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• Eating out With Toddlers: A Primer

  Before A. and I had the kids, we loved eating out. It was one of our favorite things to do together, and we always did it a little more often and little better than we could really afford, but it never felt like money wasted. We'd spend lazy Saturday mornings drinking bottomless cups of coffee and stuffing ourselves with omelettes at various breakfast joints, have drinks and appetizers in the middle of the afternoon in the midst of long, leisurely rambles through Boston or Cambridge. Occasionally, we'd splurge on a nice dinner at a place where the waiters are annoying ("what we've done is we've taken a filet of salmon, we've rubbed it with saffron, then dragged it through a vat of roasted, pulverized almonds, then nailed it to the wall and thrown little snails at it...") but the food is so-o-o-o good.   When the girls were teeny tiny newborns, and basically all they did was sleep, we went out a few times with them in their infant seats and ate normal meals, like normal adults. Those days, needless to say, are long gone. We've tried to go out with them a few times more recently, and I'm sorry to say that it's really not that pleasant. In fact, generally, I would not recommend dining out with twin toddlers. But if you are foolhardy enough to attempt it, you might find the following tips helpful:   1. Bring food. Forget about this notion of waiting to "order" food because it's a "restaurant." Once you get your kiddos in a highchair, and assuming it's near a mealtime, they're gonna want to eat. So bring a snack and a sippy cup to hold them over until your order arrives. Or ask the restaurant to bring you some bread, stat. No, forget that; it takes too long. Bring your own.   2. Bring toys, too. Or books, if that's what they're into. Basically anything they can hold onto before and after eating so they won't reach for the knives / Sweet and Low packets / wine glasses / your plate / etc. (Of course, they will anyway). In a pinch, spoons make pretty good toys, as do paper napkins.   3. Go at an off-peak time. Everyone will have a better time if the restaurant you go to is not crowded, so you don't feel rushed and there are fewer other customers for your children to annoy. And by off-peak, I mean really off-peak. We made the mistake of going out this past Sunday morning to our neighborhood breakfast hotspot at around 9:00, thinking that we'd beat the hungover college crowd, but instead, we hit the older people and families with young kids crowd (duh). We felt stressed out the whole time. At one point Alastair looked across the table at me and said "This sucks!" A better strategy might have been tip #4.   4. Go to a mediocre restaurant. It's less likely to be crowded, and let's face it: it's not like you're going to have an exquisite gustatory experience when you're moving knives and glasses and coffee cups out of reach of your children with one hand and shoveling food into your own face with another. Also, your child will prefer whatever you're having to whatever you've ordered for them, so you won't get to eat much of it anyway. If we'd gone to the cavernous, dimly-lit breakfast place across town staffed by surly Eastern European women instead of the aforementioned breakfast hot spot, we might not have gotten fresh fruit on our plates, but we might have actually enjoyed ourselves.   5. Don't do it. Just don't. Unless you absolutely have to -- you're on vacation or something. Really, you're better off just staying home (it's cheaper, too) and make eating out a special, adults-only treat, as we did last night, to celebrate our anniversary. We got a sitter for a couple of hours and went to a great restaurant with annoying waiters and overpriced wine and not a highchair or booster seat in sight. And it. was. wonderful.   Posted May 13 2008, 10:40 AM by Roper with | with 17 comment(s) Filed under: twins, feeding twins, table manners, dining out

• Clio goes commando

  A quick anecdote: Yesterday was rainy and miserable, and after a rather cranky morning (we were determined to resist Clio's pleas for her pacifier, and though it meant listening to her scream for about 20 minutes, we won. We won!) I decided to take the girls over to our local indoor play gym. We had a blast. Elsa did a lot of running around flapping her arms and screaming with excitement, and Clio did a lot of playing with balls. She and I also teamed up on Elsa and rolled her around in a cylindrical mat thing, which Elsa absolutely loved, the little thrillseeker.   As we were getting ready to leave, and Clio was walking around waving and saying "bye!" to everyone in the lobby area, I noticed a big clump of something coming out of the bottom of her overalls. At first I thought it was a wad of napkins or something that she'd stuffed in there (??) then I got closer and saw that it was, in fact, her diaper. (Not dirty or even terribly wet, thank God). Somehow in the midst of all her running around, it had come off and out from under her onesie and down the leg of her pants like some kind of crazy baby party trick. She literally played her pants off.   Someday maybe we'll watch Flashdance together, and during the scene when Jennifer Beals takes her bra off from under her shirt, I'll look over at Clio -- who will be at least 13, because I wasn't allowed to see that movie until I was that old, and I'll be damned if she can -- and say, "you did that with your diaper once when you were little." And she'll roll her eyes at me and say, "I know mom, you told the whole world on your stupid blog." And I'll remind her that I also told the world how much I loved her and how awesome she and her sister are, and hopefully she'll say, "Yeah, I guess so." And then, hopefully, we'll turn off Flashdance and watch something better instead, because, really, it's not a very good movie.       Happy Mother's Day, all you awesome Babble mamas out there. May your children keep their pants on!         Posted May 10 2008, 05:15 PM by Roper with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: twins, diapers, Clio, stupid baby tricks, mother's day

• Regression

  We were doing so well with the whole pacifier weaning thing. Really, we were.   We started using the things with the girls at an early age, following the 5 "S"s school of self-soothing: suck (that's the pacifier), swaddle, shush....um...shit. Swing? Sway? Something to do with movement. And another one. Sambuca?   Anyway, the point is, we were not bashful about giving the girls pacifiers in their early months, especially when trying to get them to sleep. Gradually, we made pacifiers the province of 1. The crib and 2. The car. (And kept them on hand for outings to stores, where they ran the risk of getting antsy.) Lately, the only time they really use them is in their cribs, while they sleep, and we're fine with that for the time being.   But last week, Clio started getting extremely cranky. She was breaking a top tooth (our children are still freakishly toothless for their age: Clio only has 2 teeth and Elsa only has 4), and obviously uncomfortable, running a slight fever, too. So we let the pacifier rules slacken a little and gave it to her outside of her crib. But it got to the point where she was asking for it all the time.   As it turns out, she had an ear infection. Her fever was up at 104.5 on Friday night, which was more than a little disconcerting. She's never had a fever that high before. And -- SPOILER ALERT FOR A 10-YEAR-OLD MOVIE -- ever since I saw that movie City of Angels, with Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage, I've been haunted by the opening scene, where a toddler gets a really high fever and the mom puts her in a cold bath, then takes her to the hospital, but she ends up dying. (I wasn't even close to being a mother when I saw the movie, and yet it terrified me.) So, we called the doctor and administered medication which, fortunately, worked, and took her to the doctor's the next day. Her right ear was nice and red and full-o-pus.   So, at least we knew what we were dealing with. She's definitely improved since we started giving her antibiotics. However, she's gotten used to having her pacifier now, and still whines for it regularly. And all you mothers of twins out there know what happens when you give one twin something: the other one wants it, too. So, now we've got Elsa jonesing for a pacifier whenever Clio is, which is often. Tonight they were so eager for their pacifiers they begged to be put into their cribs as soon as I got their pajamas on them, just so they could suck on the damned things. I'm hoping that as Clio's ear infection wanes and her tooth comes in we can gradually get her -- and Elsa -- back to their more moderate pacifier usage. Because I'm just not down with this regression thing. My hope has always been that by the time they're two, we can get them off the plastic teat completely. But we'll see...   Meanwhile, at least we are making forward progress on another front: utensils! Here, some snapshots of tonight's fork and spoon training session:   Die, potatoes! Die! Die!      Am I left-handed? I don't think I'm left-handed...      Hmm...I like the not-so-spiky end of this thing....     Is there a reason these things are a better option than my hands?   Posted May 07 2008, 07:50 PM by Roper with | with 10 comment(s) Filed under: teething, twins, feeding twins, pacifiers, ear infections, regression

• Take my twins -- please!

