Worms

A reason not to clean up too much?

Updates

Milo is picking up all sorts of words from Nora, like "nice" and "night night". He also says "apple" and "no" for nose. Milo can now point to his nose and sometimes his mouth, ear, head, and belly. Milo has also turned cranky (teething?) and spends a lot of time complaining every day. Fortunately I don't really understand what he's saying because I don't speak the language of Utter Discontent.

Nora can also say "apple" now, and "nose", and can point to all of the parts of her face. She repeats signs easily and just today she repeated the sign for "change" (as in change a diaper). Nora's crankiness has passed so now she's generally the content one, basically walking to and fro all the time holding on to little toys. 

Milo likes to carry giant, heavy things as he walks. We have this little piano that he carries everywhere, and a big heavy ball that's bigger than his head. He carries that too. 

I feel like I'm starting to get a sense of how the kids think every now and then. The other day I told Nora that it was time to go upstairs for a nap and she said "bunny!"  The bunny is one of her loveys that she likes to hug and play with when she naps. Meanwhile, any time we have brussels sprouts on our plates at dinner, Milo will excitedly say "ball!" (This has not, however, translated into any interest in actually eating a brussels sprout).

Both babies have started saying "eye" and pointing to their eyes.

Their receptive language is growing by leaps and bounds every day. Recently the twin whisperer asked Nora to go get some blocks, and she went to the container with blocks, picked out two of them, and brought them over. If I tell Milo to go give his bear a hug, he'll do that. The kids will also sometimes hug each other, both saying "nice". 

The way that Nora says the word "shoe" is a little strange, and it comes out sounding a lot like "shit". So Jake started telling her to say "oh shoe", and "take a shoe". Ah, fathers.

Nora is also saying, sometimes, "Mino" for "Milo". Milo's word for Nora is simply a very loud, angry yell.

It's fun to watch the kids learn so many new words and gestures and different ways of communicating. It must be hard to be in that stage where you can understand so much more than you can say. That stage probably lasts a long time. I think sometimes they understand more than we realize, which has resulted in some surprises, like Nora saying "bunny" when I talked about taking a nap. Just the other day Milo started fussing and yelling when we were talking about the President, and I had to remind him that it's okay, Bush is gone and we've got Mr. Obama now. He cheered right up at that.

Age

Recently a friend wanted to get some advice on having kids at an older age.

I do admit that I think about age all the time now. I do a lot of mental calculations. When Milo and Nora are 10, I'll be 47. When they're in high school, I'll be in my 50s. When they go off to college, I'll be as old as my parents are now. Will I seem ancient to them? Will we have too much of an age gap for me to be able to empathize with them, for them to be able to relate to me?

When my parents were my age, I was already in college. Meanwhile, I have two one-year olds.

When Nora and Milo turn 30, I'll be 66. Will I still be youthful enough to be free of major health issues, able to get around? What if they have children in their 30s, will I be too old to really help out the way my mom helped me? Will they have to deal with young children and aging parent issues at the same time? Is that too much of a burden to place on them?

On the one hand, I just hope that I will live a long, long time. Tonight I listened to an interview with a man who wrote a book about dying. He is 51 and his father is 97. I think, okay, if I live until 97, my children will be 61. That seems fair. To lose me when they're in their 60s seems fair. But it also seems like a stretch. It's what I hope for, but I worry that it won't work out that way.

I worry that I will be older than all of their friends' parents. That I will seem old to them, just ancient. That I'll cease to be helpful and become decrepit too early in their lives. That I will miss out on them having families of their own.

I take some comfort in the fact that Jake is younger. I was 36 when the kids were born and Jake was 30. When the kids are 15, Jake will be 45. That still seems pretty young. Jake's grandparents lived long lives so hopefully he'll be around for a long, long time.

I wanted to have children in my twenties, but it didn't work out that way. I'm okay with that because I'm happy to have Milo and Nora and Jake. I just hope that I live to be at least 97.

YMCA FAIL

You know what, when it's 10 degrees out, I do not feel like going outside. I feel like staying cozy indoors under my fluffy blanket. I do not feel like putting on shorts and running shoes, bundling up the kids into their layers, coats, and hats, putting on my own coat, packing the diaper bag, warming up the car, shlepping each kid out individually into the car while freezing my own ass off, driving to the Y, parking, opening up the trunk, getting out the double stroller, getting kid #1 out and strapped into the stroller, getting kid #2 out and strapped into the stroller, and then booking it to the building before the kids break into 800 pieces because they froze to death.

I do not feel like doing those things when it is 10 degrees out. But I do them, because of how I feel when the first mile is under my belt, when I'm warmed up, when my body is running smoothly, when everything is working together and my muscles are getting tired and my heart is light and happy. I do it because of how I feel after the run, when I am loose and motivated, when I am ready to stretch and lift some weights. I do it because of how I feel when I am going back to the car for the drive home, and I don't even notice the cold because my core is warm. I do it for those feelings.

BUT IF NORA CANNOT HANDLE THE CHILDCARE ROOM THEN I DON'T GET ANY OF THAT GOOD STUFF.

Instead, I get only one mile under my belt before I'm pulled away from the gym by the childcare lady, who has a desperate look in her eye and tells me that Nora has been crying inconsolably for the past 10 minutes. 1 mile is crap. It's barely enough for me to get warmed up. I don't get anything out of a measly freaking mile. I don't get the benefits of a workout. I don't get to feel good. Instead I've gone through all of the crappy parts, the cold, the shlepping, the packing, the strapping in, the coats, the hats, all of that stuff for NOTHING.

