You are not my mother!

You are a SNORT! Thank you, P.D. Eastman.

Eliza has some hard-core separation anxiety going. Although Snorts are known in our house by the slightly less judgmental moniker, NOTMOM, the end result is the same: hysterical crying with real tears the second she is placed in anyone else's arms. Last Monday, we went to the gym and then left the gym because I couldn't even get out of the kidcare room (they're not very patient with crying babies).

Sometimes even Mac gets painted with the NOTMOM brush, which is just a bummer on all levels. She's mostly over that, unless she senses some serious NOTMOM time coming. On Saturday, Andrea came over to help with planting our flowers. Eliza was fine with her being there... as long as she stayed OVER THERE. We went to the store to buy the flowers and left her with Mac - in her mind NOTMOM took Mommy away. She was okay with that for a bit since we did come back, but then after her nap, she freaked on Mac completely - but only while I was in the room not holding her. If I left, she was fine. Fun times. During her dinner, she watched Andrea very closely ("NOTMOM, do you like oatmeal? It's very tasty"), but was willing to sit and play with her post. We left quickly and quietly (had tickets for "Diary of Anne Frank" at Steppenwolf - great production). Andrea said all went well until she picked Eliza up to start bedtime, at which point she was only NOTMOM and there was to be no consoling. Fortunately, Andrea doesn't take it personally and is a great babysitter!

We had a very nice mother's day (for the record, I have no use for mother's day. Or father's day or valentine's day or any of the other stupid Hallmark holidays that insist we spend gobs of money to convince people we love them. Even the founder of mother's day came to hate it. Yay consumerism!). Eliza sent me flowers and persuaded her daddy to change all her diapers for the day. Mac cooked a delicious pasta with pesto for dinner and then we vegged out in front of "The Sopranos" (where I correctly predicted it was time for someone more major than Tim Daly to die).

In other news, our porch is not done yet. I didn't realize there was work to be done on the foundation, which involved much jackhammering on Saturday morning. Today they are putting in the railings - a sure sign that the end is in sight. Just in time for the cicadas.