Random Quote and Unrelated Photo of the Week

It was like something from a Greek tragedy, or at least something horrible, traumatic and if not antiwoman then campily celebratory of femininity gone awry, along the lines of "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" or perhaps more aptly, "Aliens."

John Bowe
Octo-Mom in Production

Giving It Away

Have opinions about animals?  Interested in kids beds and other furniture? Want to win something? Click here.

In the Pink

After a couple of challenging color months, April is the perfect time for me to shoot pink!

I hope the blooms hold out the rest of the month!

Remember

A year ago I wrote this note to myself about Ada:

To Remember - when I go in to make sure you still have blankets on, you turn over in your sleep and reveal that you have your teddy bear clasped in your hand.

Curses, Foiled Again!

A couple of weeks ago Ada was on "spring break." Why does a preschooler need spring break? (I have the sense that it is more a break for the teachers than for the kids.) To deal with the break, I set up play-dates 4 of the 5 days. (On Monday Ada went to work with Chris, which was a smashing success in no small part due to the CAKE Chris' department had in honor of Stephanie's birthday.)

We had a child-care swap with one of Ada's favorite friends. I gave in to the spring-break-y-ness of the week, and let the girls watch a movie (with popcorn!) in the afternoon. But in the morning we did a "project." I'd gotten my weekly kids craft email, and was inspired by a painted egg idea. If you follow the link you'll see that the idea is to cover cardboard ovals with tin foil, then paint on the foil. Before the paint dries, you scratch off patterns in the paint.

bet you can't guess which one is mine

The girls were very excited for this idea, but ended up not really caring about the scratching off part. They made tons of eggs, coloring them as fast as I could cut the cardboard. All went well until Mira woke up, and then Ian woke up. The girls were working at the kid table in the kitchen, which is now accessible to Mira and Ian (thanks to their newfound standing skills). It was pretty much inevitable that one of them would grab some paint and make a mess. Despite knowing this, I was still caught off-guard when Ian tried to comandeer the blue paint and ended up decorating himself, the floor and a cardboard box I had been dismantling to make more eggs. No permanent damage was done to any of the three, but it was touch and go for a while. (Sorry, no picture of that. Sadly.)

Thought I'd Give That "Wordless Wednesday" Thing A Try

Fun and Games

On days that I am home with the kids, I often take a shower after putting the babies in their beds for nap. Ada usually plays on my bed while I do this, and then we spend some time in my bedroom. Usually I try to take the opportunity to put things away or get other tasks accomplished, but after a while Ada generally asks me to play with her. This week she suggested we play a game she'd invented. The game consisted of me picking what she referred to as a "pattern" from somewhere in the room and drawing it so that she could guess what I had drawn. Unlike her requests for me to play with dolls or to read the same Amelia Bedelia book for the 5,000th time, this game was really enjoyable for me. I drew a bunch of things and Ada guessed. Sometimes she needed clues but sometimes she got the thing right away. It was interesting what was easy for her to find, and what stumped her; she found my drawing of a door knob  utterly perplexing, but got my sketch of wood grain pretty quickly. After a while Ada decided to draw for me, which was also fun (though a little confusing, as when she drew a bug she claimed to see on the wall of the next door neighbors' house).

 

This isn't one of the things we drew, but it is one of my favorite recent Ada-drawings.

Closeted (but not how you think)

A few weeks ago Ada decided to make a nest on her bedroom floor. Blankets, pillows, stuffed toys, all surrounding her in a cozy circle. Like many young children, Ada loves making nests, caves and other tight-space hideaways. (The mom of a friend mentioned once that kids are actually hardwired to like little spaces. Maybe they like spaces that make them feel bigger, or is it just the desire to carve out personal space, even temporarily?) The night the nest was made, Ada decided she wanted to sleep there too. Although a little concerned that sleeping on the floor might not be entirely comfortable for a kid used to a mattress, we okayed this experiment. One night turned into a few nights, and then a week. She seemed to be sleeping fine, so we let it go.

Not that there weren't down-sides. At some point the nest became a boat, and I was harshly reprimanded for mis-identifying it to visitors. More annoying, to get to Ada's dresser I had to step on (and face scolding) or around the now-boat. It finally occurred to me that if a small space was what she wanted, I could give Ada a new option that would remove the nest-boat from the middle of her room. I suggested to Ada that I clean out her 7 foot deep closet and help her make a nest space in there. It is almost as if I had suggested we buy a unicorn and stable it in the back yard. (I believe the words "you are the best mama ever" were involved.)

So I cleaned out Ada's closet while the babies slept and Ada played with (and in) the bassinet that had been shoved in the closet since the babies finished with it six months back. I made a big pile of clothes to donate, found homes for the few dresses and shirts that I want to save, and restacked and organized the items that needed to stay in the closet. Our friend Ellen loaned us a papasan cushion that had been sitting unused in her basement. Ada and I dragged it home and she happily set up her new bed space. All was well in the world.

About a week after Ada started sleeping in her closet-bed, the father of a friend told me that Ada had asked if she could sleep at the friend's house some night. He tried to determine if that might work, and he and Ada had talked about how much light she needed for sleeping. The dad said: "Ada said she uses a little light in the closet where she sleeps" and then he gave me a little smile of the type you give when you think there is a good explanation for a situation, but without it things sound kind of, well, odd. I explained why Ada is sleeping in the closet, and luckily the dad is the understanding parent of a child who has had her own sleep issues over the past year.

