Letting It All Go

The other morning I was getting dressed for an extended family event, and not having showered in a couple of days (as is often the case), and having worn the same shirt all week (as is also often the case: once you get baby vomit down both shoulders by 10am, why change only ruin every shirt in the closet by nightfall? Besides, I only have 2 nursing shirts, and I need so much constant, easy access to my equipment that I see no point in wearing anything else most of the time), anyway, I was pretty sure that I stank to an unsociable degree. I asked Jared about it, and he came to give me a test hug. After a few moments of hugging and whiffs at different angles, he concluded, in an encouraging tone, "well, this side isn't that bad," and we moved toward the door to leave.

A moment later I paused though. As I thought about the fact that I had decided it was good enough if only one side of me smelled like rancid yogurt and B.O. and I could just hug people on the other side, I stopped, put my head in my hands on the counter, and laughed a pathetic, tired chuckle.  Is it really come to this? My criteria for getting out of the house is if I can find a spot on my body that is not so stinky that you'd notice?

A lot of things all go to pot when you have twins. Actually, I don't think this phenomenon is unique to twins. You hear this frequently about having subsequent children - that you are all persnickety with your first but by the time you get to your fourth or fifth you kinda figure nature will take care of itself. You'll almost go so far as to allow natural selection to do its business in your house if it has to. First babies always get the most careful and attentive care. A pacifier which falls out of the mouth will be promptly whisked away to a sanitizing station, complete with patented "Pacifier Wash" that you can buy from First Years for $11.95 (regular soap is not good enough for a first baby. First parents get suckered into all kinds of silly stuff. Case in point: "baby wash cloths." What, like regular washcloths don't work on babies?). Somewhere along the line with more children your standards loosen. With twins this is especially true, and at this point, when one kid drops a pacifier - unless there is a verifiable smear of dog poop on it - it's getting wiped on my jeans and popped back in there (ok, ok, I admit that's not entirely accurate. Women who just had babies don't get to wear jeans. We have to wear those soft knit stretchy pants, like "goucho pants." You know the ones I mean. Or maybe even yoga pants, which distract onlookers from our enormous hips by making them think that we did something akin to yoga this morning.)

Anyway, I was thinking about my loosening standards as I took a shower this morning (yes, the first in many days). When Seville was a baby, if I attempted a shower she came with me. She would sit in her new fancy bouncer on the bathroom floor just outside the shower door so I could hear her every sniffle and squeak. If she happened to be napping, I'd bring in the baby monitor and turn it on full blast so she wouldn't be drowned out by the roar of the running water. Several times during her babyhood I dashed across the house, dripping water and soapy froth onto our expensive rug, possibly ruining it forever, to attend to a whimper. This is how much I couldn't stand to have her try to communicate something to me only to be ignored. This morning, on the other hand, I got in the shower, fussing babies and all. I could hear them in the living room, over the rushing water, making all their exclamations of protest, and I sat there coldly thinking to myself, "hold on there, little guys, just need to finish shaving my legs!" (Shaving legs is a luxury I wouldn't ever have let Seville cry for. Of course, considering how long it had been since I last shaved my legs, this was no small task, and since I can't fit the mower in the shower with me, it was going to require several passes and enough razors that I should have just bought stock in Schick.) Much to my relief, Jared came home mid-shower and relieved the twins of their distress.  And actually, it's not that I'm really that callous. In fact, that's the reason it had been so long since I'd had a decent shower to begin with. There's nothing worse than trying to enjoy a shower knowing you've got a crying baby somewhere out there - the anxiety! But still, there are things that I really have relaxed about.

I think knowing how different the boys are, regardless of what I do, helps a lot. With Seville I very carefully followed particular parenting approaches and routines. I'm doing that to some extent with these guys too, but I realize that strict adherence to The Gospel of Whatever Baby Book is not going to make everything perfect. In fact, one of our babies (Trajan) is easily overwhelmed and requires an awful lot of finesse to get to sleep as the day goes on. Oswell, on the other hand, will cuddle up and drop off pretty much anytime, anywhere. I have used this as evidence in my discussions with Jared that my own insomniac tendencies may not be, as he believes, just a product of my own bad habits. I believe, of course, that my body has an inherently more difficult time falling asleep, and that a lifetime of that problem has affected my nocturnal routines. He has long argued that I just have really bad sleep habits - and I'll concede that I do have some, but not that they are the root of the problem, a position which I have evidence for finally in our boys (thanks Trajan and Oswell. I love to win.)

As for my loosening parenting standards, there are so far approximately... let's see...about ONE single thing the twins have gotten that Seville didn't: a birth announcement. I always regretted that I didn't get around to sending one when she was born. So this time I vowed I would do it - especially given the cuteness of twin pictures (I've decided that multiple babies are exponentially cute when viewed together. The way earthquake magnitudes go up by powers. So like if one baby is about a seven on the cuteness scale, two of those would be 7²=49. My babies are both tens (of course) and so they're cuteness equation is 10²=100. You'll all agree, I'm sure, that two cute babies together are about 10x cuter than any one single baby, right? Right? I'm not just trying to act all like we're all that, either. My brother has triplets, and since any relative of mine is also a ten (of course), his kids are 10³=1000. See? Way better than our score.). So given the extra cuteness potential of our pictures, I just had to send out baby announcements this time. It took me long enough to pull it off, but they're finally gone. For the record, I mostly managed to send them to addresses I had handy, and if I had to track yours down, you probably didn't get one. If you wanted one but I missed you, and if you're still speaking to me, let me know and I'd be glad to send one your way.

