Julia

Of Course

I was trying to look back a few pages so I could properly credit this next question but I accidentally wound up in my archives. So I spent some time reading old posts about the beginning of my last pregnancy (the good one. see also: Caroline; Edward) and I got to the part where we had a suspicious looking nuchal translucency prior to scheduling CVS. I sat here and cried as I read it. I can remember having that ultrasound. I can remember the certainty that one of the babies carried an unbalanced translocation. And I can remember how stupid I felt for having ever dared to be optimistic in the first place; for somehow forgetting that I was doomed. And then there was the waiting - there was always more waiting - and finally the amazing unexpected unbridled joy of good test results and the hope which came crashing down like snow off a mountain. I just cried like I have not cried in... I don't even know how long.

If I have not said this before I should have: I would do it all again. I would relive every moment of the past nine years to bring Caroline and Edward into the world. No question. And I only hope that I would spend each second of that time recognizing how lucky I was to even try.

Two nights ago I had Edward's nice round head pressed under my chin; his long body curled on my chest. He was snoring, of course, and I fatuously contemplated what a sweet snore he has - part grunt part wheeze pure melody. Like the Country Bunny in my little gold shoes I have already decided that Edward will be my musical child and he will sing to me with his hands clasped together; soft, sad ballads in which the hero is pierced by arrows and the maiden throws herself down a well. As we sat there in the dark, Edward and me, I told him, "I waited for you I waited for you I waited for you ."

It took nine years. It was hard. You keep your head down; you keep your chin up; you remember that so many people are suffering more than you are and you feel ashamed; you learn compassion; you feel grateful and you feel anguish and you hope for better days to come.

My children are perfect and I would not change a moment that has passed.

Status of Gibraltar

If we were having this conversation in person you would find that I have a very hard time sticking to the point. One thing reminds me of another thing and even though I will waggle my thumbs at weird angles to mark the place - saying "Oh oh oh I want to get back to that" - the chances are very good that a discussion starting with "De vous, chez vous, sans vous" and leaping naturally to the Treaty of Utrecht will wind up on the subject of cats, their care and feeding, without ever returning to the reason I brought up proverbial sayings in the first place.  Steve finds this habit of mine very trying and frequently says, "Focus! Julia!" in an attempt to avoid the verbal maelstrom and figure out where, exactly, he needs to drive Patrick for swimming lessons before I wander too far off the subject and start telling him about the pony I rode the one time I went to horse-riding camp.

So although I frequently have responses to various comments here I rarely manage to get back to them before my attention gets distracted by something shiny and then enough time goes by that it no longer seems worth it - even if I could remember whatever it was in the first place. However, in my effort to set a goal and stick to it (the goal being to write here every day for a week) I find that I am sharp like a cheese and as dedicated as a drive. 

Thus:

To Lisa V, I nod and repeat, carefully, "water heater". A hot-water heater, she informs us, is redundant and silly. But, to mitigate my crime I would like to add: "You've painted up your lips and rolled and curled your tinted hair - Ruby are you contemplating going out somewhere?"  I sing this all. the. time. I think it got stuck in my head shortly after Steve's knee surgery when I found myself perseverating on the line "it's hard to love a man whose legs are bent and paralyzed." See how funny I am?

Speaking of how funny I am -

Anonymous asks if it is my intention to portray Steve as an asshole. I really like how this was phrased because it took me right back to my English major days. Depending upon the program an English major might be a writer; but at my college we were all literary criticism, all the time. Serious students of textual analysis understand that the whole point of reading anything is to suck the life from it, but they also know that you can ascribe to a few different schools of thought in order to do so. The formalists, for example, believe (or did back when I was a slip of a girl) that nothing outside the material can be considered. The answers to questions like what was the last puzzle that Frank Churchill gave to Miss Fairfax* were not only irrelevant, they were deemed frivolous. Bastards. But no matter. My point is that I like a question that understands that authorial intent and what winds up on your plate might not be from the same barrel. Or even a pickle.

So, is it my intention to... hold on how was this phrased exactly... oh, I was right, "portray Steve as an asshole"? Good lord no. Of course not. For starters Steve is terrific. I love him with a fervor that often threatens to unseat my reason. If anything I am embarrassed by how foolish I am about him. More than once I have come to a start from a daydream and found that I have written Steve + Julia with a heart around it. Why just this morning I woke up at 10:45 (TEN! FORTY! FIVE!) after a refreshing three hours of unbroken sleep to find that Steve had gotten up with Caroline and Edward, fed them, played with them, fed Patrick, put Caroline and Edward down for a nap, gotten them back up again, oh, and moved an exterior door all while I drooled peacefully in bed. And when I did finally stumble out of bed he made me tea. What's not to love? Also, why on earth would I want you good people to think that I was married to an asshole? How shaming for me. I do not mean to give that impression at all.

But - as I learned in college - beer, baby aspirin and a raw potato are not a balanced breakfast. Also, what a person means to convey and what can be interpreted are not necessarily the same thing. I have no doubt Shakespeare meant every one of his sly homoerotic thrusts (ha!) but did he intend to bury enough material to supply an essay entitled Castration Fears and Matriarchal Power in Macbeth with adequate citations? Probably not but hell that's 8 to 10 double-spaced pages right there, easy.        

