It’s been a morning.

Annabelle was sad (more “Monday Blues,” she promised, than the stomachache she’s been complaining about the last few days) and Sophie was sassy (though it’s my fault, not hers, that she wound up going “commando” to school today — the shoes were already on, I made an executive decision).

I realized, as I chased several moms down to try to get information, that missing those Girl Scout cookie meetings last week was a really bone-headed move on my part. I’ll spend all week tracking down the right forms, since Annabelle insists she wants to sell them and I can’t let Sophie not. (Sophie has enough challenges; she can’t be the girl who didn’t sell cookies, on top of it.)

One little girl waved her half-filled sales sheet in my face, reminding me I better get the girls over to the office quickly or risk that everyone will have already bought from someone else.

Damn it.

I remembered to bring snacks for the kindergarteners, commiserated with the second graders on the whole Monday thing, and successfully avoided the mom who wants Annabelle to take a pottery class with her kid. (Great idea, but we’re clearly already overwhelmed. I just didn’t have the heart to tell her face to face. I’ll email her.)

And before any of that, this crazy morning, I gave both Sophie and Piglet baths.

Sophie drew all over her foot yesterday with marker. I’d blame Ray since it happened on his watch, but it’s happened to me just as often. So a rare morning bath happened, and when Sophie announced she wanted Piglet to have one, too, I decided thatwould happen, as well. Not quite how Sophie envisioned it; Piglet’s bath was in the sink, not the tub. And long overdue.

Sophie has three Piglets. They are musical (you may have already read about Piglet or seen pictures) and each time the music element broke, I bought another (hard to find, you have to go to eBay) until I realized she doesn’t care about the music.

Sophie’s in it for the ears.

When I was a kid, they just would have called Piglet a “cuddly” or a “lovie”. (Or “gross” — at least, that’s what they called my security blanket, Rosie, which for the record I still have.) Now Piglet is a sensory tool. Sophie rubs the ears (we call that “softing” in our house) between her fingers and also rubs an ear on her cheek, on occasion.

It’s a sensory thing. I know way too little about this stuff. I know the occupational therapist deals with both fine motor skills and sensory issues — that’s about it. I don’t know why Piglet’s ear soothes Sophie; just that it does. Ms. X appreciates it, and lets her have Piglet time during the day.

Lately, Piglet hasn’t been enough. For months, Sophie has also “softed” her bangs (easy access, why not?) and more recently, she’s been very into paint brushes — rubbing the bristles across her finger tips and lips.

I intend to get to the bottom of what this all means and what more I can do — really, I do, I was just discussing it yesterday with Ms. X — but for now, I’m all for it.

I just wish I had a brush of my own to soft. Maybe no one would notice if I brought Rosie to work.

Yesterday I noticed this dinosaur atop my one remaining gingerbread house. No idea where it came from. Ray doesn’t know, either. The cat knocked it down, but not before I got a picture that also reveals a very dirty window.

I was going to start this post off with some drivel about resolutions not made or made and broken, but instead I’ll cut to the chase:

I ditched two Girl Scout cookie meetings this week, and I couldn’t feel better about my decision.

I have a real love/hate thing going with the Brownies, and now, to a lesser extent, the Daisies, which Sophie joined this school year. (Part of this has to do with jealousy — as a kid, I was forced to be a Camp Fire Girl, which was NOT cool. So while I hate joining anything, I find myself drawn to this god-fearing, pledge-loving club.)

Daisies are junior Brownies and Brownies are junior Girl Scouts, but guess what — they’re all qualified to sell cookies.

How convenient.

After noticing that I’m noticing my butt way too much (I blame the half-marathon training, more on that later), I’ve sworn that no Girl Scout cookies can come into the house this year. Of course that’s one of those resolutions/promises/threats made to be broken.

And yes, we’ll sell the damn cookies.

But I just didn’t want to go to the meetings. It’s the first week back to school and work, and it’s a nightmare. More and more lately, I’ve found that I spend my downtime beating myself up for being a. a Bad Mom and b. a Bad Employee (we’ll leave Bad Wife, Bad Friend, Bad Daughter, Bad Sister, Bad Daughter in Law and all-around Bad Person for later).

This is nothing new. I actually wrote a column called “Bad Mom” for a while, for a now-somewhat-defunct site, www.austinmama.com. But it’s been intensified, due to the Bad Employee thing, which is due to the media-industry-is-collapsing-how-long-will-I-have-a-job-I-better-step-it-up-thing.

