mothers on the verge

From Yummy London Mummy: The most sucky thing about being on holiday is that children go wild. Or at least, this appears to be the case with my children (no offense but hopefully yours do too, if so then I won't feel such a big fat parental failure). The root of the problem seems to be the Small(er) One suddenly discovering the joys of insomnia. Which, oddly, seems to affect her very little in terms of energy and good cheer during the day (she's been bad-tempered as well but this is quite normal - she's a fiery small thing). But the big problem is Firstborn, who, just like me, finds it hard to operate on three broken hours of sleep, and, just like me, it makes her grumpy, cranky and desperate to take offence at every small and/or imagined thing. The squabbles and cat fights are driving me nuts. I had to pull them apart yesterday, two crazy bundles of rage, spitting and biting and flailing limbs - and all over which one got the pink plate. In between the fights and name call

From Yummy London Mummy: Alpha, the mini-yummies and I have been in Rome for the past five days, an attempt to unwind after two months of deadline hell and to escape the builders who are currently trashing Casa Yummy in pursuit of completing our long-awaited kitchen extension. I could wax lyrical for hours about the beauties we have seen, the annoyances of travelling with small (and often bored) children, the tedium of queuing for hours at various airports... But here is a synopsis - an overview of Rome, as seen by Firstborn and the Small(er) One: Most favoured insult (Firstborn): “La fruitcake!“ (Said in a French accent and bellowed, we're uncertain as to its source) Most favoured insult (Small(er) One): “You smell of wee!“ Happiest moments: In the lollypop shop/ eating ice-cream / eating pizza/ lobbing coins into the Trevi fountain Pure happiness: Firstborn's first tooth coming out, followed by a visit from the Italian tooth fairy Utter misery: Trailing behind Mummy shopping

I remember as a girl at school thinking it was perfectly normal to have ash falling on the playground during the month of Halloween. The Santa Ana's, of course, were complained about as often as people toss around "the humidity" here in Gotham during the summer. The wind was always wild, edgy, somewhat exciting and always hard to explain to someone who has never lived in SoCal -- although I do highly recommend this collection of essays by Joan Didion who came the closest to capturing the charged bite of these winds in words. But it's so hard to see these images coming from home. Thankfully, none of my family is in danger, yet. And no friends either. But remembering when one brush fire licked the canyons just a mile from our house one year, I know how things can change in an instant.

A slight departure for Mothers this morning -- sports. With Joe Torre walking away from one of the more public spots in baseball, all eyes are now on Don Mattingly, gentleman first baseman, and possible inheritor of the Yankees manager throne. I spent many a game watching from seats that were borrowed from a borrower, just four rows from first base, during the years Mattingly played. I watched as single gal after single gal (and yes, I was one of those as well) would slink their way to the small wall hoping for a photo, a signature, a wink perhaps a date. What Mattingly offered? A blind eye focused instead on warming up for the games. But should a child appear? Eager, pint-sized, perhaps an oversized glove in her or his hand, a ball, Mattingly would stop, saunter over, sign, say a word, and then go back to what he was being paid to do -- play a great game of baseball. All that I'm saying is that I'm not really a baseball fan. And as The Prince will gladly state, I can hardly st

It's come up -- and we at Mothers feel we must clarify -- that whenever we write in our posts about a product, or list them on our Hot/Not side column, we have not taken money, freebies, or even a compliment from the brand that we mention. Now, yes, you can ask: Since you are a grouchy pair of Mamas, why would anyone want to pay you to write about their shoes/polish/handbags anyway? Well, we agree. We don't understand either except to say that you, our readers, are clearly Mothers with enough of a cool edge that people want you to hear about their goodies. If we ever decide to run a true, honest, advertisement, we promise to make that a clearly marked item. We might even put it in a box that says: "Look Here! Someone has paid us money to run this ad here about this product and we don't know NADA about it so read at your own risk!!" Or something like that. But you can be assured, when we write that Crocs are truly unattractive, and that we'd rather be caught in

Tonight we had dinner with friends in our building -- they have boys that are close enough in age to The Rabbit that she considers them surrogate brothers. It was more than an hour past bedtime, and time to leave, and The Rabbit announced that she wanted to stay over. All night. Without her beloved stuffed dog. Without me. I tried every manipulation this poor mama could muster. "You won't have your doggy." "That's okay mama." "You won't be able to call me in the middle of the night to pee." "That's okay." "I won't be there." "Mama. I can handle it." My heart broke. We left her, with two quick kisses, and watched the elevator door close on her bright pink, perfect face. And then we went home. And five minutes later got a call. She had changed her mind. It felt like Christmas to see her little body being carried back into our place by The Prince. I know this day will come when she really is ready to leave me.