So yes, my daughter is sleeping in the closet, for however long that appeals to her. When friends come over they play in the closet, and every time I go in to read books with Ada I find toys and game pieces strewn about the space. It feels like a cheap way to make Ada happy. Plus, I remember enough about being a kid to kind of wish that I had my own little nest-ship-cubby space too.

Random Quote and Unrelated Photo of the Week

There were no ladies on that set today. there were men running for curtains.
Shangala
RuPaul's Drag Race

In like a lion, out like a lamb?

I love brown. Every time I am in a fabric store I find myself gravitating to patterns with a lot of brown. (A peek in my closet shows that I have tended to make myself skirts that are mostly or partly brown, despite having almost NO brown shoes.)

That said, shooting brown was harder than I would have thought.( I am pretty sure I will type this same sentiment every month.) If I had let myself just take pictures of trees, March would have been an easy month. And Portland does have a lot of wonderful trees. As it is, wood is the subject of 8 of my 31 brown photographs.

Actually, the whole month wasn't that hard, but around the 15th I was out of ideas and inspiration. By the time the end of the month came around I had found a bunch more things to love. Maybe that is just the way it will go with this project. In any case, I am hoping that April will be fun. As I was walking with the babies on Wednesday, I passed a deep pink azalea bush in bloom. I am not usually a huge fan of azaleas or rhododendrons, but the pink of these flowers just throbbed, and I thought "if April is pink, I have to come back and shoot these flowers." And, thanks to my trusty random number generator, pink it is. April in Portland should be a good month for pink. And even it rains all month and I never get outside, I can just sneak into Ada's room and take a picture of an item of her clothing each day. Doing that would actually take more than a month.

Next Year, Right Here

Monday evening was the first night of Passover. (Don't be fooled by what most calendars say, Jewish holidays start at sundown on the night before the first day of the holiday.) Ellen graciously agreed to host this year, and we divvied up the cooking and other responsibilities.

For those of you not familiar with Passover, it is a bit like Jewish Thanksgiving in that both holidays involve foods and activities that vary from family to family, but which MUST be done for the celebration to feel complete. In the years since Chris and I returned to Portland, we have celebrated Passover with Ellen and Jiro, and it is our tradition that Chris makes brisket, Ellen makes a lovely vegetarian stock, and I swoop in at the last minute with matzo balls. (Great, huh? Ellen spends hours and days making stock, and I get to whip up a mix.) I usually make the charoset, but Ellen was kind enough to make it this year. Ada and I made a lemon nut cake on Sunday, so we didn't entirely shirk our responsibilities.

 

The traditional pre-seder jump-on-Jiro

No matter that the event was a little chaotic and messy, I had a great time. Maybe even more so because of the mess, which is, after all, my style. There was a little bump when we realized we did not have any matzo, but friends were sent out to retrieve some (thank goodness we don't live in a place with more Jews, or we'd REALLY be out of luck) while I conducted a short seder with the kids.

Last year I told the Passover story to Ada and Monkey Boy, and they were riveted by the plagues. This year was not much different. This year, Ada and MB were joined by Monkey Boy's One True Love. I recounted the tale to the kids, from the burning bush (Isn't that crazy? AND IT TALKED!) to the plagues (frogs EVERYWHERE, plopping on people's heads, landing in their soup!) and exit from Egypt (though I did change "slaying of the first born" to "the kids got really sick" and said the Pharaoh's soldiers were forced to swim downstream when the water closed in on them, instead of saying they drowned). The real highlight was the four of us running to the front door, throwing it open and yelling "Welcome Elijah! Come on in!" The kids asked lots of questions, got excited by my colorful commentary on the plagues, and even got a little heavily diluted wine to go with their ceremonial meal. When we were done, the kids ran amok while the grown-ups started the main seder.

This photo doesn't show it, but they were REALLY into the story.

A number of years ago I put together a hybrid hagaddah and every year since then I have meant to revise it. Let's just say, this was not the year that was going to happen. So we limped along as usual, but happily so. As commanded, we drank a lot of wine (pouring for one another as is the tradition of some good friends from the east coast) and kibbitzed a lot. When we talked about appreciating the freedom we take for granted, and recognizing the holy in the everyday, I read the footnote to Howl. (Reading this aloud to a group is definitely facilitated by drinking two large glasses of wine first.) At one point we somehow got into a heated conversation about men who are sub-par lovers due to failures that if discussed here will get the blog a lot of funky traffic. One of the male guests brought this up, in case you were wondering.

And we ate. We ate ceremonially (wow, love that horseradish) and for fun. We ate Chris' delicious brisket and Ellen's fantastic soup while we continued to drink. (hmm, maybe that whole b-x licking conversation wasn't so surprising after all.) I got to use my silly ancient rabbi-accent and laugh a lot.

The table, set. 

In the context of the holiday, it is traditional to say we will celebrate Passover "next year in Jerusalem." Literally this is about a return to a rebuilt temple (yes, the one destroyed 2,000 years ago, but who's counting?) but it also has metaphoric meaning. This year things are not as we want them, but next year the world will be healed. This year we have peace but there is war in the world. We are free, but others are enslaved. There is injustice, pain and sadness. The world is imperfect, but we can hope (and work) for change. 

As a secular Jew, the literal Jerusalem is not much of a draw. The wish for peace is compelling, however. I feel so lucky to be living in such a beautiful place, and one in which people have a strong commitment to social justice. For me, the wish is not so much next year in Jerusalem as next year in Portland. Life may not be perfect, but I have so much of what I have wanted over the years. My Passover wish is that others get to experience that fulfillment and joy as well.

