Today I have the great honor of guest posting on my friend Toni’s blog: The Happy Housewife! She is helping spread the word about the contest. If you need any help with meal planning, budgeting, organizing, homeschooling, or finding deals online, The Happy Housewife is THE go-to resource! Check it out!

Meanwhile, speaking of “homemade memories,” we made a new one today:

It’s Noah’s first day of Pre-K (sniff, sniff). When I started tearing up this morning, Noah said to me, “It’s okay, Mom—you can still call me your baby.”

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

The older Jude gets, and the more I dress him in Noah’s hand-me-downs, the more I am seeing double.

Observe Noah as a baby:

Now Jude:

Each with his own unique look, but unmistakeably brothers.

Speaking of brothers, I stumbled across this scene the other day:

Now that he’s mobile, Jude is always interested in what his big brother’s up to, and they are starting to “play” together, though Jude’s version of playing is mostly chewing on things. Noah is beginning to incorporate him into his storylines, recently asking me if the “Emperor” was done with his nap so that they could continue their galactic battle.

I am glad to have these two little people to occupy my mind and arms and life. Nana (their “Grand-Nana”) is slowly slipping away from us, and I find that I am hugging and kissing the boys all the more, celebrating the life here that precedes the life to come. Please continue to keep my grandparents in your prayers.

Dear Animal Control:

I am contacting you because I am concerned that wild creatures may have taken up residence in my home. For the past several months, just before sunset, these creatures make their appearance. They are noisy, ferocious, and extremely rowdy.

It is clear from their behavior that these creatures have not been tamed, though their appearance would lead one to think that they were once domesticated.

With the passage of time, I am becoming concerned that their persistent shrieks and yowls are disturbing the peace.

If you would please send an officer to investigate this matter at your earliest convenience, I would greatly appreciate it. Please come attired in protective gear, since these creatures do appear to be dangerous.

Thank you.

With best regards,

Lauren

What kind of mother lets her children wriggle all over the library floor
while she finds a book?

Um, yeah… That would be me.

Let’s not even discuss how dirty that carpet might be. I really wanted a book.

Jude, happy to be liberated from the stroller, took that opportunity to MAKE HIS FIRST OFFICIAL CRAWL. Knees up, one scooting in front of the other.

Which, poetically speaking, is just too perfect.
A library should always be a place of discovery.

Later in the day, we went over to Beki’s new house for lunch and a swim.

Noah, perhaps inspired by his brother, also felt adventurous,
surprising us with what became the first official swim of 2010.

CANNONBALL!
(Actually what he shouted was, “Captain Piggies!” an inside joke
with Owen which I have yet to understand.)

A wiggleworm and a tadpole, my two sons. It is going to be a busy summer.

Mom with two-day-old Jude (July ‘09)

Mom’s flight took off three hours ago. We always say goodbye curbside, foregoing the logistical acrobatics of parking the car, unloading the boys, and schlepping our way to security together, only for me to tear up in front of the stone-faced TSA officer checking driver’s licenses. It’s much easier to keep it brief and simple. Hugs, kisses, last-minute checks (Do you have your boarding pass? Did you remember your wallet? Security comes before the tram, don’t forget), then promises to call and text and see each other again soon. Finally, she turns and enters the airport, and we wave and blow kisses until the last possible second, when one of us finally drops out of sight.

Last week, before her visit, I waxed my face with two of those diabolical Sally Hansen strips that you plaster to your skin and then yank off with a swift, wrenching motion that briefly makes you rue the day you were born.

Our goodbyes always feel a little like that.

I did not, however, get to enjoy a good old-fashioned wallow in my gloom, seeing as I was responsible for the transporting, feeding, entertaining, and lullabying of two small children, one of whom had consumed roughly a pound of Easter chocolate in under 90 minutes. By the time I got the boys to bed, I felt like the lukewarm burrito I had heated and reheated three times in the course of the evening but had yet to actually sit down and consume. Meanwhile, Noah was still calling out from his bed for his “Arf Trooper, Storm Trooper, and alien guy”—toys the size of my thumb that were scattered somewhere amid the overturned toy bins on the sun room carpet.

Mom, come back! I silently pleaded. All weekend long, she had filled the role of the good fairy I wished to have always hovering at my shoulder. The dishwasher magically ran and emptied. The laundry aligned itself into neatly folded piles. Ice cubes sprang forth from empty trays to fill glasses of Diet Coke that fizzed invitingly before me. A date night with my husband materialized out of thin air—an entire evening for the two of us to enjoy dinner and a movie. An Easter miracle!

It felt so good to be cared for that way. If the mothering of children can be said to resemble a plane flight, fraught with delays and turbulence as we shuttle our kids from total dependence to functional adulthood, then mothering a grown woman—a mother herself—can be said to resemble the in-flight service that keeps everyone sane and comfortable from departure to destination. All mothers need to be mothered.

