My poor peanut had a rough day at preschool last Thursday. It was rainy and yucky, and that just about summed up her mood, too. They were having a "Fancy Nancy" ice cream party that Little L and I went in to help set up for. At the appointed time, MJ shuffled in with her class with her fancy bead necklace and sparkly crown that she had made the day I was in the classroom as the "teacher's assistant" (there's a job description I didn't prepare for in college), looking so glum I wanted to promise her ice cream every day for a year.

So they all sat down in front of little name cards they had also made, and she looked up at Little L and I standing nearby and tried to muster a smile, weak though it was. She ate her ice cream, keeping her head down pretty much the whole time, until the entertainment portion of the morning began.

Apparently in the book Fancy Nancy, which they had been reading all week at school, a waiter drops a tray full of ice cream. So the preschool folks had one of the dads carry a tray full of empty Styrofoam bowls between the tables where the kids sat, and then pretend to trip and drop the tray.

But he really did fall, a la Jack Tripper in "Three's Company," and made a pretty good crashing sound for a fake tumble. The tray clambored to the ground, the bowls went flying ... and the kids, most of them, weren't quite sure what to make of it. A few laughed, but mostly they were quietly unnerved by it. I mean, after all, here's someone who could have been their own daddy, falling to the ground with a great commotion. Even I was a little worried, and I was in on the joke. Surely someone would cry. Surely, someone would wonder about the safety of the daddy/fake waiter.

And sure enough, above the confusion came one colossal cry and accompanying bucket of tears. From my MJ. And what did she say, when she stopped heaving long enough to say something? Did she express concern for the poor guy who took the fall, you might ask?

Not exactly.

"Oh no!" she wailed, "The ice cream! The ice cream is all gone! What are we going to do?"

Oh, MJ.

To be fair, though, she's not totally about the desserts. At the end of the day, the teacher asked each of the kids what they're favorite part of the day had been. She wrote each of their responses next to their names on a poster and taped it to the wall in the hallway where we parent types were waiting to pick up our small ones. MJ's answer? "Ice cream and Mommy."

I'm sure she didn't mean it in that order.

It's time once again to check in with the antics of the MotherBunker nephew, and this time it's not necessarily because my own offspring have no fodder to provide the blog today. It's because if I don't keep my laptop on my lap, he might sell it right out from under my nose.

So, to recap: He's 7. Going on 42. A few weeks ago, he checked his piggy bank and decided it was getting a little too low on funds. I don't know why a 7-year-old needs a nest egg, but I'm sure I will one day. When I have a 7-year-old. Who's going on 42.

Anyway ... to quote the nephew, "When I get down to $2, I've got to start selling stuff."

Not his stuff, mind you. Other people's. He sold a pair of gloves with fur trim, belonging to his older sister but hoping to be used again one day by his mother, for $2.The taker? His grandmother. He sold a box of blueberry muffin mix, which my sister purchased for 75 cents, for the profit-making price of $1. He sold a chunk of brownie for a penny. (A penny?)

And then one day, my sister came home from work hungry, and headed for the bread drawer, where all good members of our family go for empty calories.

Except it was empty.

"Hold on there," my nephew, who had spirited the loaves to his "desk" ... aka, his shop, said. "Slices of wheat are $1 and white is 50 cents."

"Why is wheat more expensive?" my sister asked.

"Because it's harder to make. Obviously."

Obviously.

When I came home from Target last night, MJ was watching "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." I don't know why. Some questions just aren't worth asking. But she was on a Seuss kick, because when we trotted off for bedtime stories, she asked for "the one with the big turtle. The big green turtle. That one."

Yertle the Turtle is so underrated in the Seussicon. It's so much fun to read, and it has such a great message, with the king building a high tower for himself on the backs of all his subjects, only to be knocked off by a burp.

And Yertle the Turtle, the king of the trees,
The king of the air and the birds and the bees,
The king of a house and a cow and a mule ...
Well, that was the end of the Turtle King's rule!
For Yertle, the King of all Sala-ma-Sond,
Fell off his high throne and fell Plunk! in the pond!

And today the great Yertle, that Marvelous he,
Is King of the Mud. That is all he can see.
And the turtles, of course ... all the turtles are free
As turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be.

In fact, as I was reading it to MJ, I couldn't help but think that someone, anyone, should have read it to a certain former one-term senator/third-wheel presidential candidate from my state of residence around late 2005/early 2006 or so ... In fact, don't you think everyone who decides to run for office should have to read it? There should be a required candidate book club, and Yertle the Turtle should be first on the list.

I'm taking a break from talking about Rice Krispies and tiny little colds today to talk about something much more important, something you may not know about, something I didn't know about until I stumbled across a blog called Toddler Planet the other day. Toddler Planet is written by WhyMommy, a wife, mother of two and a patient fighting a rare type of breast cancer called inflammatory breast cancer -- something she was diagnosed with just a few months after having her youngest son. IBC is different because it often doesn't show up with a lump and its symptoms are similar to mastitis. It is fast-spreading and deadly, and WhyMommy has asked bloggers to spread the word, to steal the post you'll see a few lines down from here. To join Team WhyMommy, which is what I'm doing right now.

Seventeen years ago, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer (she's cancer-free today, thank you very much), but I had no idea this version of the disease existed. (I'll talk more about her and WhyMommy in my Triangle Mom2Mom post next Tuesday.) What I did know, from my mother's experience, is that cancer often reveals new bonds of support outside your own family, people who didn't know you before you were diagnosed. That kind of community is what WhyMommy has found in the blogosphere, where hundreds of people have joined her team. Below is the post she wants you to read. I recommend that you don't stop there. Visit her site to read about her journey, which she tells with candor and beauty.

