Friday Night

Daughter comes into room at approximately 2 a.m.

“Mommy, my mosquito bite really itches.”

In the darkness, I slather anti-itch cream between her toes. I can’t really see but figure I’ve doused the bite and she’ll go back to sleep.

Ten minutes later, “Mommy, it’s still itching.”

I turn on the light and put more cream between her toes. We’ve been eating dinner on the back deck a lot. Boy, she sure got munched.

Half an hour later. “Mommy, it’s itching!”

I give her a Benadryl and she finally sleeps.

Saturday

Saturday morning, she sleeps in and comes down late in her PJs.  I don’t notice whether she’s still scratching her bites and have forgotten about our middle of the night itch fest. Husband takes the kids while I go for a hike and run errands.  

At 1 pm we meet in town to go to the beach together. I climb into the minivan, take one look at Daughter, and my eyes bug out. Her feet, legs, hands and arms are covered with raised, red welts. She’s scratching them terribly.

“She has Poison Ivy!” I exclaim, wondering if we should still head to the beach.

Husband has just picked up fourteen year old Niece, who’s staying with us for a week, and we’re all packed up and ready to go. So we circle the beach three times while hemming and hawing about what to do. I dial the pediatrician on call for the weekend but am cut off (poor cell service at the shore).

Finally, I declare, “It’s pretty cool out. Let’s get her in the salt water and see if that helps. If she’s uncomfortable, we can always leave.”

Fortunately, there isn’t a trace of humidity and the beach is cool so Daughter is actually much more comfortable once she gets wet and starts playing in the sand. 

I settle myself in a beach chair with my Blackberry and start Googling “itchy rashes in children.” In a flash, I’m flipping through full color photographs of big splotchy rashes, small bumps, blisters, clusters, you name it. One photo shows a child’s foot with bumps all over it. It’s labeled as…. Scabies. Yuck.

The phone rings. It’s my pediatrician.

“Hi, Heather. I just noticed you called and didn’t leave a message. What’s up?” she asks.

I tell her about Daughter’s condition and the photos I’m viewing on my phone.

“It could be Scabies, we’ve definitely seen that around here. But it also sounds like Poison Ivy. If she doesn’t have a fever and is feeling well otherwise, let’s see how she does. If she’s not better by tomorrow, call me.” She recommends an oatmeal bath and Benadryl to ease the itching.

Back home after a bath, which makes Daughter scratch more, I dress here in a long sleeve shirt, pants, and socks and that helps her keep from scratching. I give her Benadryl and wait to see what she looks like the next day.

Sunday

When Daughter wakes up, the rash has worsened and random bumps are moving up her hips and back. I give her another Benadryl and call the pediatrician. We agree to meet at the office at 10:30.

The minute Daughter’s clothes and socks are off, she scratches like crazy. Doctor still isn’t sure what kind of rash it is.

“It doesn’t look as weepy as Poison Ivy. It could be Poison Oak. It could also be from swimming in the Sound. Or Scabies.”

Mmmmm. I want a definitive diagnosis.

“Since it’s still spreading and she’s scratching so much, let’s put her on a steroid. We could also just treat her for Scabies in case that’s what it is.”

That involves putting a pesticide cream all over her body.

“I’d actually rather wait and know what it is.”

“Okay, the risk is just that it will clear up on the Prednisone and if it’s Scabies, it will come back and you’ll just have to treat her again.”

I truth, I’m not willing to accept that Daughter has Scabies (a tiny parasite that burrows into the skin – Yikes! Uggh! Ick!). Why would she get it and no one else? Why aren’t the rest of us scratching? If we just treat her for it, I won’t know if that’s what she really has. Or something else.

Monday and Tuesday

I spend the next two days obsessively trying to determine what type of rash Daughter has. It’s appearing symmetrically on both sides of her body. How can this be from a bug? I decide it must be something else and if Doctor doesn’t know, it’s up to me to figure it out.

Welcome to MomDiagnosis.com - my stint as a hyper Googling parent seeking answers to my child’s health mystery. (Husband does his best to ignore my bizarre behavior.)

I try to get an appointment with a dermatologist and wait for them to call with a cancellation. In the meantime, I spend every spare moment jumping on the computer to Google a new variation of my search theme.

