Getting Close!

Here's Nora contemplating the moves necessary to crawl:

Making a Mountain out of a Molehill

Do these babies always have to have eating issues? I swear I've been worrying about their eating in some form or another since they were born. It's obviously not a phase. I'll probably be waging some sort of food battle against my will even when they're 10.

They just don't want to drink these days. Today around noonish neither baby would take more than 2 ounces. They're supposed to drink 6-8, not 2. 2 is ridiculous. It is so incredibly frustrating when a baby won't eat, especially when I have to take her to bogus GI doctor visits because she's too small, and Milo isn't winning any big baby awards either. Kids, you're getting me in trouble with doctors, eat already!

I was so frustrated, and became even more angry when Jake didn't seem to be phased by it. "Don't you care about this?", I spit. "They're going to end up developmentally delayed little people!* Forget them moving out of the house and going to college. We're going to end up spending our entire lives taking care of them, because they won't be able to go to school or hold down a job or live on their own because their brain growth will be stunted because they ate so little! We'll have to buy special furniture for them because they'll never grow to be full sized!" Jake looked at me calmly. "We'd better have another baby so the twins will have somebody to take care of them after we die!", I shrieked. "Whoa, whoa, whoa," said Jake. "Now you're talking crazy talk." "Now? You mean, the scenario in which we spend our entire lives caring for the kids because they end up developmentally delayed little people wasn't going too far, but having another baby was?" Jake thought for a moment. "I have my limits."

*I didn't use words that polite, unfortunately.

Milo Bounces, Nora Inches

I Need to Start Carrying Purell in the Diaper Bag

The scene: It's noon and I walk into the local coffee shop to meet a friend and her baby for lunch. Milo is with me. He's in the sling, sitting cross-legged and facing out. I start chatting with the nice coffee shop lady behind the counter and try to figure out what to order.

Suddenly this older lady swoops up to us and starts gushing about how adorable Milo is. This happens very quickly, as I'm looking at the menu. I turn towards her and see that she has grabbed Milo's hand and is kissing it repeatedly. WTF, lady? I've never seen her before in my life. All of the sudden she is slobbering all over Milo's hand. The hand that he likes to put in his mouth, oh, about a thousand times a day. I have no idea if she's healthy or if she has a cold or something much worse.

What is it with people who think they can just reach out and grab random babies and start handling them, or worse, kissing them? Did I say you could kiss my baby? The problem is that my sense of decorum makes it really, really hard to say anything about this. It's actually happened before so I've rehearsed what to do when I see somebody about to swoop in for the slobber fest. I'll say "I'm sorry, but he has a cold, so please don't kiss him. I wouldn't want you to catch it." I wasn't able to do that today because the lady lunged in so quickly that she was kissing him before I knew what hit me. Maybe I'm paranoid, but the last thing I want to deal with is two sick babies.

So back off, slobbery strangers!

Back from Paradise

Boy it sure is nice to spend a whole week around people who love to hold babies and play with them, not to mention cook dinner for you and wash dishes! Being at my folks' house was like being at a luxury baby hotel. They had everything they could possibly need and more, and it was perfectly comfortable, and they even slept like champs. Way better than they sleep at home, as a matter of fact; Nora's naps were terrific. Nora and Milo got to meet their big cousins who LOVED to be around them and try to make them laugh. They also got to meet some other new family members, and ride on a boat, and splash in the lake, and go on car rides, and of course ride on the plane.

When the babies were young somebody smart told me that the basic things we take for granted, like being able to sleep or take a leisurely shower or eat a full meal, disappear. Then when they start to reappear in our lives they feel like privileges. I guess having babies is like going through boot camp in that way. Lots of nights now I can stay in my bed all night long. That was unfathomable just a couple of months ago. Now we can watch an entire movie all the way through if we need to. I can usually stick one baby with Jake and the other in a bouncy seat and take a shower while they happily play with toys. I can go to the grocery store without rushing and worrying that I need to be back in half an hour before everything self destructs. All of these things feel incredibly luxurious.

Flying with the babies made me think about other luxuries that are yet to come, like the ability to actually read a book, or even a magazine. The ability to nap on the plane, or stand in line for 10 minutes to grab a burrito during a layover. I tend to fly a fair amount for work and have always found it boring and tedious, but there's a certain indulgent feeling to having all of that time to yourself, just to read and eat and sit around. I spent time on this trip watching parents with older kids, kids who were 6 or 8 or 10. Those parents read on the plane while their kids play games. Those parents can go to the bathroom when they want to. So I know we'll get those things back eventually.

Milo and Nora did very well flying, by the way. On the way there Nora was perfectly content the entire time, and Milo only had a little bit of trouble during the final landing. No screaming or anything dramatic like that. On the way back Milo slept on my lap for almost the entire first flight, and Nora slept on my lap for most of the second flight. They didn't even cry once! It wasn't nearly as bad as I had feared. We have this heavy burden of taking care of two infants at once, but we lucked out in that both babies are pretty easygoing and content. So it could be a lot worse.

Milo is contemplative:



Nobody puts baby in a corner!



Enjoying the summer afternoon:



Swimming (in 2 inches of water):





Notice how I'm barely touching Nora in the first photo and not at all in the second? Suddenly she's started to figure out how to sit up by herself. Milo is also doing well at sitting. Next up, crawling, or at least scooting!

Take That, Summers!

I've been wanting to do something to refute Summers' ridiculous speech ever since he made it, so I'm very glad that our study has been picked up by the news -- CNN, NPR, CBS, MSNBC, and all of the papers are running it today. The article that quotes me is actually the one I like the least because of its biased reporting about the SAT. The reporter failed to mention that we have excellent data refuting the generalizability of the SAT data; two states, Colorado and Illinois, actually made all of their students take the ACT (rather than just college bound students, which represents a sampling bias). When all students take the ACT, the gender differences in math performance disappear completely. Far more girls than boys take the SAT, so we're dipping further down into the talent pool for girls, which brings their average score down. Hence boys score better on the math SAT. But I guarantee that if any state mandated that all students take the test, the gender difference would disappear.

7 Months

Here's Nora and Milo saying hello!

This has been quite a month. It started off pretty well and then it got really crappy. And then it started to get better again, and now it's pretty decent. The end.

