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• The Problem with Pictures

  I know how much y'all love the cute pics of the girls. And I try to deliver as often as possible. The thing is, a little situation has developed. See, we've occasionally let the girls look at the back of the digital camera to see the pictures of themselves. So now, every time the camera comes out, Clio wants to see the babies.(Babies! Babies!) Which makes taking her picture decidedly challenging. Observe:   Mom quickly snaps a pic of Clio in her new chair, but she's already on her way over...   Read More... Posted Jul 04 2008, 01:06 PM by Roper with | with 12 comment(s) Filed under: twins, I am powerless, Clio, photographing babies, pictures

• The 18-month Lull

  As of this weekend -- Saturday, to be precise -- Elsa and Clio are 18 months old. Or one-and-a-half, as Alastair prefers to say. He thinks they're old enough to be referred to in years now, but I want to hang onto their babydom just a little while longer, so I shall keep referring to them in months. But only until they're thirteen.   The last few months have been, admittedly, rather challenging at times. I think it peaked at sixteen months, around the time I wrote this post, whining about the physical exhaustion of running around after two very active, very needy toddlers. But I feel like in the past couple of weeks, things have turned a corner. Maybe it's because the girls have gotten a bit more physically confident and independent -- they don't fall flat on their faces quite as often, or get as upset when they do. Or maybe it's because their language skills are suddenly blossoming, so it's a little easier to understand what they want -- not to mention a helluva lot of fun teaching them new words. Or maybe it's just because we've adjusted. Just as the line of babyproofing in our house grows higher and higher (They can almost reach the kitchen counter now! Damn!) our patience and endurance climb to keep pace with their level of energy and interactivity. Read More... Posted Jun 30 2008, 09:33 PM by Roper with | with 9 comment(s) Filed under: twins, pediatrician, exhaustion, playgrounds, twin language acquisition, throwing food, parenting twins, toddlers, parenthood, 18-month twins, twin toddlers

• Waffles and Bubbles and Flowers, Oh my!

  The whole language acquisition thing seems to be picking up 'round here. The girls keep surprising me with new words. Last week, I was getting the their breakfast ready -- Kashi waffles topped with applesauce, always a big hit -- and when I brought it to them, Elsa exclaimed "wa-foo!"   Oblivious as always, I first just smiled and repeated, in my dopey mom voice, "Yeah, wa-foo!" and then it hit me: by George, the girl is saying waffle! How long has she known this? Has she been holding out on me? Practicing in her crib at night? What else can she say? Pancakes? Eggs Benedict? So, of course, I started hooting "Yes! Waffles! That's right! Good girl! Waffles!" and trying to find ways to use "waffle" logically in sentences for the rest of the day. ("Remember at breakfast when you ate a waffle?" "You look very waffle today, Elsa!" "Dinnertime! We're not having waffles!") Read More... Posted Jun 26 2008, 04:13 PM by Roper with | with 11 comment(s) Filed under: twins, first words, twin language acquisition, learning spanish, learning to talk, sign language

• How Elsa is like Amy Winehouse

  Is it the devil-may-care attitude? Perhaps. The ratty hair? Only after particularly messy meals. The drug and alcohol addiction? Not as far as I know. The millions and millions of dollars? Oh how I wish. No, what Elsa and Amy have in common is a nasty little skin infection called impetigo. Now, mind you, I don't follow the doings of Miss Winehouse too closely, and apparently her courageous battle with impetigo is old news. Newsweek, that bastion of serious journalism, covered it back in April. But I wasn't aware until we got home from the doctor's office yesterday when I did a Google image search for impetigo and up came dozens of shots of Amy Winehouse's bumpy-looking face (along with a bunch of grody photos of much worse impetigo than Elsa has).   In Elsa's case, it's a quarter-sized sore on her upper arm that looks rather like a popped blister. When it first showed up a few days ago, as a little red spot, we thought maybe the strap of the carseat or stroller had chafed her, and it had gotten a little irritated. It didn't seem to bother her at all, though, so we didn't think much of it. But a couple of days later it was suddenly much bigger, and there were some other little red dots around it, so we took her to the pediatrician. It took the doctor approximately .08 seconds to glance at her and say, "impetigo." (Which, when I'd seen written on lists of 'common childhood ailments' I'd always assumed to be pronounced im-PET-i-go. In fact, it's im-pe-TIE-go.)   Here's what it looks like.... Read More... Posted Jun 22 2008, 04:30 PM by Roper with | with 12 comment(s) Filed under: twins, infection, childhood illnesses, amy winehouse, rehab, impetigo

• Toddlers are like sharks

  If they don't keep moving forward, they die. OK, maybe they don't die. But they definitely get fussy. I proved this theorem today at our local Stop and Shop. Not that it needed proving. In fact, honestly, I don't know what I was thinking, but we needed food and I thought it might be fun to see if the girls were  finally big enough for one of those cool shopping cart that looks like a car, with the little cab and two steering wheels in front. They were. In fact, they seemed to really dig it. But only as long as I was moving. (I mean, who wants to sit in a parked car, right?)   So, picture yours truly doing laps around the produce section, trying to gather up all the exotic ingredients for this big vegetarian jambalaya thing I'm planning to make (damn this resolution to eat less meat! Damn it! Damn it!) as well as other produce items, without letting the car(t) idle for more than twelve seconds at a time. Whoops, there went the tomatoes. Hey, was that parsley? Or watercress in disguise? Okra? Where are you, okra? (Why the am I making something with OKRA in it, for God's sake? I'm from New England!)   Meanwhile, middle-aged and elderly onlookers are making googly-eyed smiles at the girls (who are, no doubt, googling back) while I blithely ignore them. I'm trying to fill a bag with green beans here, people! Only have a few seconds! Must separate nice beans from withered crap....and then Clio or Elsa starts squirming and whining and attempt to crawl out of the car, all the while saying "dow! dow!" (translation: free me, please) So I rock the cart back and forth for a little while, which quiets them temporarily, until they remember that they're not six months old, and then I have no choice but to move on. Good-bye, beans. Good-bye, deli counter. Good-bye to the old lady screaming, "WELL AREN'T YOU TWO JUST ADORABLE???!!!"   I must have walked about three miles in that grocery store today. Which is great for the ole abs and glutes, I guess, but it was possibly the most inefficient shopping trip ever. It was also not a particularly budget-savvy endeavor. No time to comparison shop when you've got impatient passengers leaning on their squeaky horns and fighting over the steering wheels. (Yes, that's right; the fact that there was a steering wheel for each of them did absolutely nothing to prevent them from squabbling.) By the end, I was basically plucking things off the shelf at random. Organic split pea soup with ham? Hey! I bet the girls will love this! (Wrong, wrong, wrong.)   Needless to say, I don't think I'll be repeating this activity anytime soon. Unless you're just picking up a few quick things, grocery shopping really is best left a solitary endeavor. Or an endeavor for young, childless couples, free to sniff each peach and nectarine, make ribald banter over chicken parts, and linger languidly in front of the extra virgin olive oils. Ah. Those were the days.   Of course, there's always Peapod (Stop & Shop's delivery service) which we've become big fans of over the past year. But as convenient as it is, I miss the sensory experience of actually seeing and selecting my own foodstuffs. (See "chicken parts" above.) And it pisses me off that they put, like, one thing in every damned plastic shopping bag. So, I suppose the best solution, for now, is squeezing in solo grocery runs wherever we can. Unless, of course, there are any personal-shoppers-and-chefs-in training out there who are looking for on-the-job experience. (Unpaid, of course).   Anyone? Anyone?   Posted Jun 18 2008, 08:01 PM by Roper with | with 13 comment(s) Filed under: twins, grocery store with twins, I am powerless, food, shopping with twins

• Twins = Bubonic plague?