In conclusion if it has been possible to read my descriptions of my husband as derogatory then I am truly sorry. I just thought that last story was funny: two differently compulsive personalities intersecting in a bathroom discussing a painted rock... hmmm. Yeah. I don't know. I still think it's funny.

*Jane Austen wrote in a letter that the puzzle spelled "Pardon". Which, ok, but it has always seemed to me that Frank Churchill behaved like a complete cad from beginning to end. Pianoforte notwithstanding.

Love You, Baby

Steve's breakfast bar (I do not know why I am so pointedly removing myself from any involvement with this particular project - possibly because he conceived/designed/implemented it all by his lonesome and my only two suggestions thus far have been deemed impractical [the words he used were "outlandishly unrealistic" and they stung] by the Breakfast Bar Committee of Steve) has come galloping up towards a crucial deadline; so Steve spent the day working on it like a thing possessed. I kept trying to coax him inside so I could land him with a baby (two) and bolt off somewhere; but he would only glare and continue to babble 5 and 15/48th by 12 and 11/433rds.

Oh and don't even think about asking how there can even be a deadline with a project that was undertaken as a hobby to create a space that - while it will be nice - is hardly mission critical. It's not like the time in our old house when he completely dismantled the hot-water heater or (more recently) when he ripped apart the kitchen and I had to use the gas cooktop balanced atop two sawhorses. Because I asked that very question and I was almost nail-gunned in response. These home remodeling geniuses are so touchy.  Apparently he needs to do [blah] [blah] and [blah} (I am the Far Side dog, futilely waiting for my name to come up) before the guys come to put the floor down on Wednesday. And whatever you do don't ask, "Why Wednesday?" Just don't.

I still find it amusing that I somehow completely missed this aspect of Steve's personality during our courtship and early marriage. I thought he was some lovable loafer and the whole time there lurked a maniacal do-it-yourselfer possessed of such breathtaking obsessive-compulsive tendencies that it is not unheard of for him to repaint a room three times. At dawn. Who knew?

So you might expect that his attention to detail would by necessity slop over into other areas of our life. And yet I just accosted him as he showered off bits of insulation and particle board and spider and told him that I have had it up to here (imagine my eyebrows) with his leaving of crap that he never, ever retrieves on every surface he walks past. And I challenged him to progress from the shower to our bedroom door - taking his time to look carefully around - removing any items that he thought might possibly not belong where they currently reside. Also, put some pants on. He laughed and said he was on it. Count on him. No problem.

Would you like to know a few of the items Steve missed?

Lollipop, electric razor, wet dirty swimsuit, button, four pennies, empty juice glass, safety pin, eight wadded up receipts, the Lemony Snicket he finished a week ago and a five inch rock painted red green and blue.

When asked What the hell, Steve, he replied, "Those things DON'T belong on the bathroom counter?"

A-Flat Major

I have been singing that White Stripes song a lot. Enough that Patrick picked it up and I can hear him warbling "Oh I can tell that we are gonna be friendsssssss" over and over while he works on his Legos.

I told him that the song makes me think of him and Edward and Caroline and how much fun they will have together over the years. He seemed pleased by the idea and asked me later how I picture the song. I didn't understand what he meant.

"Do you imagine me in the middle with Caroline and Edward on either side and our arms all hooked together? And are we dancing?"

Um, yes?

"Me too! That is just what I imagined, too!"

My son, Busby Berkeley.

Of course, my son, the six year old, made a few changes to the lyrics with each iteration he sang*; the most recent version he presented to Caroline went something like, oh I can tell that we will not be friends and your eyeballs will explode and there will be blood all over the carpet and you will need a decillion stitches. She just laughed. It is safe to say that the babies think Patrick is absolutely fascinating.

Here he is telling them the story of his other brother and sister. The ones who were hit by a meteor. "It's true," he's saying. "Yep. Very sad, I know. But it happens."

Edward was amused.

I keep struggling to find a photo that does justice to Edward's delicate beauty. He always winds up looking either deceptively pale or preternaturally worried or both - Casper the Ghosts meets Woody Allen. But in truth he has a rose-leaf complexion that the Gunnar Sisters themselves would envy and he smiles almost constantly.

This one isn't too bad.

He isn't smiling in it but the photo does highlight his obsession with his own feet and the fact that Caroline keeps pummeling him. Note that although her attention has been drawn by something on the other side of the room she maintains her viselike grip on his onesie. She's a menace.

Patrick calls her Caroliney. Rhymes with briny but more specifically rhymes with whiny in keeping with the song he made up that goes "Whiny whiny Caroliney/ she is strong and she is tiny."

Steve tells me that we are about to be walloped by a rainstorm and will most likely losing our internet connection so I'll post this before that happens. Besides, we have the next season of Psyche rented per your Netflixamendations and are enjoying it in a gentle way. It's like an homage to the great hour-long silly mystery shows of my childhood: Remington Steele. Hart to Hart. Matlock. And could that theme song be any catchier? No.

PS LEMON! Yes! The scallops needed lemon, of course. And the smoky paprika sounds good. Bacon. Basil. Et cetera.

* Patrick just walked by singing yet another original composition. This one goes, "We all speak English but they only speak cow." I have absolutely no idea what that is about.

We are a musical family and - clearly - gifted lyricists.

