Thanksgiving Weekend

Driving home from dinner with my parents last night around 8:00, Annie asleep in the backseat and Jemma ooh-ing and ahhh-ing at Christmas lights, Jason and I decided that we had crammed about as much into a single four-day period as was possible. We left for Petoskey at 8:00 a.m. Thanksgiving morning, returned Saturday mid-day (with a stop en route in Rockford to cut down our Christmas tree), and fit in church, the 'Twas the Night Before Christmas ballet, and a family dinner on Sunday.

There are pictures (and I'll upload those later, when my computer isn't being hogged by my trying-to-acquire-a-small-business husband), but for now I want to say how lucky I felt, over and over, to be blessed with so much; to sit down to meals of such bounty, with family all around the table; to go running through the woods and along the lake early in the morning; to be out in a field full of pine trees on a sunny winter's day, watching my little girls smell the branches and march in their boots; to watch their faces when glittering snow fell onto the stage midway through the ballet, and again when Santa himself appeared in a sleigh; to settle into our house on Saturday night, a fire in the fireplace, our Christmas tree decorated, mugs of hot cocoa in hand, watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

I am feeling a bit frantic, lately, with a lot of lists lying around and un-wrapped presents and upcoming events. I am trying to figure out how to make this holiday season one of simple, intentional moments instead of a frenzy of "have-to-do's." And I think the secret is, as usual, in the small things, and in one big thing, too: watching the girls take it all in; watching them wonder at the magic of it all.

Gobble, Gobble

Annie came home from school today with this adorable sign, which she tells me she made by painting corn on the cob, then rolling the cobs over the paper. How fun is that? I love kid art.

For me, Thanksgiving is equal parts about the food and the company. Here's what my kitchen looked like around 10:30 this morning, when I was toasting nuts, making applesauce, and getting things together for the goat cheese dip. And because my pumpkin obsession has not waned over the years, I went ahead and wrote about it for my most recent Four Forks post, which is here.

This year, I'm thankful for the big things - family, friends, freedom, home, health - and the little ones, too: coffee creamer, family photos, pandora.com, my dishwasher, Costco baby wipes, my running shoes. Just this minute, I'm especially grateful for antibiotics and the way it seems that Jemma's almost back to normal because of them. Grateful, mostly, that we're able to progress from this:

to this:

PLJ Gets Pneumonia

I did a post, once, about the abbreviation PLG (Poor Little Guy/Girl) and how it came to be. I can't find it right now, but it's a funny story. And even though I didn't come up with the acronym, I can take credit for the way our family has morphed PLG into PLJ (Poor Little Jemma). It just works. (Sometimes we even call Annie PLA, or, additionally, refer to both girls as just PL's. This does not amuse them. But I digress . . .)

Today, for anyone who missed the origin and evolution of the nickname, epitomized PLJ. She woke up extra-early this morning, demanding food as Jason slipped out the door just after 7:00 a.m., then ignoring her breakfast after sitting at the table for a few minutes. She climbed back in bed, and I had to literally pry her out to get her dressed. This took fully half an hour, with crying and sobbing "I look like a boy!" interspersed with the pulling-on of leggings and the choosing of mittens. On Monday mornings, though, it's like a SNL skit, trying to get both girls out the door by 8:00, so I paid little attention to PLJ.

She coughed in her stroller most of the way to school and back in the chilly morning air, then began telling me she was "so, so cold" on our way to the grocery store. When we got home, she climbed back in bed "to rest" and got out only when Sesame Street began. I felt her head, and she didn't feel hot, so I hoped she was still catching up on sleep and fighting the last of her illness. I hoped she'd seem better after her nap.

By lunchtime, Jemma wanted to be held, carried, and snuggled instead of eating. At naptime, she told me to just put her to bed. "I don't want a book today, Mommy." She laid her head down on the pillow. I went to the kitchen to try to make fig jam, but I kept wandering to the laptop to Google H1N1 symptoms.

Up from her nap, she was sadder and more irritated than before, and now she felt warm, too. When the thermometer beeped 101.3, I marched straight to the phone and dialed the pediatrician's number from memory. Even as I was explaining her symptoms to the nurse, I felt a little silly. "She has a fever again, even though she didn't on Saturday or Sunday. And she seems . . . a little sad? And wants to be held? And doesn't eat much?" I'm sure the nurse was thinking, It's the flu, lady. Give her some Tylenol and Sprite and put on a movie. So I was pleasantly surprised that they put her on the schedule, though PLJ because even more PL when I told her where we were going.