  I try to stay positive on this blog, and not gripe or groan excessively about the challenges of bringing up babies. Because relatively speaking, I've got it pretty good. And I don't mean just in the I-could-be-starving-in-a-war-torn-African-nation sense. Even in the mother-of-twins sense, I'm lucky. I've got financial stability, an awesome husband, a bunch of kickass virtual pals (that would be you), etc. My daughters are healthy and vibrant and almost always sleep through the night: seven to seven-thirty with nary a peep. How can I complain?   Well, I'm going to anyway. Because recently it feels like things have gotten a LOT harder. Having two mobile, basically non-verbal but very spirited 16-month-old daughters -- while wonderful in many ways -- is also freakin' EXHAUSTING. (Yes, this is going to be a post full of ALL CAPS.)   Being at home is by far the most relaxed scenario. The first floor of our house is pretty much child-proofed and the girls have their run of the place. They're capable of entertaining themselves to some extent. But they also like climbing and riding on things, which requires assistance. They want to be read to, but rarely both from the same book at the same time. They fight over toys and hurt each other by accident. They're constantly hungry.   The weather's been mild lately, so we've been taking them out into the back yard, which is a nice change of pace.  But being outside also means trying to keep Elsa from eating wood chips, then running to help Clio go down the slide again, then rescuing Elsa when she crawls up the back porch steps and can't get down, then picking Clio up to look at the birdies in the tree in the neighbors' yard. Seriously, I should have the body of a 19-year-old field hockey player given the energy I burn just running after the two of them. Instead I have a sore back, a flabby tummy, and circles under my eyes. Oh yeah, and NO BOOBS.     Note our cool new climbing structure -- forty bucks on Craigslist!   Of course, hanging out flabby, boobless and exhausted in the yard is cake compared with actually trying to go out to, say, a playground alone with the girls. In that setting, at any given moment, it's pretty likely that I'm neglecting one of my children. I am that mom at the playground that you hate: the one who is nowhere to be found while her child is eating sand or whacking your baby on the head or climbing up a precarious set of steps en route to the curly slide, leaving you morally obligated to rescue her. But it's not because I'm busy chatting on my cell phone or flirting with the cute dad by the swingset. It's because I'm chasing my other child, who is also eating sand, whacking someone on the head or climbing toward certain peril AND probably needs her nose wiped, too. I'm sorry. Forgive me.   Then there are social events. And I use the term "social" very, very lightly. We went to our friends' daughter's first birthday celebration this weekend, and while it was a lovely party, we basically spent the entire time wrangling our daughters as they traipsed about reaching for drinks, fighting over toys, stealing other babies' sippy cups, toddling obliviously toward staircases, etc. Not that we wouldn't have to do this if we just had one 16-month-old. But in that case, at least, we could take turns. And if, say, we had one baby and one child that, oh, I don't know, UNDERSTOOD AND SPOKE ENGLISH, maybe we would only be in frequent as opposed to perpetual motion?   You know, the newborn months were hard: the constant feedings, the night waking, the lack of two-way interaction. This current phase is infinitely more fun and rewarding. Every day Alastair and I find new ways to communicate with and love and enjoy our children.   But God, are we tired. (TIRED!)     (What, you don't let your kids dance on the coffee table?)   Posted Apr 28 2008, 10:12 PM by Roper with | with 38 comment(s) Filed under: twins, whining, I am powerless, exhaustion, playgrounds

• Words fail me.

  A couple of times, readers of this blog have commented that I write more about Elsa than Clio. The unspoken implication, intended or not, is that I'm more focused on, or even more fond of Elsa. My initial reaction to these comments has been, naturally, anger: How dare anyone, especially someone who has never met me (and who probably doesn't have twins, let alone write a blog about them) make such an accusation? Why do they feel compelled to make it? Why casually poke at such an emotional landmine? Haven't they seen Sophie's Choice, for God's sake?    Then I take a deep breath, pour myself a glass of wine, and remind myself that this comes with the blogging territory. When you write about yourself and your private life in a public forum, you inevitably open yourself up to scrutiny as well as support. You have to be at once thick-skinned and humble, and remember that your blog is not you, nor is it a mirror held up to your heart. It is writing. As such, it can offer readers a glimpse into your life and your self, but it can't possibly give them the whole picture -- nor would you want it to. You try to remember this, and you hope that your readers remember it, too. Most of them do.   But after the most recent comment suggesting favoritism, I did look back over my posts to see if there was an imbalance; if Elsa routinely gets more pixels than Clio, and/or is featured more prominently in posts. And I'd say that yes, on the whole, I've tended to write a little bit more about Elsa than Clio. And often when I talk about both of them, I lead with Elsa. It's certainly not conscious, and it certainly doesn't reflect the degree of my love or focus toward them. But I couldn't help wondering: what's the deal? Mind you, I don't feel that I owe anyone an explanation. I only offer it here because I found it an interesting insight to arrive at, as a writer and as a parent.   What I arrived at was this: I think I find it more difficult to write about Clio than I do Elsa. Maybe it's because I tend to *get* Elsa a little more. As I mentioned in a recent post, I feel like we're alike in many ways. Furthermore, she's very outgoing and assertive and active, which tends to make for better stories and easier lead-ins. But Clio -- Clio is subtler. I find it harder to capture her essence in words the way I can (or presume to be able to) with Elsa. Maybe I'm afraid to try. She is unlike anybody I've ever known. My feelings for her are unlike any I've ever felt. Even trying to write this, I'm struggling. So, here; some fragments.   Ephemeral, mysterious, puckish, protean, quixotic, mercurial, chimerical. Where did she come from? What makes her do the kooky, quirky, delightful things she does? How can a person be so dear? How can someone this innocent exist in this world? She should disappear, like some unstable element. She is sublime. I don't believe in angels, but sometimes I swear Clio must be one. (NB: this does not mean she always behaves like one!)     Sensitive Clio. Peacemaker Clio. She cries when other people fight or hurt themselves or get upset, when dogs tussle, when our cat growls at the big long-haired Tabby on the other side of the sliding door. Alastair and I can't even play-wrestle in front of her. Her eyes will fill with tears. She has such deep empathy.   I have never been a touchy-feely person, but Clio makes me one. I worry that I give her more physical attention than Elsa, but she just seems to need and want it more. She'll sometimes just mouth my arm or shoulder and coo: "ahhhhhhhhhh." She loves touching my face and pulling me close, and I feel honored every time she does. I don't deserve this.       Then suddenly, she writhes and stiffens and wants space. She takes her own time; processes things at her own pace. She can't be pushed from the periphery when she doesn't want to be.   I am afraid I am going to lose her. Ever since she was a few months old, I've had this terrible, irrational fear that I'm going to lose her somehow -- to illness, to tragedy, to the fairies stealing her away in the night -- and it makes loving her hurt. It's the most primal, aching love I've ever felt for anyone. Maybe I am more protective of her in my writing as a result. Maybe I want to keep her a little more to myself.       So, now it probably sounds like I favor Clio, right?  Do me a favor and don't answer that.   xoxo, JR       Posted Apr 23 2008, 08:45 PM by Roper with | with 37 comment(s) Filed under: twins, love, Clio, commenters, even steven

• Transition Accomplished.

