Truck

The more I try to plan for the next phase of childcare for Nora & Milo, the more I appreciate the twin whisperer. One thing I never thought to appreciate before now is that she has legally established her own business, and pays her own taxes, so we've never had to deal with the taxes issue because she is not our employee. Now that I am thinking about other nannies and trying to calculate the taxes we'd have to pay, holy cow it drives up the price. Not just in terms of the taxes we pay on our end, but also that we would need to bump up our hourly rate quite a bit so that the nanny's take-home pay would be reasonable after taxes.  Now I appreciate just how much of a bargain the twin whisperer is, as I'd never really thought hard about how her take-home pay is quite a bit less than what we pay for the hourly rate.

Today we met with a very nice young lady who is looking for a part-time position in the fall. She is currently working with a family and the mother of that family loves her and gave her a great reference. When Jake and I met her, we thought she was nice, but I think we were both thinking "she's no twin whisperer." I can't even exactly explain the difference. Can I really fault her for not being a 60-year old retired pediatric nurse with oodles of experience? 

We'd have to pay a fair amount more than we're currently paying for this woman's services, even though in the end her take-home pay wouldn't be all that terrific. This issue of the taxes makes the daycare option seem pretty appealing.  For less money I could put them both in university daycare 3 days a week.  (Sadly there are no openings at the moment, even though I've been on the waiting list, let's see, it'll be 2 years in May).  I kind of like the idea of something like the university daycare, staffed with early childhood specialists, for the learning opportunities they would incur there. The downside is that it is inconvenient to have to take the kids somewhere for childcare, and it would interfere with my carless commute lifestyle, and the kid:caregiver ratio would be way higher than 2:1. 

Oh, and the fact that Nora would freak.  But by the time September rolls around, she might be cool with it. She'll be a lot older by then.

It's so hard to figure out what to do.  I know that tons of other people put their kids in daycare or in-home care and it's fine, and it works out great, and the kids adore their providers, so I don't know why I'm having such a hard time working this out.  I know it'll work out in the end. We'll find something that will be a good solution for all of us, even if it means paying an arm and a leg in state and federal taxes.

Both kids are saying two-word phrases now. They say "bye bye truck, bye bye kitty, bye bye dad", and sometimes "hi dad" or "hi kitty". Nora says "bye bye" any time she drops anything. Bye bye hat, bye bye block, bye bye cracker.  The kids are all over the concept of "truck" these days and anytime there is a low rumbling outside, they'll say "truck!" and run over to the window. Milo also says "tweet tweet" when he hears the birds chirping. On Thursday I came home and Milo had a bruise on his forehead. I said "how did you get that?" and he said "truck."

I Guess I have to, Like, Parent and Stuff

Milo and Nora are developing some behaviors that seem to warrant some sort of...action on my part.

Firstly, Milo has taken to hitting, pushing, and otherwise attacking Nora. I actually think that he is not doing this in the way that you'd see a 2-year old or a 3-year old do it. He's not generally doing it when he is mad or to be aggressive, it's more that he seems to be exploring with her. Sort of the way he does with the cat. He is very physical and I think he is using the tools he has right now to figure out how to interact with Nora.

Of course, it's still not appropriate behavior. The other day Milo took a hard wooden object and clunked Nora on the head with it. I don't exactly know what to do about this. I mean obviously I separate them and comfort Nora, who is always crying after this, and then at the same time try to tell Milo that we don't hit and that it hurts Nora and he has to be gentle. He totally doesn't get it, though. The twin whisperer suggested that kids this young need physical intervention as well, like in the form of gently sitting him down and telling him those things calmly while looking at him. So the act of sitting him down, i.e. moving his body, might bring it home more than just talking to him.

Secondly, both kids have taken to brief tantrums. They're really brief, like maybe 30 seconds. I know I'm supposed to deal with this in some way and different camps seem to have different opinions about what to do. My take on it is that the tantrums that Milo and Nora have are different from older toddler tantrums, like what you'll see in a 3-year old. At this age, it is not about control or trying to get what they want. It is just about having emotions that are too big for them to handle internally, and crying and kicking and writhing are basically how they are dealing with a frustration or an angry feeling. Their little systems can't just manage this nicely and quietly, they have to act it out in some way, hence the tantrum. So I deal with it by cuddling them and talking in a soothing voice about how hard and frustrating it must be, or how they're mad, etc. Then it's over.

I think when they are older, the tantrums will probably have a different quality to them, and then a different technique will probably be in order, like perhaps ignoring, or acknowledging their anger/frustration without giving in to whatever it is they want. But right now it seems more like a storm that just overtakes them for a little bit.

The tantrums don't bother me like I thought they would. What tries my patience, instead, is Nora's constant whining if I I ever want to do anything that does not involve holding her or directly playing with her. She gets mad if I cook, if I do dishes, if I want to eat a meal, anything really, it pisses her off. I have not yet figured out any solution to this problem.

In an unrelated note, last night Milo had a little bump on his thigh about the size of a mosquito bite. This morning it was a large raised welt about an inch long and half an inch wide. I took him to the doctor and now he is on oral antibiotics and an antibiotic ointment. He has an infection, but I wonder where it came from. Maybe it was a spider bite?

Going Backwards

A lady from the birth to 3 program came out today to do an initial intake on the kids and their eating. Some folks are going to come out next week to evaluate them. Maybe they will have some tips for getting them to eat things with different textures. I was surprised to learn that any intervention from the birth to 3 program (physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and whatever it is people do for kids and eating weirdness) is not covered by insurance. That seems weirdly wrong.

