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Some weeks you just focus on putting one foot in front of the other, accomplishing the myriad tasks of parenting and life as you try to ignore the drudgery that sometimes weighs all of us down.

Then there are weeks like the one my family is about to have.

Here’s our agenda for the next five days, starting today and in no particular order:

• An out-of-town, overnight trip to see life-size dinosaurs (really!);
• Three birthday parties in two days;
• One actual child’s birthday in the family;
• Swim classes;
• An overnight visit from family that includes a preschooler, an infant and a decent-sized dog (but don’t tell my cat);
• New Hampshire’s Maple Syrup Weekend (one of my favorite local events; how can you not love a tradition that enables you to exit your car and immediately step fifty years into the past?);
• A medical diagnostic procedure for one of the adult members of the family; and
• One child’s surgery to have tonsils and adenoids removed.

And that doesn’t include the standard necessities of family life, like grocery shopping, preparing meals, doing the daily laundry, choosing between picking up dust balls the size of tennis balls or squishing them down and hiding them under the furniture, etc.

The good news is that all of this craziness is keeping me from focusing on the fact that my little boy is about to have surgery.  The bad news is that sooner or later, it’s going to hit me—probably at about 3:00 a.m. the night before the operation.

By the time I blog again, all of this will have transpired.  In between force-feeding my son ice cream and screening Star Wars and every dinosaur documentary ever made for him, I’ll let you know how it all went.

“[N]ew research has confirmed what some parents recognize and others quietly fear: Their firstborn children get more of their time than others in the family.”  (Donna St. George, “Quality Time Seems Stacked In Favor of Firstborns,” The Washington Post, March 22, 2008.)

As far as I’m concerned, the only news in that statement is that there are still some parents of more than one child who don’t already know this.

I’ve noted on countless occasions how diligent I was when now six-year-old “Jack” was a toddler about teaching him colors, shapes, numbers and letters.  I tailored my schedule to his emerging interests, read at least four board books to him each day and turned every folding of a napkin, every trip to the grocery store into some kind of teachable moment.  If ever we found ourselves with five unfilled minutes, I considered it my parental responsibility to fill that time with some educational activity. 

Every new achievement, no matter how tiny, was a monumental breakthrough the likes of which no other parent could have witnessed before.  (“Look, Jack picked up a spoon with his left hand, not his right.  Isn’t he brilliant?”)  I kept thorough notes in his baby book and filled photo albums with dozens and dozens of photos of baby and toddler Jack.

In other words, Jack is a firstborn child.

When Jack was three-and-a-half, his baby sister came along.  I’d like to tell you that all of those aforementioned things I did for Jack, I also did for “Emmie.”  I’d like to say that I spend huge chunks of time teaching her those same concepts, conforming my schedule to her desires and improving her mind at every opportunity.  I’d also like to iterate that her baby book is complete and detailed, her photos pasted into albums in an organized, up-to-date fashion.

But this blog isn’t about fantasies.

Emmie is a second child.  When she came along, my agenda changed.  The most critical goal in almost any day instantly became just to get through it. 

When you have a baby and a preschooler, it’s a victory to collapse into bed in the middle of the night secure in the knowledge that everyone’s been fed, bathed and clothed for another day.  As the kids get older, you discover that it’s not so easy to teach the older child to read while simultaneously keeping choking hazards out of the little one’s mouth.  You try to focus on one child for five minutes and the other screams for attention; one wants to go to a museum, but the other will self-destruct if she isn’t put down for a nap in five minutes.  You want to play games with them, but you find yourself instead playing referee in the midst of the battles over toys.

As for baby books and photo albums: who even knows under which pile of dust those things are hiding?

Of course the younger children don’t get the same amount of undivided attention that the first child does.  After all, the first child is the only one who ever gets the experience of being the only child.  But I’ve discovered that it’s not all bad news.  There are some things the younger child—or children—gets that the firstborn does not.

