pink pajama mama

What a day! I went to the French Quarter this morning for a Master Class on writing at the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival and as I was walking down Bourbon Street at 9am, I was so overwhelmed. There is something about the Quarter–it’s iconic for me. And it’s not just that I’m looking around and seeing the same buildings people saw 300 years ago; it teems with culture, and there’s an authenticity and beauty there that is incomparable. Walking into a non-descript doorway that open up into a stunning courtyard, dripping with fecund flowers and palm trees and people already having their morning cocktails…
At first I was skeptical as I’m never a big fan of these types of classes, but the writer won me over by the end. She had a lot of valuable things to say and in the end, I was inspired. Can’t ask for much more than that.
I came home to find a “fairy-finding kit” in my mailbox from our old babysitter, Roxana, who now works a high-powered banking job in NYC. She’s always sending Annabelle and Henry fairy stuff. This kit had a little apothecary jar for capturing fairies, a tiny net the size of a thumb, a jar of pink pixie dust with a mariboo stopper, and a magnifying glass. I read to Annabelle out of the tiny book, advising us on how to catch fairies.
Annabelle spent a lot of time showing me exactly how she was going to tiptoe quietly up to the fairy and gently lay the net over it. THen, she was going to speak very politely to it. She thinks speaking politely involves holding your hands under sweetly under your chin and speaking in a high voice. “Hello little fairy. I won’t hurt you.” Fairies like politeness. She poured the pink glitter into the catching jar so the baby fairies would have the most gorgeous sandbox ever.
This morning, before she came into the kitchen, I absentmindedly spread a circle of rose petals around the sandbox. When Annabelle came in, she was thrilled. “Mom!! The fairies came again and played a trick on me! They played in the sandbox and left me rose petals.”
Later tonight, we were cleaning the kitchen. For Annabelle, this meant standing at the kitchen window, singing like Giselle to call in the chipmunks to some clean for us. For Henry, it meant taking the broom and the feather duster and making an even bigger mess,a ll the while singing, and for me, well, it meant trying to clean up. I FINALLY finished sweeping when Henry decided he wanted to keep sweeping and swept all the rose petals and glitter onto the floor so he could sweep it up. I swept that up, and he took the mop and tried to mop the table, spilling the vase of flowers I had sitting there all over the floor. We promptly tried to clean that up, and Henry ended up slipping and falling flat on his back.
He was very upset until Annabelle gave him one of her Barbies to play with–the one with the red hair we’d braided to make her look more like Pippi. Henry was delighted and kept saying “HI” over and over again. Annabelle’s favorite part of Pippi Longstocking is when Pippi decides to go find some “things” to take home and she finds a sleeping old man and wants to take him home to add to her collection.
These are our days–fairies, Pippi, and Tennessee Williams…

We had the BEST Easter!! No church for us–we went to the Easter parade in the French Quarter led by an 80 year old Bourbon Street Stripper! It was a whole lot more fun than church, and more representative of the beginning of Spring–beauty, fertility, life, fun, babies, treasures, joy… Let’s back up a bit. The weather has been so perfectly gorgeous that we ran very late yesterday and our egg dying turned into a bit of a frenzy. That didn’t stop George from doing some very fancy eggs. I found one egg this morning upon which he had written in white crayon: Daddy loves scotch. Annabelle was elated to wake up and find a trail of half eaten carrots leading from the bedroom to the living room where a very hungry Easter bunny had left her and Henry baskets of goodies and, in addition, the Spring fairy had come and redecorated the Winter fairy house into a spring fairy house complete with a baby bunny. George had gone to great lengths to hide the eggs, but Henry and Annabelle haven’t quite reached the stage where they cared to look for them, so George found them all. The crowning point of our day was our visit to the French  Quarter. My friend Cathy, she who says yes to attending every marvelous New Orleans event with me, came with her camera, spreading her light and joy and art and carrying the little diva–Annabelle–(because she insisted on wearing her pink sparkly shoes she can’t walk in) all over the streets. I was trying to decide if it was worth the effort to go to the parade until I found out who’s parade it was.A parade lead by a Bourbon Street stripper–show me the way! Of course, she was so old and her float went by so fast, I barely got a glimpse of that piece of living history, but I managed to catch the rest of the parade. You haven’t seen dancing until you see the New Orleans majorettes !! Is there anything better than the marching bands and the sassy sparkly baton twirlers with the pompom boots and their gravity-defying hairdos and enough attitude to light up 100 floats…Henry was the most thrilled to see Winnie the Pooh on one of the floats, and Annabelle came away covered in beads, her hands filled with stuffed animals and flowers, and as the brass band played that instantly recognizable New Orleans music, and the sun shone down on Bourbon Street, and I looked at all the people around me wearing fairy wings, boas, pirate costumes, and bunny ears–and no one looking out of place or even odd, I thought, we can never leave here, this amazing magical city is like no other.The streets of the Quarter are just stunningly beautiful and oozing character and culture and history. You can walk the streets and they look the same as 300 years ago. I watched Annabelle and Henry turn somersaults in the Jackson Square park, the  spires of the St. Louis cathedral behind them, and it was all so perfect, so right. Annabelle did dance after dance, followed closely by Henry who mimics everything she does, and as she kicked up her bare feet on the lawn, rolled in the emerald grass, took her sweater off and threw it across the park, I was so happy that she is spending her most formative years in this city of magic, because really, that’s the only word for it, magic.New Orleans, with your boas and masks and your cocktails and your dancing and your beignets, your streets filled with music and artists and beauty, I love you! The perfect Easter! 

