One Week Later

Exactly one week ago we were sitting in the rabbi's office waiting to start Emma's bat mitzvah. Seems hard to believe that it has only been a week. To everyone who read this and sent their messages of support and concern, thank you! Meltdown averted, everything really went beautifully. Emma was amazing, although that was never in doubt. She looked beautiful. She read her torah and haftorah and all her prayers fabulously. And she was so poised and confident and impressive in every way.

Amazingly, everything showed up and everyone was where they were supposed to be. I was pretty sure that the photographer wouldn't show up or the DJ would forget or something. But everything actually came together. The photographer was way on time (although we were late--sorry!). The flowers were beautiful, the DJ did a great job, the vegetarian moussaka was yummy. The weather was sunny and fall-ish and perfect. Even my grody ear infection couldn't ruin it. It was way better than my wedding, when the limo that was supposed to take Matt and me to the reception broke down and we had I think about six mechanically challenged men (including my dad and Matt's dad) peering in at the steaming radiator before we drove off to the reception in Dennis's hatchback.

I think (hope) that everyone had a good time. I know that Emma did and that's the most important thing. After the ceremony, I thought she'd fly away she looked so relieved and happy and lightened. We don't have the official pics yet, and I wasn't the "unofficial" photographer (thanks, Dennis, for doing that job!) so as soon as I get pics I'll post 'em here. But take my word: she was gorgeous.

I do have one pic that I'll post here, taken at the luncheon reception. Thanks, Genita!

Molly and mama and Sammy, everyone but Emma!

Chris Duffy came from New York, my mom's cousins and her friend flew in from Florida and Connecticut, Matt's family came from Oregon, Danny and family came from LA (poor Danny's plane arrived less than an hour before the ceremony) and Gillian and her family and Genita all came up from Chicago. We hadn't seen some of these guys in YEARS and YEARS, which is criminal in itself, but it was pretty fantastic that so many people made such an effort to be there for us. As Gillian said, it was a great excuse for us to all get together.

Before this weekend, Sammy was claiming to be on the fence about whether he wanted a bar mitzvah or not. He kinda wants to go to New York or Barcelona instead. But after seeing and experiencing Emma's gala, he wants one too. More to the point, he wants the same DJ, the same parties, and the same spinach-phyllo pies that Emma had. So that's compliment enough.

So all in all, it was really great. Now only three years till we do it all over again! Woo-hoo!

In other news, the Cibula family is preparing for Halloween. Which means the Cibula children are planning their costumes. Molly will most likely be going as a ballerina. I've got her this cute little tutu. Although I think that Molly would prefer to go out as "girl who doesn't wear anything but a diaper."

Emma wants to be Sarah Palin. I'm pretty stoked about this, although I think it will take a phenomenal amount of hair spray to get her hair up.

Sam's first idea was to trick-or-treat as Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke.

Which means that when my kids went out trick-or-treating, it would look like this:







But then we decided Sam would just look like someone's uncle. So now he's going to go as the Federal Banking Crisis. I'll let you know how that works out.

Today I Am a Wreck

It would be disingenuous to say that I wasn't warned. I was. I knew it would be like a wedding. Only with less sympathy from outsiders and coworkers, who don't know it's like a wedding. I had all summer to plan and prepare and keep myself out of the position I'm in now. But the summer was a rilly rilly long time ago. And now Emma's Bat Mitzvah is in 13 days. Holy fuck.

It's not that she won't be beautiful. She will. Or that she's not prepared. She is. As I keep telling her, there will only be like 5 people who know Hebrew at the whole thing anyway (and I am not one of them) so it really doesn't even matter if she messes up because she'll sound like she knows what she's talking about, regardless. But she won't mess up. She's beyond ready, and she'll be amazing. And she's excited for the chance to wear pretty new dresses and run around the temple with 22 (!) of her closest friends.

But yeah, I really don't have my shit together, which is becoming increasingly evident. I woke up at 5:15 this morning and I couldn't get back to sleep because I'm pretty sure we won't have adequate servers at the bat mitzvah luncheon. We have a caterer, and they're wonderful, but I can't remember what we told them about the number of servers we'll need, and they've never catered at the temple before. So I'm pretty sure that everyone'll be folding their own napkins and hewing their own grain for bread.

The temple's a pain in the ass because they basically expect that everyone'll use the same caterer, so they want ours to send in all these proofs of insurance and whatnot, and no one's talking to each other--they're all talking to me. I can't do anything about it so I try to relay messages.

