Birthday season begins

Z.'s long-awaited fourth birthday was on Monday. I keep starting posts and not finishing them, so I'm going to resort to the random bullets form just to get it all out of my head:

• Twenty-one kids, 16 of them three or four, the rest all younger siblings: this is because of the way that Z. falls at the exact midpoint of the very large group of kids at her school who will be entering kindergarten in the Fall of 2010. Last year I argued that she should be included in the youngest preschool class, instead of being kept in the infant/toddler program for a third year. That was one of the best advocacy moments I've had as a parent, with the greatest unforeseeable positive consequences, and if a crazily large fourth birthday party is the only downside, I say hooray. (This year, the class wound up split so that she's almost the oldest in her room, but the two older preschool classes spend a lot of their day together, so now she has new, slightly younger friends in her class but her slightly older friends from last year are still current.)
• Despite how high it was on the overstimulation meter, the party was still a roaring success. When the parents are hitting it off and having a great time, you know things are going well. We used the bookstore, which has three levels, and it was very low-key. Storytime downstairs in the kids' section, freeplay in the reading nook on the second floor, crafts in the community room on the third floor. Kids could move on when they got bored, and it was fine. We paid for pizza, cake, balloons, favors (minimal), and paper goods. I think we spent more than we needed to on the paper stuff, but not too much. Otherwise, I feel like we did it well, for not much money, and minimal headache.
  
• Z. made out like a bandit, of course. I've introduced a concept that I take seriously, which is that of the birthday season, which starts on your birthday and continues for a month afterwards. It's kind of like your birthday is the shiny, blazing head of the comet, and the season is its lingering, tapering tail. This works for me because I have a lot of birthday anticipation and post-birthday let-down, and I could see it going the same way with Z., and I don't want to live with her crashing.
  
• Declaring it birthday season lets us ration the presents, and this is a HUGE advantage. Really, I think y'all should all copy me. She opened all of her grandparent and cousin presents while her grandparents and cousins were here, on the day of her party (the day before her birthday). She opened her parent presents on her birthday, plus the present from her favorite friend. The rest she's been opening one in the morning and one after school, and it means she's actually played with each one instead of discarding it in a frenzy of acquisition.
  
• In theory, this would also let us pace ourselves on the thank-you notes, but we have let that slip and will probably do them all on the weekend.
• The binky fairy came to our house on the night before Z.'s birthday. We didn't expect the binky fairy for another night, but Z. said she was ready. No more binkies for sleeping--until she was three she had a binky in her mouth every minute she wasn't in school. Last year we eliminated them except for sleeping and car trips, and in the Fall we let the car trips drop. Getting to sleep with them, and early-morning-still-in-bed use, these were the last regular holdouts. She still has one for the emotional emergencies we have recently dubbed cyclone feelings (post to come on these eventually, I hope) but it lives in the catch-all space that is my underwear drawer.
  
• I mostly forgot about my labor and Z.'s NICU stay. I had a day or two of saying "hey, I think I'm better, no more PTSD," and then A. left a detail in a story that she would have edited out if I hadn't declared myself better, and I promptly crumpled. So not all the way better, but much, much, much further along the road. And learning that A. has been editing out details like that for years (it was about a mother and baby being separated)? I was terribly touched.
• It snowed hard the night before Z.'s birthday, and her birthday itself was a snow day. The night she was born it was the same way. That was a good echo.
  

Halfway to Four

The semi-annual tooth-cleaning of the boo was yesterday, and as it happens, it was also her half-birthday.

We are bopping along in the car on our way to the dentist, listening to a cd a friend of mine put together for me for my own birthday a bunch of months back, and Z. is singing along to the words she can decipher.

Z.: "Happy Birssday..." When I listen to diss I sink dey're singing about me!

S.: Oh yeah?

Z.: Yes, because it's going to be my birssday soon!

S.: Sweetie, your birthday is still a long time away. As long as it's been since your last birthday, that's how long it is until your next birthday. There are a lot of months between now and then, and a lot of holidays first. Your birthday isn't until around Purim.

Z.: Dzat's vewy soon.

S.: Well, it's getting closer every day.

Z.: Dat's TWUE! En den it will be my BIRSSDAY!

Thank you, everyone, for a great birthday

Last year I complained in this space about having a distinctly so-so birthday. This year, I had a really wonderful birthday.

To everyone responsible, thank you. At a time when I have mostly been thinking about what a hash I've made out of my life, you all made me feel loved.

(Also, Facebook's birthday reminder function is pretty darn cool.)

