Blindsided

M and RH

It doesn't happen very often, but once in a while I find myself at a complete and total loss for words.

Not just words, but thoughts.  Sometimes something happens, and it's as though my brain just... shuts down.

I just can't process everything going through my head all at once.  And so I stop processing altogether.

I'm sure that many of you have experienced something similar.  You're just minding your own business, and BAM!  It happens.

That happened to me last week.  And I've been dwelling on it.

It's made me go back and think a lot about the last time it happened.  That was five years ago.

...if the phrase "five years ago" is familiar to you from recent posts, you're going to know immediately what this is about.

While M was going through his treatments at that time, while there was still so much fear and uncertainty, my family did all that they could to support me.  To keep me going.

Aunt Genocide was a rock for me.  She lived in Chicago at the time, albeit on the other side of town, and she was constantly letting me know she was there for me.  She came over for dinner, cooked for us, she volunteered to make our wedding cake for God's sake.  And that meant that every few weeks, we went to her place to taste a test cake.

Her coconut tres leches cake?  It's to die for.  But not a practical choice to sit out during a wedding reception.  M and I lived on Aunt Genocides cakes for a time.

Yeah, Aunt Genocide made this.

She was amazing.

At any rate, another one of the super nice things that she did for me was to keep me reading.  Not that it's ever been difficult, but she was the queen of the comic book shop.  She was always on top of the best new books, the worst new books... she knew exactly what I liked, and what I would like.  And with that in mind, she got me started on the books, "Strangers in Paradise."

She thought the timing was perfect.  The author had announced that there was an end to the story line coming up.  She hadn't read the last volume that had been published, and there would only be two trade paperbacks left.  She'd get me hooked, let me read everything up to date, I'd get to the penultimate book right after she did, and then we could wait for the series finale together.

See?  Super thoughtful.

So when she finished reading that penultimate book, I was waiting for it.  I had just gobbled up the previous seventeen books.

Seventeen.

She brought it to my house, and then she started hedging.

"I don't think you want to read this," she said.

She wouldn't tell me why, she just strongly encouraged me to give up the series.  Like hell I was giving up the series!  I was LOVING the series!  I loved the characters, I loved the development, the maturity... I was really ROOTING for Francine and Katchoo!  I really wanted to know what would happen with David!

No matter what she said, and she refused to give plot points away (always dedicated to not spoiling things for anybody), I was adamant.  And Aunt Genocide loaned me the book.

And I read most of it.

David, who had been sort of missing, came back.  And in painstaking detail, told the other characters about his terminal brain tumor.

...his inoperable glioma.

The malignant astrocyte that invaded his white matter.

I knew what all that vocabulary meant.  Terry Moore, the author, had done his research.

There were these illustrations...

Images I was so familiar with.  I knew what they were.  They could have been M's MRIs.

I put the book down.

I didn't think.  I didn't talk.  I gave it back to Aunt Genocide, who cried and apologized, and who I assured had nothing to feel bad about.  How was she supposed to know?  How COULD she have known that the very thing she was attempting to engage me with to keep me going would take that kind of a turn?  That specific of a turn?

I didn't read the final installation of the story.  I don't know what happened to David.  I'm going to assume he died- Terry Moore was making it pretty clear that he didn't intend to let David survive.

Let me remind you- this was September of 2007.  Two months after M's diagnosis.

I happen to know that Aunt Genocide still feels horrible for this whole thing.

So last week (September again... why?), I was surfing around some of my favorite websites.  And I found...

This.  "He Took A Polaroid Every Day, Until the Day He Died."

Of course I clicked on that link.  The headline was too cool.  I had no idea what to expect, but I was completely won over by the idea.

I thought it might be a little sad, of course, but I didn't expect what I saw.

Here was this guy...

This fascinating guy...

And then there was the photo of him, in his hospital bed, recovering from brain surgery.

There was the picture of his stapled together skull, hair still on his head, just like M.

There was the picture of his chemo/radiation hair loss.

There was the picture of his hair growing back.

...there was the picture of the wedding ring.

...of the wedding.

This guy, he could have been M.  He loved music and baseball.  He had brain cancer.  And still, there he was, surviving.  Getting married.  Living his life.

And then there he was, in the hospital again.

And then he was dead.

Of course he was dead.

I had known from the minute I clicked the link that he was dead.

But it was not okay.  It is just NOT OKAY.  Because M is alive, and he is JUST FINE, THANK YOU.

But that story... that real, true story about another man...

Another beloved human being with friends and family, with ambitions and dreams ideas and a life...

That man is dead.  And that man could have been my husband.  In that wedding picture, there's even a glimpse at the chuppah.  There are so many little things, here and there, that connect me and my husband even closer to this man who has been dead for fifteen years and who's name I don't even know.

Just... living.

I don't really have a moral here.  I don't have a happy way to wrap all of this up like I usually do- to put a bow on it and show you how wonderful life is, and how lucky we are to experience it together, and how grateful I am.

Because shit like that?  It scares me.

I know M has to die someday.  We all have to die someday.

Me, my children, my parents... none of us are immortal.

When I learn about somebody's death, or illness.. I hold my family a little closer.  A little tighter.  I weep for those friends and family who have lost, and I silently say a prayer of thanks for what I have.

But when faced with the bleakness of what might have been...

When I'm blindsided like this...

I have nothing at all to say.  Nothing to think.

All I can do is cry.