  For the past couple of weeks, the girls' nap schedule has been kinda funky. The morning nap started shifting to late morning, ending at noon or even later, and the afternoon nap started becoming quite brief, if it happened at all. It was tricky, unpredictable, and sometimes exasperating   Clio has been the primary instigator of the change -- she's always seemed to need a bit less sleep than Elsa, and lately the contrast has been sharper. But as devoted as we are to our children, we are not so devoted that we're willing to put up with two separate nap schedules. Also, we're spoiled: they've always been good sleepers. I think this is a combination of genetic good fortune (we are both extremely lazy) and concerted effort on our part, with help from Dr. Weissbluth. (Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child is our bible.)   On Friday morning, Alastair was working and I was home with the girls, and I'm not quite sure what possessed me -- The balmy spring weather? The promise of morning trips to the zoo? Sheer derring-do? -- but I decided to see what would happen if I didn't put them down for their morning nap.   I expected a total meltdown, especially from Miss Elsa, who generally turns into a cranky, eye-rubbing, whiny little...something...at around 9:30. And that did start to happen, but I promptly took the girls outside, and we played with the $1.99 drugstore balls I'd bought for them the other day -- you know, the same kind you had as a kid: marbled with various colors, kept in a big, cage-like container at the store. This outdoor play seemed to give the girls a second wind. Then we did some mega-lego construction, watched a little Sesame Street (sue me), and had an early lunch. I put them down for a nap at about 12:15, and they slept for almost two hours. Not too shabby! We put them to bed a little early in the evening, and that seemed to work out fine. For three days now, they've been on just one nap.   The key seems to be keeping them (and us) occupied in the morning. So, on Saturday morning we went out with them to buy some gardening supplies (the Home Depot is a wonderland of excitement!) And today -- drumroll, please -- we went to church. Something that we hope to continue doing fairly regularly, until the girls rebel and become Orthodox Jews or Baptists or something. Why would that be rebellion, you ask? Well, it's a Unitarian Universalist church. Pretty liberal, pretty crunchy. But it reflects our values, and -- we hope -- will give the girls some grounding in the Judeo-Christian tradition whence they came, while also introducing them to other faiths. Having gone to church (Congregational) throughout all of my childhood and adolescence with my family, I also really value the community that a church (or synagogue, etc.) represents.   I can't believe I'm saying this. For stretches in my life, I hated going to church. But here I am, a parent, glad in retrospect that I had the experience. Along with piano lessons and not being allowed to eat sugared cereal.   Anyway, we first checked out this particular church on Christmas Eve, 2006, when I was great with child(ren). Then we went a couple of times when the girls were very small, and content to be held or nursed throughout the service. But since then, their nap schedule -- and our Draconian insistence on sticking to it -- has precluded the possibility. Until today.   We were planning to keep the girls with us during the service (ha!), but a nice church lady told us that there was, in fact, childcare at the annex across the street. We had assumed it was for older kids, but lo and behold, there was a nursery room full of age-appropriate toys, several small children/toddlers, and nice, responsible teenagers to look after them. We've  never left the girls on their own before except with their regular sitters (in our home) or their grandparents. I feared that Clio would have a meltdown when we left. But she did just fine. In fact, she apparently did some dancing. And both of them ate a LOT of goldfish crackers. (No surprise there.) Meanwhile, we got to sit and enjoy the service. Though it pained me a little to leave them -- Clio, especially -- I also think it was probably good for them. And us.    Don't get me wrong -- we will miss the morning nap. Alastair moreso than me -- he's home with the girls four mornings a week when I'm at work. That nap was a nice little reprieve; a time to enjoy a cup of coffee and a magazine, catch up on email, or just catch a little more sleep. But as today demonstrated, there are upsides to the one-nap-a-day regimen.   Full disclosure: the girls didn't sleep very well this afternoon after lunch. In fact, I'm not sure Clio got more than 15 or 20 minutes. It wasn't pretty. But I'm hoping that once they get used to this new routine, they'll start taking a nice, healthy two-ish hour nap on a regular basis. I have faith. (See what going to church once a year will do for a person?) Posted Apr 20 2008, 09:22 PM by Roper with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: sleep patterns, twins, church ladies, Dropping a nap

• My Bookish Babe

  I have always been a bibliophile. Not only do I enjoy reading books, I enjoy looking at and holding and smelling them. If it were socially acceptable, I would probably lick them. When I was a kid, I used to build little dens and forts in closets and nooks for the express purpose of crawling inside and reading. When we got a clubhouse for our backyard and started a club for neighborhood kids, the first thing I did -- after appointing myself president and writing the club handbook and anthem, naturally -- was set up a lending library. A long-held dream of mine is to one day have an office with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and one of those sliding ladder thingies. And given the choice between going to a movie, watching TV or curling up in a comfy chair with a good book -- well, you get the point.   So, how psyched am I that Clio is suddenly obsessed with books? Quite! She is constantly thrusting them at me, demanding that I read them to her, eager to point out everything that she recognizes. If she sees a bird or butterfly, she'll do the fluttering hands sign for butterfly. An elephant gets our own made-up sign for elephant: arm as trunk, and a sort of trumpeting sound. Horses get bronx cheers (close enough), and cows get "mmm."  Mouths (ma), eyes (ah), shoes (shz), cats (ba), fish (shh) and babies (dieh dieh) also get mentions. If she doesn't know the word, sign, or sound for something and wants to know, she'll point at it and say "da da!" and I'll tell her. It's like she suddenly *gets* this notion of words being connected to things, and is desperate to learn them all.   I've always read to the girls before bed, once they're in their cribs. Lately, Clio has been demanding to have her own book, too. The only trouble is, she's very picky. She reaches out toward the bookshelves making that terrible grunting "I need!" sound that toddlers (mine, anyway) are wont to do (ieeeh! ieeeh! ieehh!) and I bring her book after book. She pushes them away, one after another, until I hit on the right thing: The Very Hungry Caterpillar? No, no, too predictable. Noah's Ark? Religious propaganda! Hop on Pop? Don't insult me. Touch and Feel Farm Animals? Touch and feel this!   Eventually, something will strike the right chord. The Rainbow Fish? Hmm....yes, that looks interesting. Let me read the back cover blurbs and the author bio. Hm. Yes, all right. I'll give it a try. If The Guardian liked it, I suppose it can't be too bad... And then she'll plop down on her butt in her crib and read, sometimes with the book right-side up, sometimes not. For the past week, I've left her with a book in her crib to fall asleep with after saying good night. (And several times I've had to go in an hour later and remove said book because she is lying on it, uncomfortable and crying.)   Alastair thinks I'm being too accomodating by bringing her all these books until she finds one she likes. He suggested I just offer her two or three and let her choose one.  Yeah. Well. I tried that tonight, and she handily, annoyedly rejected them all and resumed grunting and reaching (ieeh! ieeh! ieeh!) until I brought more. A book from the second round, Baby Kittens, held her attention for a while, but then when I attempted to read some nice, imperialist poems aloud from A Child's Garden of Verses while she looked at her kittens, Clio decided that that was the book she had to have. So I scooped both her and Elsa out of their cribs, held them in my lap (something they're very into lately, to my extreme delight) and started reading them "My bed is a boat." I got about three iambic pentametric lines into it before Clio was crawling across the room looking for something with more farm animals in it.   I don't blame her -- in fact, I commend her -- for being picky. I'm the same way; when I'm looking for a new book to read, I'll often flip through a bunch of them before I hit on one that feels right. And it doesn't always work out. I don't feel compelled to finish books just for the sake of finishing them anymore. There are too many great books out there, and too little time.    I love that Clio wants to read, but not just any old thing. She's a nerd after my own heart.   Posted Apr 16 2008, 07:18 PM by Roper with | with 12 comment(s) Filed under: twins, I am powerless, children's books, Robert Louis Stevenson, reading to toddlers