Loving My Small Blog, Coast to Coast

A while back I mentioned that Mayberry Mom's Catherine proposed a Room Of Your Own session for this summer's Blogher. And now I am happy to congratulate Catherine, because the session (Little Fish in a Big Pond: Understanding, Accepting, and Loving Your Small Blog) was accepted! Catherine was kind enough to ask for my feedback when she put the session idea together, and I will be joining her as a presenter at the session. It is a little early for me to start worrying about what to wear, so for now I will just suggest that if you are going to Blogher that you stop by and say hi!


 

Aaand, the flip side of my whinging is my waxing rhapsodic

Like Clara of The Cheeseblog, I love a good list. Inspired by her list-related post, I offer my why it was a great weekend list:

• Most of the things on the long list of things I wanted to get done this weekend actually got done, including "make cake for passover" and "Ada goes biking" (but not "finish taxes").
• When the nice man from the Democratic National Convention called and I told him that I was an impoverished state worker who has no money to spare, he said he hoped things got better for me and wished me a good weekend.
• Fulfilling my commitment to myself to run errands by bike whenever possible, I pedaled Ada and myself to the store for strawberry starts, tarragon and bananas. Ada was a complete charm on our errand, which softened my heart to her pleas for fresh strawberries.
• Ada and Lila helped me plant strawberries without arguing about who got the better plant or which hole each girl should get. They dug holes, planted the starts, found "cozy spots" for worms and got really excited by a centipede sighting.
• The babies were adorable. Really stinking cute. They make one another laugh, which is beyond expectations at this point.
• Chris took Ada on bike-riding trips to the park twice on Saturday. I am amazed that any 4.5 year old can ride a bike without training wheels, but in Portland it is apparently totally normal. 
• While gardening I found the remote car door unlocker (what the hell is that called? keyless entry fob?) that I lost last summer. Even better - it still works!

Random Quote and Unrelated Photo of the Week

For a moment he stared at Blomkvist with an expression that was presumably meant to instill respect, but which made him look more like an inflated moose.

Stieg Larsson
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

We want to be, your crew of entertainment

Wow, '80s funk channeling Pirates of the Caribbean. Truly a musical (and video) treasure:

Q: When is a square not a square?

A: When I've sewn it.

As I mentioned the other day, all the child-related doing and re-doing has me wanting to do something that stays done. And, ta da! I acted on this urge by sewing a bunch of hand-drying squares.

Ada's school, like most places that deal with children, is concerned about germs. Ada often talks about how this or that "spreads germs" (though I have noticed this doesn't worry her when she wants a lick of my ice cream cone). The school is a typically Portland eco-friendly, so rather than replace a single cloth towel with lots of paper towels, the school bathroom features a basket of cotton squares on the counter. The kids wash their hands, then grab one or two squares to dry themselves.

Recovering from a cold as I am, the squares got me thinking. I realized that once we get into helping  Ian and Mira routinely wash their hands, we will have five people drying their hands on the same towel. Most of the time this is okay, but as I have direct experience with the lackadaisical hand-washing effort of the average child I thought it might be a good idea to give everyone their own squares. This will help avoid a germy towel spreading colds from one person to another in our house.

I have a ton of cloth scraps left over from various projects, several of which I grabbed for this effort. I looked briefly for a tutorial before realizing making these squares is so straightforward that instructions were probably unnecessary. Just in case you are interested in making this and are a novice sewer, here is what I did:

• I wanted large-ish squares, so I cut out rectangles that were 7 by 14 inches. This gave me a half inch seam on three sides (so I would have a 6x6.5 "square" when I was done). I could have measured 7 by 13, but I am lazy and it was easiest to have the long side be double the short one. 
• I folded the cut rectangle in half with the outsides touching. I then ironed the squares (okay, most of them) because the fabric had gotten wrinkly sitting in my fabric stash. 
• Next I sewed along the three open sides, but left a gap on the third side so that I could turn the squares right side out. I even clipped the corners so that they would lay flat, although this is a little fussy for something that is for hand-drying. (Stephanie would be proud of me, I am sure.)
• Finally I sewed a zig-zag stitch around the whole square. This closes the hole left in the previous step and makes the little squares look so snazzy. Using contrasting thread is nice. I used orange for some of these, and a yellow that is a minor color in the cloth once the orange ran out. 

Oh yeah. I cross-posted this over at Did You Buy That New? because Debbie sweetly asked me to start posting there again, and I can not resist a curly-haired girl.

One Little Thing

"I. Just. Can't."

I said these words in response to a request for cups with lids. It sounds so silly to me now but I just could not transfer the orange juice to other cups, could not argue about why putting orange juice in a water bottle is a bad idea, could not do another single thing.

The whole day had been either a series of frustrating and annoying events or perfectly nice, depending on your perspective. Ian and Mira were sick, they were and crabby in a completely understandable but nevertheless fairly trying way. Ada had a friend over, which is less work than Ada not having a friend over, but still not effortless. The girls made a wreck of the playroom (to be expected) and shredded paper which lay all over the rug (infuriating). They also played in Ada's closet and drew on the walls with a highlighter from my desk (completely annoying, especially because Ada knows that is not acceptable behavior). The weather was great, and the girls finally went outside for a while. I saw them digging in the garden, which is fine with me. Then I went outside and learned that they were planting peas. As in, planting them willy nilly all over the garden. I know this is really no big deal and we are talking about maybe $2 worth of peas, but for some reason this had me on the verge of tears. I managed to contain myself when I reminded Ada that the peas need support to grow and that planting them all around the yard was unlikely to get us many pods. (Luckily we'd already planted peas by the trellis, so some of the seeds will hopefully grow.)

