Things that are put on the high shelf

• All the Nerf guns, one by one, having been confiscated
  
• The TV remote control, because you've had enough TV time for now
  
• The craft project that I really don't want to bring down until you're old enough to read the instructions and do all by yourself
  
• One notebook that was fought over
  
• A packet of highlighter markers, because you have enough markers for now and those aren't even washable
  
• The glockenspiel, until you can make music instead of just hitting each other with the mallets
  
• The lighter for the grill
  
• My tin whistle
  
• The Ikea piggy bank you wouldn't let go of when you were two so I bought it, but then it became a dangerous projectile so it's been up there so long that we've forgotten it even exists
  
• The TV digital antenna, because we're like in the dark ages, man

What's on your high shelf?

Ramalamadingdong

This week is not going as planned, so far. But not all in a bad way.

Yesterday began not going to plan on Sunday night, when I realised that I was scheduled to co-op at nursery school the next morning. I had vaguely planned on going back to Target and finalizing some of the gift shopping - the gift shopping that I'd done a week earlier and that had been helpfully sitting on my bedroom floor for the next six days, waiting for me to do something else useful with it.

This problem was compounded on Monday afternoon when I discovered that that very day, not some vague date in the misty future, was the last day for posting by regular mail to Europe. Oops. Because of course 90% of the stuff in the bag on my bedroom floor was to be mailed to Europe, but I'd been waiting for this and that, for the perfect final present to present itself to me at the weekend's craft fair or some other opportune place, before wrapping it. I also subconsciously felt that B. should partake in the wrapping so that he had some input in all this shopping I'd done for members of his family, but since I didn't tell him that, and last week was busy with various meetings and whatnot, it hadn't happened.

Finally, last night, we sat down and had our gift-wrapping extravaganza, and happily we did have enough wrapping paper and tape and I had even bought a box at the post office that was the right size, all of which are no trivial matters.

So that was ready to be mailed first thing this morning, which would only be one day late and therefore practically in time, and would probably make it to Ireland before the big day anyway. Which would have been simple if this was a normal Tuesday, but then we got a snow day.
                                           
Monday had already been a delayed-start for the schools thanks to Sunday night's snow and ice storm, but then it snowed all morning here and they cancelled school entirely. It's only about an inch, and melting already, but I suppose the schools didn't want to deal with the potential mess of getting all the buses in during a snowstorm. We're not in Colorado, you know. Maryland is technically the South, and thus Not Great With Winter.

However, it was the good sort of snow day. The sort when B. has one too. Yes, yes, he was "working from home," but that also meant I could send him to the post office once the snow eased off, which it did at midday or so, and the roads had all been nicely treated so they were fine. So, BOOM, the parcel has been mailed and with a bit of luck everyone in Ireland will get their presents in time after all, and even if they don't, it's out of my hands now.

While he was doing that, I got off my arse and went through the recipes I've been meaning to try out and we made pretzels! BAM! Where's my snow-day baking award?

And Dash made a snowman all by himself for the first time. It's a little leafy, perhaps, but he's proud of it.

In the afternoon, B went out with Dash and got a Christmas tree, which we hadn't got around to doing yet, so that's something else we don't have to wait till next weekend for. DING!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

Frozen

[Only the vaguest of spoilers here. Read on without fear.]

As I may have mentioned, we saw Frozen over Thanksgiving weekend.

Before that Friday, the fact that there was a new Disney was barely on my radar, since we don't watch normal TV where such a thing would be being rammed down the throats of my suggestible little sponges in constant ads and trailers and merchandising.

However, since Mabel's dental appointment was followed by a trip to the princess aisle of Target, it didn't escape our notice that there were two new dolls on the shelves - and as a result all the old ones were highly discounted, so she got a toddler Ariel for a tenner and that was lovely. But we did, therefore, know that there was a new movie with two princesses.

As a result of this, of course, Dash was reluctant, because he has lately come down hard on the anti-princess side of things. (He has also turned against the Ponies. Mabel is very sad about this, but he is unrepentant.) We basically had to force him out of the house, and even then he sat grumpily for the first forty minutes or so and was only retained in his seat by the addition of an iPod on which to play Angry Birds (silently). It was worth it though, because at the first tense part, instead of being scared like Dash of Old, he was drawn in and started to love it. Boys grow up in the weirdest ways.