• Salon de Bebe

  Now that the girls have got some serious hair on their heads -- well, Elsa does, anyway -- we're faced with what to do about it: long, luscious locks or pert, sassy bobs? Clips and elastics or wild style? Naturally luminous color or playful highlights and sultry lowlights? (Just kidding!)   Elsa's got significantly more hair at this point, and I've pretty much decided (me being self-appointed style consultant for my daughters, God help them) that we're going to grow Elsa's bangs out. She appears to have inherited my hair, which is thick and grows fast, as well as my somewhat low forehead, so I'm thinking this is the right look for her. And more importantly, easier for us to manage. She's getting better at actually keeping barettes in her hair when we put them in, instead of immediately pulling them out. The trick is not to make a big deal of it. So, please, if you ever see Elsa in person, don't say "Oooh! Look at your pretty barette!" because she'll remember it's there and take it out. Just be cool. Be like "hey, nice shizz." Or whatever.   Really, you think it looks good?      OK, I'm convinced -- I love this look!    Clio's hair is finer (like her Dad's) and doesn't seem to be coming in as quickly or growing as fast, especially on top. She's got a bit of a mullet going on, which I plan to remedy soon. But we think she can really rock the bangs look, so we're gonna go with that. Also, she has no patience for barettes. More specifically, she likes having a barette put in -- whenever Elsa's got one, she has to have one, too -- but she immediately takes it out, then hands it to me to put back in again. I'll do this about three times before we say "bye bye" to the barette. And then I just have to hope she won't go and pull Elsa's barette out.   I've got to get this thing off my head...   Do it again, mom!   Elsa, who increasingly seems to think of Clio as her own life-sized doll, also thinks it's fun to attempt to style Clio's hair. Clio isn't so into it. (There was crying shortly after this picture was taken.)     Oh, and if you're salivating over Clio's adorable corduroy overalls, I'm sorry to say that this fashion statement can no longer be made. This outfit also came from my mother's attic stash; my little brother wore them, circa 1978 (with a bowl cut, natch).   Posted Apr 13 2008, 07:48 PM by Roper with | with 11 comment(s) Filed under: twins, The seventies, Hair styles, Ooh la la Sassoon

• My Daughter, Myself

  One of my big fears when I found out that I was pregnant with twins was that I would love one more than the other. This has certainly not turned out to be the case. I love both Elsa and Clio to an equal, insanely powerful degree. What I didn't anticipate, however, was how differently I would love them. In fact, I don't know that I really realized before they came along how individualized the nature of love is. But it makes all the sense in the world. Every person is unique, so how could the love you feel for them not be unique, too?   But I have now violated my own rule against using the word "love" more than three times in a single paragraph, and must move on to the primary subject of this post: my relationship with Elsa   One of the things I'm very aware of in my love for Madame Elsa is a sense of recognition. That is, I see a lot of myself in her. Who knows what it is, exactly? We have the same blood type, hair and eye color; the same chubby cheeks. My parents see a resemblance between her and their memories of me at her age. But it goes beyond the physical. Mostly, I just feel the resemblance between us -- this sense that we are cut from the same cloth; that we approach the world in simliar ways. And as much as this sense of kindred spirits delights me, it also scares the crapola out of me.   What does it mean, to have this flesh of my flesh, soul of my soul in the world? I see the possibility of a deep and abiding friendship; a kind of connection that I've never had with another person. On the other hand, I see the potential for great battles and clashes of will. We may end up like magnets with our matched (stubborn! passionate! self-absorbed!) poles facing, pushing each other away.    It's impossible to predict, and I certainly don't want to get myself into a whole head trip about how alike or different we are, or how we'll relate in the future. Lord knows I don't think of Elsa as a "mini-me" -- or want to. But I can't help the fact that sometimes, when I look at her, I feel like I'm looking at the child I used to be. It's scary.   This is me, circa early 1976, just shy of two years old. (Please note the insane 70s wallpaper, the patriotic '76 bicentennial brochure, and the smiley face pin on the bulletin board.) I see a little of both Clio and Elsa in me in this pic, actually.     And here's me with Elsa at my parents' house this past weekend. The groovy outfit Elsa is wearing is one that I wore when I  was about her age -- my mom kept it in storage all these years. I don't know if anyone else will see a resemblance between us (either when I was a toddler or now) but I do.      And as long as I'm posting family photos, here's another one from the weekend, of my mom (who people have always said I resemble, which I take as a great compliment) with the girls. What Crazy Clio is doing in this picture pretty much sums how and why I adore her in such a joyful and doting and unexpected way -- equally powerful and primal but completely different from the way I love Elsa. But that's a subject for another day.     Posted Apr 09 2008, 10:20 PM by Roper with | with 8 comment(s) Filed under: twins, The seventies, Polyester, Narcissism, Family Resemblance

