Please be advised that, per the terms of our ongoing contract, the following services will be required from you:

• Hold me.
• Feed me.
• Provide a warm cozy place for me to sleep, preferably including a bosom upon which I might rest my weary cheek.
• Keep me in diapers that are both clean and dry.
• Entertain me.
• Remain within my line of sight at all times.

In return, per our contract, I will be happy and dribbly and gaze upon you with wide-eyed adoration.  Failure to perform your assigned duties will result in immediate and sanity-piercing wailing.

Don’t test me, Milk Lady.

Kind regards,

Baby Brother.

(The answer to that last question, by the way?  A big scary echo-y “no”.)

Memorably, as I sat in the train station with a friend after a (soft drink only) night out, I found myself musing, somewhat mortified, that P and I were now joined forever.  That we would never be out of each other’s lives, even if we decided to take completely different paths in life, because we would always always be joined by this child.  My friend pointed out that we were already joined forever, being married and all.  I waved my hand dismissively and said, “Marriages end all the time.  Being a parent is…permanent.”

And then Bean was born and she was awesome.  I mean, she was a terror – sleepless, wide-eyed, overstimulated and wailing.  But I did have that love for her, that absolute devotion that I’d heard so much about.  And all in all, I am a good mother.  I’m not winning any prizes, and there have been bumps in the road (hello, nursemaid’s elbow at the mall!), but I can look at my Bean today and see that we’re all doing okay.  She’s bright and healthy, smart and funny, kind and confident.  All good things.

And very soon, Bean will be facing some big changes of her own.  She’s going to be a big sister.  Her days as an only child are numbered.  Sometimes, when she’s dancing to her beloved “rock and roll” or getting lost in a make-believe world, I wonder if we’re doing something awful to her.  I wonder if we’ll break her heart by adding a new person to our little clan.  I wonder if it will be terrible for her to share the spotlight, the attention, the love.

If nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies.  ~Author Unknown

And then she’ll tell me how much she wishes the baby was here already.  How she can’t wait to help with the baby, but not with diapers.  How she’ll make special artwork to hang in the baby’s room, and make books to read to the baby at bedtime.  How she’ll teach “our baby” to look both ways before crossing the street, how to use a spoon, how to read, how not to drool on toys, and the right way to give treats to the cat.  My big, grown-up, clever girl is all set for her new role.

And I think…we might not win any prizes, but we’re all going to be okay.

That’s kind of what’s happened with my blog.  I have lots of drafts saved, but I haven’t actually finished anything, let alone published them.  I was getting pretty bored with my own nattering.  But I’ll get back on it.

While you wait for me to say something interesting, enjoy a little time with a creepy sculpture of Lionel Richie:

More than 700 miles from my house, I have a storage unit full of stuff.  Most of it belonged to my mother when she died.  Quite a lot of it belonged to me, but was in storage at my mom’s house while I was away at college.  Some of it is even from college.

I avoided my storage unit for months, simply because I couldn’t face sorting through my late mother’s things.  I knew there were things I desperately wanted to keep, like her cookbooks.  But what about the things I didn’t want to keep?  What about her clothes?  I couldn’t get rid of her clothes, could I?  What if I didn’t want to keep things that she loved?  I couldn’t just give those things away, could I?

So I did the mature thing: I avoided the whole thing.

About a month before I moved out of the country, I decided I’d better get things sorted out.  And then my husband-to-be listened quietly on the phone as I sobbed about taking my mother’s clothes, things she loved and wore and still kind of smelled like her, to the charity shop.  When I paused to take a breath, he said, “You don’t have to do this right now.  Just keep it.  We can sort through it all later.”

Almost nine years later, I’m about halfway through the “stuff”.  I visit family up north about twice a year now that we’re back in the country, and I make a trip to the storage place each time.  I can only fit a few things in my car to bring back each time, so the process is slow.  As time passes, it is easier to approach the stuff with a clear head.  It is easier to admit that I do not love everything she loved, and to understand that not loving some of those things does not somehow diminish the great love and affection I have for her.  That has been a difficult lesson for me.

But then there are the treasures.