Tonight the kids had an enjoyable dinner and I fed Nora chicken risotto, a piece of toast with peanut butter, sweet potatoes, and some banana with yogurt. She wanted all of it and then was full, rejecting a bit of muffin at the end. So I cleaned her up and put her down and then 5 minutes later she spit up a teeny bit, the way she used to do all the time when she was a tiny baby. This must have hurt (reflux?) because she started crying really hard, and then she threw up her entire dinner. And then she slipped and fell backwards onto her back right into the puddle of her own barf, banging her head on the floor. God. Poor, poor kid.

Cue whisking Milo into the exersaucer to contain him away from the mess, cue Jake cleaning up the mess in the kitchen, cue me whisking poor Nora into the bath. She of course didn't want anything to eat after that but at least she had some water right before bed. So in the midst of all of this lovely weight concern, we've got Nora basically going to bed without dinner. Argh.

Work and Home

Today was our first day back from spring break and we had a department meeting in which my tenure case was considered. (Even though I don't go up for another couple of years, my case is presented to the department every year so that people can watch my progress).

My case was received well, and interestingly three different professors came into my office today, closed the door, and proceeded to talk to me about the two people who were denied tenure in the past month. They each started off saying basically the same thing, which was "word on the street is that you're feeling a little nervous." Then they proceeded to tell me why I shouldn't worry about my own tenure case. One of my committee members had lunch with me last week and laid out her reasons why my case is strong and I shouldn't be worried. One of the members of the divisional committee (the very committee that denied tenure to my colleagues this month) has set up a lunch meeting with me later this week so that she can explain parts of what happened and reassure me. Other folks just sat down to encourage me and let me know that they see my case as a strong one.

A big difference is that the two failed tenure cases came out of a different (but closely related) department. My own department is pretty good at writing strong tenure cases, and the other department is rumored to have messed things up. Now, it doesn't boost my confidence to know that a person's tenure case rests on so much more than the quality of her work. It also rests on her committee's ability to write a strong case, and that means the department in question has to be smart and savvy about finding ways to communicate what constitutes strong scholarship to people outside the field. So you can be a terrific researcher but if you've got a bonehead committee or a bonehead department, your case could still end up being weak through things you can't control, and this can sabotage your tenure bid.

So that isn't exactly reassuring, but on the other hand, everybody was quick to remind me that our department is good at doing this stuff. We write good cases and we have a solid record with getting people through the divisional committee. So I just need to buckle down and keep doing what I'm doing, getting papers out the door and securing grants.

It's really nice to be in such a supportive department. I feel incredibly valued and lucky that the senior people are concerned enough to stop by my office and talk to me about this, all because of the word on the street. It did help, too; I'm feeling less freaked out.

I came home and the twin whisperer told me that 5 minutes before I arrived she had the shock of her life. She took Nora upstairs to change her diaper and left Milo downstairs looking at a book. By the time she came back down, she saw a cardboard box that had been moved near the dining room table. She then saw Milo....sitting on top of the table. He's lucky the leaf didn't collapse and fall under him. I have no idea how he climbed on the table like that. I guess we can't leave him for even a minute, even in a childproofed area!

Actually, I guess there is no such thing as childproofed.

Babies in Box

I think I'm coming to a decision that we just have to say "fuck it" with this weight stuff.  For the last 3 months we've been trying to get extra calories into the kids, putting avocado oil in everything, always pushing for them to eat/drink more, and I thought they were doing well. Then the weigh-in was such a disappointment and we got more intervention-type talk from our doctor, so it seemed like it was all for nothing.

So what have I learned? I've learned you can't force a toddler to eat. I've also learned that being this obsessed about how many calories they're getting doesn't actually result in them eating more calories. Instead it results in them fussing at mealtimes, it results in us turning meals into a battle, and it results in me getting frustrated and angry and worried all the time, and it just doesn't do any good at all. I have been struggling with the issue of food and growth for so long. The struggle doesn't seem to have improved things.

I really think I have to let this go and trust that Nora and Milo are going to be okay. We did get Carnation Instant Breakfast and put it into their milk, and nobody was a fan. What a surprise.I have also been making some high-calorie smoothies, and again, nobody is a fan. Man these kids hate to drink. I'll keep putting oil in everything, and honey in everything sweet, and I'll keep trying to come up with fatty/dense foods for them, but I'm going to let them decide how much of it they want. I'm also going to try to get them to rely more and more on finger foods so that they can feed themselves and make their own decisions about how much they want. On Tuesday we are getting a visit from some people to try to help with some techniques to encourage the kids to move beyond the purees. They will eat smooth purees and they will eat hard dry stuff, like crackers or peanut butter toast, but they hate anything in between (like mashed potatoes, pasta, rice, soft vegetables, any fruit, anything mushy). Nora usually gags on that stuff.

At least they're gaining each time, right? They haven't lost anything from one appointment to the next. If this new approach of ours results in them actually losing weight at the 18-month check-up, then I guess we'll re-evaluate. Anyway, I think we need to do this because otherwise it is really messing things up, it is messing up my parenting behavior.

Today the kiddoes walked outside for a while and had a blast. It was warm out and everybody was outside, so Nora and Milo got to talk to lots of neighbors who were happy to see them. One of our neighbors gave us some boots for next winter and some sandals for summer. It's handy having neighbors with older kids and built-in hand-me-downs!

Later we went shopping and Jake took the kids on a walk in their stroller around the outdoor mall area while I tried on and bought some new clothes for my upcoming conference talks. Milo and Nora kept saying "car!" and "bye bye" when the cars would go by. On the drive home Milo started saying "Hi dad". We got take-out Indian for dinner and I gave the kids some korma sauce on nan (result - Milo licked it then threw it over, Nora instantly threw it over). I also did a little project in which I dyed the seat of an old rocking chair, and it came out very nicely. So all in all, it was a nice weekend day. 

