Baby Squared

A few weeks ago I posted about my "Writing Mother Guilt," and how I was wrestling with whether or not to take more writing time for myself. I decided in affirmative - a fulfilled mom is a good mom -- but now the point is rather moot. I've just started working four days a week instead of three at my job.

The shift up to four days is a result of being asked to take on some additional responsibilities - fun ones, mostly -- and is certainly not a bad problem to have in this economy. But it does come with certain tradeoffs, chief among them less time with the girls during the week. There may be a bit more travel, too, which I enjoy, but which also freaks me out a bit more now that I've got issue in the world. You can tell me as many times as you like that I have a higher chance of crashing in a car than crashing in an airplane, but I still feel a step close to oblivion in the sky than I do on the ground. Call it the post 9/11 mentality.  

(I'm actually drafting this post while sitting on the tarmac in LaGuardia, all flights grounded on account of thunderstorms. And we're 30th in line for takeoff once we get clearance, Clarence. This may be a very long post, depending on how long my battery power lasts.)

Anyway -- I've worked through the whole oh-gosh-now-I'm-almost-a-full-time-working-mom-what-does-it-mean-is-this-the-right-thing issue. What I really wanted to write about was how odd it is to me when people say things, as a colleague did yesterday before I left, along the lines of "So, is Alastair taking care of the girls tonight? Ha ha - that will be interesting, huh?" Sometimes they even use the word "babysitting," as if a father "babysits" his own children.

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 Every time I can't think the girls can't get any more adorable, they do. Starting when they were around seven or eight months old, I think I started saying, "this is it. This is the best age ever. They can't possibly get any cuter  than this." And then, by golly, they did. They did even funnier more engaging things. They said even cuter stuff. There was, admittedly, a brief period between eighteen and twenty-four months, when I was just as likely to say "It can't possibly get any harder than this..." But the past few months, things have definitely been on the upswing again.

And seriously, two-and-a-half -- today, exactly! -- has got to be the cutest possible age. It's gotta all be downhill after here, right? The girls still have a bit of that baby pudge and innocence. They still have the un-self-consciously gleeful giggles of toddlers, and take pleasure in simple things -- running around in circles and falling down on the grass, putting stickers on themselves, digging in the dirt. They like to cuddle. But they're also curious and aware of what's going on around them (I'm constantly surprised by how much they remember and pick up on.) They "read" books by themselves. And they talk -- Lord, how they talk. They crack us up on an almost daily basis with the stuff that comes out of their mouths. (Me: Clio, what is your stuffed doggie named? Clio: Cpthtoth. Me: What? Cpthoth?  Clio: Yeah, Gaby Gaby Cpthoth.)

Pics after the jump...

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On Saturday, we brought the girls to a first birthday party for our friends' son at a local indoor play gym. Among the guests was another set of twin sisters, a few months older than our girls. The four of them ended up playing together a bit, started up a spontaneous, non-adult-prompted game of Ring-Around-the-Rosy (led by future head cheerleader and premature all-fall-down-er Elsa), and we managed to take what may be one of the world's cutest kids-at-play videos ever.

I debated whether or not to post it here, because I didn't really have any kind of story or commentary to go along with it (and you know how I do like to go on...) Then, tonight, I was catching up with the news and finally saw some of the images from that horrible video of Neda Soltani dying in the street in Tehran, and I realized that that video was being taken at almost exactly the same time we were taking ours, to the hour. Maybe to the minute.

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Get this: on Friday night, we went out to dinner with the girls, and it was actually quite tolerable. "Enjoyable" would be a stretch, but we didn't leave feeling like we'd just undergone some kind of military stress test. (As has happened on many a past restaurant outing, as longtime readers will recall.) And we'd gotten to eat out on a Friday night without having to factor the price of a babysitter into the equation. We even ordered drinks! We felt downright European.

