Julia

Hostess

Traditionally we have hosted a party for Steve's teammates every year....

I interrupt this post to bring you the fact that a bear - A BEAR, people, A BLACK BEAR - just wandered down our hill, sniffed at a raspberry bush, came within ten feet of the porch and then strolled off towards the neighbors. I find this cool because, hey, who doesn't like to see Nature in all its glory; and yet strangely disconcerting at the same time. Steve laughed at me as I not only closed but locked the window leading onto the porch, asking if I thought the bear might try to jimmy it. My husband is shockingly limited in his morbid imaginings. Of course I expect the bear to try to force the window...

so we have always had this party (sometimes in the winter; sometimes in the summer - occasionally both) and it has been fine despite the fact that the guests keep getting younger and younger while I do not. For some reason... oh I know! it was the fact that Steve has broken both his legs or shredded both his knees or whatever it is he has done that prevents him from walking up or down stairs without hobbling... I sort of thought our days of giving house room to this gathering were over. That Steve would no longer throw the team party since he has retired from the team. Silly me. A few weeks ago a friend/former teammate asked if Steve would mind having the party again and Steve asked would I mind having the party again and I... well, I did mind, actually.

But I am mostly sloshing over with the milk of human kindness these days so I said yes my little lump of love, sure, if you like, but I added a few small conditions:

1. I did not want to personally clean anything or make anything or buy anything.

2. I did not want them to destroy or even slightly damage my house.

3. I did not want to be kept awake after 11 o'clock.

4. I did not want people getting themselves into a situation that would require them to sleep over. Last year I wound up feeding a handful of gray and sickly people breakfast the next day and I don't mean to be persnickety but I do think staying at a party for 19 hours is pushing the limits of hospitality. If you are going to drink such that I cannot let you drive home, please locate a sober friend to dispose of your remains so that I do not have to.

Fair enough?

1. I spent five hours on Sunday cleaning my kitchen. Although they had brought their own food one of the menu items was a turducken. A turducken, for those of you who are completely sane and have therefore never heard of such a thing, is a turkey stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a duck. Roasted. No, I am not kidding and I think this one tried to make a break for it because I have never seen so much grease in my life. The floor, the stove top, the oven interior, the cabinet doors... gak.      

2. I escaped upstairs to the guest bedroom with my book, my laptop, my ipod and my snacks around 10, fleeing from the fetid frat house atmosphere that was brewing. The party by this point was all male with an average chronological age of about 23 and an average emotional age of 17. At 10:30 Steve came up to check on me: how was I doing, would I like this plate of roasted potatoes, would I care for more chocolate milk, sorry about the singing he'd ask them to keep it down, oh and by the way.... tiny spill. red wine. my beautiful beautiful beloved living room rug that I love more than anything. not to trouble me but any thoughts? I came down in my pajamas and blotted it for half an hour but do you know what the internet says about spilling red wine on a vegetable-dyed wool rug? It says: DO NOT DO IT. And do you know why? BECAUSE IT NEVER REALLY COMES OUT.

3. I finally fell asleep at 2 am only to be awaken at 7:15 by an alarmed Patrick telling me that he could not go downstairs because

4. People were sleeping in our foyer. And basement. And long bedroom. And one poor soul was actually on the front porch.

In the immortal words of Lethal Weapons 1, 2 and I believe 3: I am too old for this shit.

I thought about venting my spleen on Steve the next day (I rarely play the "pregnant with twins" card but come on! two in the morning! drunken singing! uninvited overnight guests! poultry grease where no poultry grease should be!) but decided (damn this bonhomie I cannot seem to shake) to just cry piteously over my rug instead. Steve eventually agreed the party was a fiasco and said we would have to do it differently next year. Then we both laughed heartily because - and I am putting this in writing - we will never be doing this again.

New REDBOOK post up today (finally. we have been having technical difficulties yonder) about something that I thought was extremely funny. And, not at the rate I am going tonight but one can hope, there will be a newer REDBOOK post tomorrow detailing our Big Nineteen Week Perinatology Comprehensive Ultrasound today. 13s continue to look very nice indeed. Am beginning to believe I am really really truly having two more children.

And on that brighter note I hope your weekend was better and less greasy than mine.    