I put Milo into the childcare room first and he was fine, playing with some sort of miniature bus. Then I put Nora down and she was fine too...until I started to leave. Then she freaked. So I stayed for a while, playing with the kids with some baby dolls and books. Nora can point to the nose of the doll and say "nose". But she didn't want to let me out of her grasp. I couldn't get her to walk or play with anything, she just clung to me. The childcare lady said that I might as well give it a try, they'd hold her and I would leave and we'd see how it went. So that's what I did. And she cried the whole time. When they pulled me out of the gym I returned to all of the childcare workers (there were like 4 or 5 at the time) holding at least one baby, and all of the babies were crying, led by Nora. She had set up a giant crystorm among all the babies. Except, curiously, Milo. He was still playing with the dolls and the cars and the giant legos and having a good old time. He was watching the bigger kids, the preschoolers, with total fascination and saying "hi!" So Milo was just fine today, but Nora most decidedly was not.

What a crock. The head of the childcare team told me that I should just keeping trying, and hopefully she would eventually be okay with it. But the motivation to go through all of this giant hassle week after week with no actual payoff is small. It is frustrating.

Oh, and that lady who had octuplets? I'm amazed at how big and healthy they all are. All I can say is, good luck to her. She'll need an army to take care of that many newborns.

Random Bullets of Randomness

• I'm going with the popular term "random" instead of the correct term "arbitrary".
• I am teaching two graduate courses and one is a very informal seminar that we hold each semester for our math-ed cohort. Today was our first meeting and as one of those tired old get to know you exercises each person told us something nobody in the room knew about them. Thus I found out that one of my students has produced several movies, another student went to an Ashram in India when he was a kid, a third student once worked in a cheese factory, and another student likes to do crazy endurance racing and has run 100-mile races. His goal for this summer's 100-mile race is to complete it in 20 hours. Straight. Of running. Running for 20 hours in a row. Still can't wrap my head around that.
• Nora woke up twice last night and Milo woke up twice, and the kids were up for good at 6:15. I am a person who changed careers due to not being able to handle getting up early. I left a perfectly good job in order to find a job that would allow me to sleep in.  Then I went and had kids.  How dumb am I?
• The power cord on my computer only works intermittently and tonight it has decided not to work. I have 2 hours and 46 minutes left on the battery.
• I've noticed that many things I used to think were caricatures of baby behavior are actually true. For instance, when young infants cry, their tongues actually do waggle back and forth like you see on the Simpsons. Also, babies (or more specifically, Milo) actually do thrust out their lower lip in a giant pout without any sense of irony. In addition, babies (again Milo) will actually say "boo hoo" as they cry.
• I have noticed that a lot of the people I knew from high school now look super, super old. I mean, if I saw them on the street I'd never think that we were the same age. It is a huge shock to realize that this just means that I am actually pretty damn old, and I don't even realize it. People probably see me on the street and think "dang, she's old."
• In the first gesture of goodwill in a while, I actually saw Milo hand a toy to Nora today. She took it, then hugged me and said "nice". Both kids love to come running for a hug, which is definitely nice.
• After a long, long day at work I came home to a cheerful Nora and a cranky Milo who cried unless I was holding him, so I tried to make dinner while holding him the entire time. The kid must weigh 20 pounds. It's really hard to make dinner with one hand. Frankly, this is not conforming to my fantasies of parenthood. In my fantasy world I will come home from yet another fabulously successful day at work to greet my clean, smiling, happy children. Jake will also come home and entertain the children while reading them educational books as he tells me, "you look like you've had a rough day. Why don't you take a hot, relaxing bath before dinner." After my bath, which is silent and not punctuated by piercing screams of any kind, I'll come downstairs to find that dinner is being delivered from L'Etoile by none other than John Cusak. And not the older, saggy-faced John Cusak of today, but the younger, cute, Lloyd Dobbler John Cusak from Say Anything. After John Cusak drops off our meal of brioche-crusted jumbo sea scallops and tagliatele tossed in a lemon cream sauce with spinach and chive oil, Jake and I will dine by candlelight as the children delightedly partake in the meal by finger-feeding themselves and quietly praising the food. Again, the meal will be decidedly absent of any screaming or yelling. Then I will snuggle with the children, content in my lap, as I read them creative and educational books, which they will enjoy immensely. They will then trip off to bed, leaving me and Jake to an evening of scintillating conversation over a glass or three of wine.

Good from Bad

Yesterday Nora skipped her afternoon nap entirely. She sleeps in a pack 'n play in our bedroom, and usually likes to hug her bunny and go right to sleep, but this time she spent almost an hour and a half chattering to herself instead of sleeping. I went in there 4 different times to get her to fall asleep, but she never did. Instead she just kept up a constant conversation, saying "Libble DOW! Du DOW! Shoe. Shoe. Buhey (her word for bunny). [hysterical laughter]. DOW!"

After "nap" time we went to the Y and I dropped off the kids, who were happy playing at the table with cars, and got to work out for a whole 10 minutes before they came and got me saying that Nora was inconsolable. I calmed her down and then played with both kids for a while until they were happy. Then I left to attempt to continue my workout, which lasted 5 minutes before they came and got me again. No success at playing in the playroom without me this time. Nora was crying and Milo had a single lonely tear tracing a line down his cheek. So I gave up and bundled them up and put them in the stroller and bundled me up and hoofed it on out of there, only realizing once we were on the way home that I had left the diaper bag there. Oh well.

Then Nora struggled with sleeping, waking up before 10 and staying awake until about 11:30. Although not terribly upset, she just couldn't settle down. I eventually gave her some warm milk and after she drank a couple of ounces, she seemed to feel better and finally fell asleep.

I went to bed exhausted and irritated at not having gotten my workout, thinking "THIS is why mothers always look like crap", thinking this never seems to get better, it's just the same thing again and again, and then woke up to discover that no, it's not the same thing again and again. Change does come, in the form of a TOOTH for Nora! Finally! At 13 months and 1 week, Nora is finally sprouting her very first tooth.

