Category Archives: Frazzled Working Mom’s Fleeting Moments (2007-2013)

Sophie’s Funny Face


I don’t remember much surrounding the circumstances of this photo. I know it was taken on a weekday morning, when I was snapping pictures of Sophie and Chloe to get some new images for my blogging.

I don’t think Sophie was angry about the flash in her eyes. And I don’t think she was channeling Jekyll & Hyde like she’s done in the past. In fact, I seem to recall that she was in a pretty happy mood.

Come to think of it, Sophie makes lots of funny faces. Those of you who have explored this blog before know that she’s given us some real doozies.

I like this picture. OK, it’s not particularly flattering. But it’s great for future extortion purposes (“Eat your broccoli, or I’ll send this photo over the AP Wire, with the headline ‘Psycho Toddler Runs Amok.'”). Most important, this photo makes us laugh.

I can think of some good captions. “Mommy, your sunny morning personality is blinding me.” “Chloe, do you really think this household revolves around you? Come on, get real! I am the center of this universe.” “Papa, you’re really bald. Wow. Balder than my butt cheeks.”

Enough of this silliness. It’s time for our dinner.

Sleepover?

Chloe and Sophie live in the same house and have rooms on the same floor. But that’s not good enough for them…Chloe especially. Chloe is obsessed with having sleepovers.

She’s only had two of them in her short kid life. But she loves them. In both instances, we hosted the extended playdate and they were great fun for Chloe and her friends. Every couple of weeks she asks about having another sleepover, and we have promised that we would try to arrange another one in the near future.

In the meantime, however, Chloe wants to have a sleepover with Sophie. This poses an interesting challenge. Sophie still sleeps in a crib. Even if Sophie slept in a bed, Chloe’s bed is a twin size bed. And Chloe can’t join Sophie in Sophie’s room or vice versa, because we don’t have an aerobed.

I suppose we could eventually let the girls sleep upstairs in the attic where there’s a double bed. Or we could invest in some sleeping bags. I’m glad they love each other so much that they want to have sleepovers together. Sophie doesn’t know what sleepover means, but she’s happy to enthusiastically support any of Chloe’s suggestions.

Now that I think of it, however, Chloe should think twice about insisting on a sleepover with Sophie right now. Unless Chloe is willing to be startled awake in the dead of night by Sophie’s earth-shattering night terror screams. Be careful what you wish for, my big girl.

Post-Prandial Joy


Sophie loves to eat. Eating makes her happy and joyful. Especially after dinner.

The pre- and post-meal contrast is startling. Before sitting down for her last meal of the day, she is usually horrendously cranky, which is not surprising – she is a toddler after all. But get some food into her, and she’s a new person. Tonight’s meal was couscous and chicken. She loved the couscous – it reminds her of rice. And like rice, couscous is messy and fun to eat. She left a trail of it all over the table, her chair and on the floor. I’m sure there was plenty of it between her toes as well.

After finishing her plate, she made the rounds of our plates, and helped herself to some more of the yummy grains. Once she had had enough, she started jumping. All over the dining room, all over the kitchen. She’s really starting to master the art of testing gravity – I don’t remember Chloe being so proficient at jumping when she was Sophie’s age.

Every night is the same. Sophie eats, Sophie’s happy. Sophie eats, Sophie sings. Sophie eats, Sophie dances and jumps. You get my point. It’s nice to know that we can rely on Sophie to bring smiles to our faces once she’s sated. Go Sophie!

A Few Random Friday Thoughts


I took this picture this morning. What do you think of the sisterly love? Chloe had taken a break from her computer to pose for the camera with Sophie. Sophie thoroughly enjoys watching Chloe play games on the computer. Our little one roots for her sister all the time.

Chloe recently learned about a new web site, called www.tvokids.com. TVO is the Ontario equivalent of PBS. We’ll see how long her fascination lasts this go-round. She hasn’t visited the Webkinz web site in ages. Her poor pets would have starved to death long ago had they been endowed with real heartbeats.

Such is life for a 7-year old (actually, she turns seven in a few days). Interests come and go. Obsessions come and go even faster. I’m bracing myself for the next big craze.