And so I’m poking the broom in the corners, trying to sweep out any extra crumbs of time I can find to toss at family and then at work.

Sitting through a NINETY MINUTE, ALL-ADULT, GIRL SCOUT COOKIE MEETING at 3:30 on a weekday afternoon (meaning I’d be missing both work and kids) just didn’t fit into the new plan. Last year, I would have (and if memory serves, did) lemming-ed it. But not this year, solidifying, I fear, my already not so great relationship with the very nice Brownie leader, who still hasn’t answered the email I sent to complain — but did reconfigure the meeting. (Apparently I wasn’t alone.)

In any case, we ditched Brownies altogether yesterday (I also skipped the 30 minute parent only Daisy meeting earlier this week) and I took the girls out for gelato. Just us, just the three of us, no others invited along — rare for us, I usually multi-task and make an outing a play date or a work meeting or an extended family get-together.

Just the three of us. Just for an hour, but still. 

It was great.

On the way, Annabelle piped up from the back seat. Normally, she doesn’t say much about what goes on at school. This worried me til I compared notes with other parents; it’s pretty universal. And she rarely talks about Sophie in THAT way; I’m pretty sure I’d never heard her say the words Down syndrome — til yesterday.

Yesterday, Annabelle said, out of the blue, “Mommy, I feel really special at school.”

“Why?” I asked, wondering if a new pink Nintendo DS is really all that.

“Because Sophie has Down syndrome and the kids ask me lots of questions.”

She said this with the happy chirp one would use to annouce 100% on a spelling test, or joy over a new pair of shoes.

OK, I thought to myself, maybe – at least in the grand scheme — I’m doing something right.  

I wish I had it on tape to play for the principal, during our inevitable, upcoming battles.

We had a mood last night.

Actually, the honeymoon of the whole back-to-school-after-the-holidays-thing is officially over. That happened this morning. But that’s another story involving another Bad Mom situation: The debate over whether to allow the 5 and 7 year olds to drink their Carnation Instant Breakfast from a sippy cup. I’m sure I’ve already done permanent damage both physical and psychological (and I’m just talking about my husband) so I’ll let that one be its own blog post, someday. Maybe.

Back to last night. Sophie was exhausted. She napped on Monday but not on Tuesday and by 6, the day had caught up with her — and then some. Actually, she hit her second wind (third? fourth? fourteenth?) when I got home, but there was a fly in her ointment.

Annabelle and I had run into Deborah and Anna at aftercare, and decided it would be a swell idea to throw an impromptu dinner party, if you can call Safeway meatloaf and soup served on my all-but-covered-with-crap dining table any sort of a party.

Truth be told, Deborah and I have made parties out of far less. I always feel guilty, because she’s so groovy (e.g., the not-matching-but-went-together leopard coat and gloves she wore on a Tuesday night) but she is always gracious about my mess, both specific and cosmic.

That’s a real friend.

Usually, Sophie and Deborah are fast friends, but last night Sophie would have none of it. “STOP TALKING!” she kept telling Deborah, as we tried to catch up on holiday gossip and work news. All Sophie wanted to do was cuddle in peace, her chicken nuggets long ago gobbled, her eyes starting to flag. And she wanted to do it without background noise. (And I know what Ray will say, and he’s right.  Too much going on. Should have had a quiet night. But really, this was one — and you should have seen how happy Annabelle and Anna were to see one another….)

“She’s jealous,” I whispered over the top of Sophie’s head, carrying her off to bed. Even on a tired night, bed is a multi-layered ritual. This night, Anna was called in to choose the pajamas. (The “Sleepy Head” shirt and ballerina pants.) Sophie chose the diaper (Cookie Monster, of course), brushed her teeth, peed.

Deborah and I continued to chat quietly through all of it, and Sophie seemed more focused on her stuffed Piglet, til — as I was pulling her PJ shirt over her head — she looked up at me and quietly said, “You’re stupid.”

I snapped to.

“DID YOU JUST CALL ME STUPID?” I asked in a quiet but all-caps kind of voice.

“Yes,” came the tiny reply.

Sophie knows better. For a while, years ago, she’d get really hot and heavy with her current insult (for several months it was “YOU’RE MEAN!” usually directed at strangers in the mall who made the mistake of being in her general vicinity) but I’ve noticed she’s catching on faster these days.

Still, she has a hard time parting with “stupid,” mainly because she knows it really gets to us. Often, she aims it at Annabelle, who always cries.

We’ve had some big, huge time outs over it. For obvious reasons.

“OK, Sophie, you know we don’t call people stupid.” I paused. “At least, not to their faces.”