The main reason it worked is because it was 6:15, and there was basically no one else in the restaurant -- just one other table of people on the other side of the room, and a few people at the bar, including and older couple who beamed and waved at the girls the whole time. Either they really liked little kids, they were happily snookered, or some combination of both. So we didn't feel *too* terrible and mortified each time Elsa screamed I WANT MORE ICE! or I WANT SOME OF DAT! or WOW, I LIKE CUCUMBAS, MOMMY!!!! I WANT SOME MORE!  (The girl loves food. All of it. Loudly. She's like Dom Deluise reincarnated in the body of  blond two-and-a-half year old girl.)

Would you attempt to take this child out to a crowded restaurant?

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Do you ever find your very young children, in their innocence, asking you to do...er...inappropriate things?

Kissing boo-boos is par for the course in our household, as I imagine it is in the majority of American households with toddlers. I am always happy to kiss a boo-boo, real or imagined, serious or slight, and have kissed boo-boos on elbows, heels, shoulders, heads, noses, ears, etc. But how do you explain to your two-and-a-half year old that, no, you probably shouldn't kiss the boo-boo in their mouth (where it hurts because they bit their tongue or have a tooth coming in) or on their girl-parts (which they hurt in the midst of a particularly ambitious playground maneuver)?  I am not, however, above occasionally kissing boo-boos on their bums, assuming they're clothed or diapered. I hope I'm not setting them up for a lifetime of therapy with this.

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Clio is afraid of monsters. I'm not sure why, or exactly how it came about. But suddenly, she is constantly saying -- as if to confirm, or even reassure us -- "No monsters." And we constantly assure her that, no, there are no monsters. We don't have any monsters around here, etc. She also, to a lesser degree, likes to confirm the fact that there are no lions, no cows, no bears, no sheep, no dinosaurs. And I can always reassure her and say, no, none of those things. You are safe, and no monsters / lions / bears / etc. are going to hurt you.

But if she ever looks at me and says "No thugs going after our next-door neighbor with a tire iron right outside our house at 9:30 on a Saturday night" I'm afraid I'll be at a loss.

I should back up. On Saturday night, after I'd put the girls to bed (Alastair was away overnight), I started hearing some kind of argument in the nearby vicinity. This isn't entirely unheard of in our neighborhood. There are a few rather...for lack of a better word...unrefined individuals who live around here. There's also a sort of rough bar a few blocks up, so sometimes we get a few drunk a**holes wandering down from there. But it soon became clear from the vehemence and frequency of the expletives being hurled, that this was more than just a garden-variety drunken argument; it was a fight. And it was very close by.

When I really started getting freaked out was when I heard the people involved saying things like "What the f*** is that?" and "You put that shit on the ground! Put that right down on the street, right now!"  And now I'm thinking, holy shit, does somebody have a gun? Do I need to get down on the floor, lest I become some tragic late night news story? "35-year old mother of two shot dead through her living room window by stray bullet fire." (And me being white, of course, you can be sure it would get plenty of news coverage, eh?)

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Whenever someone asks if we've started potty training the girls, I'm not quite sure what to say. In a way, yes, I guess we have. We try to get them to sit on the potty before bedtime and naptime, which they're usually amenable to, as long as they've got a couple of books to read. Every once in a while, they actually produce something, and they seem proud of themselves. But they seem just as happy to go in the diapers. Elsa does ask to sit on the potty now and then, but more often than not, it's a stalling technique -- she doesn't want to go to sleep or go upstairs and get ready for bed. Still, i's hard to say "no, you don't need to sit on the potty right now." Because every once in a while, she actually does go. She's the girl who cried potty.

During the day, however, when they're happily engaged in playing, the girls have no interest in potty breaks. They like to announce when they're making (or about to make?) a pee-pee or poo-poo, but when I ask or suggest sitting on the potty, they resist. And I'm thinking it's probably not a good idea (not to mention physically impossible) to *force* them, screaming and crying, to sit on the pot. 

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I haven't done an 'Activity of the Week' in a while, I guess because with the weather being better and the girls being more self-sufficient, it hasn't been as much of a challenge to figure out ways to keep them entertained. And actually, this particular activity is one that they pretty much came up and do all by themselves. I just keep them supplied with the necessary materials, and suggest helpful enhancements from time to time, when they'll let me.

