Raincity Mama

In no par­tic­u­lar order, I give you three truths and a lie. I leave it up to you to fig­ure out which is which.

• As a child I attended sum­mer camp that spe­cial­ized in horse­back riding.
• In high school I went on a trip to New York and spent New Years Eve in Times Square.
• Before I grad­u­ated high school my fam­ily moved 10 times.
• In high school I ran for stu­dent pres­i­dent and lost by a spec­tac­u­lar margin.

Since going back to work is has been even harder to bal­ance being a par­ent and being a part­ner. Wait, I want to qual­ify that with being a *good* par­ent and a *good* part­ner. I don’t think the role of par­ent hasn’t got­ten any harder, there are just moments that it feels like it is more demand­ing now. The kids want me from the minute I get in the door until they have fallen asleep and then I attend to them when they wake up through the night. Week­ends are even more demand­ing because the kids are clingy. My hus­band has projects lin­ing up that are requir­ing more of his atten­tion so often he uses the week­ends to make head­way on his projects.

Since the kids were born it has been quite a strug­gle for me to keep in mind that while I tend to the kids I also need to tend to my hus­band. I don’t know about hav­ing one baby but going from no kids to two babies is incred­i­bly hard. Thank­fully the hus­band and I are usu­ally on the same page but I’m not going to lie, for a long time it felt like we were just sur­viv­ing and our mar­riage was put on hold. There were times when it was as if we were teth­ered together by a bungy cord and we were each going in dif­fer­ent direc­tions and we had stretch the cord to the limit. It’s not that often that we are each mov­ing away but when it hap­pens things start feel­ing bleak and I notice that I feel snap­pish and cranky.

When we attended our pre­na­tal class one ses­sion we dis­cusses how hav­ing twins puts addi­tional pres­sures on a mar­riage and the instruc­tor sug­gested that we talk as a cou­ple about what cop­ing mech­a­nisms we would use. The only thing that I can remem­ber is that I said I wanted to ensure that the two of us had “date nights” so that we could get out and recon­nect as a cou­ple and tem­porar­ily leave our role as par­ents behind. We haven’t been that great about ensur­ing that we get a date every month, but when we do get out I always have a great time. True to our gen­der roles, my hus­band would rather just have sex to recon­nect and I want to have a date and talk. Now sex is great, but I need to be relaxed and in the mood and he has finally real­ized that if I get my date then he is almost guar­an­teed that we will have sex. I still find that I get hyper-focused on car­ing for the kids and I for­get that I need to care for my mar­riage too.

Before we had kids we used to play board games or com­puter games together but now there never seems to be the time to do that. It doesn’t help that dis­cre­tionary time is almost non-existent. There is always some­thing that needs to be done. After the kids are asleep my hus­band is usu­ally in the office work­ing and I’m down­stairs fold­ing laun­dry, watch­ing tv or surf­ing and catch­ing up on blogs.

What do you do to stay con­nected with your spouse? How do you bal­ance being a good par­ent and being a good part­ner? Is it pos­si­ble to make sure every­one, kids and adults, are get­ting their needs met?

I’m going to be solo­ing the kids this week­end while my hus­band is work­ing. The way I see it I’m going to have to find more stuff for them to do so that I don’t go crazy. I know that they haven’t got to play out­stide because the weather has been pretty crappy and it can be really hard for one per­son to han­dle them alone out­side. I’m plan­ning on bundling them up in their rain­suits and let­ting them play in the gar­den. I know that they’ll get dirty and prob­a­bly they’ll get wet but I think that I need to let them do it anyway.

Since I’ve been back at work the week­ends have been hard. The kids are bored play­ing inside, they are tired of the toys we have and since I’m home and avail­able the want to nurse fre­quently. I’ve also been look­ing for inside activites for us to do. The first things that came to mind are play­doh or dried beans but I’m fairly cer­tain that they kids will just end up eat­ing those. Last time I tried crayons they kids were fairly indif­fer­ent about colouring.

What kinds of activites do you do with your toddlers?

