How I Got Pregnant With Twins (Part 2)

Back in the day, I kept a Livejournal.  It was on this blog that I chronicled the actions taken by me and M to get ourselves a baby.  And here... for all of you... that journey, republished for Becoming SuperMommy.  What can I say?  The girls turning two has made me sentimental.  :)

Warning: it does contain a fair amount of profanity.


How to Make a Grubling, Part II  (2/12/2009)
Part I

Lies, lies, lies!

All that wonderful information I was able to give you in advance? Take everything after the point where I had actually completed the step, and throw it out the window.

Here's the problem. Straight from the nurse's mouth, they don't want to tell you what's coming because they don't want to scare you. Well, I would rather be scared than misinformed.

Injection A for two weeks, then injection B AND injection A for two weeks. Then injection C (variable dose) for one day. Then retrieval. Which is NOT what you had been told it was. No, this is not some "comfortable" abortion-like procedure where they suck out the eggs. Oh no.

Picture, if you will, a futuristic white dildo. Now, attach a few cords and buttons. This is an ultrasound wand. You should be very familiar with it by now, because you've been getting it shoved unceremoniously up your twat every day for the last few weeks.

Now, as it turns out, this machine is actually more sinister than it looks. All those knobs and buttons and whatnot, they hide a secret switch. What does this switch do? It shoots out a big, thick, TEN INCH LONG NEEDLE. Then the NEEDLE will suck up each egg, individually.

This means that once you wake up from the procedure, you will learn that you did not just have a very angry pap smear. Oh, no. you've just had a NEEDLE of DOOM shot through your vaginal walls approximately 25 times. And THAT is why the pain is different from what you expected. And THAT is why you'll be walking funny for a few days.

Oh- and now that you have a bunch of extra holes in your vagina, you've got to stick big freakin' pills in there three times a day. Yes, very comfortable, THAT is.

How do they propose to make this all better? Every day, you are also to take an extra special pill. No explanation why, but it DOES have a little embossed heart on it.

...because you can't make a baby without love?



Getting COMPLETELY Knocked Up  (2/16/2009)
I suppose that now, technically, I am officially knocked up.

Please, no congratulations.

You see, it can take up to eight weeks to be sure that the grublings *take*.   For the time being, I have a minor medical condition for which I am prescribed rest, routine doctor's visits, and lots of ice cream. M will be doing the laundry and cooking for a while.

Oh yeah, best medical condition ever.

A far as I'm concerned, I'm not pregnant until I have some kind of evidence that there's a little person inside of me. Like... it kicks me. Then I think I'll buy it. For the time being, I have a two useless clusters of cells that will make me bitchy, nauseated, and eventually- fat.

When I'm convinced there's a new human life inside me, I'll let you know.

As for the actual procedure, it felt like there was a Vaudeville show going on in my vagina. Lights, curtains, audience... the whole nine yards. It was about ten minutes of actual procedure, and I got to watch! They inserted a small plastic catheter, and then the embryos went through the tube, they showed me on the ultrasound. Then they gave us a picture of my uterus with a little glowing white spot. The spot is two embryos, and the HUGE BLACK MASS above it is my INSANELY FULL BLADDER. Because I had to have a giant bladder to make insertion easier. Honestly, that was the worst part. I had to pee SO BAD during the whole thing. Because no part of getting pregnant should be pleasant.

And now no sex for at least ten days. And then... I can put my pants on!




Down to the wire  (2/26/2009)
Well, today is the day. First thing this morning I went back to the clinic. Not to have anyone shove things into my vagina, no. I had my pregnancy test.

You see, what with all the hormones I'm taking, an over the counter pee type test probably wouldn't be effective. I'd be likely to get a false positive, which- of course- the boxes on those things say is impossible. Not so. There is such a thing as a "chemical pregnancy." You can test positive and be negative. Usually it means that you were recently pregnant for a minute or two. Well, I had embryos implanted. So I was preggers for at least a few minutes. So no over the counter test.

I won't know until this evening.

If I am NOT pregnant, I have to wait three months before trying again. Suck.

Something I've recently learned, though. A few days ago Mike and I were wrestling, and I pulled a muscle in my abdomen. I had a full fledged panic attack. Not only that, the mind altering pain was accompanied by a crazy FLOOD of hormones. I was absolutely positive that the strain had eliminated any shot of staying pregnant. Now, this is EXTREMELY unlikely, but I did come to a realization. If I'm not pregnant, I'll be upset. Very, very upset. This is precisely why I didn't want to think of myself and pregnant yet. Between my extended family CONSTANTLY asking how the baby's coming, some friends getting pumped up to babysit and throw showers, and my father's immoderate excitement, I'm going to feel like I'm letting a lot of people down if I'm not knocked up.

Of course I'll let all of you know if I'm still testing preggers today, but that still doesn't mean I'm actually pregnant. MOST pregnancies don't result in grublings, you know. Most times that people get pregnant their body rejects the fetus pretty damn quick. True enough, if I AM pregnant, thanks to all this protocol I'm likely to stay pregnant. But even so, no excitement, please. I have an obnoxious medical condition where I can't take medications, drink alcohol, or eat spicy foods (seriously) for another few months. Then, either I get to be healthy for a few months, or I go into a second trimester with excitement and glee.

In the meantime, I am NOT pregnant. No matter what the test says. I am merely ill.








P.S.
I'm "pregnant." :)

Also, my hcG levels are nearly double normal. This is fair indication of multiples. So, maybe twins? We'll see.

Feel free to congratulate. I want it now. :) Hormonal hypocrite, that's me!

DD's Shiner

DD's Shiner

It's always a wonderful thing when you go to a friend's wedding.

Especially the wedding of an old and dear friend.

You get to see all the people you love and miss from years gone by, you spend a wonderful night catching up, you witness the vows of wonderful people, you wish them nothing but joy for the rest of their lives.

And... these days... you show off your kids.

"He was so cute during the ceremony!"
"Look at their curls!  Wonder where they got those?"
"He looks JUST LIKE YOU!"

DD in back-up clothes after spilling juice on her dress

"Is she sleeping through the night?"
"That doesn't look like an allergy or... did she get in a fight?"
"Guess we should see the other kid, huh?"

Wait- what?

You read that right.  I brought my sweet, curly-topped moppet to one of my best friends' weddings with a black eye.

A real beaut, too.

Grandmommy and Poppa, God bless them, had one again offered to watch the girls overnight while M and I stayed at a hotel (no gigantic iPod this time, though).  When we arrived in the morning of the wedding day, DD was so excited to see us walk through the door that she climbed on Aunt Genocide's couch and started to jump.

And jumped.

And jumped.

And before I could stop her and make her stop jumping on the couch, which she knows perfectly well is NOT allowed, she had begun to fall.  In slow motion.

It took ages.  First, the look of surprise.  Her feet weren't landing where she thought they would- how odd!

Then, the moment of paralyzing realization.  She was falling, falling, oh crap she's falling.

Then, the bind panic.  SHE'S GOING TO HIT HER HEAD ON THAT COFFEE TABLE!

"Show me your mean face!"

The impact- DEAR GOD WAS THAT HER EYE??????

The ricochet followed- SHE SMASHED HER DAMN HEAD AND SHE'S STILL FALLING!!!

And finally, the finale.  THUD.

I already had her in my arms when the tears started, but good lord was she one lucky girl.  The sharp corner of the table missed her eyeball by less than half an inch.  She has a bruise stretching across her entire face between her eye and her ear, and the corner only broke through her skin a little bit.  The swelling has even started to go down already.

You ever tried to put ice on the eye of a screaming toddler?  Doesn't work so well.

So eventually, she calmed down.  And eventually, she ate a bit of breakfast.  And eventually, she took a very short nap.

But when I tried to leave her with her Daddy for a few moments so I could deliver a toast to the happy couple?