 

Let Them Eat Cake

Thank you, Bill Watterson.

As you may recall, some months ago I won a pie baking contest.

And, as you may recall, the same comic book shop that hosted said pie baking contest hosted a cake baking competition.  Right after my birthday.

Despite my incessant nesting, despite finals, despite all the things that have been keeping me busy and crazy and all sorts of occupied... I baked a cake.

Oh, how I baked a cake.

I baked so much freakin' cake.

And what did I do with that cake?

I made the world's most awesome comic themed cake ever.

Did I win the competition?  No.  Sadly, this time almost none of my friends were able to come out and support me (after one ridiculous hormonal breakdown, I'm okay), while several of the other bakers brought huge crews.  I mean, when the lady who runs the independent comic book company and is handing out alternate cover editions of great titles enters a cake... who doesn't vote for that?

At any rate, I took home the third prize.  And I'm very happy with that.

So what was my comic book themed cake?

Behold-
Hot Cocoa with Marshmallow Calvin and Hobbes Snowman House of Horrors Cake(s)

For reference, see the comic at the top of the post.

...oh yeah.

Freshly butchered snowman.  And that sno-cone is actually filled with cake.

At the competition

That is one dead snowman

Mmm... delicious!

I kept telling everyone the head would be the best part (ideal frosting to cake ratio) but nobody would listen.  The fools.

Cake.

Awesome.

Pie and Utter Geekery

About a month ago, I participated in an event that, frankly, was a very very VERY bad idea.

This requires a little explanation.  It will all make sense in the end, I promise.

I am a gigantic nerd.  I sometimes wonder how close to the line of true geekdom I fall, because honestly a great deal of my geek cred has been acquired purely by osmosis.

How?  Well, this is my dad.  When I first started "dating," sometime in my mid-teens, I quickly determined my own litmus test for whether or not a guy was too geeky or nerdy for me to spend my time with- if he knew who my dad was, he was out.

So, when it comes to carrying on a conversation about some fine details of geekery, from the history of PayPal to the problems facing any anti-spam effort, I really can hold my own.

That said, my personal computer geekiness only extends to my basic knowledge of HTML and extremely long history with socializing via the internet.

My first comic love.

Of course, being vaguely geeky, even by association, I gravitated towards *real* geeks.  People who build their own server farms, battle robots, or pornography empires.

And there are some elements of nerd/geek culture that are just plain inescapably awesome.

Like comic books.

It wasn't my father who interested me in comic books in the beginning.  No, it was my uncle, who is less of a geek extraordinaire in his own right than he is an expert in something that geeks almost universally consider really really cool.  His area of expertise?  Sexual deviancy is post-Soviet Russian literature.

He despises Jonathan Safran Foer, or at least did after "Everything is Illuminated" was first published.

At any rate, HE was the big comic book geek. And when I was a kid, he decided he had "outgrown" his comic collection.  A decision I expect part of him regrets to this day.  Being the only relatives of "appropriate" comic reading age, my sisters and I inherited the bulk of his collection.  Everything valuable he kept, but our home became refuge to more comic books- almost all in their protective sleeves- than I could have ever hoped to count.  We could have opened a really crappy comic book shop.

At first, I had little interest in the comics.  My closest experience with them was watching some of my younger cousins (on my mother's side) playing with X-Men action figures, and it held absolutely no interest for me.  Until I discovered on one sleepless night, the Mars series.  Scientist Morgana Trace, paralyzed, builds a super exoskeleton with which she is able to explore the strange and dangerous landscape of Mars.

It's really a very cheesy book.  But I loved it.  And I learned that comics might have something to offer me.

One of my first boyfriends later introduced me to Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.  A few years later, my uncle bought me my first Love and Rockets book.

There was no turning back.  I still think that the Palomar collection by Los Brothers Hernandez is one of the best books I've ever read.

So, I became a comic book... fan.  Not quite a geek, really.  I never got too into superhero stories.  But I am utterly addicted to Walking Dead- the books, not the show.

Which brings me to my very very VERY bad idea.

A local comic book shop held a pie baking contest.  To the winner?

You guessed it.  Comic books.

I absolutely couldn't resist.  Despite not being able to eat pretty much anything that goes into a pie, I decided to enter.

I started off by shooting myself in the foot.  How?  I spent an entire day emailing the owner of the comic book shop with questions- mostly about my ideas for awesome comic-themed pies.  From what I could tell, this hadn't actually been part of the competition up to that point, but after being bombarded by emails he sent a notice to all of the contestants- the pies must be comic themed.

There went my comic-themed edge.

So I spent the whole afternoon coming up with awesome ideas for comic themed pies.  A collection of Comedian Creme Mini Lemon Pies (with a drizzle of raspberry blood), a Hulk ice-cream pie (mint, of course), a Thing pie (sweet potato and covered in crushed Boston Baked Beans)...  in the end, I settled on two.

The first was my Snow White and Rose Red Charming Cheesecake, inspired by the sisters of both fable and Fables.  This was a real cheesecake- no cream cheese here.  Just mascarpone and ricotta cheeses, with raspberries on one half and white chocolate shavings on the other.

The second was actually M's idea- Rorschach Creme Pie.

The Rorschach Creme Pie was something I had considered, recipe wise, but I hadn't thought of the theme.  I was going to use it to make a Georgia Mud Pie, which is like a Mississippi Mud Pie except that there are dead people coming out of it (because the Walking Dead mostly takes place in Georgia, get it?).  But M's idea was better.

