A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup of coffee

Recently I read a comment posted on this blog, from an anonymous, who said she didn’t like the remark in my profile about unless you have twins and are breast-feeding and co-sleeping, you can’t know what I am going through. She commented that she felt alienated by that sentence, and it made her feel “like you're rubbing my face in how much more difficult/challenging your situation is than mine.” This lady has twins too, and I am sure she has had some of the same problems/experiences I have been through.

Well, we ALL think we have it harder than the next gal. We ALL think we suffer more than the next Mama, and that we do it better, too. I know in many ways my home situation is great, (the weekly house help and the three days a week babysitter for three hours at a time) and in other ways I feel as if I am trapped in a Hell of my own creation, (no career, except being a mama, no job, except looking after babies, no-one to visit or talk to, unless I call and call and call and beg, or crash a playgroup), which is much worse than being a helpless victim. When you are a victim it’s not your fault; this way, because I CHOSE to have children, it is my fault.

I was upset and annoyed by the comment – of course! I would like to think everyone has great sympathy and admiration for me, the fine job I am doing with the boys and how well I am managing to keep my head above water, and how they are happy and thriving and how I look pretty decent, blah, blah, blah. But I am very afraid of being exposed as a fraud – I am not okay, I am frazzled and tired and I get depressed.

I would like to think people invite me over because they think I am fun and interesting (in spite of my only ever using half the brain for conversation – I need to keep the other half on the boys), but I guess not. I visited someone the other day who later told me that the visit wasn’t fun for her because I was seemed annoyed all the time, as if I expected her to help hold a baby the entire time. I certainly do not expect someone to help hold a baby all the time; number one, they are learning to walk and do not want to be held too much, except by me or my DH; and number two, I am capable of holding them on my own – it’s all I do all day alone in the house anyway. I was just tired, not pissed off at all, but since that’s how she saw me, I guess I can’t hope for a return trip anytime soon, eh? (Hey, Honey! Let’s have Bitchy No-Sense-of-Humor Missy and the twins over for dinner on Tuesday. It’ll be great! She can glower and make unpleasant remarks, and we can feel guilty about not holding her babies the entire time we are eating! Doesn’t that sound fun!?)

I would also like to think I can overcome my addictions, namely to caffeine and sugar. Stronger women than me have tried to wrench free from these chains of substance abuse and have failed; how can I hope to be different from my more hardened and experienced mama cohorts? I had not had any caffeinated coffee for about six weeks, but I did have a coffee and chocolate milkshake this weekend, and felt much better for it. I was, apparently, acting like a pissy bitch and my sister mixed up the shakes, one for me to improve my mood and one for her, so she could tolerate having me in her house for the rest of the day.

I would also like to think I can still be fun and happy and cool to be with, but I guess I am still waiting for my sense of humor to return. Everyone who knows me knows that I really don’t like to be teased, at least not too hard. For some reason, I take it to heart. (Example – I deleted the part of my profile that the Anonymous commenter found alienating. Now if that’s not a sign of insecurity and a need to be loved by everyone, I don’t know what it is. I’m so pathetic.) So, in an attempt to regain some humor, the ability to take a joke on me, some rationality and some sense of how I should act around those who have (obviously lost their collective marbles and) invited me for an overnight/a day/an afternoon/an hour, I have decided it’s okay to have a cup of coffee in the morning and another at the midday lunch time-ish meal. (You know, the “meal” I eat sometime between 11:00 and 3:00…lunch.)

So, in lieu of any real sleep (which ain’t happenin’ soon) here we go! Back to the sweet arms of the daily coffee! Come to me, my caffeinated Baby! Wrap those java limbs around me, and sweep me off my feet. And while you’re at it, could you sweep under the table? I see some Cheery-Oats from the last feedin’ time under there.

Plus ca change, plus la meme chose, but people will surprise you.

When the boys were two months old I heard how it would be easier when they were three months old; they’d nurse less. When they were five months old I heard how six months brings an ease of demands – they would be eating “solids”. (That is to say – pureed mush, nothing solid about it, except the resulting diapers from too much banana…) When they were eleven months old, I heard how much easier it gets when they turn one; that would bring more independence and less reliance on Mama for every breath. While listening and smiling and nodding, as is my wont, I could not imagine some arbitrary landmark on a time line would make any difference; three months, six moths, one year - I was still their world and on call 24/7 and they will always be my full time job. Now, at one year and counting I can easily say – It never gets easier, it just gets different.