Itchy rash on feet, legs, hands and arms.

Very itchy rash in child

Symmetrical rash in child

(There are about a dozen others but I won’t bore you.)

Monday afternoon I stop by a friend’s house to pick up some forms for a volunteer group and she remembers that Daughter had a fever the previous week.

“How’s she feeling?” she asks.

“Now she has a bad rash.”

“It’s Lyme Disease! I know it!” She is adamant that I have her checked for Lyme.

I return home and Google again.

Lyme Disease rash in children

Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever! It’s a tick-borne disease that presents with fever and rash. Later that day, Daughter says her elbow hurts. Joint pain! (No matter that we live in New England. My brother and his family visited us from Boulder, Colorado the previous week. At MomDiagnosis.com, a tick can hop a ride across country to satisfy my quest for an answer.)

I call the Doctor. “Should we test her for Lyme?”  Even in my obsessed state, I’m too embarrassed to suggest Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

“It’s definitely not a Lyme rash,” she says.

I Google again. The rash for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever isn’t itchy. Oh.

Later that night, I remember that Son had Shingles when he was three and his reaction was similar to what Daughter is experiencing now. A very itchy rash covered his legs and moved up to his trunk. Or was it just one leg? How could both my children have the strange occurrence of Shingles as children after receiving the Chicken Pox vaccine?

I Google: Shingles in children

The pictures on the web for Shingles don’t really look like her rash. But a list of Comments about Shingles has some postings further down that name Oxyclean as the culprit in someone else’s child’s very itch rash on her feet, legs, hands and arms.

Yawn. I’m exhausted from my mad search for her true diagnosis. I don’t think it’s Oxyclean. It might be Shingles, or Scabies, or Poison Ivy.  And now it’s mostly cleared up from the Prednisone so it’s not even worth seeing the dermatologist I finally got an appointment with.

The real truth is that with the power of every medical site at my finger tips, I am hoping for some control over what ails her. Some ability to help her and not submit to the uncertainty of a doctor’s “I don’t know.”  

This is the third strange rash Daughter has had since birth. If something else is going on here, I don’t trust anyone else to dig as deeply as I will to get to the bottom of it.

A week later

Today is Daughter’s last day of Prednisone.

Will the rash come back indicating it’s Scabies and we need to begin extermination procedures?

Will another strange rash appear in a few months, driving me to diagnostic madness once again? (Husband will probably move out.)

Or will the last remnants of red dots fade away and we’ll never know what it really was.

Probably.

In the meantime, I’ve washed all her bedding in hot water. Just in case.

Husband leaned in close, looked directly into my eyes and said, “You’re the CWO – the Chief Worry Officer.”

I smiled, well, smirked, back. He was right. In fact, my mind these days is consumed with worry.

Is it unhealthy for Daughter to live on Gogurt? Is she getting enough fruits and vegetables? Are three Max and Ruby’s a day too much? Should I have put her in camp instead of hiring a mother’s helper? She’s sunburned under her eyes! Will she have wrinkles at thirty?

Does Son have enough sunscreen to last him through the swim lesson, the soccer game, and the wait outside for pickup? Will he remember to drink enough water? Will he hurt his toes playing soccer in flipflops? Will he forget everything he learned in Kindergarten when first grade starts if we don’t read and write every day?

Did the dog get enough exercise? Is he ever going to stop jumping on the counters. Is he too hot lying on the porch when it’s ninety degrees outside? Should we bring him in?

Then we went on vacation to the Jersey shore for a week. What I love about our week together in a small rental house is that there’s less to worry about. Life is simple. And we made the smart move to leave six- month old Golden Retriever at home with my niece. I knew that if we brought him, I’d just worry about him cooped up in the cottage all day while we were at the beach, worry that he’d chew and ruin the owner’s things. Worry, worry, worry.

Not so fast… I texted Niece on the third day.

“I took him for a trail run and he’s doing great!” she wrote.

Was he too tired? He’s never been for a run before! Was he too hot? Would he be okay?

It took about a day, but I let it go.

Five days into our trip, Daughter brought her Barbies to the beach and entertained herself by hurling Ariel into the waves. No fear. She’d throw her into the water and wait for Ariel to come rolling back to us.