So I made my Rorschach Creme Pie, and my Charming Cheesecake.

They were both amazing.

And, out of about twenty pies, my Rorschach Creme Pie took first prize.  The Charming Cheesecake pulled in at a prizeless #5, but only because meat pies were allowed.  If it had been a sweet pie only kind of contest, I would have taken first and third.  I feel pretty awesome about that.

What makes me feel the awesomest though?

The winning pie- judged barely better than a pie made out of spiced meat (but only then because half of the judges didn't get a chance to taste my pie at all- it had been completely devoured)- was nearly fat free.  And vegan.

...that's right.  My vegan pie beat out spiced turkey pie.  It beat out "Spider Jerusalem Bacon and Swiss" pie. It beat out a "Gotham Night" pecan and bacon pie.

It beat both "Captain American Apple Pie" and "Fantastic Four Apples" pie.

It even beat "Banana: The Last Pie."

So, for those of you who don't believe that a vegan dessert can be just as freakin' delicious as any meaty, fruity, or otherwise creamy pie, eat your hearts out.

...so, why was this such a bad idea?

You might remember that I'm pregnant, and that for me that means I have a gall bladder that can't process fats.  This was a contest of open judging- everyone who paid to enter the event (a paltry $7 that was waived if you brought a pie) was a judge.  That meant that you had to taste as many as twenty different pies.

Oh yeah, this was a bad idea for me.

Even worse?  After making friends of sorts with the owner, he's now having ANOTHER baking contest.  For cakes.

The day after my birthday.

...who thinks they might be in the mood for some Bifrost Cake with Rainbow Bridge Frosting?

Rorschach Creme Pie

2 packages firm silken tofu

10oz semi-sweet chocolate chips (vegan)

10oz white chocolate chips (vegan)

1 3/4 c graham crumbs

1/2 c margarine (vegan)

Chocolate syrup

1. Melt margarine in a bowl.  Mix with graham cracker crumbs.  Press into sides of two pie pans (or one GIGANTIC pie pan, as the case may be).  Set aside.

2. In a blender, blend one package of tofu until mostly creamy.  Add 1tsp-1tbsp water if needed.

3. In a double boiler, melt the semi-sweet chocolate.  Add to blender, and quickly blend with tofu until homogeneous.  Pour into pie crusts until about half full.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 with white chocolate, topping off pie pans.  Only this time, add just a little bit more water.  Just a bit- so that the white chocolate is ever so slightly creamier than the brown.

5. Carefully drizzle chocolate syrup onto the surface of the pie.  Using a toothpick, marble the top of the pie to recreate a Rorschach test.

6. Set pie in fridge to set overnight.

Done.

Easy as award winning vegan pie, right?

Whole People

One thing they do have in common is how much I love them.

I really wanted to do this last night, but I was far too busy helping M put together our massive new collection of bookshelves and editing a new header for this blog (my babies are big girls now!).

I've been following PostSecret since I discovered the concept in Found Magazine.  I think that was probably nine or ten years ago now.  I anxiously waited until Sunday to check the livejournal feed every week, and there are secrets from the beginning that still haunt me.  I remember one, written on an unfilled prescription slip, by a person who couldn't find a way to tell his wife she was going to die.

PostSecret, 2005

And then there are some, like this Hitler secret, that still crack me up.

Living in the Central time zone is great, because it means that a lot of weeks, I actually get to read the secrets on Saturday night.  It feels like cheating, but it's something I still look forward to constantly.  I can't tell you how close I've been to sending in dozens of secrets, but each time I realize that my secret is something that shouldn't be a secret.  That I have people I care about that I can confide in, and that it's a healthy thing to do for me to take advantage of that.  I know how lucky I am.  I know how isolated and alone I felt back when I did lead a life full of secrets, and mostly secret pain.

I think that PostSecret isn't just an incredible art project, it's a public service.

At any rate, yesterday I discovered Mad Jackie's weekly event, Secret Sunday.  It's a weekly link-up and writing exercise.  You go through the week's secrets, pick one, and use it as a writing prompt.

I also freakin' love a good writing prompt.

Unfortunately, this week yielded a surprisingly small collection of secrets.  I think that's because Frank Warren, the creator/administrator/curator of PostSecret is still posting secrets from the short-lived iPhone app. So I went back a bit, I'm not sure how far, and picked out this one.  As it sort of speaks to something that I frequently find myself internally drafting diatribes about.

People feeling the need to label my twins.

www.postsecret.com

I don't feel like in my family we split up "pretty" and "smart" genes.  We split up "crazy," "smart," "funny," and "creative."

Lucky us, there are more "crazy" genes than anything else.

But people really are determined to label children as soon as possible.


When they were newborns, and M and I would take them somewhere- say, to a restaurant or a hospital waiting room- bystanders would ask me, "Which one is the quiet one?"  "Which one is the social one?"

It's constant, and it has never stopped.

Because there are two of them, they must represent different traits.  One must be smart, one must be pretty.  One must be quiet, one must be troublesome.  One must be a good sleeper, while one must be a good eater.

I don't see people do this as much with singletons, but it still happens.  And the fact is, it's so pervasive that children do it to themselves.

My children aren't simply aspects of a person that opposes a different aspect.  My children are people.  That means that they have moods, they have funks, they have passing whims.  Yes, right now SI constantly asks for help.  That doesn't make her "the needy one," that means that she's figured out that when she says, "Help, mommy!" I might do something for her that she thinks is a little too much trouble.

