Skipping Town

Dear Little One, You are full of surprises these days. You show a remarkable maturity sometimes, and I find myself simply trusting you to do as I say when it comes to not running away from me in a parking lot, not touching my hot coffee, etc. It’s easy to forget that you are three, until you do something seemingly out of character—like draw on your bureau with crayons during Quiet Time. It was just a little scribble, and I could tell that you knew what you’d done was wrong, and frankly I didn’t even really care that much even though of course it was nonwashable crayon—it was my fault, after all, for giving you nonwashable crayons. But it doesn’t matter, really. None of it does, for this letter, because for all your three-year-old foibles—the occasional screaming tantrums (very rare these days), the mind-boggling stubbornness, the now-and-then moods that have you grabbing anything and everything out of Greta’s hands—you are a precious, beloved little one. You’re too lit...

Greta is growing up so fast. One day she’s nursing and snuggling…The next she’s striding across the living room, straight to the Mardi Gras beads, and looping them around her neck. And wearing them all day. And resisting their being taken off. And, throughout the day, coming up to me, taking my hand, and leading me places. Few things are cuter. (This would be cuter if it weren’t accompanied by demanding screeches, but I’ll let it slide.) This afternoon was sunny, and though it was cold, I took the girls to a nearby playground just to get some air. Lucia pushed her pink corduroy cat in her doll stroller. Cat hadn’t joined us for a walk for quite a while, and Lucia was excited to show her flowers, leaves, etc., pausing now and then to take Cat out of the stroller and let her “touch” some plants. Lucia was in a very good mood, and she chattered on and on and on in her precise, funny way: “I’m letting Cat touch the flowers! I’m letting her. Mama, I let her touch the flowers. I LET he...

Let’s pause here for a moment of silence, to formally acknowledge the sad reality that Lucia no longer naps. I have been in denial about this for a few months now. Granted, she’d always give me a thread of hope—maybe once a week, maybe every ten days, she’d actually go to sleep when I put her into her crib at naptime. When she wasn’t sleeping, she was singing (or yell/singing), or lassoing her Bibi at the doorknob to pull open the door. It was getting a little ridiculous. Finally, last week, she refused to get into her crib at all, declaring that she’d have her naptime on the floor instead. My veins filled with ice. I gave an inward, Munch-like scream. Calmly, I gathered a pillow for her, told her it was quiet time, and said she had to be quiet and stay in her room. And so au revoir , Lucia’s Naptime. Lucia was never a spectacular napper even in her younger days; the very best nap-periods we ever had were maybe an hour and a half tops. Still, it was quiet. I could still my mind. I...

Last Sunday, we returned to Brooklyn for the first time since our move. Our destination was Park Slope, where we’d planned brunch at our friends’ new apartment. The moment we parked the car and stepped onto the sidewalk, we looked at each other—and the only way to describe our reaction was Oh, no, we really miss it here . The feeling only intensified. It was wonderful to see our friends, whom we hadn’t seen since this summer; Lucia and her friend reunited like they’d seen each other yesterday, running off to play by themselves (with Greta toddling after). After brunch, we walked up 5th Avenue, passing familiar spots and new arrivals, Lucia and her friend running ahead, hand in hand. We walked past our old apartment—Lucia remembered which brownstone it was, and ran up the stoop steps. Greta fell asleep in the stroller. We stopped at a favorite playground; Andrew bought a dozen bagels to take home; and then it was time to go. We were home in half an hour, a ridiculously easy dri...

Every day, Lucia’s doll—Dolly—becomes more and more of an actual presence in our household. Lucia is with her doll constantly. She calls it “my baby.” She refers to herself in the third-person as “Mommy,” as in, “Dolly is crying for Mommy.” Dolly takes naps; Dolly gets hungry; when Dolly is fussy, she is given a bottle or taken for a walk in her stroller. And now, Dolly has her very own daddy. The concept of who, exactly, Dolly’s daddy is has clearly—and hilariously—confounded Lucia. For a couple of days, she tentatively placed Andrew in that role; when he got home from work, Lucia-as-Dolly would exclaim, “Daddy’s home!” But she clearly knew this wasn’t exactly right—after all, Andrew is her own daddy, and it didn’t quite make sense that he was Dolly’s daddy too. You could see the pieces just not lining up in her little mind. Then, two days ago, Dolly suddenly had her very own daddy. A little while after Andrew left for work, Lucia announced that daddy was home—Dolly’s daddy. ...

