My Birthday Wish: Innocent Bystander for a Day

I wrote this post a couple of months ago, but didn't post it because I thought it was maybe an overshare. But I feel like the more I edit myself online the less interesting this blog becomes. I hate boring more than I hate embarrassing, so there you go.

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I really want a day off. It's my birthday in T minus 9 minutes (as of typing this sentence) and all I keep fantasizing about is a day off. I don't mean a day "away" from my kids or a day in the Bahamas or anything. Having my kids with me would be great, if I could just... not have to do anything. But it's a fantasy. I know that no matter how hard Jared tries to give me some rest or relief, he does not have boobs, he does not have superhuman abilities to be several places at once, he cannot, without duct-tape, quiet the sounds of my children calling for me (or the sound in my head, even, if they were elsewhere, which is duct-tape proof), and he does not have the title, "Mommy." And so, no matter how good a Daddy he is, he can't become Mommy for a day, leaving me to be an innocent bystander.

There comes a point, in a mother's foray into motherhood, that she realizes what she got herself into. Having a baby is kind of like planning to run a marathon with little to no training whatsoever. You know you're about to run a marathon. You know there are things about it that will suck. You know you will be unprepared and your body and mind will be in pain and you know you might break down at some point. But you also realize it's a big, fun adventure, and you'll get to push yourself to your limits, test your mettle, and accomplish something really awesome while you're at it. But a Marathon is 26 miles, and that's exactly how far you brace yourself to run. And... you all know the feeling more or less... when the finish line is in view, somehow you have only exactly the number of steps left in you to make it there, afterwhich you will collapse, dehydrated and toenail-less, into a panting heap of quivering muscles. I think having a baby (or two) is a little bit like this. You brace yourself for the onslaught, but when the finish line - and the end of your stamina - approaches, you realize that you will not actually get to stop then. That you not only have to keep going, but that you n.e.v.e.r. get to stop running. ever. in your life. You are now doing this every moment, of every day, permanently stuck doing this painful thing you don't even know if you can physically do for the next 10 minutes.

This is the point where you curl up into the fetal position and have a good cry. It's the point where you wonder what you were thinking, get angry at the world and all your friends with kids for not warning you about this, start wishing you'd be involved in a horrible accident and be forced to go to the hospital for a while just to get a break (yes. It's sick. I'm just sayin'). This is also the point where you start to have an inkling of understanding the level of gratitude you should have for your own mother (which thought you immediately banish from your mind, lest you feel even more guilty than you already do, if that is possible).

Perhaps I overstate this. After all, it could just be me and my sick and selfish self that experiences this level of dismay over the realities of motherhood. Admittedly, I struggled with postpartum depression after my first. And my second and third, well, they arrived at the same time, so that's a whole different ball of wax. I think having twins requires you to be somewhat crazy, so if it doesn't drive you there of its own accord, you will pre-emptively adopt it as a coping mechanism. There's just something about the absolute, relentless, never-ending, constant need that is incredible. You never finish one urgent thing but that there is another urgent thing. I read a twins-how-to-book before I had the babies that talked about this in terms of those whac-a-mole arcade games you find at Chuck E Cheese and stuff. You stand there with your knees bent, poised, aiming, ready, muscles twitching in anticipatory heightened awareness, trying to whack every mole that pops up its head as fast as you can for however many minutes. Having twins is like a constant, relentless game of whac-a-mole. You don't even get to sleep without being on duty. Of course, I know this really won't mean much to you, the reader, because I read this book before I had twins, but didn't really get it until several months into it. In fact, the twins were both sick recently, and I had twins for 9 months before I understood what it was like to have two sick babies at the same time. Unfathomable. Like nothing I could have imagined (and I already HAD twins, so you'd think I could imagine). So it's ok, I know you don't know what I'm talking about (excepting Amy, Chelsea, Tara, Tamara, Lauren, Natalie, of course). Just send sympathy flowers my way. Or birthday ones. Whichever cause moves you the most. Waa.