So this month we spent some time worrying about Milo and Nora and their weight gain, especially for Nora, especially when the throwing up started. Poor Nora had to see the doctor, and then the GI doctor, and then she had to have a chest x-ray and an EKG, and then she had to see a cardiologist, and then she had to have an echocardiogram, and then at the end of all that, the basic diagnosis, or best guess anyway, is that Nora is just fine. She has a small heart murmur but it's something called an innocent murmur, so that's good. I didn't want Nora to have a malevolent murmur.

I'm really impressed with how well Nora tolerated all of this unpleasant doctor stuff. For instance, when you give a baby a chest x-ray, the baby has to hold still and I guess be upright. So in order to accomplish this you place the baby on a small bicycle seat, and then bring up a plastic tube that encases the baby's entire torso. She has to hold her arms up over her head, and then the arms are trapped in the plastic tube too. There is a small cut-out for the baby's face. Ahh -- here is what it looks like (not our baby in the photo):


Pretty terrible looking, huh. The x-ray tech said "She'll cry, but that's good because we get a better picture that way." So we stuck Nora in this terrible thing and of course she started crying, and the x-ray tech took an x-ray. He needed one more, but by that time Nora had already calmed herself down and was no longer crying! The tech said "Cry honey, cry! Can you get her to cry?" What was I supposed to do, poke her with a sharp stick? Nora just happens to be uncommonly good at dealing with things. What can I say?

Anyway, she seems to be fine, and luckily both babies have regained their appetites now that they no longer have any dairy. This no-dairy thing is likely temporary and thank goodness because I'm not sure how long I can go without cheese. And cream sauces. And ice cream. And butter. Ahhh, butter. That reminds me of this really skinny guy I knew in college named Hussein who used to take those pats of butter that you get in the restaurant, the ones wrapped in foil, and eat them straight. Blechhhh.

Nora has started to figure out the logistics of scooting around commando style. She can't really do it yet, but if she rolls onto her belly and I put a toy just out of her reach, she'll lift up on her toes and inch herself forward on her belly until she gets the toy. Nora is getting really good at that sort of thing, and the rolling to and fro, because she does it constantly now. Constantly. In her crib, on the floor, and if you stick her in a bouncy seat she tries to launch herself right out of it. She's always on the move. Nora has a lot of energy, which scares me a little when I contemplate the future, but fortunately she can't crawl or walk yet. Take your time, Nora, it's okay. We're in no hurry.

Nora's ability to roll with the punches really amazes me. Whether she's trapped in a chest x-ray torture device or trapped in a car seat for 4 hours, she just makes the best of it. Today we drove home from our trip up to the north woods and the kids spent a lot of time in their car seats. Nora took her typical 30-minute nap in her car seat, and then woke up, and, well, that's a lot of time left to just be stuck in a car seat. So she played with her toys for a while, until she'd tossed them all out of reach. Then she played with the shade of the car seat for a while. Then she played with her reflection in the mirror for a while, and then when all else failed she played with her voice, saying "bah bah BAH BAH BAH", louder and louder until she was basically yelling. Then she would cackle.

Speaking of cackling, Nora has developed this weird, almost spooky laugh. It's hard to describe. I wouldn't say it's cute. It sounds more like...it sounds like she's trying to cough up a hair ball. It's not a giggle or a chuckle, it's more of a hacking sound. And just in the last couple of days she has started laughing all the time. At nothing. She laughs at the ceiling, she laughs at the cat, she laughs at her toys, she laughs at us, she laughs in the crib, she laughs while staring off into the middle distance. What is so funny, Nora? I wish I could peek into her mind and take a look at what is cracking her up all the time.

Nora also cackles when she does things like grabs my hair, or grabs the cat's hair, or steals a toy from Milo. I guess we know which twin is the evil twin now! Hah ha, Nora, I kid. Sort of. The other day I heard her cackling and I looked down and there was Sam, so I thought, how sweet, she's laughing at the cat. Then I saw a bunch of black fur in Nora's tight little fist. She cackled as she tore a bunch of fur out of Sam's coat.

The biggest change we've gone through this month is that I have finally started to do a little sleep training with Nora. This wasn't something I really decided to do. Instead, it just sort of happened because one night I just couldn't deal any longer. I was sick of waking up in the morning and seeing Nora look like crap because she'd been awake all night. I was terrified to do it, but once I knew that she was healthy, I felt like it was time, because I'd run out of options. I didn't know what else to do.

Of course these things never unfold like we think they will. I had been worried that Nora would scream for hours. I had been worried that she wouldn't stop crying all night long. But that didn't happen at all. What I decided to do was check on her and soothe her after 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 15 minutes, then every 15 minutes for as long as it took. The critical change is that I would no longer give her a pacifier when soothing her. I knew that Nora needed to learn how to go to sleep without her pacifier, on her own. So the first night, she was up a lot. The details are fuzzy but I think she was up between about 12 and 1 and then again from 3 to 5. But the funny thing is that she didn't really cry much during all of that time, it was more like she fussed, and talked, and rolled around a lot, and fussed some more. Every time I went in there she'd lift up on her arms and give me a huge smile, and I'd say "dude, it's 4 a.m., just go to sleep, please, for the love of God, go to sleep", and she'd smile some more and then I'd leave the room and she'd commence rolling around again and fussing. But there was no real crying, and no screaming. It was a tiring night but it was not emotionally difficult like I had feared.

The next night, Nora woke up two or three times and I heard her fussing. I'd look at the clock and say to myself "okay, I'll go in after 10 minutes". But after 2 or 3 minutes, she'd stop and fall asleep on her own! The night after that, it was the same thing. I never had to go in. After that we went up to the north woods, and I was actually sleeping in the same room with both kids which sucked because I could hear every time they turned over or sighed or burped, but again, Nora never fussed more than a minute or so and I didn't need to soothe her at all. I can't believe it. I was expecting something much worse. The thing is, I think I forgot to factor in what a quick learner Nora is. I think after the first night she figured out very quickly how to put herself back to sleep, and bam, that's what she's done.

Now when I go into their room in the morning, Nora looks so much brighter and better rested. Her eyes aren't red anymore, and I am so glad that she is getting more sleep. I hope that I haven't permanently damaged her by doing this. I also hope I didn't damage her by waiting so long to do it, and therefore making her lose sleep. I never know what's best for them as far as this sort of thing goes. Am I coddling Nora and Milo because I don't want them to ever cry, because I don't like to say "no" too much? Are they going to become spoiled because of these things? Or is it okay because they're just small babies still, and there is only a limited time in life when they are this truly innocent and pure? I just don't know. I hope that Nora will always know that whatever decisions I make, even if they're the wrong ones, are made because I love her and want the best for her.