Tips for Getting Toddlers to Eat

Tonight was an eating disaster for Milo. He had one jar of mushed up meat, and then refused his vegetables, refused bananas (one of his favorites), refused toast with sunbutter (another favorite), refused banana bread with chocolate chips (I mean, come on!) and even refused Cheerios. The kid wouldn't eat anything.

And yet it's always Milo who has something in his mouth, it's always Milo with a black smear on his face because he's been eating dirt again. It's always Milo eating paper or picking 3-day-old pieces of macaroni off the floor and popping them into his mouth. If you give him something incredibly delicious at mealtime, he'll gingerly touch it with one finger, maybe hold it for a while, bang it around some, perhaps briefly bring it to his mouth only to retreat quickly, smear it across his forehead, and maybe, maybe if he's feeling adventurous, touch it ever-so-briefly to his tongue, before dropping it on the floor. But if he comes across something on his own he'll pop it into his mouth immediately before I can even reach him.

So this suggests creative means to get Milo to eat. I could:


1) Scatter food across the floor. In fact, why bother putting him in his chair with the tray? He won't eat anything off the tray anyway, but as soon as it falls on the floor, it's fair game. Might as well set him on the floor and let him go at it.


2) Hide nutritious meals in the potted plant. That's where he goes for a snack anyway. Mix in some peanut butter sandwiches with the dirt.


3) Make food look like a book or a catalog. If it's paper, he'll eat it. Hmmm, very thin crepes? Maybe he'll be fooled if I put food into the catalog. I'll have to think about that one.


4) Put food in the cat's water dish. He can't wait to get his hands in there anyway.

I'm sure that if I get weird enough, I can eventually trick the kid into eating.

p.s. I wrote this last night. Tonight, Milo ate a full bowl of cheesy-potato soup (now with extra cheese!), an entire jar of peas with brown rice and avocado oil, and a bunch of sunbutter. Then he gagged on like the very last bite of sunbutter and regurgitated his entire meal in a giant green lava flow of grossness, smiling the whole time. Aaaaa, all that hard work down the drain!

New Semester

Our semester starts this week, which is a week later than most semesters. It makes sense given our northern location; this way students can stay away during one of the coldest weeks of the year, and go a little later into May, when the weather is nice. It's generally not too hot here by May.

Two of my graduate students are already missing class this week (the first class of the semester) because they're going to the inauguration. This year I'm becoming a bit more of a hardass and am implementing grade penalties for missing too many classes. My courses aren't lecture courses, they're interactive seminars in which students' contribution to the discussion is a key element of class. So missing class means that you really miss out on a lot. Anyway, I can understand why somebody would want to go to this historic inauguration. I want to go, too. But I can't, because I have to teach this week. It doesn't make a great impression when you decide to miss the first class of the semester.

But...tomorrow will be an incredible, uplifting day.

Thanks to a Christmas gift from my mom, the twin whisperer will watch the kids 3 days a week this semester and so Jake and I will each have 4 full days on campus during the week. I'll need it, as I'm teaching two classes instead of my typical 1 class. To non-academics that probably doesn't sound like much at all, but the non-teaching aspects of my job already constitute a full-time, 40+ hour a week job, so adding in two classes on top of that is a lot more. This morning when the twin whisperer came, both kids lit up and started laughing, squealing, and saying "Hi! Hi! Hi!" It's going to be hard when we lose her.

Speaking of the kids, Nora's crankiness has largely disappeared now that her walking is better. I think she was frustrated about walking. Now she can walk like a pro, and she's much happier. Meanwhile, Milo is in the phase where he can walk across the room, so he's practicing walking all the time, but he also falls down about once every 30 seconds. So he is very cranky. I swear, this weekend he practically spent the entire time just crying and yelling. Milo can already push himself up to a stand from the floor, though, which impresses me. Nora is still pulling up on objects.

Milo and Nora have entered an extreme sibling rivalry phase. It's almost like they're brother and sister and they irritate one another just by existing. The nerve! Sometimes Milo gets ticked off just because Nora has the audacity to be there next to him. He yells at her and grabs at her. Then she'll grab at him and the next thing I know there will be a full on baby wrestling scene going on, which ends in both of them crying angry tears. The twin whisperer said that it's a phase that she's seen every pair of twins go through. I haven't worked up the courage yet to ask her how long the phase might last. I keep telling the kids the whole reason we had two at once was so that they could play together and allow mama to neglect them as she hits the bottle cooks dinner or cleans the kitchen, but so far they don't seem to be buying it.

Bath Time

There are some things that just can't be posted on a blog, even a private one, but suffice it to say that Milo and Nora had a great time playing pirates in the tub with Jake, who can't resist anything to do with pirates. So here are some postable pictures of the kids having a great time in the bath.

Bathing with two 13-month olds is really a lot harder than you'd think. They always want to stand up, and they're slippery as hell and constantly going in two different directions. But oh, they love it so much that it's worth it.

Weather

The cold front has left us and now it's 14 degrees and snowing! Hooray! It feels so much warmer today. Also, I have lost a pound and a half. Hooray! Here is something I wrote a day or two ago when it was freezing:

As I write this it is -18 degrees, something like -45 with the wind chill factor. When I breathe in, my nose shuts together. If I were to spit, my spit would turn into a little ice ball before it hit the ground. There is no question of taking the kids outside. It's bright and sunny outside, but schools are closed today due to the cold. (Not the university, of course. The university never, ever closes).

