Mama Mama Quite Contrary

I spent the weekend feeling a bit unsettled and I'm not sure how to let it go. When I picked Vivi up from her last day of camp on Friday, the teacher said to me, "She did great all week. You would never know that she's never been to school." I am sure the teacher meant it in a complimentary way but the comment bothered me. I felt like there was some judgement that Vivi, being three years and four months old, should have had some type of formal education before now or that it was odd to find a child who is bright and socialized even without school. Since Vivi was 13 months old, I have been home with her full-time. My husband and I always knew that when she was pre-school age, we would send her to an official nursery school. This idea, however, that children need to be in some sort of formal learning environment before they are even done toddling seems a tad ridiculous. I have even heard parents of babies refer to their child's daycare as "school." Are you...

I went to the farm a couple of weeks ago and they had yukon potatoes, in all their glorious fresh from the earth goodness. Excited by their appearance, I ran through all the things I could make with them: mashed potatoes, a tart with a potato crust, some hearty kind of soup. I purchased a couple pounds and was filled with warm thoughts on the drive home. Then, to my horror, I realized that it isn't November. In fact, it is August and it is bloody hot outside. (Hence, the warm thoughts.) Oh, and I hate potato salad. So they sit on the counter waiting for a damn culinary intervention.

Vivi is a great eater and for that, I am grateful. I would love to take credit for her unusual pre-school taste buds but I think she is just a curious kid and that curiosity extends to food as well. She's been taking lunch all this week and has had everything from sesame noodles to tabbouleh. Her lunch box comes home empty and I'm delighted that I manage to hit a home run in the food department. That is until yesterday when I committed the cardinal sin of parenting in the new millennium. I sent Vivi to camp with.... PEANUT BUTTER!!!!!!!!!! (On a boring ol' rice cake, no less.) Apparently schools today have this thing about peanut butter. If I send it in my child's lunch and another child with a peanut allergy happens to eat it and go into anaphylaxis... well, that would be a bad thing. I guess I was supposed to know this without being told. Obviously, no one wants a kid's life to be threatened but it seems to me that banning it from an entire school because of one c...

I woke up this morning to find Vivi cooking in her kitchen. She was making us "raspberry noodles" for breakfast. With a big day of camp ahead of her, she apparently needed something more fortifying than the bowl of dry cereal and watered down juice my husband put before her. Talk about a breakfast of champions. In order to properly cook her meal, Vivi had to put on her apron and chef's hat: And nothing else: I finished my delicious breakfast and Vivi happily left for camp. Then I went to the kitchen and polished off some raw cookie dough. Yeah, that's right. I made it on Sunday but it's been too blazing hot to put it in the oven and my attempts to make a few in the toaster oven failed miserably. So I've been eating it raw. It is both exhilarating and disgusting all at the same time. Please ignore previous post about getting my fitness on.

This morning we shipped Vivi off to camp. I never envisioned camp for a three-year-old but by mid-June I was pretty certain that I was going to need some help at the end of August if I wanted to survive the summer with my sanity intact. So all this week my little spitfire will be getting her kicks from 8:30 until 3:30 under someone else's supervision. Last night, in the heat and chaos of our "vacation" week coming to an end, I was ironing name labels into Vivi's clothes and packing lunches. My husband was beginning the mental and organizational adjustment of returning to work and we all were feeling a bit excited and anxious about the whole prospect of the two of them being out of the house all day. Vivi went to bed at about 8 and by 8:30 I had climbed in with her. I wanted to snuggle and hold onto my first baby who is so much a kid that I can hardly stand it. "Mama, you can sleep in my bed tonight," she said. When I told her that I would take up too m...

Vivi has started to... ahem... touch herself. It's been hot out and she's been going without clothes for the better part of the week so she's had more than enough opportunities to give her body a thorough review. It's not that I have a problem with her exploring her body. It's natural and normal and all that. I just really don't want to see her do it. So the other day, while she was checking things out, I said, "Hey V, I know you like to touch there but it is your business and you should have some privacy." "But Mama, I want to do it here." "Well, some people may not want to see it. That's not polite." "Mama, if you don't like it, don't look." Well, I wasn' t quite sure what to say to that. I mean it is how I feel about breastfeeding in public. I don't flaunt my breasts but if one or both of my babies needs to eat, the boobs have to come out. If someone doesn't like it, too bad. They probably don...

There are a few words that I thought I'd never say as a parent. Things like "...because I said so" or "if I have to stop this car..." Those phrases always seemed tired and old and I vowed never to use them. Well, I am old and tired and I have to admit that I have threatened to stop the car on numerous occasions. This morning, however, I uttered eight words that I really didn't expect ever to string together. In horror, I yelled, "VIVI! DON'T PUT LIP GLOSS ON THE BABIES!!!!!!!!!!!"

I know I'm fat. Yeah, yeah, I gave birth to twins five months ago and I probably should be easier on myself but I know what I can look like. And what I'm looking at every day ain't it. With both of my pregnancies, I ate sensibly and gained the recommended amount of weight. I didn't deny myself anything but I didn't overdo it either. I gave birth to three good-sized babies and have nursed or plan to nurse them all exclusively until they start solid foods. After that, I'll just continue nursing at least until they are one. This plan worked beautifully with Vivi and my pregnancy weight melted off. With the Turtles, it just hasn't happened. I'm sure there are a whole host of reasons for this. Vivi was the model baby- sleeping soundly, regularly, and through the night by three months. She was the only child so getting out for a walk was never a problem. I returned to work part-time when she was 13 weeks so we had a routine for our meals and snacks. We both ...

Sunday morning we packed up ALL of our children and headed south to the Newport Folk Festival . We purchased the tickets one rainy June evening when sitting outside listening to music seemed like a nice way to relax. Not once, in our sleep-deprived delirium, did we consider how we would actually pull it off. All we thought was we will never have a chance to hear Pete Seegar, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, and Arlo Guthrie in one place again. It was a gift we wanted to give our girls even if they wouldn't ultimately remember it. When we got there, I feared we had made a terrible mistake. There was no shade to be had in the entire park and our beach umbrella was "strictly prohibited." Apparently, those festival folk don't like to have their view obstructed. I frantically covered my children in sunscreen (even the babies) and hats and prayed for clouds. By 2:30, my prayers had been answered. The clouds rolled in and the breeze off the water made it the perfect temperature. The...