twins will make you do crazy things

I must admit, i am a Santa-hater. To me, he is a representation of what is wrong with our shallow, consumerist-driven culture. Gross materialism in a red coat, that guy. It isn't really that he is a lie we tell our children, that doesn't bother me so much (life is full of lies and disappointments, unfortunately). What bothers me is the Christmas list, the 'naughty or nice', the very idea that you go to some guy and ask him for presents and he gives them to you...i just don't like it. I have never encouraged a belief in Santa in my children. They imbibe it from popular culture, from the things others say...so no, i don't crassly tell them it is a lie, but i don't reinforce it either. And i certainly don't take them to the mall to sit on Santa's lap for an overpriced photo op.

But then we had twins, and i just could not resist...

[photos removed]


T is on the left, we managed to get that one little smile for the camera. M, as you see, refused to smile...but at least they didn't cry. C was not there -- last year she would hide or cry whenever she saw any Santa-like object. This year i suspect she has a better idea of what is going on and would hop on his lap and tell him she wanted every toy in the store. So that's not a lot better, really.

of goldfish and brothers

I have been needing to write this post for, well, a solid month.

So, to recap, C had 'won' three goldfish at her friend's school Halloween fair, and of course a day or so later the smallest goldfish died. I called Dh to warn him that there was going to be some death conversation as a result, and after all it was well-timed given that dia de los muertos was right around the corner. His suggestion -- "Just tell her it died because it was a baby." "Yeah, that's just what we need to do, my dear -- reinforce the dead-baby aspect of our lives." Sheesh, what ARE men thinking??

I told her as we came home from school.

"I am sorry to tell you, that little goldfish died."

"He died? He killed hisself?"

"No, remember how daddy said he was looking sick? He got too sick, and he died. He didn't kill himself, he died from being sick."

She looked at me with sad eyes, and i forged on valiantly.

"Now we will dig a hole in the backyard, and bury him in it."

"And...dat will make him better?" she asked, doubtfully.

"No, once something dies, it can't get better. It isn't alive anymore. It isn't moving. Here, i will get the fishie and show you."

"OK, i dig a hole!!!"

(it is always fun to dig holes)

So i got the fish, held in a tissue, and showed her that he was no longer moving. Meantime she had dug a shallow hole in the sand. (long story about the sand and the concrete, don't ask. Suffice it to say one whole part of my backyard is a veritable sandbox-without-the-box. And it is dragged inside continuously...)

So we put the fish in the hole, covered him up, and stuck a stone to mark the spot. She brought her little chair over and sat next to the grave, looking at it.

"Now he will get better?"

"No..." reiterate previous conversation about sickness and death. I explained also that usually when we get sick we go to the doctor to make us better, but sometimes they cannot.

"We take him to fish doctor now?"

"Well, once you are dead, it is too late. We have to take him to the doctor before he dies. With fish sometimes it is very hard to make them better, even if you do take them to the doctor." (Dh is laughing maniacally in the kitchen by this point...)

"OK", she said, then got up and walked off to dig holes somewhere else.

When the next two fish slowly died off within the next week, she seemed less traumatized. When i put up the pictures of our dead family members for dia de los muertos, she accepted this without question or much interest either. We didn't actually comment on Nicolas' ultrasound pic among them. Then after the pictures of the dead were down, i put up the baby pictures finally -- 5 pictures in matching frames, in order of birth. Nicolas', though, is still the ultrasound pic. She didn't notice for awhile, so eventually i brought it up.

"C, did you see, i put up the baby pictures."

We dragged a chair over to the mantle, so she could get up & see.

"That one is water?" she said, pointing to Nicolas. (I admit it didn't occur to me that she would not recognize a baby's profile in the ultrasound black & white....oops)

"No, that's Nicolas, your brother who died. He was born before you, after A. We have A, Nicolas, then you & M & T".

"No", she said. She pushed back the frame with Nicolas' picture and moved hers over next to A.

"No", i said, fixing it. "Nicolas belongs there. He was born after A and that is his place. He died and couldn't come home to live with us, but he was born and i don't want to forget him."

She looked at me like i was mildly crazy, and walked off to play with something else.

OK then. I am clearly not doing very well with this thing here. I guess i should be thankful that she didn't ask me if i buried Nicolas in the sand in the back yard....

Thanksgiving

Me: Ok, let's go around the table and say what we are thankful for.

***chorus of groans***

Me: C, what are you thankful for?

C: Ummmmm......cookies. And pizza.

Thanksgiving, 2

I can't say i have ever been really part & parcel of Thanksgiving. This holiday is so quintessentially American -- with the turkey & the big extended family & the football -- that it meant very little to me growing up. After all, when all your extended family is behind the Iron Curtain, and you hate turkey and football, there is really very little there. My mother would make a nice meal for the three of us, we would eat in the dining room with fancy settings, and then my dad would go back to work. OK, this describes every single holiday of my childhood. The difference with Thanksgiving is that rather than some fight about why he had to work on the holidays and why he couldn't spend time with the family & yadda yadda....my mom simply didn't care about this one. So, really, without the fight, how can you even consider it a holiday?