Oh, woe betide the mommy who tries THAT stunt.


For a bit of comparison, here is my daughter before her terrible ordeal:

She's saying, "Draw me a heart please!"

And here she is now:

It puts the block onto the tower or else it gets the hose again.

...and one more shot, from the wedding itself:

"Hey Mommy, this little lady botherin' you?"

Ugh.

The Doghouse

Boy, is he lucky he's cute.

My husband doesn't know it yet, but for the second time this week he finds himself in a dangerous predicament.

To use the vernacular, he done screwed up.

Again.

You see, I am not generally a demanding woman.  I don't ask a lot of my husband.  (I can almost hear him politely coughing to cover up his laughter as I write this.)  All I want is that my every demand on his time and energy be acknowledged, adhered to, and that he do his utmost to make my life as easy and pleasant as possible.

See?  Not that much.  Generally, this just means taking out the trash/recycling/dirty diapers, emptying the dishwasher, switching over laundry, occasionally changing diapers, and picking up groceries on his way home from work.  Not even all the groceries.  Just a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread.  Easy groceries.

Normally, he does very well.  He is a champion of emptying the dishwasher, rarely leaves laundry to sit wet all night, and almost always calls on his way home to see if he should pick something up.

But that bit about doing his utmost to make my life easy and pleasant?

Oh, husband, Hell hath no fury.

You see, this is my last week of classes... as you probably know if you read my post of a few hours previous.  My last week of classes.  And last weekend, I took time away from my studies to go to M's family's reunion.  Which I do not in any way begrudge- I LOVE M's family, and I was more than happy to do it.  But you must understand, I don't have a lot of time to do things that I otherwise need to do around the house this week.  Like, say, eat.

Which is why when M got home on Tuesday, he found Our Mary Poppins watching the girls, and me in our bedroom, hiding and studying.

When he came in and said hello, I informed him that as of that moment, approximately 3:30pm, I had yet to eat breakfast.  I was too busy studying.

So I took off for class, and M took care of the girls. 

After class, he asked me to pick up a loaf of bread on my way home.  No problem.  Groceries are a two way street.  But at the store, it occurred to me how DESPERATELY hungry I was.  So I got the loaf of bread, and I ogled the other foods.  I picked up a ready-made bowl of fresh pasta with pesto.  But no, that wasn't fair.  That wasn't nice.   I shouldn't get myself some nice fancy dinner and eat it without M.  (This is what we call foreshadowing.)  I put down the pasta... and then the falafel... and then assortment of fancy cheese... and I picked up two packages of cookies for us to eat together after we had a quick dinner.

And then I went home.

And there was my husband, sitting at his desk, guilt all over his face.
And there was the empty pizza box.
...from my favorite pizza place.
...and nothing for me.

Did he know I hadn't eaten anything all day?  Yes, he knew that.
Did he know I was having a stressful and difficult week?  Yes, he knew that.
Did he know that I had just been in the grocery store where I could have gotten a nice something for myself to eat if I'd been forewarned?  Yes, he knew that too.

Oh, how I made him rue the day.  I berated him, guilt tripped him mercilessly, and generally made a gigantic show of my misery until he picked up the phone and ordered me a chile rellenos burrito from a Mexican restaurant that he hates, and brought me a glass of lemonade.

No, I told him,  you can't go to bed.  You have to sit here and rub my feet and watch me eat my damn burrito.  And you THINK about what you've done!

Needless to say, a foot rub, an ice cold lemonade, a delicious delicious chile rellenos burrito and a few episodes of Scrubs later, he was back in my good graces.

The next morning, he emptied the trash.  Like a champ.
That night, he ordered pizza for me.  Like a rock star.

But today he's in the doghouse again.

Because when he emptied the dishwasher, he once again forgot where all the bowls go in the kitchen.  And instead of putting my very heavy Pyrex mixing bowl with the mixing bowls, he hid it inside of my pretty (and very lightweight) popcorn bowl.

The bowl that goes on the top shelf in the kitchen, above the popcorn maker.

The bowl that I can't reach, because I'm very short, but when I want popcorn all I have to do is gently tip the stack of platters underneath the bowl, and it comes sliding gently into reach.

Visualize, if you will, a short and hungry lady, studying for her final final of the summer, and all she wants is a little popcorn.

Visualize, if you will, her naivete as she reaches for her beloved popcorn bowl, and tips the stack of platters to send it sliding into reach.

Now visualize, if you will, the noise that a light weight wooden bowl filled with a very heavy Pyrex bowl makes as it comes ZOOMING (thanks, gravity!) off the shelf and collides with massive force into her forehead.

Can you picture it?  Because I sure can.  Or at least, I could if the glowing thing that keeps floating in and out of my vision would stop distracting me for a few moments.

M, you'd better hope you read this before we meet again tonight.  Because no amount of foot rubs in the world is going to cut it this time.

The Joy of Having a Sister

Getting ready for a trip to the Museum of Science and Industry

I have, as I have previously mentioned, been blessed with  extremely easy children.

Take Father's Day for example.  We skipped breakfast, forgot our stroller, and spent an extremely pleasant and peaceful day at the Museum of Science and Industry.  We even entered AND exited the children's area (filled with balls and water and blocks and CRAYONS for God's sake) without incident.  In fact, the only two outbursts of unhappy noises from our children were both from SI, once when I forced her to abandon her train watching (this lasted about five seconds until she realized that there were airplanes over her head) and once when she took a massive spill on the Main Street of Yesterday and both knocked and scraped her head on the cobblestones.

She then sat in a big girl chair and ate her bagel like a champ.

So, you see, I have very little patience when my children start acting like anything less than easy children.

I'm a very busy lady.  I have to leave the house in ninety minutes to get to a class that I didn't manage to finish my homework for (thankfully it's optional) and upon my return I will have to quick as a bunny do all the homework for tomorrow's class (which has to be turned in online before midnight).  So you might be asking yourself, "Why did all that homework wait?  Why isn't it done already?"

So glad you asked!  For the last three hours, I was supposed to have "study" time.  This is the time I have previously referred to as, "nap time."

But, as every time my children are sharing a cold (thanks, M), the don't want to nap.

No, instead they want to torture me.  By inflicting horrific psychological torments on each other.  This is what I imagine was happening in the room.

SI and DD's frog- foreshadowing

The scene: A peaceful, lovingly and half-assedly decorated nursery.  The walls are a soothing green in the low light, and lullabyes play quietly in the background.  A ceiling fan, its blades a rainbow swirling into one spiraled blur of color, spreads a light breeze that gently rustles the pages of an open book laying on the ottoman.  The time is 12:17pm.  The door clicks softly, as the doting mother leaves her apparently drowsy children laying in their cribs with their favorite loveys clutched to their chests.

DD opens her eyes, making certain that Becoming SuperMommy has left the room.  In a flash she has thrown off the soft cotton sheet that was tucked lovingly around her middle, and jumps up to peer over the side of her crib at her sister in the next bed over.

SI doesn't stir.  She is a sleepy child, and the morning was full of games and merriment.  She needs her rest.

DD laughs at her sister.  In a jumble of consonants and squeals, she shouts something that can only be interpreted as, "Come and play some more!  I know a GREAT game!"

SI ignores her.

DD shouts, "If you won't come play with me willingly, I'll MAKE you come and play!"  She grabs a book off the shelf (requiring a superhuman agility in order to bend her arm in an astounding seven directions between her shoulder and fingertips), and bounces across the bed to take aim.

She throws the book directly at SI's head.

Fortunately for SI, she prefers to sleep on her stomach.  Her eyes are safe.  But now she's alert- she's just been given a book!  Her favorite of all objects!  She pulls herself to sitting, leans against the far side of her crib to face her sister, and looks her in the eyes.

