The Book is done. Long live the Book! and down with badparentitis..

and...done. The book is edited, my oh so professional invoice is mailed, and I am too tired to really appreciate the experience.

(one honkingly huge cup of coffee later)

Since I started writing professionally, I've gotten some nice feedback, been embarrassed by saying the wrong thing to the odd admiring person (I am not smooth in person - blunt of speech, more thoughtful on paper) and generally been slightly befuddled and excited about the whole thing. But this, this is different.

Few people know I'm working on this book, my name will not be on the title, and yet I think it's the most satisfying project I've done in years. My little articles entertain a bit, educate a bit, but this will have impact. I remember as a new parent of a child with hemophilia, clinging to this book, as if it were a lifeline to a kind of sanity. I remember cursing the book for what it didn't have, and treating as holy writ what it *did* have. And now I was part of the team that made it!

I've come a long way, baby. Damn.
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Just heard this: Ener-G Egg Replacer is now being made in a plant that also has items with tree nuts. Drat the thing. Now I'm wondering if my box of the stuff is nut safe or potentially contaminated. Was it made before the switch or after? Do I now toss yet another $5.00 box of something, just to be sure? Remember when I bitched about keeping kosher being expensive?

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On a different note, today was a Good Mama day . Yesterday was, too. Whazzup with that?

Yesterday was easy, it was my Double Trouble day, with both boys home, and we spent it there. We played, we napped together (the joys of a baby with a virus is that he goes down, and stays there, if I'm willing to lie with him. I was. So was the Eldest, and thus the Wednesday nap is born.), we wrote letters to my grandmother. Here is the Eldest's letter.

DEAR BOM, DO NOT WORRY. THE BABY AND I ARE STILL ALIVE. LOVE, (drawing followed, of a couple of siddurs - prayer books - and a Torah scroll, for mysterious reasons).
The Eldest felt that, having lost her sister, my grandmother might be worried that other people would die, too. Hmm. So it's Bom who is worried, is it?

I'll be keeping a sharp eye on that laddie, and that topic.

Today, however, was more pre-planned Mama glory. The Eldest went off to school, while the Toddles collapsed into a phlegmy heap. He slept from 8.30am to 11.30, missing a playdate, missing being hauled around to several very interesting grocery stores - and, held hostage by the small dictator, I slept too. Aw, shucks.

At 1pm the Man came home, and I swept the Eldest off for a little one on one time. I arrived grandly at school, had a conversation with one of his teachers (I adore this woman) about the Latin origins of pudenda and whether we women should reclaim the word 'cunt' or not, and rather surprised with ourselves, she and I went off to extract the Eldest. He was, of course, learning about numbers, so I waited patiently.

We went to Belkin Lookout Farm, a local place in South Natick that has changed hands at least twice in recent memory. We'd been there a few weeks after the Toddles was born, for apple picking, and today we went to see the Winter Wonderland.

Well, it was moderately fun. There was a hayride, which the Eldest firmly declined, so we played giant checkers until he changed his mind. The hayride was, well, sedate. Then we hung around until dark, when the orchards were plugged in, and bing! lights everywhere. My favorite part:

Mum, there's a clown in that car!

He was, of course, pointing to Santa Claus.

It was cold, dark, and the pickup for the train was poorly signposted (which is to say, not at all), and a bunch of us weary travelers had to be rescued by a farm-person, who looked at us as if we were daft for waiting for pickup at the spot where the train had dropped us off. Which is, I'll point out, where the train picks one up during picking season, but I grumble. grumble, grumble.

I got to see the Eldest fretting over being lost, over being left behind, and trying to persuade me that really, his toes would never, ever unfreeze. I wonder when he became so anxious a person? So have I stopped shielding him over the past year? I think I did, actually, sometime around Malka's death. It's a decision I regret only if I fail to be sufficiently sensitive to what it means.

Such as when his friend was going in to Children's for bleeding from his surgery. The Eldest, veteran of six surgeries, got really quiet. Then he got really loud and frustrated. finally, I looked at him and said, 'He's going to be okay. I know this because you were okay, and...' here I told him the story of my ten month old in surgery, and the nurse coming out to tell us, while he was in the OR, that the Eldest was not clotting properly, even with the clotting meds. He was okay then, this child will be okay now. The Eldest took a deep breath, and visibly relaxed. Ah. Good work, mama.

Some days,. I earn my keep. And some days, I earn it and get a fluffy hair cut!

P.S. for anyone wanting cute Chanuka (Hanukka) stories, we're fresh out. I will do an Eldest medley at some point, but for now I offer up Uberimma's family as an example of overeducation gone off the rails. But oh so sweetly. And considering the pudenda conversation today, who am I to judge? (For my non-Hebraic readers, 'imma' means 'mother.')