• Baby Gym Rats

  On Friday afternoon, the girls and I went to Together in Motion, a very cool indoor kids' play gym, along with my friend Christina and her one-year-old, Amelia. It was the perfect rainy day adventure. (And no shizz are allowed, let alone required!) Elsa was so excited that at first she just ran around on the mats yelling with throaty glee and waving her arms. Then she declared herself queen of a small structure some parent had built, where she discovered the fun of sliding down the mat -- and the frustration of attempting to climb back up.     She also did some great tower building and demolition:     Clio was very much into the balls of all sizes scattered around:       She also enjoyed playing "stack and destroy." Mostly the "destroy" part.     When we first arrived, there were only a few other kids, most of them the girls' age or just a little older. But it got more crowded, and some bigger kids showed up, which made it tougher for Christina and me to just sit back and yap while our kiddos ran amok. Not that you can ever really have quality conversation with your friends when you're doing the play date thing: "So, what do you think of---Oh! Look! Yes! You have a ball! That's good!---Sorry, you were saying?---No, honey, you have to be gentle with the little boy, gentle!-- Sorry, I really am listening. You were saying before that you think Obama -- Don't put that in your mouth! Yucky!"   And so on. Honestly, I find it a little stressful. I've never been good at social multi-tasking. I can barely manage a conversation with someone while I'm driving, let alone while trying to keep an eye on two toddlers. Plus, I always worry that I don't pay enough attention to my friends' children (usually just one of them) because I'm too busy trying to keep up with both of mine. So to any of my gal pals with kids who may be reading this: I'm sorry I'm a lousy play date. It's not you, it's me. I want to keep dating, but let's also make sure to go out on our own for a drink sometime, K?   In a public place like Together in Motion, there's also the challenge of trying to figure out how / how much to interact with other parents. The obligatory small talk sort of reminds me of freshman orientation at college. Then, it was What's your name / Where are you from / What dorm are you in / Do you know what you're going to major in / Awkward Silence / Drink some more.  Now, it's How old is she/he, What's his/her name, She/He is so cute / Thank you / Where do you guys live? / Awkward Silence / Cheerios, anyone?   And I still have no idea what the proper protocol is for dealing with other parents when it comes to intra-kid refereeing. Example: At one point, Clio was sitting playing in an area where a couple of older boys, four or five years old, decided to start building something. They kept barelling obliviously past her, wielding giant, vinyl-covered pieces of foam, missing her head by mere inches. Their mother was very much aware of this, and told them repeatedly to please be careful, look out for the little girl, etc., which I appreciated. But since Clio would be equally happy playing elsewhere I scooped her up and said to the other mom, with a smile, "It's OK, we can just go play somewhere else."   And then the mom--who was probably only a couple of years older than me, if not the same age--said, with what I think might be described as a "wan" smile, "Well, they also need to learn to be careful. It's something you'll find out."   Oh, well gosh, Madame Veteran Super Mom, I'm so sorry for disrupting your important parental lesson. I really should have been more considerate and left my diminutive 15-month old child there to get trampled on by your sons, for the sake of their social development. Forgive me. I'm just so new at this.   Ah, well. Maybe I read the situation all wrong. Maybe I just looked so clear-eyed and youthful that she assumed I was a 19-year-old au pair, and that was why it was OK to talk down to me. Yes. That must have been it.       Posted Apr 06 2008, 04:07 PM by Roper with | with 14 comment(s) Filed under: twins, play dates, condescending parents

• Slumber party

  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.   Posted Mar 23 2008, 09:51 PM by Roper with | with 13 comment(s) Filed under: twins, sleeping through the night, traveling with twins, gloating, newborns

• R.I.P. Morning Nap

  Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to say farewell to a dear friend: the two to three hour nap that Elsa and Clio have taken each morning for the last eight months.   I think we can all agree, it was a good nap. A merciful nap. The kind of nap that allowed us to go back to bed and get a little more sleep, if we so chose. The kind of nap which is in part responsible for the fact that I've manage to write almost an entire second draft of a novel since the girls were born. The sort of nap that was always there for us, whether we needed to catch up on email or do household chores or even just enjoy a nice cup of coffee and a magazine in peace. We knew that the morning nap -- unlike the less predictable, much shorter afternoon one -- would never let us down, and we were grateful for it.   But for everything, there is a season. And the season of the morning nap has now passed. Though we tried in vain to make it linger, we realized -- as we always realize -- that we are powerless in the face of two wide-awake babies who will have none of it. Babies who will fling their pacifiers out of the crib and scream bloody murder until mommy, who was supposed to get to sleep in today and would have made some different choices last night had she known she couldn't, has to drag her tired butt out of bed and hang out with them for the next three hours. To everything, turn, turn, turn, etc.   Of course, this cloud does have a silver lining: the girls seem to be sleeping later in the mornings these days, until the humane hour of seven, even seven-thirty. And, with hope, they will take a nice long early afternoon nap, which we will love and embrace and accept just as we did the morning nap. It won't be the same, but we will survive. We will go on.   Good bye, morning nap. You will be missed.   Places to go, people to see, nap shnap. (Author's note: they insist on wearing these absurd hats all the time. Who are we to stop them? Again, powerless.)   Posted Feb 10 2008, 12:30 PM by Roper with | with 10 comment(s) Filed under: Ridiculous hats, twins, eulogies, Dropping a nap

• Did you have a good time?

  (An interview with myself)   I caught up with myself during the Super Bowl halftime show for a brief interview to discuss my recent trip to New York -- my first time away on my own since the babies were born. I was dressed in jeans and a rumpled gray, faux-wrap sweater, and apologized for being so tired -- I'd driven up from New York that afternoon, and had drunk a little too much and not eaten  quite enough over the previous few days. After exchanging pleasantries and making chit-chat about the halftime show (could that moving neon guitar headed for the neon heart have looked any more...er...obscene? Who are those cheesy 'groupies' in the concert audience? Are they paid actors?) we got down to business.   Me: So, me, what was it like to be away from your babies for the first time?   Me, Also: You know, it was actually really great. It's not that I didn't miss them; I definitely did. But it felt really good to be on my own for a little while, just thinking about writing and my career, seeing friends, not having to think about taking care of anyone or anything. It was nice to reconnect with this part of myself I hadn't gotten to spend time with for a while, with no agenda or expectations. And, of course, I was in New York City, which kicks ass. Honestly, I was kind of giddy the whole time. Even mundane things -- sleeping until 8:30 a.m., walking down the street alone, poking into shops, buying a hot dog from a vendor on the street -- felt like a big adventure.   Me: It sounds like you didn't really *suffer* at all. Or feel guilty. Or wish you'd stayed home. What kind of mother does that make you, Jane?   M.A.:  A happy, well-balanced one?   Me:  Right. That's very post-post-feminist of you. Very empowered, or something. Anyway. What were some of the highlights of the trip?   M.A.: Gosh, me, there were so many. I visited the Babble.com headquarters and saw Ada and Gwynne, the editors, which was really nice. I went to a reading and book release party for a guy named Toby Barlow who wrote a novel in blank verse about werewolves in L.A. called Sharp Teeth. At the conference, I saw some wonderful writers speak and read. I saw old friends, met new ones, and even got to hang out and shoot the shit with (gulp!) Russell Banks. I went to MOMA, which was amazing. I can't believe I'd never gone before; it was incredible to see so many great, celebrated works of art in one place, up close. Like Jasper Johns's [sic] American flag: I'd seen pictures of it, but it's not the same as seeing it live. Did you know there's all this newspaper gessoed onto the canvas? It has so much texture. You can't just can't see that in a photograph.   Me: Um, right. That's really interesting. But I don't hear you talking about Elsa and Clio. Weren't you thinking about them at all?   M.A.: Sure. I was thinking about how much I want to bring them to museums and talk with them about art when they're older. I bought them a book -- "Andy Warhol's Colors"  -- in the gift shop. I saw a mom and her 2-year-old twins and talked to her and told her how much I missed my kids, and how nice it was to see her there with hers.   Me: And then what? You went back to your hotel room and looked at pictures of the babies and called Alastair and sobbed quietly into your pillow?   M.A.: Um, well, actually, no. I went to my room and changed, did my hair, went down to the hotel bar and had a drink and talked with some people I knew from my MFA program, then went with a friend to a bar downtown called the Crocodile Lounge, where you get a free pizza with every drink you buy. (Sweet!) Then we went back to the hotel and went to a dance party. And then, feeling socialized-out, I went back to my room and read for a while, then went to bed.   Me: That sounds really selfish. I mean, nice.   M.A.: You know, I didn't have to agree to do this interview. I could be watching the game. Not that I give a shit about football, but it is the Patriots. And I work in advertising, so I should be paying attention to the commercials. But instead, here I am giving you my time and you're passively-aggressively asking me to justify myself---   Me:  No, you're right. You're totally right. I'm sorry. It's just that -- well, I haven't done a lot of interviews, and I guess I'm kind of nervous. I'm sorry.   M.A.: Well, thank you for that. I appreciate it. (Awkward pause.) Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?   Me: No, no. Oh--wait. Well, yes, actually: just one more thing. What was it like to come home to the girls and Alastair?   M.A.: It was even better than the trip.   Me: Which is saying a lot, isn't it?   M.A.: Yes. Exactly.   Me: I feel like we really understand each other. Like we really connect, you know?   M.A.: Now you're pushing it.   Posted Feb 03 2008, 08:10 PM by Roper with | with 9 comment(s) Filed under: twins, self-centeredness, separation anxiety, writing, New York, Jasper Johns

