My girls

I feel like no one's reading this anymore so I've stopped writing. But I suppose that's writing about my delicious girls for the wrong reasons. Yes, I am a writer who craves an audience. But if I don't write about them then everything just goes away. I'm amazed at how little I remember with Eliza. If I hadn't written down certain days and certain discoveries, I'd have no recall of them at all.

Elena turned two almost a month ago. She is so much fun right now. I love this age even though she's much more high spirited and easily frustrated then her sister was at two. She is communicating up a storm. She wants to do everything her sister does and is very screams when she can't. She doesn't like it when we drop off Eliza at school and she's stuck with me. I've been letting her run into Eliza's classroom this past week and this morning, while the older kids clustered around the incubator with the newly hatched baby chicks, Elena raced over to the fish tank, then sat the in the reading chair like Queen Elizabeth on the throne. When I came to retrieve her, she held up her hands and said, "No, come back!" She wanted me to leave her there and come back.

Elena loves to sing and dance. Her dance moves now mostly consist of her running in circles, spinning in circles or doing these little knee bends with her hands on her hips. Yesterday she was so engrossed in her dance moves, she really didn't want to leave when it was time to take Eliza to school. I had to forcibly carry her to the car while she screamed. Once we got to the car, she resumed her little knee bends and hands on hip action. I don't know what song she was dancing to in her head but she really didn't want to get into the car.

At a school meeting on Friday that I had to attend with Elena, she kept running for the closed door saying "I want to go home." She also likes to say "I can do it" with if a smile if she can do it and screaming angrily if she can't do something. "I get out," she says when I meet her at the crib or she wants out of the high chair. "I get down," she says when she wants help getting off Eliza's bed. It's so cute to see her hanging off Eliza's bed on her stomach, her little feet dangling to the floor. It's not a far distance but she won't get off Eliza's bed without help. She is cautious.

She is wonderful, even more independent than Eliza. She is happy to entertain herself and needs little beyond food, drink and diaper changes from me. She loves the bath, wandering around the playground, strawberries, pressing buttons on the phone and board books. She loves her little body and is increasingly proud of all the new things she can do. She repeats a lot of what we say and imitates Eliza to a hilarious degree.

She worships her sister. When it's time to pick up Eliza as school, she says "Yay, Eliza!" and runs to the door to get in the car. When Eliza comes running out of her classroom, the two girls hug. Then Eliza takes off to run outside with her classmates and Elena screams and sobs behind her. "Yiza!" she wails. "Wait!" She screams when other students take Eliza's hand. As the little sister, Elena wants to be the sole owner of those perfect little Eliza hands. Eliza and Elena will walk up and down the sidewalk together. Then Eliza will want to play with her friends and she'll extract herself from her sister. Elena will reach rather pitifully after her, screaming with abandon. Poor Eliza feels guilty about it but I tell her to go ahead and have fun.

We are having so much fun now. We are such a cool little family. The other night, the two girls were entertaining each other in the bedroom and I realized, it's only a matter of time before they barely notice my presence. As proud as I am of their relationship, this saddens me. My days as the be all to end all in their eyes has already passed. I hope to get a life beyond them, sometime soon.

But for now, they are delicious, they are my little loves, my wonderful girls. I am looking forward to a fun summer.

Four Fridays

Wow, it's been almost two months since I've blogged. I blog mainly to go back and remember great times with my girls. If I don't write stuff down, it goes away. One day bleeds into the next and before I know it, my girls will be in double digits and I'll have little memory of the day to day stuff of their younger years.

So what can I say of them now? Not very much, I'm afraid. I've been working on an exhausting job for the past three weeks so I've seen very little of the girls. We shoot all night long on Friday nights (tonight is a Friday and it's no exception) so I see the girls for most of the day Saturday and all day Sunday. On Monday, I return to work before the wake up and get home long after they're asleep. Fortunately for me (and I'd like to think for them), I'm a freelancer and this job will end the morning of April 13th. During my all too brief phone call with Eliza last night, she asked if I'd be at her spring concert next Friday and I gleefully announced I would be.

So three weeks, is not all that much to miss out of my girls life. Except today it really feels like it is. With four more very long days still laid out in front of me, this time away feels incredibly long.

On March 11th, my grandfather died. He was 104 and not doing all that well, but still seemed insanely healthy for a man his age. What I'm trying to say is that I should have expected he'd die but still I didn't, I had no idea he could. March 11th was a warm, fairly sunny day. The girls and I were recovering from the flu. In celebration of our new, healthier bodies, I took the girls to get some spring clothes. I bought several outfits for each girl and one pair of shoes each. I came home and got the phone call shortly after our nice evening together. There it was. My grandfather was dead. I sat there holding the phone after my mother had hung up, wondering what I was supposed to do now.

