Mama Mama Quite Contrary

My girls spend a lot of time together.  Jude and Elie are inseparable for all the reasons associated with young twins and, apart from when she is in school, Vivi is home with them.  Vivi will often try to engage her sisters in her games which generally consist of bossing J&E around in the name of playing "school" or "dance class" or "summer camp." The problem is that Jude and Elie drive Vivi crazy.  They don't listen.  They don't follow her directions and even worse, they are full of their own ideas.  Oh, and sometimes they just. won't. stop. touching. her. stuff.  The few harmonious moments of sibling love quickly spiral into a three-way battle for control. I've tried to talk with Vivi about some of the ways that she can deal with her sisters.  Her first step is what we have called the counter-offensive.  She put this sign on her door: JUDE OR ELIYA CAN'T COME IN!!!!! This is Aviva's room.  Onle [only] mom and dad c...

Guess what we got yesterday? A surprise snow storm! It started snowing around dusk and the girls were beyond excited.  I was too.  There's nothing I love more than being in my warm house watching it snow outside.  Because I was feeling all warm and toasty inside, I roasted some acorn squash and made a matzoh ball soup.  The soup was a hit with the kids... the squash not so much.  I think the snow really mellowed everyone out  because our house was silent by 8:00.  My husband has a cold so he went to bed not long after the girls but I sat in the quiet by our picture window and read until 9:30.  What a wonderful way to end the day. Jude woke up this morning and yelled the loudest, happiest "Good Morning!" I had ever heard.  She and Elie were so excited that they ran into my room and demanded I look out the window with them.  Elie exclaimed, "Mama!  There is still snow on our minivan!"  Vivi was thrilled too and got rea...

Vivi loves Obama.  It all started during the 2008 election when her dad and I talked at great length about politics.  We were so happy to see George W. Bush go that I think our enthusiasm was contagious.  She obviously didn't know anything about the implications of one winner versus another but she decided early on that Obama was her "new best friend."  She was only two then but when my husband came home with this "Obama nightgown" she was delighted.  Now, with another election upon us, Vivi is just as enthusiastic about Obama.  So much so that she wrote him a letter.  Actually, more like a book since she is just as enthusiastic about using her stapler. This is the main page but there are a few others with "You Rock Obama" surrounded by even more stickers and a page with Vivi's stats and address so Obama can write her back. We included the picture below and she sent it off. My six-year old certainly picks up on our f...

I have decided that I need a goal. Something really meaningful.  Something I think I can achieve.  Not the usual lets see if I can get all 12 loads of laundry done today  nonsense. My goal is to blog every day this month and, unlike the laundry, I am actually looking forward to it! Soooo, with that being said, do you want to know what yours truly got for her 36th birthday? Here it is: A pretty awesome "birthday sculpture" made from the recycle bin. My favorite vanilla cake from my favorite bakery. Too many birthday snuggles to count. Oh yeah, and head lice. And let me tell you folks, that is the gift that keeps on giving. The girls were all in the tub and I was doing my usual bathroom ritual which involves searching my head for gray hairs and promptly plucking them.  (Hey, it takes work to look this good.  Hardee har har...)  Anyway, while perusing my scalp what to my wondering eyes should appear?  A bug. ...

Today I am home.  Alone. The girls started school on Tuesday so that makes today the second day this week that I have been wandering the hallowed halls of Chez Mama Mama by myself. And it feels so good. I thought I would be really sad to send Vivi off to first grade and my wee Turtles off to nursery school but I am not.  Vivi was thrilled to go back and  I got to have a good solid week with just her before school started.  We went to the movies, cleaned out her clothes and did school shopping, took the train to Boston and visited the science museum, and had an all-around fantastic time.  It was a great way to end the summer. Jude and Elie got their share of camp and adventures this summer too.  We made bubbles and sidewalk paint. We had picnics at the park and worked in our garden.  We went to the beach.  We saw fireworks and decorated our shed with colored shaving cream. We did a lot and for the most part we enjoyed it a...

Internet, I don't even know how to process what happened to me today.  I am feeling angry and humiliated and anxious all because I did something today that I DO NOT think was wrong but someone else did. A man called the police on me today for leaving my sleeping twins and fully awake six-year-old daughter in the car alone... for less than five minutes.   This is what happened: I needed to pick up a dress that I had ordered.  The store opened at 11 and I pulled into the parking lot at 11.  All three girls were in the car but Jude and Elie had just fallen asleep.  Vivi was awake and coloring and said she didn't want to go in.  There were only three or four other cars in the parking lot and because the front of the store where I would be has a big window and I knew I wouldn't be long, I decided to run in alone.  I put down the windows in the car (it was 80 degrees and somewhat overcast), locked the doors, and gave Vivi the usual warning that ...