Today, Lucia remarked a few times that we'd do something tomorrow. "Maybe tomorrow," she said when we discussed going to a playground. "Maybe tomorrow," she said when we talked about the library. This afternoon, when we walked to the duck pond, she suddenly declared, "I'm good at tomorrows." I have no idea what she meant. There's a zen koan in there somewhere.

Over the past month or so, Lucia has occasionally resisted being buckled into her carseat. She asks to sit backwards, or in the middle by Greta, or in the front with me. Or she’ll sit down but say she’ll “be fine” without her seatbelt. In a rush one day, needing her to sit back and let me buckle her in, I said, “You know what will happen if you don’t wear your seatbelt? The police will stop our car and say, ‘Mama, you didn’t buckle in your little girl.’ And I’ll be in big trouble.” I talk to Lucia constantly during the day, saying all manner of nonsense, but for some reason, this stuck. The next time we got in the car, she made a token resistance against her seatbelt, then prompted me: “And the police will say…” I made an ominous-sounding siren noise and then said in a deep, threatening voice, “Mama, you’re in big trouble.” Ah, the mind of a three-year-old. Now, whenever I tell her to do anything (put on her shoes, sit down in her chair to eat, wear a sweater), she says, “And ...

Monday: new stove arrives. Tuesday: new boiler. Glorious heat. Heating guy called our old boiler "medieval" and a "carbon-monoxide machine," for which parts aren't even made anymore since they don't meet any safety standards. Probably good we got a new one. But Lucia now cannot go to college. Thursday: Andrew discovers pool of water under basement stairs. Plumber comes at 6pm; says we should turn off water for the night. No water, no heat. Also, some tubing thing from the (ancient) dryer, which Andrew had duct-taped, fell down again. We're ignoring it. Friday: Plumber finds problem pipe behind wall in basement bathroom. Replaces pipe. No more leak, and we have heat and water. But now Greta cannot go to college. This is why some people are happily lifetime renters. I finally get it.

Dearest Grets, What a little joy you are. You’re walking now, full steam ahead—you started just a couple of days after your birthday, spent a few days taking a few tentative steps here and there, and then just settled into the world of walking without looking back. You have a bow-legged, determined stride, and you can’t quite keep up with yourself—you’re impatient to be done with the unsteadiness of a new walker. You’re ready to run. You try to run. You cannot yet run. You take so many spills every day it’s sometimes difficult to watch. You’re not talking yet, but you’re making yourself heard. You gesture and screech for what you want; you express your displeasure clearly when Lucia takes something from you or keeps you from something you’re after. You’ve thrown bona fide tantrums when we take you out of the bathtub—you love bathtime. You’re coming into your own. You love reading. You have favorite books and don’t hesitate to toddler over with one of them, press it into ...

Before Thanksgiving: our ancient oven died in a dramatic burst of flames. After Thanksgiving: our ancient furnace died in a quiet and brutal lack of heat. We are now ovenless and heatless. We've been cooking things on the stovetop, and tonight we bought space heaters for the girls' rooms. And Andrew leaves tomorrow, early in the morning, for a week-long business trip. Homeownership. Wheee....

Dear Little One, You have been three for a month now, and all I can say is that to be with you these days is to be constantly surprised. You are not the same person you were three months ago, or even one month ago; you are changing so much, so quickly, that it’s almost hard to believe. Suddenly, you want to dress yourself, and choose your own pjs. You come up with elaborate games and activities. You are drawing recognizable shapes, and you can write an L. But more than all this is how you’re changing socially. You’ve been coming out of your shell for a while now, but lately it’s been shockingly apparent. We had a few kids over this week for playgroup, and though you always look forward to playgroup, usually you turn shy when so many people come over. Not this time. You played the whole time with the other kids, shrieking and laughing as you all chased each other around the house, you and another little girl playing with your doll, standing with the other kids to have sandwich...

Last night, I made my very first return to Manhattan since moving to New Jersey. My return was done in style—Andrew and I went to the National Book Awards! Andrew’s company always has a table, and usually his team’s big partners are invited, but because of Sandy this year, there were empty seats, so Andrew got to bring me. I wore a lovely gray cocktail dress that’s been hanging in my closet for about five years with the tags still on, and I bought spectacular new sparkly shoes, got my nails and hair done, and generally tried my best to not look like the harried, banana-covered person I usually am. The event was at Cipriani, very fancy, with literary luminaries sitting nearby—one of the fiction judges even sat at our table. At the after-party, I walked right past Lorrie Moore and managed to tell her I still remembered something she said at a reading about ten years ago—that you should never marry someone who thinks writing is cute. “Actually,” she said, “I think I said you sh...

