Just Like Starting Over

This is how we entertain ourselves when we figure out we're all wearing purple.

These last few months have been like living in somebody else's life.  I'm serious- every scrap of our routine went out the window.  Every shred of normalcy deteriorated as we traveled, packed, had house guests, shared flus, shared colds, stopped sleeping, started sleeping again, and began experimenting with new grocery routines.

It's amazing how off it can throw you to go two weeks without cloth diapers.

This last week I have been desperately struggling to establish "normal" again.  Reintroducing the nap, enforcing regular bed and bath times, even finally taking down the Christmas tree.  This means stepping back while my kids watch "Yellow Submarine" and "Annie" ad nauseum.  (By the way, the girls LOVE John Lennon.  They refer to the Beatles as "John and his friends," and SI's favorite song is "Power to the People."  My kids are awesome.)  While the girls watch the movies, RH rolls around the floor, and I abandon my children to the electronic babysitter and attempt to reclaim my house.

RH: Six months old

It's not just cleaning, in fact it's very little cleaning.  It is the epic putting away of things.  The things are everywhere.  You start by dislodging a whole category of goods by turning your "spare room" into a "nursery."  Then you turn your "linen closet" into a "coat closet," and turn your "hardware cupboard" into your "linen cupboard" (although it doesn't come CLOSE to containing all your linens).  Then the baby goes up another size and the new things take up more space so your "first aid cupboard" once again becomes the "baby food cupboard," and baskets of bibs are switched with other baskets of bibs, and plans must be made for changing car seats- which is too daunting to even consider.  Then the holidays come, and before you can put all the things away, you're baking up a storm.  In the interest of time, food items line up in cans and boxes along the path to the pantry, to keep open the access to the molasses and vanilla.  And then comes the travel.  And then comes the desperate adjusting of toys, where the heap of outgrown clothes must become a heap of stuffed animals, and the "stuffed animal box" becomes the "dress ups box," and the "holiday toys bin" becomes the "RH toys bin," and you realize that you actually have enough things that you really like but don't actually need to necessitate both a Christmas and a Channukah storage bin to go back to the basement.  And then comes the weeks of passing around illness.  And then, because you're just finished a gift-giving season and now you've spent a ton of money and exchanged lovely things with everyone, all sorts of things that you kind of maybe need start breaking.  Things like your coat rack.  Or things fill up.  Things like your startup disc.  And suddenly you find yourself in need of buying all sorts of crap that must be built and housed in order to hold all your other things that maybe you sort of need.  And then you visit the brand new Costco and buy a million pounds of potatoes.  And suddenly you don't know where anything goes because it doesn't go anywhere, and you are quite literally losing your mind because you are wading through what feels like endless fields of random crap that you maybe kind of sort of need.

My house full of chaos.

Which is why I find myself over a month after the crazy holiday bonanza began installing shelves and hooks, filling bag after bag with things that we really DON'T need, letting them pile up in the hall to become yet another obstacle to believing that my house will ever really be under control, while watching the pile of blankets that don't fit in the linen cupboard collect dust bunnies in the corner.

I have a simple goal: To be able to decide to mop the floor in any given room without spending an hour finding where things have to go first.  Not putting them away, just figuring out where the hell I can put them.

Every vertical surface in my home was, until a few days ago, covered in crap.  Unknown, possibly important, indecipherable crap.  Two days of hard work and the addition of some shelving has yielded a kitchen that I can actually clean now.  Where everything has a place to go.  The dining room is next.

If I look at my home dispassionately, really, I'm just this side of a hoarder.

Know what I found in the dining room?  A fondue pot.  I didn't even remember that I had a fondue pot.  It's still in the box.  I could be using that space to stash the linens hanging out on top of the photo albums.

So how are my kids coping with all of this?  Simple.  Without me.

Grandmommy in my personal chaos zone

Without me, my remarkable three year olds have learned pretty much all the words to "Tomorrow," and the chorus of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."  (Granted, those are all of the lyrics of the chorus of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.")  RH has figured out that by rolling, she can cross an entire room.  I am missing most of this, because I am trying to dig what I think must be my turntable out from the detritus on my desk.  I figure if I can eliminate the clutter on top of the second "linen cupboard" I might be able to squeeze the linens onto a "linen shelf."

