Raincity Mama

I haven’t trav­eled since I had the kids. It isn’t in our bud­get and no travel oppor­tu­ni­ties have come up at work so I’ve been home bound. While I may not have hopped on a plane and hap­pily arrived at a new des­ti­na­tion we did a fam­ily 0uting that I think counts as a trip that I’d like to share.

We took the kids to Maple­wood Farm. It is part of Van­cou­ver Parks and the kids absolutely loved it. We’ve taken them before but the last time we went was their first time vis­it­ing out of the str0ller. If you have only one child I would imag­ine that it is easy to let a tod­dler roam around but with two tod­dlers it is impos­si­ble for a sin­gle adult to wran­gle two kids run­ning off in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. I arranged for us to go on a week­end when my hus­band could join us.

It was a rainy Van­cou­ver day so I packed the kids’ rain­suits. We got them bun­dled up and they were happy to be let loose. Once we were inside it was just a mat­ter of fol­low­ing the rain­suited child that was mine to watch. It was so nice to just have to watch one kid! I can­not explain how much energy goes into try­ing to super­vise two kids, but I think it would be sim­i­lar to try­ing to watch two ten­nis matches at the same time.

My hus­band fol­lowed one and I fol­lowed the other. I got to watch my daugh­ter pet a baby goat. It was so sweet to see how gen­tle she was with it. She seemed to under­stand that she needed to be gentle. I saw my son chase ducks and chick­ens that stayed *just* out of his reach. We watched the pigs sleep and sat and pet the enor­mous bunnies.

We let the kids roam. It was bit­ter­sweet, it was awe­some because I knew they were hav­ing a blast and I also felt sad because roam­ing isn’t some­thing they get to do nearly often enough. We made our rounds to say good­bye to the ani­mals and loaded our exhausted kids into the car. It wasn’t long until they were both asleep.

For days after both kids talked about their trip to the farm. There was lots of farm play and both kids asked to go back. Writ­ing this reminds me that I need to make time to take them again. It just goes to show that it isn’t the big things, it is the tiny things that matter.

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but you can’t make them eat.

Our kids used to be great eaters. As a mat­ter of fact, I was very smug about it. The kids started eat­ing solids at around 7 months (I think, I’m not really sure. That first year is hard to recall). Try as I might they did not like baby food. They wanted what we were eat­ing so that is what we did. We’d offer them what­ever we were eat­ing, no spe­cial meals. But­ter chicken to pesto pizza, they ate it.

Until recently that is. In the last two months the kids have become quite picky eaters. Well, my son will say that he doesn’t like it but he will usu­ally at least taste it. My daugh­ter will excit­edly climb into her high­chair and upon tak­ing a quick look at what has been lov­ingly pre­pared for her will announce “I don’t like dat!”

It is mad­den­ing! For the last two nights she has turned her nose up at what is being served for din­ner. We always have some­thing on the table that she will eat. Tonight is was a bis­cuit, she mostly just crum­bled it. Last night it was toma­toes. We always offer the kids yogurt after sup­per so I guess she ate that too.

What really both­ers me is when she refuses to eat din­ner and then as we are clear­ing the table she will announce that she is hun­gry! I’m not sure if this is just her way of exert­ing her own will or if per­haps her growth rate is slow­ing down? All I know is that it is dri­ving me nuts. I try not to make too big a deal about it because I want to avoid this becom­ing a power strug­gle. Feed­ing and sleep­ing are two things that I have no con­trol over. I get set the stage and be encour­ag­ing but I can­not make them do it.

How do you deal with picky eaters? Leave me a com­ment or point me to one of your posts where you’ve writ­ten about this. I’m going to have to reread “How to get your kid to eat but not too much”.

We’ve started tak­ing Dude to weekly speech ther­apy ses­sions, and today was his sec­ond ses­sion. At 2 1/2 years old he can say two words that a stranger would rec­og­nize. There are a cou­ple of other words that he’ll try but I think I’m the only one that can under­stand what he’s try­ing to say. For the rest he signs and when signs fail he points and grunts. He can prob­a­bly sign over 200 signs but that only works when the per­son he is sign­ing to knows ASL, which isn’t that many peo­ple. It is espe­cially hard to see him out try­ing to inter­act with other kids his age and they don’t under­stand him.