Augustine

First order of business concerns the use of the word "drug" as a past tense for "to drag". I believe it is a colloquialism found in the South and I would like to pretend that my use of it in the last post was intended to subconsciously convey you to those heavy, magnolia-scented lawns of a Faulknerian summer. However, I cannot lie. In point of fact (and those among you who are fluent in the modern languages will confirm this) my grammar is frequently appalling and no one is more surprised by this fact than me. Than I. Me. Whatever. So if you happen to be cutting and pasting these vignettes to submit as your own work for English 101 next semester I highly recommend following Word when it starts squiggling at you in red and green. Me, I always ignore it for I like the word "squiggling" but then I am not trying to graduate from blogging with honors.

Second, I regret that I did not take a photo of Patrick's thing from earlier this week. It involved blocks, part of a marble run, a dump truck, some geotrax, and then the plastic cups and the funnel. The idea was that the marbles would start the dump truck down the tracks which would run into the blocks which would domino into each other which would eventually knock a full cup of water over, emptying its contents into a funnel which would then weigh down a second cup, flipping a small stuffed hippo into a basket via seesaw. Let me just say that eventually this particular piece of art involved towels. I wonder if Rodin's mother had to deal with tantrums when he accidentally chipped the head off, or something. Thank you, by the way, for the very fun links to similar things. Someone suggested a computer game that is right up Patrick's alley (unfortunately not for XP, but I linked from it to something similar) and we watched a lot of cool clips. So thank you. Patrick has no idea how much he owes you guys.

REDBOOK post up re. Patrick's deliciousness about the babies. Good grief he is cute. I had an appointment today (cervix good, placentas good, weight gain inching upwards but still pathetic... 19 weeks tomorrow, 9 lbs gained) that was fairly rushed but we did get in for an ultrasound so that was nice. Patrick was fascinated by the fact that 13a (or maybe it was b) kept opening and closing his/her/its fist. We saw a baby announcement for triplets in the waiting room and you could tell that Patrick was more impressed by this than our mere two. Sassy, in case I did not mention it, is expecting TEN kittens and much sooner than we are having babies; so yet again I am failing to keep up with the imaginary cat.

I had set twenty weeks as the arbitrary moment when I would stop thinking solely about this as a pregnancy and start contemplating the babies that will show up at the end of it (knock wood). I admit that I am slightly terrified to have two newborns. The first month with Patrick was sheer living hell. Breastfeeding was AWFUL (so AWFUL. unimaginably AWFUL. the blood, oh heavens the BLOOD. it was like a topless Macbeth - my, ah, nipples split in multiple places and would then reopen every time Patrick tried to nurse, which was every hour for WEEKS- and my milk did not come in for almost eight days) and while we eventually got the hang of it and persevered for a respectable year, I shudder to think how it will go with two. TWO! I know it is possible but how is possible? The mind boggles. And then there was the sleepless thing and the feeling that I would never again know what was coming next... ghastly. It helps to know the hard parts get easier but I am still scared.

So I am not thinking about THAT yet, more the where we will put them and what they will wear aspects. I can handle that. We are splitting that long bedroom I mentioned into two bedrooms, so Steve ordered the new doors yesterday as a preliminary step. I don't know if the babies will sleep alone or together or on top of me or what but I figure we should at least have options. Actually, Steve was just going to order one door to replace the fixed panel glass that is there right now. I pointed out that the other door would need to go as well.

"Why?" he asked.

"It's, um, GLASS and it opens to the landing above the vaulted living room."

"So?"

Show of hands, can any of you see a reason why a glass door on a kid's room is a bad idea? Anyone? OK then.

Oh bother. It is a lovely day after a week of rain... I suppose I should take the child for his airing. Hope you are well. Steve talked me into throwing a big party for twenty-somethings tomorrow, but I cannot complain since I do not have to do anything, including show up if I don't feel like it.  I should check on the beer supply, though, at least. One strives for graciousness.   

Miscellany

Patrick asked me for a funnel. After fobbing him off on Steve who in turn handed him back over to me I finally stopped reading Go Fug Yourself long enough to track down a funnel (top shelf. closet. laundry room. next to that popsicle mold for which I have lost the sticks). Patrick thanked me and departed. I went back to the fugging, marveling over the fact that apart from Britney Spears I never know who any of these people are. Patrick returned looking for a large plastic cup. Five minutes later he wanted another. He left with the cup and in the distance I heard the sound of the basement door opening and closing a few times. When he finally returned, drug a chair over to the kitchen sink and began running water I snapped out of my blog reading stupor and asked what it was, exactly, that he was doing.

"I'm building a thing!" he cheerfully informed me before trotting off with his glass of water.

