Baby Squared

Elsa did not have a nap yesterday. This doesn't happen very often, but every once in a while we miss the window, or there are extenuating circumstances, as was the case yesterday: Clio had had an extremely gruesome potty mishap, on account of not having pulled her tights down far enough before she began doing her business. The mishap itself didn't phase her in the least. But when I didn't let her go into her room with me afterward to get her a new pair of underwear, so as not to bother Elsa, who'd just gone down for her nap, she pitched an all-out, really loud tantrum, thus preventing Elsa from falling asleep at all. (Don't you just love it when your attempts to head off a bad situation end up bringing that bad situation on faster? Like in an episode of Three's Company?)

For the first hour or so, napless, Elsa was fine. But she began to deteriorate, fast. Soon, she was exhibiting all the classic symptoms of Elsa-without-a-nap Syndrome: Excessive whining, random acts of destruction (Lego castles demolished, fridge magets swept to the floor) and total disregard for the rules of sharing.

Pics after the jump!

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Talk about a provocative title, eh? But fear not -- this is not a post about abortion legislation (which I can't imagine how would really figure into one's parenting technique anyway).This is about giving your kids choices. Or not.

We've found that an extremely effective technique for manipulating -- er, managing -- the girls is giving them choices. Two, never three. And I'm not just talking strawberry vs. vanilla yogurt or milk vs. juice (although we do that sort of thing, too). I mean the day-to-day stuff that can end up being a headache:

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We're having one of those spells -- as we seem to have every once in a while -- where one of the girls is not sleeping well at night. It's Elsa this time. So forgive me if this post is a little bit groggy

First off, she's fighting bedtime. She doesn't want to sleep in her bed, she says she can't sleep, or, ten minutes after we put her to bed, she'll be at the door, yanking on it (it's got a childproof knob cover on it, which she can't maneuver, but this doesn't stop her from trying), and yelling "I'm all done sleepin'!" Of course she doesn't seem to have any trouble at all falling asleep if we put her in our bed, which we've resorted to a few times recently, moving her into our bed later.

I wonder if the fact that she still naps is part of the problem: she just isn't tired at 7:30, when non-napper Clio is eager to fall into bed (she even asks us to go to bed). But if Elsa doesn't have her midday nap, she pretty much falls apart by 4:00 pm. The girl lives hard. So it may be time to stagger the girls' bedtime, but this is tricky since they share a room.

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 Anyone have any advice for getting your kid to quit the binky / pacifier / whatever else you call it? In our house, it's "ga-ga," named for the weird sound Elsa used to make as a baby when she was sucking on it (more like "goy goy," actually, but as a gentile married to a Jewish man, I felt like it was directed at me, so we went with "ga-ga" instead). We used the things right from the get-go, when the girls were wee babes. We knew the risks -- dependency, buck teeth, etc. -- but basically said screw it, we're playing the twins card here.

However, since the girls were 18 months, we've restricted their ga-ga use to naptime, bedtime, and long car trips. Then, a few months ago, Clio quite abruptly announced that she was big girl, and she didn't want her ga-ga anymore.

Elsa, however, shows no sign of giving hers up. She goes for it as soon as she's upstairs in her room, and will yell for us in the middle of the night if she wakes up and can't find it. When she's upset about something, or having a tantrum, she'll cry for it or go upstairs to her bed and pop it in her mouth.

Vintage pic after the jump!

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Back in December, I wrote about the issues we were having with Clio -- issues that felt so intense and insurmountable that we were seriously worried about her: multiple, unstoppable tantrums per day, triggered when things didn't go exactly in the order and manner she had in her head, or when people didn't say things precisely according to her own internal script. The girl had no tolerance for improvisation. 

We were feeling like we simply didn't have the tools to deal with her, and were walking on eggshells around her. Which, in turn, was probably making things worse. But we started standing our ground more firmly but more gently; telling her repeatedly (and with a smile or laugh, when we could muster it) "Hey, you're the boss of what Clio says, but Mommy is the boss of what mommy says, remember?"; and trying to be more sympathetic and comforting when she got into one of her mobius strip-like fits where it felt like there was no way out, either for her or for us.