C came down with the girls the following day for his weekly visit and was his usual, unhelpful self. I tried to figure out how I'd get to Pittsburgh to be with my family. Flights were over 1,000 dollars a piece. I cried, thinking I'd not be there. A little perseverance paid off as I discovered vastly cheaper flights at a different airport. While I booked mine and Eliza's reservations, C took the girls to the park. Not long after he'd left, he called to say Elena hurt her leg. We took her to the emergency room and after a few ankle Xrays yielded no broken bones, they diagnosed her as having a sprained ankle. Two days later, with her still not walking, I delivered Elena to my father and traveled to Pittsburgh with Eliza. We weren't there for much longer than 24 hours. Faces I hadn't seen for many years blurred in front of me as my grandfather lie motionless in a casket. The funeral was beautiful. Four of us grandchildren got up to say how much we thought of him. It was nice to hear everyone's words and stories about him.

I came home to find Elena still not walking. After finding an orthopedist willing to squeeze us in, I came home several hours later with a daughter in a full leg cast. It all seemed surreal. I'd left my beautiful baby girl with some one else, not knowing she had a broken leg. I had them put the cast on in pink so Eliza would like it. She later told me she'd rather it be purple. I shook my head feeling like I'd failed on more than one level. I put the new shoes I'd bought Elena the week before in the closet. I remembered the prior week, shopping at the Jackson outlet, the girls playing in one of those motorized cars you feed quarters to. All this while my grandfather lay on a bed, his heart failing.

The following Friday I spent up all night shooting a scene on a boat. We wrapped at 6:30am. Exhausted, I powered through that Saturday with my girls. I had little time to think about the events of the past month and what I've missed.

Now here it is, four Fridays later. As I type this, my parents are taking Elena to the doctor to have her cast taken off. Hopefully everything will be okay. Yes, I should be there but I'm not because I'm here in New York, soon to leave to meet a van that will take me up to our dreadful night shoot upstate. C will come down tonight to spend the night and tomorrow with the girls so I can rest a bit before taking over as Mama for a little more than 24 hours.

But like I said, as a freelancer, this job will end and next Friday, I'll be there for Eliza's spring concert. I'll be there at her school's bake sale. I'll be there, hugging my girls and Elena will hopefully be walking again and these past few weeks will feel like they hadn't happened.

Except my grandfather will still not be here. I last saw him alive in August of 2010. I tried to get a photo of him with Elena but anytime I put her anywhere near him, she cried. So no photo, no proof of their meeting will ever exist. Yes, I am lucky to have had this man in my life for 43 years but he was a man of such vast, of such inexplicable greatness, his loss is huge.

Valentines Day, Mama Style

A long time from now, in a galaxy far, far way, my girls will have their friends, boyfriends, spouses to spend Valentines day with. But for now, it's another wonderful day to celebrate just how much I love my little family.

When I was pregnant with Eliza and unsure of what kind of mother I'd be, my father said, "One thing I know for sure, you have a lot of love to give."

He wasn't wrong. It turns out I have so much love, oodles and oodles of it. Mount Vesuvius sized oodles of it, just bubbling beneath the surface, waiting to be lavished on some one worthy enough.

I filled little gift bags with small gifts for the girls: matching swimsuits, strawberry shortcake coloring books, one age appropriate book for each girl, new toothbrushes and a little chocolate. The way Eliza acted, you'd have thought I'd given her a million dollars or at least the key to the universe.

The way I see it, a Mama's got a few good years, a few years where she's the equivalent of kings. A simple goody bag or home made Italian ice has the power to make her little girl's day. An oversized Tinkerbell card is good enough to go into bed with her daughter at the end of a wonderful day. When I walked by Eliza's room after bedtime tonight, I saw her lying in bed with her Tinkerbell valentine in her hands. Beside her on the floor was her little goody bag.

I could lament my lack of a mate but that doesn't bother me in the slightest. I suppose when my girls have their own mates, I'll feel alone and neglected. Or maybe, I'll buy myself flowers, treat myself to a nice dinner and look back on the photos from those days when I, just an average mama, was truly the equivalent of a king.

Mama!

While I folded laundry, Elena made a discovery. She came running into the hallway saying, "Mama! Mama!" I met her in the hallway and she turned towards the living room. She took a few steps away from me and then looked back at me.

"Mama," she said, pointing towards the windows on the far side of the living room. Realizing she had something to show me, I followed.

I found this little exchange so charming. This is probably not the first time Elena has communicated, without words, that she has something she'd like me to see. But being that she's the second child, so many of the wonderful little things she does go unnoticed. Oh I remember the big stuff; the first night she slept alone in her bassinet instead of practically on top of me, her first word (Hi), the first steps she took on the tennis court at the park down the street. But the little stuff; the first time she smiled, the first time she sat up on her own, the first time she rolled over, even though they all happened more recently than Eliza's firsts, I don't remember them. It seems like the first 21 months of Elena's life have passed in a blur.

