A tough week

      Ah, what a week it's been.  I have seen more tantrums this week than I saw in all my years subbing junior high Spanish.  And, I confess, towards the end of the week, my parenting skills suffered.
     Clara, who I believe may be getting a molar and a couple incisors or SOMETHING, didn't eat hardly a thing for two or three days.  She was already grumpy from the pain, and not eating compounded it.
     I bought her chocolate ice cream, which in peacetime she loves.  She refused it, shot-putting the spoon out of my hand and shrieking like an incoming mortar shell.  I thought if I could just get her to taste it, she would realize how delicious it was.  I filled one of her oral acetaminophen syringes with some I'd melted in the microwave, and shot it into the back of her cheek.
     "Nooooo!!!!" she gurgled, melted ice cream running out the sides of her mouth. Death by ice cream.  The horror.
     Every morning this week she woke at 5 a.m., burrowing her head into my neck and requesting banana with peanut butter and V8 juice.  I'd feed her whatever she would eat and get her back to sleep, but not for long.
     Yesterday I couldn't take it anymore.  Her afternoon nap was cut short by tooth pain.  I gave her ibuprofen. She wanted to watch Winnie the Pooh.  Again.  
     "No," I said, putting her into her car seat.  I was deep in the hundred-acre wood of exhaustion.
     The denial of another hour with Tigger and Piglet was too much for her to bear. I turned up Toddler Tales Nursery Rhymes to distract her, but, understanding my strategy, she screamed right through each of the songs, letting her voice reach the higher decibels in the quiet spaces between tracks.
     She wanted snacks, but only so she could throw them back at me or onto the floor of the backseat.  She wanted me to turn around and talk to her at a stoplight, but only so she could shout baby obscenities back at me.
     We got to the Y, and I committed one of my more egregious parenting errors.
     "Hey," I said, unstrapping her from the car seat.  Yelling like a banshee, she bicycled her legs and flung her arms over her head so I couldn't get a grip on her armpits.  "Hey! Look!  Look at all these people around who can see you crying!!"
     Inside the Y, I handed her over (wriggling and whining) to the lady in charge of Childwatch, gave her a kiss and left for two blissful hours in the yoga studio.
     When I came back to collect her, she had been finger painting and playing with a baby doll in one of the automatic swing sets.  She smiled at me hugely and came running.
     "Mommy!"

Hair Cut, Lemon Bars

     Clara has had a fever off and on for the last couple of days.  It was 99.5, then 100.5, then normal.  I took her to the doctor's office yesterday.  Our regular pediatrician wasn't in, so we saw one of the other doctors in the practice.  Clara was quite relieved that it wasn't Dr. Schaffer who walked into the examining room, as she associates Dr. Schaffer with shots.  She held very still while the doctor checked her ears and heartbeat.
     The doctor's conclusion: Who knows?  Probably a virus.
     My conclusion: More teething.
     This morning, a friend who just graduated from hair school came over to give Clara and me a trim in our kitchen.  Clara, poor baby, was feeling pretty rotten, in spite of back-to-back Winnie the Pooh and Toy Story, warm jammies, and bread with blackberry jam.
     When my friend tried to trim her bangs, Clara hung her head, causing a slight miscalculation in the bang length.  It didn't seem to make her any less kissable.

     

      I had trouble getting Clara to eat anything as the evening progressed, buttressing my suspicion that the last of the one-year molars and the canines are coming in.  I offered her peanut butter and jelly, banana, oranges, chocolate ice cream, eggs and anything else I could think of.
     On our way back from running errands, I noticed two girls had set up a lemonade stand in front of our hedge.  Their names, I discovered, are Deana and Hallie.  They are twins, and live just down the street. Besides the lemonade (and free dog treats and water), they were selling homemade lemon bars.  I bought one to entice Clara with.  She took a bite and immediately spit it back out.  My husband and I had no choice but to gobble it up ourselves later, after dinner.  It was gooey and delicious.

Purse

     To Clara, my purse is the holy grail.  She likes to unsnap my wallet and pour all my cards and driver's license onto the ground.  My purse holds my car keys (she likes to point them at the car and push the "lock" button to make it honk).  It holds pens and gum and coins and a canister of Crystal Light pink lemonade powder.  It holds granola bars and Wet Ones in an interesting package with a sticky seal on it.  It holds dangly earrings that I've found uncomfortable while wearing and tossed in there.  It holds tubes of lipstick in delicious berry colors (free samples from Clinique, five or six seasons old), and a spare tube of Desitin diaper rash ointment with a picture of a cute baby on it.
     Best of all, it holds my cell phone.  Clara likes to press it to her baby cheek and listen intently.
     Clara has a few purses, but her favorite is a small sequined one with a zipper.  She likes to hold snacks in it, like cheese and miniature boxes of raisins.  Lately she has also been putting her toy telephone in there.
     Simon and I pretend to be her press secretaries, and take calls on the telephone.
     Simon fields calls from the UN Secretary General, the Prime Minister of Britain, and Donald Trump.
     "I'm very sorry, Mr. Cameron, but she is booked solid for the next six months," Simon said into the play telephone recently.  Surely Mr. Cameron could tell there were other, more important things on Simon's agenda.  Pouring organic shells and cheese onto Madame Clara's tray, for example, or attending to her toilette. He put his hand over the mouthpiece and murmured to Clara, "He wants to know your thoughts on the upcoming United States election and the situation in Syria."
     Clara took the phone and pretended to listen.  Then she handed it back.
     "Yes, yes....I see...very urgent....," Simon continued into the phone again. "Well, we could do a Wednesday.  What's the nearest Wednesday you have available...six months from now?"
     Most of the calls I field are from Lady Gaga.  I keep trying to work in a request from Gaga to borrow a wig, which is ridiculous because Clara doesn't even own any wigs.  Lady Gaga is the best possible call to take, what with all the different scenarios that could play out.  I'm so harried and distracted, though--putting on Clara's shoes or wiping her face with the play phone wedged against my ear--that the many possibilities elude me.
     Gaga could ask Clara to borrow one of her outfits, for example.  They could talk about the meat dress Gaga wore last year and share ideas about a line of accessories made from hamburger.  Or, I could simply sing the lyrics to Gaga's song, 'Telephone,' into the receiver:
     "Stop callin' stop callin' I don't wanna talk any more.  I left my head and my heart on the dance floor."

