Friday, January 2. 7:40 a.m. -- The girls wake up. Clio first, as usual. She babbles to herself for a while, then starts calling, "Mommmmmmmyy!! Daddddddy!!" I nudge Alastair with my foot. It's his turn to get up with them, so I can catch a little extra rest.
9:15 a.m. -- My alarm wakes me up, and I'm surprised that I was actually asleep. The girls had been screaming and yelling downstairs -- for milk, for waffles, to sit in the big girl chairs -- who knows. While I lay in bed, I wondered a few times if I ought to get up, go downstairs and give A. a hand, but I had to deal with the more or less the same scenario the day before. It's his turn now.
9:30 -- After a quick shower, I come downstairs, eat half a banana (Elsa and Clio catch me in the act and, of course, ask for the other half) and warm up a cup of yesterday's coffee in the microwave. While Alastair takes a shower and gets dressed, I put the girls' shoes on, change Clio's diaper (she dirties it right after I put her shoes on, of course), and tell them that we're going to go to some friends' house and have pancakes. A few minutes later, as I'm getting their jackets on, Clio says, "Go friends! Have pan cakes!" I am amazed and delighted, and shower her with praise.
10:00 -- The usual mad scramble to get out the door: girls get all excited and start yelling for things (Elsa hat! Clio milk! Picka up! Picka up!) while Alastair can't find his glasses and I can't find my cell phone and we almost forget the diaper bag, and as usual in this kind of situation, we start snapping at each other. In the car, he's annoyed because I'm not positive what our friends' address is, I'm annoyed because he has no sense of direction, the girls are yelling "Nana phone! Nana phone!" but we don't have that CD in the car, and every other driver on the road is an asshole and all the lights are red and we should have listened to the GPS instead of my gut feeling, because this is a really stupid way to get to Jamaica Plain (then, what isn't?) and we're totally late and the girls are yelling for pancakes and my blood pressure must be through the roof.
10:45 -- Pancakes, coffee and conversation with friends we haven't seen in a while. Once we recover from the trip there, a good time is had by all. The girls play nicely and enthusiastically with our friends' 2-1/2 year old girl, while their 10-month old baby boy crawls amicably around watching the action and mouthing toys. Elsa rebukes him adorably when he pulls at the string on her sleeve: "That not for you!" Then the girls all sit at a kid-sized table in the kitchen and eat their weight in pineapple, melon, and strawberries. (Surprisingly, they only pick at the pancakes they were so excited about.) Later, they all dance adorably to a "baby loves jazz" CD.
12:30 -- We say our goodbyes and head home. I talk and sing to the girls the whole way so they won't fall asleep. Success: they make it home awake and go down quickly for a nap at around 1:15.
1:40 -- Clio wakes up (or maybe she never actually fell asleep) and starts babbling to herself. I am lying in bed, trying to read The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, but soon realize that it's just not going to happen. Clio is trying to sing Banana Phone: "doo doo Nana phone! Doo doo doo doo Nana phone!" I go into the nursery hoping I can soothe her back to sleep, but she's got an extremely poopy diaper. I change her and take her out of the nursery so Elsa can keep napping, then bring her into bed with me and pretend to sleep, hoping she'll konk out and I can go back to my book. Instead, she pokes at various parts of my face with her index finger and giggles. When I say, "Let's go night night," she will squeeze her eyes shut for a few seconds, then smile and start poking me again. We lie there for a half hour or so, Clio alternately poking, babbling, and crawling on top of me.
2:30 -- Having accepted the fact that Clio is not going to sleep, I bring her downstairs and putter for a little while -- Clio is happy to play by herself while I do this -- then get her coat on. Per New Year's Parenting resolution #2, I'm taking her for the rest of the afternoon, while Alastair will stay behind and look after Elsa. Clio and I go to the grocery store, and it is so easy, so simple, so delightful and calm and fun that I almost find myself in tears. This is what I've been missing. She calls out the names of things on the shelves. She keeps tilting her head back to look at the lights, and I tickle her and she giggles so adorably that people around us turn and look and smile. I feel painfully jealous of my friends with just one kid, or even two kids of different ages.
4:45 -- The second we get home, Clio goes from being happy and contented and calm to whiny and cranky and impatient. She wants to be picked up. She wants crackers. She wants crayons. Elsa becomes equally loud and wound-up. We put Curious George on, but it does little to distract them as I try to put the groceries away and get their dinner ready and Alastair hurries around getting his gear together for his gig that night. (I'm going, too.) When the babysitter arrives at 5:15, I have approximately five minutes to run upstairs and get dressed, throw my make-up bag into my purse (I'll put it on in the bathroom at the bar) and we're out the door.
5:25 -- In the car, on the way to the club, A. and I apologize again to each other for having been so cranky and snippy to each other in the morning. I tell him how sweet and unstressful it was to go to the store alone with Clio. He is quiet for a moment, then says, "You know, when our friends say to us, 'having twins must be so hard; I don't know how you do it,' we're always so careful to say, 'well, having two or more kids at different ages is just as hard.' But you know what? Fuck that. Having two two-year-olds is ridiculous." We agreed we should pat ourselves on the back a little more often for how well we manage. We agreed that during long weekends and time off from work like this, we should get more daytime babysitting to avoid burnout. We realized that it had been almost a month since the two of us had gone on an actual "date," alone, and that that's too long. We get a parking spot right across the street from the bar.
6:30 pm -- Alastair is onstage playing, and sounds great. People filter in -- a good crowd is working up. I am drinking a glass of crappy but strong house chardonnay, and have a powerful urge to smoke a cigarette. I've never been an actual smoker, but there have been times in my life -- mostly during grad school -- when I would often have a cigarette or two in social / drinking situations. I feel suddenly nostalgic for my twenties. For uninterrupted conversations with friends and long, lazy weekend mornings at the diner. For eating out and going to movies. For the ease and lightness and spontaneity of it all. At the same time, I am self-aware enough to remember that by the time I was twenty-nine, thirty, I was getting bored with that life. I wanted a less self-focused existence. I wanted children.
11:30 -- We get home and say goodbye to the sitter (who reports that everything went fine, except that Elsa had a fit about sitting in her high chair; not surprising). I go into the girls' room as I do every night before bed and touch their cheeks and pull their blankets up over them. Tomorrow, I will be the one to get up with them, get them dressed, feed them breakfast. And though it would be nice to sleep in, I don't mind. In fact, I am looking forward to it. The next morning, when they wake up and Clio starts calling "Mommmmmy!" I will not groan and bury my head in the pillow. I will smile and get up right away. Because I just can't wait to see the little buggers. As exhausting and unrelenting as parenting -- and parenting twins in particular -- can be, it also brings me more joy and fulfillment than anything else I have ever done. Crazy how that works.