I remember it once got cold like this when I was in high school. School was not closed that morning. I was a senior and drove my Volkswagon Rabbit to school. The heaters couldn't keep up with the cold, especially given that the wind rattled through the closed windows. By about 11 a.m. the school decided to close and they sent us all home. I had a problem with my car. Any time it was colder than about 10 degrees out, the car would stall out if I slowed down below about 10 miles an hour. There was one stop sign between the school and my house, and my goal was to try to slow down enough to make it safely through the stop sign without actually stopping and having my car stall out. (This isn't quite as dangerous as it sounds as back in those days the road was pretty deserted).

Unfortunately there was a car or two in front of me and I had to slow down almost to a stop at the stop sign, and sure enough, the car stalled. I couldn't get it to start again. I sat in the car wondering what I should do as everything got colder and colder and colder. This happened in the 80's. Back then, we never ever zipped up our coats because it didn't look cool. We also never wore our backpacks with both straps over our shoulders. So basically we spent all winter going around with crooked backs and freezing our asses off because we were too dumb to actually zip up our coats. I'm quite sure I never wore a hat or a scarf. I sat there in the car and thought about what to do, and I zipped up my coat for the first time since I was a kid.

I decided to get out of the car and walk to a nearby street with houses on it. At that point a nice lady from my own neighborhood happened to drive by. She stopped and offered me a ride home, which I gladly accepted. I have no memory of when or how I got the car home.

My own memory of this day is that it was kind of an adventure, but it's not an adventure I necessarily want Nora or Milo to have when they're older and driving. Why do I live here? This is just miserable. The cold keeps ruining all of my plans. Why did I move away from the west coast?

Oh, I remember why. Summer. Summer is why I moved here.

I have never been a fan of west coast summers or west coast vegetation. It's all too dry out there. In California everything is barren and deserty. In Washington and Oregon all of the trees are spiky and not condusive to climbing. In Pennsylvania, in contrast, the trees are huge and leafy with great sturdy branches for sitting all afternoon. In Pennsylvania, the crickets chirp a constant whirring sound that grows louder and louder as the evening wanes. In Pennsylvania, the air is moist and hot and luxurious, and the trees and plants and grass are an intense shade of green you just don't see out west, and thunderstorms roll in bringing torrents of warm rain that never quite cool anything down. In Pennsylvania, grandparents have freezers in the basement with chocolate eclaires. There are streams to explore and tire swings to swing on and sheds with roofs you can climb on, and lunch happens at noon and dinner happens at 5:30 and everything is more delicious and perfect than you can imagine.

While summers on the west coast were in black and white, summers in Pennsylvania were in technicolor. They were so great that I regularly dream about being there, even though I haven't been back in, oh, more than 20 years.

I knew I wanted to go back to something like that, and when I had the chance I went far away to college and got to enjoy that gorgeous, almost-southern humidity once again. Summers during the college years were just as hot and humid as they were in Pennsylvania. The trees were just as big, the grass was just as green. My friends and I would go to the park and sit outside at midnight, eating frozen custard, lying back on the grass and watching the stars. I would walk to and from campus through beautiful neighborhoods with brick streets and ivy-covered houses. The slightest breeze would set all of the leaves moving overhead. Everything about those summers was steeped in mystery, excitement, and romance. Something wonderful was just around every corner. The heat and the humidity had everything to do with those feelings. I can't explain why, but I just love it. Give me an 85-degree day with a thunderstorm lurking in the distance and I'm going to be happy.

So that's why I'm here. Waiting for days like that, days that I relish even more because I suffered through winter days like today. It's hard to remember this in January, but summer will come around again.

13 Months

Once again, my attempts to take a cute picture of both kids together fail to achieve fruition. So this is all we've got:


See how they look kind of annoyed and ticked off? That's because they are. There are some cute times still, when Nora and Milo will laugh at each other or play little games together with the curtain, but mostly they're into antagonizing one another. And thus we enter...the toddler stage.

There's a great book I've been reading about toddlers. I think it's called "Your one year old: fun loving and fussy." It should really have been called "Your one year olds: they start out all cute and nice, and then they will slowly turn into cranky, self-absorbed monsters from hell." At least, that's the impression I'm getting from the book.

So whenever Milo and Nora are in close proximity to each other, they become aggressive in turn. Milo will yell at Nora. Perhaps he'll try to steal a toy for variety's sake, but that's not a necessary part of the ritual. Nora will then yell at Milo. Milo will then yell back, louder. Nora will then grab Milo's head with both of her hands and place her mouth on his forehead, yelling the whole time. At about that point both kids will collapse on the floor and start crying angrily. Then I'll intervene, re-direct them, and enjoy about 30 seconds of peace before something else upsets them.

The kids are doing some lovely things, too. For instance, Milo has developed a love of hugging anything soft like stuffed animals (or the cat). He'll roll all over the object of his affections, and occasionally that object will even be me and Jake, which is nice. Here he is hugging a polar bear that he got for Christmas from his grandparents:


Milo is starting to take some steps. He can walk 6 or 7 steps in a row, now, if he doesn't get too excited. One of Milo's favorite games right now is to have us balance him up on his feet, let go and scoot back, and then he'll walk towards us. He's so delighted by this that he'll laugh the entire time, and stick his tongue out in sheer joy. Often Milo will get so excited that he'll start trying to run forward, plunging head first into our arms. So his excitement can sometimes get in the way of him really practicing at those balancing skills that he needs for walking, but I know he'll get it down pretty soon.


Milo has developed some new words, like "school" and "boom" for when he knocks something over (like a tower of blocks). He's also saying car, sometimes, but we don't have enough exposure to cars right now for that concept to really take hold with him. He's still saying "ball" about 700 times a day, along with his other favorites, like baby, dada, mama, done, hi, and kitty. Milo also likes to raise one hand in a greeting, without waving it. He'll just...hold it there, upright, which bears an unfortunate resemblance to some sort of sieg heil salute. I've started teaching him to give me five when he does that, which he loves to do.