We have started calling Milo "Mellow Milo". He's just cool with everything now, and even seems to have lost his fear of new people. Sure the occasional loud noise will still upset Milo, but otherwise, he's happy. He doesn't move around nearly as much as Nora because he's just content to sit there and play with whatever happens to be handy: a toy, a foot, even his hand will do. Nora will often swoop in and grab whatever Milo's got, and if he loses the toy he'll just start happily sucking on his arm instead.

Milo gets very excited and pleased these days. A lot of the pictures I've taken of his reflect this -- his mouth is open, his eyes are huge (as usual), and he likes to shake his entire body in excitement. Life is just too cool, especially when there are things like hand puppets and cats and dogs in the world!

One sad development this past month is that Milo has stopped nursing entirely. I think part of this is my fault because when Nora was sick I started trying to nurse her every spare chance I got, and I wasn't paying as much attention to Milo. But he hadn't really been nursing before that anyway, only late at night. Now that Milo sleeps through, the late-night nursing session disappeared. Then his morning nursing became more and more pokey and distracted, and then he just stopped all together. Every day or so I still try once or twice, but Milo will just sort of look at me confusedly as if to say "What are you doing? Where's the bottle?" So...he's done. He made it almost 7 months, and ideally we would have gone twice that long but I'm done having regrets about all of this nursing. One thing I am doing is making sure that I feed Milo a few times a day so that he doesn't forget me.

It sounds silly but really I think Milo is becoming daddy's boy. He loves his dad, and his dad often ends up feeding him because Nora will still nurse, so I feed Nora. So naturally his dad is the one patting him and burping him and holding him and playing with him too, especially during all that time when I'm off with Nora placing her in plastic tubes. Milo lights up when I come into the room, but lately I've noticed that he really lights up when Jake comes into the room. And that's okay. Every boy should be so lucky, to be so close to his dad.

The other day we took the kids on their first boat ride. Both babies tolerated their lifejackets amazingly well. We also tried to put sunglasses on them, and Nora wanted nothing to do with it. Milo, however, was just fine. He allowed me to place these weird things on his face, and then we topped it with a hat, and he just thought that was peachy. Milo kept those sunglasses on for the rest of the afternoon and enjoyed showing off what a cool dude he was. Even though it's hard to be hip when your mom is calling you a "cool dude".


Milo also enjoyed his first dip in the lake. I put these fancy swim trunks on him, not paying a whole lot of attention to the tag that warned that the built-in swim diaper was only meant to contain "solid accidents". So I fed Milo a giant 8-ounce bottle, and then walked around with him in the water, dipping his toes in and letting him stomp on the sand. Then as I was holding him I felt that telltale wet warmth spreading through my fingers, and I declared "okay Milo, time to dunk you up to your waist in the lake!" Despite the fact that the lake was freezing, Milo thought this was a blast and he loved being dunked over and over again.

One thing Milo loved about his north woods trip, other than the lake, was his uncle Ken. Milo thought Ken was hilarious and often started laughing when he simply looked at Ken. I think Milo takes after his uncle quite a bit in the looks department, but his personality is all daddy's. He's a people pleaser, just eager to make everybody happy. He's easygoing and sweet, and can go with the flow. That's pure Jake.

Milo is very close to sitting. The Twin Whisperer, who really loves these kids, thinks that Milo can really sit on his own if he thinks he's being supported. She'll demonstrate this by sitting him up and then placing just one finger on the top of his head. With her finger there Milo can indeed sit and balance himself for quite a long time. When she removes her finger, he topples. So maybe she's right. It's amazing how quickly these kids change. One day, Milo is almost sitting. Soon he'll be sitting, and the next thing I know I'm going to turn around and he'll be running all over the house. It blows my mind to remember back to the fussy newborn Milo and compare him to the easygoing gleeful guy he is now. And that's in just 7 short months? I wonder what he'll be like when he's a year old, or when he's 5? Totally different again, displaying personality traits I can't even imagine now? Probably. These kids just keep getting better and better.


I'll close with some photos. Here are Milo and Nora in their lifejackets:


Here are a couple of Milo hanging out:



Here is Nora getting her glasses on oh so briefly before she tore them off and started eating them:



And finally, a few attempts at some 7-month portraits that didn't really work out because the kids were being too goofy!




Bonus shot: here is the view the babies enjoyed this past weekend. This is the view Jake grew up with.

Textbook

It happens, I guess.

We're driving home from the northwoods, eh, home of log cabins, fake log cabin siding, and really really bad decorating tastes. We left just as the kids should have started their nap, hoping for only one stop. We were also hoping to make it to the rest stop but the first rest stop is 140 miles down the road. That's right, this stupid state thinks it's okay to go 140 miles without a single solitary rest stop.

We're actually only 20 or 30 miles from the rest stop when Milo starts fussing. Jake says, "do you smell something? One of them must have filled their pants." Oh well, I think, we'll change it when we stop soon. Meanwhile Milo keeps fussing so I turn around in my seat and get up on my knees to check him out and maybe give him a new toy or something, and I see something brown on his sock. Why is his sock brown? I take off his sock and sniff it, and Oh My God, that's not chocolate. Then I see brown on his leg. And on the straps of the carseat. And on his shorts, and holy shit, a giant pile on the carseat itself. It is EVERYWHERE. I start saying "Oh my god, Oh my god, brown...blowout...pull over!" Jake pulls off the first exit we find and we wander around some small godforsaken town looking for somewhere to change a baby, anywhere, even just a spot with shade, for crying out loud. We end up in a bank parking lot taking 20 minutes to somehow try to clean the carseat, the straps, the baby, and the seatbelt with just a bunch of wipes. Poor Milo is covered. It's on his hands, his feet, his legs, everywhere. After using about 50 wipes and getting a fair amount of shit on our own hands in the process, we get everything reasonably clean and then the babies are starving, so we sit in the sad bank parking lot, feeding our kids in the hot car.

This state needs more rest stops.

Woo Hoo!

