Favorite Moments

A blogger friend of mine just asked for her readers to talk about the favorite moments of their days, and I liked reading everyone's responses so much that I'm hoping some of you will do the same here. Don't lurk forever. Tell me one of your favorite moments in your day. (Sorry to steal your idea, Christina.)

One of the favorite moments of my day is when I pull up to Sam's daycare. He is outside on the front sidewalk, bundled up in his blue Michelin-man snowsuit and size 5 target-clearance-rack boots, his black and white robot hat starting to sink down over his eyebrows and a river of snot running from his nose straight down into his mouth. He sees my car as I make a u-turn and he runs from his place near the giant snow pile where all the other kids are playing to stand on the sidewalk where he knows I will park. "Mama, mama, mama!" he yells when I get out of the car. It's as if he cannot contain the excitement he has about something he wants to show me. Yesterday it was the way the moon was going in and out of the clouds. "Bye bye, Moon" he would say in the car when it ducked behind the clouds, and "Peekaboo, Moon" he said every time it reappeared. How could reuniting with him at the end of a long day on a computer NOT be my favorite moment of the day?

What are some of yours?

Guitar or Bass?

While we were at TT's a Yo Gabba Gabba episode about bands came on, and Sam's favorite part was when they practiced and sang the practice song. Practice, practice, practice, practice. i think this video speaks for itself.





More photos from our weekend with TT here.

Toddler Chefs

The Pizza Chefs

A few weeks ago, Sam had a few friends over to make sugar cookies, and this weekend Lucy came over for sledding and some more cooking: pizzas! They loved it and we all loved the tasty pizza. Anyone have any ideas on what other simple things we could make with 2-year-olds?

You can also see more pictures from the outdoor fun on Lucy's page here.

Sam and Lucy top off the pizza

Gedion is very serious about rolling out the cookie dough.

Sam and Lucy cut out cookies.

Sam and Lucy are very serious about their sprinkles.


The pastry chefs and their masterpieces.

Bye Bye Eppy

I suppose it is probably something your friends with children warn you about before you have a child. But you listen about as much as you listen when they tell you that you’ll never sleep again and that you’ll eventually let your toddler watch TV and that you won’t mind when your son eats cheerios off the garage floor after you finally manage to wrestle him from his car seat at the end of a long day. You do not hear it when your friends with children say “Enjoy your non-mommy friends now because they will disappear after you have kids.” You know that all the predictions that other moms make about your parenting and your child will not matter because for you it will be different. You will not buy a mini-van. You will not cave in and give your child what he wants when he throws a tantrum in the middle of the candy aisle. You will not bring your child into your bed in the middle of the night just because he is demanding it. And you will not lose touch with all your friends that don’t have children.

Oh how I wish that were true.

Tonight when I picked up Sam, the entrance to the daycare was chaos. One mommy stood in the doorway to avoid dragging her mud-and-slush-covered boots onto the carpet. Her youngest (and fifth) child rested on her hip while she barked at the others to hurry up and get their coats on. A father stood outside on the porch waiting for his two boys as they dug through piles of snowpants to find their coats. Jamie’s own daughter, the one child at the daycare who has the right to call Jamie “mommy” even though many of them do, chased Sam into a corner and screamed. Sam held her clear plastic purse filled with pink hairstyling materials and said “Mine. Mine. Mine.” I fed his free hand through one sleeve and then uncurled his grip and gave the bag to Ayanna. As I picked him up and held him next to the other Mommy, he reached out his hand to the tiniest child in the house and said “Bye-bye Eppy. Bye bye.”

I love my life filled with magna doodles and alphabet blocks and books with pictures of trucks. I love watching Sam eat an entire serving of lasagna in two minutes with just a third of it finding its final resting place on his lap or in his hair. I love dancing around the living room to “5 Days Old” and “Down on Leah’s Farm” and “Dora, Dora, Dora the Explorer.” I love having my index finger grabbed by his small hand as he leads me to the living room and pats the couch cushion and says “Mama sit” after I’ve spent too much time away from him sorting laundry. I love singing “Noodles and cheese, noodles and cheese, noodles and cheese” all the way home at the end of the day to keep Sam focused on what lies ahead rather than the friends he has left behind at daycare.

Before Sam was born, before he was even conceived, a married friend of mine with children was complaining about having no time for her own hobbies, for her love of horses and the way she used to spend hours with them riding and training. And I told her she had to make time for herself, she shouldn't deny herself something that was so important to her, something that brought her so much joy. Back then I didn't understand. In the same way that I didn't understand that I would some day not have time for my writing.

I love my life and the things that Sam and i have in front of us, but it turns out all those mommies I wasn’t listening to were right. Some days I do miss my non-mommy friends and no amount of singing about noodles and cheese can keep me from looking in my rear view mirror and wishing they were here.

Cooking Up Trouble

As you can see from the photo above,
Sam likes to imitate everything Mommy does.
Good or bad.

Imagine this scene. It is 6:45am, and I sit on the bathroom floor. We need to leave the house before 7am in order to beat the school bus convoy that enters highway 35 at 7:08am. Missing our 7am deadline will result in an extra 15 minutes added to our commute not to mention the increase in Mommy's blood pressure every single time we stop and wait for some farmer's kid to walk up the steps of the school bus as slowly as he possibly can.