Daughter squealed and laughed and jumped the pounding surf as she raced around to catch her doll.

“Be careful,” I warned her. “You don’t want her to get lost at sea. Don’t throw her too far!”

Daughter stretched her arm up high and threw Ariel as far as she could into the water.

“Don’t worry, Mom!” she assured me. “She’ll come back. You’ll see.”

I watched Ariel tumble under the froth and resurface at our feet.

“See!” Daughter exclaimed.

Yes, I see. Yes, I wish for the abandon of a four year old to trust that the elements will return what’s precious to us without any harm. To let others worry for her.

But that’s my job – to worry. I’m the Chief Worry Officer.

Sobbing, four year old Daughter stared defiantly back at me.

“Yogurt,” she choked.

“No!” I said for the third time.

Exactly why I chose to dig in my heels over her third yogurt is one of the great Mommy Mysteries. Sometimes, we aren’t capable of choosing our battles. They choose us.

Daughter, however, inherited not only the color of my eyes and my odd penchant for launching into one of a few alternate characters at any moment, but also my own particular strain of stubbornness. She can dig in her heels with equal gusto. The result? At times I resort to childish behavior to break the cycle.

Hence, when she wouldn’t budge and hand over the yogurt, I grabbed it from her tightly clenched fingers and pulled it away.

(You can decide who was acting more like a four year old at this point.)

We both stared at the streaks of strawberry yogurt spilled across the hardwood floor.

“You may not have a third yogurt! It will give you a tummy ache,” I said again with as much conviction as I could muster to justify my actions.

She just stared at me and sobbed.

Then, without another word, she turned around and sat down at the kids’ art table and started drawing. I cleaned up the floor and went about my business preparing dinner. I heard lots of hardy scribbling from the corner but she didn’t make a peep.

After awhile she walked over to me and held out a piece of a paper.

“Here, Mommy, I made a picture of you.”

I looked at her questioningly.

“Am I angry in it?”

“No.”

She handed it to me and there I was, a stick figure with a triangle skirt and - a happy face. “MOM” was written at the top.

She reached out and gave me a hug.

“I’m sorry I was angry. Thank you for my picture,” I said into her hair. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

We were at peace again.

I put the drawing in the recipe stand on the kitchen counter and glanced at it over the next few days, thinking about her ability to draw through her feelings and process what had happened between us. And come out in a good place. It seemed that for all my mommy screw ups she had at least one healthy approach of resolving them.

And then one day I remembered all her ferocious scribbling in the corner that afternoon and I got to wondering…. So, I went over to the art table and picked through the sheets of old drawings. Sure enough, a few pages in I found the preliminary drawings. There I was, a stick figure with a triangle skirt. But instead of a happy smile, I had a circle for a mouth. Angry Mommy. She’d expressed me. And herself. And in the happy face that sat on my counter, found a way to move on.

Six year old Son loves sports. LOVES them. Baseball, football, soccer. He loves watching them on TV. And he especially loves playing them. But basketball is his favorite. It runs in the family. Husband is six feet, six inches tall and basketball is in his blood. Son’s too.

Not mine. I’m more of the hiking, rollerblading, cycling, long walks type of athlete. I think I could run to the end of my street. Maybe.

In the last year, I’ve played four sports for the first time. I pulled a groin muscle kicking the soccer ball around last summer. Guess I hadn’t used that one before. I finally told Son he can’t tackle me to the ground when we play football anymore because “Mommies are fragile!”

Baseball’s a little easier and I’ve gotten some good exercise running the makeshift bases we set up in the backyard. I can slug one pretty good, too.

But basketball’s where I really shine. Our kid-sized hoop can be set at 4, 5 or 6 feet height. Perfect for a six year old and… Mom. My skills are now perfectly matched with Son’s.

Since Son loves to play, he plays all the time. And basketball’s a game that can be played solo. So he’ll run outside before school, after school, after dinner, anytime – to shoot hoops. Our nine year old neighbor loves to play the game, too. So they play a lot. And what happens when you practice something? You get good.

I’m watching the whole Outliers principle in action: You like to do something, you do it a lot, you get good at it. There’s also the whole genes angle. Your Dad talks about and plays a sport a lot. Your Uncle coaches it. You want to do it, too. It also helps if you grow real tall.