After I had the twins we stayed in the hos­pi­tal for five days. When the babies were a few days old they were given the “carseat chal­lenge”. The carseat chal­lenge is where you dress your baby in their going home clothes and put then in their carseat with the base and the nurses hook them up to blood oxy­gen mon­i­tors for an hour. If their blood sats don’t dip then the baby passes. But if the baby cries then it is pretty much a fail because when the baby cries it causes the sats to drop,  This test was deemed nec­es­sary because my daugh­ter spent her first 24 hours in the Spe­cial Care Nurs­ery and because my son was tiny, well, they might as well do him too. He passed but she failed.

My hus­band had gone with them for the test so that I could have a nap. When he returned he told me that both babies had failed and I burst into tears. My babies was just days old and they had already failed a test. My hor­mones were rag­ing and I just couldn’t han­dle it. Because they failed the test we were delayed in leav­ing and had to wait another 24 hours before they would retest them. All I wanted to do was to take my kids home. I was sob­bing uncon­tro­lably and he knelt on the bed to com­fort me. I heard and felt a loud crack and the bed went thunk. I thought that he had hit the bed in frus­tra­tion as a reac­tion to my sob­bing but in fact the bed broke due to the way he was kneel­ing on it and it was dam­aged to begin with. He took a look and oil was start­ing to leak from one of the mech­a­nisms so he headed out to tell the nurses.

I sat there sob­bing, unable to see how things could get bet­ter, won­der­ing when I’d be “allowed” to take my babies home. Isn’t it funny how at times life seems so hard? Look­ing back, we should have declined the test and just got­ten out of there, but that is easy to say now. Then I was tired, hor­monal and feel­ing unsure of myself as a par­ent and now I’m usu­ally less tired and feel­ing more sure of myself as a parent.

My daugh­ter is learn­ing new words at an amaz­ing rate. Her lat­est words are

• chocolate
• Elmo
• Hop­kins
• tomato
• singing part of the alpha­bet, lmnopq
• the num­bers 6,7,8,9,10

I know that there are more words but I can’t remem­ber them right now. See­ing this list makes me proud of her but it also makes me sad for my son. He still isn’t speak­ing and I haven’t found new signs for him. I know that he is frus­trated by his lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools. Today I received an email about the upcom­ing sale at Sign­ing Time so I’ll be order­ing some DVDs that I think both of the kids will enjoy.

With my daughter’s lan­guage explo­sion I have to keep remind­ing myself that I really do need to watch my lan­guage because it won’t be long until she hears me swear­ing and then par­rots it back. I’m just relieved that her first word wasn’t some­thing that I’d regret, although I do still need to worry about what he will come up with.

I can’t believe that there are six more days left for NaBlo. Not that it has been easy, I’ve just tried not to think about it but I’m feel­ing less enthu­si­as­tic about it tonight. I know that writ­ing fre­quently will engrain the habit of writ­ing, I’m just feel­ing a bit burnt out. I’m strug­gling for con­tent. Per­haps decid­ing to do NaBlo when my blog was just a few days old was a hasty deci­sion. So tonight is yet another post about noth­ing much. I’ll end it with a clip of David Sedaris who always makes me laugh. You’re welcome!

It is almost a month until Christ­mas. I haven’t started any prepa­ra­tions yet. My hus­band and I were talk­ing the other day and I think that we are either going to get a tiny tree and put it up on a shelf or we will not have a tree this year. I can’t imag­ine try­ing to keep the kids from destroy­ing it, I don’t think that’d be fair to my mom since she is the one with them the major­ity of the week.

We have a shelf but buy­ing a tiny live tree just doesn’t seem right. We don’t have a safe area to put up a reg­u­lar sized tree unless we put it in the kitchen but then I won’t be able to cook. The other option is to wait and put it up on Christ­mas Eve but we are going to my father-in-law’s house so we won’t be home to do it. The time crunch is a fac­tor plus the cost. Last year we bought a small­ish tree and paid almost $55! I know that we could buy a bar­gain tree but I hate they way they look plus they are usu­ally quite dry and drop a ton of needles.

This is going to be the last year that Christ­mas is quiet. The kids have no idea what it is so we can get away with hav­ing one last sub­dued Christmas.

I’m all for adapt­ing my hol­i­day tra­di­tions and I’m look­ing for­ward to cre­at­ing new hol­i­day tra­di­tions with the kids and hin. For me the tree was always a big deal. Next year will be fun to get the kids to help dec­o­rate the tree. I think that for this year I’ll get the kids to help me bake cook­ies and I’ll have to look to see if I can find some non-ugly dec­o­ra­tions for the house.