From this angle, DD must stay on her very tippy toes to see what SI is doing.  With her nose pressed up against the slightly taller edge of SI's crib, she works her legs madly to get a slightly taller foothold.  SI grins at her and opens the book.

DD is beside herself with anticipation.  She squeals, she laughs, in her incomprehensible half grubling/half English patois she screams, "Read it to me, SI!  Read me the book!  I know it's a good book!  I LOVE that book!  Show me the pictures!"

SI doesn't look up.  She settles the book onto her knees, and begins pointing to images on the page that DD cannot see.

DD, unaware of the misery about to unfold

DD is beginning to get desperate.  "I can't see!  Show me the pages!"  DD has completely forgotten that it was she who offered SI this once in a lifetime opportunity to read the book all by herself.

SI points to a cow, and moos.  It's more than DD can stand.  As she jumps as high as she can, aided by the springiness of her mattress, her foot slips between the bars of her crib.  She comes crashing down, her leg slipping farther between the slats, until her thigh is excruciating pinched not only between the bars but also between both cribs.  She begins to scream in pain.

Her doting mother, unable to study well with all this noise coming from the next room, rushes in to see what has happened.  It takes a full three minutes of tugging and bending, but she frees DD from the clutches of the evil crib.  SI uses this opportunity to hide the book beneath a blanket.  Books are not allowed in the cribs during nap time.

As Becoming SuperMommy rocks DD and coos to her, strokes her hair and wipes her eyes, SI stands to peer over the side of her crib.  "Mama!" she shouts, "Mama we're not sleeping!  See how much more fun it is when we don't sleep?"  DD, forgetting the misery of a moment ago joins in the refrain.  "We're still awake!  We can play!"  Becoming SuperMommy lays them both down, shushes them, and again leaves the room.  It is now 1:09pm.

This time, SI is the first one up.  She runs to the edge of he crib to peer at her sister.  "DD!  Let's play another game!  Let's trade all the toys!"

DD doesn't hesitate.  At once she hands over her blanket, her lovey, and the crayon she had cleverly hidden in her pants.  SI hands over the treasured book, her lovey, and her blanket, and they both laugh uproariously.  They have tricked their mother, they are awake and having fun.

But they are tired, and standing on one's tippy toes is hard work.  SI yawns, prompting a louder peal of laughter from her sister.  She ignores this and lays down again.  All alone in her crib.

DD, who has somehow managed to "win" the trading game by accumulating all of the possessions, gets angry.  "I'm not done!"  She screams at her sister.  "Play more!"  SI ignores her.

DD begins to throw the objects at her sister again.  First, the blankets.  This has no effect, as the blankets only serve to make SI more comfortable.

Then, DD throws the crayon.  This hits SI squarely in the forehead, not only causing her to shout out in irritation, but also leaving a blue mark on her face.

SI, again with DD's frog in the background

Next, the book.  It hits hard enough to make SI cry, but the mother doesn't come.  She isn't sure what the cause of the crying might be, but she knows from the sound it will be short lived.  And true enough, after a few anguished peals, SI again closes her eyes and prepares to sleep.

And now, DD throws the treasured loveys.

For almost a minute, nothing.  And then it gradually dawns on DD... her lovey has gone where she cannot reach it.  She is utterly, profoundly alone.  She begins to wail.

"Frog!" she calls, tears and snot streaming down her face, "No, Frog, No!  Frog!  Come back to me!"  Or so it sounds to her.  To her mother, still on the first page of her reading thanks to the unceasing noisome chaos, it sounds like, "Fra! No no no no no Fra!  Me me me me me me!"

She begins to call to her sister.  "SI!  Please!  Have mercy!  Give me the frog!"

Si reaches up a hand to feel her bruised head and shoulder.  She can't see the blue mark, but she knows it's there.  She slowly sits up and returns to her seat at the end of the bed, were DD must strain to see her.  And then she grabs the frog.

As DD watches, wailing and pleading, she spreads the frog across her lap.  Lovingly, she dances her fingers across its soft green spots.

DD's wails become immeasurably stronger.  "Please!  Have mercy!  Give me the frog!"

SI lifts the frog to her mouth, and staring directly into DD's face, she kisses it.

In her abject horror and misery, DD devolves into a a baboon,and Becoming SuperMommy takes this as her cue to enter the room once more.  It is now 2:21 in the afternoon.

In one swift motion, she snatches DD's frog from SI's grasp, and replaces it with SI's own pink frog.  She lays her children back down, and SI's eyelids instantly flutter and droop.  DD is inconsolable.  Her breathing hitches and she sniffs and splutters as she is tucked back in, her hair stroked, her tears wiped away.  And then- horror of horrors- her mother leaves her there.

She stands up as the door closes.  "NO!" she screams, "No, Mommy!  Come back! Come back! NOOOOOO!"

She looks for something to throw at the door.  Surely, a thump on the door would alert her mother to the gravity of the situation as no amount of screaming could.  But before leaving, Becoming SuperMommy had taken away the book and the crayon!  What was left?

With a Herculean effort, DD flings the frog at the closed door.

And again it dawns on her.  Now the frog is gone.

DD in Becoming SuperMommy's birthday shoes

Too exhausted and emotionally weary to do anything else, DD sinks to her knees as she wails.  "Frog!  Frog!  Please, Frog!  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  FROOOOOOOG!"

Lucky for her, Becoming SuperMommy is just standing banging her head into the wall outside her bedroom door.  She swoops in, returns the stuffed amphibian, and once again disappears behind the door.

DD, stunned and relieved, lays down with her frog and is silent.  Perhaps even sleeping.




...and Becoming SuperMommy, stands in front of her open refrigerator door, trying to decide if at 3:20 in the afternoon, when she has class in ninety minutes and she has mountains of unfinished homework to do, there's time for her to have a martini.




Epilogue:
Instead of a martini?  I get to go find out why SI's crying.


fin

The Pitter Patter THUMP of Little Lubricated Feet

For the first time in my blogging history, I must ask that those of you who might not want to know a few things DO NOT READ THIS POST.  I am talking to you, Mom and Dad, and to any of M's family that might decide right off the bat that this is going to be a little bit TMI.  I will not describe our sex life, but the hints about it could be more than you care to read.  If you do read on, I can promise that it will be funny.  So long as you aren't too disturbed by the implications.

The culprit always returns to the scene of the crime

Yesterday was our third anniversary.  M brought me three beautiful roses when he came home from class, and a box of DARK DARK DARK chocolate.  Because he loves me and knows me so well.  For him, I did my best to take care of something I could only describe as the mess.

Oh, the mess.  The sort of mess that will be with us until we move or replace the floors, I have no doubt.  The sort of mess that will become the thing of family legend, to our daughters' teenaged horror.

You see, knowing that our anniversary was on a Monday, knowing that it would be the first day of a week where M would have work (starting at 6am in Indiana) and then immediately head to class (letting out at 9pm on the near south side) we would celebrate our anniversary in chunks, around and about in the city or in our home as deemed appropriate.

We had our date last weekend- we went to see Paul Simon play the Vic.  For those of you familiar with venues in Chicago, you'll know what that means.  For those of you who aren't, let's put it this way... Most Paul Simon experts agree that this is the smallest, most intimate venue he's played since the '70s.  While there's normally a 1,000 occupancy limit in the Vic, a full third of that was taken up by radio personalities, and almost half of the balcony was dedicated to VIP- mostly members of one of the musician's family and his friends (he's an Evanston native).

Next weekend we're having our traditional anniversary to-do: we're seeing a baseball game.  We've done that the weekend after our wedding/anniversary since the first one.  In the future, it's the part of our anniversary happenings the kids will be invited to.