Driving to the office, part of me thought I was being paranoid. But part of me knew that something was just not RIGHT with my little girl. Annie's still coughing up a storm, sure, but she's been fully back in action - eating, running, bouncing around, clamoring to wear this and color that - for two days, at least. Jemma just looked at me in the rearview mirror with glassy eyes, and I was glad to be taking her in.

While Jemma clung to my chest and laid her head on my shoulder, the doctor moved the stethoscope around, then listened four or five times in the same area. "Yep!" she said brightly, this former teacher, mother of three, and always-happy pediatrician. "Little bit of pneumonia in the lower left lobe. You know your children so well. It's a good thing you came in." Followed by pharmacy, antibiotics, etc.

PLJ. I'm crossing my fingers for a less-PL day tomorrow, or the next day, at least.

Magical Day

I run around the lake this evening, an hour or so before sunset, wearing shorts at the end of November. It is 57 degrees, and though all the leaves are off the trees, it feels like early fall, or maybe early spring. All around me, people are out walking, running, laughing, raking, stringing up Christmas lights.

The girls, besieged with swine flu fever the past few days, play outside without coats, their lingering coughs the only sign that they've been sick. Stuck inside, we've played school, dress-up, "going to Hawaii," restaurant. We've watched movies, we've colored our hearts out. We're sick of being inside. Today, though, they ride bikes (Annie has finally learned to start by herself), draw on the driveway with chalk, and play hide-and-seek.

We come inside, eat dinner, and watch old home video after baths, snuggled together with doops and jammies. I smile so hard at one-year-old Jemma, running around giving people things and then nodding frantically at them. Have this! Play with this! Yes! This! I think about how, someday, it will be hard to remember how it was to have kids this little. I'll say, remember when Annie learned to ride her bike? Remember when she wanted to wear her gold dress every single day? Remember when Jemma refused to even smell a new food? Remember when she said "fell" for "smell?" I'll say, that was such a magical time.

(More) Things Jemma Says

While playing Thanksgiving with Annie at the dining room table, Annie instructs her to "stop and say one thing you're thankful for." Jemma folds her hands, closes her eyes, and says, "Dear God, Thank you for treats. Amen."

*****

While I'm tickling her the other morning:

Me: "Mmmmm, may I eat your tiny toes?"

Jemma: "Nooooo!"

Me: "How about your cheeks? Just a bite?"

Jemma: "Nooooooo!"

Me: "Could I eat your little nose?"

Jemma: "Noooooo!"

Me: "Well, I want to eat you up. What can I eat?"

Jemma: "You can eat my blueberry."

Me: "???"

Jemma: "My blueberry." Points to her belly button. "It's in here." It's an outie, obviously.

*****

Jemma: "This is Silly Potty."

Me: "No, Silly PUTTY."

Jemma: "Silly POTTY." Laughs hysterically.

Me: "Listen: Pu- pu - putty."

Jemma: "POTTTTTTTYYYYYY! Ah ha ha ha!!!!!!"

Me: Sigh. Walk away.

Big Girl 'Nastics

Jemma and I started taking a parent-participation gymnastics class together the week Annie started school this fall. It's been our Wednesday thing, and one of the highlights of my week was holding her hand while we jumped up and down to music during the warm-up circle. She always had a huge grin on her face, like, Can you believe I'm jumping around holding my mom's hand at gymnastics? This is the best!

About six weeks in, the teacher (who I absolutely LOVE), started mentioning that Jemma seemed ready to move up into the Threes class. She could do almost everything her teacher was asking her to do, and while she liked to have me spot her, she was very comfortable with the teacher as well as eons ahead of some of the just-one-year-olds in the class. I procrastinated a bit; this was my special time with Jemma! I didn't really want to sit in a chair in the lobby, looking in while my little girl held someone else's hand. Her teacher mentioned it again, and again, and again. After a month, I caved, and at the end of October, I switched her to the other class - same teacher, one hour earlier.