  I recently read this article in Boston Magazine, and it really bummed me out. The author, Julie Suratt, a mother of twins herself, notes that Massachusetts has the nation's highest twin birth rate, then says, "I have to wonder if this deluge of doubles is a good thing for their parents—or for our area as a whole. I adore my boys and wouldn't trade them for the world. But I would no more wish multiples on a couple than I would bubonic plague." Yikes!   Now, I realize she's exaggerating for the sake of impact with the bubonic plague thing. Being funny and all that -- I've tried it myself a few times. But the tone of the whole article is decidedly negative, and really rather whiney, in my opinion. Many of Suratt's complaints about the difficulties of raising twins could easily apply to raising any two (or more) children close in age. And to hear her kvetch about the cost of twin supplies and gear -- as someone from my MOT club noted -- you'd think she'd never heard of a yard sale, Craig's list, borrowing from friends or, God forbid, making due with less (I count three double strollers on her list...) And didn't anyone give the poor woman a baby shower?   "Our tally for diapers (at least 20 a day) and formula (16 bottles a day) for the first year was about $5,000. Add to that the clothing, furniture, and gear (to wit: double stroller, double jogger, double snap-n-go stroller, two highchairs, two playpens, two infant car seats, two toddler car seats, two cribs, two swings, two bouncy seats, two baby Bjorns…), and we probably spent $15,000."   (And, man, she must have had crazy-poopy babies to go through 10+ diapers per kid per day! I don't think we ever used that many, even in the earliest months.)   A big part of the article is spent discussing the role that assisted reproductcive technology (ART) plays in the burgeoning Mass. twin population, and the burden that twins pose on the healthcare system, due to premature births, complications, etc. The author makes a reasonable point in suggesting that fertility clinics educate their patients more fully about the chances of multiples with ART, encourage the transfer of only one embryo in IVF when possible, even if it means lower success rates for the clinic. But the fact is, infertile couples want success, too. Many try multiple IVFs to no avail. Implanting multiple embryos is done with the hope that even just ONE will develop into a pregnancy. Is it wrong for a couple to try for that? Has Suratt considered how painful and frustrating it is to face month after month, year after year, of failed attempts to conceive? (She conceived twins "naturally" as they say, without any ART.)   I didn't actually have IVF myself; I got pregnant through a combination of ovulation drugs and an IUI. The chances of multiple pregnancy in this type of procedure are actually higher than with IVF, but the process is much less involved and much less expensive. With my particular issue (polycystic ovaries) my insurance and the clinic I went to wouldn't have let me go straight to IVF -- a much costlier and more involved process -- without trying IUI first. (My fertility doc was, in fact, the one mentioned in the article.)   Would the author have had me lobby to go straight to IVF -- one embryo, of course, to avoid the risk of twins -- and pose a greater burden on the healthcare system? Or would she say, "why don't you just adopt?" -- the phrase that makes anyone who's dealt with infertility feel instantly homicidal toward the sayer? ("Just adopt." Uh huh. Hey, if your spouse dies, why don't you "just remarry"? If your wedding ring is stolen, why don't you "just replace it"? If you lose your job, why don't you "just move somewhere else and get a new one?")   Suratt also complains that twins are taking up too many spots in daycare and preschool, but that's just silly when you consider the fact that the overall birth rate in Massachusetts has actually declined over the past 15 years. (Thank you, Mass Department of Public Health.)   I'm not denying that twins pose unique and often formidable challenges both to parents and to society as a whole. And it sounds like the author had a particularly difficult experience, with the premature birth of her boys, and her struggle with post-partum depression. I sympathize, and I know that everyone has different experiences in becoming a parent. I just worry that articles like this perpetuate a belief that twins are some kind of, well, plague on society. (Would anyone dare say that the pre- and post-natal care that keeps more disabled babies alive today than in the past is a bad thing because it's a burden on parents and taxpayers?)   Anyway, I didn't mean to spend a whole post critiquing an article by a fellow MOT who is most likely a very nice and reasonable person, and whose article was probably sensationalized and negative-ized by her editors for the sake of controversy. But I guess I did. So to end on a bloggier and more positive note: any expectant twin moms who are reading this and freaking out -- or any twin moms who are feeling overwhelmed by the challenges (which certainly exist!) of raising twins -- I hope you'll check out my post from last year on the top five reasons why twins rule. (And add your own items to the list.)   Posted Jun 10 2008, 08:15 PM by Roper with | with 20 comment(s) Filed under: twins, pregnant with twins, chaos, Double Trouble, IVF, Boston Magazine, Julie Suratt

• Food fight!

  We've got some eating issues in the Baby Squared household lately. In the interest of A.) Making sure I'm not the only one out there going through this B.) Letting you know that you're not the only one out there going through this, and C.) Getting free advice, I feel I should share.   The most annoying problem by far is the throwing of food. Lately, when the girls don't feel like eating something, instead of just not eating it, they drop or fling it onto the floor. Broccoli? No thank you. Get the wretched thing out of my sight, please. Flick, fling, plop. Then they make the "more" sign in hopes that I will give them whatever it is they do want to eat, usually fruit, yogurt or Annie's cheddar bunnies. When they're feeling particularly punchy, they just start wiping their trays clean, flinging everything onto the floor. (Walls, etc.; while cleaning the other day I had to pick encrusted bits of mac and cheese off the windowsill with my nails -- what was left of them post crib-sheet changing, that is.)   This is Elsa's specialty, and we respond to it by sternly saying no, food is not for throwing, it's for eating, etc., and take her tray away for a little bit, then give her another shot a few minutes later. The typical result: she eats a little more, then starts flinging again. Rinse, and repeat. It seems like despite our efforts to be "strict" about this one -- eventually, we say OK, that's it, meal's over -- it doesn't seem to stop her from letting out her inner John Belushi the next time around. She knows it gets a reaction. So, what to do? Are toddlers this age capable of learning table manners or should we just let them act like Visigoths? (No offense to any Visigoths out there; I've just heard your table manners aren't the best.)   The other issue is snacking. And this may be the cause of the uptick in pickiness / food flinging at mealtimes. Increasingly, it seems, the girls ALWAYS want to be eating. Clio seems particularly bent on carb-loading in the afternoons (a girl after my own heart). "Kah-ga," meaning cracker, is one of her favorite words. I try to give her things like fruit and cheese as snacks if she's already had crackers or dry cereal, but the girl will whine and fuss until she's got something flour-based in her maw. Maybe I am just giving in too quickly. But she is damned stubborn. And do you know just how annoying a toddler's whining is? Of course you do. And you know how much easier it is to give the kid the damned cracker rather than try to distract her with educational activities or take the time to cut up an apple and then convince her to eat that instead. It's even worse when two toddlers are whining at once, like they're going to DIE if you don't give them more cheddar bunnies RIGHT NOW.     I suspect that I'm giving in too quickly to their demands. I know kids this age need snacks, but I'm guessing that we shouldn't let them "graze" as much as we do. On the other hand, they seem awfully damned hungry. (But maybe it's just an oral fixation thing?)  I'd love to hear from the masses: Do you put limits on how much your little 'uns eat between meals, or are you spineless like me? Does it matter? Am I setting them up for a lifetime of poor eating habits?      In the meantime, I'm about to embark on a perilous outing: I'm going with the girls, in 95 degree heat, to a toddler-filled birthday party for 4-year old twins (whose hand-me-downs make up a good part of Elsa & Clio's wardrobe!), sans husband. All I can say is: I hope there's beer.   Posted Jun 08 2008, 02:27 PM by Roper with | with 23 comment(s) Filed under: twins, feeding twins, table manners, no spiders or visigoths, throwing food