Milo remains fascinated by the telephone. When it rings he'll look at it and say "eh?" and then pretend to talk in a weird voice. He has a toy telephone that he likes to play with, too, but of course nothing reaches the fascination level of the forbidden real telephone.

Milo is a cuddler. I can still get him to cuddle in my arms sometimes, which is nice.


Milo has developed a weird issue with eating solid foods. He often decides that he doesn't want to rather early in the meal. Switching to a different food will pacify him for a while, but then he'll refuse the new food, and we're then reduced to placing some finger food on his tray and slipping in spoonfuls while he's occupied with playing with the finger food. Frankly, it's a real pain. I don't want mealtime to become a battle. At the same time, he can't get away with only eating a few spoonfuls. I think Milo's entering the tough stage at which he wants some more control over how he does things, like feeding himself, but he doesn't have the coordination to really do it himself yet. This has got to be really frustrating for him. I'm giving him as many finger foods as I can to help him have some autonomy over his eating, but of course there is a lot of stuff that he doesn't like to touch.

The other night I enjoyed watching Milo pick up a piece of macaroni and cheese and disdainfully toss it over the side of his tray, and then eat all of the smoked salmon instead. What kid eschews macaroni and cheese for smoked salmon? Meanwhile, the cat lingers under the high chairs and snatches up any bit of stray food. It's almost as good as having a dog.


Milo remains a great sleeper. He regularly naps for 2 to 2.5 hours, and sometimes we have to wake him up. He wakes gently and happily plays by himself in the crib if we don't get him right away. This kid is a real dream when it comes to sleeping.


Basically Milo is pretty mellow these days, as long as Nora isn't bothering him. Or rather, as long as he's not bothering Nora because he seems to be more the instigator right now. Other than that, and the eating thing, he's pretty happy. Milo enjoys his walks and his toys and his books and climbing the stairs and chasing the cats, and going after the plastic on those damn windows every chance he gets. He does it all with a general glee that's enjoyable to watch. He's fun to be around right now.


Nora, on the other hand, is turning into a bit of a cranky toddler. She's cranky when she wakes, cranky when she plays, cranky in the morning, cranky in the evening. I have no idea why. Teething, perhaps? Hah ha ha ha ha! She still doesn't have any teeth. On the bright side, Nora's language is really growing. In addition to the old standbys of mama, dada, hi, night night, kitty, done, and ball, Nora is also saying "shoe", "bye bye", "boom", "diaper", "nice", and "no".

The last two are my favorite. Nora has learned "no" from when I say it as they approach the windows. Now when Milo goes for the window, Nora will tell him "No!" and shake her head. But the funniest is when Nora herself decides to go for the plastic on the windows. As she's doing it, she'll say "no" and shake her head. She associates the word "no" with the windows, but totally doesn't get the purpose of the word. I think for Nora "no" means "playing with the plastic on the windows."

The other funny word that Nora uses is "nice", which is what she says whenever she hugs one of us or a stuffed animal. She'll hug us and then she'll say "nice". It must be because every time one of the kids hugs something, I tend to say "awww, that's nice."


The other big thing with Nora is that she is really walking now. She's pretty good at it and can turn around, and navigate around things, and side step, and do all sorts of fancy stuff. Walking has pretty much eliminated our need to provide Nora with any toys. She doesn't want to sit and play, she just wants to walk. All day long. She's happy just walking back and forth, all around the living room and the dining room and the kitchen. That's pretty much what Nora likes to do with her time.



Nora is doing a great job at eating solid foods. For instance, tonight for dinner she had mushed up chicken with vegetables, then some green beans with rice (mushed), then sunbutter, then yogurt, then smoked salmon.

It's good that she is doing well with her solid foods because she is pretty consistently rejecting the bottle, so the amount of liquids that Nora consumes is pretty low. I think a toddler this age is supposed to still drink about 24 ounces of milk. Today, Milo had 16 and Nora had 3. It is frustrating because it's very difficult to make up the calorie difference in solids. But there's not much I can do about it. I have spent more than a year now obsessed with figuring out how to get Nora to drink, either nursing or from a bottle, and she has always hated it and I'm sure always will. She is also not a big fan of the sippy cup or the straw cup. The only exception is if I put juice in the sippy cup. Then Nora will drink some, but I don't want her to get in the habit of drinking juice and only juice all the time. In fact, before the kids were born my plan was to never give them juice, just milk or water. Hah. Nora won't drink milk from any kind of cup, and she won't drink water, period. Man, these kids with their individual preferences and personalities and everything, who do they think they are?



Nora does enjoy showing off her little tricks, though, which is a saving grace in the midst of all of this non-drinking, non-sleeping, crankiness. She'll hold out one finger when you ask her how old she is. She'll show you her nose, her ear, and her belly. She'll show you the sign for "more" and for "eat" (but she won't use these signs to ever indicate that she, say, wants more to eat). When Nora's getting cranky I'll just cycle through her tricks, asking her how old she is, what an owl says, where her belly is, and she'll smile despite herself at the chance to show these things.


13 months is somewhat challenging, but at least she's cute.

The Never Ending Struggle

Now to post something good, Nora slept through the night last night, and Milo slept through until 5:50.

The last time Nora slept through the night was Christmas night, Dec. 25. Around that time she would frequently wake about once a night, but sometimes sleep through. That continued, and turned into twice a night on many nights. I did what I always do, which is to go in there and comfort her very briefly, and then return her to her crib with a pacifier, place her bunny in her hands, and leave. She would go back to sleep again.