Chloe made more woven paper placemats today. Luckily, I wasn’t around for them. Otherwise, I would have pulled my hair out. Sophie spent the day at our babysitter’s place. She saw her friends. She loooovvvves her friends. I don’t think she has a real concept of what “friend” means, but she’s happy to have them in any case.

The end of my second week at work. Even had to go it alone with my boss away for 3 days. I survived. I guess I’m still capable of doing the office thing. It’s good to know. Anyway, we’re going to watch Michael Moore’s “Sicko” tonight. It will probably make us nostalgic for France.

I Love My Girls

I don’t have much to write about tonight, but I just want to say that I love my girls. That’s obvious, I think (and hope!), but I enjoy saying it out loud to myself sometimes.

They have their faults and they do things that annoy us to no end. But they also do magical things, and say lots of funny things, and are joyful more than they are angry or sad.

Chloe is the passionate, serious one. Sophie is our clown. Chloe likes to act like she’s 12. Sophie is happy to be 2. They’re usually strongwilled and independent, but my heart melts whenever display their vulnerability. It’s during those times that I’m free to console them and hug them for as long as I like.

And when they sing and dance, I’m simply happy to be alive – which is not to say that I’m not generally happy to be alive. It’s just that my happiness quotient goes up a notch.

Anyway, enough of this sugary sweet essay. I’m starting to gross myself out. We’ll return to our regular programming tomorrow.

Night Terrors

Poor Sophie. Poor us. At around 10 pm last night, Sophie woke up to the sound of my husband in the stairwell. From time to time this happens. But yesterday was different. He must have used elephant feet to go upstairs, because the screams emanating from our child’s mouth were like none I’ve ever heard before. And they didn’t stop. For over an hour.

My husband went in to console her first. Usually, a brief hug and cuddle will do the trick. But not last night. As soon as she hit her mattress again, the agonizing sobs continued…and continued. Until I came to her rescue.

We huddled in her big chair, and she wanted me to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” Which makes me laugh. Because I have a HORRIBLE voice. I took singing lessons when I was a kid (I tried lots of activities when I was a kid, lots of activities that didn’t last more than a few weeks). I learned how to breathe and how to modulate my voice. For my recital, I had to sing “Climb Every Mountain” and “Whistle While You Work.” Which was pretty ironic, since I didn’t know how to whistle at the time. I think that was my teacher’s way of telling me that I was wasting her time.

The wonderful thing about children, however, is that they love you for who you are. Even if you are completely tone-deaf. So I sang for Sophie, and soon the sobs turned into sniffles, and then into quiet snores. But it wasn’t enough.

Because when I tried to put her into bed, the screams started all over again. Until her dear Papa returned to her cribside. And she agreed to let him lie down on the floor next to her bed. Pathetic, right? He stayed there for a bit (actually, it might have been longer than a bit). And then he finally made his escape.

All was quiet on the Sophie front until about 3 am. Then the wailing started all over again. We ignored it this time, and she finally fell back asleep. However, there’s no rest for the weary. When she woke me up yet again at 5 am with her screams, I brought her into bed with me. Which is probably what she wanted all along, and probably the worst thing we could have done.

I am already tense thinking about what might possibly happen tonight. Thoughts of mixing spoonfuls of Benadryl into her evening yogurt crossed my mind. But I have to have faith that our little one won’t subject us to that torture again. Otherwise, I may just have to purchase the entire stock of Benadryl from our local CVS.

Homework Miracles

One of the things we stressed to Chloe before I returned to work was that she would be on her own to do her homework during the week. Of course, we would review her exercises when we got home, but she’d have to complete as much as possible in the afternoon hours.

My husband and I had our doubts. She’s a 7-year old girl, and if she ever listens to us the first go-round whenever we ask her to do something, for a split second we believe that miracles really happen. But as soon as we start to see a little halo floating above her head, we have to repeat ourselves at least five times when we make our next request.

Needless to say, over the course of several days, we gently reminded her of the new rules.

