I Got Into The Halloween Candy Last Night

It was mocking me from across the room, in the bright orange plastic Jack O' Lantern pails.

I was helpless to resist the siren call of the snack-size Three Musketeers bar. Which is, by the way, a candy bar filled with some mysterious mock-chocolate, mock-creamy, foamy substance I have never been able to identify, but is something I suspect will survive a nuclear holocaust intact, much like a Twinkie.

My stomach was unhappy later. I must've downed a pint of milk in the aftermath just trying to rid myself of the trans-fatty acid aftermath.

But this afternoon, the candy was mocking me again.

Today I managed to resist, but only because the husband came back from lunch at the studio commissary bearing a brownie, and when faced with the choice between a fresh-baked goodie and a factory-made, preservative-packed treat, I am adult enough to choose the slightly more wholesome option. Afterall, there are eggs and flour and milk in brownies, and the fat involved is mostly butter, not hydrogenated corn solids or some such artificial evil.

I hope to be a little more of a grown-up tomorrow and skip the sweets entirely. But I'm not holding my breath.

Halloween itself was marked by the children finally "getting it" this year. They went full-on trick-or-treating for two full city blocks, tramping up the front walks of a dozen or so decorated domiciles (we skipped the ones that didn't have Halloween decor, the universal sign welcoming trick-or-treaters). And they did so in the dark. The girl, by the way, who had been utterly terrified of the whole prospect last year, and opted out except for the well-lit trick-or-treat fest at the local mall, was fearless this time around. This year, as soon as the very first door opened and a kind, smiling stranger deposited candy in her pail, she was sold on the entire enterprise.

The girl dressed as Cinderella, and got admiring stares, particularly in the costume store when she first tried it on. But the boy was the stand-out hit in his store-bought Wall-E outfit, a sort of foam sandwich board duplication of Wall-E's front and back, with the addition of a light-up glow stick on the top left, Wall-E gray goggles for his eyes (which he wore perched atop his head like movie star sunglasses), and Wall-E gloves that made his hands look like electronic arms (he mostly left the gloves in the built-in treat pocket on the bottom of the sandwich board). Wall-E was greeted all night with exclamations of "Look, it's Wall-E!" and "Cool Wall-E costume!" and "Hi, Wall-E!" Either Wall-E is much beloved, or my son looked simply adorable as Wall-E, or more likely, some combination of both factors.

As a Late Blooming Mom who has fond memories of this holiday (as posted previously here), I feel I did the kids right this year. I can check off the Halloween box. I carved a pumpkin with the kids. I took them to a Pumpkin Patch AND a Pumpkin Festival. Late Blooming Dad made a chocolate pumpkin bread. And I even got a tiny bit crafty: I didn't handmake the costumes (leave that to the moms who have the time, god bless 'em) but I DID wind up sewing the Wall-E goggles' headband so they would fit without slipping off my son's head. Plus the kids got to go trick-or-treating at the Star Eco Station on Friday, the mall Saturday afternoon, and in the neighborhood Saturday night. Oh, and did I mention the Halloween picnic for the West Los Angeles Parents of Multiples? (The highlight for me: the quadruplet toddlers dressed as Elvis ... or should I say, Elvii?)

A lot of people get down on Halloween these days as rampantly commercial, a waste of money and bad for the environment (given all the treat bags, treat wrappers, and decorations that get tossed when it's over). Religious groups of all stripes are starting to oppose it: it's got pagan origins, it involves images of evil, etc. But let's face it, America has embraced it and turned it into something it never was back when it was All Hallow's Eve. And your point is?

All the trouble Late Blooming Dad and I went to was worth it when we heard our daughter say, as we brushed teeth post-candy, "I wish every week was Halloween." Now would someone pass me the StarBursts?

"It was so yummy that I can hardly feel my eye."

You read it right.

That's what Thing 1 said the other day.

I can't remember what he ate that was so yummy, but I don't think I'm soon to forget his creative attempt to articulate what he was feeling in response to aforesaid yumminess.

I am sure I am dating myself now as a very Late Blooming Mom indeed when I say moments like this remind me of an ancient TV show with Art Linkletter, ART LINKLETTER'S HOUSE PARTY, which ran for something like 20 years and was later revived with Linkletter and Bill Cosby as KIDS SAY THE DARNEDEST THINGS. It can't be quite as obscure as I'm making it out to be, because WIKIPEDIA tells me it's been mentioned on FAMILY GUY, SOUTH PARK and THE SIMPSONS. The basic idea was that Linkletter (and later Cosby) would interview kids and, well, they would indeed say the darnedest things.

