Red Friday

by Patti

Friday I circled a mall parking lot for 40 minutes. And then I gave up and went home.

I was only there because S is in the Nutcracker again this year, and we went to support those in the cast that were doing a Black Friday sneak preview. After a scouting of the lot with no luck, and eager to not miss the 11 am showing, I dumped S at the door so she could run inside and find Cathy and Mich - whose girls were among those slated to perform - while I continued my search for parking.

But I never found parking. Instead, I got yelled at, honked at, flipped off at, sneered at, arms-up-in-air'd at...... The bloodied, beat-up man slumped into a bench at the mall entrance as paramedics tended to his war wounds didn't even surprise me. What was he thinking, trying to grab that parking space when CLEARLY IT WAS MEANT FOR THE OTHER GUY. For every spot that miraculously opened up, there were at least 20 cars waiting. How anybody knew whose "turn" it was to park was an operation of epic intelligence. And, after a night of wine and too many potatoes au gratin, I wasn't in any mood to think. ABOUT PARKING.

Apparently, the performance was running ahead of schedule, and Cathy, with whom, along with our girls, I had planned to spend some time on Black Friday since we would all be at the mall, decided to bolt as soon as it ended. Since they were leaving, there was no reason for me to continue my manic parking lot tour, and I decided to abort Operation There is No Damned Place to Park! I called S and had her meet me outside again, and out she came, donned in her carefully chosen "mall outfit" and an expression of such letdown I wanted to cry. She was so disappointed there'd be no Black Friday experience, but I made it up to her in the form of an overpriced Caramel Apple Spice from Starbucks and a promise to visit the capital of Smells like Tween Spirit, Claire's, the next day.
"But can't we go today?"
"Honey, there is NO. WAY. I am entering any store today. I mean... LOOK!" I gestured to the madness around me, making sure she didn't miss the beat-up man in the blood spattered shirt.

So, after three near-collisions in the parking lot, we headed to the serene Starbucks, where a jazzy version of Silver Bells soothed us as we sipped our steaming latte and apple concoctions. Just outside and across the street was a Best Buy. Upon imagining the bloodshed no doubt occurring inside at that very moment over deeply discounted flat screen televisions and tricked out laptops, I shuddered. I then sunk more deeply into my chair, humming along to the chorus.

Thank you, Gracias and Sas Efcharistó̱

by Patti 

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Most of you will not read this until well after tomorrow, since you will likely be cussing your way through the baking of sweet potato casseroles and the defrosting and basting of unfortunate turkeys. 

But when you do have the opportunity to read this - hopefully with a glass of pinot in your hand and a gourmet turkey sandwich slathered in cranberry sauce with a side of stuffing who's countin' carbs, not me, that's for sure - we want you to know something: We are thankful.

We love our families, we love our friends, we love the days that are blessedly granted us time and again. And despite the "bite your tongue" day that occurs every year the day after Thanksgiving - the one that has many people shivering at midnight in lines the length and complexity of ancient labyrinths, bellies bursting with Aunt Rita's green bean casserole - we even love this time of year, doorbustin' rib-shovin' shoppers and all.

There's some doorbustin' 'bout to be had.

And there's something else we want you to know: We love you, too.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's Holiday Time? No, It's Remodeling Time

by Cathy

This past weekend I pretended I was a visitor in my own home - I did a walk-through. I forced myself to look at my house from the perspective of a stranger; someone entering my house for the first time. Have you ever tried that in your house? Or are you afraid of what you will discover?

The reason I put myself through this stressful experience is because I am hosting, like I do every year, Thanksgiving dinner at my house. But each year, our house, like us, changes, evolves and well...ages. Every year, we have something new to contend with like the toll of the normal wear and tear of everyday, commonly used things, stains, breaks, cracks, spills, dirt, results of accidents and what have you. As you go through your day-to-day routines, you eventually no longer see or forget that there is a huge nail polish stain on the living room area rug...

No amount of acetone will take this off.

...or that we have turned one corner of the living room into a music area complete with guitars and keyboards, or that half the lights in the bathroom and kitchen have gone out or that the shower curtain bears the streaks of marker-stained little hands which attempted to pull it back to take much needed baths.