Paul Simon at the Vic

But Sunday night was the romantic part of the celebration.  M had built me a new desk and bedside table, replaced my kitchen faucet, and generally been wonderful and amazing (as usual) all afternoon.  So once the kids were in bed, we decided to hit the sack as soon as humanly possible.

And as I'm sure you can guess from my cleverly placed italics, we didn't sleep much.

Now, as I had an appointment relatively early in the morning, I wanted to be sure that Our Mary Poppins wouldn't be mortified by the girls bringing her some new and fabulous toy from Mommy and Daddy's room.  So I scoured the room, hiding things here and there, at the very least getting everything out of sight.  It's a little tricky to put everything away when you've just changed the plan for where everything goes (see "new bedside tables") and you're sort of dazed and in a rush.  What with the winds and the windows being open, the bedroom door has a tendency to open and shut of its own accord,  so just trapping everyone outside wasn't a very comfortable option.  I thought I did a pretty good job.  Nobody was going to get embarrassed or awkward.  And I succeeded.  For the moment.

When I came home and relieved Our Mary Poppins, I returned to the bedroom so I could put away clean laundry.  And then SI, our little detective in training, found the only remnants of the nights activities.  M had, in his excitable and eager enthusiasm, thrown the lid to our bottle of lube on the floor.  Where it had rolled beneath his dresser, far out of reach of any little fingers.  Including my own.

Of course, this also meant that when I left the bottle of very, VERY expensive and high quality lubricant on his bedside table, I had not noticed that this bottle was OPEN.

A word on our choice of lubricant, Jo Premium.  This is widely acknowledge the very finest of silicone based personal lubricants.  Extremely long lasting.  Completely water-proof.  Never, NEVER sticky or tacky.  Costs an arm and a leg, as far as lube goes, but worth every pretty penny.  Just ask your friendly local feminist sex-toy shop owner.

As I folded laundry, on my side of the bed, I saw a most alarming sight.  As if in slow motion, SI was  reaching towards the bottle on Daddy's bedside table.  And as if time had frozen for that infinitessimal moment, I stared and stared and stared, wondering- "What is wrong with this picture?"

And then it happened.  The exquisitely lubricated bottle slipped between her fingers, and as I ran pell-mell around the bed to try to stop the inevitable from happening, the pharmaceutical grade silicone began gushing out of the bottle.

The bottle half-emptied, I returned it to the shelf.  And poor, unwitting SI, sensing a lecture or perhaps an angry shout, ran THROUGH the puddle in an attempt to escape.  Encasing her feet in super long-lasting, water resistant, silicone based personal lubricant.

I had already grabbed a handkerchief that was destined to go straight into the garbage and was sopping up what I could when I heard a new sound- one I had never heard before, but was absolutely unmistakable.  It was the sound of SI losing all traction with the floor.

I turned over my shoulder to see SI floundering, comically, as her feet failed to make understandable contact with the floor beneath her.  She was essentially running in place, wobbling precariously, her little feet stomping, sliding, running, as she barely moved forward.  And then, THUMP, she landed heavily on her hands and knees.

Blanking for a moment on the full implications of the situation, I waited for her to run back to me so I could kiss her hands and finish my weak attempts at cleaning up the pool of silicone on M's beside floor.

But SI could not run back to me, because she could not maintain contact with the floor.  Another cartoonish attempt, legs working wildly and desperately struggling to maintain balance, and THUMP, onto the floor again, this time rear-end first.  This set DD giggling furiously, as she put the pieces together about what Mommy was doing on the floor, and what SI was doing.  And I saw the wild gleam of mischief in her eyes.

Sometimes, just staying upright is half the battle

Suddenly the real dilemma reared its ugly head.  Do I take SI to the bathroom and start trying to wash her feet, do I clean up the mess on the floor before it spreads farther than I can fear or imagine, or do I somehow wrangle both children away from the bedroom?

I opted to help the hysterical toddler who suddenly found the laws of physics failing her, hoping that bringing her to the tub- DD's favorite place on earth- would lure DD after me.

It worked beautifully.  Unfortunately, I hadn't counted on DD having to run through SI's little silicone footprints to get there.  The moment she scurried through SI's pharmaceutical grade footprints, physics failed her as well.  Legs working wildly, she managed to cross the threshold from the hardwood floor of the bedroom to the tiled floor of the bathroom.  Upon contact, the silicone seemed to gain viscosity, and THUMP, down went DD.

After much scrubbing with castile soap, I felt I had done the best I could for my lubricated grublings.  And then the task remained- cleaning the silicone off of the floor.

Google was no help at all.  Nor, I'm sorry to say, was the JO website.  Apparently most people store their highly expensive sex accessories with more care.  The best I could do was to get instructions for removing the silicone based lubricants used by some furniture manufacturing machines from your furniture.

I'm sorry to say, I failed.  I did all I could, I essentially polished nearly half of the bedroom floor with silicone, but it was too late.  The floor on M's side of the bed is, to put it mildly, a safety hazard.  He entertained himself before bed by sliding around in front of his dresser.

I keep discovering that I've missed spots.  This morning, on my way to prepare my children for their day, my feet went completely out from under me in the hallway.  Added to the comedic scene of your truly suddenly finding her feet whisked out from under her is the fact that she was, of course, holding a full cup of water.  Which she proceeded to wear for most of the morning.

Little lubricated footprints

Random patches of the floor in my nearly-entirely hardwood home, from the dining room on one end to the living room on the other and every room in between, are suddenly hazardous.

I can only hope that the regular wear and tear of a family of four tromping around will do something the mitigate the dangers facing us.  In the meantime, M manged to locate his hastily discarded lube lid, and we will forever remember our third anniversary as, hopefully, our most comically dangerous.

But then, there's always next year.

Worst Mommy in the World

My daughters and their new friends- the owls

I have no doubt that someday they'll call me horrible names.  But right now, I do it all to myself.  And I can't even tell myself that it's really not that bad.  All I have to do is keep checking the condition of the laundry.

My children are in a right state.  Let me put it this way, in the last two days we've gone through a lot of neosporin.

I was so anxious to have kids who could move around on their own steam.  And really, it's a huge improvement in most ways.  I can walk down the street and my children walk along with me, their tiny hands in mine.  I can go out and come back, and they take themselves back up the stairs.  I can say, "Go to your chairs!" and they run to eat a meal.  It's lovely.

Except, of course, that they're just not that good at it.

SI and her new best buddy

Two days ago, the streak began.  SI and I were playing with the yoga ball.  She was chasing it up and down the hall, shrieking with laughter.  As she ran after it (me encouraging her, of coures), she fell down.

She fell down, knocking her head REALLY HARD into a heating vent.

So she had a giant, bleeding lump on her forehead.  As the evening progressed and she calmed down, I kept checking her eyes to make sure they were focusing together.  I knew it wasn't likely that she had a concussion, but she was so sleepy... I was terrified.

So the next day, when we went to the grocery store, I was very sure to take care that both girls got lots of attention and love.  That meant two carts, which was fine.  We had M with us, SI's scabbed bump was a little smaller, and with a hat on her little head I thought that I might not appear to be some sort of horrible child abuser.

Then DD started getting very silly.  She wanted me to tickle her under her chin.  And what kind of parent wouldn't tickle their adorable toddler under the chin when explicitly begged by such a sweet and insistent  little munchkin?

DD giving her owl kisses

So I tickled her.  And I tickled her again.  And in her inexpressible mirth she flung her body sideways as hard as she possibly could.  Instantly, her laughter turned to screams.  She had smashed her face- SMASHED her FACE- on the metal bar at the side of the cart.  While she screamed and the other grocery shoppers started looking for the horrible abusive mother who was maiming her children in the frozen food isle, I saw blood starting to trickle from the corner of her eye.