A complicated love

     This morning at the park, Clara was determined to hold Wilbur's leash.  By herself, please!  Wilbur, thank goodness, was too tired from running back and forth across the field with an Irish terrier named Max to give her much trouble.  
     In the distance, Clara saw the slides and swings.  She pulled and pulled Wilbur towards them, but he just looked at her disinterestedly.  After a moment he saw a small puddle of water on the edge of the asphalt parking lot and made his way to it, Clara in tow (she was pretty sure she was leading him there, though).  He began to drink deeply from it.  Clara assessed his stance.  At home, when she pretended to be a dog, she crawled around on her hands and knees. Watching Wilbur drink from the puddle, it seemed like she realized, for the first time, and perhaps for only a brief instant, that Wilbur's back legs were straight.  
     She clumsily put her hands down and kept her back legs straight, too.  She looked like a bear cub.  She bent her head to drink from the puddle.
     "No!  No, no!  That's yucky water! Yucky!" I said.
     Grunting and muttering (it was hard work, getting to one's feet from that position), she righted herself, a puzzled smile on her face.  If Wilbur could drink from the puddle, why couldn't she?
     Nevermind, then, she seemed to say.  It was time for him to go to the slides and swings.  This time she didn't bother with the leash at all, but grabbed the fur on his rump and tugged.
     "Clara, we do not pull Wilbur's fur.  That's not nice."
     Wilbur turned his head and gave her a sorrowful look.  His and Clara's relationship is complex.  She often fiddles around with his snout and ears.  Her hugs are ferocious, unpredictable, and sometimes involve her lying on top of him.  She gives an ear-piercing screech of joy when she first sees him in the morning, the upper octaves of which must be at least close to the dog-whistle range.  She piles her toys on his back and tries to brush his teeth.  She tries to "dress" him in her jammies while he's napping (This involves draping her jammies over his head.  Wilbur already suffers from sleep apnea, so the extra layer of jammy must feel positively suffocating).  And yet, Wilbur can never totally renounce his love for her.  She feeds him handfuls of tuna-noodle casserole and pieces of hot dog at dinner.
   

Dinner

     Tonight we went to dinner with a friend of a friend who was new in town.
     Clara was not in top form.
     We went swimming this morning and Clara experimented with putting her head under the water, again and again.  This afternoon, after the third saturated diaper, I surmised that she had been gulping the pool water rather than holding her breath.  The wet diapers, coupled with the heat of her bedroom (insufficient ducts, apparently), kept her from napping sufficiently.
      She was also very, very hungry but the time we sat down to eat.  We initially stopped by Deli Days at the synagogue where Simon and I were married, but they were just closing shop.  So instead we drove all the way back downtown to eat at a middle-eastern grill there.
     Clara refused to sit in her high chair.  She preferred my lap.  She started fingering the beads on my necklace, examining each one thoroughly and then biting it, like a miner testing for gold.  She wanted to stand on a table at the back of the restaurant and look at her reflection in the mirror hanging on the wall there.  She rifled through the Sweet n' Low and swiped the salt and pepper shakers, objecting strenuously when I took them back.
     Somehow she filched a pen with a spoon attached to it from the cash register.  I was enjoying my chicken kabob and the dinner conversation when our dinner date abruptly stopped talking.  Clara was stirring my water with the spoon pen.  I took it away and she started dipping her French fries in my glass.
     She examined a dolma curiously and then squeezed it, as though it were a giant slug.  She ate my rice with her hands.  She got a piece stuck in her windpipe and coughed gratuitously, spewing middle-eastern cuisine all over the table.  She escaped and ran, screeching, up and down the length of the restaurant.  
     When we stood to leave, prematurely (the high-jinks had reached an unsupportable level), I had rice down my dress and tabouli in one of my shoes.
     On our way out to the car, Simon said, "We definitely need to work on our manners."

