Mama Mama Quite Contrary

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...

Guess what I did this weekend?  I hiked these mountains: Now I know what you are thinking.   Mama Mama you are a homebody.  You pay someone to make you exercise.  You are not the type to go on a 9 mile hike in the snow and ice in mid-November.    'Tis true fair readers, 'tis true.  I ended up doing this because I had a plan and it backfired.  BIG TIME.  Let me explain. Back in August, my sister watched the Young Contrarians so my husband and I could have a night away from our children.  We went to this resort in Connecticut and had a wonderfully relaxing time.  We also spent most of the time planning how we could do this sort of thing again.  I knew then that another night away would be Mark's birthday gift.  When my husband's birthday arrived a few weeks ago, he was thrilled when I announced that we could go away again. I told him that we could do whatever he wanted which is when all this planning backfired on m...

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...

Tell me that Jackson Five song isn't running through your head right now... My husband bought me an Ipod shuffle for my birthday. This is a big deal yo.  I shun technology.  I don't even have caller ID and when you call me and I am on the phone, guess what?  You get a busy signal.  No shit.  My friend Grace says that I am "off the grid" and with the exception of the occasional TV drug I give my children, I kind of it like it that way. So, in light of that fun fact, I thought I would be a lazy blogger today and tell you a little bit more about Mama Mama ABC style.   Here we go: Age:   35 and it feels great! B ed size: Queen size.  C hore I hate: They all kind of suck but I am going to go with mopping. D ogs : Pup.  He's the best kind because he is stuffed.   E ssential start to my day: My husband getting up with the girls F avorite color: Green.  It's the new black. G old or silver:  I think I look better i...

Hey Internet, I've been wondering about something.  Do you think it is bad to refer to your children as "the animals?"  As in,  "Oh, I've got to put my animals to bed." Or "Should we feed the animals pasta for dinner or soup?"  Or "Sorry about the mess.  The animals crushed the graham crackers into the floor again." It often seems like a fitting description for my children. They eat without regard to silverware or dishes.  They sleep curled into little balls.  Their play consists of climbing on each other and wrestling one another into submission. They run really fast. They like to forage. They growl and roar when they are angry.  Frankly, it seems clear that my children seem to lack any sense of dignity at all. Lately, however, I've been thinking that maybe calling my children "the animals" is a wee bit demeaning.  They are my children, after all, and even though they may act like puppies, I should probably show them a bi...

Recently a family friend of ours told us that if he could have laid out his life plan knowing how hard it would be to have twin babies, he would still choose to have two at once. Even if he had the choice to have the same exact children but not at the same time, he would CHOOSE the experience of having twins.  I nodded politely but in my head I was thinking  there is no way in hell I would go through that again.    It is well-documented in this blog that my twins were a huge surprise.  I had a few weeks to prepare for the baby I was expecting and the bonus I was also getting.  I was frantic with the idea that I was going to have three children under the age of three and little help.  To say that we were overwhelmed for the first year of their lives hardly conveys the extreme amount of exhaustion, stress, and misery we endured.  It was brutal and if given the option of all things being equal, I absolutely would NOT choose to do it again. I think...

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...