First of all, the younger child gets an older sibling.  I know, this isn’t always a good thing, but in our house, we are fortunate that Jack and Emmie really love each other.  That doesn’t stop them from clocking each other over the head if the mood strikes them, but Emmie worships her big brother like a superhero and he, in turn, is often willing to teach her things like her numbers, read her stories, or help her with toys and puzzles she can’t quite manage.  Emmie gets to learn from toddlerhood that there are people besides her parents who love her and will watch out for her.

Emmie is also, I’ve noticed, considerably more independent than Jack.  While that can often drive me nuts—she’s far more defiant than he is—and at least some of this characteristic might be attributed to gender differences or simply their individual personalities, I’m willing to bet that some of it is influenced by birth order, too.  I’ve just been busier since I’ve had two kids, and Emmie has always known that to some extent, she’s got to entertain herself.  And she’s pretty good at it.  Jack, on the other hand, has been known frequently when bored to stand in the middle of a room, surrounded by toys, games, videos, puzzles and books, look at me in real confusion and ask, “Mommy, what should I do?”  On a daily basis, Jack requires significantly more guidance than Emmie does.

I’m not saying that younger children don’t have valid complaints.  In fact, I’m sure all of this will keep Emmie’s future therapist well-funded for years somewhere down the road.  But it’s not the worst thing in the world, and for God’s sake, it’s certainly not news.

Gentlemen, if any of you are reading, let me do you a favor.  Stop now.  You won’t care about this, I promise, so just come back next week for my next post.

Okay, ladies.  Now that it’s just us, I’ll get to the point.  This is going to be one of those little posts about things that annoy us, things that get in our way, things that moms who have thirty-six hours of tasks and responsibilities to fit into each twenty-four hour day just don’t want to be bothered with.

I’m talking about mascara.

Here’s the deal: I wear a little bit of eye makeup every day to promote illusions.  I want people to think my eyes actually open all the way, even if I’ve only had three hours of sleep for four nights in succession.  I’d like for the first thought friends and acquaintances have upon seeing me out in the world NOT to be, “Wow, Tracy’s really aged lately.”  I prefer to look in a mirror and not see my grandmother.

So I take sixty seconds with an eye pencil and mascara each morning.  But here’s the problem: satisfied as I may be with the result, that mascara’s migrated an inch lower two hours later.

I don’t need eye makeup to put dark circles under my eyes; I’ve got children for that.

I’ve tried a long list of brands, cheap and expensive, waterproof and not, but the result is always the same.  I even contacted my sister, the fashion maven, certain that she would have the answer.  She came back empty.

This shouldn’t be that hard.  How many zillions of dollars go into product research in the cosmetics industry each year?

We moms have to worry about diapers, dishes, laundry, jobs, meals, transportation, schools, husbands, TV, society’s influence on our kids, messes left by the pets and a myriad of other items.  Every day.  I don’t know about you, but I’d just as soon remove worrying about the condition of my eyelashes from my list.

If anyone’s got any ideas, let me know.

Okay, men.  It’s safe to come back now.

With all of the hullaballoo surrounding the current presidential election, I’d like to propose that we hold a national referendum of a different sort: I propose that no more holidays be permitted to evolve into occasions to give kids candy and fantasies of gift and thrill-toting characters without a vote.

Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day.  I dutifully dressed the kids and myself in green, and, because my husband and my six-year-old son are presumed to have some fraction of Irish blood somewhere in their veins, I planned a classic dinner of corned beef, cabbage and potatoes (not that my son would let any of these ethnic delicacies anywhere near his palate).  Last time I checked, this and a proclamation of Erin Go Bragh constituted a sufficient celebration of the holiday (for anyone under the age of twenty-one, anyhow).

So imagine my surprise when I picked up my usually close-mouthed son at school and he launched into a recitation of what I will call “My Fabulous St. Patrick’s Day.”

“Mommy!  Guess what the leprechaun left us in school today?”

“What?” I inquired, filled with apprehension.

“Candy!  He left it under our pillows when we weren’t looking!”  (My son’s kindergarten class still pretends to have rest time, though I know for a fact no one rests, and, judging by the looks of the pillowcase that was sent home for me to wash over the last break, their true activities during this period must be something closer to traipsing about in mud puddles and then stretching out the bedding on the ground in order to create artistic mud patterns with their boots.)