What hol­i­day tra­di­tions do you do with your kids?

In no par­tic­u­lar order I give you three truths and a lie. I leave it up to you to fig­ure which is which.

• I love to paint.
• I am very much a Tau­rus, not that I put a ton of stock in that stuff.
• I love coffee.
• I love gro­cery shopping.

The first apart­ment that was my very own was the first and only one I looked at. It had been months since the ex and I split up and I hated my three hour com­mute for work so I decided to move downtown.

I asked around at work to see if any­one knew of any vacan­cies and I was told of a bach­e­lor suite down by the park. I made arrange­ments to go see it one day after work.

I walked down towards what would become my new neigh­bour­hood and I was impressed to see all that there was to do nearby. Not that I planned to do any­thing, mop­ing around feel­ing sorry for myself was tak­ing all my free time.

I buzzed the man­ager and he took me up to take a look. It was on the 6th floor and it faced the alley. It was vacant and the land­lord was paint­ing it It was 600 square feet and it would be all mine. I said I’d think about it and rushed away to make my train home.

I had vague ideas about view­ing other apart­ments but I fell in love with the neigh­bour­hood and I was too lazy to search for other places to view so I called and said I’d take it.

Just a few short weeks later I was rush­ing around pack­ing as the movers showed up to load my stuff. My par­ents and the movers helped me get all my stuff loaded onto the truck and my dad and I drove down ahead of the movers to secure the ele­va­tor in my new building.

It was Octo­ber 30, I was 30 and I was finally mov­ing into my own apart­ment. I’d lived with my ex for years and I’d moved straight from my par­ents house into what was our house. I’d never lived on my own save for the few months hous­esit­ting I’d done. It felt free­ing and terrifying.

I remem­ber that I loved not hav­ing to con­sider any­one elses feel­ing. I could come and go as I please. I didn’t have to explain my pur­chases to any­one. I missed hav­ing some­one to come home to and it freaked me out that some­thing could hap­pen to me and pos­si­bly no one would notice.

Mov­ing into the city where I didn’t really know any­one want daunt­ing at all. I fig­ured I’d get to know my neigh­bours and explore my neigh­bour­hood. The neigh­bours were a bust. The gay cou­ple across the hall wanted noth­ing to do with a sad sin­gle girl. The gay man next door to me was too busy to talk and the girl at the end of the hall had a life. If I hadn’t been so depressed I’d have started to sec­ond guess the idea of mov­ing downtown.

I drew deeper and deeper into myself and then sum­mer finally came. On the week­ends i’d head down to the beach and lay on the grass under a tree read­ing and peo­ple watch­ing. I loved my neigh­bour­hood. I even­tu­ally got out of the house every­day and even found myself enjoy­ing myself when I was out. Look­ing back I think it is so sad that I spent such a long time so miserable.

I lived in that apart­ment for almost three years. I met the man that would become my hus­band and ended up mov­ing in with him. I kept that apart­ment for three months after I started liv­ing with him. It was my safety net. My haven. He finally con­vinced me to get rid of it and stop pay­ing rent for an apart­ment I wasn’t using. I look back on the apart­ment with bit­ter­sweet fond­ness. I liked liv­ing there but really I think it was more a mat­ter of sur­viv­ing rather than living.

That is the sad story of my first apart­ment. What was your first place like?

I remem­ber hav­ing the thought “oh I should blog about that” sev­eral times today but I can’t remem­ber any of them. I need write them down. So I’ve got noth­ing but the fol­low­ing snippets:

• My daugh­ter started say­ing my son’s name clear as a bell tonight.
• there was a mouse near my desk today. I hate vermin.
• I fell asleep while putting the kids to bed tonight. That hasn’t hap­pened in a long time.
• I’m look­ing for­ward to hav­ing my par­ents over for din­ner tomor­row so that I can catch up with them. I miss talk­ing to my mom everyday.
• Today while my dad was watch­ing the kids he didn’t real­ize that there were cloth dia­pers already assem­bled in the dresser so he grabbed the empty shells from the laun­dry bas­ket and put a dia­per on them with­out putting inserts inside. When my hus­band got home my son was soaked and had pooped and had to have a com­pete change of clothes. It was pooptastic!