Skipping Town

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...

Dear Little Big Girl, “Big girl” is what you call yourself these days, when you use the potty and pull up your own pants or do something else independently. Indeed, you’ve taken a lot of big-girl steps in the past few months. You’re almost totally potty trained now, except for nighttime; when we go out, I don’t even worry about accidents anymore, as you seem unfazed by public restrooms (and have proven to have the blad der of a camel). I always ask you if you need to go before we leave the house, and you invariably say no, then follow up with a worried “Will there be a potty there?” You love preschool, and you haven’t even cried at drop-off the past two times. You are always excited to report what you did at school—particularly that you rode a scooter and in one of those Little Tikes cars during gym time—and practically burst with pride when you show me your art project from the day. At home, you talk a lot about school, and when we play with your (amazing, fantastic, vi...

It’s finally fall around here. The radiators are on. Leaves are falling. Not too much color yet around our house, but we have high hopes for all the Japanese maples along the side of our driveway and beside the porch. Piles of leaves are appearing by the roadside, but it’s been too wet and rainy to do any good fall crunching-walks. Soon, I hope. Fall in the suburbs promises to be lovely, if the ground ever dries up. This time last year, I’d been in the hospital for a week and was facing down two more. I watched October from my antiseptic perch above West 59th Street; the only fall-blue sky I saw was whatever peeked between skyscrapers. I got to see tiny, bundled-up Lucia only a few times each week. I watched a lot of TV episodes online. I read all the Twilight books. I spent all day in bed, just me and kicking, rolling Greta in my belly. That was last October. The pumpkins we picked on the day I was admitted to the hospital got moldy before I came home. Now, a year later, we’r...

("Lucia, ready to feed the ducks?") "That's wonderful!" ("Lucia, would you like a snack?) "That's a good idea!" "I can't wait to show Daddy what I made! He'll be so happy!" ---variation: "I went poopie in the potty! I'm a big girl now! I can't wait to tell Daddy!" ---variation: "I went poopie in the potty! I'm a big girl now! I can't wait to tell Nora!" (a neighbor we spotted in her yard a few moments before heading to the bathroom) "It's spicy." (Anything she doesn't like is deemed spicy, with a worried and disturbed expression, as though she's saying "It's moving .")

Lucia’s language has gotten both precocious and hilarious lately as she tries out new words and phrases, not always correctly. Some highlights: Andrew, bleary-eyed, stumbled into Lucia’s room one morning this week. She’d been calling for me in her usual way: “Mama…Where ARE you….Maaamaaa….Where ARE you…..Maaamaaa…” When she saw Andrew in the doorway, she said, “First of all, I was calling Mama.” This week I asked Lucia to carry her water to the table for lunch. “Sure, Madame,” she responded with a little smile. She brings out “madame” at random times. “Lucia, are you ready for breakfast?” “Yes, Madame.” “Lucia, here are your Kix.” “Thank you, Madame.” The funniest thing is that she has no idea what it means; I always call her madame when we have tea parties, which is where she learned it, but she also calls Andrew “madame.” We’ve tried to explain that Daddy is “sir,” but it has yet to stick. Sometimes, when Lucia is traipsing around the house babbling to herself, I hear he...

With the weather gloomy and cold, we headed to NH for the weekend, hoping to see some fall color despite the rain. We saw oranges and yellows, but no brilliant reds; it seems we missed the peak, or that there wasn’t much of a peak this year at all. Still, it was lovely to be there this late in the year. Milkweed was everywhere, mostly new and green, but some had dried and split, the soft fibers spilling out. There were a few small frogs in the pond—the bees that had kept us from the dock on our last trip were gone so we were able to go say hello. We saw a flock of ten wild turkeys along the roadside, and then in the back field on another day. Being at the house in rainy weather isn’t easy; there isn’t much for the girls to do inside. Spending time outdoors, in middle-of-nowhere nature, is what NH is all about. Still, during breaks in the rain we went on short, damp nature walks. Lucia wasn’t enthusiastic until she saw me collecting pretty leaves and flowers in a bag, to press late...

Dear Littlest One, You get cuter by the day. Really. Sometimes when I go to get you from your crib in the morning, where you’re standing at one end waiting for me, sleep sack askew, your pacifier in your mouth upside-down, I’m amazed that you’ve managed to get still cuter than you’d been the day before. You are cute to look at, to be sure, with your two-front-teeth smile (soon to be gone forever—two more teeth have just poked through), fat cheeks, and baby-soft hair. But you also do countless cute things. For example, your wave is progressing. You’ve been waving goodbye for about a month now, with your entire arm. But now, sometimes, you open and shut the fingers of both hands when you want to wave. The movement is so subtle as to be pretty much invisible to whomever you’re waving to, and I find myself announcing it—“Greta is waving to you. She’s waving.”—to ensure that your action is recognized (and adored). You’ve decided that eating is hilarious, and you laugh uproari...