Wheels

Before they arrived last week I asked my brother if there was anything he thought his wife might like to do while she was here. She had been so agreeable about accommodating our inability to travel this summer that I wanted to do what little I could to make her time in Minnesota extra-specially pleasant. My brother said he thought she would enjoy going to the gym at some point; if it was at all possible. I said certainly.

So last Sunday we left all five (five! wheeeee) children with Steve and my brother and we trotted off to the Y for an hour or two. This was the first time I had been there since my ill-fated attempt to start running again after Caroline and Edward were born. I don't remember exactly how old they were (six weeks? eight?) but I do know that I ran for all of 800 feet before I collapsed with a whimper and they had to call animal control to come put me out of my misery. It was a debacle. Since then I have considered going back but something has always come up to prevent it: a pedicure, my need to sit on the couch, etc.

My relationship with running is fairly straight-forward. As a child, no doubt, I ran and gamboled. Probably prettily. I also did gymnastics and played soccer. Then at some point I discovered cigarettes boys and alcohol (not necessarily in that order) and somehow the appeal of any sort of physical exertion whatsoever lost its charm for me. I did eventually settle on just one boy and I haven't smoked in eons but the sight of fit, tanned people jogging past sparkling lakes continued to leave me absolutely cold. Thus for about twenty years I was pale and interesting but likely to fall over in an unhealthy heap at any moment. Whether I would have stayed like this forever is subject to debate but Steve got me an ipod Christmas before last and... the next thing I knew I was running two-three miles every other day. It was an Applicious Christmas miracle.

Unfortunately (or rather, fortunately) I started an IVF cycle soon thereafter and although there is nothing that says a little exercise is detrimental, no one in their right mind feels like joggling $20000 worth of developing follicles. You just don't. So we finished the cycle and it worked and then I threw up for a five months and then I was on bed rest for another three and then Caroline and Edward were so cute I just couldn't stop kissing them and then I tried to start running again but it made everything including my appendix hurt and then... here we are. July.

My brother and sister-in-law run marathons. When we got to the Y she hopped on a treadmill and said she was just going to run 40 miles or whatever and to let her know when I was ready to leave. The next thing I knew her legs were flashing around like one of those old-fashioned clockwork dolls with wheels for feet. I slunk away and tried to decide if it was less shameful to wait for her in the lobby or to try run again and have her witness the arrival of the paramedics. I decided on the latter. And, amazingly, it wasn't that bad. I was slow. I was an unnatural blotchy reddish color all over. I was wheezing like a ferret. But I managed to run just shy of a mile. So on Tuesday I did it again. And today I went a little farther and a little faster. I am quite pleased with myself and if I can do it anyone can. And I mean that very sincerely.

On an only barely related note (exercise-health-body-food) I made a dinner tonight (inspired directly by a recent restaurant offering) that was pretty good but it needed something. If I give you the rough outlines of what I made, will you suggest what you would do differently?   

SEARED SCALLOPS with CHICKPEAS SPINACH and SLOW-ROASTED TOMATOES

Halve and core 6-8 Roma tomatoes. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle liberally with salt and black pepper. Bake at 300 degrees for about an hour or until the edges brown. Set aside.

Heat olive oil in a saute pan. Add minced garlic (I really like the frozen garlic cubes from Trader Joe's for some reason - I think they are fun. also they don't burn as easily as fresh garlic at high heat.) Add two cans of chickpeas, drained well. Sprinkle with salt and black pepper and 1/2 to 1 t cumin. Saute until chickpeas start to brown and crisp. Add baby spinach (I used about 8 cups. Never ceases to amaze me how much spinach shrinks) and roasted tomatoes and continue to cook until spinach wilts and tomatoes are heated through.

Meanwhile sear scallops (VERY dry scallops. use paper towels and let them sit for a while.  a little olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan. salt and pepper scallops just before they go in. two minutes without touching them. flip. two more minutes. done.)

Adjust seasoning. Serve scallops on top.

Like I said, it was good but it needed something. What do you think? Balsamic vinegar? An herb? I have just started trying to cook without recipes and I don't think I am very good at it.

Working

Every time Edward looks at Caroline I get that White Stripes song in my head: I can tell that we are going to be friends. His pleasure at seeing her lights him up and I still cannot get over the way his muppet head flips open when he smiles. Caroline grins back at him but we suspect that this is because he looks delicious and she is about to eat him. They are good babies. 

Well, they don't sleep worth a damn sometimes (like now, for instance, but I am ignoring her after my fifteenth attempt to lovingly lull her into a nap when she pulled my hair and then tried to throw herself bodily into her crib) but what can you do? I located my stash of baby sleep books in the basement and thought I would re-read the No Cry Sleep whatever to see if any of it might be applicable this time around. It lost me with Patrick because it assumed that Baby would not start crying in the first place provided you didn't stick him in a cold dark room with hungry bears. I was VERY amused to see that I had carefully filled out a Sleep Chart in the middle of the book that recorded one night (I guess around six months) with Patrick -

Asleep time: 9:30

Awake time: 5:45

Number of awakenings: 5

I mean, yikes, right? And I see that he woke up at 11:19 and 12:22 and 1:46 and 4:09 (I love that I wrote the exact minute like it mattered; what a twit) and that I nursed him each time for 15-30 minutes. Good grief, no wonder I still get flashbacks. But what killed me is the little penciled note under  "How Baby Woke Me Up". Ready? I have written "Squirmed". HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Over here at 1:46 I have elaborated with "Squirmed etc." What on earth do you suppose the et cetera was... breathing? I just wish I could reach back through the years and slap myself. Time to ditch the co-sleeper, lady. Poor Patrick.