It's easy to talk about the bad work stuff -- the missed deadlines, the foggy thinking, the falling down on my ass while trying to catch the bus and ending up late for meetings. I mean, it's just obvious. Twins plus a tenure track position is just nuts.

It's harder to talk about the good stuff, at least without sounding like a braggart. But some really good stuff has happened to me so far this year at work, and I need to remember that the next time I am convinced that I'm flubbing this whole gig. And one of those good things is this: check out the next edition of Science when it comes out on July 25. It'll have an article in it by yours truly.

Not just me, of course -- me and a whole bunch of other people, most of whom did way more on this article than I ever did. So I can't take a lot of credit for it, but still...Science!

Speaking of sleep...

Gratuitous cute kid picture. I love how Milo is cuddling the little dog. Milo sleeps like a champ these days, sleeping through the night reliably. The main exception is when we have a thunderstorm, which scares Milo. He needs cuddling then. Milo gets scared by things like loud noises or strange people sometimes, and needs a little reassurance. Nora is never bothered by things like that. I've seen her get angry, but it's pretty rare to see her afraid. She's cuddly too, though. They're just so different in so many ways.

Typical Night

I drag my heels when it comes to going to bed. Once I go to bed, the night has begun, and the night time is a bad time. Since I'm up 5 or 10 times a night, I should probably be asleep by 9 or so, but I can never manage to do so. I try to be in bed by 9:30 and asleep by 10, or at least with lights off by 10, but then the night begins.

It's dark. It's time to sleep. I try to relax my body and my mind, but the fear is never far away. How long is this quiet going to last? When will I hear Nora? Forget about it, try to go to sleep. I toss and turn and my thoughts spin and I try to ignore the vague dread that lurks in the remote corners of my mind. Just relax. Eventually, sometimes 10 minutes later, sometimes two hours later, I drift off.

I am floating along in the quiet land of dreamless sleep. I am deep under water. It is peaceful and quiet and delicious. Then Nora starts to fuss and call out and whimper. My body is instantly jerked awake. I am flooded with adrenaline. I am immediately wide awake and anxious, my heart is racing, I can feel it beating in my chest. I put on my glasses and jump out of bed and go into the nursery. Nora is thrashing around. I can't see very well, but I can see her unhappy mouth, a rectangular shape of blackness as she moans and cries. I try to give her a pacifier but she has figured this trick out, and she knows that a pacifier means that I will leave her side. So she refuses the pacifier, angrily pushes it away, turns her head, cries harder.

I pat her chest softly and tell her to relax, it's okay, it's okay Nora, just relax, it's time to go back to sleep. She calms down a little bit but keeps fussing. I keep patting. Nora starts to get more upset. I step away from the crib, take a few steps away, and Nora almost immediately quiets down. She learned this in about half an hour one night. I had sat in the glider next to the crib and taken any opportunity where she quieted down for just a second to approach her crib, praise her for calming herself down, and comfort her. That one night she learned that if she quiets down, I will come back. But what does this get me? It doesn't teach her to put herself to sleep. I have to go back, so I do, and I pat her chest again, and whisper that it's okay, and it's time to go to sleep. Now Nora is no longer crying and she is calm enough to accept the pacifier. She turns onto her side, her signal that she is ready to try to go to sleep.

I rub her back for a little while. She is still awake. Is she going to go back to sleep? I can't tell. Either she will go back to sleep, in which case it's worth it for me to go back to bed, or she'll stay awake and fuss and cry every 5-10 minutes, in which case it's a lot easier to just stay up. She remains calm, and on her side. She seems like maybe she is going to go back to sleep. I slowly back away from the crib. I back out of the room. She is still quiet. I slip into bed, and take off my glasses, and try to calm my racing heart. I'm alert but tired, and it only takes a few minutes to fall back asleep.

Jerked awake again. Nora is crying. It's 10 minutes after I returned to bed. I go through the whole routine again, calming her in the crib, trying not to pick her up, hoping that somehow she will magically learn some day to put herself back to sleep because at least I'm not picking her up and rocking her to sleep. She is falling asleep in the crib, at least, albeit with a little help. Nora calms down again. I go back to bed again. I fall asleep.

Jerked awake again. It's 20 minutes later. I go back in and soothe Nora again. She turns on her side and seems to be going back to sleep, but is she really? I can't tell. But she's not moving. I check my email. Oddly I have 3 new messages even though it's the middle of the night. I listen and don't hear anything. I go back to bed.

Jerked awake. It's 20 minutes later again. I go back into the nursery and as I soothe Nora my mind revisits the same questions over and over again, the same questions I ponder every night. Should I let her cry? Should I get rid of the pacifier? Should I cut out the night feeding? Or should I just nurse her every time she cries? No, I did that for a while a few weeks back and it didn't cut back on the waking, so it can't be hunger. Maybe it's time to let her cry. No, I can't do that. She's getting the rest of her shots in a few days and she's going to need me then. After that we're going on a small trip, so I can't let her cry in a strange place. And after that we're going on another trip for a week, and again it doesn't seem fair to let her cry in a strange place. So that means I have to wait until we're back home for a while. That means waiting until August. I can't wait until August. I can't keep doing this. I can't. How am I supposed to function? How am I supposed to do my job, to think, to write articles? It's hard enough to write on a full night's sleep, how can I possibly muster the proper amount of concentration on almost no sleep? I can't even remember my keys on most days, how am I supposed to get tenure? This is it. I am never going to get tenure because I can't even work properly, because I haven't slept in 6 months. God. I haven't slept in 6 months. This is insane! I can't do this! This is so unfair, Jake is sleeping through all of this, I can't handle this! I can't do it!

Nora is falling back asleep. I go back to bed. I fall asleep.

Jerked awake. It's 15 minutes later. I go back into the nursery. Nora is crying and refusing the pacifier. I am angry. I want to pound the crib with my fists. I tell myself, don't do it. Don't pound the crib with your fists. That will just scare Nora and it won't make you feel any better. It will just make it more likely that you will react in anger again next time. I don't pound the crib with my fists. I step away from the nursery for a few seconds. Nora quiets down. I return to her crib while she is still quiet. I tell her what a great job she did there, calming herself down like that. She seems really tired. She accept the pacifier and turns onto her side. I worry. I think, she can't keep waking like this. She has been awake most of the night, and this can't be good for her. What am I going to do?

