Dear Marta

If by God's grace you are 16 or 17 (though I have a feeling with you it'll be more like 14 or 15) and you've decided to look back at our lives for reassurance of your place in our family because you're full of teen angst or possibly just (please) teen goofiness and you've pulled out this old blog, my feelings regarding your behavior today stand true forever and ever:

Even though it makes you furious, the things I do to restrain you are for your safety, because you are a certified Wild Child. You like to take the scariest, bumpiest, slipperiest route to any destination, you teach your big sister to do stunts she'd never have dreamed of, and you throw body-flinging tantrums when I even suggest you hold back your physical ambitions.

I spend half of my day holding you down, and the other half in sheer joy of your loving existence.

You say the most, The Most adorable things ever in existence in all eternity, like "Come 'ere Mama," whenever you want to be picked up, rubbing your face into my knees all snuggly and sweet. You pretend to cry and then say, "Goodness!" and "Heavens!" over and over until I say it back to you. You thank everybody for everything: "Marta sleep. Thank-you Mama." When the sprinkler spray hits you you get a nervous look and you say over and over, "S'okay-s'okay-s'okay-S'OKAY MAMA-S'OKAY!"

Yet you have the kind of spirit that will get you into trouble. I only hope it's going to be the good kind, the kind that brings you home with scraped knees from climbing trees and riding bikes rather than running with a wild crowd.

If you keep the curls, though, you might make us forget to ground you.

Finally! Summer Has Arrived

Marta At 18 Months

Yesterday was Marta's 18-month birthday, and to celebrate we went in for her well-baby check-up (she did get a sucker at the end, so not such a bad party). For those of you who don't like when parents brag about their kids, you should stop reading now. She was a Big Girl, and I was proud of her.

The doctor walked in and she said, "Mama," because she was caught off-guard and was nervous. He said, "Is that your mama?" And she pointed at him and said, "Dr. McGeath." He laughed, and said, "Did you see the fishies on the wall?" And as he pointed toward the wallpaper mural of sea life, Marta turned to it and showed him, "dolphin," "starfish," "bubbles," "fish."

She then proceeded to tell him all about her family, his office, her clothing, HIS EQUIPMENT (as in, "Ears! Ahhhh! Heart!" as she pointed to each of his tools, without prompting), and a variety of books that were in reach. A good human being, the doctor laughed and said appropriate remarks of praise, such as "You are so smart!" and "I should be more specific when talking to you!" (Me=Beaming)

Usually my kids clam up at the doctor's office, not showing off the skills I know they have. But yesterday Marta named colors and counted to 10 and said clever little phrases like "Shake your body!" to the doctor. (It's from a song. She sang it. It was adorable.)

He took a look at the myriad bumps and bruises covering her body from her daredevil tricks and wrote "Safety" on my take-home growth record. He told me what to look for in case of concussion, because she has a habit of bonking her head, which he sensed with his doctor reflexes/sensed by seeing the 17 bruises about her head. He laughed as she spun in circles for way too long, refusing my attempts to stop or even slow her, and watched as she climbed on every surface of his office, with me constantly pulling her down, trying to keep her in one place while we chatted about the horror of the benches in downtown Petoskey that city officials have decided to place in the middle of the streets downtown. Permanently. Ridiculous. Anyway, Marta's stats are:

Weight, 24 pounds, 2 ounces, 50th percentile

Height, 32 1/2 inches, 75th percentile

Head, 18 7/8 inches, 80th percentile

She has four mean molars coming in, which I've named Meanasaurus, Molarsauraus, Biteasaurus and Ouchasaurus. She's hurting from them, and the doc thinks we've still got a bit before the bottom two are fully up. Poor baby.

And when I left I made the appointment for her 2-year checkup. Two years! I can't believe it's been so long since I gave birth to our baby, but at the same time, it's such a relief to have her a toddler, doing adorable things, a moving part of our family instead of a new baby needing full attention for sustainability. She is a tornado, a dictator, bubbly and joyful. She makes us laugh just by looking at her, so full of happiness that it's making her hair curl with pure delight of life.

Questions

In my quest to be a passable mother, here are the questions tops on my mind today:

1. How do I enforce a "TV Time-Out"? In other words, the kids have been watching too much TV lately. Yet they only watch it while I get things done, like make meals, clean meals or put Marta to bed. So I'm doing too much without them, without figuring out how to make it all work, without letting them just play. How do I turn off the TV and turn on the fun, and still run the house and make healthy meals?