At the three-month mark, I was grossly fat, swollen, confused, lonely and exhausted. My, did I hope the magic three-month age would mean they would be less needy! Did they stop nursing so much? It was hard to tell, if one baby eased up, the other was just as rapacious.

At the six-month mark I was still really fat, confused, lonely and exhausted – but at least I was trying to get out jogging a few times a week. The babies were indeed eating their so-called solids, and yes, there was a lessening of the nursing. However, I now had between 3 and 16 jars of baby food to either make or buy a day. Them twins is mighty expensive to feed! (I know it’s going to be even worse when they are 16 and guzzling a gallon of milk a day between them…oh, the grocery bills I have to look forward too…). By eight months or so I knocked off the homemade baby food thing. There is nothing more frustrating, insulting, or upsetting and annoying, than having your cooking rejected with a scream and a yell. “Yuck! Help! Get it away!” the baby hollers, waving his hands to keep the nastiness from touching his lips. Home made dinners every night, how they have suffered, poor fellows.

At the eight-month mark, at the end of the homemade baby food, (it was an attempt to keep costs down and nutrition high) the insulting rejection of my hard work was too much for even me to bear. I can take a lot, but don’t throw what I cook on the floor and scream in my face. There was one black, bleak day when exactly that happened. Baby A, the one who doesn’t eat as much anyway, was being ten kinds of fussy and shrieking with every reluctant bite. I had finally had enough, and I, to my eternal shame, poured the pureed banana and pear combination over his head. Well, he was pretty surprised and actually laughed as he licked mush some off his cheek. At least he ate a little, I thought, as I put them into the bath a bit early. That stopped my cooking special food, and now I don’t try to get them to eat more than they want. If three spoonfuls satisfy, okay, that’s all they eat at that meal. I can always feed ‘em again later.

At the one-year mark, just a few weeks ago, they did start walking, right on schedule. Baby B took his first independent steps the Monday after their birthday, and Baby A took his on the Wednesday, or so. Lately they have both been staggering around the kitchen like a couple of drunken sailors at the end of their shore leave, looking for the right ship. Are they less needy? That would be a big fat NOPE. They are more clingy, if anything.

It seems that when a baby is learning how to crawl, or walk, or eat with a spoon, or drive a car, or is getting ready to go to college, or something big, he will become more clingy as a part of his quest for independence. The baby needs to know you are there, a safe harbor where the drunken sailor can return, as he takes those steps away from you and out on his own. They also wake up more, in the wee hours, to practice their new skills. One night, after we had spent the weekend at my sister’s house, Baby A was so pleased to be home he woke up at 2:30 am. He insisted my DH take him downstairs to visit his toys. He patted the floor gym, he shook his jingle bells, he petted his stuffed lizard and, for some reason, he checked under the carpets. Why the carpets, I couldn’t say… But then he was happy to plug back into Mama, nurse a little, and fall asleep until his normal internal 6:00 wake-up call. Baby B is really good at the walking and, as a result, he is really good at the clingy thing too. It’s totally exhausting, even more so than when he was three-months old, because he is so heavy now. I actually had a spontaneous back spasm the other day. I felt like my mother…

Anyway, here I am, still flabby, still wiped out, still lonely, and still trying to Get Something Done. I keep a book and magazines in the car to do my reading when they nap after a ride, I do my writing at the midnight hour, when all the men are asleep (cats included), and I am still trying to figure out what I am going to do when I grow up. About the fat rolls and the flabby skin; I have heard, “Give it a year” “That weight took nine months to put on and takes at least nine months to get off.” Well, we are working on month thirteen - I have no more excuses to be 155 lbs. plus. Since I’m only 5’3”, it doesn’t look too pretty. And the bangs are growing out, so my head is currently bristling with hairpins and stiff with gel to keep it all contained, hence, the hair thing isn’t too pretty either.