Deborah had to stand in the doorway, out of sight, shaking with laughter. I tried not to smile.

“You know, Sophie,” I said, “someday you might just understand the irony of calling people stupid.”

“Oh, I think she gets that now,” Deborah said. I’m sure she’s right.

Sophie is anything but stupid, and yet she faces a lifetime of the label — both to her face and behind her back. I grapple with the word. Not when it comes to my kids; they’re simply not to use it. But as I recounted the story to my mother today, I explained that there’s actually a whole movement — one I’m not so sure I like, given my desire to let people use the words they want to use, except for certain ones like “retarded” when it’s not a medical term, though that’s yet another blog, I suppose — against using words like stupid and idiot.

“And moron,” I added. “So what are we supposed to call people?”

We moved on to “nerd” and “dork” and the notion that those are now compliments. Never did answer the question.

In any case, I’ll schedule our next play date with Anna and Deborah for a time when Sophie’s a little better rested.

And maybe we should just call people by their names.

It was like Christmas in our house this morning. The Valentine Rubbermaid made its 2009 debut.

I meant to wait til all evidence of the last holiday was gone, but knowing Ray that could be months, and we needed to switch out Sophie’s little bribe at school. It’s one of the things that has made this year work, so far: We don’t really bribe her with stuff as much as the thought of it — at first she worked each morning and afternoon for five “Elmos,” cardboard cutouts laminated and velcroed to a small board on her work space. When she bored of that, we switched it out to holiday ornaments, which of course were obsolete yesterday morning when she showed up for school. Whoops.

So the Rubbermaid Valentine box came out. I don’t do a lot right as a mother — I’m the firs to admit it, if only to beat you to saying it yourself — but I give myself a hearty pat on the back for the Holiday Rubbermaids. Even my mom’s copied me, with her own version. If you can make yourself wait a year to open the box (and you have a bad memory, as I do) the whole thing will be a surprise: kid artwork from years past; Valentine stuff bought on sale post-holiday and crammed into the box; all sorts of pink, red and white treat bags, stickers, cards and even a hole punch in there somewhere, in the shape of a heart.

It’s fun because the crafts I bought when Annabelle was 6 months old are finally stuff the girls can use themselves (I got a little ahead of myself, ok?) and each year the art evolves. I dug around this morning and found some suitable Valentine stuff for Sophie’s bribe board, then snapped the top back in place, intending to wait til the tree is gone.

But it will be hard to keep that lid on….

Usually I’m a stickler for the January 1 deadline, but tonight there are still some remains of Christmas around the house. The lights are not only up, they’re on, and the tree is bare but waits in the corner of the living room — items on Ray’s “to do” list.

The garbage was so full — and had been for several days — that there was no room for the gingerbread houses that have gathered on the kitchen windowsill in the past few weeks. That’s okay; I don’t relish the thought of disposing of them. I’ve come to think of this as my own little village. (And trust me, it takes one, in my world. I only feel guilty that the one Annabelle built in Mrs. Z’s class fell apart so completely I tossed it the day it came home. Bad Mom.) One house will stay with us, the gingerbread cookie jar from my friend Gilda, the collector extraordinaire. I plan to tuck it on the top kitchen shelf with the other cookie jars, a rare holiday item on year-round display.

I’m not sure I can part yet with the glittered beads on the chandelier. They’re blue — that’s a January color, right? It did feel icy cold out tonight, at 54 degrees.

Otherwise, the holidays are gone. I giggled this morning over the number of Facebook friends who confessed their joy at being back to the usual routine. I was relieved, I admit it. I know Ray was. I think the girls were, too. Annabelle wanted to compare gift notes with her friends, and Sophie — well, I think Sophie really does crave routines. I dropped her at Ms. X’s door today with a silent prayer to the back-to-school gods: Please, don’t let her be any more out of control than her classmates.

The call came late in the day — Ms. X was just leaving school, poor thing; it was dark already. She reported that Sophie had a great first day back! She fell asleep in the afternoon when they watched a movie, but so did a couple other kids. Otherwise, she did very well.

The school year is officially half over. My little girls are so grown up. The other day at the zoo, I snapped this photo of Sophie on the carousel, and was struck by how old she looks. It’s already January 6. 2009′s flying by.

And the garbage came today.