Ok, so now I'm filling this post with pictures of my cute kids because I feel like I'm being kind of a whiner, even if a tongue-in-cheek one. I don't mean to whine, but what's the value in super-glossing everything? Life is awesome and crappy at the same time. There. And as for the awesome, I will confess that having twins is a lot like having your cake and eating it too. I just get so much delight from just LOOKING at a cute baby doing cute things, especially my own cute baby doing cute things. But the minute you pick up the baby to cuddle and kiss it (which you inevitably want to do while observing it being cute) you can't see it anymore. In fact, with Seville, I used to kiss her in front of the mirror so I could watch her giggle. Anyway, with twins, you can cuddle and kiss a cute baby and watch a cute baby SIMULTANEOUSLY! It's the awesomest thing. Not to mention watching two babies being cute WITH each other. Two babies is seriously some of the cutest cuteness you can ever experience (my brother's kids excepted, of course, who are triplets. No competing there, on any count).

So, yeah, I like twins. And my life. Really, I do. I will adjust sometime. Or maybe the sun will come out and that will help. Or maybe I have a Nanny Godmother out there somewhere who's waiting for me to cry on an animated garden bench for her to come (my bedroom, the kitchen, my car, and the bathroom, were perhaps all the wrong places for Fairy God-Nannies). My fairytale is surely just getting going.

The 5 Kinds of Mommy Pictures

Every so often I need a recent photo of myself for something. A family newsletter, a facebook profile that is remotely honest, a family calendar. It never ceases to amaze me how difficult it is to find a picture of myself that isn't a complete embarrassment. Talking to some other moms I know and looking at the photos of myself from the past year or so, I am starting to put together why this is. First of all, husbands, for some reason, are not as trigger happy with the camera shutter as moms are. I can't think of a time that my husband has been like, "what a precious moment! wait. hold it there a moment, you adorable wife and children, while I fetch the camera and preserve this delightful scene for posterity!" I am almost always behind the camera, and by the time it occurs to me that this could be a good photo op of ME, specifically ask my husband to take a picture of me, spend a minute negotiating about whether it's a waste of time or worth the effort, he will get the camera and humor me but by then I've lost my sense of humor, and somehow cameras have a way of capturing that (okay, I might be exaggerating this scene a little, but still). Anyway, mommy pictures almost always fit into one of 5 categories, and I'm posting them here with examples, to embarrass myself once and for all.

The "I Am Looking At My Child and I Have 15 Chins"

The "I'm Trying to Hold and Arrange All My Children, But They're Pulling My Hair/Earrings/Shirt and I Am Trying to Adjust Myself Between Shots But Of Course That's When The Shot Was Taken. Yay."

The "I'm So Tired And Wearing No Makeup And This Could Have Been a Good/Fun Picture, But Honestly, Do You Think I Want People To See Me Like This?"

The "Snort-Laugh" (no explanation necessary)

The "I'm Mid-Sentence/Bite/Sniffle and I Look Like a Stroke-Survivor"

 

Unfortunately, my fear is that if 99% of pictures of myself look like this, maybe I just look like this 99% of the time. Perhaps it is time to come to terms with the fact that I will inevitably decline in hotness as I age, even as my husband gets hotter every day (curse the inverse-gender-age-to-hotness-cultural-bias!).  I may have 15 chins when I look down (which probably IS 99% of the time), but I have inner-awesomeness, and my super-hot-only-getting-hotter-as-he-ages-and-gets-more-rustic-wrinkles-and-distinguished-gray-hairs husband, fortunately, seems to appreciate that.

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

Sugar-Free: By request, I'm starting this update by blogging about my no-sugar-experiment. two weeks ago I decided to quit eating sugar. I mean totally. I check the labels of anything and don't eat it if there's any kind of sugar added. This means I can't eat most crackers, sauces, spreads, prepared foods, canned goods, etc. It never ceases to amaze me how many things have sugar in them, that you wouldn't think would have sugar. Bread! Meat! Cheese! No wonder the American consumption of fructose has gone up 1000x in the last 40 years.  So anyway, I've had to make all my food from scratch (which is good to do anyway, but who has the time on a regular basis?) and forego my regular infusion of chocolate and sweets. In fact, this is part of why I started this. I need sweets after every meal. I get intense cravings. And, come on, who doesn't crave chocolate at regular intervals throughout the day, but I felt like it was getting out of control. Perhaps a result of my breastfeeding two babies, but I figured my body can't need all that sugar. I'm pretty much exclusively breastfeeding 35lbs of baby, which amounts to something like 140 oz of milk a day, and yet my "baby weight" persists, determined as ever to hang on. So I thought maybe it was my love handles asking for the sugar, not my boobs. It was worth a shot to see if it made a difference.