Gloom and doom, I know. AND I get gloom and doom from those who tell me – ‘Oh, once they are walking you’ll wish they weren’t!” Why, in Heaven’s name? Why would I want to carry a couple of four year olds? Besides, when they crawl, they get ten kinds of dirty, because such a large surface area is dragging on the ground. Not to mention the trousers wearing into holes at the knees. I’ve patched them, but the patches are wearing through too! If they were walking I’d be happier to go to outside, to the museum, to the park, to Ikea, wherever. As it is, I have to pick the color garment that will match the dirt they are bound to collect. I put them in denim if we are going to be on playground wood chips or grass, denim doesn’t show dirt and grass stains; they wear dark brown or navy blue if we are going to a store, those colors mask store floor dirt; and they sport dark red if we are going to the museum. There is a deep red and jewel toned carpet in their favorite gallery that left marks on their pale blue trousers last time we paid a visit. I plan on taking them to the museum tomorrow – it is going to rain all day. Weather to match my gloom and doom.

Addendum: Well, I did take them to the museum today, and we had a nice time! I have a new double stroller, so they could both ride, and Baby B took a few steps in one of the galleries, in front of an admiring audience - I was so proud. We also had a remarkable experience, the kind that renews one’s faith in fellow human beings.

We were in the ladies room at the museum, which has a small lounge with a sofa, and the boys had just eaten a jar of smushed fruit and some Annie’s cheddar crackers, and I went to use the restroom. While I was doing my thing in the handicapped stall – it’s larger and therefore it’s easier to fit in the stroller, two babies, the humungous diaper bag and my fat ass – Baby B escaped under the stall, went into the one next door and started splashing around in the potty. Ick!!! My baby’s hands were in a public toilet! Yuck!! Not to mention, he soaked both sleeves of his long sleeved one piece up to the shoulder. So there I was, on the floor of the lounge, trying to change Baby B into the dry emergency Onesie, while Baby A kicked up a fuss – don’t ignore me! Besides, he was sticky from his snack and needed a diaper change. I was getting a little frazzled (in case you’re wondering, no, I had not eaten since breakfast at 8:00 and it was 12:30, and yes, I had packed a snack for myself, but at that point had not yet had a chance to stuff the cereal bar into my jaws) when out of the blue came a ministering angel. “Do you need a hand?” asked this total stranger. “I have a friend with nine month old twins, I think you need help.”

She washed Baby A’s sticky face, changed his diaper and put him back into the stroller while I took care of Baby B, who was hollering the whole time, furious that I had taken him away from his fun with toilet water game. Then the nice lady said “Bye” and off she went, having made a real difference in my day. I wonder if she knew how great it was just to have an extra pair of arms for five minutes. I said thank you, but I didn’t get her name.

I had the opportunity to eat my snack on the drive home. I feel fine now.

The Change brings Hot Flashes

The change into a mama, that is. Just today I found myself drenched in perspiration, and it wasn’t a cold sweat let me tell you. No, I was all hot and upset and sweaty and very near tears. My twins had to have blood drawn for the one-year lead test.

I thought it would be bad, but I was not prepared emotionally to see the needle go into the little defenseless arm, to hear the cries and to see the tears and know I had to keep holding him still for another minute until the lab technician filled the second vial. Nor was I prepared to have it be just as difficult to hold back the tears as I had to hang on the second struggling baby, who had just seen what had happened to his brother, and not being a fool, and knowing what was up, he started crying as soon as the tech took hold of his arm.

This first year with twins has caused me to sweat a lot; outside, inside, at my parent’s house, in public…When I have to wrestle the twins to change them, the one who gets pushed aside so I can attend to the other’s underpants will climb on my back and cry and scream as loudly as he can. He must think I am ignoring him, or that I can’t hear him. Boy, does that cause a hot flash of perspiration.

Other situations to cause a fine sheen over the skin are ones like this: I am out for a walk, and while walking one baby has started to cry and needs to be held. I know how to stop the weeping and make him happy, just carry him. So I put the one boy in the sling and push the stroller with the other boy. But when the second baby needs to be held? Then what? Hot Flash time.