Not Buying It

For like a decade before I had kids, when everybody else around me was having their own kids, I used to hear patronizing remarks like "you'll understand when you have kids" or "you don't really know what true love is until you have kids" or some variant of that. Like having children is this fundamentally life-altering experience but more importantly a fundamentally emotion-changing experience, wherein you discover a depth of emotion that you had never experienced before. Perfect, pure, unconditional mother love, and those poor shlubs who haven't had children will never know this kind of love. I would protest that I knew what love was, but then I'd hear "It's different, trust me. You'll understand once you have kids."

I wonder if I am damaged in some way, or anti-maternal, because that hasn't been my experience at all. I love Nora & Milo without question. I love them in a different way than I love Jake, but it's still the same basic thing. My love for Jake is still unconditional and unquestioned. Sure, he pisses me off and there might be an evening when I don't particularly like him at the moment. But frankly, the kids are capable of making me mad too. I just don't get what this special depth of emotion parenthood thing is supposed to be all about, like it's some mysterious magical thing that only parents can understand. I think that's basically crap, and anybody who really deeply loves anybody else can already understand it. Love is love.

I wonder if parents just use that kind of rhetoric to justify, to themselves, their choice to have kids. Or to justify it to their friends who haven't had kids, who frankly have pretty awesome lives. Either that or, like I said, I am personally messed up or something.

Without a doubt having children has been fundamentally life altering, but I'm not really sure it's in a good way. I already cared about other people's kids before I had my own. I already cared about the fate of schools and the suffering that other people experience. It is true that I am no longer able to expose myself to certain things now, so that is one change. I can no longer read certain articles or stories about bad stuff happening to babies or kids. I just can't handle it. I think the big emotional change is just this giant feeling of helplessness and lack of control that I'm constantly experiencing. I feel like stuff could happen to the kids that I can't control (like they don't gain enough weight, or they'll get sick, or get hurt) and it leaves me feeling super vulnerable. I know I wouldn't be able to handle it if something happened to either one of them.

But then...I wouldn't be able to handle it if something happened to Jake, either. So I knew that feeling of vulnerability already. It was just less intense and less constant because Jake can generally take care of himself.

Eh.  Maybe I'm just weird.

(Above -- we have a very, very, very good cat).

I still get mad at night

I think that if somebody had told me last summer that at 15 months we would still be dealing with sleep problems with Nora I would have offed myself. But anyway, we still are. Sometimes I worry that Nora is in constant pain or something, something she can't communicate but she is trying to tell me by being a huge grouch during the day and then waking up and crying through the night. Those are her only symptoms, though, and "grouchy" doesn't give a doctor much to go on. 

The hard part about nights is that Nora cannot fall asleep while being held. It's all about associations. So many parents and babies get into a habit in which a baby associates nursing with falling asleep, and so their mothers can nurse them to sleep, but then when they wake up they need to nurse again to fall back asleep again. For Nora, it's the opposite. She falls asleep by herself in her crib. That is how she is used to falling asleep. No matter how tired she is, when she is being held by me, she thinks it is play time and cannot fall asleep.

This can lead to hours of pointless rocking or comforting, which gets us nowhere in the end because she's still wide awake. This happened the other night. Nora woke at about 9:15. It took 2 hours and 45 minutes for her to get back to sleep. I rocked her, I gave her medicine, I changed her diaper, I gave her a bottle, and eventually I took her into bed with us. Then Jake and I lied there, exhausted but awake, as Nora rolled around and chatted at us and tried to stand up and walk on the bed. Somehow I thought I could get her to sleep in bed with us, but no luck. Ultimately I put her in the pack 'n play in our room, expecting she'd just have to cry it out, but for some reason at that point she didn't cry and went to sleep. It was midnight.

The association of "alone in the crib is how I fall asleep" works great most of the time, but it does fall apart when something is bothering Nora and she can't sleep for one reason or another. Then I have no secret weapon, no ability to get her to sleep with my help. 

She's probably going to be one of those kids who endlessly tries to delay bedtime with constant requests for glasses of water and trips to the potty. Or more likely she'll be one of those kids who wakes up with a bad dream every night and needs some comforting, night after night. Sleep is just a thing of the past for me.  Why is it so hard to just accept this?

Check-Up

At 15 months Nora weighs 17 lbs 11 oz and Milo weighs 19 lbs 2 oz. So my plan of backing off and letting the kids' normal appetite dictate things a little more has been put on the back burner. At first, their doctor thought they should both go back to the GI doctor to see if they have any malabsorption issues. But then she thought more about it, and given that they have normal stools, she decided we could hold off on that. Instead the plan is going to be to try to pack as many calories into them in sneaky ways as possible, and to get early intervention services involved to help them transition to finger foods and more textured foods so that they're not as dependent on pureed foods. Then if they have not improved in 3 months, we'll do more GI-type tests (the bulk of which are very unpleasant.)

Both are growing well in height. Milo is 30.5 inches and Nora is 29.5 inches. Both are growing well in head circumference. But they are both too skinny. They are below the chart for weight, and Milo isn't parallelling his own curve very well, and both are not on the chart for height/weight ratio.

The doctor gave me a handout on high-calorie foods to try. Most of them involve a lot of sugar, like using Carnation Instant Breakfast, or smoothies with ice cream, or putting honey into everything sweet (and oil into everything savory). I have been reluctant to introduce so much sugar into their diets but I guess at this point it is time to let go of that a little and focus more on the immediate problem of weight gain rather than the long-term goal of having a healthy, low-sugar diet. After all, it's not like they're really into steak or fried foods or other high-calorie stuff like nuts. So when I make breakfast for them I'll start using cream for their cereal instead of milk, and I can put honey into it. I'll try making some smoothies and see how they like them. 

