Always Remember That

"What's a mansion?" Phoebe asked. "It's a big house," I said. "A very big house." I groped about for an example that would be relevant. "It's like...like the house in Home Alone . A very big, fancy, nice house with lots of rooms." "Is our house a mansion?" Phoebe asked. Mallory scoffed. "Our house is NOT a mansion. Our house is the OPPOSITE of a mansion. Our house is IN EVERY WAY the opposite of mansion." I think she needn't have been quite so emphatic about it.

A co-worker of mine has one of those names where his first name is a nickname of his last name. Vic Victor, for example, although that's not exactly it. Dave Davidson. Tom Thompson. Ben Benson. Every time I hear a name like this, I wonder about the thought process behind the choosing of the name. Did the parents think it was funny? Had the mother always dreamed of naming a son Edward, and couldn't give up that dream even though she married a man with the last name Edwards? Was it a family tradition, was it to honor a friend, was it a dare or a bet? Or were the parents just idiots who gave their son an idiotic name? A couple of weeks ago, I had one of those days where I wondered if I might be pregnant. If you're a woman of childbearing age, you know what I mean. I had no particular reason to think I was pregnant, I'm certainly not trying to become pregnant -- but sometimes, you know, you just wonder. (It may have been because I had just heard of two people -- two! --...

I ran for twenty solid minutes tonight without a break. My legs hurt, but I feel good.

I am charmed by Phoebe's kindergarten homework, which came home in the form of a calendar with one activity per day. Today homework was discussing the family fire escape plan; tomorrow will be practicing zipping up her jacket; Wednesday is telling me the plot of her favorite story. So much more fun than the math problems Mallory had to do tonight. (Alaska has 18 National Parks. If you add zero to that number, you'll get the number of National Parks in Virginia. How many National Parks does Virginia have? Mallory's answer: 180?) On the drive to a Brownie field trip yesterday, Mallory mentioned that she's getting an ipod for Christmas. (The truth is that she's asking for an ipod for Christmas.) All three other girls shouted in unison: "I already HAVE an ipod!" Mallory gave me one her her outraged See, Mommy? looks. Driving to the field trip entailed forty-five minutes of listening to some variation of this joke, over and over and over: What's your...

This weekend we watched the charming movie “Babies,” a film that follows four infants from the first breaths to their first steps, as the tagline explains. The babies are from all over the world – Nabmia, Mongolia, Tokyo, San Francisco – and the film confirms that no matter what, all babies are cute, and all babies like zerberts. My girls were startled by some of the details – “Why aren’t those ladies wearing shirts?” Phoebe asked, hiding her eyes every time the film cut to the African village. “That’s inappropriate,” Mallory commented when the little Mongolian boy was shown without his pants. “It’s a different culture,” Chris and I kept explaining; “this is how other people live. It’s different, not wrong.” I’m hoping that the girls learned something from the movie other than “Wow, I’m glad I was born in North Carolina instead of Nambia.” You have to start somewhere, I guess. The movie did make me feel vastly privileged, and even faintly ridiculous, when I recall my own daughters’...

“Camp is fun!” Mallory said, about thirty minutes after we arrived. Then she looked back at me. “Camp is fun, right, Mommy?” “Camp” was for Girl Scout leaders and their daughters – a special weekend getaway. I decided to bring my kids to camp so I could get a feel for the facilities and decide if camp was something I would ever want to do with our whole troop. Camp was climbing on logs and rocks and crossing a “swinging” bridge. Camp was Phoebe’s sudden fits of hysteria anytime she, Mallory, or I got separated by more than ten paces. “Mallory, wait!” she would wail, whenever Mallory tried to run ahead. “Mommy, hurry up!” she would holler tearfully, if I was lagging behind. “We have to stay together !” She takes the Buddy System very seriously, does Phoebe. Camp was going on a canoe! We were subject to a 15-minute lecture on Canoe Safety by a woman who called herself, mysteriously, Band-Aid. As Band-Aid spoke about grips and feathering and sterns and pivoting on...