I was on a walk with someone else when exactly that happened. Arms and Maya Wrap were full of Baby A, and Baby B started a fussin’. My walking companion said – “Oh, I can’t stand to hear the baby cry!” Like I can? I was all sweaty and shaky by the time I got home; of course we were at the furthest reach of the walk when all this came to be - OF COURSE. This was a few months ago, and I still find it bothersome that she had to tell me the crying upset her. The implication was – “Doesn’t it bother you?” I guess I really have that British thing going on: don’t make a scene. It’s drilled in from the time one is very young. Case in point: here I am, with two hysterical babies on a walk, on a hot day with a woman I barely know, and rather than ask her to stop and park ourselves on a total stranger’s lawn in a rather chi chi part of town and let her (and the chi chi neighbors too) see me nurse twins until they are calm enough to put back in the stroller to get home sans screams I have to say – “Oh, they’ll be okay for the ten minutes it takes to get home” and smother the inner screams of my own. We can’t make a fuss now, can we? My babies are good British babies too. They are generally very “good” (using the common definition of a good baby to mean a quiet baby), when we are all out together and they save the worst extremes of emotion for the privacy of their own home. And for me to deal with alone. Goody.
Who said menopause caused hot flashes? Mother-pause causes them too.

The Laparoscopic Cleaning Crew

I am one of those control freaky types who like to have everything in my house it its own place at all times, unless it is actually in use. A dear friend, who has known me since 1992, says I have a touch of OCD. I see it not as a mild mental illness, but as an advantage in this disordered world. However, the DH doesn’t have it, and as a result he has his own thoughts on neatness and order, as well as that that “man” way of organizing. (You know, that MAN way… But Sweetie, I did help clean the house! I re-inflated the basketballs!) I am not suggesting he has no right to think in his own way, just that he cannot clutter up the house and not have a shrieking Harpy on his case to pick up his pajamas from the bathroom floor and put away a few of the seven pairs of shoes next to the front door.

Example: My DH sat down to write the thank you notes for the twins first birthday party, right after breakfast. I had gone upstairs to nurse one baby to sleep; he had the other with him in the kitchen. When the upstairs baby was asleep, I went to get the other one, put him to sleep as well. There was my DH, in the kitche, busy writing the thank you notes, spread out on the table, with the babies’ toys all over the place, the waffle iron still on the counter, the milk jug sitting out and the butter gently melting next to him. I asked if he couldn’t have tidied up a bit before he started on the notes. He replied since I had asked him to start the notes, but had not asked him to tidy up, he thought the notes were priority. While that is all neat and great, I couldn’t see why the tidying of the kitchen did not naturally come first. How could he concentrate on jotting charming and witty comments on the thank you notes I had printed from the computer with the butter oozing out of its paper onto the table beside him? That is how we think differently.

We had a professional organizer come to the twin mothers club to which I belong. (The meetings are one of my twice-monthly outings.) It started with everyone telling their own organizing challenges. I told the story of how, when I had first moved to England in the early 1990’s, my brother and sister decided to move all my things into the detached garage, to make more room in the house. A few months later, the garage burned to the ground.

I did not share this part: the sole reason there was a fire was because the 14 year old daughter of my parent’s neighbor, who had just had a row with her boyfriend, got drunk and went on a tear, using a can of gasoline to light fire to several neighborhood garages in an juvenile arsonist rage. The most rankling part of this was not that I lost all my “valuable” stuff, but that she only knew my parents’ garage was there was because her father showed her where it was years ago, when he helped her trespass. It’s like this: my parent’s house is set a good half mile back from the road, and the garages were even further back. There is a pond next to these garages, and I remember seeing this porky little girl, her fat sibling, and her fatter father crossing the field between the next-door neighbors and my parents’ driveway to refresh themselves in this pond. Number one, the land they were walking on and the pond are private property; number two, they never asked my parents’ permission to go swimming in their pond; and number three, they would give the then 14 year old me dirty looks as they marched across our grass to dip their rolls in our pond. This 14 year-old felon knew the garages existed only because her Daddy had taken her back there as a tot. And my folks never got to press charges for trespassing or arson or anything because, GET THIS, her overweight Daddy is Chief of Police. Arrrrgghhhh!!!!)

