Multi-tasking, M&M's, and Panache!

First of all, "panache" really has nothing to do with anything - it's just my favorite word at the moment, from a couple of books I've been reading (I can just hear my grandmother - "When," she said once when I mentioned having read something, "do you have time to read?" As always, my answer is that I put off my already neglected laundry...!). So that's all about that, except to say that there's a great deal of panache to be found in the Count of Monte Cristo, the book I am reading currently, and it's highly entertaining story (and about a thousand times better than the movie, as usual).
As for multi-tasking, it's something I have become very skilled at in the past few years, as most mothers usually do, but it can be so consuming that I sometimes forget how to do just one thing at a time, both physically and mentally. For instance, Ryan's nursing demands have been - well, very demanding, and a little tiresome, if I must be completely honest. It's not that I mind nursing him at all, it's just that I dislike feeling that I'm a slave to it, that every time he rounds a corner and sees me he MUST nurse or perish. :-) There is no subsitution or distraction once he asks. So of course I've been thinking of all the usual suggestions I give moms, and one of those is that perhaps the toddler or preschooler in question needs more focused mommy time, which, subsequently, I've been trying to give Ryan. I have been trying to offer this in a natural and genuine way, rather than as if I were throwing a dog a bone - I read an interesting parenting article once that suggested we think of some of our parenting strategies and tactics in the light of working on a marriage. How would you like it if your husband, in other words, approached you with a list of nice things a husband should do for his wife and proceeded to check them off mechanically - then became annoyed if you didn't appreciate this very much and it didn't do anything for your marriage? The same thing would be true of our children - they probably don't appreciate being guinea pigs - "let's see if this makes you behave better" - instead, they just want us to love them. But I seriously digress! I was saying that I have been trying to make sure Ryan has enough of my attention, and I have thought that I have been available to him in general as much as possible and have played with him on specific occasions, but he has still been so needy. I realized last week, though, that my thoughts at any given time are on the next ten things that I'm going to do; and while it's helpful to be aware of what's going on and what needs to happen several steps ahead, children are very likely able to sense when someone is with them, but not completely committed. Therefore this weekend I made a conscious (and difficult - it's hard to put the brakes on!) effort to let everything go when I sat down to play with him, and it was good to really reconnect with my little boy. He's a quintessential middle child, and for several reasons right now he's the one who seems to get the dregs of everyone's attention. He does often get nuggets of attention, though, when he's being funny, and he is hysterically funny. Last week on several occasions he went around the house with a pretend cake he had made. "Who wants happy birthday cake?," he would say, missing several consonant sounds so that it came out in his unique and charming accent. He would describe with great relish that it was chocolate, "with M&M's," and feed me pieces until he would suddenly say in a very grown-up, important fashion, "That's enough! You have to share with Drew-Drew." Unfortunately I can't include all the expressions that made this so delightful. Yesterday the older kids were telling knock-knock jokes, and he chimed in, too - "Knock-knock," he said, his eyes sparkling. "Who's there?" I answered. "Bana" (banana), he replied, then threw his head back and laughed uproariously. That was around the same time Dave and the kids were tying stuffed monkeys to the ceiling fan in the living room and playing games to see which monkey would stay on the longest and who could catch their monkey when each flew off!
But back to the M&M's - when Ryan started dishing out his imaginary cake I aquired this intense craving for a cake my mother-in-law had brought for my husband's birthday in April. It was from Publix, and it really did have M&M's on it - lots of refined sugar and all other kinds of terrible things, and it wasn't homemade, but it was good, and over the weekend, chocolate, particularly in the form of M&M's, was all I wanted. I had to stop by the store after church yesterday (my favorite thing to do on a Sunday afternoon, you know!), and I went completely overboard in the baking aisle. A few aisles later, however, I looked over what was in the cart. I had the coveted candy, in miniature form for baking, the cake mix to put the candy on, chocolate chips, and baking chocolate in two forms. I realized I must have a nutritional deficiency of some kind, but I knew enough to know it wasn't for sugar, at least not that much, so I put half of it back. I did come home and make the cake, though, adorned exactly the way I wanted!