Apparently Arden walked today for Judy - repeatedly. She even stood up without pulling herself up on anything and walked across the room. However, by the time I got there, she was done with any form of walking. To be fair, one of Judy’s youngest daycare charges decided not to sleep at all today and kept the rest of the children awake by screaming at the top of his lungs all day. Arden had a brief cat nap this morning but had been awake non-stop since 10.30 am. By the time we got home, she wanted nothing to do with anything except her cart. I decided to be smart and move the cart out of her way, thinking that if I removed what I felt was her “crutch” she’d have to walk. Nope. I put it on top of the dining room table and she made grabby hand motions at it, clung to the table and cried pitifully until Mike got home and relented.

This brings to mind a funny story that Pauline told me - Lily’s first daycare provider. I said something about how sad it must be for parents when their kids roll over, crawl, say their first word or walk when they’re not with them. She smiled and said, “It never happens here.” I didn’t get it at first and said, “How can that be?” What she meant was that she never TOLD the parents if it happened, so they could pretend in their fantasy land that their children had all of their “firsts” in front of them, in the comfort of their own home. In a way, I appreciate Judy’s honesty - she’s a no BS kind of person. If Arden is crabby, she tells me. If she drove her nuts, she tells me. And if she took her first real steps in Judy’s playroom, she’s certainly going to tell me that, too.

But back to the cart. The push cart was good for Lily, who used it long enough to get her feet under her. I’m convinced that Arden’s become dependent on it and as long as it’s around, she’d rather use that than her legs.

I also realize that whenever I get obsessive about something with my kids (like Lily’s nail biting), it’s not until I let go of it that it happens. In a few months when Arden is roaming around I’ll wonder why it was such a big deal. I think it bothers me so much for a couple of reasons. The first is that selfishly, I’m really tired of carrying her everywhere. Other people in attempts to be helpful say “At least you aren’t chasing her around.” Yep, correct. However, at this point I’d rather chase than carry. The second is that although Lily and Arden haven’t ever been physically precocious, nor have they been behind. They are always just average (tribute to Risa: when people brag to her about how smart their kids are and go on and on about them, Risa tells them her own kids are average and boring - the gushers usually get the point and shut up). Regardless, average is good. I think I’m still paranoid because so many bad things have happened to friends and acquaintance’s children that every time there is a blip I think that this is evidence of some permanent medical issue. I know that this is ridiculous but at least I come clean with my paranoia and weird thoughts. There is a lot of insanity that appears to be inherent with motherhood. Paranoia and guilt seem to always be on the top ten list of things that have changed about me since dilating to 10 centimeters.

Anyway, I’ll keep you all posted on Arden’s progress assuming there is some. Tonight, however, we bypassed our usual attempts to get her to walk and put her straight to bed sans wild rumpus. She was angry but she needed to sleep more than anything else. She is far too young to not be sleeping all day!!!

When I picked Lily up at school today, I noticed a large red mark on her face. After questioning the teachers, they told me that her partner in badness, #1 (not his real name), had thrown a rake on the playground because he was mad. Lily happened to be between him, the rake, and the sandbox - and her cheek took the brunt of the rake’s force. Here’s a picture of Lily vs. The Rake.

It doesn’t look like much here but it’s pretty ugly up close and in person. I think perhaps Lily has learned a lesson about temper tantrums - she’s never been on the receiving end of whatever is being thrown at the time. She isn’t too happy about the rake. And believe me, if you ask Lily what happened, she’ll tell you. I asked her when I sat down with her at school, “Lily, what happened to your face?” She told me, very matter-of-factly, “#1 threw a rake at my head.” That isn’t exactly what the situation was, but close enough - in her world, #1 threw a rake, and it hit her in the head. She’s a nut, that one. I think she will survive and heal nicely. Right now she’s recovering by watching “Finding Nemo” for the 100 billionth time.

Arden’s new nickname is above. Judi refers to her as the Pit Viper most days and Mike came up with her latest name. She was a wild thing tonight at dinner but once she got some food in her belly she was much better. She is at that bizarre developmental stage when she knows what she wants but language is still not her friend. Her only recourse: screeching until her veins look like they’re going to pop out of her neck.

We had Lily’s “Holiday Around The World” concert tonight. Envision 40 2 and 3 year olds “singing” to some holiday classics. It was hilarious. Lily chewed on her nails and occasionally jingled her bell - including one particularly forceful jingle that nearly brained Ms. Hood. She survived intact. I’m posting some pictures - only one of Lily half turned out. Hopefully Vicki had better luck than I did. There is a nice one of Katie, however!