Secrets in my house

Z. and A. are standing two feet from me.

Z.: Mama, I didn't tell you about da prwesents. I just told you I was telling *Mommy* about da prwesents.

Introducing the Pants Boss

I think that last one has been up long enough, don't you?

Co made a late comment I want to respond to here instead of burying it: Co, I can't imagine going through something like this, let alone something objectively worse, on a date that other people were always reminding me of--you have heaps and heaps of my sympathy. I also think you're right--as so many other people suggested--that having more layers of good associations with the date will help me. This was only the third time it's rolled around since it happened, after all. But I'm also thinking that knowing the anniversary was going to come in its inevitable time helped me contain the story more this year than I have the previous two years. Knowing I was going to open that box up no matter what let me leave it closed for longer, if that makes sense.

So in the spirit of both adding happy layers and closing the box up again, here are some joyful things that have come along with the arrival of the birthday:

An inundation of grandparents, a birthday cake, a Glinda snowglobe, a pair of ruby slippers, a wand, an inchworm riding toy, a puzzle, some videos, a toy Muppet, a scooter, some crayons for drawing on windows, and (preparing her for her future life of peonage in the family-owned retail business) a cash register. She has played with each of her presents intensely and happily and frequently in the past 48 hours. Three is an age when most things are interesting, but I also think that the relatives just did a good job of getting her and meeting her where she's at.

Her birthday night, she got out of bed twice expressly in order to put on her ruby slippers. Normally if she gets out of bed, she just pads to the top of the stairs, but Sunday night she donned her shoes and her witch hat and outfitted herself with her new flashy purple wand before inquiring after a drink of water.


Here are some other things that have followed in the wake of three: she chooses her own pants now, in the morning--I figure it doesn't matter to me what pants she wears so long as they match her shirt, more or less, and I still get final say in her shirt. Of course she started by choosing the purple ones.

She has jumped to wearing big girl pants, even to school. I'm holding my breath, I really am, because she is still fighting us way too much on way too many trips to the potty, but suddenly she loves the big kid pants and she's doing what I've known she could do if she wanted to, which is pay attention and keep them dry, and she has been dry for two days straight now. Not overnight, she's still in a diaper overnight, but even for naps.

And.

Drumroll.

The Binky Fairy came to our house.

On the night after her birthday, we had a binky hunt. I distributed our binky stash so that there was one in every place that a binky tends to be left in our house: the sideboard in the dining room, the kitchen counter, the side of Z.'s bed, the edge of the sink. Z. and I took a basket and we hunted down all of the binkies, each and every one (there were 8, not including the one in her mouth) and she put them under her pillow (but not! the one in her mouth--until she exchanged it for the only purple one). When A. went to bed, she collected all the binkies and put them in a safe place (my underwear drawer) and in their stead she left a purple Kermit the Frog shirt of magnificent fabulousness.

Now Z. has a binky when she's sleeping or when she's riding in the car (but not when she has a friend in the car). And that's it. She misses her binky. She really, really wants a binky in her mouth, especially in the morning when she gets out of bed. It is clear that we have an addict and she's jonesing. But she's also doing it.

In the space of two days, she is transformed. No binky, no diaper butt. She has been tall for her age for ages (I'm 5'5", and her head is almost at my waist) but all of a sudden since Sunday, she has stopped looking like a baby.

I'm proud as hell.

Another year

Last year, I started blogging.

Yesterday, we were back at the Four Seasons for our circa-Valentine's Day High Tea, on yet another miserable mid-February day. The valet opened the car door for me again, and accepted the key to a different, slightly battered Civic Hybrid (the car we drove last year was totaled in May), and this year we had two second-hand carseats in back, one of them not yet installed, because while repairs at the usual building are ongoing, Z.'s daycare has had to move to new digs far enough away from our house that as of tomorrow, we are carpooling to spare the polar bears.*

Last year, I was still making my way back towards music; mostly, the radio was tuned to NPR. This year the front of the car is littered with cd's.

The trash in the seat wells is pretty much unchanged.


Blogging, blogging. Very few decisions have changed my life as much as my plunge into the Web 2.0 world. I went from isolation to abundant connection, and I figured out some seriously important things in this space.

When I began I felt quite urgent about writing, but the place the blog has in my attention has changed a great deal, and my posting has fallen off dramatically. I realize that I am at a crossroads with it. I'm not quite sure what is going to happen. I would like to be posting daily again--given the array of things I'm avoiding dealing with in my unbloggable life, I don't expect that to happen anytime soon, but I think that was a good discipline for me--only if daily blogging is a project I'm going to resume, I need to find an approach to content that does *not* use confessional journaling as its model.