After one year and two weeks of breastfeeding, Greta is weaned. Last Friday, I just decided it was time. Greta is drinking cow’s milk, she’s eating a ton, and she was nursing out of habit, not any real need. So I just—stopped. I didn’t really intend to do it cold turkey, and if she’d protested, I would have kept going and phased it out gradually. But this wasn’t the case. At her morning naptime, I gave her her pacifier and blankie, snuggled her close, sang her a song, and put her in her crib. She went to sleep without a peep. Same thing for her afternoon nap, and then at bedtime. I did nurse her late that night, but the next day, that was it. She’s more or less stopped waking up during the night now (though she’s been getting up quite early, like 5:30 or 6), and she goes right to sleep at naptime and bedtime. It’s like she doesn’t even remember breastfeeding was something she used to do. Sniff. I was ready to stop, but Greta is my baby, and weaning her means I have to (sort...

We are still without internet or TV, but on Tuesday night we managed to watch the returns through a convoluted setup of cell phone—wifi hotspot—iPad—streaming CNN. The image and sound didn’t always align, and for long spells the screen would be black, jumping back to life with surprising announcements like CNN PROJECTION: OBAMA WILL WIN ELECTION. Hooray! I voted at a church near our house Tuesday afternoon. I went at lunchtime, and there was no line, and I gave my name and checked the little electronic boxes and walked home on a beautiful fall day, crunching leaves, moved not so much by the election itself but by the fact that I had gone through the ritual without even a thought of being harassed or hurt, that the most dangerous thing about my voting that day was the possibility that one of the girls would wake up from their naps while I was gone and Andrew was on a conference call. We’re lucky, and what a relief that this election proved that reason, respect, and inclusiveness pr...

We got a snowstorm last night, a good three or so inches of snow. Lucia was beyond excited yesterday when the first flakes started falling. She was excited about the snow—but she was also certain that this meant Santa was coming imminently. Ever since Halloween ended, and I explained that Thanksgiving and Christmas were coming up, she’s been exclaiming “Santa is coming!! I want Santa Claus!” at random moments. I’m not sure where she’s picked up this fascination/excitement over Santa. I’ve mentioned Santa to her a few times, but I haven’t made a big deal out of it (it’s only November 8!), so she either remembers last year’s Christmas (unlikely) or is just picking up on the pervasive cultural explosion of Christmas now that the Halloween stuff is gone from windows and stores. Anyway, when she woke up to see the world covered in snow this morning, she squealed and shouted that she wanted to go outside to make snowballs. First, though, she had preschool. I took someone’s helping-mommy...

At two this afternoon, we finally lost power. It seemed like a fated thing, long overdue, after hearing the laments of still-power-less neighbors from the other half of the block for the past seven days. I was rocking Greta when suddenly there was silence—her white-noise machine just died. I heard a beep of something shutting down. From the kitchen, silence. And so, tonight, we went trick-or-treating in pitch blackness. All we could see of the (few) trick-or-treaters who ventured to our block were flashlight beams; the only signal candy-offering houses could give was a candle or lantern in the window. It was truly eerie, the street absolutely dark; Lucia kept pointing out the stars in the sky. We left a bowl of candy on our porch while we were out, and our house was truly Halloween-y: yesterday we carved our two biggest pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns, and their glowing, jagged-tooth faces looked spectacular against the fully dark night. Lucia was very brave in these extrao...

***Today, November 10, we got our internet back--it went out the day of the storm. I wrote some blog posts over the past two weeks and will post them now. Blogger allows me to retroactively date them.*** Today is my and Andrew’s five-year wedding anniversary. To mark the day, here is our marriage so far, in numbers: 5 years of marriage 1 real wedding 3 exchanges of vows (legal; symbolic; official Catholic) 2 kids 2 cars (now 1) 6 apartments in 6 cities (Citrus Heights, CA; Sacramento, CA; Roseville, CA; New York, NY [temporary housing]; Brooklyn, NY; Maplewood, NJ) 3 states (CA, NY, NJ) 2 interstate moves (CA to NY, NY to NJ) countless weekend trips (pre-kids) 3 trips to the ER (Andrew: kidney stones, sliced finger; Lucia: tick) 1 major surgery (Margo: C-section) 1 historic election (2008) 2 hurricanes (Irene, Sandy) Immeasurable happiness. Happy anniversary, dearest!