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We learned a few weeks ago that our regular sitter, who looks after the girls a couple of afternoons a week, won't be available for the next several months due to some family medical issues, so we've been searching around for someone to fill in. Always a pleasure.

We tried our various networks and contacts without much luck, and since then we've been using a combination of Craigslist and Care.com. We've gotten lots of inquiries, and have managed to schedule a few interviews with the qualified candidates who actually get back to us when we contact them. But it's amazing how few viable options there end up being when all is said and done. Perhaps I am too picky, but chances are I will not hire you to watch my children if:

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Trying to explain things to young children makes you realize how complex and/or bizarre so many things are that we take totally for granted. Board games, for instance.

The girls were given a few very rudimentary, preschool-level games for Christmas and their birthday, and I've tried a few times to play them with them. One of the games involves a die with a different color on each side, which you roll to advance. Roll a red, and you move to the next red space. Roll a green, and you move to the next green space, etc. It's about as basic as a game can get, and I figured that since my children are (of course) geniuses, who can perform such complicated tasks as feeding baby dolls and putting wooden train tracks together and recognizing letters of the alphabet, that this would be a piece of cake. We'd be on to Monopoly in no time. 

But, no. The first problem: understanding the concept of a colored pawn representing "you." We had four pawns. So why were we only using three of them? And why couldn't both Elsa and Clio be yellow, their favorite color?

Pic after the jump!

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In a couple of weeks, that is. This is the big change that I alluded to in my kiss off, 2009 post a few weeks ago: I'm leaving my job and am going to freelance. 

This is something I'd always planned on doing eventually, but eventually finally arrived -- a bit sooner than I thought it would, but what can I do? Eventually is not a fella you can ignore forever. He knocks and knocks and knocks on your door -- softly at first, then louder and louder, until finally you're like, OK, Eventually, I get the point!! It's time for me to move on. I hear you. Now will you stop that already? It's driving me NUTS. Can't you just ring the freakin' doorbell?

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I can just make out their pastel gowns, heart-shaped faces and impossibly large eyes in the distance. I hear their wistful sighs, charming laughter and bell-like singing voices (Ariel, I'm talking to you) drawing closer. They have Curious George, Elmo and Thomas the Tank Engine in their sights, and they are ready to take those mofos down. "Step aside, boys," they trill. "The princesses are coming to town!"

And I'm not talking about traditional fairy tale princesses. I'm talking about those princesses. You know the ones I'm talking about: Cinderella, Snow White, Aurora, Belle, Ariel, Mulan, Jasmine and Pocahantas, and the new one in the Frog movie, brought to you by Walt Disney, Inc. And now, they seem to have their own subsidiary franchise. The 3-10 year old girl merchandising appeal of nine trademarked characters, bundled into one, irresistible package! I applaud the marketing people who came up with that. The bastards.

Do I sound cynical? Hard-hearted? Unrealistic?

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Back in August of 2007, just a few months after I started writing this blog, I posted a list of five reasons why twins rule. It's been a long time since I've felt much like being a cheerleader for twin parentdom. I mean, the last year and a half has really kicked my ass. But lately -- just in the past couple of months, really -- a wonderful thing has started to happen. And this is my #6 reason why twins rule:

They keep each other entertained so you don't (always) have to.

People have said to us many times over the past three years, "it'll be great when they can keep each other entertained!" and we have nodded wearily and said yes, yes, that will be great. And we waited. And waited. And waited.

But when they did start interacting more, it tended to be more fighting than playing: grabbing things away from each other, pushing, shoving, whacking each other over the head with legos, laughing while the other one cried (stop me when my children start sounding like sociopaths.....sometimes I have wondered). We really couldn't leave them to their own devices for more than three minutes. 

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Yesterday morning, I sent the girls -- via their father, who actually takes them -- to preschool with two dozen cupcakes (yellow cake with pink icing and colored sprinkles) for an in-class birthday celebration. Since their birthday falls during school vacation week, and probably always will, this shall be their lot in life: late birthday cupcakes. Which isn't the worst thing, really -- sort of a last, sweet gasp of celebration after the holidays and their "real" birthday are over. The kids who really get screwed are the ones with summer birthdays. (As my husband, an August baby, can attest.)

