Not Feelin’ It

Halloween is like black licorice. You either love it or hate it.

Me? I loooooooove Halloween. It’s the attention-seeker’s favorite holiday. The one time of year when you can unapologetically dress to elicit attention. You get to be creative. Plus there’s candy. And jack-o-lanterns. And cinnamony, nutmeggy, pumpkiny foods.

And did I mention the attention part?

Junior year in college I lived with a family in France. The mother was in her forties. Super young-looking, fashionable, and pretty. And she was a maniac extrovert. When my friends would come over she’d run around opening wine (as if we needed encouragement), cranking music, and dragging the furniture to the side of the room to get us dancing.

Her teen-aged daughter would be cowering in the corner. She was painfully, hideously shy.

Our parenting days were light years away, but my friends said, “That is SO going to be you and your kid some day, Kristen.” (They called this up to me while I was dancing on the couch.)

Weirdly, neither of my girls has retreated like a threatened snail in the wake of their mother’s extroversion. In fact, Miss Kate, my oldest, holds her own quite well. She’s one of the youngest in her class, but as other parents have commented, “You’d never know it.” I think that’s code for, “She’s all  in your grill with the sass and spunk you’d expect from a much older kid.”

Or maybe they’re just referring to her mad reading skillz.

Anyway, it turns that I’m worried about Little Miss Self Esteem. On the one hand she’s so socially bulletproof. She went from camp to camp one summer without knowing a soul, and without batting an eyelash. She was the only girl in an animation class with 19 boys. And she was totally un-phased.

She’ll happily let anyone babysit for her. (I should take advantage of that and work a deal with some homeless folks.) She’s independent, confident, funny, and a good big sister—90% of the time.

She blew away her preschool teachers by asking if she could lead Circle Time. Apparently no kid’s ever done that, and her teachers ended up handing her the Circle Time reigns a bunch. (“Today,” she’d report, “I led the kids in some yoga poses and we sang a song about snowflakes.”)

These days as a big second-grader she volunteers at Paige’s preschool reading to the children and leading art projects that she comes up with on her own.

My Kate is the future Most Likely to Succeed.

And yet I’m fretting about all the things she isn’t doing. It’s not that I want her to do more. It’s not that she’s disappointing me in any way. It’s that there are things that I know she wants to do that she isn’t doing.

And it’s all because of clothes.

You may’ve seen me write about this here before. Kate hates clothes. She’s not a nudist, just a super-sensitive kid who can’t stand the feel of seams, stiff fabric, sewn-on decals, and zippers.

We’ve gone through phases with this. As a baby it seemed non-existent, but somewhere along the way she forsook pants for dresses. She whittled her wardrobe down to a handful of acceptable well-washed, worn out, super-soft cotton clothes.

She saw an OT a couple years ago and we brushed her and did some other exercises to desensitize her skin. It seemed to work. A bit, I mean. Even just learning other kids have this problem helped us all.

But it’s far from behind her. I’ll nearly forget about it, then she’ll need new shoes and I’ll realize how not-normal this behavior is that we’ve become so accustomed to.

So we started with another OT this fall. A well-respected woman who’s in walking distance of our house. She gave us some new insights and exercises, and already Kate seems to feel some things are easier. She recently wore a long-rejected shirt that Mark had bought her on a business trip. We nearly fainted when she walked into the kitchen with it on.

At school the other day I caught the end of her P.E. class. She was wearing a red vest along with her teammates. I was thrilled. We went shoe shopping a few days later and to my shock she picked out a pair of tall leather boots.

Things like these are victories. Totally unprecedented stuff.

So, what’s the problem? What I’m worried about is all the things she doesn’t want to do because of an outfit or uniform or some kind of gear.

She used to love ballet. Everyone else wore tutus and tights and slippers. Katie was in a baggy cotton dress, barefoot. This was fine with her teacher, but somewhere along the line from toddler to first-grader Kate decided ballet wasn’t her thing.

She adored choir until the performances last spring where I had to coax her into her uniform while drugging her with TV. This year she quit choir after one rehearsal.

She still has training wheels on her bike since she can’t tolerate a helmet.

And she’s expressed interest in horseback riding and theater, but admitted that the required clothes or costumes made those things a no-go.

I also think she’d love Halloween, but—in my mama brain at least—she sees it as a day when she’ll have to wear something other than her four soft-and-cozy skirts or her three approved cotton shirts. Dressing up is anxiety-provoking. What’s fun about that?

A few weeks ago I’d just about decided that we’d put her in therapy. In addition to the OT, I mean. Might as well come at this from every angle, right? My dad and I had a long phone conversation about this and he agreed it was a good idea. Let’s hit this thing with a hammer.

But a chat with her pediatrician later that day had me reconsidering.

“Is she doing okay socially?” he asked.

“Yeah, totally,” I said. No-brainer to that.

You’ll go through two or three years when she’ll say no to things, the doc said. But you have to trust that she’ll pull out of it. Eventually there’ll be something she wants to do badly enough that she’ll be willing to wear whatever she has to for it.

Putting her in therapy, he contended, will just solidify this as a big issue in her mind. It could make it even harder to shake.

I called my dad to discuss this new perspective. And we agreed that it made sense too.

Oy! What to do?

It’s hard to resist that modern-day reflex to throw as many resources and specialists at a problem as possible. Especially when that problem relates to your sweet young child. Isn’t being a good parent about removing whatever roadblocks prevent your kid from being their best selves?

I said that to a friend the other day who replied, “Or maybe it’s about letting them remove those barriers themselves.”

For now at least I’m back-burnering the therapy idea. Mark agrees. Let’s focus on OT now and see what comes of that.

So then, time to hone my maternal patience skills. Time to sit on my hands when I see Kate yearn to do something that she ultimately decides against because some part of it won’t feel good. Time to sit back and appreciate all the dazzling things that Kate IS doing, instead of fretting over what she’s not.

And time to go put the finishing touches on my own Halloween costume.

Happy Halloween, y’all.

A friend emailed me a link to this excellent short video. (Thank you, Melanie!)
My husband and I related to so so much of it. In fact, Mark said it made him cry.
Check it out, yo.

The Emperor’s New Onesie from Hillary Frank on Vimeo.

Choir Quitter

Kate quit choir. (Try saying that five times fast.)

She’d joined a community youth choir last spring—a pretty well-known group where the older kids get to travel once a year and have cross-cultural experiences with singer nerds from other countries. Aside from voice training, she was learning how to read music and studying something called “music theory,” whatever that is.

Growing up my family prided itself on its deeply-rooted musical ineptitude. Mark, on the other hand, can play several instruments and was also a choir geek back in the day. He hauled out some old cassette tapes when Kate started last year and filled the house at high decibels with crackling recordings of his past performances. Kate would run home from rehearsals to sing him the new songs she’d learned and show off the sheet music in her binder.

It all seemed like such good clean fun.

But aside from all the “it’s good for you like broccoli” reasons for Kate to be in choir, Mark and I just wanted her to have a special thing that she’d get good at and stick with. Whatever that was.

My friend Sydney was a figure skater when we were kids. She went to a rink out on Route 6 for private lessons.  It wasn’t some after-school elective our other friends did. This was her own thing. She even had performances where she got to wear bee-yoo-tiful pastel outfits—and make-up. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was jealous that Sydney had a weird special talent. Something that was just hers, that she was good at.

So, Kate quitting choir sent Mark and me into a tailspin.

Now, I don’t shy away from parental challenges. I was happy to strong-arm Kate into continuing. I figured that if I did it could well be something she’d thank me for some day. It’s not first-nature to me, but I guess I’m a Wanna-be Tiger Mom. Or at the very least, I like to direct the course of my children’s activities (that’s a euphemism for being a control freak). And having my twerpy seven-year-old resist my well-laid plans rubbed me the wrong way.

But how do you drag a crying second grader out of a car, thrust her into a building, and make her sing? The day of her second rehearsal this fall she decided she was just not going. The conductor this year was strict. She didn’t like the songs. She was tired from her longer school days. And, she proclaimed, she was not going to get out of the car.

She’d promised us she’d go to try it out at least three times this year. We figured she just needed to get back in the groove. But it turned out she only made it there once.

So we had a family meeting. Or Mark and I at least tried to be all Brady Bunch formal about the somber-toned, sitting-on-the-couch discussion we had with her. Oh we were disappointed. Oh she had not held up her end of the deal. But here’s the thing—we were going to let her pick something else. Something she was interested in. Something she could stick with.

That, by the way, was Mark’s idea. My inner “course-director” was not keen on giving her free reign. I wanted to point her towards some classically character-enriching activity so she could, you know, perform for our dinner party guests. At least in my alternate fantasy life.

But I also thought about those kids who have some weird fondness for, like, the tuba. Perhaps there was something she cottoned to and would want to pursue without any urging from us. I do not need to repeat that parking lot meltdown any time soon.