See, Clio and Elsa are obsessed with birthdays. This began shortly after their own birthday, back at the end of the December, and kicked into high gear when they went to their friend Amelia's 2nd birthday in Februrary. The obsession has manifested itself in a variety of ways: first, they just sang the Birthday Song constantly. Then, they started constantly asking for / calling everything sweet "Happy to you" cake. (We successfully introduced the idea of *pretend* happy to you cake, as well.) The, for a while, they wanted us to draw birthday cakes for them. If you looked through our recycling bin anytime this March through May, you would find page upon page of crayon drawings of birthday cakes -- usually double tiered, with lots of fancy, squiggly decorations, and candles, of course. (I really honed my birthday cake-drawing technique. If for some reason you ever need a drawing of a birthday cake, I'm your gal.)

Pics after the jump 

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Katie Allison Granjau over at Home/Work just wrote a great post about her Summertime Working Mother's Guilt. I've been wrestling alot with my feelings about my work / family balance, too, specifically as it pertains to my fiction and nonfiction writing -- a.k.a. the part of my work that doesn't pay me shite in monetary terms, but that I truly love, and dream of making at least part of a living at someday.

I've always felt extremely fortunate to have a situation where I can work part time (25-30 hrs/week) at a well-paid job-job that I really enjoy ("love" would be slightly too strong a word....it is advertising, after all) AND have time to be with the girls AND sneak in some time to write my own stuff, including this blog, AND even watch the occasional DVR-ed episode of 30 Rock. It's been tricky at times to maintain the balance, but mostly I've managed. Lately, though, it feels like it's gotten a lot harder to fit everything in.

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I thought that the whole phase of finding it funny to say things like "stinky poo poo" and "Pee-yew, stinky winky" and so on, came later. Like, at three or four or later. When the sense of taboo around these kinds of things was a little more developed. But apparently, two-and-a-half is not too young for kids to have a sense of the silly stinkies.

As usual, of course, we are partly to blame, for asking such stupid things as "who made a stinky poo poo?" And their regualr babysitter is apparently a big "Pee-yew"er, because sometimes when I change the girls' diapers or take their socks off they'll say "Pee-yew!" followed by a giggly "Adriana say that!" I suspect she is the one who put "stinky winky" into their vocabularies as well, because I don't recall either Alastair or I ever saying it. But this morning, the girls were drawing all manner of stinky-winky animals: a stinky winky penguin, a stinky winky whale, a stinky winky sheep. Our friend the stinky stinky bat was back, too.

Pic after the jump!  (Not of the stinky stinky bat)

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This past weekend, Alastair started recording his first-ever album of kids' music -- or family music as he (and Dan Zanes) prefer to call it. It's going to be a mix of Alastair's original tunes and some covers of songs by American folk/blues greats like Woody Guthrie and Mississippi John Hurt. He played me some of the rough tracks last night, and I think it's going to be a great album -- the kind that adults will enjoy, too. Or at least not be driven insane by. (Of course, I'm somewhat biased.)

My sweetie's album aside, I think it's fair to say that we're in the midst of a children's music renaissance right now, and for this I am incredibly grateful. I truly feel for parents of the late eighties and early nineties, who had to sustain their children on an empty-calorie musical diet of Raffi, Hap Palmer and Wee Sing.

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The girls and I are up here in Maine with my parents for the long weekend, and since the bedroom the girls stay in has a pair of twin beds, we thought maybe we'd give them a try, and see how the girls fared. Granted, they're already a little out of their element being away from home, but I thought it might provide some insight into what might or might not happen if we attempt to make the crib-to-bed transition for good. Here's the play by play:

Last night, 5:30 pm.

We realize that the bedrails my mom bought for the purposes of this experiment (and for future visits -- the beds are on the high side) are not as easy to assemble as we'd assumed: things to measure, about a dozen different parts, a packet of screws, and one of those instruction manuals in five languages with lots of big WARNING! boxes throughout. My parents are on their way out the door to a neighbor's BBQ so there's no chance we're going to get the things put together in time for bedtime.