DD is picking up whole phrases and using them in context right now, that doesn't make her "the verbal one."

They're both people.

They're people with preferences and quirks.

Just like anyone else.

Aunt Something Funny, me, and Aunt Genocide

I think they get it worse as twins, but this was the case with my sisters and I.  I always considered Aunt Something Funny to be "the smart one."  I always considered Aunt Genocide to be "the funny one."  At different times in my life, I was intensely jealous of them for that.  I tried very hard to present myself as "the creative one."

But Aunt Something Funny isn't "the smart one."  She's one of three girls, born within about three years, who are all very, very smart.  She was the best at telling adults when they were wrong, she did have the best ability to recall impressive vocabulary, or identify specific dinosaurs.  She got good at Scrabble first.  She was also the oldest.

Aunt Genocide isn't "the funny one."  She's one of three girls, very close in age, who are all very, very funny.  She was the best at clowning around for a crowd, she was the best with a biting comeback, or a hilarious one-liner.  She also felt from a very early age that there was no way she would ever be "as smart" as her older sisters.  Which is a belief that, I'm sorry to say, Aunt Something Funny and I encouraged.

I wasn't "the creative one."  I was one of three sisters right behind each other in school who had a variety of talents.  I might have had the most drive to perform, I might have had the most art supplies in my rooms, I might have listened to the most progressive music, but I certainly didn't monopolize creativity.  Aunt Something Funny is a brilliant writer.  Truly brilliant.  I've reread one issue of her zine, published about a decade ago, more than almost any other book I own.  Aunt Genocide is an amazing photographer.  Really.  Even if she's decided that her passion lies more with her "smart" pursuits in academia.

Not "the boisterous one."

And we're all crazy.  And yeah, we all have our opinions on who is the craziest.  But frankly, there are enough kinds of crazy going around that we can all have our own.

The idea of teaching my children that they are whole people, not defined by their similarities or differences to each other, has been important to me since I first learned I was having twins.  I see so many other multiples- and their parents insist on dressing them identically.  What does that say about them?  That they exist only as reflections of each other?  That in fact, they are only one social entity?

How would I have felt if I constantly matched my sisters?

I would have felt even more that I needed to identify myself- to be "the creative one."  Because aside from that, I would have had no other distinctions.  I would have been simply part in a collective person.

I wouldn't be Lea the individual, I would be Lea of "The Borenstein Girls."

Just as DD and SI wouldn't be DD and SI, they would be, "The Twins."

They'll probably never get away from being, "The Twins."  No matter what I do, it's going to happen.  Just as I was lumped into the unit of my sisters, they'll be lumped into the unit of their twindom.

And yes, I've been guilty of dressing them alike.  Or as complements to each other.  But only as a special occasion thing- only for a picture, or for a big family event.  For something that they will understand as "not the way things normally are."  But each time I do it I feel ashamed.  Because being a twin isn't just a cool trick they can do.  It's a facet of who they are.  And I have no right to make a spectacle of that without their consent.

No, she's not "the sweet one."

I'm sure that it will be easier for them to actualize as individuals being as visually different than each other than it would be if they were identical twins. But they're not- no more than I am identical to MY sisters.  They just happened to be born at the same time.  And that means that they are automatically perceived as being part of a set- incomplete without each other.

I just wish that the rest of the world would stop treating it as some sort of novelty act.  One person, with traits divided between two bodies.

They are TWO people.  In some ways similar, in others, not at all alike.

Just as any two people in the world might be.









...and for those of you reading through a platform that doesn't actually show you my blog- the new header:

"Becoming SuperMommy!"

 

Complicating Factors- Or, My New Widget

Tummies are Awesome!

As I mentioned recently, I've been having some... rather complicated health problems.

The gall bladder thing, skin cancer, catching every little bug that goes around...

If you follow me on Twitter, you've probably noticed routine complaints that I am either hungry or tired.  Or nauseated.

There's a reason for all of that.

I'll tell you the same way I told all my friends on Facebook...

That's right!  I'm pregnant!

I found a super cool widget for the blog- it has a rendering of my new grubling floating around in what is supposed to be my extremely spacious uterus.

I can't telly you how excited we all are about it.  The girls are absolutely thrilled about the idea of the baby in mommy's tummy.  SI is insistent that she wants a brother, while DD refuses to acknowledge that there could be any acceptable outcome but a baby sister.

M is pulling for a boy, which isn't a surprise.  I'm totally on the fence.  I feel like I'm kind of awesome at raising girls, and I don't really know if boys would be different.  At the same time, I would love to have a little boy as well.  So either way, I'm going to be thrilled.

The day I found out I was pregnant was a pretty amazing day.  I had noticed a mole that had gone all... funny.  You see, when I'm pregnant I get skin cancer.  It's kind of terrifying, but there's really nothing I can do about it.  So when I saw that mole changing, I thought to myself, "I should take a pregnancy test."  I wasn't due to start my period for another two days, easily, but I went ahead and tested.

I went into shock.  I took the test as soon as I got home, so our new sitter was still there.  I called her the bathroom with me (she obviously thought she had started working in a crazy house- the look on my face must have been terrifying) and asked her if I was seeing what I thought I was seeing.  She flipped out.  She kept saying the line was a little faint, so maybe I wasn't pregnant and I should stay calm.  I thought I was a lot calmer than her, so I told her to go home and started trying to put my thoughts in order.