As it turns out, basketball’s good for academics, too. Teacher mentioned in the early spring report card that Son couldn’t count by 2’s yet. When we were shooting hoops a few days a later, I asked him to keep score. Two points for every shot. Perfect. He struggled in the beginning but at our conference last week, she said he had nailed it.

Good sportsmanship is another matter. At five, he had to win everything. In fact, he dictated the rules and I just played along trying not to injure myself and coach him gently about being a good winner and loser. No dice. He was pretty sore every time I won.

But now that he plays team Tee Ball and soccer and looks up to his nine year old neighbor, both his physical and social skills have improved on the field and court.

My skills are coming along, too. I may still prefer a hike with the dog for exercise, but I cherish our time in the driveway dribbling, blocking, throwing and…scoring two points.

Six year old Son has a girlfriend. They had a play date yesterday. At her house. Believe me, I was dying to see how their romance is unfolding  - or what six year olds who plan to marry do on a play date – but she’s afraid of dogs and well, our new puppy’s here to stay.

I’ve met Girlfriend’s mom before but don’t know her well so I delicately traded emails when setting up the date.

“Son’s a bit smitten,” I wrote.

“Girlfriend has a crush, too.”

“Good, it’s mutual.”

I was glad to hear that Son wasn’t swooning alone. But what exactly did all this mean for two six year olds when they get together?

Girlfriend’s mom texted me mid-afternoon on the day.

“There’s a lot of talk of love and marriage going on. They’re really cute!”

When I arrived to pick him up, they were in the playroom playing Wii. Baseball. She’s cool.

“They were really sweet,” Girlfriend’s Mom said. “They talked about getting married and moving to Florida. They played outside until it started to rain and then they went upstairs to her room.”

I looked at her wide-eyed.

“I went upstairs to check on them,” she said with a smile. “And they were sitting on her bed…. Reading to each other.”

I guess that’s what six year olds do in the bedroom.

Over dinner that night, I asked Son about his play date.

“So you were making big plans, huh?”

“Yeah, we’re getting married and we’re going to have three kids. We don’t know if it will be one boy and two girls, or two girls and one boy. Or, it could be just boys. Or girls. We want it to be surprised.”

I thought about Girlfriend’s baby sister, their third child, who came along a couple months ago.

“She has a new baby sister, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah, and her nanny’s having a baby soon.”

And that’s how six year olds process things. Imitate, pretend, corral your friends to come along for the ride. Buckle up, Son.

or

How to Teach Your Child to Go to Sleep and Sleep Through the Night

Four months ago, we were at our wits end. Daughter, who was at the tail end of three years old, wouldn’t stay in her bed all night. She’d come into our room, beg to sleep with us, then beg for us to sleep with her. We’d sleepily say no, then do whatever was necessary to get us all back to sleep. That usually meant sleeping with her for awhile – several times. After all, once you crawl into their beds, kids notice when you get up to go back to your own. They wake up. And it starts all over again.

She’d been out of her crib and in a bed for four months so this was an unwelcome hitch.

We tried the method from my favorite sleep book that had worked for Son. Namely, I had a conversation with her during the day and told her that we expected her to sleep in bed all night. If she did, she’d get a marble in the morning. Earning ten marbles wins our kids a prize. (A $5 or less item. Marbles are lost for bad behavior as easily as they’re won for good. Earning ten takes time.)

No go.

The Stick Option

After six weeks of this, I called the pediatrician for advice.

“You can offer her a reward for sleeping in her bed all night. But make it short term and tangible. She’s only three. You have to give it to her after a few nights. And if nothing else works, tell her you’ll put a lock on the door. You can even take her shopping to pick out the lock. This usually does it. Most parents never have to buy the lock.”

But what if I did? Leave it my daughter to be the one child who takes it to the end. I knew I’d never have the heart to lock her in her room. And if we bought the lock, if I made it the consequence, I’d have to follow through.

So, Husband and I debated and strategized what to do.

“Maybe she just needs a bigger reward and sooner – so she can latch onto it. Remember the poopy party? That worked.”