The speech ther­a­pist seems to under­stand him and his sit­u­a­tion a bit bet­ter. He is one of the youngest patients she’s worked with so she’s hav­ing to adapt her method. I was reluc­tant when we first met her months ago because she was rec­om­mend­ing that I stop teach­ing him signs. I didn’t see why I would take his only form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion away from him. I still don’t want to take it away. It is just eas­ier to sign because he will read­ily use signs to tell me what he wants but if I attempt to get him to speak then we go around and around with him point­ing to var­i­ous things and he gets upset when I don’t know what he wants.

As part of my home­work with him I’m to try to get him to use his voice more often and to do that we are going to basic sounds, like mmm, dd, bb, ah, oh, eh, etc. If I start he will copy me as long as his sis­ter doesn’t jump in. If I ask him what a dog sounds like and his sis­ter answers he just doesn’t see the point in answer­ing too. I totally get that but I just want to hear Dude try. This is one of the chal­lenges of hav­ing twins. It is really high­lighted when one if advanced and the other one is delayed. At least they aren’t iden­ti­cal because it would be even more tempt­ing to make comparisons.

Because I knew that we were going to start up speech ther­apy again I started ramp­ing up prac­tic­ing with him. The hus­band and I have also made it a pri­or­ity to give the kids one on one time with us at least once a week. It sounds so piti­ful to see that in writ­ing that they only get indi­vid­u­al­ized atten­tion once a week but I guess all par­ents with more than one kids strug­gle with that.

Mama and Dada are the two words that Dude says that I think any stranger would rec­og­nize. For the longest time he would only say them when I prompted him to use his voice. The hus­band would be upstairs and Dude would stand at the bot­tom gate sign­ing Dad and “call­ing” him in a word­less way. I’d remind him that his daddy couldn’t see him sign­ing and that if he used his voice then daddy would respond. Only then would he call Dada.

The other day I came home and Dude saw me sneak in the door. He ran over with a look of delight on his face as he cried Mama. I can hardly describe the joy I felt hear­ing my son call for me unprompted.

We sat today with the speech ther­a­pist and it quickly became obvi­ous that for what­ever rea­son Dude wasn’t inter­ested in play­ing any of her games. She com­mented on how last week he was quite talk­a­tive and it felt like magic and this week, well, not so much.

I’m as on-board with his speech ther­apy as I’m going to get. I am con­cerned about the level of his speech delay. I believe that I am doing the best thing by tak­ing him for ther­apy. I just know that he will speak when he is good and ready. There are a num­ber of kids that for what­ever rea­son decide that speech just isn’t for them and then one day they just start talk­ing. It will take time. For now he doles out words at a miserly rate. Now that I’ve heard him say my name I know that it will hap­pen; on his terms and that is fine with me.

The day came and we (finally!) moved the kids into their own room. We have co-slept with the kids since they were born. Even in the hos­pi­tal I’d sneak a baby into my bed. It was just so much eas­ier to nurse them hav­ing them right next to me and I got more sleep!

As they grew older they’d go through growth spurts, either phys­i­cal or emo­tional and I’d tell my hus­band that I’d had it and that we were mov­ing them out. He’d sup­port me and ask me to for­mu­late a plan and then he’d help. We’d get through the spurt and the kids would set­tle back to an accept­able sleep­ing pattern.

We are at the tail end of another growth spurt that has been par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult. That cou­pled with the fact that they will sleep for longer stretches if I’m not in the room made the deci­sion to move them into their own room eas­ier. Another huge decid­ing fac­tor is that I want to sleep with my hus­band again!

Let me explain. We had two queen size mat­tresses on the floor in our room. I slept on one mat­tress with the kids and my hus­band slept on the other. There were times when one of the kids would go cud­dle with him but for the most part they slept next to me. I’ve come to real­ize that I haven’t been mak­ing my hus­band a pri­or­ity and I think that sleep­ing next to him is a pretty big step in the right direction.

The kids have always had a room but they had never slept in it. I’m not sure what I’d envi­sioned. We had always intended that they would sleep in our room as new­borns but we never had a plan for mov­ing them out. Their room had a crib in it for a while. It came in handy for hold­ing clothes and toys for the babies! We tried the crib for a while once the babies got too big to sleep side-by-side in the co-sleeper attached to our bed. I’d lay our son down in the crib and he’d imme­di­ately start squawk­ing. It didn’t mat­ter how long I rocked him as soon as his head touched the mat­tress he’d complain.

The tran­si­tion went smoother than I expected. The first night we had been out and the kids fell asleep in the car so I slept in their room with them. The next night we went upstairs and ush­ered them into their “new room!” and had new stuffed ani­mals there to greet them. For the next few days they were quite excited and they talked about their room often.