Soccer

     Yesterday we got up early and went to a nearby park that has off-leash hours until 10 a.m.
     A club soccer team was using half the field for practice.  It was the same team that had practiced there in the days before.
      The other dogs at the park stayed away from the soccer practice.  Murphy, a big labradoodle that reminds me of David Hasselhoff in his early, golden days, played catch on the half of the field that was free.  Mia, a sweet French bulldog puppy, hassled the adult dogs and stole kisses from Clara.  Two border-collie mixes assiduously and elegantly chased Frisbees.
     After greeting the other dogs, Wilbur reasoned the best way to maximize belly scratches was to run into the thick of soccer practice.  This was the second day in a row that he had done this. I suppose he wouldn't be Wilbur if he wasn't friendly and lovable.
    'Wilbur!" I shouted, running after him, Clara jouncing on my hip, sunglasses on my shirt collar, knocking against my chest. Clara echoed my sentiment, furiously scolding "Ilbur dog" while we ran. I was wearing red fleece Guitar Hero parachute pants.  The weight of my car keys and cellphone in the pockets was threatening to de-pants me with every stride.  We loped past a cluster of soccer balls.
     "Ball!" Clara noted, wriggling ferociously.  Clara would very much like to collect every ball on the planet and horde them under her crib.
     "Dog!" warned one of the soccer players as Wilbur made his way into the action.  The girls stopped playing, laughing and cooing at him. When Wilbur saw me running towards him, breathless, he trotted over amiably.
     I leashed him up and took him to the other side of the park.
     Clara generally feels that she is the boss of Wilbur.  She insisted on holding the leash, alone.  On other mornings, Wilbur has made a run for it as soon as her dimpled little hand closed around the handle.  Yesterday he was docile, thank goodness.
    Clara wanted to make sure I understood that this was Wilbur's pile of poop.  Right there.  Right here.  Did I have a sack?  Did I want her to--?
    "No, Honey.  Mommy will do this.  This is yucky."
    Did I need her to hold the poop sack?  Did I understand that there was poop in that sack?
     "I'll do it, Hon," I told her.  I tossed the poop in the trash and turned to find Wilbur in the thick of the soccer game again.
     The girls on the sideline started cheering.
     "Go, Wilbur! Go, Wilbur!" they shouted.  Wilbur ran for them at full tilt, obviously showing off.  His ears flapped in the breeze, his chunky legs churned.  He looked like a bratwurst with fur.  He made it to them before I did and let them lavish him with affection.

 
   
   

   
   

Two Against One

   Yesterday for breakfast I gave Clara a piece of Hawaiian sweet bread with butter, torn into small pieces.  I turned from pouring myself some water to see her flick a piece of the buttered bread off her tray and into Wilbur's eager jaws.
    "Clara! You know we don't feed Wilbur people food! People food is not good for Wilbur!  It puts an ouchy in his stomach!"
    A flash of defiance crossed her face.  She quickly flicked another piece of bread at Wilbur.
    "Hey!" I said.
    "Ha-ha!" she laughed triumphantly, sticking out her legs and flexing her little pink toes.  She flicked the third and final piece at Wilbur.
     "Do you want to sit in time-out?" I said.
     "Hes," she replied cheerfully, nodding her head.  I sighed inwardly and unlatched her from her booster seat.  She arranged herself in the time-out corner and, understanding that time-out was about punishment, gave me her very best fake cry.  A big, square-mouthed yowl, with squinted eyes.  She stopped mid-cry because she saw Wilbur in the kitchen, licking the floor under her booster seat.
    "Dog," she said, pointing, and then threw her head back and fake-cried again with gusto, watching Wilbur out of the corner of her eye all the while.
     She sat in time-out twice more yesterday, once for giving Wilbur prunes and--more egregiously--for giving Wilbur a whole chunk of salmon at dinnertime.
     After the salmon time-out, Simon came from the kitchen, where he had been finishing up the dishes.
     "Clara, do you know why you were sitting in time-out?" he said.  "We can't give Wilbur people food. It's yucky for him."  Then he said, "Do you want a hug?" Of course she did.
    A few minutes later, Simon devised a game where he "cymbal-ed" her between two couch pillows.  I caught a glimpse of her, sweaty and shrieking, wearing only the red bloomers that went with her dress, thundering across the living room floor.
     Today Clara didn't give Wilbur any food until dinnertime.  Then she gave him all the peas and corn from her booster tray while I was rummaging in the refrigerator for some cheese.
     We sat together in time-out briefly and she cried remorsefully.  When I put her back in her booster seat, she pointed at Wilbur and sternly said,
     "Mommy!  No, no, dog!"
     "That's right.  No people food for Wilbur."
     But five minutes later I caught her holding out her yogurt-covered spoon for Wilbur to lick clean, giggling wildly. This time I sighed out loud.  Deeply.
      "Wilbur, come here," I said.  I took him by the collar and put him out in the garage, locking his dog door from the inside.
     "Ilbur?" Clara asked, pointing at the door.
     Wilbur was in time-out.

Grammy and Popi

     Clara's grandparents from Florida came to visit this weekend.  We call them Grammy and Popi, but Clara calls both of them "Boppy." (Although, by the end of the visit, I thought I heard her say, "Ammy.")
     They brought her coloring books and wooden maracas from their vacation in Cuba.  They took her to the Spaghetti Factory, the Cheesecake Factory and Big City Coffee.  They fed her cheesy eggs, toast with raspberry jam, pieces of Monte Cristo sandwich, shreds of marinated chicken and bean sprouts, homestyle macaroni and cheese and hash browns.
    Grammy gave her three baths--one each night, two with bubbles.  She gave Clara the requisite comforting hug after pouring water over her soapy curls to rinse them (this hug tends to get you very wet).  She combed Clara's hair and watched Dora the Explorer with her.  She flicked her nicely-manicured nails across Clara's tummy until she shrieked and wiggled in delight.
     Popi read to Clara.  In a furniture store we stopped by, he played hide and seek with her in a rug display.  He let her watch while he fixed one of the wheels on the grill.  He bought her a giant calculator in Office Depot and refrained from using any puns about her being "calculating." He helped pick out jammies and track down clean diapers.  He watched Toy Story and Winnie the Pooh with her. He sang "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" to her in the car.
     When it came time for them to leave tonight, Clara was running on fumes.  She didn't want to go to bed and kept asking to read one more story.  I handed her to Grammy for a kiss goodnight and good-bye, and her body went as stiff as a board. She grasped at the air and arched her back. Grammy managed to steal a kiss as Clara shrieked and twisted.
     I took her back and handed her over to Popi.
     "I'll save you," said Popi.  Clara briefly rested her head on Popi's shoulder and then did a half-twist, half-dive off to the side, whining and fussing and flopping around.
     Simon and I took her upstairs, and she briefly entered the delirium stage of exhaustion (often prefaced, as was the case tonight, by the Kim Jong Il stage).  She giggled and snorted while we sang "A Bushel and A Peck" and gave her goodnight kisses.  