I'm stressed because my computer died a week ago. My computer with all my lists and names and spreadsheets so I am convinced I'm forgetting about someone who's coming--probably a family of 10 who'll show up in a maxivan with no place to stay and no placecards for their kiddush meal.

I'm stressed because before my computer died I counted everyone up, and then I re-counted yesterday and came up with 10 more people for the lunch. Inexplicably. I guess I can't count. Good thing I'm a teacher. I can't remember now whether I told the temple to order enough napkins and tablecloths. (A task, btw, that I managed to complete at the last possible moment.)

Stressed because I still don't have a florist or a photographer. I have a line on both, but nothing nailed down. This could be bleak. And I have to figure out how to decorate a barn, where the dance party will be held. No clue what to do there. I don't even have shoes. Or a suitable dress. How can I be expected to decorate a barn?

Stressed because I'm quite sure I'm forgetting about 50 things I need to do. I can't take more than a day off to do it all. My basement smells like cat pee and I'm not sure when and how we can clear it out to clean it.

And I'm not really dealing with how we're gonna pay for it all, since we're maxed on our HELOC and I keep putting off the call to the bank to incrase it.

I've got a cold that's not going away and at this point, I'm pretty sure it's mutated into some kind of low-level infection that probably won't send me to the doctor but won't clear up by itelf, either. So instead of sleeping on a Sunday morning, I'm up, at 5:15, watching infomercials, but not even the good one about Colon Cleanse, and looking for scissors so I can cut out patterns of eggs with letters on them. Wondering if my twisting stomach is the result of too much wine on Friday, or my burgeoning sinus infection, or the stress of not knowing how this is all gonna work out.

It's gotten so I can't even fret about the election.

This is your brain on kindergarten.

On Friday, not one, but two of my students decided that it would be a really really good idea to put rocks in their ears. They were the little gravelly rocks that you find under the jungle gym, and they shoved them in while they were sitting in their specials class. You know, just for kicks. To see what would happen. Makes sense. Both of them went home with pebbles lodged in their ears and notes from the nurse.

Meanwhile, another one of my students has figured out that he can make a really fly tooth grill out of the foil cover of his little juice container. Very bling-bling. He looks like Flava Flav. Except not.

It's Potty Time

I just watched as Molly stood in the middle of the living room and pulled off her diaper with a sense of purpose. Think she's trying to tell us something?

Nature's Perfect Food

As I write this, Molly is sucking down MY cup of coffee. Full disclosure: my coffee with tons of sugar in it, so it's really more like a lukewarm liquid coffee lollipop. But still. She grabbed it away from me and screamed and cried when I tried to take it back. Emma took a sip and she slapped her hand til she had the mug again. She's an addict. This morning she woke up saying "Bunna. Bunna. Bunna." Which is the Amharic word for "coffee."

Matt has these horrible stories about when he was like 3 and supposedly he went around one of his parents' dinner parties when everyone was out of the room and finished off all their drinks--toddler Long Island Iced Tea. No one's feeding Molly alcohol (and even the veracity of Matt's story is hotly contested within the family). But I can't help but wonder what kind of effect all this fully-caffienated bunna is having on my daughter's developing brain. As she is slurping, she occasionally stops to babble urgently. I've never heard her speak so quickly. And this is what she's saying:

"A beee bee da bunna bin."
"A bunna be bunna be coffee. Chocla milk."
"A kiki juice. Bunna."
"Emma aggiggiggiggiggi bunna bunna bunna bunna ababa."

Should I be concerned?

I'm thinking diaper time will also be interesting.

Auf Wiedersehen

On a recent episode of "Sesame Street," Elmo is talking with Heidi Klum about the word "cooperation." Molly, who only half-watches SS most of the time (Elmo and Cookie Monster are interesting, Maria and Alan, not so much) got very animated pointing at the screen and yelling "Mama! Mama!!" This has happened again on several repeated viewings. (Have I mentioned that the TV is a wonderful babysitter?) so I know it's not a fluke. Yay for me! I am Heidi Klum! Now Molly has identified lots of people as Mama and Daddy (incl. Daddy=cowboy singer/sometime actor Vaugh Monroe in the 1952 movie "Toughest Man in Arizona." Still, this is encouraging.

Daddy?

The resemblance is striking.