A Potty Training Tangent

An aside to discuss our toilet training strategy. Namely, we didn’t have a good one and after repeated attempts with little success, I tried a friend’s suggestion. If her son pooped in the potty for five days, he got a poopy party – balloons and all. Sound ludicrous? Have you recently toilet trained a child one month before her preschool starts where she must b out of diapers? It worked. We had a festive event on the back deck (I have pictures!) and she was good to go (so to speak) from then on.

The Carrot

I had been saving a beautiful princess dress for Daughter’s fourth birthday. Maybe if we upped the ante for her to sleep in her bed all night, she’d come around. So, lock or princess dress? We chose the carrot.

I made it short term and tangible, just like the doc said. After five nights sleeping straight through the night, she’d get a beautiful dress. She went for it. And four months later, she’s still sleeping in her bed all night. She’s had a few slip ups, but early on, keeping her princess dress made good collateral. And later, we told her we knew she could sleep through the night, she was such a big girl and all, and she reverted to her now better habit.

Rewards Help Break Bad Habits

The truth for us has been that kids turn any behavior into a habit quite easily. It takes a reward to break it, and then the better behavior becomes habit – and that’s hard to break.

This week we decided to tackle Daughter’s troubles staying in bed after story time. She’d started to pop up and come downstairs until she wasn’t getting to sleep until 9 pm. Then she’d fall asleep in the afternoon the next day and repeat the cycle.

Our offer? Five nights going to sleep on her own wins a prize. We just finished night three successfully. Time to go shopping.

He ran ahead of me on the trail, his ears flopping back and forth and his nose pressed down to the ground. Puppy, our 3 ½ month old Golden Retriever, was beginning to fulfill my dream as a hiking companion – among all my other hopes and wishes for him to fulfill as our first dog. (No, his name is not really Puppy but in the spirit of what I call the rest of my family on this blog, he’ll be Puppy, for now.)

We’ve spent the last three weeks since he came home with us getting to know each other. Me, establishing my role as Pack Mom. He, displaying his puppy personality: Pretty mellow, loves to chew, adores a belly rub, and will cop a sit on the sofa faster than I can say, “Don’t even think about it!”

According to Mother Knows Best, the highly recommended dog training book, I must firmly establish myself as his pack leader and demand his deference to my authority. Only with this hierarchy established, will he and we be happy.

So now the mini amounts of peace I’ve discovered since Son and Daughter grew past the tough infant and toddler years are crowded with constant words of discipline spoken firmly in my Pack Mom voice. I hate speaking firmly all the time. It just makes me feel so…. stern. It feels like I’m doing it all day, too, since I’m also training Son and Daughter how to behave around Puppy: “Don’t pull his tail! Don’t tease him when he’s in his crate! Shhhhh, he’s sleeping! Well, okay, that is a little much.

A week after Puppy came home, I even told Son to “Come, boy!” He laughed. Fortunately, Son doesn’t mind being called the dog’s name, either. He just laughs.

But I mind telling everybody what to do all day. It gets old. And it feels so unattractive. I think that’s why it’s the lousiest part of the Mommy/Pack Mom job. You feel like you’ve got such a grouch pus on all the time. Poor Husband. By the time he gets home, my face is staunchly set in a fierce Pack Mom growl and I tell him what to do, too.

Fortunately, Pack Mom knows how to have fun. We’re enjoying more simple pleasures like playing fetch, and taking Puppy for a stroll after dinner, and stomping skunk cabbage on river banks.

Is my pack leadership working? Puppy comes when I call him. He jumps off the sofa after the third “No !” (we’re working on that one) and he generally respects and adores me.

He doesn’t quite understand he needs to pee and poop outside, yet, preferably in the woods. One of my dog books said I should use the same term every time he goes. I should repeat it until he goes and then at some point, he’ll just go when I say it. So I started saying, “Get to it!” (I thought that’s what the book said but it was actually “Do it!”)

For the past three weeks, I’ve said, “Get to it!” when we hit the woods. Then, “Good get to it!” after he’s done either business. It seems to be working. He now goes pretty quickly when I say it. Except, he may have to go anyway and he also goes whenever he feels like it in the middle of the front yard or sometimes, the kitchen floor.

