Action Shots

Nora sliding:

Milo bouncing a basketball:

And yes, that is an actual bounce!

I also wanted to make a record for myself about what Nora did tonight at 18.5 months. Recently our toilet seat broke so we went and bought a new one. The new one has a small child seat attached to it, and you can put it down so there is a smaller hole for little kids to use the toilet. Nora wanted to sit on the toilet so I sat her down on it (fully dressed), which she thought was great fun. She then proceeded to say "poop" and then pooped while sitting on the toilet! I swear these kids are something else. 

Amazingly Beautiful Creatures Dancing

I wish this were available on iTunes, or anywhere. It's so great. I played it for Nora and Milo tonight and they're really getting into the ABC song. When Milo watches this video he says "quack quack!", but I can't see any ducks in it.

Today we went to Jake's aunt's house out in the middle of nowhere for a Father's Day lunch. There were some other little kids there, Nora and Milo's second cousins (or is that cousins once removed?), and great aunts and uncles and grandparents and their great grandfather. Jake's aunt and uncle have a small farm with sheep and chickens. The kids got to see the animals and run around on the grass. Milo was in heaven, spending the whole time carrying around a ball as big as he was. Lunch was...lamb.

Nora has picked up a bit of a habit. She likes to run through her series of exclamations, all in a row. It sounds like this: "Oh my! Oh shoot! Oh dammit!" The first expression definitely comes from the twin whisperer. The second one is my fault (it was originally oh shit but I wised up). Jake takes responsibility for the third. Maybe I can get her to convert it to "oh darn it"...

I am tempted to take down that 2 a.m. post because it is so dramatic and whiny in the way that things can only be in the middle of the night, but I'm going to leave it there. But I should also write a reminder to myself here that today wasn't that bad, despite getting less than 4 hours sleep, and it truly is never as bad as I think it's going to be. I wasn't super exhausted, I was able to work and focus, and I finish the draft of my grant narrative. And it's Friday, so life is okay. So of course I can do this, and it's never as hard as it seems in the middle of the night.

According to the twin whisperer, Nora came up to her today with two balls in her hands and said "two balls". I have not observed this behavior. I have seen Nora say "too", though, in the sense that when Milo is climbing up on the bed, Nora will try to climb up on the bed and say something like "Bed? Bed too? Nora too?" She has also taken to saying "Nora's turn!" when she wants to play with whatever Milo's got.

I am trying to teach the kids manners.  Right now we are working on please and thank you. Nora is doing well with please and, interestingly, she might ask for something 5 times in a row and then throw in a "please" when she's not getting her way. Up? Up? Up? Up? Up? Up please? I can't really get either kid to say "thank you" yet. Then there is Milo and please. It is almost impossible to get him to say please. At first I thought he couldn't say it, because with any other word, if I say "can you say _____ ?" he'll say it, but not with please. Can you say blueberries? Blueberries. Can you say thunder? Thunder. Can you say demilitarized zone? Demilitarized zone. Can you say please? (Silence). Please? (Silence). It is so weird. Why won't the kid say please? He did say it once, perfectly, and we clapped and cheered, but he totally refused to say it after that. It is patently clear to me that Milo is deliberately refusing to say please. He does not want to say it. But why? He can't possibly already understand what it means, right? Maybe he's more precocious than I think. 

Well, everything's better in the morning.

When Milo loses track of me, he says "Where'd Ma go?"  So cute.  Milo made it through the night unscathed and woke up at 6:30. Poor Nora at least slept until 8.

It's 2 a.m. and Nora has been up for 4 hours. She has thrown up once. She has destroyed me. I can't listen to the sound of her crying anymore without going insane, which is where I've landed now. 

Other people, when met with desperate times, will take their baby into bed with them. What do you do when that doesn't work? When she will not, literally can not, fall asleep with you? But if you leave her by herself, she also cannot sleep? You're left in a cycle of insanity in which you're awake for 4 hours, going slowly insane and doing everything in your power to avoid screaming at her, or throwing things against the wall, or destroying the house.

