Exile from Babyville

It's a Birthday Kind of Day

Exactly two years ago today, I was being wheeled into a recovery room after Max and Nathan's birth.  I remember marveling over Max's longish head of hair and Nathan's almost completely lacking head of hair.  I remember feeling overwhelmed and exhilarated all at once, and I was so excited to finally be at the end of the seemingly endless journey to motherhood.

Two years later, I have two amazingly funny, smart, cute boys with almost boundless energy and enthusiasm for life.  Both Max and Nathan have officially moved out of the baby phase and into the child phase, and I have to keep reminding myself that they are no longer babies.  That doesn't mean that we don't hug and kiss and cuddle, but they are definitely intent on asserting and exploring their Independence on a daily basis.  I feel so incredibly fortunate to have them, even though some days they test my patience to its outer limits and even beyond. 

Yesterday, we spent the day at my parents house, hanging out and helping them prep for their big annual Bastille Day Party. (Although I did sneak over to my old friend Jen's place for her son's belated birthday party while the boys napped.  Can I just say how nice it is to get out and socialize with no children to chase and lots of good conversation to be be had.  I was sorry to have to cut my visit short to get back to the P's.)  Anway, my parents have been hosting this party for over 20 years. My mother's family moved to the States from France when she was a teenager, and she loves to throw a party, so having this big shindig every year was an easy habit for them to fall into.  Last year, the boys were still cruising around and were just on the verge of taking their first steps unaided.  (They both did that the following day on their birthday, within hours of each other.)  This year they were running all over my parents huge backyard and getting into absolutely everything with the crazy enthusiasm of a two year old.  My sister and her boyfriend gave the boys tricycles, and they also had a blast riding those around the yard.

Today, we stayed in and let the boys play with their new toys.  We let them watch as much TV as they wanted (bad Mommy and Daddy!), and eat pretty much whatever they wanted for dinner (blueberries and graham crackers.)  It was definitely a good day.  Next weekend, we have the official Max and Nathan Birthday Celebration! 

Happy Birthday my boys!

All Grown Up

First, I want to thank Heather for responding with her experience using a crib tent.  Thankfully, Nathan has stopped trying to climb out of his crib and it looks like he is simply content for the time being with the knowledge that he can escape from his crib while now longer trying to do so.  At this point I'm filing away the whole crib tent thing and taking a wait and see approach.  Hopefully Nathan is thinking that crib climbing is so two weeks ago, but you never know.

In other related business, the boys' second birthday is merely a few weeks away and wow did the last two years fly by.  Recently I've been noticing how their baby selves have become more and more child-ish, and it's truly startling to witness.  Their baby pudge is melting away, their limbs are lengthening, and the look of understanding in their eyes whenever I speak to them is unbelievable.  I know that every parent wonders at how her child grows up before her very eyes, but I can't help be amazed and somewhat dismayed by it all the same.  It's bittersweet seeing my babies turn into boys, I miss cuddling those tiny little packages of baby I brought home from the hospital almost two years ago, and smelling their lovely little baby scent. 

Sigh...

The birthday party plans are really getting into full swing now, and M is in his full glory planning the menu for the big shindig.  M is quite the gourmand/foodie, and he is planning on appropriating his friends smoker to smoke up some real low and slow BBQ.  Because space is at such a premium in our place, we're having it out in the 'burbs at the home of M's Mom.  Of course we will also have cake, and pin the tail on the monkey, (did I mention we were going with a monkey theme?  These are our invites,  which I just fell in love with, price be damned.) and possibly a baby pool or two for the kiddies.  All of M's friends and their kids will be there, and most of my girlfriends too.  I don't really know all that much about how you entertain older kids at a party, and there will definitely be kids in the 3 to 7 age group at the party.  I'm resisting the subtle pressure to get on of those crazy bounce house type things to clutter up the front lawn, and clowns creep me the fuck out so that's a no go as well.

I fear I'm actually in a kind of denial that M&N's birthday is coming up so quickly, because I've only purchased a few small gifts for them and aside from getting the invites printed and mailed I haven't really accomplished much else birthday related.  We also have a lot going on trying to figure out my whole career thing, and preschool plans for the boys, not to mention what to do about the fact that this condo is just getting too darn small to contain this family anymore.  I guess it's just kind of overwhelming, and when I get overwhelmed I just sort of leave things at loose ends.  I don't know what to do about any of it, and trying to figure it out only brings up questions I'm not really comfortable confronting just yet.