I am eagerly awaiting the day that I reach the living room.  On that day, I will unroll my probably spider infested yoga mat, and I will do a sun salutation.

Because I have had it with my current lifestyle.  The lifestyle of a person wallowing in the collected detritus of self pity.

I wander around my home, looking forlornly at puddles of dried playdough with wooden and velcro eggs embedded in them, sighing and thinking to myself, "I'm going to get to that..."

Screw it.  I'm getting to that.  And then I am getting to me.  I'm tired of carrying around this spare tire from making three babies.  I'm tired of just telling my friends to cram the crap on the table just anywhere when they graciously come over for dinner.  I am getting my life into the kind of order where it might be functional.  Where I could dance with my kids if I wanted to.  Where the pre-dance party cleaning isn't just a stashing things out of reach because they have nowhere to go.

Now picture them singing "Tomorrow."

And yeah, it's going to mean getting rid of a lot of crap.

But with a little elbow grease and determination, I think that soon I'll have a functional coat rack, linens that don't live on the floor, and a routine that allows me to actually mop once in a while.

It's amazing how out of control things can get in just six months.

Six and a half months ago, I had a baby.  My third baby.

And, because I'm not an idiot, I prioritized me and the baby and the girls and M over just about everything else.

But now it's time to start acting like I run this show.  Because, as it turns out, I do.  And I'm good at it.

And with that mantra in mind, I think I can lock up about two thirds of the marzipan hiding in my sock drawer, put away the plastic dishes, and make my home my home again.

Wish me luck, lovely readers.

Sometimes I think I'll need it.

Potty Training the Becoming SuperMommy Way

Warning:  This post is all about poo and pee.

"Potty Time with Abby" and "Everyone Poops"

It finally happened.  The morning sickness and fatigue mostly passed, the anxieties over travel and the holidays faded, and I buckled down.

It was time to *really* potty train my children.

Almost a year ago, I made the same decision.  They were walking, they were kind of sort of talking, and they were holding in their bodily functions until massive outpourings occurred.  The time seemed ripe.

We potty trained for a week.  During that week, both girls peed in the potty.  A few times.

And then stuff started happening again, and we sort of gave it up.  But the potties have remained out, objects of occasional curiosity, playtime, or even inspiration.

So twelve days ago, I took the plunge.  I called the diaper service and told them to cut our diaper order by two thirds.  I bought a bag of conversation hearts (the girls love hearts and they love candy) as bribes and rewards, and I got a new Swiffer.

The time was nigh.

Who wouldn't void their bladder for one of these?

On MLK Day, rather than work to benefit my neighborhood, country, or planet, I undertook the great community service of potty training my children.  (Yeah, that's a total cop out.  I was just happy to have a whole day where I was free to stay home.)

How does potty training work?  I have no idea.  I have no clue how most people do this.  I only know what made the most sense to me, and that was why I had put it off so long.  I figured that the best way, perhaps the only way, to potty train my children was to keep them naked.

That way, if they peed or pooed, they would KNOW IT.  That way, if I said, "Run to the potty!  Go go go go go!"  They wouldn't need to worry about the whole pants issue.  That way, they would figure out pretty darn quick how many advantages there are to going in the potty, rather than in a diaper.  Or... you know... on the floor.

Our first morning was utter chaos.  We marched straight away to the bathroom. For nearly an hour, we sat.  Me on a stool, the girls on their potties.  We sat, we read an entire library of potty-themed books, and we drank chocolate milk while we waited.

Eventually, both children peed in the potty.

SUCCESS! thought I.

I relocated the children to their highchairs-cushions removed and replaced with Sham-Wows- to *finally* eat breakfast.

SI finished the meal by declaring in a state of panic that she needed a clean diaper.  I plopped her onto the floor and told her to go to the potty, now!  And I checked the disaster that she must have left in her chair.

The cause for much celebration.

There was none.

As I was confusedly marveling at the entirely mundane sight of a dry Sham-Wow, SI returned from the bathroom, ecstatic.

"Mommy!  I make yellow poo!"

"...what?"

"I make yellow poo!"

"...you did what?????"

I followed her into the bathroom, and lo and behold, my child had gone to the potty.

There was much celebration.  Hugs.  High fives everywhere.  Candy hearts.  A ticker tape parade.  Skywriting.  It was epic.