2. Do I take Berit? I've been thinking for some time about taking Berit on a solo trip to Chicago this fall. I go back and forth, and I'd like to get the details nailed down in July to pounce on deals, but should I even do this? Is she too young, at 3? Would a trip to Dairy Queen be the same for her? As I write this, I think, "yes, obviously this is silly; take her when she's 5, or at least old enough to remember it later." And yet, I can't help but want to introduce her to the spectacle of a Big City, with the museums and aquarium and Navy Pier and the restaurants. She'd love it, but is she too young?

They Win

Today was... huh. Every time I start to bemoan a certain day, I think about all the women in the world who would love to be in my shoes, with a roof over their kids' heads and food in the fridge and then I feel guilty.

And yet.

We started off pleasantly enough, with a playdate with some friends we haven't seen in awhile due to the arrival of a new baby, so it was doubly great (triply great, since the friends are twins) to see the friends and the newest addition to our little group.

I planned to take the girls to Charlevoix after Marta's nap to visit their new children's fountain (new to us; it's been up for a year now). It was remarkably warm in these parts, with our thermometer reaching 83 degrees (in the sun, but still). So I thought the girls would revel in the newness of the fountain and the chance to be outdoors without coats on.

Charlevoix is about 40 minutes from our house, but I thought the fountain was worth the drive. I packed tons of snacks, since Marta is eating everything, all the time, and by 10 minutes into the ride she'd eaten a banana, twisted fruit stick and crackers. She then began chewing her cheese and raisins and spitting them out onto her chest, and she dropped her water (NOT a no-spill cup) upside-down into a corner of the car that I couldn't reach. I stopped the car, got out, got the water. Fine.

Berit is in this magical phase where all she does is make noise. She is very literally constantly talking, and not just to herself, but needing answers and when said answers are given, she's clearly thinking of something else and asks me to repeat everything. Therefore:

B: "... Mom look at this FRECKLE on my leg! Look Mom! Hey Mom, look at this freckle!"

Me: "Wow, I love that freckle."

B: "What?"

Me: "I love that freckle."

B: "Mom, what did you say? Did you -"

Me: "I said-"

B: "What?"

Me: "Nothing."

B: "What?

Me: "I. LOVE. THAT. FRECKLE."

B: "Oh. Mom, did you SEE that truck? When I grow up can I ride in that truck with that man? MOM, that truck was LOUD! I don't like LOUD things! MOM! There are people walking on that sidewalk. I like sidewalks. Remember when we walked on the sidewalk and Marta fell down and hit her head? MOM, do you remember when..."

OH MY GOSH IT DOES NOT END.

So anyway, we do this all the way to the fountain park, we run up to what seems to be an amazingly fun fountain and realize that the jets in the ground, the ones that shoot water up into the air, are set on "power wash the paint off a house" or possibly "shoot holes into houses" because they are intense and my toddler, who loves water and anything really that she might get into, walks right up onto one that's currently dormant (because helpfully they're also set on "random," so you can't figure out which ones might be safe to play over) and sticks her face over it, studying the dribble of water popping out of the hole in the middle. Of course, what you're thinking happens happens, and this sets the tone for the entire visit. Berit is terrified and never so much as ventures three feet into the fountain, and Marta desperately wants to play in the fountain but keeps getting shot in the face, head and hands with the vicious spray.

It may have been helpful if another child were playing in the fountain that my kids could watch and mimic, however the only other kid there was a baby with his mom and her friends who just yelled at him the entire time for doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ("Don't you walk with that towel!" "NO you can't go over there." and my favorite, "Mommy can't hold you because I'm SMOKING. You know Mommy doesn't hold you when I'm smoking, and can't you see I'm smoking?"). The poor child was also completely and painfully developing a serious sunburn, and I tried in vain to offer them sunscreen and they laughed at me when I put even more on my girls' parts in their hair.

I ended up carrying both girls in a "dance" through the fountain, trying to convey to Berit that water spraying up at random can be fun and to Marta that if she does it this way, she could enjoy herself without needing to be taken to the ER afterward. Berit freaked out and tried to climb up my now-soaking wet self and Marta cracked up. Half a point for mom.

