Lucky Seven

Dearest Sugar Bee,

It was your birthday yesterday and I fell in love with you again. We were out in the desert with friends and you were your beautiful, lively self. Enjoying your family and friends and the sunshine and the wacky antelope ranch where we stayed. You said you wanted to stay there for a whole week. We spent a lot of time holding hands and swinging in a hammock and talking about life. I gave you your number seven charm to wear around your neck this year. The charm that I wore when I was seven and Grandma wore and Aunt Lenore too. The charm that Grammy brought into our lives. Lucky seven. And how lucky we are.

Flashback a week and we are fighting about homework. Again. You are giving me that look. Slack jawed, tongue forward, rolled eyes, wobbling your head like you work in the Main Bazaar. How do you even know how to do that? There are like three Indians who live in Israel. And I want to kill you. I feel my chest tighten and I want to shriek that I can't stand you. That I don't understand why you treat me the way you do. Why only me? I try to diffuse your frustration and anger. I'm pretty good at that. I've had a lot of practice. Plus I know reading is hard but you've come so far! You can't hear me because you are too far gone. I excuse myself from homework and give myself a time out in my bedroom and hold my head in my hands until the anger dissipates. When you calm down you knock on my door and we hug. You give me the picture you drew of us together. I smile and thank you and add it to the pile. We continue to work, you finish your homework and peace is restored to our home.

And so it goes Sugar Bee. Two steps forward, one step back. Which of course mostly refers to my own progress in navigating our relationship. You are forging ahead as best you can and you are magnificent. You are strong and loving and confident and curious and wild and silly and expressive. You are finding your stride and it is beautiful to watch.

But we clash, as do mothers and daughters. And it reminds me of clashes I used to have with Grandma. And that's hard too. A friend of mine with a four year old asked me what was the deal with her "teenager" and I gave her a knowing smile. I told her it eases up with time. And it does. I can see that. Our clashes are fewer and further between. We no longer fight about the "bumps" in your high ponytail. Getting dressed in the morning is a non-issue (school uniforms help). We do that funny thing now when we feel a fight starting we put up our fists and make our meanest faces. And then we laugh. But sometimes the fury comes on so fast that we miss our window and it gets ugly.

It's all okay though, you know why Sugar Bee? Because you are still just seven. You are not a teenager. You just play at it sometimes and play is good. You are still just seven, I remind myself. It's been a year of big changes, like every year, but you still play with dolls and you still like unicorns and rainbows and Strawberry Shortcake and Rainbow Loom and drawing and dancing in front of the mirror and snuggling and pretty hairbands and climbing trees and hiking and Ivy and Bean and Hello Kitty and Legos and riding bikes and baking. And you love Judo. What would we do without Judo? You have great friends who still like to play house and build forts and hold hands with you at school. You have one brother who thinks even your farts are magical and another brother, who, despite his constant teasing and antagonism, admits he can't live without you. And you have two parents who often find themselves staring at you and wondering how such an astonishing creature came from them. In fact you are surrounded by love and admiration going back generations and you know it. You feel it. So something is going right.

And as we swing in the hammock together and watch the clouds move through the blue sky on your seventh birthday at the Antelope Ranch, my chest tightens with love this time and I know it is all passing so quickly.  And you know that I love you.

Mommy

Three

Dear Sugar Bee,
Today you turned three. How lucky I am to have you in my life. Here are a whole bunch of things that I love about you:

1. the way you hug my neck
2. how you share with your big brother
3. your voice
4. how you sob when Aba leaves the house
5. how you snap out of it twenty seconds later
6. your sense of style
7. your belly
8. the way you know how to calm yourself
9. the way you dance
10. when you say I love you so much mommy
11. how you potty trained yourself (that was really considerate)
12. the way you march
13. your silly words
14. your curls
15. how you worry about your brother
16. the way you skip seven and ten when you count
17. your indiscriminate love of stuffed animals
    
18. the way you snuggle in the mornings
19. your willingness to try new foods
20. your ability to forget what you were crying about
    
21. your friendly demeanor
22. your love of tiny things and tiny places to keep them
    
23. the intensity in your eyes when you run

Every day with you is a blessing. Even the days when you draw on the walls or change your shirt six times or won't let me brush your hair. Those are the days that I learn the most from you. To have fun. To be patient. To let go.

all my love,
mommy

Can you hear me now?

My daughter has further endeared herself to me. We were browsing the latest Real Simple magazine (which incidentally has a tiny but adorable feature on my friend Jenn Louis who owns a catering company called Culinary Artistry and a relatively new restaurant called Lincoln up in Portland - must check out if in the area) and she was pointing out whatever she recognized. Cars. Flowers. Shoes. Then, bless her heart, she saw a picture of a beautiful Eileen Fischer model and said, Mommy! Even better, she turned the page, saw a picture of the Verizon Wireless guy (Can you hear me now?) and said sweetly, Aba!

Can you hear me laughing now?

Here's sleeping with you kid

My daughter and I have come to an agreement about sleeping arrangements. Three days ago she slept the whole night in her room. What did we do differently? We started putting them to bed together. She used to fall asleep while I was singing songs (and it would make sense that she then would have trouble falling asleep again when she wakes at night without me there singing her songs) but I now I sing my songs, give everyone goodnight kisses and I leave. There's always a little upheaval. Mommy, she's on my bed! Mommy, she's playing with stuff! Mommy, she's touching me. And I have to March them back in their room a few times. But after twenty minutes they are usually both in the room and finding a way to coexist in the dark. The other change is that instead of putting her back on her mattress after she's rolled halfway across the room, I just left her where she was on the carpet and put a blanket on her.