DD wanted in on this.  She sat on the potty.  For what felt like the rest of the morning, she sat.  When I finally freed her, she immediately peed on the floor.  And burst into tears.

I tried to tell her that it was okay, and that mistakes happen, and that was okay because learning to use the potty takes time.  SI promptly used the potty again, and began her refrain of, "I make yellow poo!"

DD rallied to congratulate SI, and eventually calmed down.

And then she peed on the floor again.

SI began to take outrageous delight in announcing, "Debbah poo on the floor!"

This whole pee/poo distinction obviously needed some work.  But every time SI mentioned it, DD would begin to cry again.

It was not quite time for lunch.  I had planned on skipping lunch, opting instead for a constant availability of beverages and salty snacks, mostly goldfish crackers.  They weren't hungry.  And just as I was wondering if, without lunch, it might be nap time, SI ran away.  A few moments later, she came back into the room, whining as though something very upsetting had happened.  My heart dropped.  "What's wrong?  Did you have an accident?"  She nodded and whined, and grabbed my hand to lead me to... the bathroom.

Where sitting in her potty was a gigantic turd.

Paper on the floor- good for puppies and toddlers.

I was beyond ecstatic.  I threw her in the air, hugged her, high fived, everything I could think of, while I chanted, "You pooed in the potty!  You pooed in the potty!"

...parenting is so dignified.

Once SI figured out that the thing that had just happened to her was not, in fact, a sign that her ability to make "yellow poo" had somehow transformed into something sinister, she joined me in my jubilation.

DD promptly peed on the floor again, setting off her next bout of woe and misery.

By the time the day had ended, SI had one- just one- accident outside of the potty.  And it was in her chair.  DD had four, but managed to pee into the potty twice.

And so it continued for another three days.  SI peeing and pooing in the potty like she'd been doing it forever, and DD peeing over and over on the floor.  Each time, she obviously felt humiliated and wronged, and at the same time very, very guilty.

Dear readers, I never- NEVER- told her that it was a bad thing to pee on the floor.  Never.  I tried and tried to tell her that it was okay.  That we all make mistakes.  That it would get easier, and that she was learning.

She didn't believe me.

I started putting big sheets of newsprint on the floor.  I figure, hey, it works with puppies!  It was SO MUCH EASIER to clean up those messes when they were already being absorbed, and the girls were happy to spend all day playing with crayon on the "big paper."  It was, I feel, a stroke of potty training genius.  I still wish I had considered how many pairs of socks we might go through in this process, though.  It turns out, a lot.

And then the turnaround day came.  Only one accident, and halfway through, she stopped, ran to the potty, and sat down.

It's hard to be grateful for steps like that when it means you have to wash the hallway rug, but still.

This child is seriously pleased with herself.

And since then?  No accidents.  None.

She still won't just up and go to the potty in the middle of playing.  She still needs to be reminded, and occasionally argued with in order to make her stop playing with crayons and sit down on the potty for a while.  But once she's there, she knows what to do.  It takes her a little time, but she does it.  And then she gets SO EXCITED!  She gets SO PROUD!  She pumps her little fists in the air, high fives everyone a hundred times, and then demands a treat.

It's a nice change.

Tomorrow, we switch to training pants.  An obstacle between the bodily functions and the potty.

But after training pants come underwear, and after underwear?  My children get to wear clothes again.  They are SO EXCITED about underpants, you'd think I bought them some made of gold.

We're still using diapers at nap time and at night, and those are the ONLY times that DD will poo.  She must be so backed up!  I don't know how long it's going to take to get through that, but I'm confident that it won't be too long.  Perhaps we timed potty training with a growth spurt- she never really poops a lot during a growth spurt.

And me?  My pregnant legs are KILLING me!  All those hours, crouched on a stool in the bathroom.  The pregnancy leg cramps have been a problem.  And what with the constant availability of salty (and, sadly, fatty) snacks all over the house, I have been eating badly.  My poor gall bladder is furious.

But I haven't had to change more than six diapers a day in over a week.

It's amazing.

Hopefully, we'll be out of diapers entirely, or at least during the whole day, before Baby X gets here.  The girls have almost six months to get good at this, so I'm pretty confident.

I've never had only one child in diapers.  I wonder what that's like...