Like those cookbooks that sat on her cookbook rack for as long as I can remember.   Thumbing through them now, I am 7 years old all over again, desperate to make a batch of cookies from the Betty Crocker cookbook.  (And treasure within a treasure: an index card fell out of one of the cookbooks.  I picked up the card and found, written in my grandmother’s perfect cursive, the recipe for my grandma’s haystack cookies.)

Or the framed bluebird needlepoint that took her about three years to complete, because she found it so frustrating.  It hung in her kitchen after she bought her very own little house, and she decorated the whole kitchen around it – even though the little needlepoint really never was quite right.

Or the stainless steel pots she gave me when I moved into my very first apartment.  I mostly used them for noodle packets, but I remember my first attempt at Mom’s fantastic potato soup in that soup pot.  (I called my mom every 5 minutes, saying, “Now what do I put in?”)

These days, I have really nice stainless steel cookware, a KitchenAid mixer (with a spanky new ice cream maker attachment – yay for Mother’s Day!), and more kitchen tools than that noodle-packet-eating 20-year-old me could have ever imagined.  But last night I made a red sauce in one of those old pots, and it really did make me smile.

Bean got more and more excited as we drew closer to our destination.  (Incidentally, it does my heart good to hear my child exclaiming, “I just can’twait to get to the museum!”)  She was practically skipping across the parking lot when we arrived, clapping her hands and singing.

And then we opened the door.

Bean, who was practically bursting through the door, stopped dead in her tracks.  She stood motionless in the doorway for a few moments, shook her head, and backed out of the open doorway.  She turned to me, her eyes wide and her face absolutely serious.

“I don’t want to go in there,” she said.

My child, shockingly enough, is a very stubborn child.   And when she makes up her mind, she makes herself very clear, and it can be very hard to change her mind.  And she did not want to go into the museum.

At first I thought it was because the interior was sort of dimly lit.  Or because it was a very big room.  Bean can be anxious about things like that, especially when the surroundings are unfamiliar.  But as I opened the door to try to coax her in, I saw what she’d seen.

Okay, but imagine it way bigger.  And real.  And…a skeleton.

Bean stood firm: she was not going in.  That dinosaur was big, and scary, and she didn’t want to walk past it.

I assured her that the dinosaur wasn’t scary.  That I understood why she was scared, because he was very very big, but that he wasn’t alive and he wasn’t going to do anything.  He was just going to stand there, like a big toy.  I offered to hold her hand or carry her.

She was having none of it.  The more I talked, the further she stepped away, shaking her head.  And then, frustrated and frightened, she began to cry.

We stood there in the courtyard for a good ten minutes before two museum employees emerged, pushing a little trolley with water bottles and other bits and bobs.  I decided to take a chance, and asked Bean if she might like to ask one of the museum employees if that big dinosaur was scary.  ”After all,” I explained, “they’ll see him every day.  They’ll know all about him.”

Bean nodded, still flooded with tears.  One of the ladies had overheard me and stopped.  She asked if we had any questions.   Bean, summoning all of her courage, croaked, “Is that big dinosaur in there really scary?”

The two women quickly and enthusiastically assured her that the dinosaur was not scary.  Bean, overwhelmed, wrapped her arms around my neck and sobbed.  One of the women said, “Would you like me to walk you to the desk?  You can cover your eyes and you don’t even have to look at that dinosaur.”

Bean reluctantly agreed.  I lifted her, she buried her face in my shoulder, and the nice woman chatted away as we walked to the admission desk.  Once there, Bean peeked quickly at the T. Rex.  Her eyes grew wide, and then she said, “Hey!  I looked at that dinosaur and it’s okay!”

And just like that, the fear vanished.  She chatted with the ladies at the admissions desk, who told her that the dinosaur was just like a big toy, and that they’d even seen it taken apart and put back together.  Why, it was just like giant Legos!  Bean, who loves Legos, loved that image.  And when they told her that the dinosaur was actually a girl?  She was tickled to bits.

We faced more fears as we made our way through the museum : dimly lit rooms, displays of giant animals, and the bones.  Ohhh the bones, somehow fascinating and terrifying at the same time.  I shared my enthusiasm as we walked through the hominid exhibit.  Introducing Bean to Lucy, I talked about our book at home with lots of pictures of hominid fossils.  Bean was excited, but did later clarify that she does not want to look at photos of bones.