This was not the only reason. Jared recently gave up sugar for a month when the babies were born. He read an interview with Steve Nash that he had given up sugar and was more energetic and even-keeled and athletic because of it. Jared cut it out and did become more energetic, even-keeled, etc. He also lost 10 lbs right away (he was also playing soccer 3x/week, which couldn't have hurt).  The other big reason is that I'm a little freaked out by the prevalence of cancer in young people close to me. My husband. My sister. Other friends. Who knows what the reason is for so much cancer these days, but the American sugar intake has risen at roughly the same rate as the American cancer rate (I think, anyway), so it's on my list of suspicious possible culprits, along with pesticides, chemicals in our water, preservatives and other unnatural things we eat, additives in childhood vaccines, contaminants in plastic bowls and cups, air and water pollution, cell phone waves, too much corn in our diets, hormones in our beef, and secret government conspiracies (obviously, I think some of these ideas are more feasible than others). And I wanted to see if I could even do it - a feat which Jared seriously doubted was within the realm of my own power and self-discipline.

It's been a good experiment, and was not nearly as hard as I thought it would be, for a few reasons. Reason #1: Trader Joe's sugar-free chocolate covered almonds. They use inulin as a sweetener, a natural vegetable fiber (don't eat too many of these at once. trust me on this.).  #2: Medjool dates. So sweet and delicious. #3: A few great recipes for treats that use alternative sweeteners. I made really great breakfast granola using pureed raisins as the main sweet ingredient. Apple crisp using stevia and agave. And chocolate fudge balls using honey. There were more that I didn't even try, but I plan to get around to.

So it's been good. Do I feel better, more energetic, more emotionally stable, skinnier? Meh. I really WANTED my life, energy, digestive health, emotionality, physique, immune system and everything else to improve, but so far there's really no noticeable difference. But I feel better about eating less sugar regardless. This has been a good chance to get some treats and sweets into my repertoire that don't use so much cane sugar, so that's good. I plan to continue using as little sugar as possible. Except not over Thanksgiving. All things be damned at Thanksgiving.

Other exciting events in the Engstrom lives:

-Trajan (aliases: The Trajanator. Toot-aloo. Li'l Traj. Brickley. Brickles. Happy.) sleeps like crazy and spends his rare awake time smiling and laughing and charming everyone in the room. He's super interested in anything he can get his hands on to play with. He's not that interested in rolling or bouncing or standing, but loves people and toys. He wants to know how the world works and is very involved in figuring it out. He did roll over once, purportedly, but hasn't repeated the experiment. He doesn't eat much, compared to his brother, and has the figure and feel of a baby monkey - the one who clings effortlessly to his mother's fur, and weightlessly rides her wherever she goes. As far as I can tell, there is not an ounce of "babyfat" on his body, much like his sister Seville was. He's photogenic and charismatic, and a clear favorite of his bigger sister, who always wants to play with him.

-Oswell (aliases: Ozalicious. Noodle-Roo. Oz. Ozzie. LuvvieBunns. Squeaky.) is more like a luscious little Roly Poly Snuggly Buddha-bellied baby. He weighs 12 oz more than Trajan (despite the same height and head circumference, and smaller birth weight). He is making us concerned that he will eat us out of house and home.  It seems that my body has tapped out at its current milk supply and it's not enough for him. Though I have some great milk-producing supplements, they cause me quite a bit of personal discomfort, so I'm not sure I can torture myself to keep taking them to the level that would produce to Oswell's demand. Though I have all the obligatory feelings of inadequacy as a mother, I remind myself that your average mom starts supplementing with solid food when her baby weighs, oh, say, 12-15 lbs or so. So there is no shame in being unable to sustain 35 lbs of baby from breast alone (right?). We are starting to give him extra formula bottles now and again, and he is sleeping a little better.  Oswell is really into rolling over, bouncing, and all things "my-cool-new-body." Where Trajan wants to know how the world works, Oswell wants to know how he himself works, and he's certainly getting it down. He rolls over the instant you put him in bed and then cries to be turned back over again. It's a long and tedious exercise getting him to sleep, but he's very cute about it so all is forgiven.

