Melissa Anne Cohen

At this very moment, my daughter is sitting in her chair, her baby doll nursing under a nursing blanket “because she needs privacy, Mommy.” My son may be the only two year old boy in the world who walks around pretending to have a baby in his belly. He’s folded a baby doll in half and came to me, frustrated that he couldn’t get her to stay under his shirt. I explained that when you actually have a baby in your belly, the desire is to get them out, not keep shoving them back in. He was adamant, though, and is now walking around glowing with pregnancy ;-).

I was just nursing Sam, and he paused, looked at me, grinned and said “Daddy Nakie Funny.” Now that he’s talking more, he can express what he’s thinking and apparently he was remembering Saturday when Marc was getting ready for his shower while Sam and I were in the bedroom.

Yes, my son is officially a talking boy. He’s chattering more and more, and coming up with so many words that I’ve lost count. He just started yelling “shark” at Word World on the television (there’s a shark swimming about on screen). He’s officially two years old, and so much fun I can’t imagine how I lasted as long as I did without my boy. He’s so smart and funny and earnest, and so incredibly different from my girl.

Back to normal around here, and I have to say, I’m loving it. I adore my husband, more than I ever thought possible, but I was happy to wave him off to work this morning. We had a major battle yesterday – details unimportant, except to say that I’m profoundly grateful that we fight as rarely as we do, because it’s just miserable when we don’t like each other. I had such a migraine last night, and can feel it sneaking back on me.

I was thinking about interfaith relationships (any clues on what we battled about?). It’s one of the few topics that we both get really upset about, religion, spirituality and the ownership of what our kids are going to think/believe as adults. Which, when you think about it, is really foolish, they’re both smart, capable people who will form their own thoughts and opinions. To assume that we have the ability to determine what they think thirty years from now is incredible arrogance, I think, on our parts, but it doesn’t stop us from assuming that what we do now has life and death consequences. I wonder if couples who are of the same faith have it easier – but I have to say that they probably don’t. They might not fight about whether to attend a synagogue or a church, but I bet they’ve got their own crisises in their marriages. Marc and I are so in sync on so many issues, it’s baffling and frustrating to me that we fight about this as often or as intensely as we do…

Just got back from vacation – yes, that’s right, I took two children and no husband to the beach for three days. Four days, three nights. I wasn’t alone with them, my cousin Becky was camping on the same site with me, and my mother and sister were up there as well. And for the most part, it went really well. That being said, I’m beyond happy to be home, with my husband bathing my children, laundry in the dryer and washer and the news on the television in the next room.

Jess LOVED the ocean, she was on the beach from the moment we got up until I dragged her off each afternoon for a shower. She made a bestest friend, and spent her time digging tide pools, capturing hermit crabs and then making them race across the picnic table, searching for “beautiful” broken seashells, and chasing the waves. It was wonderful… and were it not for her, I’d have left yesterday :-). Sam was pretty happy up there as well, if you could discount the fact that he started nursing like a newborn. He didn’t move more than a few feet away from me the entire time we were up there, prompting many comments on how much I spoil him, shouldn’t still be nursing him, and etc… It’s amazing how easy it is for everyone else to parent my children… or at least, to know how they’d do it so much better if they were their’s.

He fixed my vacuum cleaner. I’m a stay at home mom, with two kids under six, plus I baby sit for two more toddlers. My vacuum cleaner is my FAVORITE. I use it three or four times a day, it’s my go to appliance. I can think of no other piece of household stuff that I rely on as much, except my coffee pot. I would also self destruct without that.

Anyway, I sucked up a chapstick and jammed the whole thing. Had no clue why it suddenly wasn’t working, and was so sad that I had broken it. Marc took it apart, returned the chapstick (in perfect condition, no less) and then pulled all the hair and junk out of the brush so that it works like new.

I love this man.

Earlier today, Sam picked out his outfit and announced he was ready to go outside. If you can picture an adorable little boy, with light brown hair, greyish green eyes and a huge smile, with a rainbow sun hat, topped with a princess tiara, white onesie that’s so old it’s all stretched out, blue and green swimming trunks, and rubber giraffe rain boots that are four sizes too big – that’s my boy.

All is well in my world – major thunderstorm this morning, which is my FAVORITE. I love the pounding rain, the booming thunder and the flashes of lightning. We kept Jess home today, she’s just been such a wreck this weekend, actually, more like just yesterday, I think she needs a day when she can hang out with just her brother and stay in her pajamas all day, she can color and play in her bedroom and just vege out. So far, she’s calm and happy, she’s aware that she can’t play on the computer and knows why, she’s not arguing or fussing about it.

Grounded my little girl tonight for the first time in her little life. She’s been having a crappy day, lots of physical aggression, and she narrowly avoided kicking me upside the head in car because she started flailing her legs and screaming about me not understanding her. So she’s off the computer all day tomorrow – which is a BIG deal, because we just got a brand new, huge computer with speakers. Marc was shooting for three days with no computer, but that sounded harsh to me, too harsh for a five year old when you consider that she’s had a really busy weekend after a killer week. Maybe I’m just making excuses – it’s hard to know. But I know how much she’s going to hate having no computer tomorrow.

Everyone is gone. It’s just me, Jessica and Samuel right now, and I’m calm and relaxed. There’s been a lot of chaos and confusion lately around here, I had Glennys over night Friday night, and then yesterday we went up to my cousin’s graduation party in Rindge. I ended up taking two of my nieces home with me (how is it that I always end up taking extra kids home with me from family functions?). We didn’t get home until 10:00 and the kids were all still awake. My mother just came to pick up my nieces and I popped my two into the tub and am feeling much more in control.

Kids are good, Jess is still having major issues when she’s overtired. She’s prone to huge screaming fits, and I have yet to discover a cure all technique for dealing with them. I’m doing the mediation thing, taking her hands and having her take three deep breaths to calm down, but that’s not 100% effective, and today, she screamed for 45 minutes because she accidentally cut her pancake up before remembering that she didn’t want to have it cut. I think that was what the problem was, but it was tough to decipher the screaming.

The party yesterday went really well, Marc and the other guys staged a baseball game for the little kids and they all had so much fun. Jess couldn’t actually hit the ball by herself so my brother would hold the bat with her and when they actually connected, she’d take off, running in a big circle around the field, not actually hitting any of the bases, but absolutely confident that she’d scored a home run. And the guys in the field would purposely miss, overthrowing and undercatching to ensure that she could make it the whole way. It was so sweet, and she was so proud of herself.