Wilbur, you stink.

     Thursday night was a three-book night.  I had to prop three books against Wilbur's rear end to muffle the stench while he dozed on the couch next to me. Clara had dumped bolognese sauce down the sides of her booster seat.  I saw it when I lifted her out, but while I went for paper towels, she went for the carpeted stairs, hands and face coated in sauce.  Wilbur, ever the opportunist, took advantage of my dilemma.  He offered to clean up the sauce.  What it did to his poor doggie tummy I have no way of knowing, but it made his gas weapons-grade.
     "Wilbur, you and I need to have a talk.  Consider this an intervention.  You need to work on some sphincter control.  Yes, I still love you.  Yes, I will scratch behind your ears.  Oh, yes, scratchie-scratch.  Such soft ears."
     Thursday he had burst through his doggie door reeking of something foul.  Where did this smell come from?  I wandered the yard, looking for a squirrel carcass or a dead bird he may have rolled in.   It didn't help that my brother and sister-in-law had recently regaled me with tales of their dog Bandit's glandular secretions. All I could find in the yard was the Kiwi bird puppet he'd stolen from Clara's toy box and killed over and over.
     "And another thing.  This whole digging things up out of the backyard has got to stop.  That chunk of cow bone thing you excavated from the flowerbeds is not something a dog of your civilized status should be troubling himself with."
     A friend came to visit and sniffed his fur extensively.
     "He just smells like grass and dirt to me," she said.
     "You mean burst anal glands," I thought.
     Wilbur jumped up on her lap and put his nose inches from hers, panting softly.
     "It's his breath," she said, scratching under his collar.  "He has bad doggie breath.  I know where you can get some doggie breath chews that are flavored like filet mignon."
     "Filet mignon is not something I associate with good breath."
     "Oh, but he's such a good boy."
     "Yes, he is a good boy," I agreed. "Look at that soft tummy and those big, sad eyes. He's a real good boy."

   
 

Toddler Tales

     Today we went to Toddler Tales at the local branch of our library.  We went to Toddler Tales for the first time last week, but we went to the main branch of the library, downtown.  There were at least thirty toddlers there.  The first couple rows in front of the reader (a very animated middle-aged woman with good makeup) sat nicely and responded to her questions and cues.  The rest reminded me of the back of a mosh pit.  A little girl wearing lace-trimmed biker shorts pivot-hopped on one leg in the middle of the room.  Several children wandered, whining, and a little boy made distressed sounds in his throat and cowered between his mother's knees.
    Clara was completely nonplussed.  She wanted to go back out to the kid's section and pull books from the shelf, "read" the first page and toss them aside.  She wanted to sit at the kid-sized computers and wear the panda bear headphones and bang the keyboard.  She wanted me to lift her to pet the giant fabric dragon floating above the first shelves.
     My neighbor told me fewer kids went to the local branch for Toddler Tales.  When we arrived there today, a little boy, probably three years old, with kind brown eyes, approached Clara and said, "Me, my story-time," and attempted to herd her in the direction of the story-time room. 
     "Oh, yes.  Books," Clara said, and headed for the adult fiction hard-covers.  She liked the pictures on the front.  She also liked the heavy "thud" they made when they hit the floor.
     The librarian read inside a room with a glass door at each end in the back of the branch.  While many of the other toddlers listened to the story about animals and petted the furry (or scaly) three-dimensional pictures, Clara did laps through the doors.
     She was interested in the library's collection of puppets, and brought me a Sesame Street Ernie puppet and a door stop she found on the floor.  I made Ernie pretend to eat the doorstep.  Clara watched  for a moment and then thoughtfully licked the doorstop.
     "Oh, yuck!  Yucky! Yuck! Yuck!" I said, hurriedly wrenching it from her grasp.
     She lined up a series of puppets on the miniature foam couch in the kid's section.  A little two-year-old girl picked one up to play with and Clara came at her with a face like a thunderstorm.  She likely would have smote her down had I not been standing there.  She grabbed the other end of the puppet and an epic tug-of-war ensued, with both little girls screeching like baby owls (I was relieved to find other little girls make this sound).
     Next Clara plowed into a group of little boys at the puzzle station, making swimming motions with her arms to shunt them out of the way.
    When I'd settled her into her car seat later, I said, "Clara, the library is a different sort of place.  It's not like the park, where we can be loud and rough.  Although, even at the park, we don't hit people or push or not share things."
     She watched me, listening.
    "At the park, we can talk like this: 'La-la-la, I'm bein' so loud!  I'm at the park!' [waving my arms, sticking out my tongue].  But at the library, we have to talk very softly, like thissssss [making my hands small and noodling my fingers together in front of my chest]."
     She grinned at me and chuckled.