I loved birthday cupcakes in school as a kid. Who didn't? It was this fantastic surprise that made the day a little bit special. Something to look forward to all morning when it was your birthday or someone else's. There was something slightly forbidden feeling about it (cupcakes? In the classroom?! Right here on our desks?!) and also something a little comforting -- your mom, or someone else's, coming in to deliver them to the teacher in the carefully packed cardboard box lined with waxed paper, or the snug tupperware container. A bit of home sneaking its warm way into the institution.

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There are a lot of things you pretty much expect two- and three-year-olds to be afraid of: monsters, loud noises, the dark, inflation. But my girls have developed some rather quirky phobias in the past couple of months. 

1. Trichophobia (Fear of Hair). OK, so accidentally getting a piece of hair in your mouth is never pleasant. But for Elsa, it's a full-blown catastrophe. If it happens, she shouts "Hair! Hair!" and starts swatting wildly at her face, as if the hair is actually alive, and about to wriggle down her throat and breed there. (Ew! I just scared myself!).

But it's not just getting hair in her mouth that bothers her. If she has piece on her pillow or on a piece of clothing, or sees one in the bathtub, she lets out the same desperate, piteous cry and insists that Alastair or I remove it. Which isn't alway easy, hair being on the light-colored side in our household. (In fact, I suspect much of the hair that terrorizes Elsa is, in fact, her own, which is very fine and wispy and frequently in her face.) I am beginning to wonder if we need to shave all of our heads. And the cat, too.

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And don't let the door hit you on the way out. Yes, my friends, it's been a pretty sucky year for me, as years go. This may come as a surprise to some, as I generally attempt to maintain a positive demeanor here on the internets -- and in life generally. And the past year certainly hasn't been all misery, by any stretch. There have been plenty of moments, hours and days of joy and delight -- many brought courtesy of Elsa and Clio and Alastair, my family and friends, and the sense of satisfaction and virtual community I get from writing this blog. 

But when I look back at 2009 (and 2008, for that matter) I will also remember them as 1.) The years during which I faced the immense disappointment of not finding a publisher for my novel, in spite of a few close calls 2.) The years during which the shit hit the fan with regard to my mental health. 2009 has been particularly rough in this regard. But -- spoiler alert -- it ends on a much happier and more hopeful note.

Here -- deep breath, hold nose, holy crap what am I doing? -- is the full story.

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This really was a good Christmas: nice, relaxed, not-too-big family gatherings. Great food, including some rockin' apple sausage stuffing, ginger molasses cookies and a pumpkin pie, all made by yours truly. A viewing of the definitive A Christmas Carol -- the one with Alastair Sim. And plenty of Elsa and Clio adorability (is that a word?). One of my favorite yuletide quips: On Christmas Eve morning, I told the girls that it was almost Christmas, and that Santa would be coming soon. Elsa said, "Yeah? Is he coming to town?"

It was also mighty cute to watch them "playing" with their baby cousin:

Another pic after the jump!

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I'm so excited. This is the first year that the girls actually "get" the idea of it being the holiday season, and they're having a ball with the attendant rituals and festivities -- as am I. It's great fun to re-experience the joy of this stuff via your children. To date we have:

1. Celebrated the first night of Hanukkah with our friends the Almonds (long-time Babble readers will remember Steve Almond's blog here, Baby Daddy). The latkes were not a big hit with the kids (hey, more for us!) but the applesauce and chicken were, as was the gelt. Elsa and Clio thought the menorah (a.k.a. the banora) was a birthday cake, and we comitted happy sacrilege by letting them and Josie blow out the candles.

2. Made gingerbread men. Or "gingerbread babies," as the girls call them, per one of their favorite books, Gingerbread Baby, by Jan Brett. The four-stage process -- make dough, let dough chill for an hour, cut out and bake, decorate when cool -- was tolerated admirably by the girls. (Though I did have to tell Clio, when she asked to sit at the kitchen table while the dough chilled, that maybe she'd be better off playing in the other room...)

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I so often use this blog as a place to vent about and solicit advice for various parenting challenges, and since there's always a new one, I don't often get a chance to stop and report on areas where there's actually been progress. It's partly because -- let's face it -- hearing that everything's fine is isn't nearly as interesting as the drama of the latest childrearing crisis, either for me to write or for you to read. (Not that any of it's exactly action flick material, but you get my point.) 