It has been almost two weeks now and my daugh­ter now sleeps through the night!!! and my son sleeps a six or seven hour stretch. I think we lucked out with tim­ing it right and really, I think that the kids were ready and able to han­dle it. Plus, the hus­band and I actu­ally sleep together again! At this rate, we’re going to actu­ally have to start using birth con­trol again!

It feels like we are tread­ing water, try­ing to keep from being washed away by the relent­less waves of every­day life. The days fly past and we aren’t get­ting every­thing done. Our to-do list keeps grow­ing, new items are added but noth­ing is com­plete. It is over­whelm­ing to see what needs doing know­ing that there is lit­tle time to get all of it done.

I was talk­ing with the hus­band about this. We are both feel­ing over­whelmed. The hus­band says that it feels like he’s at the bot­tom of a well. Both of us are feel­ing defeated, unable to start any­thing new because we don’t know where to start. Which task that has been neglected needs to be dealt with first and are there any neglected tasks that are going to explode if they are con­tin­ued to be neglected. Small stuff like the win­dows are so smudged by fin­ger­prints that it looks like the win­dows has a film on them, to “holy crap! our house insur­ance has expired!”

I was speak­ing with another twin mom and she said that it feels like she and her hus­band are lead­ing par­al­lel lives. They are so busy man­ag­ing the kids and the house that there is lit­tle time/energy left over for “them”. They trade off nights so that they can get work done or go out and con­nect with friends but they don’t get a night out together. She is just as stymied as we are as to how to fix this.

When we went to pre­na­tal class the teacher warned us that par­ents of mul­ti­ples have a higher divorce rate and she encour­aged us to talk about what were going to put in place to help smooth the bumps. We sat there rub­bing our preg­nant bel­lies, feel­ing cer­tain that we would not become a sta­tis­tic and talked about how we’d hire a sit­ter and ensure that we had a date night. Thank­fully none of us have added to the ranks of that par­tic­u­lar sta­tis­tic but I think all of us are feel­ing the pinch of try­ing to bal­ance work, life and kids.

I had a rev­e­la­tion the other day that I’m not putting my mar­riage as a pri­or­ity. I’ve thrown myself head-long into car­ing for the kids and return­ing to work that my mar­riage has fallen to the side. I real­ize that I am mod­el­ling what it is to be a mom, wife, friend, insert what­ever role here, to my kids and I worry that I am fail­ing. I rec­og­nize that I am not putting my hus­band on the pri­or­ity list. I don’t want us to become room­mates. I want us to start putting each other first. Even as I type this I worry, will my kids under­stand that I have enough love for every­one. They have got­ten used to my undi­vided atten­tion and they are going to have to adjust as I learn to adjust.

Watch­ing tv last night I saw other par­ents of mul­ti­ples announce that their mar­riage has fallen apart. It is painful to watch. Would it have hap­pened even if the cam­eras were there? Who knows. Watch­ing their life unravel just threw my life into sharper focus. I can’t keep putting off tak­ing care of my marriage.

So for now it comes down to this: we can con­tinue to float, rest­ing because we are so very weary, with the risk that we might drift so far apart that we can­not find our way back to each other; or we can hold each other tightly and face what comes our way trust­ing that we have each other’s back and that we can face any­thing as long as we face it together.

A mar­riage isn’t gaz­ing into each other’s eyes. It is stand­ing side by side, hold­ing hands and fac­ing the world.

I’m a firm believer that you get what you expect. If I think that I’m going to have a shitty time, well guess what, I have a shitty time. I decided that I needed to get out and have some fun! When I heard about the VanCity BlogHer meet-up I knew that this is what I needed to do, that this would be fun. I RSVP’d and then I was wor­ried because I didn’t know any­one but I’m so tired of feel­ing lonely so I decided that I was going to go and have fun. I got dressed, got a hair­cut and got my ass downtown.

I held my breath as I walked in. Would they all already know each other, would I be an out­sider? Would I fit in? It sucks to feel so inse­cure, to be so full of self-doubt. I was one of the first to arrive, but once I saw the other women I exhaled. They smiled at me and I knew that I was going to have fun. These women are an awe­some bunch. We sat and talked and the time flew so quickly. My only regret is that I got so engrossed with the con­ver­sa­tion that I was hav­ing that I didn’t actu­ally get to talk with every­one. Next time I’ll have to get out of the cor­ner seat and make a point of circulating.