I looked longingly at my computer but followed him. The eternal catch-22 of children is that if they leave you alone long enough for you to start doing something pointless but enjoyable; they themselves are inevitably up to no good. So you have to stick to them like limpets in order to avoid fire and flood but it cuts into one's own mindless time something fierce. Alas. Now go on and remind me that with twins I will never again have time to even begin to read a blog. Or breathe.   

I mentioned in a REDBOOK post yesterday that Patrick has taken to building things. Kinetic sculptures. Oversized marble runs without the marbles (well, sometimes marbles). That sort of thing. I described them better in the REDBOOK post so.... I'll wait. OK? Visualized? Good. So Patrick has been building these things and my Mom Moment involved the fact that they generate unfathomable amounts of clutter. Which in turn led to my discussing the fact that I continue to suck at getting Patrick to do things for himself. I mean, silly things like putting on his pants or neatly repackaging a puzzle before busting out the crayons. He is the Montessori camp bad apple. Well, I assume he is. Who knows? Actually he probably has taken first prize in cleaning all month long; we've talked about the fact that Public Child and Private Child barely know each other.

I got this terrific email from a very nice Peggy who tactfully pointed out that perhaps Patrick's aversion to my pathological need to tidy is a sign of the kid's robust mental health. She didn't say that exactly but it was close enough that I laughed and thought, huh, maybe the toys CAN stay on the floor overnight, maybe cars and blocks CAN exist together in non-categorized bins... then I had a mini-stroke. However, the thought has stayed with me so I might be making progress. Still, it cannot be denied that Patrick is a) kinda spoiled, b) rather exceptionally manipulative [he praises me! he positively reinforces me! the fink] but c) just so damned cute how can I NOT want to zip up his collegiate robes for him and get the electricity turned on in his new condo while I am over there washing his breakfast dishes after he leaves for the office.

You guys know I am teasing myself, right? That I recognize my tendency to smother Patrick in the avalanche of my boundless love and that for me love = nurturing = bringing someone a glass of juice on request?      

Good.

Steve and I were watching Rome (THIRTEENTH! thank you, Victoria, we quote you now) season two last night. So for the love of God, no spoilers. You can tell how far out of my period of expertise this is when I pondered all night about Herod. I just couldn't place him. I knew he had done something rotten, something just terrible, but I could not remember what...? And to think I pride myself on my cultural literacy. Yikes.      

So we were watching Rome curled up like cats and 13a started to shimmy a bit. I said, "Oh!" and Steve put his hand on the side of my stomach and whap! whap! he got to feel two strong kicks. Probably won't happen again for a few more weeks but it was really lovely. I really had no idea how stressful this has all been for Steve until I have been able to see how relaxed and happy he is right now. Makes me feel kind of weepy, actually.

And, finally, speaking of weepy, I woke up on Tuesday and was suddenly much more pregnant. I cannot lie on my stomach and the normal pants I have been wearing buttoned low just laughed at me. So I busted out the maternity stuff and I felt all round and lovely and yet I was still compelled to get That Haircut. I went in last night and passed on my usual barely noticeable trim, asking her to take it up to my shoulders. Seven or eight inches, gone. Poof. I am not sure how I feel about it. Lighter. Less likely to strangle myself as I roll over in bed. But... what is it about pregnancy that causes women to abruptly cut off all their hair? Is it me? I have gone from wild-locked mermaid to demure frau in no time.

Whoa. Patrick's last day of camp party is in four minutes. Parental attendance mandatory. Have a good weekend.

Sassy

Right now it is impossible for me to imagine there will ever be a time when I am not intimately acquainted with the life and times of Sassy. That I will forget when she was 151 years old. That I will no longer be able to tell you that she had made several trips to Antarctica and the moon, or that her grandmother was born in Russia. I may no longer recall that Sassy had a sister who, strangely, had no fixed name of her own but who was referred to almost exclusively as "Sassy's sister". I might not even remember that Sassy was a cat, but o! what a cat. A cat who could talk, walk on her hind legs, attend cat school and build neat, effective rockets for transport. Since it is possible my memory may fail me, I thought I should probably take a few minutes and write it all down.