In fact, most days while Eliza's in school, Elena and I barely spend any time together. I am forcing myself to excercise so I do that while she plays in the playroom. Then I get sidelined by chores, phone calls, work-related activities. She and I hardly ever do things together where as with Eliza I hosted puppet shows, we went to the park constantly, I took 1,000 photos per week.

So today, I followed, excited to have this tiny interaction with her. I hoped that she wasn't going to show me another broken lamp. She toddled over to a shelf that holds several photographs, all of them including at least one of the three of us. She pointed to the only photo of me with both girls, her finger resting on me.

"Mama!" she said, grinning so broadly I thought her face might break. "Mama!" she said tapping the glass again.

The photo was taken sometime in the fall. It's from our back porch. I know it was taken after mid-August because we're sitting on an overturned canoe that belonged to my neighbor. On that day, she pulled up in her car and we waved down to her. She took out her camera and snapped the photo. I'm in the middle, the farthest from the camera. Elena is camera right, in the foreground, her hands on the bars of the porch. Eliza sits forward on my other side, grinning. I remember being so happy when my neighbor gave me the photo. There are very few photos of the three of us.

Elena was so happy with her ingenuity. She had recognized me in a photo. I'd like to say she recognized herself and her sister but she just kept pointing to me and smiling. There I was, her Mama, grinning unblinkingly from someplace else while I also stood beside her. I held up a photo taken six years ago of myself with baby Eliza but she didn't seem to recognize me. I tapped another photo of myself, cuddled against an actor for a show I worked on a long time ago. Elena didn't say anything, going back to the photo of the three of us and saying "Mama!"

I kissed her round, cottony cheek. My little Elena. I might not spend much time with her, but every now and then, we have a moment. It's not enough, I don't know that it's ever enough but it's going to have to do.

Happy, happy

"Happy" is the word Elena uses to start off her day each day. I hear her in the crib quietly saying singing "happy, happy" to herself. It's a derivative of the song happy birthday taught to her by a singing teddy bear. The singing Happy Birthday bear was a gift to Eliza for her first birthday from my close friend Meredith. Four years later, that same bear is teaching Eliza's little sister how to sing.

Happy is how we've been this week. Last week was a tough week and as of Saturday night, I decided this week would be a better week. Nothing particularly bad happened last week. There was another snowstorm but it was not nearly as bad as predicted and although we lost one day due to digging out, it did not impact us like the December 26th blizzard. I wasn't feeling great, a close friend went into the hospital last Tuesday and I interviewed for a job I really don't want. So I suppose those factors led to my bad mood. But mostly I just think I'm lonely. Starved for friends my own age. It's been one month straight of just me and the little girls. So I kicked off the pity party and let myself wallow in it a bit too long. Yelled at the kids, a bit too zealously. Didn't get enough sleep.

But then I decided enough was enough and we've had a good week so far. There is still enough snow outside to make it hard to walk around outside so we've been housebound. So Eliza helped make the soup on Sunday by peeling potatoes and carrots and mixing up the noodle dough. On Monday, my father and his wife stopped by for a bit and this did wonders to cheer up the little girls. Tuesday, Eliza went back to school and the past two days I've settled comfortably into my routine.

After I picked Eliza up at school yesterday, we stopped at Duncan Donuts on Ocean Avenue so I could get a gift card for Remy, my stepson who turns 14 on Friday. While the girls and I enjoyed donuts and hot chocolate, I noticed how huge the waves were across the street. The waves were so gigantic from all the current winter activity, it looked like they'd practically come into the donut shop. They were far enough away so I didn't feel unsafe but I've never been able to see ocean waves from inside the donut shop. They're usually blocked by the boardwalk and fence.

The girls and I went outside and crossed the street for a closer look. The waves came almost to the boardwalk. The girls ran down the boardwalk laughing and I realized, I've been driving past this ocean most days since Christmas vacation ended and I haven't stopped, not once, to look at the waves. As the girls enjoyed an unseasonably warm day by chasing each other in circles on the boardwalk, I savored the look, the sound, the smell of the beach in winter. There's still huge piles of snow along the beach. One pile is so high, kids have converted it into the equivalent of a black diamond for sledding. A temporary fence has been put up along a stretch to keep ocean avenue from flooding. But even with the weather, the bleakness, the snow, the beach is still so awesome. Watching the girls play, drinking them in, it made me so, happy, happy.

On to less happy thoughts--I may have landed this job I interviewed for. It's a good job and financially it will be a lifesaver but it will take me away from my girls for an extended period of time. I put the feelers out for babysitters and have some good candidates on the table, but I'm not sure where this will lead. I've been feeling happier because as time passed from the interview, I felt more comfortable that they've offered the job to some one else. But they called tonight and just left a message for me to call back. I don't plan to do it until tomorrow morning because I don't know what I want to say. I know I don't want it but then there's that voice in my head, not necessarily the one that's panicked about money, but the one that says, do you not want it because you're afraid of change? Change sometimes can be a good thing.