We gave her some time to think, and a couple days later she came to me and simply said, “Horses.” Not “I want to learn how to ride,” just “horses.” Whatever the hell that meant.

I confess. I was ready to dismiss the idea summarily. I know the horse-hugger girl type, but that was never me as a kid. And I guess I can’t easily rally behind something I don’t really get. But I resisted putting the kibosh on it. If Mark’s plan to let Kate pick something was going to work, I needed to kick aside my inner control freak.

So I checked with some mama friends who’d sent their kids to camp at a local horse ranch. And get this: It turns out the place has a class called Fun with Horses. It’s not riding—it’s learning about things like how to teach horses tricks, what they like to eat, how to brush and care for the beasts. The kids even get to braid the horses’ manes, which did sound like some form of crack for Kate.

This is why I love the Bay Area. Your kid wants to take “horses” and it turns out there actually is such a class.

She starts in two weeks. After that we’ll consider whether she wants to move onto riding lessons, although Kate’s clothing sensitivities have her currently unenthusiastic about that. Suffice it to say that the kid who can only tolerate wearing a handful of old, well-worn cotton clothes is not keen on the idea of tight, seam-laden jodhpurs, stiff tall boots, and a helmet.

And unless we win the lottery, that’s frankly okay with me. I’ve had several parents look at me wild-eyed when I mentioned Kate’s interest in horses. “The cost!” they bellowed. “The time commitment! The travel! The begging for a horse of their own!”

Oh, and did they mention the cost?!

Maybe the thing Kate’s about to stick with and get good at isn’t gymnastics, or singing, or even horseback riding. Maybe it’ll be mucking stalls and horse hair-dos. And unless I want to drag her screaming from the car into some class she isn’t keen on, until her fascination with the clarinet naturally emerges I guess I’ll just have to make peace with that.

Have you wrangled with your kid’s extracurricular activities?  (Please tell me I’m not alone.) What’s your take on it all?

Thrift Queen

When I was eight I had an interview to get into a private school. It was with the head of the lower school, a woman known as Miss Page.

Miss Page was in her late fifties, and wore thick woolen dresses with flat, sensible shoes. She had stocky calves and styled her hair in a blunt page-boy. She was, I would come to learn, one of those rare, wonderful institutional legends. She worked at the school for decades, taught in the classrooms, cheered alongside playing fields, and in her clipped New England way, greeted students by name as she bustled through the campus.

Because my sisters attended the school a decade before, I sensed–whether it was real or imagined—a genteel familiarity she had with my mother. I got the feeling that our “little talk”–an important step in the admissions process—was something only I could fuck up.

Which, I’m happy to report I didn’t do.

I wish I could be a fly on the wall looking back on that day. I’d love to remember the questions she asked me, and of course, how I answered. I know I had to do some memory exercises and a few puzzles. Probably some math too. The only thing I recall specifically is she asked me what “thrifty” meant.

And I had no idea.

Which, if you knew me today, might shock you. It’s not that I’m a penny pincher. On certain things I’m more than happy to spend spend spend. But I also love a good thrift store. I veer to the side of roads for yard sales. There’s nothing more thrilling or satisfying to me than a good bargain, a good find.

Yet I’ll also spend lavishly on dinners out. I’m an experience junkie and a whore for travel—whatever the cost. I shop infrequently for clothing but when I do I tend buy in bulk and gravitate towards expensive “quality items” that I rationalize are worth it because, well, cashmere never goes out of style.

But lately my psyche has embraced this idea that I can scale back across the board. This, it turns out, is one of the silver linings of unemployment. Along with having less money to spend, I have a lot of time these days to simply re-assess my modus operandi.

Last week I took my mother-in-law (an obliging sidekick shopper) to Nordstrom on a quest for new jeans. I’ve lost some weight recently, and as much as I’m trying not to spend money, all my jeans are now too big. I think I need to repeat that, MY JEANS ARE TOO BIG FOR ME. They’re actually—wait for it—BAGGY IN THE ASS.

Hold on a sec while I go high-five myself in the mirror.

It seemed somewhat Draconian to deny myself the glory of buying a new, smaller size of jeans. Especially since, given my current stay-at-home mom status, I wear those frickin’ jeans EVERY SINGLE DAY.

See? My amortized-over-time rationale is kicking in again.

I have a brand I like, but I was curious about what else was out there. While Peggy waited on a Gothic-looking wood-carved couch, I tried on roughly two zillion pairs of jeans. Even Peggy, a seasoned fitting room advisor with solid Midwestern staying power, had to wander into another department at one point to relieve herself of my relentless asking, “Wait, I think I look slightly thinner in these than I did in the ones three pairs ago. Do you?”

I finally settled on a fabulous dark blue “skinny” pair that cost a whopping $180. Well, that minus the $50 gift card I had.

I told myself this was thrifty.

But at home later, I tucked the pants and receipt carefully into my dresser and questioned whether they were there to stay. Two of my O-town besties had mentioned a mall-store that had good-fitting, cheap jeans. And, although skeptical—could a woman my age really shop in that store?—I was curious.

So two days later I took my dear, patient mother-in-law to some Godforsaken suburban shopping complex a half-hour away to TRY ON MORE JEANS. (If you saw a gray-haired woman pawing at the window of a silver Subaru heading to Pleasanton last week, that was her.)

But guess WHAT? Cheap jeans look cute too! And you can still feel cool about getting them in your new smaller size! In fact, you can get one pair that works with flip flops and another to wear with boots—all for $80!

Woo hoo!

High on my jeans buy I made another, possibly rash cost-cutting call. I decided to cheat on my hairdresser—the extremely talented, extremely gay, extremely expensive guy I ADORE and go to in San Francisco (a not extremely convenient location). I have my first low-to-the-ground local cut and color in less than an hour. And when they don’t hand me a mug of organic mint tea or offer to put money in my meter when it runs low, I’m going to be okay with that.

Maybe.

If I don’t come out looking like pre-makeover Kate Gosselin, that is.

Oh and yesterday? Getting a new prescription for my contacts the doc tells me there’s another brand of daily-disposables that are much cheaper and just as good. It’s like SHE KNEW I’m high on a money-saving binge. I’m all, “Hook a sister UP!”

When you see me next you won’t even notice the lenses I’m wearing are less expensive than my old ones. As long as I’m able to see you back, that is.

There’s really no telling how long I’ll ride this austerity wave. I’m fearful I’m just in the honeymoon phase and I could go back to my old ways faster than you can say “new pair of fall boots.” But in the meantime I’m enjoying my newfound thriftiness.

Miss Page would be so proud.

Don’t Feel Good

My six-year-old, Kate, just got a new pair of sneakers. Hot pink lace-up Vans. They’re adorable in a preppie surfer-girl kinda way, and look just like the old pair she had.

But they are making our lives a living hell.

Mornings are miserable ’round here when it’s time for her to put on those damn shoes. She whines, whimpers, cries even. She pleads with us to let her wear the old ones. She begs for “just one more day.”

The new ones “don’t feel good,” she says. If I had a nickel for every time she’s used that phrase, well, we’d be able to buy lots and lots of new shoes. But she wouldn’t want those either. So it’s just as well.

Some kids stress about the first day of school or monsters under the bed or having to eat their broccoli.  For Kate, clothing is the enemy. If you’re no stranger to this blog, you’ve heard me go on about this before. Like when Mark went to Australia for work and Kate refused to change her underwear.

Or when she modeled for a photographer friend and was required to wear a woolen dress, cotton tights, tall boots… and a hat. [Wince] (Let’s just say her runway career was short-lived.)

Or the first time she actually wore a tutu to ballet class and I wept with joy and pride and the sweet normalcy of it all.

These things other kids do—tossing on, say, the Back to School outfit Grandma bought them, or new PJs on Christmas Eve to wait for Santa—are Herculean feats that are unattainable to my Kate.

The Occupational Therapist we saw 18 months ago called it Sensory Defensiveness, an extreme reaction to certain touch-sensations. Like, a shirt with a decal sewn on it won’t just elicit an “ugh” from Kate. She will claw it off, screaming and panicked. Some clothes aren’t just uncomfortable. She can’t bear them.

As with most diagnoses, there are degrees of intensity, and we are lucky that Kate’s is low impact. God bless the people out there who have it worse than us.

In fact, we’ve dialed the situation in to the extent that you might never know she has this problem. We’ve found shirts and skirts without bulky seams or itchy fabric that she’s willing to wear. And we’ve bought those things in quadruplicate.

And thrift stores are our friends. Other kids have broken everything in. And even though we have Paige to pass hand-me-downs to, I feel good about saving money on Kate’s clothes, considering all I’ve spent on things she only ever wore once. (Or that she cut the labels out of, then refused to try on.)

Once we get over the painful, arduous hump of breaking in a new pair of shoes, she will wear them every day for months, until she looks like a Dickensian pauper and we’re forced to buy her a new pair.