Also I put him to bed at NINE THIRTY? Was I high? From the distance of six years and backed by my newfound no-nonsense twin experience (I would like to see me reacting every time Caroline or Edward squirmed in the night - as if. crying, yes. talking squeaking grunting kicking rolling yabbering clunking? I turn off the monitor and pull the pillow over my head) I can diagnose Patrick's sleep problems in three notes:

1. Put the kid to bed by seven at the absolute latest

2. Down for a nap every two hours

3. Own room

The end.

But back to Caroline and Edward. I feel like retracting that first statement about their not being good sleepers now that Caroline has stopped yowling. Actually they are great sleepers provided that I put them in their cribs early enough. Steve keeps looking at me incredulously when I swoop in and say "Nap time!" as the babies are playing happily on the floor but, seriously, it is like magic. On days when I get them to bed every two'ish hours and then down for good by 6 everything is lovely. Days like yesterday when Steve was out of town and I had to get Patrick to and from camp and the twinks had to sleep in weird car-riding snatches they were both obnoxious and bed time was a protracted painful affair. Anyway I offer this for what it is worth.

The advice re. the clogged duct was very helpful; I thank you. I used a microwaved rice sock for moist heat and then beat the crap out of that breast until it cleared. I tried to nurse more on that side but this backfired when Caroline (my resident nursing baby) developed a screaming aversion to it. I had heard of nursing strikes and Edward was more or less born with a placard in his tiny fist; but I was quite surprised to live through one. Every time I flip Caroline toward that side she screams and flails and fights me. Most unpleasant. So the count is: 2 babies + 2 breasts down to 1 baby 1 breast. Hardly seems worth it but I am muddling along, still pumping still offering to nurse still using my beloved bottle-making Munchkin formula immersion blender thing. You know, I kinda thought that once you get an established breastfeeding pattern going - even if you supplement with bottles, whatever you fill them with - you could rely upon continuing that for a year or so. Guess not.

We once had a dog who liked to eat bees. She would stand in the yard and snap at them with her jaws. When she finally got one she would cry because it stung her. Then she would do it all over again. This is exactly how I feel about wasabi peas. I eat a handful; I shriek with pain; then I eat another handful.

For reasons that never became quite clear to me Patrick started trying to work out the eight tables yesterday. As frequently as I assured him that it is

1) easier to just memorize the multiplication tables and have done with it and

2) not necessary to know anything over 12

he just smiled and ignored me and went back to doing his addition. He brought to my attention that 8x18 and 12x12 equal the same thing and he wanted to know why. I was very confident as I brought out a pencil and showed him that you just add 4 to one and subtract 4 from the other and... and I realized that I was totally wrong. I have no idea why this is true. Do you know? Also if you know who Penrose the Mathematical Cat is can you suggest anything similar? Patrick has read this book to shreds.

I would post a picture so you can see how pretty Edward has gotten and how long Caroline's hair is now but we switched to Mac a few weeks ago and not only do these things not have media card readers (the deuce you say!) but I miss Picasa something fierce. I hate iphoto. Hate it. What's with not letting you undo changes? Is there a better Mac software for people who want their hand held?

Hope you are well. I have vowed to try writing here every day for a week, starting today. We'll see how long that lasts, considering that I started this chunk of nothing as a draft on July 1st and what is it now? The 8th? You can see how committed I am to blogtacularity.

Sartorial

Patrick went to a birthday party today. This was one of our first forays into socializing with school friends whose parents we don't know from the Addams. Although I don't really care, I was still sort of glad when Steve said he was going to change before taking Patrick to the party. Steve had been working on his breakfast bar all morning and he was wearing one of his old shirts with bits of whatever lives under our porch still clinging to his person. I am sure Joe's parents would not have turned Patrick from the door after realizing that Patrick's father is a filthy vagrant (in fact they might have given him some cake to take home, the poor little mite) but I would have been embarrassed next September when they urged me to accept the box of canned goods that had been collected on our behalf. So when Steve went to change I was a little relieved. I wrapped the gift and helped Patrick locate his shoes and I was about to wish them both a fond farewell when I got a look at what Steve had changed into and I regretted for about the millionth time that we don't drink wine with lunch in this country:

Imagine, if you will, a place called Versailles (Ver-sales), Ohio. Every year this town hosts a Poultry Festival  (and they serve a very nice chicken dinner, too), which features a tournament in addition to the tilt-a-whirl and the used book sale in the high school library (at which I have on more than one occasion scored some truly excellent vintage Stories for Girls). The tournament pits a grab bag of co-ed players against each other and one of the more whimsical notions is that many teams will give themselves a name related to both poultry and the mixing of the sexes: Chicks with Dicks springs to mind. And, of course, every team has a t-shirt; of which Steve has collected more than a few over the years. Right? Right. So my beloved husband trotted out to meet some fellow school parents for the first time wearing a tomato red t-shirt of great antiquity that reads: Breasts and Thighs! and is emblazoned with the image of chicken whose anatomical realism is... dubious.

