The Terrible Twos and the Evolution of a Mother

As I type this, my 20-month-old-as-of-yesterday is throwing a screaming fit on the floor. Instead of making me feel upset, I find that it's really actually very funny. She's stretched out to the absolute limit of her fingers and toes, lying face-down on the carpet and screeching. Seeing someone so small behave in such a large manner can't help but elicit a snicker or two. I'm sorry, but I can't help it. Chalk it up as a tick mark in the Bad Mommy column.

When Sporty would throw fits like that as a toddler, I would always be reduced to a bundle of nerves almost immediately. No laughs there; believe me. And then, within about 5 minutes I'd be screeching right back at her. Before long, we'd have both reached a fever-pitch and then there would be an almost audible *pop* in the tension level and everything would deflate. Hopefully without any lasting damage to the psyche of my then two-year-old child. To be fair to myself... I was working a full-time job in addition to parenting, so my stress level tended to be maintained at a higher altitude than it does now. And Sporty was a most determinedly vociferous child... actually, she still is, come to think of it. Tick.

Even with Posh, who could hardly be bothered to throw a fit about anything, who was so much easier-going than my passionate oldest child, it was hard to know if I was doing right by her. When your children are like that, you start to feel like you forget about them sometimes (squeaky wheel and all that). Sometimes their needs don't seem to take priority. And then when they do throw a giggy... you react badly because you're not used to the fuss. Tick. Tick.

Now, with Baby... she's sort of an odd mix of the two temperaments of her older sisters. She's very mild-tempered, in general (in fact~ as a newborn, she was so quiet that we weren't really sure she knew how to cry for about 2 months). And when she does throws a fit, it's almost like someone whispered to her that that was what she was supposed to do. So she gives it her all for about 5 minutes, and then she starts looking over her shoulder to see if you're watching her. If you look at her with any sympathy, she goes right back to screaming~ then she'll check again in a few minutes. Stinker. After awhile, once she's good and forgotten what it was she was screaming about in the first place, she just fizzles out. And then she's all smiles again. Today, for example, she was relieved of a mostly-empty Sprite can that she found on the coffee table. For all the bellowing the event elicited, it must have been the worst thing that has happened to her all week. But true to form, she's now perfectly happy and playing with her big sisters. And, yes, I am a rather slow typist. Too busy chuckling to myself. Tick.

There are many joys in parenting... the obvious things like hugs and kisses, pride in your childrens' achievements, bedtime stories etc. etc. I also think that there is great joy in simply wondering what's going to come next. Not knowing who your children will be and how they will be different from each other, and not knowing how you'll react to those differences. It's true that I don't like some of the results that I've achieved along the way (hence the Bad Mommy column), but I still love the journey. I am always trying to be the sort of parent who can do the right thing for each of my children. Even if it's not always the same thing I did for the others. And with each child that's come along, I like to hope that I've been traded in for a new and improved model of myself. One who can handle adversity with more patience, understanding and good humor, and who doesn't need to roar at a toddler to diffuse a very loud situation. But my methods are always being tested against my own rigorous standards, and they'll never live up to those. Oh well. Tick.

Cheating at Cakes

I have many heroes these days... a world of people that I look up to from the ground as I kowtow before them. One of my favorites, right now, is Duff Goldman, baker, chef, proprietor of Charm City Cakes in Baltimore, and star of Ace of Cakes. I watch that show in awe, all the while scheming and planning how I can do that (so to speak). There are many things I am sure I would never be capable of doing, but fondant is something I'm starting to get. What I've discovered about fondant is that the scariest thing about it is the ignorance factor. Once you get over that and learn how to handle it, it's actually pretty easy. Buttercream, on the other hand is a skill I don't think I'll ever master. Beautiful roses, basket weaving and scroll work... not my piece of cake. But, fondant is like cheating, to me. Mostly because I can do it. At any rate, I'm learning... and in the interest of constant practice and skills-honing, I've now made my third fondant covered birthday cake... and here it is (and no, the smudgy red part is a doctored image thing, not a cake decorating catastrophe)...



My sweet middlest Beauty, the Princess Posh, will be five years old tomorrow! Sniff... She is having her party at a kid's gym~ hence the ball pit and the monkey bars. I wanted to put another kid on the cake, but I ran out of skin tone fondant. Sniff (again). I am mostly happy with the result... but it was a serious amount of work. Luckily, it's worth it for the fun factor. The not-fun part is the part where there is confectioner's sugar in every nook and cranny of the kitchen, ground into the kitchen floor and coating each alveolus in my lungs. For some reason, I can't control the sugar from going everywhere when I decorate cakes. However, I've lucked out in another way, in that my dear hubby gamely cleans up the mess when I'm done.