Thank you Mr. Lady for orga­niz­ing and host­ing this meet-up! It was so nice to get out and meet fel­low blog­gers. I’m sad that I can’t make it to Chicago this year, maybe I’ll be able to go next year. I’m slowly adding every­one I met on Twit­ter and get­ting them added to my reader too. This blog­ging thing is awe­some and over­whelm­ing! I’m so glad that I decided to get out and have some fun!

I’ve always been a pro­cras­ti­na­tor. I mar­ried a pro­cras­ti­na­tor. I hope that I can pre­vent my kids from becom­ing pro­cras­ti­na­tors. (Can I use the word pro­cras­ti­na­tor again??? Procrastinator!)

I hate how leav­ing things unstarted or unfin­ished makes me feel. The shame I feel when I real­ize that I’m not doing what needs to be done is awful, but sadly usu­ally it isn’t enough to make me get off my ass and just do it, what­ever “it” is.

I feel like pro­cras­ti­na­tion is tak­ing over my life. Sure, I man­age to get enjoy­able, pleas­ant tasks done. The last piece of cake needs to be eaten? Done. The PVR is full of tv shows? No prob­lem, I can sit and watch tv. The kids bed­room needs to be cleared out so that they can actu­ally sleep in there? Huh, didn’t you say there was cake?

Well. I’m reach­ing the end of my rope. I need to make some changes in my life. I’m tired of how putting things off makes me feel. I decided to take the bull by the horns and I’ve started to tackle on of the big scary things that I’ve been putting off, my taxes. It’s going to take some work but I will get them done. I felt in incred­i­ble mix of emo­tions once I got the ball rolling, exhil­a­ra­tion, fear, shame, relief, the list goes on. I con­sider get­ting this sorted out to be a huge step in the right direc­tion in leav­ing my pro­cras­ti­nat­ing ways behind. Although I do have to say that it has taken me two days to write this post. I’d say that I need to take baby steps but big steps are required if I’m really going to change me ways.

Is pro­cras­ti­na­tion an issue for you? How to you deal with get­ting stuff done?

At work we were talk­ing about sleep, or lack thereof, and being tired. I tried telling my co-workers that I win at being tired. I’m a pro­fes­sional at walk­ing around sleep deprived. They didn’t believe me so I told them what it means to be really tired.

When the babies where new­borns it was hard. I’ve blocked out for­got­ten a lot about those early days but I do recall that I was always extremely tired. I’m sur­prised that I didn’t spon­ta­neously fall asleep. I remem­ber being in my room try­ing to nap while my par­ents or hus­band were watch­ing the kids. I remem­ber feel­ing frus­trated hear­ing the ryth­mic thump of house music pump away while I tried to drift off to sleep. This went on for days, maybe weeks, I’m not really sure. I remem­ber think­ing that it was odd that I’d notice the music when I was try­ing to sleep but I couldn’t hear it when I was down­stairs with the kids. I’d for­get about it and carry on with the chaos that was my life.

I finally asked my hus­band about it one day after it had tak­ing me a long time to fall asleep. He looked con­fused. He wasn’t play­ing any music and he said that the neigh­bours weren’t play­ing any music. Both of us were quite puz­zled and he was a tiny bit wor­ried. I received an email from the mul­ti­ples group that I belong to and there was a thread about sleep depri­va­tion and one woman wrote about being so tired that she started hear­ing “things”. I was aghast that any­one would let them­selves get so tired that they’d start hear­ing voices. I told the hus­band about this poor woman and you should have seen the look on his face. Such a mix­ture of pity and con­cern. He pointed out that I was hear­ing non-existent house music and that I was in fact hav­ing audi­tory hal­lu­ci­na­tions too.

I was dumb­struck! No, it wasn’t some­thing I could be in denial about. I was hear­ing this music and it was not real. My hus­band and par­ents tried to ensure that I’d be able to get naps in more often and the hal­lu­ci­na­tions went away. I’m still sleep deprived on a daily basis, but it’s get­ting bet­ter. On a good day I get almost four hours of sleep in a row but when the kids are sick I get two to three hours in a row. As long as the music doesn’t start up again I think I’m doing pretty good. I rarely drive, so I’m not wor­ried about falling asleep behind the wheel.