A note: I had been considering writing this post all week, as it was happening, but I just couldn't decide about whether or not putting pantsless pictures of my kids on the internet was a good idea.  So... more pictures once we're in training pants or underpants.  Until then, cute naked butt pictures are staying offline and family-only.  I may dedicate an entire wall to pictures of the girls with no pants.


Probably when they're about 15.  :)

Parenting on Instinct

Baby wearing love

I'll admit it.  When I was pregnant, I was totally lost.  I had no idea what I was going to do with a baby- for those first six months I really couldn't think of anything that babies DID.  I figured it was a weird time of limbo where you just waited for your child to finally get... interesting.

I did a few of the standard pregnant and clueless things.  I bought a few books, I accepted sometimes completely contrary advice from anyone who would offer, and did what I do best.  I decided to wing it.

Now, I know that it might seem to you out that I officially subscribe to a few defined parenting techniques.  I never did that on purpose.  Everything that I've done as a mother has been done following a few basic guidelines.

Breastfeeding love

What's best for the babies?
What's best for ME?

Best for the babies?  Breast feeding.  Best for me?  Moving the girls to their own room.  Best for the girls?  Baby wearing.  Best for me?  Potty training.  Starting last week, sort of.

We use cloth diapers because of the environmental impact, but more importantly because I think it's best for the girls to be aware of their bodily functions and to avoid the nasty rashes that come from artificially dried poo.  We breast fed until the girls self-weaned, because the human breast milk is ideal baby food, and they were happy to eat as much of it as they could.  I made most of their solid baby food, because I knew every ingredient was natural, healthy, and delicious.  I was constantly shocked at what Gerber and the like will put gelatin into.  That said, we're keeping the girls on a vegetarian diet until they're old enough to make an informed decision on their own.  It all seems pretty crunchy, huh?

Solid food love

But I never let myself feel like I HAD to do (or not do) something because of some ideal of granola parenting.  I supplemented with formula without giving myself a guilt complex- hell, nursing twins at all was an accomplishment, I wasn't going to treat myself like a failure if I wasn't always able to produce enough milk for two hungry babies.  I got my kids vaccinated on the pediatric recommended schedule- I wouldn't know what the measles looked like if I saw it, and frankly the same goes for whooping cough and mumps.  I moved my kids into their own room when they were about four months old.  After all, they comforted each other better than I could, and we all slept better.

In short, I've been basing my entire parenting philosophy on instinct.  Does this feel like the right thing to do?   Do I feel like this is a good idea? 

I found as I was reading parenting books- ALL of them- that I found the authors at best irritating and at worst complete idiots.  The multiple specific books were no doubt the worst of the lot.  I constantly felt like I was being talked down to, and if there's one thing on this earth that is guaranteed to enrage me, it's condescension.  I stopped reading parenting books before half of the full shelf I'd acquired had even been opened.  I just couldn't be bothered.  I obviously knew best.

Sleep-in-your-own-room love

And I still felt like I didn't know anything.  It was all a matter of watching my children, listening, and trying to figure out what they were trying to tell me.  I introduced solid foods as soon as the girls started acting really interested.  I stopped breastfeeding when they made it clear that they were just plain done.  I started vaguely potty training when they started acting upset about being around their own feces.  (And I'm totally flying by the seat of my pants here, too.  Right now my version of potty-training is a lot of "see Mommy using the potty?" and reading potty-themed books.  They know what the potty is, and I think they're starting to get an idea of what it's for.  So far, we haven't even tried actually using it for its intended purpose.)

Book worm love

We human beings are bad at remembering that, fundamentally. we're ANIMALS.  We're mammals, primates, bipedal, social, verbal... those are the things that define most of our development.  The things that we do for babies are completely tied up in being those things.  Being a highly civilized creature just complicates matters.  Everything about having a baby is primal- from pregnancy until the child is functionally verbal.  So as far as the parenting of my own babies is concerned, I guess you could say that I've reverted to some kind of inner animal nature.

I think my kids are remarkably close to perfect.  So is it undignified that I tend to think of us as neanderthals in order to get through the immeasurably difficult years of baby- and toddler-hood?  Perhaps.  But it's working.  It makes me feel good about our lives and every milestone my children reach, and I have no regrets whatsoever.

The parenting choices that M and I have made have made all of us very happy animals.