Excellent, I thought.  The Valentine’s Day haul from school is still scattered on one of the windowsills, where it replaced the Christmas and Hanukkah candy I tossed that had in turn replaced the remnants from the trick-or-treat bags. 

“Wow, that’s so cool.” 

“Yeah, he left us Easter M&M’s; he must have gotten together with the Easter Bunny and gotten some of his candy to give to us!” 

We don’t believe in the Easter Bunny.  We’re Jewish.  Oh, never mind.  “Wow.”

“And the leprechaun changed things around in our room when we weren’t looking!  When we get home, I’m going to look all over the house to see if the leprechauns changed anything at home.”

Oh come on.  I didn’t know I was supposed to set this up.  Someone’s got to get me the right memoranda on this stuff.  I didn’t move anything around, and I certainly didn’t leave any treats for you to find.  I tried to cushion the blow.  “Well, honey, I have to tell you: I’ve been home most of the day, and I didn’t see anything different.”

“Well, maybe the leprechauns are moving things around RIGHT NOW!”

Only if the leprechauns consist of an extremely lazy black-and-white cat who only deposits in our house  things we’re generally not too happy to find.  “Maybe, honey, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

Upon entering the house, “Jack” tore off his coat and boots and ran through the house.  I mentally prepared to comfort him in his disappointment.

I underestimated, however, the magic of the six-year-old imagination.  Jack thoroughly examined every single room in the house, and, to my amazement, found something amiss in every room.

“Look!  In the bathroom!  The bath towels are gone!” 

They were in the dryer because I had washed them, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

“Look!  That stegosaurus was on the windowsill, and now he’s on the floor!”

His sister had certainly accomplished that feat, but I kept my silence again.

And so it went.  Jack found at least a dozen leprechaun tricks, and he was so excited that he even shared his holiday candy with his little sister.

In the end, Jack had a fine St. Patrick’s Day despite my lack of preparation.  But that stroke of Irish luck doesn’t change my original position: no more treat-filled holidays without giving us parents a say in the matter.  Or at least filling us in ahead of time.

Somebody tell me now if I’m going to need to pull out the stops for Bastille Day.

I finally figured out the answer to the question kids have whined to their parents for decades: “Why do I have to study math?”

The answer: So that someday, when you are a parent, you can plan your own children’s summer schedules.

It doesn’t seem like it would be that difficult.  You take a finite number of weeks, investigate summer day camp and activity options, determine your budget and your goals for the summer, and register.  That’s it; you’re done.

Hah.

It would be more accurate, I believe, to describe summer-camp planning as a complex algorithm.  You must assemble all of the factors and plug them in at the appropriate times and places to arrive at the correct result, and at all points in the process, you must be aware that any single change can affect the outcome of the whole. 

For example: I begin my planning with a summer consisting of ten weeks between kindergarten and first grade.  I know that there are two annual mini-vacations (three or four days) to fit in, the Fourth of July holiday and some area friends and family to visit for a day or two each.  Moreover, we’d like a little unplanned family time.  My almost-three-year-old daughter can go to her regular daycare any week I choose except one at the end of the summer, and I have collected a list of camp options for my son.  Go.

I take a pass through the camp options with my son, and we highlight the camps we think he’ll like best and pencil (never use pen) our selections on the calendar I have printed out for this purpose.  I then huddle with the friend with whom we always do a joint trip to Storyland, and after some negotiation, we arrive at a date for this trip.  I look at my calendar and it fits.  Whew.  Pencil in Storyland.

But now it gets fun.  Remember, we’ve had more than 109 inches of snow this year, along with uncountable numbers of snow days and delayed openings.  I inquire about my son’s last day of school for the year and am told, “We have no idea.”  I do my own sub-calculation and determine that the “Museum Week” camp at his school that my son is dying to do the first week of summer is about as likely to happen as an early spring.  Time for that pencil eraser; summer is now nine weeks.