What. the hell.

I have a babydoll dress from 1992 that I still love. It is made of, I dunno, crepe paper and it  starts just above the aureoles and ends about 1/2 millimeter below my underpants. I wore it to play pool one summer night when I was 21 and it... it was a great night. There are occasions, generally after I have been listening to Alphaville one too many times on the ipod, that I will pull that dress from its hiding place in my closet, carefully lock the bathroom door behind me and put it on; shedding a few silver tears over the dear dead days beyond recall.     

What I do not do is pair it with some heels and trip off to meet the PTA.  

When I asked Steve if he was wearing that to take Patrick to the party he looked confused and said yes. When I asked if he wanted to just put on one of those trucker hats with the foam boobs on top and bring along a copy of Swank to flip through while the children play he said, "No. And yes."

No offense, but men are total fucking idiots.

Patrick, incidentally, had a lovely time. They went bowling.

Quasi

Steve was in Florida for a few days and although practically everything else in my life is much harder when he is not home it is incredible to me how much tidier my house stays when he is absent. He made Patrick pancakes this morning and I am pretty sure that there is an eggshell - an honest to f.... ha ha ha ha OH MAN - a live action post. Steve just walked in from his breakfast-bar-in-progress project and asked, "What happened to my tape measure? It was right there"... he points... "when I left."

Right there being the center of the dining room table and when I left meaning last Thursday. As if a reasonable person would have kept an unused tape measure on a frequently used surface as a... what? A shrine? I rest my case. Steve just puts things down wherever and then he never thinks to pick them up until he needs them again. Of course, there are faults on both sides. While I am quite good (one might even say compulsive, if one was very rude) about picking things up; I never have any idea where I put them. So although I clearly remember taking the tape measure and later using it to see how tall Caroline is (still short) I have no idea where I put it after that. The garage? The bathroom? Caroline's dresser? You know, as many times as I have just typed that word in the past minute I am still unsure if it is right: I always say tape measure-r, like a thing that measures (a measure-er) constructed of tape; feel free to educate me.)

I took Edward and Caroline for the last of their four month vaccinations yesterday. I had been putting off the DTaP because my pediatrician said that is the one to which babies tend to react if they are going to have a problem with any of them and after the two month shots Edward was a high fever with a nasty rash surrounding a small speck of baby. Although I pride myself on my maternal detachment and my rational worldview I swear I have never been as close to Mrs Lovejoy as I was when I realized that I had authorized eight vaccines in one day and was directly responsible for turning my delicious Edward into a red, sweaty, screamy disaster. I am still pro-vaccine and I favor a planet in which no one dies from preventable disease but diptheria plus tetanus plus pertussis plus hep B plus polio... my god won't SOMEBODY think of the children?

Anyway, I gave them both a healthy slug of infant tylenol half an hour before the shot and I continued to give Edward a dose every four hours until bedtime and (deo volente) he seems to be fever, rash and scream free. I definitely think staggering the shots has been a good idea with him, and it probably doesn't hurt that he is five and a half months now and a good, I don't even know, eight pounds heavier than he was the last time. I was so anxious about this last set of vaccines; I'm glad he did not have the same reaction this time. Caroline, on the other hand is so congested she can't breathe. If I had realized at the time she has gotten Patrick's recently acquired camp cold I might have put the shots off again but I did not - so I did not. Fortunately, she is not the delicate flower young Edward seems to be.

Caroline is a menace. I put her down and she flips over and rolls until she can't roll any further. This is usually because has wedged her head under something; popular choices being the bouncy seat, the couch or an end table. Then she shrieks. However, sometimes she just gets her feet sandwiched and she will lie there grinning fiendishly at her own cleverness. Either way I say "Oh CAROLINE" a lot:

I just looked at this picture and realized that the entire front of her garment appears to be covered in slime. That appearance would be... true. Reflux-y babies are not tidy babies. And that blue thing is Steve's physical therapy whatsit, the stretchy thing he uses to exercise his knee. A trained forensics expert might be able to trace the line of drool extending from Caroline's chin down to the rubber loop and conclude that the baby had recently been chewing on it; perhaps while her mother tried to remember where she had put the camera. No comment.

Edward rolled over this morning. Back to stomach. Then he did it again. Although this is not his absolute first time doing so; it was the first time it looked like it was accomplished with any forethought. Prior to this Edward has been content to lie on his back and smile at things. When he felt the need for exercise he would keep his arms pinned rigidly to his sides and flail his legs. He looked just like the Lord of the Dance.  He's a happy little thing.

 

They both are. They're good babies, and now that I have learned the rule of the 6:30 bedtime and the need to put them down for naps every two hours or so whether they are unconscious or not... they are remarkably easy.