Somehow, we got through the storm unscathed. We never lost power, and all of the beautiful trees in our yard stayed standing. We are lucky. Next door, and down the rest of the block, power is still out. (Two neighbors have strung extension cords to our outdoor outlets.) A gigantic tree a little ways down our street was uprooted and is still blocking the road; it took down an entire power-line pole, and the line was still live yesterday. Just up the street from us, as well as over one block, enormous trees were uprooted and fell over onto houses. A neighbor told us that a couple of blocks away, a tree split a house's second and third stories in half. So, we are lucky. Friends came over yesterday to charge phones and warm up (she's eight months pregnant; they have two other kids; still no power). We, on the other hand, went to Home Depot to buy paint--Andrew's office is closed for the rest of the week so we decided to undertake a home-improvement project, painting the "r...

Lucia and Greta both had lovely birthdays this year. The biggest storm in all of recorded history is apparently hitting New Jersey sometime soon, so I thought I’d post a quick recap before we’re plunged into the Dark Ages and have to boil water on our grill and subsist on granola bars and bananas. Andrew’s mom was here in the morning on Lucia’s birthday, so we did a little party at lunchtime. Lucia had requested a purple cake, which I made for her. Granted, it was a store-bought cake, with store-bought icing and a “flavor packet” of raspberry something or other (the only purple option), but Andrew had been in Germany up until late the night before—so I consider it an accomplishment that I managed even a boxed cake. Lucia, of course, did not care, as long as it was cake. She blew out her candles and opened her gifts. The helium balloons were her hands-down favorite part of her birthday. (When they lost helium the next day, she kept saying she wanted her balloons to be “up in the sky...

Dear Little Banana, You are one! It is hard to believe that a year ago today we met you for the first time—you strong, healthy baby whose heart-rate tracings were always the best of the best when we spent that month together in the hospital, before you were born. It’s hard to remember a time when you weren’t with us. You are a determined, happy little sweetie. You laugh loud and often and have begun demonstrating your happiness with an ear-splitting scream. You exhibit your gap-toothed smile liberally, charming friends and others. You seem to have very little fear of strangers, though if you suddenly look up and find yourself surrounded by strangers with me nowhere in sight, you burst into tears. (This has happened approximately twice, during our playgroup, when I’ve simply stepped out of your line of vision for a moment.) You seem, for the most part, fearless—trying to climb slides and steps that are far too large for you, crawling at top speed toward whatever catches...

Our lovely little village is not exactly wilderness, but these days it seems sometimes like we’re truly living “in the country.” We haven’t seen them for a while, but a family of wild turkeys was visiting our yard each morning this summer. Lucia would spot them from the window and shout “Turkeys! The turkeys are here!” We’d watch them trot through our backyard and then hop into someone else’s. We have a lot of chipmunks, which, since I don’t have a garden, I think are quite adorable. Last week we watched one snacking on all the crumbs I’d swept off the porch. He was nibbling very close to us, in the unlandscaped dirt right in front of our house. We have raccoons. Our trash cans have to be locked in our garage lest we wake in the morning to a garbage-strewn yard. I haven’t actually seen a raccoon, but I’ve seen the aftermath. We have weird jumping crickets in the basement, a stink bug here and there, and very very big spiders. And we have squirrels. Lots and lots of squ...

Some changes are afoot with our girls, one newly three years old, the other on the cusp of one. Just this week, Lucia has become afraid of the dark. For a while now, when I turn off the light at bedtime, she’s been saying, “I can’t see. It’s dark.” I always reassure her that it’s okay, that it’s time to go to sleep and she doesn’t need to see. Lately, though, she’s wanted me to keep her door open while I sing her a song so that light from the hallway comes in, and then she started asking to keep the door open, period. And then two days ago she had a bedtime meltdown, refusing to get into her crib; Andrew managed to calm her down and told me afterward that she seemed truly distressed. So I went out the next day and bought her an adorable mushroom night light, which she loves. She is so happy that she can see all her animals. When we turned it on the first night, she exclaimed, “It’s wonderful!” (Now I just have to remember to pack it up along with the animals, and the white-noise m...