My kids oblige daily. It's getting so that I don't even notice the mangled English that is their attempt to master their mother tongue. "I'm gooder than you at swimming, "Thing 2 brags to Thing 1. "No you amen't!" proclaims Thing 1. And so it goes on.

They take in what they hear me say like sponges, yet somehow things don't quite come out the same way when uttered from their mouths. "Why are the cars in their lines on the freeway?" Thing 2 asks. She means lanes. "What's an exit?" is Thing 1's question when I say I'm taking the next one. Sounds like an easy concept to explain -- it's the thing you take to get off the freeway, the ramp, the lane, the way you choose to take your car when you leave the freeway to go where you want to go. But somehow this didn't really clear it up for him.

They're piecing together how the world works, using language clues, and the results are sometimes not exactly accurate, yet betray a certain logic.

Perhaps my favorite mistaken assumption the kids are under is that when you kiss, it means you're married. It comes from too many Disney movies in which the princess kisses the prince at the end in a big wedding scene. Somehow, this recently led to my daughter kissing daddy and then proclaiming, with a huge smile, "We're married now!" (Elektra complex, anyone?) And when Thing 1 kissed his sister, he proclaimed that they, too, were suddenly wed. (Ah, incest. I won't be explaining that one to my four-and-a-half year-olds.)

All too soon, they are going to understand way more about the world and I won't have to explain why the car is thirsty and we have to stop for gas, or that we're not in the earth, we're on it ... or that regular TV -- as in, TV not recorded on our TiVo -- has something called commercials.

I'm in no hurry. I realize that right now, I am, to my children, an expert on the world. And I'd better enjoy it now, because in a few years, they will have dethroned me from my lofty perch. They'll be the self-proclaimed experts, and they're going to be explaining it to me.

It's Not The Terrible Twos You Have To Worry About: It's The F^&#ing Fours

Sometime last year, I was at one of the monthly support meetings thrown by my local parents of multiples club, and the club co-president was decrying "The F^%#ing Fours," the phase her twin boys were going through. She said, "Everyone talks about the terrible twos. But no one warns you about the fucking fours!"

At the time, I just laughed, and figured maybe she was exaggerating. Maybe she'd had a particularly hard day with her boys, two kids I'd only glimpsed at club events, where they were invariably well-behaved and adorable.

But now I know about the F^%#ing Fours. And I want them to be Fucking Over.

Okay, not entirely. Four has mostly been a fun age, a better age, an age during which my kids have learned to use three and even four-syllable words, play together without need of near-constant intervention by a referee, go to the bathroom before going to sleep, and only rarely wet the bed. They eat more and different foods (maybe not vegetables, but you can't have it all), and they're easier for one parent to manage on a trip to the mall, the store, or the movies.

But lately, at least one of the kids -- Thing 1, my son -- has entered into a new and infuriating stage, the "I will whine about everything and throw a fit if I don't get exactly what I want, when I want it" phase. This morning, he could not handle the concept that he wouldn't be able to get the toy Late Blooming Dad had procured for him at a baseball game -- thunder sticks -- because he was refusing to eat his breakfast. He threw another fit because he had forgotten to take a different toy to school with him. And he proceeded to go "batshit" in the back seat of the car -- "batshit" being the technical term for kicking, screaming, and crying at a pitch designed to induce headaches in all but the most Zen parents.

Thing 1 is sometimes egged on by, or inspired into, his poor behavior by his sister, who though technically the same age (well, younger by two minutes), knows better and is developmentally advanced enough to realize that throwing a fit is NOT gonna get her what she wants. Though she went through something of a Fucking Fours state around three-and-a-half -- isn't it typical of the girl to hit the behavioral milestone sooner? -- she manages to regress quite dramatically on occasion.

Tonight that occasion was the minute we arrived home, when she demanded Late Blooming Dad carry her over the threshold into the apartment. Dad, who was busy cooking dinner and had already taken his shoes off, refused, asking her to just come inside. This prompted a five-minute crying fit that included dragging herself along the floor on her back, while refusing to take off her shoes or get up.