This is an impossible task in a house filled with active toddlers.  So, I took them into the back yard.  The back yard had a few surprises in it for me.

First, there was the GIGANTIC katydid.  The girls LOVED it.  And I couldn't help myself but smile.  Katydids are a symbol of fertility and luck.  There's a an old Chinese blessing, "May you have as many children as the katydid."  I helped the gigantic insect escape from my children by promising them we could look for another "big bug."

We found one.

It was a GIGANTIC grasshopper.  Another luck symbol.  And another Chinese omen- it's supposed to be a harbinger of a baby boy.

It seemed kind of impossible.  Those first few weeks, I seemed to be followed everywhere by katydids and grasshoppers, reminding me that even if the only difference I could physically feel was mutating skin cells, I was going to have another baby.

And seriously, I was practically being stalked by katydids.  On my walk from my car to class.  Sitting on the wall outside the pharmacy.  Hanging out on trees near my friends' houses.

Katydids everywhere.

We've passed through all the scary things well enough so far.  It turns out that I'm a carrier for a really terrifying looking genetic disorder.  But after a few weeks of fretting and worrying, it turns out that M isn't, so that's a huge load off my mind.

I'm due at the beginning of June, after graduation but before my last summer class.  That is going to be a HUGE challenge.

But M will be done with school.  We'll both be graduating.  We'll be free of that huge weight, that huge responsibility, and free to get better jobs- that give us more resources and more time.  And that's a gigantic relief.

We'll have our whole summer with the new baby.  All of us together.  And then... then the girls will go to preschool, and for the first time I'll find myself alone with just one baby.

Ideally, for the first time I'll find myself with only one child in diapers, too.

Of course I kind of suck at pregnancy.  Through the whole first trimester- this time as well as the last- I was just so darn ill that I actually lost quite a bit of weight.  And once again, I'm having SPD problems.  (For those of you unfamiliar- it means my hips have prematurely loosened to make way for a baby that just isn't really there yet.)

Just try figuring out a way to get enough calories when you are a)constantly puking, b)have no appetite, c)restricted from eating fat or meat or dairy or eggs, and d)chasing two toddlers with hips that keep threatening to dislocate.

It makes me nervous, but it doesn't bother my doctors.

One of the best parts of this new pregnancy is that we didn't use fertility assistance.  We got the all clear that M is fully recovered from his chemotherapy (he was on chemo from August of 2007 until February of 2009), and so... we just went off of birth control.

And a few months later...

Well...

It looks like we're going to have to find a way to fit another person into our little condo.

Dancing Through Life

"Pre-Breakfast Dance Party"

One of my least favorite parts of my current schedule is that I'm gone every morning.  I have class every single week day, most days for less than an hour.  Starting at 8am across town.  This has been a problem for me.

Despite the fact that I am indisputably NOT a morning person, mornings had become my favorite part of the day.  Entirely because of my children.  Without my children's morning routine, I have become the biggest morning grouch you ever saw.  Based on our temperaments at dawn, my kids and I share absolutely no genetic links.

As for the girls, I have never known anyone to wake up so cheerful, so happy, so... on the right side of the bed.

I don't just say that because this morning I awoke to the sounds of laughter and the repeated refrain, "Mommy yay!" coming over the monitor.  Although that helps.

Mornings are so cheery that we've developed a few morning routines that I adore.  Including our pre-breakfast dance party.

I go into the room once they're awake, already dancing in their beds and giggling wildly.  Once we're all dressed and ready for breakfast, we dance.  Usually this is my chance to let breakfast cool off.

We dance the Hora (probably my favorite with a toddler on each arm), or we dance the twist.  Or, if we're talking about DD, we dance the Elaine.

DD dances the Elaine worse than Elaine dances the Elaine.  Here, if you've never seen it...



Picture that dance.  Now, picture it being executed (ha ha ha) by a three foot tall ball of early morning energy.  Now, picture it moving rapidly in a straight line down the hall.

Legs, kicked off to opposite sides, ankles turned in.

Arms waving madly (with or without thumbs pointed out).

Nodding.



DD loves to dance.  And she might be the only person I know worse at it than me.  It's quite refreshing.

This love for the dance is not confined to DD alone.  SI also has a never ending affection for dance.  In fact, our morning frequently turn into endless variations of, "The Dancing Show."  "The Dancing Show" is when SI makes me pull out the video camera and film her while she hops up and down in the kitchen doorway.  While wearing sparkly red Dorothy shoes.

"Dancing Show, mommy!  Dancing show!"  She'll demand, and run off to dance in the doorway.



Yes, our home is always full of dancing.

It's why I advise people to stay away.

The Terribles

Out with The Terribles

 There were two little girls.  Who had some little curls, right in the middle of their foreheads.  And when they were good, they were very VERY good.  But when they were bad, they were HORRID!


It's amazing to watch babies turn into people.  More and more, we're reaching these landmarks that tell us for certain that we have gone from having babies to having children.  Last weekend, we rearranged our house quite a bit.  Instead of having the safe area we referred to as "the grubling cage," we now have a new enclosed space= "the Daddy cage."  The girls have free run of the house, with the exception of a gated area that encompasses M's computer desk, the door to the balcony, and the DVD player.

But this comes with a down side.  They are now aware of the limitations of their own tiny bodies.  They are aware that I have far more power of their lives than they.  They are suddenly lashing out at both of these humiliations.