Patrick was very excited about Caroline and Edward before they were born. When they arrived he was fascinated and proprietorial for about a month. Then he was SO TOTALLY OVER the babies and everything having to do with the babies and when he wasn't completely ignoring them he was lavishing me with praise about how good, how fantastically good I am with babies and didn't I want to take them... somewhere? somewhere else? so that he and his father could play? He mentioned that Sassy does not like babies because they always need someone to carry bottles upstairs for them (one task; Patrick has ONE task that we regularly ask him to do for Caroline and Edward and that is it: every now and then Steve asks Patrick to carry the evening bottle upstairs for Edward; and despite the infrequency and relative painlessness of the chore this is the first thing Patrick mentions when people ask how he likes being a big brother, "Well, I have to carry bottles around all the time for them..." - drama queen)  and they cry when she is trying to watch one of her shows so she misses learning stuff. At first I was sympathetic. After all he had been an only child for a long time, naturally he would take a while to adjust. Then I noticed the way other children greeted their infant siblings after a long day at school or camp and I thought, huh. I could not think of the last time Patrick was actually friendly to Caroline or Edward; and most of the time he was downright crabby. So I told him to shape up and when that did not work I told him I was disappointed in him.

He was stung. "That's not a nice thing to say!" he told me, which is kindergarten-speak for "How dare you!"

I told him it was true.

We left it at that but I notice he has been going out of his way to talk to the babies lately. Part of it might be the fact that the are getting more interesting (Patrick finds it hilarious that Caroline scares the beejeesums out of me by disappearing so quickly - the more safety minded among you will be glad to know I finally brought the pack n' play back) but I think some of it has to do with my lecture. Which makes me feel all wise.

So Caroline is fine (but congested) and Edward is fine and Patrick is fine and Steve is fine (his knee seems to be doing quite well) but I am falling apart. I had a pinched ulnar nerve in my left hand that was bothering me so much I went to see a hand surgeon. He sent me to a nerve place and they tortured me. Literally. They put needles into the different muscles in my hand and then ran electricity to test how much it hurt. It was awful and if I could remember what it was called I would warn you to be very very certain you have nerve damage before blithely scheduling an... EEG, was it? Anyway, I hated it and a week or two later my hand felt better anyway. Then it started to hurt on the other side (the thumb rather than the pinkie) but I was too embarrassed to go back to the hand doctor again. So I am just wearing a brace and taking lots of ibuprofen and I hope this too will clear up on its own.

In a more dire development I noticed a painful lump in my breast yesterday. I assume I have a blocked duct and I have been pumping more on that side and I took a hot shower and tried to massage it but... yikes. It is worse and larger today. Do I need to see a doctor (I never know who to call, my OB or my family practice) do you think, or will it work itself out eventually?

 

Westbound

We had to put Rusty to sleep on Tuesday. Although for the past year and a half I have been expecting him to take a turn for the worse I was still caught off guard by what seemed like the suddenness of his decline. Friday he was frail but fine. On Monday night he fell into the sink and just sat there - up to his neck in a soapy roasting pan - crying while I ran to get him out. All night long we woke up to his cries and it would take us a few moments to find him since he would have wandered into an unusual corner somewhere - crouched in the pantry, wedged half under the stove. Despite the fact that we added a nearby litter box to his hospice area on the kitchen floor (you would have wanted to step gingerly in my kitchen last week; fortunately I don't run a catering business or anything) he kept leaving bloody messes as he staggered around in confused circles... it was definitely time to let him go.

We miss him.

Steve has become obsessed by mushroom hunting, which seems like a good way to start a murder mystery. Oh damn it. I was just feeling rather clever until I remembered that Dorothy Sayers wrote an entire book about poisoning a mushroom enthusiast - no wonder it sounded like a good idea. I'll bet she sold a bunch of 'em. Anyway, to be fair Steve has always been interested in rooting around for things in the forest that he can eat; but I refused to let him involve Patrick until I was absolutely positive that the child could grasp the difference between looking for specific types of edible mushrooms while under the constant surveilance of his father and just putting random crap he finds outside in his mouth. Five and 11/12th's, by the way, is apparently our family cut-off point for this distinction. Steve and Patrick have been devoting a portion of every day to the pursuit of the elusive morel and they could not be more boring on the subject if they tried. Last night I told them they had forty minutes before dinner as I had just put Edward and Caroline to bed and I had a little over half an hour's worth of prep work to complete before we could eat. An hour and fifteen minutes later I finally bellowed into the woods loudly enough that I was able to bring them down again to a meal that had become both cold and overdone (and it would have been great too: tenderloin! shallots in a red wine reduction! mesclun! potatoes all gratined and whatnot - I finally finished my Tivo'd backlog of old Top Chef  episodes and I have been inspired; I have also learned that it takes a whooooole lot of salt to be too much salt). I was pissed and the fact that they had scrounged a king's ransom in morels was completely immaterial to me. Personally I don't like my food so... organic. Naturally the moment I sat down to eat Caroline woke up for what the hobbits might call her second dinner and by the time I returned Steve and Patrick were done eating and had started admiring their mushroom haul again.

Huh. Why was I telling you this? I know I had a point somewhere... hmmm. Maybe it will come back to me later.