How about the piles of papers everywhere? Or the fact that our living room table sometimes doubles as a desk? Between my husband and I periodically working from home, the girls' schoolwork and projects, bills, brochures, mail, 'to file' piles, 'to review' piles, etc., we are begging to go green. Then there's the belongings from the girls' room, which trickle out and find themselves in every single room of the house: books, binders, clothes, stuffed animals, belts, hair accessories and last but not least, the fact that snacks and food are being had in every room that contains a television. Mix all of these together (things that really, you don't have the time to fret over as you go through your daily grind but stand out like flies in milk when you're out of that mode) and you have a house that you will be most critical of than the normal guest. After all, we all tend to be harder on ourselves than others.

So in addition to my cooking shopping list this week, I am making a "get it together" list for my house. Cleaning and tidying up of major areas aside (which is most of the work), I need to replace some light bulbs, spot clean some rugs (although I fear the nail polish is there to stay) and perhaps, if time allows, spring for a new drip coffee maker since ours now apparently, has sprung a leak. And while I'm in the kitchen, how about taking down all the papers that are tacked on the fridge like a shield of armor so I can actually see it?

In order to get my house guest-ready for the holidays, I must first, think outside the house.

Blocked

by Patti

It started out innocently enough. I got busy at work; S got busy with school and ballet; I had family visiting. You know: life? And as life got in the way, and I found less and less time to do the things outside of those necessary to survival - things like eating and drinking and peeing - I started moving away from the thing that, while unnecessary to survival by most accounts, is totally necessary to my own survival: Writing.

And then, when I found that little gaps of time opened up to me, I found myself filling them with other things totally unnecessary to survival, things like the entire Paranormal Activity series and spray painting the heels of my shoes. (Don't judge.) When I found the time to sit down and write, I felt tumbleweeds roll lazily through my brain, the words that normally flow so easily from my hands trapped within the intricate weaves of twig and dust. I had nothing. No words. No ideas. Nothing to say. Nothing to express. No picture to paint. So I would carefully close my laptop and tell myself the words would come tomorrow.

But they didn't.

"What's wrong with me?" I lamented to Cathy.
"Be patient. You'll write when you're ready." She encouraged.

Weeks later, feeling lonely on the whitespace of this blog, Cathy started giving me ideas to write about. "Come on, girl, it's no fun without you!"
"I know, I know... I'll have something on Monday."

But the words never came.

Yes, I am writing words this very moment, but it feels more like one of those "freestyle" writing experiments we did in my college creative writing class. Don't think, just write. Yet the words I know exist to tell the stories I need to tell are somewhere in outer space, perhaps dotting the black galaxy, perhaps twisted into the Milky Way, perhaps making up the handle of the Big Dipper.

Rather than try to summon them on demand, I have decided to simply give them the opportunity to disentangle from the nebula and willingly make their way back to me.

I can feel it. They're coming.

Wake Up! I'm Back

by Cathy

The second morning I returned from my trip, my inner clock jarred me awake. It was still dark out so it wasn't time to get up just yet. Was it?

'Come on,' I grumbled to myself as I tossed and turned in place. I knew that I was up because of the time zone difference between Aruba and Chicago. And on top of that, we had the daylight savings hour to contend with so now I was TWO hours off.
What time was it anyway?

I turned to look at my alarm clock and was greeted by 3:45 blinkety-blinking at me.
"What the...?"
I nudged Joe. "We had a power outage in the middle of the night."
"What?" Joe snorted awake. "What happened? What time is it?"
"Hold on, let me check my phone." Luckily it was still on and sitting on my nightstand.
"6:15? Wow, I thought it was much earlier. Glad I woke up or we would have overslept!"

So then we tried to sleep that limbo sleep where you want to get some more rest but you can't let yourself fully sleep lest you sleep too long - after all, it was rather close to our 7am wake up call - but no use. Our minds and bladders were reeling. I got up to go to the bathroom and in passing our alarm system, I heard BEEP. I hadn't heard it until then, but that doesn't mean it hadn't been going off since the power outage. I padded into the bathroom and 30 seconds later, BEEP. How long was this going on?

