Fordham Miller Fare

i don't think he meant it quite that way...

for about a week before mother's day, there was much abuzz in our house. i was commanded not to enter certain rooms except with my eyes closed, asked what kind of waffles were my favorite (i had a proustian moment as i recalled the pecan waffles with cherry coulis that i once had at the now defunct wild iris cafe in madison, wisconsin), and highly encouraged to sleep in on the day in question.  on sunday, i awoke to find bill gone to work, the kids gone down to the TV room to watch cartoons, and not so much as a cold cup of coffee waiting for me by the microwave.  sigh.

however, i was treated to a really wonderful day.  i got to start in on my dream of building square foot garden boxes for the front yard (we would have finished them had not my powerdrill battery peetered on out on me), we attended a lovely brunch hosted by friends where i was relieved of the duty of tending to the several teary breakdowns of my children, and i was showered with a whole bunch of homemade presents - poetry, re-gifted mardigras necklaces, a couple of drawings, and a special gift from morgan, with this note (follow along phonetically):

Dear Mommy,

here aer some bath salts

for you

ples tac a bath

Love

Morgan

winning the battles. losing the war.

lice.

we successfully avoided them for 8 years.  then in september it started.  the 3rd day of school i found lice on both kids.  so i treated.  and combed.  and washed the sheets.  and banished the stuffed animals.  and combed.  and retreated.  and then we were done.

i initially treated with the over-the-counter formula - fun with neurotoxins! - but after my usual googling i decided that for all forthcoming treatments i would go with the decidedly less toxic nuvo protocol.  it goes like this: wash hair.  dry hair. apply 16 ounces of cetaphil gentle face cleanser to hair.  comb excess cetaphil cleanser out of hair.  blow dry hair.  all in all, it takes about an hour and a half to do maddy, about half that time to do morgan.

then, mid-way through november, maddy reminded me to check her hair, because lice had been recently identified in class again.  and right off the bat i found one.  augh!  so, i treated, and retreated, and combed, and examined.  this time around, not so many, and morgan didn't get it, and by the day before thanksgiving, i declared us yet again, lice free!  i swear, two months ago we were lice free.

tonight, maddy complained of her head itching.  she has a recent scar on her scalp from a bad fall she took (4 staples) so i thought maybe that was it.  but the scar also happens to be where the critters like to hang out most.  i couldn't find any of the critters themselves, but i found one egg, and then another.  at first i thought they were old stragglers from the earlier bouts. but then i found another.  and another.  and you know, where there's smoke....

so tomorrow i am in for it again.  washing, drying, shampooing, combing, blah blah blah.  i'm just praying nobody else gets 'em (so far it hasn't happened, but...knock on wood).

in sickness and in health

happy thanksgiving.  we are in lake placid, new york, reliving a family tradition of ours: the vacation illness.

   

thinking back, it probably all started in the summer of 1995 when bill and i (newly minted as a 'we') travelled from the east coast back to madison, wi.  we stayed over with some friends of bill's in ithaca, ny, one of whom had just whethered a stomach bug.  sure enough, 2 hours into our drive to madison, bill came down with it.  i'll spare you the gorey details.  we made it just shy of ann arbor, michigan, where we pulled into a super 8 motel and called it a day.

   

of course, kids only added to the likelihood that a vacation would involve a trip to the local hospital.  so in welfleet, july 2005, we were in town for about 4 hours before bill and maddy headed to the hyannis ER.  diagnosis: scratched cornea.  camping in vermont, august 2004, 4 hours in, morgan came down with sore throat and fever of 101.  after two hours in burlington's fletcher allen medical center, the doctor agreed it was likely strep, although morgan refused to open his mouth for a throat culture.  turns out: hand, foot and mouth (which is NOT to be confused with hoof and mouth disease).  we spent the night at my dad's house in hineburg, thankfully avoiding a whopper of a thunderstorm.

   

but bill and i have had our share of ER visits as well.

   

when i was seven months pregnant with madeleine, i threw out my back.  the pain was so severe that it radiated across my abdomen, and as we were on vacation in the relative sticks of upstate new york, i thought a visit to the local glens falls ER, where their labor and delivery department has the unfortunate name of 'the snuggery', was in order.  several thousand hours and 4 surgery sodas (so as to induce fetal activity at 2 a.m.) later, after determining that all was well in utero, i left with a prescription for codeine, realizing quite quickly why people might find it addictive.  after taking the appropriate dose, i didn't so much feel as SEE the pain disappear, like a heinous pirate ship slowly sailing away over the horizon.  someday soon i will tell you my latest, and perhaps last, experience with the opiate family.  but not today...