SI's motto: If you can't beat 'em, destroy 'em

I know people refer to it as, "The Terrible Twos."  I think of it as just plain terrible.  Suddenly, SI will decide that the fact that she's having difficulty fitting a puzzle piece together is a grave injustice.  She is filled with a rage untamable by man or beast.  Her anger is mighty, and terrible to behold.

DD doesn't get angry at the cruel joke that fate has played upon her.  Her tiny hands, her awkward fingers, these are not cause for ire or wrath.  They are the great tragedy of her life.  She becomes inconsolable, pounding her tiny fists on the ground, bashing her head into furniture.  Anything to make the incomparable pain of her little existence seem less all consuming.

They both try so hard to assert their independence.  DD says "No!" to anything and everything, even if she really wants it.  She has to be in control, if only for a moment.  SI simply does things her own way, determined that she'll MAKE IT WORK, until the building frustration reaches its peak and she instead decides that if she cannot make it bend to her will, the only other option is to destroy it utterly and completely.

On one side, a toddler determined to outsmart or decimate her environment.  On the other, Emo child.

And then there's me.

I alternate between laughing at them, soothing them, or desperately trying to distract them.  The freedom they now enjoy in the house, being able to move freely across our entire shotgun flat, makes this so much easier.  If we're in the living room I can suggest a cup of juice or a cracker, and by the time they've made the commute to the kitchen all is forgotten.  If we're in the kitchen, the suggestion to watch cartoons sends them scurrying so far away as to escape all memories of the previous frustration.  But it's an endless game.

DD the little girl

They want to learn so badly.  It's inspiring and exhausting.  And they're more and more aware of how much they still need to learn in order to learn.  Before they can master the alphabet, they must become more verbal.  Before they can put their own shoes on, they must learn to navigate their fingers more dexterously.  Before they can brush their own teeth, they must acquire a better sense of spacial reasoning.

They want to learn.  And they want to behave.  But it's hard.  And that means that where there's an obvious solution to a problem, they want to SOLVE it.  The wrist-leashes I put them on when we're out, for example.  If they just TAKE THAT OFF, they could go farther.  See?  Solution!  But they don't understand that the real problem is that they need to stand still and just wait in a damned line.

They're still remarkably easy children.  I still can't imagine what I'd do if they stopped being easy children.  But it's exhausting nonetheless.  And I find it really saddening.  They're just going to keep finding new things to rebel against.  And I'm probably going to be the one they rebel against for the next decade plus.  And I don't particularly like being the villain.

Still, at the end of the day, they seem to forget just about all the wrongs I've inflicted upon them, from not picking them up while I grate zucchini to closing the bathroom door.  Each morning they wake up somehow oblivious to the fact that their worlds are filled with a million little frustrations.  Every day is a new day, without any of the baggage of the day before.

I could really learn a lot from them.

Make Peace With It

Making Peace with the Crazy

What feels like eons ago, M and I had a date night to see "Date Night."  It was our first night out to a movie since we had become parents.  And one of two to date.  I remember vividly my reaction to Tina Fey's proclamation that sometimes she fantasizes about being alone.  The thing that stood out the most in my mind was, "...it's a surprise every night that they have to wear pajamas."  I thought it was hilarious.  And dangerously specific.

Until recently, DD has LOVED her pajamas.  She loves pointing out the things on them- monkeys, bears, shoes... whatever it is.  She loves running around in her pajamas.  She loves snuggling up for a bedtime story in her pajamas.

But nowadays?  She does not want to wear them.  "Pajamas" has become a synonym for "bed."  And when she's tired and losing steam, she does not want to go to bed.

Never mind that most nights she just giggles with her sister for half an hour after the lights go out.
Never mind that she has her favorite toy and her favorite blanket and her lullabyes playing.
Never mind that she's exhausted and she's comfortable.

No, pajamas have become a big problem.

Sometimes, irrational children make you want to tear your hair out.  Smash your head into the wall.  Sell them to the circus.

Sometimes, they make you feel completely differently.

Tonight, after I gave my utterly exhausted children cups of milk, I began our nightly routine.  "Who's ready for PAJAMAS?" I cried.  SI ran off, happily, down the hall to her room to get changed into pajamas.  DD began shaking her head violently.

"No no no no no no no no no no no no!  Mama NOOOOOO!"

"I'm going to the bedroom to get pajamas!" I shouted happily, leaving her alone in the dining room as SI and I sprinted across the house.

"NOOOOOOOO!" screamed DD, as she began shuffling, as though drawn by supernatural powers of proximity to me.  I wouldn't be surprised if she levitated.  She wailed and sobbed, "No Mama no no nooooooooo!"

SI happily collected books, relocated stuffed elephants, and opened and closed her drawers.  With DD finally in the room, I scooped her up and handed her her favorite book to read while I effected the change.  I figured once she was in the pajamas, she'd forget it had ever been an issue, and begin practicing her bunny hops.  It's her new pre-bed routine.

A few moments of peace followed- she pointed out animals and told me what noises they made.  And I thought to reward her for her switch to very good behavior, I'd put her in her FAVORITE pair of pajamas.  The ones with pandas for feet.  She's been learning, thanks to "Kung Fu Panda," that the panda says, "Awesome!"