I’ve changed my expectations too. I’d love to dress her in cute outfits and put barrettes in her hair, but I traded in that desire for being able to start our days without tantrums, and with Kate feeling comfortable and calm. And I’ve stopped making costumes she refuses to wear on the day of the Halloween parade.

I’m trying to let go. I’m trying to rise above. Now I just smile at all her classmates in their sweet flowered sandals and their outfit-appropriate patent leather shoes. My girl? She’s the one in the velvet dress and muddy, threadbare sneakers. I really work on not letting it bother me.

We were down to three pairs of panties with her at one point. She had a drawer-full of others—all the same style and brand. But just three of them were old and soft enough for her to tolerate. Eventually one of The Chosen Ones split at the seams. When Mark threw them in the garbage can Kate wept like we were burying her pet dog, alive.

These are my maternal moments of heartbreak.

Two weeks ago Kate had her first concert. She joined a youth choir this winter, which she’s loved. She sings during dinner, while she brushes her teeth, when she’s falling asleep. I have to ask her to stop sometimes. She and Mark—a former chorus geek himself—bond over flowery high-pitched songs from the 18th Century. And best of all, choir requires no tutus, shin guards, or leotards.

So it was a bummer of the highest order when Mark learned he’d be traveling for Kate’s first performance. It was just a few weeks ago, and on the day of the show I was a basket case. I wasn’t the stage mom, worried that Kate wouldn’t hit her notes. I wasn’t concerned that she’d feel sad that her dad would miss her sing Homeward Bound.

My agita was about clothing. Because it ended up that there was a uniform she had to wear. Oy! A bright purple shirt with a sailor suit collar, a nylon black skirt, and black tights. And with Mark out of town, it was up to me to get my Don’t Feel Good Girl into this get-up.

There’s a reason why tights are called tights, you know. Kate does not do tights. And the awkwardly-cut, stiff new shirt was sure to be a Fashion Won’t.

I envisioned us being a hour late. Kate tear-strewn and inconsolable. And me holding the outfit that I couldn’t get her into. I pictured what our evening would be like if we were told she couldn’t participate in the show.

I texted my girlfriends throughout the day (bless their hearts), opening the pressure valve on my stress by sharing my fears. I read and re-read their encouraging responses.

I could do this. Kate could do this.

Breathe.

By 4:45 it was time to get ready. We’d eaten an early dinner and I’d given us 30 minutes for clothing and 30 minutes to drive there.  More than enough time.

I hauled out the big guns. I said the girls could watch a show while Kate changed.  I tried to keep my tone all easy-breezy. Usually my kids are in such hypnotic states in front of TV I can perform small surgeries on them without them even noticing.

But the tights! The tights were up first and were pure torture. She got them halfway on while laughing at Curious George, then looked down, realized what she was doing, and peeled them off in terror. We tried again. This time I gave into her request to try them sans panties. (They were thick black cotton so I figured it was hardly a Sharon Stone move.)

But no go, even without panties.

So you know what? I gave up on the tights. Forget the tights. Who needs tights?

I tossed them in my purse, she put back on her panties, and I coaxed the skirt on her as Curious George opened the farm gate and all the cows ran out. We tried the purple shirt solo, then over a variety of tank tops. Finally the right combination. Success!

And get this—we even braided her hair. A crazy, unexpected bonus.

She looked beautiful.

I wanted to dance, cry, and drink a massive gin and tonic and pass out. But I had a church to get to.

Every other girl was in their perfect outfit, black tights on, purple shirts pressed and perfect. And Kate run up to the crowd, melding in from the skirt up, but in her comfort-approved black-and-gray striped socks.

Instead of hating the other girls, I was proud of Kate. No tears shed, and 95% uniform success.

In a whisper I explained to the conductor that the tights were a no go, and why. And I didn’t stop to wonder about the judgments she might’ve been making about my child.

Summer camp starts in a week and a half. The “What to Bring” email always raises my blood pressure. Kate currently has no sweatshirts she’s willing to put on. So our next challenge is getting her to stop wearing the down jacket she still grabs when I ask her to bring a warm outer layer.

Either that, or start praying for snow in June.

Polka Dotted Panties

I’m planning to take an axe to Paige’s diaper pail.

Or maybe I’ll back over it with the car. Or set it on fire like some stinky, suburban Burning Man. We can get the neighbors to wear strange provocative costumes, do psychedelic drugs, and ride their bikes around our back yard as they watch it go up in flames. (Never let it be said I don’t keep the community’s entertainment needs in mind.)

Or maybe this is the wrong approach entirely, and I should do something to honor and preserve that damn diaper trapper for its many long years of service. Like, maybe I could mail it off to one of those places that covers baby shoes in bronze. We can set it in the corner of the living room—under a little art spotlight—like some masterpiece that everyone would be too disturbed by it to do anything other than compliment it. It could be our awkwardly large tribute to our kid’s babyhoods, like some freakishly over-sized charm bracelet souvenir.

Oh, the possibilities are endless, really!

Yes, it’s a thrilling time of unbridled celebration here at Chez McClusky. For the first time in nearly six years, we don’t have any children in diapers. (And we only have TWO kids. I shudder to think how long The Diaper Phase endures for more prolific breeders.)

Yes, we have no diapers to change. We have no diapers to buy. We have no diapers to carry with us in unattractive, unwieldy padded diaper bags. And we’ll hopefully never again be part of one of those weird half-drunk conversations where you find yourself arguing with other parents about whether it’s harder to clean poop off of boy parts or girl parts. (Everyone seems to think the gender they don’t have to deal with is worse. Which has gotta be some kind of Darwinian survival instinct.)

Whatever the case, Paige proclaimed recently, “Girls have vaginas and penises. And boys have nothing!”

In Paige’s world it’d be easier to change boy diapers without a doubt. I imagine they’d just be like dolls down there.

At any rate, it’s too soon to put our poop-talkin’ days totally behind us (no pun intended). As a new potty indoctrinate Paige is still in the exuberant bodily-function announcement mode. Which is to say, the moment everyone is seated at the table, hands washed, milk cups filled, and you lean over to take your first hungry bite of roast chicken, Paige will inevitably announce, “I have to go poop! I have a thousand big big poops to do!!”

Oh, how… cute.

At least, for the weight conscious among us, it‘s an effective appetite suppressant.

Of course, the dark side to all this grown-up behavior is that we’re closing the door on yet another phase of parenting—even if it does mean less direct contact with feces. I lamented the last time I breastfed. I was heartbroken packing away all those tiny newborn shirts, booties, and receiving blankets. And despite myself, I was a weeper on Paigey’s first day of preschool.

Whether it’s good or bad, when the girls move past something, I feel a twinge of nostalgia about it. I mean, if I have time to.

But I’m over thinking that having a third baby is the solution to avoiding the bittersweet passage of time. I’ve come around to accepting that parenting throws plenty of weepish moments your way. So even though I don’t get to chomp on Paigey’s  ham hock thighs when I change her diapers any more, there are new excellent things that she does now—like pontificate about how panties with polka dots are really the best panties there are. And deliver spontaneous anatomy lessons on gender and genitalia.

Before our East Coast foray this summer Kate went to a fabulous summer camp. One of those old school outdoorsy places where she canoed, rode horses, swam, did archery (ha!), and had her first overnight away-from-the-family camp out. Oh, and made lanyards. In fact, she could now open an Etsy shop called Lanyard-palooza.

At the end of the first week the camp put on a lip synch performance. Each of the groups of campers did a little performance to a song, all the parents lucky enough to not work came to watch, and it was a lot of good clean fun.

I mean, “clean” if you didn’t listen too hard to the lyrics. Like for one of the songs, Katy Perry’s “Extra Terrestrial,” a stage full of nine-year-old girls jumped around waggling their fingers on their heads like antennae, while mouthing,  “Kiss me, ki-ki-kiss me. Infect me with your love and fill me with your poison.”

I don’t mean to be prude, but sheesh.

Kate’s group sang a Justin Bieber song, for which she practiced around the house (seemingly endlessly) by jutting her hips out to one side and singing with the synthetic soulfulness that only a five-year-old can muster, “Bay-buh, bay-buh, bay-buh, oh!”

At least no one was purporting to be filled up with someone else’s “poison.”

But still I felt that sneaking, sinking they’re-growing-up feeling. Too fast.

One of the other moms called me the night before the performance. All the other girls were wearing Justin Bieber t-shirts for the show. Did Kate have one? Her daughter did not, and she had no intention of changing that. As long as our girls would be outsiders together, it’d be fine. We agreed they’d wear special sundresses—an attempt to make them feel gussied up, without giving into some Tiger Beat-like peer pressure at age five.

As it turned out, none of the other kids wore JB shirts the next day. More proof that you can’t always trust what your five-year-old tells you. And a reassuring indication that kindergarteners through the tunnel—in the suburban town where the camp was—were the same as our kindergarteners. Or at least, they weren’t yet acting like tweens.

On the last day of camp there was a talent show. The auditorium was packed with kids of all ages and parents wielding video cameras, digital cameras, and iPhones. Rest assured, this event would be captured.