-Seville (aliases: Savilla la Maravilla (pronounced in perfect Spanish of course: saveeya la madaveeya. translation: Seville the Marvelous), Sweetheart, The Big Sister. She used to be called The Poopsmith when she was a baby, but she doesn't want us to call her that now). Seville is in preschool now, doing big girl stuff. She has accepted purple into her catalog of colors she likes (so she has two now. pink and purple). She loves to play with her brothers, even though all they do is smile at her. She says funny things all the time, and as every parent, I wish I wrote them all down. Some favorites that I remember:

"Mommy, sometime, when the moon is up, we should buy the moon a present. We should buy it some stars. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots [...] of stars!" She also told me I could make it come down by playing it music, and then we could release the stars from their ribbons. I should hire her to write my songs.

"my face starts to look like a raisin whenever I poop" (sorry, Seville, to preserve that for posterity, but it was too funny).

"I don't wanna die..." which commenced in a conversation about dying and how your body stays here but your spirit goes to heaven. And no, you're not going to die anytime soon, but when you do, there will be lots of people in heaven who will be so excited to see you they'll put their arms around you and give you a big hug... "but... would they have arms?"

Putting two and two together one day, Seville informed me that peanut butter is made out of pee, nuts, and butter.

Pictures from this Fall:

2010 Fall

6 Months

Bedtime Stories

That's right. They're officially 6 months old! Which means they're more like 4 month-olds, being 2 months premature. They're not the size of 4 month-olds, mind you - they're already busting out of all those cute fall clothes I bought in 3-6 month size (aargh!). Unlike Seville, they are little chunk-a-lunks, growing like weeds. But developmentally, they're more like 4 month-olds, which means they're starting to play with toys, chew on stuff, Oswell can roll over, and they're starting to get picky about where and when they sleep. Which means I'm officially on house-arrest until they drop a nap or two or seven. I'll catch you guys on the flip side - wish me luck as I descend into the depths of isolation and reclusiveness. If I start to act weird it's because I've forgotten how to socially interact with adult human beings, so I hope you'll cut me a little slack and still be my friend.

Sleeping Arrangements

Anyway, you'd think we'd take more pictures, given how cute multiple babies are, but cameras inconveniently require hands to operate (stupid camera-makers), and so there's actually not a lot of photography going on around here. Here are a few recent-ish pictures though.

Boys n' Grandma

And by the way, as long as we're talking about hands, or the lack thereof, I am in bewilderment over ANY piece of baby equipment that requires two hands to operate! Seriously Graco???!!  What are they thinking? I have a number of things (car seats, swings, baby carriers) that have these weird snap/lock/release/lever/clasp thingies that require BOTH HANDS!! Honestly, I just want to slap those designers, if not do something more severe that I shouldn't print here lest it be interpreted as a "threat." Especially since some of them seem to be designed as "safety" measures (so... you think that it's safer to dangle the baby precariously  by a combination of my teeth and my left knee while balancing on one foot in order to free up both hands to undo your clasp instead of just having single-handed operation? yeah, that's just brilliant.) Anyway, if any of you work for a baby-gear company, would you please hand them a real, crying baby and say, "here, now try." Cuz apparently the empty warehouses in Bangladesh which are full of nothing but able-bodied adults do not convey the ridiculousness of what they are asking parents to accomplish with their fancy 5-star rated piece of equipment that's purportedly making parents' lives easier (as if!).