Was surprised to come across the highlighted line in the book I'm reading: The author, in 1997, chose those two names at random for these particular characters (who are never mentioned again). My daughter's names (one of which we chose at random, one of which she inherited). It's just so weird. I'm wondering now if I read this book, some time before December 2001, and then remembered it subconsciously after I got pregnant, and...but no, I know that didn't happen. (This book is kind of dumb, frankly. Memorably dumb.) ---------------------- Here are the lines Phoebe wrote in her "journal" at church last weekend (asking me to spell each word, of course): Turtle on the loose Top secret cat diary Donkey Kong is amazing and awesome Then I told her I couldn't spell any more because it was time to listen to the priest. ----------------------- At a former job, Chris got to write a personal bio for his company's web page. He included the li...

Mallory has changed her mind and no longer wants to be a giraffe for Halloween. You can bet that I did not spend any amount of time trying to change her mind back. Now she wants to be a witch. Phoebe is also going to be a witch, having inherited the witch costume that her Aunt Amy wore for many years as a child, and which was recovered from a box in my in-law's attic and which is still in pristine witchy condition. I went to Target today to look at witch costumes for 8-year-old girls. I found a Sweetie Witch costume of inappropriately short length, and a Fairy Witch costume with purple sequins. I went to the Adult section and found a Spiderweb Witch costume and a Glitzy Witch costume which one would need a whole lot of cleavage to pull off. There were Twinkle Witches and Elegant Witches and Goth Witches and, yes, Sexy Witches too. I just want, for my child, a long black dress, maybe a bit raggedy around the hems, with a plain black cape. I guess I need to learn how to sew.

We received a DVD of the play Mallory was in last summer, and watched it Friday night. Captured on film was Mallory's late entrance for the big "NYC" number. As she watched herself meander across the stage to her mark, Mallory shook her head and said, "Boy, I'm a slowpoke." Perhaps awareness will be the beginning of a cure. But I'm not holding my breath.

We've had a busy week. Last weekend, the girls begged us to let them set up a lemonade stand. They've asked before, and we've vetoed the idea, having visions in our minds of the girls sitting, dejected, in the hot sun, with a full pitcher of lemonade on the table and no ready customers. But I finally said yes because, well, I figured if the no-customer scenario came true, they would at least learn a valuable life lesson about disappointment and commerce and so forth. (Plus, Phoebe made the heartrending plea that "I've wanted a lemonade stand my whole life and it's not fair !") As it happens, the girls sold 4 dozen cookies and 2 gallons of lemonade in about 45 minutes. They made $9 a piece (because I didn't have the heart to charge them for my own time and labor and the price of chocolate chips). Of course, it could be that the only thing worse than an unsuccessful lemonade stand is a successful lemonade stand, in that now they're going to wa...

I thought and thought about how to make the "bio" for my 20-year high school reunion interesting and witty and insightful and memorable. Finally I wrote: My life is not what I expected it would be, 20 years ago. I am less “successful” than I anticipated but more fortunate than I could have imagined. I think that pretty much sums it up.

I’ve been trying to think of songs to sing with the Girl Scouts. Honestly I don’t like being a song leader, but I know the kids like it, so it’s a sacrifice I must make, I suppose. Anyway, last night I remembered this song: Little cabin in the woods Little man by the window stood Little rabbit hopping by Knocking at his door “Help me! Help me! Help me!” cried “Before the hunters shoot me dead.” “Little rabbit, come inside, Safely to abide.” You do hand motions for each line, and then repeat it, dropping a line each time so that with the last repetition you ONLY do hand motions, not signing at all. I remember thinking this was great fun. But – can you sing a song like this with children today? With the hunters and the shooting? In my time it didn’t matter; we’d all watched Elmer Fudd tracking Bugs Bunny with his gun (and we were none the worse for it, I think). Kids these days, though – they see Dora the Explorer “vanquishing” her enemy by repeating “Swiper no swiping!” thr...

So, since May 1st I’ve lost 22 pounds. Yay! However, about 18 pounds of that was between May 1st and July 15th. And in August I gained two pounds back. Boo! Lots of reasons for this, I think. I got bored, mostly. I essentially ate the same thing for breakfast and lunch – whole wheat toast with peanut butter, salad, an apple – for three months. It’s been too hot to exercise. I was also – and this is no small thing, really – pleased enough to be 20 pounds lighter. I look better! I feel better! So my motivation more or less dwindled. I’m ready to get back on track, though. Twenty pounds is good; thirty or forty would be even better. So I’m starting again. I’m getting some new recipes and a semi-new plan. I figured out that if I lose about two pounds a week – giving and taking here and there for plateaus and pizza and Halloween candy and apple pie – I’ll be thirty pounds lighter by Christmas. Here’s the wacky part of my plan. I’m signing up for the Gobblers’ Run 5k race held in my ...