How do you help a child cope with the loss of her best friend? I wish I knew.  Vivi and Charlotte have been inseparable for years.  They spend hours playing together, sharing secrets, and planning sleep overs and dance parties.  Charlotte, who is two and a half years older, proudly proclaimed that she and Vivi are like sisters because they "have blue eyes and almost exactly the same hair except that Vivi's is curly and brown and [hers] is straight and blonde."  Vivi says they are sisters because Charlotte saw her when she "was just three days old."  They love each other and that affection is frequently expressed in love notes Vivi draws for Charlotte and the way Charlotte looks after Vivi on the school bus. This is my daughter's first love affair and it is ending. Charlotte is moving... to New Zealand.   I adore Charlotte and her family.  I feel like I am a better mother because Charlotte's mother sets such a great example for me. ...

Internet, please forgive me, I have created yet another mythical being to con my children into doing something they don't want to do. Her name is the Hairy Fairy. As I explained to my girls, the Hairy Fairy is a rather unfortunate soul.  She has the most awful hair.  It is stick straight, thin, and the color of smashed peas.  She tried everything to make her hair curly like Vivi, Jude, and Elie's but nothing has ever worked and she felt very sad about that.  One day, she realized that the only way that she could ever have the beautiful, curly hair she admired so much would be to take the curls that big girls like mine no longer need.  That was how she magically transformed from sad sack to magical fairy hair collector.  Because the Hairy Fairy knows that not every girl wants to part with her curls, she leaves a treasure behind to thank the girl for her kind curl donation. I had Vivi at the word "treasure." So, after months of months of "gr...

Am I the only one who thinks the holidays come and go in one big blur?  It seems like it was just the beginning of December and we were all worked up about choosing our tree.   My husband had the brilliant idea that we should tag a tree after Thanksgiving before all the good ones are scooped up.  (Apparently our Charlie Brown trees of yore were haunting my poor Jewish spouse.)  Well, he and the girls did a good job this year.  Take a look: I also spent a fair amount of time at the sewing machine this December.  I made those big cushions on the left hand side of the tree-- complete with piping.  (That's unchartered territory for me!)  Jude and Elie love them and, as I suspected, they work beautifully for story time or as implements of destruction. Speaking of Jude and Elie, they had quite an accidental meeting with "Santa Claus" in the YMCA parking lot a few weeks ago.  There is an older man who works out when I do.  He has long white...

I love the month of December.  I love the preparation for the holidays.  There's the excitement of picking out a Christmas tree and decorating it.  The joy of lighting the menorah for Hanukkah and seeing my girls marvel at how beautifully the light reflects in our windows.  I love baking cookies, making presents for my children, and being with our little family.  We also try hard to remind ourselves and our children how lucky we are. I had all this in mind when I came up with my advent calendar for this year.  Last year, I filled each day with stickers or chocolate but I wanted something a bit more meaningful.  So instead of treats, every day has a card and they say: -Decorate the Christmas tree -Walk around the neighborhood and look at the lights -Interview your family and videotape it -Send a Christmas card to a friend you don't see -Make hot chocolate -Do something nice for your sisters -Have a camp out in front of the Christmas tree -Hav...

As we were walking out of our parent/teacher conference today, my husband and I were remarking how wonderful it is to see Vivi thriving in public school.  We had our concerns-- the lack of recess, the strong focus on academics, the homework-- but it has become very clear to us that we made the right choice to send her to public school.  Vivi's teacher is phenomenal and we have no doubt that she is just as good or better than any private school teacher.  Plus, she really impressed us today when she showed us Vivi's special folder.   Because Vivi often gets her work done before her classmates, her teacher made her a special book full of puzzles and enrichment activities that she can do while she waits for others to finish.  It really struck us that in a time of bare-bones funding, classrooms full of children living in poverty, and teachers forced to do paperwork upon paperwork all in the name of "documenting progress" that Vivi's teacher went out of her way to ma...