She took one look at the panda pajamas, and completely lost it.  I've seen her suffer a complete and total meltdown before, but not exactly like this.  Not in the throes of utter exhaustion.  Not after happily informing me that the rooster says, "Doo doo doo!"

The first scream nearly knocked me off of my feet.  Even SI paused for a moment to consider what on earth was happening on the changing table.  Just for a moment, though.

Once she had spent all the air in her lungs, she took a breath.  An ominous breath.  I could hear the vacuum forming in the closet beside me as all the air was dramatically siphoned into DD's chest.  It sounded sort of like what I imagine the inside of a tornado would.

But she hadn't prepared properly for the repercussions of inhaling the entire atmosphere of the room.  The sound that came out next, while definitely in the "scream" family, was more akin to the call of some species of baboons while mating.  I heard it once on the Discovery Channel, I think.

This sound escaped her lips, leaving her rasping, gape jawed, with tears streaming down her face.

And being the wonderful, considerate, presumably perfect mother that I am, I did something that completely surprised me.

I started laughing.

After all, it was hilarious.  And not just because DD was de-evolving into a lesser ape before my eyes.  It was the absurdity of the thing.  That this was caused by her favorite pajamas.  The pajamas that, when they usually go on, she gets upset with me for not zipping them up fast enough.  The pajamas that say, "Awesome!"

I tried to stifle my laughter as I forced her arms through the sleeves, and preformed the zipping that is usually the culmination of a daily dream.  Then I set her on the floor, ostensibly to begin hopping and forgetting that she was angry at pajamas.

I picked up SI and began getting her changed, as she happily sang to her toy crab.  Yes, that's also a regular show around here.  But DD didn't calm down.  I resolved to focus my attention on SI and let DD scream herself out a bit.  After all, I can only do so much at once.

DD didn't scream herself out.  She maintained a death grip on my skirt, wailing and bonobo-mating-calling with tears pouring down her bright red cheeks.  I chanced a glimpse at her as I was offering SI's sleeve holes to her, and saw something that simply made my mirth more unbearable.

DD had sunk to her knees, staring straight up at me, arms outstretched.  How long she had been posed that way, I don't know.  But she looked at me as though I could somehow free her from the fact of bedtime.  From those awful, panda pajamas.  From the lateness of the hour.  From all of the horrors of her life.

Horrors that she was simultaneously blaming me for.

I utterly lost it.  Snorting and laughing, I set SI on the ground, and began trying to console DD.  However, as I intimately remember from my own childhood, a parent who is laughing at you isn't much of a comfort.  As she threw herself on the ground on her hands and knees, like Moses before the burning bush, I simply gave up.

No- I made peace with the scenario.  I accepted that the roles had been changed.  I was the mother and not the child, I was the adult finding an improbable situation hilarious, and the exhausted child making things absurd was not me.  She was my child.

"Time for a story!" I called.  SI squealed joyfully and clambered into the rocking chair.  DD, with a no doubt Herculean effort, pulled herself up to weep onto the ottoman.

I grabbed a book, "Would you like to read 'Pirates?'" I called.  SI nodded and grinned, and DD pounded her fists on the upholstery.

I decided maybe that was the wrong book.

"Do you want to read 'The Sneetches?'" I suggested.  SI was nearly jumping for joy.  DD pounded her tiny fists against the soft, cushioned surface.

Wrong book again.

"I know!  Do you want to read the potty book?"

She bolted upright, and nodding vigorously she staggered to her feet and beamed at me.

It was like the sun shining.  Like angels singing.  It was a look incandescent joy.

And thus, bedtime was effected without further incident.  The story was read, Prudence's butt sniffed, frogs cuddled, and lights turned off.

So children are insane.  They are nonsense machines.  And the sooner you make peace with it, the sooner you can stop taking the Xanax and start enjoying your stone cold cups of tea.

...make  a note of it: Becoming SuperMommy's General Rule of Parenting #4: Make Peace With It.

Burnt Out

It is always too early...

Maybe it's the fact that I take my last final for the semester in three hours.

Maybe it's that I had a very unhealthy dinner last night.

Maybe it's that with my school-blinders off, I can suddenly see/remember all the stuff I've let slip in the past eight months, and am realizing that cleaning my house might actually require a haz-mat team.

Maybe it's having a one-sided fight and losing a dear friend.

I don't know.  Whatever it is, I'm completely exhausted.  On a normal day, I'd be doing the housework, the dishes and the laundry, sweeping the floors and putting away toys while my children joyfully undo all of my work behind me.  But not today.

Today I am completely toast.

I've been up for more than four hours, and I haven't stopped yawning.  And I haven't done anything.  I lay on the couch and snuggled my kids in turns while they brought me books and put buckets on their heads.  With the TV on the whole time.

And then I put them in their high chairs and gave them crayons to play with for about twenty minutes so I could make myself a cup of hot tea and drink it.  It didn't help much.

The sun is shining through the windows, lighting up the piles of papers on the dining room table, illuminating the dust bunnies under my desk, igniting that smell that can only mean it's been way too long since you've cleaned the cat box.

I need a vacation.  But vacations are hard to come by these days.  The girls, while charming and sweet and mild tempered, are still toddlers requiring attention amounting to constant vigilance.  M still works absurd hours, and because he's the biggest freakin' rock star crazy person in the world, he's getting no break.  He's going straight from finals into a four week long class of doom.

I love my children.  I love being a mommy.  I love my husband, and I love our life (for the most part).  I love our home, regardless of the age of the crumbs behind the cat tree.