Once upon a time Steve had two cats, littermates named Rusty and Sassy. Rusty is the one with the wonky kidneys who is asleep on my kitchen counter as I type this, but Sassy was killed when Steve's roommate accidentally let her out of the apartment twelve or thirteen years ago. Steve, for heaven knows what reason, mentioned the passing of Sassy to Patrick one day. Although he was not visibly affected by this tale of loss, some time thereafter he started talking about a cat. A cat named Sassy. But unlike her ill-fated namesake, this Sassy was not troubled by such inconveniences as mortality or even gravity. Sassy could do anything. And thus was born Patrick's imaginary cat who comes up in conversation so frequently I cannot even remember when I started being presented with her as a Platonic model for my own existence:

"Sassy makes a delicious dinner EVERY night," Patrick observes distantly when I confess that I have sandwiches or... sandwiches planned for that evening.

"Sassy ALWAYS stops at the stop sign," a voice coldly reminds me from the backseat when I execute something more in the nature of a second gear slow-and-turn.

"Sassy learned that in college. She learned it before college. She learned it in, like, second grade," Patrick scolded when I admit that despite having read the Penrose the Mathematical Cat page about binary number systems (TWICE) I still have absolutely no idea what 138 would be in binary.    

I don't know what most imaginary friends are like but I have to tell you, Sassy is kind of a pain in the ass. She is not a companion of any sort and Patrick gets quite offended if that mistake is made. She doesn't have a seat at the table and they certainly don't play or anything.Although there has been talk of her coming over for a visit once or twice, the visit has never materialized. In fact, as I think about it, I think the only times we were expecting Sassy were when Patrick was encouraging me to make an extra effort for dinner (alphabet french fries most likely) and offered the fact that we had company coming as an inducement.

My mother and I finally pieced together that Sassy exists as a kind of conversational device. Patrick's own experience is quite limited by years, size and subarbanitude so we think he felt like he needed something to bring some weight to his remarks. He could (and does) of course make up stuff in his own right but for whatever reason he frequently employs a prop to assist him: enter Sassy. Steve will be talking about some business thing or other at the dinner table and Patrick will join the conversation with, "Sassy once merged a company. She merged two actually I mean four. She merged four companies, yeah." Steve and I say "Oh how interesting" and we all talk from there.

I hope that Sassy is with us for another 151 years but in the event that she goes the way of Puff the Magic Dragon (which MY GOD contraband anyone? children's movie? what? was everyone INSANE in the 70s?) I wanted to state for the record: while I never lived up to the ideal she set I will miss her in all her otherworldly perfection.       

Three more things: I still plan on dying Patrick some socks (thank you for the suggestion) but in the interim I picked up some cool patterns at a sock shop (fine! I went to the Mall of America! we were in the neighborhood) but the real winners were the black-and-white, skull and crossbones pair I found at the Gap. Those are some bad-assed socks, I must say, particularly when worn (as Patrick prefers) as a singleton with a nice sedate stripe on the other side.

I suspected something two weeks ago, felt more sure last week and am now absolutely positive: I can feel the babies moving around (17w3d for those of you poking along at home). 13a mostly, although b has poked a few times too. With Patrick the placenta attached on the front and I rarely felt him through it. With these two, both placentas are on the back and I expect I will live to regret that eventually but for now it is wonderful. 

New REDBOOK post up today some time on my loser-like inability to do something other than housework on the rare occasions I am all alonely in my house. Comments welcome. Oh and I have said it before but no harm in repeating it: if you want to leave a comment there, terrific; if you want to leave one here instead, great. No comment at all anywhere ever? Ok too. No need to explain or apologize. I keep an open house, you know.   

PS Re. the ultrasound pictures. I called my mother to tell her I had put pictures up here and waited while she said, "OooooooooooooKkkkkkkkkkkkkkk." She couldn't tell what the hell they were. The top one is mostly 13a's head, facing outward, looking very much like either a skeleton or an alien depending upon your fantasy genre of choice. 13b is lying sweetly on his/her back, showing a nice leg on the left and a charming profile to the right.

Further

What the hell, here are some ultrasound pictures from yesterday:

13a and 13b respectively. Can you guess which one Patrick immediately called Skeleton Baby? Take your time, now. Study the pictures. The other one he called Asphalt.

I was hoping that Patrick would spontaneously conjure some darling gestational names that we could use but unfortunately he has produced about 500 of them. He changes it every time. I told him last week that the doctors call them baby a and baby b and he thought that was HI-larious. Since then it has been "Up and Down", "Empty and Full", "Good and Bad" and "Barbecue Sauce and Applebutter". He keeps putting his hand on my stomach, light as a butterfly, to see if he can feel them move and it is so sweet I want to eat him. I am sure he will inevitably want to send them back at some point after they arrive but he is VERY excited in the meantime and I am enjoying discussing it with him. The doctor's office gave me one of those booklets filled with color photos of the developing fetus. Patrick cannot stop reading it, so I offered to take him with us to the level II ultrasound with the perinatologist in three weeks. Steve and I decided that they can just leave if it gets boring and come back for me.   

