What Happened Last Saturday
There are days when I wouldn't question someone coming into my home and saying, "You're not doing such a great job with this parenting thing and we've got some very nice people who we think can do it better". I would just nod and hand over the babies. Last Saturday was one of those days. Let me start by saying, I am a perpetually tired, working mom and like most moms, I love nap time. Nap time is sacred. If you want us to hang out with you, we have to schedule hanging out time around nap time. If you want us to volunteer somewhere, volunteering has to be scheduled around nap time. Great new restaurant you want us to try? Not during nap time. No sir.
Without naps, babies turn into horrible, angry, exceptionally unreasonable monsters. In addition, through some kind of twisted joke of nature, if babies don't nap during the day, they don't sleep as well at night. Finally, and most importantly, nap time is the time when I can get some cleaning, relaxing, and eating done. Some days, it is the ONLY time I can do those things. When we went from two naps a day to one nap a day, I was very very sad. Very sad. I have recovered from that sadness, but it was a long hard journey to acceptance.
Anyway, last Saturday's nap was a good one. The babies slept for a solid 2 hours and so I got the bathroom cleaned and a short nap for myself. Charlie and I woke up to hear little voices babbling on the monitor and we went in to collect our angels from their cribs so we could all sing and play together for the rest of the day. Walking into the babies' room to get them out of bed is normally an almost high-inducing experience. They are so sweet and cuddly and happy to see you and sleepy. It's so great that Charlie and I have a rule that, if we are both home, we always go in together to get the babies. On this particular day, we were greeted by the smell of poop. Both babies were standing in their cribs, facing each other and smiling. When I approached Olivia's crib and noticed she was holding something. That something turned out to be a handful of poop that she had dug out of the back of her pants. "OLIVIA!" I said. Her eyes went wide and she immediately dropped the handful of poop into her bed . Across the room, Isaac was clutching the slats of his crib. "Oh shit!" He said, "Fuck!" I still maintain he heard those words from the bad kids at day care.
We went to Canada
We went to Canada as a family, in the family minivan. We hadn't taken a real family vacation in a couple of years because of my pregnancy and then the twins being tiny babies last summer. A love of traveling is one of the things Charlie and I have in common and it's one of the things we do much less of now that we have little ones. I knew the trip would be a tough one because I remembered the vacations of my youth. We went on one every summer and, because we were always broke and/or my dad was cheap, we always slept in sleeping bags, on the ground, in a tent. My dad claimed it had something to do with us learning to love the outdoors or some crap. We had a hard time believing that since we lived in the Ozarks, on a farm. We camped and fished near our home every summer, spent nearly all our time at home outdoors, and if we didn't love sleeping in a 105 degree tent, covered in mosquito bites and sand by the time we were old enough to say, "Look Dad! There's a hotel near this national park!" we probably weren't going to.
Looking back I may have been too hard on my parents. It turns out that traveling with kids is not that different from traveling with a pack of wild boars. I found that if you load 4 kids and two adults into a minivan for a 13 hour drive, it is NOT about the journey, it is about the destination-because the journey sucks. By hour 6, the van smelled funny, the big kids were annoyed with each other, us and the babies, the babies were pissed at their car seats and we were pissed at the big kids, and each other. There was some disagreement about the route we were taking and it may or may not have resulted in Charlie and I yelling at each other in the car and then having a, "What I hear you saying is...." conversation in a Burger King in Michigan while the kids ate Whoppers and chicken fries and watched, riveted. They never see us fight and said it was both stressful and interesting. I was afraid to ask them to elaborate.
We stayed in hotels on the way there, and then at the home of friends who are really sweet people and are obviously totally insane. Who, in their right mind invites a crew like ours to stay at their home for 3 nights in a row? To top it off, they have a beautiful home that they have obviously invested time, love and money into decorating. Unfortunately, we hit their house like a tornado of toddlers. The babies wrecked rooms, tossed toys about, lost 4 pacifiers, and broke one nice, shiny statue. That little gem of an incident resulted in me aplologizing profusely and blinking back tears of dismay while our gracious host insisted the statue was a very inexpensive item, and not to be worried about. It was 105 degrees outside, but we really wanted to see Toronto- and it was worth it. Toronto is a beautiful city and everywhere we went people were polite. Of coures, when our hosts were kind enough to guide some sightseeing and we all decided on a boat ride, the babies sweated, cried and fussed, causing Charlie and I to come very very close to totally flipping out and ruining the trip not just for us, but for all the other nice people who had travel vast distances to see Toronto from the water. The water tour was followed by a beer at a nice micro brewery....followed by a cautious laugh about what a horror show the boat ride was.