You'd think the gods of parental hell would have taken compassion on us then and let us off the hook for the night. But it was not to be. Thing 1 refused to sit for much of dinner, or to eat his food without assistance he no longer really needs. He lay on the floor demanding to be carried, and we responded by ignoring him for about fifteen minutes... though it seemed more like the 100 Years' War before it was over.

His fits continued in fits and starts, interrupted by instances of him spitting and then being given a time-out for having done so. Somehow or other, he calmed down enough to get into PJs and brush his teeth. But come bedtime, it was Torture-Your-Parents Hour again. He wound up getting a time-out, but since he wasn't going to stay in the family room alone, I sat in there with him and made up a bedtime story about dinosaurs that seemed to calm him at last.

He's in bed now, after one last talk from me about how being difficult means you don't get TV, you don't get toys, you don't get a treat, or anything else you really want. I hope it sunk in, but my suspicion is, to paraphrase Jackson Browne, when the morning light comes streaming in, he'll get up and do it again.

The co-president of the twins club warned me. I should have known they were coming. All I can do now is hope to hunker down and get through them ... and for those of you who have kid or kids younger than mine, CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED!

The Still-Pretty-Great-Pumpkin, or HALLOWEEN: The Next Generation

I remember Halloween pretty fondly from my Upper West Side childhood.

My friends and I used to dress up in home-made costumes -- they were ALWAYS home-made in those days, never store-bought. And we'd trick or treat "for Unicef," shaking our bright orange cardboard boxes -- which I loved putting together the day before, tucking in all the tabs -- chanting in singsong, going from apartment to apartment. (The next day, mom would break open my box and help me count the coins we'd donate.) I had Halloween parties in which my art-loving, ever-creative mom used to "web" a room in our apartment, stringing twine through everything to creative an enormous web. Each string finished off attached to a wooden clothes pin, and each kid at the party got to try to wind that string around the clothes pin and untangle the web. We used to eat candy corn until we got stomach aches. A great time was had by all, and it didn't cost a lot.

But these days, Halloween is big business, the kind of massive consumer-goods-heavy enterprise that makes me think of what one of the PEANUTS gang says about Christmas in "A Charlie Brown Christmas," that it's all run by "an eastern syndicate."

I want my kids to enjoy it, but I don't want to be compelled to buy, buy, buy to make that happen.

Yet it isn't easy.

A Halloween SPIRIT store has opened up on our corner. It has a huge inflatable orange man-type figure of undefined identity -- is he a scarecrow? A big orange stick with hair? And there's an inflatable Jack-O-Lantern snow globe and skeleton. It's pretty enticing. For several weeks now, we drive right by it on the way home from school, and I admit I've promised the kids we'll go in to buy costumes. Unlike my mom and many of my friends' mothers of that day, I don't have time to make a home-made costume, so store-bought is gonna have to cut it. I will part with money there.

A couple of weekends ago, Late Blooming Dad and I packed the kids into the car and drove the 29 miles to Pasadena. The lure was Kidspace Museum's 15th annual "free" Pumpkin Festival. But "free" didn't really mean free. True, there was no admission fee. The festival was in a big park by the Rose Bowl. But other than one arts and crafts table open to all (we made ghost puppets), everything else required that we purchase tickets. Tickets were a dollar each, and each attraction cost anywhere from one to six tickets. After the kids endured the lines and visited two bouncies, played carnival games, got face painting, and temporary tattoos, we'd spent quite the wad. Might've spent more, but they RAN OUT of pumpkins.

So much for free Halloween festivities.

And yet... I feel compelled to spend more. On Sunday, it's off to an urban pumpkin patch, the kind of temporary attraction thrown up for a few weeks in October on an otherwise empty lot. There will be a train ride, pony ride, more bouncies and face painting, and I hope we will actually be able to purchase our pumpkins there.

I'm drawing the line at decorations on our door; I really don't need cobwebs and a hanging paper glow-in-the-dark skeleton, now do I?

I promise I'll stop the financial bleeding there, really I will. Oh, except for the following weekend, when the local elementary school puts on their 62nd annual "Halloween Hoot" carnival. 62nd annual. I kid you not.

Clearly I'm not the only one who finds this holiday so compelling, despite the money parents part with, me included, and the commercialism run rampant. I think it's about some very good childhood memories, and a compulsion to give my kids some of the same, while they're still young enough to appreciate selecting a pumpkin, taking it home, carving it, turning out the lights, and watching the glow of a candle through those Jack O'Lantern teeth and eyes.