I go back to bed. I fall asleep.

Jerked awake. Nora is crying. It's an hour later, and it's after 2 a.m. so at this point I can nurse her. My arbitrary rule is to nurse Nora if it's after 2 a.m. but not before, because when I do it before 2 a.m. I just have to keep nursing her again and again throughout the night, and it doesn't seem to help her any more than simply soothing her in the crib. So I rush to the crib and immediately pick Nora up and she starts nursing. She nurses for 10 or 15 minutes. She is very sleepy now. I change her diaper, and hold her over my shoulder and pat her back until she burbs. I gently place her down in the crib, and she rolls onto her side and goes to sleep. I feel relieved. At this stage of the night she'll probably sleep for 2 or 3 hours. I go back to bed. I have a hard time falling asleep. Eventually, I drift off.

Jerked awake. Body flooded with adrenaline. It's 4:45 a.m. I've been asleep for 2 hours and 15 minutes. Nora is fussing and rolling around in the crib. I go in and pat her belly and she falls asleep fairly quickly. I go back to bed.

Jerked awake. It's 6:15. No, this is too early. Please don't tell me the day is going to start at 6:15. What happened until sleeping until 7? I go into the nursery. Milo is awake and mumbling to himself. Nora is half awake and fussing. I give them both pacifiers, I tell them to go back to sleep, I go back to bed. I think, I'm not getting up until I hear crying. I fall back asleep.

6:30. I hear some talking. No crying. I drift in and out of sleep, listening to this for a while. By 6:45 things are starting to ramp up instead of down, so I give in and get up.* Another night over. As I feed the babies and get them ready for the day, the fog of the night disappears and I feel better. I think, I didn't think I could do it, but I did it again. For another night, I did it, and I didn't lose my temper. I can keep doing this, I guess. But I still don't know what we're going to do about Nora's lousy sleep.

*Alternate ending every other day or so: Jake gets up instead, and I put a pillow over my head. I try to trust that he can handle everything, which of course he can, and I sleep for another delicious couple of hours.

Milo Plays, Nora Swoops In

The kids got to play with a toy that Aunt Sally sent today:

Everybody Loves Raymond

So, we don't have t.v.

I mean, we have a t.v., but it's not hooked up to cable or any reception device, so we use it to watch dvds -- or we did, before the babies were born. We haven't watched anything on that t.v. since Milo and Nora arrived because it's all the way down in the basement, and that's 2 whole flights of stairs away from the kids, and who wants to interrupt Harry Potter to book it up 2 flights of stairs if somebody starts crying? Not us. Instead we use my computer in the office to watch our dvds, because that's a mere 5 steps away from the babies' lair.

We don't eschew t.v. out of some grand sense of betterment or a holier than thou attitude. In fact I don't even like to talk about it in casual conversation because if somebody finds out that we don't watch t.v., that somebody will generally start looking at me funny and slowly back away as if I'm about to start spouting off about the latest NPR program or launch into a debate about cabernets versus merlots. So when Joe Shmoe asks me if I've seen the latest "American Idol Big Brother Surviver", or whatever the heck reality show they've introduced this summer, I just say that I missed it.

The real reason we don't have t.v. is that I can't handle it. The last time I had t.v. was when I was in grad school, and I was a busy person then. I had classes to teach, and classes to take, and a dissertation to write, and a race to train for, and an ocean to surf, and beaches to visit, and what did I do? I found myself awake at 1 a.m. watching a 4-year old re-run of Everybody Loves Raymond. Does anybody even like Everybody Loves Raymond? I didn't. It's a terrible show, featuring a selfish, idiotic main character, and yet there I would be, at 1 in the morning, vegging out on the sofa with little potato chip crumbs gracing the front of my shirt. The fact that I watched old re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond, and not just once or twice, but regularly, was a signal that t.v. and I had to break up. It was time to start seeing other people.

Not that we don't have any t.v. viewing options now. Jake and I belong to Netflix, and that means we can order dvds of all kinds of crummy t.v. shows if we want to. And we have. I, in particular, have a real weakness for angsty teen coming-of-age dramas, so I have to admit that I have watched the entire series of Freaks and Geeks, and the less cool, more embarrassing Gilmore Girls and, God help me, Dawson's Creek. (And I loved them.) Right now we're making our way through the ancient but still terrific Northern Exposure. The thing about watching t.v. on dvd, though, is that I can't fall into the trap of overconsuming random bad television. We have our show, it's on a dvd, we watch it, and then it's over. No more channel surfing until I end up back on re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond at 1 a.m.

So when I moved to this town I made a clean break with t.v., and it was fine, because I was in a new town with so many new things to do and see and think about, plus there was Jake to visit, and a house to take care of, and I never had time to watch t.v. anyway. I don't miss it, and the fact that I don't miss it tells me that it was the right thing to do. Whenever I travel and stay in a hotel I get all excited about how I'll be able to watch some t.v., and see what's on these days, and then I start flipping channels to try to find some vaguely interesting show, one that doesn't switch angles every 5 nanoseconds and make me dizzy, one that doesn't involve some overly tan dumb guy who mysteriously gets to go on tons of dates with dozens of women who are competing to become his girlfriend or something bizarre like that. Usually I end up watching a show about people who buy old ugly houses and then fix them up with cheap materials in order to sell them to poor unsuspecting buyers. Then I wonder, why did I just waste that hour of my life when the hotel bar is only 3 flights down?

I struggle with television and kids. Right now it's kind of a no brainer, they're only 6 months old so what are they going to watch? Nora and Milo don't care about forensic science, and as far as I can tell if you don't like forensic science then 90% of the viewing options won't interest you. When they're older it might get a little tricky. On the one hand, I love the fact that advertising never enters our lives via commercials. I know that my haircut, glasses, watch, and shirt are all probably out of style, but without commercials to tell me so, I don't really care about it too much. Milo and Nora will have enough advertising in their lives, just from walking down the streets, just from magazines on our table, just from going over to their friends' houses. They don't need any extra from television. And I'm pretty sure that whatever great show they're missing out on probably isn't as great as running around outside, or playing with clay, or making a painting, or digging in the garden.