I grumbled at the third BEEP in two minutes. So I walked over to the alarm keypad and with one eye still shut, I started pressing buttons. In no particular order, in no code formation. Just kept pressing them but to no avail. I began using both hands now and in the process, I inadvertently hit the two buttons retained for Panic Mode.

No, no need to panic. It's just me, half asleep, pressing alarm keypads at the ass-crack of dawn.

Before I knew it, sirens were blaring and lights were flashing. The girls were out of bed and dragging into the hallway half in fear of their lives and half wanting to go back to bed. Joe was out of bed asking what was going on and shooing the girls back to bed while I was "this close" to pulling the alarm keypad out of the wall to make it stop. Thoughts of my condo neighbors running to my front door in their night clothes, bedhead hair and bad breath were running through my head as I frantically, now fully WIDE awake, tried to make the sirens stop. Please, please, please don't let the police show up! I was fully expecting my house phone to start ringing off the hook.


Then, it hit me.The fuse box!!! I opened the furnace room and clicked every fuse down the panel until I found the one connected to the alarm box. Thankfully, it stopped. And thankfully? No police, no neighbors and no phone calls.

"Well, I guess we're officially up now!" Joe said.
"My God, a few minutes ago we were sound asleep! But thank goodness I got up because we would've totally overslept today."
"Yup, you made sure THAT didn't happen," he replied.
Ahhhhh....good to be home again.

Aruba (not Jamaica) Is Where I Wanna Take Ya

by Cathy

Bon Bini to Aruba!

One of the best perks about my job is getting to travel. I'm not talking about seeing the inside of airports and conference rooms business trips here; I'm talking about experiencing these destinations as potential getaways. So when the opportunity arose for me to fly to Aruba, I cannonballed into it. Granted, we had to take notes, jot relevant stats, info and details down, meet the right people and ask the right questions, however it's all done in a casual, very non-business like setting. In other words, as many friends described it complete with airquotes: "work"

The start of my trip started off a bit frantic, thanks to an hour and a half delay with my connecting flight, which pushed into my scheduled itinerary once on Aruba. I literally had 10 minutes to check in, change into a fashionable-ish outfit and meet the rest of my media group in the hotel lobby. Once at our event, I eased into the DJ's drumbeats and slowly melted into my Vodka Mango concoction created especially for this press event, which took place on the pool deck of the swanky Renaissance Hotel across from the turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea. Aahhh...this "work" was more like it.

Part of my "work" included covering this:

2nd annual Aruba InStyle Fashion Week

This is when designers from Latin American, the Caribbean and even the U.S. showcase their new collections. As I eventually found out, there was press coverage from all of these places: Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela (which we were only about 18 miles off the coast of), Curacao, Columbia, Costa Rica, Barbados and even from Spain. Combined with the diverse cultures already present on Aruba (the national language spoken is Papiamento and are taught Spanish, Dutch and English in addition to this in school), I was in for a multi-cultural treat. And as I also found out, Latin Americans are NEVER on time for ANYTHING. Let's just leave it at that, shall we?

Needless to say we attended some fantastic open-air fashion shows/club parties:

Ronchi de Cuba show at the famed Versace Mansion. This is someone's house, y'all.

Swimwear show while dipping my toes in the water? Why, thank you.

We had an amazing island tour on the Kuckoo Kunuku party buses:

Turn up the music and shake your maracas!! (Famed California lighthouse in the background).

Walked through natural boulder formations a la 127 Hours.

 We visited Gold Mill ruins on the rocky northern coast of the island and came across these stacked rock piles. Island folklore says that you must stack five rocks (any size), make three wishes and in three months, given your stack is still intact against high winds, your wishes will come true.

Wishes, wishes everywhere, as far as the eye can see...

Me with my wish stack. Fingers crossed!

We were refreshed from the hot sun with fresh coconut juice, macheted open for our drinking pleasure.

Tasted some amazing local cuisine like Keshi Yena

Went on a tranquil catamaran/snorkeling excursion. Anyone want a gander at a real, live shipwreck?

And of course, no trip would be complete without a shopping excursion. Just FYI, Aruba has 1.5% sales tax and boasts every luxury brand store you can think of, so ladies, this is the place to get that Gucci purse. Speaking of which, while in that store perusing the handbags - I have my eye on one or two I'm salivating over - another woman comes in and the sharp-dressed suit asks, "Hello, what can I show you today?"
Her reply was my favorite: "Oh, nothing. I'm just here visiting my purse."
Ladies, can we relate or what? Loved that.