A few times Nora asked for milk so Jake gave her some milk, which she guzzled. Nora did eventually fall asleep for about 15 minutes or so after that, and then very suddenly woke up crying hard. I pulled her into bed with me (she was in the pack 'n play in our bedroom), then some instinct caused me to whisk her out of bed and into the bathroom, where she threw up all over everything. I still smell like vomit. The milk must have triggered her reflux.

Tomorrow I'm supposed to finish the draft of my grant narrative and give it to some internal reviewers. I've got the background and rationale done, I've got the methods and the plan of work and the analysis done, I've got the intellectual merit and the broader impacts done, I've got the education plans and evaluation plans done. I just have to write the personnel section and the results of prior funding section and read over everything and edit and change some things, but how good of a job am I going to do on this with no sleep?

I'll tell you. I'm going to do a crappy job on it, just like I've done a crappy job on everything for the past year and a half. If I had known that a year and a half in I would still have sleepless nights from hell, I wouldn't have done this. I wouldn't have opted to destroy my career, which is what this is doing to me. I never sleep, I am always exhausted, and I cannot handle the pressure of being both the mom and the dad and having all of the responsibility of the family's well being on my shoulders and all of the financial responsibility on my shoulders at the same time. I cannot do both anymore. It is killing me.

I am trying to be strong, and tell myself that I am strong, and that I can keep doing this for another few years, and that I don't need sleep and the day never seems as bad as I predict it will be when I'm up all night. But I am probably shortening my life by releasing all of the stress hormones every night. The kids cry and Jake wakes up and then immediately goes back to sleep. I wake up and then I am awake for another hour, because my body has been flooded with adrenaline, with dread, wondering if this is going to be another one of those nights when Nora throws up or Milo is up 6 times. I constantly feel like I am dragging a giant rock around in my chest and it is growing bigger every day. I cannot handle this pressure.

I know why women with kids don't get tenure. All that stuff about discrimination and not being taken seriously and work-life balance, whatever. It's really the sleep deprivation that makes you not get tenure. The sleep deprivation makes a person stupid and slow and unproductive. 

Conversation with a Student

Me: So how's the thesis coming?

Him: It's coming along slowly...I took a little time away from it last week because of my race. (My student is a runner).

Me: Oh yeah -- how did that go?

Him: Well, for the first 70 miles I was doing really well, and on track to finish in my goal time of 22 hours, and -- 

Me: (Wait. Did he just say the first SEVENTY miles?)

Me: So this race was...

Him: 100 miles. So yeah, but I got a cough about 50 miles in, and by 70 miles I was coughing pretty badly. Going up any hill I'd have to cough and cough to catch my breath, it was really bad.

Me: Uh...but uh...100 miles...

Him: So yeah, I did actually finish about 10 minutes faster than my previous time --

Me: (Wait, he's run a 100-mile race BEFORE and he did it AGAIN?!?)

Me: So how long did it take you?

Him: I finished in about 22 hours and 45 minutes.

Me: Like...straight?

Him: Well, you know, we stopped here and there to eat and stuff...

Me: Holy cow. I just can't believe this. 100 miles. Holy crap.

Him: Yeah, I've never had that coughing problem before. I mean, when I run short runs, like only 30 miles or so --

Me: (Head explodes)

I swear, we've got the most insanely athletic graduate students around. It's unbelievable.  

18 Months

It's summer, as you can see. Isn't it beautiful? Summer is beautiful.

Today I was making up a little song for the kids to mark their half birthday, but didn't get very far. Nora's part goes like this:

Nora Nora, we adore ya...

Then I needed something for Milo, but not a whole lot rhymes with Milo. Jake suggested,

Milo Milo, you're a pile 'o...love

But somehow, "pile 'o" just doesn't sound too great, even if it's a pile 'o love. Eventually I came up with this:

Nora Nora, we adore ya

You're a sweet and feisty gal

Milo Milo, you're a philo...dough

You are sweet and tasty now

Hmm. Needs some work. The only other word I can think of that rhymes with Milo is "silo", and it's hard to work that into a song.

Because the kids are now 18 months we've come up across the absolute deadline for getting rid of bottles. According to their doctor, if they keep drinking bottles after this, they will get tooth decay, deformed mouths, brain damage and scurvy. Or something like that. So this weekend we got rid of bottles cold turkey. It hasn't been pretty. I can only imagine what it's going to be like when we toss the pacifiers. 