The first week, I explained as we were waiting in the lobby that she got to go to "Big Girl Gymnastics" because she was so good at everything and I would watch her the whole time and give her a big hug when she came out. She looked unsure, but went in anyway. Sure enough, three minutes in, she was in tears, and her teacher had to hold her during the warm-up. As soon as they broke into small groups and got jumping on the big trampoline, she was fine, and by the end, she was all smiles. I was hopeful.

Every week, though, it's gotten a little worse, not better. She started to get upset when we were walking in the door, then when we pulled into the lot, and this week, she started semi-crying while we were still at home. "Is it Big Girl Nastics?" she asks, hoping, I think, that I'll say things are going to go back to the way they used to be, that I'll come in the gym and hold her hand and jump up and down to music. Today, she cried for the first twenty minutes, and just as I had made up my mind to bail on the whole endeavor and cancel our membership, a friend whose child was on a fieldtrip there walked in. She's been through a bit of the same thing with her daughter. "Hang in there," she said. "Stick it out. She'll love it." She's probably right, too.

So I don't know what to do. Right now, my little PLJ is asleep after a tough afternoon with a fever and a lot of cuddling on the couch and I'm reminded for the umpteenth time how my littlest girl is growing up, like it or not.

He Did, She Did: Girls' Weekend 2009

To his credit, Jason managed the girls for the entire weekend without incident. He also documented some of the things they did with his iPhone. However. I do not even know WHAT is going on in this picture. Apparently, on a sunny, warmer-than-average-for-November-but-with-swine-flu-still-lurking-everywhere weekend, he thought he should take them to the mall. Twice. And let them play in the germ-infested play area. (Other husbands, it should be noted, chose Chuck E. Cheese, McDonald's Playland, and the gym daycare as their disease-ridden locales of choice. Guys: Seriously?)

They browsed Nordstrom Rack.

Annie does not mess around when it comes to clothes.

And they tried on Christmas dresses and took pictures in the dressing room. There are . . . so few words to describe how I feel about this.

Meanwhile, in Winston-Salem, at the house of Andrea, the girls convened for Girls' Weekend, Year Eight. We stayed in on Friday night, made pizza and a big salad, and drank our share of red wine. Heather brought an assortment of pumpkin, raspberry, and coconut cupcakes (she shares my deep love of a quality baked good) and we all stayed up talking until well past midnight.

When we woke bright and early on Saturday morning, it was sunny and warm (and still fall-beautiful there, with leaves on the trees), so we drank coffee and then went for a long-ish hike around a pretty lake, talking all the while about life, family, kids, clothes, money, time, camping, exercise, food, and basically every topic under the sun.

On our ride back, we discovered that Connie had never (gasp!) been to Whole Foods, so we immediately detoured there for lunch. Here she is, very happy with the olive selection.

We went home, ate most of the gelato we hadn't already spilled on ourselves in the car, and eventually showered and headed out to dinner at the very cute, very yummy Print Works Bistro in Greensboro. (We did not get lost on the way there. Nope.) Cocktails, scallops, autumn salad, roasted garlic and baguettes, brussels sprouts, gnocchi = great dinner.

We skipped dessert at the restaurant so we could come back home to eat pie and drink wine. We did eat the pie, but to the great horror of us all, the lovely wine that Heather brought for the occasion was corked, and we had to pour it right down the kitchen sink.

Later, around 2:00 a.m, we did this:

Leaving on Sunday always sucks. Of course I am tired. Of course I am sad to leave my friends, some of whom I see far less frequently than I wish. But beneath the tiredness and the impatience with the travel drama (there is ALWAYS travel drama, and this time did not disappoint, as Connie and I nearly got bumped off our plane in Detroit), I always leave with a deep sense of contentment and peace. These are the people - outside of my family - who know me best; these are the friendships, among others I treasure, that sustain me. They're my life coaches, fashion consultants, financial advisors, decorators, child psychologists, marital therapists. We've been at (and in) one another's weddings, cheered for the births of healthy children, rallied around each other during the hard stuff, and it is both so calming and so energizing to spend these 48 hours or so together. We may have had to pour a little wine down the sink; Anthropologie may have been closed too early; and some people may have watered a fake plant, but it was good. It was unbelievably, simply good. We're already planning the next one.