I can't even type this little scene without wanting to erase the whole thing out of embarrassment about what a non-issue this is. Even hours later I see how uninmportant the loss of a half package of peas is, but in the moment it felt like part of some death-by-a-thousand-cuts torture. It isn't the peas, or any of the other little annoyances really. It isn't the babies' crankiness and general sickness-induced neediness. And by now I should be used to the all consuming boredom of feeding, changing, soothing and entertaining that is life with young children. It is all of those things together. There is no end to the work, and though none of it is very onerous, taken together it sometimes feels crushing.

This week I have felt a strong urge to make something again. The return of good weather has me considering a skirt for myself (I have some great octopus fabric I bought when I was pregnant) and this has me suddenly dying to make mustaches for myself and my family. I remember this feeling from when Ada was a baby. I was so tired of doing things only to have to do everything again. With babies there is no "done." You feed them, only to have to feed them again in a few hours. Clean diapers get soiled, noses continue to run after being wiped, naps begin and end, necks become food encrusted even though you just wiped them. You get the idea. I started sewing when Ada was a baby because once I finished a project, it stayed finished. The skirts did not have to be remade and stuffed toys stayed stuffed (for the most part, at least).

So here we go again. I am going to find myself a project and carve out a piece of the dining room table to make it happen. It may happen slowly, but it will happen, and once done, will stay done. Until the next project, that is.

 ** * ** * **

As I sat down to write this, I saw a woman walk up the path. My heart sank as she knocked, knowing that I would have to interact, that she would want something from me. I opened the door to a well-dressed woman introducing herself as a financial adviser who just opened an office nearby. "Are you familiar with Edward Jones?" No, I said, but I just put babies down and I have just 20 minutes to myself."

"No problem," she said. "I have three myself. Have a good day." And she waved and walked back down the path. That little thing might be enough to salvage the day. And it might be enough to go see this woman for the financial planning help Chris and I sorely need.

A Perfect Ten (Months)

Ten months is a good time.

First, let's get the monthly update out of the way:

• At their 9 month appointment, Mira was 20 pounds and Ian was 25. That's right TWENTY-FIVE pounds of drooling, crawling joy. They are both in the 90-95% for length and weight. Shocking, I know.
• Mira can get herself from crawling to sitting and back. Ian can too, but as with most physical milestones Mira did it first. I note this not to give Mira fodder for sibling squabbles later, but because I am sure I won't remember if I don't write it down. They are both pulling themselves to standing and doing some "cruising" around furniture.
• Ian is still commando crawling. He continues to practice hands-and-knees wiggling, but when it comes time to move he goes back to the tried and true. This means he is S.L.O.W., which is only a problem when he and Mira are racing after the same toy. Thank goodness that only happens, oh, fifty million times a day. 
• Ian has been working on getting his top two front teeth for what seems like forever. Today I saw the first little white bits poking out. I'm thrilled, because while he's been teething we've seen a lot of this: 

or maybe he was just pissed off that Mira beat him to the toy he wanted

• Eating was going really well until they got sick. Now they are pickier, but hopefully as they feel better they will continue to expand their preferred foods. 
• The illness sucked. It started with conjunctivitis (how the rest of us managed to avoid getting it, I am still not sure) and moved into a fever/stuffed nose snot-fest. Chris and I both got the cold, but thankfully not at the same time. We are steaming the heck out of Ian and Mira while they sleep.

Speaking of kids with colds and humidifiers, you may want to know that Chris and I have officially learned NOTHING from parenting three kids. When Ada was a baby, we used a humidifier when she was plugged up. One of the first times we used it, we plugged it in to an outlet located between her crib and the door. About an hour after she had gone to bed, we heard a loud and horrible beeping. A "your house is burning down" beeping. Turns out that we'd put the humidifier right under the smoke detector, and the thing was working so well that the waves of condensation read to the smoke detector as fire-related heat, causing it to alert us to impending doom. We ran into Ada's room, flipped on the overhead light and generally added to the scene. Ada did not move a muscle during this whole thing.

Of course you know what is coming, right? Despite putting the humidifier across the room from the smoke detector, we failed to consider that once it really got going the machine could still trigger the smoke alarm. Which it did. Once again, the babies (and Ada) were unperturbed, but it rattled the crap out of me.

believe it or not, he is more smiley than not

My girls (with Mira trying out to be a cupie doll)

A Last Minute Plea.

My stomach is in knots today as I wait for the outcome of the health reform vote in Congress.

My legislators are voting for it (after some wrangling about Medicare, but still). To my readers in the USA: if your legislator is on the fence, please call her or him. Congresspeople are working today and need to hear from you. A New York Times graphic from Friday will give you a sense of where your legislator stands on this issue. Check it out.

And please, take action. It is insane that this vote is so close.

Lunchtime Questions

Why is there no right answer to a child's "I am still hungry, what else can I have?" that does not involve toast or sugar?

Why does mac and cheese get darker after sitting in the fridge?

Is looking into a full refrigerator and thinking there is nothing to eat genetic?

Is it better to laugh out loud and have to explain your reaction, or to stifle the laughter when your daughter says: "It's a hooker quesadilla. I'm chewing hooker!"?