• Never blog angry

  I'm sure that's one of the most important rules of blogging. Right up there with "don't blog drunk." But I have got to tell you, dear readers, I just changed two crib sheets, and I am PISSED.   Can I just say? I hate hate hate hate HATE changing crib sheets.   Seriously, my idea of hell would be a million cribs, lined up in a row, and a stack of a million fitted cotton crib sheets to wrangle onto them. Put some bumpers on those cribs, and have them be up against a wall -- oh, and throw in a couple of whining, overtired toddlers fighting over a book nearby -- and I'm pretty much in the ninth circle.   Is there a reason that the manufacturers make the things exactly two centimeters too small, so that you have to use every ounce of strength in your body and tear off at least one fingernail attempting to get the last corner on? Is it right that you should have to pry the mattress out of the crib, crawl on top of the rails and assume all manner of compromising positions for such a simple task? I mean, I know the sheet's got to be tight -- SIDS and all -- but come ON. All I'm asking for is a little give -- an extra smidgeon of fabric, a dab of Lycra -- anything!   Now, mind you, I don't change the crib sheets very often, because we use those "Super crib sheet" things that go over the actual fitted sheet and can be easily snapped on and off. But sometimes when they're in the wash, the girls will end up sleeping a nap or a night or two on the regular sheets, and sometimes even when the super crib sheet is on, it moves out of place and the sheet below gets drooled on or spilled on or what have you. Honestly, I think the last time I changed the sheets was maybe two months ago. But as far as I'm concerned, once a year would be too often.   Maybe we just registered for the wrong brand. Maybe Carter's (Carter's! Aren't they supposed to know what they're doing?) is working off some outdated standard crib mattress size template. Or maybe they're just a bunch of sadistic a**holes. (Is Carter's a Babble sponsor? Er....hey, guys! Love your PJs!) Maybe I'm the only one with this problem. At this point, I don't particularly want to go out and buy new sheets. But if there was some brand out there that promised easy-peasy changes or patented "No-curse-corners" I might change my mind.   There. I blogged angry. I'm sorry. I promise that my next post will be poignant, thought-provoking and hysterically funny, rife with adorable photographs. For the moment, though....GRRR!!! Crib sheets!!   Posted May 29 2008, 08:06 PM by Roper with | with 23 comment(s) Filed under: twins, bedtime routine, Carter's, crib sheets suck

• Eating out With Toddlers: A Primer

  Before A. and I had the kids, we loved eating out. It was one of our favorite things to do together, and we always did it a little more often and little better than we could really afford, but it never felt like money wasted. We'd spend lazy Saturday mornings drinking bottomless cups of coffee and stuffing ourselves with omelettes at various breakfast joints, have drinks and appetizers in the middle of the afternoon in the midst of long, leisurely rambles through Boston or Cambridge. Occasionally, we'd splurge on a nice dinner at a place where the waiters are annoying ("what we've done is we've taken a filet of salmon, we've rubbed it with saffron, then dragged it through a vat of roasted, pulverized almonds, then nailed it to the wall and thrown little snails at it...") but the food is so-o-o-o good.   When the girls were teeny tiny newborns, and basically all they did was sleep, we went out a few times with them in their infant seats and ate normal meals, like normal adults. Those days, needless to say, are long gone. We've tried to go out with them a few times more recently, and I'm sorry to say that it's really not that pleasant. In fact, generally, I would not recommend dining out with twin toddlers. But if you are foolhardy enough to attempt it, you might find the following tips helpful:   1. Bring food. Forget about this notion of waiting to "order" food because it's a "restaurant." Once you get your kiddos in a highchair, and assuming it's near a mealtime, they're gonna want to eat. So bring a snack and a sippy cup to hold them over until your order arrives. Or ask the restaurant to bring you some bread, stat. No, forget that; it takes too long. Bring your own.   2. Bring toys, too. Or books, if that's what they're into. Basically anything they can hold onto before and after eating so they won't reach for the knives / Sweet and Low packets / wine glasses / your plate / etc. (Of course, they will anyway). In a pinch, spoons make pretty good toys, as do paper napkins.   3. Go at an off-peak time. Everyone will have a better time if the restaurant you go to is not crowded, so you don't feel rushed and there are fewer other customers for your children to annoy. And by off-peak, I mean really off-peak. We made the mistake of going out this past Sunday morning to our neighborhood breakfast hotspot at around 9:00, thinking that we'd beat the hungover college crowd, but instead, we hit the older people and families with young kids crowd (duh). We felt stressed out the whole time. At one point Alastair looked across the table at me and said "This sucks!" A better strategy might have been tip #4.   4. Go to a mediocre restaurant. It's less likely to be crowded, and let's face it: it's not like you're going to have an exquisite gustatory experience when you're moving knives and glasses and coffee cups out of reach of your children with one hand and shoveling food into your own face with another. Also, your child will prefer whatever you're having to whatever you've ordered for them, so you won't get to eat much of it anyway. If we'd gone to the cavernous, dimly-lit breakfast place across town staffed by surly Eastern European women instead of the aforementioned breakfast hot spot, we might not have gotten fresh fruit on our plates, but we might have actually enjoyed ourselves.   5. Don't do it. Just don't. Unless you absolutely have to -- you're on vacation or something. Really, you're better off just staying home (it's cheaper, too) and make eating out a special, adults-only treat, as we did last night, to celebrate our anniversary. We got a sitter for a couple of hours and went to a great restaurant with annoying waiters and overpriced wine and not a highchair or booster seat in sight. And it. was. wonderful.   Posted May 13 2008, 10:40 AM by Roper with | with 19 comment(s) Filed under: twins, feeding twins, table manners, dining out

• Clio goes commando

  A quick anecdote: Yesterday was rainy and miserable, and after a rather cranky morning (we were determined to resist Clio's pleas for her pacifier, and though it meant listening to her scream for about 20 minutes, we won. We won!) I decided to take the girls over to our local indoor play gym. We had a blast. Elsa did a lot of running around flapping her arms and screaming with excitement, and Clio did a lot of playing with balls. She and I also teamed up on Elsa and rolled her around in a cylindrical mat thing, which Elsa absolutely loved, the little thrillseeker.   As we were getting ready to leave, and Clio was walking around waving and saying "bye!" to everyone in the lobby area, I noticed a big clump of something coming out of the bottom of her overalls. At first I thought it was a wad of napkins or something that she'd stuffed in there (??) then I got closer and saw that it was, in fact, her diaper. (Not dirty or even terribly wet, thank God). Somehow in the midst of all her running around, it had come off and out from under her onesie and down the leg of her pants like some kind of crazy baby party trick. She literally played her pants off.   Someday maybe we'll watch Flashdance together, and during the scene when Jennifer Beals takes her bra off from under her shirt, I'll look over at Clio -- who will be at least 13, because I wasn't allowed to see that movie until I was that old, and I'll be damned if she can -- and say, "you did that with your diaper once when you were little." And she'll roll her eyes at me and say, "I know mom, you told the whole world on your stupid blog." And I'll remind her that I also told the world how much I loved her and how awesome she and her sister are, and hopefully she'll say, "Yeah, I guess so." And then, hopefully, we'll turn off Flashdance and watch something better instead, because, really, it's not a very good movie.       Happy Mother's Day, all you awesome Babble mamas out there. May your children keep their pants on!         Posted May 10 2008, 05:15 PM by Roper with | with 8 comment(s) Filed under: twins, diapers, Clio, stupid baby tricks, mother's day