More about Instinctual Mamas:
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A Day In Your Life

Tales of an Unlikely Mother proposed a project- take pictures of your day, all day, and put them up in your blog.  She calls it Day In The Life, or DITL.  Without further ado, here is my DITL.

My day in the life?  Yesterday- Valentine's Day.  For those of you unaware, I've been very ill.  Today was the first day in a long time I felt mostly like myself.  Unfortunately, it's always one step forward two steps back, and while yesterday was a HUGE step forward I'm back where I was in early January today.  But yesterday was lovely.  In most ways, it was a very normal day.

First, I woke up, took a shower and brushed my teeth.  Then I went in to get the girls ready for their day.

Cherries and oatmeal for breakfast

I made SI and DD oatmeal with cherries for breakfast.  SI made a mess, but DD was neat as can be.  Me?  I skipped breakfast and emptied the dishwasher.

A nice clean kitchen?  Not quite.

Next, the girls played around while I did the dishes from the previous day.

I loathe Elmo's World, but the rest of Sesame Street is okay.

Then it was some waking up time for SuperMommy.  I checked my email and facebook and blog list while the girls watched Sesame Street.  Their sitters and father let them watch a lot more TV than I do, when it's just me and them they watch half an hour to an hour a day, depending on how many times we require a "Free To Be You And Me" time out.  It's like a grubling sedative, and sometimes that just what you need to get through the day.

Laundry and nail polish

After that, it was time to do more chores.  I put away the several baskets of clean laundry while the girls played with my nail polish on the floor.  This is a new game, and I think it's just about run its course.

Hooray blankets!

Next, I changed the sheets.  This was lucky for the girls, because they LOVE playing in the pillows and blankets!

Green Eggs and Ham!

 That brought us to nap time.  The girls and I read "Green Eggs and Ham," and then they went to sleep peacefully.

Homework and a sandwich (goat cheese, avocado, and hard boiled egg on whole grain)

During nap time, I went to the basement and collected the diapers from our service.  After bringing them back up to our third floor walk up, I scheduled a few doctor's appointments, and got started on lunch and my homework.

Yogurt with bananas, avocados, and OJ

Once the girls woke up, I make them their favorite lunch and cleaned up the kitchen floor.

Grubling yoga!

After lunch, yoga time!  Then we just played and played until dinner.  DD stacked blocks more than six high, SI played the flutophone, there was an incident involving a paper bag, and a lot of hugs and dangling upside down of children.

The beginnings of wild rice and mushroom soup

I started dinner while the girls ate- they had hard boiled eggs, peas, cheese, cheerios, and grapes.  They were still pretty full from lunch.

DD loves having her teeth brushed

Next it was clean up time!  The girls had a bath and a tooth brushing.

Toweled grublings

After bath time, it was act-crazy-in-your-towels time.  On of their favorite times of the day.

SI loves finding the duck on every page

After that, the girls got into pajamas and we read a bedtime story- Bubble Bath Pirates.  It's a favorite as well.  Then it was into bed, and to sleep!

Soup, salad, and wine for dinner

M got back from campus about an hour later, and pulled out a bottle of wine to celebrate Valentine's Day.

Not pictured- Ben and Jerry's and Mel Books

After dinner, we snuggled on the couch and watched Young Frankenstein.  It was a lovely evening.

And that was my Day In Your Life!

Cloth Diapers

Here at casa SuperMommy, we use cloth diapers. We subscribe to a service, which I will explain in a minute. Just know to start- a diaper service is amazing. And affordable.

We put a lot of thought into whether or not to do this, as it seemed like a pretty big deal. After all, disposables are easy. Very, very easy. However, they are wasteful and expensive and we were going to be using a lot of them.

After all, the average newborn uses about 80 a week, and we were having twins.

In the end, we settled on cloth for a few reasons. The first was that I really care a great deal about the amount of garbage we create- it's amazing how much you throw away! The second was that I had no idea how much cheaper it would actually be. Best of all, there are a few really big perks to cloth diapering.

Cloth diapers are pieces of folded cloth. And you have no idea how useful it is to just have a cloth around. To wipe up baby's butt, her nose, her vomit... Yeah, rags are good. And the service doesn't care what you use them for. Just so long as you don't destroy or lose them.

