HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Every night, this is my prayer:

"Dear God, thank you for this day together.

Thank you for baby Vanessa in our family.

Thank you for Daddy: I love being his wife.

Thank you for letting me be a Mama - I love being Mama to Vanessa.

And thank you for Milo, thank you for Max, and thank you for Chica."

That's how I start us off, then we fill in the rest.

Vanessa loves this prayer. When we ask her to pray, it is a spontaneous expression of, well, English, from our wee 2 year old. "Thank you for the doorknobs! The spiders! Mama's boob!"

Since my last post, we have had my sister's daughter, Abby, come visit. Nanners took a backseat whilst we rolled out the red carpet for Abs because it was her very first visit to our house in all of her seventeen years. Well, unless you count when she was a 3 month old fetus in her Mama's belly when we got married.



Abby arrived in San Francisco on her seventeenth birthday, so we - Van, Daddio and Granny Ernestine and I - met her at baggage claim, blended frozen coffee drink in hand, singing "Happy Birthday to you!" at the top of our lungs. Abby came off the escalator, glanced our way, turned, and launched off in the opposite direction. She later said she thought, "Wow, someone has the same birthday as me." Silly girl. She did not expect a grand entrance? She'll learn.

For her birthday meal, she selected the weirdest food possible at the San Francisco wharf, octopus. Many photos of said food were taken.

After carrying around the mass of tentacles for an hour, we made Abs ditch her leftovers so we could introduce her to Ghirardelli hot fudge sundaes.

We had a quick walk over the Golden Gate Bridge in a 90 degree heatwave, and a driving tour of the city, and then we felt Abby had done San Fran adequately for the afternoon.

When Auntie Anne is within a mile of Vanessa, she is laser focused on her. That's how I felt about Abby. Where ever we went, people assumed she was my daughter. (Ahem.) I loved that. Instead of being the haggard-looking, out of shape young mother of a toddler, I looked like the youthful, slightly with-it middle-aged woman that I more truthfully am. Hey, I'm closer to 60 than I am to 21.

Abby, you might gather from the pictures, is a bit of a hottie. She fit right in to the surf climate and culture. You would never guess she hails from rural Connecticut. Bless her heart.

Let's just say that this amateur and occasionally bossy photographer and this underphotographed teenager could have spent days on location together. She willingly did all I asked, in terms of posing, and she made every shot look great. So much easier than photographing a toddler.

When we weren't snapping pics, we spent our days getting our nails done, shopping, and sampling the local fare. We girled out, Big Time.

Daddio took her surfing. He surfed over her face her first day out. Doh! or Woot! as Abby would say.

Death-defying surfing lessons work up one's appetite... for ribs, apparently.

When it was time to go home, we drove up the coast through Big Sur on Route 1 - Abby drove, actually, all 225 miles and 6 hours of it. We stopped briefly to see the elephant seals and again to try to say hello to Steven the Beetle, but we couldn't find him. That's a lot of driving for a new driver, and it was an expert trail, no less. Abs was thrilled.

We sent Abigail MacGoo home with a French manicure, a new haircut, a fabulous tan, and a suitcase full of new surf-inspired duds, five new pairs of shoes, and a Pokeman comforter and sheet set (thrift store find) that was her catch of the week. She also had a hearty dose of western air in her lungs. Heck, she even got a new job and a boyfriend the week she was visiting - both back in Connecticut.

As soon as Abby departed, Jack, Van and I all got a virus I affectionately call the swine flu, which morphed into a sinus infection for both me and Jack. V-dog missed her second full week of preschool thanks to that. Even so, the weekend after Abby left, we drove to Santa Barbara on Saturday and Los Angeles on Sunday, for track meets. We got to see Rob, Manuela and Sophia in Santa Barbara, and "Auntie" Shea-Shea's parents Eugene and Yolanda in Los Angeles.

While in Santa Barbara, we got an unexpected call from our adoption agency that another birthmom is interested in us. After talking for an hour on Saturday, and discovering that she happens to live in L.A., we agreed to meet up on Sunday at a McDonald's. We all got along very well. This birthmom is adopted herself and is raising a 4 year old girl, so she is pretty clear about what she is looking for in parents for her child, due July 30th. Jack and I both felt an immediate connection with this mom. We're waiting to hear if she chooses us, so this past week has been full of anticipation for me.

In other news, Vanessa's Uncle Mike needs surgery to remove a world record sized kidney stone, Auntie Anne put her baby boy Andy on a plane to head back to the Navy base before he ships off to Afghanistan next week, and Auntie Judi's boy Daniel, an Iraqi War veteran, fell and broke his leg and perhaps his femur. Even our dear Maxy cat is in the hospital today, after a bad fight and an abscess on his ear bud that the doctor hopes isn't new cancer. So much to pray for.

As far as my mysterious breast lump goes, I have good news to report. It disappeared! Even so, I kept my biopsy appointment with the surgeon, who actually participated on my c-section when a loop of bowel was adhered to my abdominal wall, making it hard to make the incision. He was very nice. I had to disrobe and lie back on the examination table. While the doctor palpitated my right breast, Van seized the opportunity to man-handle my left breast, then tried to get her mouth on it for a quick snack. ("God bless Mama's boob!")

As an elderly stay-at-home mom with little left to prove in the way of ambition, organization, housekeeping or self grooming, I can spend luxurious amounts of time bonding with Vanessa, time my sister didn't have with her baby girl. I hope to someday be the slightly with-it mom of a seventeen year old VanNannerkins, but until that happens, I was delighted to capitalize on my opportunity to lavishly spend time with Abby.

"Thank you for letting me be a Mama - I love to be Mama to Vanessa."