The older kids were a treat to watch, and really made any road misery worthwhile. They felt like very sophisticated jetsetters because of the international travel. They visited the grocery store and shopping mall, and talked about school with some REAL, LIVE, Canadian teenagers! We visited the CN tower in Toronto, and had a nice dinner there, at the 360 restaurant. It was fancier than the kids were used to, and way more expensive. I explained this to them before we arrived and told them that if they had any questions about the food on the menu, to just ask and not be intimidated. E assured me that she would be fine because she, "went to the Cheesecake Factory, once", which is the kind of comment that makes you want to squeeze them so tight and protect them, so that kind of innocence and sweetness stay put.
On the way home, I lost my keys...maybe at a rest area in Indiana, I don't know. I do know that I was very glad to see our home and put the babies in their own beds. I'm sure it's something the kids will always remember and at the end of the day, I think it's an important experience. Adversity and discomfort breeds...something healthy...I think.
Baby Books
My sister is a master scrapbooker. That woman can take a few pictures from a birthday party or a 4th of July celebration and turn them into a crafty masterpiece. She has several books, filled with the documentation of her sons' sunny childhoods. Both boys also have baby books with blanks diligently filled with dates commemorating their first steps, first haircuts, family tree, etc. I've known for a long time that I'm no scrapbooker. I would love to have a scrap book, but I don't want to make a scrap book. It's boring and you have to have tools and stamps and hole punches in the shape of cute things. I really don't want anything to do with it. I recently discovered that I also don't baby book. I received two baby books when the twins were born. One is pink and one is blue so we don't forget that boys are different than girls and that girls like pink and boys like blue, even as infants who can't distinguish colors. Anyway, I wrote in Isaac's book once. I filled in the family tree (incorrectly) and then a baby started screaming so I had to stop. Honestly, if a baby hadn't started screaming, I would have found something else to do. I had way too much on my plate to worry about writing it all down as it happened, and now it's really too late to go back and do it since I have a terrible memory for dates....unless I make up the dates (which is not out of the realm of possibility). I never even took Olivia's out of the box.
I don't know if the babies will want to know what date they took their first steps. I don't care when I took mine. What I remember most from my baby book is the following passage, written by my sister (age 8 at the time) under the "Your Baby at One Year" section: "Baby Mary likes beer. If daddy leaves a beer can sitting on the table, she will pick it up and try to drink it." Additional entries document that Baby Mary threw a hairbrush into daddy's popcorn while he was eating it and Baby Mary sprayed Windex all over her baby brother's head. My parents were big believers in developing independence in the form of not much supervision. Before you judge too harshly, remember that it was the late 70's-when it was still leagalish to drive drunk, seat belts were a nuisance and leaving an 8 year old home alone was perfectly acceptable.
Instead of a baby book, I have chosen to write letters to each of the twins on their birthdays. I chose letters mostly, because I'm lazy, and writing is much easier for me than filling out forms with totally accurate, detailed, neatly printed information. The letters are about how we chose their names, what we felt when we saw them, what they brought to our family, and what we saw of their personalities in the previous year. There are rough estimates of dates of significant life events, and anecdotes about their development. I want them to know their history and how events and milestones unfolded around them. I want them to know how speical they are to us and how each of them brought something unique to our family. Most of all, I want them to know how loved they were all along the way.
I don't know if the babies will want to know what date they took their first steps. I don't care when I took mine. What I remember most from my baby book is the following passage, written by my sister (age 8 at the time) under the "Your Baby at One Year" section: "Baby Mary likes beer. If daddy leaves a beer can sitting on the table, she will pick it up and try to drink it." Additional entries document that Baby Mary threw a hairbrush into daddy's popcorn while he was eating it and Baby Mary sprayed Windex all over her baby brother's head. My parents were big believers in developing independence in the form of not much supervision. Before you judge too harshly, remember that it was the late 70's-when it was still leagalish to drive drunk, seat belts were a nuisance and leaving an 8 year old home alone was perfectly acceptable.
Instead of a baby book, I have chosen to write letters to each of the twins on their birthdays. I chose letters mostly, because I'm lazy, and writing is much easier for me than filling out forms with totally accurate, detailed, neatly printed information. The letters are about how we chose their names, what we felt when we saw them, what they brought to our family, and what we saw of their personalities in the previous year. There are rough estimates of dates of significant life events, and anecdotes about their development. I want them to know their history and how events and milestones unfolded around them. I want them to know how speical they are to us and how each of them brought something unique to our family. Most of all, I want them to know how loved they were all along the way.
Day Care Revisited
Recently I had another fit of what I like to call, "Are my personal ambitions going to emotionally and/or physically harm my child?". Charlie does most picking up and dropping off of babies, so I don't have much of a relationship with the ladies that care for the babies at the Child Development Center (CDC) daycare. I worry about this lack of relationship because I worry that we will miss some important nugget of information or the babies will suffer some kind of "you're parents are stand-offish" neglect. Totally irrational, but there it is. Sadly, what I call, "building a relationship with the people who care for our babies", Charlie calls "shooting the shit with strangers", and he just doesn't do it. I haven't been much help.