The other thing is that we're supposed to do away with bottles completely. I told their doctor that the kids only take a sip here and there from cups, and she acknowledged that for a week or so they might not drink much at all, but they do supposedly have a thirst mechanism in place and once they learn that bottles are out the door, they should start using their cups.  So, we'll see.

All in all it was a bit of a downer appointment.  I don't know why they're so small and I feel like I'm bad at feeding them.  Every time people visit they comment on how well / how much they eat, though, so I don't know what the deal is exactly. 

Upsetting Events

My university has something of a reputation, especially within my college, for being a place where it is hard to get tenure. Much of the recruiting work that we do to get new faculty is to reassure them that this isn't really the case, that the system is fair, and that lots of people have successfully gotten tenure in the last five years or so.

Two colleagues of mine went up for tenure in the past month, and they were both denied. This last one just happened on Friday. I am not being modest when I say that they both have better CVs than mine. They both have more publications. One of them has more publications than me plus a book, and she has been denied for tenure.

All of us assistant professors are shocked by this, very upset and sad for the two people, and very scared for ourselves. They both passed the department level and then were denied at the divisional committee level.

Nobody knows why this happens (or rather, none of us assistant profs know why). Maybe there was a legitimate reason? It's hard to see, given their CVs, but who knows. Maybe they had terrible teaching evaluations? But it's hard to imagine that would be enough of a reason (sad, but true -- what's really valued here is research). Maybe they had bad external reviews. Who knows. What all of us are thinking, though, is that maybe none of those things are the case, and maybe it has something mysterious to do with the make-up of the divisional committee, and the kind of research that committee values, or other political issues that I'll never know or understand. The whole thing makes me lose any faith that there is any fairness in this system. I don't feel like there is any way to know what to expect for my own case. If two people with better records than my own were denied, then what chance do I have for making it?

The other assistant professors around me are dusting off their CVs and preparing themselves to go on the market and ultimately leave here. I need to be prepared to do that as well. It just sucks. It's scary, and it sucks, and I still have a year and a half of this uncertainty before I myself go up.

I am so sorry for these two outstanding scholars who are losing their jobs.

15 Months

I can't believe it, Milo and Nora are already 15 months old. They play:


They fight:


They do stuff they're not supposed to do:


They're definitely turning into people. Today we spent the morning with my friend Bekky and her daughter Karina, who is exactly 28 months. So she's 13 months older than Nora & Milo and it's fascinating to see how different they are. I imagine us a year in the future and it'll definitely be life with two actual kids, if Karina is any measure. Actually, she is probably not a good measure because she is BIG (35 lbs) and talks like a 3 year old. She tells stories and speaks in paragraphs and has correct grammar and everything. Milo and Nora seemed so babylike compared to Karina. Which is nice and fine with me. I like them this way still, I'm savoring it.

But, they are growing. Today off the top of my head I counted 50 words that I know they use, and that's just what I came up with on the spur of the moment. So they're using a lot of words, and more every day. They are interacting a lot, in the sense that Milo is interacting with Nora and Nora tries to ignore Milo as much as possible. Milo touches Nora, tackles Nora, points to Nora, and laughs at Nora's antics. Nora does none of those things, but she does get mad when Milo tries to take her toys. We are, however, starting to have some brief bits of positive interaction here and there. Tonight Nora and Milo were laughing and chasing each other.

Jake is gone this weekend, but so far it hasn't been too bad because Bekky and Karina were here. Nora did skip her nap on Friday and almost skipped it today, only succumbing very late in the afternoon which caused me to have to miss our planned afternoon outing. Today is, of course, Pi day, and we were scheduled to meet a bunch of people in a diner for pie. We had to miss out. Some neighbors who are having twins in May stopped by for a visit and I gave them advice while Nora tried to convince me to let her jump on the couch. She was cranky and wacked out from lack of sleep (probably not good advertising). But she did sleep a little eventually, and then we went on a nice long walk in the gorgeous, sunny, 50-degree weather.

Oh. Then we came home and I gave the kids some measuring cups to play with and they sat happily playing with the measuring cups while I ran upstairs to go to the bathroom. I came back down about 60 seconds later to see both of them gleefully scooping cupful after cupful of dirt out of the plant pot and tossing it all over the floor, the rug, Milo's pants, etc. Seriously. 60 seconds. So I guess that's the kind of thing that happens when Jake is out of town. My hat is off to those single parents out there.

So...Nora. What is Nora doing these days, other than not napping? Well, I think she is teething. She has a second tooth and I wonder if another one is coming soon, because she has been cranky lately. She also chews on things all the time. She even chewed the paint off the windowsill, which I thought was kind of cliched. Isn't that the most typical reason cited for getting lead poisoning? Come on Nora, be creative. So she is chewing and teething.

Nora has also become shy. Even though Bekky and Karina stayed with us for 2 days, she never fully warmed up to them. On Friday morning Jake's buddies came to pick him up for his ski trip. They are two very big guys and Jake went downstairs with Nora while I changed Milo's diaper. Nora immediately started crying and crying. She was okay once I held her, but it's interesting to see how she has morphed from this social baby who was happy to be held by anybody to this very shy toddler who always needs to be in my arms whenever anybody else is in the room.



Nora's favorite new thing is to be up on the sofa or the loveseat. She'll sit like a big kid for about 3 seconds and then want to STAND on the sofa, and then want to JUMP on the sofa. So it's probably not a good idea, and I've started saying no when she asks, over and over and over again, up? Up? Up? She really adores being up. Being on the sofa is a huge treat for Nora.

Nora has also started doing things that just impress me with their suddenness. For instance, today when our friends were leaving we said "bye bye" a lot. All of that "bye bye" talk must have reminded Nora of when we go out, and I often say "bye bye" to Jake when I take Nora out. So she went into the sunroom, got her coat, brought it to me, and then put her arm out so that I could put the coat on her. She wanted to go outside! It seemed like a real big kid move to me.