She did start to get upset with it after he left, though, and it became just her & me & the meal in the cold dining room (no money for proper heat anymore). Then she would watch the neighbors, as the seemingly endless carloads of kids & grandkids arrived, and scowl.

So for me, i didn't experience this extended-family Thanksgiving thing until i started dating dh, and he took me home for turkey day that first year. Then i realized it was in fact a very nice thing, traditional cuisine notwithstanding. With everyone going to one house, the big big extended table, six ladies in the kitchen cooking and the kids running around, getting bigger every year...it is a nice thing. I do treasure the memories of those Thanksgivings with his family, when A was the smallest child....now we live too far away to go, and it makes me sad.

But yet again there was something there that started in my mother's mind -- the constant exclusion of her, all those holidays where she sat at home alone. Just like she sat at home alone yesterday....15 years of sitting home alone. For the first few years, we tried to be fair about the holidays, go see everyone, you know. And my mother was invited to the holidays at the inlaws (which she never went to). But then we were disinvited from my mom's, for whatever reasons. And she never took up anybody's holiday invites...so noone ever invites her any more. This year, my guilt is strong. Though i still cannot pinpoint what i really could have done/ can do differently.

Ah, though, guilt is another holiday requirement, isn't it? Along with the fighting. Dh and i have been getting along well lately (knock on wood) so no fighting there....but he and his mother did have a rollicking row this morning about the opening hours of the Sears Auto Center, so i suppose that fits the bill...

And then, Myles arrived safely!!

Congratulations all!!

Myles is on his way!!

I got an email from Catherine saying that they are having Myles today!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't have her blog password so if i hear anything further i will post it here & in her comments...

a good night

Sunday morning i woke rested and revived -- we had a good night! While in the shower i thought over the details of what constitutes a 'good night' around here, and figured i had better write them down for posterity.

9 pm -- i fall asleep fully clothed while feeding M (who also falls asleep). Dh & A have T, who refuses to fall asleep, since he took a 3-hour nap in the early evening. Ooops.

9:55 -- Dh wakes me to ask what to feed T (answer: oatmeal, as he slept through his usual dinner, mix with 1/2 breastmilk, 1/2 apple juice; because otherwise he won't eat it)

10:00 -- A wakes me to ask what to feed T. Didn't i just answer this question?

11:15 -- T needs to nurse. I wake up enough to get out of bed & change into my pajamas.

11:30 -- T is still not asleep so dh puts him in the swinging chair to CIO. I say i am against this because it is not the method previously discussed & agreed upon. Then i put a pillow over my head & fall asleep while the baby cries.

12:00 -- Dh wakes me because he, uh, needs some attention. (By the way, ordinarily i will not put up with being woken for sex but since the twins have arrived it is the only way to actually get any....)

2:00 -- M wakes up, i take him into bed to nurse, fall asleep nursing

4:00 -- M wakes again to eat, i stick a boob in his mouth & fall right back asleep

5:17 -- I wake with a start -- OMG the alarm didn't go off! Wait a minute, it is Sunday, we can sleep in...

6:00 -- T wakes up to eat. That's right, he slept 6 hours straight!!! I leave M in our bed, feed T, put him back in the swinging chair, go back to sleep in the bed. Nice.

8:00 -- C wakes up, M wakes up, day starts. Wow, i got to sleep until 8 am!!

The bad nights, you don't want a chronicle of those...

Holiday season

Today is A's birthday. He is 15 years old today! Old enough to get a learner's permit to drive. Last week he went to a school dance for the first time, kind of/sort of with a girl (they arrived & left separately, thus making it absolutely not a date, Mom! Geez! Leave me alone! )

GAAAH! Now i feel really old. Really really old. Really really really really...ok, enough of that.

It is also the start of the holiday season for us. The Xmas thing has gotten quite involved for me, and it starts early. I won't put up a tree until a few days before Dec. 25th, but somehow there is so much to do that A's birthday really signals the start of the season. I will try to get dh to decorate the outside of the house for the house tours, which are the first weekend in December. No, my house is not on tour this year, but i think i may not get out of doing it next year. Goddamn.

Anyway i am trying not to freak out about the holidays, and not be too upset or overwhelmed. I will let you know how that plan goes...

Identical? (edited)

Ok, i don't *know* they are not identical. It is possible they are. They looked different when they were born (to me, anyway). But now they look totally identical, it is very hard to tell them apart in person as well. On photos, well, forget it. So, really i would have to pay out-of-pocket for genetic tests to be sure. But i can think of alot better uses for several hundred dollars....

It's funny though that if you look at A's baby pictures he looked very very similar to them. So maybe it's just strong genes.

edited to add: Yes, they can still be identical and have separate placentas. (of course, if they share a placenta they are definitely identical) It depends on how early in the development process the fertilized egg splits into two. If you read the Wikipedia entry on twins it tells you about that plus lots of weird stuff -- how you can get identical twins of different sexes, chimeras, etc....

stripes

[photos removed]

small boy/big chair

[photo removed]

fall

not better yet...

