Minky & Me

When Minky was small, maybe three or four months old, we got her a stuffed bunny that Layr dubbed Willard. Willard is mostly her bedtime companion. While falling asleep she hooks a finger over her nose and sucks her thumb while simultaneously holding Willard’s ears in each hand. It’s pretty adorable.

Minky pronounced Willard | ja – jee | until this morning. We’d constantly say Willard this or Willard that but to no avail. Today as we were heading off in the car I said, “Coco, can you say will?” Immediately she said, “Willard.” It has since morphed into, “Willow.” I’ll take it.

This has also happened with “Rocky,” which was strangely also pronounced | ja – jee | until I realized Minky was able to say “rock” with no problem. Then just that suggestion of saying “rock” first and then adding “ee” enabled her to put it together.

A great adventure yesterday and today in Maine. Yesterday we strolled around Portland after checking into our hotel and had some food. Later we swam in the hotel pool.

This morning I missed a turn and wound up being fifteen minutes late to the casting call. Getting there earlier wouldn’t have made much of a difference. There were a billion people already lined up. I took the opportunity to catch up on a little New Yorker reading while in line.

After standing for a good portion of the time in the hot sun, a man came along to tell us that at 10:15 AM they would no longer see babies. I was pretty sure we wouldn’t make it based on how slowly the line was moving but I waited anyway. Of course there was grumbling from the masses over this news. The woman in front of me said she’d be cutting up her LL Bean Visa card if they turned her away. Someone else suggested that LL Bean give out $50 gift certificates.

Soon enough the same guy came back and told a woman standing three people ahead of me that she would be last the one with a baby to go in. We had advanced to within feet of the door by this time. I asked if any exceptions could be made, that we’d come from Boston. He let us go. We’ll see what happens.

A woman who’d been standing behind me (and who kept saying to her son very loudly again and again, “I love you so much. Do you know how much I love you? I really really love you.”) ended up arguing with the guy and ignored what he’d said. She marched right in and got done with pictures before we did.

Amazingly Minky sat in her stroller almost the entire time we waited nibbling on raisins and rice crispies.

After our “work” was done, we made our way to Old Orchard beach. I’ve been to Maine a lot but hadn’t ever gone there. We ate some awful pasta and then hit beach. Here we are ~

Off to Maine today with Minky. It’s our first trip without daddy. We’re going to a casting call tomorrow morning. Though I don’t look forward to the required trips back to Maine if she’s chosen, it would be fun to see her in a print ad. Ugh. I’m a stage mother.

Just a quick entry about our great weekend. Took all the kids to the Salem Willows on Saturday. Had a lovely time. See the photos here. Saturday night, courtesy my belle-fille et beau-fils, Layr and I went out to watch the Tour de France at a nearby watering hole. We rode our tandem there. Heaven. And I still can’t believe Lance Armstrong won for the 7th time!

Sunday we went to Walden for a swim while Minky napped at home and later went to our friends’ cookout by ourselves. It was pretty amazing to get some time alone.

Merci Sinéad and Tristan!

My mother enrolled my sister and me in swimming lessons at Cedar lake when we were small. My memories of the lessons have been distilled into one image. Me, standing at the edge of the lake; the gray of the sky matching the color of the cold water. A vague sense of dispare over the fact that I’d never really be a good minnow or shark or whatever the hell those swim classifications were.

When my mother reminisces about those lessons she tells a different story. She talks about her delight at sitting alone on a cool uncrowded beach with her coffee in one hand and donut in the other. Her version has a slight get-out-of-jail-free-card quality to it.

The other day, sitting in my chair at the pond with Minky playing happily beside me, I could identify with those feelings my mother had.

Here are some of the fun things Coco has been saying lately:

wah-doo (water, refined from wah-dee)

die-poo (diaper, refined from da-pee)

icky

ah-doo (otter)

di-din (Tristan)

Zach-ee (Zachary)

vuh-vhy (french fry)

ee-beam (ice cream)

and my personal favorite

ah doke a doke (okie dokie)

Yesterday, Minky lost her footing and fell in a friend’s wading pool. I was standing right next to her, as was my friend. In my practiced non-reactive way, I looked down and observed my daughter flailing on her back, eyes as wide as saucers. Her were hands open and next to her head, think Dustin Hoffman looking through the glass at the church in The Graduate. It seemed like forever before my internal command center communicated with that faraway outpost known as my arms. Right! Bend over and lift. I scooped her up and watched as she opened her mouth and no sound came out. She sputtered for a second before crying, water cascading down her face. After the initial shock was over, she was fine. In five minutes she was strolling around the yard exploring.

