Delinquent Mother

Questions I've received about my blogging absence: Did you fall off the face of the earth? Are your children hibernating? My wife won't leave me alone until you post something, when will you post? Did you sell the girls? West Nile Virus? Avian Flu? Are you alive?

Alas, we are alive and thriving, we have not slept the summer away, and no one has been sold for profit.

My professional life has been relentless this summer but has resulted in a promotion so I won't complain. The girls are rocking my world with their exploding vocabulary and imagination. We're halfway through the terrible twos and, well, it hasn't been so terrible. They have tantrums but usually it's over something so inconsequential it's easier to laugh than cry. (Of course, it's easy to be sanguine writing from a quiet office many miles from home. More than likely they will pull some stunt tonight that will put me into a blind rage--but that's still a few hours away.)

As proof that I haven't locked my children in the closet here are some pictures of their summer fun.

Coney Island

Hanging in the Neighborhood





Climbing the "Tall Mountain"

Visiting with Friends

Creative Impulses with Mr. Potato Head

An example of ZZ's Orderly Impulses

Coversations IV

6 July
ZZ: I have a hamameh like baba and (to mimi) you have a toot like mama.
*hamameh and toot are the "cute" arabic words respectively for male and female genitalia and watching the girls grappling with gender has been hilariously funny

5 July
Mimi: Are you a woman?
Me: Yes
Mimi: Am I a baby woman?

25 June
Me: Are you hungry?
Mimi: No, I'm happy!

30 June
ZZ: No you cannot go to work and I take the choo choo card (as she reaches for the metrocard in my backpocket)

Mimi: Mama, I go to work in the park. I have to slide. I have to swing.

JUNE

I sincerely hope the first photo in this series will help explain my blogging absence. That's right ladies and gentlemen, the month of June was dedicated to potty training my girls. And since I love to brag, let me brag. It was the easiest hurdle the girls and I have ever crossed together. They just did it, seriously it was that easy. Now, of course, we still have the occasional accident but it's usually my fault. It almost always happens when I let them watch TV and forget to ask them to pee before I switch on the zombie box. (By the way, I love TV and use it shamelessly when I need to prepare a meal or do a chore in the house, or gasp, take a freakin' flippin', can I hear an amen, break.)

Next steps toward full blown girlhood are no diapers at night and giving up the pacifiers before the end of 2010. The delay in achieving these goals are wholly related to my dependence rather than theirs. Sleep is still too precious to be interrupted by wet sheets. They've been waking up with dry diapers for two weeks now but I'm still not ready to take the risk of 3am bed changes. I've managed for the last year to relegate the use of pacifiers to sleep time, but again, rest is priceless and I haven't armed myself with enough will power to withstand the assault of dual tantrums when they no longer have "paci for sleep sleep". All in good time.

There are lots of photos below from the month of June for my dedicated and patient followers (holla holla to the aunties!).

At our First Dress-Up Dinner Party

Their manners were impeccable (for real!)

Bay Ridge Bombs!

We've been spending a lot of time this summer on the stoop dipping in the pool and playing with chalk.

First Born

ZZ can't keep her clothes on in the heat


Second Born
This is what Mimi, my wildcat, looks like when she wakes

Power to the People!

Don't they sort of look like radical communistas from 1960s Cuba?

15 Years

Fifteen years ago I married the man I met in this cafe.

The Boy Next Door

Conversations III: Time-Out

Conversations I and II

Discipline and two two-year old children is not an easy mix. When I can take something away or deliver on a threat then discipline seems to work. But certain behaviors, for example, throwing heavy objects about the house, require a different approach (you can't exactly take away something that has already been released and you can't threaten to go home, because, well, you are already home). Time-Out? I gave it a try. The conversation went something like this.

Me: Mimi, stop throwing books. (She laughs and throws a book)

Me: Mimi, mama said you need to stop throwing books. (She laughs and throws a book)

Me: Mimi, go sit in the corner for time out.

Mimi: I like to sit here.

Me: You are in trouble.

Mimi: I like to be in trouble.

Me: (silence and becoming increasingly furious at my own impotence as a disciplinarian)

ZZ: I want to be in trouble too. (She goes and sits next to her sister)

Mimi to ZZ: Being in trouble is funny.

ZZ to Mimi: Yeah!

Me (dejectedly): Go watch TV.

I relayed this exchange to a friend's friend. I had failed to put the fear of god in their hearts. My girls didn't feel a bit threatened. She pointed out that my time-out worked.

What? (think of the sound scooby-doo makes)

But they weren't scared of me at all? She said that isn't the point. Time-out is, well, time-out. She asked if Mimi stopped throwing things. I said yes. She said, mission accomplished. Apparently, discipline doesn't have to mean fear? (Even though it remains my preference.)

Here are some pictures of my saucy little minxes.

Fan Mail

I was planning to write a clever post about a play date the girls had recently with the older sister of my very best life-long friend, but she did a much better job of it.

Here is the girls' very first piece of fan mail.

dear little girls,

first let me say it was wonderful to spend the afternoon with you yesterday. you probably don't remember the first time we met, not long after you both had just started breathing air. i had never in my life seen human beings as small as you and most of me was afraid to even be close to such smallness. you looked as if any slight touch could stop you from being and your parents had gone through a great deal just to get you to be at all and i did not want to mess things up. but your mom ran her hand over each soft forehead and said i could, too, and i'm glad i did. you were fuzzy then, peachlike. you looked imaginary somehow. i think maybe until you both got home from the hospital your mom and your dad worried some days maybe you were imaginary. but then when you got home i remember they realized really fast that you weren't. you tested them a little bit as i recall just to make sure they were really good at being parents. and it looks to me like once you figured out they were you relaxed that testing and settled into the work of being glorious little girls with magnificent ponytails perched on top of some very creative brains.

and we have seen each other from time to time since then but you were always small still, not quite sure what to do with people who weren't all the time in your life. so that's why i'm so glad we had tea yesterday and watched all that rain go everywhere outside and read green eggs and ham. that is a mighty fine book, by the way. i don't know if you know about the guy who wrote it but he was a smart and brave and passionate man and also a little sad, but i think it gave him some sort of joy to write books like the ones he wrote and then know someday children like you would read them and think interesting things. i think he admired the same things i admire and i thought you should know some of those things include the ability to leap off a table and land with elegance and fierceness and also the ability to share animals in a sailboat even when you're not really sure that's what you want to do. and loving books. i guess that's one of those things that in some households just goes without saying. books are like water or air. if you like books now your whole life will be more beautiful than it would have been otherwise. you will live in so many worlds some days you might get a little dizzy. but that's okay, too.

because i know how you feel about rescuing baby cows from tornado-related tree strandings i wanted to tell you about the giant cow over in andes. that's andes, new york. not andes, andes. some days we drive up the side of the mountain for sunday breakfast and before we get very far, when the land is still mostly flat near the river, we drive by a house all animaled with farm creatures. there are chickens scattered all over the yard and a few goats milling about. but on some days, the best days i guess, there is a black and white cow standing around. just standing. but what i think you would both like about this cow is that it is the giantest cow i have ever seen. now, i'm not saying i'm an expert on the situation, but i did grow up in a town full of cows and, as i mentioned yesterday, i have ridden a cow or two. and i have never seen a cow so big, not even on t.v. that cow just stands there. and i don't know that it needs rescuing. i think the people it lives with keep it from getting caught up in trees just fine, but i am pretty sure it gets bored sometimes with all those chickens underfoot. so i was thinking that when you come to visit we could drive up on the way to sunday breakfast and maybe wave to that giant cow. i don't think cows wave back, but i think we'll be able to tell it likes us.