Daughter’s a big help. She likes the rise she gets out of me when she orders him to “Get to it!” in the house. She looks at me with a smile as my Pack Mom voice rises to hysterical levels.

“Don’t tell him to do that! He’ll go in the house! That’s for outside!”

But Puppy doesn’t listen to her. He doesn’t go. Her voice is too high. Too nice. She’s not a Pack Mom. Yet.

Son arrived home from school two days ago and a short while into our afternoon he said,

“Friend is getting me a DS. His Dad can get one for $10.”

Son hasn’t yet expressed interest in this handheld gaming system and I’ve been relieved yet waiting for when it would come up.

“Okay,” I replied evenly. “I didn’t know you even wanted a DS.”

“Well, Friend’s Dad can get me one for $10.”

Now, I have no idea how much these things cost but they probably go for a bit more than $10 and I know for sure that Friend’s Dad’s profession is nowhere near the gaming business. Friend is more of an Acquaintance Friend (as opposed to a Close Friend) and I don’t know the parents well so it was hard to tell what the two had conjured up. It sounded a little fishy and like harmless boy talk.

“Okay, well, you know if you get one, we’re going to set time limits for how long you can use it. Like half an hour at a time. And you’ll need to share with Sister and I don’t want to hear any whining when the time is up.”

“Okay.” He was very agreeable.

I let it drop.

This morning before school, Son declared,

“Can I have a playdate at Friend’s house?”

“Well, we can call and ask him over here but you need to be invited to his house.”

“Well, I want to go over because he’s going to give me my DS.”

“Uh huh.”

“He said he could get it for $10 and Sister’s old enough and he’s going to get one in pink for $10 for her!”

Wow, Friend is a really generous guy. These two even cooked up a way he won’t have to share his DS with kid Sis.

I figured it was time I tackled this thing head on.

“Honey, there are some things you buy yourself and a DS is probably pretty expensive and you can’t accept that from your friend. If he gave it to you for your birthday, that would be one thing. But your birthday just passed.

“You can save up your weekly allowance and money from the tooth fairy and buy it yourself.”

“Well, he said he could just take $10 from his Dad’s wallet to buy it.”

Uh oh. This had taken a serious turn.

I sat down on the bed.

“Do you think that’s okay for him to take $10 from his Dad’s wallet?”

“Well, he already did! He bought me a DS!”

“What if his Dad catches him and he gets in trouble? Would you feel okay about that?”

“No.”

“Would you feel okay with a DS knowing he took the money or you saved up for it?”

“Saved up for it,” he mumbled.

“Is it okay for him to take the money from his Dad’s wallet?”

“No.”

“So when you get to school today, why don’t you tell Friend ‘Thank you, but I don’t want you to take the money from your Dad. I’m going to save up and buy the DS myself.’”

“Okay.”

I reminded him again at the bus stop.

Then I hopped online and looked up how much these babies really cost.

$89!

Geez.

At $1/week for setting the table each night and $2/tooth from the Tooth Fairy, that’s…a lot of chores and a lot of teeth.

It was 11 p.m. and Husband pushed the gazillionth mini-marshmallow into the frosting on the side of the mammoth butterfly cake. He was smiling. Finally.

Two hours earlier I had pushed two sheet cakes towards him and said, “We need to turn these into a butterfly cake for Sophie’s party tomorrow.”

He was exhausted after a long day with the kids. I was exhausted. But the butterfly party was the next day, at our house, and I had committed to a butterfly cake. Husband’s an artist. He can do it!

I gave him an overview of how I thought the cakes could be cut to create a butterfly. We looked for an adequate platform. Baking sheet? Too small. Tray? Too small. Large butcher block used for carving big hunks of meat? Perfect.

Then I whipped out the bag of chocolate and vanilla frostings, food coloring, squirt can icing for writing and drawing intricate wing designs, and mini-marshmallows.

“And we’re going to use all of these!”

He looked miserably at me.

“I know you can make it beautiful!” I tried to buck him up while offering additional strategies and pointers on how he could make it so.

He spread his arms wide to nudge me away and I got the hint. Back off.

Okay. I puttered around the other side of the kitchen, occasionally making furtive glances over his shoulder.

“I think you need  to cut the top, too, for the antennae. Oh, and here’s some black icing for the body.”

