her stories rather than read them.  She particularly likes to hear about Santa.

25. When her baby dolls get hungry they still nurse from me, not her.

Next post: 25 things about Ollie.

A Thing I like

This list from Hula Seventy.

The always-hilarious lists at McSeeney's.

An experiment in single parenting. It's not pretty.

I totally know how he feels

The Mister is out of town.  He's in Utah on non-Mormon related business.  Books and stuff.  This means that I am alone with the twins for five days.  I won't lie.  It's been hard.  Like, soggy-rice-chex-hardening-on-the-kitchen-table hard.  Like, no-time-to-shower hard.  It's even been grab-your-kid's-arm-just-a-little-too-hard hard.  I know, I'm a wimp.  All hail to the single parents of the world.  Truly.  I've never been more appreciate of the Mister's contributions around here than I am right now. I miss him.

Here's a scene from our little experiment:

This happened last night after the burrito battle, and the bath battle, and the one-more-story battle, and the light-on-a-little-more battle.  The kids are in bed.  The door is closed.  I can finally do something fun, like clean up the huge mound of dishes.  

And then I hear it, the potty pleading.

So I get them up, and walk them in to the bathroom, and take off the complicated footsie p.j.s, and undo the nighttime diapers. 

OLIVER (sitting on the potty and looking thoughtful): Mommy, are you happy?

ME (astonished and sort of not that happy): Yes, honey.  I am happy.

OLIVER: But, are we driving you up the wall?

ME: Not anymore.  But you were earlier.

OLIVER (gazing philosophically into the middle distance): Yeah.

A thing I like

This thought from George Bernard Shaw:

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of nature in stead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy." 

Kind of harsh, I know.  But a good one to keep in mind.