Caroline. Second dinner. The advice on that last post that I should put the babies to bed at six-thirty when they start to become unbearably obnoxious was so good I could kiss you. Why had I been resisting this obvious step? Oh, right. Because I was afraid that if Caroline and Edward woke up at 6 when I put them down at 8, they would then wake up at 4 if I tried to put them down at 6. And if I was forced to wake up for the day at 4 am I would try to strangle myself with my hair before lunch. That's why. But! No worries. I am now putting them to bed at 6 and they still wake up at 6. I have not experienced the miracle that some of you described in which the children not only go to sleep earlier they stay asleep all night long but I'm ok with that. I don't actually mind being woken up in the night. I don't love it or anything and I will be glad when it is over but I don't feel the need to attempt anything drastic to change things. Besides, when Caroline and Edward do wake up in the night they are starving and I don't see how one gets around that or would want to do so. When I feed Caroline around 2 she sounds like a marathon runner knocking back paper cups full of water at the 23rd mile marker and Edward (who just started being able to breastfeed with more ease - at FIVE MONTHS; not sure what the lesson is there because in the absence of a twin what the hell was a person to do in the interim? - but only during the day) will easily take eight ounces at 4 am and sometimes more. Where was I? Man I am scattered today. Oh, Caroline. She recently started this neat little self-regulating feature at bedtime. I don't know if I have mentioned it, but Caroline is the spit-uppiest kid on the planet. She spits up all day long.  It doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything either. I have watched her spit up hours after eating. Recently she has started eating at bedtime and then waking up an hour or two later to take twice as much again. She gives herself a little time to digest and then... voila - second dinner. I said that she is clearly evolving to enable herself to sleep for longer periods and Steve said that my ignorance of the basic tenets of biological theory is appalling; that a species can evolve but an individual merely adapts. I suggested that he bite me.

Speaking of biting poor Edward is producing teeth in the strangest places. Well, ok, they are all in his mouth so it is not that strange but the teeth he has starting to poke through are weird ones. Bottom left canine (not the bottom middle but the pointy one next to that) and right top molar (poor kid) and then the two middle top. Only the canine and the molar are beginning to break the skin but I can feel the other two right at the surface and the molar on the other side as well. Edward keeps his fingers or a blanket in his mouth at all times and I can't blame him. His gums must feel like they've been paved. I have an appointment to take him into a pediatric Ear Nose and Throat person tomorrow with the understanding that she will diagnose his floppy trachea as floppy. I have no idea what that will do for us but his pediatrician listened to him breathe the other day (after first establishing that it was really Edward making that noise, not a low flying plane overhead) and believed me when I said breastfeeding is rotten and it is all Edward's fault. He said that the ENT will put Edward on Zantac since the current understanding is that reflux (silent in Edward's case - he rarely spits up anymore) aggravates the whatsit that enlarges the other thing and that causes the stridor. Also choking when he eats which is more of a problem, particularly when he is, you know, trying to eat. Although sometimes he has no trouble at all so I find it a little mystifying. But since the ENT will start with Zantac the pediatrician opted to be proactive and Edward has been on the stuff for about ten days. To be honest I cannot tell that it makes a damned bit of difference but we'll see what the doctor says tomorrow. Oh! And before I forget, re. Edward's belly button: you were all right. Well, most of you anyway. Edward does have an umbilical hernia and that allows the stomach contents to bulge out a bit which forces the belly button to poke out which enables a person to see the interior of it more easily which allows one to note the inflammation which is caused by... some kind of infection. Yeast most likely. The doctor put him on a prescription cream for it.

You know, Edward is really not nearly as unhealthy as he sounds.

Finally I have an HGTVesque question for those of you who like these sort of things. Steve - as I have mentioned about a thousand times - likes to do home improvement projects and his latest plan is to move the exterior wall of the kitchen and add a breakfast bar. Although my initial response was one of incredulous horror (I am still recovering from his knee surgery, you know, and we have baby twins and Patrick gets out for the summer this week and... WHAT? Move an exterior wall? In my kitchen?) he quickly suckered me into it and now I am rather excited. I keep picturing all three kids in a few years sitting in a row eating breakfast or coloring or whatever and it seems... nice. So two questions: we want to use the space for both adults drinking wine and kids eating jelly - do we go with a counter top height or a higher bar height? Also, we have run into a major snag. There is no longer a supplier for our counter tops. Since the idea was to extend the counter top (should we opt for a counter top height bar which is my inclination) with a tight seam in the middle that kinda complicates things. Would you use a different granite? Something similar or something contrasting? Or a different stone? Stainless steel? Tempered glass? Wood? I favor wood, actually but I might be failing to perceive an obvious problem with it. Here's a picture so you can see what we are dealing with:


Steve is going to move this wall back by x feet and put a bar on the far side of the counter. Any thoughts?

And since I am in Picasa anyway, here are photos of Caroline and Edward in Patrick's old exersaucer. Note how very short Caroline looks. It's like Kilroy Was Here.




PS I never did remember why I started to tell you the mushroom story. I hope it wasn't subconscious foreshadowing.

Rhumba

A couple of months ago I publicly sneered at the notion that you would want twins on the same schedule. The idea of having to deal with both babies in the dead of night on purpose seemed absurd to me. However, I think I get it now. While I still maintain that it is crazy to try to establish a joint schedule when babies are so little there really is no schedule at all - just a lot of catnapping on your part punctuated by the vague desire to cry - by the time children start to work out their own routines around three'ish months I can see the appeal of having those routines mesh. So my apologies to anyone I might have offended when I asked if you were HIGH to recommend coordinated scheduling. Yes! I see now. Two babies + one nap = a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Got it.