One of the few times I did a drop off, I took Olivia in so I could go to the hospital to be with a very sick Isaac while Charlie came home to nap after his all night shift there. The ladies asked how Isaac was doing and I gave a report on his condition- out of ICU, they still don't know how long we will be there. I had no time or energy for the kids who weren't sick- in fact, the next day was E's birthday, and we didn't have her party together. I was stressed and exhausted and I immediately felt tears welling up at the ladies' display of concern and kindness. Embarassed and in a rush to leave, I turned and accidentally stepped on Olivia's hand. She had crawled back over to me to get some extra good-bye love. She started wailing and I started crying and it didn't do anything to instill confidence in my parenting abilities in either the CDC ladies or me.
Anytime a request or a suggestion comes from the CDC, I immediately worry we aren't doing something we should be. They suggested the babies come in shoes to play outside. Up to this point, we had only done socks. I immediately grilled Charlie, "Are the other babies wearing shoes?" (some of them) "How many?" (he doesn't know). I picture my babies as barefoot hillbillies with ice cold toes, crying while the other babies run around a tiny baby track, in tasteful comfort, provided by lovely, perfectly fitted shoes. The babies seem hungry in the morning and cry until they get breakfast at CDC, can we give them a little something before we bring them in? "How long has this been happening?!" (he's not sure, but they just mentioned it today). In my head the babies have been screaming for months, starving as hunger pains shoot through their little abdomens.
One comfort I have is that since I had the babies, I do most of my socializing at work with, obviously, other working moms. We commiserate and compare. We try to laugh away the guilt that comes with being a working parent.
One of the other moms said she had hoped to ease her son into staying home alone. Maybe start with a trip to Target on her own, or to get gas while he stayed home. Instead, he had to stay home for 4 hours, alone, for the first time while she attended a mandatory training, her daycare was closed and her husband was out of town. She called every 15-20 minutes to make sure he was staying clear of the stove.
A second co-worker confided that when she arrived at preschool with her four year old, they had the following conversation:
Co-worker: "Hurry up and get out of the car, let's go"
4YO: "I can't!"
Co-Worker: "What?! Why, let's go!"
4YO: "I don't have any shoes on! We forgot them!"
All of this makes me feel better. On good days, I think we will have self-reliant kids who are clever and resourceful and are OK with making mistakes and imperfection. Today is a good day, so I think I'll end it there.
One of the few times I did a drop off, I took Olivia in so I could go to the hospital to be with a very sick Isaac while Charlie came home to nap after his all night shift there. The ladies asked how Isaac was doing and I gave a report on his condition- out of ICU, they still don't know how long we will be there. I had no time or energy for the kids who weren't sick- in fact, the next day was E's birthday, and we didn't have her party together. I was stressed and exhausted and I immediately felt tears welling up at the ladies' display of concern and kindness. Embarassed and in a rush to leave, I turned and accidentally stepped on Olivia's hand. She had crawled back over to me to get some extra good-bye love. She started wailing and I started crying and it didn't do anything to instill confidence in my parenting abilities in either the CDC ladies or me.
Anytime a request or a suggestion comes from the CDC, I immediately worry we aren't doing something we should be. They suggested the babies come in shoes to play outside. Up to this point, we had only done socks. I immediately grilled Charlie, "Are the other babies wearing shoes?" (some of them) "How many?" (he doesn't know). I picture my babies as barefoot hillbillies with ice cold toes, crying while the other babies run around a tiny baby track, in tasteful comfort, provided by lovely, perfectly fitted shoes. The babies seem hungry in the morning and cry until they get breakfast at CDC, can we give them a little something before we bring them in? "How long has this been happening?!" (he's not sure, but they just mentioned it today). In my head the babies have been screaming for months, starving as hunger pains shoot through their little abdomens.
One comfort I have is that since I had the babies, I do most of my socializing at work with, obviously, other working moms. We commiserate and compare. We try to laugh away the guilt that comes with being a working parent.
One of the other moms said she had hoped to ease her son into staying home alone. Maybe start with a trip to Target on her own, or to get gas while he stayed home. Instead, he had to stay home for 4 hours, alone, for the first time while she attended a mandatory training, her daycare was closed and her husband was out of town. She called every 15-20 minutes to make sure he was staying clear of the stove.
A second co-worker confided that when she arrived at preschool with her four year old, they had the following conversation:
Co-worker: "Hurry up and get out of the car, let's go"
4YO: "I can't!"
Co-Worker: "What?! Why, let's go!"
4YO: "I don't have any shoes on! We forgot them!"
All of this makes me feel better. On good days, I think we will have self-reliant kids who are clever and resourceful and are OK with making mistakes and imperfection. Today is a good day, so I think I'll end it there.
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