• Regression

  We were doing so well with the whole pacifier weaning thing. Really, we were.   We started using the things with the girls at an early age, following the 5 "S"s school of self-soothing: suck (that's the pacifier), swaddle, shush....um...shit. Swing? Sway? Something to do with movement. And another one. Sambuca?   Anyway, the point is, we were not bashful about giving the girls pacifiers in their early months, especially when trying to get them to sleep. Gradually, we made pacifiers the province of 1. The crib and 2. The car. (And kept them on hand for outings to stores, where they ran the risk of getting antsy.) Lately, the only time they really use them is in their cribs, while they sleep, and we're fine with that for the time being.   But last week, Clio started getting extremely cranky. She was breaking a top tooth (our children are still freakishly toothless for their age: Clio only has 2 teeth and Elsa only has 4), and obviously uncomfortable, running a slight fever, too. So we let the pacifier rules slacken a little and gave it to her outside of her crib. But it got to the point where she was asking for it all the time.   As it turns out, she had an ear infection. Her fever was up at 104.5 on Friday night, which was more than a little disconcerting. She's never had a fever that high before. And -- SPOILER ALERT FOR A 10-YEAR-OLD MOVIE -- ever since I saw that movie City of Angels, with Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage, I've been haunted by the opening scene, where a toddler gets a really high fever and the mom puts her in a cold bath, then takes her to the hospital, but she ends up dying. (I wasn't even close to being a mother when I saw the movie, and yet it terrified me.) So, we called the doctor and administered medication which, fortunately, worked, and took her to the doctor's the next day. Her right ear was nice and red and full-o-pus.   So, at least we knew what we were dealing with. She's definitely improved since we started giving her antibiotics. However, she's gotten used to having her pacifier now, and still whines for it regularly. And all you mothers of twins out there know what happens when you give one twin something: the other one wants it, too. So, now we've got Elsa jonesing for a pacifier whenever Clio is, which is often. Tonight they were so eager for their pacifiers they begged to be put into their cribs as soon as I got their pajamas on them, just so they could suck on the damned things. I'm hoping that as Clio's ear infection wanes and her tooth comes in we can gradually get her -- and Elsa -- back to their more moderate pacifier usage. Because I'm just not down with this regression thing. My hope has always been that by the time they're two, we can get them off the plastic teat completely. But we'll see...   Meanwhile, at least we are making forward progress on another front: utensils! Here, some snapshots of tonight's fork and spoon training session:   Die, potatoes! Die! Die!      Am I left-handed? I don't think I'm left-handed...      Hmm...I like the not-so-spiky end of this thing....     Is there a reason these things are a better option than my hands?   Posted May 07 2008, 07:50 PM by Roper with | with 10 comment(s) Filed under: teething, twins, feeding twins, pacifiers, ear infections, regression

• Take my twins -- please!

  I try to stay positive on this blog, and not gripe or groan excessively about the challenges of bringing up babies. Because relatively speaking, I've got it pretty good. And I don't mean just in the I-could-be-starving-in-a-war-torn-African-nation sense. Even in the mother-of-twins sense, I'm lucky. I've got financial stability, an awesome husband, a bunch of kickass virtual pals (that would be you), etc. My daughters are healthy and vibrant and almost always sleep through the night: seven to seven-thirty with nary a peep. How can I complain?   Well, I'm going to anyway. Because recently it feels like things have gotten a LOT harder. Having two mobile, basically non-verbal but very spirited 16-month-old daughters -- while wonderful in many ways -- is also freakin' EXHAUSTING. (Yes, this is going to be a post full of ALL CAPS.)   Being at home is by far the most relaxed scenario. The first floor of our house is pretty much child-proofed and the girls have their run of the place. They're capable of entertaining themselves to some extent. But they also like climbing and riding on things, which requires assistance. They want to be read to, but rarely both from the same book at the same time. They fight over toys and hurt each other by accident. They're constantly hungry.   The weather's been mild lately, so we've been taking them out into the back yard, which is a nice change of pace.  But being outside also means trying to keep Elsa from eating wood chips, then running to help Clio go down the slide again, then rescuing Elsa when she crawls up the back porch steps and can't get down, then picking Clio up to look at the birdies in the tree in the neighbors' yard. Seriously, I should have the body of a 19-year-old field hockey player given the energy I burn just running after the two of them. Instead I have a sore back, a flabby tummy, and circles under my eyes. Oh yeah, and NO BOOBS.     Note our cool new climbing structure -- forty bucks on Craigslist!   Of course, hanging out flabby, boobless and exhausted in the yard is cake compared with actually trying to go out to, say, a playground alone with the girls. In that setting, at any given moment, it's pretty likely that I'm neglecting one of my children. I am that mom at the playground that you hate: the one who is nowhere to be found while her child is eating sand or whacking your baby on the head or climbing up a precarious set of steps en route to the curly slide, leaving you morally obligated to rescue her. But it's not because I'm busy chatting on my cell phone or flirting with the cute dad by the swingset. It's because I'm chasing my other child, who is also eating sand, whacking someone on the head or climbing toward certain peril AND probably needs her nose wiped, too. I'm sorry. Forgive me.   Then there are social events. And I use the term "social" very, very lightly. We went to our friends' daughter's first birthday celebration this weekend, and while it was a lovely party, we basically spent the entire time wrangling our daughters as they traipsed about reaching for drinks, fighting over toys, stealing other babies' sippy cups, toddling obliviously toward staircases, etc. Not that we wouldn't have to do this if we just had one 16-month-old. But in that case, at least, we could take turns. And if, say, we had one baby and one child that, oh, I don't know, UNDERSTOOD AND SPOKE ENGLISH, maybe we would only be in frequent as opposed to perpetual motion?   You know, the newborn months were hard: the constant feedings, the night waking, the lack of two-way interaction. This current phase is infinitely more fun and rewarding. Every day Alastair and I find new ways to communicate with and love and enjoy our children.   But God, are we tired. (TIRED!)     (What, you don't let your kids dance on the coffee table?)   Posted Apr 28 2008, 10:12 PM by Roper with | with 38 comment(s) Filed under: twins, whining, I am powerless, exhaustion, playgrounds

• Words fail me.