Mallory seems to be enjoying third grade. She made me cringe by saying this: “We had to fill out a graph of how many books we read this summer. Luckily, ‘one’ was an option.” (I considered telling her that sometimes, it’s okay to lie , but decided not to go there.) Then she said, “For quiet reading time I picked out Little House on the Prairie . But I decided it was boring so I switched it for Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew .” On the other hand, she’s reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid at home (for her required 20 minutes a day – although I don’t think she ever hits 20) and keeps saying how good it is, so maybe there’s hope. She has a new BFF and they’ve decided to be “locker pen pals,” which means that she has to make a craft or picture or something and put it in BFF’s locker before school every day. She put a note in Phoebe’s lunch box the other day: “Phoebe, I hope you have a good day in school! Love, your sister Mallory.” The “your sister” part kills me. It seems not to have occurred ...

This morning Phoebe woke up and announced, "I don't feel like going to school. I'm stuffy and my legs hurt." This escalated to a full-blown tantrum ("But I don't feeeeel like going to schoooool!"). I confess to being bad at tantrums. My best strategy is to ignore, ignore ("I'm sorry that you're upset that you can't have ice cream before dinner, but I'm not discussing it anymore, so go over there if you're going to cry") -- but you can't ignore a child who's crying about not wanting to go to school when you actually have to get her to school. Comfort ("You'll feel better once you get there, and you'll see your friends!") and reason ("You have to go to school because I have to to work, and you can't stay home all by yourself.") also failed. To make things even better, she locked her arms at her side every time I tried to get her dressed, so we wound up driving to school with her still ...

I suppose I ought to say something about the fact that Phoebe has started Kindergarten. I think I’ve been putting it off because I’m still not quite ready for it. The first morning was rough – actually, I’m going to say that the two weeks leading up to school starting were rough, with an increase of tantrums and tears on her part, which I’m chalking up to school anxiety. When the big day arrived, she woke up crying through breakfast and getting dressed (especially because she had to wear her PE uniform, which is just not pretty), and continued to cry until we got to the parking lot. We were early (I had to drop off some coffee cups for a teachers’ breakfast), so we had time for some first-day pictures outside of school. Yeah, she didn’t look too happy, did she? But, once we got in the classroom, she brightened up. She overheard her teacher say that she had just returned from visiting family in Mississippi. “I drove over the Mississippi River last Christmas,” Phoebe said. “And...

Mouse the dog is living with us this week while my inlaws are out of town. She's been good, mostly. The funny thing is, I keep slipping and almost calling her "Finn" -- but only when I'm about to reprimand her. "No jumping, Finn...Mouse!" And so on. I remember doing the same thing when Phoebe was first born. The only time I called my new baby "Mallory" was when I was at the end of my rope. "Please go to sleep, Mal...Phoebe." And so on. I'm not sure what that means, really. I will say that I miss Finn, and when I see the girls walking off into the school building together I miss my babies. But I'm also very glad to live most of the time in a dogless, babyless house.

"Say, 'Third grade rules!'" I said to Mallory, trying to get her to smile for the camera. "But I don't know if that's true yet," she said. My child, the eight-and-a-half-year-old literalist. I loved third grade, myself. I loved my teacher, Mrs Neill. She could be loud and kind of scary when we were acting up, but she was funny, too. Certain things she said still stick in my mind. We did the state capitols in third grade, and I can't see or hear "Idaho" without remembering how she said, "I'd a hoe iffen it doesn't rain," when we learned "Boise." If I hear the line, "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo," I remember Mrs Neill saying in a squeaky voice, "I'm down here, Juliet!" (When, I learned that "wherefore" actually means "why," I was immediately filled with concern that perhaps Mrs Neill didn't realize that.) One day we were learning irregular verb en...