So once a night turned into twice a night, and then last week it started getting worse. Sometimes three times a night. Sometimes more. Not often. Saturday night, though, she woke up several times and was awake for about two hours in the middle of the night. She also woke Milo and all four of us were awake for a significant portion of the night. At that point I realized that my strategy of going in quickly to comfort Nora right away was making things worse. Even though my visits were brief, I got the impression that she was expecting it more and more.

So Sunday night I returned to the old sleep training habit of waiting 5 minutes before going in to comfort her. If Nora were to start crying hard or get upset, I wouldn't wait, but typically she doesn't do that. She'll make some noise, quiet down a little bit, whine or cry, quiet down, talk some, etc. So waiting 5 minutes doesn't mean that she's screaming in agony or anything. Nora woke at 11:30 or so and I waited 5 minutes, and she was still making noise so I went in and comforted her and put her back to bed. At about 2:30 she woke again, and she woke several more times through the night but my memory of the whole thing is blurry. Each time I put on my glasses and looked at the clock to wait 5 minutes, and each time she quieted down and went back to sleep by herself before the 5 minutes had passed.

The other thing I did differently on Sunday night was toss about 20 pacifiers into her crib so that she'd have no trouble finding one if that happened to be what was bothering her.

And then last night, she didn't wake (or at least didn't cry or make noise) at all. Having written that, I'm sure that Nora will wake tonight. I'm not naive enough to think that we've solved anything here. It'll probably be years before Nora reliably sleeps through the night. That just seems to be who she is no matter what I do. But it's good to remember that Nora is a very responsive little person. She seems to get the gist of things pretty quickly, and when I make a small change like waiting 5 minutes, she gets the picture. She was in such better spirits this morning as a result of actually having gotten a decent night's sleep.

I know we'll be dealing with sleep and Nora for a long time. Some kids are just better sleepers than others, I think, and we've got two who are rather on opposite ends of the spectrum. But for the moment I'm glad I made a change that will hopefully work, at least some of the time, rather than letting things get worse and worse for both her and me.

One last note about sleep -- sometimes the kids have a little bit of trouble going to sleep at night these days. If Milo is keyed up at all, he'll stand up and start jumping up and down in his crib. If Milo does that, Nora will do it too. Then they feed off of each other. So basically we'll put them to bed, say night night, leave, and then they'll get up and start jumping up and down. So far, we can settle them down if we go back in once or twice, make them lie down, and leave. But I'm just waiting for the day when that'll no longer work and they'll realize that they can jump up and down for an hour if they really want to. I hope it doesn't happen because I really like having them in the same room, and I don't feel anywhere near ready to separate them yet.

Not. Fair.

After 10 days of eating less and exercising more, I have not lost a single pound. Not even half a pound. I actually don't understand how this is even physically possible. It is so discouraging. I have never believed in dieting but maybe I do have to actually go on an actual diet to lose weight. Again, super discouraging. I guess it is harder and harder to lose weight the older you get? I don't know. I feel like crap. Now I will go to the Y and work out and at least feel physically better for a while after a night of being up from 1:30 - 3:30 (and before that at 11:30, and again at 6:30) with Nora. Maybe it is impossible to lose weight when you are chronically sleep deprived, who knows.

But the Workout was Nice

Today Nora and Milo spent almost an hour in the childcare room at the Y and when I was walking down the hall to get to the room to pick them up, I could hear Nora's cry before I even got to the room. She was crying the high-pitched hysterical cry that she almost never cries, the one that I hear when I'm getting out of the shower late at night and Jake has been holding her for the last 5 minutes and she's been inconsolable and saying "mama, mama". So...yeah.

Apparently she'd been fine until about the last 10 minutes but had been pretty unhappy for that last 10 minutes. Milo was fine. So now I have some mixed feelings about leaving them. 

The people working in the childcare room are pretty good. They immediately knew Milo & Nora's names today and they hold the babies/toddlers when they start to get fussy or upset. They play with them. So it's not like Nora was sitting in a corner crying. She was being held and crying, but still, is that unacceptable? Or do I need to just toughen up and not raise a couple of overly-coddled kids? Parenting is so hard. I have never done anything in my life that has been so filled with uncertainty and constant second guessing. It's like, when I started doing this a year ago I was clueless, and now I'm a whole year into it and I'm still clueless!

There's been a discussion going on over at Dooce about whether parenting is harder or marriage is harder. It blows my mind that this would even merit a discussion. How could anybody find anything harder than parenting? Parenting is a hundred, a thousand times harder than marriage. Jake is an adult who can take care of himself. When he takes a dump, he cleans it up himself. He can feed himself and dress himself. He's also a nice, reasonable person who doesn't scream for no apparent reason at the dinner table just to hear the sound of his own voice. Jake doesn't wake me up in the middle of the night. I'm not responsible for his safety or his cognitive and emotional development. He pretty much just runs on his own. Being married without kids involved things like taking naps whenever I felt like it. Parenthood took all of that away in one fell swoop. 

Being with the kids is fun, funny, exhausting, delightful, and frustrating. Behind it all is this constant low-grade worrying that never ends. I think that some people are just sort of naturals at being parents, and they take to it like fish to water, and I thought that I would be one of those people and it turns out I'm totally not. It's all alien to me and I feel like I'm walking around in a pitch-black house feeling the furniture with my hands and trying to figure out the lay of the room without ever knowing if I'm going to stumble over a footstool. Marriage is nothing like that. It's stress relieving rather than stress producing. I feel like I know how to be a wife to Jake, but I don't know how to be a parent to Nora & Milo so I'm totally faking it all the time.

Above are some photos I took today of Nora exploring technology. I have so many more pictures of Nora than Milo because he naps so much longer than she does. I probably spend an additional hour to two hours with Nora every single day compared to Milo because he sleeps so much more than she does.

