Lost: One Farm Journal’s Cookie Cookbook

Location: No where obvious

Reward: A healthy portion of gingerbread man cookies

I have lost my cookie bible two days before Christmas. C is insisting that he must have gingerbread men, only Nana’s gingerbread men. Nana has left her house and is somewhere on the Mass Pike en-route to our home and therefore cannot provide her copy of said cookbook.

If anyone happens to have said cookbook and can offer up the gingerbread men recipe, please let me know. I will send you copious quantities of gingerbread men in return.

M’s side of the bed in MUCH closer to the door than mine. Why is it that all of the little visitors at 2,4, and 5 am walk ALL THE WAY AROUND to my side? I figured that when A started making the pilgrimage she would head directly to her beloved Dada, but no, last night I woke up with a start to find her peering into my face commenting on the fact that I had no glasses on.

I just want an uninterrupted night’s sleep. Is that too much to ask for from Santa? I’ll give him my share of chocolate…

C: “Nicholas didn’t know where heaven is.” (pause) “Where is it?”

Mommy: “I think maybe it is in the sky? I’m not really sure.”

C: “I think it’s on a boat.”

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Mommy: “C, what are you doing?”

C: “I don’t think I want to tell you.”

Mommy quickly races to the scene of the crime. C is wrapping scotch tape around the coffee table (see, I TOLD you that they like scotch tape…). C looks up guiltily.

Mommy: “I’m going to pretend I didn’t see this until later.”

C: “Really??? You’re being so nice today Mommy.”
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C: “Under the swaddling, does Baby Jesus wear a diaper?”

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C: “Why does Santa come down the chimney?”

Mommy: “I don’t know, let’s Google it.”

Mommy: “It says that Santa started coming down chimneys for the Dutch children. That doesn’t help me at all. Why did the Dutch children need him to go down chimneys?”

C: “I thought Google knew everything. I’m so disappointed.”

So I’m getting C ready for bed tonight and I tell him to pick out his pajamas while I get out of my suit. When I come back, he has picked the new pj’s just sent from Auntie M. He loves them, but they are light-weight and we’re going through a cold snap right now (not to mention that our house is almost 250 years old and just a wee bit drafty), so I wanted him in the warm footie jammies. And of course, when I say as much, he starts crying because this is the biggest crisis to hit his life since, well, the last one.

I choose to ignore the crying and press on: “Oh, hush, C. Get in your diaper.”

C: “It’s a pull-up daddy.” (He’s potty trained but the pull-up is our insurance policy at night).

Me: “Well, when you’re crying like a baby, you wear a diaper like a baby.”

He stops for a second, turns to me, and says very seriously and without a tear, “Daddy, sometimes people just get sad and right now I’m sad.”

Are three-year olds normally so in touch with their feelings? Are we raising Dr. Phil here?

Ah well, I let him wear Auntie M’s jammies, he now looks like a 3-foot-tall candy cane, and life goes on…

Yesterday I got to take C to swimming lessons without A in tow as M was home because of the transit strike in NYC. So instead of chasing A around the parent “lounge” (really, it’s a hallway) and trying to keep her somewhat entertained, I was able to actually sit and watch C swim. After about five minutes it became abundantly clear why we are repeating the introductory “learn how to get into the pool without crying class” for the THIRD time. You see, instead of focusing on swimming like the other children, C is using the time to make friends. He chatted up the lifeguard when he arrived, made the rounds to all of the different teachers, and then checked out the older kids’ cool goggles before heading to the lane in which his class was occurring.

He obligingly put on his white bubble but then saw a friend in the next lane and started conversing with him about the temperature of the pool today. As he began his doggie paddle down the pool, he stopped to visit with the lifeguard again, checked in with the teacher, and encouraged the little girl trailing behind him to “keep it up!” He was perfectly happy and charming and polite to everyone, but focused on swimming he was not.

At the end of the lesson I had to go in and collect him as he was still chatting with the lifeguard. As I walked by one of the instructors, he stopped me and said, “C is the sweetest kid. But man, can he talk.” To which I had to agree. It had just never occurred to me that his penchant for conversation would spill over to athletic endeavors. It is clear that I need to rethink C’s extracurricular activities. Do you think three is too young to start the debate team?