  A couple of times, readers of this blog have commented that I write more about Elsa than Clio. The unspoken implication, intended or not, is that I'm more focused on, or even more fond of Elsa. My initial reaction to these comments has been, naturally, anger: How dare anyone, especially someone who has never met me (and who probably doesn't have twins, let alone write a blog about them) make such an accusation? Why do they feel compelled to make it? Why casually poke at such an emotional landmine? Haven't they seen Sophie's Choice, for God's sake?    Then I take a deep breath, pour myself a glass of wine, and remind myself that this comes with the blogging territory. When you write about yourself and your private life in a public forum, you inevitably open yourself up to scrutiny as well as support. You have to be at once thick-skinned and humble, and remember that your blog is not you, nor is it a mirror held up to your heart. It is writing. As such, it can offer readers a glimpse into your life and your self, but it can't possibly give them the whole picture -- nor would you want it to. You try to remember this, and you hope that your readers remember it, too. Most of them do.   But after the most recent comment suggesting favoritism, I did look back over my posts to see if there was an imbalance; if Elsa routinely gets more pixels than Clio, and/or is featured more prominently in posts. And I'd say that yes, on the whole, I've tended to write a little bit more about Elsa than Clio. And often when I talk about both of them, I lead with Elsa. It's certainly not conscious, and it certainly doesn't reflect the degree of my love or focus toward them. But I couldn't help wondering: what's the deal? Mind you, I don't feel that I owe anyone an explanation. I only offer it here because I found it an interesting insight to arrive at, as a writer and as a parent.   What I arrived at was this: I think I find it more difficult to write about Clio than I do Elsa. Maybe it's because I tend to *get* Elsa a little more. As I mentioned in a recent post, I feel like we're alike in many ways. Furthermore, she's very outgoing and assertive and active, which tends to make for better stories and easier lead-ins. But Clio -- Clio is subtler. I find it harder to capture her essence in words the way I can (or presume to be able to) with Elsa. Maybe I'm afraid to try. She is unlike anybody I've ever known. My feelings for her are unlike any I've ever felt. Even trying to write this, I'm struggling. So, here; some fragments.   Ephemeral, mysterious, puckish, protean, quixotic, mercurial, chimerical. Where did she come from? What makes her do the kooky, quirky, delightful things she does? How can a person be so dear? How can someone this innocent exist in this world? She should disappear, like some unstable element. She is sublime. I don't believe in angels, but sometimes I swear Clio must be one. (NB: this does not mean she always behaves like one!)     Sensitive Clio. Peacemaker Clio. She cries when other people fight or hurt themselves or get upset, when dogs tussle, when our cat growls at the big long-haired Tabby on the other side of the sliding door. Alastair and I can't even play-wrestle in front of her. Her eyes will fill with tears. She has such deep empathy.   I have never been a touchy-feely person, but Clio makes me one. I worry that I give her more physical attention than Elsa, but she just seems to need and want it more. She'll sometimes just mouth my arm or shoulder and coo: "ahhhhhhhhhh." She loves touching my face and pulling me close, and I feel honored every time she does. I don't deserve this.       Then suddenly, she writhes and stiffens and wants space. She takes her own time; processes things at her own pace. She can't be pushed from the periphery when she doesn't want to be.   I am afraid I am going to lose her. Ever since she was a few months old, I've had this terrible, irrational fear that I'm going to lose her somehow -- to illness, to tragedy, to the fairies stealing her away in the night -- and it makes loving her hurt. It's the most primal, aching love I've ever felt for anyone. Maybe I am more protective of her in my writing as a result. Maybe I want to keep her a little more to myself.       So, now it probably sounds like I favor Clio, right?  Do me a favor and don't answer that.   xoxo, JR       Posted Apr 23 2008, 08:45 PM by Roper with | with 37 comment(s) Filed under: twins, love, Clio, commenters, even steven

• Transition Accomplished.

  For the past couple of weeks, the girls' nap schedule has been kinda funky. The morning nap started shifting to late morning, ending at noon or even later, and the afternoon nap started becoming quite brief, if it happened at all. It was tricky, unpredictable, and sometimes exasperating   Clio has been the primary instigator of the change -- she's always seemed to need a bit less sleep than Elsa, and lately the contrast has been sharper. But as devoted as we are to our children, we are not so devoted that we're willing to put up with two separate nap schedules. Also, we're spoiled: they've always been good sleepers. I think this is a combination of genetic good fortune (we are both extremely lazy) and concerted effort on our part, with help from Dr. Weissbluth. (Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child is our bible.)   On Friday morning, Alastair was working and I was home with the girls, and I'm not quite sure what possessed me -- The balmy spring weather? The promise of morning trips to the zoo? Sheer derring-do? -- but I decided to see what would happen if I didn't put them down for their morning nap.   I expected a total meltdown, especially from Miss Elsa, who generally turns into a cranky, eye-rubbing, whiny little...something...at around 9:30. And that did start to happen, but I promptly took the girls outside, and we played with the $1.99 drugstore balls I'd bought for them the other day -- you know, the same kind you had as a kid: marbled with various colors, kept in a big, cage-like container at the store. This outdoor play seemed to give the girls a second wind. Then we did some mega-lego construction, watched a little Sesame Street (sue me), and had an early lunch. I put them down for a nap at about 12:15, and they slept for almost two hours. Not too shabby! We put them to bed a little early in the evening, and that seemed to work out fine. For three days now, they've been on just one nap.   The key seems to be keeping them (and us) occupied in the morning. So, on Saturday morning we went out with them to buy some gardening supplies (the Home Depot is a wonderland of excitement!) And today -- drumroll, please -- we went to church. Something that we hope to continue doing fairly regularly, until the girls rebel and become Orthodox Jews or Baptists or something. Why would that be rebellion, you ask? Well, it's a Unitarian Universalist church. Pretty liberal, pretty crunchy. But it reflects our values, and -- we hope -- will give the girls some grounding in the Judeo-Christian tradition whence they came, while also introducing them to other faiths. Having gone to church (Congregational) throughout all of my childhood and adolescence with my family, I also really value the community that a church (or synagogue, etc.) represents.   I can't believe I'm saying this. For stretches in my life, I hated going to church. But here I am, a parent, glad in retrospect that I had the experience. Along with piano lessons and not being allowed to eat sugared cereal.   Anyway, we first checked out this particular church on Christmas Eve, 2006, when I was great with child(ren). Then we went a couple of times when the girls were very small, and content to be held or nursed throughout the service. But since then, their nap schedule -- and our Draconian insistence on sticking to it -- has precluded the possibility. Until today.   We were planning to keep the girls with us during the service (ha!), but a nice church lady told us that there was, in fact, childcare at the annex across the street. We had assumed it was for older kids, but lo and behold, there was a nursery room full of age-appropriate toys, several small children/toddlers, and nice, responsible teenagers to look after them. We've  never left the girls on their own before except with their regular sitters (in our home) or their grandparents. I feared that Clio would have a meltdown when we left. But she did just fine. In fact, she apparently did some dancing. And both of them ate a LOT of goldfish crackers. (No surprise there.) Meanwhile, we got to sit and enjoy the service. Though it pained me a little to leave them -- Clio, especially -- I also think it was probably good for them. And us.    Don't get me wrong -- we will miss the morning nap. Alastair moreso than me -- he's home with the girls four mornings a week when I'm at work. That nap was a nice little reprieve; a time to enjoy a cup of coffee and a magazine, catch up on email, or just catch a little more sleep. But as today demonstrated, there are upsides to the one-nap-a-day regimen.   Full disclosure: the girls didn't sleep very well this afternoon after lunch. In fact, I'm not sure Clio got more than 15 or 20 minutes. It wasn't pretty. But I'm hoping that once they get used to this new routine, they'll start taking a nice, healthy two-ish hour nap on a regular basis. I have faith. (See what going to church once a year will do for a person?) Posted Apr 20 2008, 09:22 PM by Roper with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: sleep patterns, twins, church ladies, Dropping a nap