Anyway, I lost everything I owned, except what I had with me, in that fire. When I told this to the Club, I made sure to tell how I felt just plain old relieved that I no longer had the detritus of my adolescence to cart around with me. Even today my DH has things at his parents’ house, and I am NOT having a bunch of old rubbish in MY house. Sorry! I feel you should cull your possessions on a regular basis, keeping only the lovely and useful, the clothing that fits, and the sentimentally valuable too, of course. I do this constantly, therefore, I did not have any organizing challenges to share, except the usual toys all over the place and two babies have a lot of clothes, blah, blah, etc. It’s only the DH himself. He’s not a bad organizational challenge at all, he does keep up with the filing, and the laundry, but he tends to accumulate bits and pieces in his car. Why does he drive those nuts and bolts and tools and business manuals and old sweatshirts and cans of chain saw lubricant around with him? (I suppose it’ll all come in handy if he’s waiting somewhere and is desperate for reading material, then suddenly gets chilly, wants to grease up a chain saw and tighten up a few loose screws…maybe he could start with the ones in my head.)

Owing to this love of organization and a fetish for tidying up, I had a difficult time in settling with someone to help clean the house. Naturally, she had to be capable and a neat freak, but also had to be able to clean in a non-invasive manner. I can’t have all my things rearranged in someone else’s idea of order. I need to know my stuff is where I left it. The first few weeks after the boys burst onto the scene, I had four different helpers come in to be tried out. Only one is still here. She is definitely a tidy person on her own; the cleaning supply cabinet is organized by size and product use. She has a routine where she does the same things in the same sequence each time she comes, which makes it easy for me to keep out of her way. She also has a great way with the twins; if they are in their chairs feeding when she arrives they practically fall out of them in an attempt to reach her to be picked up. She never complains about the babies being in her way, you know how some people can complain in that sigh/tight smile/pointed glance way of complaining. No, she’s great. She has the ability to clean without disturbing my order. I call her the Laparoscopic Cleaner.

I should start a company that’ll put those Merry Maids right outta business. I’ll call it the Laparoscopic Cleaning Crew and promise minimally invasive house cleaning to the obsessive compulsive and hyper-organized homeowner who needs someone to help out, but doesn’t trust anyone to do it correctly. Can you imagine! The ads can read:

Do you need a clean, neat home, but don’t have the time to mop floors yourself?
Are you afraid of having a housekeeper come in because

no one can do it like you can?

Do you have a particular order and system for everything and are afraid

a stranger in your midst would disorganize your home?
Do you wish you could find a minimally invasive someone

to clean your home, without upsetting it?

Well, we are here for you! The Laparoscopic Cleaning Crew will come in, do your cleaning, and leave our home exactly like you left it, only much fresher, much sweeter and much, much cleaner! The only thing that’ll be out of place will be the dust bunnies!
Call today!!!

Naturally, I would charge a fortune.

A Recommended Reading List for all New, Old, or About-to-be mamas

I called all my pregnant friends once, when I was in my black days of February, when the boys were four-months old, and told them the truth. (Yes, I had four pregnant friends at the same time; just as I had become a new Mama.)

The TRUTH at the time, for me, was that being a mother just sucks. You have no time, peace, or personal space; no time to think for yourself, eat for yourself or take care of yourself. The first few months, especially with twins, is just one huge give-give-giving of you to them, (no, they don't want their Daddy) and you somehow feel that you don’t have a right to demand that space for your own person to breathe. So, I called around, trying to shed some light on the hazy future for these wonderful ladies.

One woman said, “But I don’t think I’ll have a problem, my husband is very understanding.” My dear husband is extremely understanding and helpful too, but babies are not understanding, or helpful, at all. Another said, “Well, my situation is different from yours; I have my Mom right next door and his Mom in the next town.” Well, so do I, as a matter of fact. But they don't live in the same house; who will hold the baby while you go to the bathroom? Another just asked me if *I* was okay, which I appreciated, but she didn’t seem to heed the warning.

Now that I am at the one-year mama mark, I can say, in all frankness, that the first year of motherhood was the worst and the longest year of my existence, current and past lives included. The highs were pretty high up there and the lows were abysmal. Holly Golightly has no idea how mean a Mean Red can really be. Please do yourself a favor, especially those of you who are at the I’m-due-in-a-few-months-and-I’m-not-prepared stage or at the this-baby-is-already-seven-months-old-oh-God-why-did-I-ever-do-this stage, and check out my recommended reading list for all new, old, or about to be mamas:

Mothershock, by Andrea Buchanan
The Price of Motherhood, by Ann Crittenden
The Mask of Motherhood, by Susan Maushart
The Mommy Myth, by Susan Douglas
The way we never were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, by Stephanie Coontz
Money, Milk and Madness, by Naomi Baumslag
And for fun:
The Three-Martini Playdate: A Practical Guide to Happy Parenting, by Christie Mellor