But today, I want to comment on one major improvement, and one area where I think we may be making a little bit of progress, and are feeling optimistic:

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I've been posting a lot lately about the issues we've been having with Clio's....let's call it "passionate"...nature. As a result, I feel like I've let Elsa fade a bit into the narrative background, which I feel bad about.

To some degree, it's a reflection of how I feel in "real" life, too. We spend so much energy trying to manage Clio's behavior that sometimes it feels like Elsa gets short shrift. We're quicker to tell her "no" because we know that it won't escalate into a gigantic tantrum. Because she's fairly independent, we expect her to take care of herself while we try to manage Clio's freakouts. And because she's fairly laid back as compared to Clio, we often look to her to make accomodations (Elsa, is it OK if we read Clio's book first?) in order to avoid big dramas.

This is not to suggest that Elsa is a perfect angel, by any stretch. She can throw a tantrum with the best of them, she whines like a champ, and she can be willful and defiant. She's very physical, and we often have to reprimand her for throwing toys or food, or for hitting or kicking or pushing. (We try to give her lots of opportunities to dance, to get all that physical energy out -- she loves it, and is surprisingly good at.) In sum, she can be a handful. But a different kind of handful than Clio.

Pic after the jump

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It's gotten to the point where we're a little worried about Clio. I mean, we wonder if some of her "issues" are outside the realm of normal almost-three-year-old behavior. I'm not talking about screaming while getting a flu shot, or being a picky eater, or even just having the occasional garden variety tantrum about not getting her way. It's issues of control that seem a bit extreme, even for a toddler.

One of them is around talking / listening. As I've mentioned before, it's really important to Clio that we not cut her off before she's finished a thought, or try to complete a sentence for her. This is reasonable enough. (Reasonable in the context of preschooler parenting, that is.) But increasingly, she freaks out if Alastair or I (or even Elsa) say anything in response except yes / yeah / uh huh / that's right, or repeat back exactly what she just said -- to the word.

So, for example, if Clio says "When we go to the store we can get some more yogurt, right, Mommy?" your response must be either "Yes" (or some variant thereof) or "Yes, when we go to the store we can get some more yogurt." NOT "Yeah, and you can pick out what flavors you want!" or "That's right, but we're not going to the store today, we're going tomorrow" and not even "Yes, when we go the the store we can get yogurt." (That would be leaving out the "some more" part. See?)

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How many people does it take to administer an H1N1 shot to Clio? Read on.

Our city had a much anticipated free H1N1 clinic today. Alastair had to work, so I came home early from work to take the girls over. I brought our babysitter along too, which, as far as I was concerned, was essential. Me on my own (sick with a cold no less), pouring rain, possibly long lines, and two toddlers -- one of whom was very likely to totally freak out -- would have been a recipe for certain disaster. And besides, we were paying the babysitter for the afternoon anyway. Why not bring her on a road trip!

We didn't tell the girls where we were headed; only that we were going on a little adventure. We filled out the forms, no problem. We walked down the hall to the gym -- smooth sailing, though Clio was looking a little wary. Then, just before we went in, I made the grave error of telling the girls that a lady was going to look at their arms and make sure they were OK. I thought I was doing the right thing. Clio especially tends to do a lot better in unfamiliar situations when she knows ahead of time what's going on. Not fair to totally spring it on her, right? 

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It snowed here in Boston on Saturday night. Just a little, but enough that we had to put on our boots to venture out on Sunday morning. We took a drive up to Marblehead -- a quaint little coastal town -- because we figured it would be picturesque, which it was. Snow-glazed trees. Purty Christmas decorations. There were even sailboats out on the water.

During the drive up, Alastair and I were talking about this and that. Work, family, the nuclear test-ban treaty, who knows. Every once in a while, as we were driving, one of the girls would ask, apropos of nothing, "Are you talking about my birthday?" They know that their birthdays are coming up soon, so it's a hot topic of conversation. And as far as they're concerned, what else could we possibly be talking about, right? 

Then at one point, I was laughing at something A. said and Elsa -- who likes to be at the center of the action -- asked, "Mommy, why are you laughing?" I told her that Daddy was very silly, and he said lots of funny things. "Yeah?" she said (which is her favorite response these days when you answer any question she asks. It's pretty cute). She was quiet for a little while. Alastair and I continued in whatever silly vein of conversation we'd been in. But the next time I laughed, Elsa laughed, too. Just because it was clearly the thing to do.