People For Bikes

Sometimes life pushes you for the good. Last weekend Ada and I needed to get over to Ellen's house to pick up a small mattress to complete her "ship" (this is another story, but I cleaned out her closet and Ada build a cozy ship-bed in there). It had been raining but wasn't at the moment, so we discussed how we would get there and back. Ada, the kid who routinely tells me that she wishes she could be driven to school instead of walking the eight blocks, suggested we bike. She initially wanted to ride her bike, but I wasn't entirely sure how I would keep an eye on her while pulling the mattress in the trailer. (Ada isn't ready for the street, but I couldn't see negotiating the sidewalk and curbs for her and myself and the trailer.) So we settled on me biking with her in the trailer, which worked well.

I should probably mention that Ellen only lives seven blocks from us, so it is not as if this was a heroic undertaking on my part. I was just so thrilled that Ada was not lobbying to be driven.

At dinner that night Ada, Chris and I were discussing the idea of taking Ian and Mira out for a ride. I mentioned that we have one baby helmet but need another. We talked about who should pull the trailer. (Chris suggested me, Ada thought he should do it.) We brainstormed what might be a good path for this first ride with the babies. All details settled, Ada chiped: "let's go!" When I mentioned that it was already dark, Ada countered that I have a bike light.

"Yeah, but you don't," I said.

"Well, you can get me one."

Chris and I agreed, but suggested we might also try to bike during the day instead. (For one thing, this was better for the babies' schedule.)

After dinner Ada and Chris told stories and watched the Blazer game. I plopped down in the living room for some blog-reading. I surfed over to Lauren's blog and found this:

I love this video, and all the more for the fact that I recognize Portland's streets and bikeways. 

Lauren, in addition to being a cartoon goddess, is a committed and enthusiastic biker. A lot of the sketches she shares on her blog are based on things she saw while riding. She signed the pledge, and I did too.

The pledge is this:

I am for bikes. I'm for long rides and short rides. I'm for commuting to work, weekend rides, racing, riding to school, or just a quick spin around the block. I believe that no matter how I ride, biking makes me happy and is great for my health, my community and the environment we all share. That is why I am pledging my name in support of a better future for bicycling—one that is safe and fun for everyone. By uniting my voice with a million others, I believe that we can make our world a better place to ride.

To sign the pledge, click here. At the site you can also check out the goals of People For Bikes and see the latest news about bike-related public-policy in your area.

Does it help to look away?

Two girls come scooting past me toward the bathroom. Ada yells out, "I have to use the potty!"

"Great" I say, just as the friend runs into the room saying, "me too! I have to go too!"

Ada (from the bathroom): "I really have to go NOW. You can pee on the carpet."

Jumping up, I run into the bathroom to tell the friend, "if you really need to go, you can come upstairs."

Friend: "No. I can wait."

Ada: "You can cross your legs and look away."

Recognition

My friend Susan is so smart. She says these things, these really deep and insightful things, and it is only later that they come back to me and I realize how right she is and how smart. She tells me things about her experience parenting and being a partner to her husband, and while I am hearing them I think that they sound good, but I don't necessarily think more about her observation beyond a description of what is happening for her. Like the time at my blessing way when she talked about her experience of fatigue as a defining characteristic of parenting very young children. She likened it to the native Alaskans, who have something like 50 words for snow. She has experienced being tired in many ways. She talked about being happy tired and angry tired. Being weepy tired and goofy tired.

Listing to Susan say this I thought I remembered the fatigue of parenting in the infant stage. I had done it once before, and as a heavily pregnant person I was already re-experiencing interrupted sleep. I heard her talk about being tired and I took it in as a part of my whole blessing way experience; she, and the other women at the ceremony, shared their experiences as mothers as a way of marking my becoming a mother to two new children. 

It was not until months later that I remembered what Susan had said and found it completely descriptive of my present life. Maybe remembered is not quite the right word. It is more like that I felt it. The experience of simultaneously remembering and recognizing that her words fit me was almost physical in its immediacy.

This weekend I had another "Susan is so right" moment. Susan and I have talked a lot about the stresses of parenting, and about how those stresses can affect our relationships with our husbands. We are both lucky to have wonderful partners who are active parents and very engaged on many fronts. But no one is perfect, and all the work and time and and and of parenting can make relationships harder. Add to that the tendency to ignore the need to nurture that key relationship, and both partners can find themselves drained and frustrated.

After a week in which I realized that our finances are such that I will have to work more in the coming months and make some other changes that will likely require sacrifices for both Chris and me, I have been feeling put upon. It wasn't something specific, it was just the reality of my life right now. I don't want to get into it, and I realize that even as things stand now I have a wonderful life with completely bourgeois problems, but things feel like a bit of a grind right now. I work. I plan, shop for and prepare food for Ian and Mira. I plan, shop and sometimes cook food for Chris, Ada and myself. I do laundry. I pick up toys, blankets, clothes, food, newspapers and plastic bags constantly. I pay the bills and fret about how we will keep up. I wash the babies, I wash Ada. I run through bedtime routines and wake-up routines and in-between routines. I recycle. I fight back the rising tide of stuff in our house by giving stuff to goodwill or the swap shop. In between I get to play with the Ada, Mira and Ian, but even that involves dealing with a lot of whining and crying and other age-appropriate but parent-soul-crushing behavior.