• My Bookish Babe

  I have always been a bibliophile. Not only do I enjoy reading books, I enjoy looking at and holding and smelling them. If it were socially acceptable, I would probably lick them. When I was a kid, I used to build little dens and forts in closets and nooks for the express purpose of crawling inside and reading. When we got a clubhouse for our backyard and started a club for neighborhood kids, the first thing I did -- after appointing myself president and writing the club handbook and anthem, naturally -- was set up a lending library. A long-held dream of mine is to one day have an office with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and one of those sliding ladder thingies. And given the choice between going to a movie, watching TV or curling up in a comfy chair with a good book -- well, you get the point.   So, how psyched am I that Clio is suddenly obsessed with books? Quite! She is constantly thrusting them at me, demanding that I read them to her, eager to point out everything that she recognizes. If she sees a bird or butterfly, she'll do the fluttering hands sign for butterfly. An elephant gets our own made-up sign for elephant: arm as trunk, and a sort of trumpeting sound. Horses get bronx cheers (close enough), and cows get "mmm."  Mouths (ma), eyes (ah), shoes (shz), cats (ba), fish (shh) and babies (dieh dieh) also get mentions. If she doesn't know the word, sign, or sound for something and wants to know, she'll point at it and say "da da!" and I'll tell her. It's like she suddenly *gets* this notion of words being connected to things, and is desperate to learn them all.   I've always read to the girls before bed, once they're in their cribs. Lately, Clio has been demanding to have her own book, too. The only trouble is, she's very picky. She reaches out toward the bookshelves making that terrible grunting "I need!" sound that toddlers (mine, anyway) are wont to do (ieeeh! ieeeh! ieehh!) and I bring her book after book. She pushes them away, one after another, until I hit on the right thing: The Very Hungry Caterpillar? No, no, too predictable. Noah's Ark? Religious propaganda! Hop on Pop? Don't insult me. Touch and Feel Farm Animals? Touch and feel this!   Eventually, something will strike the right chord. The Rainbow Fish? Hmm....yes, that looks interesting. Let me read the back cover blurbs and the author bio. Hm. Yes, all right. I'll give it a try. If The Guardian liked it, I suppose it can't be too bad... And then she'll plop down on her butt in her crib and read, sometimes with the book right-side up, sometimes not. For the past week, I've left her with a book in her crib to fall asleep with after saying good night. (And several times I've had to go in an hour later and remove said book because she is lying on it, uncomfortable and crying.)   Alastair thinks I'm being too accomodating by bringing her all these books until she finds one she likes. He suggested I just offer her two or three and let her choose one.  Yeah. Well. I tried that tonight, and she handily, annoyedly rejected them all and resumed grunting and reaching (ieeh! ieeh! ieeh!) until I brought more. A book from the second round, Baby Kittens, held her attention for a while, but then when I attempted to read some nice, imperialist poems aloud from A Child's Garden of Verses while she looked at her kittens, Clio decided that that was the book she had to have. So I scooped both her and Elsa out of their cribs, held them in my lap (something they're very into lately, to my extreme delight) and started reading them "My bed is a boat." I got about three iambic pentametric lines into it before Clio was crawling across the room looking for something with more farm animals in it.   I don't blame her -- in fact, I commend her -- for being picky. I'm the same way; when I'm looking for a new book to read, I'll often flip through a bunch of them before I hit on one that feels right. And it doesn't always work out. I don't feel compelled to finish books just for the sake of finishing them anymore. There are too many great books out there, and too little time.    I love that Clio wants to read, but not just any old thing. She's a nerd after my own heart.   Posted Apr 16 2008, 07:18 PM by Roper with | with 12 comment(s) Filed under: twins, I am powerless, children's books, Robert Louis Stevenson, reading to toddlers

• Salon de Bebe

  Now that the girls have got some serious hair on their heads -- well, Elsa does, anyway -- we're faced with what to do about it: long, luscious locks or pert, sassy bobs? Clips and elastics or wild style? Naturally luminous color or playful highlights and sultry lowlights? (Just kidding!)   Elsa's got significantly more hair at this point, and I've pretty much decided (me being self-appointed style consultant for my daughters, God help them) that we're going to grow Elsa's bangs out. She appears to have inherited my hair, which is thick and grows fast, as well as my somewhat low forehead, so I'm thinking this is the right look for her. And more importantly, easier for us to manage. She's getting better at actually keeping barettes in her hair when we put them in, instead of immediately pulling them out. The trick is not to make a big deal of it. So, please, if you ever see Elsa in person, don't say "Oooh! Look at your pretty barette!" because she'll remember it's there and take it out. Just be cool. Be like "hey, nice shizz." Or whatever.   Really, you think it looks good?      OK, I'm convinced -- I love this look!    Clio's hair is finer (like her Dad's) and doesn't seem to be coming in as quickly or growing as fast, especially on top. She's got a bit of a mullet going on, which I plan to remedy soon. But we think she can really rock the bangs look, so we're gonna go with that. Also, she has no patience for barettes. More specifically, she likes having a barette put in -- whenever Elsa's got one, she has to have one, too -- but she immediately takes it out, then hands it to me to put back in again. I'll do this about three times before we say "bye bye" to the barette. And then I just have to hope she won't go and pull Elsa's barette out.   I've got to get this thing off my head...   Do it again, mom!   Elsa, who increasingly seems to think of Clio as her own life-sized doll, also thinks it's fun to attempt to style Clio's hair. Clio isn't so into it. (There was crying shortly after this picture was taken.)     Oh, and if you're salivating over Clio's adorable corduroy overalls, I'm sorry to say that this fashion statement can no longer be made. This outfit also came from my mother's attic stash; my little brother wore them, circa 1978 (with a bowl cut, natch).   Posted Apr 13 2008, 07:48 PM by Roper with | with 11 comment(s) Filed under: twins, The seventies, Hair styles, Ooh la la Sassoon

• My Daughter, Myself

  One of my big fears when I found out that I was pregnant with twins was that I would love one more than the other. This has certainly not turned out to be the case. I love both Elsa and Clio to an equal, insanely powerful degree. What I didn't anticipate, however, was how differently I would love them. In fact, I don't know that I really realized before they came along how individualized the nature of love is. But it makes all the sense in the world. Every person is unique, so how could the love you feel for them not be unique, too?   But I have now violated my own rule against using the word "love" more than three times in a single paragraph, and must move on to the primary subject of this post: my relationship with Elsa   One of the things I'm very aware of in my love for Madame Elsa is a sense of recognition. That is, I see a lot of myself in her. Who knows what it is, exactly? We have the same blood type, hair and eye color; the same chubby cheeks. My parents see a resemblance between her and their memories of me at her age. But it goes beyond the physical. Mostly, I just feel the resemblance between us -- this sense that we are cut from the same cloth; that we approach the world in simliar ways. And as much as this sense of kindred spirits delights me, it also scares the crapola out of me.   What does it mean, to have this flesh of my flesh, soul of my soul in the world? I see the possibility of a deep and abiding friendship; a kind of connection that I've never had with another person. On the other hand, I see the potential for great battles and clashes of will. We may end up like magnets with our matched (stubborn! passionate! self-absorbed!) poles facing, pushing each other away.    It's impossible to predict, and I certainly don't want to get myself into a whole head trip about how alike or different we are, or how we'll relate in the future. Lord knows I don't think of Elsa as a "mini-me" -- or want to. But I can't help the fact that sometimes, when I look at her, I feel like I'm looking at the child I used to be. It's scary.   This is me, circa early 1976, just shy of two years old. (Please note the insane 70s wallpaper, the patriotic '76 bicentennial brochure, and the smiley face pin on the bulletin board.) I see a little of both Clio and Elsa in me in this pic, actually.     And here's me with Elsa at my parents' house this past weekend. The groovy outfit Elsa is wearing is one that I wore when I  was about her age -- my mom kept it in storage all these years. I don't know if anyone else will see a resemblance between us (either when I was a toddler or now) but I do.      And as long as I'm posting family photos, here's another one from the weekend, of my mom (who people have always said I resemble, which I take as a great compliment) with the girls. What Crazy Clio is doing in this picture pretty much sums how and why I adore her in such a joyful and doting and unexpected way -- equally powerful and primal but completely different from the way I love Elsa. But that's a subject for another day.     Posted Apr 09 2008, 10:20 PM by Roper with | with 8 comment(s) Filed under: twins, The seventies, Polyester, Narcissism, Family Resemblance