These pictures above and below involve Nora in different hats. She and Milo got into the hats today and kept bringing me all of the hats, saying "hat?" and asking me to put them on their heads.

I love the fact that both Nora and Milo sort of talk to themselves these days with words that I can understand. It's like I have access to what's going through their minds now. Today on our walk Nora just started saying "quack quack quack" out of nowhere, so she must have been thinking about a duck, or the song we sing about ducks. Nora likes to sing along to parts of songs, so with the song we sing about ducks she'll chime in on the "quack quack quack" part.


I guess I would say that things are a little challenging with Nora right now, for me specifically, because Nora is so clingy to me. She doesn't want Jake, she doesn't want to play on her own, she wants to be held all the time. She cries when I leave the room. She does love the twin whisperer so that helps, but she still gets unhappy when I go to work in the morning. I know that this is a phase and in some ways, it's a sweet phase to be wanted by her so much. I'm sure there are going to be times, like when she's 12, when the very sight of me will cause her to gag and have to choke down her own bile. So I'm hugging her as much as I can right now, and loving it, but frankly it'd also be nice to be able to go take a leak without Nora spontaneously combusting from sorrow.



The thing I like about Nora is that she wears her heart on her sleeve. It's all out there, exactly how she feels, with no pretense or mystery. Nora wants what she wants, and that's all there is to it. If she gets it, she'll smile and settle in. If she doesn't, she'll cry and kick her feet. I'm glad we're still at the stage when I can give her what she wants, when it's as simple as being held, and kissed on the cheek, and maybe in a dire moment a wooden spoon and a pot to bang on will be necessary. That's all it takes to make my girl happy, and I'll gladly do it. Once we graduate to a pony, or a car, though, all bets are off.


Milo...Milo has become a happy, happy guy these days. It really drives home the point that it makes no sense to label either kid in one way or another because they are always changing. I remember when they were tiny Milo was the one who struggled and cried so much. We viewed Nora as more mellow. And now, Milo couldn't be any more cheerful. He was so tickled to have Bekky and Karina here. Every time he woke up from his nap and came downstairs it was like a glorious surprise all over again. He'd say "hi!" and grin and grin, and he would play with Karina and have a grand old time. Milo has become more outgoing, which is again quite a reversal from how he was as a smaller baby. He likes people, as long as they're not giant 6 feet tall men (those still scare him a little).



As you can see from the pictures, Milo too loves being on the couch. It's a huge treat.

Milo's new phrase is something that I've started interpreting as "what's that?" It doesn't sound much like it, but it sort of sounded like it and he would say it while pointing to things, so I just started responding by telling him what the things are. And now he says it constantly. He'll point to some new thing and say "what's that?" and I'll say "that's the speaker" and half the time he'll try to repeat whatever I've said. He's learned lots of words that way recently, like "socks" and "cup" and "outside" and "light" and all kinds of things. He probably says it about 50 times a day. Maybe 100.



Yesterday we went to the park in front of our house and it was wet and muddy, but not overly so. I put Nora down in the rubber tire pieces that line the ground around the play area and she freaked, but Milo was actually cool with it. He sat down, kicked around, held some leaves, stood up, and figured out he could actually walk on the stuff. Then he took off at a near jog straight towards the street, and he walked all over the playground, the basketball court, and onto the muddy grass. Milo had a ball. He just loved walking around outside so much that he was laughing the whole time. I've never seen such a joyful kid!



Here we have Milo playing dress up with various hats and one of the red wellies that they babies are borrowing from the twin whisperer. He loves putting on one boot and stomping around.

Milo has developed a troubling habit lately, and it's got me pretty flummoxed. He loves to spit his food out in a giant spewing blubber, landing droplets of pureed sweet potatoes onto me, the tray, his shoes, the floor, the wall, etc. He then laughs hysterically at his own joke. Ignoring hasn't extinguished this behavior because he finds it so inherently delightful. It really tries my patience, especially because I'm still kind of uptight about making sure both kids get enough calories. I could go to finger foods only, but the number of foods Milo will eat that way is about 5 (and by eat I mean a few bites), whereas the number of foods he has rejected outright is about 100. So he doesn't get many calories from finger foods yet. I could end the meal when Milo does this, but see above about being worried about his calories. Plus, I don't think he has the impulse control yet to remember not to do it the next time, so if I ended the meal every time he did it, he'd probably never get to eat. So it's a challenge. Recently I've figured out that he tends not to do this when he is actually hungry and the food is something he really likes. So maybe this is Milo's way of trying to assert some control over his own body and what he eats, and maybe I need to start listening better.


Milo's just a little ham. He loves to make people laugh, he loves to laugh himself, he loves to march and dance and chase. He cracks me up all the time. When he was a colicky 5-week old I never would have guessed that he'd turn into such a happy little guy. He's also social. Most 15-month olds basically ignore other kids, or at most engage in parallel play, and here Milo is already trying to initiate chasing and peek-a-boo with other kids. And, let's face it, the kid is easy on the eyes. Look at those chubby cheeks! Look at that bald little head! I could just eat his fingers and toes for breakfast. I'm going to miss the cuddly, roly poly Milo as he grows into a bigger kid.

New Milestone

Today Milo strung two words together for the first time. The cat jumped over the gate and headed upstairs, and he said "bye kitty!" He's been saying it again and again all day long, probably because I encouraged it so much. I'm pretty impressed that Milo did this today; I wasn't expecting to hear something like that for several months.