So I repeated the exact routine the next night, but she still woke up and walked into our room holding her pillow. When she went back to grab Julio the rat and her blanket, I put my pillow on the floor next to my bed. When she came back in I whispered, do you want to sleep on the floor next to mommy? She agreed. And that was that. In the morning she woke up and instead of coming into our bed she reached for her blanket and snuggled in more on the floor. She appears to like the floor. Last night, same story. Although she came in much closer to 5 am.(progress!) I had already put the pillow and blanket down there for her. She only needed help finding her Julio in her room. So I retrieved Julio and she got cozy on the floor. Bingo.

Tonight, I'll have her pillow and blanket ready PLUS the spare Julio. If all goes well, I won't even know she's there. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Pissy

I thought it would last a day or two. I was wrong. Several weeks ago (months? I've lost count.) my daughter was suddenly terrified of taking a bath. This is a girl who used to lie down in the tub so that only the tip of her face - like her nose, eyes and pursed lips - was sticking out of the water and bubbles. While my son was whining about getting his head wet she was snorkeling for tub toys. We called her the baby beluga. Then one day, seemingly out of nowhere, she freaked out about going in the bathtub. I put her in and she was literally shrieking to get out. My son was already in so I knew it wasn't too hot. It was the same as any bath day. Same amount of water. Same gnarly bath toys. But she was having none of it and made that clear with blood curdling screams. Step aside Ronald Regan, this girl is the Great Communicator.  All the while she was also ranting about poo poo. So I figured she had to go. I put a diaper on her but she didn't go. And then it occurred to me that maybe she was worried she would have to go. Two days before she had pooped in the tub which really upset her (though you'd think my son would be the one with the hang-up now. Yes doctor, I have a latent fear of floaties). 

Anyway this has been going on for a while and the only way I can get her in the tub is if I go in first which as you can imagine after a day of work and scrambling for dinner and an hour at the park, the last thing I want to do at 7:30 at night is get in a luke warm bath. A spa, sure. A sauna, no problem. As long as I'm alone. In Baden Baden. But the luke warm piss tub is not a fave. Although now she even gets nervous with me in the tub and I see her kind of holding her crotch which says to me that the feel of the water is making her want to pee but she's not comfortable peeing in the tub (she used to just pee right on her brother without a care in the world. Again, we wonder why he's not the one troubled by the bathtub). So here I am telling her, sweetie, it's okay. You can pee in the tub. I've lost my mind.

So how is this going to end? I don't want to force her but she stinks. My son went through a brief bathtub boycott when he was about her age. Younger actually. We came to understand, at least we think, that he was afraid he would go down the drain. So I sat his butt on the drain and he felt a little tickle of suction which made him laugh and maybe he realized that in fact neither his giant tushy nor the rest of him would ever fit down this drain. But his anxiety only lasted a week. This is going on months. I even put her in a  swim diaper (I mean I am pulling out all the stops here). That worked for a few minutes until she likely peed in the diaper. She's going to end up being the stinky kid at school that no one wants to be near. Just pee in the goddamn tub. We all do it. It's your one opportunity to pee standing up. You'll love it. It's liberating. 

No can do.

Eat. Play. Dough.

What a great weekend we had. The highlight for today was sitting on our porch reading my new book, Eat Pray Love, which I am enjoying so much, while my daughter played with her play dough. She was in her usual post-nap happy spirits. There was a slight breeze. The play dough was still in a malleable state (which is not always the case after months of non-use). It was divine.

So for an hour I read and she mashed the play dough and mixed up all the colors into a big swirly mess. And then she tried to sort them back into their cylinders. And then she took a taste and grimaced, then laughed. And I laughed. What a great girl. What a treat to spend the whole weekend with her.

Meaning to Wean

We're still in Israel and thankfully everyone has adjusted to the ten hour time zone difference. We're having a terrific time. Grandparents are doing plenty of babysitting and my husband and I have been taking full advantage.

But this isn't a travel log so I won't bore you. With the travel details anyway. I'll bore you with other details. My daughter's been slowly weaning herself over the last few months, basically since I went back to work when she was six months old. I pumped twice a day at work for nearly three months after going back but it was getting to be too annoying to spend twenty minutes on the pump only to get one ounce of milk. Plus there wasn't exactly a designated place to pump so I'd end up hiding in the corner of an empty office with no window blinds hoping that no one would barge in. It wasn't super conducive to milk flow. So of course my supply dropped. And my daughter was eating a lot more food by then so that was fine. But I wasn't ready for her to give up the boob altogether. I actually really like nursing. So I continued to nurse her in the evenings and the mornings and once at night.

But then she sort of wanted a bottle more than a boob before bed and then sometimes I'd leave for work in the morning right after she woke up so I didn't have the chance to feed her...and little by little those feedings went the way of the pump. But I continued to indulge her night feeding(s) because I didn't want her to give up on nursing altogether. And that's where we are right now. She cries at 4 or 5am and we nurse together. I think once we're home after the trip she'll have to give up her early morning beverage just because I need my 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. So I'm trying to savor these last few pre-dawn sessions and all of my daughter's funny nursing idiosyncrasies. For example...

Sometimes she spends the whole time twirling her hair. So adorable. Or she'll have one arm wrapped around my back and be whapping me on the chest with her free arm. Less adorable. But by far my favorite move is when she takes out her pincer and tries to pull the freckles off my chest. Or the flowers off my pajamas. One by one she goes in with her little claw trying to remove whatever markings, blemishes, or loose threads are in her field of vision. All the while making her snarfle noises. Sometimes she catches my eye and gives me a smile which I always appreciate. But then it's right back to work de-pilling my sweater.