Walking and Bear Hugs

Revealing my Town

Our neighborhood was written up in the paper today for, of all things, its ice rink. This ice rink is right in front of my house and all day long kids are out there skating on it. I'm looking forward to when Nora and Milo are old enough to skate on it, and maybe join in the hockey games.

http://www.madison.com/wsj/topstories/index.php?ntid=431378

It's Fun to Stay at the Y-M-C-A

Last weekend I took Nora to visit the local gym I was thinking of joining and I was less than impressed. The gym itself was fine but the playroom seemed a little...off. I don't know why. It was a little dingy and there was a t.v. blaring (granted, an older kid was watching it) and the young women watching the kids didn't seem very enthusiastic. It didn't leave a good taste in my mouth, so I kept looking. I found some other options with better childcare facilities, but they were out of my price range. Then I visited the YMCA, and it was great! The childcare room has no television and it has a separate gated off area for littler babies who can't walk yet. The staff greets you when you enter, and they're all certified in CPR and anti-child-abuse training and all sorts of other things. It was bright and cheerful.

So today I took both babies there for a trial run. I dropped them off, hanging around for a while with them, feeling a bit worried because it was the first time, after all, that I'd dropped them off anywhere for any kind of child care thing. But they were into all of the new toys and stuff and barely noticed me. They didn't care when I left.

I was gone for about 40 minutes and Nora was fine the whole time. Milo was getting a little fussy towards the end, they said, so when I returned somebody was holding him. They had tried to give them bottles but they weren't interested even though it was a little past time so I sat there in the room with them and fed them both. If I could actually get the babies to drink their bottles when they're in childcare, I could then have more than 30-40 minutes to work out, which would be fantastic. But the people working in the room don't really have the same, shall we say, persistence that the twin whisperer has when it come to getting them to eat. I guess I have to accept that not everybody is the twin whisperer, and it's not going to kill the kids to spend an hour in childcare where they're competently watched but not, you know, fawned over. Which is pretty much what the twin whisperer does when she's here.

So Milo and Nora seemed to like it just fine, and I'm glad for that. I feel weird about leaving them somewhere, even for a little while, but I think it's important to get over that because eventually they're going to have to, like, go to school and stuff. Eventually they'll get hurt when I'm not around, eventually somebody will be mean to them, eventually they'll cry and I won't be there to soothe them. It's all going to have to happen eventually.

And oh, that 35 minutes that I had to myself? Oh man. Perfection. It felt so wonderful to be there, to run, to do things that I can't do when I run with the kids, like listen to music. And not deal with them if they get fussy and fight. In other words, I could actually focus on what I was doing and zone out, get into that awesome place that you go when your body is working really hard and you're not thinking about anything, for once, you're just enjoying the sensation and the music. I missed this. It is such a terrific kind of happiness, that feeling you get after half an hour or so and everything is running smoothly, like a well-oiled machine, and you push yourself to go farther, faster, work just a little harder, and your face is red and you're sweating up a storm and everything is just perfect. I have missed that feeling. I don't know why I waited so long to start doing it again.

I have to remember that Nora and Milo are growing up quickly. Eventually they won't be drinking bottles, and they're going to drop their morning nap, and I'll be able to have, say, a whole hour to myself with maybe even some time to stretch afterward instead of rushing back to them to make sure they eat or drink. We'll get longer stretches of time in, and that's going to come sooner than I realize. Even this time next year everything is going to be totally different as far as scheduling goes, and I'll have bigger chunks of time to do things with the kids.

Tonight, I feel great. We'll go back on Thursday.

Photos

Nothing's more fun than sitting on a box.


Let me just reach in this box a liiiitle more to get that toy...whoops!

All Things Baby

So Milo has been taking a few steps here and there, grinning hugely as he does it and we clap and clap. He's been doing it for a while; almost as soon as he let go to stand on his own, he started trying a step or two. Meanwhile, Nora's been standing by herself for weeks now but never took a single step at all. She wanted to get steady with the standing and balancing first.

Then we made the huge mistake of letting Nora grab onto our fingers and walk with us as we walk backwards. Both babies love this sort of thing, but Nora loves it best and she wants to do it constantly. The problem with this is that adult backs hurt when they're constantly hunched like that, and we just can't do it without a break here and there, at which point Nora freaks. right. out. I mean, we're not just talking crying, or screaming, we're talking full-on tantrum on the floor, complete with pounding her fists and kicking her legs. I keep trying not to laugh during this hilarious outburst, but it's hard. Nora is very insistent, too. She'll constantly crawl up to us, pull up on our pants, and seek out our hands, grabbing onto our fingers, and then she'll jump up and down and yell at us, which roughly translated means "Come on, let's go! Walk, you giant people whose job is to fulfill all of my needs immediately! Walk! Walk!"

So yesterday we were in the playroom and Nora stood up on her own, at which point I immediately scooted back 10 paces and she then proceeded to walk across the room towards me as Jake and I clapped and cheered. She then did it again. So both of them are taking steps now, which I guess means the beginning of walking? Of course it might be quite a while before they're actually walking walking, instead of practice walking.

I thought of the walking milestone as sort of like the crawling milestone. When each baby started crawling, that was it. One day, they weren't crawling, and then, they were, and that was that. I guess I assumed that walking would be the same, like, one day they'd just start walking and then they would never crawl again. But Milo and Nora aren't really doing that, instead they're practicing with their standing, and taking a few steps here and there for fun, but when it's time to get somewhere, they crawl. So I guess it's more of a gradual evolution.

