Skipping Town

Dear Littlest One, You are funnier and cuter every single day. You have taken your place as an autonomous, opinionated member of the family, as likely to snuggle up with a bottle of milk as you are to hurl yourself from one end of the couch to the other, screaming and laughing. You've discovered that your cache of animals is there to be carried around and cuddled, and you've even started feeding your animals bites of play food and letting them drink from doll bottles. You have the things you like to do, and you know what books you'd like to hear, and when you want something, you go for it--you can't always tell us what you want yet in words, but you make your wants known by, say, banging on the refrigerator (milk). You have the funniest, cutest smile, with a little row of teeth on top and bottom and a few shocking molars peeking out in back. You like to give kisses, coming at us suddenly with an open mouth; you like to hand Lucia her Bibi. You and your sister have f...

Last Thursday, around 3:30pm, I loaded the girls into the car and off we went to a playdate. We were listening to music and Lucia was snacking on Goldfish and then CRUNCH. I’d crashed into another car, smashing up my hood and the other car’s front passenger-side door. Shocked, I sat there for a moment. The car had come out of nowhere. I’d seen it in time to try to brake, but there wasn’t enough time even to screech. Just…CRUNCH. Lucia gave a brief whimper from the loud sound; the girls were otherwise unaffected, as was I. Thank goodness for our Volvo. Seriously, we barely felt it. The other car continued across my path and pulled to a stop. I pulled in behind and called the police. The driver of the other car was an elderly woman, with a passenger who was maybe her son. They weren’t hurt either. (They were also in a Volvo.) It happened at a tricky intersection: the road I was on has no stop sign; the road she was on has a stop sign with a flashing light and big yellow signs w...

Dear Little One, Three is fun. We’ve reached an even-keeled period, and suddenly you’re the easy one—your little sister, with her inability to go grocery shopping without screaming, has become the weak link in day-to-day placidity (or what passes for placidity with two kids, anyway). You sleep to a decent 7:30, you play, you sit for long stretches to read books, you play with Greta. We have moments when you dig in your heels—slipping out of your winter coat just when it’s time to leave the house is among the more maddening sticking points—but for the most part we have fun. You have come to love, and look forward to, your Quiet Time. Your favorite thing to do is strew about your room hundreds of tiny beads I bought at a garage sale and gave to you on a whim; you sort them, set aside your favorites, gather them in different vessels. They are all over the place, all the time, and every night I curse quietly as I crawl around picking them up (you help, but there are a ton of ...

You. Yes, you. Think I'm cute? Today I mysteriously got past the baby gate and made it to the landing before my older sister screamed "GRETA'S CLIMBING THE STAIRS!!!" (It will be a mystery forever whether or not Lucia opened the gate for me.) Today I also learned how to get onto the couch by myself, and my favorite thing to do is jump and run from end to end, getting precariously close to the edge and bringing to an end the relieved exhalation Mama has been feeling when she can turn on Dora and go into the kitchen to cook dinner. I dare you to look away for one second. I dare you.

Thursday, needing a good activity to kill some time before lunch, I decided the girls should finger-paint together. They’d done a tiny bit of fingerpainting once before and loved it, and this time I went all out—preparing a seat for Greta at the table, spreading out a huge sheet of paper, pouring paints into Tupperware lids. The girls loved it. Greta just liked grabbing handfuls of paint and squeezing the paint in her fingers. Lucia did some actual fingerpainting, but she, too, was more interested in getting as much paint on her hands as possible. It quickly became about as messy as I’d expected it to be, but then I realized I had no exit strategy—a paint-covered table, paint-covered chairs, paint-covered girls, their paint-covered clothes, and just me, trying to figure out how on earth to get us back to zero and get lunch made before, oh, six o’clock. I ended up wiping them down as best I could with a cloth and then taking them upstairs for a bath. There is still paint...

Today on the way to preschool, Lucia, as she always does, asked if I was going to be the “helping mommy” today. I told her no, but that I’d be the helping mommy next week. “Are you the leaving mommy today?” she replied. Oof. The leaving mommy. Even though I leave this child for a total of five hours per week—at preschool, which she loves and looks forward to—I still felt a good dose of mommy guilt. (“I’m so glad you’re here!” Lucia exclaimed when I returned to pick her up. “Brr! It’s a good thing we’re wearing coats!” After preschool, everything is usually an excited exclamation.) I also felt guilty because I left Greta with a new sitter for the first time today, and I was sure she’d be scared and upset. But it went fine—the sitter is wonderful, and when I came home she’d gotten out all the drums and was engaging Greta in a lively song, Greta smiling on her pink chair. The sitter said Greta didn't cry at all and took a one-hour nap. This afternoon the girls had on their fa...

Over the past month or so, I’ve read The Night Before Christmas to Lucia and Greta probably a hundred times. Both of them took to the story, and it was a relief to me to have this framework—the descriptions, the illustrations—to help me explain the whole idea of Santa. I’d been talking about Santa for a while, and Lucia watched a Dora episode about Santa a bunch of times, so she definitely understood the concept. But I felt like every time I brought it up, I had to add a new, perplexing detail—he flies in a sleigh pulled by reindeer; he visits when you’re sleeping; he lands on the roof; he comes down the chimney. It is bizarre to piece it apart this way, each element more incredible than the last. But somehow it all added up coherently for Lucia, who, throughout December, eagerly talked about what she wanted Santa to bring her (a wand and a pillow). On Christmas Eve, we went to the annual Orlando Christmas Eve party, the climax of which is “Santa’s” appearance to dole out joke ...

Dear Grets, This letter is slightly late, but in a way that’s good, since it gives me the chance to remark on the vast changes you’ve undergone in just the past couple of weeks. I feel like I blinked and you morphed from a cuddly, docile baby to a toddler with a mind of your own—you are as cute as ever but are now at the receiving end of my “No!” just as often as Lucia. Your big thing right now is stairs—all you want to do is go up. You’re pretty deft at this, but since you have absolutely no idea how to climb down (you think you can simply step off the top like we do), this is ridiculously dangerous. Just before we left for Christmas, I spent an insane afternoon chasing you as you ran for the steps again and again, screaming when I peeled you off and sometimes grabbing the railing and refusing to let go. I blocked the steps with the piano bench, but you climbed under it. Needless to say, I’m counting the seconds until our new baby gate arrives. In the meantime, we’ve manag...

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...