The show was made up of older girls singing pop songs alone and in groups, boys doing kicks and karate chops to “Kung Fu Fighting,” and one twerpy kid who sang some teddy bear song that had the crowd howling as the seemingly endless lyrics went on and on and on.

Kate had talked about wanting to do something, but I wasn’t sure if she’d muster the gumption. Almost no kids her age had.

Then the M.C. called to her to go back-stage to be “on deck” as the next performer.

When she stepped onto the stage, she was clutching a mic and standing ramrod straight, wide-eyed looking out at the crowd. Then, without any musical accompaniment, with a weak uncertain voice she started singing, “Doe a deer, a female deer…”

I noticed a few mamas in the audience reach out to touch each others’ arms.

My chest swelled with love—or pride, or sympathetic stage fright—or all of those, and I held my fingers up to my mouth as I listened to her. I telepathically egged her on. I hoped some people knew she was my kid.

My little Kate, on her own volition, picked an adorably sweet wonderful song, blissfully devoid of semen-shooting metaphors. (Sung by a nun no less!) She’d ponied up to perform, though few other kids her age had. And she was KILLING on stage.

Maybe in response to the smiling audience (or my telepathic encouragement), her confidence kicked in, and she started singing more steadily, even swaying a bit less stiffly than her initial robotic stance. She finished to a resounding room of applause. (But really, the crowd clapped a lot for everyone.)

My girls might be growing up fast, but somehow—for now—they seem to be doing a damn good job of it.

Bravo to you, Katie! You are a rock star indeed. At least in your mama’s eyes.

And Paige, Daddy and I could not be prouder of you and your big girl panties.

Carry on, girls! Carry on.

Campfire Classroom

You think you know everything there is to know about someone, then out of the blue they bust out something new.

Mark did this to me on Sunday. He told me that two of the best showers he’s ever taken took place since he’s known me.

Okay, I admit this is NOT the most scintillating tidbit. Not like finding out he’d been a prodigy on the tuba. Or that he had a tail surgically removed after birth. (Neither of those things, sadly, are true.) But, you know, when you’ve been married to someone for a while, any fresh little nugget is compelling.

So about these showers. The best of his life, he claimed. And before you envision some steamy Nine 1/2 Weeks acrobatic-sex scene, the showers he was referring to he actually took alone.

One of them was after a several-day backpacking trip we took through the Minnesota Boundary Waters. Back when we were dating. It was the kind of grueling balls-out adventure that had the potential to cement our relationship or squelch it. After several days we emerged from the woods exhausted, sucked-dry by mosquitoes, and with Mark missing a toenail. But strangely, still in love.

We were both chicken-fried in sedimentary layers of sunscreen, bug spray, and dirt. Oh, and sweat. Did I fail to mention we were comprehensively coated in deeply-funky homeless man strength sweat?

Well, yes sirree we were.

Mark remembers that first shower back in civilization quite fondly.

Then there was the bath Mark took in a fancy L.A. hotel room after completing the AIDS Ride. (Okay, so this wasn’t a shower per se, but his second best “bathing experience.”) Turns out that after a 580-mile bike ride, a soak in the tub does you justice. In the same way that doing anything other than pedaling your bike would probably be pleasant.

Since having had kids, neither Mark nor I have gotten much chance to do the kinda things that result in severe abstention from cleanliness. No long camping adventures. No immense feats of athletic endurance. And I don’t mean to show off here, but even when the kids were newborns we somehow managed to shower regularly.

So it wasn’t until a few weeks ago, when we went camping for a weekend with Kate’s school, that we returned to the Land of the Stinky.

Yes, we’re the people who put camping equipment on our wedding registry, got a bunch of great new gear, then I immediately got pregnant. And say what you will about the merits of a Thermarest, I had no intention of settling my preg-o whale-like carcass atop a thin air mattress and hoping for any semblance of a good night’s sleep. I mean, even a world-class optimist like me knew that was too much to hope for.

But now Paigey’s well over three years old. We no longer have a baby as an excuse. (Take my notions of poor sleep as a pregnant camper and magnify those to the tenth power at the thought of bunkin’ in a tent with a baby.) So when Kate’s kindergarten sent out an email about a school-wide weekend in the wilderness, how could we say no? It seemed like high time to dredge up and dust off our sleeping bags, Nalgene bottles, and moisture-wicking clothing. Oh and those great little super-absorbant towels.

Sure, we were staying in a cabin. With bathrooms just a path’s walk away. And—get this—there was even a dining hall where we were beckoned by bell for meals three times a day. So it was hardly roughin’ it. But it was a perfect re-introduction to the wonders of the wilderness. A great way for Mark and I to revisit the concept of camping, and to envision it as an activity for our party of four.

And beyond re-igniting our desire to starting camping again, our whole family learned a little something new that weekend. So much so, that I started noting our various discoveries.

Here’s that list:

Electric Kool-Aid Gummi Bear Test
For the first time, Kate and Paige drank Kool-Aid. Paige dubbed it “gummi bear juice” and became immediately, devastatingly addicted. After polishing off a large cup she’d plead, “More, more, MORE gummi bear juice, Mama!” I started wondering what we could use as a methadone to ease her off the stuff on the long drive home.

And to top it off she had a big, smile-shaped, red Kool-Aid stain on her face. Kinda like a milk moustache, but larger and more terrifying. By weekend’s end I feared it was essentially tattooed on. She looked like The Joker from Batman—and with her sugar high, was acting only slightly less demonic.

Boys Like Fire
At the bonfire our first night, I learned that boys—especially 4th and 5th grade boys—really REALLY like fire. Trust me on this. My eyeball was almost on the receiving end of a flaming marshmallow several times. Some boys were skipping the s’mores altogether to focus all their attention on setting branches and leaves on fire. The way things were going it was only a matter of time until bratty siblings and controlling parents were tossed into the flames. I bugged out before the real pyrotechnics kicked in.

Tricks for Keeping Warm
On our first morning in the cabin, Mark handed Kate and Paige their clothes for the day and suggested they put them in their sleeping bags to warm up. Mind you, it was May, but still chiiiiilly where we were. (Saturday night dropped down to 40-something.) Anyway, I thought this idea of thawing your clothes before getting dressed was sheer spousal brilliance.

It pays to marry an Eagle Scout, ladies.

And the other thing? On Sunday morning when I was nearly swan diving into a cup of rank camp coffee to warm up, I learned that I’d bungled my attempts to not freeze during the night. I’d layered on lots of clothes before climbing into my super-schmancy hi-tech sleeping bag. (I am, after all, The First Lady of Wired Magazine Gadgets.) Anyway, in a not altogether flirtatious fashion, one of the dads from the school informed me that “less clothing is more” in one’s sleeping bag. As in, your body generates warmth that bounces off the sleeping bag and gets trapped there—keepin’ ya toasty.

But me? I’d intercepted my 20-degree sleep sack’s ability to be warm and womb-like by foolishly layering on leggings, a t-shirt, and a hoodie.

This explains why mountain men like to sleep in the buff. (Someone said that who was listening to our conversation that day, so I thought I’d say it too. But I actually don’t know any mountain men, and certainly have no insights into their proclivities for night-time garb—or lack thereof.)

Moths to a Flame
The first morning at the dining hall many of Kate’s classmates were clamoring around the industrial cereal dispensers—those long clear-plastic tubes that’re filled with different cereals. You churn a knob at the bottom to dump some in your bowl.

And you know what was in one of them? FRUIT LOOPS.

This, like the Kool-Aid, was life-changing for many of those all-organic, low-sugar, earthy-groovy-healthy California kids. Suffice to to say they were like moths to a flame. Or rather, like little robots aimed at a target who kept blindly walking towards it, bumping into it, then charging it again.

All those lies us parents had been spewing all these years—that the flavorless cardboardy organic Cheerio-shaped cereal was the most delicious and indulgent of breakfast options—were brutally laid bare.

I actually had some Fruit Loops myself that weekend. What a taste flashback!

And you know, they ARE pretty damn good.

Four-Legged Stroller
I have long contended that I will be pushing my children to their proms in strollers. Because they are the world’s wimpiest walkers. I know I should really just dispose of our Rolls Royce-quality double stroller altogether. But now I don’t think I’ll have to. Now that Kate’s been on a horse I’m convinced she’ll be more game for a pony than a Porsche when she turns 16.

I too rode a horse for the first time! Took a glorious hour-long trail ride on an amazing gorgeous trail. Even saw a real-live beaver out swimming in the river.

Nature! Real living nature!

I’m currently considering an urban-girl-goes-country wardrobe overhaul. The next time you see me wearing turquoise jewelry, a silver belt buckle, jeans, and boots, please just play along with it. I’m sure, like all good phases, it will pass.

When in Rome, Speak Roman
On the second morning in our one-room cabin, Kate rolled over and started yammering on about something to Paige. This was a thrilling chance for Kate to start her 12-hour-long Daily Talk Marathon a few minutes earlier than at home, where she has to walk from her bedroom to her sister’s before lurching into uninterrupted streaming chat.