Instead, I chose to shop in a little Gingerbread-looking outdoor "mall" that clearly evoked the Dutch architecture the island inherits from its owners. 

Little pink houses - for shopping!

Our media group. And, oh, that amazing, fake-looking sea.

My visit there was quite the sensory and cultural experience to say the least. I will always cherish the sights, sounds, flavors and company. Until the next time...

(Oh, and nothing against Jamaica. Been there, done that. Just keeping with the flow of that breezy Cocktail theme song.)

When Mom Is Away, Confusion Is at Play

by Cathy

I was recently away for five days (much more on this coming soon). This meant that I left the girls in the care of my husband. Aside from the hours they were at school, he had to handle the A-Z of everything that involves them, school, food, homework, activities, baths, and basic home upkeep so that the rooms and hallways are walkable - essentially, everything I normally tackle while present.

Now before I go on, I must be honest here and say that my husband helps out A LOT. His work schedule is extremely flexible and for this, I am very thankful. We are respectful of each other's time and schedules and pitch in accordingly when the other cannot. His main tasks are preparing breakfast, shuttling the kids to school and back and forth from activities and pitching in around the house with homework and basic household upkeep.

I have been away once before for several days this year to Mexico. Upon my return, I didn't have time to assess how things went down here since I was saddled with a bout of the stomach flu and was out for a couple of days. By then, the follow up got lost in the shuffle. This time, 'twas a different story.

I knew things were going to be a little tough when I received a text from him while I was about to board my flight out of Chicago, around 7:30am. "What do I pack for lunch? PBJ?" It would be a long several days for him. Here are a few of the highlights:

- "Papi got my snack bag all mixed up," my six-year old offered up at breakfast the morning after my arrival. "What do you mean?"
He gave me the wrong snack bag and I got confused and forgot what it looked like so I think I lost it at school."
"So you didn't have your snack on that day?"
"No and I still can't find it!"

- As I busily fell back into my routine by preparing lunches during breakfast, I opened the fridge to find my reflection staring back at me. There was nothing in there except a loaf of sliced bread, a carton of eggs, some random yogurt drinks, a gallon of milk and some other odds and ends.
"You didn't go to the grocery store at all while I was gone?"
"Yeah," Joe mentioned smoothly. "We got bread and milk. The basics."

Our refrigerator now doubles as a mirror.

- I opened my kitchen cabinets to reach for a plate and noticed that my entire cupboard had been rearranged. No one apparently knew the storage system I've had in place for the last 15 years in those cabinets so stuff was stacked upon other random, breakable stuff and completely out of place. Whose house was I in?

- That same evening I announced that I was going to take a quick shower before bedtime. Upon entering my bathroom, I tripped on a giant, plastic, pink hula hoop that had taken residence in there during my absence. Just then, I hear my husband say, "Ari needs a bath too. She's pretty funky."
"Didn't she take a bath while I was gone?!"
"I tried, but she just wouldn't listen so I said, 'Forget it.' I had so much to do with work."
I verified this after I forced Ari into the bathtub and scrubbed her scalp and body raw.
"Honey, why didn't you take a bath while I was gone?"
"Papi didn't give me one!!"

- I unpacked my suitcase and opened the washing machine to throw in my vacay load and saw that there was a load, already washed and wrung, still sitting in there. Crossing my fingers that it hadn't been in there too long, (it didn't smell bad at the time), I threw the clothes into the dryer and hoped for the best. The next night, while looking for her PJs, Bella screams down the hall, "MOM! Our dryer smells like butt! And so do all of our clothes in it. Everything smells like butt!"
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"Smell this!" she said, and practically shoved her pants up my nose. "This is from the dryer."
"Ewww," I said, twitching my nose. "Yeah, papi forgot the load in the machine and I thought it would be okay but I guess it's not. I have to re-wash the whole load."
"Lemme smell it," countered Joe. "It doesn't smell. I don't smell butt. I don't smell anything," said the man who cringes at every towel he dries himself with, convinced they all smell like mold. Maybe it's because loads need to be immediately put in the dryer rather than chilling out in the washing machine for a day or two?