My friend’s reaction, like mine, was understated, leading me to believe that the whole thing was no big deal. Certainly nothing that would cause increasing unease after the fact when telling your husband about it or writing the entry for your blog. If anything these kinds of events lessen in scariness in the subsequent hours rather than the opposite, right?

This afternoon Minky left her room, ran ahead of me toward the stairs (leading to our kitchen, which are luckily carpeted) and threw herself down them.

Though I’ve learned to temper my reactions to almost all of her falls in the last six months, I completely freaked out. I shrieked her name several times at great volume and went running to where she landed, prone, her face pressed against the baseboard, one arm beside her body and one underneath. She was crying quite loudly; from shock, pain or fear at her mother’s screaming it’s impossible to say.

This isn’t a surprise, the falling. For awhile now Coco has been egging me on when it comes to the stairs or chairs she’s climbed on. She’ll get right to the edge and then look over at me and actually chuckle as she steps back. It’s charming really. Who needs aerobic exercise when you have a toddler to get that heart rate going.

When I scooped her up she was really wailing. I walked her the rest of the way downstairs and did my usual frantic pacing finally coming to rest on the family room sofa. I looked her over with hands that were shaking uncontrollably. Everything but her nose was uninjured. The nose is a bit red and bled slightly.

Ever notice how presidents appear to age decades in the span of four years? Like Bill Clinton. By the time he was in his third year as president it looked like someone rang his youth out like a towel. I know one of these days I’m gonna wake up with gray hair, looking haggard and spent. Problem is this job doesn’t have term limits.

Two great stages in the Tour de France yesterday and today. Lance Armstrong is in the maillot jeune and will hopefully still be wearing that color when he rides into Paris a week from today. This morning we watched George Hincapie win his first stage in the tour. It was his first stage win since he started riding in 1996. What amazing athletes. And the commentary from Phil Leggett and Paul Shervin is brilliant.

Coincidentally, I got on my bike yesterday for the first time in two years for a short ride with Layr. We did about 12 miles. It felt great. The Brawn stayed home with Minky.

The rest of the day was very eventful. We went to our old neighborhood and up to visit Layr’s sister. Last night when Layr returned to our old neighborhood (we had gone the first time for a party being thrown by one of Layr’s co-workers that hadn’t really gotten off the ground yet), I started a new knitting project: the Anouk.

This morning we took Minky out for a tandem ride. She enjoyed herself, especially when trying to push me off my seat.

Yesterday I took Minky and my belle-fille, Sinéad, to nearby pond for a swim. We were having fun digging in the dirt, collecting rocks, and playing a game with the plastic purple starfish.

The starfish game, which came about from mild desperation to actually stay in the water for a bit of time, goes like this: you throw the starfish, which floats, and Minky wades through the water to get it. It also broke that dizzying cycle of getting out of the water, attempting to hijack other kids’ toys and then getting back into the water. Unfortunately I got distracted at the end of the game and left the starfish in the water. By the time I realized it, the starfish had floated away.

I also got to try out my new sand chair while Sinéad and Minky played. Not since I lived at home have I actually sat on a beach chair. I got the kind my mom always got – wooden arms, with the cloth back that reclines.

So there we were enjoying the day when Matt Damon came striding down onto the beach.

Sinéad was sitting on a towel a bit away from where I was standing. I gestured to her to walk over. I said, “Matt Damon is here.” She said she thought that the guy she had just seen looked like him.

Matt Damon was standing to the side of my chair so I missed seeing him change from his clothes into a wet suit. It would have been blatant gawking on my part had I looked. Sinéad, on the other hand, went back her towel to call her friend, Blair and reported the goings on. It took approximately fourteen seconds after we first spotted Matt Damon for her to get someone on the line. She was sorry that we didn’t have our camera. Star magazine might have paid handsomely for the photos.

Later, after Matt and his friends had swam away I told Sinéad that I had stifled an impluse to call out from my sand chair, “Matt Damon, if you see our starfish floating in the middle of the pond, can you bring it back to us?”