But it's hard.  Hard and exhausting.  And I am exhausted.

I am utterly, completely, and existentially exhausted.

Karmic Balance

Quiet Time

SI on a tricycle at the park

It's been a very difficult week.  As with any difficult time in our lives, we sometimes lose perspective.  Fortunately for us, we can always refer to our mantra of eternal levity, "At least it's not brain cancer!"

Also as with any difficult time in our lives, there is a balance of things that are wonderful and then things that ruin the wonderfulness.

My parents came into town for a visit!   We hadn't seen Grandmommy and Poppa for about three months, during which they've been jet-setting across Europe.  Because that's what they do.  We spent the week taking turns being very ill.  First, M with a nasty cold.  Then me with the same cold.  Then Poppa with food poisoning from the airplane.  Then DD with roseola.  Then Grandmommy with that same stupid cold.  We only had two nights out of about ten where we all got to enjoy each others company simultaneously.

DD LOVES the swings!

But the thing that made this week so difficult?  One of our cars is about to die, and through a series of unfortunate and unreasonable events, this means that after taking one of his two sick days for the year (yes, two for the year) in order to deal with keeping our car legal, the DMV actually slammed the door in M's face and locked it.
Ouch.

Then he came home, discovered that he'd somehow infected his computer with an extremely vicious and malicious virus, and it's looking like the recovery is beyond our scope of expertise.  Remember, this is while he still needs to use the very specific software on this computer to study for his finals... which start on Wednesday.

SI has decided that Poppa needs a shovel

But like I was saying... karmic balance.  Yeah, all of that stuff above sucks.  But there was something truly wonderful going on simultaneously.

Our kids.  SI and DD were on their best behavior, in the happiest of moods, and feeling entirely cooperative for the entire week.

Even while she was sick, DD was full of smiles and laughter and snuggles.  They LOVED having Grandmommy and Poppa around!  Every day was just one adventure after another.  DD learned a few new skills (Poppa showed her how to shovel sand into a bucket), SI learned a few new words... they were basically perfect.

SI climbing to the slide

Every time I'd say to my children, "Who's ready for a nap?" they would both go running off to their bedroom, grab their frog loveys, and patiently wait to be plopped into their cribs and tucked in.  Then, as the grownups would leave the quiet nursery and close the door, my father would look at me and say, "I hate you."  His kids didn't let him sleep through the night for about the first seven years, and they did not take naps.


Last night, after reading my daughters a few bedtime stories, after chasing them around in their silly towels, and after getting some hugs and kisses, we turned out the lights and watched a movie.  And the children, who could hear this activity, hung out in their beds and giggled a bit, and then peacefully went to sleep.  He joked that either me or M must have made some sort of deal with the Devil, and M laughed as he said that we did.  Brain cancer first, perfect children afterwords.

DD will never abandon her shovel

And I know it sounds ridiculous.  But I really think they pretty much are.  Perfect children, that is.  I know, I know the old Jewish proverb: "There is only one perfect child on earth, and every mother has it."  But I do think my kids are pretty much perfect.  They're just EASY.  They're mild tempered, they're cooperative, they're snuggly and loving and sort of clowns.  They're smart, and different, and they play adorable games with me.

The sand box is a big hit with my kids

DD turns nearly everything into a phone, which she wanders around talking into and occasionally passing off to me.  SI wants to read absolutely everything- from Grandmommy's pamphlets about her vaccinations (they're off to South Africa next) to every single book she can get her hands on.  A few nights ago she tried to get Poppa to read her Little House in the Big Woods for her bedtime story.  And when he explained to her that it was too long and that he'd read it to her in a few years instead, she simply sat in the rocking chair, flipping through the pages and pointing out the occasional phrase.  She did this for about fifteen minutes while DD played "Simon Says," perfectly happy to let her sister have all the attention.  After all, she was busy reading.

Today we had a really lovely moment.  I was sitting on the couch, reading a book to SI, with DD snuggled in next to me, pretending to talk to somebody on a mirrored rattle.  Roger's and Hammerstein's "Cinderella" (a life-long favorite of mine) was on the TV, and I kept pointing out the dancing to DD while SI tried to sing along a little bit.  They both just wanted to hang out, in a relaxed, stress free sort of way.  It was beautiful, and more than anything it was easy.

SI loves landscaping

My kids are easy.  Sure, they're still toddlers.  It's still impossible for me to get everything that I'd like to do DONE, it's still difficult to go new places and visit all our friends... but they are ridiculously easy children.

So of course school is awful for me and M.  Of course we keep rotating illnesses and car or computer related catastrophes.  Of course M only gets two sick days a year, and our finals correspond but our vacations don't.  Of course we don't get to go to all of our family baby showers, pre-deployment BBQs, holidays, and birthday parties.  Of course we don't get to do about seventy percent of the stuff we'd like to do.  Because we're already paying for it.  We have achieved some measure of karmic balance.

DD could live at the playground and be happy forever

So whenever we're feeling down, hard-done by, and generally angry at the universe, it's not just reminding ourselves that, "At least it's not brain cancer!"  It's also taking a deep breath, and re-reading a Dr. Seuss book.  And all the sweet laughter, the tiny little arms giving tight and sincere hugs, the endless adorable fist-bumps... all of that is an emotional refund.  The universe reminding us that parts of our life suck, but the absolute most important part that there is... our happy little family...

That's perfect.