This isn't really an announcement of change, though, more like an alert that this is a blog in search of a new mission statement. I'm hoping to figure it out when things settle down. You know, in my next lifetime.



*All credit to Phantom for the concept of teh polar bear points.

One hundred and two

My mother loves finding patterns in numbers, so this is for you, mom:

Today is January 2nd, 01/02. It would also have been my grandmother's 102nd birthday. Mind you, she didn't want it to be: after her 90th birthday she often told people what a shame it was that "they made you live so long," but she hung on to 99. She started out at 5 feet, half an inch, and by the end she was a tiny, wrinkled person, still pronouncing a few words in a Scottish accent (shoogar) despite having spent most of seven decades in this country.

I think the thing she was waiting for was to know that all of her children were grandparents. A week before she died, my cousin's baby girl was born and so all of her children had grandchildren. I think after that she felt like everything was set and she could go if she had to.

My grandmother taught me how to knit. Not how to purl, just how to knit. I figured out how to make stockinette stitch on my own (that would be "flat knitting instead of bumpy" to all of you non-knitters out there) and she assumed I'd figured out purling. Eventually, I did.

My grandmother was also my first correspondent. I was seven, and she gave me stationery with my name on it, and sometimes she would send me stamps.

She gave me a way into yarn and a way into words, a way into art, though she would not ever have called herself an artist.

She was Presbyterian. I broke with Jewish tradition and gave my daughter her name. I consider it the best decision of my life.

Generosity

S: Hey, Z., do you know what we're going to do today when the stores open?

Z.: (looks expectant)

S.: We're going to run some errands!

Z.: We're going to get new play-doh!

S.: And we're going to make a package for Charming Boy and take it to the post office. It's his birthday in two weeks. Not even two weeks. Do you know how old he's turning?

Z.: Two!

S.: No, Three.

Z.: (in tones of awe) Thrwrweeee! We can get him a thrwee.*

S.: Should we get him a three?

Z.: Yes! And he can hold it tight!!! in his hand so it won't get brwoken.

*a three-shaped candle.

Double chai*

Well, having had a recent point of comparison, I can report to you all that it is more fun to turn two than to turn 36. Especially when your birthday falls on both shabbat and Passover and you didn't manage to find a babysitter. Maybe if this happens again I'll break shabbat to pick up my birthday calls. Birthday voice mail isn't the same. I did have a few unexpected emails waiting for me just now, and A. made a fairly ambitious orange nut cake at my request. She also gave me a packet of fancy kleenex and a little bird statue. Z. attempted to appropriate the bird. That was it for things to unwrap today, though I know there are other presents in the mail. It's not all about the presents, but you're not fooling me if you pretend the presents don't make a difference.

I used to have better birthdays, but the thing is that to have a good birthday you have to plan ahead, and I just haven't been up for it the past few years. I don't mind a low-key birthday, but I don't think I should be able to forget for hours at a time that it is my birthday. Harumph. I believe in the concept of the birthday season, though, which lasts for a month after your birthday, so maybe things will improve.

It did snow on my birthday, for only third time in my recollection.

*for the non-Jews out there, chai ("hi," with the H like you're clearing your throat) is the word for life in Hebrew, and in Hebrew letters it looks identical to the number 18. Jews will often donate money in multiples of 18 for this reason.

Carnival and chaos

Carnival:

So I promised to write about the Big Day of Grandparents. A.'s parents showed up just in time to keep Z. up for an extra hour on the night of her birthday, and my folks arrived early the next day. We all went to shul, even my non-Jewish folks, who do this for me every year or two. Z. was so delighted to have all her grands there, and me! (I usually sleep in), that she promptly abandoned them and dragged me by the hand to kids' services. Once she got her story hit we were good to rejoin the grownups.

The official reason for this family outing was to provide kiddush in Z.'s honor. In addition to the usual (hummus, pita, crudite, chips, salsa, and gorp) I had intended to make New Orleans bread pudding, which is an alcoholic marvel, but didn't check that we had enough milk before shabbat. When shortfalls like this happen I always think I'll break shabbat so that the fun thing I planned won't be spoiled because I don't want my shabbat observance to make me feel deprived. Then having determined to break shabbat, and without ever wavering in that determination, I decide that it wouldn't be worth it anyway. In this case, when I found there wasn't milk I decided to go to the co-op the moment it opened the next morning, then decided that I wouldn't have enough time anyway. Instead of bourbon and raisins we brought honey bunnies. Luckily a hamantaschen baker missed the communal mishloach manot assembly day on Friday and brought her tray to kiddush instead.