Tuesdays are nice days. They're the days when I stay home and pretend to be the domestic kind of mother. I work during their naps and I also cook one or two meals for the week and do laundry and other chores. I like making a meal while the kids play and then cleaning up the kitchen. I like putting everything in its place and having the house be all organized and sparkly. Tuesday is the day when there is time for that because I am at home. It's pleasant. I can only imagine how great the house would look if I stayed home every day. In the afternoons I take the kids out in the stroller if the weather permits. By the time Jake comes home I am exercised, dinner is ready, and the kids are usually banging on pots with spoons. It all gets smoother as the kids get older.

The kids know the word "outside" now and so I can talk to them about going outside. They like to look through the window (or bang on it) and say "outside". We had a nice run with the stroller this afternoon, and I pushed pretty hard at the end. This is because I was on my way home when I passed the entire high school track team going the opposite way. There were like 60 of them. I knew I was going to get lapped by the track team, but I didn't want to get lapped by all 60 of them. The fast guys out in front lapped me before I got home, but I started going faster and faster and faster to avoid getting lapped by the second group of kids. I barely made it. Then I got home and was unable to stretch because Milo and Nora kept crawling all over me (and whoever wasn't on me at the time was crying at the injustice of the other kid getting mama time). It's hard to share a parent, and it can be hard to be a twin sometimes!

Where's Milo?

Here's a video of Milo and Nora -- Milo is hiding behind the curtain. It cracks me up how he keeps giggling as he's hiding, and then he "hides" with his little legs sticking straight out.



The kids have developed a fake coughing habit, which is really annoying, and a fake sneezing habit (they say "aaaa-choo"), which is cute. New words lately include "car", "light", "boo", and "pot". (The kind you cook with, not the kind you use to relieve glaucoma symptoms in California). Milo has settled on "Noon-a" for Nora, and he calls himself "Money". Nora calls herself "Nana" and calls Milo "Mama", which is confusing because that's also the word she has for me. Milo is much more into Nora than the reverse. He likes to tackle her and "cuddle" the way he does with the cat. Nora is less tolerant of this behavior than the cat.

Nora asks to be picked up about a hundred times a day. It's the first thing she says in the morning and she keeps saying it all day long. Milo has become very interested in the windows and looking outside. Now that it's light out in the mornings I'll open up the window shades and Milo will excitedly peer out the window of the nursery.

Today was kind of an annoying, tiring, lousy day but it's really true that coming home to the kids makes all of that other stuff seem relatively unimportant. They really do have a way of reminding me of what really matters, and the rest of the stuff is just water under the bridge.

Under Pressure

I think teething must be very painful for Nora. The other night she cut her second tooth. I didn't know it was happening at the time, but I suspected so because she was up every hour or two all night long. Then in the morning she had blood on her lip and had also bled onto the sheet! 

Milo was a cheerful little dude today. He got to do two of his favorite things, go to the store and take a bath. He loves the store and both kids adore the bath. All I have to do is say "do you want to take a bath?" and both of them will run to the stairs, laughing with glee.

One of my FB friends is a professor at my university who came in the same year I did. Her current status is that she wished that she were tenured so that she could take a night off. (It is Saturday night). This status update stressed me out. I am taking the night off. Maybe she will get tenure and I won't because she works every single night, even Saturday nights?

I should probably be working more. I have to leave the office at 5 every day to relieve the twin whisperer. I do miss the days when I could just stay until I was finished with whatever I was doing, or had reached a good stopping point, even if that meant eating dinner at the office and walking home at 10 p.m.  It is frustrating to be right in the middle of a good piece of data and have to stop because it is time to go home. I can pick it up later in the evening when the kids are in bed, but it is hard to re-gain momentum. 

Part of me kind of thinks that it is unhealthy to work like that year after year, and having a family forced me to stop and turn to more normal habits, which is sort of a great experiment as far as the tenure bid is concerned. It is a high-stakes experiment and in this economy it feels even more serious. I would not be surprised if Jake were unable to find a job once he graduates. There just isn't work in the state for folks like him right now, and I am prepared to continue to be the sole wage-earner for the foreseeable future. So that makes the whole tenure thing even more huge. Losing my job, especially in this economy where universities are putting on hiring freezes and calling off searches right and left, it would be a pretty serious disaster. The entire family is depending on me and my income. I feel like I can't afford to mess it up. 

But I also don't want to be a completely absent mom the way I see some parents (to be honest, dads) doing among my colleagues. Maybe it is a necessary evil, though, and it's worth it to sacrifice the next 2 years for the security of the family. On the other hand, Milo & Nora will never be this small again, and these are formative years for them. 

I feel like I am under so much pressure all the time.  

I think that it should be possible to be a normal human being and also get tenure. So I shouldn't let my friend's FB status get to me. I am doing it differently than she is doing, and that doesn't mean it can't work. I can make it work, right?  ...?

The Twin Whisperer

The twin whisperer thinks that our babies are geniuses and that she is the reason why.

I can see her point. She's always teaching them interesting stuff. Today I came home and she proceeded to sing the alphabet song, and then Nora chimed in, singing "D-E-E-E-Geeeeee". The twin whisperer said "I've never seen any baby that young sing like Nora!" She teaches them to dance, and to turn the pages of the books, and to press the buttons on the music cube to make music, and she teaches them all kinds of words. 

It's kind of funny because the twin whisperer definitely has, shall we say, generous interpretations of Milo and Nora's behavior. One of them can say "Whiz-ZAT-ow?" and the twin whisperer will say "Did you hear that? Milo just told me that one plus two is three! He's adding!" I just nod and smile, as Milo proceeds to gnaw on the arm of the chair and drool.