Spaghetti

     Today we went to the park for an hour and a half. Clara climbed up the corkscrew slide five or six times, raced across the park three or four times, saw some babies and a little boy's pet lizard, and tried every single swing on the swing sets. When we got home, she was ravenous.
     I put leftover rotini noodles on her tray and heated a small bowl of leftover meat sauce in the microwave.  I started to ladle the meat sauce onto her tray.
    "Mommy, no.  I want this," she said, taking the bowl from me.
    "Spoon!" she said.
    "Can you say 'please?'"
    "Hes."
    "Okay then, say 'please.'"
    She nodded cheerfully.  "Hes."
    I brought her a spoon with Minnie Mouse on the handle.  She examined it thoughtfully and then dexterously slid it sideways into the sauce.  She began to softly mutter out the side of her mouth, her voice high-pitched and garbled, as though she held marbles in her cheek.
     Now came the first bite.  Her muttering became philosophical, then brave.  She would take that first bite, no matter what it held.  She would do it because there was no other way, because sometimes a man had to do hard things. The tension was appalling.
     She put the spoon into her mouth, flipped it upside down so it cupped her tongue. It took a second for the tomato, oregano and meat to saturate her taste buds. She swayed back and forth in her seat and did a little shimmy with her shoulders.
     She picked up the bowl, looked inside with frank delight.  Mounds of glorious, dark-red sauce.  Never had she seen anything so extraordinary.  She must examine it more closely, must delve into the depths of its peppery secrets.
     Last night at dinner the arms of the chair that held her booster seat had been giant slides.  She'd pretended her sauce-covered fists were people and made them slide down the chair arms. She made them squeal in fear as they crashed and got ouchies at the bottom.  (Well, what did they expect?  Slides were fun, but they could be dangerous, too.)
     Today the victims were chunks of hamburger.  She piled them on her lap, under her tray.  They would be safe there.  And, someday--if they were good--someday they could come back and join their friends again in the bowl.
     "You are covered in lunch," I said.
     She looked up in surprise.
     I brought her upstairs and ran a bath.  I had to wash sauce off her belly, her ears, her neck.  I had to scrub it out of her hair.  When I finally lifted her out of the bath, there were chunks of meat and pasta floating in the water.

Too much sugar?

     Today Clara woke up from her morning nap while I was in the bathroom.
     "Mommy! Mommy!" she called from her room.
     "I hear ya, Love.  Give me a sec'."
     "Mooooommmyyyyy." Like an opera singer.
     "I'm trying to pee!!" I yelled.  Then, "Mama's going potty, Love."
     "MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!"  Like a bus horn.
      I brought her downstairs.  I remembered the iced lemon pound cake from Starbucks I'd bought yesterday, but hadn't eaten.
     "Do you want a dog with cheese?" I asked.
     "Yes," she said.
     I was still holding her because, after she wakes up, she must go through a ten-minute stint on my hip. Minimal. It's like she has to get her land legs again after the sea of sleep.
     I casually reached in the cupboard with my free hand, opened the Starbucks package, and quickly popped a bit of the pound cake into my mouth.  I almost moaned, it was so delicious. Clara saw what I was doing.
     "Mommy! Me wannu!"
    "Just a bite, " I gave her a small crumble.  She wanted another, and another.  I started taking big bites of the pound cake, rushing.  She shrieked in indignation as I bit into a particularly delicious length of frosting-smeared goodness.
    "Okay, that's it, that's it," I said, hurriedly putting the rest into the bag and shoving it back into the cupboard.
     I brought out the brick of cheese.
     "I gotta put you down to cut the cheese, okay?" I said, setting her down on the kitchen floor.
     "Aaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!" she screamed, throwing her head back and then folding forward until her chest touched the floor.
     "I've been trying to do that pose for ages in yoga," I thought.  I put the cheese on a tofu dog and put it in the microwave.  Her little face was bright red with rage. When I picked her up, I saw she'd left a puddle of tears and spit on the floor.  I kissed her firm, teary cheeks.
     After she'd had her cheese dog, she wanted to sit in a big-person's chair at the kitchen table.  Then she wanted to sit in my chair.  She pulled me out of my chair by my hands and hustled me out of the way.
     "Kiki!" she said after she was settled.
     "No way.  You've already had a bunch of sugar today."
     "KIKI!"
     "A cookie is a sometimes food, Love," I said.  Unfortunately, in our house, "sometimes" is every day.  My eyes wandered to the box of walnut chocolate-chip cookies in the pantry.
     I brought out the bag of prunes.  Clara loves prunes.
     "Here, I'll even let you pick one out," I said.
     She reached into the bag and swirled all the prunes around.  She got one, examined it, and and then put it back.
     "Okay, take one," I said.
     She found a big one, stuffed the whole thing into her mouth and chewed slowly and with relish.  After a minute she took the mangled slime out of her mouth and put it back into the bag.