Oh, and once again my neighborhood is under siege by the gigantic food festivus held nearby every year.  As a result, I feel even less motivation to leave my home this week because I hate wading through all of the crowds and traffic.  Anyway, enough with my downer routine.  Have a great holiday everyone!

Death Defying

Now that summer is finally here I've been trying to get out more with the boys to places like the park on a regular basis.  Max and Nathan love to climb on anything and everything, so the play structures at the park provide them with the perfect medium to hone their skills while simultaneously scaring the crap out of me.  It's terribly hard to keep track of both of them when they really get going, and I usually spend most of my time chasing somebody down and reminding him of the "no running off" rule.  So now the bloom is off the whole park thing for me, and I've even started to dread it sometimes because I'm so concerned about trying to keep either or both of my kids from either getting away from me or becoming seriously injured (or both.)

As a result, I've started taking them to a nearby pool that has a special gated kiddie pool.  It overlooks train tracks and Lake Shore Drive, so the kids get to splash to their hearts content while also indulging their fascination with trains and buses.  It's mostly a win-win for me, as long as I remember to bring all of the gear required to keep them busy and hydrated and sun-screened.  I feel kind of guilty though that I haven't taken them to the park in over a week though, like I'm cheating somehow because it's easier to take them somewhere fun that's enclosed and free of fall hazards.

The guilt of a mother never ends, does it?

The only side effect I've noticed is that the boys still need an outlet to satisfy their climbing jones.  I'm constantly pulling them off furniture and small wheeled objects that they try to utilize to climb wherever.  I've tried to make pillow mountains for them to climb on, and they are allowed to climb on to the couch and the arm chair, but not surprisingly that just isn't good enough for M&N.  So now I guess I will start taking them back to the park again soon so they can get the climbing thing out of their system for a few days or so.

Nathan is my more intrepid and fearless climber of the two boys, and if I leave the room for a second he is the one I expect to find standing on the table when I return.  Last Friday he figured out how to climb out of his crib apparently because he didn't feel like taking a nap.  We battled for over an hour, I put him in time out and then returned him to his crib, and then finally deposited him in the packnplay thing we still have set up in the master bedroom in a fit of desperation.  It worked in that he couldn't figure out how to climb out, but not so much since he couldn't or wouldn't fall asleep.  I think the whole thing at least delivered the message that it isn't OK to climb out of the crib, because he's only tried it a few more time since then.

I'm thinking one of those crib tent thingies might offer a good short term solution until I think the boys are more ready for toddler beds.  I'll post more about that next time, but suffice it to say that I'm certain the boys will not sleep if given the opportunity to roam around their room/the apartment instead. 

Anyone else tried a crib tent?  Liked it?  Hated it?

As I Was Saying...

Once again the time has gotten away from me and this blog has been greatly neglected.  I swear I thought my last post was a mere few weeks ago, so imagine my suprise when I realized it was a month ago.  It never ceases to amaze me how quickly life seems to speed by these days, if I look away for even a few seconds, bam, an entire month slips through my fingers.

Anyway, after reading my own thoughts on the whole boy/girl/nature/nurture I can see how unclear some of them may have seemed.  The impetus for it was the stupid running commentary I keep hearing from family members and some friends about boys always being this way or that way, combined with the meteoric rise of the Dangerous Book for Boys to the Amazon top 100 books.  No, I haven't read the book or even seen it in person, getting to a book store these days is still too much of a challenge these days and they don't carry it at my local Target's book section either (although given it's immense popularity it's just a matter of time before it does.)  But as a matter of principle it bugs me that the authors couldn't have simply titled it the Dangerous Book for Kids and left it at that.  I would have loved this book when I was a kid, but I'm sure the ridicule I would have likely faced from classmates when I checked it out of the school library would have discouraged me from doing so. 