One of the reasons I should not be volunteering for another crumb in my life is because I am also helping, God help me, with the Halloween event this year -- yes, AGAIN. And so today as I was fielding calls from lawyers (part of this horrendous chaos in my life) the phone rang. and then rang. and then RANG and then an email came. I picked up the third call -- knowing it was about this event and was told that we had to know HOW MANY tickets I sold last night (oh yeah, did I mention I spent part of last night in the lobby of my building WITH the Rabbit selling tickets? Dinner for me: Bazooka gum.) because we HAVE to buy the toy giveaways TODAY. And yes, of course, this is my emergency. And then, if the milk curdling irritation was not already audible from my voice (yes, I am quite aware I give very bad phone) I am asked: Why were the flyers publicizing the event not put in one of the other buildings? Not something that was my responsibility -- and not something I could even handle. So I

I know October is here not because of the weather (it finally broke this afternoon, but this extended heat has given me a summer rash), but because... I went to a PTA meeting tonight. You'd think, given my past experience, I would know better. You'd think given my own mother telling me how insufferable these meetings were for her -- 30 odd years ago -- I would know better. But no, I went tonight, and get ready...ran for a seat on a board that helps draft policy for the school. That meets monthly. That meets for 2 hours once a month on a night that The Prince traditionally never gets home before 11 pm. And...I lost. Five people running for 3 seats, and I and the woman known as "the loon" lost. Now that should send me to the Entenmann's box, right? The crazy thing is, I knew I shouldn't have run. I had to drag The Rabbit out of the house, with a piece of chicken still in her tiny hand, race to the meeting in the rain, drop her off with some woman in the lunchroo

I am still here out in the real world, but unfortunately sick with the snuffles and beset by deadlines. Back soon. x

Sweltering through yet another day in the humid 80s, I keep wondering when fall might deign to appear and save me from my summer clothes. Nothing personal guys, but if I have to look at my short sleeve shirts, and cropped pants and shorts one more day I may turn them into scraps for the quilt I swear I will make one day, and will, when I'm 90. The weather report is taunting me with 60-degree days -- maybe late next week. Nice to know I'll be going apple picking with The Rabbit on Tuesday when it's supposed to be -- 81 DEGREES!!!!! I'm sorry. But I think 5 months of having to stare at my ghostly pale legs one more day is just too much torture. (And I'm talking about torture for me.) So fall, come on. Give it up MAN. It's OCTOBER. Get it together. Or I swear, I'll start pledging my loyalty to winter. Now that's cold.

The Rabbit, on hearing Mama needs to work to make money, started to come up with reasons why she should be more of a priority -- and why Mama should work less. So she came up with a list of things that, after all, all free. Although shocked that My Little Ponies and cookies actually did cost money (the horror), she was psyched that I did agree with many of them: air clouds colors dreams outer space where all the planets live like Jupiter planets whole wide world laughing teeth and eyeballs Given my state of mind in recent days, I was so taken aback by this, and taped the little list to the wall over my desk. I forget how much my mind has been shaped and molded to stop seeing the world this way. So today I'm noticing the crisp red crane near a construction site down the street, and the dawny pink flowers of my blooming african violet. And even though the city is blanketed in a thick humid fuzz in an desperate (and pathetic) attempt to prevent fall from trumping, I know that tonight

Bush Vetoes Children's health insurance bill.

Packs of Orbit gum chewed 11 Cups of coffee 31 Calls to mom 26 Calls to sister 18 Boxes of Kleenex used 1 1/2 Minutes spent starting blindly out window 343 Batches of chocolate chip cookies baked 4 (all for The Rabbit's school bake sale) Cookies personally consumed 6 No. of reruns of Mad Men viewed 3 Hugs to teddy bear 3 (yes, I still have mine) I suppose that this is a fair measurement of how one can cope with the acute stress I seem to be ping-ponging between each day. But you know what? The Rabbit's coming home from school soon, and we'