I am about to go out to the car and get the Pack-n-Plays (brought just in case) when my dad, who is sort of like a domestic MacGyver, goes down to the basement and returns with two card tables. He unfolds one pair of legs on each of them, shoving the legs between the mattress and boxspring of each bed, so we have ourselves a couple of rather unsightly but perfectly serviceable and sturdy improvised bedrails. Go Dad!

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As in, "are you planning to have any more children?" We get this question from people a lot, frequently right after they learn that we have twins. I'm sure people who don't have multiples get this question too, particularly after baby number two or three is born. But I suspect we MOTs get it more often.

The question is usually asked with a wry smile. You get the sense that the asker thinks we are so exhausted and overwhelmed that we wouldn't for a minute consider having another child, even if we'd originally planned on having six. When the question is asked more earnestly, on the other hand, (in which case it's often phrased more delicately), I get the sense that the person is wondering if the fact that we had twins changed our childbearing calculations in any way. Did we plan on having two children, but now want a third so we can experience the whole pregnancy/new baby thing a second time?

In any case, my answer is more or less always the same: Yes. We're 99% sure we're done.

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You know, I love being a world famous blogger and all. The parties, the award shows, the late night talk show appearances...I can't complain. And I don't mind it when fans -- I mean, readers -- come up and tell me how much they love my blog or ask for an autograph, or take pictures of the girls. But sometimes it gets awfully tiring not being able to go out in public and just enjoy ourselves like any other family, you know?

You'd think that, of all people, other celebrities would understand. As we found out this weekend, however, that's not necessarily the case. At least not when it comes to the Affleck family.

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Over the last six months, things have gotten so much more manageable when it comes to going out in public places with girls. But every once in a while, I get a little cocky. And those gals put me right back in my place.

Mother's Day in Boston was a gorgeous day, sunny and breezy. After a morning of indulgent "me time" (I slept in, was brought Dunkin donuts and coffee for breakfast, read for awhile, went to the gym, then sat outside in the sunshine with a magazine) I wanted to spend a little quality mother-daughter time with my gals. I decided to take them into the city, to the Public Garden. It seemed like a terrific idea at the time. On my own with the girls (and their doll strollers) at a city park that also happens to be a major tourist attraction, on a beautiful Mother's Day? Sure! No problem! Piece of cake!

Yeah, well. Not exactly.

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Over the past two weeks, the girls have discovered how to climb up into their cribs by themselves. It's easiest for them to do it when the side of the crib is lowered, but they've also successfully done it a few times with the sides up, with the help of a step-stool. They get their feet up onto the mattress, between the crib rails, then swing a leg over the side and basically somersault into the bed. (Is this unsafe? It looks harmless to me, since they're they're only tumbling from a few inches away, onto a soft surface, but Alastair thinks they're going to break their necks. Please advise.)

In other gymnastic news, last weekend while staying over at Abu and Jacye's, Elsa climbed out of her Pack-n-Play at five in the morning. And today at naptime, when I went in to try to get the girls to settle down after 10 minutes of gabbing and gigging and bickering, Elsa was standing in Clio's crib. I don't know if she got all the way down from hers and climbed up into Clio's, or if she did a crib-to-crib transfer (their cribs are perpendicular to each other, in a corner), but either way -- it doesn't bode well.

Pic after the jump

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In my last post, I mentioned some of the quips Clio and Elsa made recently while we were drawing pictures. And, of course, the only thing more fascinating than hearing about the adorable things other people's kids say is looking at their fabulous artwork, right? But instead of just blathering on about Elsa and Clio's blossoming artistic abilities, I thought I would change things up a little by inviting world-renowned toddler art critic and scholar Dr. Enaj Repor (she's, um.....Turkish) to provide her professional commentary on some of the girls' recent work. So, without further ado: Enaj?