Every time the twin whisperer babysits or visits toddlers around Nora & Milo's age she always comes back and tells me about how they're not talking at all, not even "mama", and she feels so sorry for those toddlers. "Aren't you glad yours aren't in daycare?", she'll say, pointing out that in daycare the toddlers don't get a lot of verbal stimulation. I am glad, actually, because the twin whisperer probably talks to the kids more than Jake and I do. I know that they get a lot of words from her, and they probably wouldn't have gotten that from me, so I'm glad that the twin whisperer gets such a kick out of teaching them stuff every day.

She's either going to stay with us until May or until August, and then I have to find a new situation. I just don't know what we're going to do once she leaves.

Extreme Cases Make Bad Law

Georgia politicians have introduced a bill that would limit the number of embryos transferred in IVF, apparently in response to the Octuplet story. The bill would limit the number of embryos transferred to two, or three for women over 40. That's actually a good idea if these procedures are covered by insurance (more on that in a moment), but the next part is just ridiculous. The bill would also limit the number of embryos created to the same number they'd intend to transfer: i.e., two for women under 40. This would prevent anybody from freezing embryos, which makes sense considering that the bill was drafted in part by a Georgia "right to life" organization.

This is fucked up for so many reasons. I guess they didn't actually consult any reproductive endocrinologists when drafting this bill.

Here's the problem. Embryos die. Embryos die all the time. Even for non-infertile couples who make babies the normal way, some estimates are that 75% of fertilized eggs die before they ever make it down to the uterus and implant in the uterine wall, resulting in a pregnancy. The embryo that actually survives long enough to implant and become a pregnancy is the exception, not the rule.

So this is true with IVF as well. Most embryos die before they even become blastocysts at the day 5 mark. Let's take my case. 11 eggs were retrieved. 9 were normal enough to be fertilized. So we had 9 embryos. By the time they were 3 days old, 4 of them had died. There were 5 left. Two of them were pretty good quality, two looked so-so, one looked pretty iffy. At that day 3 mark we transferred 4 embryos (not a good decision, looking back on it, but there were special reasons for this). We saved the 5th embryo to see if it would survive to become a blastocyst. If it did, we would freeze it. It did not survive, so we had 0 embryos left over to freeze.

I had researched the statistics. There was roughly a 60% chance of not getting pregnant, i.e. all 4 transferred embryos would fail to implant and would die. There was a roughly 40% chance that I would get pregnant. If that happened, then the overwhelming odds were that we would have one baby. There was about a 14% chance of twins, and the odds of conceiving triplets or quadruplets were less than 1%. I was surprised when we ended up with twins. But back on that day when we transferred 4, I remember secretly thinking to myself "better two than none". That is bad medicine, driven by desperation, but that's another story.

So 9 embryos became 2 babies, and the rest all died naturally. And that's actually a pretty good ratio. It's not uncommon for women to have to go through multiple rounds of IVF, ultimately creating way more than 9 embryos, in order to end up with one baby in the end. If we had only fertilized two eggs, what are the odds that those two would have lived? They're very low. If we had only fertilized two eggs, they probably would have been in the group of 7 that died, not the group of two that lived. It takes lots and lots of embryos to create a viable pregnancy because embryos die more often than they live. I don't think people know that, in general. If they did, they certainly wouldn't introduce legislation like this. I also wonder if people would get so worked up about birth control options like Plan B if they knew how common it is for embryos to die naturally.

Transferring 1 or 2 embryos makes the most sense, especially for women under 35. In Britain, for example, the limit is 1 under most circumstances. The rate of multiples and higher-order multiples is very low as a result. That is healthier for everybody. So why don't we do it the same way here? Well, here we generally do not cover infertility treatments under medical insurance. The infertile people who happen to be poor are not allowed to conceive. Only those who can afford it can do so, unless you happen to live in one of the few states that mandates that insurance covers these treatments, like Illinois. 

My state doesn't have that rule (most don't), so my insurance didn't cover a penny of our treatments. Not our diagnostic testing, not our drugs, not the ultrasounds, nothing. For many couples, infertility is linked to very real health problems (not that infertility itself isn't a health problem, but I mean other health problems), and treatments that address underlying health issues still aren't covered if they happen to also address infertility issues. IVF costs, in general, about 12K - 15K for one try. Under the best of odds, with a young couple, the success rates never go above 50%. As couples get older, those rates go way down. So you're spending, say, 15K on a very, very, very big gamble.

That is why doctors and patients transfer more embryos than they should. Doctors want their clinics to have strong success rates, because they will report those rates and potential patients can look them up online and choose the clinic with the best rate. Patients want it to work the first time because they can't afford to try again. Maybe they've taken out a loan to try just the one time. If it fails, you still have to pay the bill. Imagine what that feels like, to receive bill after bill for services after it has already failed, to have to write check after check to pay off a failed attempt. I've done that. It's a bitter feeling.

In the UK and other European nations, insurance covers fertility treatments, so the stakes are lower. It is still emotionally devastating to have a failure, and it still means having to pick yourself off the ground, prepare to go through the whole thing again, the shots, the ultrasounds, the exams, the humiliation, the pain, the side effects, all of that. So it's not like it's easy, but at least the financial aspect doesn't come into play. At least you don't have to decide whether to quit because you can't afford it, or whether to take out a loan to try again, or whether to take out a loan to try to adopt, because adopting is also expensive (about the same as IVF for a domestic adoption and much, much more for most international adoptions).

So this bill would tie doctor's hands but not provide insurance coverage for these treatments. In addition, it would prevent IVF from ever working, just about, because you're not going to achieve a pregnancy when you only start with 2 embryos. In addition to that, it removes the option of a frozen embryo transfer later on. If the first round of IVF fails but some embryos survive to become blastocysts, a couple can freeze the embryos. Then they can try again with those embryos, not having to go through the time-consuming, painful route of IVF. A frozen embryo transfer is also much, much cheaper than IVF. In some cases it can cost as little as a few hundred dollars, in comparison to 12K - 15K. So for couples who have frozen embryos, it can be a great solace to know that they have the option to try again. This bill would eliminate that entirely.