This seasoned corps of flight attendants, be they linked to us by blood or friendship, are the ones who direct us to our seats, hand us pillows and cold drinks, and point out the location of the oxygen masks, should we experience an unusual drop in cabin pressure. They shove our baggage into tight overhead compartments and report suspicious activity if we look like we are going to launch an attack, or explode. They are the ones we look to when the ride gets bumpy, their serene faces devoid of any signs of panic. They remind us to buckle our seat belts. They help manage missed connections. They pick up the castoff People magazines and USA Todays and candy wrappers that we’ve left scattered about like a child’s toys. Sometimes they even hand out those little plastic wings, as if to say, Thank you for flying. You are special today. If we’re lucky, somewhere between the beverage service and the in-flight movie, we relax long enough to close our eyes and doze, safe in the care of someone else.

This weekend, I got to doze—long enough to be reminded I was soaring.

Thanks, Mom.

Our cozy blue house

I remember, growing up, giving my mom grief every time company came to visit. The kind of whining that turns one syllable words into two syllables. “MO-om, whyyyy do we have to CLEEEE-EAN the whole house?”

Not surprisingly, my delivery ruined any chance of constructive negotiation, though it was a valid question. After all, it wasn’t like anyone was going to actually see the inside of my bedroom closet or run a gloved finger across my bookcases, unless perhaps they were in the mood to peruse my complete canon of Babysitters Club paperbacks. Yet without fail, whenever anyone motored down the interstate toward our door, the house was a hive of activity. Sheets were laundered and changed. Shelves and tables were rubbed down with Lemon Pledge, dispensed in noxious clouds that burned our nostrils. Bathroom cabinets were cleaned out to accommodate the industrial strength cans of hair spray that my sister and I used to shellac our bangs into wavy, concrete sculptures. Floors were scrubbed to lift the aforementioned hair spray from the bathroom tile so that our grandparents would not feel like they had stepped into the La Brea Tar Pits upon entry.

Even as I complained, I knew that all of that cleaning heralded good things. Preparation always rubbed shoulders with expectation. Once we reached the final stage where the house had been vacuumed and we were officially banished from any room where our footprints might blight the perfectly arranged carpet hairs, we loafed around the kitchen or outside, usually waiting for the crunch of tire on gravel that signaled Nana and Papa’s arrival.

Then, magic.

It was in the smell of Nana’s perfume; kisses tattooed on our cheeks in red lipstick; Papa’s embraces; comments on how big we’d grown, or how the drive went, or what beautiful weather we were having; the Dunkin Donuts thermos emptied and fresh coffee poured; the sweets; the presents; the stories about New York or Acapulco or Texas, or wherever they had last traveled; the ruckus of four children finally free to roam about the house again. Liberated, we trod on the carpets and sprayed our hair spray and slept soundly at night between clean sheets, corners tucked so tight you felt like you were pinned. On those visits I felt a little like the house, clean and full of light.

Now, twenty years later, I am rubber-gloved to the elbows, scrubbing and spraying in anticipation of my mom’s visit tomorrow. She is flying in from Colorado for Easter weekend—also her birthday weekend—and the four days stretched out before us look like presents yet to be unwrapped. We spoke on the phone this evening, and I told her I was cleaning, and she told me not to clean too much, and I told her I wouldn’t, and of course I will, because that’s just what we do. It’s as much a part of my DNA as my addictions to chocolate and bean burritos. There are window blinds to be dusted, splatters of baby food crusting the chairs that need to be wiped down, sheets to be laundered and tucked in tight hospital corners on a newly rotated mattress. They are things she will probably never even notice, but which signal the importance of the occasion and the excitement accompanying it—each chore scrubbing clean the palette on which to pour the colors and dip the brush.

Then, magic.

Our grocery store has a program where they send newsletters, coupons, and free gifts to parents of preschoolers.

Yesterday they sent us a chef’s hat. Noah told me to give it to Jude.

I’m not sure if they want him to cook an omelette or say the Easter mass.

If the latter, his is the first Popemobile to feature teething toys.

I have good news for the universe—the galaxies are at peace. Just look at the scene I came upon at the breakfast table:

Noah had apparently convened a Jedi roundtable over Cheerios and milk.

Vader was a little miffed that the bananas hadn’t turned to the Dark Side (he prefers them overripe).

Yoda was his usual sagacious self. “Love them you don’t. Eat them you will.” He also saw great potential in Jude. “Young Padawan you may be. Strong is the Force in you. Use it for good you must.”

Word on the street is that next month, they’re having a pancake breakfast.

If the Wookiees show up, I’m going to need a lot of batter.

Such is the price of peace.

The face of a new campaign.