Annabelle and I hit TWO Targets today, looking for a lipgloss kit she just had to had, and new black Converse for me. Couldn’t find either; thank goodness for the Internet. We did find Sophie a $9.99 substitute for the Nintendo DS she’s been begging for since Annabelle got hers. Lipgloss-kit-less for the moment, AB had an uncharacteristically unattractive meltdown in the handheld electronics aisle, but I held firm and refused the item she grazed past and decided she had to have.

I do understand. It’s the post-holiday thing. Last night I stayed up til 1, watching Baby Mama and putting away the holiday stuff. I actually reorganized the holiday closet — a little, not enough to bend over and pick up the plastic Easter eggs on the ground; I just mushed the Rubbermaids on top of them. But at least the holidays are in order and almost every shred of Xmas is put away. (Sniffle!)

 My reward: the silver clogs I’ve been drooling over. I finally found them at www.svensclogs.com and shamelessly bought them, even though I’m totally copying a new friend who bought hers at Triple Happiness in Brooklyn. (How freaking cool?! A CLOG STORE. I told her the silver clogs were the tipping point for the playdate invite — how can you resist a potential new friend with silver clogs?)

And now they will be mine. So shallow. So what?

We rang in the new year with family, the kind of friends you call family, U2, The Ramones, chocolate martinis and deep thanks for water chestnuts in Safeway’s spinach dip. So far, so good, 2009. I could have done without the glimpse of poor Dick Clark, but it was a good reminder that it’s always best to leave the party while it’s still going strong, and that we did.

Happy New Year!

It’s 11:50 pm, December 30.

It’s entirely possible that 24 hours from now, I’ll be fast asleep. New Year’s tends to be that way. More than ever this year, I’ve heard friends complain bitterly about how much they hate the holidays (namely: Christmas), which makes me incredibly sad. I wonder if anyone would ache to hear how much I hate New Year’s?

Nah. No one likes New Year’s. It’s a holiday hung with unrealistic expectations, that’s the real hangover. And then there’s the next day, full of promises. The other day, I watched Sophie play with the new magnifying glass someone gave us for Christmas (after she stamped her nose red with her new teacher kit and started calling herself Rudolph) and considered the life examined. What a crappy time of the year for that — after all the overindulgences. Atop my inevitable list of soon to be broken promises: 

Stop starting sentences with “it’s”. Organize the house. Straighten up my office. Keep the car clean. Teach the girls the value of organizing, straightening and cleaning. Get my eyes checked. Put all the laundry away. Figure out a way to be nice but firm with Sophie so she respects me in public and so the public respects me — and so she still wants to be my BFF. Spend more quality time with both girls and Ray. Ditto for the dog. Stop buying stuff. Read all the books I’ve bought but haven’t read. Stop wasting time on Facebook. Figure out a way to eat healthy and exercise simultaneously. Be nicer. Garden. Learn how to size photos and put up links. Get Sophie all the help she needs in school, but not too much. Wear my grandmother’s jewelry. Find and buy silver clogs. Work less. Work more. Put makeup on once in a while. Stop being so vain.

Never make another resolution.

Have you heard of Calef Brown? If you haven’t, grab one of the bookstore gift cards you got for the holidays, and run out and buy one of his collections of poetry, which include “Polkabats and Octopus Slacks” and “Flamingo on the Roof” (www.calefbrown.com).

It’s the stuff you had children for — this guy’s the Dan Zanes of kid books, the Yo Gabba Gabba (well, sort of) of baby lit. Todd Parr with an edge.

I bought the girls (okay, I bought it for myself but I’ll share) Brown’s latest, “Soup for Breakfast,” and I was flipping through it yesterday and was delighted to see a poem entitled “Oilcloth Tablecloth”.

I’m all about the oilcloth tablecloth, as any observant GIAPH reader knows. (Buy your own: my favorite site for oilcloth is http://mendels.com/fabrics10.shtml.) My dining room table serves as the backdrop of many of the poor quality photos I take and post, and my tablecloth collection has garnered more than a few comments from certain quarters. (I’m always tickled to hear complaints about the oilcloth patterns, which I slather with the unabashed love reserved for things like vintage Japanese celluloid and carnival chalk — acquired tastes, to be sure.)

I love that Calef Brown appreciates oilcloth, too. With no further ado (since I’ve been told by an expert that my blog entries are too long) here is Calef Brown’s own ode to the OT, followed by a particularly bad photo that will give you an idea of his cool imagery: 

OILCLOTH TABLECLOTH

Oilcloth Tablecloth

Keeps the table dry,

Despite the many soda spills

and coffee gone awry.

If someone sloshes orange juice,

or baby starts to cry,

Oilcloth Tablecloth

keeps the table dry.