I thought I would be a lady of leisure with Vivi in school full-time but I guess Jude and Ellie did not get the memo. So for the past month, we have been pretty busy.  Vivi lost her second tooth on the second day of kindergarten.  She ran home from the bus stop, locked herself in the bathroom, and came out a few minutes later looking like this: A few days after Vivi started school, I had a birthday and celebrated my official "advanced maternal age" milestone.  I welcomed my free-falling fertility with open arms.  I also welcomed the cake.  It turns out Ellie is a bit of a rogue candle extinguisher so Vivi is doing her best to protect my opportunity to make a birthday wish.  (See note above about free falling fertility.) Perhaps because I love cake, my husband got me twelve sessions with the personal trainer at the gym for my birthday.  After the first session, the words "you only look like you are in terrible shape" kept running through my hea...

Despite the look on our little kindergartener's face: and her refusal to let me take a decent picture: and her anxious thumb-sucking: Vivi declares kindergarten to be pretty good.  When I asked her the best part of her day, she told me it was recess because playing on the "spinning wheel [merry-go-round] was awesome."  When I asked what was the worst part of her day was she told me, "Nothing, mama.  Everything is the best.  Well, except in the morning when they were going over the rules.  That was boring." Personally, I declare kindergarten to be a little overwhelming.  I cried as I was leaving her at school and then again when I got to the YMCA and then again while the Turtles were napping and the house was quiet.    I almost cried for a fourth time when I went to pick her up and saw that she wasn't in line with her classmates.  (She was put on the bus to go home instead of in the pick-up line but a teacher went and found her before...

I have been all aflutter with preparation for kindergarten. I've purchased an ungodly amount of supplies and snacks, filled out a pile of papers, attended an orientation and a kindergarten playdate, and sewn a super-duper fancy pencil case.  I thought I was doing all this to prepare my first-born for kindergarten.  What I realized this morning is that I did all that to prepare myself. Kindergarten is the place where Vivi will really begin to understand that she has autonomy.  Family will fade into the background of her school life and time with her friends will become her priority.  There will be rules and expectations from other people besides her parents.  School isn't about play anymore. As much as she is ready, Vivi is doing this on her own. Mommy and Daddy won't be in the classroom.  She will choose her friends and they won't necessarily be the children of Mommy's friends.  She is beginning the process of letting us go. The question is can I do...

I had to laugh when I saw this crying baby photo link up party .  When Vivi was a baby, I don't think we got any pictures of her crying.  As our only child, her tears were a rare occurrence and I never thought to document the crying when it happened.  I was more concerned with putting an end to the tears. As if that would ever happen with twins!  Photos with one or more crying babies were an inevitability.  So here you have it, my contribution to the link up: Eliya giving those lungs a workout.  Jude trying to tune her out.  Week #1 Jude screaming and the poor big sister not sure what to make of it.  My personal favorite since this pretty much sums up Jude's first year of life. Unidentified screaming child in the background.  It's probably Jude. When the babies got going, so did Vivi.  Oh, and mommy.  Mommy always cried too. I'm also linking up to Simply Modern Mom's Glimpse into Motherhood .

We recently received an invitation for Vivi to attend a Kindergarten orientation and play date at her new school.  She will get to tour the classrooms, meet her teachers, and say hello to the principal.  I think this is a great thing and we are all looking forward to it. But....   I am a bit perplexed by the supply list for kindergarten which was on the back of the invitation.  I am supposed to send my child to school with the following: 1 large bottle of hand sanitizer 2 boxes of crayons- one with 8 large primary colors and one with 16 colors 2 rolls of paper towels 1 pair of small child-size scissors 1 eraser 1 box of markers 1 box of colored pencils 2 packages of #2 pencils, sharpened 1 package EXPO dry-erase markers 4 folders with double pockets on the bottom (2 with 3 fasteners on the inside and 2 without) 4 large glue sticks 2 boxes of tissues 1 art sketch book with blank pages 1 package small drinking cups 1 container of disinfectant wipes Geesh.  I re...

Even though Vivi's language has become a bit more complex and (ahem....) colorful, sometimes her simplest notes are the sweetest.  This is what she gave me a couple of weeks ago: My present was this picture: Vivi explained that she and I are walking on a path to China together in our high heels. Since she's really into writing and sounding out words, I asked her to write my grocery list.  I told her we needed: Chocolate Graham Crackers Veggie Burgers Watermelon And this is what she wrote: She may be sunshine and rainbows but she's part potty too. Linking up to Simply Modern Mom's Glimpse into Motherhood .