Eliza, post bath, 2-20-08

Eliza: I need a bandaid.
Me: Do you have a booboo?
Eliza: Nooo.

A minute later:
Eliza: Need bandaid?
Me: Where's your booboo?
Eliza: It's hiding.

Train Trip

Max took a train this morning to my mother's. He left at 7:15 with Miriam, Sophie, Rick and my mom, carrying two Richard Scary books, three pullups, blank paper, seven magic markers and Blue Blanket in his "Max" school backpack. His last words before falling asleep and his first words on waking were that he had changed his mind about wanting to go on the trip, but Rick said by the time he and Sophie left them all on the train at Penn Station, he was good to go, armed with a chocolate croissant.

Max is fascinated by trains but not in the way that many little boys are. He was terrified last summer when, waiting for Rick's train in Westerly RI, an Acela passed through the station. He literally jumped into my arms, and wailed until we were in the car. He didn't even want to wait for Rick's slower train to come, and talked about the scary train for weeks. But he also in the fall, concocted an elaborate secret fantasy with Miriam, where they planned how they would take the train to Grandmother and Dziadzi's house by themselves. It was the first of many planning conversations that have got Max and Miriam through the tough companionship that's being forced on them this year sharing many pick ups and drop offs at school, and it broke down eventually into arguments about the plans, but lasted for days before deteriorating.

I wonder about this intersection between fear and desire. Because when we saw that scary train, we were staying at the thunderstorm beach house, the name coming from a two and a half year old memory of a thunderstorm that Max dug out of a four year old brain. The thunder claps he remembered were remarkable. Back when we were cowering in bed that night in a one floor slant roof extention to a rickety three season house, where the walls were made primarily of glass, Max was on the verge of a new life––new house, new friends and cousins sharing under the same roof. Plus, later that year, a sister. And all that came with it––time outs, rules, a schedule that was not his.

At the train station, when the Acela ran by, his fear response was way more developed and nuanced than it had been during the thunderstorm, but also elemental and simple, the way all of ours are. Planning his train trip with Miriam, he was combatting his fear of a new school. This morning, his instinct was to cancel his adventure. And yet he went.

I know that this is how it should be, and yet I find myself left with a really intense fear response myself. Something abstract, because I know he's fine and I want him to go and Eliza and I have big plans for the time he's away (aside from the 8 hours of babysitting I've signed her up for each day), but still, if I'd had my druthers I would have held onto him this morning, instead of giving him a brisk kiss and pointing him toward the door.

Valentine's Day

This morning started with Eliza screaming in her crib. Rushed in after quickly feeding dogs (if they don't get fed right away, they pee on the rug). Then Max was up. Something was wrong with the remote. Eliza very cranky. Oscar up to no good, I think. Eliza and I walked dogs. Instead of showering, I made valentines for everyone in Max's class with necco hearts taped on index cards. Max worried the tape would make the hearts taste funny. I was like, "yeah, they'll taste just fine," and I gave him one. Eliza happy after big bowl of warm milk, oatmeal and honey. Very pleasant, in fact!

Just before we walked out the door, I noticed that Max's cereal was untouched. I threw a bagel quarter in the microwave to defrost. Max and Miriam were shocked I made them walk in the cold, and I shouldn't have, it was miserable. Ten feet from the door I remember the bagels, still in the microwave, and decided to leave them. By the time we got to school, Max was a mess. Considering he'd had 2 necco hearts for breakfast and had walked a mile in cold so bitter slicks of water on the sidewalk were frozen solid, I couldn't blame him. But I did. Miriam was being very patient, but maybe that's just because she has the ability to make a necco heart last for over three avenue blocks...

About one hundred feet from school, Max started to complain of something hurting on the left side of his abdomen. I assumed his appendix was about to burst. Does that mean I can't leave him at school? I mean, they have a nurse, right? I was grilling him so heavily in the hallway about the location of the pain, the character of the pain, the exact level of its intensity that he finally said, "This is boring," and waltzed into the classroom.

Did I mention that his new thing to do on a crowded subway car is shout at the top of his lungs to all the other passengers, "Give us your seats!"

I ended up feeling so mad all the way home that I started to think that maybe my appendix was going to burst. Or something. I was mad at Max, but it's hard to be mad at a four year old you love, so I just was running through different rants in my head--I was even angry at this 9 year old ahead of us walking really slowly through the school doors.

Happy Valentines Day, everybody!!!

Grumkin

Someone with the email name of Grumkin has read my blog! A fellow blogger, mother, and as far as I can tell from her entries, curator of eternally-in-the-future projects. A New Yorker reader. (www.grumkin.blogspot.com)

I think I stopped writing in my blog because of Slipping. All I wanted to write about was the seeming miracle of it's being purchased. I'm still very obsessed with it, but now that if feels more real, and I am so deep into the next book, I'm kind of missing this.

And I am so enjoying re-reading this blog, that I think I will start trying to keep it updated again. My favorite parts to reread were the stories and descriptions of Eliza and Max. Nearly a year has passed since my last entry, and Max is totally recognizable in last year's entries, though Eliza not.

Eliza - since May! - has learned to talk in complete sentences. She tells me all sorts of stuff. She is very interested in babies and dogs, and since around December, cooking. Her birthday was last weekend and we gave her a kitchen. Her favorite game is to say, "I like!" which means, incredibly, "What would you like?" and then you say, "Coffee! With milk!" and she nods her head deeply, as if trying to touch her collarbone with her chin, and says, "okay" and then hands you a plate and a piece of plastic pizza. She loves the word "okay" so much - it's a question, it's an affirmation. She hands you something, "okaaaay?" Everytime the pigeon wants to drive the bus in Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, she gives in, saying sweetly, "oh-kay."

There's also something else I've noticed about Eliza and Rachel. They both seem to have accents. Today, for the first time Eliza used one of my favorite of Rachel's expressions, "This bothering me." She said, like Rachel, "Dis bodderin me." It doesn't sound like baby speak though. It sounds like deep New York borough. I wonder... Will these kids sound like they actually come from the places they grew up?

Max is at a new school - a big public school in a big building. He was terrified all through August and wishing he could go back to Rivendell, but adjusted, and now likes it. He refused soccer this fall, and I very tentatively signed him up for dance in January with his favorite camp and movement teacher, Helen. He LOVES Helen. He hated going into the class, hated that it was drop off, hated every single thing about it, except that he actually really really loves the class. Helen turns every single movement and idea into a story, and he comes out flushed, a huge smile on his face, and tells me "Aliens came to Brooklyn!" I'm not sure if he even likes movement as much as he likes Helen. One time, he came out of the class and ran for the bathroom. I told him he could always leave class to pee, and he said, "But I don't want to miss anything." This is the day I had to literally push him through the door and disappear myself so he woudln't run back outside.

He's apparently not a member of what his teacher Jennifer refers to as The Birthday Party Club, but he did spend the entire fall discussing who was inviting whom to their birthdays and extrapolating huge fantatsic MGM-in the 1930s versions of what his own birthday would be like. My favorite: every one would dress up like soldiers and he would be the teacher. His actual birthday is finally at least on the horizon, and he has about 35 people on the guest list. Everytime he watches a new movie, he says "I want to have a Happy Feet birthday party" or "I want to have a Winnie the Pooh birthday." Merchandising is a huge part of his world, even though I don't think he really knows what it means.

And on the Winnie the Pooh note, Eliza calls Tigger, "Tigger the Pooh." Max had me cracking up today trying to get Eliza to become interested in Spiderman the Pooh.