Today I looked carefully at Nora's mouth and I could see the whites of both of her top front teeth starting to poke through her gums. Hooray! Lately she does seem to have been feeling a bit better. It's only 3 or 4 times a day that her head starts spinning around 360 degrees and the demons from hell escape through her mouth. Once these teeth poke through Nora will have 4 teeth, and I'm psyched about that because having teeth on the top and the bottom of her mouth will hopefully allow her to bite things off, which she currently cannot do.

Nora never holds still to get photographed, especially when outside. This next picture shows Nora's extremely annoyed face, because I was grabbing her hand and trying to get her to stand still for a second so that I could take her picture.

Nora is making up weird versions of words these days, which is awesome. For instance, her word for pajamas is "jamamas". Itsy bitsy spider is "bitsy bellow". This is not to be confused with pretty flowers, which are "pretty bellows". Pacifier is "pafier" and Cheerios is "cheetos". Most of Nora's words are well pronounced, though. Today she learned "fountain" and got it right the first time. Nora learns lots of new words every day and is putting together words like a champ now, like "more bubbles" and "outside park" and "I got you, Mama".

Nora has gotten over her dislike of sand and now likes to play with the sand table. The only problem with a sand table, as I have learned, is that 18-month old kids do not keep sand in the sand table. They like to spill it onto the ground. Nora also likes to carefully place little piles of sand onto her shoulders and onto her head. It's like she's preparing to carry as much sand as possible using only her body as a vessel. Combine this with sticky arms from the sunblock and you have delightfully sand-covered everything. It's like a day at the beach. 

We spend a lot of time outside right now. Nora's favorite things are bubbles (popping of), playgrounds (slides and pea gravel pile making), and other people (fascinated but slightly rude staring of). Yesterday we went to the park by the lake and there were two men sitting on a bench reading books. This bench was right at the edge of the playground. Nora walked right up to them, pointed at one, and said "Glasses!" (She feels the need to announce when anybody is wearing glasses. In the summer, that's a lot of people). The man just glanced up at her, annoyed, and then went back to his book. Nora just stood there, staring at him. And staring. And staring. Finally I said "Nora, do you want to go down the slide?" "No?" "Do you want to go on the swing?" "No?" (Staring, staring, fascinated by this creature who refuses to be charmed). She pointed at him and said "What's that?" I said "That's a bench and two men, Nora" and then scooped her up and carried her away. Awkward.

Nora carries on a more or less constant monologue, and it's funny to see how some of it is just a reflection of what Jake and I say to her, down to the tone. "Sit down, Nora", or "Careful, Nora" are common ones. Also "I got you, Nora!" and somehow recently she picked up "Okay" and "All right". Nora is either talking or singing, and the songs continue to be mostly Nora-focused. She does, however, like an old song by the Police: "do do do, dah dah dah". 

At least once a day Nora will say something that will make Jake say, in awe, "She's so smart." Nora has a great memory and makes all sorts of impressive connections. For instance, we have the book Goodnight Moon which involves a bunny who is trying to go to sleep. He has a grandmother who sits in the rocking chair and says "hush". Then today I was reading Nora a different book about Nicholas the bunny and what he likes to do during the different seasons. At the end of the book it is winter and he curls up in his hollow tree to sleep until spring. (Bunny hibernating? Do bunnies do that?) Nora saw that and said "Sleeping! Hush." She just comes out with these things!

Here is the elusive, hard-to-capture Milo:

He runs and runs and runs. Unfortunately, he also runs down hills and trips and skins his knees. These days Milo is looking more and more like a little boy to me, and less and less like a baby. He has long legs, taking after his dad.

Yesterday while we were at the park Milo spent a full half hour playing soccer with Jake. He just kicked the ball back and forth the whole time. I'm pretty sure he could have kept doing that for hours. It was Jake who tired of it and took Milo over to the tetherball area, where he found another paradise! A ball on a rope! Milo played with that for 15 minutes straight until we finally picked him up to go home to dinner. He screamed the whole way. He did not want to leave that tetherball, which is pretty impressive because I'm fairly sure I saw him swing it and then hit himself in the face with the ball a couple of times.

