New site!!

I have a new new blog site and have put the new post up there: http://momsontheedge.typepad.com/

It is very pretty and much improved! I hope you'll come visit, bookmark it and let me know what you think of the new design!

Thanks to my wonderfully creative and generous friend Katherine for working so hard on it! :)

Day 617: One tiny word, one giant pain in the...

I know what you’re thinking, I do. I spent months worrying and whining about the fact that Maddie was stubbornly refusing to talk and now that she finally is starting to say a bit more I complain about that too! What can I say? You just can’t win with me sometimes. Just ask my husband, he’ll tell you.

So yes, it’s true that she’s progressed leaps and bounds in terms of language development in the past month or so. I still wouldn’t say that we’ve hit the mythical language “explosion,” but I think we could safely call it a spurt. Of course many of her words come from her primary educator – Dora the Explorer. Dora is Maddie’s new best friend and I have to say I couldn’t be happier about the relationship. She’s comes from a good family (I met them in the Christmas dvd, and they really seem like salt of the earth people), she’s relatively well-behaved but for a few misadventures along the way, and she’s bilingual to boot. Not only is she a-dora-ble (ha!) but she’s really done wonders with Maddie’s vocabulary, teaching her essentials like “map,” “backpack,” and of course “Boots,” her trusty primate sidekick. There is one word, though, that I could do without. One word that little Dora is fond of that Mads fell in love with immediately: NO!

No! No! No! All day long, that is all we hear. It is delivered with various inflections and intonations, at different volumes. Sometimes it’s dragged out, “Noooooo!” and sometimes it comes at us in rapid succession, like gunfire: “No no no no no!” Even the treasured nap time doesn’t protect us from the onslaught, as she now sits in her crib saying “NO! No Mommy! No! Nooo!” until she eventually wears herself out and falls asleep.

Santa even noticed it during our trip to the mall the other weekend as I was trying to cajole her onto his lap and was being met with a steady stream of No’s. “No, no, Dear,” he told me, apparently feeling the need to correct my parenting techniques. Since when does that service come with the $5 donation? “We don’t ask, we tell,” he said. Then he called Maddie over: “Okay Madeline, we’re going to sit and take a nice picture with Santa now. Ho, ho, ho!” She stared at him, said “NO!,” turned around and left. I admit I laughed. Nice try, Santa.

Day 614: Time well wasted

Mommy needs a nap. I am pooped.

The holidays are barely upon us and already I feel the need to pack up and hibernate for a couple of weeks. I am so unprepared for Christmas this year. Let’s compile a virtual checklist, shall we?

• Shopping: After getting off to an impressively early start, I've since hit the mall wall.
  
• Cards: Haven't started them. In fact, haven't even bought them.
  
• Mailing: It helps to have bought the gift first before mailing it. So, no. (If you're expecting a package from me... um, it's going to be late.)
  
• Baking: Ha! Yeah, right. As if I bake.
  
• Decorating: While I've considered throwing tinsel over the table saw and that mountain of paint cans that sit in the middle of my kitchen I haven't managed it just yet.
  
• Renovations: Ongoing. Endlessly, ceaselessly, painstakingly ongoing.
  

If I've left a few dozen things off the list that is because I have entirely forgotten about them. Did I mention the fact that we're hosting 20 people for Christmas dinner this Friday night? And that the stove is not yet working? Is it true that you can't serve turkey raw, or is that just an old wives' tale?

So in light of the fact that I have accomplished next to nothing, I really have no right to be this exhausted! I guess thinking about all of the things I've neglected doing has worn me right out.

And of course this weekend, instead of buckling down and getting started I instead took Maddie to the market where we sat and watched our breath in the cold air and bit the legs off of gingerbread men and chased after a family of ducks. It was a great day. I guess there really is such a thing as time well wasted!

Day 608: For the love of Santa

Forgive me if I break into a round of “Jingle Bell Rock” today. There are only 20 sleeps till Christmas, and the holiday bug has bit me.

I’m not the only one – at all of 20 months (21 months? I find I’m losing track, isn’t that awful? At what point do you stop counting in months and switch to years?) Maddie is already crazy about Christmas. We got a dump of snow this weekend, the first one of the year, and she spent much of her days with her little nose pressed against the window saying “no! no!” Which in this case, as far as I can tell, means “snow.”

We also went to visit Santa at the North Pole. Well, at the North Pole they’ve set up at the mall up the street. Maddie has a bit of a crush on Santa. Whenever she sees him she throws both hands in the air, screams “Danta!” at the top of her lungs and then covers her mouth and giggles like a lovesick schoolgirl. I guess she has a thing for the older guys. Till now she’s only seen Santa on TV, in her beloved Toys R Us catalogue, on the side of a cereal box. So we were beside ourselves with excitement, Fernando and I, at the thought of her meeting the real deal. Turns out she prefers the guy from the catalogue. While she flat out refused to sit on his lap – or on my lap, for that matter – we did manage to come to some sort of a compromise: she gave him a high five and we were on our way.

To complete this weekend’s jam-packed holiday agenda, Fernando got started on the outdoor light show. He always has big plans for the lights, but about a quarter of the way in a fuse inevitably blows and we have to scale down production. This year he went and bought one of those huge inflatable decorations for the roof of the garage. In a past life I would have called it unbearably tacky and flat-out refused to have it erected anywhere near my home. But now of course I love it; because Maddie loves it. We bundled her up and brought her outside and showed her this giant Santa on the roof and her face just lit up. Her big eyes were full of wonder, which is an expression I’ve never really understood until I saw it at that moment. We grown-ups are too saddled with expectations and experience to allow ourselves to feel wonder. Awe, sure. Surprise, of course. But wonder is something different, something reserved for the innocence of childhood.

If it takes a garish 8-foot Santa to put that look in her eyes, so be it!