Paige was groggy. She was un-used to the late bedtimes brought about by night-time bonfires. She harumphed. She whined. She rolled over. She pulled her blankie over her head. And finally, fed up, I heard her clearly, unemotionally say, “Suck it, Kate.”

I was stunned. And I think Kate was too—even though I’m pretty sure neither of them knew what it meant.

Kate quieted down. Paige dozed back off, and I lay trembling and speechless in my sleeping bag, not believing what I’d just heard my baby say. (Mark, as it turns out, was in the bathroom during this.)

Clearly the girls picked up more than just how to wield hot marshmallow-tipped sticks from the older boys that weekend. They learned a new nearly-swear. But blessedly—maybe because I didn’t react to it—it was one lesson that they totally forgot.

Kate is doing an overnight camp-out with her most-excellent super-expensive summer camp tonight. They’re sleeping under the stars, having a bonfire, s’mores, and lots of other good clean fun. At nearly six years old, this will be a big dose of independence for her. She’s stayed away from us with her grandparents before, but an overnight camping trip is truly the Big Girl big league.

I’m in that weird maternal place of feeling half thrilled for her and half sad about how quickly my girl is growing up.

And I’m looking forward to getting out to camp more this summer with our whole family. No doubt Kate will have a thing or two to teach us then. Hopefully it won’t be about being naked in your sleeping bag.

Highlights and Lowlights (and I’m Not Talking about My Hair)

My friend Barb is perfect.

She’s extremely kind and thoughtful. She’s genuine through and through. She’s creative and silly and fun and smart. And, of course, she’s gorgeous. So much so that she was asked out on a date—approached on the sidewalk, no less—when she was nearly eight months pregnant.

If she wasn’t so wonderful, I’d hate her.

Barb and her hubby had kids long before Mark and I added to the world’s population problem. So going to their house for dinner always was an exercise in note-taking for our future family. One night after dinner I remember their kidlings hauled out a bunch of different instruments. We had a music and dance party that was such good clean fun I wanted to make lederhosen for them out of the drapes while belting out “The Hills Are Alive.” (Note to my sister-in-law: This is a reference to The Sound of Music. Which is a movie.)

At dinner each member of Barb’s family shares the highlights and lowlights of their day. It’s something we started doing, and a few of our friends have since picked it up from us. It’s a sly way to lure kids into old-fashioned dinnertime convos. I never knew how deeply shrouded in secrecy a day at kindergarten could otherwise be.

Someone recently told me she does this too, but calls it ‘Roses and Thorns.’ She borrowed the name from the Obamas. Such a schmancy Presidential Rose Garden spin! Hey, what’s good enough for Malia and Sasha is good enough for my girls.

I stumbled across some other tips on Motherboard for taking the gruel out of family din-dins. Did you know that the more family dinners teens attend, the less likely they are to smoke pot, run away from home, and dress like sluts? Okay, so I’m not sure about that last one, but I’m still willing to enforce the you-sit-right-here-for-dinner-Missy rule for a while to come.

So, where was I?

Well, God knows it doesn’t some dinnertime game to get me talkin’. But with 2010 in my rear view mirror, I’ve been thinking about some of my year’s highlights and lowlights.

First, for the highlights:

Best Times with Paige: Every day when she climbs on me in bed for our delicious morning snuggle. I love this even when it’s brutally hellishly early in the morning. I can’t help but think she won’t be doing this forever, so I’m basking in it while it lasts.

Best Times with Kate: Reading. This year Katie Pie learned to read, which was magical and thrilling. But she’s not exactly devouring books on her own yet. And I cherish the times each day that I read to her. For an active kiddo, she totally calms down, snuggles up, and gets absorbed in stories. It rocks. We’re reading chapter books now too, which has lots of great day-after-day satisfaction, like some weird good-for-you soap opera.

Best Meal: The first out-put of Mark’s food smoker—pulled pork sandwiches for Paigey’s 2nd birthday party. (Feeding the kids was a total afterthought.)

Best Dessert Recipes: Three-way tie between The New York Times’ Maple Pear Upside-Down Cake, Sunset’s Lemon Rosemary Buttons, and Martha Stewart’s Cornmeal Cookies.

Best Yard Sale Bargain: Four Reidel stemless wineglasses for $2. (And to think I almost asked “For each one?” Ha!) Now I wish our vast Reidel collection was all stemless.

Best Once-in-a-Lifetime Trip: The Winter Olympics in Vancouver with Mark (who covered the games for Wired) and my dear collegiate frienda Brenda. If you have never been to this event, GO. It will renew your faith in, well, the world. Plus, you haven’t lived until you’ve gotten emotionally invested in a curling match.

Best Party We Attended: A Father’s Day brunch in our beloved friends’ the Bibbo’s back yard. We came for breakfast and stayed through dinner. Such fun. And the food! Oh, the food.

Proudest Mama Moments: Watching Kate walking into her first day of Kindergarten like such a big big sweet girl. And seeing Paige running around with the other kids at her 2nd b-day party. (If 2009 was about Paigey Wiggles learning to walk, 2010 was about her running and dancing and jumping and skipping and never looking back. Yippee!)

Best Televised Sports Experience: Watching a Canadian Olympic hockey game at a bar in Whistler with one of my best friends and my best (albeit only) husband. Man, those Canadians really do love their hockey. And their beer. (Turns out we do too.)

Best Life-Improving Purchase: Our super-cozy eco-groovy Keetsa memory foam mattress.

Best Happy Tears Moment: When I read the letter to Mark over the phone that Kate had gotten into to the super-excellent school she now goes to.

Best Date with Mark: His birthday dinner this November at Quince in San Fran. We forsook the entrees, ordered all five pastas, and had them bring us whatever wine they wanted with each course. And we didn’t talk about the kids once!

Best Summer Trip: Spending three glorious weeks at my dad’s house with the girls. The mercurial New England weather was set to Perfect Summer Beach Day the whole time. The girls were like little nature nymphs, dancing around in the waves and happily playing in the sand for hours each day. (TV? Who needs TV?) The 4th of July parade rocked, like it does, especially with all the far-flung friends we’ve managed to have to join us in Bristol. Best of all, we got truly excellent quality time with my Daddio, who watched more patio-staged ballet performances, and drew more hearts and princesses and rainbows then he ever bargained for.

Best Dose of I-Still-Got-It: Shaking off years of professional rust to do some freelance work at the very cool design firm in SF Hot Studio. A week into the project I told someone I’d been working at home as a mom for the past two-plus years, and he said he couldn’t believe it. (When he sneezed and I automatically started wiping his nose, I think he caught on.)

Best Home Furnishings Score: When my sister unloaded about a dozen duvet covers, sheet sets, pillows, bed skirts, and cloth napkins on me from her vast and fabulous personal collection. I now have a bad-ass world class bedscape. But it also takes an extra 20 minutes to move the pillows off our bed before going to sleep at night.

Best Wine: The huge-ass bottle (I think that’s what vintners call it) of supreme Surh-Luchtel vino that our friends Don and Shelley brought to a party at our house. Not only did it have A LOT of wicked good wine it it, the bottled was inscribed with our wedding invitation. (Try registering for that.)

Best Personal Challenge: Doing Oakland Adventure Boot Camp this summer/fall. I pride myself on voluntarily waking up at 6AM every-other morning, as well as the endless rounds of push-ups, wind sprints, and squats with medicine balls. Go me.

Best I’m Not As Young As I Used to Be Moment: Playing field hockey at my 25-year high school reunion. The other team (our old rivals who were also in town for their reunion) decimated us, but it was hilarious getting out on that field again. And it’s nice knowing that nothing I do now requires a mouth guard.

Best Foodie Celeb Sighting: Meeting Sarah Foster at her cafe/store Foster’s Market in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where we spent another fine Miller Family Thanksgiving.

Best Novel: The Help. But I also *loved* The Eloquence of the Hedgehog.

Best Non-Fiction Book: Life, on the Line: A Chef’s Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat. Mark got to know Chef Grant Achatz (of Alinea in Chicago) after writing about him for Wired, then contributing to his dazzling cook book. Even though I know the story, it was a total page-turner. I was lucky enough to read an advanced galley. When this book comes out in March, if you have any interest in the foodie realm, check it out. It’s way cheaper than a dinner at Alinea.

Best New TV Show Addiction: Seems pretty trite and light-core, but it’s Parenthood. A friend of mine said he and his wife were TiVoing it, but before they’d watched it someone told her, “I LOVE that show. It’s makes me laugh! It makes me cry!” So my friend’s wife went home and deleted it from their TiVo. Well, I admit it’s made this Mama laugh and cry too. I wuv the cast (Peter Krause is the celeb version of Mark), but there are a couple actors I loathe, which it turns out I actually kinda need in a show. And, of course, it’s supposed to be set in Berkeley. So I dig seeing the local landmarks, the Craftsman houses, and of course, the bra-less women and pot-adled liberals.