So my announce­ment to my co-workers that I’ve been so tired that I’ve heard non-existent music was met with smirks and weird looks. It wasn’t until I told them that it was house music that they burst out laugh­ing. Come on, it is funny. I can’t think any­one would fall asleep lis­ten­ing to house music. Now I’m on the look­out for the prankster that is going to start play­ing house music qui­etly in their cube in an effort to see me freak out. I’ll just bob my head along to the nst nst nst beat, feel­ing thank­ful that those days are behind me and I have the abil­ity to laugh at what was a very tir­ing phase of my life.

What is the most tired you’ve ever been? Have you ever expe­ri­enced audi­tory hal­lu­ci­na­tions? Come on, share your story.

Over the past week two women I know on Twit­ter have lost their chil­dren. It has left me heart­bro­ken. No, I don’t know these women per­son­ally, but their loss has still moved me. I wanted to come here and write some­thing elo­quent, but now that I sit here no words seem appropriate.

My own chil­dren have been so lucky. I have been so lucky. So many things have gone right for us. There were so many moments when things could have turned out dif­fer­ently, but they didn’t, and my chil­dren sleep safely in bed. I am so very grate­ful for my fam­ily. I am gra­teul for our health. I will snug­gle my kids closely tonight.

I can’t believe how quickly time has passed! It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that my babies were tiny babies. I have vague mem­o­ries from their first year, just like I was warned. It amazes me. I remem­ber being over­whelmed and exhausted (wait, I’m still over­whelmed and exhausted) and think­ing that it would never get bet­ter but it has. I keep get­ting asked if it is eas­ier but in truth, it is just dif­fer­ent. I don’t think par­ent­ing ever gets eas­ier, ask me when they are 30!  I have to say that I mostly love this age (minus the tantrums please) the best so far. I now have kids that gig­gle and play. Hav­ing them come to me want­ing a “squeezy hug” or a kiss is so much bet­ter than infants that want to nurse all.day.long.

For days now I’ve been remem­ber­ing snip­pets of the day the babies were born.

• stand­ing in the shower watch­ing my belly con­tract, telling the babies that it was OK for them to come after months of telling them they had to stay put.
• Sit­ting down­stairs on the couch after the con­trac­tions had stopped, too excited to sleep know­ing that my induc­tion was going to start in the morning.
• chas­ing my hus­band around want­ing him to hurry up. I was wor­ried that we would be late for the induc­tion. I know now that it’s not like they could have started with­out me.
• those first few con­trac­tions after the oxy­tocin was started.
• cav­ing and get­ting the epidural just so they would leave me alone. I still think that I could have done it with­out it.
• the chirp­ing of the epidural being pushed
• see­ing the anethe­si­ol­o­gist do an abrupt about face when he walked in to check my epidural and he saw that I was push­ing. I think it’s funny that he was embar­rassed. It must have been an auto­matic reac­tion to want to give me privacy.
• I pushed for 2 hours but it didn’t seem like that long
• yelling at my hus­band because he wanted to take pic­tures. I didn’t care about pic­tures, I just wanted him by my side
• my doula rub­bing my legs between contractions
• the intern sit­ting on the edge of my bed mur­mur­ing encour­ag­ing words. He seemed quite excited and happy to be there.
• feel­ing my daugh­ter crown and think­ing “I can’t!” It was going to be “I can’t do this” but it imme­di­ately turned into “I can’t stop!”
• check­ing and see­ing that it was indeed a girl.
• real­iz­ing with dis­be­lief that I had to push *ANOTHER* baby out.
• feel­ing amazed at how easy it was push­ing out my son.
• look­ing up and feel­ing aston­ished at how many peo­ple were in that lit­tle room.

The list goes on and on. As time goes by I worry that the mem­o­ries are van­ish­ing. I want to keep ask­ing my hus­band to retell the story from his point of view. For months after they were born I’d keep ask­ing him ques­tions about the order things happened.

Yes­ter­day I kept look­ing at the clock and replay­ing that day in my head. Last night when their birth min­utes were draw­ing near I felt such a mix of emo­tions. The six min­utes between their births was long and short at the same time. At the time, it felt like just moments passed before my son was born.

I feel a touch sad that they aren’t tiny babies any more but I also feel happy and proud at how much they have grown. I miss those days where they slept and I sniffed their sweet downy heads but I love to see them just as they are now. I watch in amaze­ment as my son builds a tower out of blocks. He care­fully con­sid­ers where to place the next block to ensure that it doesn’t top­ple. I watch as my daugh­ter sorts her toys by colour. I gig­gle when I see them dance along with the Wig­gles. So yes, now is by far my most favourite time. Remind me I said that when the next tantrum rolls around.