This, That, and the Mother Thing

Still Here for A While

2012-02-03T09:16:00.000-05:00

So, why not a bar in a hospital? Who needs it more than those of us spending the night with our sick loved ones and are too revved up to get to sleep. And it's not like medical personnel are so stingy with the medications. When I was in maternal care with the twins, they were passing out ambien like candy for me to go to sleep. And after the c-section, they were very open with the percocet. They kept trying to push the extra strong stuff and I kept telling them I needed one half pill of the weakest.

I think therein lies the issue. So what I want is a glass of wine. And a hospital bar would offer is a choice and between a double martini and a fifth of vodka, all the while watching until I drink the whole thing in one gulp.

(((sigh)))

Anywho, Christopher is doing fantastic during the day. He is so active and engaging he doesn't look sick at all. I forgot to mention that our pediatrician told us that Christopher was the happiest child she had ever checked into the hospital. So he's great during the day.

But when he sleeps, his oxygen plummets below 90% saturation and sometimes down to 85 or 86. I finally had some time to check Dr. Google. 86% does not indicate immediate danger at this age, but it can cause some long term damage? I don't understand that. I just know it's not good.

But they put him on oxygen and he gets better. He just needs to sleep a night without oxygen to get home. I thought we'd go home today based on his activity while awake yesterday. Now I think the earliest is tomorrow if he doesn't have any oxygen tonight. But I think we're looking at Sunday to come home.

So asthma.

One of the pediatricians stopped by yesterday. I was apparently in a mood for chatting because I told her and the nurse in the room all about a new study I'm working on analyzing a medical virtual community, asking for their feedback and insights. The doctor and I ended up chatting for quite a while about that until we started talking about the A word.

She says it's possible that Christopher is on the path for atopic asthma, because of his eczema which is related to his seasonal allergies and now this strong reaction to RSV. I would like to take a minute and do the double bird flipping booty dance towards his first pediatrician who said there is NO WAY POSSIBLE THAT ECZEMA AND ALLERGIES ARE RELATED even when I said it seems to me and the RESEARCH I SAW that they were!!! Asshat. Which is why we switched to our new pediatrician who LISTENS to us, especially when we talk as though we are typing in caps and italics.

We aren't going to be exploring any asthma diagnosis right now, though, until March. Why, you ask as did I? Because for the next 4 weeks and the every other day visit to the doctor to check Christopher out, we're going to be more concerned that he is still breathing right now and not any long term issues. I really don't know what she said because my head exploded after the You Will Be Seeing Us WHOLE FREAKIN' LOT FOR THE NEXT FOUR WEEKS part.

So this morning's pediatrician stopped by. And um. Good news. He's going to be fine. There's no bad news. There's just a whole lot of waiting. He has to be off oxygen. And while I was excited that he is down to 1/2 liter while he's sleeping, that's not the best news we could have. He still hasn't "turned the corner" yet. We are still on the straight path and it's too foggy to identify the corner. I thought we were well past the corner, but we're not. So he gets out Saturday? Unlikely. Sunday? Maybe. Sometime next week? Probably.

So join me on this adventure with the other bleary eyed, wild haired parents walking the halls of the children's hospital in our pajamas looking for coffee.

I Honesty Didn't See That Coming

2012-02-02T07:56:00.001-05:00

Greetings from the hospital.

Everything is going to be ok. But Christopher doesn't have pneumonia; he has RSV. I think it's good news that this is not pneumonia, because the course it is taking would be a Really Bad Path for pneumonia. But the RSV is taking a real toll on him.

Generally, RSV is a concern for children under 1, especially preemies. Christopher was a preemie, but is well over 1. I do think, though, we are looking at some asthma issues developing and this is why his RSV hit him so hard, while when Bridget had it (we think), it was just a really, really bad cold.

In any case, Christopher is in here for a few days at least. You can't treat RSV because it is a virus so you treat the symptoms. His main pain problem is significant congestion making it hard for him to breathe. The congestion is described as "coarse" by the respiratory therapists--worse than wheeze, but not as wet and dense as pneumonia. RSV! His oxygen saturation level gets too low (waaaay too low) while he sleeps so he is on oxygen. He can't leave the hospital until he can sleep a good amount (usually 8 hours) without needing oxygen.

We hope to get out Saturday or Sunday. I don't think there is any way in H-E-Double-Hockey sticks we will get out tomorrow.

I realize the benefits of blogging about important episodes later when you can get perspective and add insights and humor. Bu sometimes you just need to get it out.

Things that are interesting, worth developing some perspective:

* this is a highly contagious illness, so the medical staff, if they are going to touch him, have on all sorts of masks and gloves and disposable robes.
* Even sick and even tiny, my son takes up a boatload of room. I slept with him in his bed last night, fixing his oxygen when it fell off and the monitor beeped. And thank god(dess) for the respiratory therapist who, at the 4 am treatment, finally slid him over in the bed so I could actually get my whole body on the bed. A twin bed can have an adult size and a child size portion as long as the child isn't doing this.
*Presby Main still serves fried chicken on Weds. Woohoo!! It was the third thing both Dave and I thought after they told us to go to the hospital. After: Oh and Shit. So yes, the thinking was. Oh. Shit! Fried Chicken on Wednesday. Oh, maybe it was the 4th thing we thought. But it was up there. Yes, we've spent a lot of time at this hospital.
*While Tuesday was my turn to freak the freak out over Christopher's health, Wednesday's was Dave's. We share that way.

Goal today: to take a shower. My first one since Sunday. It's been a rough week.

I Am So Tired....

2012-01-31T10:57:00.001-05:00

Sometimes, I have to blog to get some things out of my head so that I can move forward and do other things (e.g., work).

So Christopher has pneumonia. This is our fourth pneumonia in the family. Conor had it once and Bridget had it twice. He has had a cough since Christmas, but nothing too worrisome; we all have some sort of dust/pollen allergy over here. Then Sunday night, his cough got a lot worse and he started running a fever. In our house, viruses start with fever and turn into coughs. Pneumonia (at least for Bridget) starts with a cough and then turns into a fever.

Conor and Bridget also had substantial lethargy with their pneumonia,which is why when I took Christopher in Monday morning to the doctor with a 99.5 fever and a engaging, funny, ACTIVE disposition, I felt like I was being an overanxious mother.

Nonetheless, the doctor heard the crackling and wheezing in his lungs immediately. I congratulated Dave and me for being wonderful parents and developing our lay skills at identifying early signs of pneumonia in our children. Indeed, the doctor suggested we only needed to use albuterol on an as needed basis instead of a strict 4 to 6 hour schedule (like we did for Bridget).

I was even more proud of us when Christopher's fever spiked to 102 Monday afternoon. We were ahead of the curve! He was going to have two good antibiotic treatments before the dreaded Nighttime Fever Spike. I was expecting this to be an Easy Peasy pneumonia.

Ha.

We gave him ibuprofen at 9:30 (easy peasy!) and another albuterol at 10:30 (coughing but under control after the meds) and settled in for sleep. About 1:30, I woke up next to a burning, wheezing ember of a toddler. The 103 temperature was especially bothersome because he should have been covered by the ibuprofen. (We are thinking this morning, it would have been 105 if we hadn't treated earlier in the night). I dosed him with Tylenol and debated giving him his next albuterol an hour early. The wheezing, holding his breath at the top, and the coughing up of the lung made Dr. Mom decide to give him his albuterol early.

But then. It didn't get better. The fever stayed at 102.5 and the wheezing, struggling breath wasn't going away like it did earlier. I would like to also point out that what is happening at this point is NOT AT ALL like we experienced with Conor's and Bridget's pneumonia. Yes, we've had to alternate between tylenol and ibuprofen for high fever before, but the breathing has usually been taken care of by the albuterol.

I started to debate calling the triage nurse. What could they do at the hospital that I wasn't doing already? But could I give him more albuterol earlier to help him breathe and sleep. So I called. Dave told me this morning that he thought I wanted to take him to the ER. No, I wanted to give him more albuterol. And, honestly, to make sure Christopher's path wasn't similar to a friend of ours who nearly died last Christmas. (Yes, Anne, your illness and near death scared us then and scares us now. When a friend's Facebook posts go from "I've got the flu" to "Here is Anne's CaringBridge Page", I think that is the definition of having the bejeesus scared out of you. Pneumonia isn't something to trifle with)

So yes, after the triage nurse had me report what Christopher's ribs looked like as he breathed and to count the number of breaths he was taking per minute, he told us to Go Directly To the ER. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200. (Instead, start writing the $200 check)

There was no one in the Presbyterian Main Hembly Children's ER (Shout out for this pediatric ER! Go there!) and the triage nurse and receptionist tag teamed us into the system and to the doctor ASAP. Christopher's oxygen saturation at this time was about 93%. As the doctor told us later, 92% is when you start to worry. Personally, I do not find 93% to be a "Yippee, Hooray" kind of number.

The doc came in poked, prodded, listened, and discussed with us what was going on. There was some discussion about whether Christopher has asthma because he takes flovent and that we have albuterol hanging around the house. It took a couple of tries to get him to understand that our (old) dr tested for asthma (no), allergies yes and that's why we use the flovent, The albuterol is leftover from Bridget's pneumonia, and honestly, I think the pediatricians like us having that around the house.

ER Doc prescribed two breathing treatments in the ER and steroids for home use. The treatments got his oxygen saturation up to 95% (not yippee, but not on the border of freaking out, either). And then we talked about the steroids.

The ER doc went back to Christopher's initial lung scan from NICU and said he saw a gray spot indicating Respiratory Distress Syndrome. I pretty strongly said "THAT had never been brought up before" not mad at him, but bugged that no one mentioned that earlier considering all the lung/respiratory issues both twins had have. In any case, we got out of ER and arrived home about 5 and went back to bed. Around 6:30, Bridget started pounding on my head to WAKE UP!! TIME TO GET UP, MOMMY!

So it looks like Christopher is developing mild asthma, probably related to being a preemie. We follow up with our doctor on Friday to get more information about this.

Dave is home today so I am supposed to be working on my research papers (one submission due today! another tomorrow!) and prepping my class on Thursday. I am so emotional that when my co-author just emailed me that the one we're submitting today looks great, I started tearing up. (I just did it again) I'm very excited about these two papers; they are part of a new program of research I'm doing and I want them to be good. But I'm also concerned about my son dying (he's not, but I wasn't convinced last night) and it's a lot to be processing all of this on an incredibly small amount of sleep.

I had to get this out so I could start focus on my other stuff. It takes some time to write this, but it frees up my brain to focus on other things.

Toddler Talkings

2012-01-16T19:47:00.000-05:00

The kids are saying some very cute things lately and I want to remember them before it's too late. Despite our first blog's semi-disappearance (we all lost our blogs on Salon, including Julie Powell's blog--the one the book and movie Julie/Julia was based on), I frequently wrote about Conor's development. The twins are getting short changed in this regard. So, I may be writing some short entries over the next few decades (!) so I can say a bit more about what they are doing.

I'm just freakin' busy. And although I have time to write a FB status update most days, I don't have enough time to do that with the blog. (As my older son just CHING CHING CHING CHING ninja attacked me on the arm this very second, I don't always have the patience either)

So, here we go.

Bridget likes when I tickle her parmpits, but does not like it when she hurts her belbow. Truly, she loves to eat doodles with red sauce and a lot of parmesean cheese. When guests are over, and she, ahem, passes gas, they might expect her to excuse herself when they ask her "What do you say?" Most people are surprised when she proudly shouts, "I TOOTED!"

We are pretty open with bodily functions around here. Tonight, Dave said to Christopher as he changed him for bedtime, "Oh my goodness! Where did all this pee pee come from in your diaper?!"

Christopher thought for only a moment before he stated the obvious, "From my penis."

If The Blog Doesn't Post, It's Me

2011-12-16T09:17:00.003-05:00

Hmmm, wasn't there a Jimmy Buffet song that went something like "If the phone doesn't ring, it's me?" I seem to recall an underground bar in Chapel Hill (Trolls?), cheap beer and singing that verse. Or not. There's a lot that's a bit foggy about nights in Chapel Hill, and that was, ahem, a few years ago.

In any case, even though I haven't been here in a few months, that doesn't mean I haven't thought about you daily or that I haven't written dozens of brilliant posts in my mind. (Both meanings of that sentence--there were written in my head and they were brilliant and only in my head were they actually brilliant)

In any case, my sabbatical is coming to an end. 3 more weeks and the spring semester starts up. It's been a great leave. I worked and I fell in love with my life and my research again. (I've been wondering which blog I should put this on--my personal or professional one) But since there will be family updates, we are here instead of there.

I shall also continue on the theme of how much FREAKING easier our life is now that it was 2 years ago, 1 year ago or even 6 months ago (although 6 to 9 months ago are when things starting really easing up). Friends even comment to us how obvious it is that things are easier. I think one telling factor is that when they something cheery like "Happy Easter" I don't respond with "Fudge you!", only I didn't say Fudge. (True story from Spring of 2010).

Anyhoo, the twins have moved into big kid beds and they Want To Stay There All Night. And when they don't, we have taught them to just Just Get Up and Walk Into Our Room (lesson learned from the firstborn). So far, Christopher has taken us up on that offer and it is a joyous thing.

The twins have also become very verbal, telling us about their day and their friends and have quickly learned to tell Santa what they want for Christmas. This includes Bridget shouting her requests to our new Elf on the Shelf (Elfie) and taking the Santa potholder off the cabinet and telling him, too. It's obviously important to cover all your bases before Christmas.

Conor, either inspired by the twins or from other kids in our carpool, has become more verbal, too, and is actually revealing facts and stories from his day at school. You cannot imagine my relief at this. Forever, Conor has not told me anything about his day. Bridget, at age 2, was more revealing about what happened during her day than Conor ever was. But now, I am hearing stories! With kids' names!

And who knew our introverted son was such a ham? The life cycle of piano lessons has been:

Love it
Hate It
RECITAL: Love, Love Love it!

He was begging to stop lessons before the recital and now he's back to enjoying it and doing really well. I'm really proud of him for that.

OK. We are in the midst of Holiday Frenzy 2011. We have had a 10 day stretch where only 2 nights have been free and some days we've had 2 and 3 events to attend. Tonight, we're hosting a reception for our graduate program to honor our newest doctoral student and my first student to get her PhD. There's a real sense of ownership over the grad students and I'm so excited for her. It's also nice to see how our relationship is changing from mentor/mentee to more of colleagues. Saturday is graduation and I get to help "hood her". It's something like this and a pretty big deal.

So, yes. Busy. Fun. Life. Work. Better. Much, much better. That pretty much sums up my life right now.

She's Crafty

2011-11-03T14:03:00.000-05:00

She's crafty - she's gets around
She's crafty -she's always down
She's crafty -she's got a gripe
She's crafty - andshe's just my type
She's crafty.....

--The Beastie Boys

I have become crafty, albeit not in the way the Beastie Boys describe and whose song haunts my brain.

I have been knitting up a storm lately. And then, in a fit of over-ambitiousness, I bought a sewing machine and made Gryffindor robes for the kids so that they could be Harry, Hermione and Ron.

And I did it with a minimal amount of stress and anxiety! Actually, sewing is a lot of fun and a lot quicker than knitting.

I have also discovered that there are an enormous number of my over-educated women friends of a certain age are also quite crafty. For me, I feel like knitting, sewing and gardening are incredibly similar to the work I do normally---conducting research projects and writing them up into papers. No, seriously.

I have a great deal of ownership over my research and writing (like my crafts). And I hope it doesn't surprise any of you out there in blogland, but just like my craft projects, my research and writing always have "areas for improvement" the next go round. (And not to be too defensive, but THAT'S NOT JUST A PROBLEM OF MY RESEARCH; ALL RESEARCH AND WRITING HAS ROOM FOR GROWTH. ahem, ahem, cough, cough).

In any case, these knitting, sewing and gardening (and soon chickens and a koi pond) help me in my research. Research and writing projects can take YEARS from inception to completion. I think I would become incredibly discouraged if I couldn't point to something that is easier and quicker to produce. So I go out and weed a bed and it's done and then, I can go write three pages of a draft. I can knit a cap and rerun for the zillionth time a confirmatory factor analysis and a structural equation model. I can sew up some robes and then work on that theory paper.

I know not every faculty member feels this way, but I find it very engaging and interesting. Plus, we get some clothing and food, eh? Not such a bad thing.

It's better than making myself all worked up over what is a normal part of my job.

I LOVE that pumpkin.

Sleep and Curly Hair

2011-09-15T09:43:00.003-05:00

((Insert comments about how busy I've been here))

OK! Now that we have my excuses over, I'm going to talk about something that I've wanted to talk about, but have been too intimidated to post here on the blog as it is "public". SLEEP. Or How We Are Still Co-Sleeping With (and bfing) The Twins. You should leave now if this topic annoys you or it might bug you. (For those of you who don't have children or are way past this stage, sleep and how one's family accomplishes it appears to a controversial subject for modern parents)

But for everyone else who wants to know what it's like for a working mother to AP-ish with twins, keep reading.

So, umm, yeah. We are still co-sleeping. Generally, we are really just co-sleeping with Bridget, because Christopher, THANK OUR LUCKY STARS, sleeps all night long in his crib. Indeed, he is the ONLY child who regularly sleeps through the night. Conor usually gets up around 1:30 and either climbs in bed with us and he and Dave go sleep in the guest room, should our bed be over-crowded.

Again, if this bothers or annoys you, stop reading now! This is our family's choice! Your mileage may vary!

Bridget usually starts off in our bed because it's rare that the twins actually go to sleep at the same time at night and one tends to be rocking and rolling while the other one is nodding off. We've also found it's easier to land Bridget in our bed than in her crib. We're lazy parents and we like to do things the easy way, what can I say.

Fortunately, Bridget is the least likely of our sleep bunnies to want to be the middle part of an "H" or an "N" while we sleep. If you co-sleep, you know that I mean they sleep directly across (H) or diagonally across (N) the bed. Bridget is more of a || sleeper meaning she is right up against either Dave or me.

Really, it's not bad, mostly because she is such a cuddler and I am, too. (Break in story: Christopher actually kissed me in his sleep one night! In the middle of the night, he sat up, grabbed my face, kissed it, and went right back to sleep. Have to say that was pretty dang special!) But back to Bridget. The main problem is when she's not all the way asleep and she shouts out (literally!): I WANT BOOBY! BOOBY!

This is 1) where we think we should have taught them a different word and 2) where you should leave if your face is turning red. We've actually made great progress on her not needing so much booby in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, part of that transition is that she likes to sleep with her hand down my shirt. Given the choice. . .

Well, let's just say that I sometimes lie in bed with my arms crossed over my chest until she's in a deeper sleep and I can push her over to Dave. (And Dave would tell you if he had his own blog that she will go fishing down his shirt, too, which is a fine Howdy Doo way to wake up!)

So there. The story arc for this post is somewhat (completely!) lacking, but that's what you get for reading the blog of a working mother of three.

We plan on bfing and co-sleeping until we stop. You should take bets on when that will be, because we have no idea.

As for the curly hair, there are two sub topics. One, I've started following the advice in the Curly Girl Handbook and my hair looks gorgeous, if I do say so myself. Second, Conor was bullied yesterday on the bus because of his curly hair. Some older kid made fun of it and told him that he was going to pull it all out so that Conor couldn't have curly hair anymore.

In all of Conor's life, I have never seen him so genuinely upset. He's sensitive and cries, but this was different. He had real, deep hurt and real, grieving tears. I had honestly thought the south had gotten past its issues with curly hair and that we had inoculated Conor to curl problems by keeping it long and celebrating it his whole life.

So he and I took a walk away from everyone else at the bus stop so we could talk about it. And I told him what I think is true: this kid is jealous of Conor's curly hair. Conor first denied that but I don't think he knew what jealous meant. So then I asked him, "Conor, how many people have told you how beautiful your hair is?" Conor thought for a moment and realized that he ALWAYS gets compliments on his hair wherever we go. Strangers stop and stare at his hair and say "Don't ever cut that; it's beautiful!" Then I said, "How many times do you think anyone has ever stopped this boy and told him how beautiful his hair his?" "Never," Conor said with some confidence. We talked a bit more and moved on.

Last night, when Dave spoke to Conor about the incident, Conor told him that Mommy told him the boy was just jealous of his hair and it was all ok.

I'm hoping that this all ends up with a pat on my back for handling this situation well and preparing us for bigger issues. I did email the head of busing for his school, who said he will address the issue. I actually just responded with a hopefully subtle suggestion to handle this sensitively so that the problem does not escalate.

The problems change when they get older and the problems get more serious. I have had several mom mentors tell me this about parenting. I believe it's true. But it's also true that these parents and their children are sleeping through the night and they don't remember what it's like to be tired all the time, either.

HA! I did make a link back in the curls story back to the sleep story! And that's the best I can do in this overly long post.

((Imagine here: promises about how it's not going to be so long before I post again))

French Class

2011-08-08T07:46:00.002-05:00

Conor is starting first grade in two weeks. For some reason that seems so much older to me than kindergarten. It has a real number!

We are very happy with the French immersion program he is in. His receptive French is pretty good although he still is quite shy about speaking French.

Two things we still think about in our schooling decision.

1) Did we do the right thing by holding him back a year? He is bored at school. The most fun thing about school is riding the bus home. Scooby Doo is WAY more exciting than school has ever been. I don't know if this is a Conor thing (I loved school; I'm not sure he does), a boy thing (school is not as much fun for boys as girls in general), or an age thing (he needs to be in second grade now; certainly his math is way beyond what they are doing now). I don't know if it is the right decision for now, but it certainly was the right decision then. Can you imagine starting kindergarten, living in a new house, while we remodel the old house, while two small and needy twins move into the family? Conor was chewing his nails down to the nub at that point without starting kindergarten. I think it would have been beyond his capacity to cope had we started school.

2) Are we doing enough to help him read? It's the parents' responsibility to teach children English until they get into the third grade at an immersion program. We read a lot, but are we doing enough? Probably not, but Conor is actually reading pretty well. He just did an activity from our first grade activity book and could read nearly every word. He's not reading a lot on his own, but he is figuring out words by sounding them out.

So I'm not bragging on him, OK? We have neighborhood friends whose children were reading chapter books before kindergarten and Hippogriff's older son was doing 5th grade math at 5 years old. It's just that I don't want Conor to be so bored by school. I'd like the love of learning to not be extinguished by 2nd grade. We expect him to have quite a few more years of schooling after that.

Any advice you have on keeping boys interested in school would be vastly appreciated!

A More Fun Update

2011-08-05T07:20:00.006-05:00

So, imagine my chagrin after I posted my seemingly witty and insightful (by my standards) update about how much easier it gets when the kids get older and then realizing as I go back, that, umm, I pretty much wrote that same post in April. And my April post was only 3 or 4 posts ago.

Wow.

That's pathetic.

The thing is, I'm writing tons, just not here. I'm updating facebook, twitter, Google +, and my professional blog (all are available through a google search), but I'm not doing much here. And when I do post here, it's repetitive.

WELL NO MORE! At least for today.

What do you come here for? Updates on kids and what it's like to be a crazy working mother of three. Here goes.

Conor is having a very lazy summer. There is a bit more TV watching than I am going to admit, which we believe has lead to an increase in sarcastic responses to the parental units. So ix-nay the ickelodean-nay. Even Nick Jr. But yes, I am letting him watch Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry and even a little Scooby Doo. On the one hand, it's not PBS. On the other, it's so engaging that the child will spend 15 minutes re-telling and re-enacting the entire story for me. The most animated conversations I've ever had with Conor involve cartoons.

I now know as much about Tom and Jerry as I do about Conor's entire kindergarten year. It must be a guy thing because although I watched Tom and Jerry as a child, I never knew which one was which. When Dave and I were talking about this, Dave said "Well, of course, Tom is the cat." It never occurred to me. Then again, Dave can quote Bugs Bunny ("I should have taken that left at Albuquerque") and still does.

Bridget continues to blow my mind and explode my heart. Some parents, like Ayelet Waldeman, love their husband more than their children. I love my husband very much. But I fall in love with my children on a daily basis. Bridget is amazing. Her vocabulary and pronunciation is well beyond what it should be at this age. And her will! Her strong sense of self! Her hatred of bees! Wha?

Apparently at school this week, the teacher heard Bridget yelling NO! NO! and thought she was having a fight. Indeed, she was: a fight with a bee! She was smacking the bee on her arm with a spoon and yelling No! No! at it stung her. The teacher got the bee off her arm and Bridget cried just a bit. And then went back to eating her breakfast. No Damn Bee is going to get the best of my girl!

She is so strong willed and determined to let everyone know what she thinks that when our (still alive and perhaps not deaf) cat gets on our bed at night (after a 5 year absence in which we actually didn't miss her) and meows/howls until we pet her, Bridget will wake up in the morning, get in the cat's face, and say loudly NO! NO! That Scarlett (the cat) is also known as Psycho Kitty and is afraid of this imp should tell you something.

Bridget likes to tell Patches that he is a Good Dog! She told us this week what she wanted to wear "tomorrow"---actually saying "tomorrow". She blows us away and I cannot wait to get to know her better as more of her personality develops. (Although that statement alone conjures up scary images. More!? MORE!?!)

Christopher has become my best surprise. There is so much going on inside of his head. Of all three children, he has the deepest and quickest emotions--which reminds me of an adult in this house and it's not Dave. He can go from Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy to melting in .3 seconds. And his scowly face! I love it!! If it's a new situation or person, do not expect a smile. But don't be offended if you get the scowly face. Of course, as soon as we call him on it, it's a grin. But it shocks most people to begin with.

I am pretty sure I've talked about his sugar spot already---that place on his neck that is my favorite place to kiss in the world. All I have to do is ask for it, and he laughs and yells NO!! And runs, fully expecting me to chase him and eat him up. Christopher is also very funny--and Conor does not like to hear us say that. Still, Christopher can crack us up, with his sneaky grin and an impish look in his eye as he takes off running and swinging his one arm. I don't know why he does that, but when he Runs Hard, he bends his right arm and pumps it back and forth as he runs. That's how we can tell he's Running Hard. And if he's just standing there and pumping his arm, then we know he's dancing.

He also sings a lot. There are two favorite songs: Hello Everybody from school (Bridget "sings" it too. Actually, she just yells it) and Daddy's Home! (one of my original tunes that involves clapping and, well, you know the words already). And then there's the tweaking. Both the twins are obsessed with boobage. Mine, mostly, but here lately, Christopher has taken to lifting his own shirt and tweaking himself. That is odd. We are open to the children exploring their own bodies and appreciating them, but this one is just weird (not to be too judgmental about it). Any level of anxiety and that child whips his shirt up and tweaks his nipp.

I'm assuming this is a phase and we won't have this issue in high school. NONETHELESS. I was expecting touching in, ahem, other places and have the stock supportive yet directive sentence to use with the older boy in the house (WHICH I STILL SAY 5 TIMES A DAY), but "I know that feels good, but do that in private in your room or the bathroom" really doesn't seem to fit with a nipple tweaking.

In any case, I'm sure Christopher will be glad in the future that I've shared that. (As will Conor).

Finally, Me. Dave can update his own dadbum blog. (Or just a facebook status, honey!) I am enormous. I am the fattest I've been in my life without having a couple of other humans inside of me. Those two years of eating all I wanted while pg and breastfeeding were great. Unfortunately, as the twins stopped eating so much of me, I didn't stop eating so much of everything else. I'm sort of eating less and sort of exercising more, but so far no weight has escaped. I just discovered how much fun it is for Conor to go on a bike ride with me while I run. That's actually A LOT of fun and it's been tough to run without him.

This week's adventure involved finding the house where is best neighborhood friend is moving to. It's very close to where we are now, so we ran/biked past it. I got so excited when I saw their house that I missed the uneven sidewalk. Actually, I didn't miss it. I hit it dead on. This is the 3rd time in over 20 years that I've fallen while running. All three times, everything goes very slowly right after I trip. My thoughts speed up and slow down at the same time. "Uh-oh. I could fall. I am falling. I could catch myself. Can I catch myself? Whoops. No." Whacka whacka thunk. Knees, pelvis, hands, face. Thunk.

The outcome is that I clearly landed on my left knee first and it is currently covered in Winnie the Pooh bandaids. I somehow landed on my pelvis (?) and have an enormous bruise on my hooha. Seriously! Who bruises their hooha when they fall? I'm blaming the twins and my c-section and my lack of any sort of lower stomach muscles on that one. Otherwise, I am so uncoordinated and unconventionally contorted when I fall that people actually SHOULD point and laugh when I run by. Or get out of my way. Finally, my face has a couple of sidewalk rashes and I bruised my cheek.

I am very pretty right now. A bruised tomato on toothpicks, although at this weight, more like straws.

So now you have a blog post more like what I used to write. It takes a long time to write like this and I have a boatload of other things to write---including my REAL work--journal articles. But sometimes, I have to get these things out of my head--the things that keep me from going to sleep at night. In any case, now it's time to go write on Virtual Health Communities, which actually is sort of fun right now.

It Gets Easier

2011-08-03T07:15:00.002-05:00

I'm not sure it gets better (like in the campaign I like so much), but I want to tell mothers of twins (or MOMs) that it gets easier when the twins get older.

I honestly feel like we have some semblance of normalcy back, which makes me reflect back on the last two years and realize how incredibly tough those times were. The first summer right after they were born was hard because they were coming out of NICU and catching up on their development and we were completely overwhelmed with comforting, feeding and getting the twins to sleep while remodeling our house. We were insane.

Last summer, I had the twins home with Conor mostly by myself because we couldn't afford to keep the nanny and there wasn't a spot in daycare. Naps were HORRIBLE. Giant boy twin and tiny needy, girl twin have different comfort, sleeping and eating needs, in case you were wondering. And all the baby/toddler paraphernalia and still trying to get the remodeled house sorted out = H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks.

This summer, well, they are in daycare, which I do not know how working parents who sometimes work at home do it otherwise. I am not a very good SAHM. I've never been one, but if I was one, I think I would be fired. On the other hand, I'm a GREAT working mom.

But it's not just daycare---the house is done on the inside. We've spent the summer working on the back yard and there is real progress on making an outdoor living area. And the CRAP! The BABY CRAP--is going away! All the enormous toys! All the paraphernalia! Bye-bye, sippy cups! Thanks for playing and I hope I never see you again.

We're HAPPILY and WITH GREAT JOY putting it all in a box to sell. And the house, it is clean. O.M.G. Do you know how happy that makes me?? And the twins are eating well. And sleeping well! And we can comfort them so much more easily than before. They are talking more and playing independently. And my life! It's there! On the horizon!! I see it!! It's coming closer and closer!!

Of course, my old self is being blocked quite substantially by my giant gut. The twins stretched it out and I didn't help with all the ice cream and french fries I've eaten in the last year or so. That's the next plan of attack---reduction of the excess Mother Thing to get back to normal.

It just has gotten so much easier. And I am so glad we're done and forever past the first two years of childhood.

It's Been A While

2011-06-28T07:16:00.002-05:00

We've been busy.

Dave is building a tree house.

I'm working in an amazingly prolific garden.

The twins had their second birthday.

And we found a mummified snake in a box of clothing during a yard sale.

Things have been happening around here.

Also, I taught summer school, which is a lot of fun (getting to know students) but a BOATLOAD of work. Honestly, I have not had time to do much of anything besides make it through the next 30 minutes for about 6 weeks now.

In any case, I thought a pictorial blog would bring you up to date. We're going to the beach next week for a Real Vacation--the first one in a couple of years. I hope to have a few hours to put up more pictures and talk about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Birth and Death

2011-05-06T10:27:00.010-05:00

I am so lame. I've been wanting to blog for weeks, but the ability to get to this computer (with the pictures) during a time when I had a few minutes to write and be inspired enough to say something interesting.... Well. Here I am.

What I've wanted to be posting first starts with this picture. Dave put in raised beds in the garden for me, and the day after a bunny mowed down our first round of beets and lettuce, added this beautiful, architectural bunny and rat fighting fence.

I love it. I love my garden with a feeling I did not know I had. I have missed actively gardening for about 4 years now. Three years ago was the diverticulitis; 2 years ago was hospitalization for twins; 1 year ago, I can't really remember, but I'm going to assume I was occupied with my twinnies. Nothing happened in the garden last year.

But this year, we've got lots of growth in a beautiful, beautiful space. I am much a believer of the intersection of form and function. It's got to be beautiful and it's got to work. Dave's handyman, craftiness has made gardening the most pleasant extra-work thing I do. Thank you, honey!!

So that's birth: the birth of a garden and the rebirth of my life outside of the twins.

What about death? Well, there is an interesting thing I only recently learned. After my first miscarriage, the chair of my department told a group of people at the time that my miscarriage--"It was for the better."

............

.................?

..................??!?!?!?!?!??!?!

What the fuckety fuck???

First, I got really upset when I heard that. I will be honest with you: it's the angriest I have been, perhaps in my entire life. The death of my baby was for the better? What????? Alcohol was likely involved with the anger considering I heard this during a casual happy hour, so let's blame that a bit for the anger.

But let's go a little further. And this is where I can easily move from being generous or nutty. The generous interpretation: He was making one of those stupid comments people make when women have miscarriages. It's entirely possible and, not unlikely, given his social skills.

The nutty interpretation (and by that I mean, I look like a completely paranoid nutjob) involves my state, at that point, of being an assistant (i.e., untenured) professor: it was better for my career that I didn't have another child. People bristle at that interpretation, but I think it's reasonable that he meant that, too. I am not trying to be coy about what was going on at the time, but for Dave and me, we believe this is an entirely reasonable interpretation. It's only nutty to those who weren't around us during that time.

He may have even meant a combination of the nutty interpretation and the more generous interpretation. A dead baby is a win-win for me!! Lucky me!

(((sigh)))

After I sobered up and got some distance from learning this information, I had a glorious revelation. And indeed, it came while I was walking back from my garden: I have everything I've ever wanted. I have my dream job, with my dream colleagues (mostly). I live in my dream house and I have my dream family. He's no longer my chair. He no longer works in my department. He no longer works at the university, and, he's not even in the country anymore.

So, yeah. I wish I could report back on some insight on forgiveness that I had. I don't have one. I'm not a good enough person to experience forgiveness that involves reconciliation and new close relationship with the "offending person". No. I think for me, forgiveness in this situation is just indifference. It's a feeling of "meh", which, I have to admit, is a pleasant one to have.

UPDATE: I spoke with my friend about his comment after she read this post and my "nutty" interpretation was the correct one. Fortunately, several of the feminists in the room (and the discussion was on INCREASING DIVERSITY AT OUR UNIVERSITY!) called him on this completely inappropriate statement.

Well, Poop

2011-04-04T06:58:00.005-05:00

What an amazing weekend. There is something about the south in the spring that is prettier than any other season in any other part of the country I've lived in. All the flowering dogwoods and cherry treas, vibrant pink azaleas, and, um, flowering flowers are so pretty after the gray of winter. But what I think is even prettier is all the shades of green from the trees as they start to get leaves again. By the middle of summer, it's all one hot, oppressive shade of green. But now, it's all vibrant colors and 15 shades of green that make me so happy to move from winter to spring.

And we FINALLY have the house and the yard in a livable condition. When we moved back in November '09, the yard was completely destroyed from all the workers and their equipment. The vegetable garden had been mostly neglected and with less than 1 year old twins, we made the easy decision to neglect it again. Even the perennial got no attention besides mulch and superficial weeding.

Worse than all of that was that we didn't have a deck anymore on the back of the house and it wasn't clear where we should put our outdoor table and chairs to hang out and "enjoy" our backyard.

Who the hell am I kidding. There was not a lot of "enjoying" last year. What were we thinking having twins and remodeling the house at the same time? I don't know how we could have done it any other way but holy crap, that was a rough time.

IN ANY CASE, for the last month, we've been working in our yard. Dave put in cedar raised beds for the garden and just this weekend we finished putting up a gorgeous architectural bunny and rat proof fence (designed by Dave's DIY Home By Design--available for hire and/or babysitting services, inquire within). Pictures to follow; they are on the other computer.

It's been wonderful getting the yard to where I thought it should have been last year. Who knew, really, how much work a remodel is *after* the remodel!?

But even better--the TWINS! Are EASIER!! They PLAY!! With each other!!! With Conor!!! And even though a re-enactment of Bridget at any point during the day would include the words "Mommy. Mommy!! MOMMY!! MOMMMYYYY! MOMMY! Mommy. Mommy!! MOMMY!!" we can do things when they are awake and that is a freedom I am excited about.

Speaking of freedom, both twins have shown some interest in potty training. I think they are really young, but they want to sit on the potty. And we're happy to let them do it.

Yesterday, we thought, Hey!! It's warm out! Let's give them some freedom and let them run around without their diapers on and practice sitting on the potty. What's the worst that could happen?

What is the worst, indeed.

It was not more than 5 minutes before Bridget started running around the backyard with her diaper in hand. Fine. She wants to play with her undies; I wonder what the neighbors will think. At this point she still had her jumper on and I thought it would be good to take it off in case she peed and got her clothes wet. I ran after her and she ran to steps outside the garage.

I scooper her up. "What is that smell," I thought. "Did she toot?"

Ummmm, no.

I looked down at a poop on the stairs to the garage. Did the cat get outside?? Did some other apparently large cat poop on our steps?

There were olives. No cat I know eats olives. Bridget on the other hand. . .

YIKES! I yelled and made Dave come over and look because that's exactly the kind of wife and mother that I am.

I ran back inside to get some wipes to clean Bridget up and finally take off her jumper.

I see Patches wending his way towards the garage, curious at this new smell.

LEAVE IT!! LEAVE IT!!! Patches slinks away.

I clean up Bridget. And then I go to clean up the steps to the garage.

What the.....???? Where the.....??? PATCHES!??!!?! PATCHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'd strongly suggest you don't let Patches kiss you any time soon. I'm just saying.

Bronx Zoo's Cobra

2011-03-31T07:06:00.003-05:00

I know that most people on the Internets are not on Twitter. The latest stats are that only 10% of folks on the Internets are also on Twitter. And it's hard to explain why people would want to be on twitter. You don't get to explain about a story in detail like when you write a blog and you don't get to learn about someone's life and develop relationships (at least in your own head) like when you read a blog. And the criticism is always "Why do I want to know what someone had for lunch? I don't care about that."

Honestly, people, it's not like all people do on twitter is talk about what they eat. They may tweet about what they are drinking, maybe, but that's later on at night and a whole different issue.

Oh, and as an aside, on of my colleagues came up to me and said I was the best example about what he didn't want to be on Facebook. I had posted a very funny (I thought) update about lingering puke smells around the house after the twins' bout with a stomach bug. He said "why am I reading this? I don't need to know about it!" Why, indeed.

Two words, people: Un. Follow. Instead, I blocked him, because I am passive aggressive that way.

In any case, have you heard about the cobra that escaped from the Bronx Zoo? Well, that cobra has started a twitter account. And I love it.

And I am not the only one. The twitter account started on Monday and already it's been featured on the NY Times, NPR, the BBC and various other news outlets. Ellen DeGeneres, Steven Martin, Jon Favreau, the New York Hilton, and even Sesame street have all referred to him (or her?) in their twitter feeds. There is even a hysterical video of baby twins talking to each other which has been re-interpreted into one warning the other about the cobra. It wants to eat baby toes!!

I tweeted last night: "It's somewhat hard to explain to "normal" people how one is following an escaped cobra on twitter #snakeonthetown" and it has been my most retweeted and responded to tweet ever.

What. Is. Up? For some reason, the word Zeitgeist comes to mind. Obviously, there's something about escaped cobras that captures one's imagination. And the idea of one touring New York ("looking for Rebecca Black. No reason.") and tweeting about it is funny.

But there's a time urgency here. They could capture the snake and then the tweets won't be so funny. The snake could die, and sort of the same thing. You can't really put off following this snake until some time in the future. We have to enjoy it now because it may be over in the next hour. (Or not. See the post by the vet above)

I cannot explain this easily. It is something I would like to research and explore in further depth. What I love most about twitter is sharing diverse, time dependent, special or unique events with friends and strangers. I would love to know what it's tapping into for me psychologically or sociologically. And when I've had more sleep I will pursue that.

But right now, I'm having a lot of fun following an escaped cobra on twitter. You might enjoy it, too.

Spring

2011-03-23T08:18:00.003-05:00

I hate to keep changing the background and layout of my blog, but I am still not completely satisfied with it. I would like it to be fancy and eye-catching, but not so busy. Sort of like how I'd like my own life to be. ((Rudely laughing at my own joke))

So, um, yeah! Here we are in spring. Work-wise, I need to be reviewing abstracts for a conference and what I'd really rather do (besides writing constructive comments) is just to turn in my short assessments to the conference organizers:

1) Hell No

2) Yes, great job

3) Yes, but as a poster or interactive session

3) Nope.

That should be enough. It's relevant for conference organizers, but, alas, does not have enough specific feedback for the authors. (Really? Ya, think)

In mother news, Bridget was given an "incident report" this week for biting another child. The good news is that it is fully clear in the report that she was defending herself from the tooth-y onslaught of the other child. That is, she wasn't the aggressor--someone was trying to bite her, she knew someone was trying to bite her, and she got the first bite in, probably right after she said "Listen, fool." (She can channel Mr T when she is defending herself)

In working mother news, I have a much better internet connection, we have a printer that works, and the cat is still alive. Let me back up a moment. A month. Ummm, two months.

Two months ago, in that I took a work-life balance class for mid-level women academics at our university: How the heck are we supposed to do this thing called A Career that allows us to have A Life, too. I honestly don't know if that is possible, but one thing we worked on was our "tolerations." Tolerations are those annoyances you have in your life that if you took 10 minutes or $10 (or maybe a bit more investment of time/money), you could solve the problem and your life wouldn't have those niggling "tolerations" any more.

For me, besides exercise, some of the big tolerances we've been putting up with around the house is crappy internet service (from AT&T U-verse) and no working printer. As someone who works A LOT from home, these are problems. The night of the workshop, Dave read my list of tolerations and within 3 days, had fixed them. Or at least, these two. The Messy House toleration is ongoing. Let's just stop for a second and talk about how wonderful my husband is, shall we? Yes, he's wonderful. Ok, moving on...

What bothered me about ME is that I had also included on my list of tolerations: Cat Won't Die.

Really? Really, Anita????? It is a daily annoyance to you that your Cat Won't Die. What kind of heartless bitch am I? A pretty big one, apparently.

In my defense, the cat is 18 years old. If she were a child, we would be exploring college opportunities right now. It would be time for her to move on. She also howls at night. LOUDLY. Right by the bed. That is annoying. Especially since sleep is so precious right now, an 18 year old cat howling by the bed is a toleration, that could be solved. By, ummm. Well, a shoe would be a less extreme solution than death.

Of course, feeling very guilty, I started paying a bit more attention to the cat. And that's when we realized that she is completely deaf. I have no idea how long she's been deaf. But she is completely and utterly deaf. That's why she's howling. In the middle of the night she has no idea what anyone is doing and would kind of like the world to know she's still alive. (Fortunately, she cannot read and did not know of her place on my list of daily annoyances/tolerations).

So she is still alive and she is not on my list of tolerations any more. We are also paying her more attention and she is not howling as much.

Finally, a funny professor story. After I give lectures, I will often write notes to myself on the syllabus or on the PowerPoint slides if there was a problem and if I should revise the lecture. This week, I gave my lecture on Stress in the workplace and I had written on the opening slide (so as to catch my attention) "This is a BORING lecture!! FIX!" So, I did. I added more exercises and more places for the students to contribute their own feedback and experiences.

Then, yesterday when I was reviewing my notes before class, I realized: I had uploaded the PowerPoint slides on the web....and had not taken off my note: "This is a BORING lecture!! FIX!" Yes! On the first slide!! The first thing the students saw when they looked at the slides was how awful class was going to be this week!! And yes, they did notice it!

Great!!

What I appreciated was during the class, I kept asking: Are you bored? how am I doing? I absolutely LOVE the student who said, "I'm not bored, but I am less enthused than I was."

We stopped and did an exercise.

She's Alive!

2011-03-02T11:40:00.002-05:00

Hmmm, apparently, I've used this same title for a blog previously.

Oh, Lord. We have had some sickness around here. It's taken about 3 weeks, but FINALLY, everyone in the house is healthy and back to school or work. I am really hoping that next year the twins will be immune to most of this crud, so we won't be in danger of becoming a CDC super fund site.

I've also decided not to try to combine this blog into a professional blog. I would love to have a fancy pants professional blog to talk about my take on technology, psychology, and parenting research/news. But I can't do it any time soon. And I'm afraid if I did it, I would most certainly put a stake in the heart of this blog. I like the Mother thing. And although I don't post much on it, and I certainly don't get the readers I used to, I need a little space of my own. It sounds very Virginia Wolff-ish, doesn't it? Eh, well. So be it.

In any case, I do see this blog moving more towards working mother issues and perhaps working mother in academia issues.

I still need to blog about a mid-career/work-life balance workshop I went to in January (JANUARY) and had some great insights on the "tolerations" in my life. (I keep calling them haterations).

The problem is as an associate professor with a big(ger) house and three kid---I not going to be able to find the time. I'm going to have to take it.

I Knew You Were Going to Say That....

2011-01-24T08:20:00.005-05:00

Did you hear about the recent ESP research published in a top psychology journal? No, that is actually not the start of a joke. There actually was a research article published by a highly respected psychologist in a highly respected journal which possibly provides evidence of ESP. You can read the article here. It's not a short article, but there it is for you to read.

You can read a variety of reactions throughout this long sentence.

My take on this whole controversy is a bit different. Controversy, you ask? Yes! Psychologists are a wee bit skeptical and like to point out that there are no such things as ghosts, witches, astrology, ESP, and other superstitions. They are interesting in the way they protect (or harm) one's psyche but have absolutely nothing to do with reality.

So my take is this: Is there ESP? Unlikely, but I still find this study quite interesting: students were able to pick out the correct location of a randomly assigned pornographic picture 53% of the time while they only got the regular non-naked pictures 50% of the time. (College students apparently have a "gift" of finding naked people doing things they'd like to be doing themselves.) However, as you can see this "gift" is not too strong. Picking the correct picture 50% of the time is what we'd expect by chance--just guessing. 53% is not a big gain over 50%. But with enough people, it can be a statistically significant improvement.

So here is what I think:

1) The most likely thing that will happen is that these data will not hold up in additional research. I'm can predict (!) this outcome because this is what happens the majority of the time there is a new research finding. I actually do not have in my hot little hands the percentage that makes up the majority of the time, but I think it approaches 90% of the time. 90% of the time is a little bit larger than 50% of the time. And what it means is that we are constantly refining our research to find the "truth" and the first finding is not likely at all to be the final say in what is actually true.

2) I disagree with every single criticism of people who say this research shouldn't have been published or there is something wrong with the peer review system (where researchers anonymously review others' research to determine if it's adequate for publication). The data are what the data are. These results are neutral (as long as they weren't faked). If the results of this study don't agree with what you think, too bad, so sad. If anonymous reviewers can't find a flaw, then the research should be published. I guarantee you that the editor gave special care to picking out people who do NOT believe in ESP to get the best feedback.

3) Here is what I do believe will happen from this study: we are going to find a flaw. It's either going to be a methodological flaw (there is an error in the design or enactment of the study) or there is a statistical flaw. And what is going to be so cool is that it's going to push our discipline ahead in our research and statistics. Why do I say that? Because those reviewers couldn't find a flaw--this research meets the standards for good research in its current form. So whatever mistake was made is not something we as a discipline know is a mistake. And that means growth in how we study. Sounds good to me.

4) Of course, I could be wrong and there is ESP. But I'm not convinced by this study. I'm not convinced by any one study of anything. Unless, of course, it's my study because mine are all brilliant and insightful and completely accurate descriptions of the truth in this world. (((cough, cough, cough, wiping tears from eyes)))

So I think this is pretty exciting. Something good is going to come from this. It's going to take a while--several years at the least before the next studies are designed, data collected, analyzed, vetted and published, but how exciting for psychology!

It's almost as exciting as a talking dog. Which is what I want to talk about next in research.

And No Stuffed Animals Were Burned!

2011-01-14T08:17:00.004-05:00

Perhaps you have heard of Amy Chua's essay in the Wall Street Journal about the superiority of Chinese Mothers. If you haven't, I'm going to guess you don't have young children. Or you don't follow the Internets all that much, which means you aren't going to be reading this blog.

Although when I heard Ms. Chua on the Diane Rehm Show (and WOW, isn't Diane Rehm beautiful!), she suggested that her extreme parenting (calling her children garbage when they get an A- or less on a test, threatening to burn their stuffed animals if they don't play the piano well, no extra-curricular activities or friends), is a bit tongue-in-cheek, my understanding is that that is not true. A friend of a friend is Ms. Chua's neighbor, and indeed, can attest to the truth of the dinner party incident related in the article. She does berate her children and she limits their social activities in order that they will be The Best and win The Medal. She loves them and argues that she believes they are the best and they can win the medal and that is why she pushes them so hard.

Clearly, this is not our style. On the other hand, I think Dave and I can push Conor a little bit more, especially in skills we know he can do but he's afraid at failing at. So oddly enough, inspired by Ms. Chua, we had Conor sit down after dinner the other night and practice tying his shoes. He has not learned this yet and it's probably past time. So Dave and I hid in the kitchen and mouthed GARBAGE! GARBAGE! towards Conor (because we are apparently that kind of parent). Conor took a minute and then shouted out, "I DID IT!!!!" "YAY!" we shouted back. "Untie it and do it again!"

A minute passed. "I DID IT AGAIN!" "YAY! Do it one more time!" And Conor did. We told him he could have an ice cream sandwich if he tied both his shoes and went out to the garage freezer to get one. He struggled a bit, but did it. And no stuffed animals were burned.

But, yes, we were inspired to push him to do it. (A push as harsh as blowing on him) And we are actually inspired to do more of this You Can Do It, Just Practice parenting. (And you may be thinking we are incredibly slack. But no, we simply have 19 month old twins)

In any case, Ms. Chua's parenting style could be on to something name calling and toy destroying notwithstanding. Research suggests that everyone can become an expert/genius in something. Come again? Genes change and adapt to the environment. From the article, "This means that everything about us - our personalities, our intelligence, our abilities - are actually determined by the lives we lead. The very notion of "innate" no longer holds together." We settle for mediocrity because we think we aren't innately talented enough when expertise actually comes from effort and self-discipline. According to this new research, even IQ (which has long been thought as an innate, stable trait) changes according to the environment.

I love this research. FINALLY, science is demonstrating that genes apart from the environment mean nothing and the environment has no effect on people outside of the genes a person is given.

This is huge to me, and probably not in the way you think. We think in terms of cause and effect. A causes B. Genes cause people to Be The Way They Are. But NO, others argue (and I have tended to be here). Environment is the stronger contributor to people becoming the way they are. But that's silly, too, because it's obvious that people have certain proclivities; you can't make an introvert an extrovert no matter how hard you try. So scientists have been asking the question, which is more important: nature or nurture.

As I've grown as a researcher and as a methodologist, I've realized that one of our main problems is that we have a hard time thinking in terms of interaction (genes and environment mutually cause people to be the way they are), particularly when the interaction is recursive---the interaction is continual and progressive. I think the next big leap in the way social and biological scientists think about why people are what they are and do what they do. It's hard to think this way. It takes some mental effort to really work through the theoretical logic (not to mention the analyses!) of research like this. But I think generations of researchers behind us are going to build on our mental efforts and find it easy--just like we all naturally think in causal terms, which wasn't the case before the Renaissance. Before the Renaissance, witches caused everything.

And going back to the beginning of this entry, witches can "cause" genius, too. There is a lesson here, besides it's really fun to silently mouth "GARBAGE!" and "I am going to BURN all your stuffed animals if you don't tie your shoes!!!" at your children when they are doing something. For us, it's that our limits are self-imposed. We can do more than we think we can. And we want our children to know that they can do a lot of what they want, too. They just need to keep trying. And we'll support them, and not abuse them, along the way.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-07T15:18:00.003-05:00

So much for my plan of posting every week!

I hope your new year is going well. December was a bit rough around here. The kids were sick the first two weeks and out of school the last two weeks. They started back this week (WOOOHOOOHOO) and I've finally had a break. But my "break" has involved getting caught up on work and prepping for my classes--including one that is a new prep for me and will be the last time the class is offered. Nothing like seeing lots of hard work go for naught.

In any case, there is so much to share with folks, well, actually just to put in this blog so I remember it. I will start with Christopher, since he has been the focus of our attention with his 18 month sleep regression--and subsequent waking up every 2 hours.

There is a spot on Christopher's cheek, just above his jaw, that is so soft and mushy that it is the best spot to kiss I've found on any human being. Kissing that spot (and I kiss it a lot) is one of the highlight's of my day.

Another Christopher feature, less kissable, is his habit of pooping while in down dog position. Oh, indeed-y, it is clearly obvious when Christopher is doing his thing when he looks like he's creating a new down dog/plank merge. Nonetheless, the poop I want to remember forever (truly) involves 5 to 10 minutes of dramatic down dog producing yoga one tiny, yet perfect, still solid and recognizable blueberry.

Have I mentioned how much he likes blueberries? He would gladly eat a complete pint if we let him. Apparently, he was so stuffed on that day that one popped out. (Pooped out!!)

Ah, yes. He is an adorable little boy. We actually call him Kisstopher frequently because of how much he likes to kiss and be kissed. His cousins have suggested that we drop that nickname before he hits high school. Well, I guess so. It actually might work to his advantage. But we'll wait.

I am seriously thinking of starting to blog more "other thing" topics here, such as psychological research (have you heard about that new ESP study? Fascinating!!) I'd also like to start talking more explicitly on the difficulties of being a working mother, even with the flexible job that I have. I'm not sure what audience these topics will attract, and if I really want those audiences to learn so much about my infertility, miscarriages and breastfeeding exploits. ALTHOUGH, I'm not ashamed of any of them and the more we talk about this stuff out in the open, the more it will be normal.

In any case, I'll actually have to BLOG. I want to. And if I'm doing it about work stuff, I'll feel less guilty doing it before all the kids have gone to sleep.

Virii

2010-12-13T13:42:00.003-05:00

Oh, dear.

Here's another fun feature of twins, although I would imagine this applies to all families with more than two children. We've been like a slow motion Domino collapse around here. It turns out it wasn't fifth disease. The fever has been too high. And fortunately, it is not the flu either.

It is, however, some sort of respiratory virus that has felled my children. Dave and I are just fine. But the kids are, as we say in the south, puny. Conor is actually home sick today for the first time in years. I honestly don't remember the last time he had a fever.

So for the twins, the progression was: cough, 101+ fever, puke, no appetite for a period of time, lethargy for a period of time (HATE that symptom), and then a secondary bacterial infection. Although those are many of the the symptoms for the flu, Christopher was tested and it came back negative. So, either it's a different flu strain than the one they were testing for or this is a different respiratory infection.

In any case, bleah. We've had someone with a fever here for 11 days. Woo. Hoo. I can't imagine Dave and I are going to get this if we've been around it so long (and the snotty kisses that go with comforting one's sick, pukey children) and not gotten it.

But there you have it. And famous last words, right? I'm sure I have just doomed myself to posting tomorrow about my 102 fever.

5th and Poop

2010-12-07T21:37:00.003-05:00

Continuing my goals to just post when I have time, here's my second post of the day. Since this morning, oh, joy!, we have figured out that both Bridget and Christopher have 5th disease. In the scheme of things, that's not a big deal. It's just a common virus in which the main symptom (besides a fever that lasts for the normal 3 days o' virus fever) is the bright red cheeks.

However, it's just one more thing to add on the list of reasons why tonight's sleep is going to be crappy tonight.

And in the goals of catching up on all the exciting things that have happened, let me share the story of The Poop In the Tub. Really, I don't know how to build up that story much beyond One of My Children Pooped In the Tub. That's pretty much the high (low) light of any story. It was Christopher and I should have known it was coming when he assumed the position.

Christopher is very picky on how he poops--which is in a yoga position--down dog to be exact. It's obvious when it's happening; yes it is when a child gets a determined look in down dog. I should have acted more quickly when he got in that position in the tub, but I thought he was reaching for a toy. Yet, he was not.

That's one of those things you just wish never really happened. Oh, yes. But still. It's a good story, right? Good time or good story. That's become our motto around here.

Incongruity

2010-12-07T07:55:00.003-05:00

Here is a picture of the twins' Halloween costume. Yes, they were adorable! So adorable, in fact, that they were featured on the front page of the online Charlotte Observer for 3 hours the day after Halloween! And yes, I AM bragging about that. I have always felt that feeling "proud" of some other person's accomplishment is a bit narcissistic, reflecting in some way your involvement in someone else's accomplishment (which is rarely the case). It's why I'm often very, very happy for other people, but rarely "proud" of them.

NONETHELESS, I am so proud of how cute they look and that they were on the front page of our local newspaper's online edition. Ha! I even love that in that picture they have become Thing 1 and Thing 2 looking adorably like imps about to do something bad. :-)

The incongruity comes from talking about Halloween when I also want to talk about last night's HORRIBLE night of (no) sleep. We're in the 18 month sleep regression. I vividly remember this stage with Conor and was convinced we were doing something wrong; that the co-sleeping was coming back to bite us on the butt.

Ummm, no.

This is a normal stage in which children's brains explode and their sleeping stops. We're back to newborn waking. Add on to that Bridget's bronchitis and her coughing so hard in her sleep she wakes up screaming (and puking! Thanks, Dave, for taking that one for the team last night!). and there is not enough coffee in the day to help me think clearly.

And thank ye gods and goddesses that I am past tenure, so I work, but not kill myself getting papers out over the next 4 months while we get through this stage. Yes, I'm still planning on submitting 4 conference papers and a journal submission in the next 4 months (one is already done), but I'm not planning on 4 additional journal submissions in the next 4 months. That's the difference and it is a big one.

So there. That's what is on my mind. And that is how scattered I think and what has become the new normal for us. It works. :-)

Ummm, hey!

2010-12-03T10:14:00.002-05:00

Yes, yes, I'm still here. Insert repetitive whine about how busy I've been.

I'm actually catching up on "things" this morning. This often happens when I've been working my a$$ off on "school" work and I have neglected my "home" work. Everything is work for me. Even knitting is "gift" work. Reading is "intellectual" work. Running is "health" work.

I am weird.

You should know that already, right? And by "you" I mean the three of you still regularly or even occasionally stopping by here.

I continue to have tons of conversations with you or topics I want to blog about. I JUST DON'T HAVE FREAKIN' TIME!!

So, whatevs. I'm going to do some picture posts now. And then I really hope I can work back in my life a few 10 minutes posts here and there when I have something funny or vexing to share.

So, yeah, HEY!! Hope you're doing well!! We're ok over here. Hoping I can share a few things over the next few days.

Soccer

2010-10-03T19:19:00.003-05:00

So yes, we remain busy around here. With an active and exciting life. (The irony in that statement will become apparent later on) Why, just Friday night, both babies (ok, they are toddlers now), both toddlers had one mighty explosive puke each and the dog ate our dinner right off the table.

And we have recently decided to take a 3 to 6 month hiatus from eating out at restaurants. Bridget absolutely cannot sit in her chair when we are out any more. She *has* to go around to every table and wave "Hi!" to the people sitting there. Yes, she is adorable and yes everyone melts when she arrives at their table. But it's getting too much and we're afraid her light-of-1000 suns cuteness will wear out for others sooner than it will for us.

Christopher continues to blow us away. Apparently, he has become the leader in his daycare class. He picks up whatever the other children drop and give it to them. When they are playing in the sandbox, he hugs every child in there. And when they come back in from the playground, he leads all the children over to the sink to wash their hands.

I have to be honest with you: it's overwhelming enough to fall in love with one child every day. My head and heart are going to explode falling in love with 3 children day in and day out. That part between Conor and the twins--the 8 miscarriages---that part sucked. But this part is extra-special sweet.

So, umm, soccer! Yeah.

Conor has started playing soccer and it is really a lot of fun. First, at 99.9th percentile height, it is relatively easy to pick him out on the field. Second, Conor has perfected an advanced move to psych the opposing team out while he plays: skipping. Perhaps you saw that at the world cup this year? No? Really? Additionally, Conor has an innate enthusiasm about life (from me) and very long arms (from Dave). Let's just say, that while he is skipping, his arms are also wildly swinging about in happiness for playing the game. He is noticeable.

He is also not aggressive out there. He is not a ball-hog and keeps a fair distance from the action as if he has been told to play defense. (He has not) So during the first game, when out of nowhere he ran through the crowd and with a sliding-on-the-ground kick kept the opponent's ball from scoring, we were a wee bit surprised. So was he, we noticed, as he stayed in that position for a few beats replaying his defensive move in his head and looking towards us, grinning, to see if we noticed. Yes. Yes we did, we cheered to him.

He has since, in the last two games, scored a couple of goals and is gaining some confidence. He seems to really enjoy it and the nights after practice or a game, he goes to bed quite easily. Yay! Easy bedtimes are a cause for celebration around here.

We also enjoy getting to see other kids and experience the range of normal. Our favorite story thus far involves a sweet boy on the first night of practice. Let me preface this by saying that Conor's old teacher told us that 6 years old is a preview for puberty. If that's true, we are screwed. I never thought that 10% of the utterances I made to my son would be some variation of "keep your hands off your penis." We are MUCH more discreet than that and we don't want to introduce any shame to a natural act, but there are only so many times one can say such a thing before one wants to shout "STOP DOING THAT!" (which we never have)

So back to soccer practice. Perhaps you can guess where I am going with this.

Dave was standing near the boy's nanny as called him over in the middle of practice. She told him they needed a code word that she could shout out to him during practice so that he would stop "touching his pants."

The boy thought very deeply for minute. Then he suggested to her "How about: Let go of the tiger tail?"

I will wait for you to stop laughing. And I will brag on both my husband and the nanny that neither of them laughed (out loud) at that child. Indeed, the nanny just matter of factly said to the boy, "How about: Tiger tail."

Tiger tail, indeed. Dave and I have routinely been shouting Tiger Tail to each other around the house and for no reason mentioned previously except that it makes us laugh really hard.

I continue to blog that it's crazy around here. You should continue to think that. Sometimes, it still shocks me that we have twins. That we have 3 children! And that we're only at the beginning of this crazy ride. Ah, well. It's crazy but it's our brand of crazy and so far it's still pretty good.

My Bleb

2010-09-21T18:53:00.003-05:00

I have a bleb. It is as lovely as it sounds. I will explain what a bleb is, but first I have two confessions.

1: I am still breastfeeding the twins.

2: they are still sleeping with us.

There! Now you know our dark secrets.

I talked a lot more about breastfeeding with Conor than I have with the twins. I'm not sure why, except it may have something to do with the same reasons why I would NEVER breastfeed the twins in public, and I breastfed Conor in public all the time.

Breastfeeding a singleton is one of those Hallmark moments in which mother and child gaze into each others eyes with love and connection. Breastfeeding twins is more like being a sow. Especially when one has an athletic daughter who prefers to nurse in a down dog position. And will sometimes attack one's breast like a tribble. Of course, you know that I don't think there's a damn thing wrong with nursing twins--as mine are 15 months old and I fully plan to go at least two years---but it is not a Hallmark moment. The double twin standing nursing pose? Well, let's just say, we have pictures and you will not be seeing them.

And sleeping with us? Well, we've always done that and it just makes it easier. It's just that with a bleb, one will often wake up in the middle of the night with the sensation of a knife stabbing you in your bassoomies.

So yes, we're going past 6 weeks of my bleb, a milk blister. It apparently can take between 6 and 8 weeks for a bleb to heal. Yippee! Truly, I've not been doing everything I can--such as applying wet heat (as hot as one can stand) every 4 hours around the clock. Dudes--it hurts. But I am NOT going to get up in the middle of the night to soak my boob for 20 minutes before the twins wake up and nurse. Hells bells, I RARELY even sleep 4 hours in a row to wait for them to eat again.

Yes, here's the part you may not understand. The twins sleep as well as Conor did---they get up two or three times a night. Each. EACH.

EACH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That means that on a good night, I'm up only 4 times. That has happened, oh let's say, twice in the last 15 months. Most nights, I'm up 6 times a night. Occasionally, I'll use my running watch (HA! RUNNING! I RAN ONCE! HA!) to "lap" how long I sleep. It's a good night--and I feel well rested---if I get one stretch of about 3 hours. Then the laps will get shorter to: hour, hour, hour, 45 minutes, 30 minutes...time to get up.

I'm tired. I'm not going to deny that. And blebless, I can sleep through most feedings. But it's doable. And I know that in another year or so, they'll be sleeping much longer and eventually, so will I.

Eventually.

I freaked a bit when I read on my twin mother's support group that other MOMs who co-sleep, when their twins finally started sleeping through the night, it took them months...MONTHS (I'm shouting a lot in this entry)...MONTHSSSSSSS to finally sleep and feel rested again.

Bleb. Breastfeeeding. Co-sleeping. A sleep schedule that would make normal people scream.

So now you know.

Firsts

2010-09-01T20:13:00.003-05:00

Conor, in his school uniform, on his first day of school.

Bridget on her first day of daycare.

Christopher on his first day of daycare.

Things are going well. Conor learned the French ABCs today and has been practicing saying Bonjour to all of us. We are still working out his bus issues, but it will be fixed soon.

Bridget and Christopher are having a rough time in daycare. Bridget is miserable there and perfectly fine at home. Christopher is ok there, and clingy to the extreme at home. He's actually really mad at me when I come to pick him up and, honestly, he melts into tears from the time I arrive until we get in the car. I think that's when he realizes I'm not leaving him. Their teachers are WONDERFUL and, as we asked, they are holding Bridget pretty much all day long. Things are actually getting better for her, and hopefully, they'll get better for Christopher soon.

It's all good. It's all the right things. And I'm having a lot of fun at work making progress on research projects and projects outside of the university. Work=fun is amazing.

9:30 and time for bed. We're back on marathon training schedule to get the kids to school. We're just not running now.

Kindergarten

2010-08-29T18:58:00.004-05:00

Conor starts kindergarten on Tuesday. We thought he was starting last Wednesday with the rest of the Charlotte Mecklenburg system. We thought wrong.

Apparently, here at CMS, they have a staggered system. We thought (along with many other first time parents) that meant that not all the schools start at the same time in the morning. While that is true, it also means that kindergarteners get a "trial" day the first 5 days of school; that is, they only go one of the first 5 days of school. So some kids had their trial day on Wednesday and then start kindergarten for real the NEXT Wednesday, we have our trial day on Tuesday and then start for real on Wednesday.

So, um, yeah. That's actually fine. Conor starts kindergarten in two days. And actually, the twins start daycare tomorrow.

Halle-effin-lujah. We had two great nannies. Two women who were fantastic with the twins. But I am going to be so glad to the twins back to our regular daycare where I don't have to worry about what to tell someone to fix them for lunch, if I have the food I want them to have for lunch, if there is enough food for the nanny to eat something for lunch, does the nanny know how to prepare what they should have for lunch, and then to repeat the whole thing again for snack. Seriously. We loved the nannies, but I am so glad to be sending them to daycare.

Of course, the panic attacks in the middle of the night of how we're going to do all this have been a lot of fun. First, we cannot afford after-care for Conor. We were going to send him to an aftercare program at our church, but we honestly and truthfully do not have the money. How is that possible? Due to an amazingly low fixed rate mortgage we are not paying any more for that. And we were fine when it was just Conor is daycare, so what the heck?

I'll tell you the heck. It's doubling the daycare payments AND the new car payment. We had paid off both cars a while back so we didn't have a car payment. But the twins can't fit in a jetta, much less the twins, Conor, Dave, me and sometimes a dog. Here's a number that made Dave and me slack jawed in pain and anticipation: in 4 years when the twins enter kindergarten and we pay off the car, we'll have $2,000 more tax free dollars per month to, I don't know, to do what? That is so much money right now, we could use it for toilet paper and still end up ahead.

So that's been part of the panic attack--we have no money, we can't afford for Conor to be in after school care, but I, um, kind of have to work! But then we got some good news and some kind of bad news that helped solve the after school dilemma. Basically, if Conor rides the bus and I take him to the bus stop, I will have plenty of hours to get my work done during the day and Conor will not be in after school care. That's the good news. The bad news is that it will be a long-ish day for Conor--although not really longer than daycare. But it will start early. REALLY early. The twins' time in daycare will be about the same as Conor's has been these last 5 years, but not worse.

So that's where we are. I think it's sort of funny that people think I'm having a hard time with the twins going to daycare. But I don't. I'm more worried about Conor. I want him to have enough free time during the day--that doesn't involve sitting on a bus. I know it's going to work out. It always has. But the transition is going to be a little crazy and that's a little bit overwhelming right now.

Viral Pneumonia

2010-08-16T19:13:00.003-05:00

Now that's a blog title!

Um, so, uh, yeah! It's been a busy week. First, viral pneumonia is not nearly as bad as bacterial pneumonia. And, indeed, we caught Bridget's viral pneumonia/chest cold early.

Ok. So let's back up a bit. Bridget appeared to come down with croup (from her brother, as you may recall) last Monday. I am not that worried about croup, so I saw no need to call the doctor. And then Bridget sort of melted over both Dave and me and wouldn't move from sitting in our lap with her head on our shoulder.

Lethargy is never a good sign in a feisty child, particularly one with a fever.

Additionally, Monday night, Bridget started throwing up. Tuesday morning, we opted to go in to the doctor, because again, Bridget could not even lift her head off our shoulder.

I expected the doc to give me another lecture about how viruses can cause croup, blah, blah, but instead he put Bridget right on a nebulizer. Fortunately, her breathing cleared up so no need for x-rays or oxygen. Instead, we went home with an albuterol inhaler and orders to come back Friday.

The virus continued this course for a while. Bridget has no energy, ran a high-ish fever (102 to 104), threw up, and as she got better, had diarrhea. And of course, there was the junky cough. Coughs are not good indicators of chest colds/viral pneumonias. Lethargy is. REMEMBER THAT if your child loses all his or her energy.

So, yeah. She's better now. The ultra-conservative doctor put her on an antibiotic which freaked both Dave and me out. This doc HATES antibiotics and to give her one without her having a bacterial infection really freaked me out.

In any case, school starts back next week and I am completely not ready for it. Last week, I had planned on doing what I'm doing this week. But I couldn't leave my little baby while she was this sick. So I'm trying to catch up this week before next week starts. I'm a wee bit freaked out.

Life With Twins

2010-08-01T19:15:00.003-05:00

Do you want to know what life with twins is like? Do you want to know why Mothers of Multiples (MOMS) say it's much harder than you can imagine? Let me share this story with you.

Let's say you have a twin, a twin with floppy windpipe, something that while noisy is not that dangerous. Unless the child develops croup. At this point, it is prudent to put this child on prednisone to reduce the swelling in the throat and help the child breathe. This is a good thing. There is just one caveat: the major side effect of hyperactivity. Let's, hypothetically, call this twin: Christopher.

So on a Friday night when Christopher's twin sister falls asleep at 7:30, Christopher is a whirling dervish around the family room, giddily playing with every toy he can and manically running back and forth along the room until, oh, say 10:30. On the second night of medication, his parents look up whether benadryl can be given along with prednisone and, lo and behold, IT CAN! So on Saturday night, Bridget passes completely out at 7:30 and Christopher is only up until 9:30.

Not being slow, the parents of a twin on prednisone will, on the third and final night of medication, give benadryl right after dinner. And HOORAY! Christopher goes to sleep at exactly the right bedtime of 7:30. And so does his sister! Hooray! Hooray!

But that's not what it's like to be parents of twins. No. The twin god laughs when both babies go to sleep at the same time after two hellish nights. Nope, life with twins means that the sister twin wakes up at 7:50 and refuses to go back to sleep. With just one child, a) we would be enjoying a free night tonight or b) we would have enjoyed two previously free nights. But instead, we have one child peacefully sleeping and another happily playing, having had two amazing nights of sleep under her belt.

So, there. We were away for a good 11 day trip to see Dave's family in the midwest. AND WE DROVE! Yes! 6 days in the car for an 11 day trip. It wasn't as bad as you might imagine, and there were a couple of unexpected highlights including a hotel bathroom that opened into the bedroom and zooming (and subsequent squeals of laughter from the kids) over Ohio hills in Amish country. There was also an AMAZING thunderstorm and 12 straight hours of lightening. There was so much continuous lightening at one point that I thought a police car was outside the house and the lights were flashing through the window.

More, more, more to share. Christopher is walking now and has been for two weeks. Conor starts kindergarten in three weeks. The twins start daycare (AND NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON) in 4 weeks.

I'm not giving up this blog. I know I say that every (rare) time I update. I'm not ready to give it up yet. I am ready for a little more free time, but I have no control over when that is going to happen again.

Summer School

2010-06-22T19:42:00.003-05:00

{Start blog}

{Insert paragraph bemoaning lack of blogging activity}

{Insert paragraph subtly rescinding apology because current state of life eliminates ability to post}

{Insert long and winding paragraph expressing hope that current state of life will pass by and sleep and mental abilities will be restored}

{Mention recent blog post written in head about Charlotte Observer's series about SIDS being over used on infants' death certificates (good) and arguing that cosleeping will kill children (bad). Provide link along with compelling argument as to why Charlotte Observer's attempt to win a journalism article has provided poor and misleading advice to parents.}

{Provide witty and entertaining account of twins' first birthday, along with Bridget's ability to walk like a zombie monkey and Christopher's current status of taking 3 steps. Share engaging stories of Conor, which woo the reader to perceiving the wonderousness that is this child}

{Mention that summer school is nearly over and how little research has been done but class has been a boatload of fun}

{/End blog}

Why, Hello There!

2010-06-09T18:06:00.003-05:00

Yes, yes, still around. Not leaving. Hopefully, when things settle down in August as far as kindergarten and daycare, I'll have a little more space to get back to blogging. (To document my life? To work out troublesome issues? To help others?) I'm sure the reasons will evolve, but let's consider today a Documenting Blog.

Let's review the last 7 days, shall we? (feel free to scan the first sentence of each paragraph to hit the highlights and get out of this long entry)

Last Tuesday, Conor lost his first baby tooth. I'm not sure when it's supposed to start but his lost his at 5 years and 10 months. And not only that, his first permanent tooth is coming in and, indeed, is what knocked out his baby tooth. And if it's incoming position is any indication---braces are in our future.

Last Wednesday, Bridget took her first 6 steps. It was the first time she had taken more than a few steps while cruising. Even more exciting, Dave and I got to see it together. That's not always the case if you're not a SAHM or a SAHD, so we were pretty psyched. By Thursday, she was walking across rooms. Christopher was not amused at all the attention she was getting and by Thursday afternoon, every time we cheered for Bridget, he performed what we call Trick #2: Clapping his hands. So it became a cheer-a-thon of being excited for Bridget and rewarding Christopher for clapping. (Do think think there's sibling rivalry? By Friday, Bridget had figured out how to clap and Christopher was taking 2 steps before falling forward into the closest person's arms)

On Friday, Conor graduated from preschool. I had expected that I would weep at the passage of my little boy out of the daycare we have loved since he was 4 months old. (Conor is staying home the rest of the summer with the nannies and then with me when I take July off work) No. I cried as some of Conor's special needs classmates triumphantly performed in the graduation ceremony just as well and enthusiastically as Conor's "typical" classmates did. (Ummmm, everyone did)

Sunday was the twins' first birthday party. It was a lot of fun and pretty cool that we were able to invite a lot of neighbors over with their children who are about the same age as the twins. Conor was the only baby in the 'hood when he was born. Now, we have 3 1 year olds within a 5 house radius. That's exciting.

On the other hand, remembering back to what happened a year ago when the twins were born was not a lot of fun. In fact, I was sad. My twins are perfectly happy and healthy now. And they are at least developmentally caught up if not ahead. But the day they were born sucked. I got to see them for 10 minutes total that day and they were covered in tubes and wires and did not look like healthy babies. EVERYTHING TURNED OUT FINE. I know. But that is not what parents have in mind when they think about their babies' arrival.

So where are we?

OK--Monday, the babies had their first year check ups. Christopher is clocking in at 80th percentile weight and 85th percentile height. He is 4 ounces less than what Conor weighed at one year...and one inch taller. YIKES. He is going to be huge. Bridget remains at 15th percentile weight, but 50th percentile height!! She is a skinny baby with ginormous feet, if I have to describe her.

So yes, that has been my last 7 days. There was also a baby shower in there and some massive cake decorating going on (must post pictures), but you get the idea.

I am also teaching summer school (love it) and Conor is out of school for the rest of the summer. (There are a few camps coming up, but he's going to have fun and goof off this summer before school starts)

I do have more to say, but honestly, I hate reading long blog entries. And Conor and I are reading Charlotte's Web together, so it's time for me to go.

Oh, Dear

2010-05-03T18:46:00.003-05:00

We've been praying for an easy year this year. Apparently, God said HA! Well, it's not that bad, but it's certainly not "easy."

First, last week, my good old friend "Aunt Flo" returned. I was actually quite surprised. My cycles started back up when Conor hit 10 months old. The twins are 10 months and 3 weeks old now, so the timing is about right. But now I am breastfeeding TWINS. Two babies. One boob for each. And yet, my cycle has returned. I have imagined the conversation going on inside my body:

Ovaries: Should we send one down? It's about that time again.

Boobs: No way! I'm workin' double time up here. There's no way she would be able to support another baby.

Uterus: Have you SEEN her ass? Go on, Ovaries! Send one down. Heck, send two!

So that was a lot of fun.

Then on Friday, we were filmed for part of a Blue Cross Blue Shield Commercial. I'll post more about that when it comes out, but despite having lived in Los Angeles for 10 years, we were a bit surprised about the crew that arrived for the process. Make up, lightening, sound, BCBS big wigs, and a director and producer. My role was essentially to stare lovingly at Dave as he told our story, not for any sexist, "wifely" reason and pretty much because I had no idea what had actually happened. Sadly, my staring at Dave involved looking at him in profile, and I predict an uncanny resemblance to Professor Snape in the commercial.

On Saturday, we attended our first NICU reunion party. This was quite nice. It was a HUGE party with lots of families attending. We saw a couple of our nurses, which was quite nice. We did not see our favorite nurse, but we also missed Nurse Control-A-Lot, so overall it was a win.

This morning, on the other hand, I had to attend an academic integrity hearing for a student of mine whom I caught plagiarizing. You might think that would be an easy thing to do: AHA! A student has been caught doing wrong! I will get him/her!! You cannot imagine how it is not like that at all. At our school, hearings are rare. Most of the time, students get a "settlement" in which they admit their guilt, receive their "penalty" and the information is kept top secret for 8 years and then destroyed. So, cases like this are the exception.

And this case did not go as expected. There was lying, denying, external attributions of fault, anger, sulking, admissions of other plagiarism, and general Things That Are Not Good. And that was just me!!

I jest.

It was bad. And it was bad to see the student do what I would presume are all the same things that have gotten him/her out of trouble before. This was not a growth experience for this student. This was not a moment that is going to make him or her finally straighten up and fly right. This was just one stop in what I would guess is going to be a long line of messing up rather significantly. He/She did not get out of this. He/She was found guilty and was dealt a pretty severe penalty. Still, there is no relief.

And the emotional fallout for me has, surprisingly, been high. I protect my students. I cheer them on and coach them and want them to grow and do well. I recognize that not all are at that stage in their lives or have that goal, but if they want it, I want to help them achieve it. It's not fun and it's not why I'm a professor.

Oh and what else? I forgot to register to review for a conference so I may have let that person down. I have my first dissertation defense on Friday (on self harm in adolescent girls. Light and fun topic!!). I have 25 student project papers arriving tomorrow and another student waiting for another review. AND Christopher has a double ear infection and is quite cranky/sick.

There is more. There is always more. But I'm sure you're tired of hearing of my whining. God(dess) knows I am.

Why I Don't Post More

2010-04-22T18:58:00.004-05:00

This is photo tableau of why I do not have time to blog. They keep us on our toes from morning to night. If they just weren't so darn cute.

What A Week

2010-04-14T19:48:00.002-05:00

Sometimes, I have to work really hard to come up with the prose to make things sound interesting around here. And sometimes, it sort of writes itself.

Obviously, you can be the judge of whether our last week has been as eventful as I think or whether I should have spent a bit more time, effort and actually grown some talent to make it seem more compelling.

Let's just go chronologically, shall we? Friday, Nanny #2 and I were discussing a blister/sore that Nanny #1 had noticed on Bridget on Thursday. I had said, on Thursday, "Oh, she must be sucking her hands and fingers and got a blister. Babies do that when they're born, you know." Then Nanny #2 said, "Wow, it really looks like a burn."

Ding ding ding ding ding. I rewound my brain and remembered when Bridget stuck her hand between the bottom of the hot oven door and the top of the oven storage drawer. She had only cried for a moment and when I stuck my hand in there it wasn't hot. Apparently, though, it was.

A quick trip to the doctor and a diagnosis of a 2nd degree burn and instructions how to take care of it---neosporin and hand washing (although he showed me how to wash Bridget's hands, which annoyed the ever loving hell out of me)---and we were back, none the worse for the wear.

Then on Sunday, Conor tells us a story of how he and his new playmate found a dead mouse? And how his new friend pushed all the blood out of this dead mouse by putting a rock on top of it and squishing it. I'm not even going to try to make that more dramatic than it is, but basically I flipped out. If you'd like to know why, then read this article. In any case, how we're going to deal with this issue is still in motion, so no more comments about it here, except it freaked me (and continues to freak me) out.

Monday and Tuesday were mellow, just normal random throw up, crying, and lack of sleep. And that was just Dave!

I kid! It was our multiple offspring, but I had to put that there. Then this morning, oh, let's say at about 4 am, the random throw up (Bridget once Monday morning) became more regular (Christopher, three times in a row. then again at 7 and then again at 8:30). Since Christopher had had congestion for the last 8 months and we think it's related to allergies and our Doctor (Dr. Here's How You Wash A Child's Hands) refuses to listen to us and he was constantly yakking, we decided to take him to the doctor's office. And see another Doctor. HA! Cheating on our doctor! And trying to find one who listens and doesn't think I'm an idiot.

Surprisingly, this new-to-us Doctor DID listen to me about Christopher's congestion. Why yes, he said, 8 months a really long time for a child to be congested. Some children are born sniffley, but still. It could also be a problem. And for the first time, a doctor agreed with me that Christopher's eczema is likely related to his congestion. After diagnosing an ear infection and an unrelated stomach bug, he suggested we give Christopher a half teaspoon of benadryl to see if that will stop his congestion.

At home, Christopher had his first doses of both penicillin and benadryl, and took a nap. A long nap. A long nap in which he did not snore. For the first time since we brought him home from the hospital.

But that's not all! No, burns, mutilated mice and yakking, infected, congested children do not cover all the excitement around here! No, the last bit of thrill happened during dinner, when I looked over at Bridget and saw a growing redness around her mouth, cheeks and nose. After deciding that I was not imagining it and going through a mental checklist of what we ate new for dinner that night, I narrowed it down to the eggplant Bridget had loved so much she'd have 3 helpings. But allergic? to eggplant?! Why, yes, it is possible! And a quick call to the after hours nurse made me very, very grateful that we'd bought children's benadryl today. The nurse was as excited as I was, saying that if we didn't have it, she would have stayed on the phone as Dave had gone out to get it, come back and give it to Bridget. Yeah.

She is fine now. We have to give her another dose in 6 hours but the rash went away in about 45 minutes. And tonight, she and Christopher are both sleeping well and breathing well. We know this because we've been checking on them quite a bit. But no more eggplant at our house. I fully realize that I am the only person mourning that fact. But it also scares me that Bridget has a food she can't eat again. It sort of freaks one out to know that something she could eat could make her sick. Or worse.

It's been an eventful week. I would just as soon it not be eventful any more. I could use boring. I could stand to be bored for a while now.

Hello There

2010-04-06T19:18:00.003-05:00

So there's busy. And there's working mother of 10 month old twins and a 5 year old and a working husband. Hello!

I'm not leaving this blog. But I may be on leave this semester from it. By the time we get the babies to sleep and the place somewhat cleaned up, I just want to sit down with a glass of wine and watch TV. Even if that does happen, I usually only get 30 minutes to 1 hour of free time. And the often brain work required to do that is more than I have left.

And I don't really feel bad about that. I feel bad about a boatload of other things. But not about neglecting this too much. Except, I do feel bad about not documenting the twins' babyhood as well as I did Conor's. I know that happens moving from the first to subsequent children, but I still feel guilty.

Especially when I have such news to report as Bridget nearly walking and Christopher clearly saying "Daddy" (no Da Da) to Dave. Christopher has also started playing advanced Peek-a-boo with whatever linen he can find. And I just checked the previous blog entry and I did not mention that Bridge started to cruise about a month ago and can now stand up momentarily on her own. Christopher has just started creeping, in comparison, but he's still pretty darn proud of it.

Why here he is, creeping up on poor Patches instead of being in bed. Another difference in first vs. later children is that if one isn't ready for bed, I don't sit in the bedroom rocking for an hour until he goes to sleep. I'm sure we've doomed him or Bridget to a lifetime of horrible sleeping, but that's just too damn bad. I can't sit up there that long any more. And I don't believe it anyway.

As for the thousands of conversations I have in my head on this blog, the latest is what a witch I was on Easter! Yes! I won the award for worst mother of the year on Easter morning...BEFORE church! When we walked in and saw our friends, they kindly said "Happy Easter!" My blaring eyes, wild hair and frothing gave away my true meaning when I said "HAPPY EASTER TO YOU TOO!"

I'll simply provide the 15 minute highlight of dressing the twins in their very expensive outfits and then us all losing it. These highlights include: figuring out that their sailor outfits were not navy blue, but were black. Dressing infants! In black! For Easter!!

Then Christopher's button came off before I could even put his outfit on!! Did I mention EXPENSIVE? (And I don't mean "target" expensive)

Then we went down for pictures---one button gone be damned! I was going to take some pictures. Conor is running around the house in corduroys despite the hot weather. I sent him to change his clothes and he came back with a decent outfit and a tobaggon on his head he wouldn't take off. Fine.

"Sit down with the twins to get your picture taken."

"No."

"Sit!"

"NO!!!"

"Fine!!! Then years from now when you look back and don't see yourself in these pictures I'll tell you that you refused to do it!!!!!" <--the peak of my bad motherness.

Seven bad pictures later, another button fell off of Christopher's EXPENSIVE BLACK EASTER OUTFIT. It only had 4 buttons! And 2 fell off in 10 minutes.

I believe that I was enraged at this point. All those images in my head of beautiful Easter pictures of my children in their matching Easter outfits (none black, by the way) as we go to church to have everyone oooh and aaaaaw of their cuteness is completely blown. I am so angry. So mad at the everybody. So achingly frustrated. And we're going to Church. On EASTER.

It got better. But it didn't start off that well. And now I've made my confession to you.

Time to relax. After I get Christopher back to bed and actually to sleep.

She's Alive!

2010-03-11T19:51:00.002-05:00

Yes, we're still alive over here in the Mother Thing household. But just barely. I have a ton of things I want to blog about, some factual/chronological and some more meditation on current events in our family.

However.

I don't have the time. It's 8:00 over here and although Christopher is sound asleep, Bridget is practicing her cruising. Oh the joys of a 9 month old and her sleep. In any case, the good news is that Bridget sleeps almost the entire night once she gets to sleep. It's just getting her to sleep and getting her to stop waving and cruising and practicing saying Da Da that's the issue. The big difference between us as parents with Conor and us as parents with Christopher and Bridget? Instead of sitting in their room and rocking and rocking and rocking and rocking (and rocking), we just bring her back downstairs and do some work until she gets sleepy. Then lickety split, she's back in bed and asleep. I have no doubt that's All Wrong (for your family), but it works for us. You try convincing her that little girls who can wave can sleep just as well as little girls who can't.

Speaking of other baby issues, I used my infant CPR this morning. This was not a fun event, in case you're wondering. We were eating breakfast and Christopher appeared to be having problems swallowing. Since he had a cold, we figured he had some sort of mucus issue that was causing the problem or that the livermush (!) he was eating was too big. Then I looked over and he was making the choking face: Mouth open, struggling, no sound. I picked him up out of his seat, threw him upside down over my left arm and began to thump him with my right arm. I would like to say that I was incredibly focused and not at all feeling adrenaline. It took two thumps and then it came off of his windpipe, he coughed and it came out of his mouth. it was a velcro round from one of Conor's toys. Dave and I were actually still pretty calm by this point, but Conor was nowhere to be seen. It wasn't until after Christopher started his comfort boob that Conor poked his head back in the dining room again. It scared the carp out of him. I honestly though that the infant CPR class they made us take before we could take the babies out of NICU was b.s. Now? Not so much.

In better baby news, the twins were dedicated at church on Sunday. It was a beautiful ceremony and they were angels. Yes, I do owe you pictures of them (and the house) soon.

Speaking of the house, the great irony of the remodel is that we have more work to do on the house now than we did before the remodel. That annoys me!! We were hoping to have a few years of doing nothing, but we still have to decorate, organize, etc. etc. for a while more. And the CLEANING! It takes a lot more work to clean this bigger house with 5 people in it than it did in a smaller house with 3.

In any case, here's something good for you to know: if you paint your house a darkish blue, it's going to change colors quite dramatically based on whether it's in the sun or the shade. And even the direction of the sun (east, south) makes a big difference. Sometimes I drive up to our house and think "Oh, dear" and sometimes (in the shade), I think our house color is really nice. It's like living in a mood ring, though, that's for sure.

OK. Bridget is eating my leg. This is generally a sign that she's ready for sleep. Let us hope.

Hold On

2010-02-28T20:53:00.002-05:00

I'm still here and I have about a zillion blog updates to write. I'm just so tired after working and getting the babies to bed that the hour I have to myself after the kids go to bed and before I go to bed, well, I'm keeping that hour to myself.

General stories to follow:

*Quirks, Part Deux: Conor's underwear

*Bridget: It's her world, we just live in it.

*Christopher: My head is too big to hold up all the time. Now I'll cry.

*Amy Bishop is a nut, but I freaked out and talked about tenure all the time, too.

*I'm a wonderful human being!!!!: How I yelled at my mom, accidentally pointed out a couple who broke up before my class and were crying, and made two graduate students plus my son cry (irony in title will be prominent in that post)

*I'm still keeping the weight off from Pukefest 2010. Except as soon as I said that, three lbs jumped back on.

*(In a follow up post) I weigh the same as I did before I had Conor, but none of my body parts are in their same location. Plus my boobs are HUGE. And I don't like that any more.

*Two showers a week: Why working mothers don't smell as pretty as they used to.

*Our Remodeled House: Why do we have so much more freakin' work to do on it?

*Our Remodeled House, Part II: Blue looks different in the shade than in the sun. Whoops! Next time, we'll paint the house yellow.

Stay tuned for more exciting episodes of....This, That and the Old Mother Thing.

Quirks

2010-02-03T19:49:00.003-05:00

The twins have grown out of that blank infant stage and have started to become distinct babies. They still really dig each other, holding hands while they nurse and touching each others' faces first thing in the morning. But they are quite different as far as their personalities go.

Christopher is just like Conor was. He laughs easily and, apparently, when I sneeze, tickle him, or throw him in the air, I am the funniest mother that ever lived. And like Conor, he is not all that interested in movement. Like Conor, when you are a fat baby with a ginormo head, it's hard to actually propel yourself around with your arms and legs. Unlike Conor, Christopher has decided to just lie on the floor and kick his legs like he's trying to swim across our hardwood floors. The good news is that he has advanced from last month when he would kick his legs for a few minutes and then put his head down and sob. Now, he'll kick and perhaps even spin around a bit before he puts his head down to rest a bit and try it again. It's really the only time he gets upset. When I say he's a happy child, I mean that 95% of the time, he's amusing himself with his toys and then looking up at whoever is around, cocking his head to one side and laughing. It's hard not to run over and grab him and kiss him when he does this, so I don't even try to resist.

Bridget, on the other hand....

Well, Bridget makes you work for her smiles. They are absolutely worth the effort because her whole face will light up, but she's not giving them out for free and never giving them to strangers (who usually make her scream). And quite unlike Christopher, the child is very, very mobile. She's not crawling yet (THANK GOD(DESS)), but she's creeping her way all over the house. The child is tiny, yet she's cover a space that is proportionately enormous just to see what is there.

She was trying to eat the mirror in our bedroom and so I put her way on the other side of the room to keep her safe. She made a beeline back to the mirror, stopping only for a minute to chew on an extension cord along the way. (A box of new baby proofing supplies arrived today, in case you were wondering) And because she is still drooling so much, we can tell where she has been crawling. Much like a giant slug, she leaves a trail of spit in her wake.

And just today, she started to growl when she crawls. She is still the queen of raspberries and feels free to use them to make comments about everything. But now, she's growling. She's not angry; she's just playing with her voice. But it's a bit disconcerting seeing this extra tiny baby crawling across the floor with a trail of slime behind her while she growls.

Speaking of disconcerting, Conor has started to really blossom into his own person. His own quite quirky person. (He is our child, you know) The latest was his proud declaration that he did not want to poop at school. While Dave agrees that he would not poop at their school, either, Conor when on to share how he will "move his poop back up inside" so he won't poop at school.

Yeah. That's one of those things that you learn about a family member that you care about and still think, "Dude, that's weird." But we shall judge not his poopitude. We've talked to him and his teachers that if he needs to go he should go. But he prefers to poop here in the bathroom he prefers to poop in (versus the other bathroom downstairs). Folks I PROMISE you, we did not put any pressure on potty training.

And then, his teacher overheard him explaining to his classmate about having a new sister "One of the good things about having a baby sister is that your parents love you more because you can be more useful." Dave and I were a bit saddened by that. Does he think we only love him b/c he's useful? No, but still! When we asked him about it, he told us that he told his classmate the good thing about having a baby brother and sister is that you can go to your room and shut the door when they start crying.

I have to be honest with you. Of all the things we would have imagined Conor to say about being a big brother, being loved more because we put him to work and the ability to get away from their crying would have not be on our top 20, even top 30, things we would have expected him to say.

So there. He's not us. Conor is his own little funky, loving, slightly bizarre and completely lovable person. He's really separating and keeping secrets and having his own opinions. And it's really nice. Quirky. But nice.

Bread

2010-01-29T19:27:00.002-05:00

I just realized what Michele was talking about a few posts ago. The Artisan Bread can become doughy in the middle---unless you cook the hooey out of it. Yes, using my southern roots of Making Sure It Is Really Done, I usually add on at least 5 minutes to the cooking time for the bread. I've yet to burn the bread (and I've REALLY let it bake), but there are times when it's less than done. So, umm, yeah. That's my advice. Cook it to death.

And both bowing to and bucking southern tradition: We have a big snow storm coming. And so I went out to buy milk (along with a bazillion other people at Harris Teeter at 8:45 this morning). But I did NOT buy bread. Instead, I bought flour to make it.

Dave is calling our bread "microbread" after the microbrew beer we got used to in LA. Once you get used to drinking locally crafted and brewed beer, it's hard to go back to Budweiser and Miller Lite. We both think the same thing is true of this bread. A regular loaf of bread from the store is going to taste awfully "light" after the toothsome, chewy stuff we've been making.

OK. Time to go stare out the window at the snow. As much as I mock Storm Watch 2010, I'm fully southern and am obsessively checking the radar and two or three weather forecasts. Lame. But me!

Kindergarten

2010-01-28T21:40:00.003-05:00

I've had some wine with the dinner party we had tonight. Can I still blog?

We'll see.

Anyhoo, good and bad news with Conor's options for kindergarten next year. The good news: our local school is no longer Title 1 Choice. That's great. Sort of. Our local neighborhood school is Good now. But it doesn't feel like it, to be honest. One year out of being "good" still seems sort of sketchy to me. And the real issue is that all of a sudden we've dropped a notch in the lottery standings. In Charlotte, the lottery for the magnet programs goes in this order: within 1/3 mile of the school; siblings; Title 1 folks; in the transportation zone; everyone else. We've moved from "Title 1" to "Zone" in two of our (former) choices and "everyone else" with our final choice. We've subsequently changed what our lottery choices are.

I KNOW it's "political" our choice not to attend our local school. "Good" people in our neighborhood do. And by "good" I mean "good"--people who want to do good in this world and help spread the wealth of resources and attention. I am too selfish in my career to do this though. I can't work and run the PTA at the elementary school to. (I realize no one is asking me to do this, but it my delusional mind, that's the level of involvement needed)

So we got data for the lottery assignments from last year. This is the list of the number of people who applied to the 2009 CMS magnet programs, the number of people who got in and the number of people who were wait-listed. The good news (for us) is that it doesn't appear that there is a problem for us to get into a language immersion program. Indeed, we've decided to opt for French, Chinese and German in that order. We had eliminated Chinese earlier because we heard it was so popular there was a wait list for it. there is not. Since we knew there was one for French, too, we didn't want to go for programs we had little chance to get into. However, we're pretty sure we'll get in to the school (the language immersion) we want to now.

It's our friends who want to get into the more popular traditional and learning intensive/talent development schools who are going to have a harder time now. One very good thing is that our local school also has a magnet program for learning intensive/talent development. And we hear it's really, really good. it is one of the reasons why our school has graduated from Title 1.

And that's good. I understand that it's good. And in 5 years, our local school may be THE school to go to. In fact, it may be *THE* school to go to next year. I GET IT and I FEEL GUILTY that we still are concerned. Still, even if it had been "good" for the last five years, Dave and I still might prefer the language immersion program. it's really appealing to us. We've just thought, since we've lived in our neighborhood, that we'd always at the top of the list to get it. And now, our chances have gone down. Only slightly for our choice, but more for our friends.

So you know the weird part? After writing all this out, if we ended up NOT getting into the language immersion program and getting into the talent development/learning intensive program at the local school, I think that would be fine. I think it would be more than fine---I think it would be good.

We'll see. We finalized our choices today. Fingers crossed, mes amis.

ETA: Our good neighbors and why our local school has improved.

Bizarro World

2010-01-25T20:52:00.002-05:00

Every time I blog about something here, the next day the opposite thing happens.

So imagine what last night's sleep was? W.O.N.D.E.R.F.U.L

Christopher slept without eating from 7:15 pm until 4:15 am. Bridget decided to sleep in 2 1/2 to3 hour increments. I only got up 4 times last night because of the babies. AMAZING!!!

Of course, there is always something to complain about. Otherwise, why would we be here?

The most exciting part was the two (2!) automated phone calls from Charlotte Emergency services at 1:30 am telling us that if we needed to flee flooding water, not to do so in a vehicle, but to call the fire department. OOOOOkay. Although our back yard is way flooded and you could probably get around in a kayak, we were not in danger of flooding. ON THE SECOND FLOOR.

And the irony, the IRONY, that it was the best night of sleep we've had in months and we're running around the room with our hearts pounding, adrenaline flowing worried about which set of parents had bad news.

The second part was the incredibly painful breast waiting for Christopher to finally wake up and eat. OH MY GOODNESS it hurt and there was no way in H E Double Hockey Sticks I was going to get up and keep him from sleeping as long as he could. Nonetheless, that's another big clue that the babies are still eating at night.

And, of course, when Christopher did come in to see us at 4:30 he was so excited to see us that he decided to practice his consonants and vowels (ba goo ba ba ba da paaaa), touch our faces and generally roll around the bed and have a party.

Then we gave him another dose of motrin and we all went back to sleep.

And based on my history, tonight is going to suck loudly because last night didn't and I told you about it!

At least, I think we'll be free of the emergency services calls. I hope.

Sleep

2010-01-24T21:49:00.002-05:00

NOTE: I'm posting this just to complain, not to get assvice. It's just one of those things one wants to point out that is different for parents of twins as opposed to singletons.

So, defensiveness acknowledged and up front. I'm not really sleeping all that much. The funny part is that I don't really notice how tired I am until I start thinking about it. Or actually until I start thinking---research lab was a challenge this week: we were talking so quickly that my head was spinning by the end. And I'm the professor!!

Anyhoo, I decided last night to use my athletic watch to find out how many times I was waking up and how long I was going between nursings. Perhaps I should explain what happens: the twins go to sleep in their own cribs (HOORAY!) and when they wake up, we bring them to bed. Unfortunately, they wake up relatively early, around 11. One reason for this is that I know they are still eating at night. If, per chance, someone sleeps a bit later, my boobs are rock hard, filled with milk. I can also tell that during the night they are "eating." I don't really know how to feed them more during the day, but apparently I need to.

Back to last night, I decided to hit the lap button on my watch every time I woke up and rolled over to feed someone. Did I mention that during the night, I'll be facing right and at some point the baby behind me will whack on my back until I roll over and feed him/her. Then the baby on my right will spoon me for some time and then whack me on the back until I roll back over and feed him/her? I feel like I'm rolling over about 6 to 8 times per night, but am I doing it once an hour? Am I doing it every 15 minutes, which is what it feels like. Am I over or underestimating how little sleep I'm getting?

Well, last night, I did 8 "laps" during the night. That means, I rolled over 8 times during the night. That's about right. Sometimes I've done 6 times (great night!). Sometimes I've done 10 (suck egg dog night).

What was nice to find out is that I actually had a couple of long stretches last night. I had one 2 hour stretch and one one 1 hour 15 minute stretch. I know that's not a lot, but it's wasn't so bad. Of course, I also had a 50 minute stretch and an 8 minute and a 16 minute stretch, too, which definitely sucks.

The babies are actually sleeping quite well on their own. Each one is getting about a 5 hour stretch of sleep on his/her own. The problem is that they are still waking and eating (not comfort sucking---at least not early on) after that 5 hour stretch.

Here's the scoop folks: I have no idea how women who do not breastfeed do it. Although I'm up a lot during the night, if I'm awake for an entire minute, I'd be shocked. A couple of times, I'll stay awake 3 to 5 minutes thinking about something, but really, I wake up, position the bbs and then go right back to sleep. I'd rather sleep all the way through, but if I'm having to deal with this, I'd rather deal with it with the babies in my bed than any other place.

Also, can I tell you HOW ADORABLE it is to have the babies snuggling up against me? Especially when both of them throw a leg and an arm over me. It's so cute. And it's not just me. When I get up in the morning, they roll over to each other and snuggle up with each other to sleep for a bit more. We're snugglers around here. Tired. But snugglers.

A Few Minutes

2010-01-23T10:00:00.003-05:00

Both babies are down and I'm getting a few things checked off my list. And oddly, one of the things to check off my list of things to do today is to make a list of all the things we need to do in the house and yard this year. There are a lot of things we need to do just to finish the remodel!

Surprisingly, we have a lot of things to do in the yard. The contractors, bless their hearts, parked their trucks all over our yard and our grass, which used to be the envy of everyone in the neighborhood, is gone. There are issues in the back yard, too, and we've go to figure out where we're going to put all our outdoor furniture which used to go on our (now nonexistent) deck.

The good news, at least, is that we can now permanently cross off our list "Fix Leaky Roof" because for a while, that's going to be someone else's responsibility.

In other news, we heard from one of Conor's teachers about Conor's views on being a big brother. A classmate is going to have a little sister and the classmate is not happy about it. According to the teacher, Conor told him that it's fun having a little sister and that being a big brother is nice, too. The highlight of her version of the conversation was "Your parents will like you more because you can be useful."

Oooookay. That made us feel like crap. I don't think he meant it in the adult interpretation of that story. Cuz we like him plenty when he's just sitting there. However, he does like having things to do which are "his" responsibility with the babies. Still. As a psychologist, I'm going to blame it on having a high need for achievement.

Even better, when we asked him about that conversation, what he told us he said "When you're a big brother, you get to go to your room and shut the door when the babies start crying." Great! That's not much better.

OK. Bridget's up. Must go.

Bread

2010-01-19T20:06:00.002-05:00

Michele from In Between the Parentheses, who is a real bread baker, asked about our bread. We are still following the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book. Honestly, it is the easiest thing I've ever cooked. And 5 minutes a day is the maximum I spend making the bread.

The challenge, though, is in the planning. If I want bread tomorrow night, the easiest thing to do is make the dough tonight and then bake it tomorrow afternoon. That gives it time to rise and time to bake and cool. But my active time in actually doing something is never more than a few minutes a day.

We've even been making sandwich bread using their dough. I bought some wheat dough and tomorrow, I'm going to try out the light whole wheat bread. We've even made our own pizza dough using their recipes and it's YUMMY: light, crisp and fresh tasting.

Have I mentioned we now have a weekly pizza night? Every Friday night is pizza night. One pepperoni for Conor and Dave and one grown up pizza for Dave and me. (Dave eats a lot of pizza). This week's grown up is going to be some variation of chicken and pineapple.

OK. Time to wind down.

Have I mentioned how wonderful our new nanny team is? How AMAZING? How much the babies love both of them and How. Much. They. Clean. The. House. A friend just pointed out some research that women professors with paid help at home are more productive in terms of publications than others. I'm thrilled to find this out. It may make next year's choices a lot easier---stay with Nanny Team or go to daycare.

Menus

2010-01-18T19:58:00.002-05:00

I have read that one is supposed to do this, but I've never been able to stick to it until recently: weekly dinner menus.

I am finding this to be really, really helpful in organizing ourselves around here. Sunday night, I figure out what I have left in the fridge and what the organic produce folks are going to bring and what I ought to eat out of the freezer. Then I make changes in the weekly food chart. Then, for the last two weeks, I figure out what I'm going to order from HT.

I was quite lame in last week's online ordering, not understanding why my master list was filled with wine purchases. Then I realized Dave had gone to the store to load up on cheap alcohol. Once I deleted those, then all my regular stuff was right there. I can click on something and add it to the list. Or not.

I'm also putting together a master grocery list. This is a list for HT, TJs and BJs (Harris Teeter, Trader Joe's and BJs, a local club shopping center). I'm trying to put on each list what stuff we use is the cheapest where. And my goal is that's the only place we buy it. For example, wine is verboten now anyplace but TJs because it's so cheap there. Whole chickens are at BJs only because they are cheap ($.89/lb).

This has to be one of the most boring blogs entries I've ever written. Really? Who the HELL cares where we buy our groceries. The scoop is that I am obsessing on saving money. March 1 is our first mortgage payment for the remodel, which is not all that different from the mortgage and equity payments we made before. It's just that now, we have an additional $1200+ childcare payment. That will only last for 4 months (March, April, May and June) at which point Conor graduates from daycare and we get back $700 a month. (Can I just point out that right now, we're paying at least $1900 in daycare costs per month; we were used to Conor. Now we have Conor and the twins)

So until Conor graduates from pre-k, we are going to be freakin' broke. I mean, the budget is not clear how income is going to be greater than or equal to output. In looking at our budget, the thing we by far spend the most on per month is food. Even the occasional Target or Home Depot splurge doesn't hold a candle to what we regularly spend on feeding ourselves each month. (And we're not buying steaks folks--we eat healthy and frugally; leftovers do not go to waste around here). So my goal is to continue eating healthy (including the organic food delivery; it's not as bad as you'd think) and frugally (I'm making my own bread; we are not eating out; I'm buying dry beans and cooking them instead of canned beans; we are eating less protein and more economical whole grains). And BTW---online shopping completely gets rid of all that marketing and product placement effects that consumer packaged goods have spent years perfecting. It's OBVIOUS what the best price is. Yay for the consumer on that one!

So again, NOT VERY INTERESTING. But that's our lives.

Speaking of spending a boatload of money and the complaining about being poor, I need to get some pictures of the finished house. We love it. And the twins. We wouldn't make a different choice on either for the world. Just going to be a bit tight for a few months.

Food and Sleep

2010-01-17T19:57:00.002-05:00

The main issues around here seem to be getting enough food to everyone and making sure that everyone gets enough sleep.

Dinner times are absolutely crazy and I'm not sure if it would be better with just one baby, but it's out of control with two. With Conor, I think at this point, we were feeding him and then eating our own dinner later. However, we've been eating with Conor (early) for a really long time now, so it doesn't seem reasonable to cook two meals in such quick succession.

Besides, the babies are eating what we're eating, just pureed into a slurry. That's right. Even a 7 months old, the babies eat what we eat and not special baby food. Tonight was roasted chicken, roasted sweet potatoes and sauteed yellow squash. Last night they had a hamburger (no bun), baked beans, blueberries and breastmilk shake. It was such a lovely shade of brown! We're sure you'll see it soon at your local fastfood joint.

We've only been doing this for a couple of weeks. I have known in my head that there is no scientific evidence suggesting what babies should eat when; it's all cultural. That means that the advice to hold off on protein, wheat, dairy, peanuts, strawberries etc. etc. and to start with rice cereal is not scientifically based and in fact, in other countries, parents feed their babies with different orders of food. Nonetheless, I've been following the US pediatric recommendations on what to feed children when and what not to feed them until later, UNTIL a brand new study came out from the American Pediatric Association that basically says start with meat. Additionally, there is no benefit to waiting to introduce foods that are related to allergies and in fact, that strategy could cause allergies.

So we're feeding the babies what we eat. They are gobbling it up and are quite happy about it. It's a little tough cooking our dinner and then blending it down in a timely manner for them while we're all waiting for dinner, but that's what we do.

There are other crazy things I'm doing, like making all our own bread. But we can talk about that later. It doesn't take time, it just takes planning. and it's so much better tasting. And it's a boatload cheaper. In any case, it's just constantly crazy around here.

Folks may be wondering how our sleep is going. The good news is that the twins are going to sleep in their own room now. Umm, yeah. They were sleeping in our room all night every night until 2 weeks ago. Now, at least, they start in their room and move to ours somewhere between 11 and 3. More often it's 11 and not 3.

I don't even look to see what times they wake up any more. It's too depressing. The best nights are when no one wakes up from 11 until 4:30ish or so. Those nights are not frequent. and the thing is, they are mostly not waking up to comfort nurse back to sleep. I can tell you that they are EATING during those times. If they don't wake up until 4:30, I've got concrete in my boobs, they are soon full.

Thank God(dess) I can nurse in my sleep. Except for those few nights when Bridget wakes up and wants to party, if I'm awake for an entire one or two minutes, I'd be surprised. Sure, I'd rather sleep continuously, but a one or two minute, even a 5 minute, wake up is not that bad.

And we both think the twins have not caught up growth-wise to what they should be. Christopher is tracking to Conor's height and weight, but we think he's going to be bigger. Bridget is still small and skinny. It seems to me that all her calories are going to getting taller instead of getting fatter. And I *think* it's more typical for kids to get fatter and then taller, not the other way around.

So there. Food, sleep, food, sleep, food, sleep. That's what my days (and nights) mostly consist of.

I'm going to the chiro tomorrow for my back. I don't think the tingling and numbness is a good thing.

So, Ummm, Yeah

2010-01-14T20:19:00.003-05:00

I am really, really busy. And somewhat in pain. My back has been alternately going numb and tingling, so I think it's time to find a chiropractor and get some work done.

I started work last week, and at the same time decided we needed to go in a different direction with one of our nannies. Thank god(dess) for Sitter City. Seriously, if you need a sitter or a nanny, get your tired a$$ on there and find one. There are 4,700 people in their database for Charlotte. We found an amazing woman to complement our other fabu woman and now we have a childcare team that the babies love (already! They love the new nanny already!!!) and who are really and truly helping me work this semester.

But I have to be perfectly honest with you. I'm so incredibly focused at work that I simply do not have time for crap. I can only afford X amount of daycare hours per week with the twins, so I have to do what needs to be done when I need to do it. I have started online shopping with Harris Teeter, we are having organic produce delivered to the house and I'm using weekly menus to decide what to cook.

Also, I'm afraid that I've become a bit of a beeyatch taking no prisoners and getting done what I need to get done. On the one hand, I don't want to be a "pit bull" (what we called hard ass women when I was working in the real world). But on the other, I kind of like it. I'm getting problems solved and getting things done that need to get done.

But what really needs to get done right now is I need to sleep. And to get my wonky back fixed.

Well, Isn't That a Kick in the Head

2010-01-06T20:32:00.003-05:00

Well, today wasn't all that eventful.....*after* I fell down the stairs.

Yes, I fell down the stairs this morning and NO I wasn't carrying a baby. Yes, that is the most important thing but OCCASIONALLY, it's nice to know someone is concerned about just selfish ol' me. I have since learned that wool socks are especially bad to walk down wooden stairs and that more than a few of my friends have taken that same dive bruising their ribs and banging themselves up.

My back is completely whacked out and I look like Quasimodo. I took some leftover pain medication from one of my miscarriages soon after it happened. That was not such a good idea. I apparently cannot write research papers while I am loopy. It didn't feel all that bad this afternoon, but now I'm really hurting. I'm thinking that tomorrow morning is going to be even worse.

And I have no idea how it happened, apart from the obvious. I just remember falling down and thinking "Surely, I'm going to stop. Surely, I'm going to stop now. SURELY, I'm going to stop NOW, there are no more stairs!!!"

Great. I really don't want to deal with this right now. We'll see how it goes tomorrow.

Good Lord

2010-01-05T20:18:00.002-05:00

And I don't mean that in a positively religious way.

Yes, what did I last post? And when? I just checked the blog and indeed "Overwhelmed" was the last thing I posted about. And it's pretty much all I've felt for the last 8 weeks or so. Christmas while moving with twins and breaking in a new nanny to prepare for going back to work after being off for 9 months? Well, let's just say I don't recommend it as a positive influence on your marriage or your sanity.

We have, however, survived. And although there was that memorable cookie dough throwing incident on Christmas Eve, by Christmas day I felt we had rounded a corner. At some point, I had to just stop and realize that my family doesn't care all that much about the quality of the food or the craftiness of the decor. And really, the most important thing was that Santa had a wide welcome mat into our home.

We had a bit of a conundrum with Santa that my Mom and Dad generously saved. Dave and I are apparently one of the few people in America who have decided to save money for presents beforehand as opposed to just spending and paying off Christmas for the next couple of months. This means we have a budget and it is pretty limited. Conor really, really, really wanted a special Lego set and if we bought it, it would pretty much eat up his entire gift budget (we did go over budget for him, but still, he would have had squat if he'd gotten that set). So we told him Santa had to spread his gifts out and he probably wouldn't get this set.

On Christmas morning, Conor was very happy with his gifts from Santa and did not overtly express disappointment that he didn't get that particular Lego set as he got another Lego set from Santa. Well, Mom and Dad bought him that Lego set for Christmas. When Conor opened it, well, I've never seen such an expression of bliss and happiness over a gift by anyone in my life. He hugged it and gave a very contented smile. And my Dad (trying to save our face) told him that they had asked Santa not to give it to him so that they could do it. Conor then interpreted this to mean that Santa had brought the present to my parents who then brought the present to him.

I am so happy my parents gave him that Lego set, but I tell you what: I have never felt like such an ass in my life. I don't care WHAT Conor asks for next Christmas from Santa, he's getting it. He can have a god blessed pony next year if he wants it. Indeed, this would be the year he should ask for a new car, because he's not getting one when he turns 16. Yes, in the scheme of things, we could have afforded that Lego set. But we were trying to be frugal since we're running up on some dire straights financially. Still, that one moment of joy in what Santa wrought would have been worth the extra money. This experience also makes me feel very empathetic for folks who simply cannot afford that special gift for their children. The guilt they must feel has to be overwhelming.

Ok, enough o' Santa. I'm back to work this week for the first time since April 13. I know that because I found the receipt for my lunch and indeed some of the lunch from that date still on my desk. Lovely. I obviously was not planning on being out of work for the next 9 months. Even I, slob that I am, wouldn't have left a dirty fork, a milk cap or any of the various half filled cups on my desk for that period of time.

I like going back to work and preparing for classes and working on papers and grants. Our daycare situation, however, has become unsettled in the last two days. We have confidence that everything is going to resolve itself, but it is a wee bit stressful now.

As for the house, we've unpacked all but three boxes and are finishing the last major projects. The house is cleanish, except for the Lego explosion that is Conor's room. We're hoping the Ikea toy storage set will help us in that area.

Life with the twins is actually going really well. They are finally sleeping in their own room in their own cribs!! WOOHOOOHOOOHOOOHOOOHOO!!! I'm a bit excited about that. And despite what we were warned about the transition from our room/bed to theirs, it was nothing. There were no crying or anything. Let that be a lesson that your mileage may vary quite a lot from other people's experiences. Even better, the twins' naps have snapped into place. We are not training them: the naps are emerging on their own. Hallelujah and a-frickin'-men. I feel a lot better having the nannies step in when the babies are more stable.

I feel like I'm giving a book report of my life. I'm ready for some sanity to come back here. Some quiet? Some stability? A few minutes to collect my thoughts and relax? Yeah. I do sometimes step back from the dinner table and observe the chaos and wonder when that's going to happen, too.

Overwhelmed

2009-12-15T20:31:00.002-05:00

I am cutting myself some slack.

Nonetheless, things are feeling quite overwhelming to me today what with the move and still unpacking and finishing the house, trying to clean an unpacked house, starting back to school in one month, prepping a new class, learning a new computer system for class, revising an NSF grant, submitting at least one conference paper and preferably two and/or perhaps a symposium in one month, shopping for Christmas, deciding on and sticking to our Christmas budget when I can't get out of the house to shop and Amazon's days of free super saving shipping are drawing nigh, transitioning to a new nanny, providing the nanny with resources and family beliefs on bonding and interaction and feeding, learning appropriate interaction activities for the twins and nanny(s), trying to keep on the good side of nanny(s) because losing them screws us in innumerable ways for this semester, keeping track of Christopher and Bridget's health/eating/development, trying to eat different foods to help Christopher's skin, going to the bazillion wonderful Christmas recitals Conor is in, finalizing Conor's kindergarten choices, deciding whether twins are going to stay with a nanny in the fall or go to Conor's daycare (applications due in February), figuring out how the HELL we're going to make it financially until July when Conor stops daycare, and generally just trying to remember to breathe and eat and pee.

There is more, but these are the top things on my mind.

It is times like these that I do realize that THANK GOD I AM PAST TENURE and I can just relax and do things one at a time. (Instead of everything all the time, faster and better, which was life before tenure)

The doctor called Christopher's eczema "run of the mill" typical eczema and prescribed a very mild oily cortisone steroid for flare ups. We are to keep the child lubed twice a day with Cetaphil lotion (or one the doc recommends, which I imagine is expensive and has paid him money to recommend). I'm glad we went. The 1% cortisone cream did make a difference, but I'd rather have a doctor's advice when putting steroids on my child's face.

In any case, I feel better getting it out. And now I shall self-medicate with a glass of wine. Have any idea when I'm going to fit exercise in my schedule? Cause that's really what I'd like to self-medicate with.

DecEmBlo

2009-12-14T19:27:00.003-05:00

Oh, I just made that up. It is a pretty crazy month thus far.

We're functioning in the house now. There are still plenty of boxes left to unpack. But the master closet is set up and most of the boxes are out of the master bedroom.

Dave is actually playing with the AT&T Uverse TV and we both are so overwhelmed. We found some games on the system this weekend (or I should say, my tech and otherwise genius brother-in-law did) and we have no idea where they are now. And have no idea how to find the time to find them again.

School starts in one month, and I am a bit concerned about how I am going to do this with 3 kids. Dinners are CRAZY around here. And that's when I have a couple of hours to put together a lame meal. What about when we're down to hour singular?

And Christopher's eczema is not better. I'm off both wheat and dairy for now and we're taking him to a pediatric dermatologist tomorrow.

Still, it's all good. Conor sang for the first time with his choir in front of the whole church for the Christmas sing-along. This Wednesday is the Christmas Pageant, and Conor is going to be a sheep. Very cute. We're loving the house and considering how uncomfortable Christopher is at night, sleep is realistic at this stage.

The first two years are the worst, right? I need to go back and read my blog and figure out when it gets easy again.

Back Up To Speed

2009-12-06T20:01:00.002-05:00

Yes, yes, I only missed my NaBloPoMo goals by two days. But we only got internet on Friday night (Dec 4) and the last two posts would have basically been some version of "HOLDER POST FOR NABLOPOMO" and really, after getting tenure, I have absolutely no tolerance for self-imposed goals that cause me stress and provide me little in rewards (beyond----"NaBloPoMo! WOOHOO!").

So, ummm, yeah.

We have moved in and are still unpacking. You'd be surprised how slowly it takes to do things with twins around. I thank God(dess) for my buckle tai. I was able to put a baby on my back, get him/her to sleep and pretty much unpack for as long as I pleased. Folks, if you only have one baby you HAVE to get one of these things!! There is no reason to suffer about not doing what you need to do if you have one child and a buckle tai. You can sit, eat, cook, clean, or dance like a monkey and everybody is safe and happy.

In any case, we are absolutely digging the new house. Although, I have to say, there is something completely perverse about moving into your dream house and then scouring every inch of it to find all its problems to give to the contractor to fix (it's called the Punch List). A psychologist did not design this process. It's like getting your perfect present and then having to tell Santa why it's not perfect.

Still, we love it. I have already taken a bath in the massive claw foot tub. I was in there for a half hour and the water was still warm. Here's a vote for a cast iron tub over an acrylic one, in case you are making that decision. There are a few things we'd probably do a little differently now that we're here (decorating decisions, not structural ones), but Dave can easily fix those things we've identified already.

Our primary nanny for next semester started part time last week. She's coming three days this week, too. (We have another nanny/sitter we'll be using too, but more on the nanny team later) The thing is, folks, I thought since I'd already put Conor in daycare this process would not be so difficult. But twins are different, folks. And Christopher lost his bottle skills in the last couple of months. He drank from a bottle for the first 6 to 8 weeks of his life, but now? If it's not straight from the cow, it's not acceptable milk. Also, the kids are just starting to develop object permanence, which means they now understand that when I'm not there, I haven't just disappeared from this world. I'm somewhere and they want me back. Crying and separation anxiety ensues. It's not a lot of fun for anyone.

In any case, they have to get used to the sitter and I have to let them. That sort of sucks for all three of us (four including the nanny. Five including the nannies). But that's what has to happen. I fully understand that 2 months from now, this won't be a problem anymore, but right now, it's not the most fun I've had in the last 6 months in case you're wondering.

OK. Harry Potter is distracting me. I must go. Tomorrow is the babies' 6 month check up. I'm excited to see how they have grown.

Day 2

2009-11-28T19:44:00.000-05:00

We've been in the house 2 days now. We've unpacked a few boxes, and we still don't have internet. AT&T customer sucks. Dave had to convince them that our original appt to have Uverse installed -- dec 31, 2036--seemed a little extreme. Are they really that busy with new accts? If so, they are about to lose one.

Anyhoo, I'm typing on my phone. I'm drinking a glass of wine. I'm not as tired as I was last night.

nablopomo.

Moved

2009-11-27T15:59:00.000-05:00

we've moved in! no internet yet, but we're in! we have great friends. . .and a gret new house!

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T21:43:00.003-05:00

It's been a rough year, with the issue of my pregnancy, the twins' time in NICU and the remodel. However, it's also been one of the best years of my life as I realized what a community of friends and family I have.

Truly, I am thankful for understanding that we are part of a bigger community and we feel very lucky to be here.

Fin Slippy

2009-11-25T19:42:00.003-05:00

I just poured myself an enormous glass of wine. I didn't even mean to do it. Well, yes, I did meant to pour myself some wine. It's not like I was planning on drinking milk and accidentally poured wine. However, I had no intention of pouring myself the amount of wine I did until I did it.

But now, what the hell. I'm going to drink it. I might even pour myself another one after that.

Things still look like we're moving on Friday. (And as this is Thanksgiving weekend, I expect by the time folks read this, we would have already been stuffed with turkey, moved and be mostly unpacked) The cleaners came, little things were done, the leak in the wall was fixed. Oh, yes. The last part was fun! At some point, someone saw water running out of the outside wall of our house. That's never good. Indeed, all of our (very active) crew stopped what they were doing and went to stare in very alarmed matter at the water running out of our house. If you ever want to see a construction crew jump to, arrange for this sort of event. Fortunately, the crew chief intuited where the likely leak was and they found it and fixed it with minimal disruption. Nonetheless, caffeine was not required in the afternoon.

As for the Fin Slippy part, I'm actually not referring to Finslippy, but to Christopher. We've taken to putting socks on his hands at night to help him from scratching his head. Since these look like fins, and we slathering him with aquaphor, he indeed reminds of us Fin Slippy.

We've also decided that there was no correlation between the milk I wasn't consuming and any change in his eczema, his problems do not seem allergy related. Nonetheless, we need to keep him covered in aquaphor. Last night, he would not sleep, which was annoying me. (I'm not up for mother of the year, in case you're wondering) Then I realized he was trying to scratch his head and couldn't because of the fins. I put the aquaphor on him and he moaned with relief and within seconds was asleep.

Yeah, I felt like a jerk for thinking he just had a "sleeping problem" instead of realizing he was in pain. It is obvious to me how I could go down the Crying It Out path on something like this, not realizing that Christopher was in pain. Not every problem is this solvable, but it was humbling to see how mistaken I was about why Christopher wasn't sleeping.

In any case, he's so covered in aquaphor that he could slip off the bed. Uh-oh. Must run. Crying.

Cuteness and Scams

2009-11-24T09:09:00.002-05:00

Have I mentioned how much of a flirt Bridget is? Actually, she's probably just more of an extrovert. In any case, she loves seeing what is going on around her. If I am feeding here and there is any activity in the room, she takes a sip and strains to look over her shoulder to see if people are still there and they are doing anything interesting. She also engages everyone she sees with smiles and laughs.

Christopher, like his big brother before him, always values the boob first. A parade with dancing monkeys and singing elephants could be going by, but if there's a chance to eat, he's going to take it.

Ok. That's about as creative as I can get on that part. They are painting like fiends at the house today. We're going to Lowes and getting the twins' closet system and a few other things. Hopefully, we can install that stuff tomorrow.

As far as scams go, I do want to talk about falling for one--the first time in forever. While bfing the twins and watching TV a few months ago, I saw something about a free trial for wrinkle reducers. Although I did not get that exact one, I did see about the Dermitage free trial. Although I know my brain has been oxygen deprived, I did not see anything else about buying any other products. Well, guess what. Yesterday, $100 worth of products arrived based on the "subscription" I signed up for. I cancelled my "subscription" today, but I have to keep and pay for the additional products they just sent me. I am definitely not the first person to call and complain--in fact, they told me where the information was on the payment page (on the absolute bottom)--not anywhere on the info about the trial. So they have covered their legal bases, but, in my opinion, they are still deceptive in their practices.

I hope this helps some other people in making a decision about using this product.

Further goals today: dye hair, take shower, move boxes, pack boxes.

Well, Alrighty Then

2009-11-23T19:38:00.002-05:00

So the move has been postponed until Friday. There were issues with the floor and the cleaners couldn't do their cleaning, blah, blah.

In other news, though, the painting is done--the painters only have the interior trim left. (Neighbors, do not worry--the current light blue/green combination on the outside is not staying). We have our final light fixture up and there are other things that happened today.

Tomorrow, they finish putting in the doorknobs and doorstops, finish the trim, and put the final coat of polyurethane on the floor. And HOPEFULLY, they'll turn our electricity on. That would solve a lot of the potential problems so we can move in on Friday.

I'm so tired and so ready to get this done at the same time.

Packing

2009-11-22T15:15:00.002-05:00

Our closets and cabinets are beginning to vomit their belongings out into the rental. We are dutifully cleaning them, wrapping them up and gently putting them in boxes. There are steps forward in some aspects of finishing the house and steps nowhere in others.

Oddly, for the last two mornings, I've been waking up singing to myself: I Am Not Your Broom. I did not understand why until I read the lyrics. Then I found it very amusing.

After waking up this morning singing "I Am Not Your Broom" to myself, I then put myself back to sleep singing the round "Shalom, My Good Friend." I even tried doing the round myself in my sleep.

Yeah. Lots going on around here.

The Beginning of the End

2009-11-21T16:12:00.002-05:00

We have entered the beginning of the end of the remodel. Dave is finishing up painting; I've cleaned the fridge and the stove to move back into the house. The final part of the house is being stained.

Our architect came by today for a final view of the house. She won three awards at a banquet last night in recognition of some of her projects being the best in category in Charlotte. Here is the one featured in the Observer. It's not too shabby having an award winning architect design your remodel. Especially, when the award is in the type of remodel we're doing (historic, but a boatload cheaper than the one featured here)

Tomorrow, Dave paints like a wild man while we pack up boxes. Monday, I'm hoping we move boxes and Tuesday we move furniture.

You can probably expect the next 5 or 6 entries to be variations on this theme as I keep up my nablopambo obligations and move houses. Have I mentioned how tired I am lately? Consider it mentioned.

Ack

2009-11-20T19:48:00.002-05:00

First, the fun note. Today, Christopher had the most fun he's ever had in his life. The same sort of thing happened to Conor, but it was the worse day of his life and it happened during the throes of colic. It was pretty obvious that it was a pretty bad day for Conor and at 6 weeks of age---I was pretty sure it was the worst day of his life thus far. If he could compare, all other bad days in his life would be either a little worse or a little better than that day.

For Christopher, he had what appeared to us to be the most fun he's had in his life. How could we tell? The continuous laughter. What caused it? Listening to Conor read their bedtime story. We have no idea why that tickled Christopher's funny bone, but he loved it. Conor might as well have been successfully headlining a comic club as much as Christopher laughed. Bridget thought it was funny, too, but she didn't laugh nearly as much as Christopher did. Hence, the most fun Christopher has had in his short life.

The Ack part of our day comes from the remodel. BTW, although the beginning was stressful, the end is about to make us both nutty. er.

We had planned on moving in tomorrow, but that would have entailed every absolute thing happening exactly on schedule. And you know as well as we do, that doesn't happened. So then we thought we'd move in on Tuesday. It would have to be either Tuesday or next Saturday and we'd already given notice on our rental and it may be rented very soon.

So of course the unexpected arose and we haven't passed our final inspection (so no electricity), the exterior of the house hasn't been painted (and some parts of the interior), and part of the floor has not been finished yet. These are, in order, very important, slightly important, and moderately important. Without final inspection, we can't get our electricity turned on. So hopefully on Monday it will pass inspection and Monday or Tuesday, we'll have our permanent electricity. They can paint the house when we're moving in, I don't care. But the floor. Well, they are going to need to do a coat of finish on Sunday in order to do the final coat on Monday so that we can walk across it Tuesday to move in. We won't be able to put furniture in these rooms (the twins room and the upstairs loft), but that's no big deal. But if they don't come on Sunday, they'll have to do the final coat on Tuesday and we can't be living there when they do that.

Ack.

Ack, ack, ack.

And hopefully, we'll have electricity on Tuesday.

ACK! ACK!!

But honestly, our friends are letting us stay here in the rental as long as we need. So if we HAVE to postpone the move until next Saturday, we will. It would just be really nice to have all those days to unpack instead of staring at the back of our house wanting to move in.

Poop

2009-11-19T19:52:00.002-05:00

Well, that's how my day started. About 4:51, someone semi-small and very cuddly had some problems in his diaper. It was one of those noises that wakes one from sleep. And it didn't sound good. After a quick change of her poopie diaper, I realized that I, too, needed to stop by the loo and have a visit. (Not to be too graphic)

So, once again, I have taken one for the team. I'll say it again, I don't mind being sicker than the babies, and I don't want to say anything negative about my husband. But still.

The good news is that this bug seems to have come and gone quickly for us. I've heard that some folks are getting 10 days worth of bad poopie diapers. I'm hoping that was it for us.

NICU Month

2009-11-18T19:57:00.005-05:00

Apparently, November 17th is National Fight for Preemies day. I know that because of this amazing essay by Julie at A Little Pregnant. I have to be perfectly honest that I have not become a outspoken advocate for the March of Dimes, even after the twins' time in NICU. (Denial: It's not just a river in Egypt!)

But their time in NICU still affects me. I was a weepy mess after reading Julie's essay. And then on Tuesday, I ended up taking Christopher to the pediatrician because I felt like he was having apnea during a nap. The scoop is that I had left for a while and Christopher had gotten very upset with the sitter. I came back, nursed him, and he went to sleep. Except...

Do you know how children will hiccup when they are crying? They sort of try to catch their breath and it sounds like a hiccup. Well, Christopher was doing that while he was crying and then he fell to sleep. And then he started doing it while he was sleeping--just the hiccuping part, not the crying. And sometimes, between hiccups, he wasn't breathing. He. Wasn't. Breathing. He would hiccup and I'd hear him breathe a few times. Then he'd hiccup again and I'd start counting one, two, three, four, five, six...Hiccup and another breath. This happened for about 20 minutes when I called the doctor's office the first time. They told me it just sounded like he was recovering from crying and to wait for another hour and then they'd follow back. That's when I started counting the time between crying and noticed it was for a period of time. So I called the doctor's office and came in.

Of COURSE, when I woke Christopher up and he started gently crying, his breathing went back to normal. And when we got to the doctor, everything turned out ok.

But what GALLS the every loving HELL out of me is that the doctor spent the visit telling me why Christopher was crying and that I simply should not respond to him when he gets upset when I leave the room. What the ever loving fuckity fuck does that have to do with anything??

Apparently, because I told them that the episode started after he was crying and he was fine when they came in, I was classified as the Typical Neurotic Mommy Who Can't Stand For Her Baby To Cry. My sitter and I were both getting pissed and she was very glad (she later told me) when I said "Actually, I'm not concerned about how we handle crying. I came in here because we were concerned he wasn't breathing."

Two things from that: 1) When I start a sentence what "Actually" I can pretty much guarantee that I'm going to say something in which I think you are completely wrong and I am completely right. 2) No one, that is, NO ONE asked me why I thought Christopher wasn't breathing. NO ONE. They all assumed I was overreacting to his crying and not to the fact that he wasn't taking regular breaths. Since he was in NICU for not breathing, I think my concerns out to be taken seriously. I know this isn't the same as Apnea of Prematurity, but surely, my concerns deserved something more than "Well, isn't she the hysterical little mommy."

I have to say my sitter made me laugh as we were debriefing about the whole visit. Several times the doctor said "Well, as you know from when Conor was young, blah, blah, blah." My sitter said "I wanted to say 'Since you know that she already knows this, then why are you still talking?!'" That has made me laugh out loud several times. My sitter is much quicker on her feet than I am.

I have no doubt that I was very sensitive yesterday about this issue. A Little Pregnant's essay on her son's experiences in NICU stirred up some stuff with me. And I realized I don't have *any* positive feelings about their birth. Yes, I am thrilled to have my twins, but the thrill started when they came home, not when they were born and were whisked away to NICU. (And did I tell you that the first night Bridget came home, Dave was rough housing with Conor and accidentally--ha!--threw him into a ceiling fan? And Conor had to go to the emergency room and get 3 staples in his head? On THE FIRST NIGHT ONE OF OUR TWINS CAME HOME FROM THE HOSPITAL?) So let's just say that to me, the thrill of their being born to me started when Christopher came home, too.

Do you know what I think of when I think of their birth? I think of this picture. This is Bridget struggling to breathe just after she was born. I'm no medical doctor, but that big indentation in her chest does not look good to me.

So that is why yesterday, Dave and I decided to give some money to the March of Dimes. Maybe you'd like to donate some money, too.

High Chairs Or Thumbelina at the Table

2009-11-17T20:27:00.003-05:00

Being the slow parents that we are, it wasn't until last night that we realized that instead of holding the twins in our laps while we ate, we could probably put them in a high chair at the table and they'd be just as happy. This is indeed true. And although they did not eat, we wanted to document their first time in their high chairs at the table.

So here is Christopher, eating his fingers per usual, and enjoying his new high chair.

And here is our daughter, Thumbelina, engulfed in her high chair. Seriously! Do you see how small she is in that chair!?!? We were absolutely dying of laughter.

And just so you can tell it wasn't just some wonky angle, here she is tonight playing with toys in her chair. It just makes me laugh. And she's grown!!! She's close to 25th percentile. How do the really small kids eat in their high chairs?

I absolutely love these pictures. Now, if they would just stop teething so we can all sleep, I'd be much happier.

Southern and Parents

2009-11-16T19:47:00.003-05:00

As Dave and I ate this amazing gumbo that a friend brought by tonight, he decided that there are four groups of Southern food:

1) Cook the hooey out of it (i.e., any vegetable made in the south)

2) Add Bacon

3) Fried

4) Gravy

All I can say to that is: YUMMMMY!

In case you are wondering, the parents in our neighborhood whose children are starting kindergarten this year are obsessed with where their children are going to school. The vast majority of the conversations Dave and I have right now are where to send Conor to school. To give you some perspective, the debates are like CIO vs AP parenting....only worse.

Actually, I take that back. For my friends at least, we seem to be supportive of each other's kindergarten choices. And just before I started this blog entry, Dave and I realized that NONE of our friends are making the same choice! Not a single one. So from our perspective: none of our friends have looked at the same schools and all agreed on the same school.

What I appreciate the most about our friends is that we all seem to be supportive of each other. This weekend, a good friend and I had a cleaning party at the new house and could truly support that a school we didn't choose was indeed a good school and a good choice for each other's family. Dave and my impression thus far is that all the schools we've seen are "over the bar" in that they would be good educational choices. I don't think any of the magnet schools we've seen are bad.

NONETHELESS, today a friend explained to me how "parents she knew, parents whose parenting styles she respected, had chosen a particular school (<--the school she mistakenly thought we are choosing), but it simply was not a good fit for her child." Now, being the psychologist interested in communication that I am, let's parse that statement. If that statement had been "That's a good school, but not a good fit for my child or my family", I would think that was a fine, non-judgmental statement. Indeed, I think all of our choices are based our family's beliefs about what makes good education (pedagogy or pedagogical philosophy if you want to sound fancy; I have had to submit my personal pedagogy at every job appointment or review I've had as a professor). Some are more traditional than others. Some are less traditional than others. There you go. That's fine.

But that's not what this woman said. She had to justify her statement by talking about the families who have chosen this particular school by saying she "still" thought they were good parents. Implying, of course, that they had chosen the WRONG school, but she wanted me to think she respected their (clearly poor?) parenting style. Let me translate, "GOOD Lord, they don't seem like wackadoodle parents but that school sucks!!!" She even continued on trying to convince me that this school had poor resources and weak parental involvement until I finally got her to understand we were talking about another school--although, ironically, I know people who go to the school she was referring to and they love it. Good parents, too.

Have we not been through all this before? here's a clue: see CIO vs. AP above. I'm over it.

It recently occurred to me that we don't tell each other how to be married, do we? We don't say to each other: in order to have a good marriage, you must have sex X amount of times in Y amount of ways; you must split (or not) your finances in this way; you much divide house chores this way; you must live in this house with this many children and this many pets; you must do everything I've done exactly the way I've done it or your marriage is bad and wrong.

Somebody might try to tell you (or me) that, but my response is simply: Bite me. Marriages and other long term relationships are unique. No one expects that all marriages are the same. Why then do we expect other family choices, like um, parenting, should be the same, too? Insecurity is the answer. And I am too dadgummed tired to be insecure about that.

I think it's time for me to go fix me some fried bacon gravy and cook the hooey out of it.

Christopher

2009-11-15T19:41:00.003-05:00

So the mini-Conor clone known as Christopher, yes, what is he like? The similarities between Conor and Christopher are pretty amazing. They look alike, they smile the same, they are hitting their physical milestones at about the same time, and they have the same interest in food!

One big difference is Christopher's temper. Conor has a definite midwestern calmness about him that isn't anywhere in Christopher's consciousness. I have learned that when the boo-boo lip emerges, I have a nano-second to react or the screaming and the (nonverbal) cussing begins. Neither Conor nor Bridget have a temper like this. And although it keeps me hopping, I think it's awfully sweet.

On the other hand, Christopher (like Conor) is a big laugher. I have already found his ticklish spots and kisses on his neck get him going every time. Bridget honestly just started laughing today. We were outside and I was double slinging so I didn't have any free hands. Nonetheless, Patches really, really wanted me to throw the frisbee. Instead, I put my foot under it and lofted it up in the air as high as I could. Although it only went a few feet, Patches happily fetched it just like I'd thrown it across the yard. After a few fetches, Bridget started giggling. The more we did, the louder she got. I have no idea why that was so funny to her, but Patches and I were very happy to keep doing that funny version of fetch to keep her laughing.

But back to Christopher. Christopher (like Conor) is also a very smoochie boy. But either I didn't notice it this early with Conor or Christopher is trying very early to figure out how to kiss. Last night when he was supposed to be going to sleep, Christopher decided it was time to flirt. And then he started coming at my face with an open drooly mouth. Since I know he knows where the nummies are, I was a bit confused. Then I just gave me him cheek and he put his mouth fully on it, drooled a bit and then pulled back looking very pleased with himself. I have to admit that this was so adorable that we did this for a very, very long time. Who can resist one's son trying to reciprocate love? I certainly can't.

And the most unusual thing about Christopher is his ability to provide amazing back massages at this early age. Let me explain. I am finally confident having both babies with me in bed. However, at some point in the night I have to roll over and feed one while the other snuggles against my back. (As an aside, I have become the queen of rolling over in one spot) While Christopher snacks, Bridget is likely to gently tug at my pajamas should she get hungry. Christopher, being the enormo baby that he is, is a bit more dramatic.

He will flail his limbs beating me in my back to get my attention. Once, I rolled over and he was attacking Dave thinking that might be a new source of milk. But if I'm really lucky, and he's more just stirring in his sleep versus demanding food, his flailing arms and legs will hit on some pressure points in my back and relieve some of the tension there. It's definitely not a skilled massage, but it's a freebie back rub and I do appreciate it. (And no, I've never delayed rolling over to get more massage---it's not that good!)

And I'm very excited about our new buckle tai sling for Christopher. We got it yesterday and I was able to put it on once today. Christopher loved being on my back and going about the day. I have to work on it though. I tried to put it on a second time and ended up whacking Christopher in the head with my elbow. There was crying and it was not good for anyone. But, once I figure it out, I think it's going to be a life saver.

That said, I'm pooped. Time for bed and getting ready for the new week. Not that it's really that much different than the end nor the middle of the week. Or the weekend for that matter. I don't know how fulltime SAHMs do it.

Place Holder

2009-11-14T20:22:00.002-05:00

This is a place holder post so that I can still qualify for NaPlambo or whatever the name is. Good day but pooped. Cleaned the house of the new kitchen with a friend and picked up my buckle tai, the new sling for the babies. I realize it won't solve all our problems with young twins, but I'm thinking a lot is going to be fixed as I'll be able to pick up both babies safely at the same time.

Tonight's bedtime routine was a bit long mainly because Christopher got a second wind and decided he wanted to practice kissing me. Who can possibly resist a wide-open, smiling, mouthy kiss from a short bald chubby guy who laughs every time he presses his drooly mouth against my cheek? I certainly can't. I'm even looking forward to those same kisses tomorrow morning.

Happy Naps

2009-11-13T20:18:00.002-05:00

Today was one of the few days that both twins have had good, substantial naps today. They had a good 2 hours this morning and a good 1 1/2 to 2 hours this afternoon.

((((sigh))))

It's so nice when they are not whining from their lack of sleep. That said, I think my daughter needs to better understand that no one is making her roll over. If she doesn't want to roll over, she doesn't have to! Rolling over and landing on her belly apparently pisses her off to no end. No one has any expectations of her rolling, yet she continues to roll and blame us for it. Can't wait until puberty!!

We've also decided to delay our move into the new house. I need to tell my mom and dad who are helping us move, and if they are reading this before I talk to them--we're delaying the move. There are issues with letting the floor completely cure before we move in and it would just be a good idea to wait a few more days.

Oh, yes. Now I remember what I wanted to blog about this morning. This idea probably came to me about the time I was getting dressed. Yes, my post twin pregnancy body. Honestly, I can get back into most of the clothes I was wearing before I got pg last year, but nothing fits the same.

First, and most shockingly to me, I really miss my A-cup boobs. As Dave pointed out with wide eyes and up and down hand motions upon seeing an old picture of me, I was "flat, flat, FLAT as a board! There was nothin' there!!" This cannot be said about me now and I cannot tell you how surprised I am to miss my former flat-as-a-board like figure. Clothes fit better and it's easier to run around.

Second, my belly is huge. In fact, I think I might have diastasis recti, or basically my stomach muscles have stretched too far apart. Besides the lovely pot belly that I can't get rid of despite being at a decent weight, my back and shoulders are all tweaked and I'm in pain most of the time. I'm hoping the doctor will provide some advice if I really have it. But truly, my body shows the what I've done with my life the last couple of years. And it's ruined my chances of ever being a Victoria Secret model. Just saying.

Bridget

2009-11-12T20:22:00.002-05:00

I haven't really dedicated single blog entries to the twins as individuals, and I feel like I ought to. Although it's easy to lump them into a unit ("the twins"), they are quite unique and a lot of fun just by themselves.

Bridget is a bit of a pistol. Originally, we called out a Code Binky whenever she was going to sleep and dropped her binky. While we'll still call out Code Binky, now it's more like Bink! Bink! Bink!! to whomever is closest. And sometimes, we don't even need a binky to get worried. That's when we call out Code Bridget, which means, figure out what the problem is and fix it before all Bridget breaks loose.

The child can scream. You can be holding her when all Bridget breaks loose and not become deaf from the sound of her screams. It is obvious to others when this happens by the frozen expression on the holder's face and he/she thinks of a way to calm Bridget, and the blood coming out of the holder's ears.

That said, she is also one of the most charming people I know. This morning, she was playing in her exersaucer, and she looked down at Patches and gave him her huge toothless grin and crinkled nose. Patches was so excited by her flirting that he hopped up, trotted over to her and gave her a big kiss on her face. We really, really try to discourage the dog kisses, but I get the reason why he did it. When she smiles that charismatic smile, it's hard not to come over and scoop her up and kiss her.

Of course, now she's upstairs protesting a little about going to sleep. Dave is with her for now. I'm hoping she'll let him put her back to sleep so I can have a break. It is incredibly hard being a SAHM (even temporarily) for twins.

Crappity Crap

2009-11-11T20:12:00.002-05:00

Today was one of those days that I will happily forget the details. Just so I can later read back and go, "Oh, yeah, that day definitely sucked", I shall share some of them with you.

The gist of the problem was that neither of the twins took naps today. Christopher had a couple of 20 to 30 minute cat naps, but Bridget didn't sleep at all. There was screaming all around, and I don't mean just the babies.

Then about 3:00, we went over to meet with the other children's choir members at church. Conor's kinder choir (and the other youth choirs) sang at the Southern Christmas show. Of course, both babies fell asleep on the drive over to the church (yay!) and woke up screaming on the drive over to the event (booo!). I sat in the parking lot at the event and nursed both babies and they were in happy moods during the entire 20 minute concert (yay!). And in case you're wondering, 20 minutes is a good length of time for children to sing and not nearly enough reward for getting the whole family over there.

In any case, it's raining here. A lot. I woke up this morning thinking: Ida? Ho! I'm tired of the rain and it's disconcerting to see the animals gathering two by two and the big wooden ship being built at the end of the street. If you think I'm exaggerating, last weekend was the first weekend in 8 that it didn't rain. And to compensate for it, we've had 3-5 inches of rain in the last 2 days.

I'm pooped and the rain doesn't help. And tomorrow, we're going to another school open house and I have to take a shower and wash my hair at some point. Bleah, bleah, and more bleah.

The Language Academy

2009-11-10T20:49:00.004-05:00

This morning, I went to the public K-8 language academy open house. I know I've mentioned it before, but to repeat myself, our local elementary school is one of the worst in the county. WOOHOO! The middle school after it is pretty bad, too. And the high school after that is not known for being the top in the county.

So we're looking. Today was the first open house and I was pretty impressed. The building itself is nothing to get excited over (which is important to many folks around here). It's 50 years old. But it has some of the highest test scores in the county and, well, I don't know, the kids learn another language.

And I don't mean "learn" another language like I learned French in high school. I mean starting the first moment of the first day of kindergarten, they are immersed in their language track. Even on the first day, the teachers speak no English but they do a lot of pantomiming.

We toured a kindergarten class in each of the four languages: Chinese, Japanese, French and German. Holy Freaking Cow. These children were exposed to the language for the first time at the end of August. And maybe it's because I could understand enough of the German and French, but the Chinese and Japanese classes blew me (and the other parents) out of the water. Kids in all the classes were completely understanding and responding to the teacher in their language track. They were all doing math, singing, spelling, just doing all this amazing kindergarten stuff....in another language. Wow. Seriously, the students in the Chinese class were doing something with math that just made my jaw drop. I know I'm hormonal, but it was amazing.

What a gift we feel we could give Conor, even if he does not choose to use it in a career. How amazing to be completely fluent in another language. At this point, we're debating between French and German. I speak some French and I think that if our children knew French and English, they could go anywhere in this world. However, we have good friends in Germany and we will likely visit with them and hopefully vacation with them (in Spain! long story). In addition, there is a German family right across the street from us.

In all honesty, I would be thrilled if the kids started in one of these languages and then picked up the other in the 5th grade (also an option). Seriously. WOW. This is a free option for us here in Charlotte, NC. Pretty dang cool.

That said, we are also going to see an International Baccalaureate, a Montessori, and a traditional elementary school. But this was amazing.

Oh, and thanks for yesterday's comments and friendings (speaking of France), :-) . Like Carter, my identities bleed on each other. And I appreciate Matt's thoughts about posting links. Now that I've fixed my FB problems, I can do that with interesting stuff. But do I friend our Dean on FB? I'd love to, but I think she'd think I was a wingnut.

Back to the subject, are your schools as whacked as this? Do you have to search for a school or can you just go to the one closest to you?

New Media

2009-11-09T19:42:00.002-05:00

Here's a big change of subject, but something that has been on my mind. I have a question for all you folks who blog and/or use Facebook and Twitter. I do all three and am in a bit of a quandry over what to do with some of these media.

First, if you're on FB and haven't friended me, give me a holler. I'm actually quite a bit more active on it than I am here. I also have a twitter account (see the right) which I sometimes use and I sometimes don't.

The issue for all of these things is how much I "talk" about personal stuff and how much I talk about "professional" stuff. Back in the olden days when I first started blogging, one was advised in no uncertain terms NOT to talk about work stuff online (see Dooce). But now, I'm finding that folks are using blogs and FB and twitter to talk about work things.

Certainly, it's still not advisable to talk about office gossip online a la "Can you believe what an idiot so-and-so is?" or "I think X is dating Y." Although, really, that would qualify as both the most interesting and the most boring stuff depending on whether you knew so-and-so, X or Y or not.

But a lot of folks, and actually, a lot of my peers, are twittering and blogging and FBing about professional things. And none of them are blogging about social things, much less "mother" things.

So should I use my FB or twitter accounts to be more professional? (This venue is too far gone t all of a sudden be professional) And what would I talk about? We've already established that office politics are out. Do I twitter/FB about teaching or general professional activities throughout the day ("Am running SPSS now! Next I'll do confirmatory factor analysis! WOOHOO!")? About what I'm reading ("Information and communication technologies are cold media!")? About what I'm researching (No way on that--it's not peer reviewed and I don't want someone to steal my ideas, should any one of them be worth stealing)?

Some friends/colleagues post about things they've read in the NY Times, etc. But I figure my friends, should they be interested in such things, would have already read it.

My concern is that my colleagues are talking about smartypants stuff and I'm talking about poopie diapers (Christopher had a DOOZY today; it was like a volcano shooting out of his diaper and pants). I don't want to sound so "fluffy". And I actually do get really excited about my research and my work. I actually can do smartypants stuff myself. I just don't know why anyone would want to hear about that from a tweet. And all the good stuff about teaching ("Let's see, what do you need on the final to get a B in the class? Well, you got a D on the first exam. A D on the second exam. And a D on the third exam. Hmmmm, you need to score 457 on a 100 point test to get a B in this class." <--actual conversation from several years ago), I can't really do since I'm no longer anonymous on any of these venues.

I have few boundaries between my identity as a professor/research and my identity as a mother or as "Anita." I don't blog or tweet or update on my work not because I don't really get excited about it, but because I can't imagine that many other people getting excited about it. ("Woohoo!! Sense of virtual community! WOOHOO!! Comes from interactions and support! Is mediated by norms! Sanctioning hurts it! YEAH, BABY!!! Now, we're talking!!")

I don't know. Maybe now that I have tenure, when I go back to work I will twitter or blog a bit more about being a working mom. Maybe about the research process. Maybe some about what I'm doing. Or not. We'll see.

Do you twitter or FB with work colleagues? Do folks at work read your blog? How does that work for you?

Now, I'm going to go open the fridge door and hope that some sort of snack food has magically appeared in there from 30 minutes ago. I am SO HUNGRY. I am ALWAYS SO HUNGRY. And I did eat an avocado and nuts today already. And I finished up the hummus a few days ago and they were out of boiled eggs. I'm not a skinny minny by any means from all this bfing. But BOY AM I HUNGRY.

Ikea

2009-11-08T19:14:00.002-05:00

Went to Ikea today to look at closet systems. Also, got our H1N1 vaccinations at a local clinic.

I am POOPED. And it's time to put the babies to bed. I would blog afterwards to write something more witty than this, but I'm at 50-50 whether I'm coming back downstairs after the twins go to sleep.

Just one more thing: Bridget has figured out both front-to-back and back-to-front roly polies. She is adorable and amusing herself and us to no end. We've also lost whatever unguarded time we have had with her.

sigh. I am so tired.

Lessons Learned Part Deux

2009-11-07T20:22:00.002-05:00

Today, Dave worked on painting the downstairs while I cleaned out the cabinets in the kitchen. Here's another lesson we've learned: move all your stuff out of the house. We thought they wouldn't end up working in a couple of the rooms and moved a lot of our boxes in there; they ended up in those rooms--including a foot through the ceiling of a closet nearly ruining a substantial amount of our clothing. (Contractor is going to fix that).

The kitchen cabinets still had some stuff in them and we noticed this week that lots of dust had gotten in there. Yuck. I still have about half the cabinets to clean and a lot of dishes to wash.

Bottom line, we should have moved everything out and then could have easily moved everything back in.

Here's a question for you: do you use shelf liners? I always thought it was a Southern thing. None of my roommates up North or out West used it and thought I was a nut for suggesting it. however, the dirt I'm seeing in the shelves would be a lot easier to clean if I could just, oh, I don't know, change the lining as opposed to unsuccessfully trying to scrub it out. How about yor house? Do you use it? What kind?

Off to review an NSF grant proposal on a Saturday night. Fun times!

Remodel Lessons

2009-11-06T19:28:00.002-05:00

This will be a multi-part post. Just warnin' ya.

We've learned a lot about the remodel. Not the least of which is goes along the lines of "Hmmm, didn't think that was going to be as important as it was." Some things seem obvious and some still feel like revelations most days.

First of all, we're really happy with our architect. That was totally worth the money. The reason is that we never would have come up with their solution for adding a master suite and an extra bedroom. Our solution would have sucked.

Second, our contractor charged by the task, not by the hour. So if it took less time or more (like the problems they found in the old family room), that was on their dime. There was no construction problem that came up that we had to pay extra for.

On the other hand. . . .

The extra charges we ended up paying for had to do with wanting some lighting or plumbing fixture that was nicer than our allotted construction "allowance." This is apparently where everyone pays more than they think they are going to. Occasionally, it's simply going to the contractor's preferred store and picking out fixtures that are more expensive that you meant to. Other times, it's part of the realization that after the construction, you really need an X in this Y space.

More specific things we learned:

*Working with a contractor generally gets you about a 50-60% discount on the store's prices.

*You can occasionally find online specials that cost about 20% what the store is offering. Not 20% off. 20% of. Very nice.

*A clever husband can sometimes find building materials for sale on Craig's list and save, oh let's say, $1500 off the best deal the contractor can get. Go, Dave!!

And here's the hardest and most strange lesson: Those extras--those lighting, plumping and paint choices--appear to be the most important ones, but they are not. I'm not thrilled with my custom built bathroom vanity. It's built exactly the way I asked for it on the design. But I don't think it's going to work for me. However, for a little bit more money (probably less than $100), I can have that fixed. The general bathroom on the other hand--the shape, location, windows, etc? That I really like.

Even if Dave and I picked the butt ugliest lighting and plumbing fixtures and paints, they can eventually be replaced. Yes, it will cost money, but only a couple of hundred dollars really. The house itself? Not so easy to change. Those are the things one sees and uses day to day and they are really the least important. Yeah, I get it, they are the most important as far as how pretty and stylish the house looks. But it's the bones of the house that really have the most importance in how well your house is going to work as a home.

So there you go. Ideas we hope you can use in your remodel. I have absolutely no doubt more will be coming. (Like how to get cheap granite for your counters!)

You're my Friend, Aren't You?

2009-11-05T18:42:00.004-05:00

A few weeks ago, we were leaving church and as we got into the mini-van (!), Conor shouted to another family as they were getting into their car ((sigh)) "HEY!! I know you! Don't I know you!? You're my friend, aren't you!?"

Dave and I laughed about this. It's not so different than he and I are: happy to see people that we know, unsure about who our friends are, hoping that the people we know are our friends or that they might want to be our friends, and most likely, appearing very geeky to the people that we know and scaring them off from actually being our friends.

Seriously.

But it was still very cute. Then last night, we had dinner at church so we could see Conor's kinder-choir sing (speaking of cute!). Conor spent the first part of the dinner running around the entire dining hall pointing to friends and shouting "I know you! You're my friend."

On the one hand, that's sweet. It shows how comfortable he is at this church and that he's starting to get to know other kids. And on the other hand, visions of junior high are dancing in my head. And it's Not. Good.

Neither Dave nor I were the popular kids in high school and judging by the pictures we've shown each other from those days, it's clear why we didn't have a lot of dates. I don't know, maybe acknowledging the other kids and how he likes them (or how he thinks they like him, I'm not sure) is the path to popularity that Dave and I missed. I'm definitely not saying that we want Conor to be a popular kid. The one thing Dave and I do agree about high school is that it's better to geek and not peak.

But still. I'm not sure about all this running around to the different tables and saying "You're my friend!" I think that it shows how unselfconscious our son is and how utterly assured Conor is about being accepted for *exactly* how he is. That's amazing! How lucky to feel that way in your life. I just don't want him to lose that feeling. Or, more honestly, I know that feeling is bound to go away some time. And it's could be a painful experience for him. And it's a little bit sad to know that about life.

It just hits too close to home. You're my friend. Aren't you?

Off of Milk

2009-11-04T11:28:00.004-05:00

Christopher has horrible eczema and we think it's due to a milk allergy. Honestly, it's really bad. If you can look past the triple chins and the pinch-able cheeks below, you'll see just how awful his breakouts have become.

And this was the day after the really bad break out.

So I'm not eating any dairy. And ironically, I can't eat goat's milk or yogurt either because of the high correlation between cow's milk and goat's milk allergies. Folks, I had no idea how many milk products I'm used to eating. Besides cream for my coffee, I apparently consider ice cream and cheese as my go-to snacks when I'm hungry. And I'm always hungry. But that's another post.

In any case, I need to go get some snacks that are not Halloween candy and are not potato chips and are also not dairy. Any suggestions? I'm really hungry. And I can't have Christopher looking that scaly again.

We'll do another picture at the end of this week. So far, his skin has really improved and doesn't feel nearly as leathery as it did. If we get close to clear skin, I'll be thrilled. And hungry. And perhaps thinner?

Big Butts

2009-11-03T19:02:00.002-05:00

I was just upstairs talking to myself in terms of a blog post: "You know this house, the rental, looks a lot smaller from the street than it really is. Like our remodeled house and most houses in this neighborhood, it's got a small facade. Like most people I know, it has a small front and a big behind. Heh heh heh heh heh. This is something I should blog for Naplambo or whatever this is called."

So yesterday you saw our big behind. Today is our small front. Behold the before.

And the after. Not so much of a difference.

The Remodel

2009-11-02T13:41:00.003-05:00

Here's a little before and after of our house. This is before in March.

This is pretty much the same shot at the end of September.

We still have a few more weeks' work to do including painting, finishing the floor, and installing the plumbing and light fixtures. You know, little stuff. (Oh, and the colors are going to be what you can see on the outside of the after picture--dark and light blue).

We've just decided that starting November 20th, we're going to start moving in. And yes, it was crazy to remodel when expecting twins. But what the heck.

In any case, remodeling lessons will be following. Once I can type without the babies crying.

National Blog Posting Month

2009-11-01T16:22:00.004-05:00

Should I? Would it finally jump start my a$$ to record the life of my twins in a more detailed basis?

Why the hell not? Why not stress myself out with a task of my own choosing!

I say this at the end of a 5 minute break of mild fussing and the beginning of a larger fussing session. (Dave has just come back from the house; a break for me)

Halloween was fun. Except for the fact we only trick or treated for 15 minutes because of the rain. Pictures are here (to be added when facebook actually sends the link). Actually, I cannot fully express to you how bugged I was that we were only out of the house about 25 minutes for Halloween. I had apparently been looking forward to this event for a really long time and because of a little thing like a sudden downpour, all the members of my family who could use words wanted to go back home. By the time we arrived there, the rain had stopped, but we still called it a night.

For those of you who do not have infant twins in your home, perhaps this will illuminate just how isolating it is to be at home with them all the time. I've started walking during the day during their naps, which has helped a lot (they are in their stroller). I'm trying to call more friends on the phone so I can at least talk to people. I am trying to schedule a few lunches or coffees out with some friends to get out, too. That is more challenging than you can imagine because we're trying to finish up the remodel and Dave is saving us tons of money by doing work for us. But it means that I am home alone more, too. So, it's a trade off of not getting the work done that we need to get done on the house versus my sanity.

In any case, I had really been looking forward to Seeing. Other. People! Being out of The House! Experiencing this thing I've heard about called "fun." It happened for about 15 minutes in the rain. And then we came home. I honestly felt shat upon by the universe. Happens though, huh? This is one case where you can honestly say, "Girl, you need to get out of the house more."

Ain't that the damn truth.

Don't Make Mama Mad

2009-10-23T07:03:00.002-05:00

Dear NY Times:

Wow! Really? Most parents lose their temper at some point or another and yell at their children? And most of them feel guilty about it afterward? And no parenting philosophy in the world endorses shouting as a good parenting technique? What novel reporting!! Is that really "all the news that's fit to print?" Here's a suggestion for next week's Styles section: The sun is going to rise tomorrow. Then it's going to set. And it might be cloudy.

Sleep, Part 473

2009-10-21T08:16:00.002-05:00

I just had to negotiate 10 minutes from Conor so that I could write this post. It's not really working out all that well, but I thought I'd let you know that's how we roll around here.

The good news is that the sleep issues are getting much better around here. After starting Operation Early to Bed and Early to Rise, we started bedtime earlier, which has led to clear naps in the morning and semi-clear naps in the afternoon. The only problem is that Early to Bed can mean Much Earlier to Rise than we meant. That's not as bad for us as it could be for others, but also for the last 2 nights, it's been snuggle-rama to get them to sleep and I've gone to bed soon after they have. Really, again, not a problem, but I would like to have just a little time by myself. JUST A LITTLE TIME BY MYSELF. Ahem, where was I?

Oh, yes. I also remembered this site on Bed Timing and looked up the section on 4 to 6 month olds and realized, by jove and by golly, there is no way on earth sleep things are going to get better for 6 more weeks. The babies are in a cognitive growth spurt and with babies, when development accelerates, sleep goes downhill. And if you could see the smiles, laughs, and general discovery we're seeing in these bunnies, you'd know that they are developmentally where they should be at 4 months, at least in this part.

So sleep, it's better. It's not great. Just like us.

So why is Conor home on a Wednesday? Well. H1N1 is going around his classroom and we're keeping him home this week in the hopes of keeping him, and thus the twins, from getting sick. Of course, DAVE came home with a 102 fever last night and a massive headache! So we're thinking he might have the flu. However, his fever broke overnight and it feels more like a bad cold right now. Considering we're old farts, perhaps the swine flu is just a piglet flu for us. No biggy, just a piggy. Apparently, one is only contagious during the fever, so if none of us get his version by this weekend, we should be ok.

I hate that I cannot write more on the blog right now. The twins are doing such amazing things. They are discovering each other and actually LIKE playing beside each other. I think they are even trying to start kissing back--either that or they can't distinguish a cheek from a boob. Christopher is starting to laugh and Bridget is starting to blow raspberries and scream. Oh, dear. She is loud. Just like I am. And she is having a blast figuring out what sounds she can make. At times, I'm not sure I have a daughter or a howler monkey. Both are starting to teeth and there is drool everywhere. There is also poop everywhere and I think Bridget in particular is in a bit of a growth spurt.

None of this does any justice to the cuteness and charm they are displaying over here. But I am not joking when I tell my colleagues who ask me if I miss work that actually, I miss being able to pee when I want to. Work, and the free cognitive time that it implies, is so far away from my reality that I don't even know what it is.

Speaking of lack of free time, I've neglected Christopher long enough. Have I mentioned what a temper my younger son has? I take full credit for that, too. I must go relieve him from his anger.

((Insert witty closing here))

You Kiss Your Mommy With That Mouth?

2009-10-11T15:10:00.004-05:00

Parent #1: "Be sure and wipe your booty when you're done."

((pause))

P#1 to P#2: "You know, when I was in high school, I never expected I'd say a sentence like that."

((Laughs from both parents))

((pause))

P#2: "What are you doing in there?"

Child: "Kissing the toilet."

P#2: "Don't kiss the toilet!!"

((pause))

P#2 to P#1: "Now that's a sentence I never expected to say."

Choices

2009-10-07T07:31:00.003-05:00

First, an update on the twins' development. We went for their 4 month old check up yesterday. Christopher is one ounce less than Conor was at 4 months. One ounce and 6 weeks preemie. Who wants to vote on who'll be the taller brother? Conor's at 99th percentile. How much taller can Christopher be?

Bridget is at 10th percentile weight but 40th percentile height! That explains why she continues to look so skinny while Christopher looks so pudgy. The boy has man boobs. The only thing we worry about with Bridget is that she's going to go to high school in 0-3 infant size clothing.

Best news of all: the twins have caught up with their chronological age developmentally, and may even be ahead in some areas. Preemies! Caught up and ahead at 4 months!!! We're just relieved and feel like we can stop worrying. Mostly. I don't think either is really at their "genetic height or weight". That may take a bit longer.

Okay, so what is the big stuff about choices? The real stuff on our mind is figuring out the twins daycare while we also decide on Conor's kindergarten options. ((((sigh)))) This is just something you don't think about before you have kids and don't stop thinking about after they are born. Well, maybe the Kindergarten thing is specific to living in a big city. In a "transitional neighborhood" in a bad city. With the worst elementary school in the county as your home school. Woohooo!!!

So we, along with all our other neighbors whose children may be going to Kindergarten are freaking out. Registration for next year's school year started this week. And we're all also starting to figure out which magnet program we're going to. And yes, the first open house for schools is next Tuesday. That's right!! On this Tuesday, we have to visit a school which may be where we send Conor NEXT YEAR!!

There are only two or three options we are seriously considering for Conor: 1) a traditional school in a better school district, 2) an elementary international baccalaureate school or 3) the language academy. In all honesty, we're leaning towards the language academy. (These are all free public options, btw). We're thinking either French, Chinese, or German in that order. What a gift to give a child the ability to be completely fluent in another language before the age of 12 (when the brain stops being able to easily acquire language or musical skills). And yes, Spanish is important, but the academy doesn't do Spanish and moving from French to Spanish in High school and being trilingual is not the worse thing ever.

Nonetheless, we have to visit several of the schools and figure out which is the best match for Conor and for our family. Other issues include: how far away the school is, what middle and high school does it feed into, the hours, is there a bus to it?, etc., etc.

For the twins, we're looking into daycare options for when I go back to school. The price of two children at daycare makes having a nanny somewhat reasonable. The problem is that we LOVE our daycare. But we might be able to save anywhere from $4K to $6K a year depending on a whole excel spreadsheet's worth of options and variables. Over 4 to 5 years, that's a little bit of money. I think for sure in the spring, we're going to have a nanny, one reason being that our daycare may not have space for both twins. For next fall, we just don't know.

Oh, and yeah. In the spring--we'll be paying for all three children in daycare. That's going to be about the same amount of money per month as our mortgage. Double your mortgage and then figure out how you're going to pay for everything else. Then send us that secret along with a check for $100. :-) That should help out with the groceries, at least!

Christopher calls. The butterfly toy has lost its appeal.

Sleep

2009-09-28T15:45:00.002-05:00

Oh, dear. It's been a while since I've last posted. There's no good reason for this--I'm not in the hospital, everyone is healthy, I'm quite happy staying at home this semester. It's just, well, I'm busy.

There are times when from about 8:00 when Dave leaves until 5:30 when he comes back that I've had about 45 minutes to myself. The twins are doing really well; we don't have a lot of crying. But sometimes, one is awake and needs attention until s/he goes to sleep and then the other wakes up and needs to eat and have some Mommy time.

Right now, they are both asleep. BTW, those of you who are SAHM, feel free to pass on advice on naps, etc. It seems like the afternoon nap is becoming clear. They are both sleeping for a good period in the afternoon and acting quite happy and smilely afterwards. (We appear, at 15 weeks chronological and 9 weeks adjusted to be clearly past the colicky stage). The morning naps are a bit more sketchy. My friends who have been SAHM during this time told me that the morning naps would be the first that are clearly established, but I'm not seeing it. Bridget usually goes to sleep first and naps for a couple of hours. Christopher is more on and off and I can't tell when his morning nap is truly happening.

As for night, well, Oh Joy. Last night was a bit rough but for the last week or so, Bridget usually goes to sleep about 9 pm, wakes up at 3 and 6 for a quick snack and then sleeps until 8 am or so. Christopher goes to sleep between 9:30 and 10 (we've had some horrible later times, but usually then) and then wakes up about, oh, 7:30 or so for his snack. Others might think Bridget waking up at 3 and 6 is rough, but I think it's easy. I bring her into bed, she eats and we're done.

Also, I'm finding that having both babies in bed at the same time is not that difficult. I can't move, but it's not that difficult. Heat seeking missiles that they are, it does not matter where I lie them down initially, soon enough they have scooted across the bed and are glued to my side. I can lie on my back with both babies nestled in my pits or I can be on one side snuggling one while the other spoons me (or spoons my shoulder) from behind. I used to worry that I'd roll on the baby behind me, but as I said, I don't move. If I have to get up, I do a sideways sit up and there you go.

What about Dave? How is he sleeping with the twins in bed? Well, the correct question is how about Dave and Conor. We have a bit of a bed shuffle going on around here. When Dave and I go to bed, all the children are snuggled up tight in their beds. Sometime around 2, Conor comes up and gets Dave and they go downstairs to sleep in the guest room. (We decided 5 in the bed is too crowded). Around 3, Bridget comes to bed. Around 6 (sometimes), Christopher comes to bed. Around 7, Conor comes back up to our bed and he and I snuggle while Dave makes us breakfast. Sometimes, I must admit, I try to encourage Conor not to snuggle with So Much Love for the twins and me, especially if I or one of the babies has just gotten back to sleep. I feel incredibly guilty, but Conor is still a 5 year old boy and although he's a gentle, loving 5 year old boy, he's still a LOVING 5 year old boy. The command "gentle!!" is used a bit more and probably in a less gentle voice by me than it should be.

So as far as sleep goes, I can't complain. But sometimes I do. Life's been good to me, so faaaaaaaar.

Ahem, yeah, well, still I can't explain why I am still so pooped all the time. They are great twins and I am getting decent sleep. I can count on them sleeping at least until 3. But still, I'm pooped. I'm thinking the double dose of hormones I have from breastfeeding has got to have something to do with it. There's no reason I should feel this tired all the time!

Six Years

2009-09-16T07:29:00.002-05:00

Last night, I was reading a book (a grown up book, which at this point in my life is exciting), and the protagonist drank a vodka and cranberry.

"Wow," I thought, "I can have a vodka and cranberry, too. I can have a vodka and cranberry any time I want for the rest of my life. WOW."

There's been a series of these revelations since the twins have been born: I can sell baby equipment, I can drink, I can exercise, I can train for a triathlon (again). It's like a whole new section of my life has opened up again now that we're not trying to get pregnant and won't ever try to again.

At first, I thought it had only been 4 years--that's how long we've been trying to give Conor a sibling or two. But then I realized we started trying to have Conor 6 years ago. So it's been 6 years that every month has a contingency. Every month where I decided whether or not it's worth the risk to buy new clothes---because I might need maternity clothes sooner or later. Six years where I've wondered whether or not it's safe to have a drink.

I don't know if other women experience this when they are trying to get pg. I'm pretty sure men don't quite get the point of dual processing one's life (well, I could train for a triathlon or marathon but I may be 7 months pregnant then).

It's just very nice to be through this journey and to finally be able to be wholly me again. Well, as me as I can be breastfeeding twins.

Lessons Learned

2009-09-15T12:56:00.000-05:00

Here's an idea:

When your twins are overly tired, that is not the best time to learn they are frightened of the coffee grinder.

And then, after that? It's probably best not to trim their nails and get too close on one of them.

There are lines one shouldn't cross and then there are chasms.

Good mothers know this. I have to be taught.

Ack

2009-09-03T07:58:00.002-05:00

It's 12:00 and even though I got up at 6:30 this morning, this is my first break.

The babies are actually sleeping well through the night, but we're still adapting. Conor still comes to bed, or he wants to still come to bed. But we're afraid he's going to roll over on the babies, who are now sleeping on either side of me. So Conor and Dave head down to the guest bedroom to sleep while the twins and I stay in the new king sized bed. (This does not suck)

The only problem is that the babies love, love, love to snuggle (just like Conor) and their favorite position is with their head facing my armpit. Or in my armpit. It varies. I don't move at night any more. I don't think it's possible to roll over on them because I can't roll at all. I can't move.

In any case, we're moving along. I'm ready to drop these last 10 lbs so I can't start working on the next 10 lbs to lose and then start fantasizing about the final 10 lbs to lose to get back to pre-marriage weight. (HA!) Really, what I fantasize about right now is a big, guilt-free glass of pinot noir and a full night's sleep. In a year, I will definitely have it. I'll probably have it before then (the guilt free part). But in a year, it will be guaranteed. The weight? I don't know about. But I'm definitely working the muffin top look. My butt indeed must be smaller so that I can wear these clothes because I don't remember the rolls last summer.

Fun part of break done. Must go fold clothes and wash dishes before the housekeeper gets here!

Snippets

2009-09-01T11:10:00.002-05:00

I can barely put a sentence together, much less a paragraph or a whole post. But that doesn't mean I'm not thinking of things I want to share here. I may have to do snippet posts for a while. You know, a while being that length of time when I can pee whenever I like and not when I have to sneak it into a free moment in my day.

On Sunday during breakfast, Conor said "Patches!! Stop licking me!! I'm not a lollipop for dogs!!" Dave and I were overly impressed with our son's creativity. A dog lollipop. That totally fits with Patches' behavior lately.

Speaking of Patches, he continues to pass judgment on us as parents and the twins as puppies. Lately, he's been indicating that one of the twins' crying is excessive and perhaps that puppy is defective. At times, I agree.

I never thought I'd be the type of person who would want to dress her twins alike, but I totally do! The problem is finding matching clothes for boys and girls, especially when one is tiny and one is ginormous.

And surprisingly, I can already fit back into my prepregnancy clothes. I know my belly is much bigger now than it was last year. It's still distended from the twins. Dave suggested that perhaps my butt was not as big this year. Ummm, thanks?

We're in cry-o-rama here at the mother thing household. It's not nearly as much fun as it sounds. The only thing is that I know from this being our second time around that it's not going to last forever. I really, really, really hope it's not going to last forever and I'll be able to get out of the house and start living again.

Public Service Announcement

2009-08-26T14:59:00.003-05:00

This isn't the first time in the last 2 years that I've said something or Dave and I have had a conversation and the topci has ended up on the Diane Rehm show, featured in an NPR story or in the NY Times. Nonetheless, just this week I said to both Dave and my Mom that I feel a little PTSD from the NICU. Certainly, I've noticed a pretty deep spot in my heart or soul of grief about how my twins came into this world and had to be in NICU for so long.

I'm not one to push those feelings aside or ignore them. Instead, I try to feel them when I need to and experience the grief and fear that I could not experience then.

So guess what article was in the NY Times Health and Science section this week? Two studies are suggesting that parents whose children have been in NICU experience post-traumatic stress, even to the point of developing PTSD. Go figure.

I don't think my feelings are going to develop into PTSD. Nonetheless, may I say again that NICU sucks. And it sucks for longer than the babies are in there. And if you know a parent whose child has been in NICU, there is going to be suckiness even after their child graduates.

There. Must go smooch on my daughter who is fussing a bit. That doesn't suck at all.

(Ironically, she had just dropped her binky...so she needed to suck)

Best Laid Plans....

2009-08-18T12:01:00.002-05:00

It started with fussiness. Bridget has been getting a bit fussy when she and Christopher nurse together. Christopher is pretty calm and confident that he can get all the nummies he needs. Bridget worries and frets and can't get into position when she can see Christopher half a mom's body away. So it started with fussiness. But it has moved to the stink eye.

Bridget now gives Christopher the stink eye most times they nurse together. And bless her little heart, it backfires and she ends up feeling the anger of the stink eye herself. So even if we wanted to put the babies on a schedule, the stink eye prevents us.

(((Sigh)))

As I said, we're not so much on the schedule, but we were loving the routine. We're still routinized: they still eat, play, and sleep around the same time. But any plans to encourage them to eat exactly at the same time are out the door. Bridget gets too upset and she needs to save her calories for growth, not for bursting my ear drum.

And how is Patches doing, you ask? (Smooth transition...not) He is well. He is happy to have more puppies in the pack. But he is concerned about our abilities to properly parent the loud one--Bridget.

People have accused me of exaggerating, but I'm not in this instance. Before we diagnosed Bridget with reflux, we had real problems with her screaming. Indeed, a few days before the doctor's visit she was screaming and Patches gave me a look that clearly indicated his thoughts. He was heading out the door of our bedroom and turned and with a disappointed expression, projected onto me: "You are not doing that right."

Yes, you can say I was imagining that, but I know my dog. And I know what he thinks. And he was sorely disappointed in my parenting skills at that point.

A few days later, I was nursing them together (it was the beginning of the stink eye), and Bridget was screaming, of course. Patches sat up from his nap and barked at me! Just one bark. And it was one of those heads up barks that dogs have. But I knew what he was thinking "Are you paying attention here? Fix it!!"

And on one of my first days alone, Bridget had a melt-down (notice a theme here?) while I was changing Christopher's diaper. I ended up putting Christopher in a safe place while I ran to pick her up. As soon as I started running, Patches started running, too, to safely escort me to Bridget. (All 7 feet it took me to get there)

So yes, there we are. Having my parenting skills judged by a dog and keeping my daughter from giving her brother the stink eye. We actually have created a "stink eye cloth", essentially a burp cloth I hold between them if we are trying to have them nurse at the same time. Because they have not yet developed object permanence, neither of them have any idea the other one is behind the cloth. It works mostly, unless Christopher starts stretching out his enormous monkey arms and pokes Bridget in the eye or sticks a finger up her nose.

Hmmm, maybe that's why she gives him the stink eye? I doubt it. Even when he's nursing in his sleep it bothers her.

So How is Conor Doing?

2009-08-11T09:19:00.004-05:00

The first question people ask after inquiring about the twins is how Conor is doing? I hope I've bragged enough about what a wonderful big brother Conor is. He loves the twins. I mean he loooooooves the twins. We are going to have to put a limit on the number of kisses he can give them at any one time, he loves them so much. But then again, why limit how much he loves them? I'm not sure it's this common to have a big brother so into having a little brother and sister.

He also tries really hard to help them. If they are crying, he'll start singing to them. If they are in their bouncy chairs, he will gently bounce them. (sometimes more "gently" than others). He will try to give them their binky (Bridget, in particular, likes the bink). And he always tells them that their big brother is here and that they love him. (Not so much "big brother loves them" but that "they love their big brother")

I really can't believe what a great big brother he is. But that doesn't mean that everything is all hunky dory. Who would expect it to be so?

This is a picture that Conor's teacher transferred from the t-shirt we gave him for becoming a big brother. Conor himself wrote the twins' names and his own. If I ever lose this picture, it will break my heart. It is the cutest thing I've ever seen. He has it hanging up in his room in a very prominent spot.

This, on the other hand, is a picture he drew of his family last week.

One might note a couple of things. One, Dave is drawn appropriately: tall and then. I, on the other hand, am the size of Conor and the shape of a potato. I have lost about 55 lbs from the pregnancy and have less than 10 lbs to go to get back to pre-pregnancy weight. I *was* a potato, but now I'm more of an apple now. (Did I ever tell you about the first picture Conor drew of our big family with Bridget playing with him and Christopher playing with Dave and me the size of a whale lying in a bed between them? It was right after the babies were born and I'd been on bedrest for 6+ weeks. Kids communicate through pictures, in case you were wondering) In any case, Conor is, correctly and mentally healthily, drawn happy and in the middle of us. Yay!

However, where are the twins!?!? If he's so psyched about having the twins, where are they? I asked and he said that he just didn't draw them. However, what is up with the 5 suns at the top? Granted, I am not a clinical child psychologist, but it seems to me that the entire family is actually in the suns happy above!! He wants to assert that he is the center of our lives (he still is) but there are additional parts of our family.

So overall, how is Conor? Just fine. He is still coming up and sleeping with us most nights. And in the mornings, he oohs and aahs while the babies have their breakfast. He tries really hard to be gentle and responsive to them. And you'd be hard pressed not to think he's the best big brother in the world. It all serves to make me fall more in love with him. Just as I'm also falling in love with our new son and daughter.

Gotta go. Twins want nummies.

Routines

2009-08-08T15:59:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was pretty hellish as we got out of our unofficial schedule, ahem, I mean routine. Bridget ended up with only about a 3 or 4 hour nap all day long and that made for a very cranky daughter.

We also went to doctor for the twins' 2 month check up. At 11 lbs 12 oz, Christopher is up to 5oth percentile (from 10th percentile) on weight and at 23 inches, 50th percentile on height. His noggin also rates at 50th percentile. So pretty much, Christopher is perfectly average for a 2 month old!

At 8 lbs 8 oz, Briget got on the chart this month, coming in at a wonderful 5th percentile. Oddly, she's 10th percentile for height and 30th percentile for noggin size. It's odd because I thought children went out before they went up---being a little fatter before they get a little taller. It may explain why she still looks skinny even though she is getting some meat on her bones.

We also have a bit of info on when the growth spurts will start/stop. Term babies have their spurts at 10 days, 3 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 months and 6 months. Preemies? Well, I found in our NICU book that preemies growth spurts start at 36 weeks (adjusted age) and end 2 1/2 months adjusted age. What does that mean? Well, the twins will be 2 1/2 months in 2 weeks. But they will be 2 1/2 months adjusted age at the end of September. That means, basically, their growth spurt will last about 14 weeks. Straight. Continuous. Boobage. For 14 weeks. Four. Teen. Weeks. Boobs. Mooooooooooooooooooooooo.

And toots. Lord, it's windy around here and it has nothing to do with the afternoon thunderstorms. Christopher set a world record 10 second toot the other day. And I can actually feel puffs of air on my face and chest when they burp. I don't imagine we're going to see any consistent sleeping through the night until the end of September. I just don't think it's even possible for babies to sleep through the night during a growth spurt. And have I mentioned that 14 week growth spurt? Well, let's just say, I think we're at the best we're going to see right now: sleeping 3 to 4 hours at a time. Which is just fine. I do not want to complain about that. But these are two hungry babies.

What makes it worth it are the smiles the babies are starting to freely give. Depending on which age we're talking about (9 weeks chronological or 3 weeks adjusted), they are either way behind or way ahead. If I had to guess where they are developmentally, I'd say about 6 weeks. For some reason, that just feels about right. Yes, all my vast experience with babies (Conor!) makes me think we're at about 6 weeks old around here.

More pictures up soon. I need to either get it back together on Flickr or choose another site. I think Flickr is fine, but I actually need to do something.

Ok--I've stolen enough time. I am in the midst of a 14 week growth spurt, you know.

Schedule Vs. Routine Vs. Whatever

2009-08-03T11:39:00.002-05:00

I've been working on this post for days and I really just don't have time to make this as clever and outrageous as I'd like to. So, here's the condensed version:

Did you know that the vast majority of advice I keep finding online and in books and hearing in person from more than a few "twin authorities" is to put the twins on a strict schedule? As in Ezzo's Baby Wise, don't dare feed them more than every 3 hours starting at 7 days old. Yes, the same Ezzo Baby Wise that was condemned by the American Association of Pediatrics as a dangerous parenting strategy likely to lead to dehydration and failure to thrive? What's even more surprising is the lack of awareness of the controversy these people have when they say this. Is it because twins are really so rare that parents think it's ok to use a parenting style for them that is condemned for singletons? Is it because so many twin parents are first time parents that they don't know any better? W. T. F. And it's not just a few places: It's a good deal of the twin parenting advice.

So, um, yeah. What is probably even more surprising is that I have luckily found quite a few MOMs (Mothers of Multiples) who do NOT follow this advice for a strict schedule, even if they do follow a routine (which we are doing, too). Back to an aside I would fix if I could edit this: When I say Strict Schedule, I mean that people are actually saying to me that they ONLY feed their children every 3 hours. And maybe once or twice they fed them at 2 hours and 45 minutes, but that was the absolute exception and they resolved never to do it again. (The last part is the only exaggeration)

So a routine? Yes. The babies get up at 8. Christopher has his alert time then, then goes to sleep. I feed them again. Bridget has a much shorter alert time and then I nurse both again and they eat and go back to sleep. They nap for most of the afternoon (and if they don't get both these long morning and afternoon naps, there is hell to pay) and then they have alert time late afternoon and evening and go to sleep for the night between 9 and 10. They wake up a few times in the night--like once or twice, oh, I am SO NOT KIDDING and we are SO LUCKY--and then are up at 5 or 6 for snacks and a nap.

That is our routine. It is not a schedule. They eat when they want to eat. And Christopher, weighing it at over 11 lbs (from 7 lbs when he came home 4 weeks ago), eats more frequently than Bridget who FINALLY broke 8 lbs last week (up from 4 1/2 lbs 5 weeks ago). And both of them eat more frequently than 3 hours at more than one time during the day. And they should!! It is obviously helping them. The only person it isn't helping is *me*. I don't know exactly when they are going to eat and sleep every day. I do, however, now where two watches which let me know who ate when so when I'm getting ready to do something, I have a rough idea of who is going to demand a boob when and plan accordingly.

But so effing what? I'm a big girl. I can handle my day being disrupted by two babies. They have been on this earth just a little while and need to know that someone is going to take care of them when they are tired and hungry. (Did you know that Ezzo/Baby Wise promotes not picking infants up when they cry? Oh, and the whole spanking with tubes and sticks to not leave marks?)

ANYWHO, it's busy with twins!! We are actually doing well. It's sooooooo much better now that Bridget's reflux is medicated. She's still a crazy kitten, but she's not screaming in pain for hours on end.

Ok. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I hope to blog on less annoying things later on. And if you used a schedule and it worked out well for you and your family, that's great. It's not our cuppa, and I guess the real reason it's been so annoying to me is that I've heard it again and again and again and no one has acknowledged that it's very controversial advice.

Where Are We?

2009-07-21T10:26:00.002-05:00

It's been busy around here in the Mother Thing Household. That is no surprise. There are surprising things, though, so of which has, ummm, surprised us.

First, except for last night, the twins' nighttime sleep has been pretty good. This is surprising because sleep was pretty much an ongoing issue with Conor at this point. On the other hand, things really feel much, much better now with Bridget and Christopher. They go a good solid 3 hours between feedings and eat relatively quickly (20-3o minutes, if I'm actually awake while they are eating). And they usually go right back to sleep after eating (hence, last night's issue). Even though I understand that sleeping in 2 to 2 1/2 hour spurts is no one's idea of a good night's sleep, we actually think it's going relatively well.

We've decided to keep giving them the one bottle of fortified breastmilk at night. This is per the NICU doctor's advice to increase their calcium and phosphorous to help their bones grow quickly as they play catch up in weight. I am not sure I actually buy that advice, but it's the only way we can figure out how to also give them their nasty vitamin supplements, which contain the extra iron they didn't get the last few weeks they should have been in me. If there are any mothers of former NICU children out there or breastfeeding mothers who give their children Poly Vi Sol and can do so with the dropper directly to their mouths, let me know.

The weirder part of "Where We Are" has to do with "Where We Are" in infant development. Some of the best advice I got from a Mentor Mom with Conor is that the first 3 weeks are the roughest, then you have 3 more not-quite-as-rough weeks to make it past 6 weeks and it gets better. It gets better again after 3 months and then again after 6 months. It may have been closer to 4 months with Conor, but for the most part she was right about the 3 weeks and 6 weeks.

However, we have no idea where we are with the twins. By birth, they are nearly 7 weeks old. However, by gestational age, (when they were really due, how you track development with preemies) they are about 6 days old. So are we passed the 6 weeks of hell or are we just starting it? I would also like to add that I swear to GOD(dess) if someone says "Stop worrying about it and just wait and see what happens", I will track them down and clobber them in the head. It makes a difference in how much stamina I have and I need until we get to the good part. Do we have 2 more months? 3 more months? 4 more months??

The doctor's can't even figure out their "real" ages. The main pediatrician thinks they are 6 days old, essentially, now. We don't need to start tummy time until *next* month, when he thinks they will be more like one month olds. Then again, when I challenged him on the fact that twins due dates are actually 38 weeks not 40 weeks, he suggested that they could also be anywhere from 3 weeks and 6 days to not-even-born yet since term is 37 weeks to 42 weeks. But when we took Bridget in last Friday because we suspected reflux, the doctor thought she was acting like a one month old. (Yes, Bridget does have reflux and she's on Zantac now. She no longer screams during and after breastfeeding because stomach acid is not burning her throat)

Their ages also make a difference in their place on the growth chart. We read in the books the doctor's would follow special growth charts for preemies. So far, no. They are being compared to term children based on their birth ages (not adjusted ages). That means that although Christopher has gained over 2 1/2 lbs in the last three weeks of being home, he is only at the third percentile in weight. And Bridget, who has gained over 3 lbs in a month is not even on the chart for weight for her "age."

Final, final thing for a blog entry that is not the wittiest I've ever written (have I mentioned that I'm pooped and that last night's sleep sucked?). I've been searching long and hard for ways to nurse the babies at night in bed at the same time. There are illustrations in several of my books of women reclining on pillows with a baby in the crook of each arm with their arms propped up with pillows. I have tried this position. It has not succeeded. I can get one twin attached but can't figure out how to get the other one up there. And when Dave has helped, I still can't get Twin 2 latched and can't come out of the position as I am stuck like a turtle on my back.

Even the Internets has been useless, with the most specific advice being "It's tricky, but if you can learn how to breastfeed while lying down, it will make night time nursing a lot easier."

Ummm, thanks!! In the meantime, I continue to search for the Kama Sutra of Breastfeeding positions so that I can get some ideas of positions that might work with the twins at night. If you have any ideas, feel free to share them!!

Off for a snack and maybe a nap before they wake up again.

They Hold Hands When They Sleep

2009-07-14T20:29:00.002-05:00

Should I admit this?

2009-07-14T12:50:00.001-05:00

"Oh! That would have been such a good picture if only Bridget had kept her eyes open. Or maybe that was Christopher. I can't tell. Whatever."

A Several Thousand Word Post

2009-07-13T15:27:00.002-05:00

This weekend was Conor's birthday party. Here are some of the guests in Conor's tree house.

Here is the present frenzy. Conor is actually opening a gift from Amy Matthews of Sweat Equity on DIY Network. He also got a card and photo from Dean and Derek of Rock Solid of DIY, too. It was very, very special.

This is Conor's Spiderman cake. The theme was actually Superheroes/DIY. It works for a 5 year old.

Here is Christopher. We have a picture of Conor in which he looks almost exacty like this.

And here is Conor holding Bridget for the first time. Close up pictures of Bridget Ann being alert are coming soon.
Life is busy. It's going pretty well, to be honest. They are sleeping well at night, but we're obviously still be pretty tired. They are starting to act more like newborns---with alert times and lots of sleep. They are gaining tons of weight which is good on the one hand, but awfully hard on their tiny digestive sessions. It's pretty painful to toot and poop like they have been tootin' and a poopin'.

More later when there's a break from nursing and napping.

Getting to Know Bridget and Christopher

2009-07-06T14:51:00.004-05:00

I think most of my posts about the twins for a while is going to be about breastfeeding because that is mostly what I am doing. Ummm, that's all I'm doing. The good news is that we took the twins in for their one month check up today and their weight gain has been great! I am a whole milk cow!! They are growing with leaps and bounds and hopefully, soon, they will be on the regular baby growth charts and not the preemie growth charts.

I have to admit I am so proud of how well they are doing with transitioning from bottles to boobs. We occassionally have to supplement one or the other, but for the most part they get everything they need straight from the source. (There is an issue of using fortified breastmilk twice a day to increase their calcium and phosphorous and also they are taking vitamins, but more on that later)

One funny thing the twins do is that they are very vocal when they eat. They are constantly talking and making noises about the quality of the milk. Sometimes it sounds like a flock of geese are nursing at my breasts. And then Bridget likes to snort a lot. We sometimes have a hard time telling whether she has burped or just snorted at us. Bridget also will let us know with no hesitation if she is displeased with the situation. She can yell loudly enough and at a high enough pitch that I am concerned that glass will crack. Honestly, though, it's endearing because she is feeling so much that she just has to let us (and the world) know about it.

As for breastfeeding *twins*, we are trying to feed them together although they are not always awake at the same time. I think that as they get a little older and more skilled at eating, we'll be doing more tandem feedings. The nice thing is that they like eating together and will actually reach out towards each other and even hold hands while they nurse. Yes, this is as adorable as it sounds. Actually, it's more adorable that it sounds. It's beyond precious and as soon as I get a picture that doesn't show too much of the boobage, we'll post it.

As for now, I think I have about 15 minutes in which I can nap. however, I'm hearing squeakage, so I may be mooing again sooner rather than later.

It's worth it. Oh, but I'm looking forward to some decent sleep. In a couple of months.

Life with the Twins

2009-07-02T08:22:00.004-05:00

Are they not adorable? Christopher is on the left and Bridget is on the right. This is their reunion photo, taken minutes after Christopher came home from the hospital. You might think I'm being facetious, but as soon as Bridget figured out he was there, she had her arm out and was touching him. I think he subsequently poked her in the eye.

Things are going well, for the most part. They are both gaining good weight, eating on demand instead of on a schedule. On Tuesday, I tried feeding them both at the same time at nearly every feeding, which went well. However, yesterday, I decided to focus a little bit more on each twin individually. It, ironically, out to be a little easier, especially when Bridget demonstrated that she could drain a boob by herself in about 10 minutes. Whereas Christopher takes his time to enjoy the ambiance of the boobage, Bridget is making up for "sharing the groceries" as the nurses called it in my uterus.

Sleeping is not as hellish as I remember with Conor. However, my parents are helping out a lot. They essentially moved in here in April after my first hospitalization had have been helping out a great deal. Lately, that includes delivering a baby to me if one is already on the boob as well as keeping an eye on them in the afternoon (and rocking down Bridget through her massive burps) while I take a nap.

Conor is being an amazing big brother. Who would expect anything differently? Yes, there are some whinage issues but really, we're ALL doing that right now more than usual. Here is Conor holding Christopher for the first time. And yes, Christopher is smiling at his big brother. Is that not the cutest thing you've seen?