   

okay, trip to austin texas, january 2001, first morning there, bill pulled down a metal vertical blind on his wrist.  this one was pretty severe - bill suffered some permanent nerve damage, although the damage was sensory, not muscular, thank goodness (but still no picnic).  it meant he was wrapped up in bandages our entire trip, and had neurosurgery (neurosurgery for goodness sakes!) upon our return to new england.  yipes.

   

narragansett, ri, july 2003.  stomach flu.   another trip to austin, february 2007.  strep AND croup (three doctors visits in three separate cities).  and now, lake placid.  stomach flu again.  oh, that and the fact that we are on 'lice watch II - 2007.'

   

so there is a big pavlovian reaction to the beginning of a vacation, pretty much wherever we go.  if we are settled in, if things look like they are smooth sailing for the next several days, our spines tingle in anticipation of the calls to the 'triage nurse,' the search for the local medical facility, the hopes and dreams temporarily shoved aside for the more immediate matter at hand.   

   

today, madeleine is feeling better, and eating progressively more complicated solid food.  the heads are, by my best estimation, lice free.  and we are settling into some quiet family time, the kind of which we rarely have at home.  the weather, it's kinda schmutzy, but the town is pretty and devoid of throngs of tourists, the christmas lights are up, and overall, it's kinda cozy.  so far, so good...

attempts at routine

in an attempt to serve varied, nutritious and regular meals (and also to enjoy the process of preparing food for the family), the day before yesterday i made zucchini bread, carrot ginger soup, and tomato onion cheddar quiche.  for the kids benefit, i made little quichettes, consisting of only the egg custard mixture and cheese.  oh, and i made the crust from scratch.

when morgan came to the table, he dissolved into tears at the sight of his dinner.  keep in mind, this child currently survives on the following staples: (whole wheat) bread & butter, bananas, yogurt, and some breakfast cereals.  now, i made the quichettes knowing that both of my kids like eggs, and cheese, and bread/crust.  i tried very hard to convince morgan that the zucchini bread was really like cake (and really, it is), and that the quichette is just eggs and cheese.  i did not even TRY to serve him the soup.  he refused the eggs outright, and told me the zucchini bread, which is made with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cardamon, smelled like zucchini.  what the heck does zucchini smell like, anyway?  the meal ended with morgan eating a piece of bread and butter, and me barely holding back-- okay, not holding back -- my fury at his refusal to even TASTE the eggs and zucchini bread.  madeleine, i'm happy to report, love the quichette, and zucchini bread; she tasted the carrot soup and gave it a thumbs down, but she did try it and remarked that it seemed "interesting" in color and smell.

i know i shouldn't engage in power struggles over food, but i'm at a loss at what to do with this child who wants to eat bananas and yogurt 3 meals a day.  i truly don't care if he won't EAT what i make, but the fact that he won't even TRY it is what gets to me.  i know he has some serious super-taster/texture issues going on, but it's hard to get excited about cooking and serving food to your kids when one of them (and sometimes both) reject just about everything, even things they've previously eaten and enjoyed.

yesterday morning, it was madeleine's turn.  while she has become a very game eater, and expresses a lot of interest in the health value of foods, getting her dressed these last couple of days has been complete torture.  madeleine is one of those "it doesn't feel good" kids.  when she was a toddler, putting on a coat which caused her sleeves to bunch up was a regular meltdown experience.  i had to buy her shoes a size too big in order for us both to cope.  but the strange thing is, this sensitivity seems to wax and wane.  i would have thought that we were gradually outgrowing it, but this week has seen the "princess and the pea" return with a vengance.  suddenly, the clothes she's been wearing for the past 6 months don't feel good (and it's not because they're too small).  nothing feels good, and she turns into an inconsolable and rather nasty puddle of despair.  this shirt is too long, this skirt bunches up when i sit, this waistband doesn't feel good.  we managed to work through some hysteria over her sneakers, which are relatively new and which she had worn for several weeks without complaint, but the rest of it is going full steam.  good god, i can't imagine what it's going to be like when she's a teenager, and has adult size wardrobe crises.

yesterday she had her first ballet class, where they are very particular about the uniform.  we needed a blue leotard, and the one she had she had outgrown, but just barely.  still, the tears and the trauma came again.  i got her into a looser fit black outfit, but when we arrived at class and she saw the eight other girls in blue capezio leotards, she became despondent again.  the director managed to find us a blue one in roughly her size, but it was only a minute before i heard her sobs coming from behind the bathroom door.  we managed to pull it off after i cut out the tags, but i thought "if i have to endure much more of this i'm going to go mad."

today was better.  she dressed herself in a skirt and shirt without a tear, and only got my ire up when she went into a screaming rage at her little brother over the "theft" of the swing she had been using.  tonight at dinner, i served whole wheat spaghetti, Ian's fish sticks, and peas.  neither child cried.  i did not raise my voice.  maddy started off with an "i lost my appetite" speech after one look at her plate, but bucked up and ate both fishsticks plus her pasta plus a copious amount of peas.  morgan whimpered at the fish sticks, proceeded to peel the breading off of them and eat what remained, ate about 3 strands of spaghetti, and ignored his 5 peas.