I thought I had sunk to a new low over the weekend, but if that was low, this is rock bottom. A refused to nap in her bed this afternoon (surprise, surprise). Since she is sick, she has.to.sleep. or she will never kick this thing. So in a moment of sheer desperation (or brilliance, I’m not sure which yet) I scooped up both kids, carried them to the car in slippers, and drove like the wind to a friend’s where I borrowed a Video Now player. I then took a detour to Dunkin Donuts drive thru, picked up a decaf latte and returned home. C is now happily watching Sesame Street in the back seat, A is snoring away, and I am blogging from the comfort of my car parked as close as possible to the wall with the wireless hub.

You can all laugh now. But we are all happier than we have been in days.

Not to continue my whiney theme from the last few weeks, but A seems to have developed a horrific cough in virtually no time what so ever. We did mommy and me gymnastics yesterday, and about halfway through the class she broke out in this horrific, verging on croupy sounding, cough. The other mommies gave me that “Why did you bring a sick child to class” look, and I frantically tried to explain that really, I swear, I hadn’t heard that cough until right that very second.

By 2am she had a roaring fever on top of the horrific cough. I think I will just cry now. I will not be leaving A with the babysitter I hired so I could get the trimmings for the several holidays meals I will be cooking over the weekend. I will not be leaving her with the babysitter to finish purchasing stocking stuffers. I cannot even take her to the store. I am going to be stuck running around on Christmas Eve with the 40 billion other last minute shoppers, even though I had thought I had finished my holiday shopping well before Thanksgiving.

This is my own fault. She got the cough less than three hours after I mailed a holiday card to my pediatrician saying I hoped we wouldn’t see her until C’s four year appointment.

When will I ever learn about jinxing myself??????

A is currently stomping around the playroom in a pair of yellow rainboats singing the Wiggles theme song at the top of her lungs and stopping periodically to flail her arms wildly and clap for herself. C announced at lunch that he was the best gymnast in class today, even if he couldn’t do a handstand yet.

I am always amazed at my children’s self esteem. I hope they can hold onto it through adolescence, it will serve them well.

No one ever told me that spelling would actually be a much more useful tool in my life than higher math as I failed spelling quiz after spelling quiz and lost spelling bee after spelling bee. But now that C and A understand every word we say, I find that at least some portion of my conversations with adults involve spelling.

Dinner decisions, for example: “Do we want to go out for p-i-z-z-a?” “Oh no. How about the d-i-n-e-r?

Or holiday gift discussions: “Did your parents get him the j-e-t e-n-g-i-n-e or the b-r-i-d-g-e?”

Or looking for the light at the end of the tunnel: “Is it time for b-a-t-h?”

I even find myself spelling out loud when childless. This weekend at the grocery store, I was apparently muttering “Shall I get the pre-made p-i-z-z-a or the d-o-u-g-h? And where is the c-a-n-d-y?” as I wandered the aisles. When a friend stopped me near the c-o-o-k-i-e-s, she just about fell over laughing.

Recently we’ve run into a little problem, however, as C is starting to spell certain words, such as p-i-z-z-a and b-a-t-h. In order to keep my children from discovering that p-i-z-z-a is even a dinner possibility, we either need to increase our spelling speed or change the spelling to an understandable by adults but temporarily confusing to children alternative. Neither scenario is particularly appealing to the spelling challenged. I have hard enough time getting the spelling right a half speed, at double time I am sure to fail miserably. And while changing the spelling might seem like it would be a no brainer for me as I generally spell wrong anyway, it’s not a skill I’m particularly good at on demand.

I was never skilled at gibberish or pig Latin either, it took too much thinking on my feet and I tend to get flustered under pressure. I could speak in French, but M is a Spanish guy, and I’m not about to take up a new language just to keep my children from hearing the word c-a-n-d-y. And plus, they’re smart enough that it would be no time at all before they figured out that caramelo is really c-a-n-d-y.

I haven’t yet figured out a solution to this issue beyond wildly making gestures that bear no resemblance to p-i-z-z-a or b-a-t-h (did I mention I am also lousy at charades?) and M spends a fair amount of time looking at me quizzically and saying “Huh? Repeat please…” Perhaps if we both learned ASL? Or perhaps I should just stop speaking of things I don’t want my children to hear…