Milo is a very physical kid. He likes to climb on things and in and out of things, he likes to fling himself face forward onto the bed and then laugh, and he likes to be held upside down. Sometimes he likes to push Nora, which isn't cool, but he also likes to hug Nora, which is adorable. Milo loves to be tickled these days, and he's a sucker for slapstick.

That's Milo climbing in and out of the cart attached to the back of a trike. He's always doing dangerous stuff like this, and he's always got a few scrapes and bumps to show for it. I swear, the kid is all boy, through and through. There's the physical rambunctiousness, there's his never-ending love of all ball sports, and...well, I guess that's it. But still. Where'd he get this from? 

Milo is really starting to speak in some recognizable sentences now. Tonight every time Nora left the room he said "Where'd Nora go?" Milo still calls everything and everybody "it", so when he's looking around for, say, Jake, he'll say "Where'd daddy go?" Then he'll say "Where is it?" and when he finds Jake he'll say "There it is!"

I am so pleased that Milo is starting to branch out with what he'll eat. He is more adventurous than Nora and will try things, like a green bean or a noodle. Milo is not a fan of these items, but he'll at least try them. I, the non-beef eater, have taken to getting meatballs at Trader Joe's (120 calories in just one meatball!) and Milo loves to eat pieces off of a fork. Even better is if we make a noise when stabbing the meat with the fork. Milo loves sound effects and this will humor him into eating. 

Milo is still daddy's kid, through and through. He inherited Jake's sweet nature. He also got a touch of the goofball, which makes him an easy-to-enjoy kid. Milo can be frustrating because he'll use that goofiness to throw stuff onto the floor or purposely spit out his food (and then laugh in our faces as he does it). One of the hardest parts, though, is not laughing myself when I know that I should be stern. The kid is just so darn funny.

As time passes Milo and Nora are playing more and talking more with each other. They fight like hell, reminding me of how we humans are, at our most basic nature, aggressive jealous creatures who don't like to share. So, like every kid, Milo and Nora need to be socialized into polite society, and they have lots and lots of opportunities for practice as they negotiate who gets to play with the car at any given moment. I'm trying to teach them that negotiating means, say, taking turns and not, say, leaving bite marks on the other person's forehead. Progress is slow. But more and more there are the times when they find some secret joke that has them cracking up, and I start to be glad that we did this crazy thing of having two at once. 

Friday Afternoon

The summer after my first year here I got my first solo-authored manuscript back from review, about 7 months after I had submitted it. The decision was revise and resubmit, and I was pretty crushed because it wasn't an outright accept. In fact, I think I even cried about it.

(These days, being much more jaded, I'm pretty happy about a revise & resubmit, because I know the chances of the paper getting published eventually are high. I also know that the changes I will make to a paper after a revise & resubmit will probably make it a much better paper. That first paper was eventually published and it all worked out in the end.)

Anyway, like I said, I was crushed. It was a Friday afternoon and I had spent all week in the hot city working hard on something, I don't remember what, probably a different manuscript or something, and I was tired and feeling defeated and like a total failure. As luck would have it we were scheduled to go up north to Jake's parents' house on the lake that afternoon, so shortly after I got the revise and resubmit decision we packed up the car and drove north for 3 and a half hours. And by the time we arrived there, in the cool woods, I was feeling a lot better about life. We walked into the house to a chorus of "Hey!" from everybody, and soon a drink appeared in my hand, and chips and salsa were nearby, and I sat there listening to happy chatter and watching the boats on the lake. A feeling of peace settled over me as I realized that work is not the end all be all of life, and it was okay.