- The day after my arrival, the girls were dropped off at home after school by my neighbor as I was busily preparing food.
"Mmmmm," said Bella taking off her coat. "Smells good! I'm starving!"
"What did you guys eat when I was gone?" I found an opportunity to ask without Joe around.
"Frozen chicken nuggets, frozen fish sticks, frozen pizza, frozen potatoes..." Bella rattled off exasperated. "I want some real food!"

I smiled an ear to ear grin, knowing that there is nothing like a woman's/mother's touch. Although fathers may provide the basics necessary to live and get to places on time, mothers provide the little creature comforts that make a house a home.

Pillow Talk

by Cathy

Ever since Bella was born (actually, since she was a toddler) I have had to lay with her - and now my younger daughter - to fall asleep at night. Why? Because we have trained them this way. Not because that's how we intended this to go. We did not intend to spend hours upon hours of precious, free time sitting in a half-lit room staring at the strange light designs on the ceiling made by that giant star hanging on the wall. Hours that could have been spent doing much needed housework or taking advantage of even more needed "me" time or "couple time". No siree.

Bella was a finicky sleeper. She did just fine as a baby and I was even able to "nap when the baby naps". But as she entered her toddler years and became cognizant that she would be sleeping alone, she morphed into a very troubled sleeper. She repeatedly got up, dragging her exhausted little body out of her toddler bed and into the living room where I would be practically hiding under the couch cushions so that she could just return to bed and put herself to sleep. Because I knew...I KNEW...that once I entered that room and sat on that floor next to her bed, it would still take her centuries to fall asleep. She even caught me trying to crawl out more than a few times, (picture that pretty scene, would you?) whereupon I had to start the whole ordeal over again since she was now traumatized that I would leave her.

Many a night would I sit on that floor, sometimes literally crying tears of frustration at how this process had gotten so out of hand. She needed some type of security, some kind of reassurance to sleep quickly and soundly and even to this day, her bed is strewn with numerous special stuffed animals, her special pillow and Cuddles, and she has even concocted a little "nest" for herself to sleep in amongst throngs of pillows and teddy bears.

I don't lay with her now unless she asks me to, which can be about once a week. Sometimes I sit on her bed for a few minutes, sometimes I'll crawl under the covers with her since I'll only be able to do this for a short time yet before one of us falls out of the narrow twin bed.

However, with our younger daughter, I was determined to NOT repeat this mistake and thankfully, she was a very independent, self-soothing baby once we passed the "let her cry it out" phase. I avoided laying with her like the plague, but my husband on the other hand, who had no idea what I had been through with Bella, decided to start laying with her. The only good part is that he fell asleep instantly (whereas I would sit and mull over mental to-do lists, things I could be doing now, making myself more anxious than sleepy).  I was secretly happy it wasn't me this time.

But eventually, he tried to cut off ties too. He liked his free television time to veg on the couch and watch the news. He soon started denying her requests and then Ari tried to sideline me into the task. I obliged more than once, but then nipped that too in the proverbial bud. I came up with a hardline rule, since she now was old enough to lay by herself: I would only sit on the edge of her bed for ONE minute and then I would leave.

That has been my M.O. for quite some time now but the other night, Ari convinced me to lay down next to her "just for two minutes." What mother can deny that for her child? So I did, but vowed I would get up in a few minutes and made that clear. She agreed. As soon as I lay down, her little arm swung around and circled my neck comfortingly. Then she began to talk.

[I discovered that as they grew, the more they wanted to tell me as I was tucking them into bed. This was their time to confess or ruminate over things that only a clear mind, free of noise, gadgetry and television clutter, would allow. And oh, the things I heard. ]

I listened intently to her concerns, her observations, her fears, to things said to her by friends that have already left obvious impressions on her. As she was talking, I couldn't help but think to myself, What else have I missed about their thoughts and lives by not laying with them? 
If this is the time they feel most comfortable to talk to me, why haven't I realized this and taken advantage of it more? 
What if these are the only moments they would open up and I would get quality time with them?