We finished our museum trip with ice cream and a walk on the nature trails.  Within minutes of getting back into the car to go home, Bean was sound asleep.

All that bravery takes it out of a girl.

(Photo: Amazon.com)

You read that right.  A university.  Dry campus.  Who ever thought that was a good idea?

I lived in the dorms, and as it happened, I had a keg in my closet.  Friends had brought it from Texas one weekend, and they’d rolled it into a duffel bag and lugged it onto the elevator, trying to look inconspicuous.  First it was set up in Best Friend V’s room, because she was a brave sort.  Later, after it had been well and truly floated, we stored it in my closet.

On April 1st, I called my mom, who lived nearly 1,000 miles away.  In my best on-the-verge-of-hysterics voice, I said, “Mom, I’m in trouble.  They found my keg.”

My mom was confused.  I went on to explain that there’d been a bomb threat on campus (which would’ve sounded far-fetched if it hadn’t actually happened only recently), and all the rooms had been searched, and they’d found my keg.  Which was totally against the rules on the ol’ dry campus.  And now they were saying I had to pay a $250 fine by the end of the week or I’d face expulsion from residential housing.

I ended it with a panicked, “What am I going to do?”

My mom was beside herself.  ”What the…why do you still have that keg in your closet?  What were you thinking?”

She didn’t have $250 to send me right then.  She said she guessed I would have to leave.  And if I didn’t have a friend I could stay with, I’d need to leave school altogether.  She was furious with me.

I said, “Hey Mom?  April Fool!”

There was a long pause.  Then my mom, who rarely swore, said quietly, “You little shit,” and hung up.

Happy pranking!

And then there’s the Cake Anxiety.

I can bake some seriously yummy homemade cakes.  Yummy ugly homemade cakes.  Decorating – be it my home or my delicious baked goods – is not my choice for the talent competition.  And I think I’ve mentioned my perfectionist streak?  As much as I love the idea of throwing caution to the wind, trying new things and allowing myself to get them wrong until I get them right…I’d really be much happier to get them right the first time, and I do find myself feeling frustrated when I get them wrong.

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.  ~Colette

I’m not sure why I thought a checkerboard cake would be a good idea.  I was looking at the Wilton website, getting some ideas on icing shaped cakes, and I saw a photo and thought, “Hey!  That would be fun!”  P agreed that Bean would be dazzled by such a cake, and I hurried off to Hobby Lobby to pick up the pan set with the special bullseye-shaped insert which would guarantee neat, perfect concentric circles of chocolate and yellow cake.

In the interests of time and effort, I used boxed cake mix and frosting in a can for my trial run.  (Why waste good energy and ingredients on a cake I’m not going to eat?)  I mixed up a batch of yellow cake and a batch of devil’s food.  I measured carefully, poured carefully, held the little bullseye insert firmly in place, and even furrowed my brow in concentration.

Hmm.  That looks about right, doesn’t it?  Gracious.

Maybe I’ll just buy a cake.

We bought our house six months ago.  Previously, we rented.  We owned a home in Scotland, but it was a new construction and everything was under warranty.  Our house is 15 years old.

Yesterday, a contractor told me that I need to think about getting a new roof, to the tune of around $6,000.  There’s a leak inside my refrigerator that causes little ice pools to form on the shelves, and despite my super-classy Shamwow-in-the-back-of-the-fridge remedy, the problem persists.  It’s a serious upper-body workout to open our windows, but there’s not much need to open them at all since they’re a bit drafty. One window in particular has obviously had leakage problems in the past, and I’m not sure that problem has gone away.  Our patio door has a similar problem and needs replaced.

I could cry, but I don’t dare because I might never stop.

We knew when we bought the house that it was 15 years old and that there were things we would need to update.  But it seemed doable.  And then we signed all the papers and handed over the Very Large Check for the down payment, and then we remembered.

We don’t have a clue what we’re doing.

I don’t know how to fix a refrigerator.  I don’t know how to replace a patio door.  I don’t know how to put down hardwood floors.  I don’t know how to tile a bathroom.