When you are asked by those well-meaning people who will ask – “What can I get you for the baby?” reply – “You can give ME your TIME. And the baby could use a snowsuit, as well.” Get a daily planner and coax/persuade/beg/pay people to make appointments to be with you and the baby. Don’t just fill in the days immediately after the birth. Most people want to come and see a new, teeny, sleeping beastie. No, fill in the days when you want adult companionship when the baby is six months old and it’s snowing and you can’t get out of the house. Or in July, when it’s hot and your husband/partner is working, and you are alone and want assistance in getting the eight month-old (who is crawling everywhere) to Ikea, or the museum, for a fun day, but you would like to have fun too. Another pair of hands goes a long way to ensuring that. The future block of time is the best baby gift anyone can give.

My mother,(you know, the therapist?) has come through with flying colors recently, and has helped me regain some sanity. She gives me a babysitter four evenings a week so I can go running. I am up to almost four miles a run, and I also run one weekend day, if the social calendar allows. I’ll be back in my size 12 jeans in no time….

Of mice and little men

Right after I managed to extract myself from what I refer to as My Year Long Learning Experience Relationship with the biggest liar I have ever met, (never trust a man who tells you he is 30 and then three months into the relationship, when you take a peek at his license, you find out he is really FORTY, and then, seven months in you find out not only is he NOT single, he hasn’t even started the divorce process with his wife yet. But he could be charming and was a pretty good dancer…) I needed a place to live, something cheap and ready to move into. My mother had just purchased a house to use as a rental property, so I moved right on in.

It is a little Cape Cod style house, that I called the Mouse House. My mother thought it was because it was small like a mouse house, but I meant it was because Mickey and Minnie built it in 1968 and were too cheap to do any maintenance until they sold it to her in 2002. The insulation, as it apparently will do if improperly installed, had slid down the space between the studs, leaving hollow areas in the walls. That would not have been a big deal, except this happened to all the walls, including exterior ones. The result was the bedroom was so cold in the winter that if you licked the wall your tongue would stick.

The place had “radiant heat”. I put it in quotes because there was nothing “heat” like about it. I had a bunch of space heaters to keep me from getting hypothermia in my sleep. The way radiant heat used to be done, back when Mickey and Minnie had their dream cottage slapped together, was to install copper piping directly into a concrete slab and then erect the house. The main problem with this is that the acids in cement dissolve copper over time. Who knew? The result in the Mouse House was two warm patches in the floor, one on the bathroom, and the other in the kitchen, right by the stove. How convenient! The central heating only works in the two rooms you can warm by other methods; one by, obviously, running a bath, and the other by turning on a stove. Needless to mention, as soon as I could, I was outta there.

In my new house, where my DH and sweetly scrumptious babies all live, is of the late 1960’s/early 1970’s split level variety, with the windows jammed right into the corners of the rooms. Have you seen the like? It’s okay inside, because it makes the rooms brighter, but from the outside those windows look totally retarded. AND I hate, hate, HATE it when people put shutters on this style home. It means you get some windows with only one shutter! Number one, shutters nowadays are not functional, but decorative, so they are superfluous, and number two, why put up a decorative accident that is completely off balance and asymmetrical? That's not decorating, it's grating.

Anyway, in this house I have hardwood floors and what Americans call area rugs, and the English call carpets. To the English, a rug is something you take on a picnic to sit on, or use to wrap around yourself in front of a fire. You know, what Americans call blankets. With that cleared up; the carpet downstairs is dark and linty, and therefore no good at all for changing a baby. The lint sticks in the zinc ointment and it looks like my infant has pubic hair. It’s quite disturbing. But I like the classic look of hardwood, and it's much easier to keep clean than that wall to wall stuff.

A friend, from my days on Planet Zoom, and I were talking about moving, and how it is such a drag and now that we have babies we are very hesitant to move house unless totally necessary, and blah blah. I mentioned I have moved 20 plus times, and have lived in three countries, three major cities, 9 different apartments and 7 houses. She has only lived on Planet Zoom and now she lives in Nebraska. She was flabbergasted. It was quite interesting to see her flabber gasting right before my eyes; I should have taken a photo.