From Toddler Planet, July 23, 2007:

We hear a lot about breast cancer these days. One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetimes, and there are millions living with it in the U.S. today alone. But did you know that there is more than one type of breast cancer?

I didn’t. I thought that breast cancer was all the same. I figured that if I did my monthly breast self-exams, and found no lump, I’d be fine.

Oops. It turns out that you don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer. Six weeks ago, I went to my OB/GYN because my breast felt funny. It was red, hot, inflamed, and the skin looked…funny. But there was no lump, so I wasn’t worried. I should have been. After a round of antibiotics didn’t clear up the inflammation, my doctor sent me to a breast specialist and did a skin punch biopsy. That test showed that I have inflammatory breast cancer, a very aggressive cancer that can be deadly.

Inflammatory breast cancer is often misdiagnosed as mastitis because many doctors have never seen it before and consider it rare. “Rare” or not, there are over 100,000 women in the U.S. with this cancer right now; only half will survive five years. Please call your OB/GYN if you experience several of the following symptoms in your breast, or any unusual changes: redness, rapid increase in size of one breast, persistent itching of breast or nipple, thickening of breast tissue, stabbing pain, soreness, swelling under the arm, dimpling or ridging (for example, when you take your bra off, the bra marks stay – for a while), flattening or retracting of the nipple, or a texture that looks or feels like an orange (called peau d’orange). Ask if your GYN is familiar with inflammatory breast cancer, and tell her that you’re concerned and want to come in to rule it out.

There is more than one kind of breast cancer. Inflammatory breast cancer is the most aggressive form of breast cancer out there, and early detection is critical. It’s not usually detected by mammogram. It does not usually present with a lump. It may be overlooked with all of the changes that our breasts undergo during the years when we’re pregnant and/or nursing our little ones. It’s important not to miss this one.

Inflammatory breast cancer is detected by women and their doctors who notice a change in one of their breasts. If you notice a change, call your doctor today. Tell her about it. Tell her that you have a friend with this disease, and it’s trying to kill her. Now you know what I wish I had known before six weeks ago.

You don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer.

P.S. Feel free to steal this post too. I’d be happy for anyone in the blogosphere to take it and put it on their site, no questions asked. Dress it up, dress it down, let it run around the place barefoot. I don’t care. But I want the word to get out. I don’t want another young mom — or old man — or anyone in between — to have to stare at this thing on their chest and wonder, is it mastitis? Is it a rash? Am I overreacting? This cancer moves FAST, and early detection and treatment is critical for survival.

"Maybe we go outside," MJ would say to me.

"Maybe dolly is tired," she would say.

"Maybe, maybe baby is awake! And, and ... we go get! MJ go upstairs and get!"
"Do you think so, sweet pea? I don't hear her yet."
"Yeah. Sink so. Maybe."

She works so hard to put together her "blue-collar" sentences -- she earns each and every phrase, using wild hand gestures to direct them from her growing mind, and then, looks up at you in expectation, waiting to hear that you've understood her. So it was surprising when, a few weeks ago, she began to add "maybe" to almost everything she said. Even her hardest fought comments, things she had so much trouble expressing properly, were softened by the word's presence.

Last week, I cherished each "maybe" she uttered.

My college years at UNC have long past, and their memories, my loyalty to them, have often been stitched in pride for its athletics. We've marked UNC friendships with e-mails on the day of the Dook-Carolina game, or phone calls around the ACC Tournament. The days are so busy and fleeting that time rarely stops long enough to consider slow walks on gorgeous days along brick paths, walks that were accompanied by thoughts of how fortunate it was to be a part of a campus so unpretentious and so magnetic with hope. Every day in Chapel Hill was touched with magic.

But when Eve Carson was killed last week, time stopped. E-mails did, too. Talk seemed inappropriate, difficult, a blue-collar task that we privileged enough to go out into the world from UNC could not muster. All of us, I think, were transported back in time to when we were 22 years old, like Eve, and in love with a place so singular in what it gave to its students that it could only be called a community.

We were too busy weeping for our campus to talk. Not for the campus we left behind; for the one we are still -- and always will be -- very much a part of. For the one we want our children to attend one day, the children we hugged a little more tightly at the end of a long half-week. Children to whom, on our best days, we transfer a blend of magic that was learned years ago, under pine trees and blue skies and full futures.

"MJ, would you like some grapes?" Randy asked her one day after dinner. She was sitting at the table, her hands resting on top of each other in front of her, thinking about something pleasant.
"No thank you, Daddy," she said. "Maybe tomorrow."

Thursday, the day they announced Eve Carson had been killed, was sunny and breezy. It was warm and chilly all at once; even the weather was saying, "maybe." We went to the park and sat on the big-girl swings and worried not about dishes and laundry and lunch and dinner and a half-dozen other common pursuits that fill our days. I thought about how big childhood is from this spot, suspended in the air by forces that are both in your control and out of your control, the earth and the sky, the back and forth of all you understand and all you don't.

MJ giggled and said, "This is fun." What else she was thinking of, I don't know. But after a marked time of silence, of listening to the squirrels scatter through the brush and the wind blow through the trees, she said a simple, quiet thing that was so natural it needed no work, no questions, no maybes.

"I wuv you."

"I love you, too, baby."