I do not mean to imply that Chris doesn't do this stuff too, because he certainly does. But this is my blog, so let's focus, shall we? I (and okay, we) just do a lot of stuff, and it goes on all day, every day. In the midst of this effort and stress and fatigue I have been feeling crabby. (Shocking, I know.) I feel crabby generally, and I feel less than generous toward Chris, despite knowing that he is facing the same pressures and is holding up at least as well as I am, probably better. In the middle of my disgruntled blah-blah-blahs, I remembered something Susan had said. She talked about how she and her husband get into this place where they are both tired and worn down and out of sorts. Then one person gets a break - gets to sleep late, or go out with friends or in some way gets their burden lightened a little. Let's say it is Susan who gets the break. This lightening allows Susan to not feel so tired and stressed, and once she feels better it allows her to turn to her husband and say I know things are feeling really hard for you right now. This in turn lets him say yes, things have been hard. Thank you. All I wanted was for someone to recognize that!

And this can be a release, allowing both partners to feel better and to more easily shoulder their burdens.

After days of carrying around low-level annoyance I realized that this is part of what I want. I want it recognized that I am shouldering this burden. I want Chris to point to it, and to tell me he can see its contours and recognizes its heft. I want all this work and stress and fatigue to be recognized, not so that I can give it to Chris to carry, but so that I can once again pick it up knowing that I am not doing so unappreciated.

Well, that and a lot more sleep. But I'll take what I can get at this point.

I am feeling kind of worn down and a little (okay, a lot) cranky, but I am enjoying this:

Random Quote and Unrelated Photo of the Week

One Party slogan described it as "A Village for Art, a Capital of Romance, a Place for Idleness."

Peter Hessler
Chinese Barbizon

Tuning Out

I think I am going crazy, driven there by the tunes spilling out of Ian and Mira's leapfrog table. The insanity caused me to start a review blog just so I could write about it.

I am not surprised they lost their appetites

Ada and Lila were eating dinner at our house. They started out pretending to be kittens. (Which by the way, yay! Kittens LOVE milk! These kittens drank several glasses.) After a bit they started talking about going to Disneyland with their children. 

Lila: I am going to have a baby. If you want kids you have to have babies, right?

Ada: But I don't want surgery.
(Why would she worry about this? Neither she, Lila or their siblings was born by c-section. Until today I wasn't even sure she knew that babies could be born this way.)

Lila: Everyone gets surgery at some point.
(See, this is what's wrong with the U.S. health care system.)

(some chatter about surgery and cutting and babies that went by too fast for me to understand, much less transcribe)

Lila: When your baby is inside of you it really really hurts. They don't want to cut too deep because it will cut your baby and it would be dead. It would cut your baby's head. And I don't think you can have a baby with no head.

(whisper whisper)

Ada: We aren't hungry any more.

Lila: Yeah. We don't want to finish our dinner.

** * ** * **

I love listening to them. Where else does dinner conversation range from Snow White to surgery?

Gray in February (what the hell was I thinking?)

Color Year, Month Two (Gray)

The random number generator offered up GRAY for the second month of my color-a-month, photo-a-day project. Gray, in February. Well, at least I knew I could get one day's shot by taking pictures of the Oregon sky. On the third or fourth day I was already wishing to be done with gray, silently thankful that February is a short month.

In January I was amazed by how many things are orange, and how interesting they are. This month I found that while a lot of things are gray, those things are pretty mundane: the sidewalk; concrete walls; sides of buildings... It took a little more pushing to find things I was interested in capturing. That is a good thing, as I was forced to think more about what was in the picture. So a picture of a bicycle rack (one of two racks I snapped this month) included Ada's scuffed pink shoes. The sky shares space with bare tree branches. 

Coming to the close of this month I have a better appreciation for gray as a subject, or more accurately, for using a gray focus as a way to expand my focus a bit. I am glad to be moving on (to brown, the color for March), but I must grudgingly admit that I liked gray a lot more than I thought I would.

Tired

I don't know if it is because she has a low level cold (possible), because she has been running around more (could be) or because she wakes up at 5 when Ian and Mira yell from their cribs (definitely a factor), but Ada has been wiped out by the end of the day. And by "end of the day" I mean often 7pm, but sometimes 5:30.

Whatever the reason,  we have been seeing a lot of this lately:

Due to sleepiness (either falling asleep before dinner or leaving the table during dinner because she can barely keep her head up, much less chew) Ada has missed a bunch of dinners and baths recently.  It doesn't seem to be harming her much. She wakes up ready to go, but not ravenous. (and only sometimes stinky)

Speaking of sleep, I'd better get to bed. Between Ada's new schedule and Ian's 4am chattering, I need to move up my bedtime a bit.

Random Quote and Unrelated Photo of the Week

People! What a bunch of bastards!

Roy
The IT Crowd

A Friend

My godson was once so tiny. That was a long time ago. Now he is a running, laughing, complicated-story-telling blur. I love how enthusiastic he is, and I am thrilled to have caught a him a few times the other day:

My new favorite picture of him

Inside the lion head at the Chinese Gardens New Years Celebration

I am really looking forward to seeing him continue to grow up within his family and mine.

Happy Days are Here Again

Mayberry Mom added me to her list of bloggers that make her happy, which makes me giddy with joy. (No really, reading her post made me very happy.)