Thank you, Jane. Greetings, Baby Squared readers. I'm mildly pleased to be here. Before I discuss the specific works in question, I'd like to make a few comments on toddler art in general, specifically that of toddlers in the 24 to 30 month-old range, into which Elsa and Clio fall. At this age, children are not yet capable of representational art.  Except in very rare cases (see my book, Look, Mommy, it's a Cantilevered Bridge: Studies in Accelerated Juvenile Artistic Development, 2002) they lack the necessary eye-hand-mind coordination to recreate recognizable images and objects.

Objets d'art after the jump

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Yes! We're here! I've been so looking forward to this stage of the girls' development. Not that I haven't enjoyed the other stages, mind you, but this is really a lot of fun: the Stage Wherein the Kids Say the Darnedest Things.

I think this lasts for a while, and probably will reach its cuteness peak when the girls are around four. But it's pretty damned cute now, hearing the funny and surprising things that are coming out of their mouths now that their verbal abilities expanding at warp-speed. I will try to refrain from posting every adorable thing they say here, because obviously the adorable things that kids say are much more adorable to their own parents than to the world at large. But I hope you'll indulge me on occasion. (This occasion being one of those.)

pic after the jump

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It has changed my priorities and the way I plan my time. It has changed the way I shop and sleep and work and spend my weekends. It has heightened my appreciation and respect for my own parents and lowered my tolerance for parents who abuse or neglect or mistreat their children. It has deflated my breasts and softened my belly. It has given my life more meaning and purpose.

But truth be told, I expected all this. I didn't know exactly how these things would feel or how far-reaching the changes would be. In some cases, the changes have been exactly the opposite of what I expected: for example, instead of losing all desire and ambition where writing is concerned, I've actually become more focused, productive and determined. There is one thing, however, that I did not anticipate: I did not realize that once I became a mother, almost any time I saw, heard or read about a child dying -- real or fictional -- I would feel like my heart was being sawed in half with a bread knife.

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Lately, this seems like the perfect description of my children. Not all of the time, of course (excepting the short part). But it does seem like we're in a phase wherein the girls march around the house like little Mussolinis, giving orders to us, to the cat, to each other. More milk! I wanta watch Curious George Monkey! I do it allbymysef! I don't want to change diaper! No sing, mommy! Up up UP! Go away kittycat! No! No! NOOOOOO!!!!

Are we doing something to encourage this kind of behavior? Or is this just what they call having "spirited" children? (Possessed by spirits, perhaps?)  Does the twin thing factor in? Sometimes I think my girls' loudness has to do with the fact that they feel the need to shout over eachother to be heard, or even just shout to get more individual attention.

Mostly, I just tell myself that this is the way toddlers are, this too shall pass, etc. But then I see the way other kids behave and I can't help wondering.

Pic after the jump

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I'm not exactly sure how this started, but Clio is all about being naked -- or naked except for a diaper -- these days. It's not that she disrobes; she just wants to stay naked or undressed or partially dressed once she gets that way. A key part of the experience for her is shouting "I'm a naked baby!" or (if we're attempting to put clothes on her) "I want to be a naked baby!"  Of course, we have no one but ourselves to blame for this; for a long time, Alastair and I have been in the idiotic habit of gleefully yelling out "naked babies!" when we get the girls into the bath. That kind of humor is very funny to toddlers. And to us, apparently. And, well, shucks, naked babies are just so durn cute!

Let me interject to say that, in case you're wondering, no, there will not be a birthday suit photo of Clio accompanying this post. As cute as it would be, I wouldn't feel right doing it. Not just because there are sickos out there, but because it seems like an invasion of her privacy. Unlike the rest of this blog. Ahem. Um...er...Moving on!

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I recently picked up a copy of Harvey Karp's The Happiest Toddler on the Block from my favorite local bookstore, the Salvation Army. I'd heard good things about it from a few people, and I'd also found the Swaddling-shushing-swaying-shishkebabing-etc. advice from Karp's Happiest Baby useful when the girls were young, though I never actually read the book. (The S's were just the word on the street.)

