Definitely too old for the boat ride. There was a height maximum, actually.
We went to an oceanside amusement park today, to celebrate Mother’s Day. My mother and my brother joined us, along with half of the state, but the weather gods were not smiling down on us at all. The day started off just fine, but once we got down to the shore, the clouds started rolling in and the wind started howling.
We were all in sweaters. And the smart parents dressed their kids in winter jackets, gloves and hats. Sophie’s teeth were chattering – but she still wanted to go on the rides. Chloe and I screamed through a kid’s rollercoaster – at which point I realized that I was too old for this stuff. As I kid I LOVED the scariest, craziest rides. But even the tame, rollicking hills of this mini-coaster made me nauseous.
My brother was a good sport – he bravely accompanied Chloe on the Tilt-a-Whirl. Which would have caused me to puke. Chloe, of course, adored it. She wanted to go on again, but we all refused to accommodate her request. Our love for her isn’t entirely limitless.
Anyway, we had to cut our day short. There came a point when Sophie’s lips were turning blue – and despite her good naturedness and desire to stay, it was Mother’s Day and what kind of mom would I be if my kids ended up in the hospital with frostbite (yes, it seemed like it was that cold).
We promised the girls that we would return before the end of the summer. And we will – when we can wear shorts without fear of our legs becoming numb.
My brother arrived for a visit earlier today, and Chloe and Sophie have been on their best behavior – so far. Sophie was in particularly good form.
When asked to describe what she saw at the zoo last week, Sophie told her rapt audience that she saw a polar and ducks. This wasn’t entirely accurate. But she was close. We did see this very large, lumbering grizzly bear, who was pacing back and forth on a rock.
And when Sophie went on to say that she saw the “bear’s tushy,” she wasn’t completely misremembering. We did see its butt from afar. And it was pretty big. She also saw the butts of baby swans (which she probably mistook for ducks).
She’s very into butts right now. And thinks it’s extremely funny whenever she talks about someone’s or something’s tushy. And when Chloe laughs at her commentary, that makes Sophie even happier. When Mommy, Papa and Sophie laugh at her commentary, she’s ecstatic. Oh, to be 32 months again…
Although Chloe has hosted a couple of sleepovers with friends in her short kid life, she hadn’t enjoyed a sleepover at a friend’s house until tonight.
You can imagine her excitement when she received the phone call…and her exultation when we told her she could go…Although it would be an exaggeration to say that her joyful shrieks could be heard around the world, it wouldn’t much of a stretch to say that they were probably heard by our next-door neighbor.
To top it all off, she and her friend were going to watch “Nancy Drew,” a movie she’s been clamoring to see since it came out last year and since she started reading her first Nancy Drew book a few weeks ago. Life doesn’t get much better than that.
It’s amusing to see Chloe and her friends enjoying many of the same things, including sleepovers, that my friends and I enjoyed when I was a child. Despite the fact that kids grow up more quickly than they did when I was younger, Chloe and her buddies are still young enough to have innocent fun. Which makes me extremely happy and that much more determined to prevent her from growing up. At all.
She has her weekly swim lesson tomorrow morning – but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to get an early phone call. Her end of the conversation will no doubt go something like this: “Mommy, we didn’t get to sleep until after MIDNIGHT! I’m really tired and I want to play some more here. Please, Mommy, please…”
Sophie is a real helper. She loves to help around the house. Throws out garbage, puts away her toys, goes fake food shopping for us, throws her clothes in the dirty bin and clears her plate off the table.
She also loves to make a mess of her food. I hate when we have rice as a side dish. After Sophie has finished eating, there’s more rice on the floor than there is in her belly. In fact, who needs a carpet when one has Sophie? A rice carpet might be nice. Pasta night with shredded cheese is also a treat. Given the choice, however, I’d stick with the rice. Less smelly.
Sophie has her friend’s birthday party on Saturday – I’m looking forward to seeing the buddies in action – they spend Mondays together. Four little girls – all 3 years old, or close to it. They talk together, they dance together, they run around our babysitter’s apartment together. They’re little people, trying to use big words and full sentences while in diapers. It’s pretty trippy, actually – and absolutely adorable.
What a pleasant evening we had tonight. We both got home at a reasonable hour, and we spent good, quality time with Chloe and Sophie. I didn’t look at the computer once, and my withdrawal wasn’t so bad. Just some sporadic tremors.
The best part was that I think my discussion with Chloe about her needing to make choices regarding how she spends her time before bed actually made an impact. Chloe created a schedule for herself – carving out a good hour every evening for “playing with family.”
Whether her partner in playtime crime be Sophie, our babysitter, Papa, Grammy or me, she will be playing with at least one of us before bed. She hasn’t sacrificed her TV shows – she’s just organizing her time. We’ll see how she does. But I’m glad she took our conversation to heart.
In the meantime, little Sophie is on a “dude!” kick. She’s not a dude, or even a dudette – and neither is Chloe. But my husband and I are dudes. Sometimes we’re “poops.” I obviously prefer the former. Chloe obviously prefers the latter. Kids will be kids, after all.
