Two-year-olds and eating well and going to bed

Y'all!

I have SO forgotten what it's like to live with a two-year-old. As such, this is what I feel like right now.

Snore!

Two-year-olds are adorable but they are very messy and often loud, despite having relatively few words. They like to drag food around the house with them, discarding like tiny Hansels bits and pieces as they go. Unlike Hansel, no toddler intends to return along his meandering path, not least with a dustbuster. 

I adore my precious nephew, but I have forgotten about tee-tee fountains and the utter delight of made up names for things. I am now hazy on obsessions with things like helicopters and the associated sound effects that go along with frequent reminders of them. Dunh-dunh-dunh-dunh say the chopper blades. 

Memories of the very emphatic ways that two-year-olds can express "No!" burbled up from the recesses of my mind in recent days. I was reminded of the genius of Mo Willems describing a melting down toddler as "going boneless" in Knuffle Bunny. If ever I describe anything so perfectly, I'll feel accomplished to the max.

I have somewhat forgotten about watching young tots learn stuff. How they practice and practice and then one day say "turtle" in the most endearing "tuh-tle" way. And there is nothing like the gut laugh of a little one. I love, love, and will do anything for the moments my boys still guffaw like toddlers do.

Mom left yesterday, and before taking Elia and Leone to the airport this afternoon, we had a little birthday party (Leone likes Baked & Wired cupcakes as much as we do) as he is officially 2 in a few weeks. It seems like a long jump from here:

to here:

Beautiful mama and darling nephew!

Last night, I cooked dinner, and Tom and I raised a glass to Elia. She is doing such a good job in motherhood, and I am so proud of her. We ate well, watched the debate (if by debate one means a large, rude child following a thoughtful candidate around stage and lying), and then tucked in. 

Don't those sunchokes look good?? Yum!!! Pan-roasted and then dressed with rosemary brown butter and aged Balsamic (thank you, Bon Appetit). We also had salmon and brussels sprouts and, duh, this.

Funday

"Today was the best day ever!" said no one ever whose husband is on Day Any # of a Man Cold.

I am not even kidding y'all. If all the men in the world got a cold on the same day, everything would seem so pitiful and half of everything would quit or wilt or die, and there would be so much drama and blowing of noses, snoring and moaning, unending hours on the couch and in bed, utter incapability of doing anything helpful, and then miraculously, because IT'S A COLD, everything would soon get better and the wonder of it all would be amazing. And then a woman would get a cold and it'd be like "Um, keep going!"

People, listen. Colds suck. They can make you feel truly awful. Having had a cold for five days last week, I can fully attest to this. And yet, I persevered. I got a nosebleed on the way to a school meeting and felt thankful that my dress's pattern was just busy enough to obscure the dropletty stain. I went to my exercise classes and made dinner every night and kept the house tidy. 

Life went -gasp!- on. 

While on the way to the market this afternoon, I said, "Jack my love, I have an important life lesson I would like to teach you."

"Yes, Mom?"

"Jack, do you know how when people say Male Refrigerator Blindness everyone gets it? Like, they all understand and know?"

"Yes, Mom."

"Ok, well similarly, there is a thing called Man Cold. It's where a man gets a cold and acts as if he is dying and is very dramatic and becomes incapable of doing anything except moaning and playing Candy Crush while fully horizontal on a couch. Long story short, Jack, it is not an attractive thing."

"Hmm. Does Dad have Man Cold right now?"

"Yes, Jack, he does. And let me tell you, with all the love in my heart, that so far in your life, you are well on the Man Cold path. The last mouth ulcer you had? It sounded for five days as if you were actively having your skin pulled off by chihuahuas. It was really pretty irritating. I mean, I understand that ulcers suck, but seriously. 
If you can, on the contrary, act with forbearance, you will be even more amazing than you already are. You will be so surprising and appealing."

"Ok, Mom."

I swear to G that if I manage to raise my children to NOT demonstrate Man Cold behavior, I will have done some effing stellar parenting and should likely be awarded some sort of Peace Prize. Legit, I think that.

Thank the lord tomorrow is Monday. Bye-bye family!