• Walk this way

  Wow -- my second Aerosmith reference in two weeks. My true colors (leopard print and turquoise, that is) are really starting to show, eh? Well, as the boys from Boston said, you ain't seen nothin' till you're down on...um...on the floor, watching your kids take their first steps. Which we've been doing a lot of lately. And yes -- that's right, kids, plural. Inspired by her big sister, Clio has started walking a little, too. She's a bit more tentative, but she sure is having fun.   The timing for this couldn't be better. Alastair is headed off to the UK for a week tomorrow, and I'm headed to NYC for AWP the week after that. (The first time I will be away from the girls for more than 10 hours!! More on that later...) Both of us were worried that we'd miss the big ambulatory moment(s), so it's nice that they've already happened. And it's also nice that it's not really one moment, as legend (and TV commercials) would have you believe. At least for our kiddos, this walking thing -- like everything else -- seems to be incremental. There have been first steps, and now there's occasional, sort-of-walking. At some point, walking will presumably overtake crawling as the preferred means of locomotion, but we're not there yet.   The coolest part of all of this is how much fun the girls appear to be having with their new accomplishment. They seem quite aware that they're venturing into new territory, and quite pleased with themselves as a result. It's a hoot. So, if you need a toddling baby fix (and who doesn't?) here's a highlight reel of a recent walking-fest in our kitchen on Friday night before bedtime. (With apologies to Arthur, who we're totally copying by posting this.)   As you view our less-than-spotless kitchen floor, ask yourselves -- as we often do -- at what point do Cheerios cease to become food and become, instead, dirt? If you know the answer then, surely, you are on the path to enlightenment.     Posted Jan 20 2008, 08:44 PM by Roper with | with 15 comment(s) Filed under: Milestones, Zen masters, twins, first steps, youtube

• They like me. They really like me.

  So, picture this: it's a weekday morning in the Baby Squared household. I am upstairs getting ready for work, trying to find pants that won't fall off my flat-and-deflated-by-nursing-ass* and a top that will fit over my inflated-by-nursing boobs** that actually somewhat go together. Alastair, meanwhile, is downstairs in the kitchen making coffee and doing last night's dinner dishes, listening to NPR. Elsa and Clio play contentedly nearby, stacking mega legos and eating Cheerios and trying to crawl into the dishwasher. They are happy. They are calm. When I approach, they smile at me. "Hello, mommy," they seem to say. "Welcome to the kitchen of domestic bliss! We're so glad you're here. And how lovely you look! Come, nourish yourself, and bask in the light of our smiles before you head off to your daily toil!"   Now, picture this: It's five minutes later. Alastair is sitting at one end of the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee, scoffing at the Muzzy brochure I've forced him to read, cracking wise: "Oh, big deal, your kid can count to ten in French. You need a $300 set of DVDs to teach her that?"   Meanwhile, I'm on the other side of the table, trying to eat my breakfast while two small babies are grabbing onto my legs and/or lifting their hands to be picked up and whimpering pitifully, tears and all. So, I pick up one baby and put her on my lap for a little while, at the same time trying to talk to the other baby, eat my cereal left-handed, and move aside objects that the baby on my lap is trying to grab (coffee, cereal bowl, a New Yorker from last June, etc.) Then, when that baby seems content, I put her down and pick up the other one, which causes the recently dumped baby to start whimpering again, of course. After a few more minutes of this, I try to get them both to stand and look out the window at the snow and the birdies -- something they occasionally seem to enjoy -- which works for about 12 seconds (1.5 bites of cereal) until they're both clinging and whining to be picked up again. And occasionally bumping their heads on the kitchen table, which is exactly as tall as they are, which gets them even more upset and more in need of mama love.   Alastair (who, meanwhile, has managed to eat his breakfast, refill his coffee and read an entire thirty-seven-thousand-page article on Eliot Spitzer in his New Yorker ) looks up at me, smirks, and says "Ha ha."   See, they don't do this to him. And when I'm around, they (usually) won't settle for him as a substitute. This new cling-fest is almost completely mommy-focused. It doesn't just happen in the mornings, either. When I'm alone with the girls for any stretch of time lately it's "Pick me up! Pick me up! Hold me! Love me!"  On the one hand, it's quite sweet and flattering. On the other hand, it means that I have to focus my full attention on them all the time. No more playing for a little while, then puttering a little -- doing dishes, checking email, etc -- while they play on their own or together, then playing with one baby, then the other, then puttering a little more. No sirree bob. The past few days, it's been all about them, them, them. I mean, what the hell? It's like they think they're the center of the universe or something!   It would be easier to deal with if it were just one baby. But they seem to set each other off. When Clio gets clingy, Elsa seems to think: Hey! I've got needs, you know! and she starts in, too. It's a logistical impossibility. Picking them both up at the same time, while do-able, is not easy, and is arguably dangerous. (Hercules, the legs! Lift with the legs!)     I can fit both of them on my lap at once, when sitting on the floor, but just barely. In a chair -- like at breakfast -- forget it. And Clio often won't settle for mere lap-sitting, or sitting in front of me on the floor. Her big thing right now is being picked up and carried around so she can point at various objects and say "da."   I don't always give in to the girls' pleas to be up in my lap or arms. Otherwise, I'd be holding a baby all the time. And while I know that in some cultures this is the norm....well, it ain't my culture. (And again -- two babies.) Sometimes after a little bit of kvetching, they end up being fine just playing with me or with each other. But other times a.) it's just easier to give in, or b.) it's so sweet I can't help myself, dammit. Because, after all, there will come a time when they'll be embarrassed even to be seen driving in the same car with me, right? So, how bad can it be to be desperately wanted by them now? Not that bad, I guess. Just a wee bit tiring.   *This is not a good thing, I assure you. **This most certainly is   Posted Jan 16 2008, 07:45 PM by Roper with | with 16 comment(s) Filed under: twins, The New Yorker, Bill Murray, whining, breakfast, clinginess

• And the winner is...