The last few evenings with the girls have been a bit more challenging than usual. Dinnertime, pajama-time and bedtime have made me want to crawl into a corner, or at least fly off to an exotic island for a brief vacation.
That said, I guess it’s our fault (not entirely, but mostly) – we get home from work around 6:30 pm, we’re both tired and sometimes stressed out. With the better weather, the girls spend more time outside and get home later in the day. There’s Chloe’s homework (which she’s been very good about doing before we get home), there’s dinner (which Sophie has recently decided she’s not interested in until a good 1/2 hour after the rest of her family has finished eating) and last but not least, there are Chloe’s two TV shows.
What this all translates to is a bedtime that has progressively slipped from 8 pm to closer to 8:30 pm. And more tears and more stress. My husband thinks we need to devote more of our attention to the girls when we get home from work – even if it means suffering through Chloe’s TV shows with her.
And he has a point. I am the first to admit that my selfish streak reveals itself in the evening – when I’m cranky and tired. Especially when, like last night, Chloe and Sophie were whining in unison from the moment we walked in the door. Don’t get me wrong, I adore my girls. And I generally love spending time with them. But I also enjoy decompressing after a long day. And as wonderful as spending time with the kidlets usually is, it’s not always the most calming experience.
It’s all about striking the right balance. And I’m not always that good at it. It’s time to recalibrate. More organization and more togetherness, resulting in less computer and less junk TV (at least until the girls are tucked away in bed).
It’s a rarity, but the weather cooperated with our plans yesterday. It was supposed to be a crappy day, but it ended up being glorious. And because the weather reports were predicting rain until the last minute, we were one of the relative few families to visit the Bronx Zoo, which made our excursion all the more enjoyable.
The girls are channeling insects in these photos, inspired by the real thing. Sophie loved the birds and the reptiles. Chloe and her friend loved the rodents and sea lions.
Personally, I was partial to the butterflies, because I got some great shots with our recently purchased camera. The lens on that thing is a lot stronger than I realized.
The girls also took a ride on the merry-go-round. I’ve never seen Sophie laugh and smile so much – she was radiant as she rode atop the preying mantis.
It was nice to get away for the afternoon – and the best part about it was the surprising sunshine. It’s so easy to get caught up in the weekend race to go to the supermarket, do the gardening, clean the house, chauffering the kids around town – all the annoying chores – that weeks go by before we realize that we haven’t done anything of substance as a family.
Here’s to spring and fun family moments! And to butterflies, rats, snakes and tigers…
Sophie is now a repeat offender – escaping from her crib for the second day in a row. The thud following her jump was louder than yesterday’s and I half expected to hear bawling as soon as she hit the ground.
Happily, she didn’t cry. Instead, she served as the household’s rooster, announcing to all of us that it was time to wake up and start the day. And this, after an interrupted night’s sleep thanks to Chloe, who noisily came into our room at 4 am following a nightmare. Neither of our girls has mastered the art of tiptoeing.
As a result of recent developments, we went bed shopping today. We saw something quite fun – a loft-type bed with a little staircase and lots of storage underneath. Chloe very magnanimously offered to give Sophie her bed in exchange for the one in the store. We laughed.
But we did see another one we liked – much more traditional, and one that wouldn’t make Chloe green with envy if we bought it for Sophie. We haven’t ordered it yet, but we realize we’re going to have to order a bed soon, before there’s one thud too many…
Sophie must have really been frustrated with us this morning. She had woken up, and was moaning and groaning for one of us to come and fetch her from her crib. We ignored her because we were tired and still half-asleep.
After months of wondering (and worrying) whether she’d ever figure out that she could climb out of her crib, we finally sufficiently annoyed her with our snail’s pace approach to retrieving her this morning that the next thing we knew, there was a little thud as her feet hit the ground and she came trotting into our room.
Suddenly, there she was. Towels and all. Yelling into my husband’s ear: “Hi Papa!” Happy as a clam. For a second, I thought I had imagined the whole thing. After all of this anticipation – will she or won’t she? – she finally does. She must have overheard us talking the other day about the need to get her a bed. At the time, we weren’t concerned about the flight risk, it was simply because she’s getting too big for the mattress. Now we have two good reasons to go shopping.
The big question now is, will she remember what she accomplished this morning? Will she repeat her fantastic feat tomorrow? Only time will tell. Stay tuned.
Chloe says I rock. But “for Pete’s sake,” she doesn’t know why. She just came up with the title of the post. Which leaves me with not much to write about tonight.
Chloe has a science fair at school in a few weeks. She has to report about either an animal or a habitat. Right now, she’s thinking about a presentation about the ocean. A diorama would be cool. I think I’m going to recruit my mom for this project (she’s in the photo with Chloe). She’s good at this stuff. And as my readers know, I’m not.
Maybe we can make her habitat in a fishbowl. Chloe prefers using a box, because it’s bigger – but a box can’t hold water. We’re going to have to research our options. Maybe we should consider a field trip to Hawaii. OK, that’s not realistic. An excursion to the Jersey shore might be in order, however, to pick up some Jersey sand, some Jersey shells and maybe even a Jersey crab.
A Mom's Ramblings About the Marvels & Mishaps of Parenting, the Joys of Family Travel & the Writing Life