My father learned to say "hamantaschen" moments before the baker came over and he complimented her on them perfectly.

Back at the Rhyming ranch, proper lunch was eaten, and cake, and ice cream. The Big Day of Grandparents reached its purest, highest point: the Opening of the Big Grandparent Presents. Z. was almost dizzy with her treasures. There was a big tube to climb through from A.'s parents, with tents and things to attach to it when it can be assembled somewhere larger than our living room, and there was also a pinky-purple gorilla whom we named Hank. My folks gave her a tricycle that had both grandfathers saying admiring techonological things, and has a basket in back for toy transportation that you can dump out when you get your toys to where they're going. Aunt N. sent her old cell phone, with charger so it will continue to turn blue when Z. turns it on. Uncle B. and Aunt S.E. sent a huge box of sidewalk chalk and a big, floppy unicorn whom we named Stella. (If we don't name toy animals instantly they all get names like The Camel.)

Then the afternoon kind of ran out of juice. All of us could have used a nap, but Z. was too manic to even think of trying. I had wanted to take a walk earlier, but after the presents I could no longer remember that. Eventually, it was time for the grandparents to go. Goodbyes were said all around, then we got ready for Purim. With no nap, the goal was to keep Z. up long enough to sleep through the night when she did go down.

Z. got back into the most purplest of her purple clothes, which industrious Mama had rendered clean again. Neither A. nor I did much in the way of costumes, but we were nearly alone in that--there were zoo animals and fighter pilots, yin and yang, rock and rollers, various sports stars, and the entire synagogue staff came as penguins. It was fun, but we didn't stay long. The moon was in eclipse when we arrived but full when we walked home.

Chaos:

The next day, yesterday, was the brother-sister family's birthday party. This was held at an indoor gymnastics place a half-hour drive from our house--mind you, most of the kids at this party live within a 10-minute walk of our house. A. had a ton of work so I took Z. on my own, and got lost twice from directions that referred to roads that weren't signed. We arrived to find a mass of big kids in the lobby of the place and a harrassed teenager herded us brusquely but ineffectively along. We were told to hand over the presents before we even reached the party--as though this were a wedding!--and given little help in sorting out the geography of the place, which was complicated. Most of the party was held in the "Kids' Fun Factory," a multi-level Ikea-style play structure with lots of tubes and ramps and netting. There were two ball pits, and the first one we found was full of big kids playing very rough. Z. desperately wanted to go in and she would have been crushed instantly.

After a couple more turnings we found the toddler area, which was magically, delightfully full of her day-care classmates. What sweet relief. We had a nice long, pleasant interlude bathing in the balls and throwing them up in the air. She didn't want to leave when our time was called, and in fact she shouldn't have, because under 3's weren't allowed in the next activity (mind you, over half the kids at this party were under 3) and no parents or under 3's were allowed to walk across the route that the over 3's walked.

Z. melted down. I tried to get her together with cuddles and snacks, but she just wanted to go away and cry and I couldn't much blame her. Finally, I carried her over to where everyone else was. A few over-3's were in a moon bounce, and most of the 2's had illicitly joined the rest of the 3's doing completely unrisky things on mats with hula hoops, but Z.'s window for fun had closed. Looking around, she wasn't the only one. Luckily, the meltdown had taken enough time that we were quickly herded up to lunch in a room that also held another party of much larger kids. Our group got pizza, for which no knives or forks were provided, so parents either encouraged small offspring to direct entire floppy slices towards their mouths, or they were reduced to pulling off pieces by hand. Z. was still too dazed and weepy to do anything, so I resorted to actually putting pieces into her mouth to get her blood sugar up.

Cake emerged--pink and purple skirt-shaped with a Barbie in it for big sister, brown and red sheet cake with the Cat in the Hat for baby brother. The cake was excellent. The cake was delicious. I can't complain about the cake at all, and though I did have visions of the candles frying Barbie's hair, sister clearly adored it.

I counted heads before people started to leave. There were 27 toddlers and preschoolers there. Twenty-seven! I would say that Brother-Sister Mom is insane, except that clearly this has become a cultural expectation, that you would have nearly 30 kids for your 3-year-old's birthday party.

Also, I don't like not giving the presents to the birthday child. Present-giving and present-receiving is a skill that kids need to learn by doing it at birthday parties. It's no fun to give a present to a staffer who collects them out of sight of the intended recipient, and if you are the birthday child you need to learn graciousness in accepting presents. I can see the argument against opening presents in the middle of the party (though I think I would make a different argument), but at least the gift should be given from the hand of the guest to the hand of the guest of honor.

Blah.