I panicked.  I picked her up, abandoned the cart (and my purse) and ran off to sit down with her, apologizing over and over and over again.  And DD, rock star that she is, stopped crying almost at once.  It was only five minutes before we were back in the cart, going through the checkout.  We were still a few groceries short, but I didn't care.  And DD was sporting a nasty shiner.  Lucky us, the blood was coming from a cut probably a millimeter away from from her eye.  It still makes me breathless with terror when I think about it.

After a much needed naptime, we went to the 'burbs for my cousin's birthday.  Upon our return, M went to extract DD from her car seat, and positively screamed to me across the car- "Come quick!  She's covered in blood!"

And that she was.  COVERED in blood.  Perfectly happy, but with blood crusted all over her face, from forehead to chin, all over her hands, her hair, her arms, in her sweater...   Turns out she'd gotten a nosebleed and, in toddler fashion, rubbed the blood all over herself.  The car seat (and one of my favorite blouses) looks like it's been through a horror movie.

SI and her "Owii" = BFFs

So today, we went off to a music class.  The other mothers laughed off my daughters' bumps and bruises, assured me that they didn't think I was beating up my kids when they were at home, and we all had a lovely time.

When we got home I did what I usually do- I encouraged the girls to race up the stairs.  How fast can they go- they're crawling up three flights of obstacles, right?

DD, in her excitement to be a step higher than her sister, KICKED SI IN THE FACE.  And then raced ahead.

SI burst into tears.  I grabbed her around the middle and leaped up the stairs behind DD, who was turning a corner out of sight, and in my haste I knocked SI's head into the wall.  (Not very hard, but still.)  It was enough to turn being hurt and upset into one of the worst things that had ever happened to her.

Of course, I still wasn't expecting that when I looked down to give her a kiss and tell her it was okay, that her face would be all bloody.  It seems DD actually busted open SI's lip.  Poor SI, who's mouth is already all sore from growing new teeth, has a nice big cut to make her even droolier and more miserable.

This owl is rightly terrified of my children

Just two days ago I felt like an amazing mom.  I had the happiest little girls, they were giving me tons of kisses and hugs.  They were eating well and sleeping well and cheerful and sweet... and I felt like I was just the awesomest mommy you ever saw.

But now I have a collection of blood stained diapers, blood stained clothes, and bloodied babies.  Gorgeous little girls that are sleeping peacefully while I contemplate a stiff martini to get through my horrific guilt.

I swear, I'm really not a terrible mother.  I'm really not.  I just feel like one.  I feel like the worst mother in the world.

Freedom, Consequences, and The Opposite of Teamwork

First of all, many MANY thanks to Kyle at Have Kids, Will Blog (and The Kopp Twins- whose little girls I personally can't get enough of) for the incredibly kind words about me and my blog.

Secondly, another heap of thanks to Mom Daughter Reviews for even more lovely and kind things about me that you're spreading all over the internet.

All this attention could turn a girl's head!

And now- onto a subject about which I've been meaning to write at length- Freedom.

I am, in a way that I have not been since practically becoming pregnant, free.  You see, we live on a third floor walk up.  It's a gorgeous place- huge east facing windows with no obstructions, so it's always filled with natural light.  I've taken advantage of that by filling it with stained glass.  It has a lovely balcony on the front, where we can watch strangers and friends come and go.  It's on a nice quiet block, the most non-emergency vehicle noise we get up here are the sound frolicking children and dogs in the unofficial dog park next door.  We love it here.

But, again, it's a third floor walk-up.  When we moved in, I was already five months pregnant (twin adjustment: ten months pregnant) and in a really remarkable amount of pain from my SPD.  I didn't get out much.

Then there were two babies.  And it was winter.  I pretty much hibernated.  Spring came, and with it my return to school.  It was so nice and breezy in the house, with all those big, south facing windows opened wide.  And it was so much of a hassle to bring my children up and down, one at a time, the treacherous back stairs to the back yard.  Plus, we were so busy traveling.  Whenever I was home, I just stayed there.

But now things are different.  Spring has almost really sprung, it's routinely warmish, and sunnyish, or at the very least pleasantly dreary and humid.  I love early spring.  And now, my children have learned to climb the stairs.

Allow me to repeat that.

My children, each about thirty pounds of squirmy little toddler, are capable of bringing themselves from the front door of our building to the front door of our condo three stories above.  Add to that some success with a few tries at medicating my mystery condition, and I actually FEEL like leaving the house!

I can't tell you how liberating this change has been.  Suddenly, during those non-school days, I can GO somewhere, I can take my curious and friendly children off to play with other kids, I can meet other parents, and I can even run to the grocery store.  I almost don't know what to do with all that freedom.

Unfortunately, this isn't a perfect situation.  The girls can get themselves up, but not down.  Fine, down is easier for this grown-up.  Or so I thought.

Turns out that my old friends, back injuries and ankle sprains, do not like taking carrying two children down the stairs at once.  But what else do I do?  Take one down, leave her in the front yard all alone, and return for the child panicking in her coat and shoes upstairs?  I somehow doubt that this might lead to anything resembling happiness, and even at my best all I can imagine is hearing my daughter's name on an amber alert over and over and over.  So I use my trusty sling, tie one child on to my chest, pop the other on a hip under one arm, grab all our stuff, and leave the house.

The girls are loving it.  These days, if I need to distract them from absolutely anything,all I have to do is say, "Shoes!" and off they go to pull their shoes out of the drawer and try putting them onto their silly little feet.

We've been going to toddler music classes, and the produce market, and the occasional meet-up at other mother's houses.  And I feel like a new woman.

A completely broken, shattered, mutilated woman.  It feels like when I raise my head I'm catching some ample amount of flesh between my vertebrae, like I have a golf ball lodged under my right shoulder blade, and like I've been kicked repeatedly in the lower back.

Now, this alone wouldn't really be a problem, but it's compounding another little problem in a big way.  School.  That's right, I'm still in classes.  And every single one of my infuriating professors has assigned group projects.

I hate group projects.  It has been my experience for pretty much my entire life that the real purposes of these experiments are to test the limits of how much work you can do for other people without getting the credit.  So far, my biggest group project of the semester has beaten all the records.

You see, there's another woman in my group.  Another woman with a child, who has to travel a fair distance to get to class, and who seems rather busy.  When we first discussed this, there seemed to be a measure of understanding between us.  As the semester has progressed with me struggling to keep afloat in the midst of my illness and toddlers, this woman has failed to turn in her assignments, show up for classes, or cooperate in any way with her group.  Each week, her demands for our meetings have become more and more outrageous, up until we reached a total breaking point.  M and I have been having some money problems- the bursar at his school never sent him his financial aid, my school is still denying my my FAFSA for taking two semesters off to have babies, and both of our cars needed about a grand worth of repairs after the storm of doom.  I was ready to start missing classes because I couldn't afford Our Mary Poppins, but she got pneumonia anyway, and saved me the embarrassment of having to cancel on her.  In desperation, I agreed to a date, time, and general geographic area for a team meeting, chose the only location within that area that came equipped with high chairs (a deli), and agreed to schlep my toddlers to the South Loop and build a Power Point presentation.

Of course, there was pouring rain from dawn until dusk the day of our meeting.

So, what did this fellow mother and student and commuter do at four o'clock in the afternoon, watching me wrestle a child less than a year and a half old into a sling outside of a deli where she had agreed to meet me?

She marched up to us, third teammate in tow, and flat out refused to convene our meeting in the deli- at 4 in the afternoon with two toddlers in attendance- BECAUSE THERE WAS NO BEER.

I stood there, jaw on asphalt, spine on fire, SI a-flailin', DD a-wailin', getting steadily wetter, and collected my thoughts.

And as a reasonable adult with no choice but to finish this class, no reasonable options aside from taking my children home, and with a million and one responsibilities already waiting for me when I got there, I volunteered to do the whole project by myself.