Tonight, my little clever girl was sitting in her ballet pink leotard and tights telling me how she needed to start taking ballet again so she could be in The Nutcracker next Christmas. She knows exactly which characters she wants to be. “The little girls wearing tutus carrying baby dolls, not the little girls that do yoga.”It was bedtime, so I said, “Let’s clean up your nursery before bed.”Annabelle: “Mom, I don’t really like to clean up. It’s not very much fun.”Me: “Well, you have to make it fun. Don’t you remember Mary Poppins? In every task that must be done, there is an element of fun, just find the fun and snap! The job’s a game!”Annabelle: “Well, Mom, I’m not magic, I don’t know how to snap!”Me: “You certainly are magic! And you don’t have to snap to clean your room, you just have to sing.”(I start singing A Spoonful of Sugar while dancing to put the toys away.)Annabelle thinks for a minute and then she starts singing along with me while dancing to put her toys away. She even arranges her Barbies in a neat pile covered with a silver string of mardi gras beads so they look extra beautiful.Me: “See, isn’t this fun?”Annabelle: “Yes! Let’s go clean up the bathroom too!”She happily brushes her teeth, cleans up the stack of envelopes I’d left all over the floor of the powder room, and climbs into bed. Amazing!! I’m going to play Mary Poppins more often.Earlier today, we were eating carrots and she asked me why carrots were good for her eyes. I told her they were filled with Vitamin A and besides, you never rabbits wearing glasses. (This is something my mother used to tell me which drove me crazy.)She was silent, chewing her carrots and thinking, and she finally said, “What about the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. He wears glasses.”She’s seen about fifteen minutes of that movie six months ago.I couldn’t argue with that reasoning. I just pointed out that that rabbit lived in a movie and she would never see a rabbit out in the flowers wearing glasses.I’m not sure she believed me.But a spoonful of sugar should fix that! Magic everywhere! 

Today I was reading stories to Annabelle and Henry and one had an octopus in it. I was reading it and I was supposed to say “The octopus reached out one tentacle” but I said “The octopus reached out one testicle.” This made me laugh hysterically. The kids just stared at me.Today was one of those days where we spent six hours outside–it was gorgeous, 80 degrees, sunny, and by 3pm, I was ready to go to bed. We spent an hour in the tub and ate a huge dinner-like meal and then puttered around. Maybe the day wouldn’t have seemed so long if I had felt better, but I had a headache and felt nauseous. Annabelle and Henry were hilarious. They’re amazing. They can make me laugh even when I’m feeling horrible. I got on the floor to do pilates and Henry, totally delighted, got on the rug with me and started copying my moves.He was also very tickled to see me get in the tub. I always bathe after they go to bed. It was the first time they saw me in the tub, and Henry acted like it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen, then proceeded to throw all his tub toys in with me. He was even more thrilled when I wahsed my hair. “Mama!! Hat!” he shouted.We’re reading Pippi Longstocking before bed and Annabelle fall asleep laughing. Life can’t get any more heavenly than this. 

We got up and pulled out the paint easel and I filled up the little cups with paint. I ran to get the paintbrushes and when I came back, Henry was pouring out the cup of yellow paint. Then, my Dad called and Henry took off running through the house covered in wet paint. Then we moved onto the kitchen where Annabelle did science experiments with water, food dye, salt, and her little pets. Henry helped me stir up the cookie dough. (We were making cookies for Chuck E.’s birthday. Chuck E. is a dear friend who was the catalyst for bringing George and I together. He wrote a song for m called Oh Marci and George produced the album from Massachusetts.  We met at the record release party at the Viper Room in Hollywood–I don’t remember much of that evening as I’d imbibed a bit too much.) ANYWAY, Henry broke the electric mixer by digging it so deeply into dough, it couldn’t move. So, now we’re back to handmixing with a wooden spoon. We did all the measuring and stirring and I ran into the other room for a moment and when I returned, there was an empty bowl with green remnants in it sitting in the big bowl of dough. “Did Henry pour the green water into the dough?” I asked Annabelle. “Yes,” she answered.The good thing is, you couldn’t even taste it. The cookies were delicious!

Tonight I set the table for dinner. When I turned around, I saw Henry toddling out of the kitchen with the placemats on his head. After they ate their Angel Hair pasta, they climbed on top of the dinner table and started dancing and singing. Annabelle kept yelling that she needed her polka dotted skirt so she could dance better. They were hilarious today. This morning I asked Annabelle if she wanted to make m&m cookies. She said, “You betcha!” and winked at me. She’s going through some kind of 1930’s newspaper boy phase with her outfits and lingo and winking. She says she gets it from Hannah Montana? I don’t know.A little later, Annabelle really wanted to go out and play. But the damn bank called with pressing business for me and I told her I needed to take care of some business for a few minutes and then we could go out and play. This didn’t go over well, and she proceeded to cry and yell and pull on me during my whole conversation with the damn bank. Finally, I told her to stop. She said, “Mom, I know you’re mad at me, but sometimes things are important to me too.” Excellent point. Her play is just as important as my business. Everything ended up getting done of course and we decided to take a late afternoon walk. The air was sparkly after the rain, and Henry pushed his pink stroller with Baby Marcher in it of course, and Annabelle pretended to be Cathy. She kept telling me she was going to take my picture and where I should stand. Then, she pretended Henry was her dog and her skirt was full of dog treats. SHe kept offering them to him. At first he was confused when she said “Do you want a treat?” and proceeded to put her fingers to his mouth with nothing in them. I said, “They’re pretend treats Henry.” He said, “Tend?” And then he got very into it, taking the imaginary treats from her and panting for more. (It was her suggestion that he pant like a dog.) We had just seen a woman in her yard with her giant gray poodle enacting this whole scenario.It’s amazing to me how much these kids take in and imitate. They’re so much fun.