on an unrelated note, just before dinner maddy was doing a ginsberg-esque chant with the aid of a tamborine, while morgan provided the interpretive dance segment.

where have i been?

boston, maryland, back to boston, and the cape.

sorry for the absence, and only a moment to write.  there's been a lot going on around here.  morgan had his wonderful 5th birthday in early june.  we had a family gathering and cake.  bill's parents came to stay for a week, because shortly after morgan's birthday maddy had eye muscle surgery (for misasligned eyes, also known as strabismus) at children's hospital in boston.  we managed to do the outpatient surgery in one day, and two days after my return i headed down to maryland for four days. 

my trip to maryland was to help out one of my parents.  i've never really posted anything in detail about my immediate family of origin, and it doesn't feel right to be too specific here.  but i can say that in a general sense this parent of mine is having some health issues, and needed some support on the homefront, so off i went.  then back here for a couple of school picnic's for madeleine, then back to boston for madeleine's follow-up visit (a good outcome), then a trip to the cape to watch some whales. 

we've been practising an every-other-year-no-birthday-party rule (odd years are off, even years are on), where on the off years we do something exciting as a family instead of having a party.  a painting of a whale made me think to ask morgan if he'd like to go whale watching, and he was very game for the idea, so that's what we did.

i'll try to blog more in a day or two, including uploading photos into flicker, to give you more of the details on all this stuff.  but i knew if i didn't write something right now, it would all slip away and it would be more weeks before you heard from me again.

notes from the weekend

• morgan has coined "smell out" as a way of describing a food-related intrusion into his (highly sensitive) olfactory world.  to his cousin jeff, who was eating a fritatta in morgan's presence, he declared, "jeff, you're smelling me out."
• maddy has started two-wheeler training camp.  bill took her to the town common saturday to practice her two wheeling.  because maddy has a tendency to vent her SUBSTANTIAL frustrations on her kindly parents with impunity, bill adopted the alter ego of "mr. ross, bicycle coach," to avoid being at the receiving end of her more virulent invectives.  while this was somewhat successful, bill believes that a disguise may be necessary to complete the ruse.
• both kids are home from school today.  maddy, viral fever illness.  morgan, potential for stomach flu.  me, i've got a stiff neck from "wrong sleeping" (exacerbated by two more consecutive nights of agonizingly "wrong sleeping"), and am awaiting return calls from the triage nurse ("just how many ibuprofens is TOO many?") and the massage therapist.  in the meantime i'm clining to my kaz Themipaq Heat Therapy System like the life raft in a stormy sea that it is.  (see picture, right.  no, that's not me, but mmmmm, i could use a little of that soft focus in my life right now...)
• btw, when you get your medical care from the local university health service, you can expect a lot of "those" kinds of questions when your 7-year-old starts reading everything in sight.  we are getting a HUGE head start on alcohol, drug, and sex education.
• oh, and two last words:  chef wayne's.

on the road again

we have decided against buying a second car.  i did the math (that's the we-have-no-money-so-we're-talking-negative-numbers math), and decided it was time to try becoming a one car family.  our current vehicle, a 1993 subaru legacy wagon with 156k on it, will be our primary around town car.  to head out of town, we will rent.  it's making me feel all greenhouse gas superior, except that right now we are borrowing a 2002 subaru forester (which i luuuuuuuv) with a weensy 23,000 miles on it, and i think it may be causing me not to think straight.  we give it back in about two weeks.

but truly, if we can't make a one car family work, then shame on us.  bill works 1.5 miles from the house, accessible via bus for free.  i work at home.  maddy takes the bus to school, which is only .5 miles away.  and morgan will be going to same school in fall, so there you have it.  we aught to be able to do without a car altogether, but for now we are holding onto Suby, and hoping she holds firm for a year or two to come.

pop kiddie culture OR don't say i never took you anywhere

i wisely waited for kristen, bestower of dora tickets, to have the first say on the event.  i think i wanted to hear her take before coming out with my own.

first off, i argue that dora was not necessarily played by a woman.  true, true, i googled as many Dora Live! pictures as i could, and they all pointed to decidedly female actors.  but i still say that should the lead have fallen ill twenty minutes to show time, adam sandler's Lucy the Gap Girl would have made a great understudy.  and if peter pan can be played by sandy duncan, i say it's time for men to start filling Dora's shoes.