It was exactly what she had expected.  She didn't even miss a beat.  She said, "Okay then!" and cheerfully handed of any semblance of responsibility.

She picked the one and only day and time she would be available to meet up again and review our project- conveniently a day that M is home and can watch the girls- and went off in search of beer.

To his credit, our other teammate seemed to feel that there must be a catch.  He's sent me a few emails since making sure I've got his part of the info and offering to go on fact-finding and photography missions.  But this other woman?  Her response to my declaration that I would just DO IT, was to tell me what her bit of the information was supposed to be, and what images I should get to go along with it- things that I already knew.  In short, that she had done no work and that I was now to do her part of the work- in all of its aspects- on her behalf.

Would you eat them on a boat?

Me?  I put the girls back into their car seats (miraculously they were okay with this) and just took them back home.  Where we had, without a doubt, the nicest night we've ever had without M at home.  Really, the girls were so charming ans sweet and loving that I couldn't help but feel like my degree was just a waste of time- a diversion from the only people in my life that always make me feel wonderful and good and successful, people who never royally screw me over out of pure selfish spite.

Still, I'm doing the damn project.  I'm stuck with this woman for the rest of the semester, so I'm just going to count my lucky stars that it's half over and wait until this presentation is done.  And then I am going to rip this woman a new one.  Seriously, I am laying down the law, letting her know that even if the professor feels that it's none of his concern if a teammate is completely useless (his argument is that if you can't work with difficult people in a group in school you can't do it in real life, so tough cookies) I can still go to her advisor, and that if she leaves us in the lurch like that for our final project I'll be making it very clear that she is NOT part of our group and had nothing to do with it.  I'm used to making enemies of colleagues, and I can deal with that kind of animosity for another few semesters.

So what's the moral of the story?  Is there a lesson, or at the very least a happy ending?

Thank you, thank you Sam I Am.

Let's see... it's sunny and beautiful and not EXACTLY warm but marvelously springlike.  I can bundle my wonderful children into their shoes and sweaters, and take them down the street to the playground.  Or next door, to a big open grassy (muddy) lot, or just sit on the front stoop while they play in the tulips.  Because I'm free, you see?  Tomorrow I'll be finishing that stupid Power Point, with M playing happily with his children.  I've replaced my desk chair with my yoga ball, so my back pain is slowly improving.  I've got a grocery list full of ingredients for making hamentastchen (I love the spring!) and I'm planning the girls Purim costumes.

Tomorrow I'm going to be up to my ears in school related frustrations, but right now I can sit in the sun with my amazing, sweet, cheerful little girls, and feel like the most successful person in the world.  So yes, it's the best of all possible endings.  Me and my girls get to ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after.

The Stuff of Nightmares

RUN AWAY!

There are some things that are much worse than you ever imagined they could be.

Take my current weight loss, for example.  I've lost fifteen pounds (and gone down two notches on my belt) over the last three weeks.  I have not been exercising or eating healthy- in fact, I haven't been eating at all for the most part.  And I never imagined that I would view my weight loss as a sign of doom and gloom.  After all, I've been carrying that extra weight around ever since I got married.

And when your car starts acting dangerously wrong, you know that you'll have to suck it up and pay a bunch of money to keep it running, which will involve taking it to a shop where people either assume you're too stupid, or (if you're a woman) that you're too female to understand what they might be trying to tell you is wrong with your car.  You sort of expect it.

And as some of you may recall, I recently learned what it's like to be out in public during a catastrophic twin meltdown.  As I lamented at the time, I was lucky to be in a nice, quiet, toddler-friendly place.

You wouldn't think that all of those things could coalesce into one massive morning of epic misery, but you would be wrong.

The car that M drives to and from work, an aging Kia Sportage, has not been well.  Starting during the epic storm of doom my husband's car started acting, in a word, disturbingly.  The lights wouldn't go off, the steering column started making ominous noises... it wasn't pretty.  We're lucky enough to live just over one mile from a very nice shop that specializes in foreign cars.  It's run by a very nice gentleman who generally assume that I'm female-stupid instead of just stupid-stupid, and if you'll forgive me the extremely unfeminist feeling on my part, I would rather be under the impression that I'm the victim of sexism than that somebody actually thinks I'm dumb.  I made the car an appointment for this morning, FIRST THING IN THE MORNING, with the hopes that I could get the car back by the end of the day and use it to get to class tomorrow.  I figure, the girls usually don't have breakfast until 9am anyway, I could bundle them into the car, drive the 1.1 miles to the shop, drop off the car and keys, pop the grublings in the stroller, and walk back the 1.1 miles back before breakfast.

Blocks are fun!

As you can imagine, I did foresee flaws in this plan.  First and foremost, there's the problem with the battery.  It seems that the only way M had been keeping the (brand new) battery functional was by actually detaching it from the motor each time he turned the car off.  This is normally a simple procedure, but Kia Motors seems to think that the idea of positioning the battery in any sort of functional way is just overdone.  So, the battery attaches way down towards the bottom, requiring that you lean all the way into the engine in order to get this done.  If you're a short person with stabbing abdominal pain, this is a big problem.  As a result, M had to attach the battery for me when he left for work in the morning, two hours before I would shuttle the girls down.  The right lights would be on in the cold all this time.

The next problem that I foresaw was that the girls would run amok in the shop.  Fortunately for me, my MIL brought me several grubling leashes and harnesses (don't you dare judge me for putting my toddlers on leashes!) just last weekend.  I could tether the girls to my belt, and they might not like it too much, but they wouldn't get into anything too awful.

The last problem I anticipated was my health.  I haven't been up for mopping the floor, let alone walking for a mile.  But, I told myself, what choice did I have?  And I could take it at a leisurely pace.  A little fresh air and exercise might even do me some good.

The morning started well.  The girls cooperated with, even got excited about, getting into their coats, snow pants, hats and mittens.  A very nice lady walking past me on the street helped me wrangle SI while I got DD into her seat.  They were cheerful and pleasant he whole drive to the shop.

We were even early.

...for the first appointment of the day.  Of course, the doors were still locked.  I had planned ahead- I tried to give the girls crackers and milk.  This, complicated by mittens, enraged SI.  I thought to myself, "Maybe she just needs to run off some steam..." and tethered her by her leash to the stroller.  Watching this made DD extremely upset, so I started to tether her as well.  At that precise moment, SI learned that she could only run a few feet.  She fell flat on her back.  And the screaming began.

Mid-morning dance time!

First, it was just SI.  Screaming as though she was being murdered.  Then, DD realized that it was cold, she was stuck on a leash, and I was preoccupied with SI.  This caused the screaming to double.  There was nothing I could do.  No milk, no crackers, no stuffed puppies could calm the banshees.  I did the only thing I could- I sat down on a patch of icy sidewalk and tried to calm down my hysterical toddlers.

As though that would work.

I kept telling myself, "Only ten more minutes until the shop opens..." but the time crawled past.  People were peering out their windows (the scene takes place at 8am on a Wednesday on a residential street that just happens to have a car shop behind a brownstone), glaring at me as they put their own children into their cars, LAUGHING at me as they passed by on their way to campus (childless college students are too cruel...), and finally some guy walked out of the house next door and started yelling at me.

Or so it seemed.  He actually worked at the shop.  He took my keys, told me to call the shop once I had the children home, and heavily implied that I was a neglectful fool for bringing children so young to a mechanic.  As if I had a choice.  I wrangle the now completely inconsolable children into the stroller and begin to walk home.

And let me tell you, 1.1 miles is a looooooooong way when you're pushing 100lbs of screaming, flailing, sobbing misery on wheels.

...a looooooooong way entirely through the campus of a very prestigious university filled with cruel childless college students.

Oh, but it gets so much worse.  Remember- I'm ill.  And this was not going to be a simple, leisurely stroll.  This was a race to get back as soon as humanly possible.