I dunno, maybe it's been an awfully long time since I saw an animated movie in the cinema, but I was totally blown away. I mean, I've watched Tangled plenty of times, and in earlier years The Little Mermaid and Cars were pretty much on constant repeat in our house from time to time, and we've had a lot of The Emperor's New Groove (unsung BRILLIANT movie, by the way), but the big screen just does something the little one can't. I'd forgotten, or maybe I'd never discovered before, what a full-body experience it is when you sit there and let the whole thing wash over you, even as you cringe because it's too loud for tragically old you and the five-year-old beside you. And we didn't even see it in 3-D. (To be honest, I'm pretty sure I can't handle 3-D.)

In traditional Disney/Pixar style (I'm thinking mostly of the beginning of Up, here) the start of the movie tugged at my heartstrings almost unbearably, as the backstory was laid out and we were shown how and why things panned out the way they did when the real action got going. Maybe I was premenstrual/menstrual/postmenstrual/female/human, but I admit I was already swallowing hard and needing a tissue. I talked to Mabel about that part today and she said she didn't find it emotional at all, but I think she just likes to contradict me. Heartless wench.

We didn't think the songs were as good as the ones from Tangled, but ever since, we've been humming them and finding them on YouTube and now they're all stuck fast in all our heads; and probably if and when that one song wins the Oscar, even though had I not seen the film I'd be thinking it was just another obvious sappy Disney number, I'll be delighted because damn it's just so huge and swirling and wonderful and in my head it's totally swept up with the images and emotions in that part of the movie and it's downright cathartic, so it is.

 Oh dear, that was all one sentence.

Yes, the princesses are still Disney princesses, and along with their lovely hair and their impossibly big eyes, they have waists that are about 50% tinier than necessary and, you know, Disney, you could have not bought into the Barbification of imaginary women, but apparently you decided to, which irks me. And because it's conveniently set in some Nordic-type land, there are no people of colour and the princesses are blonde and strawberry blonde respectively; but I suppose it has to be set somewhere, and Hans Christian Anderson does set a precedent.

In summation, though, you should go to Frozen because it's really great. It's funny and exciting and happy and sad and thrilling and it even has a good message about not hiding your true self, and the true love's kiss is not what you expected.

Your kids will probably like it too, but bring an iPod just in case.

Big enough

One thing I've noticed about parenting - and hang onto your hats here, because as epiphanies go, this one's a doozy - is that it takes a long time.

I know; rocket science is a breeze for me, right?

It's just, you start a family and you dream about all the things you'll do with your kids: take them to the movies, play board games together, go out to eat and have a happy family occasion... and you know it'll be a while, because a little baby can't do those things, but you think soon... some day soon, surely... maybe now they're old enough...

And you try far too soon and find that your two-year-old is terrified by the noise of the big screen, or is ready to jump up and run around just when the ads are done and the feature is starting because that's enough sitting still for one afternoon; or that your four-year-old really doesn't want to eat anything on the kids menu and once his chocolate milk is all gone, that's it for the restaurant outing; or that the only board games they want to play are the ones that you have to be able to read for, which they can't do yet, and then they eat the pieces and you fish them out of their hamster cheeks and put the whole thing back on the high shelf for another year or three...

So here we are with a five and a seven and we went to the movies last week (to see Frozen) and everyone liked it and nobody wet themselves (except me, because someone had apparently just dumped a giant coke all over the seat I chose) and we stayed for the whole thing, even though it was very loud and Dash was grumpy about watching princesses. And we loved it, dammit.

And today we took out the Risk and played a short game with three players (and one play-with-the-spare-soldiers-off-the-board-er) and it was almost, dare I say it, fun for all of us, and nobody threw a fit when I won, fair and square, because I'm better at rolling dice than anyone else. (That's probably because of the rocket-science, isn't it?)

And the restaurant thing, well, we're still working on that, but at least they can both play tic-tac-toe on the menu while we wait, and they can both eat some damn french fries and we usually don't actually have to evacuate the whole show mid-mouthful any more.