I have been sitting on the bathroom floor for 2 minutes. Sam has wedged himself between the bathtub and the toilet, just out of my reach. I have been asking him kindly to come sit so I may change his diaper. I have told him that as soon as we change his diaper we can have a snack. I have told him that Jamie is waiting for him so we need to get ready. I have tried to interest him in the drawer full of interesting goodies like nail clippers and dental floss that are in the cabinet next to me. He has seen all these tricks before and is not interested... until I take out a purple plastic tampon applicator and convince him that it's a rocket.

He creeps over and lays quietly on the bathroom rug in front of me, and he is distracted while I unzip his new red striped jammies from TT and change his diaper. He says uh-oh when he drops his new toy while I push Baby Gap toddler socks onto his feet. He doesn't even notice as I feed his legs into blue warm-up pants and pull him to a standing position. But when I try to feed his hands through the sleeves of his flannel shirt, he will have none of this. How can he look at his new toy if it and his hands have to pass momentarily through the sleeves?

"Work with me here, God damnit!" I say as I push his hands through the shirt and his new toy once again comes into sight.

"God damnit," he says.

[sigh]

Time to change. Again.

Christmas Memories

"I want color," Sam says. And so they do.

PHOTOS HERE.

Some of my favorite moments from Christmas 2009:

TT fresh out of the shower sits on the couch and rubs her head with a dry towel, and Sam stands at her feet and pulls the corner of the towel up to rub his own hair.

I open Sam's bedroom door early in the morning and find him standing quietly near the corner of the crib. "Good morning," I say. "I want TT," he says.

I place the T in the Leapfrog musical machine on the refrigerator and Sam pushes it and listens. "T. T. T says tuh. Every letter has a sound, and T says tuh."

Sam sits in TT's lap and looks at his new Elmo book. They turn the pages and push the button to the music player that sings over 100 songs. Big Bird sings "Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?"

TT sits on the couch. Sam fills his arms with pieces of the new plastic food set that arrived on Christmas Eve. He throws green grapes and red strawberries and pink ice cream cones and boxes of brownies and bottles of soda pop at TT. TT picks them up and tosses them back in the box and Sam rushes to get more, laughing hysterically. Over and over again, Sam rushes to bring more food and TT yells "Arrrrr" and tosses it back in the bucket.

TT sits in the easy chair in the corner reading her book with the reading lamp behind her. Sam crawls up on her lap and pulls the book away from her, and TT laughs. "What are you doing?" she says and she takes the book and hides it behind her back. Sam digs behind her and grabs it and laughs. TT grabs it again. "What are you doing?" she says and folds her denim shirt over it. Sam pulls the edge of the shirt away and finds the book and laughs hysterically. This goes on for several minutes.

Sam stands at the counter and rolls out dough for sugar cookies, insisting that he can do it himself yet frustrated when the dough sticks to the rolling pin. I unstick the dough and sprinkle a bunch of flour on it, and he rolls again and smiles up at me when it doesn't stick. Now he wants some cookie cutters. Sam proceeds to pound the star-shaped cookie cutter into the dough over and over again until it is an unrecognizable mess.

Sam says "Uppie" and I lift him onto the bed next to TT. He crawls under the covers and lays his head on the pillow next to her and pulls the comforter up to his chin. He waves with his tiny hand and looks at me and says "Bye-bye. Bye-bye, Mama."

Sitting on the floor in front of Sam's new tool bench, I use the little wooden screws and nuts to put together some struts. Sam takes the end from me and aligns a hole with a hole in the front of the bench. He pushes a simple wooden nail through the two holes and looks up at me. I line up the other end and he pushes another wooden nail into the contraption so it hangs neatly across the front.

I am making lunch when Sam crawls into the bottom of the tool bench. He seems to be stuck so I go over to help him get unstuck. He shakes his head and holds his hand up to me and waves. "Bye-bye, Mama. Bye-bye."

Here are some cute photos of our little family and the fun we had during a very special Christmas weekend.

Coloring and Cookie Crumble and Spinach Lasagna

Sam helps mom make spinach lasagna

When you're two years old and your mom tells you there will be a party to celebrate your birthday, you don't really know what a birthday is or what a party might mean. And you're not sure why she keeps trying to get you to say "Two" when she asks how old you are. But when you're two, almost everything is a reason to be joyful... even clearing the driveway or making spinach lasagna. Sunday afternoon during the critical time period between the toddlers' afternoon naps and the season finale of Survivor (Russell was robbed), we had some friends over for food and fun and football and all the chaos that ensues when more than 3 toddlers are in one room together.

The Happy Birthday song was a little scary.

Sam's best bud Lucy arrived first, and we had a few quiet moments to get comfortable before the rest of our guests arrived en masse. Sam took a little while to adjust to all the bodies, big and small, in our little living room, and we hid out in the kitchen and ate spinach lasagna and fat fresh raspberries until he was comfortable. But the party was a big success, and Sam enjoyed every second of it... from the messy cookie crumble cupcakes with dumptrucks on top to the peg puzzles of farm animals and police vehicles to the helium balloons that floated to the ceiling and the friends sitting around the table laughing and scribbing and drawing Sesame Street characters. Sammy got a little scared when all the big people stood around the table and stared at him and sang, but when I crawled into bed last night I thought about how I cannot remember ever being so happy. I thought about how truly blessed I am to have this boy in my life and how two years ago I never could have imagined I could love my little man as much as I do.

Check out this link for pictures of the party and the pre-party preparations.

The cupcakes were delicious!

Wow - that went fast!

Blowing out the candle.

Special cupcakes we brought to daycare to celebrate.

Waiting for mommy to put the camera away.

(Delicious, custom-made organic cupcakes from Mon Petit.)