   

Ambushed

     Yesterday I looked down from inserting my contact lens to find Clara smearing my Covergirl blemish stick in circles on her tummy.
     "Hey! That's Mama's," I said, wresting it from her grasp.  Lucky for me, the blemish stick matched her skin tone almost exactly, so the clean-up was minimal.
     "Mommy! Mai! Mai! Ma-iiiiiii!"
     "Here," I said, giving her a tube of toothpaste (lid tightly screwed on).
     She tossed it behind her without even looking at it.  She grabbed the edges of the bathroom vanity and stood on her tippy-toes to see what treasures were waiting on the countertop.  My glasses: totally off-limits but incredibly interesting to wear because of the strange way they distorted the world.  Nail clippers: so challenging to use it was almost mind-boggling.  Yet she felt she could almost do it, if Mommy would just quit trying to interfere.
     A roll of toilet paper: Yes, she knew what this was for and where it belonged.  The way it unrolled was magical.  Almost like a soft, thin animal.
    I saw her reaching for things and pushed everything to the back of the vanity.
    She grunted her protestation and reached, reached.
    The world turned blurry as I tried to get my lens to stick to my eye.  I heard a slurping sound like someone enjoying their morning coffee.  It was Clara. She had gotten my contact lens case and was slurping the used solution from one of the lens holders.
     It was a shade worse than drinking the water in the kiddie pool at the Y.  Maybe on par with sipping bath water from one of the toilet's screw caps (she'd stolen both and sequestered them in her bath toys).
     "No! Yuck! Yucky!"
     I took the lens case from her and opened the bathroom door.
     "Go get your baby.  Go get a book from your room."
     She flipped her hand back at me dismissively, stuck out her tummy, and half-shimmied, half-marched from the bathroom.  As if the bathroom and all its cache were suddenly old news.
     She didn't go to her room.  She went to my room. She wanted help onto the bed and then she laid down and pretended to sleep.
     "Honk-shhhhhhhh!!!! Honk-shhhhhhhh!!!!" she faked snored loudly.

 

Sibling Rivalry

    I've been taking Clara and Wilbur out for comparatively long walks (we had been only walking about a half-mile.  Now we're up to a mile.  Which, for Wilbur, equates to ten miles, because of the stubbiness of his legs).

    Yesterday I heard a litany of complaints coming from the stroller about halfway through our walk.  It sounded like a just-hatched, ravenous baby T-Rex.

    "Are you hungry, Love-y?" I asked.

    "Hes, Mommy.  Me, me, eat, Mommy, Mommy, hes."

    "When we get home, I will make you lunch.  What do you want?  Do you want noodles?"

    "Hes. Hes, hes."

    At that point we had to take one of our frequent rests so Wilbur could sniff around in the weeds and recoup some vigor. Getting him going again was a massive feat.

    "Come on, Bub.  Yeeeesss, you're such a good boy.  Such a handsome dog. That's right.  Come on, boy. When we get home, I will fill your dish with cold water.  Won't that taste good? Mmmmmm..."  

     "Mommy!  No! Me! 'Oodles! 'Oodles 'Oodles 'Oodles!"

     "Of course! I will make you noodles with some cheese when we get home.  I was just telling Wilbur that I would put cold water in his dish.  Wilbur likes cold water."

     "No! Me-unt 'oodles."
     "How about some peas and corn, too?"
     "No.  Mmmmm no no unt...pease. 'Oodles! 'Oodles."
     "No peas and corn, huh.  How about some balls (prunes)?"
     The baby T-Rex made a sound like teeth scraping against metal.
     "No balls either.  Just noodles."
     "Hes."

Raking with Wilbur and Clara

     Last week was stiflingly hot.  Then, a few days ago, a massive wind storm blew in.  The air turned cooler, almost cold, as the wind roared against the house.  There were gusts of greater than 60 miles per hour.  When it was all said and done, the front and back yards were littered with pine cones and tree branches.
   Clara and I decided to rake up the debris.  I brought out her kid-sized gardening tools and showed her how to rake tree seeds and pine cones from the concrete patio into her shovel and then put them into her wheelbarrow.  It was interesting work, she thought, but what I was doing was more interesting.
     "I'm raking sticks and branches into a pile to throw away," I said.
     "'ticks," she said.  She grabbed the biggest one in the pile and pulled hard.  She would help me out by taking care of that big stick.
     "I don't think it's going to fit in the trash bag like that.  Why don't I hold it and you step on it to break it?  Here, put your foot right here." She put her little baby shoe on it and I pulled until it snapped.  She made a sound of deep satisfaction.
     Wilbur wandered over and laid down in the grass in the sunshine.
     "Oh, hi, doggie!  Yes, yes," Clara said, patting his rump.  She turned one of his ears inside-out and stroked it carefully between her palms.  "Ee-ya," she said.  "Ee-ya."  Then she lavished him with a series of high-pitched croons.
     Wilbur lifted a fleshy eyebrow.  He seemed to be debating baring his tummy to her.  On the one hand, she might scratch it. There was nothing better than getting a tummy scratch in the warm sunshine. On the other, she might sit on it.
      Finally, the deliciousness of the possibility was too much and he rolled onto his side to bare his tummy.  His roundness and the way he was reclining made him seem like a woman from a Rubens painting.  Clara stood above him, contemplating what to do.
     "Do you know what scratching is? It's what you do when you have a bug bite." I showed her how to scratch Wilbur's tummy.  As I bent down, she reached up and pulled my sunglasses off and put them on her face, upside-down.  Then she tried to put them on Wilbur's face.  It was a frustrating endeavor.  She knew they should go over his eyes, but then his ears were way up high, and she couldn't get the sunglasses to hook them.  It was all wrong, but she couldn't figure out why.
     She tried it a couple times, almost poking Wilbur in the eye. He winced and made a soft, high-pitched moan in the back of his throat.
     "Clara, do you remember the wind?" I asked, and I held my arms out, swayed and and shook my hair.  I tried to make the high-pitched sound of wind blowing through trees. Luckily, she caught what I was trying to imitate.  She chuckled and pointed at the big elm tree in our backyard.