When I came home from work the first day, things were a bit disorganized, to say the least. But it wasn’t really Chloe’s fault. On the second day, her finished homework was waiting for us when we got home. And she did it well, too. On the third day, she used her assigned vocabulary words to write fantastic, creative sentences in her spelling journal. She even did research -verifying how to spell “chocolate” by looking at the package of Oreos in the closet. She did an equally impressive job tonight.

There’s no way of knowing how long Chloe will keep this up. But I’ll enjoy my small miracle while it lasts.

America at a Crossroads

Last night’s New Hampshire primary was fascinating to me. As I sat and watched the results slowly trickle in, it started to sink in that we’re truly all in for a big change.

Who would have ever thought, just a few years (or even months) ago, that two of the most serious contenders for the presidential nomination would be an African-American and a woman? It shouldn’t be such a startling thing, really. What is amazing to me is that the United States, for all of our talk of diversity and melting pots, is so homogenous when it comes to its politics. And that until now, the closest we’ve come to diversity in a President was a Catholic JFK.

I can’t wait to see the current administration pack its bags and take a long walk off of a short pier. In fact, I’d happily vote for a barrel of monkeys to lead this country – almost anyone would be better (except those freaky Republican candidates) than the clowns who have made us a laughingstock in the eyes of the rest of the world.

That said, the thought of having Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama occupy the Oval Office is thrilling to me. All the more so because there’s a good chance it might actually happen. And it’s about time.

When I think about Chloe and Sophie, and what Clinton and Obama represent for them, I can’t help but smile. Their candidacies prove (political affiliations notwithstanding) that one can reach for the stars and succeed, regardless of race or gender. What an incredibly important lesson to learn.

Hip Hop Mama

I finally returned to the gym today, but I wasn’t really in the mood for my usual 40-minute torture workout on the elliptical machine. I noticed that there was a hip hop class and I was intrigued. Perhaps inspired by my two girls’ dancing to the “High School Musical” soundtrack every night, I decided to swallow my pride and give it a try.

I am not a good dancer. I am able to clap to a beat, but that’s about the extent of it. My husband and I took dance classes together before our wedding. Ballroom, rock ‘n roll, you name it. The lessons were useless. Our wedding waltz was charmingly laughable. His excuse was deafness in one ear. I had no such excuse – my ears are fine.

The class this morning was filled with women of all colors, young and old, thin and fat. And looks are truly deceiving. Some of the women you would think least likely to be able to carry a beat were amazing dancers. The 40-something Jewish mom, a Rubenesque woman with greasy hair pulled back in a ponytail, a tiny Asian woman… It was a celebration of girl power, for sure.

We danced (I’m using that word extremely loosely) to Timbaland’s “The Way I Are.” We learned about 15 different moves. And I realized that I have absolutely no coordination. The woman in front of me was a natural, and I tried to follow her lead. But as soon as I mastered a few steps, I was rarely able to remember what came next. The teacher initially threw watchful glances my way, but after about 1/2 hour, she had turned her attention to more promising candidates. By the end of the session, my mind was mush and my body ached all over.

In spite of my fatigue and awkward moves, I felt exhilarated. The thing is, I won’t be able to return to this class any time soon, since I will be tapping my feet to the beat of computer keys in my new office starting next week. However, the gym offers a beginners’ hip hop class on Saturdays. Maybe there’s hope for me yet.

Chloe’s “Buddies”

When I was about 12, I cuddled a different stuffed animal every night. Using a list I had created, I kept track of each animal’s turn so that none of them would feel left out.

I mentioned this anecdote to Chloe a few weeks ago. Evidently, my obsessive-compulsive behavior inspired my big girl, because last week, she created her own list. And she laid out her animals just so, using Sophie’s old baby blankets for both covers and mattresses, and tissues for pillows. Her toys sleep dormitory-style on the floor.

Because the animals are on the floor, they often get knocked around. Every evening, Chloe lovingly ensures that they are back in their proper tissue beds, cozy and happy.

Her m.o., however, is a bit different from mine. Rather than limit them to cuddles at sleeptime, she has daytime buddies and nighttime buddies. And two separate lists, with all of the animals’ names meticulously written down. She’s very proud of her system, of course.

The apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree. I think I’ll refrain from telling her, at least for another 10 years or so, that I had a system to categorize my record and book collections.