I still remember the peer pressure and ridicule of my adolescent years all too well, and I know that my kids will inevitably face that reality as they get older.  I just want to make sure that I do whatever I can so that my kids learn to embrace diversity and individuality.  I don't want them write things off because they are strictly for girls or for sissies or whatever, and I definitely don't want them to do something simply because that is what boys are supposed to do or are expected to do. 

At the end of the day, I just want my kids to be themselves.  I want them to become whoever they are going to become, unencumbered by stereotypes that require them to subvert their own emotions or personal talents in the name of being a boy/man.  And I want them to understand that girls aren't any less capable or smart or fun than boys are.  I want them to accept all kids at face value whether they are boys or girls.  Because at the end of the day I think that's all any of us really want from our fellow humans, to be accepted and valued.

Now whether or not these lofty goals of mine are all that realistic, who knows.

Nature Versus Nurture

When it comes to the differences between men and women, it seems awfully easy to assume those differences are simply sex-related and leave it at that.  I've certainly fallen into the mindset myself as an adolescent and adult that all men are one way and all women are another, and that nothing can be done to change that reality.  As I've gotten older, however, I've become a lot more aware of how a person's upbringing can really influence the man or woman s/he will become. 

Having two sons has naturally made me even more thoughtful about this whole issue and concerned about what kind of adults they will become as a result of how we raise them.  During my pregnancy I was surprised by how early the barrage of male stereotyping started to come at me from friends and family: that boys are rough and tumble, strong and brave, little men in the making.  But the more I thought about it, the more I found myself disagreeing with the premise that all of these qualities are inherent in the male sex.  My baby boys were just as sweet and cuddly as any baby girl I had ever held, and my toddler boys are no wilder than most of the little girls we know.

Yet I feel like many friends and family members are intent on picking out their individual personality traits and ascribing them to the boys being boys, when all I see is completely normal, energetic, curiosity-driven toddler behavior.  What makes me even more crazy is that most of M's family members seem to assume that it's just normal boy behavior for them to be rude, rough, inconsiderate, and even violent.  M's cousin has raised her five year old son with that philosophy, and I dread ever letting Max and Nathan anywhere near him as a result.  The few times I couldn't avoid it (like Christmas and family birthdays) I did notice that the boys were a little wilder and crazier for a few days afterwords, and I really think it was because they were modeling the bad behavior they witnessed their cousin exhibit a few days earlier.  Thankfully, M disagrees with his family's stance on this stuff and we are on the same page about encouraging the boys to be kind, considerate, and non-violent.

All of these thoughts sort of came into focus for me a few days ago when I took Max and Nathan to one of those indoor play places that have become so ubiquitous in our city these days.  While I was there I ran into a friend and his son, who is only a few a few weeks younger than the boys, and we let all three of them play while we chatted together.  The kids had a blast running around for much of the morning, until another Mom came to find me with a crying Max in tow.  She vaguely advised me that another kid had been kicking him on one of the play structures and left it at that.  A few minutes later I heard Nathan crying and ran over to find a little girl in a fairy princess costume kicking the crap out of him.  I scooped him up and scolded the girl for hurting him and then went back to find Max so we could all leave.  When I turned my back momentarily she started going after Max again, and as I was putting the boys in their stroller she took the opportunity to go after my friend's little boy.  I have no idea where her caregiver was while all of this mayhem was going on, but I had to wonder if her parents have turned a blind eye to her aggressive behavior because it doesn't fit into their notions of who their little fairy princess is.  Sugar and spice and everything nice, she certainly was not. 

This Public Service Announcement Is Brought To You By The Letters F and U

To the pushy woman who came up to me on the sidewalk yesterday, advised me that the "baby is cold", and then tried to pull the hood down on my stroller, YOU WEREN'T BEING HELPFUL!  Yes, I know it was drizzly and windy and kind of cold outside, and yes, I know my kids were crabbing and whining, but that doesn't gives you the right to come up to a complete stranger and try to physically impose your will on her.  Unless I'm beating my kids in the street it's none of your business, and all you succeeded in doing was showing what a rude, insensitive and obnoxious person you really are.

So maybe you need to think about that before you try handing out any more mommy drive-bys in the future.