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I was quite relieved the other day to read this article right here on Babble, which reassured me that it's not the end of the world if your toddlers don't eat vegetables. I mean, not that the authors are pediatricians or anything. But it was an affirmation of what I've always suspected, which is that while in an ideal world your toddler would eat 2-3 servings of vegetables per day, he or she will not perish if it's more like 2-3 servings per week. And if one of those servings is actually ketchup. And if 3 partially chewed and then spit out peas counts as a "serving."

When the girls were babies, in the land of purees, I could get them to eat all kinds of veggies -- peas and squash and avocado and carrots. Once we were in "real" food land, they liked broccoli and peas for awhile. But now, it's all I can do to get them to eat a bite or two. And I totally use dessert as a bribe to get them to eat a tiny bit. According to the article, that's wrong. But I'm not entirely sure I agree. Unless they vehemently hate a food, I don't think it's overstepping my parental authority to ask them to have one bite before they can have applesauce or a fig newton.

Pic after the jump!

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Well, the girls just had their first official F*#@ with the babysitter caper. The poor woman. We were down at Alastair's parents' house for thanksgiving, and left the girls with a sitter on Saturday night so we could all go out to dinner. This babysitter, who we'll call Dotty, is actually Alastair's parents' dog sitter, not a babysitter. But she's sat with the girls before, after they were in bed, and it's always worked out just fine.

We figured it would be the same this time: we'd put the girls to bed, we'd be right down the road at the restaurant and come right back afterward -- no problemo. And anyway, you figure if someone can handle two boisterous golden retrievers, they can handle a couple of sweet, innocent toddlers, right? (Cue menacing music...)

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We have real toy storage issues in our house. Because we don't have a dedicated "playroom" for the girls, and because their bedroom is upstairs (and we're not, most of the time), the majority of their stuff is in the living/dining room, wedged in wherever we can find space for it: on the shelf underneath the coffee table, on the floor underneath our wall-mounted bookshelves, and (sigh) on and in our antique tiger maple sideboard. We've also got a couple of big square baskets where we keep smaller toys, but they're really too large and deep for the job -- you can't easily find things in them -- and as a result, Alastair calls them the place where "toys go to die."

This weekend, in an attempt to recussitate some of said dead toys, I dumped out the contents of the baskets in front of the girls. They immediately seized on the WWF (now known as WWE) action figures from Alastair's childhood: Hulk Hogan and the Iron Sheik.

"He's wearing underpants!" Elsa said (of Hulk Hogan). "He got a muck-tack!" Clio said of the Iron Sheik. (Translation: mustache.)

Pics after the jump!

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As you may have picked up if you've been reading this blog for awhile, I am a very silly person. Or, perhaps more accurately, I have an intensely silly side which balances out my incredibly serious and sophisticated side (cough cough).

So I am therefore quite psyched that my gals are now entering the age of prime verbal silliness -- you know, when you crack up over words like "underpants" and (my personal favorite) "poop" and where nonsensical utterances like "you're a waffle head!" win big, gleeful giggles. (Just a few months ago, this kind of thing was more likely to get a solemn disputation: "No I'm not, I'm just Clio.")

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This weekend, we went up to Maine to introduce the girls to their new cousin, Deklan, who has now attained the ripe old age of three and a half weeks. He's a cute little dude. On Saturday night, my brother and his wife went out for a few hours, and my mother, Alastair and I babysat for him. I was reminded of how simultaneously sweet, exhausting and dull the newborn weeks are. It also made me think back on the surreal-ness of going from being childless to suddenly being a parent.

Once, when the girls were just a couple of weeks old, and my parents were in town, Alastair and I snuck out for a quick dinner at a Thai restaurant. It was the strangest thing to be suddenly back out in the world, doing something we might have done on a typical weekend night just months before. Since our babies were born, our lives had changed dramatically, but we hadn't yet made the full psychological shift. It was as if we were in a strange, prolonged dream, so that this -- being alone together in a restaurant, surrounded by mostly twenty- and thirty-somethings -- felt more like reality.

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