On the other hand, I don't want them to become the weird kids with the hippy parents, either. I taught a few kids like that in my day, the ones who only started going to school in 9th grade because they were home schooled up until then, and they'd never tasted a hamburger, and didn't know what a My Pretty Pony was, and they wore handmade shirts with little flowers on them. Those kids were nice and all, but they had a heck of a time making friends. It's probably not going to matter much because even without t.v. in our house, I'm sure they'll get some exposure from staying over at friends' houses. Maybe by the time Nora and Milo are big kids t.v. will be passe anyway, and they'll just spend all their time on Facebook Junior or whatever is going to exist in 10 years. So hopefully we'll find a way to continue to live without needing things like t.v. in the house, but still raise kids who are, you know, socially normal*.

*Yeah. I know. As if such a thing is possible anyway with me and Jake as their parents.

The Face of Motherhood at 37

And other birthday photos:

No Content, Just Cuteness

The kids seem to be feeling better as a result of switching from dairy to soy. I have to refrain from dairy too, of course. Nora shows off her happy smile here, and Milo is perfecting his gleeful crazed mad scientist look.

In Which I am a Lousy Advisor

Things are not going well.

Nora is not getting better. She is still eating very small amounts, and a few days ago she gagged and threw up a little bit while eating solids. Since that time she hasn't wanted much at all to do with solids. That was her one eating strength, the solid foods. So now Nora isn't drinking much, and she's eating next to nothing, and yet she is still vomiting. Last night she threw up all over everything, and this was after almost two vomit-free days. It isn't still the shots, and she doesn't have a virus any more, and yet she is still vomiting.

So today it's back to the doctor. I originally had a meeting with one of my doctoral students this afternoon. He scheduled this meeting with me about a month ago, and he probably did so because I've been sort of slow this summer. Slow to read and comment on his work, which isn't the way I typically operate, but I've been slow with everything. I have a book chapter due in 5 weeks and I haven't even started it.

I had to change his meeting time from this afternoon to late this morning, because I need to take off from work and drive Jake to and from the doctor as he needs to have his own medical procedure, one that involves drugs good enough to prevent him from driving. I hate moving meetings like that and inconveniencing my students, but I had no choice. And now, of course, Nora needs to go to the doctor this morning. So I have to cancel my appointment with my student yet again. I'm becoming that type of advisor. The one you can't count on to keep her meetings, or to get your draft read in a timely manner. I hate this. My first doctoral student, who graduated a year ago, wrote a letter to my department chair and the dean about what a fabulous advisor I was. Now half of those things that prompted him to write that letter have probably gone down the tubes. How do you remain reliable when you have kids who get sick on their own schedules and not yours?

Plus, what on earth are we going to do about poor Nora?

Hot Time, Summer in the City

Milo and Nora still aren't eating much, but there isn't a whole lot we can do about that. They had half of their 6 month shots and spent the day after that vomiting. Then yesterday and today Nora has also been vomiting, and Milo has been unhappy, so they seem to have a bug. So much for weight gain; right now we just need to get through this. I've decided that I can't spend every day freaked out about how little they are eating. I can't make them eat when they don't want to eat.

Nora's sleep is getting a little bit better in the sense that she can once again put herself to sleep instead of being rocked to sleep. She is still waking at night but I've decided I need to slowly wean her off her night feeding before trying to do any sleep training. It seems a little harsh to just cut her off from eating at night all at once. This is probably my way of procrastinating. When I feed her earlier in the night (or a little less), she does eat much, much better in the morning. When she has a solid night feeding, or eats at 2 a.m. or later, she doesn't want to eat in the morning.

One time I took her in to bed with me to see if that could perhaps be a solution to this sleep stuff. I think Nora might sleep fine with us if she had to. She woke a lot, but went back to sleep very easily, probably because I was right there to give her a pacifier before she even fully woke up. The problem is that I didn't sleep a wink with her glommed on to me, stuck to my side like a barnacle, her little fist constantly reaching out and grabbing my hair, twisting it in her vice-like grip. Or, alternatively, she'd scrape her razor-sharp fingernails across my face, pinching my lips, hooking her thumb into my nose. I don't know if she slept better than she sleeps in her room with Milo, it's hard to tell.

Both babies have coughs.

Milo spent some time sitting up like a big boy in his booster seat this evening. They aren't sitting up on their own yet, but it's only a matter of time. Milo seemed to enjoy his booster seat experience.

It's summer, thank God. Summer means the scent of barbecue in the air when we walk through the neighborhood in the evening. Summer means watermelon and lemonade. Playing outside on the grass under the dappled shade of the maple tree. Jogging on the bike path through tufts of dandelion slowly drifting in the air.

Summer means lunch outdoors at the union terrace, watching the sailboats on the lake. Softball games every Wednesday evening at the park in front of our house. The sharp scent of freshly cut grass, the drone of a lawnmower in the distance, and fireflies lighting up in the yard at dusk. Summer means the low rumble of thunder in the distance, and the sweet relief of a rainstorm bringing the temperatures down for a while.

Here in the city, summer means humid days and warm nights. When we travel up north, summer is a different animal. It means walks through the shaded woods, long afternoons on the boat, cold dips in the lake, bonfires at night, and card games with cocktails. Summer means exciting nighttime boat rides, bundled up in our warmest clothes. This summer will bring a lot of firsts for Nora and Milo: first boat ride, first time playing in the water, first time playing with a dog, first long car trip, first time sleeping away from home.

Some day, we'll get to see their first time fishing with Grandpa, first ride in the speedboat with Uncle Ken, first time waterskiing, first night in a tent. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

No baby pictures this time because they're too sick and miserable, and we're too busy cleaning up soiled sheets to use the camera. Instead I'll post a picture that Jake recently took in our garden.

In the Grand Scheme of Things

So Milo has fallen off of his growth curve too, but not in a way that is as dramatic as Nora's slowed growth. Part of me thinks, this is just genetics. Jake and I are pretty small people, I was a small baby, and we were both small kids. So Milo and Nora aren't going to be huge people. On the other hand, given that both babies have slowed their growth a little too much (according to those evil charts), the other part of me thinks, "Great. It's not just a fluke, like it was with Nora, instead it must be the fact that Jake and I totally suck at parents and we can't even feed our babies right!"

So we're feeding them the highest-calorie solid foods we can think of, and we have to fortify their bottles (both breastmilk and formula) so that they are drinking something that's higher in calories than normal breastmilk or formula. I don't even want to nurse them anymore because I know that they're not getting a calorically-dense enough meal from breastmilk alone. But...I am still nursing them when they want to, basically in the middle of the night or the early morning.