As I walked, I felt the pain in my abdomen sharpen.  My breath began hitching, and as the screaming went on seemingly without end, I began limping.  But I must continue!  I must get home!  As soon as we're home this will all be better!

Who is that masked child?

I looked up as we passed a street sign.  Some road construction work on the corner blocked my path, and two workers rushed to move the caution tape and tarps to let me through.  Two blocks down, seven to go.   The pain in my abdomen started reaching into my shoulder.  It was harder and harder to push the stroller with my right arm.  My nausea began to rise.  Don't throw up!  If you throw up you'll have to stop moving!  Do not stop moving!  You can do it!  You'll be home soon!  Almost half-way there!


It was then that I passed the bustling business school.  Nobody would make way on the sidewalk.  This enraged my children yet more.  I gave up being polite and pushed the stroller into snowy, muddy area between the sidewalk and street.  I felt my fever begin to rise, everything was going fuzzy.  You're almost past the business school!  Just get past, and then three more blocks!  You're so close!

At the end of the block with the business school, there is a hill.  The children did not appreciate the shift to their equilibrium.  I think I may have actually begun to cry as with a great heave I forced the stroller up the hill.  I began to get a little delirious with fever.  Do. Not. Pass. Out.  You have to get INSIDE of your building before you pass out.  If you pass out before you get INSIDE of your building, somebody could steal your children, but your neighbors will watch them and call 911.  Get. Inside. The. House.  Only two blocks left to go.

With one block left, another obstacle.  More construction work blocking the sidewalk.  I disregarded the "Do Not Walk" sign, and cut around in the street.  The construction workers shouted jokes about my screaming children at me as I rushed past.  I hoisted the stroller back up over the curb to get back onto the sidewalk.  Do not die before you get home.  You just all need to get home alive.  That's all.  And there's only one hundred feet left...

As I finally neared my house, I saw a downstairs neighbor exiting the building, obviously on his way to work.  He held the door and then one child for me as I labored the stroller and all of our stuff back into the house.  The screaming was ceaseless.  As I sat on the bottom step of stairs to our third floor walk up, he asked me if I was okay.  "Actually, I'm quite ill," I told him.  "But I've got it from here, thank you so much."

Happier times.

Normally, the girls climb the stairs themselves.  Not today.  I carried them up (mostly lugging them by the harnesses they still wore) all the way to the top floor.  And then I sat on the floor and did my best to calm them down.  We all rolled and thrashed around the foyer- just inside my front door, for about twenty minutes before I could get the children silent.  They weren't calm or happy yet, but at least they were silent.

They had breakfast, watched Sesame Street (and some more cartoons, I needed the rest), helped me put away laundry, and went down for their nap early.

And me?  I found out that the damage to car is minimal, and mostly M's fault for not changing the fluids.  The pain in my abdomen hasn't stopped, but my fever has broken.  And I didn't even throw up.  That was a miracle.

So what have I learned from this experience?

Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  As far as I'm concerned, this was one of those inevitable disasters that just happens to you when you're responsible for very small people.  As a parent, you are constantly tested.  Constantly the butt of a universal joke.  And the fact of the matter is that you know what you're getting in for.  It's one of the reasons that people without children so fear becoming people WITH children.  There is nothing glamorous about being a parent.  We all know that we're going in for the longest, most grueling endeavor known to man, and that parts of it are going to suck.

Oh good lord, some parts of it suck.

Very helpful grublings

But we do it anyway, because despite the indignity of using your last ounce of willpower not to lay down and die in your stairwell while covered in your screaming children, there are benefits.  There are moments every bit as perfect as those horrible, unfathomably awful moments are miserable.  There are reasons.

And right now my reasons are happy, oblivious, sleepy little people laying in the other room, content in the belief that I am a superhero who rescued them from a terrible morning, regardless of the fact that I was also the villain that inflicted it upon them.

It's big, sloppy kisses from DD and soft, gentle kisses from SI when they see me when they wake and hug me and bring me books to read them and toys to play with, and say "Mama!" over and over again, as though it's a mantra that evaporates all ills.

In short, my morning was one of the worsts of my life.  But I am still so, so happy to have those little people around.  So happy that they've come into my existence and brightened it so fully.

...and I am so desperately in need of a nap.

One of the first times I ever found myself this exhausted

Gigantic Screwups

Day one with the grublings

I understand that we all make mistakes.  That I will continue to accidentally walk into my kids, trip them while I try to pull up their pants, get soap in their eyes...

Today I screwed up.  I was closing the bathroom door, and had my eyes on SI.  She was trying to get into the bathroom, and I was trying to keep her out.  Unbeknown to me, DD was behind me, grabbing hold of the door jam.  Which is to say that I closed her fingers in the door- HARD.

DD and SI waking up SuperMommy

I absolutely panicked.  She was screaming, her finger was rapidly turning purple, and it was sort of flattened with a giant dent it in.  I was sure it was broken.  She wouldn't let me ice it, and she screamed and screamed.

I learned a few things.  One- baby digits are squishy.  It is completely undamaged, despite its horrific appearance at the time.

Two, DD might be the most thoughtful and affection person I'd ever known.  What did she do after I desperately tried to make her first really nasty boo-boo better?

She stopped crying, and she gave me lots and lots of watery, boogery kisses.  She's usually pretty reticent about giving kisses, it's SI who kisses like crazy.  DD made ME feel better, even while she was still obviously hurting and scared.

 I would be hard pressed to say that I'd do it again, because I still feel AWFUL.  But I do feel like I must be doing something right, because these kids are just wonderful.

Napping with two of my favorite people

In Which SuperMommy Is Nearly A Victim of Vehicular Manslaughter

My beautiful, charming daughters

Ever noticed that the holidays fall during school breaks?  That means that, along with the stress of gift purchases and annual family letters and baking (okay, some of it's fun) is also the stress of FINALS.  Good lord, how I loathe the end of the semester.

I've had a particularly stressful semester's end.  I'm taking the classes for my major out of order- part time status kind of does that to you- and as a result was woefully unprepared for one of my classes this last semester.  It was on the visualization tools used by urban planners, public administrators, and policy analysts.  My final project involved the use of all sorts of software that I had not only never used before, but that my poor little netbook Hackintosh just couldn't run.  As a full time mommy, I don't get out much, so my time in the school labs was extremely limited.  My wonderful father downloaded the software to finish my project, worth 40% of my final grade and to be judged by the graduate school faculty, and I planned to finish my homework over Thanksgiving weekend.

Never mind that my family was also celebrating Channukah on Thanksgiving weekend.  No, let's not concern ourselves with that just yet.

SI and DD in their pretty dresses, playing with Poppa

Of course, nothing is ever that simple.  For example, M's semester is also ending, and unlike me he actually has final exams.  That means that every last minute he has is spent on campus, working on his school work.  This is very conveniently timed with a major project at his work that's threatening to make him work seven 12 hour shifts a week starting any day now.  He's hardly seen his children at all.

For the first time probably ever, I went to bed the night before a family trip without having packed.  That's how bad it was.

We stayed at my sister's house.  Now, I love my sister.  But I will never be doing that again.  The fact of the matter is that people without kids just don't understand what it's like to HAVE kids.  Every time I asked my parents if they'd change a diaper, or feed a toddler, I was treated like some kind of lazy slob.  Not exactly my cup of tea.  Add to that the constant complaint that my kids were leaving crackers under the table or making too much noise early in the morning...

They're 14 months old, for god's sake!  Give me a break!

Incredibly, impossibly, unfathomably, I finished my homework very late Saturday evening- while my family and friends were eating latkes and playing with my daughters in their beautiful holiday dresses.  I was tucked away in the basement, editing margins and adjusting color transparency, but I got the thing done.  I even managed to scarf down a few latke and some falafel, and actually see a few people I love dearly and haven't seen in at least five months.  Or in one case, about fifteen years!