Milo really goes for Nora's toys all the time, trying to steal whatever is in her hand. Then we get another outburst from Nora. I was glad to see that over the weekend Nora has developed a defensive maneuver in which she twists her body away from Milo, shielding the toy, and then crawls away while holding it. He's usually fine with playing with something else at that point, not up for the challenge of chasing after it when it's being actively defended, and this way we avoid the resulting yellfest.

I need to teach Milo some different words. He is seriously obsessed with balls, ball is by far his favorite word, and lately he's been saying it constantly. Any remotely spherical thing, the light, the clementines on the counter, the head of a snowman, is "ball". Because of the clementines on the counter Milo has to say "ball" about 800 times whenever we eat a meal. This morning he woke up early and when Jake went into the nursery he found Milo in his crib, chatting to himself and saying "ball" over and over again. I am getting sick of "ball". Milo also knows kitty, night night, done, hi, bye, and baby, among other things, but I think it's time to branch out more and teach some different words. I was trying "book" for a while but he wasn't into it. Milo did learn "school" but that is such an abstract concept that it's a little hard to reinforce.

Nora's latest word is "shoe". She'll also say "night night" when she's getting tired and ready for her nap. Nora also says kitty, hoo hoo (for an owl), hi, bye, mama, daddy, and done. She'll say ball sometimes but nothing like Milo.

One weird thing about Milo is that while he adores small balls the size of a tennis ball, we have a bigger ball (maybe a little smaller than a soccer ball) that frightens him. It is made of that super soft rubber, and I don't know if it's the size or the way it feels or what, but we've had to put it away for good because every time Milo sees it he starts crying in fear.

Both kids also say "baba" with an associated sign that they made up, and I have absolutely no idea what it means. The twin whisperer thinks that it's their name for her, and I'm willing to go with that, but who knows. They say it almost exclusively during meal time (solid meals, not bottles, and it doesn't mean bottle).

That's pretty much all that is new in babyland, or I guess I should say, toddler land!

Too Old for This

Jake and I had a night out tonight, just the two of us, which hasn't happened in a long time. The worst part is that we were pretty much ready to go home by 6:50 p.m., but we didn't want to go home right in the middle of the kids going down. So after dinner we walked to a nearby cafe for some coffee, and by 8 p.m. we were dead tired and ready to come home and hit the sack. It's now 8:37 p.m. and as soon as I hit "publish post" I'm going to get in pajamas and go to bed. As we were driving home, Jake said "having kids is like having chronic fatigue syndrome." I had to laugh. I guess the problem is that I'm so dang old, too old to have babies, and I just can't deal with exhaustion and sleep deprivation the way I could in my twenties. Man I'm tired!

2009

Nora has been very cranky over the past few days. She must not be feeling well or something. I don't even want to say it's teething because I always say that and it never is. Every time I put her down or try to walk out of the room she freaks out and starts screaming. I hope she starts feeling better soon. Milo is still his happy little self.

I have been struggling to find a way to give the kids some more variety so that they don't get bored cooped up at home all day every day. In the summer and the fall we took walks all the time, and we could play outside, but now that it is so cold we can't rely on that anymore.  When it gets too cold for a walk, even, then what can we do? I have been looking around at various baby/toddler activities or open gym type things, and the biggest challenge is that most of them have set hours that happen in the morning, smack dab in the middle of Milo and Nora's nap. They still nap in the morning as well as in the afternoon, so the only big chunk of time we really have is in the late afternoon when nothing is open or scheduled.

So I can take them to the mall and let them play in the germfest that is the play area, or....hmm. What else can I do with them? Then I realized that I could join a gym. This would solve several problems at once:

-- The gym has a supervised playroom that's open in the afternoon so I can drop the kids off there and give them some variety.

-- The gym will give me a chance to work out when it's too cold to take the kids out in the jogging stroller, which it is most days.

-- Getting some kind of better work-out schedule in place (other than my lame 3-mile walk to and from work) will help with getting in better shape.

I weigh more now than I weighed this time last year, 3 weeks after the babies were born. That's pathetic. I weigh more now than I have at any time of my non-pregnant life, and it's time to stop. None of my clothes fit and I'm sick of it. I haven't really gone crazy with eating or anything, so the only thing I can think of is that I don't exercise like I used to because, of course, it's impossible to get anything like that done with the kids. So if I join the local gym and can drop the kids off in the playroom, my hope is that they'll get some variety into their day while I get some much-needed exercise time on my own.

When I lived in San Diego my apartment complex had its own gym that was free and 30 feet from my front door. It was filled with nerdy grad students and visiting professors, and it was kind of dingy, and small, and completely non-intimidating. It was just my kind of place. I used it every day and that was eventually how I started running (I started on the treadmill). I'd much rather find something like that, but on the other hand a) I'm not a grad student anymore and I don't want to run into my own students at the school gym, and b) those places don't have childcare. So I'll give this a try and see how it goes. I definitely have to do something about this weight problem, pronto.

I've never made a health or weight-loss NY resolution before. But it's time. The babies are a year old, they're done nursing, and it was reasonable to give myself their first year to just recover and cope and deal. Now it's time to move forward and get healthy again.

2008 was a big year. The babies went from being mostly out of it to being real little people. I went from barely being able to walk around the block to being able to run again, all while pushing a heavy stroller. Jake and I learned that sleep deprivation is hell on a marriage (and life) and the only saving grace is a sense of humor. Thank God Jake has a great one. I had an article published, two accepted for publication, and two submitted. I traveled for the first time and spent two nights away from the babies. Jake ended his business and started his graduate program. The babies learned to sit up, roll over, crawl, pull up to a stand, stand alone, eat solid foods, and talk. 2008 was a hard year but it got better with each passing month, and I hope that 2009 will continue along that trend.

Above are the kids' eyes. I can tell immediately whose is whose, but I don't know if it's that obvious to everybody else.