Cloth diapered babies get fewer rashes. This is for a few reasons, they let you know sooner when they're wet, so they don't get as irritated. Also, you can leave the cover off if a rash is forming, allowing the skin to breathe very well, and letting it heal faster. You don't get that kind of option with a disposable.

Biggest perk perhaps of all? Cloth diapered kids toilet train faster. They are constantly more aware of their bodily functions, and as a result learn to control them sooner. We're not there yet, but I'm looking forward to it!

Cloth diapering is not carbon neutral. Nor is it particularly great for the environment. After all, you're using soap to clean the diapers, you're using bleach to sterilize them, and you're using water to rinse them. All of that creates waste, and most of it uses electricity. This is one of the reasons I like the service so much. The volume of diapers cleaned at once reduced the impact of each individual diaper. Yes, that's slightly offset by the delivery driver shuffling diapers from place to place, but the route is well organized and essentially works out to one big loop each day. Far less than the trip to the laundrymat for each participating family, or even the added volume of a vast number of washers and dryers running constantly.

We pay significantly less than a dollar a diaper. Most of the investment in cloth diapering is in the covers- known by our parents as "plastic pants." Plastic pants they are not, they're much more breathable and comfortable than the versions from the '70s, but they do tend to get pricey. You'll need as many as three a day, so when considering how many to buy you should decide how often you do baby laundry. We do it about every other day, so we like to have at least 10 covers for the two girls.

There are a lot of varieties, and they all have perks. There are covers that are more flexible, that are more waterproof, that adjust to fit more sizes... you can get all-in-one diapers that you can also use as covers, and then when you go on vacation use as whole diapers. There are covers that withstand multiple washings admirably, and there are some you have to wash very carefully. There are really plain covers, and there are really cute ones. You can spend anywhere from $10-$20 on a cover, but it's worth it. Each cover will last the baby more than 3 months, like a VERY flexible article of clothing. And of course, if you have another baby you don't need to buy additional covers- you're already got it... well... covered.

We LOVE our service! They come by on Sunday, pick up our soiled diapers, and drop off fresh ones. We get more than we need, because our personal laundry loads can go down. If we use service diapers for wiping up big baby messes, our personal load goes down, and we're still saving a ton of money. Our diapers run us about twenty cents apiece, so if we use an extra ten or twenty, we really hardly care. That's an extra load of laundry we're not doing at home, and anything that makes our lives easier generally makes us better parents.

If you let your friends and family know, they can order your service for you as a shower gift, or for baby's birthday, or any old reason.

Disposable diapers still have their place. We keep them in the diaper bag for when we're out of the house. It's much easier to be able to toss them on the go than to cart a bag of poop and wet cloth everywhere in the car. But going on a long vacation, you can bring cloth diapers with and clean them at a laundrymat. It's still cheaper than disposables, and so much better for the environment.

We also use disposables at night, for the time being. It keeps the babies asleep a little better, because they feel dry longer. Once in a while we let them stay in cloth for the night, but these days our sleep is too precious to give up that daily disposable.

Our service is called Bottoms Up, and it covers the entire Chicagoland area as well as southeast Wisconsin. I can't recommend them highly enough.

Naked Babies

My children love being naked. Honestly, six months and going on seven, and they're never happier than when they're nude.

Unfortunately, it's been winter and spring in the midwest, and that means that a naked baby gets kind of chilly before too long. So the opportunity to spend more and more time without clothes has been a very happy development.

Along with the nicer weather has come an unwelcome friend- diaper rash. Poor little SI has very sensitive skin and sleeps like a log, so the other day she woke from an 11 hour nap with the nastiest diaper rash I have ever seen. Cracked, bleeding sores on her rear. As you can imagine, she was not happy. I spent half the day trying a few different ointments, changing her CONSTANTLY, and attempting to distract her from her pain, before the cure presented itself.

It should have been so obvious... remove the diaper.

She's been completely pantsless for nearly two days, and I have never seen her this happy. Not only happy, but active! Generally she couldn't care less about things like rolling over or collecting her toys into a heap. But without pants?

Amazing.

I'm inclined to put her back into a diaper once it's all healed, but I might abandon the rest of her clothes for the season. After all, she is so freakin' happy.

Such a simple thing- you take away the clothes, and life becomes so much more peaceful...