First Day of (Pre) School

Jared's New Look

As for Seville, she started pre-school a couple of weeks ago. I was really nervous about her letting me leave her somewhere without me. After all, I can't even leave her at church nursery without her getting all clingy and momma's girl on me, and she knows those people. But as with most things, I was more nervous about it than she was. We spent lots of time preparing her in advance and talking about what was going to happen, even going so far as to role-play her first day of school, complete with me peacefully leaving with a kiss and then coming back to get her at the end. Much to my surprise and delight, our plan worked! I took her to her classroom, explored it a bit with her, and then got up the guts to say I had to leave and could I have a kiss goodbye. She kissed me and that was that! Then I paced the floors at my house for 2 hours. Amazingly, her teacher did not call me frantic to come get her, she did not cry for me for 2 hours, she did not get hit by a bus or fall and break anything. When I went to pick her up she was happy and told me about her day. Go figure. (and by the way, I know you're wondering how on earth I am planning to get Seville to preschool and back twice a week. SO WAS I! My saint of a neighbor, whose twin boys are Seville's age and in her class, and with whom I had arranged to carpool, said that her stomach turned thinking about me loading all our kids and taking them to school, even for my "share," and she'll just do the driving. Hallelujah! Did I mention she's a saint? yeah.)

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

Schedule

A friend of mine recently asked about my schedule, making the assumption that it was probably unpredictable. He's right, of course, mostly (though, contrary to my personal nature and instincts, we feed the boys on a pretty tight schedule. It seems to be the only way not to have an unraveling free-for-all of chaos). Rather than just tell him that, I had to go and make a snide response and detailed the essence of my schedule:

My schedule is probably more predictable than you might think. It goes like this: 7am: get bottles ready, 7:05am, change babies' diapers, 7:15am figure out a way to feed two babies simultaneously, 7:35am: take bottles out of mouths so you can burp the baby that is about to spit up all over everything, say uselessly soothing words to the other baby who is screaming because you took his bottle out of his mouth, 7:36am: put bottle back in screaming baby's mouth, try to jiggle one half of body to burp one baby without choking/drowning the other, 7:37am: give up on this, put other baby back down and put bottle back in its mouth, 7:39am: pick up other baby to burp, catch remaining baby before accidentally dumping him on the floor during unsuccessful one-handed pick up maneuver, 7:40am: try to reposition babies using only one hand each, try not to damage heads or other floppy appendages in the process. 7:41am, put bottles back in mouths, 7:45am: frantically reach for burp-cloth to wipe up the first half of baby's breakfast which he just spat up all over pants, 7:45am: abort! abort burp-cloth grab to rescue falling babies who were dumped off your lap in hurried maneuver, 7:46am: pick up bottles from wherever they landed, without dumping babies on the floor this time, 7:47am: take a deep breath, chant to self, "it's ok to have baby vomit all over my pants, it's ok to have baby vomit all over my pants," 7:48am: notice spit-up all over expensive couch, take another deep breath, chant to self, "babies' safety is more important than couch, babies' safety is more important than couch," 7:50am: finish first bottle, pick up crying baby to bounce, pat, and burp with one half of body while miraculously holding the other half of body motionless. 7:52am: ignore warm sticky stream of spit-up trickling down the inside of shirt. 7:55am: finish second bottle, pick up second baby and do the double-baby-bouncing-burping routine. 8:00am: pick up and hold babies like a litter of puppies and find a way to rock self into standing position, go to nursery and put litter of babies on changing table. 8:01am: begin changing first baby's diaper, 8:02am: try to keep other baby from kicking first baby in the face, reposition babies and continue to wipe up poop, 8:04am: wipe face and front of body of projectile pee, also wipe down baby's brother. 8:06am: untangle babies' appendages and reposition again, begin changing second baby's diaper, 8:07am: sooth baby whose face got bonked by other baby's head. Remove everyone's wet, pee-soaked clothes and dress in something dry and hopefully "cute," 8:15am: swaddle babies and try to settle them into sleeping or other satisfied state, 8:20am: continue bouncing and swaying and shhhing, 8:30am: continue pacing house and trading babies back and forth to get them settled, 8:40am continue efforts, 9:00am continue efforts, 9:30am: babies are sleeping. go to bathroom, change out of milk and pee soaked shirt, put bagel in toaster for nutritious breakfast, start pumping milk for next feeding, look at facebook and enjoy moment of respite, 9:35am: moment over. listen in despair as babies fuss while you are hooked up to pump and unable to respond to cries. 9:40am: have a good cry yourself, 9:50am finish pumping, go put pacifiers in babies' mouths, notice that one of them is poopy, 9:55am: change poopy baby's diaper, lament that I'm still wearing pajama pants, 9:58am: look longingly at bagel in toaster, start preparing bottles for 10am feeding, 9:59am, take single bite of cold, dry, toasted bagel, take bottles to feeding station and retrieve babies, 10:00am: repeat. 1:00pm: repeat, 3:00pm: repeat, 7:00pm repeat, 10:00pm repeat, 1:00am repeat, 4:00am: repeat, ...