The hardest part about all of this is that Milo and especially Nora just don't want to eat sometimes. It's bedtime, and they will both refuse to nurse, and then when I give in and give them a bottle sometimes one or the other will only drink an ounce or two and then just stop. They'll push the bottle away, turn their heads, cry if I try to give it to them, and basically give me every clear signal possible that they are not hungry. It feels cruel to force somebody to eat when they don't want to. It feels wrong. I cheer and cajole and soothe them into near sleep so that they practically eat in their sleep, and do whatever I can to convince them to eat because I know they have to in order to grow properly, but it all just feels wrong, wrong, wrong. I mean, way to set up a lifetime of eating issues here! Way to teach a kid to keep eating even when she's full! Gah!

I know that some day I'll be worrying about things like breaking into the liquor cabinet, or driving recklessly late at night with their friends, and this eating thing will seem like no big deal.

I'll be 50 with Teenagers

A weird thing happened to me when I was taking a walk with the kids. A guy passed me going the other way on his bike, and his bike was pulling one of those carts that carry kids in them. He took a look at the stroller and started laughing and said "ha ha ha ha ha, twins! Twins!" I said "Ha, yep, twins" and he stopped and said "I have twins too," and gestured into the bike cart. Indeed there were two girls in there.

So this guy gets off his bike and turns around so that he's going the same direction as me, and starts walking with me, talking about twins. Turns out he is a stay at home dad, so maybe he was feeling isolated or something, but he stuck with me for the entire rest of my walk.

I learned a lot of things about this guy in the next 20 minutes: his twins are 3 and a half, they are not identical, they are not potty trained, they don't talk much, he dropped out of art school when they were born because it was too hard to deal with them and be in school, his wife is a nurse, they live on the far east side, they only planned to have one child, they use disposable diapers, and oh, yeah -- his twins are "natural". None of that weird reproductive technology for him and his wife!

"Have you checked out that multiples club in town?", he said. "They are all a bunch of weirdos. They all had to use reproductive technology to get pregnant. Yeah, most of them definitely took advantage of pharmaceuticals. If you ask me, if you need to use reproductive technology to get pregnant, then you have no business having kids." I asked him "how do you know that they needed help to get pregnant?" He said "Well, most people won't admit it, of course. But you can tell. Most of them are really old. I sure wouldn't want to be 50 and still dealing with teenagers!"

Huh. This guy had a real thing for the phrase "reproductive technology". I guess enough people have asked him whether his kids were "natural" (as if my kids aren't?) that he now feels like he has to let new people know right away. They were natural all right. None of that fishy reproductive technology for him! He just had extra special manly sperm!

I told him that I'll be 50 and dealing with teenagers, and he seemed surprised. At one point I said that whenever I feel overwhelmed, I think about people who have triplets or quadruplets. He said "yeah, well when there are higher order multiples involved, you know they used reproductive technology. It's practically a given. If you ask me, they dug their own grave."

My weird walk with this tool reminded me of a couple of things. One, never assume. When you meet new people, you don't know much about their personal history. So it's probably smarter not to, I don't know, go off on some weird religion X or some pyramid scheme Y because the person you're talking to might end up being part of that group. But the more important thing is to try to have compassion for points of view that differ from your own. This guy's rant about people who use reproductive technology is probably something that I would have vaguely agreed with a few years ago. Until, you know, I became one of those people. One thing that taught me is that you can't know what it's like to live through certain things until you actually do it. And you might not know how you'll react until you're actually faced with making the hard decisions. It is so, so easy to judge other people and say "I would never do xyz." I distinctly remember saying that about IVF. Easy to say it, but we don't really know. We don't know what other people live through, we don't know what plagues them, we don't know their suffering, we don't know what drives their decisions. That's worth remembering the next time I might feel tempted to judge a decision that strikes me as stupid, petty, selfish, or unfathomable.

(Above -- when I was at work, Jake and the twin whisperer took this photo of the results of reproductive technology. Totally totally worth it, thank you very much).

On Worry

I remember one time when I was pregnant and worrying about the babies. I was so worried about something going wrong, and if I didn't feel any movement for a few hours I'd start to wonder if they were still alive. I remember doing that one night and thinking to myself that I couldn't wait until they were born, because once they were actually here then I'd no longer have to worry about that.

Then I realized, oh crap, once they're born I'm probably going to start worrying about different stuff. The worrying isn't going to stop when they're born. In fact, I'm probably going to worry about them for the rest of my life. It was a huge realization, that I had taken on this worry burden that I'd probably never truly put down until the day I died.

I have worried about the babies eating too little. I have worried when they fussed and refused to eat. I have worried about Milo's head. I have worried about Nora's weird hyperactivity during the night. I have worried when they got their shots, and I worried when they got rashes, and I worried when Milo had a fever, and now I am worried about Nora's size and her eating. I am more worried about this than anything else I've worried about so far. Last night I was awake, in bed, thinking about it and I actually broke into a cold sweat over it.

Suddenly it has occurred to me that how I deal with this is something of a choice.

Do I need to worry this much? Or am I choosing to indulge in that worry? I can see that some degree of concern is going to be helpful because it will spur me and Jake to be extra careful and vigilant regarding the thing we're worried about. So in this case, focusing attention on Nora's size means we're pushing to get her seen by the doctor quickly, and we'll be highly proactive in doing whatever needs to be done to make sure that she is healthy. But is it possible to maintain that attention and vigilance without then indulging in all of that extra worry? Without focusing too much mental energy on it in a way that simply results in me spinning my wheels, creating more and more anxiety?

When I think back throughout my life about all the thousands of things I've worried about, most of the time it's turned out fine. The worrying was just wasted energy in the end. Excessive worrying probably isn't helpful to Nora. It's not going to make her better sooner. It's just going to make me distracted and anxious and fearful. Maybe I could make a choice to not allow myself to perseverate on this. To not necessarily spend my life worrying about Milo and Nora all the time, as if I had no control over that.