In the lobby, there were still more kids for still more birthday parties. Z. got away from me twice while I was explaining the value of cutlery to the teenagers on staff--both times she had positioned herself not 10 feet away from me, but the chaos was such that I really couldn't see her. Then of course we had a half-hour drive home, and the directions that served me so poorly the first time weren't reversible, so I wound my way through backroads for some time. That was actually fairly pleasant. It gave me a cooling-down time, and almost gave Z. enough time to nap, but not quite. When we got home I took a three-hour nap in her stead, but she got her second wind and was up the rest of the afternoon with A. No nap for two days in a row. She went down in flames at 7:30, resurfaced screaming again at 9, slept in our bed the rest of the night. When I got her to talk to me about it (Mama asking questions, Z. either wailing through them or responding) it came out that she had been terrified of losing me at the party place. But really, who wouldn't be?

The birthday payoffs

After all my blogging in the run-up to it, Z.'s birthday was a lovely day. It seems eclipsed by chaos and carnival now (more on which in another post), but I can work myself back there, I think.

She woke up early, before A. left for work, so A. was able to give her a happy birthday hug and kiss before the day started. We had decided on two presents she could open before school--a little fire truck to feel "birthday" ish and a bracelet because it might have been added to her Purim (observed) costume. The bracelet was a dud, but the fire truck was a hit. She adored it absolutely (as did I--I think it's an intensely smart design) and played with it so much that despite being up early she was later to school than she had been all week (still: we at least made it there by snack every day but Monday last week.)

We came downstairs to a beautiful Happy Birthday sign A. made with paper from Z.'s easel, taped to the glass of our front door at Z. eye level. Happy Birthday was in many colors, Z.'s name was in purple, and there was a heart, a star, and a smiley face. Wow! Uncle B. and Aunt S.E called with birthday wishes at breakfast time, a super-special treat.

Z. went off to school in the most purplest of the purple clothing she owns, clutching the fire truck. Z.'s leaving-the-house ritual these days requires both binky and toy-from-home. The toy from home varies and is handed over to a teacher just after arrival at the door of the class (the binky is handed to me just outside the door along with her jacket). This seems to me to be a more literal meaning of transitional object than is usually understood, but it does work to get her out of the house with less drama, which means faster.

I picked Z. up early to get in a couple of errands before the big day of grandparents began--at 2:45 instead of 4:00. I thought I would arrive after her nap (her school nap is woefully short compared to her home nap--this is one of the reasons why she stays home more often than is perhaps ideal). Instead, she was still asleep and needed to be woken. She came into the classroom bleary and still in the sleep zone. She didn't take in that I was there at first and when she did she was weepy and clingy--her teachers were surprised she was so sad, confirming my belief that she usually puts on a better front for them than for me. No surprise, I'm sure.

But once she got it together to get onto the changing table for a diaper check, she turned out to be dry. This led to a trip with me to the school potty. The school potty is scary since it is a preschool-sized real toilet, too big for even a fairly tall two-year-old like Z. To sit on it she kind of perches at the far front edge, and even that is an accomplishment won after a few tearful acclimation visits. Recently she has attached herself to a book from the rack in the hall that we only read on the potty: suitably, it's called "All By Myself." I thought all these potty reward things--stars and stickers and whatever--were a bad idea but we have inevitably evolved our own reward system of books. It has been the one thing that's made any progress possible at school.

And, on her birthday, she peed on the potty at school for the first time! Hooray for two!

By the time we got home after our errands she had acquired a purple mouse and pirate hat courtesy of pushover Mama, and a flamingo bead from the nice bead store lady. (How to make a pirate hat from a quilting quarter: tie a knot in each corner.) Mommy was home when we arrived, so we opened the rest of the Mama and Mommy presents at snack time--a smallish purple playground ball with pink spots, a barrette and a bunch of hair clips from CVS, a pull-toy clown, two pairs of pants that happened to arrive the day before her birthday so I wrapped them but Z. was not fooled, and finally the thing she asked for, Stacrobats! These are like the fire truck in that they are even more fun in person than you think they would be from seeing pictures. None of us could stop playing with them and, since they are magnetized, introducing the hair clips into the equation meant additional hilarity.

There were more birthday phone calls, from Aunt. O. and Aunt N. and grandparents and friends. Z. loved the fuss and attention, and I liked watching her being happy. A. said that I had made good birthday ruach for her, which I thought was a lovely compliment. I had fun making a good birthday, but even if it's fun work you still like it when someone notices that you're doing good work.

I'm going to stop writing before I get to the arrival of the grandparents, because I do need to get to sleep. Part II tomorrow!