I haven't read all of Happiest Toddler. I've skipped around a bit and focused on the sections that dealt specifically with two-year-olds. So far, I have mixed feelings about the book. Overall, it was a little too "cute" for my taste stylistically (enough with the exclamation points, Harvey!) and a lot of the advice just isn't practical for twins. Or any toddler, for that matter. Nightly massages before bed, complete with massage oil? Uh huh. Right. But the insights into toddlers' emotional and cognitive development were great, and most of the advice seemed to make a lot of sense on an instinctual level.

There was one particular tactic Karp recommends that I'd love to know if anyone else out there has tried. He calls it speaking "Toddler-ese" -- basically, talking to toddlers in their own language when they're upset / angry. You start by acknowledging what they want or feel, to let them know that they are heard and understood, then you shift into what you'd like them to do. Sounds pretty sensible, right? But when you look at the examples of what this might actually sound like....well, here's one example he gave, of what a mother said to her 32-month old twins who were fighting over a ball:

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Clio has been calling me "Mom" on occasion these days. I'm not sure exactly how she picked it up -- maybe from hearing A. and I address our mothers as "mom" on various occasions -- but she does it in an almost mischievous manner, like she's checking it out to see if it works / she can get away with it. I can't say I like it. She sounds way too grown up when she says it, and I feel way too un-grown-up to be called it.

There's a difference between being a "mommy" and a "mom." A "Mommy" is someone young and vibrant, possibly even hip. She plays and laughs with her adoring young children, kisses their boo-boos when they fall down, tucks them into bed at night. But a "Mom"? Entirely different. A mom is a frumpy someone you argue with and roll your eyes at. She wears bad jeans and has an outdated haircut and drives a mini-van with a "My child was student of the month..." bumper sticker on the back. She's worrywort. She's a nag. You wish she'd just leave you alone.

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Yesterday was one of those days where it felt like there were lots of new things going on. (How appropriate for Easter, yes?) It wasn't actually the girls' first Easter, but it was the first one we celebrated. We went to church in the morning, and in the afternoon, the girls partook in their first-ever (chocolate) egg hunt. This was totally a last-minute, minimalist effort -- I'd picked up two baskets and a couple of bags of chocolate eggs at CVS the day before. But the girls loved it.

I feel like it was the first holiday activity we've done with them where they seemed less like"babies," being dragged along for the ride (say Trick or Treat! Open your present! Etc.), and more like kids. When Clio first came down the back porch stairs, she spotted a chocolate egg, picked it up and said "Where did that come from?" (One of her new favorite expressions). Once we gave them their baskets and explained what they were supposed to do, they "got it" immediately, running around the yard and scooping up eggs, each time shouting "I found another egg!" And, like true kids, they were NOT happy when, after they'd each had some chocolate, I put their candy away to be doled out over the next few days (and eaten by me. Ha). In fact, there was a brief but intense crying jag until I distracted them with the idea of going around the living room and "finding" toys to put in their baskets. Of course, with older kids, this diversion technique never would have worked.

More pics after the jump

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When we were down in New York this week with Alastair's family, his mother (a.k.a. Jaycee) threw a lovely, abbreviated Passover seder for Elsa and Clio's benefit. It ran about fifteen minutes, total, which is about as long as the girls can manage sitting at a table these days, even when mass quantities of mac and cheese are present.

Highlights were hand-washing, the parts where they get to eat matzoh, the parts where they got to drink wine, the part where they got to stick their fingers in the wine and dab it on their plates (something they might have come up with on their own), and, in Elsa's case, haroset. The herbs dipped in salt water didn't go over so well, and we didn't even bother trying to get them to eat the horseradish. I think the finer points of the story were lost on them, but they enjoyed finding the matzoh. And eating it --- lots of it. They were also not slouches when it came to the wine. After the first couple of sips of that oh-so-fruity Manischewitz, they were calling for "More wine! More wine!"  They would have downed Elijah's whole glass too, given the opportunity.

Pics after the jump

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