Before And After

Before I had kids I have to admit that I fell into that camp of people who really didn't care about the amazing new things other people's kids were doing.  But I have to begrudgingly admit that I now get how amazing and exciting it is when the wee one starts cruising and walking and talking and so on.  I still try not to get to braggy about what the boys are up to though, especially with women who get all competitive about it in a "my kid is smarter and better" kind of way. 

And yet, a common partly tongue-in-cheek comment often uttered by M and I to describe one of the boys is "the kid is a genius."  When Max figured out how to climb over the baby gate by pushing his ride on car over to it and then hoisting himself up and over, we said it in with a combination of horror and amazement.  And as Nathan began to speak in sentences that statement became even more used and abused.  (Shameless bragging alert!)  So, yes, Nathan already speaks in sentences at 21 months old.  Max, not so much but he is starting to figure out how to string words together.  Most days Nathan likes to remind me that Daddy left and went to work, and that he hears a train, or a bus or a car outside the window (I heared it Mommy, I hear a bus outside! he'll crow with excitement.)  He also likes to recount what happened on Sesame Street that morning, and tell me about how George is a monkey and that his friend is the Man with the Yellow Hat.

So I try to keep most of the stories of the new and amazing things the boys are doing to a minimum with my friends and social acquaintances, and reserve the more effusive commentary for family only.  Much like I feel like I still need to be respectful of the issues my infertile friends may still be facing, I feel like I need to respect the fact that only my very good friends like to hear funny stories about M&N and that childless friends may have relatively little interest in the quotidian aspects of every day life with twin toddlers.  I suppose one of the reasons I wanted to revive this blog was because it gives me an outlet to discuss and explore some of these things in a way I just can't in my every day life. 

I have a lot more to say about how rapidly the boys are growing and developing, but for now I feel the desperate need to catch a quick nap before the kids wake up from theirs.

Oh, and thanks for the shout outs MotherLawyer and Heather!!!!  It's definitely good to be back.

Exile Version 3.0

Wow, it's been about a year or so since my last post to my poor, neglected blog.  So much has happened in the meanwhile, M&N had their first birthday, took their first steps, and learned their first words.  Of course plenty has stayed the same, I am still doing the SAHM gig with them and we are still cramped into our 1,300 sf place in the City. 

I've meant so many times to come back and revive this blog and talk about the thoughts that float through my tired brain, but that would involve getting my tired and sleep-deprived derriere off the couch and at the computer long enough to put something thoughtful together (which is probably also why I haven't put much effort into the job search thing either...)   Alas, all the fun stuff that goes along with being a sleep deprived and busy SAHM (like the volumes of laundry taunting me every day and the piles of toys that must be put away so that I can actually make my way through the living room) have taken away all of my motivation to write stuff on this blog by the time I'm done with them. 

That is until recently, when I really started to feel the pull of blogging once again.  The thing is I enjoy writing down my thoughts, sorting through them, and trying to make sense of them.  This blog had given me the outlet to do exactly that, until the boys came along and the blog starting to feel like something that required more effort that I could possibly muster.  But now that they are older, more independant, and even learning the rudimentary aspects of talking back and arguing with Mommy, I feel like I need this outlet again to put my thoughts out there, with the possibility that some people may stop by to read, or in the alternative that nobody will care to read at all. 

So there you have it.  Exile From Babyville, Version 3.0 starts today.  I'll probably still talk about some of the fertility related stuff that I think about from time to time, as well as the boys, the husband, and whether or not I will end up lawyering ever again.

If anyone out there is reading please feel free to leave your comments and let me know what you think!

To Work Or Not To Work, That Is The Question

The last nine months or so have flown by so quickly that I really can't believe it.  The boys have been growing like weeds, and Max is starting to pull himself up and cruise around the house.  Nathan is still creeping around on his belly, and he sometimes seems kind of frustrated that he has a hard time either pulling himself up into a sitting or standing position.  I don't have any current stats on their heights and weights, but we go back to the ped for a check up in a few weeks so I guess we'll just have to wait until then to find out for sure.