It seems to me that worrying serves a purpose when it spurs us to action. If we're motivated to do whatever it takes to make us feel better about the thing that worries us, and if it's actually possible to do something about it, then that can be helpful. But if we worry about things we can't do anything about, things we have no control over, then the worrying serves no productive purpose and indeed is just harmful to our mental health. Over the past few years I have been pretty good at setting aside worry over things that were too distant or too out of my control to do much about. I can't believe it didn't occur to me before now that I could apply the same mindset to Nora and Milo.

(Above -- Milo looking worried, as he often does).

Finally

Couples tie the knot.

Petite Nora

So after I put Nora on the cat scale, I got worried about her weight and took her to the doctor. They weighed her and at 11 lbs 14 oz, she's fallen completely off the growth charts and her doctor referred us to a GI specialist. The doctor also suggested introducing meats and upping her solids to three meals a day. The nurse at the GI clinic was singing a somewhat different tune, telling me that they'll probably put her on a special high-calorie formula.

I think Nora and Milo must have both sensed our increased worry about their eating today, as neither baby has been interested in nursing or in taking a bottle. They both ate about half what they were supposed to during their afternoon feeding. An hour or so later, we gave them some solids, though, and Nora ate it right up. I had poached some chicken for the babies but hadn't gotten around to grinding it up in the blender, so I mixed some cereal with the broth and Nora absolutely loved it. She hates drinking, whether it be by breast or bottle, but she seems to love eating.

Of course we're super worried about Nora. But one consoling fact is that at 6.5 months, I only weighed 12 lbs 5 oz, and I grew up to be more or less normal. So hopefully she'll be okay.

Sleep Statistics Week 4

Day 22: Milo woke once and Nora woke twice, and we fed them, and Nora woke one more time early in the morning. So I guess that was 4 wake ups again.

Day 23: Nora woke once at 9 before we went to bed. Then there were 5 more wake ups, and an early (6:20) start to the day, so it was a messed up night, but the one shining beacon of light was the fact that Milo did not get up to eat. Other than waking a couple of times when Nora was screaming on the changing table, Milo slept through the night. For the first time. Oh, please let this be the start of something new!

Day 24: Well, it was a pretty good night! Nora woke once briefly at 12:30, then not again until 2:45 or so to eat. They both woke at 6 but both went back to sleep after getting pacifiers -- at least, as far as I know. There was no crying, but Milo has been known to play in his crib in the morning for quite a while.

Day 25: Nora woke 4 times and Milo woke once at 4 a.m. to eat, so I guess the sleeping-through-the-night thing isn't foolproof yet. As usual, the longest stretch I got in a row was 2 hours.

Day 26: Milo slept through again! Hooray! Nora woke 4 times, which I guess is her typical pattern these days although I hate to admit it.

Day 27: Nora woke 6 or 7 times, she cried, she woke Milo, it was a mess, the longest I slept was between 3 and 6 a.m.

Day 28: Nora only woke twice, I think, which is awesome. Milo woke once around 4:45 but went back to sleep with a pacifier.

So Nora's sleep doesn't really seem to be getting any better, and I don't think it's worth keeping track of it anymore. Milo is sleeping through the night more and more, which is encouraging. I just don't know what we're going to do about Nora yet. She also almost never naps for more than half an hour, so it's a mess. I don't know. I guess at some point we need to start letting her cry or else we'll probably end up with a 2-year old who is still waking every couple of hours, and that wouldn't be good for anybody. I'm just so afraid to do it.

I feel like maybe at some point, when they were 3 or 4 months old or so, I was somehow getting 4 and 5-hour stretches of sleep. I can't remember. For such a long time now it's been so much worse than that, and I never sleep more than 3 hours at a time. I really honestly feel like I'm at the end of my rope and I am going insane. It's got me so messed up that I am actually having insomnia. I have a terrible time sleeping when it's time to go to bed, because I'm so filled with anxiety about Nora waking. I often can't really fall asleep until after she wakes for the first time. Which is ridiculous, because the only other chance I have at a 2-3 hour stretch of sleep is when we first go to bed. My insomnia and anxiety ruins that chance.

This morning I weighed Nora on the cat scale and she only weighed 12 pounds. I hope the scale is wrong, because that would mean she's totally fallen off the growth charts. She's spending all of her calories on writhing around in the night not sleeping, and I know this can't be good for her. I'm kind of worried about her. Every information source I read says that all healthy 6-month olds don't need to eat at night and should be able to sleep through, so does that mean we should try to help her do that and let her cry? But if she is only 12 pounds and isn't even on the growth chart anymore, maybe she doesn't count as a normal, healthy 6-month old and I keep thinking she probably needs those extra calories in the night. Boy, it's a puzzle. A puzzle that is slowly driving us all mad.

Happy Father's Day to Jake

Jake is out taking the kids for a run, so this will have to be short as I need to use this uber-valuable time to also shower, put a load of laundry in, and do dishes.

This New York Times piece on shared parenting is excellent and worth a read. There's so much to say, much of it already said by others, about the journey towards having an equal marriage. It's a goal almost nobody achieves, us included, as we're still not at 50% when it comes to career work, housework, and parenting work. Yesterday when I read this article I got all worked up and started tallying up for Jake all of the kid-related jobs I do that he doesn't, even though I'm also our wage earner now. We're both just so conditioned to let me do all of the little things like researching all things baby, buying their clothes and toys, figuring out how to feed them solids, making their doctor's appointments, figuring out which bottles are BPA-free, being the first to rush in and grab a baby who wakes from a nap, noticing that their laundry basket is full, and so on, and so on, and so on. Jake has been socially conditioned to not even see this work, and I have been socially conditioned to automatically take responsibility for it -- to be the CEO of the family. So, we're like couples everywhere when it comes to that, and that's despite our deliberate intention to live differently, to parent equally, to show Nora and Milo that domestic chores are women's work and men's work, to show them that achieving success in a career is an aspiration that belongs to both men and women. Our desire is not just to tell them these things, but to show them, by living it ourselves.

So of course we're not perfect, but what I was going to say was that Jake's response to my little spontaneous rant about all of this was incredibly admirable and part of what I respect about him. He listened without being defensive, and then said "I can see your point. Things would probably be different if I were the one working towards tenure and you were the one staying home this summer. I'm willing to make changes. I'm willing to do things differently." And then he did the laundry.

I knew Jake was a guy to marry when I realized that if we had a son, I would be proud if that son grew up to be just like his dad. Confident, kind, gentle, smart, thoughtful, and open.