DD hamming it up for the camera

To sum up: the weekend was hectic and stressful, but parts of it were genuinely wonderful.  And it ended with me being on the verge of DONE with my semester.  And the girls were absolute gems.  They got some really great presents, too.

Then yesterday came.  My final countdown began: only seven days of class left.  So how could it possible go wrong?

I'll tell you how.  I'll tell you how the universe likes to screw around with SuperMommy.

That gigantic project?  It's printed on PAPER.  As soon as she gets out of the print shop?  It starts` POURING RAIN.  I run from the print shop to the car, and drive to my night class.

The rain doesn't let up, it just gets heavier and harder.  By the time I head back to the car, it's a torrential downpour.  A car stops at the crosswalk to the parking lot of my night class.  I step out into the crosswalk, in front of the now stopped car and make a very unfortunate discovery.

That driver?  She didn't stop because of the stop sign, or the crosswalk, or the wet, surly pedestrian.  No, she stopped to answer a text message.  And she decided to start going again without looking up at all from her phone.  Right into ME.

The good news is that she didn't accelerate very quickly, she was only about a foot away from me to begin with, and I'm fairly resilient to car v. human collisions.

SI playing with her aunt's girlfriend

I first picked myself off of her very wet hood, then the very wet pavement, and as she apologized out the window, I started shuffling off towards what would undoubtedly be a very wet, uncomfortable drive back home.

But at least the homework is all done, right?

Bullying and Sexual Identity- A Parenting Perspective

As you might expect, I read a lot of other mothers' blogs.  A topic that has been much discussed this week is the recent rash of teen suicides.  So many teens in the last few months have committed suicide as a result of anti-gay bullying.  Not all of these kids were even gay, they were simply perceived as gay by their bullying peers.

You would be amazed what the mommy-blogosphere is saying.  One of the moms I read has an eight year old who is becoming a bully.  She's begun making all sorts of excuses, saying that bullying is really a result of a very confident child trying to contrast their own success against obvious failure.  That bullies are more popular, that they are more successful in life.  That the children who are bullied make themselves victims.  I can't even begin to tell you how much this view shocks and terrifies me.  I was bullied as a child, mercilessly.  I remember vividly contemplating suicide when I was eight and a half years old, because of how cruel the other children were.  And while that had nothing to do with my sexuality, it had to do with other elements of my personality I was just as incapable of changing.  I was teased about being Jewish, about being a vegetarian, about having glasses, about having curly hair... anything that bullies could come up with to use against me.  And I was not alone.  Children are a cruel lot once you get them in packs.

She's begun making all sorts of excuses, saying that bullying is really a result of a very confident child trying to contrast their own success against obvious failure.  That bullies are more popular, that they are more successful in life.  That the children who are bullied make themselves victims.

Another disturbing bit of reading I've done is by a mom who's blog is intended to debunk parenting news.  Her argument is that these kids are too young to be thinking about such issues as their own sexuality anyway, and the best thing that the adults in their lives can do is to discourage them from worrying about it in the first place.

Has she never been a teenager?  Can she honestly not remember the CONSTANT OBSESSION that teenagers have with sex?  They want to have it, they're frightened to have it, they want to know who's having it, when, how...  Take a look at any video store or library, teenagers want to watch movies and read books about other teenagers talking about or having sex, they want to learn everything possible about it, and figure out what sort of role sex is going to play in their lives.  There's constant speculation about who's doing what with whom, regardless of the orientation.  High schools have always been and will always be rife with speculation about which girls are easy, which boys are all talk and which have actually "gone all the way."

Not surprisingly, the kids who are the cruelest during those teen years are the ones that are least comfortable with their own sexuality.  Girls who feel demeaned in their own sexual experiences are the fastest to label other girls "slut," boys who are the most frightened of their own potentially homosexual urges the first in line to shout slurs or beat up a boy they might see as effeminate, even if they haven't outed themselves as gay.

Can she honestly not remember the CONSTANT OBSESSION that teenagers have with sex?

We as a culture are beginning to understand more and more that our assumptions about what it means to be gay are not true.  Two thirds of Americans are ready to welcome gays into the military, because we understand that they're not limp wristed girly men who run from a fight, but patriots- no different from any other patriot that wants to serve their country.

But the fact of the matter is that kids are killing themselves because of bullies.  Now.  They're not only being bullied for being gay, but homosexuality is one of the last bastions of fundamental characteristics that many adults seem to think is still WRONG.  In most of this country, you can't bully a kid for being black, or Catholic, or a girl... but homosexuality is another story.  How many of those homophobic bullies have a parent who would support them if they went to Prom with somebody of the same gender?  How many of those parents would try to accept their child's confession that they believe they were born with the wrong reproductive organs?

I've spoken with M several times about what we would do if one of our girls was being bullied, and what we would do if they were bullying.  I know I would cry bitter tears for any child my child victimized.  I also know what I would tell my girls if somebody bullied them.  And it's something I desperately want to tell to all these teenagers, gay, straight, or just plain odd, who face the bullying daily:

Assault, hate crimes, these are the things children get away with in the name of youthful exuberance.

This is not about you.  They're not making fun of you or hurting you because of anything true- and if it is true, it's only a coincidence.  They've decided to make you a target and that's not fair, but it means nothing.  They could tell the other kids that you're an alien from Mars, and get the other kids to beat you up for being an alien from Mars.  It doesn't matter if you're gay or straight, it doesn't matter if you're tall or short or smart or stupid, they'll pick any reason out of the air and they will bully you for it, but it does not define you.  You are not what they say you are, and what they're saying you are is unworthy of their respect.  Nothing more meaningful than that.  You are a human being, and you're a kid, and that means that life is not fair and that life is hard, but you will all get a little older, and this will end.  These horrible people who make you feel ashamed to be you, they'll turn into regular old adults, and you'll be a regular old adult, and they won't dare say these things.  Because when adults do this, it's called a hate crime.  You might not be able to stop them, but the end is in sight.  All you have to do is grow up.

The last thing I would say is that I am so sorry I couldn't do more to make this a better world for you.  For my daughters, for every kid that's bullied past the breaking point, I wish to God I could have made this a better world for you.

I plead with all of you parents out there, please don't turn a blind eye to facts of your child's life.  If you child is a bully, don't ignore it.  Don't make excuses.  Because if this was behavior an adult was engaging in, they would be in jail.  Assault, hate crimes, these are the things children get away with in the name of youthful exuberance.  Would you stand by your adult child in court as they were prosecuted for beating up homosexuals, telling the judge and their victims that it's just an overabundance of confidence?  Would you tell your twenty two year old daughter that she really doesn't need to think about whether or not she's a lesbian because it's time to get a job and focus on her career?  No.  Because once your kids are adults, you have to accept that their adult behavior is largely out of your control.

It doesn't matter if you're gay or straight, it doesn't matter if you're tall or short or smart or stupid, they'll pick any reason out of the air and they will bully you for it, but it does not define you.

But your child's behavior is NOT out of your control.  You can make it right.  You can at least TRY to make it right.

I hope against hope that when my girls are grown, they will have the freedom to love whoever they choose.  Sure, part of me wants my kids to have the same sorts of experiences that I had- and those were largely heterosexual experiences.  But I also want them to be happy, and most of all true to themselves.  Because what kind of happiness is it to live a lie?

Part of me would genuinely rather my girls were bullied than that they were bullying others, because I just don't know how I would fix that problem.  I hope I never have to learn.  But I do hope they never have to endure the bullying that I did, or that those poor dead teenagers did.  I hope that in the next decade, the rest of humanity wises up a bit and realizes that children are people too, and that it is NOT acceptable for people to treat other people as anything less than an equal human being.