Today was kind of stressful, not in a horrible way, but in a low-grade way. My friend is going up for tenure in the fall (actually, a lot of people I know are) and we spent a couple of hours poring over her research graphic, which is a visual representation of her research trajectory. It is actually a brilliant graphic and communicates well her different research strands and foci, but it still merited discussions about which of her papers to put into the graphic, where to put particular titles, how to orient this and that, etc. The research graphic is one of only about eight hundred documents she is creating for her tenure case. The thing is huge and by the end will represent about 6 months of hard work. Six months. What goes into getting tenure here (just creating the case to submit to the committee) is crazy. It's not even the work, per se, it's all of the worrying and the strategizing and the agonizing about whether to use this word or that word, and how to orient one's teaching statement, and how many people to solicit for external letters, and when to do that, and how to craft a good department letter, and on and on.

Once I left her (with dread in my heart at the thought of going through this process myself in the near future), I returned to work on my grant proposal, with renewed anxiety about how much I suck and my work sucks and I don't have enough publications and I am going to die alone and poor in a van down by the river.

I'm not going up north this weekend, but now I am going to shut down the computer, walk home, hang out with the kids and Jake, and sit out back on the terrace and watch the flowers and listen to the birds and remember that work is not the end all be all of life. Thank you Jake and Milo and Nora for giving me that perspective.

Check-Up

Well, the kids are still freakishly skinny at 18 months, weighing 18 lbs 11 oz and 19 lbs 15 oz, but their doctor has apparently decided that this is just what they're like, so we're not really doing much about it anymore. Both of them have growth curves that have been remarkably consistent despite our best efforts to shove more and more calories into them, so I don't think there's a whole lot I can really do to affect this. Their heads are a good size (50% for Nora and 35% for Milo) and their heights are fine (25% for Milo and 18% for Nora), so they'll never be amazons but at least they're on the charts for height and head. At least their brains are growing!

Nora was starting to fuss a little as the nurse charted their growth so I asked her if she wanted to sing a song, and she started singing "A B C D A B C D" (she just repeats those 4 letters). The nurse thought that was the greatest thing ever. 

We are ditching bottles this weekend and moving to cups and meals and big-kid type of eating, all the way. The more and more they can learn to feed themselves, the better it'll be, I think. (They seem kind of behind in the feeding-themselves area, which is probably our fault for not letting them practice as much as they should).  I hope it'll help them learn to enjoy mealtimes a little more.

I still remember as a kid and even a teenager dreading mealtimes over at other people's houses. Parents would load up my plate way beyond anything I would be capable of eating, and I would dread that inevitable moment when I wouldn't be able to keep going and I'd still have a giant plate of food sitting there, which I thought was rude and unacceptable. (Because you're supposed to "clean your plate"). I would eat as fast as I could, trying to get as much in as possible before the uncomfortable fullness would set in and I would be certain I couldn't eat another single bite without getting sick. This was still a problem for me even in high school. Sometimes I wonder if that is how Milo and Nora feel at mealtimes. 

The more independent they become at eating, the more they can decide how much they want to eat, and I'm looking forward to that day.  As long as they don't decide to starve themselves.

Contrasts

I'm stressing myself out over this grant proposal to the point of inaction, almost, so even though it's only 9:30 p.m. I think it's time to stop working and do something else.

(I think the experience of having been on an NSF review panel for the specific award I'm applying for is making it harder for me to write this particular grant. I have seen how solid proposals can get killed over kind of idiosyncratic things based on who happens to be on the review panel.)

Having Milo back has made me notice how different M&N are in their personalities. Milo is such a goofball. He gets all riled up very easily, and runs around laughing and flailing his arms everywhere and cracking himself up. He is super cheerful most of the time and usually has a huge grin on his face, unless he's upset about something. Nora is more serious. She isn't constantly goofy the way Milo is. She can have fun and laugh, but her general demeanor just seems to be...serious. She's a serious person.

Nora is eager to please. She wants to do the right thing, she just has to figure out what that thing is. Once she learns what to do, she'll do it. I have listened to Nora tell herself "sit down, sit down", mimicking what I say when she's in the bathtub. The other day I asked her to find all of the books scattered about the room and bring them to me, and she did it, bringing them one by one. Nora was so tickled by this task that she started giggling in glee. In contrast, I have told Milo not to do something, like throw his food on the floor, and then I have watched him look me in the eye, deliberately pick up a piece of food, and then very slowly and deliberately throw it on the floor, staring at me the whole time.

