This weekend, my mom and the gals and I went down to my aunt's house in my old hometown in Connecticut for my cousin's wedding shower. I hadn't originally planned on bringing Elsa and Clio along (The packing! Oh, the packing!) but I'm very glad that I did. They got some QT with their great aunts and first cousins once-removed and various others. They danced to Donna Summer's greatest hits. They ate Mexican corn and bean salad with cilantro. (Anyone know what Mexican corn and bean salad with cilantro looks like when it comes out the other end of a baby? Did you say Mexican corn and bean salad with cilantro? You win!!) The only disappointment was that they didn't get to meet / be met by their great, great aunt for the first time. She was supposed to come up from Philly for the occasion, but she couldn't find her teeth. Ah, well.
For me, one of the nicest parts of the weekend was having the chance to sleep in the same room with the girls -- something I haven't done in a long time. I was worried that we'd wake each other up -- I'd stub my toe in the dark on my way in or they'd cry or I'd snore or all of the above -- but except for a brief bit of crying from Elsa when I first snuck into bed, we all slept soundly through the night. In fact, it was nice to be able to just go over and rub Elsa's back in her crib and shush her and tell her I was right there. It brought me back to those early months when they slept in a co-sleeper crib next to our bed, the two of them, side by side, all wrapped up like little burritos, sweet as can be.
However, allow me clarify: it brought me back to the sweetness of having two babies sleeping nearby. But it did NOT make me miss having newborns. It did not make me miss not having my evenings to myself or waking up every two, three, or four hours in the middle of the night to nurse. Lots of people we know who had their first baby around the same time we had ours are now thinking about or already having their second, and when I think about them, I thank my lucky stars that we got our two kids in one fell swoop. This is not to say that I never ever entertain the possibility of having a third child. But after I entertain it, I send it home: Buh-bye. Drive safely.
Everyone says that you get a sort of amnesia when it comes to babies -- you forget the discomfort of pregnancy, the pain of birth, the exhaustion and difficulty of the first few months. Hence the survival of the human species despite of the availability of birth control. But I think having twins delays the onset of that amnesia, because right now, the thought of having another baby is absolutely exhausting. Maybe I'll feel differently in a few years. But for the moment, this is absolutely perfect -- and plenty.
Am I gloating? Yeah, OK, maybe a little.