Tonight Lily was able to con Mike into actually lying down next to her for her nightly cuddle. Normally he leans in for a kiss, gives a hug, reads a book and then leaves the two of us alone to smooch the skin off each other. However, tonight she asked him to put his head on the pillow next to hers, and she petted his face and told him, “Daddy, you’re my best friend.” It was so darn cute I almost vomited. This was, of course, after a hellish afternoon at pickup time. She never made eye contact when I showed up, didn’t say hello, and was angry because I told her we had to leave and she was busy playing with blocks. She screamed, “NO!!!” in my face and then mimicked slapping me - right in front of her teacher! Ms. Allen walked us to the parking lot having a stern conversation with Lily the whole way. And there’s the rub. Kids can be demons one second and absolutely fantabulous the next.

Tomorrow we’re going to see Katie sing in her choir concert. I’m excited . . . I plan to make goofy faces at her while she sings to see if I can get her to crack up. I’ve always wanted to be big sister to someone so now I can play at that.

I got a lot of work done today which was good and miracle of all miracles (drum roll please) . . . I finally got Mike to relent on the cleaning service issue. They came today and I never thought watching someone scrub my baseboards could equate to an orgasmic experience. It did. They were wonderful and thorough and my house smells truly clean - at least for the next 24 hours. True to my word, the entire time they were here I was billable.

I’m off to get caught up on archiving pictures and hopefully putting some pages together for Arden’s scrapbook. I’m not working tonight . . . it feels almost as good as the cleaning service did!

Tonight, at bedtime: “Mommy, you’re a meatball.” Hmmm. Is it my rotund appearance? My meaty smell? My combination pork/beef chemical makeup? I have no idea, but Lily thought it was hilarious to call me a meatball while petting my cheeks. She said I felt like one to her.

I’m dead tired tonight. Mike is watching the Flyers (taped from last night) and I’m sitting in bed seriously considering blowing off the many things I said I’d complete tonight and just going to sleep right now. I’ll delay the inevitable by writing about my day today.

It was the Thanksgiving Feast at preschool today. Mike and I called it “Feast of the Beast” (aka Lily). Pretty much any time we can insert the word “monster” or “beast” or “devil” for Lily, we do. We mean it with all the love in the world. The kitchen staff cooks a big turkey extravaganza and they invite family and friends in to eat in shifts with their kids. It was a lot of fun but a bit overwhelming for Lily - lots of noise and excitement. I always feel really bad when they do parties and things and parents are invited. Usually only half of them show up, so some of the kids have their parents with them and some of them don’t. I am fortunate enough to have a flexible schedule and right now my “office” is in my house - so I’m literally 1/4 mile from her school. No excuses. Grammy and Grampy went and mom ended up helping Lily’s friend Rahol with his meal and I wiped Elizabeth’s nose throughout lunch. We all just pitched in to whoever needed the most help at the time.

After we watched Lily play a little outside with the rest of her classmates and then she “pushed” us out the door. Her teacher’s ploy to keep them from crying is to have them push us gently through the door - she says it makes them feel in control of us leaving. It’s really cute watching Lily push her daddy into the school. She is totally comfortable there. No tears at all - just shoved us out, waved goodbye and went tearing back across the playground to the sandbox. Speaking of the sandbox, I was cuddling this morning with her and her bed is full of sand. I couldn’t figure out why, but it’s because she lives in that sandbox and I swear, even though we bathe her every night, she has sand coming out of her pores by now.

I was completely worthless this afternoon and got nothing done other than finding out that all of Lily’s expensive nursery decor was worth $17 total at the consignment shop. Ebay, here I come. I couldn’t believe it. That stuff probably cost $500-600. I certainly don’t expect to get that, but $100 would be nice! It’s not just bedding - it’s EVERYTHING. You can tell it was a first child. Even the diaper genie had a matching cover for it. I just couldn’t bear to watch my first-born’s nursery bedding put in a consignment shop for that amount of money. Apparently I am sentimental about it. I told Mike that if it didn’t sell on Ebay, I would donate it to Goodwill. It’s not even worth $17. I’d rather give it away than sell it like that. They do, however, want my swing and exersaucer and will pay good money for those items. Apparently crib linens are a hard sell.

I have two of the world’s most annoying meetings tomorrow. Great way to spend a Friday. I volunteer on a committee for a very worthy organization. However, it’s annoying because the organization is like most typical not-for-profits. They need so much, but they are unable to get their act together for longer than 5 minutes. I’ve offered to do tons of work for them for free but they can’t accept the help because they can’t even give me the tiniest bit of what I need due to problems with their information systems and various other roadblocks that I personally feel are self-imposed. Only in the world of government and not-for-profit is hand-wringing allowed. In the real business world, we’d have to figure it out or we’d go under. So that just makes me crazy. I try to breathe a lot, be patient, supportive, and not overtly look at my watch.