Reading Mayberry's list got me thinking about what makes me happy these days. Some of what occurred to me:

• They Might Be Giants' song Seven and jumping around singing "we want cake, where's our cake?" (while I'm at it, this is a great song too.)
• Ada is potty trained. I know this happened months ago, but it still knocks me out. 
• Coworkers who are also friends.
• I get along so well with my parents and in-laws that I look forward to their visits. 
• The just-ended stretch of sunny February days included a weekend. 
• Good coffee and being able to have a second cup when I want to. 
• A friend and I signed up for a series of plays this year, so I periodically get to the theater without having to think about whether or not a particular play will be "worth" it. 
• The gray month of my current photo project is almost over.
• Moving my huge rosemary plant freed up more room in the garden. I will be adding tarragon and cilantro to my herbs. 
• Magpie Musing sent me two charming unsigned postcards before I thought to compare the handwriting with that of a card she'd taken credit for. (I couldn't read the postmark on either of the anonymous cards. What did you do, Maggie, bribe the post office?

Please join in. Comment with your happy lists, or post about this yourself. I want to know what makes you happy!

Love Him

Happy Birthday Chris. I know you don't like a fuss, so hope you won't hold it against me that I like to tell everyone it is your birthday. To make it up to you Ada and I promise not to eat all your birthday cookies. Hmm, maybe it is time to make some birthday cookies.

Edited to add: I ended up making cupcakes instead. Chris didn't seem to mind. 

 

"Birthday Cookies? Where?"

I love you so much and could not ask for a better husband or father to our three (!) kids. As great as you are, I do have one bit of advice for the next year: that bag doesn't really go with fleece.

Nine, Nine, Doin' Fine

Mira:  crawling, in the traditional style
Ian:  commando crawling (arms only)

Yes, we used the baby gates for their outside time. 
You try to keep crawling twins from eating dirt and bugs and then judge us.

Ian:  definitely clapping. Favorite new game - clap twice, then look hopefully at nearest adult. Laugh and clap some more when adult starts clapping too.
Mira:  (maybe) waving, differently from the slow queen wave of a few months ago (I say maybe because she does a lot of hand stuff, but this looks like waving)

Ian: not a big fan of wearing a hat

Mira: Pulling herself up on things, without regard to whether they'll hold her

Mira:  opposed to having her nose wiped
Ian:  opposed to having his nose wiped


Both Ian and Mira have settled into a routine, with the obvious changes when they are sick or annoyed. Ian likes to wake up around 4. Chris and I don't like this, and generally try to quiet Ian and then go back to bed until as close to 5 as we can muster. Some mornings this means that Ian complains in his crib for a half hour or more, but somehow Mira manages not to be disturbed by this. In fact, she is more likely to wake up once we've given in and taken him out of their room. Chris thinks it is because Ian acts as Mira's white noise machine, and his removal from the room leaves her without his soothing wails as background to her slumber. In any case, even when she wakes up around 5, she can often be coaxed back to bed until 6 or even 7. (This would be great if one of us wasn't already up with Ian.)

Ian and Mira turn 9 months on Monday. Tuesday is Chris's birthday. I suppose that means I should let him sleep in.

Random Quote and Unrelated Photo of the Week

One of these days... I am really...going to let you teach that guy a lesson.

Mike
Monsters, Inc.

Lemonade (but no Burritos)

Working at home yesterday, I started thinking about the sweet potato burrito from Magnificent's, a trailer near my house.

Portland is currently in the throes of a food cart obsession.

I walked over at lunch, to find this:

Experiments (My New Toy)

For my birthday, Chris got me a diana lens for my digital SLR. This might seem like a weird idea, getting an incredibly low tech toy camera lens for a high tech digital camera. It might be, but it is so fun. It is freeing to slap on a lens that makes everything, um, impressionistic (to be polite). It lets me think about framing, color and mood, without being too obsessed with getting the focus detail just right. Plus, the diana only works in full manual mode, which pushes me to pay more attention to what I am doing as I take pictures, instead of leaving things at one aperture whether or not it is appropriate to the light and situation. 

early cherry blossoms

I took a bunch of pictures of Ada using a variety of settings, and even this one is clearly "too dark" I love the look - it reminds me of a fairy tale, with the heroine entering the deep, dark forest. I can't wait to show it to Ada.

Laurelhurst park pond

I also own a (film-using) Holga, which I love, but I am so in love with being able to review my pictures at the end of the day that the Holga gets a bit neglected. In fact, I have a roll of film taken with the Holga (mumble-mumble) months ago that is STILL waiting to get developed. I'll get right on that, I promise. In the mean time, I am having a great time playing with my low tech lens without losing my high tech ability to See It Now! Right Now!

Drought

I hate it when people blog about how they are having a hard time finding things to write about. Really, what is the point? You are uninspired, you are tired, you are busy. Why would anyone want to hear about that? And yet...

NO. I won't do it.

Instead, I offer: 

Mira, with a rice cracker

...aaand, shocked the cracker right out of her mouth.

Did I mention that she's crawling and has a head cold?

Random Quote and Unrelated Photo(s) of the Week

small text reads: Winnie is the only pooh welcome in our school. 

Please respect our childrens' health, happiness and learning environment.

small text reads: Please respect our children's health, happiness and learning environment. 