  I know a lot of you were rooting for the underdog -- we were, too -- but it looks like Elsa is going to be the big winner in the Ultimate Walking Challenge. On Wednesday, she suddenly started being able to stand unsupported, and on Thursday, she apparently took a few steps for Jean, our sitter. On Friday, on several occasions, she took three, four, sometimes even five steps toward us, smiling all the while, obviously excited by this new adventure. There were, of course, three times as many failed attempts, where her bottom half couldn't quite keep up with her top half. (Hot tip to would-be walkers: don't forget to move your legs!)   As exciting as it is, each time we've watched Elsa walk -- sitting there smiling and encouraging and reaching out our arms for her -- I can't help feeling a pang of guilt, knowing that Clio is being temporarily ignored. Not that she seems to care in the least. The first time, she clapped and grinned right along with Elsa and the rest of us. It's lovely the way they both seem to take vicarious pleasure in each other's happiness rather than get jealous.   Still, I find myself trying to "even things out" by turning my attention to Clio after it's been on Elsa for a little while; to praise her and play with her and encourage her to try walking, too. (I don't think she's far from it; she's great at standing on her own, and even better than Elsa at squatting down.) I have this fear that at some point she's going to start developing a complex about Elsa always being a step (ha) ahead. But maybe that's just the overachiever in me, projecting. Maybe, in fact, Clio will be happy to hang back and do her own thing while Elsa blazes ahead: You want to start coloring inside the lines, big sis? Hey, that's cool; I prefer to keep things experimental. You want to get your driver's license the day you turn sixteen? Sweet -- you can give me rides.   It's insane how early you can feel these dynamics creeping in. As hard as I try not to pigeonhole or project, I can't help wondering: twenty years from now, after they've taken psych 101 and maybe a creative writing course or two, are they going to come back and accuse me of irreperably messing them up or unfairly shaping their destinies because of how I perceived them and, hence, treated them as infants/toddlers? They'll have this blog for evidence, too! Shit! (Of course, that's a whole other conversation: the revenge of the blogged babies.)   All I know is, it's impossible to treat two babies exactly the same way, because they're two completely different people. And although I love them in equal measure, I love them completely differently -- something I never could have fully grasped before I had them. I just hope that the separate but equal (whoever thought that could be a good thing?) intensity of my love will come through to them, always.     Posted Jan 12 2008, 08:01 PM by Roper with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Milestones, twins, walking, Brown vs. the Board of Education, love

• Mommy don't play that.

  Clio is suddenly very much into the dropping game. You know the one: where baby drops (or flings, in Clio's case) a toy or pacifier or cup out of the crib or stroller or highchair, then cries for an adult to pick it up and give it back so she can do it again. And again. And again.    Um...can I opt out? Just not give the dropped object back more than once, so that maybe she'll learn that if she drops something on purpose, then that's it -- it's gone; mommy is not a golden retriever? Is she too young to learn that type of "lesson"? Or is there some hidden developmental or emotional benefit to this particular activity that I would be depriving her of?    Don't get me wrong. I'm happy to play all manner of give-the-toy-take-the-toy (thank you!) games in the context of play. But when it's mealtime and she's repeatedly tossing her cup onto the floor, or naptime and she keeps chucking her pacifier out of her crib (or into Elsa's), or if it's a situation like the other day when we were out at a store and she kept flinging her stuffed turtle out of the stroller then crying to have it back, then flinging it again with a big grin, it's not so amusing. At least, not after the second or third fling. Admittedly, it's tough not to laugh the first couple of times a baby chucks a stuffed turtle. Turtles being inherently funny. In that case, I actually did stop giving the turtle (tee hee) back to her after a few times, let her cry a little, then managed to distract her by making funny faces or monkey-like gestures or something. When I gave the turtle to her again a little later, she held onto it. So maybe she is capable of learning that throwing things is not cool. And maybe if I'm consistent about not "playing," and can resist laughing (which no doubt encourages her) we can move onto some other game -- one that doesn't reinforce the idea that what baby casts away, mommy shall re-deliver. (Boggle, maybe?)   Writing this, I'm reminded of when I used to babysit for a friend's son when we were in grad school, and would totally play the dropping game with him for long stretches of time after he woke up from his naps. He was a little older than my girls are now, and loved to drop stuffed animals out of his crib for me to throw back in. Hell, it was fun, it passed the time, I didn't have to worry that I was reinforcing a behavior that, in other contexts, is completely exasperating. Gally, if you're reading this: sorry!   If this toy car were smaller, and I weren't sitting on it, I'd throw it!    Posted Jan 10 2008, 09:27 AM by Roper with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: twins, The dropping game, turtles

• One year!

  Exactly one year ago today, as I write this, I had just given birth to our two baby girls, and was holding a very slimy, Vernix-y little Clio in my arms. Elsa, who'd had a bit of a rough time getting out, was in the TCU getting a little TLC, so she'd join us a bit later. (Anyone--I'm thinking expectant twin moms in particular--who's curious to read the whole birth story can check out my old personal blog.) It was easily the strangest and most surreal thing I've ever experienced -- with the possible exception of "Smurfs on Ice," circa 1984 -- to suddenly have these two tiny little creatures who were (gasp!) my children. This is what they looked like:   Elsa yawning/sleeping below, Clio quite awake up top, just like in the womb...   They didn't feel like mine. I didn't feel instantly like a mother, nor did I fall instantly in love with them. I wish more people talked about the fact that bonding with your children isn't necessarily an immediate thing (as Oz does, in an excellent recent post). It's a relationship, like any other. It grows. And grows and grows and grows. Now, I love them so much I think I would literally, physically kill anyone who tried to do them harm. And I'm generally not a big fan of killing people. But enough talk of death. This is a birthday! Time for fun! So, how about a funny picture? Like, one in which the girls' binkies -- about 2 inches across -- look like dinner plates because the girls are so small! (Just over 5 pounds at birth, if you're curious.)     Amazing how much growing and changing and maturing happens in the first year. (And that goes for me, too.) Part of me feels like, yes, the time flew by. It seems like just yesterday they were nursing every 3 hours for 45 minutes at a time (aye ay ay) and wearing preemie diapers and sucking on binkies the size of dinner plates. On the other hand, it feels like it's taken exactly as long as it should have. Maybe it's because this past year, I have felt more present and centered and living-in-the-moment than at any other time in my life. With babies in the picture, you don't really have a choice. You just do and do and do. And while you may not love every minute of it, the overall, backdrop feeling (for me, anyway) is one of great satisfaction and joy. In fact, I'm so damned happy that I'm willing to post a picture of myself 48 hours post-partum, looking fat and tired and terrible, on the World Wide Web for everyone to see:       On a slightly different note, here's a birthday-related question that I've been thinking about lately: how will the girls react in a few years when they find out (because they presumably will ask) who was born first? Will Elsa lord it over Clio that she's nine minutes older? She already seems like the "big sister" in many ways, blazing trails and whatnot, but maybe we're projecting. Likewise, I have a tendency to think of Clio as the "baby."  But she is smaller. I've heard of some parents not telling their twins what order they were born in, but that seems like a bit much. Especially if you're trying to help them develop a sense of individual identity.   Besides, it's right there in our girls' baby books and embroidered on the gift baby blankets in their cribs. Once they can read, they'll figure it out. Should we keep them in the dark until then? I don't know enough about the ways of the toddler mind to know what's best, but my instinct is to be honest. Then again, it might also be fun to keep changing it around, just to mess with them. Elsa could be all "Mommy, I should get to pick what game we play 'cuz I'm older!" and I'll say, "Did I tell you you were older? I'm sorry. I must have been confused. Clio was born first." And Clio will be all, "Yeah, step off bitch, you my bitch now!" and Elsa will be all, "Oh no you di'in't just disrespect me!" And I'll be all, "Stop talking like gangsta babies!" And they'll be all, "Bitch, go get us some apple juice."   I can't wait!   Big birthday party tomorrow at our place. Pony rides, clowns, juggling bears, ice sculptures, the works -- you're all invited. But please be advised, it's B.Y.O.P/C/JB/IS/etc. We will, however, provide the cake. And two awesome one-year-old girls.   Posted Dec 28 2007, 09:46 AM by Roper with | with 12 comment(s) Filed under: twins, smurfs on ice, birth story, birth order, first birthdays