This, of course, represents the easy days, when Seville is not around...

As the author of "Juggling Twins" noted, you have to have the "whack-a-mole" mentality 24/7 (you know, that arcade game you can play at Chuck E Cheese and other places, where different moles pop up out of a bunch of holes and you have a mallet and you're trying to whack as many as you can by just staying on your toes all the time? that one). One of the most astounding parts of twin-momdom is just how constantly repetitive everything is. As soon as you finish any task, you have another one to do, and you can't put your guard down for a second. Certainly you can't expect down time, because if you do you'll be frustrated to tears by its absence.  But it's all kinds of fun, too (I can only say that because I'm well rested, thanks to our shift-sleeping plan. Heaven help parents of twins who don't get sleep at night, which is the other 99% of them).


In other news, we had a photoshoot done recently. Here are some pictures captured with much effort and photoshopping to deceive you into thinking that twins do things like... say... sleep peacefully simultaneously (ha!). They're cute, though, ain't they?

Happy Birthday Babes

So these guys finally reached their birthday. The day there were SUPPOSED to be born, that is. Yesterday. Every time I get frustrated with their lack of eating skills or lack of pooping skills or lack of head-maneuvering skills, I get all kinds of attitude and say things like, "why can't you figure out how to eat you nitwit! It's not like you were born yesterd.... oh, wait, it IS like you were born yesterday. nevermind." A close variation on this sentence has come out of my mouth several times today. Okay, minus the "nitwit" part. What do you think I am, verbally abusive?

Anyway, as such their lives really should start counting from now. Pretend I had a coupla babies yesterday, and they will start moving and laughing and batting at objects all in due time. And unfortunately sleeping more than 2 hours in a row at night will take that much longer too.

Speaking of which, Jared and I have this brilliant shift-sleeping plan that is making all this quite do-able. He goes to bed around 10pm, but I stay up until 2 or 3am. I handle the feedings/burpings/cryings/poopings during that time, and after that I get to go to bed. Jared wakes for the 4am-ish feeding, but goes back to bed for a couple of hours before he gets up for the day (he doesn't have to do things like nurse and pump when he feeds them, so it's pretty quick. Nothing like the 2 hours I spend at every feeding, only to eat a snack, put on some clothes, go to the bathroom and figure out how I get to spend the next 15 minutes before it's time to start over.). Anyway, I sleep until about 10am (a million thanks to the folks who are coming over in the morning to let me do that!). And so far there are some great things about this. Mostly I find that as long as I get sleep I can deal with just about anything else. I may have 3 people screeching bloody-murder at me during the day, but if I'm well rested, I can tell myself that, in fact, no one is dying and we're all going to be fine. eventually. And furthermore, I'm not fighting my natural night-owl nature, and there's something soul-recharging about that. I just go ahead and stay awake during my creative time (late at night) instead of squashing it trying to force myself to fall asleep at a decent hour. Even though I have little time for actually DOING anything creative, just being awake for it and having creative thoughts is more than I've had in ages (you wouldn't believe all the really great blog posts you've been missing. I've thought them though! Does that count?). Jared even claims that he gets more sleep now than he did before because I'm not keeping him up with my tossing and turning and reading and fiddling with tea cups and chapstick and iPhones and magazines next to him in bed. If this new plan didn't mean that we spend virtually zero time together we'd probably keep it forever. That and the fact that we need to have someone over here in the morning so I can sleep, which works while people are taking pity on us, but probably won't last for long.