I then remember that we don’t have a date yet for the several days we usually spend at a lake house each summer with friends who come up to New Hampshire from D.C. each year.  As we are their guests, we happily conform to their schedule.  I send my friend an email to inquire about this year’s dates and receive back a frenzied reply about the uncertainty of her own summer.  As soon as she figures out the lives of herself, her husband and her kids, she promises to get back to me.  No problem.  I return to my calendar and cross-reference the selected camps with the descriptive brochures—specifically now, I am looking at the deadlines for registration and cancellation and the nonrefundable registration fees and matching those to my summer budget. 

My budding scientist of a son then informs me that he wishes he could go to the Museum of Science “every day.”  Naturally wishing to encourage such intellectual devotion, I revisit my initial rejection of summer camp that is more than an hour’s drive away.  I print out the museum’s summer offerings and run through the brochure once more, taking into account which camps are offered for my son’s age group and the weeks still open on my calendar.  Perhaps for one of those weeks, I’ll drive each day into Boston and write while my son is in camp, provided my husband can be on call if my daughter’s daycare calls for any reason.  I propose this idea to my husband, expecting accolades for my maternal devotion to my son’s interests.  Instead, my husband informs me that given that fighting the traffic into Boston each morning to arrive at the museum by 9:00 a.m. would be a maddening, two-hour, often losing battle, he not only believes my idea to be misguided, but he fears that my ensuing road rage in the summer heat would possibly endanger my life, my son’s life and the lives of others, and, in any event, make me intolerably cranky for the rest of the summer.  Scratch the Museum of Science.

Okay.  Time to finalize the summer.  Some weeks are set on my calendar (though I’m still not prepared to use a pen).  For others, my son has to make a choice.  I spread out the options on the dining-room table.  For week X, he can choose between week one of a two-week nature camp or staying home, but that decision must be made in conjunction with the decision for week Y, which is week two of the two-week nature camp versus a one-week outdoor camp.  He’s already decided to go to the second week of the outdoor camp the following week.  The outdoor camp’s two weeks can be selected independently, but the nature camp’s two weeks go together; it’s all or nothing.  What does he want to do?

“Mom,” “Jack” asks in a plaintive voice.  “Can I decide this later?” 

“Sure,” I respond.  Who can blame the kid for not wanting to deal with this?  I’m, well, older than six years old, and I find this confusing. 

But he’d better decide soon: registration begins Monday.  And I think they’re going to make me use a pen.

What would you do if you came upon a children’s picture book about penguins?  A book that talked about family behavior in the animal world, about penguins who “walked together,” “swam together,” and generally went about the business of being penguins together?  A book with hand-drawn illustrations of cute little black-and-white penguins with yellow eyes and their fuzzy gray chicks?

Apparently, if you were one of the elementary school libraries in Loudoun County, Virginia (not far from where I used to live), you would yank that smut-filled volume right off the shelves.

A few facts: the book in question is called And Tango Makes Three, written by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell and illustrated by Henry Cole.  It tells the true story of two chinstrap penguins in New York City’s Central Park Zoo who chose each other as mates in 1998, in the manner common to many species in the bird world.  Unable to reproduce on their own, the penguin couple was given an egg produced by another penguin couple who could not care for it.  The two penguins cared for the adopted egg until it hatched and then became a family like any other of the chinstrap penguin families in the zoo.

Oh yeah, except for one thing: the two adoptive penguin parents in the book are both male.

Yup, that’s right: gay penguins.

When I read about the Loudoun County dispute regarding this book—which the American Library Association listed on both its Most Challenged Books of 2006 and Most Notable Books of 2006 lists, I decided I had to read this book for myself.  So before I wrote this blog post, I checked the book out of the children’s section of my little town library.

I read an endearing story accompanied by appealing pictures about penguins who wanted to form a family and needed a little help.  It was a story about love and nurturing, family and commitment.  Now that the book is in my home, I plan to read it to my children in the hopes that it might give them a little insight about the love that parents feel for their children, even in the animal world. 