At any rate, it was a long, sweet, sticky morning, but the end result is something that I hope Posh will remember for a long time. Happy Birthday to my Princess!

Just Call Us the Griswolds

Summer is in full swing in the R. house... just 5 days back from camping and we're gearing up for our second big summer thing. Tomorrow we're taking off for a week at my parents's cottage in the mountains, or, to anyone who lives near actual craggy, summit-in-the-cloud peaks~ tall hills. I guess, technically, they do qualify as mountains, but they're the little east coast kind that barely live up to their grandiose appellation. Beautiful, but not dramatic.

We're looking forward to a quiet, less-stress week, where the big events will be day camps for the kids (Sporty to horseback riding camp, and Posh to play camps), going to the pool and enjoying the unhindered time to do whatever the heck we want. This is something we really haven't ever done before. Whenever Chris is able to take time off from work, it's usually to go visit family up North or friends down South, or go places like Disney or family reunions. All of this R. together time should be a fascinating social experiment. Lucky for us, we'll be joined by my parental units towards the end of the week~ right about when we'll have all had just about enough of each other. Perfect timing.

It'll be a quiet week, here on the blog, as well... as there is limited internet access where we'll be... i.e. there's a 20 minute drive to the nearest open wireless network. I'll be on and off, but probably won't have a chance to post again until we get back. Just so you know. Hopefully the next time I post, I'll be so relaxed that I won't be able to type because of my jelly fingers. We shall see, I guess.

Later, gators!

As promised, more pictures...

One of my nightmares of the trip was that I took over 400 pictures with the wrong setting on my camera. So all of the pictures came out too dark, too bright and/or too blue. I spent all of yesterday doctoring the pictures on the computer to fix them up. I seriously wanted to cry the whole time. There are some great shots, but some of them look downright funny, because the color or light is off. I can't stand it, and I deleted over half the total pictures I took. I don't want to talk about it anymore... but here are a few more of the survivors:

You Can't Really Call it Camping...

Once again we have survived a trip to the Great Outdoors. With the exception of a few skin cells from a few knees that got left behind in the woods, we are relatively intact. And the whole family had a fantastic time. For those of you who haven't been keeping up with all one of my previous posts that has dealt with this event... this was the trip we make every year with 10 other families from the neighborhood.



I'd like to say that we spend the weekend communing with nature, when we go on this annual foray out of the air conditioned environment we occupy on a daily basis. But we don't. For us, the trip is about communing with each other and our friends and moving the Block Party/Happy Hour to a new location for a few days. You could hardly call what we do roughing it. We more or less turn the campground into an outdoor house, complete with bedrooms, kitchen, dining room and living room (with a fireplace). If the "house" was closer to home, we could make a killing selling it on the real estate market.

Come see this idyllic and charming eleven bedroom home, with a large, open floor plan, fireplace in the living room, soaring ceilings, dining room that seats 50, and gourmet kitchen with 8 burner stove. Sorry, no running water, or central air, but the home is only a stone's throw from a lovely lake with sandy beach, not to mention the beautiful songbirds that will be your alarm clock each day. Side note: woodpeckers start looking for food EARLY. You will love the bucolic setting, with gorgeous 100 year old trees and nearby nature trails.

The kitchen always produces meals worthy of any gourmet kitchen... chili with spaghetti, hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, fajitas with grilled veggies and all the fixin's... scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and pancakes for breakfast. Food always tastes better when it's cooked outdoors over an open Coleman stove fire. Especially since cooking in the great outdoors seems to require larger amounts of testosterone, so it's mostly the men who do the work. Score! The beer and margaritas are freeflowing, and the children have 30 other kids for playmates. So they stay out of the way. And there are 20 other eyes, besides your own, keeping watch over the flock. Score again!

Saturday is Beach Day... and this year, we had a the perfect beach-going day. The temperature was only in the low 80's and there was a nice breeze, so sitting in the shade was really comfortable. The water was chilly, and all of the kids had blue lips, but they really couldn't have cared less. In 5 hours, they only came out of the lake to eat lunch and ice cream sandwiches under the umbrellas. You can always recognize our group from the line of closely-clustered Costco beach umbrellas that take up half the beach. And the beach carts. We've all got those too. Something like 90% of the stuff we have to cram into the car for this 48 hour trip is for the beach day.



We really couldn't have asked for a better weekend... except for the disgustingly trashy people that we had the misfortune to be parked near (a whole other story that would be completely inappropriate to post on this blog~ leave me a comment if you want to hear it). I'll make another post with more pictures, but here's one more of my tired girls on the way home... exhausted, but already looking forward to next year!