...worse, i would say. Babies are both sick, some virus, since friday or so. It is not too nasty, bad cough basically. C had it first, and had an ear infection too, but she is now on antibiotics for that (and is back in school). Of course with the cough & congestion, babies will not sleep unless held (ideally, upright) by someone at all times. (Fie on you, foul swinging chair, they say...and of course the crib is RIGHT OUT).

I could regale you with an amusing quack doctor story, or some more fabulous teaching stories. Rosepetal, i am not sure about the (mental) age of my students! Certainly there are
many who are responsible and intelligent. But the sheer number of immature idiots seems to be rising...

So anyway i am becoming rather sleep-deprived. Today i had to concentrate quite hard on walking because i was having trouble with that skill...i can't really let them CIO when they are sick, though. I am tentatively planning the CIO for Christmas break, they will be 6 months old then, so maybe i will be able to do it.

sometimes teaching is just a drag

OK, it's not worth my time writing out long lamentations about how some people can do a problem when the variable is x but not when the variable is V, or make it to class with their homework to turn in when they are specifically already being allowed to turn it in late, or get it through their heads that pi is a constant (though i would love to learn how to make blogger make a proper pi).

I gave a calc test this morning and two students came in when the period was already half-over and explained that they had been up all night studying and had fallen asleep at 7 am and slept over so could they have longer to finish the test. Yeah, i gave it to them, but my patience is totally shot. Especially since these guys will probably fail anyway.

See, i myself have been up since 4, with one fussing child or another -- C being sick, and M getting the idea that if C was up at 4 then it must be morning already, and my stupid husband who takes like a half an hour to smash a many-legged creature next to the bed, and yadda yadda never mind. It's too boring to type out.

Let's just say i am sleep deprived and annoyed, and leave it at that.

sleep stuff

The boys were very good sleepers when they were born. Somehow, though, 4 months of age, they got broken. There doesn't seem to be a toll-free number to call for service of the unit, and oddly enough neither of them came with a manual? Now ordinarily i don't read manuals anyway but occasionally they come in handy....

Seriously i know there is this 4-month sleep regression thing but i have been becoming dangerously sleep-deprived of late. What with the every-hour-on-the-hour wakings to nurse and the times when one or both wake up at 3 am ready to start the day....i find myself doing things like stopping on green and going on red. NOT good.

But guess what? Last night they both slept the night! Well, 11-4, anyway, but BOTH of them. Of course it is a fluke, tonight will be terrible again, but because Delphi mentioned it i thought i would write a post about where we are with sleep.

First of all, with A we didn't cry it out but with C we had to. At 18 months or so, and it was ugly. I kept waiting for her to 'find her rhythm' like A had but she, uh, never did. So i decided that if i had another baby, i would do sleep training Weissbluth-style at 4 months. Because it must be better to CIO sooner rather than later, if you are going to have to CIO.

But honestly, i haven't been able to implement it. Or rather, i have not yet decided to do it...i just don't want to. Jennifer at Arcane Matters has chronicled their CIO experience and though it seems very positive, i just am not there emotionally yet. So, i don't know.

That said, last night (and the previous night), there was CIO in my house. Basically because at 10:30 when they both wouldn't fall back asleep but needed to be walked with (& dh had an internet meeting with people on the other side of the globe), i was simply too tired to pace the floors with two screaming babies. So i put them down & let them holler, and eventually they fell asleep. Last night both fell asleep -- M in the crib (because he can self-soothe) and T in his swing (because he cannot) -- and slept 5 or 6 hours. The previous night they both fell asleep but were still up 2 hours later.

Yesterday during the day we started Moxie's 2-3-4 daytime nap schedule. I think that is more responsible for the successful night than the CIO. That, and cereal in the evening. For the record, they do the 2 & 3 but the 4 is all screwed up -- by the late afternoon i have to go pick up some selection of older children in some way, and it is different every day. So i don't think we will ever have a 'schedule' there.

Also, they won't nap at all now unless someone is holding them (well, 20 minutes maybe), which makes the daytime nap difficult to accomplish. I wouldn't mind lousy daytime napping if it meant nightime sleeping, but it doesn't seem to work that way. (*&@^%@$@$@@!!

So, anyway, we will see how it goes. I would prefer to avoid the full CIO treatment, if i can do it. But we will see, we will see...

Dia de los muertos 2007

This is the first year i can actually put stuff on a mantle. So i am very pleased...this year i also added Nicolas' teddy bear that Jenna made and the beautiful needlepoint of footprints that S made (click on the picture to make it bigger if you want to see). No marigold garland, though -- most of mine bit the dust in the August drought so i barely had enough to fill a vase. Oh well! And the interior of the fireplace looks gross, but oh well...one thing at a time around here. If that, you know.

I tried to involve C with the putting up of the pictures but she was too sugar-hyped last night to pay attention. She asked about it this morning, though, on the way to school. Also yesterday we had a goldfish fatality and resulting funeral, so lots of discussion there. I will post more about that, when i have a chance.

halloween 2007

[photos removed]

....as she was dumping ever more candy into her bag, the neighbor said, 'i didn't know you were such a little piggy, C!'

C, of course, said 'I not a piggy, I a kitty cat!'