We'll see where this goes.

Exhausted

It's a new year, a time people often embrace with hope. We had a horrific snowstorm to close out the year that left me feeling a bit lost and not exactly hopeful. My life has always been about being as self-sufficient as I can be. I'm not the type to ask for directions and not the type to ask for help, even when I should. But nothing will bring you back to begging for help like the wallop of 36 inches of snow and 70mph winds that cause massive snow drifts, some more than seven feet high.

When I tell people we were trapped inside for more than 30 hours, other fellow storm survivors say "Yeah, we weren't plowed out until Tuesday." But no, I'm talking a five foot wall of snow pressed right up against my back door that made leaving that way impossible and a front door that's bolt was frozen shut.

Following the major snowfall on Sunday and early Monday, the day was so miserable and windy it's not like I wanted to go out anyway. From my front window, I could see a caterpillar going back and forth over the huge wall of snow that had formed across the street. The winds had created something I'd never seen before, a massive hill of snow stretching almost all the way down the block on one side of the street while on my side of the street, I could see the sidewalk. It looked like some kind of ominous wave. I'd never seen anything like it, the sight of that huge snow wave greeting me at 4am Monday morning still haunts me.

So with the caterpillar going back and forth, back and forth for several hours, on my block alone, I knew we weren't going anywhere no one was coming to us. But the hours ticked on by and still my front door wouldn't open. Trying to shovel down the wall of snow out the back door only succeeded in a huge pile of snow inside my house. The back porch and steps would have to be cleared from the outside but I couldn't get there.

I called my landlord who was in Florida, no real help. I spoke to the guy who'd been contracted to do snow removal, no real help. I saw some Mexicans walking down the street with shovels, I shouted out the window to them. They tried to pick at the block of ice that prevented my door from opening but they couldn't do it. I called the police who told me a lot of people were in my position and if the door was clear from snow, I could call them for help and they'd blast the door open. So I waited.

Around 7pm, the snow removal service arrived to clear a walkway in the building my landlord owns across the street. I hung a sign in the window for help, hoping they'd realize that even though my door looked clear, it wasn't. When I saw them packing up their truck to head home after probably a miserable day, I pounded on the window. They were able to pick through the ice and we were freed around 7:30pm. The business of freeing my car from a 10 foot wall of snow wouldn't happen until two days later. I used a sled to pull the two girls through town but with the mountains of snow on the corners, I often had to pull them onto the street. With Elena not exactly cooperative, just going two blocks was pretty scary.

Now more snow is looking this weekend and although the forecast so far is not severe, it could change on a dime. My parking space is still full of snow so I'm not sure where I'll park my car. My skylight in the bathroom and windows rattled so hard after the last snow, I'm not sure this apartment can really handle the winter that looms in front of us. I am responsible for driving my daughter to and from school on Friday. So I won't know where I can park until after I pick her up. I could decide to keep her home on Friday so I can park on one of the few slots on the street where the plows will hopefully leave me alone. The question of who will dig me out then hovers over my head.

It is all too much for a single woman with two young children. I am their sole provider. I have food and we won't starve. But if we lose power or there's an emergency, we really will be stuck inside. So I'm afraid. This is how 2011 starts for me. With fear.

My big girl is five!

And then she was five. We had a wonderful weekend, celebrating my lovely daughter. I worked overnight the night before the big party day so it was stressful for me but we had such a great time. Everything worked out, just as I knew it would.

On Saturday, I came home early to scoop up my girl and get ready for the party. Eliza asked for a repeat of last years very successful kid party at the little gym followed by a surprise party at home. Okay, it wouldn't be much of a surprise for her this year but she still really enjoyed it. Knowing there'd be a party afterwards saved her from having the meltdown she had last year. Or maybe it's just because hey, she's five and could handle it.

So after I picked her up and she spent the day with her father while I made the lasagna for the after party, we all set out for fun at the little gym. Eliza and her friends had a great time and while we were there, my father and his wife decorated my home and heated up our dinner. We came home to two dozen balloons and pretty pink streamers strewn through the apartment. Eliza loved all of it.

But a surprise still waited the following day, her actual birthday. Though one of the girls kind of let the cat out of the bag at the little gym by saying "I'll see you at your house tomorrow," Eliza didn't realize that two other friends would also be coming over for a surprise tea party. It turned out to be such a lovely day that after I served Eliza and her dressed up friends tea, we went to the local park, then stopped by the chocolate shop. It was truly a special day. Here are some photos of my darling girl dancing with her friends at the little gym, then dressed up and with her friends for her tea party. Oh my darling, how wonderful these five years have been!