Speaking of Patrick, thank you for your thoughts on what is appropriate for early talks with a new teacher. For those of you who do not feel like reading the comments I can sum it up thusly:

The overwhelming majority of those members of the teaching community who commented felt that less is more. In fact, many expressed their conviction that if one more parent told them about how brilliant young Chauncy is at Meet the Teachers night they might be forced to start swallowing paste. And we don't want that to happen. I think the feeling was it is their job to familiarize themselves with their students' strengths and weaknesses, and they would appreciate being given the space to do so. Which answers my question about Patrick nicely, thank you. Although I am wondering, if you don't mind sort of revisiting the subject, if this just applies to academic skill sets or if it is true of behavioral things as well. A few commenters mentioned having children who are exceedingly shy or have been diagnosed ADHD etc. Would those be the sort of things that a teacher would want to hear about upfront? I am curious and have absolutely no idea. It is a different world for me as the only intimate experience I have with kindergarten was when I was three feet tall and much narrower of foot. And I cried every day and my brother had to come down from the third grade to have lunch with me until Thanksgiving. So what do I know.

The comment, actually, that struck the loudest chord with me was the person who said I might want to tell the teacher that our goals for Patrick for kindergarten are not so much academic as social. I thought this was an excellent point and it got me to thinking about WHY I would want the teacher to know that Patrick can do X or Y. I guess, as long as he is not unhappy, that it really does not matter to me. There are two parts to being asked to write your name on a lined sheet of paper. There is knowing the letters and how to form them and which letter goes where; but there is also the getting of the paper, the sitting down to the assigned task and the following of the direction until you have completed it. Successful learning is doing both parts well, so I have a hard time imagining that Patrick will be too bored in the beginning. Also, I was a complete fool for not realizing this sooner, but quite a few of you noted that a multi-age classroom necessarily assesses the kids to place them in appropriate groups. I don't know how I thought they would do it. Height? Shirt color? But obviously they must talk to each kid about reading before creating reading groups, right? Right.    

Pregnancy update up today at REDBOOK if you want to read it.

PS Have you figured out which one is Skeleton Baby yet? Lie down on your desk or pick up your monitor and turn it sideways. Did that help?

PPS I really hope that some of you find these discussions helpful, because every single time I write about education and Patrick and ask questions or express concerns I take a freaking bullet or two. I start dreading the comments because sooner or later I am going to get someone who puts the word genius into ironical quotation marks etc. On the one hand 99% of you are normal, helpful, informed and well-meaning so I always get useful insights and I hope you do too. On the other hand, I occasionally find myself in desperate need of a shower.

Serpentine

After biting all my nails off, we decided to send Patrick to a local public school that pulls from three districts and does mixed age classrooms. Since Patrick is about 85% kindergartner, 10% third grader, and 5% Methuselah it made sense to us to put him in a kindergarten class that includes some first graders. My hope is that he can learn to use a glue stick with his five-year old cohort and still be able to do math and reading without leaving his classroom. We'll see how it goes. I am actually fascinated to see what kindergarten is like for him - I am pretty sure it will be positive but I am curious to see what he makes of it.

To send him to this school, obviously, we are choosing not to send him to our neighborhood school. Not that we have anything against the one; it's just that we think Patrick will do better in the structure of the other. No big deal, right? And yet people are VERY weird about it. When our local friends ask where Patrick will be going to kindergarten (or, more often, just assume he will be going where their kids go until I correct them) they positively FREEZE when I say that he will shortly be enrolled at MultiAge Elementary.

"Oh?" they say. "Really? MultiAge? Over in Otherville? Why not Neighborhood?"

And for a while I struggled to find a good answer to this. It was sort of hard to say we think he would benefit from being in a mixed classroom while avoiding the unspoken "we think our child is smarter than yours. actually we think he is smarter than YOU. we think he is so smart that he is smarter than the twelve kings of Europe and sometimes we hook him up to a computer so he can teach the computer stuff and frequently we worry that NASA is going to come and steal him."

Well, maybe not. Maybe I just feel ridiculously self-conscious about it. As we know, Patrick's little differences are my Achilles heel (NOT that anyone ever believes that, no matter how many times I shriek about it). Anyway, allowing for some freakiness and over-sensitivity on my part, it is true that people usually wind up the conversation with a chilly, "Well, Kaden and Kadence had a wonderful kindergarten experience at Neighborhood."