So, while it was only yesterday that I had a baby, and then I had another, and I swear I don't feel as old as I must be by now; on the other hand I feel as if I've been doing this for ever and shouting at these short people for a long time, and it's about time we got to do some of this stuff because we've all been waiting a while now. You know?

Concerted effort

My favourite Christmas carol is God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, because as an alto I can't get up high enough for all the other ones.

I used to sing in choirs. I don't have a particularly good voice, or a particularly strong voice, and I can only stay in tune when surrounded by a group of people also singing the same thing, but I enjoyed it and I can read music decently enough not to go horribly noticeably wrong. I also showed up for practice, which is always a bonus from a director's point of view.

My husband has also sung in choirs for many years. He's much better at it than I am, being what you might call legitimately musical and with a nice voice to boot. He'll even sing alone in front of other people, if you ply him with a drink or three. And it will sound good.

At Christmas, the Messiah is what we should be singing. I sang in the Messiah several times, in school and college and afterwards too. I could probably still get a fairish proportion of the alto line right, if given a score and placed right in the middle of all the other altos. Some day, I'll go to a singalong Messiah and do that, I hope.

For years, the choir concert was part of the beginning of Christmas. Long black skirt, black long-sleeved top, putting on my makeup in the bathrooms in the Science building of UCD, or the ones Dramsoc used in the LGs of the Arts block. Waiting upstairs in the O'Reilly Hall, going through those last few bits where I still went wrong, marking them with a pencil so at least I'd know where to stop singing for two or three notes rather than mess it up. The sound of an orchestra tuning up; it's like the clinking of ropes on masts in the harbour on a breezy summer's day. Sometimes I was in the orchestra instead - third clarinet or something like that. Again, not very good, but a show-er-up.

I love the anticipation, the lights, being on stage, being important but camouflaged as one of many. Not being the one who faints, that's vital; there's always one. Watching the conductor, trying not to giggle, turning pages silently. Looking out for parents, friends, whoever you could strongarm to come along. Smiling keeps you in tune. File out row by row, one by one.

On the whole, I enjoy a concert a lot more when I'm part of it than when I'm just watching. But we should find a concert to go to, because it's not Christmas without one.

Syndicated!

I am delighted to have a post syndicated at BlogHer today. You may have read it here already, but click on over and see it in situ - it'll look totally different, honest.

I think this is actually the first time I've been paid real money for something I've written.

I'm hoping it won't be the last.

Debunking

Sometimes life just writes my blog posts for me. The post about Mabel's dentist visit segued into Dash's prosaic encounter with the tooth fairy; and then this happened...

After school yesterday, out of the blue, Mabel and I had this conversation:

"Mummy, is Santa real? A___ told me today that it's just the parents giving presents."
"Oh really?" said I, playing for time.
"I know from the way you said that, he's not real."
"What?"
"You used that voice you use."
[Oh crap. Really? I'm that transparent?]

Then we had a little conversation about whether it's more fun if Santa's real or not real, and she admitted it's more fun if he is real, but she still wanted to know the truth. So I told her the truth. And followed it up swiftly with the Very Serious Admonishment that now that she's in on this big secret, she must be very careful to keep the secret from the other kids.

I admit, I felt a twinge of sadness at the passing of the belief. But mostly I felt relief. I never did very well with the double standards required by Doing Santa. When you're reassuring your kids on the one hand that giants don't exist and dinosaurs are extinct and fairies are only in stories and there are no goblins, and then encouraging them on the other hand to write letters to the man who'll come down the chimney and leave them presents in some totally magical manner... well, I've nothing against anyone who does it, but I found it tricky.

Anyway, there are great things about having Santa finally debunked:

• I don't have to explain how come Santa only shops at Target.
• I can put useful things in their stockings that Santa couldn't possibly have known they needed (and certainly wasn't asked for).
• I don't have to be careful to remember which presents we gave them and which ones Santa did for years to come.
• Santa doesn't get all the credit for the great gift ideas that were really mine.