I used to be able to just live anywhere; I could move in with my two green suitcases of clothes and skin care products and snuggle in for the three moths or three years or whatever length of my tenure happened to be. But now...the game has different rules. I read a blog recently where the new mama was commenting on how she knows it will never again be “just her”. I can relate completely. My twins are not temporarily in my care, to be returned to their rightful owners at some future date. They are not interesting pets. They are my CHILDREN, fruit of body, and I will forever be their mother. Forever will I have a part of me crawling, walking, driving, living, existing separate from the main body, but oh, so closely and intimately connected. I will never again be my own woman alone, or my own woman and wife, but forever I am to be my own woman, a wife AND a Mother of Twins. For the first time, I have daydreams about settling down in one spot, maybe for years and years.

To fuel the dream, I have started a garden, complete with overpriced herbaceous peonies, lilies, butterfly bushes, forsythia, clematis vines, rose bushes and crimson Barberries in the front, under my jammed-in-the-corner windows. I even planted a tree for each baby as soon as I knew I was to have twins. Baby A has a Carolina Silverbell and Baby B has a Japanese Lilac, or as my mother would put it “A lovely Syringa reticulate.” She’s big on Latin names. I am hesitant to move now because I have an emotional attachment to those two trees. (As well as a healthy financial investment in the peonies – some of them are absurdly expensive….)

“My, my!” The old gang from Planet Zoom would comment, “How you have changed!” Yes, my dears, no longer do I flit, or float or fleetly flee or fly. I may be here to stay.

When babies swarm

It’s wonderful to be loved, and fabulous to be needed. It makes one feel so wonderful and fabulous. However, there are times when the relentless neediness of twins can be a little overwhelming. Let me give you a frinstance.

For instance, the other night I was trying to take a bath. Not a luxurious, mud mask wearing, pedicure inducing, stress relieving bath, no, it was more of the quick, get wet so we can scrub up and rinse off, I should have taken a shower, type bath. Anyway, there I was in the H2O and I could hear the screams and yells of two needy beasties coming from the former dining room/current romper room. I know the DH is perfectly capable of tending to them on his own for ten minutes or so, but they aren’t so sure, especially in the evenings, when they are tired and twitchy. I then hear the slap slap of little hands as they crawl up the stairs towards the bathroom, boo hoo-ing all the while. When they realized the door was shut, oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth began! So, I got out of the tub, let them in, got back into the tub and since they love the water, they insisted on getting in with me. (Good thing my DH took their clothes off first.) That night I went to bed with some shampoo still in my hair. Ick.

Or the times when I am sitting on the bed in the nursery, setting up the pillows and the double Boppy (registered trade mark) in order to tandem nurse. Yay!! She’s getting ready to nurse us! Come on! Race ya! They leap onto the bed, crawl up towards me faster than you can say knife, and climb all over me, cackling and screeching, as I am trying to get organized so I can nurse them both in comfort. Comfort for me and them, you see.

Then, there are the times when I am attempting to prepare the evening meal. Being a former chef and graduate of Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, I tend to be particular about what I eat, especially at home where I have total control over the ingredients. (Once I told this to some one who replied – “Oh, I am a fussy eater too! I have never tasted ketchup, and I will only eat Oscar Mayer hotdogs.” I could have replied in turn – “Oh really? I’ll bet you get really ticked when they run out of your “fussy-guy” flavor of Pop Tarts at the local Piggly Wiggly.” Never tasted ketchup indeed! I’ll bet he thinks Red Lobster to be the height of style and fashion…) So, there I am, standing next to my cutting board, chopping up eggplant (fresh from the garden!) for ratatouille, and all the while, two strong willed and strong limbed little fellas are yanking on me as hard as they can. They have succeeded in pulling off my pants on occasion. Kind of makes dicing shallots a little risky.

They just want to be held, ALL THE TIME. That’s where the Maya wrap (registered trademark) comes in handy. If the DH is holding them, they are okay, but if they see me holding the other one – the green eyed monster rears its head – and they’ll shriek – “Pick ME up too, mama!” Or that what I interpret – “Yahh, mamamamamamama eek yelp!” to mean.

However, it is really good to be so loved and needed. (And I have fabulous muscles in my arms, too.)