Apparently, the fear of laying with them until they go to college had scared me into possibly depriving myself of a piece of them. These little pieces that make up the parts of who they are, how they feel, how they will think and live their lives, how they become affected and how they process life's curveballs and curiosities - these were the moments, and I was letting them go right past me, to be dreamt away and never return.

So now I lay with them - even if it's a few more minutes than I "allow" myself - and take in every little part of their beings - their hugs, their kisses, their caresses, their whispers, their observations, their revelations, their laughs, their minds and their hearts. Then I can drift off to sleep knowing that I was there to listen, to help, to make a joke, to take in these small, yet precious moments of life with them.

The iFamily

by Cathy


Hey y'all! Yee-haw!!!!
We done leaped into the 21st century!!!
We bought an iPad.

You gotta know our backstory to know that this is kind of a big deal in our house, and apparently, a shifting of the planets' alignment in my tween's world.

First off, let me clarify that we are not like The Beverly Hillbillies ; we are forward-thinking, technology-aware, on the edge-of-trends people. I have an iPhone, Bella has an iPod and we have one Mac laptop and one iMac desktop. The problem, however, is how old these two computers are.

If it wasn't for Mac's sleek, minimalistic design, you could not tell that this is 12 years old:

That's our new, powerful, smartcased iPad wedged up tauntingly against a classic.

Or that this is seven years old - at least:

iMac G5: cool name, cool design, bad mutha(board)

My husband, a bonafide MacHead and a staunch believer in using something until you can't physically use it anymore, refuses to part with the tiny little laptop, claiming, "Are you kidding me? This is retro Apple. It's vintage! It's awesome! People at the coffee studio always ask me to check it out!"

Ya think it's 'cause it's sort of like, a relic? 

This is one of the first MacBooks Apple came out with so it is sort of a collectible and to be completely honest, if you can get past the tingy sound when it powers on or the fact that you have to connect it to the internet with an ethernet cable (GASP!) that little thing has so much power, memory, speed and form, it seems almost wrong - sort of like watching tiny toddlers start walking prematurely and how in the world can that be physically possible? It's our little workhorse, which will now be used by our tween for all of the middle school essays she was to write, so it's still being put to great use!

The desktop, however, is a whole other story. When you turn this dinosaur on, it sounds like The Gong Show. GNNNNNNnnnnnnngggggggg!!!!! One of the few goof-ups Apple made had to do with this particular iMac G5. Apparently, as we were told by MacHead repairmen, this version has a defective motherboard that will eventually cause the computer to just die. Then they went ahead and listed the "symptoms" caused by the "diseased" motherboard and wouldn't you know it, we are experiencing them now: it can't be upgraded to the newest version of Mac OS; it starts going dead on us; the cooling fan kicks in loudly when it's off, just to name a few. Oh, and our favorite? Ever since we did a slight upgrade to Leopard, it set something else askew within its sick self, whereby it shuts completely down if it's left unattended for a short amount of time. As in five minutes. Gotta go to the bathroom while you're in the middle of something? Fuggedaboutit. Gotta restart the sucker all over again. GNNNNNNnnnnnnngggggggg!!!!! 
Oh, and are you sitting? It's also NOT wireless. We don't even own a router! (DOUBLE GASP!)

So now you know why getting this iPad was such a big deal (mainly for my husband, who does a lot of work from home). For me, slightly less because I got myself an iPhone a year ago and joined the high tech masses of society. I was so excited about it, I slept with it next to me on my nightstand. Still do. But for my husband, who is still tinkering around with a T-Mobile phone, the iPad was an angelic Godsend. He's still getting used to its capabilities, nuances and little quirks, but as the days go on, his awe for the thing becomes greater and greater.

He happened to email me something while I was at the grocery store the other day so I emailed him back from my phone. Under his message, was the omnipresent, "Sent From my iPad" and under mine, "Sent From my iPhone." I didn't even realize that until he emailed me back and said, "We are an iFamily now. :)" I could almost feel the pride emanating from the screen. Until our iMac dies and we buy a new desktop.

Sweetly, Come Undone

by Cathy

I have the sweetest, most thoughtful girls on the planet. They are both kind, respectful and generous.