Personally, I would have no objections to this book residing on library or school shelves under any circumstances.  But to me, the most compelling point about this story is that it is true.  Roy and Silo, the penguin fathers in the story, had no political agenda, no role in history they were looking to secure.  They were a couple of penguins who loved each other.  And they wanted a chick.  You can approve of these facts or disapprove of them, but you can’t change them.  This is reality.

I should point out, I suppose, that I am not only an immense fan of books, but I am also generally opposed to book banning.  I was an early member of Muggles for Harry Potter, I still like the “Little House” series and I fully expect that  my kids will read Catcher in the Rye when they are older.  I even (gasp) anticipate that some of this reading will occur through the schools.  And if the topics about which my kids read require me and my husband to discuss certain issues with them, so much the better.  It should come as no surprise to anyone that if a reading of And Tango Makes Three inspires some questions from my kids about the gender of the protagonist penguins, I more than welcome that discussion. 

We take our kids to the zoo to show them what animals are like, to help them understand animal behavior in the hopes of instilling an appreciation for the value of preserving animal life in nature.  Similarly, we read our children books to help them begin to process the world around them, to give them tools with which to understand they reality of the world in which they live and the people whom they will encounter in their lives—all of them.

I’m glad my library had And Tango Makes Three on the shelves.  I’ll have to make sure to read it to my kids quickly so I can return the book to the library and give other parents and kids the chance to read it, too.

“Fetch!”  Six-year-old “Jack’s” voice was enthusiastic and triumphant.  “Go ahead.  Fetch!”

I was a bit puzzled when I heard this command, seeing as how we don’t have a dog.  We do have a cat, but even the kids know that if you ordered the cat to fetch anything, she would probably just puke on your shoes and then go hide in the closet.  So when Jack gave the command to fetch, I decided to listen more closely.

“Fetch!” Jack repeated.  “Yes, that’s right.”  Then I heard giggling—younger, feminine giggling that could belong to no one other than two-and-a-half year-old “Emmie.”  My suspicions heightened, I peeked around the corner.

Sure enough, Jack was throwing a toy for Emmie.  And teaching her to fetch it.  And they both thought the whole thing was hilarious.

Now, I suppose one might argue that the lesson to be learned from this episode is that my children are in desperate need of a dog.  Or that Jack is a bit manipulative and Emmie a tad simple-minded.  Or maybe that my kids are woefully insecure about their identities and their roles on the planet.

None of that is true, however.  It would be closer to reality to suggest that Jack’s regard of Emmie is in perfect alignment with the attitude of children toward younger siblings through time immemorial: he sees her as a tool to be wielded and utilized according to his will.  And as long as Emmie is willing to “be the dog in this scenario,” (quick: what well-known movie is that line from?), Jack is more than happy to play the role of master.

Poor Jack.  Sure, Emmie thinks it’s fun to fetch now, but she’s only two-and-a-half and she thinks her big brother is better than chocolate cake, hot dogs and macaroni-and-cheese all rolled into one.  She may always worship him, but I know Emmie, and the day is coming when Jack’s attempts to get Emmie to do his bidding will result in nothing but mockery from her.  Kind of like what happens now when I try to tell her what to do.

So go ahead, Jack.  If you want to teach Emmie to fetch, that’s fine with me.  Just don’t be surprised when one of these days, those stupid little sister tricks jump up and bite you in the, well, you know.  Or you will.

One picture is worth a thousand words.  Or in this case, one hundred inches . . . of snow.

Actually, we’re at 109 inches of snow so far this year.  We’re rapidly closing in on an all-time record.

Here’s a picture of six-year-old “Jack”—who is on the tall side for his age—attempting to climb one of the snow piles in our yard: 

Unfortunately, not only was Emmie calling me on my shoddy housekeeping skills, but she was advertising them to others as well.  As it turned out, we’d invited a friend over for the evening, and we were all sitting around the dinner table when Emmie decided to show off her find. 

You know it’s time to clean your house when your preschooler begins to think of the dirt as a toy.  But hey, if she’s so concerned about it, maybe I should get her to do the cleaning.  Right after I teach her how to shovel the snow.