By the way, if you'd like to be one of those great folks that helps us out, you can sign up! We have this "Care Calendar" thing, where you can sign up for meals and baby shifts and things like that: www.CareCalendar.org. Our calendar ID is 36494 and our password is "engstrom." We are SO grateful to all the generous people are making sure we are fed and rested, which makes this twin experience actually enjoyable, instead of harrowing. Thank you!

Here are some pictures from our at-home adventures:

Seville meets her brothers for the first time.

Checkin' out Brickley

Now that they're home, we can snuggle them up like this.

....aaaaaaand the excitement starts to wear off. :)

Actually, Seville is being quite sweet with them, holding them all the time, shoving pacifiers into their little mouths every time they whine. She's had a tough adjustment, and she's being a doll, all things considered (at least she takes out her anger at being de-throned on people like Grandma. And Daddy. Not her brothers. so far).

And Now, to Really Gross You Out...

Brickley and Oswell will be 6 weeks old tomorrow, and will have been home for 2 weeks.  Last time I brought a baby home (Seville, obviously), 2 weeks into it was getting pretty difficult for me personally. I struggled mightily with deep postpartum depression and had an extremely difficult recovery from a C-Section to boot. Since I had another unavoidable C-Section this time, and since I was warned that pregnancy and post-pregnancy hormones are twice as severe with twins, we wanted to do everything we could to avoid the dark days of last time. We were better prepared in lots of ways, but there's one thing I really honestly think made a huge difference.

It's like this... every mammal on the planet eats its own placenta after birth - except humans, for obvious reasons (like, the fact that we would barf all over ourselves even attempting such a feat, completely defeating the purpose, for example).  But there are rumors about eating the placenta and what it does for you. Like that it eases and speeds your recovery. And that it stabilizes your hormones keeping postpartum depression in check.

I had heard these things, but since the babies were born 2 months early - at least a month before we expected to have to think of any immediate post-birth needs - I hadn't had time to look into what is called "placenta encapsulation," - where they put your placenta in capsules for you to take, like any other benign, un-disgusting supplement, with your daily vitamins.

In the recovery room, one of the doctors brought my placenta for me to see. Its rupturing was the cause of the emergent C-Section. She knew I was extremely disappointed at not having a vaginal birth, and came to show me the signs of rupture so I could see, with my own eyes, why my baby needed to come out asap and why he might not have survived a vaginal birth). You could see the signs of distress and hemorhagging on the one placenta. The whole "eating your own placenta" thing came up then, and I mentioned to Jared that it was a bummer we hadn't had time to look into it.

The nurse looked at us and told us it was easy to do yourself.  "What?" She was from Russia or something, and I don't know whether this is more common in Easter Europe or she was just a hippie at heart, but she walked us through how to do it yourself. And bless Jared's heart, he actually did this for me (that is serious dedication!).

Step 1: Wash thoroughly (there's a video at the bottom of this post of Jared washing the placentas. There were two of them, in my case.)

Step 2: Freeze until you have time to do something with it (and/or so you can slice it later) (you could skip this step, actually, if you had time to work with it right away and planned the "blender" method).

Step 3: Slice thinly and/or puree' (Here is where it gets a little confusing. Russian Hippie Nurse told us to freeze it and then slice it very very thin, and then dry on a dehydrator, not unlike jerky. Jared tried this and it just wasn't drying fast enough and he was afraid it would go rancid, so he looked up how to do it on our "friend," the Internet. The folks he Googled were putting it right in the blender and drying it like fruit leather, so he switched methods and went with that.

Step 4: Spread blended placenta on a fruit dehydrator and dry.

Step 5: pull or chip dried placenta off the dryer, and pulverize it into a powder (blender, magic bullet, mortar & pestle. whatever works. I think Jared used our magic bullet).

Step 6: borrow capsule-making thingy from brother in law (Thanks Bryce!) (or get one at local Natures/Wild Oats/New Seasons/hippie food store), and put powder in capsules.

Voila! Placenta Pills.

These have been my friends these last 6 weeks, and oh what a difference they've made. Unless it's all in my head, which is ok too. Whatever works.

(WARNING:)If you're a glutton for punishment, and you have a strong stomach, here's a video of Jared getting the placenta out and washing it...