Sleeping and Other Pipedreams

I've been putting off posting because the weekend before last we went with our lovely friends Will and Jennifer and their gorgeous children, Eli and Max, to an Ethiopian "culture camp" (which sounds somehow like an indoctrination facility and which I can't say or write without quotation marks) in Lake Geneva. I have many adorable pictures, mostly of Eli and Molly pulling around a rope. But I need to make room on my hard drive for the new pics, and since that day doesn't seem to be coming yet, I thought I'd post quickly (ha!) here.

Not much new, really. Sam has been free and easy since his drama camp ended a month ago. He's honing his mathematical and shopping skills simultaneously by obsessively watching "The Price Is Right" and toting up all the prizes he would have won if he'd been a contestant. Although Drew Carey is such a disappointment; his heart's just not in it when he weakly reminds us to "spay and neuter your pets--it's really important." Emma is babysitting like a babysitting fiend. Part of it is for her "mitzvah project" which is her "good works" project that she has to do as part of her Bat Mitzvah preparation. For that, she's volunteering over at Molly's old preschool and she comes home with many stories of the political machinations of three-year-old girls.

Speaking of which, I just checked my class list for the new school year and as of right now, I have 7 boys and ONE GIRL. That will change, for sure (for one thing, they wouldn't let me have a class with only 8 kids, they'll let me go and absorb my class first) and in our school, mobility is so high that the class list I see today may not bear any relationship with the one I find on the first day of school. But still. Last year, I had 9 girls and 5 (then 4) boys and it was a Mean Girls Fiesta. I felt like Tina Fey in a class full of Rachel McAdamses. I won't have that problem with 7 boys, they're just not mean and petty like that. But they do like to run around a lot and hit each other with blocks. Good times.

Molly's pottying proceeds apace, and I couldn't be prouder. She peed yesterday, pooped this morning. If I were home with her on a permanent basis I'd be tempted to just put her in underwear and upholster the house in plastic wrap. But since that's not the case, and since she's not yet 2, I figure we'll let it ride. I'm so proud of her; she's WAY ahead of Em and Sam at the same age.

Molly's latest trick is to take off running any chance she gets. But when she does, she announces it, yelling: "Running! Running!" She's pretty fast and I figure she's got a genetic predisposition to be an Olympic marathon superstar. I like to think of her at the 2028 Olympic Games, chugging down the road in wherever the hell the games will be, far ahead of her competitors, yelling, "Running! Running!"

In less impressive news, my lovely youngest still will not go to sleep in her own bed. It's becoming a real problem. She's 20 months old. Because of her particular history, I have been even more reluctant than I was with Em and Sam to plunk her in her crib and close the door and let her cry it out, "SuperNanny-style." We tried to "Ferberize" Em and Sam this way, with less than stellar results. (I slept on Emma's floor for years.) In Molly's case, since she had so much early loss, it quite literally breaks my heart to let her cry in her room, as I did for a little while tonight until I couldn't take it anymore. Matt's solution to get her to sleep is to take her out in the car or the stroller until she falls asleep. I think it's sort of the ANWAR-drilling approach to baby sleeping: a quick fix but one that doesn't lead to long-term independence. Of course, I have no better options. Tonight she was quite simply exhausted, screeching, rubbing her eyes, whipping herself around, it was painful for me to watch how tired she was. She wouldn't settle on the couch, she wouldn't fall asleep in the mei tai, so I finally took her to her crib and put her in. And left the room. And she wailed pitifully for 2 minutes til I came back in. Thanks, Dr. Ferber. Then I tried one more time, with equally horrifying results. I couldn't take the crying and the "mamas" and "daddys" and finally the "all dones" coming from her room. So we came back downstairs and, finally, she settled on her couch with all her accessories: blanket and blue doggy toy, and finally finally fell asleep. But it was painful. And she still can't sleep alone. Apparently she falls asleep fine at preschool. I also know at preschool (because I've seen it) that even if she's crying pitifully when I leave, she stops within seconds of my being out of sight and is perfectly happy and content. So why is sleeping time so different?

At this rate, I'm not sure what we'll do. She goes into her crib generally when she's already asleep, wakes up halfway through the night, and comes into our bed, where usually she can sleep just fine. I worry that she not feel abandoned. This is actually my deepest fear for Molly, that she not feel abandoned. And so I'm inclined to let her keep up this ultimately unhealthy sleep pattern until she's old enough to sneak out after curfew.