Also: Berit threw my camera onto the cement (by accident); Berit threw a full-on screaming tantrum because she wanted me to put her pants on for her but then wanted to put them on by herself but then wanted me to do it for her; Marta found a bag of Annie's Bunny Crackers and shoved honestly 10 in her mouth at once, wobbled around with her mouth completely open for a minute or so trying to figure out how she was going to make it work, then launched into her own screaming tantrum when I scooped them out of her mouth; and I found a bag of very old peaches in the front pocket of my diaper bag that had melted into peach vodka and covered everything in the pocket, which happened to be where I put my keys and now my "fob" is all sticky in the buttons with rotted peach juice.

And: Trevor is working until 9 p.m., so I took them on our nightly family walk by myself during which they both scream-fought the entire time, even while our neighbor tried talking to us about his newly three-legged dog who needs chemo WHILE THE DOG HOBBLED IN FRONT OF US. Oh, and I tried to give the girls a bath but Berit threw a tantrum while she was on the potty before the bath, refused to get off, I removed her, she informed me she was so mad because she just wanted to dance, immediately realized she needed to go #2 and spent the next HOUR working on this while Marta ceremoniously begged for bites of oatmeal and spit them out onto the floor while I wasn't looking, but have now discovered.

Now I'm off to clean the oatmeal and the peach-soaked diaper bag, IN PEACE AND QUIET, thank you very much. Sorry, didn't mean to yell at you. Force of habit today, I think.

Almond Butter Balls

Berit doesn't eat lately, and Marta eats at least once an hour, all day. Sometimes she wakes up at night starving, too. That means I'm constantly coming up with things to give her that are quick yet healthy -- not always succeeding, but trying anyway. I need more portable snacks, because I hate always handing her a granola bar or crackers while we're in the car or out, but seriously, what else? Yes, raisins, we've been there. What else?

This is one snack that I try to keep in the refrigerator on alternating weeks (she gets sick of stuff easily). I've adapted it from The Toddler Cafe, a cookbook I use every few weeks or so when Berit goes on the random hunger strike. We're lucky that our kids tend to eat what we do, but if you're looking to mix it up a little, The Toddler Cafe is fun. Anyway, this recipe is one we do constantly. The book says it makes 12 balls, but Berit eats lots of the "batter" while we're rolling them, so we typically get about eight. If you want to double it, they keep in the refrigerator for five days, and in the freezer indefinitely.

1 1/2 c. cereal, crushed with a mallet (anything works -- my kids love our whole wheat/cinnamon cereal -- the organic equivalent of Cinnamon Toast Crunch)

1/2 c. nonfat dry milk

1/4 c. + 1 T. creamy or chunky almond butter (the original recipe is peanut butter but we use almond, for no reason other than it's just what we have)

1/4 c. + honey (I usually need a little more for sticking power, that's why I put the + in there)

1/4 c. quick-cooking oats

1/4 c. sesame seeds

Place the milk, almond/peanut butter, honey, oats, 3/4 c. cereal and sesame seeds (everything but some of the crushed cereal) in a bowl and mix with your hands until you can form it into 1-inch balls. Put the balls and the rest of the crushed cereal into a zip-top bag and shake and squeeze gently, coating them.

You could also roll the balls in coconut, cocoa powder, crushed nuts or sesame seeds (we just put the sesame seeds on the inside, for more protein).

Tie

Good:

• Playdate this morning with loads of friends.
• Berit loosened up during said playdate and actually threw balls and was OK with bouncing balls off of her head. She laughed. I tensed, then marveled.
• Upon his arrival, Marta marched up to Brennan completely unprompted and said, "Hi there, Buddy."
• Berit rode her big girl bike, even though she's been so nervous about riding it after she fell off months ago. She even got up and down by herself. (Much of this is due to Shelly's calm and encouraging influence.)
• We went downtown for a walk, and played in the park, and each girl picked out a sweet at Symons, and being away from the house for just a couple minutes like that was the perfect before-dinner distraction.
• Chocolate-burnt caramel-Hawaiian sea salt bar. M.M.M.M.mmmmmmmm.
• Marta ate a whole avocado. Again.
• I signed both Trev and myself up for a local gym.

Not So Good:

• Mac and cheese for lunch AND dinner.
• Marta is still awake, crying "Mooooommmy. Maaaa-maaaay. Mow-my. MOMMY."
• Mosey threw up on the lawn, just as our playdate group walked outside for play on the lawn.
• Marta threw a tantrum when it was time to leave downtown, and as I tried to pick her up she jerked herself back down and slammed her head onto the sidewalk. In front of an outdoor cafe. At dinnertime.
• I did not take her to the doctor's after the head slam. Bad?