I feel lost.  And when the contractor told me my roof was one windstorm away from needing major work, I felt completely overwhelmed.  I just kept thinking, “I don’t know what to do.  I don’t know how to do this.”

My husband knows no more than I do, and he’s not even from this country.

And suddenly, I just wanted my dad.  Because my dad knows stuff.  He’s owned houses and worked on houses and fixed up houses for 40 years.  He helped my grandfather build an entire house from the basement up.  He and my mom built a second story onto their house when they found out I was on the way.  My dad knows how to do these things and he knows whether or not I’m supposed to worry about them.

In contrast, I felt good about myself when I drilled two holes in the wall yesterday to hang a chalkboard.  A chalkboard that I bought six months ago.

I called my dad and told him what I’d been told.  He gave me some reassuring advice about the roof, which amounted to, “Don’t worry about it.”  He told me what he’s done about roofs in the past.  He cleared up a bit of my confusion.  And then he told me to measure my patio door, pick out the door we want, and we’ll figure out when he can come down so he can replace the door.

Sometimes I hate being so far away from him.  It’s an 11-hour drive, and he doesn’t get a lot of time off.  I do wish we lived closer.  Because sometimes, I need my dad.

“I did it all by myself!” she shouted.  “I got the bowl all by myself! I didn’t need any help at all!“  I asked her how she did it, and she explained with great excitement that she had gotten her stepstool, moved it in front of the cupboard, then reached into the cupboard to retrieve the bowl.

These past few mornings, she hasn’t wanted cereal.  She has wanted Trader Joe’s cereal bars.  “I will serve up breakfast all by myself, Daddy,” she has announced to P.  And although the cereal bar never actually leaves her hand, Bean insists that she needs a plate to “serve up” her breakfast, and she gets that plate all by herself.

Getting dressed?  “No, Daddy, I don’t need your help.  I can do it all by myself.”

Getting out of the car?  “All by myself.”

Making smoothies?  “I can help!  I’ll get my stool, and I can put the fruit in the blending thing all by myself.”

I’m proud of her.  But every once in awhile, I miss…helping.

This weekend, she was sick.  Nothing terrible, just a wee cold.  It has barely affected her during the day, other than a stuffy nose, but nighttime is a different story.  As soon as she crawls into bed to go to sleep, she starts coughing.  And coughing.  And choking and spluttering and coughing.

She woke up just an hour after bedtime tonight, awakened by the body-racking cough.  I slathered her with Vicks VapoRub and snuggled up in bed with her.  She drifted off to sleep, and as I tried to sneak away, she woke up just enough to say, “Will you stay here with me and dream what I dream tonight?  I don’t want to be all by myself.”

(By the way?  I asked, and apparently we’re dreaming about Rita’s tonight.)

Bean, who will be 4 in the spring, has been on a coloring kick recently.  She’s been working very hard at coloring inside the lines, and I’ve tried to recognize that hard work without giving her the impression that she “should” color inside the lines, or that it’s the “right” way to color.  I felt a swell of pride when P commended her on coloring inside the lines and she replied, “I can color it any way I want.”  I’ve told her that, and she has happily taken the message to heart.

So there she was, coloring her little heart out, and then she proudly showed me what she had drawn in the blank space in the picture.    It was a pink squiggly scrawly thing, not much more than a scribble, but obviously drawn with some kind of intent.  “Look!” she exclaimed, bursting with pride.

And that’s when I got it wrong.  I knew I’d gotten it wrong as soon as the words left my mouth: “Oh wow!  Did you draw a heart?”

Wrong answer.

She deflated and her brow furrowed.  Her face darkened.  That bright smile turned to a scowl.  “It was supposed to be a star!” she stormed.  “Stars are hard!  And that is not a good star!”  She chucked the crayon down, crossed her arms, and refused to look at me.

Ah crap.

I apologized and asked her if she wanted to tell me about her drawing.  She did not.  I told her that stars are hard to draw, and that I couldn’t draw a star really well until I was 7. She was suddenly fascinated by the idea of me as a 7-year-old, and my art critic faux pas was quickly forgotten.

I wonder if I can use the same approach when she’s a teenager.