Best Old TV Show Addiction: Tie between Dexter and Damages. Glenn Close is so good at being bad. (What else should I be watching on DVD?)

Best Party Mark and I Threw: Hiring a chef to cook dinner for our six nearest and dearest Oakland friends, and my dad and stepmother who were visiting from Rhode Island. All I had to do was buy a centerpiece, set the table, and take a shower. Bliss! Plus, the food rocked. As did Dad’s card tricks.

Best Kiddie Music the Whole Family Can Tolerate:  Laurie Berkner

Best Self-Preservation Maneuver: Hiring a “hangover helper”—i.e. a babysitter to come over one Sunday at 7:30AM, the day after we had a party. She whisked in, took the kids out for breakfast and to the park, and allowed Mark and I some desperately-needed sleeeeep. This was such a supremely smart idea I think there’s a business plan in there somewhere.

Best Meeting I Attended: One in which it was determined that Paige was doing so well (physically and verbally) she was no longer eligible for the state’s early intervention services. Woo hoo!

Best Article of Clothing I Bought: A brown cotton Max Studio dress that I wear like it’s my favorite pair of jeans. Looks kinda like this one.

Best Hobby I Got Back Into: Reading. And really, reading one good book is like grocery shopping when you’re hungry. You want to start reading everything. According to the widget on this here blog, I read 20 books in 2010, about two a month. And that doesn’t count the small handful I started and abandoned.

Best Gift I’ve Used Every Day: When Mark was in Switzerland last winter for work, he bought me a fabulous perfect-for-everyday-use indestructible Freitag purse. It’s fabulous, and he’s fabulous for having such good taste (in wives, and in business-trip gifts).

Best Kitchen Gadget: An electric kettle, which I dropped and broke last week. It had been great for everything from making tea, to hot water for the kids oatmeal.

Best Stupid Comedy Rentals: Step Brothers (AMAZING tip, Drew!), and The Hangover. These bad frat-boy-humor movies were so damn good, I can’t believe I ever liked (okay, loved) Dumb and Dumber.

Best Stay-cation: Our Christmas/New Year’s break. The kids were off school for two weeks, and Mark was off work (for the most part) then too. It was the perfect balance of social plans, sleeping late, and lazy rainy days. Mark and I gave each other time for golf (him) and yoga (me). And I didn’t get out of my PJs all day on Christmas. I can’t remember the last time I did that.

Best Social Event: My high school reunion. If everyone waited until they were in their 40s to go to high school it’d be a much friendlier place.

Best Compliment: A babysitter told me I look like Ari Gold’s wife, Mrs. Ari, from Entourage. She was certain I “must hear that from people all the time.”

As for the year’s lowlights, I’m happy to report there were far fewer than the highlights. Which also means this blog post will end soon(ish) for you. Phew!

Saddest Loss: Mark’s wonderful grandpa passing away. And my Dad’s BFF and most-excellent neighbor, Eddie, and my sweet Uncle Ade also died.

Worst Foot-in-Mouth Moment: Asking a mother at Paige’s preschool if she was a nanny. Ugh!

Worst Mama Moment: How much time do you have? Seriously, nothing huge and hideous comes to mind here, THANK GOD, just a long list of times when I’ve lost my temper, raised my voice, irrationally barked out a, “No!,” or had my own form of grown-up of tantrum. You know, the usual stuff.

Worst Weekend-Away Phone Call: The one in which Mark reported that Kate got kicked out of kindergarten. Just for the day. But still.

Worst Morning: Crying at boot camp—while running the stairs!—because I had barely slept the night before (see Paige’s sleep issue below). The petite drill sergeant trainer gave me a double dose of tough love, when what I needed was a wee bit o’ encouragement. (At least she emailed me an apology that afternoon.)

Worst Weather Interference: A local daytime Halloween parade is a supremely super-fun place for kids and Halloween-obsessed adults (like moi) to revel in the holiday. This year it rained. Waaah! I was like a bride on her rainy wedding day. Even though the die-hards still came out, the raincoats over costumes were a bummer.

Worst Wretched Sleep Pattern: Paige went from being a star sleeper, to the kid who gets out of bed 15 times after you tuck her in. Plus a few times in the middle of the night. Oy! We’ve considered returning her to her crib (since this all started with the move to her Big Girl Bed), but I fear if we did that we’d leave her in it ’til her teens. And that’d bring about a whole ‘nother host of unsavory issues.

Biggest Regret: Realizing that the 8-hour drive to Palm Springs to visit my sister Judy is totally do-able with the kids—especially with a DVD player in the car. Why haven’t I been going to see her more? (And this doesn’t come solely from my desire to score more sheets.)

Worst Airline Travel: Twice—or maybe even three times—this year we’ve taken family trips with flights departing at 6AM. One time Kate refused to get dressed when we woke her up. We finally put her in the car in her panties, since we were about to miss our flight. At the long-term parking lot her tantrum continued, until Mark and I strong-armed her into her dress and shoes (a lovely public display of excellent parenting). Later, in a long busy airport hallway, she had another diabolical fit. Over her head (and while pretending to not be her parents) Mark and I vowed to never take a 6AM flight again. No matter how much cheaper the tickets were. And then, we went on two more trips with 6AM departures. Sigh.

Saddest Farewell: Our long-time nanny and friend Shelly moved back to Israel this fall. We are thrilled that she is back with her family and friends, but we miss her madly! It’s super sad to not know when—or if—we’ll see her again.

Most Shameful Injury: Pulling a groin muscle while bowling with the kids and Mark’s parents on our Thanksgiving vacation. My chiropractor said, “I don’t know what’s worse: Admitting you were bowling, or that you got injured while bowling.”

When it’s Mark’s turn to tell his day’s highlight at dinner, he sometimes says, “Right now.” Even though it means a relatively early dinner hour and food that’s geared towards the whole family, we’ve been making an effort to eat with the girls every night,. (Except for when we ditch them with a sitter and go out.)

So it’s sweet that our family meal is sometimes the highlight of Mark’s day. Either that, or his work day really sucked.

Now Kate and Paige sometimes use “right now” as their highlight too. Which would be fine if it wasn’t on the days I’ve busted my butt to take them to the beach and out for ice cream, or to a children’s museum, or to some other kid-gasmic concert or party or special event. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it takes the wind out of my sails when the turkey burgers en famille beat all those other things out.

But maybe I should wise up a bit to Mark and the girls. Maybe the best highlight of all is the sum-total of our sweet family dinners together. Maybe turkey burgers really are the key to happiness.

I love you, Mark, Kate and Paigey, my three life highlights!

And Happy Happy New Year to the rest of you. In 2011, may your highlights blast your lowlights out of the water.

Locked and Loaded for Thanksgiving

My mother got headaches on holidays. The kind that required to her to be alone in her darkened bedroom. A room that she entered after shouting, “A little bit of appreciation would be nice!” then slamming her door.

Truth be told, I’m not sure this holiday ‘tradition’ took place on a truly regular basis, like the arrival of eggnog at grocery stores. But it did go down a few times for sure. Which in my tattered memory qualifies as something.

Of course, back then, my three sisters and I thought she was a drama queen. We rolled our eyes, called her nasty names (under our breath), and phoned friends to bemoan our misery. But now, as a Mama myself, I’m not so sure my mother was the offending party.

When I think of my mom at the holidays, I see her rolling out these Italian fruit cookies she used to make. More often than not, this was a late-night project. It took up all the counter space and the kitchen table. The cookies are super time-intensive and the dough’s delicate and tricky to work with—so much so that even now as a graduate of cooking school, I’ve shied away from ever attempting them.

But us kids loved them. They’d become tradition. So even if it meant finding time to bake at 10PM—and even though they were her ex-husband’s family recipe—Mom made them. Never fail. Every year.

Like many of the things she poured time and energy into—making pine cone wreaths, going to a farm for real hay for our manger, nurturing Christmas cacti year-round and baking cranberry bread on Christmas morning—all these things we all just took as traditions. Hardly considering how Mom toiled to maintain them.

What I’d pay now to be a fly on the wall back then. There were four of us girls, one of her. What was it we did to set off her tirades? Lazed about in our Lanz granny gowns, refusing to even let the dog out, when she’d woken up at 5AM to start the bird? Moaned about going with her to Christmas Mass? Or complained that the cocktail sauce for the shrimp was too spicy—or worse—was a new recipe we weren’t used to?

Embarrassingly entitled behavior, I know. But all totally feasible scenarios.

From where I stand now—a Mama who’s decorated and baked and shopped and wrapped ‘til all hours of the night—I can’t help but think that the odds were Mom’s tantrums were legit.

Too bad it’s too late to tell her I feel her pain.