Last night, my six-year old, Ari, wanted to surprise my husband and I with what she called a "romantic dinner". The thought popped into her head two nights ago while I was tucking her into bed - although I have no idea what prompted that thought. Either way, she had it stuck in her head and insisted on doing it, and after some coaxing and savvy explaining, I got her to hold off until last night. And boy, did she ever remember.

She got home from school, ate, did her homework, rushed off to her bedroom, shut the door and began her planning preparations for our "date night in". She staked her claim in the living room and posted some signs (backed up by verbal warnings) that we should not, under any circumstance, enter or peek into that living room until she invited us in. After what seemed like hours of scurrying to and fro, sliding around some chairs, requesting step stools, carrying bins, writing out menus, digging up pink aprons and covering the coffee table in a fuzzy, teddy bear blanket/tablecloth, we were summoned to be seated.

My husband and I sat across from each other, literally on the edges of our seats due to fluffy couch pillows placed lovingly against the dining room chair seatbacks for comfort. No matter that our knees were crouched up against the sharp edges of the coffee table - we were on a romantic date and nothing was going to spoil this fun. Pretend tea was served to us in Ari's plastic, princess Disney tea set as we perused our hand-written menus, courtesy of Ari's Cafaye.

My menu had Brecfist and Dusrte as such:
wofols
eggs
meteu (meat)
spgedey
cack
SunDay
ice screme
cokese

Joe's had Lunch and Dinnr as such:
eggs
Hot Dogs
chiginugit
friyse
spgedye
brede
meteu
salide

Ari dutifully stood guard, decked up in an adult-sized pink apron which was tied all the way up under her underarms and mentally took note of our orders. She set up some tunes on a keyboard and for full effect, we unsealed the plastic film from around our fireplace for the first time since they were toddlers and fired that baby up. Ari even entertained us with a puppet show from behind our couch called "The Frog Who Won't Leave the Puppy Alone," complete with intermissions where she allowed us our "privaseat" and "funny talk".

Towards the end of our hot date, I asked if I could personally thank the owner of Ari's Cafaye and she shyly said, "That's me!" So I grabbed her, tickled her and plopped her on my lap, whereupon I smothered her with millions of thankful mommy hugs and kisses. Worried as to her father's potential jealousy, she looked over her shoulder mid-tickle and gestured to him that she will come to him next.

Later that night, once we had tucked both girls into bed, I cleaned up the living room and collected the menus and signs posted outside the living room. Then my eye caught a welcome sign that I missed on my way in:

The sentiment; the spelling; the innocence. I've come undone.

And that, my dear friends, is when I lost it. I don't even know where all of this emotion was coming from and was baffled that all it took was to read this sign, the catalyst in my mommy meltdown. I began sobbing - the type of sobbing where your body is racked with heaving sighs and multiple attempts at catching your breath. I was drowning in tears and my face was so contorted with wails that I now know why they call it the "ugly cry". And it just kept coming. My eyes became puffy, my nose filled up with snot and I was wailing like a baby.

My husband shuffles into our bedroom half-asleep. "Are you okay? What's wrong?!"
And there I stood, hand wrist-deep in a tissue box, face beet-red, puffy and smeared in makeup-infused tears, and replied, "My babies are growing up!!!!"
"Of course they're growing up," he says, totally unhelpful and setting himself up to be punched by his lunatic wife/mother of his kids.
"Pretty soon she's gonna grow up and figure out how to spell and we'll be done with this phase of our kids! Look!" I said, shoving the sign under his nose. "It's the cutest most innocent thing and that is going to come to an end. SOOOONNN!!" I fell apart again.
What was wrong with me?!?! Why was this hitting me so hard? It's not like I haven't seen this writing before; I must have looked insane.
"Yes, but when they do, we'll still get written letters, just of a different kind," he tried hard to reassure me.
"But I like these!!" I cried back, slamming her hand-written note down on the bed.
After a long pause filled with lots of sniffing, nose-blowing and heaved sighs, I turned back to Joe.
"Just wait. You'll experience this too. For me, it was this letter. For you, it will be something else very seemingly insignificant yet monumental in some way and it will hit you out of nowhere. Just wait," I taunted. "You'll see."

And with that, I drifted off to sleep with sweet thoughts of my sweet girls in sweet, unforgettable moments that I hold onto with the tenacity that only a mother could take in, hold dear and never let go of.