Pass me the candy corn, will ya? Who says wax-like sugar concoctions are just for kids...

Their Fred Astaire Moment

The very first time you're exposed to something wonderful in this life, be it the person you fall in love with, or your very first taste of ice cream as a child, I have a name for it. I call it a "Fred Astaire moment."

Back when I was fourteen or so, living through the hormonal and social hell that is eighth grade, I felt alienated from pretty much everyone I knew. My parents could not relate to me, and my middle school classmates had turned on me. It wasn't that they hated me. It was just that they didn't "get" me ... and I didn't "get" them.

I'd always had friends in kindergarten and elementary school, and coasted along with a comfortable social life through sixth grade or so. But in seventh, the girls I used to like, and who used to like me, became a lot more interested in boys... to the exclusion of all else. And the boys in my class I may have been friendly with once upon a time pretty much ignored my existence and paid attention to the girls who were boy-crazy.

Maybe my pubescent hormones hadn't fully kicked in yet, or maybe I was never one for gossip or speculation about the crushes and the rites of teenage physical exploration about which my classmates had suddenly become obsessed. I know I had no interest in shutting out some people because they weren't "cool." But by eight grade, that is what happened to me. Kids whom I'd known since second grade and who'd always invited me to their birthday parties and sat next to me in class started to ignore me. And when I didn't act coy around boys and talk of my latest crush -- because really, I didn't have any yet -- the gap between me and my classmates only got bigger.

It didn't help that I enjoyed doing my English and History homework, loved reading and writing essays about Shakespeare or world politics, and was often a teacher favorite in the classroom. I was soon branded a nerd, and though no one ever said it to my face, the social isolation that I experienced made it clear to me what my reputation was.

As if it wasn't unfair enough that most of my classmates were in the midst of full-blown boy obsession and I wasn't, I still suffered from the mood swings and hormonal symptoms of adolescence. I had braces, glasses, and now pimples, and I felt very much alone.

My mom knew how unhappy I was. But she was a nosy mom and the last thing I wanted to do was share my feelings with her because of that. Like any teen, I jealously guarded my privacy. She tried to get me to talk to a child psychologist, and when I caught her on the phone with this shrink, I hung up the phone on both of them.

Then one day, when I found myself having a crying jag and just couldn't seem to stop, mom dragged me out of the house. She walked me over to the Regency theater, a movie revival house a few blocks from our apartment, and sat me down in the midst of a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie. It was a black and white musical from 1936, and I had never seen anything like it.

A few minutes after I arrived, I couldn't resist looking up at the screen and watching, through my tears, a tap dance number so breathlessly exhilarating, exuberantly musical and irresistibly swinging, that in a moment, I utterly forgot myself. I was lost in an experience of grace, of sheer joy and disbelief and wonder and delight that a human being could do what the man I was seeing -- and his dance partner -- did on screen.

In that moment when I was lost, I was saved.

My adolescence turned around right then and there.

No, I didn't stop being a nerd. On the contrary. I become a teenaged Fred Astaire aficionado at the height of the disco era. I also finally understood what it meant to have a crush, even though, in reality, the object of my affection was then in his seventies (this being the late 1970s). It was the young Astaire I fell for, the guy up on screen, not the real one. And while it would be awhile before my movie star crush that could never be was replaced by real crushes on real boys my own age, the feelings began there.

I also developed a compelling interest outside of school that led me to haunt the stacks of Lincoln Center's library for the Performing Arts, to read all about the golden age of Hollywood; about movie musicals; the songwriters and composers who wrote the "standards" of the 1920s, '30s, '40s and '50s; the Broadway shows of those same years; the New Yorkers, many of them Jews like my family, who emigrated to Hollywood and what they did there, writing comedies and musicals and great songs ... and a fascination with American film so strong that I would wind up moving to Los Angeles and storming my way into the movie business not so many years later.

But the main thing I want to convey about that moment isn't that it influenced my life course. It's that it made me experience something wonderful, unique, exhilarating and the delightful, that I'd never experienced before, in a way so powerful it lit me up inside.

Tonight my kids had such a moment.

My daughter is taking a pre-ballet class on Saturday mornings, not because I got her to do so -- I really couldn't care if she dances or not -- but because she feels like it, and finds it fun. Last week she saw some girls at the school in tap shoes, having a tap lesson, and she wondered what that kind of dancing was all about. So I promised her that I'd show her some tap dancing at home.