Wilbur, Workin' His Way In

    This morning Wilbur yakked at the foot of our bed.  From the looks of it, he'd been eating grass.  Additionally, neither Simon nor I remembered to unlock the dog door, a fact that was brought home strongly by the distinctive bouquet of dog pee in the basement playroom.  I crawled around on all fours sniffing the carpet, trying to find the puddle.
    "I can't do this! We're taking him back!" I said to Simon on the phone at noon. "I need a clean house!"
    "Whatever you want to do," Simon said.
    I called back an hour later.
    "I don't want to take him back," I sighed.
    "Whatever you want to do," Simon said.
    I put Clara down for her nap.  She cried and yelled because she didn't want to nap. Wilbur came up the stairs and sat down on his haunches outside her door, a look of deep concern on his face.
    I laid down for a nap, too.  Wilbur has been sleeping next to my side of the bed since his third night here.  He likes to sleep on the velour body pillow I used while I was pregnant.  He was disgruntled with me this afternoon, however, because I'd sprayed 409 on his puke stain and he didn't like the smell.  He looked at me resentfully and made his way to the floor on Simon's side of the bed.  He dragged one of my dirty T-shirts from the base of the hamper to his new resting place, and put his snout on it.
    I felt much better after I woke up.  I put Clara in her stroller and we took Wilbur for a long walk.  The second half of our walk, he stopped intermittently and refused to budge.  He did the same thing on our walks last week, and I ended up carrying him six blocks (hope to heaven no one was watching out their front window).  Today I briefly considered slinging him over the top of the stroller, chubby front paws hanging off one end and chubby back paws hanging off the other.  I've learned, however, that the thing to do is give him thirty seconds or so to sniff the wind or listen to sounds and then gently tug his leash and say things like, "Oh, what a good boy!  You are such a good, smart boy! Yeeessss, such a good boy!"
     Tonight, he situated his considerable bulk in my lap, put his nose close to my mouth, and offered up his silky ears for a good scratch.

   

No More La-La

     A few days ago, we went cold turkey on breastfeeding.  My plan to wean Clara slowly was no longer working.  When I would drop a feeding, she'd pick one up later in the day.  It was as if she were keeping track somewhere.  Carving notches on the railing of her crib.  Counting on pudgy fingers.

     I was ready to be done.

     We decided before her afternoon nap.  We talked to her a little bit about it.

     "Clara, I'm not going to La-la you today," I said.

     "La-la," she said, nodding, a trace of anxiety in her voice.

     "You're a big girl now, and big girls don't need La-la," Simon said.

     "Mama still loves you very, very much, and I still want to cuddle with you lots," I said.  "I still want to give you lots of hugs."

     "La-la! La-la!" she said again, her voice betraying her level of panic.

     When we brought her up to her crib for her afternoon nap, she started to sob and point to the rocking chair.  "La-la! La-la!"

     I held her and made soothing sounds into her hair.  She clenched her hands around my neck and rocked back and forth and sobbed.

    "She's mourning," Simon said.

    We brought her back downstairs and read "Baby Dear," to her two and a half times while we snuggled.  She cried for a long time before she finally went to sleep.

    That night before bed, she asked about La-la and I told her we weren't doing La-la anymore.  She laid her head on my shoulder and then pointed to her crib.

    "Bed," she said.  She was steeling herself.  She laid down stiffly on her back in her footie jammies.  She seemed stoic except for the corners of her mouth, which sagged a bit.

    "Do you want to hold your baby?" I asked.

    "Yes," she whispered.  Simon brought up the baby doll from the backseat of the car, and she clenched it fiercely against her in one arm.

     "Do you want Scooby?" Simon asked.  She nodded and clenched Scooby in the other arm.

     We gave her a sippy cup full of cold water and made sure both her stuffed dog and rabbit were on location.  Then we stroked her hair and told her we loved her and left.  She didn't make a sound, that first night.

     In the morning she asked for La-La.  I brought her downstairs in a blanket and we sat on the couch and snuggled for a minute.  Then I fed her Cheerios while we watched Winnie the Pooh the whole way through.