Don't worry, Santa will still be coming to our house. Probably until the children are grown-up, and maybe even then a while. But if he slips up now and then and brings the wrong thing ... well, I suppose the kids will know exactly who to blame.

Fairytale

The following episode was recounted to me, because I was asleep - or at least doing my best to pretend to be asleep - for most of it. But it's classic Dash, so I'll do my best to reproduce it.

Early yesterday morning - a little too early - Mabel woke up. As usual. I went into her room, agreed that she should go to the bathroom if she needed to, and welcomed her back to her bed with a mumble, as I'd lain down in it and was trying to go straight back to sleep.

I could tell that it wouldn't work for her, though; she's been on an early track since we came back from Ireland. Luckily, so has her father. "Daddy's up," I told her. "You can go downstairs." And off with her. I snuggled down for my next hour and a half of sleep, or at least snooze.

About a minute later (I thought), I heard Dash wake up and call quietly, "Mom, Daddy!" (Yes, I'm "Mom" now. I'm still getting used to it.) I laid low and heard B come upstairs. There was some excited talk about how it was wobbly and it was just attached at the corner and then it wasn't.

                                         

Apparently - this is where I move to reported speech - the tooth had fallen out. Dash was under the impression that it was the middle of the night rather than about 6.15am. He thought he should put it under his pillow for the tooth fairy right away.

Now, Dash knows all about the tooth fairy and how it really works. But he is busy amassing dollars and imaginary fairies who exchange dollars for teeth are an excellent source of revenue.

B agreed that he should do that, and left the room. Dash put himself happily back to sleep in no time flat, and B went back downstairs to Mabel and coffee and early-morning Internet or whatever it is they do while I'm trying to claw back those minutes of sleep cruelly denied to me.

About five minutes later, as far as I was aware, Dash woke up for the day. In reality it was maybe 30 minutes, and in Dash's head it was the other half of the night. He must have glanced at his pillow, and failed to see anything. He immediately went downstairs complaining that his tooth had disappeared.

B went upstairs. There was the tooth, in plain sight, about two inches from where Dash's eyes had apparently stopped looking. B took a silver dollar coin from our room, put it on the pillow, and palmed the tooth.

Then he went back downstairs and told Dash to look again.

"It's a dollar! The tooth fairy came!"

In some respects, he's very easy to please.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Christmas in America is so different from Christmas in Ireland.

• In America, you go to a performance of The Nutcracker. In Ireland, you go to the pantomime.
• In America, the big shopping day is the day after Thanksgiving. In Ireland, it's traditionally the Feast of the Assumption, December 8th; because all the schools would be off and everyone from the country would come up to Dublin. After going to Mass, of course.
• In America, you have to be careful to say "Happy Holidays", in case someone is Jewish or of some other faith, because you wouldn't want to offend anyone. In Ireland, you say Happy Christmas, because offending people is a national pastime and insulting someone is a true mark of friendship.
• In America people drink egg nog and eat candy canes. In Ireland they drink whatever you're having yourself, and eat selection boxes and Quality Street.
• In America, Turkey Day is Thanksgiving; people eat all sorts of different traditional foods on Christmas Day, depending on their heritage. In Ireland, Turkey Day is Christmas Day and that's that.
• Americans bake gingerbread houses and peppermint bark; Irishers bake mince pies and Christmas cake.

And yet, my Facebook and Twitter feeds - full of people from both sides of the Atlantic - confirm that:

• Everyone is unable to believe that it's December already.
• Definitely nobody is ready for it to be 2014.
• People everywhere have either done all their shopping or are leaving it till the last possible minute.
• Christmas is becoming more commercial every year, but the Christmas spirit is still alive and well if you take a moment to look for it.
• Some people's Christmas trees are already up. Some are not.
• Letters to Santa are being written and some children, on both sides of the Atlantic, are having up close and personal encounters with the man himself. (Don't ask how. It's magic.) 

I think it's just possible we are all cut from the same cloth, after all.

Tooth of doom

Almost exactly two years ago, Mabel got a filling in a molar. She had just turned three, and it was not a fun experience. The dentist had intended to give her a crown, but she was wriggling and crying so much, in spite of the nitrous oxide, which didn't seem to be doing anything much, that he left it at a filling.