Today, I remembered the promise, and so after dinner, before the bath, when both kids were ready, I put on the very same dance that had lifted my soul years before, a jovial little number called "Pick Yourself Up." (Gotta love having DVDs with scene selection; you can watch in on Youtube too.)

I sat back and watched my kids watch Fred Astaire for the very first time.

Curiosity on their four-and-a-half-year-old faces soon gave way to smiles, laughter, and light in their eyes. When Fred pulled his first tap dance move, I gestured to the screen and said, "That is tap dancing." Suddenly, it was like a light switch went off inside my kids. Within seconds, they wereup out of their seats, and nothing could stop them from what they simply had to do next: they were trying to tap dance -- in their socks -- all over the living room floor.

Their joy -- and the need to participate in full body with what they were witnessing -- was as potent as the exuberance I'd felt as a lonely teenager suddenly lifted out of herself in a darkened movie theater on west 67th street.

It's not my hope to don't condemn my children to years of old movie musical nerd-dom. It's an odd interest, I'll admit it, and I've taken some social heat for it over the years.

But I am damn happy they had a Fred Astaire moment. And I'm taking a moment now to marvel at how a small joy like watching tap-dancing shadows filmed decades before I was even born can make my kids get up an dance.

I reveled in this moment, especially because it's one I never have imagined all those years ago in a movie theater on west 67th street.

Avoiding the Kid-Centric Life

Kid-centric parenting has run amuck.

If you don't know what I mean by that, then take a minute and stop and think about the moms (and maybe dads) you know and how much their lives utterly revolve around vehement sideline screaming at Junior's soccer, comparing Ms. Thing's pas-de-chat with that of the other would-be ballerinas at dance class, enrolling the kids in advanced Mandarin lessons and, even when out with adults, talking EXCLUSIVELY about their children.

I'm not against finding the very best school you can for your kids, whether public or private. I don't see anything wrong with a few fun activities after school, or "enrichment" as it's come to be called. Sometimes tutoring is actually called for, when a kid is having a tough time with a subject. And even I have a tough time resisting the impulse to talk shop with other parents when I see them, not to mention write about it on this blog.

BUT there are limits. Or rather, there should be.

Focusing too much on your kids, living through them instead of living your life, using them to compensate for disappointments, or trying to control them to compulsive levels because you're frustrated at your lack of control of other parts of your life, isn't good for them or for you.

I like to think I have an advantage, as a Late Blooming Mom: I had a life before I had kids, and I refused to give it all up and trade it in for rampant mommy martyrdom.

The same is true of Late Blooming Dad. There are things he liked to do before having kids. He hasn't given them up. He just doesn't get to do them as often. But he and I both try hard to make space in our lives for the stuff that kept us sane and happy BEFORE the kids came along. We spend a lot of time with our kids, but we don't just do stuff they want to do. We bring them along on activities we enjoyed before we had them. Our kids go to museums because WE like museums; to baseball games because WE like baseball games; and though we take them to Pumpkin Festivals so they can get face-painting and bounce in the Jumperoos, it's because we enjoy seeing them have a blast at these events, not because we're looking for developmentally appropriate educational outings that will provide educational enrichment.

We also make sure we get a night out two or three times a month if we can swing a sitter, so they get used to the idea that mommy and daddy are entitled to some time to ourselves. Sometimes daddy gets a day or night off; sometimes mommy does. This summer, mommy and daddy each had a three-night trip to see old friends WITHOUT bringing the kids.

We are better parents because we do all this.

Yet not all later-in-life parents I run into take quality time for themselves or keeping up their pre-kid interests. In fact, some of them -- particularly a breed I'll call Hypermoms -- seem to be doing the opposite. They're the ones I saw back on the preschool tours who aksed questions like, "What private schools do kids get into from this preschool?" "Are the kids reading when they graduate?" "What is the emphasis on academics?" Remember, I said these moms were touring PRESCHOOLS. Which they clearly confused with college prepatory high schools or Stanley Kaplan SAT prep.

The Hypermoms have Blackberries whether or not they are working moms. They seem to be equally frantic whether in business suits or yoga pants, whether scheduling their next conference call or setting up their kids' KUMON tutoring schedule.

Their counterparts are the Hyperdads, the ones I was talking about when I mentioned the vehement screamers on the sidelines of Junior's soccer game.