Time-Out

     Clara and Wilbur's relationship has deepened into heartfelt adoration on her side and wary acceptance on his.  When he comes through his dog door in the early morning, she says, "Oh, hi doggie!"  Sometimes she gets down on all fours and pretends to be a dog, too.
     Other times she talks to him in a high, squeaky voice or gives him hugs.  Her hugs involve her bending down to clasp her arms around his furry neck and letting half her body weight sag luxuriantly onto his back. It hasn't happened yet, but in such a position, it's only natural that her leg would eventually come up and swing across his back.  From there it's only a hidey-ho and giddyap to full saddle position.
     Poor Wilbur.
     Clara's fascination extends to Wilbur's food and water dish.  She daily drowns her Scooby-Doo doll and Raggedy Andy in the water dish.  One of her favorite things to do is drop his dog cheerios, one by one, into the water.  She likes to watch them expand.
    We caught her doing this a few days ago and I said, "Clara, we talked about this.  The next time I catch you doing that, you will sit in time-out."
     "Oh!" she said, and trotted to the time-out corner.
     "Honey, you don't have to sit in time-out now.  Only the next time you do it."
     The next day she did it again.
     "Clara, that is not okay.  Wilbur can't drink his water when you clog it with dog cheerios.  It's time to sit in time-out."
     "Oh, this," she said, flashing a grin full of baby teeth and bright blue eyes. She cheerfully sat down in time-out corner with her little-girl legs stretched out in front of her and her little-girl hands clasped on her lap.
      I sat down across from her and said, "Do you know why we're sitting in time-out?"
     "Doggie," she said, pointing at Wilbur.  Then she stood up and held out her hands for a hug.  I put her back in the corner firmly.
     "It's not time for hugs.  We are doing time-out."
     She tried to escape to the side, giggling.  She tried to distract me by talking to me about the lamp. ("ayit" for "light").  I put her back in the corner a dozen times.  Her mouth started to tremble and her chin sunk to her chest.  Her eyes filled up with tears.
     I said, "Ten more seconds, alright?" and I counted loudly to ten and then picked her up and held her close.

 

Dishwashing

     "Would you like to help me wash the dishes?" I asked Clara today.
     She wasn't sure what to say.  It wasn't something I'd asked before.
     I pulled an old chair in from the garage and put it by the sink.  I stood her on it.  She gasped a little in delight at the landscape opening up in front of her.  She had seen me up here before.  She knew there was soap involved because she'd seen the suds on my arms.  Now she could put her hands in the sink.  Grab soapy dishes and silverware from the water.
     "On," she said, pointing to the faucet.  I let it trickle cold water into her side of the sink.  She washed one of her sippy cups.  She took both my sponges and my washcloth and squeezed them out on her chair. She experimented with the spray nozzle (thankfully, she doesn't have the pincer strength to turn it on yet).
    I put her back on the floor when I felt the margin between productivity and mess was too slim for my comfort.
    "Me!  Me! Mommy! Do! Tair! Tair!" she said as soon as her bare feet hit the floor.  She pulled on the chair.
    "Why don't you close the dishwasher for me?  You are the strongest girl I know.  You are really, really good at shutting the dishwasher."
     She smiled a secretive smile and nodded her head a little.  Muttering, she expertly surveyed where the best place to grab the dishwasher door was. She stowed her sippy cup in the top rack and pushed it close.  Then she picked up the door.  There was a moment when she thought she might fail, but then felt silly when she remembered she'd done it a hundred times before.
     She had almost pushed it close when something in the silverware cage caught her eye.  She staggered backward and let the door fall open, muttering in a tone of surprise and self-rebuke.  There were two colorful rubber baby spoons in the silverware cage that she felt shouldn't be there.
     She took the spoons out and appraised them under her breath.  They would have to do.  She brought them over to the dog's water dish and ladled out some water with the orange spoon. I turned from the sink in time to see her slurp water noisily from the spoon and smack her lips in appreciation.  It was almost as though she were at a wine tasting.

Two Little Girls

     Yesterday two little girls took over my house.  They ran shrieking across the kitchen floor at their reflections in the stove.  They left a trail of raisins down the stairs.  They insisted I pretend gobble a delicious concoction of plastic onion, banana and chocolate chip cookies they made in the play kitchenette.
     Sharlene's mom brought her over at 10:30 to play with us because she had to go to a funeral mass.  Shar is two and lives right next door.  She has beautiful, long curly strawberry blond hair and a rosebud mouth.  She calls Clara, "Cara," and Clara calls her, "Baby."
     "Clara, Shar is not a baby.  She's a little girl, like you," I explained.
     "Baby," Clara said.  When Shar arrived, Clara smiled shyly, tucked her chin and stuck her belly out a little bit.  A few minutes later, she tried to climb on her tricycle in front of Shar and fell off.
     Downstairs, Shar found the pink Cozy Coupe with the "princess" license plate.  She hopped right in and attempted to make her way across the floor in it.
     "Would you like me to push you?" I asked, and I pushed her across the room in the Coupe.  Clara, who likes the Coupe but is not particularly possessive of it, helped push at first and then took over the pushing entirely.  When Shar turned to see who was pushing, she was not pleased.
     "I push you!" she said, pointing at me.
     "Runs," said Clara, piling crayons into the back of the Coupe.
     "Shar, would you like to push Clara?"
     Shar sighed and got out of the Coupe.  "I sharing," she said.
     Wilbur the dog came downstairs and wisely left immediately (but not before Shar saw him. "Is dog at?" she asked me after he had gone, shrugging her baby shoulders and spreading her baby hands, palms-up).
     Later Clara indicated she wanted to sit on the potty.  We all trooped upstairs to the bathroom and I took off Clara's diaper.  She did her usual thing: sat on the potty a minute, adopted various expressions of concentration, hopped off, looked inside disappointedly, and busied herself with some bath toys.
     Shar found the letters we stick to the wall in the bathtub.
     "A B C D E F D," she sang softly. "Ach, I J K Elemenogee. K R S D U V, W S S AND Z."
     Clara hustled her against the side of the vanity so she could give her a hug.
    I left to get a fresh diaper for Clara and she and Shar shut the bathroom door on me.  "Hey!" I yelled. "Hey!" I banged against the door for extra drama and rattled the doorknob.  I heard shrieks of laughter inside. Finally I opened the door a little.  They pulled it open all the way, conciliatory expressions on their faces.  Then suddenly they shut it again, laughing uproariously.