on dora itself (and mass media, pop culture and parenting), i'm a mixed bag.  on the one hand, i want to be pure.  no sugar and no tv and no computer and no saturated fats and no bratz dolls and no gendered clothing and no white flour and all that jazz.  on the other hand, i am weak.  so there's television and cookies and computer and pink jackets* and flashing tennis shoes and let's not even talk about family Survivor night.**  oh, but still no bratz dolls.

ironically enough, going to Dora in my rented monster truck was remarkably un-pc-guilt-inducing.  and the show was somehow decidely non-nightmarish.  two factors helped immensely.  (1) we had free parking about 5 blocks away, so we skipped the traffic jams on the way in and out, plus the kids had to work for it ("back in my day, kid, i had to walk 2 miles in a snowstorm for the ice capades."). (2) i seem to have effectively trained my kids not to drive me insane with pleading for toys and treats (tho' maddy and i did get in a tussle over what size of popcorn to get).  so we got to focus on the show, which the kids clearly enjoyed, and not the smoke and mirrors that serve to drain one of a good $40-60 bucks before the evening is over.

just so you don't get the idea that this was any kodak family moment, on the way back to the car maddy kicked a rather large abandoned styrofoam tub of ketchup lying in the street, and got condiment all over her white dress shoes.  she then proceeded to hissy fit the rest of the way to the garage, and she and morgan almost boiled over on the way home, to the point where i thought maybe we'd lost kristen as a babysitter for good.

but all's well that ends well.  next stop, disney world.

___________________________________________________________

*pink jacket for maddy, pink shoes for morgan.

**i live in fear of maddy betraying our Survivor secret in the wrong company. say, for example, at nature camp.  we'd have to go around with a red 'S' on our fronts, heads bowed in shame.

oh, i see the light and the heat...

ME: who wants to come with me to the library?

MORGAN: not me.

MADDY: me!

MORGAN: THAT'S NOT FAIR!!!

later, after we have had several good laughs over morgan's idea of what's not fair, morgan lets us in on his logic.

MADDY: ...and Morgan says 'that's not fair' (laughs hysterically)

MORGAN:  but it isn't fair, do you know why?

MADDY: why?

MORGAN:  because i LOVE mommy.

MADDY: (more hysterical laughing)

MORGAN: (indignantly) I DO!!!!

i think this is as close as i have ever come to John Cusack blasting Peter Gabriel outside my bedroom window.

MIA

where have i gone?  oh, good question.  i've composed about 45 posts in my head over the past four weeks, but haven't made it to the computer to regurgitate them.  the short of it is that i had 21 concurrent days of childcare on my hands.  most of you who know me well know that this is a recipe for disaster.  we did hang out with family -- the kids attended a great Audubon summer camp up in Vermont while we stayed with my dad and stepmother, and bill's folks stayed here the following week leading up to the start of public school.  it was great to have everybody's support, but as i said, if you know me at all you know that 21 days without a 9-5 "here, you take 'em" slot turns the cranky complainy mommy into a vat of molten jello.  i proceeded to meltdown status the night before the start of maddy's first day of first grade, and bill was smart enough to take the kids off my hands for three whole days and nights.  i cleaned house in a major way, both literally and metaphorically, and got back up on the horse with the help of school buses and hot lunch and god bless it a routine.

now bill has left for a 5-day stretch, and i'm trying to hold down the fort again.  but it's easier because i've got several hours of quiet time to myself to plug in my batteries and recharge.  i'm trying to get us on this totally NORMAL routine, where we do NORMAL family things, like all eat dinner at the same time and maybe even eat some of the same food, and put things away after we use them, and speak to each other in understanding and helpful tones.  yes, i've gone completely mad with these expectations.  i was sure it would wear off after about a week and i would be back to being continually behind the 8 ball, but i think i got some sort of second wind.  wish me luck, i think it can't last.  after all, the holidays are just around the corner.

bill and i are also trying to incorporate regular exercise into our weekly routine.  so with keeping the house clean, cooking edible meals, working, and putting the children to bed, i've got 3 exercise slots to get in each week.  this is another thing that has impacted my blogging time, although i suppose i could stop watching "funniest moments on live tv" and spend that time blogging.

which reminds me, i seem to be on the cusp of some sort of revolution, because i got TiVo a few weeks ago, and every time i tell somebody this their jaw drops as if i'd just told them i hired a full-time housekeeper and a cook.  really, it's not that huge of a luxury, i tell them, sounding like an infomercial.  it's only $13 a month, and you can get a box for $50, and then you can watch TV whenever you want.  mostly i'm using it for The Daily Show and kids PBS shows, but now that the new television season has started i get to REALLY take advantage.  which is funny because we subscribe to cable TV lite, meaning 10 channels plus thankfully the comedy channel.  but i do have The Simpsons on 'season pass' so along with John Stewart i think that pretty much justifies the cost.

okay, back to the grind.