I had taken her for a checkup as soon as her second set of molars were in, which was only about a month earlier. That seemed like a good time to start the dentist's visits, and had been what I'd done with her brother, whose teeth have no holes. But I'd noticed a little spot on one of Mabel's upper teeth, so I wanted to get them checked out. Sure enough, we were sent off to the pediatric dentist for a further look.

Everything had been fine at the two checkups after that filling, and then last spring Mabel took agin the dentist and decided not to open her mouth at all. I didn't push it. She's four-and-a-half, I said, because we've been through the four-and-a-halfs before, and they're tough; she'll be fine when she's five. We went back a month ago and she was a lot more cooperative. And lo, the dentist could see that there was a new hole in the tooth with the filling.

So we went off to a new pediatric dentist (not that I had anything against the old one, but this one was closer and we had the referral for her) and they took some x-rays and saw that not only did she definitely need a crown, but also a baby root canal. I did ask later why they wouldn't just pull the whole tooth: as this was a molar that isn't due to fall out till she's ten, the dentist felt that for spacing reasons it would be best to leave it in.

Taking x-rays was not a trivial procedure, because Mabel didn't like the thing in her mouth that they use to x-ray just one area. She said it hurt the roof of her mouth; having a small mouth, I can empathize because I hate that too, but being a grown up I have learned to just do it and get it over with without gagging. She point-blank refused, crying piteously. Finally, they said they could try the all-round x-ray machine, and by bringing it down to the lowest level and finding some phone directories for her to stand on, they got her positioned just right. The dentist said usually this is harder for small children, because they have to stand perfectly still while the machine moves around their head, but I was proud of Mabel for swallowing her tears and standing like a statue so the machine could get a perfect photo of all her teeth, in and out of the gums. It was very cool to see all her adult teeth waiting inside there for the time when they'll nudge the others out of the way and burst forth.

(Dash's teeth are bursting forth all over right now. He lost his third this morning, and the adult incisor that's front and centre is about to come down through the top gum where he's had a space since he was a baby and knocked out the tooth. He's going to look odd with one big and one little tooth until the second one comes out, but seeing him with a mouth full of teeth at all will be a new experience for us all.)

I told the dentist about Mabel's previous experience and how the gas hadn't seemed to work at all. She said she could give her some oral medication first to make her more relaxed from the outset, which would let her inhale the nitrous better. Then we had to postpone the appointment twice because she was congested with a cold, and we finally got there on Friday morning, the day after Thanksgiving. Yes, when you were all making turkey sandwiches and planning trips to see Frozen, or recovering from your Black Friday early-morning outings, I was pumping my baby full of drugs and watching the dentist drill out pretty much the entirety of her molar.

Again, the first hurdle was the worst, because she didn't like the taste of the diazepam. After a million tiny sips and some crying and a break to watch tv, I eventually syphoned it up into a syringe and squirted it into her mouth. She swallowed some and spat out some and we called it done. In a few minutes she was amusingly floppy and having difficulty talking. ("I...an..not... [drool]...")

Then it was into the chair and to be wrapped up in the special hugging blanket ("So I shouldn't call it a strait jacket then?" I'm not sure they appreciated my humour, but I was pretty sure Mabel wasn't in a position to notice, and has never heard of a strait jacket anyway) and under the elephant nose that dispenses the gas, and open wide so we can count your teeth...

Little kids must wonder why it takes dentists so very long to count teeth, and why they can never seem to remember from one opening of their mouth to the next exactly how many are in there. I sat by her head to keep the gas thing on ("Does it smell of strawberries? Or is it more like chocolate? Take a big sniff in and see.") and to make sure no little hands wormed their way out of the huggy blanket in spite of velcro restraints.

After a lot of drilling (sorry, "buzzing") with the little drill and the big drill, the poor molar was literally just a shell. Then it was scraped out and packed and a shiny crown put on top and boom, done. Mabel got to sit up and be unwrapped and I had to carry her to the car because she was still a bit wobbly on her pins, but we still went straight to Target (which was conveniently just across the parking lot) and got a new doll, because that was definitely a princess-worthy ordeal.