Babies in Bulk

The boys are 4 months old now. 4 and a half, actually, though their "corrected" age is closer to 2 1/2 months, so we've had double the amount of "little baby infant time." Which is both a blessing and a curse, I'm sure you realize.

It's been a while since we've updated here, and there is too much and too little to say at the same time. We feed and change babies, put them various places around our living room to keep them happy to mix it up now and again. But other than feeding, changing, rocking, pumping, washing bottles, washing clothes, there's not much else that happens around here.  We took them to Costco the other day, put the carseats on a flat cart and went around the store that way, adding our purchases to the cart with them. At the checkout line the guy behind us said, "which aisle'd you get those on?" We all joked about how you can buy anything in bulk at Costco, and these come in a 2-pack, etc. It was the highlight of our week. Actually, almost any adult conversation is the highlight of my week, but I think that isn't much different from other young mothers.

I'm doing pretty ok with the whole twin situation. I was telling a friend today that I've adjusted to having twins probably better than I adjusted to having my first baby. I think with twins you expect that your life will be sucked right out from under you and that you'll need nannies, prozac, and therapy to get you through. And so when you miraculously survive on less than that, you feel really good about yourself. When you have one baby (girls, you can back me up on this), you imagine all the blissful baby moments at home: You will hold and rock this baby, nurse it effortlessly to sleep, and while it is slumbering peacefully all afternoon you will do sewing projects and start scrapbooking and paint your bathroom and plant 27 varieties of tomatoes in your garden and you'll work out every day and be just as tiny as you were pre-pregnancy within 3 weeks and you'll start cooking organic meals and your husband will come home every night to a tidy home and a warm dinner and he'll kiss you and scoop up your darling little blessing and cuddle it while you leisurely eat your delicious cooking, after which you'll put the little pumpkin to bed and then you and hubby will spend a quiet evening together watching a movie, cuddling, and going to bed before the sun rises another blissful day of New Motherhood.

So when you find yourself robbed of your body, your time, your sleep, your hair, your food, when you wake up 50 times a night to a baby who wants to suck violently on your scabbed and raw nipples and have to function the next day heaving around that extra 30 pounds and spend the rest of your day elbow deep in poop and laundry and spit up during those spare moments between trying to feed and/or settle a baby who is completely unpredictable and upset whenever you don't immediately read its mind and attend to its every whim and you're starving but can't find a minute to eat a half a grapefruit until 5:00 in the evening (this happened to me. I'm not exaggerating), and then when your also-tired husband comes home from work to find you haggard and weary heating up leftover hotdogs in the microwave for a dinner you can barely bring yourself to swallow, despite the fact that you're ravenous, and then you spend your evening disagreeing on whether to let the baby "cry it out" or not and your husband eventually collapses into bed and falls asleep before you have any "quality time" only to start the night over again... for SOME reason... I don't know why... this is difficult for a new mom. So, yeah, twins has been a piece of cake in that respect. I never imagined I would have a life. I don't. It's all good.

Meanwhile the boys are growing like weeds (something Seville never managed. She still weighs about as much as your average 12-month old). They have officially started to laugh and "talk" to us. They do everything different from each other. You know all those things your baby did that you thought was a result of your parenting style and choices? Wrong! Those had nothing to do with you. Babies just each have their own way of doing things. Think their pacifier preferences are because of how you handled it? no. Think they slept well because of your careful parenting planning? no way. These guys have been treated identically, and they are completely different.  They need different things, they respond to different things, they like different things. It's impossible not to compare twins to each other. I know. You are always told that babies develop at their own pace and in different ways, but holy cow when it's right in front of you you can't help but compare.

Brickley is much more observant, alert and wakeful. He was the first to smile, the first to laugh. He can hold his head up pretty well and generally seems to have better physical control than Oswell. He's really charismatic and will interact with and smile at anyone on command.

Oswell is sleepier and more cuddly and baby-ish. He probably sleeps more because he's growing faster. He's a big juicy baby with jowls dangling to his shoulders and a cute little knob of a chin poking out of his luscious little face. Despite the fact that he sleeps more and doesn't hold his huge noggin up well yet, he's more of a talker and his sounds are more developed than Brickley's so far. It's so cute to see him smile, like his tiny face muscles have to lift his huge cheeks to pull it off.

Seville is starting to adjust and she loves her little babies. She's very proud of her Big Sister role and sometimes gets mad if I help a baby before she does (she's good at popping pacifiers back in mouths, which is good because there is much pacifier popping going on around here.) She also wears ballerina clothes on a daily basis. She loves to help mommy and has started to get a little devious. Today we put a popsicle in the freezer for her to save for after dinner, to which she protested loudly and with much crying. She ran into the kitchen and yelled at daddy to "go away!"  When he asked her why she wanted him to leave she said because he might see her getting the popsicle out of the freezer. We both laughed so hard. Nice try, honey. You're getting there. We eventually set a timer for the popsicle and it all worked out.

More pics of our summer:

Summer 2010