When Paige was in a crappy sleep cycle a while back, waking up sometimes five times a night, I was also dragging my ass up at 6AM for boot camp. I was a zombie. Some days when Paigey napped, I’d crawl into my own bed. But Kate doesn’t have the ‘constitution’ for naps. (The gal’s natural pace is hopped-up like a speed fiend’s, and I have no one but myself to blame.) So to ensure Katie-Pie was well occupied, I’d plop her in front of the boob tube. I felt guilty, but I also felt so very very sleepy.

A couple weeks later, Kate and Mark were talking in the kitchen. “You know, Mom’s tired all the time,” Kate reported. “I always watch TV during the day so she can sleep.”

“Whaaaat?!” I cried from the next room, tripping over myself to bust in on their convo and rectify my reputation. “I did that TWICE!” I said to Mark. “Okay, maybe three times… Back when Paigey kept on waking up at night.”

Then, turning to Kate like we were sisters in a spat, I sneered, “It wasn’t ALL THE TIME.”

I think Mark knew Kate was stretching the truth to con him into turning on TV. “Hey, it’s cool man! We roll like this all the time when you’re at work!” But maybe, like my memories of my mom’s holiday headaches, Kate saw a small pattern in my behavior and blew it up to be much bigger in her mind.

Whole families can have collective distortions of how things went down. Don’t you think? Stories are told and retold and embroidered along the way, and before you know it that famous playground scuffle William got into in third grade involved seven other kids and a pit bull. And he stole a police car after to get away.

I wonder if that’s the case with Mark’s family and their tales of talking politics around the turkey table. From the lore I’ve heard, there were some holidays that got pretty ugly. Folks fired up with a wee bit o’ holiday cheer duking it out over differing political opinions. I mean, far as I can tell there were never fisticuffs. But maybe a turkey drumstick or two got chucked across the table. At least, it’s fun for me to imagine that.

Were their political imbroglios ever really THAT bad? I can’t picture Mark’s mild-mannered Midwestern family bickering over Hilary’s foreign policy. I’m fairly apolitical, so I can’t even see doing that myself. Just like how I don’t get how a football team losing can put someone in a bad mood all day.

In my family accusations are flung, people storm around, and doors get slammed. But that’s just ’cause we’re Italian. It’s built into us. Moments later we’re all back at the table tucking into slabs of pie like nothing happened.

Anyway, all I know is, at some point prior to my indoctrination at Mark’s family holidays, an edict was set forth to suspend all political discourse. Forevermore.

But, you plug up one hole and eventually water spurts forth from another, right? Try as you will, there’s no way to ensure that a big extended family—with differing ages, political views, and opinions on how the stuffing should be cooked—can gather at the holidays with utter serenity. Even if you cook all your side dishes ahead of time, and avoid dinner-table talk on legalizing marijuana, healthcare reform, and failed family investments, something’s gotta give, right?

A recent Motherboard story I read gives the best reality-based holiday advice. Listen, your mother is going to be critical of what you cook no matter what, so just brace for it, honey. And when your brother-in-law acts all tweaky and insecure about something, GIVE INTO HIS SHIT. Toss out some crap that shocks and soothes him with how understanding and supportive you are.

I just LOVE that. Instead of willing it all to go away, step right into it.

Thanksgiving is always with Mark’s family. It rotates between being at his Mom’s house and her siblings’. This year we’re in North Carolina, which is fab, though frankly we could be in [insert some crappy place here] and it wouldn’t make a difference. Wherever we are we all end up just hanging out in the house anyway. Totally by choice.

Everyone’s even got their own foam coozy with their name on it. How rad is THAT? The bar’s open all day and the food don’t stop coming. This year there are even two—count ‘em TWO—newborns we can babble at and whose heads we can smell. And I just KNOW the cousins from Kentucky will bring some truly excellent bourbon. [Nudge, nudge.]

What’s not to love?

The Milller Family Thanksgiving is nothing like the holidays at my house used to be. (They actually watch FOOTBALL. And sometimes even play it!) But ten years in I can’t imagine spending Turkey Day any other way. Is it too meta to be thankful for Thanksgiving itself?

Well, who cares, damn it. I am.

A few years ago one of Mark’s relatives made a request to omit the nuts in the Chex party mix. This person lobbied that everyone in the family just picked around them anyway. A year or so later, the little pretzels were also removed. (I know, right? One of the best parts!) I joked—after a couple bourbon and Cokes, mind you—that the next year they’d be setting out empty bowls.

“What are these?” folks’d ask.

“Oh, the Chex party mix!” the host would reply. “The recipe that everyone likes.”

So, no political banter. And eventually I fear, no Chex mix.

We will get there! We will achieve celebration perfection!

If anyone’s bound to throw a wrench it in the well-oiled Miller Thanksgiving machine, I fear it’ll be me, or one of my kids. (Our wild Italian genes can’t be held down.) So I’m just bracing for Kate to start lecturing her cousin that daddies should be able to marry daddies. Or ranting about BP’s management of the oil spill. (Kate LOVED that damn spill and still goes on about how “some birds died, you know” and “Uncle John plugged it up.”)

At the same time I can picture Paige spitting out a brussel sprout, screaming, “ME NO YIKE DIS!” then spilling my red wine all over the white linen tablecloth.

Should this take place, I offer this up to our hostess, Aunt Ann, in advance: Talk a deep breath and a swig of chardonnay and remember that you’ve got a back-up plan: There’s a dark bedroom and a headache—either real or well-acted—that’s waiting for you.

Trust me on this. I’ve learned from the best.

[Yawn]

I am so very tired.

It’d be one thing if it was just on accounta getting up at 6AM day after day, since in some late-night at-my-computer moment of bravado I signed up for the FIVE day-a-week boot camp. (Oy! What was I thinkin’?) I mean, that alone would be a really excellent reason to be tired.

But add to that the fact that my darling dumpling of a two-and-a-half year old has decided to regress to the sleeping habits of a two-and-a-half month old. This from the girl who has always been a star sleeper.

Alas, no more.

Who knows if it’s her new Big Girl Bed, or a sudden spate of nightmares, or some over-achiever desire to get back at us in advance for all the ways we’re certain to deny her things, dislike her boyfriends, and piss her off in the course of her life.

Whatever the case, she wails for me from the moment I click her door closed at night. But—from all we’ve read—when I go back in to comfort her I’m just rewarding her yowls. So now Mark uses his resonant I-used-to-be-a-DJ voice to say through the closed door “It’s time to sleep now, Paige.” It’s friendly, but firm.

Oddly, this at times has the effect of Paige stopping mid-hysterical-sob, and responding in a sunny tone, “Alright, Dada!”

But the relief is only temporary. Once we get into the dark cozy REM hours of the night she rises up with the gusto of a pregnant vampire on the prowl for a midnight snack. She cries. She screams. She beseeches “MAAAAA-Ma! Dada! I waaaaaaant you!” And sometimes, just to mix it up, she tramps out of bed and ambles down the hall to our room. (It’s always creepy to be awakened by a child standing silently by your bed. Even if she’s yours, and she’s cute, and she’s not holding a meat cleaver.)

Mark and I alerted the neighbors that we are not waterboarding Paige, despite what her tortured nighttime vocalizations might infer. And we’re methodically working our way through different approaches to getting her to freakin’ sleep again. Although she’s had some intermittent nights of solid sleep—just to really fuck with us—for the most part nothing has worked.

So if you’re interested in coming to babysit for a week and taking a crack at this issue yourself, we’ll happily vacate the place at a moment’s notice.

Sudden thought: Is this some Darwinian toddler phase that emerges to remind parents who’re considering another child about the hellish newborn months of sleep deprivation? Not that we ARE considering another kid…

At any rate, something to think about.

In the final school-free days of summer, and with me work-free, it’s actually been somewhat manageable plodding through the days in a sleepy haze. Sometimes it’s even fun, in a distorted art student life-perspective kinda way.

I mean, have you ever had one of those days that unfolds like a play? Kinda like when you’re reading a book and you know that the writer was really trying to get a movie deal, just based on how it’s all laid out? Well, I had a day last week that felt totally like it wasn’t meant to be a day, but some sort of series of staged events.

For starters, my sleepiness was keeping me more distanced from things way more than I’m used to. Un-shy gal that I am, I usually feel pretty integrated in whatever’s happening around me. But it’s like I was in some weird deaf-mute alternate universe where things were unfolding around me in strictly choreographed little dramatic sequences, and I just happened to be there watching. Like some invisible Ebenezer Scrooge.

It started at boot camp. As most of my days recently do.

Instead of the punishing rounds of weights and bands and medicine balls and lunges/squats/lat blasts, we did our usual punishing frenzied-fast warm-up but were then told we were going to have a break in our routine. We’d just be running around the lake.

And can I just say that Lake Merrit is a fascinating place at 6AM? It’s like when you’re driving to the airport at some ungodly early hour and you can’t believe there are other cars on the road. Something that always prompts Kate to ask questions like, “Are the people in those cars taking a plane to see Grandpa in Rhode Island too?”