He gave me the back off hand signals again.

So, I sat down and started drawing black designs on the cut out butterflies I’d asked him to make that morning. This was the plan for Daughter’s 4^th birthday party:

1. Butterfly craft
2. Butterfly face painting and tattoos
3. Pin the sticker on the Ladybug game
4. Musical chairs
5. Snack and Cake!

We were expecting 15 three and four year olds. I could only pray.

Now, I must confess that we should be pretty seasoned party throwers by now.

“Remember when I made you do the puppet show?” I reminded Husband as he smoothed royal blue icing over the wings.

He smiled. Well, grimaced. That was the jungle safari theme when Son turned two. I handed Husband the animal puppets and little stage then attempted to “narrate” his performance. Kind of a bad idea.

“What about the cupcake cake?” He asked. Oh yes, that was the cake idea I got from a magazine. It was…interesting.

There was the cooking party when Son turned four, the dress up party when Daughter turned three, and most recently, the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory party for Son’s sixth birthday when I thought a burping contest would be so much fun except most of the boys didn’t know how to burp, resented the one kid who could, and fought over the trophy prize (and one well-mannered boy left the room in disgust).

“I really think we should cut the top out and put little antennae up there,” I said again. “I’m just not seeing the shape here.”

“Okay, but once we do, there’s no going back.”

“Fine, I’ll do it.” I grabbed the knife and sliced rounded corners on the top of the wings.

We both agreed it looked much better.

“Should we line the sides with all these marshmallows?”

“Sure.”

“Look! If I put frosting up here, I can line up marshmallows and make the antennae!”

He just watched.

We finished pressing the marshmallows into the chocolate frosting and stood back to admire our handiwork. It was kind of gross and… kind of beautiful. And really big.

The next day, I couldn’t quite tell what Daughter thought of the huge butterfly cake we put in front of her. It might have been a bit overwhelming – being half the size of her and all. It was probably…. just what she expected. And wanted.

Then we chopped it up, doled it out, and lots of little hands put forks to mouths and ate through the blue frosted wings, black body, and puffy marshmallow sides. Then they licked their lips in yummy satisfaction and started running around the room again.

Last week with a snow day looming, I thought of all the To Dos we could accomplish while home all day. Make all the Valentines (two classes) for Friday! Write overdue Thank you notes from Son’s birthday party! Practice karate combinations! Watch a movie! Watch another movie! And so on.

When we woke up to fluffy flakes falling from the sky, I thought of the long hours of indoor activities stretched out before us. Maybe some structure would help ward off the whining and fights I knew would come by midday.

“Let’s make a list for our day!” I suggested as if this was an activity in itself.

“Okay!” Son jumped on my bandwagon.

We found chalk and erased the year old list of weekly dinner ideas from the kitchen chalkboard. On it we wrote:

Valentines

Thank you notes

Karate

Movie

Play

Friends (invite neighbors over to sled and drink hot cocoa)

Wii

Oh and

Breakfast

Lunch

Dinner

For those of you aghast at the lengths of my Type A personality (yes, I’m a list person) on what should be a lazing-around-the-house-in-your-PJs-all-day kinda day, feel free to stop here and click back to TMZ for some celebrity surfing.

For the rest of you – dreading the next snow day due – ah, Tuesday – here’s what happened.

At about 9:05, Son said, “Mommy, check off Breakfast.”

Here we go.

“Check off movie.” He noted at 11.

We didn’t actually consult the list on what to do throughout the day but by 6 pm, we checked them all off. By writing them down, they were in our heads (well, my head) and we didn’t find ourselves in those blank spaces of time where chaos ensues. The structure helped.

After dinner, Son checked off the remaining items then announced, “Mommy, let’s make a list for tomorrow.”

Huh? What have I started?

“Well, why don’t we find you a notebook,” I suggested. “And you can make lists for yourself. This way, you can keep track of what you need to do, like, get dressed and get ready for school in the morning, pack your backpack, you know…”

“Okay.”

We found an old journal I had started to keep his health history in when he was an infant but gave up when he was two. He had fun writing out the lists and learning to spell new words.

Then I went to sleep with a secret smile that we had another Type A in the family. And I’d be in Florida for the next snow day.