I knew that the octuplet case would lead to these kinds of discussions, but I am surprised by how quickly a legislative effort has arisen. I don't know why. The terrible media coverage of this extremely unusual case is making it harder for all infertile couples everywhere. And frankly, it's hard enough as it is.

Epistemology

I teach a graduate class on learning theories and we're starting to enter the world of radical constructivism. My students are reading about Piaget, among other people, and in re-reading some of Piaget and von Glasersfeld I am always thinking about Milo & Nora's cognitive development. 

Even though I know, intellectually, that the mind organizes the world as it organizes itself, it is hard to remember this in day to day interactions with people. It is so easy to forget that the kids' universe is not my universe. Milo and Nora don't even have a sense of identity yet, in the sense that they know that they are individuals who are separate from us and separate from one another. This is most apparent right now when Milo looks at himself in the mirror. He points to his image and says "Noona!" (Nora). When I say "No, that's you! That's Milo!", this does not serve as a perturbation for Milo. 

Piaget wrote about the processes of assimilation and accommodation. We assimilate when we take something as an instance of a known thing. Any differences that might exist between our experience of the new thing and our existing scheme are not perceived. So when Milo sees an old lady on the sidewalk and says "Baby!" he is assimilating what he sees into his (very broad) baby scheme. He does not perceive any differences between the old lady and a baby. I shouldn't even state it that way, because I don't believe it like that. To state it that way makes it sound like I believe there is this external world that people are perceiving more or less accurately, and I am perceiving the old lady more accurately than Milo perceives the old lady. But I believe that the mind organizes the world rather than the other way around, and Milo's world is not the same world as my world. I am agnostic about whether the world is even there. I don't think it matters. I do not believe that any of us perceive the world in any direct or accurate way. Our perceptions are fully mediated by our existing cognitive structures.

So anyway, if a person assimilates something into his scheme and then experiences an unexpected consequence, that results in a perturbation. People deal with perturbations in all kinds of ways. Often we will diffuse these perturbations by not attending to them or talking them away or doing whatever it takes to not change our schemes. But sometimes we will change our schemes as a result of the perturbation, and this is called accommodation, or learning. When Milo calls the old lady "baby", I say "that's not a baby, that's a lady." But this is kind of dumb on my part because this doesn't lead to any accommodation for Milo. Maybe he's expecting me to say "yes, that's a baby!" and when I don't, this is sort of surprising to him. But it's not making him change his scheme at this time.

It is very easy for me to forget the subjective nature of knowledge and truth and think that I can just tell people stuff and that will work. That almost never works. I know this in the context of being a math teacher (or researcher) and can often figure out what will be a true perturbation for a student. But I am pretty clueless about it in the context of being a parent, which is interesting. Trying to figure out what Nora and Milo's world is like is fascinating to me, it is like a trip through the looking glass. 

Time Traveling

Last night Nora woke many times, and was up from about 3 to 4. She is getting heavy. I rocked her and rocked her and jiggled her and swayed with her and the whole time she would almost settle down, but her little hands kept moving, grabbing me, pinching my skin, refusing to calm down and just go to sleep. She fights it with every ounce of her being. Finally I put her in the crib at least drowsy, but not asleep, and she did go to sleep. She felt hot to me and I think she might have had a fever.

Today's intense bout of neediness and whining might have had to do with one or both of the kids not feeling too hot. Nora basically cried whenever I wasn't holding her. I ate lunch holding her. I tried to cook while holding her, but that wasn't really possible. Milo was more cheerful than Nora but still pretty testy, so this adds to my suspicion that they aren't feeling too hot.

There was one point this evening when I felt like everything is just going to hell in a handbasket. I was making mushrooms bourguignon (verdict -- delicious) but the kids kept wandering into the kitchen, complaining for my attention, slipping and falling, or grabbing things from one another, the typical sort of evening witching hour meltdown stuff. Jake just wasn't doing what it took to keep them entertained and happy in order to let me cook. I was mad at Jake for not being able to do that, and wistfully remembering how much easier it is to get a meal made when my mom is here with the kids, and annoyed at the cats for scratching things and destroying the furniture, and annoyed that the kids are slowly tearing our house apart, and feeling like between 2 cats, 2 kids, and 1 husband everything is basically falling apart around me. I'm sure my feelings of being fed up had a lot to do with being up so much last night. I can handle everything better on decent sleep. But still...

And then as I was cooking I had this sudden flashback and everything in my chaotic, messy, food-encrusted present faded away and I was back in the past, cooking dinner for just myself and Jake, waiting for him to come over after he was done with work. I lived alone, and it was fall, and it was probably 7:30 or so, as we used to work late and eat late, and I would have had an open bottle of wine on the counter, and I would have been marinating salmon with olive oil and capers. I'd be steaming brussels sprouts and there would be brownies in the oven. And it would be quiet, and everything would be clean, and after dinner we would read out loud together in the quiet, dark house. I think back on those nights and remember how leisurely everything was. 

And then I remembered that the next morning Jake would go home and I would then be alone for the day, alone in my silent house, with no cats to meow or claw at stuff, and no kids to beg to be picked up. And if I didn't work I would try to find ways to waste away the hours until I saw Jake again, or until I went out or met friends, and sometimes the hours would stretch endlessly in front of me. And I remembered how I used to dream about a noisy, boisterous house filled with people and pets. How that seemed so homey and comforting.

Then I snapped back to the present. I returned to my messy kitchen and listened to the sounds of Milo and Nora babbling in the living room, and I walked in there and sat down and pulled them both to me to give them a kiss and a hug.