Now that the babies are closing in on their first birthday, M and I have actually started to try and figure out when and if I should return to work, and when and if we might try to try again on the pregnancy front.  Surprisingly enough, I've kind of started to miss working (at least in theory) lately and I'm starting to feel like I might be ready to try working part time once the boys turn one.  I love staying home with the boys, but sometimes I feel like it would do us all some good to get the boys into school part of the week to socialize with other kids and to get me out of the house and back into the real world part of the week as well.  Of course I need to figure out if the whole cost of child care thing would render my working pointless or not.  At least for the summer I would have my sister to take care of the boys because she will have the summer off from college and lots of free time on her hands to take care of them.  After that, I'm considering a newish preschool that recently opened up about four blocks from where we live.  As you can see I'm still kind of ironing out all the details in my head, and all of this may become moot if I can't find a job anyway.

Which leads me to the big issue of what kind of work I would do anyway.  The few long time readers of this blog that are out there know that I was less than thrilled with my last job.  My boss was a nut and the work was oh so incredibly boring that it practically brought me to tears on a daily basis.  I've thought of seeing if they would consider bringing me back part time, but the intensity with which I disliked that job in the first place has been the biggest impediment to my even asking the question.  And then there is the reality that there are so few part time gigs to come by in my field, so I would probably have to consider taking either temp work or contract work (and neither of these is a very attractive option.)  What else am I forgetting?  Oh yes, the time and effort lawyering demands of the practitioner, the expectation that the job will always come first, so that the private life always has to lose out to work, work, work.

Can you believe I ever gave it all up in the first place?

On the other hand there are still times that I miss practicing law.  Because when the game was good, it was really, really good.  The true practice of law is almost like a vocation rather than just a job.  It can consume you completely if you let it, and I have to admit that I've often enjoyed becoming completely drawn into the work in the past.  So as you can probably tell I'm feeling incredibly conflicted about the whole thing.  I've been putting off updating my resume and I've only cruised the job listings a few times.  If I want to get this ball rolling I need to do it soon though, it's just so hard for me to really decide what I want to do and then make a commitment to actively pursuing work once I'm sure I want to go for it.  At this point I'm leaning towards shopping my resume around a little and seeing what happens.  I can always turn down work if I decide it's not the right thing for me to do.

In the meanwhile I've also been mulling over the big question of whether we should try again at some point in the future.  That will have to be another post, because I'm still formulating all of my thoughts and deciding what I really want to do.  But let me say that I am feeling a pull in my heart to try again in a year or two. 

So there you have it.

And I will try to post with an update soon on how the boys are doing after the next pediatrician appointment.

Hippitty Hoppitty Humbug

I've always been a sucker when it comes to holidays like Christmas, Halloween, and even Easter.  I don't know what it is exactly, but there's something about an opportunity to decorate with silly seasonal items that I've always enjoyed.  That is until I had the boys.  Now I have so little energy and spare time that my holiday enthusiasm has been seriously curtailed.  I never even took my Halloween stuff out of storage this past year, and I only took out about half of my Christmas stuff too.

So this Easter I've really had a hard time mustering any enthusiasm of any kind.  (Of course my estrangement from the Catholic church doesn't help things, but that's another post.)  I didn't even bother getting anything for the boys because let's face it they are completely clueless about clebrations and gifts at this point in their lives.  So far this Easter season they have gotten one gift from Max's godfather, some stuffies and little toys in a bucket, and the only thing they liked was the plastic bucket the gifts came in. 

The other thing that is bugging me is that I've noticed that M's family, which used to enthusiastically give Easter baskets to everyone in past years for some reason stopped doing anything at all last year.  But I still get their kids stuff because I know they've come to expect it and that they would be disappointed if Aunt Lola finked out on them.  So I've seriously scaled back on the baskets and junk this year, and I'm dreading when Max and Nathan get old enough to ask me why their Aunt and Uncle's kids get stuff but they don't.  Of course I know that my parents and sister have gone completely nuts getting the boys little toys and gigantic stuffies this year, and that they will every year.  So I know I can always count on them to come through for the boys regardless of the occasion.

Uggh, I don't know why I let this stuff get to me.  I really don't.  I guess it just seems like the stakes are so much higher now that I have my own children I have to worry about not ruining.  And I just dread the idea that in the future there will be things in their life that might hurt them, things that I have no control over and can't shield them from.

Oh well.  Better get back to my Easter basket building while the boys are still napping.  Happy Easter/ Passover/ Spring everyone!