There's nothing wrong with encouraging achievement in your kids -- be it athletic, artistic, or academic. And of course you want your kid to be able to compete in the world, at least enough that when grown-up life comes around, it won't be a cold hard shock.

But when your whole life is kid-centric, and you have lost your inner -- and outer -- life apart from your kids, and you've deluded yourself into thinking life really is ALL about the kids, you're not doing them a favor, or yourself.

I realized one day after spending hours trying to find and schedule soccer, ballet, and swim classes for the kids, that I needed to stop and spend some time doing something for me. I was exhausted, cranky, and no fun to be with, and Late Blooming Dad, bless him, took the kids out to a movie and the mall. I took to the hills -- specifically, the Inspiration Point trail and Will Rogers State Park, a place I used to go to, pre-kids to breathe, to exercise, and look out at the view, to get a little perspective. The mountains, the sky, the trees, the ocean, and the city itself are all in view, and yet it's quiet up there, where it's high enough to hear yourself think.

Some days, a mom's gotta do for a mom and for no one else. I may be a Late-Bloomer at momhood, but part of what makes me bloom at it is that I know, even though I wanted parenthood more than anything, that while it's a lot -- and I'm glad for it -- it's not everything.

"No I Amen't!"

That's what Thing 1, sick with a cold, vehemently said this morning when his sister inquired if he was going to school with her.

I'm not exactly sure how "No I'm not" somehow became "No I amen't!"

But I can respect the passion.

Still, the big feelings these little people get can overwhelm. And I don't just mean them.

I recall a David Sipress cartoon from the New Yorker in which a father and mother faced their young progeny, and the father addressed the kids thusly: "Your mother and I are feeling overwhelmed, so you'll have to bring yourselves up." (See the cartoon here.)

That's exactly how Late Blooming Mom -- and Dad for that matter -- felt tonight after Thing 1 and Thing 2 began to grab for the same toy after dinner. When I took the toy away from both kids, telling them, "If you fight over it, the toy goes away," a switch flipped in Thing 2 and she went from "difficult" to "The Wrath of Khan" in sixty seconds. Her fit continued for the next fifteen minutes, during which we mostly ignored her, though Thing 1 did his part to make things worse by being the unfeeling little brother, laughing at her plight. This was deemed unacceptable and got HIM a talking to. Finally Late Blooming Dad managed to get her in the bathroom, at least in proximity of her waiting bubble bath. There I gave her cold water to drink, stroked her calmly, and got her at least down to "Defcon 2."

Getting their teeth brushed and hair combed was well nigh impossible, given their lack of ability to focus on anything that needed doing, in favor of dawdling and finding new ways to distract one another or, in Thing 1's case, weave in and out over the sink so that more toothpaste wound up on the sleeve of his Alien pajamas than in his mouth.

Our nightly routine of late involves Late Blooming Mom or Dad sitting in the right angle where their beds come together (the two beds forming an L shape) and reading books to them by flashlight. Tonight things went awry within moments because Thing 1 had chosen a lift-the-flap book, and Thing 2 insisted on lifting the very same flaps Thing 1 wanted to lift, while Thing 1 was insistent on going first all the time. I finally had to take the book away from them and move to the next book. This very nearly caused escalation to "Orange Terror Alert" on the part of Thing 2, but when she saw it was no use throwing yet another fit, because I'd already started reading the next book -- one she wanted anyway -- she shut up.

By this time, dad had already poked his head back in the room twice to find out why I'd raised my voice at them yet again. Dad had reached the top of his fed-up-meter by the time the baths had ended, so it was lucky for me that exhaustion finally kicked in on Thing 2's part -- the fits had taken their toll, and she just didn't have another in her. And Thing 1, who remember has a cold, was already settling into a Benadryl-induced drowsy state.

Thing 1 was out minutes after I finished the second book. Thing 2 took a bit longer -- she just had to have one more, if minor, freak-out. As I curled up next to her she declared, "My finger hurts," and tried to pry a band-aid out of me, but I stood firm, then tried to distract her: "Think of how much fun we're going to have on Saturday when we go to ballet, and have a girl-girl date." (That's what I call a day when I take her out alone.)

At last, the boy was snoring and the girl was sleeping quietly up against me. I finally left the room and unclenched at last.

The big passions come out of these little bodies, and they tend to do so at day's end, when mom and dad have the least energy and reserve to roll with the rolling waves of feelings too big to handle.

One day, I'm going to show them that David Sipress cartoon.