Dog doo is not cool at school!

in the past I've been as interested in tai chi as I would be in a particularly exotic flavor of ibuprofen

Sandra Tsing Loh
Tai chi & me

Leave the House

Friday is the day I am home alone with all three kids. This can be great or it can be a horror show. Determined to avoid the latter, I suggested to Ada that we go to the library. Ada is almost always more fun when we leave the house. Something about staying home makes her clingy and whiny and (even when she is being pleasant) prone to asking me to play dolls, which I (parenting failure on my part, I know) hate. But really, what could be more boring? I am always trying to steer her toward games or legos or really anything but holding three dolls at once while pretending to take them to the park. Again. Plus, one doll's head tends to pop off unexpectedly, and I am always made to be that doll, so there's the added stress of playing while trying not to decapitate the toys.

But back to the day: getting all three kids out the door can be tricky, especially if (due to illness, say) Ian and Mira are not synced in their naps. And yes, the babies were out of sync, but it worked out anyway and once they were both up we scooted out the door. As expected, Ada was completely lovely the moment we went outside. We talked, looked for rocks, and avoided stepping on cracks all the way to the library. (As an aside, although a little put out that I would not let her pilfer a lovely river stone that caught her eye, Ada seems to understand why it is not okay to take "special rocks" out of people's yards. In addition to not stealing from my neighbors, this rule has the benefit of limiting the number of rocks that come home with us.)

On the way there, we passed a man sitting in his yard with a baby. We stopped to say hello and compare ages, and we entered into our usual conversation with strangers:

Man: Are they twins?

Me: Yes. Whenever you think you are having a hard parenting day, you can think of us.

Man: Wow. (Making small bowing motion) I'm impressed. I feel like one is hard!

Me (backpedaling): Actually, they are pretty good. It helps that I had practice with her (pointing to Ada). And she's a really good big sister.

Immediately I thought to myself, why am I such an asshole? Why do I need this nice stranger to acknowledge my workload? All parenting is hard, and why make him bow to my superhuman parenting abilities? I need to stop implying that things are so much harder with twins. I mean, they are harder in some ways, but there are a lot of ways in which just having one baby and a preschooler would be just as challenging. It really depends on the day, or maybe the moment.

Speaking of the day, the rest of the day Ada was a joy. After the library we popped into our local biscuit shop for eats. When we got home (just in time to feed Mira and Ian before they passed out) Ada decided she wanted to stay outside. So, fine. We agreed she could play on the porch or in the yard, as long as I could see her my perch in from the dining room. Ada is so good about this kind of thing. She played on her own for an hour while I got Ian and Mira fed, diapered, nursed and in bed. Then I went outside and we played until Mira woke up. Then we read books and hung out outside most of the rest of the day.  At some point I thought to myself that I needed to remember to tell Ada how much fun I had with her, what a joy she was to be around. (I did tell her that at bedtime, but I am not sure she actually heard me, as she was practically asleep when her head hit the pillow.)

 

Maybe the wrong photo for a post on the virtues of going outside.

He really does like leaving the house.

On Saturday, Ada was crabby, crabby, crabby. She insisted she could not go upstairs to get something from her room because she was afraid. She didn't want to be lonely. Never mind that it would take 30 seconds to run upstairs, grab the shirt and zoom back down, which was about one tenth of the time she took whining about the idea. Everything was a struggle, and it took all my will not to yell at her. Luckily some friends called and we forced Ada out the door to go see them. When Chris took the babies home for lunch and nap, Ada and I played in the park. Later that day I took Ada and a friend to a local art center, where they had a fantastic time. By the time the friend's parents came to get her at 8:30 that night, the girls had also built a complicated block and toy city, acted out a complicated story in which they were "super baby kittens" and eaten the (fantastic) brownies I made on a whim. So we were back in the "happy" category, family-wise.

The main lesson for me is to leave the house. No matter how hard the kids make that, leave the house. They, and I will be the better for it.

Balance Shmalance (or, I Need More of Everything)

What I want to do:

Take better pictures
Sew a groundhog ipod cozy
Be more fun as a parent
Get back to sewing clothes for myself and the kids
Make a crown for Ada
Read more
Laugh more

But I feel so stretched as it is. Tonight after dinner I suddenly literally could not keep my eyes open. Retreating from table to couch, I lay down and fell asleep. I woke up only when Ada and Chris were getting ready to go upstairs.

I don't know if the answer is to work more or work less. Right now I am entering a busy time at work, which means more working in my "off" hours. So far it is not too much, but I look at a friend/coworker who has put in a super-human number of unpaid hours and wonder when I would be able to say it was too much. Financially I need my job, and intellectually I really enjoy it. I also enjoy that I work part-time. I want to spend more than two days a week with my children. And yet, at the end of one such day with them I am emotionally and physically spent.

How do you find balance, or is that a myth?

Still not a good reason

"But we want to!"

Random Quote and Unrelated Photo of the Week

Following a lengthy period of evolution, the earth had more or less reached the point where we are now; in other words it  had entered the phase where cars wear out more quickly than the soles of shoes.

Italo Calvino
The Daughters of the Moon

Pata Pata Post (say that three times fast)

Chris is watching the first episode of the final season of Lost. The show ends and a commercial for a new Honda comes on. Hearing the music, I perk up.

"It's the pata pata! Do you know how many people find me by searching for 'pata pata'?"

"How many? More than three a week?"

"Yes!" (A quick check of my sitemeter shows that 4 of my most recent 40 visitors fit this description.)

"You should throw them a bone."

"What? I already posted about the pata pata."

"You could do more. How 'bout a weekly pata pata post?"




(I won't do that, but for those of you here looking for the Honda ad, this is your lucky day.)

Not Much Of A Sale

Excuse the photo quality (snapped with my phone). I spotted this at the fancy grocery store near my house: