Category — Toddler-hood

Amaia took her first three steps today. THREE STEPS.

I set her down on the ground in a standing position and you could just SEE the gears going. She wanted to go forward. Really, really wanted to. First, she sort of walked in place: picked up one foot, then the other, not moving forward. Yet.

“Dude, she’s totally thinking about walking. Look at her.” I told Chris.

Amaia leaned onto one leg and pointed the other toe, poising herself . . .

“DUDE! Look look look! Look at her! She’s going to do it!”

Chris and I both stared and smiled, smiled and stared, trying not to freak her out. Waiting . . .

The pointed toe moved forward. Then the other foot lifted and moved, then the other foot caught up!

And then she fell on her diapered little butt.

Total pandemonium. Chris jumped up and down. I jumped up and down. The twins hugged our legs and laughed hysterically. Pure and total joy.

This, from the baby who could not sit up on her own just two short months ago.

This, from the baby who has us in and out of neurologists and gastroenterologists and speech pathologists and god knows what other -ologists yet to be determined.

Video to come, hopefully!

Between the twins’ birthday party last month, and the baby getting ready to turn one in just a couple of days (OMFG ONE WOT???), we are seriously broke in party mode around here.

With having the extra party now to do every year, I’m starting to learn a little about pulling off a kids’ birthday party. Now, I’m no expert. I have hosted a whopping four parties in three years. But I’m a quick study!

Now, chances are, all the stuff I’m about to share with you is blindingly obvious to everyone else. But, to me, it wasn’t. So I’m just passing along the information in case it helps someone else out.

The twins’ birthday party this year was at a local park. I was FREAKING OUT because I’m bi-polar not taking meds. I am NOT a kids’ party-planning person. I don’t do themes, I have no organizational skills, I don’t know how to decorate and I hate the outdoors. Last year, we had their party at an indoor kids’ gym where everything was done for me. The year before that was a gathering at our house (wherein I was cruelly introduced to the necessity of a theme for a child’s birthday party).

So, an outdoor party, planned entirely by me, to accommodate about 40 adults and children? Well, this was going to be interesting.

My experience so far has been that, out of your invite list, maybe 75% of people say they can attend, and only 40% of those people actually show up. So, I scaled back the food and party favors slightly.

Lesson #1: DO NOT SCALE BACK FOOD AND PARTY FAVORS SLIGHTLY.

Yes, I am shouting! At you! Because you know what happened? Everybody showed up. EVERYBODY. And some of their friends! Seriously, people? When did you actually start showing up when you say you’re going to?

We ran out of food and favors and I felt like a total dick. We seriously had like a slice of cheese and two grapes leftover. Thank god my kids don’t eat sandwiches, because we would have had negative cheese and no grapes leftover.

That brings me to:

Lesson #2: Choose your location wisely, especially if you’re lazy,

and

Lesson #3: Let location dictate theme — or lack thereof.

On the plus side, the park was built-in entertainment. The picnic tables were shaded, so I just sat there all comfortable and mom-like and I didn’t actually have to play with the children even once.

Plus, having the party at a park meant I was off the hook for theme-y decorations. I spent about $40 on tablecloths, two sizes of plates, cups, utensils, two balloon arrangements and a generic “Happy Birthday” banner (which I re-used at Amaia’s party) by buying the generic, birthday-themed supplies at BJ’s instead of the cute, expensive-as-hell theme decorations from the party supply store. In fact, I originally bought a full set of themed decorations for almost $130 at the party store, meaning I saved $90.

Speaking of budget,

Lesson #4: DIY doesn’t always mean savings.

I may have saved on decorations, but we actually spent a lot more money by doing it all ourselves. The kids’ gym party last year cost about $325 total, including our gifts to the kids, party favors, cupcakes, balloons, and food for the adults (the kids’ food was included in the gym rental).

The DIY park party cost closer to $500. You know, because we have $500 just laying around. Renting the stupid picnic tables alone cost $110 for four hours, and that didn’t include jack shit except the right to tell people to get the hell off our tables (WHICH I DID).

Now, for Amaia’s first birthday party, I invited some of the twins’ friends over for a cupcake-decorating party. As I Googled ideas for party favors and crafts, I came across the idea of giving every child an apron that they could decorate themselves and take home, along with extra cupcakes, as their favor.

I loved the idea. Not only was it a welcome relief from the bags of throw-away trinkets that you get at most parties, but it would actually end up being cheaper than the party favor bags.

I got a dozen colorful aprons on Amazon for a mere $9.50 shipped (with Amazon Prime; price of the apron will fluctuate a bit). I paid less than $5 for the cupcake supplies. Considering a party favor bag full of crap will run you in the range of $2-3 per bag, this was a big savings.

Then, I had another idea: What if I personalized every apron by stenciling each child’s name on it beforehand? Wouldn’t that be awesome?!??

Then: Am I out of my fucking mind? What business do I have with paint and stencils? I can barely dress myself, let alone create something that involves color coordination and, like, not writing like a five year old.

Lesson #5: You, too, can stencil.

Holy shit you guys, my stenciled aprons came out awesome. Check it out.

Okay, so you could totally see the pencil lines where I lined up the letters. And I smeared the paint on most of them. And a couple of them came out downright ugly and I felt really bad giving it the kid. BUT. I fucking stenciled, people. STENCILED.

The point is, it’s okay to step out of your comfort zone for your kids. Just don’t expect perfection and make no apologies for it.

For crafts, the older kids got to decorate their own cupcakes and totally fuck up all my stencil work draw on their aprons (I bought fabric markers for that — no way was I going to have a dozen three-year-old kids running around with fabric paint in the house).

I was a bit nervous about the kids getting to work with food and frosting and whatnot. But, thankfully, I was wrong!

Lesson #6: Decorating food can actually be a very do-able and not-too-messy craft for little kids who dirty everything else up.

For toppings, I put out bowls of gummy bears, colored marshmallows, rainbow sprinkles, crushed Oreos, plain M&M’s, and these seasonal gingerbread-man marshmallows. The kids had a BLAST. There really was minimal mess, and only one kid took a scoop of sprinkles and ate it directly. (Side note: I would suggest cutting the Oreos into recognizable pieces; no one used them and now I have a bag of crushed Oreos I refuse to throw out.)

The party turned out great and we had a ton of food left over, thanks to the aforementioned fact that I’m a quick study and I over-planned the food this time. Which reminds me,

Lesson #7: Pizza is cheaper than sandwiches

Shop around for the main course if you don’t make it yourself. For instance, around these parts, a deli party sandwich from the popular supermarket, Publix, will run you $19.99 per sandwich, which feeds 8. A comparable sandwich from the less-popular Sweetbay is just $11.99 (also feeds 8).

Now, a one-topping medium pizza from Domino’s, which can also be ordered ahead of time and delivered to your door? $5.55. Also feeds 8.

We basically paid almost half for the food. That’s a big deal, so to speak.

And finally, speaking of food,

Lesson #8: Make your own fruit and vegetable platters

Those fruit and vegetable platters at the supermarket are a major rip, right? And the food is half-old and the dip is nasty, anyway. I comparison shopped between the supermarket sales and the wholesale market, and made gigantic fruit and vegetable trays myself, with premium dipping sauce, for about the same price as the prepared trays — with leftovers.

I chose the fare wisely — only stuff that required minimal or no chopping. For fruit: strawberries (locally grown, even), grapes, and cantaloupe. Veggies: cherry tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, and skinny baby carrots.

Everyone had a great time. And you know what? There was no mess difference between two kids or 12. Our house still looked like a complete and total disaster.

Oh, and in case you were wondering . . . Amaia beat the hell out of her cupcake. She may look nothing like me, but she sure knows what to do with her dessert. Happy birthday, little baby.

In just a few short weeks, my twins will be three years old. The birthday party invitations have been sent (okay, it was a Facebook invitation. Just being cheap and lazy trying to keep things green.), the venue has been reserved, the “birthday girl” shirts have been bought.

I’m admittedly having a very difficult time coming to terms with the idea of having three year olds. Amaia’s growth toward turning one isn’t helping. Every box of the girls’ old clothes I bring out makes me feel anxious and depressed. I’m trying desperately to remember how Elise and Althea were at Amaia’s age as I soak in every millisecond of Amaia’s infancy.

So much has changed in the past year with the twins. I haven’t done a blog post about their development in a long time. It’s about time, then, to catch up. Long post ahead.

Eating

This seems like a silly topic to talk about with preschoolers. They eat when they’re hungry and don’t when they aren’t . . . or when they feel rebellious or are tired or mad or busy or don’t like pasta/beef/garbanzos/honeydew/air/being alive. Sometimes, they eat like  horses. Sometimes, they eat three raisins, then jump up and down on the couch for six hours non-stop.

Come to think of it, I could benefit from this diet.

That said, Elise eats more and is a much more adventurous eater. Elise will try a bite of almost anything. Meanwhile, Althea will rarely try anything that she doesn’t recognize or that isn’t properly presented or explained to her. Elise tends to like more savory foods — pasta, casseroles, meats, starches –, while Althea tends toward more sweets, dairy and fruit. There is now a visible weight gap between the two.

Random food information: A pediatrician (not ours) recently informed me that you’re not supposed to feed hot dogs, popcorn, grapes, nuts and a variety of other common foods to children until they’re four years old due to the risk of choking. Um, woops. I get that you can’t give a nine-month-old a kielbasa covered in unshelled walnuts, but come on. FOUR???

Sleeping

As is to be expected for preschoolers, their bedtime routine takes approximately forever.

Between the periodic and inexplicable hatred of bath time; the kicking, shrieking and flailing to get into pajamas and a nighttime diaper; the minimum 18 books that we MUST read, despite the 9-second attention span; the drama-filled and violent separation of children into two bedrooms (more on that later); the subsequent two to three hours of checking on and replacing of one twin into her designated bed (I’m talking about you, Althea); the sips of water, storytelling, song-singing and final trips to the bathroom even though I just asked you if you needed to go pee-pee, that happen EVERY SINGLE EVENING, it takes anywhere from two to four hours for the twins to be bathed, dressed, put into bed and finally, actually fall asleep — not to mention fitting in the baby’s bedtime somewhere in there.

It’s as exhausting and frustrating as it is enjoyable. I love the reading, singing and telling stories part. The kicking and crying and alligator rolling, I could do without.

Beginning shortly after we converted to toddler beds back in May, we discovered that the girls could not fall asleep in the same room anymore. First, we separated them just for naps. We decided that Althea, the less defiant of the two, would sleep in our bed.

The first few weeks were really stressful. I constantly had to check on her and replace her in the bed, sometimes to the point that she wouldn’t nap at all. Then, I started putting her blankie in time-out if she got out of bed. It was a few more weeks of that before she really understood that she was expected to stay in bed for the duration of a nap.

(Why do kids need things explained 9,000 times? I don’t understand this.)

A few weeks later, we started separating them at night. They were often keeping each other up until 11:30pm, which led to cranky and over-tired kids the next day. Althea now falls asleep in our bed between 9-10pm and we transfer her to her room with Elise, usually around 10:30 or 11pm. Althea has always required slightly less sleep than Elise anyway, so this works well for us most of the time.

When they do nap, which is becoming rare these days, they still do decent three-hour stretch from 2-5pm. I’m finding that they’re super-sensitive to being overstimulated and thus not being able to sleep, much more so now than when they were younger (contrary to what I’ve read and believed). In fact, since starting preschool in September, their napping has become sporadic.

Bedtime is theoretically (and sometimes actually) from 8 or 9pm – 7 or 7:30am. Elise would happily sleep longer if Althea weren’t up first.

Milestones

Oh, I don’t even know where to start here. There’s just so much that has happened in the year from toddler-hood to preschooler-hood:

• They started going to preschool twice a week.
• They can ride tricycles.
• They had their first real haircuts this year. ::cry::
• The roll of fat in their upper thigh has disappeared. ::sob:: . . . ::sobcrywailwhinewillnotacceptdoesnotcompute::
• They can speak in complete sentences, sometimes even two or three complete sentences in a row, of five to seven words in both English and Spanish. They speak mostly French to my mother-in-law and will easily and intuitively switch languages depending on who they’re speaking with.
• Yes, I’m bragging. Suck it.
• They sing songs, recite lines and music from movies, and sense the time of day (e.g., a certain show starts after naptime).
• They can use the toilet on their own (but don’t wipe their own butts yet).
• Their imaginations are completely fantastical. They re-create characters and scenes from books and movies, play pretend with dolls and stuffed animals, and make up games to which only they seem to know the rules (and they both create and agree upon the rules without a single word).
• They enjoy school and have a good relationship with their teachers and other students.
• They can sing the ABCs and (sort of) count correctly to 20.

Personalities

This topic has become rich over the past year. Things we thought we knew about each twin has flip-flopped. I suppose that a big part of that is the general feeling of pressure to categorize each twin as “the such-and-such” one or the “this-and-that” one. In reality, even the most identical-appearing of twins are truly two separate people. Navigating this terrain with increasingly sentient little kids is new to me.

We used to think of Althea as The Bold One and Elise as The Sensitive One. But now, we’re seeing that it’s simply not that black and white. However, we are seeing that each seems to have generally taken after one parent or the other.

We agree that Elise tends to take after me. She’s bull-headed and wants to do things her way, not as she is told to do. She feels deeply and is very intuitive. She’s determined, a bit lazy, a bit detached, and has a great sense of self-pride. She’s a bit socially reserved (though that has changed some since starting school).

Althea takes more after Chris. She strives for social interaction and acceptance. She walks into a group of kids and either makes her own friends or attracts them to her. Negativity and punishment are met with extremely emotional responses. Fear of failure doesn’t keep her from trying anything. She’s a little clumsy and very creative.

As for talents and proclivities, Elise still tends to react to music, as we saw very early on. I don’t see it as something that will help me retire early a natural gift, but definitely something that is interesting to her.

Althea has shown tremendous interest in drawing and reading, without a doubt. She wants to read 24/7 and can draw her face off.

Overall, they’re doing awesome. I adore them with every iota of my being and couldn’t be a prouder mom.

Sigh. Someday, we'll get a normal picture with normal smiles. For now, this will have to do.

Remember this guy?

Creepy voice aside, I think that, after two decades of seeing his commercials, I’m finally going to call his ass.

You see, Althea has artistic abilities. We first noticed it when we gave the girls Magna Doodles (are they still called that, or am I just old?) about a year ago. While Elise had the typical two-year-old reaction of using it as a step stool, Althea started drawing circles. Lots of them. All surprisingly round and of varying sizes.

“Well,” I thought. “Ain’t she one circle-drawing fool.”

Circles soon became drawings of Muno from Yo Gabba Gabba. From there, she began doing faces. Here’s a portrait of me. Apparently I have airborne hair (or is that a halo?) and a bad case of acne — at least one of which is accurate on any given day.

Some of the things she draws are pretty awesome. One day, she ran over to me saying “Cat! Kramer!” She dragged me over to her Magna Doodle to show me this picture she drew of Kramer, our cat:

Pretty close. She even remembered to put a tail on him. Either that, or he’s shitting upwards.

One day, she asked me to add teeth on a smiley face she’d drawn. Then, she disappeared. When she came back, she was holding this:

This is a portrait of her Grandma and Grandpa (my in-laws). Notice that Grandma (the top one) has teeth and is even wearing glasses like Real Grandma. Grandpa, on the other hand, didn’t fare so well this time. I guess even genius artistry has its limits.

While this type of artwork makes me throw a few more bucks in her college fund, there are some endeavors that are just plain disturbing. Such as:

Fuuuuck. I really can’t think of a moment that has made me feel like a worse mother than this. It pretty much makes you want to call a child psychologist, right?

And a few days ago, I walked into the garage to find this bit of artistry on her easel:

I do believe that’s Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo. Hey, at least he’s smiling.

I’m pregnant and in hard labor, wandering the campus of the University of Florida at night and looking for a hospital where I can give birth to my baby. I’m certain I’m at the point of needing to push, but every time I look at my stomach, it’s nearly flat. I’m concerned that the baby is gone, but she kicks me violently in the ribs to remind me she’s still there.

Finally, I find a building that looks enough like a hospital. I find a bed, where I lie on my back and discover my stomach is indeed flat. The baby kicks me so hard that I writhe in pain. Soon, though, I realize I am no longer in labor. Instead, a giant python head pushes against my stomach from the inside. Through my skin, the snake tries to bite my hand as I scream and swat at it in terror.

This was the dream I had last night as I slipped in and out of consciousness, tossing and turning with anticipation of the twins’ first day of preschool.

My completely unqualified interpretation of this dream shows a great amount of anxiety over major milestones (birth, baby, school). There’s a conflict between feeling I have a baby, then fearing it’s gone, then realizing it’s actually trying to escape (and apparently eat me alive), but that my own skin is holding it back. Also, I have a fear of a giant, vicious snake taking residence in my abdomen.

I woke up extra early this morning to get everything in order. Chris came with me to drop the girls off. We took them to their classroom and kissed them good-bye. Althea was immediately distracted with drawing, but Elise saw us leaving and took off down the hall after us. The teacher nabbed her and we gave her one last kiss before she went back to the classroom, crying and howling.

I stood in the lobby, watching the girls on the cameras and hearing Elise howling at the top of her lungs. Then, I left.

The errands I’d planned to keep myself busy for three hours took exactly 25 minutes. So, I got a coffee at Starbucks and sat in the van with the sleeping baby. An unusual morning storm pounded water all around us. I checked my email on my phone. I listened to the rain.

Since I had no other plans, Amaia and I went back home. It was eerily quiet as we walked in. The vestiges of Althea and Elise’s presence were all around: a toy vacuum cleaner on the couch, an overturned basket of toys scattered on the carpet, toast crumbs fallen on the kitchen floor. My mind flashed forward 15 years, when the girls leave the house and the noises and the messes are gone.

I nursed the baby. I checked my email. I watched the rain clear up.

Chris and I were the first parents back at the school to pick up the kids. The building had calmed from that morning. The fear-filled cries of dozens of confused children were gone. In the lobby, I watched the video stream of the girls’ classroom. The kids were seated in a semi-circle around the teacher. Althea and Elise both were model students, singing and imitating the teacher. My heart swelled.

Our first day of preschool was pretty great.

I’m so excited.

I’m so sad.

It hit me that what I’m saddest about is that the girls are going to do all these awesome, amazing, fun things, but I won’t be there to see it all happen. I don’t mind that I don’t teach them everything, and I don’t need to participate in everything they do, but I just want to be there to see it. Until now, I’ve always been the storyteller of their lives. Now, they’ll tell stories of their own.

Look at this pile of stuff.

Does any of it look familiar? Like school supplies, perhaps?

That’s because, starting next Tuesday, the twins are off to the great big world of school.

It’s not like a for-reals school. We’re too broke for that at this point. It’s just a Parents’ Morning Out program at a local church, so it’s only three hours a day, two days a week for now.

Still, this is a big step for us. If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you know that, aside from a short, part-time stint back at work in early 2009, I haven’t been away from my kids in nearly three whole years. The program they’re going to has a real cirriculum, rules to follow, goals to achieve. There’s a freaking parent’s manual for me to read.

Oh god. I have to cooperate with other adults who are going to be in charge of my kids, critiquing and disciplining and expecting things of them — all out of my control. I’m not going to last a week with these people, am I.

Still, I’m really, really excited — for them and for me.

I think it’s the perfect time to give them more room to explore their budding personalities and talents. For instance, Elise can identify every letter in the alphabet in any context, including many lower-case letters. And Althea can make drawings that like actual things.

Althea brought this drawing to me and said, "Cat!" She is two-and-a-half years old. A budding artist, I'm telling you.

They want to imitate everything — theme songs to shows they watch, words to books we read. They want to “help” me in the kitchen, which generally consists of emptying everything out of the pantry and arranging it on the counter. You know, so I can easily access every single ingredient I could possibly need for any recipe ever invented.

My little kitchen helpers. Thanks, girls. Thanks a lot. No, really.

So, it’s probably better that they start learning to imitate good things, like saying “yes ma’am” and “no, thank you,” rather than how to correctly use the terms “Jesus Christ” and “son of a bitch.” Because that’s apparently all they’ve learned from us so far.

As for me, I could really use a little space. As fiercely attached to the twins as I am, I also realize that it’s only a matter of time before they’ll be off to VPK (that’s voluntary pre-kindergarten, which is state-sponsored in Florida. I will never turn down free.). I need time to be able to run errands during the week, an impossible task with three kids of these ages in tow. I would also like time to foster new relationships with moms and babies of Amaia’s age group.

I’m also the only idiot mom in my group of friends who doesn’t have their twins in some sort of day program.

I feel emotionally ready for this. I know I’ll bawl my eyes out when the first day actually comes, but I still feel like this is a good thing to try and a good time to try it.

After all, it’s not really that much of a break. I still have them the other 162 hours a week. Oh, and an eight-month-old baby to tote around.

Leave it to us to accidentally potty train our kids.

A few weeks ago after taking the girls swimming, Chris discovered that if we left them pants-less, they would quite happily go to the potty all by themselves. We figured it was a fluke until it happened several times in a row. I decided that perhaps we could sorta kinda halfheartedly try to maybe potty train them on weekends when Chris was around to help.

But then, Althea started asking to go potty. She would actually stop herself from peeing in her diaper and go running to the bathroom. And then Elise didn’t want to poop in her pants. And then they started wearing panties at home. And then I took them on some errands wearing panties (them, not me. I just went ahead and accidentally tinkled in my drawers when I coughed, as usual.).

For a playdate the other day, I put them both in Pull-Ups. Since I hadn’t taken them out for more than 30 minutes without diapers, I fully expected them to just do their business in the Pull-Ups as they would in a diaper. But during lunch at McDonald’s, Althea started squirming in her chair.

“Pee-pee, little bit. Use bathroom. Pee-pee. Use bathroom.” **translated from original toddler Spanish using Rosetta Stone**

“Uh. You have to use the bathroom?” I asked incredulously.

“Bitch, did you not just hear me? I’m pissing myself and would like to use the restroom. Christ.” **she didn’t really say that**

Crap. I hadn’t planned on this shit actually working.

Luckily, our friend had a foldable potty seat — which Althea used to pee twice and Elise used to pee AND poop. Yes, my two-and-a-half year old daughter crapped in a McDonald’s public restroom. Not even I would do that, and I have absolutely no germ phobia.

So does this qualify as being on the road to the twins being potty trained? I don’t understand how this happened, especially considering that, in response to our horribly failed attempt at potty training just a few months ago, Elise left for me this as a gift of thanks:

Yes, that is human excrement on the carpet. (Actually, I’ve been dying for a good excuse to share that with you guys. You’re welcome.)

So now what do I do? I have no idea how I’m going to pull this off in public on a daily basis, what with there being two potty-training toddlers and having the baby and all. And we still have a long way to go, of course. At home, the twins still come running bare-bottomed and dripping urine  out of the bathroom screaming “I DID IT!!! I DID IT!!!”

But there’s no way we’re going back now. Do you have any idea how much we’re saving on diapers???

Althea has apparently taken after her mother in the coordination department.

A few nights ago, I was putting the baby to bed when I hear Chris shout nervously from the kitchen, “I need you out here! I’ve got blood!!”