So I came up with a new answer. Now when people ask why we are sending Packy to the other school I say, "It's across the street from our vet."

You know, I think I am very funny. Much of the time.

I mean, you can't argue with that, now can you? And it is true. It IS across from our vet and these days that is no small consideration; what with gas prices being what they are and two of the four cats having to eat different prescription foods that I can only get at the vet's office (unless you have a good source for under-the-counter pet food, possibly from Canada, in which case, hook me up man). I thought about how convenient it will be to have Patrick in school right there as I was at the office today picking up a new supply and being gently lectured (as always) on the importance of not letting Rusty eat Kelvin's food or Kelvin eat Rusty's. Because on the one hand we have chronic renal failure and on the other we have chronic bladder infections and one cat's low ash is another cat's poison etc.

Rusty, by the way, might still be dying but he is doing it so slowly it is hard to distinguish from very very sedate living. Ten months after his CRF diagnosis his levels are good (slightly improved actually) and he is the same 23-hour-a-day-dishwasher-top sleeper he has been for the past five years. When I first called my mom in tears because I thought Rusty was about to pass to an eternal feline reward she told me that I might want to wait to grieve until something happened. As usual, my mother was right.

New REDBOOK post up about Patrick's, um, perpetual deviations from the strict truth combined with his need to make a black-or-white moral issue out of everything. Views on either are appreciated. Are the five year olds of your acquaintance all big fat liars?

And this is sort of a teacher question but all thoughts are naturally welcome: when we go in to meet his teacher before kindergarten starts should I tell them that Patrick can read, well, anything and that he is quite competent with word problems etc or do I just assume that they will figure this out on their own? I want Patrick to have a positive school experience so I want him to get good challenges but I also, and let me stress this, I also do not want to come across like a complete ASS.      

To Steve

rainbow colorssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!hereeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Huh. I leave my computer open for five minutes while I get dressed and I seem to have been the victim of some kind of graffiti artist. With no witnesses however we will never be able to track down the perpetrator, alas.

Thank you very much for the nice messages and emails checking on the welfare of me and mine. We are fine, though saddened by the losses in the Twin Cities this week. I wrote about it briefly at REDBOOK yesterday, wondering (as we all have in the past) what one can DO when there are tragedies. I hate feeling helpless.

I have spent most of my week crying (for various reasons, new REDBOOK post going up later re. contractions being part of it) and Steve has spent most of his week pulling me onto his lap to hold me. We watch Netflix with me lying on his chest. We hold hands. He is being so gentle and kind and solicitous and, well, I never thought I would say this but, so NURTURING that it quite takes my breath away at times.

I had this massive revelation in the past few days. The first time I started to cry this week and I let Steve hug me, I realized that I had never let him do that before. With every miscarriage I would quite literally push him away when he would try to comfort me. I didn't WANT him to console me. I wanted to be mad at someone and I wanted to grieve alone. The fact that he continued to try over the years is really quite a testament to his essentially loving nature. While the miscarriages and our reactions to them put various significant strains on our marriage, I think we did pretty well all things considered. When I think about the past eight years I can remember a lot of miserable times but I do not think of those years as being miserable. Quite happy, actually. What had never occurred to me until my recent epiphany is that my version of those times is quite possibly skewed. In my mind I suffered and Steve ignored me. It is more likely true that I suffered, I rejected Steve and he left me alone. So, having shared all of this with you in the past, I wanted to let you know that I think I might have gotten it wrong. And I am sorry for that.

I have received so many emails over the years asking how you keep things together when the agony of infertility is driving itself between you and your partner and I never really knew what to say. I think I might finally have an answer for you: you just keep loving them. And for the first time I recognize that this isn't just me loving Steve despite his frequently referenced "nurturing limitations" it was Steve continuing to love me despite how wrecked and hurt and angry I was.

And right now I feel like we are being rewarded a hundred times over for our mutual forbearance. We are so excited about the twins and so in love with Patrick (and each other but I don't want to make you sick or anything) that this is one of our best times ever.

I am sure that life will send something to fuck with us any minute, though, so I am trying to enjoy the harmony while I can. This might be my way of saying there can be unexpected benefits from perseverance but I don't want to REALLY jinx myself so I will shut up.

Hope you are all very well and to my fellow Minnesotans I add an especially fervent wish for you.