• Baby Gym Rats

  On Friday afternoon, the girls and I went to Together in Motion, a very cool indoor kids' play gym, along with my friend Christina and her one-year-old, Amelia. It was the perfect rainy day adventure. (And no shizz are allowed, let alone required!) Elsa was so excited that at first she just ran around on the mats yelling with throaty glee and waving her arms. Then she declared herself queen of a small structure some parent had built, where she discovered the fun of sliding down the mat -- and the frustration of attempting to climb back up.     She also did some great tower building and demolition:     Clio was very much into the balls of all sizes scattered around:       She also enjoyed playing "stack and destroy." Mostly the "destroy" part.     When we first arrived, there were only a few other kids, most of them the girls' age or just a little older. But it got more crowded, and some bigger kids showed up, which made it tougher for Christina and me to just sit back and yap while our kiddos ran amok. Not that you can ever really have quality conversation with your friends when you're doing the play date thing: "So, what do you think of---Oh! Look! Yes! You have a ball! That's good!---Sorry, you were saying?---No, honey, you have to be gentle with the little boy, gentle!-- Sorry, I really am listening. You were saying before that you think Obama -- Don't put that in your mouth! Yucky!"   And so on. Honestly, I find it a little stressful. I've never been good at social multi-tasking. I can barely manage a conversation with someone while I'm driving, let alone while trying to keep an eye on two toddlers. Plus, I always worry that I don't pay enough attention to my friends' children (usually just one of them) because I'm too busy trying to keep up with both of mine. So to any of my gal pals with kids who may be reading this: I'm sorry I'm a lousy play date. It's not you, it's me. I want to keep dating, but let's also make sure to go out on our own for a drink sometime, K?   In a public place like Together in Motion, there's also the challenge of trying to figure out how / how much to interact with other parents. The obligatory small talk sort of reminds me of freshman orientation at college. Then, it was What's your name / Where are you from / What dorm are you in / Do you know what you're going to major in / Awkward Silence / Drink some more.  Now, it's How old is she/he, What's his/her name, She/He is so cute / Thank you / Where do you guys live? / Awkward Silence / Cheerios, anyone?   And I still have no idea what the proper protocol is for dealing with other parents when it comes to intra-kid refereeing. Example: At one point, Clio was sitting playing in an area where a couple of older boys, four or five years old, decided to start building something. They kept barelling obliviously past her, wielding giant, vinyl-covered pieces of foam, missing her head by mere inches. Their mother was very much aware of this, and told them repeatedly to please be careful, look out for the little girl, etc., which I appreciated. But since Clio would be equally happy playing elsewhere I scooped her up and said to the other mom, with a smile, "It's OK, we can just go play somewhere else."   And then the mom--who was probably only a couple of years older than me, if not the same age--said, with what I think might be described as a "wan" smile, "Well, they also need to learn to be careful. It's something you'll find out."   Oh, well gosh, Madame Veteran Super Mom, I'm so sorry for disrupting your important parental lesson. I really should have been more considerate and left my diminutive 15-month old child there to get trampled on by your sons, for the sake of their social development. Forgive me. I'm just so new at this.   Ah, well. Maybe I read the situation all wrong. Maybe I just looked so clear-eyed and youthful that she assumed I was a 19-year-old au pair, and that was why it was OK to talk down to me. Yes. That must have been it.       Posted Apr 06 2008, 04:07 PM by Roper with | with 14 comment(s) Filed under: twins, play dates, condescending parents

• Slumber party

  This weekend, my mom and the gals and I went down to my aunt's house in my old hometown in Connecticut for my cousin's wedding shower. I hadn't originally planned on bringing Elsa and Clio along (The packing! Oh, the packing!) but I'm very glad that I did. They got some QT with their great aunts and first cousins once-removed and various others. They danced to Donna Summer's greatest hits. They ate Mexican corn and bean salad with cilantro. (Anyone know what Mexican corn and bean salad with cilantro looks like when it comes out the other end of a baby? Did you say Mexican corn and bean salad with cilantro? You win!!) The only disappointment was that they didn't get to meet / be met by their great, great aunt for the first time. She was supposed to come up from Philly for the occasion, but she couldn't find her teeth. Ah, well.   For me, one of the nicest parts of the weekend was having the chance to sleep in the same room with the girls -- something I haven't done in a long time. I was worried that we'd wake each other up -- I'd stub my toe in the dark on my way in or they'd cry or I'd snore or all of the above -- but except for a brief bit of crying from Elsa when I first snuck into bed, we all slept soundly through the night. In fact, it was nice to be able to just go over and rub Elsa's back in her crib and shush her and tell her I was right there. It brought me back to those early months when they slept in a co-sleeper crib next to our bed, the two of them, side by side, all wrapped up like little burritos, sweet as can be.     However, allow me clarify: it brought me back to the sweetness of having two babies sleeping nearby. But it did NOT make me miss having newborns. It did not make me miss not having my evenings to myself or waking up every two, three, or four hours in the middle of the night to nurse. Lots of people we know who had their first baby around the same time we had ours  are now thinking about or already having their second, and when I think about them, I thank my lucky stars that we got our two kids in one fell swoop. This is not to say that I never ever entertain the possibility of having a third child. But after I entertain it, I send it home: Buh-bye. Drive safely.   Everyone says that you get a sort of amnesia when it comes to babies -- you forget the discomfort of pregnancy, the pain of birth, the exhaustion and difficulty of the first few months. Hence the survival of the human species despite of the availability of birth control. But I think having twins delays the onset of that amnesia, because right now, the thought of having another baby is absolutely exhausting. Maybe I'll feel differently in a few years. But for the moment, this is absolutely perfect -- and plenty.   Am I gloating? Yeah, OK, maybe a little.   Posted Mar 23 2008, 09:51 PM by Roper with | with 13 comment(s) Filed under: twins, sleeping through the night, traveling with twins, gloating, newborns

• R.I.P. Morning Nap

  Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to say farewell to a dear friend: the two to three hour nap that Elsa and Clio have taken each morning for the last eight months.   I think we can all agree, it was a good nap. A merciful nap. The kind of nap that allowed us to go back to bed and get a little more sleep, if we so chose. The kind of nap which is in part responsible for the fact that I've manage to write almost an entire second draft of a novel since the girls were born. The sort of nap that was always there for us, whether we needed to catch up on email or do household chores or even just enjoy a nice cup of coffee and a magazine in peace. We knew that the morning nap -- unlike the less predictable, much shorter afternoon one -- would never let us down, and we were grateful for it.   But for everything, there is a season. And the season of the morning nap has now passed. Though we tried in vain to make it linger, we realized -- as we always realize -- that we are powerless in the face of two wide-awake babies who will have none of it. Babies who will fling their pacifiers out of the crib and scream bloody murder until mommy, who was supposed to get to sleep in today and would have made some different choices last night had she known she couldn't, has to drag her tired butt out of bed and hang out with them for the next three hours. To everything, turn, turn, turn, etc.   Of course, this cloud does have a silver lining: the girls seem to be sleeping later in the mornings these days, until the humane hour of seven, even seven-thirty. And, with hope, they will take a nice long early afternoon nap, which we will love and embrace and accept just as we did the morning nap. It won't be the same, but we will survive. We will go on.   Good bye, morning nap. You will be missed.   Places to go, people to see, nap shnap. (Author's note: they insist on wearing these absurd hats all the time. Who are we to stop them? Again, powerless.)   Posted Feb 10 2008, 12:30 PM by Roper with | with 10 comment(s) Filed under: Ridiculous hats, twins, eulogies, Dropping a nap

• Did you have a good time?