Silvia and Rocco and aging mugs

It is so lovely that so many of you have checked in on me because I've not posted in a few days. Thank you! All is well; I'm just busy busy. Two classes, volunteer stuff at school, a bridal shower I'm co-hosting coming soon so I'm cooking like crazy. And, my fifth grader told me that he "loves homework" so I'm recovering from a mild cardiac infarct. 

What I really want to tell you about today, though, is a gift Tom and I received for our wedding, twelve years ago.

When my sister, Elia, was 4 she met a girl named Emily. They immediately became best friends and still are, more than three decades later. As it turns out, Emily's family is deeply wonderful, and the four of them became an extended family for four of us. And vice versa.

Weddings, new children, losses, retirement parties, relocations, Thanksgivings ("a pie a person plus more the next day" is our motto)...we've shared so many of each of those things together over the years, each experience cementing another star into the Hollywood boulevard of family memory.

Jim and Marjorie, Emily's parents are accomplished artists (sculpture, pottery, painting, wine-making), and for our wedding gift made Tom and me a set of five mugs. The glaze is an inviting bluish green -think celadon + seafoam- with a hint of red in spots near the mugs' rim. Each cup is unique but thematically on point.

For more than twelve years now, we have cherished these mugs. Tom's first gift to me, not eight months after meeting, was a superbly crafted espresso maker and coffee bean grinder, Silvia and Rocco. 

"I hoped and thought we'd end up together so bought a present for both of us," he later told me. I lived in New York then, and Tom in DC. We were in NY a day after Christmas as we were set to fly to Italy to meet my sister and her then-boyfriend in Florence for New Year's.

My apartment was a 51%-of-my-income, fifth-floor-walk-up studio, but I loved it because it was all mine. I set the Silvia up on an old dining chair my parents bought when they were poor newlyweds. That chair served as a catch-all shelf next to my wine cabinet which was a metal thing with one glass shelf that I'd proudly bought from Crate & Barrel. 

I plugged Rocco into a nearby outlet, and top-shelf coffee that I didn't need to go out for soon became my norm.

Once married, Tom and I moved Silvia and Rocco to Boston, Reston, VA, DC, and now MD. Each move has also found us carefully bubble-wrapping each Jim-and-Mawj mug, cherished treasures that we always move ourselves with our art and other beloved things. We'd never leave them with even the best movers. They are stars on our own Hollywood boulevard.

We've drunk wonderful joe, often with barista-quality latte art atop, for years now, both when apart and together. In the frenetic mornings that have characterized the time since Jack and then Oliver were born, mugs of coffee have served as our morning communion, a bit of pleasure and deep appreciation that we share even if only in passed cups and briefly locked eyes. 

More often than not, Tom acts as barista while I make breakfast or sleep in. He passes me a mug with just the right proportion of coffee to milk, a gift of love, a tribute to and vial of strength for the day ahead.

When we travel, we explore by way of hopscotching from coffee shop to coffee shop. We've always done this and I imagine we'll never stop.

Ooh, that place is known for its proprietary roast, that one for its cortado, the next for its cold brew. In Rome we discovered Brassai on our first or second morning and proceeded to return every morning of our trip. We came to know the owner and one waitress, we saw what a place can mean to the regulars who haunt its eaves, we, for an ephemeral week, felt what it might be to be a regular and to partake in a communal tradition. The boys felt and understood it.

One of the common denominators of all this Life With Coffee is this set of mugs which have come along with us for the ride. For years I handwashed them, scared of and thus unwillingness to risk what might happen if I put them in an unfeeling dishwasher. Circumstances have changed, and although I loathe our present dishwasher, I entrust to it our treasured grails because I recognize that time is not the only fleeting commodity; so too are possessions, the things that seem crucial but ultimately probably aren't.

That said, the mugs Jim and Marjorie made remain in perfect condition. Not a one has been lost or broken. Not a one suffers even a chip. They are pristine and sit proudly and usefully in their fourth kitchen cabinet, the one under which Silvia and Rocco are tucked, our dutiful morning soldiers who make the early day possible and lovely.

When marriage feels tough, as it is sometimes wont to do, I look at those unmarred yet well-worn mugs, and I am hopeful. Things crafted from work and love tend to stand strong against the tests of time. For these precious totems I am thankful.