Yeah so there are ALL THESE PEOPLE awake and out and doing exercisey stuff at the lake. As I ran I got totally absorbed in watching them pass by. It was like I was in some Spike Lee movie and was gliding along smoothly on some conveyor belt that let me really stare at each person as they passed by.

There was a trio of old Chinese ladies in foamy trucker-style baseball caps and over-sized fleece jackets. One young woman had on a blue silk scarf babushka-style, and was clutching a cell phone to her ear as she scuttled past. There was even a buff black guy, pitted out in gray sweats, who was bobbing in place and doing little boxing jabs. (People really DO those?) Even the dogs looked like they were from Central Casting—one small, white, and scruffy, a big dopey Lab, then a vicious looking brindled Pit. An assortment as diverse Oakland’s human population. Everyone seemed to placed there intentionally to set the tableau of “the lake at dawn,” but it was so well-done, I almost couldn’t buy it.

Do you know what I mean? Like, I was totally anticipating the credits where the scarf-clad woman on the phone would be Babushka Caller #1.

And then later, when I’d shaken myself loose from the scene, gotten home, showered, and collected the still-on-summer-break kids, we went to the lake. A different, swimming lake. And there it was just more of the same. A series of mothers and kids on blankets under umbrellas lined up along shore. They were too perfectly spaced out to be real.

I saw one Mama I vaguely know and we start chatting, while our kids (her boys, my girls) ignore each other. Then, Mother #1—at the far end of the beach—her umbrella get swept up in the wind and tumbles a few times. She catches it, and runs up to my kinda friend. “Hey, could I borrow your hammer again?” Uh… HAMMER? And then Kinda Friend pulls a big rubber mallet from her L.L. Bean bag as if it’s a bottle of sunscreen.

“You, have a mallet with you?” I ask, trying to modulate the shock out of my voice. She carries it, she says, to secure her beach umbrella. Really bang that bottom stake down into the sand.

Hunh.

And this woman is so petite and mild mannered. She’s a nurse for God’s sake. In my sleepy haze it struck me as surreal for her to have a sledge hammer in her tote. And to act like it was no big thing.

After she leaves I get to chatting with Mom #3, the one closest to my blanket. She’s got her own two kids and another in tow who’s a total terror. He’s taking buckets of wet sand and running up from the shore to dump them on people’s blankets. In fact, since I’m standing a bit away from it, he chooses my blanket for this lovely gift. Mom #3 was mortified. She was virtually pulling his ear to get him to apologize, and clearly wanting to illuminate some NOT MY KID sign over the boy’s head.

Later in our conversation, Mom #3 and I were swapping school stories and she tells me that Holy Terror Boy goes to none other than Kate’s soon-to-be new school.

LOVE-ly!

It was three days before school started. I took this tidbit as any rational mother would—as a strong premonition to Kate’s future life of crime.

As the day wore on Mortified Playdate Mom’s umbrella goes flying. As I run down the beach with her to help grab it, she turns to me and says, “Ugh. I wish your friend with the hammer was still here.”

And I just kinda stopped, imagining the morning tableau of mothers and kids arriving lakeside, and—despite not knowing each other—all taking turns with the beach-umbrella mallet like some weird “We Can Do It” poster come to life.

Later that day, we drove through the car wash. Kate and Paige were with me, and they’re pretty enthralled with the drama of the whirling brushes, long slappy rubber strips, and squiggly squirts of pink wax. We happened to be listening to our Nutcracker CD at the time. And as I put the car in neutral, I turned the music way up and we sat back. It was as if each new swishing slapping squirting movement came in perfect syncopation with the music.

It was better than fireworks.

If you have never been very very sleepy and gotten your car washed to the soundtrack from The Nutcracker, I highly recommend it.

Digging Out

One night last week my sister walked into her kitchen to find her nine-year-old son in a laundry bag. A bag that he’d voluntarily put himself in. Because I guess that’s what you do when you’re a nine-year-old boy.

It was mesh, so it wasn’t like he was struggling for air or anything. And he wasn’t alone. He was hanging out with his best friend. His friend who, for nearly A HALF-HOUR, had been trying unsuccessfully to un-knot the top of the bag.

And here’s the thing. My sister was upstairs THE WHOLE TIME. Had the boys thought to get her for help? Apparently not. She even asked if they didn’t find her because they thought she might be mad or something. They said no. Word was, they just hadn’t thought to get her.

I can’t help but think this is a boy thing. Like the young male version of not asking for directions.

As my sister was working to free him he tells her, “I’m starting to feel kinda weird in here.”

Uh, YEAH.

I’d have lasted four seconds in there before screaming and thrashing around like a Tazmanian Devil. Not only would someone upstairs know I needed help, the whole block would.

But the fact is, sometimes you get yourself into a tight spot and it’s kinda hard to know how dig yourself out. I was like that for a short while when I get back from Little Rhody. Not in a super bad place, but just glum. The craptastic Bay Area weather plus a large dose of nothing-much-going-on had me in a vague fog. And seeing as I generally operate like a chihuahua on caffeine (at least, in the words of my dear friend Kevin), this nebulous floating about was distasteful.

So I did what any sane woman would do. I started washing down pillows.

You know, took on an extremely low priority project and threw myself into it as if I was single-handedly redoing the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Oh, did I wash pillows. Then I tossed them in the dryer with tennis balls to dry and fluff ‘em all up nice. Once one set was done I’d nearly yank a pillow from beneath Mark’s sleeping head to start in on more.

It was a strange yet effective form of therapy. I was making just enough progress on an utterly unnecessary project that my morose mood was replaced by a mild sense of satisfaction. And since I have an addictive personality, I took my usual more-is-more approach. (Note: If anyone in my neighborhood would like their pillows laundered, please leave them on my front porch. I probably won’t hear the doorbell ring since the tennis balls in the dryer are fairly loud.)

Today, having come near the end of what turns out to be our thrillingly-large pillow inventory, I stumbled across a twin duvet I forgot we had. Perfect for Paige’s new Big Girl Bed! And an excellent item to, well, wash.

Pillow mites are watching their nightly newscasts and shielding their children’s eyes from pictures of me. I’m like the Saddam Hussein of the pillow mite community.

I’m considering opening a bed and breakfast for severe allergy sufferers. Why hoard all this pristine hypo-allergenic bedding for my family’s sole use?

Anyway, speaking of Paigey’s Big Girl Bed—and believe me, she and I seem to spend half our days discussing its merits—the other thing I’ve been doing to occupy myself is re-arranging the furniture in her room. This, it turns out, is also good therapy—albeit somewhat disorienting to the poor girl. She leaves her room for a five-minute snack, and on her way back in slams into a dresser I’ve impulsively moved catty-corner in her doorway.

I just can’t help myself. I’ve explored varying degrees of good and bad feng shui (a bed facing towards the door = a no-no). I’ve exhausted nearly every configuration of the contents of the room. And finally on this “project” I’m also slapping my hands together with a smug sense of accomplishment. I’ve settled on one layout I’ve been willing to keep in place for three days now. This, it seems, is progress.

Other things have helped my disposition get sunnier, despite the thick Bay Area fog. We’re off to Palm Springs at the end of the week—a trip I hastily planned in a desperate heat-seeking mission. And one day after our return from there, we set out for our Minnesotan lake vaycay.

And back on the homefront I signed up for a boot camp. You know, I’m paying some petite drill sargeant to yell at and disparage me as I do wind sprints by Lake Merrit, then fall to the sidewalk for endless rounds of push-ups. At 6:30 in the morning. This started today in fact, and aside from the regular Advil-overdosing I anticipate I’ll be doing, I think this ass-kickin’ is just what my lazy ass needed.

Though waking up at 5:45 was especially brutal. Miss Paige, ever the ringer for sleep, has been discombobulated of late. For years babysitters have gloated about “how easily she goes down.” But in the past few weeks her Sleep Super Power has been out of whack. At bedtime she’ll appear to have fallen asleep, but 45 minutes later will call out, “I want MY MAMA!” in her most desperate and dramatic wail. We’re popping up two to three times a night to settle her down, like she’s a newborn again. You’d think the steady thrum of the tennis balls in the dryer would soothe her back to sleep. But no dice. Much more of this and I’ll be asking for my money back.

Then in the morning, the poor thing calls out to us as if she’s shackled to the mattress. This happens to be my favorite non-intelligent behavior in my children: the fact that once they moved into twin beds they didn’t figure out that they were FREE TO GET OUT on their own.

But really, like I said, sometimes you’re just feeling stuck—be it in a laundry bag, a funk, or a bed that you forgot isn’t your crib any more.

So what’s been happening most mornings is we send Kate into Paige’s room to tell her she can get out of bed. Then she pops right out like a trained Cocker Spaniel and shows up in the kitchen, beaming and wild-haired, announcing proudly, “I got up, Mama!”

Hopefully by the time she goes away to college we’ll get her self-prompting to get out of bed. In the meantime, she’s one member of the family I’m happy to keep in the fog.