• A Very Baby Christmas

  As I've mentioned, I'm a big fan of Christmas. Commercialism aside, there really is something magical about the season to me, which I guess goes all the way back to childhood. We did the whole nine yards when I was growing up: cutting down our own tree, making tons of Christmas cookies, hanging stockings by the chimney with care, etc. But during the past ten or fifteen years--that long, carefree stretch of young adulthood--the holidays were always kind of disappointing. Still enjoyable enough, sure. But something was missing.   Then last Christmas was just strange. I was 36-1/2 weeks pregnant, gigantic and incredibly uncomfortable. (Aching pelvis, aching back, swollen feet, horrible heartburn, braxton hicks contractions.) I was too exhausted to go to any Christmas parties. Not to mention the fact that I had exactly two pairs of pants and two pilly maternity sweaters that fit me, and was sporting seven chins.  We couldn't leave town, in case I went into labor, and didn't particularly feel like entertaining, either, so we had a quiet little Christmas at home, just the two of us, bored out of our skulls, waiting for it to become the four of us.   And this year, it is. Not coincidentally, I've felt more Christmas-y this season than I have in a long time. The snow certainly helps (we've gotten dumped on three times here in Boston), but I think it's mostly the babies' doing. It's funny; they're not even old enough to be conscious of Christmas, or understand the concept of a gift, or get into the whole Santa thing. (They did, incidentally, have their first Santa encounter last week, when "Santa" visited my workplace. They were totally unimpressed.) And yet, something about having them in our life has put the shimmer back on Christmas. I guess what it really comes down to is that thanks to these two little buggers, I'm happier than I've been in years. Maybe happier than I've ever been.   More importantly, for the first time in my life, I understand the value of singing, animatronic decorations:       Happy Holidays, Babblers. Catch you on the 28th -- Elsa and Clio's first birthday.   Posted Dec 23 2007, 09:31 AM by Roper with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: twins, nostalgia, dancing babies, holidays, baby's first Christmas

• Off-Crib Betting, Anyone?

  I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner. We've got two babies, both striving for the same developmental milestones. We never know who's going to be first to achieve the next one. They're both raised in the same conditions, the same environment. It's one big experiment in nature vs. nurture. So, why not make it a little more interesting, if you catch my drift?   I won't participate, of course, because it would just be wrong for a mother to bet on her own children. The last thing I want is to be known as the Pete Rose of the mommy blogging set. But as disinterested (and perhaps slightly interested?) bystanders, you can get in on the game.    Ever since they've been pulling up -- starting back in September for Elsa -- people have been saying they'll be walking "any day now." I think they've still got at least a month to go, personally. But who knows. Sometimes developmental progress happens in fits and starts. But the question remains: which twin has the Toni? And by Toni I mean not a bad at-home perm from the 1950s, but the will, the determination, the get-up-and-go to do that which separates man from meerkat: WALK! On two legs. (Meerkats can't do that, can they?)   Before you make your prediction, please take a moment to get to know the contenders, and consider their respective strengths:     On the right: Elsa "Give 'em Hell-sa" Margaret Moock Eyes: Blue Hair: Sedona Dusk  Body Type: Tall and sturdy. Interests: Nursing, bathing, cat food, Cheerios, peas, puttting blocks into a bucket, climbing stairs, squealing, whacking her sister on the head in glee, postmodernism   History: Elsa has traditionally been the more advanced of the Baby Squared twins when it comes to gross motor skills. She rolled over first, sat up first, started crawling first (7 months) and started pulling up to standing first (8 months). She's a confident cruiser, and has lately been doing a lot of getting up on one knee as if to stand, but hasn't made the final push to independent verticality. She's also gotten much more interested in more sedentary things of late, like cuddling and pointing at pictures in books. So, does she have what it takes to go bipedal? No doubt. The question is, when?   On the left: Clio "O Sole Mio" Rose Moock Eyes: Hazel Hair: Calistoga Taupe Body Type: Compact and tightly coiled Interests: Drinking from a cup, sticking tongue out, putting fingers in people's mouths, giggling, Cheerios, bouncing, taking blocks out of a bucket, thrashing, ska, hedge funds   History: Clio has always done things at her own pace, unfazed by the gross motor skill progress of certain other babies and generally preferring to focus on social and verbal skills / bemused observation. But in the past couple of months, she's made great strides in the mobility department. In October, she went from getting up on all fours to zooming around like a little roadrunner within the space of two weeks. She was pulling up by early November. And -- get this -- in the past couple of weeks, she has started letting go once she's up and standing completely unsupported -- at times for as long as 15-20 seconds at a time. Sometimes while clapping, to boot! Clio just might be the dark horse entry in....   THE ULTIMATE WALKING CHALLENGE!!   So, my friends, who will be first to take their first steps? The intrepid Elsa?       Or the maverick Clio?     Mesdames et messieurs, les jeux sont faits!   Posted Dec 12 2007, 09:17 PM by Roper with | with 13 comment(s) Filed under: Milestones, twins, Pete Rose, first steps, questionable ethics, betting on your twins, gambling, walking

• I point, therefore I am

  Anybody who's anybody in the Baby Squared household knows that pointing is where it's at. Get your little index finger out there and aim it at your mother, your father, your sister, the cat, the couch, the wall, the inside of somebody's nostril....who needs a reason or a meaning, just point!   I wonder why this is a common developmental stage, this pointing thing? I suppose it's a form of communication: As in, "Look, I am indicating something." (My girls, at this point, don't seem to be pointing at things they want; they just point.) And at the same time, maybe it's a sign of developing self-awareness: As in, "I am aware that something exists outside of and distinct from my own self. Look! I'll point at it!" A third possibility is that it's just a by-product of improved small motor coordination (Hey! I can control these finger things!) that happens to get a good reaction from grown-ups.   Clio's favorite pointing maneuver is to do it E.T. style. She'll reach her finger out toward you, and if you touch your finger to it, she gets a big goofy grin on her face. (To match yours.) Another of her favorite things to do is point at your mouth. In this case, I recommend nibbling on her finger while making pretend "munch munch munch" sounds. Gets a laugh every time. The girl has always been into putting her hands in other people's mouths. Perhaps she'll be a dentist. Or a performance artist.   Elsa is a little more concrete with her pointing: she likes to point at pictures in books, and occasionally at the cat, while saying "dah!" But she'll sometimes play the the E.T. finger touching game with Clio. It's very sweet. (An aside: I think Clio is good at bringing out Elsa's sillier side. She's got her doing the head-tilting trick now, too. The two of them will sit in their high chairs side by side and tilt their heads onto their shoulders simultaneously, for no reason except that they seem to think it's cute. They're right!)   Anyway, maybe the next development in this point-fest will be the ability to point at actual objects to indicate need or desire. Like pointing to food or bottles or my breasts when they're hungry, or at a book when they want me to read to them, or at the door when they want to g