Being here with just Nora made me realize how much crying and whining we listen to on a given day due to sibling rivalry alone. Without Milo here, suddenly there were no fights over toys, there was no pushing, there was no freaking out because one kid has something and the other one suddenly must have that exact. same. thing. Having Milo back means everything is louder again, but at the same time, it also means being able to sit on the couch and just watch as Milo and Nora run back and forth across the living room, chasing each other and laughing. 

Day 2

Both Nora & Milo slept 12 hours straight last night without waking at all.  Hmmm. I wonder if sleeping apart suits them. Or maybe they were both just so worn out that they slept well. Milo is reportedly having a good time up north. It is too cold to do lake-type things but he is playing with new toys, walking in the woods, and playing with the dog.

Nora has started narrating things to herself in a way that mimics how I talk to her. So today she was walking around on the sidewalk and she started down the driveway towards the street. Then she stopped before she got to the street, said "no no", then turned around and went back to the sidewalk and said "good job!" 

Nora likes flowers and calls them "pretty belows". 

Today was grey and rainy and cold so we only spent a total of about an hour outside, and Nora has not been having an easy time going to bed tonight. Unbeknownst to me she also pushed some buttons on our dishwasher changing the "heated dry off" to "heated dry on" which would explain why 10 minutes ago I had to open up the kitchen window to clear out the room from smoke. The heated dry function on the dishwasher is seriously broken. As that was happening one of my cats started to choke up a hairball, so naturally she ran to a rug so that she could puke on the rug. Our house is all hardwood floors and the cat has to run around to find one of the few rugs to puke on.

Day 1

After 1 day under my belt, hanging out with just one baby is SO easy! It's awesome! There is nobody to freak out and cry when I change a diaper. If somebody falls down, I can immediately give comfort without baby #2 freaking out from jealousy. Also, it is so easy to go places in a car. I can just put the baby in and then hop in myself. No rigamarole involving getting baby #1 into the car while baby #2 cries and freaks out, thinking s/he is being abandoned, then getting baby #2 into the car while baby #1 cries and freaks out, thinking s/he is being abandoned, no need to put a stroller in the trunk just to get babies from point a to point b...I can just CARRY Nora myself! Also, feeding time is much easier with just one baby. 

However I'm not inclined to go far in the car because I'm not sure the car seat is in all that well, and it's Jake's old 2-door car which is a bit of a pain to get Nora in and out of. Today I took Nora to the zoo and the park for a couple of hours and got her good and tired out, which was great. She doesn't really seem to have noticed that much is different, although she has said "daddy" a few times. At one point at the zoo she approached another baby and said "Mino". Otherwise, though, it's business as usual. I think it's harder on me than it is on Nora having the boys gone, because it's kind of quiet and monotonous without Jake & Milo around.

Last night I watched a movie called "Smart People" and early on in the movie there was a scene that took place in a dorm and I immediately recognized the entrance to that dorm and I was all, holy crap, I used to live there! It was Donner hall from CMU where I once lived for a summer. Sure enough the story took place at CMU and was filmed in Pittsburgh. That was a really weird moment.

Going Fishing

Tomorrow Jake is taking Milo up north to his parents' house on the lake for the weekend, leaving me with Nora. Tomorrow night will be the first night in Milo & Nora's lives that they won't go to sleep together. 

I don't know what it's going to be like, just me and Nora for two days. Hopefully Nora will enjoy having so much uninterrupted Mama time and Milo will enjoy having all of that Daddy time. I'm more worried about Milo than Nora, because Milo will also have to cope with new surroundings and new people. But at least he'll have Daddy, which makes him very happy.

Milo is so Daddy obsessed that every person on the street is "Daddy", and the other day we were looking at a picture of a woman in a catalogue who he identified as "Daddy". Often when I'm out on my own with the kids, Milo will see a man pass by us on the street or the bike path and he'll call out, delightedly, "Daddy!" It's made for some awkward moments and some double takes as random men start sweating and looking over their shoulders.

Oh no

Nora threw up again, which makes 3 night-time vomits in the last week and a half. I'm worried. Calling the doctor tomorrow and hoping she can get seen. Maybe she still has reflux?