Althea had tripped over Chris’ foot and smashed her FACE into the corner of a marble windowsill. She’d busted open her bottom lip and smashed her top lip and two front teeth. I had a fall when I was a child and ended up with the dreaded “brown tooth”; I was certain Althea would be similarly cursed, though she seems to have escaped that fate.

The following morning, she was spinning around in circles like a maniac when she tripped over the edge of the rug and smashed her forehead square on the corner of the coffee table.

The result:

I need to get these kids into ballet or something.

At Grateful Dead concerts, there used to be this place called the Hurl Hut. It was a tent where people who had taken too many drugs would go to get medical attention. Folks who had dropped one-too-many hits of acid, OD’d on PCP, or who just plain got too high and didn’t feel well would cry, spit, shit and puke on medical personnel.

My house has been a lot like a Hurl Hut for the past seven days, only with a lot less tokin’ and trippin’ and a whole lot more puking and shitting.

Last Tuesday morning at 3 a.m., Althea woke up crying hysterically. She had upchucked the contents of her stomach all over her bed and the floor. (Unfortunately for our white carpet, the contents of her stomach included a bunch of tomatoes and pizza with red sauce.)

We’d had a similarly random puking incident in the middle of the night with her before. She had thrown up in her sleep and screamed for help. I was picking through half-digested chicken nuggets and bile and trying to remember when I’d fed her white beans when I realized what had happened: She’d eaten dirty, dried beans out of a toy bucket at a playgroup. Yuck. So this time, I figured she had again eaten some undigestible bit of something-or-other and would be fine by morning.

And she was fine. For a while. Until she had a bit of orange juice for breakfast.

I was home alone with all the kids and excused myself to go to the bathroom. The door was open, of course, as there is no such thing as visiting the restroom alone when you have toddlers. Althea wandered in and proclaimed that her stomach was full.

Hm. That seemed odd. “Your belly is full? But you haven’t eaten yet.”

“Full. Stomach.”

“Okay, well hold on, let me . . .”

And, as I sat there trying to finish going to the bathroom, Althea hurled foamy, orange juice-y, toxic-smelling vomit all over my bare feet.

There are moments when, as a parent, you realize you are truly in it. Taking a dump while a toddler pukes on your feet is definitely one of them.

For the next five days, she laid on the couch in a state of semi-delusional consciousness, her mania exacerbated by mild dehydration and a complete lack of nutrition. She puked on the couch. She shit on the couch. She puked and shit on me. She was evacuating out of both ends at an alarming rate.

During this time, I felt truly grateful for television. We explored the depths of streaming Netflix and discovered a fantastic stop-motion series called “Shaun the Sheep.” All 13 streaming episodes of it, over and over and over again, in the maniacally repetitive manner that only two-and-a-half year old kids can tolerate.

Just as Althea started to get better, Elise began running a fever. And on Monday, her stomach succumbed to whatever evil had invaded her sister’s intestines. Yesterday alone, she puked on me three times. The washing machine has been churning non-stop.

Now, Althea’s favorite game is “Vomit.” The game is simple: Make your toys vomit into various plastic containers. Fun for the whole family, really.

Right after Amaia was born, Elise and Althea came to visit me in the hospital. Althea showed immediate curiosity and interest when we showed her the baby.

“See it? Touch it? Hold it?” she requested, peeking over the edge of the hospital bassinet.

Elise, on the other hand, took one look at the peacefully sleeping newborn and cried out, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” She then forced me out of the room and ran me up and down the hallways of the maternity unit as I gingerly waggled my empty uterus and bled all over myself.

Since then, both of the twins have had a range of vaguely negative emotions toward Amaia. Nothing violent or mean, thankfully, but somewhere in the neighborhood of general lack of interest to suspicion and mild jealousy.

Over the past few weeks, though, they’ve figured out that the baby’s not going anywhere. And now that Amaia is chuckling and smiling like crazy, I guess she’s not quite as threatening as before.

The other morning, I found Althea playing with Amaia in this silly play mat/box thing. Althea was politely asking Amaia to make some room for her to play.

It was all love and fun until Amaia started yanking on Althea’s hair.

I’m sensing a budding friendship.