Now how exactly does one go about getting that to happen? My friend with twins (my friend with twins whose entire twin experience reads like a glossy coffee table book on the subject: two seven lb babies delivered at 38 weeks exactly following a complications-free pregnancy who both took instantly and easily to breastfeeding and who are now the best behaved two year olds you will ever want to meet - I try not to dwell on her since the whole thing gives me a complex) gave me the schedule she had gotten from some book or other. Apparently, you put the babies to sleep at seven and then they sleep until seven. After that they are up until 9 and then down for a nap. Wake them at 10. Up until noon and then down for their two and a half hour nap. Up until 4; down for an hour. Two hours for dinner and a bath and voila, seven o'clock bedtime. Other than the fact that it involves rather more math than I like to do in a day; it sounds lovely. So very clean and regimented. I could say "Oh, I'll call you at 9:15 tomorrow morning when Caroline and Edward are asleep" or "Steve, would you mind just keeping an ear on the monitor between 1 and 2 while I get a pedicure and drink this champagne split?"

So far the only part I have gotten down is bed time. Somewhere between 7 and 8 Caroline and Edward go to bed. I always try to push it towards 8 and they keep trying to push it to 6:30. After that it all falls into tiny pieces like a prepackaged cookie. She wakes up and then he wakes up and... would you believe that I actually have no recollection of when I went upstairs last night or who I saw? Literally. I assume that Caroline woke up around 2 (she usually does) and then Edward woke up around 4 but... I shrug. I do know that they both woke up for good at 6 am but that is largely anecdotal as I now just poke Steve anytime after 5:59 and mutter for him to go do something with somebody. Then I put the pillow over my head and SQUEEZE. Our bedroom is right off the living room which I suppose will be great when we are decrepit empty nesters but is a bit of a trial right now since that room has been designated Baby Central (you can tell because the plastic to natural materials ratio in there keeps increasing.) So Steve deals as best he can and I try to ignore the squeals and fussing while having odd disjointed dreams. This morning I dreamed about Patrick's school. Specifically, that three other mothers from Patrick's class asked me what I was doing about Christmas cards since they needed to be distributed before the end of the year. And I was irked by this presumption of Christianity in the public schools and said, untruthfully as it so happens, "Oh we don't celebrate Christmas." So they all looked shocked and one said, "You... don't celebrate... CHRISTMAS?" and the other said, "Well that's funny." And I very coolly said, "Some people don't you know; perhaps you have heard of Judaism?" And it was a terrific moment since they all looked chastened but then I realized that I had somehow implied that we are Jewish and we are not - which is when Patrick's teacher rushed over in my dream and enthusiastically asked if I would be willing to come and share information about our faith with the class. I was too embarrassed to admit that I had lied about being Jewish to make a point so I said, yes, of course but I was mentally deciding that the only solution was to enroll Patrick in another school district. Then Caroline must have pulled Edward's hair (again - she does it a lot) because he screamed in the living room and I woke up. Much to my relief. After all, I like Patrick's school.

In the time that it has taken me to write this I have put Caroline and Edward down for a nap three times. The first two times involved tears and gnashing of the gums but it finally took. Huzzah! Imagine that, both babies sleeping in cribs at the same time. I feel like composing an opera about how great it feels to get rid of all of your children when the sun is shining. Instead I will utilize this time to:

1) finish this

2) use the breastpump while watching something Tivo'd - I am making a concerted effort to wean myself off the baby shows (I watched an otherwise rational and intelligent woman put her 1 week old baby to sleep on her stomach [the baby on the baby's stomach I mean] and I gritted my teeth so hard I almost cracked a molar; it's not healthy for me to sit and judge people like this on a regular basis) so I decided to try recording old seasons of Top Chef for a change of pace. As of three days ago I am a Top Chef addict. I'll be sorry when I am no longer nursing/pumping since it provides such a great excuse for sitting on my couch in the middle of the day watching god only knows what on TV

3) go do all of the work in the vegetable garden that did not get done last Fall so we can get our plants in this weekend - tomatoes and watermelon this year. oh and the asparagus and strawberries that are annual. but that's it. I am done growing weird vegetables that we don't eat. Hey has anybody ever had any luck growing cilantro? I like to cook with it but have been unsuccessful at keeping it from going to seed in about a week outside.

4... oh damn it. OF COURSE the babies are now awake. OF COURSE they are.

Gotta go.

Oh wait, one last thing, do you know of any places that sell interesting dinnerware? The set we currently use is from a... a previous relationship and I hate it. I was just staring at them last night, whispering "I hate you" as one does sometimes with a saucer, when I realized that life is too short to spend breakfast lunch and dinner with bowls you despise.  So I want to look for something new. Something with square plates, I think, and a bit of color maybe. I have looked at all the usual places but I expect there must be a zillion others. So if you know of something and would shoot me a link I would be much obliged.

PS Edward has this weird belly button thing that I have been noticing off and on for months. The lower half of the outer circumference looks red and a little inflamed. At first I thought his diaper was just rubbing there and I treated it with a little Neosporin but I have recently decided that actually the inner skin coil seems to be pulling away from the surrounding skin. Does that make sense? It is particularly noticeable in the evening when his stomach is full. I will ask about it in a month at his next well baby check unless this rings any bells with anyone in which case I can always bring him in sooner.

OK. Now I really have to go.