  (An interview with myself)   I caught up with myself during the Super Bowl halftime show for a brief interview to discuss my recent trip to New York -- my first time away on my own since the babies were born. I was dressed in jeans and a rumpled gray, faux-wrap sweater, and apologized for being so tired -- I'd driven up from New York that afternoon, and had drunk a little too much and not eaten  quite enough over the previous few days. After exchanging pleasantries and making chit-chat about the halftime show (could that moving neon guitar headed for the neon heart have looked any more...er...obscene? Who are those cheesy 'groupies' in the concert audience? Are they paid actors?) we got down to business.   Me: So, me, what was it like to be away from your babies for the first time?   Me, Also: You know, it was actually really great. It's not that I didn't miss them; I definitely did. But it felt really good to be on my own for a little while, just thinking about writing and my career, seeing friends, not having to think about taking care of anyone or anything. It was nice to reconnect with this part of myself I hadn't gotten to spend time with for a while, with no agenda or expectations. And, of course, I was in New York City, which kicks ass. Honestly, I was kind of giddy the whole time. Even mundane things -- sleeping until 8:30 a.m., walking down the street alone, poking into shops, buying a hot dog from a vendor on the street -- felt like a big adventure.   Me: It sounds like you didn't really *suffer* at all. Or feel guilty. Or wish you'd stayed home. What kind of mother does that make you, Jane?   M.A.:  A happy, well-balanced one?   Me:  Right. That's very post-post-feminist of you. Very empowered, or something. Anyway. What were some of the highlights of the trip?   M.A.: Gosh, me, there were so many. I visited the Babble.com headquarters and saw Ada and Gwynne, the editors, which was really nice. I went to a reading and book release party for a guy named Toby Barlow who wrote a novel in blank verse about werewolves in L.A. called Sharp Teeth. At the conference, I saw some wonderful writers speak and read. I saw old friends, met new ones, and even got to hang out and shoot the shit with (gulp!) Russell Banks. I went to MOMA, which was amazing. I can't believe I'd never gone before; it was incredible to see so many great, celebrated works of art in one place, up close. Like Jasper Johns's [sic] American flag: I'd seen pictures of it, but it's not the same as seeing it live. Did you know there's all this newspaper gessoed onto the canvas? It has so much texture. You can't just can't see that in a photograph.   Me: Um, right. That's really interesting. But I don't hear you talking about Elsa and Clio. Weren't you thinking about them at all?   M.A.: Sure. I was thinking about how much I want to bring them to museums and talk with them about art when they're older. I bought them a book -- "Andy Warhol's Colors"  -- in the gift shop. I saw a mom and her 2-year-old twins and talked to her and told her how much I missed my kids, and how nice it was to see her there with hers.   Me: And then what? You went back to your hotel room and looked at pictures of the babies and called Alastair and sobbed quietly into your pillow?   M.A.: Um, well, actually, no. I went to my room and changed, did my hair, went down to the hotel bar and had a drink and talked with some people I knew from my MFA program, then went with a friend to a bar downtown called the Crocodile Lounge, where you get a free pizza with every drink you buy. (Sweet!) Then we went back to the hotel and went to a dance party. And then, feeling socialized-out, I went back to my room and read for a while, then went to bed.   Me: That sounds really selfish. I mean, nice.   M.A.: You know, I didn't have to agree to do this interview. I could be watching the game. Not that I give a shit about football, but it is the Patriots. And I work in advertising, so I should be paying attention to the commercials. But instead, here I am giving you my time and you're passively-aggressively asking me to justify myself---   Me:  No, you're right. You're totally right. I'm sorry. It's just that -- well, I haven't done a lot of interviews, and I guess I'm kind of nervous. I'm sorry.   M.A.: Well, thank you for that. I appreciate it. (Awkward pause.) Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?   Me: No, no. Oh--wait. Well, yes, actually: just one more thing. What was it like to come home to the girls and Alastair?   M.A.: It was even better than the trip.   Me: Which is saying a lot, isn't it?   M.A.: Yes. Exactly.   Me: I feel like we really understand each other. Like we really connect, you know?   M.A.: Now you're pushing it.   Posted Feb 03 2008, 08:10 PM by Roper with | with 9 comment(s) Filed under: twins, self-centeredness, separation anxiety, writing, New York, Jasper Johns

• Walk this way

  Wow -- my second Aerosmith reference in two weeks. My true colors (leopard print and turquoise, that is) are really starting to show, eh? Well, as the boys from Boston said, you ain't seen nothin' till you're down on...um...on the floor, watching your kids take their first steps. Which we've been doing a lot of lately. And yes -- that's right, kids, plural. Inspired by her big sister, Clio has started walking a little, too. She's a bit more tentative, but she sure is having fun.   The timing for this couldn't be better. Alastair is headed off to the UK for a week tomorrow, and I'm headed to NYC for AWP the week after that. (The first time I will be away from the girls for more than 10 hours!! More on that later...) Both of us were worried that we'd miss the big ambulatory moment(s), so it's nice that they've already happened. And it's also nice that it's not really one moment, as legend (and TV commercials) would have you believe. At least for our kiddos, this walking thing -- like everything else -- seems to be incremental. There have been first steps, and now there's occasional, sort-of-walking. At some point, walking will presumably overtake crawling as the preferred means of locomotion, but we're not there yet.   The coolest part of all of this is how much fun the girls appear to be having with their new accomplishment. They seem quite aware that they're venturing into new territory, and quite pleased with themselves as a result. It's a hoot. So, if you need a toddling baby fix (and who doesn't?) here's a highlight reel of a recent walking-fest in our kitchen on Friday night before bedtime. (With apologies to Arthur, who we're totally copying by posting this.)   As you view our less-than-spotless kitchen floor, ask yourselves -- as we often do -- at what point do Cheerios cease to become food and become, instead, dirt? If you know the answer then, surely, you are on the path to enlightenment.     Posted Jan 20 2008, 08:44 PM by Roper with | with 15 comment(s) Filed under: Milestones, Zen masters, twins, first steps, youtube

• They like me. They really like me.

  So, picture this: it's a weekday morning in the Baby Squared household. I am upstairs getting ready for work, trying to find pants that won't fall off my flat-and-deflated-by-nursing-ass* and a top that will fit over my inflated-by-nursing boobs** that actually somewhat go together. Alastair, meanwhile, is downstairs in the kitchen making coffee and doing last night's dinner dishes, listening to NPR. Elsa and Clio play contentedly nearby, stacking mega legos and eating Cheerios and trying to crawl into the dishwasher. They are happy. They are calm. When I approach, they smile at me. "Hello, mommy," they seem to say. "Welcome to the kitchen of domestic bliss! We're so glad you're here. And how lovely you look! Come, nourish yourself, and bask in the light of our smiles before you head off to your daily toil!"   Now, picture this: It's five minutes later. Alastair is sitting at one end of the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee, scoffing at the Muzzy brochure I've forced him to read, cracking wise: "Oh, big deal, your kid can count to ten in French. You need a $300 set of DVDs to teach her that?"   Meanwhile, I&