A twins parenting (?) blog

I’ve been thinking a lot about my job as a stay-at-home mom.

I purposely don’t put quotes around the word “job,” even though every feminist instinct in me wants to. Because hey, this gig doesn’t pay jack shit, and doesn’t a “real” “job” bring in a paycheck? Isn’t my worth as a contributing member of this family tied to my annual salary, my gainful employment — or lack thereof?

As the girls get older, my job gets harder. If I were still who I was five years ago, I’d look at my current job description of SAHM and laugh at myself. Stay at home? Mom? Uh, EASY. No obligatory bathing (myself), no dressing up for work, no bureaucratic red tape, no makeup, no high heels, no non-ergonomic chairs, no middle management, no client calls, no 12-hour days behind a desk.

Stay-at-home moms just play all day, zone out on soaps, burn food, sleep in and give up on any attempt at cleanliness or self-esteem.

In the words of the Rolling Stones, a permanent vacation.

But becoming a SAHM has been extremely difficult, emotionally and financially. I expected the finances to be tough. I was a little surprised at all the emotions that arose. But what I didn’t expect was the actual fact that staying at home and raising kids is freaking HARD.

Here’s my analogy:

I used to be the editor of a major tourism website. This meant I worked with designers and developers (and project managers and clients and salespeople and analysts and. . . ). If a web page wasn’t browser compliant, I would inform the developer and he/she would fix it. If I didn’t agree with the layout or design of a page, the designer and I would talk it out. If sales wasn’t happy with click-through or ad positions, we would meet to talk about ad placement and cross-promo opportunities.

In other words, if I told someone to do something, they either did it or talked it out with me to make something happen. If someone told me to do something, I either complied or argued for a rational compromise.

Not so with motherhood.

I spend a decent portion of my day talking to people who don’t speak my language. A simple “Are you hungry?” is met with “Baahelgih goaishhglc lsdlfkajsgiieeeeee!”

I tell someone to do something, and they take off running in the opposite direction, laughing and farting with glee.

I try to explain the simplest of tasks (“Do NOT put the fork IN YOUR EYE.”), point out the most logical of conditions (“When you throw your blankie on the floor, you no longer have your blankie in your hand; you want the blankie in your hand. You WANT the blankie in your….OH GODDAMMIT.”), elaborate on the most evident consequences of one’s actions (“If you don’t put on your diaper, you will shit all over the floor.”).

Nothing.

You’d think these kids were being raised in a barn.

So, to anyone out there who thinks a stay-at-home mother just gets to “stay at home” . . .

Yeah. Suck it.

We got one of these bad boys yesterday:

Because I got one of these bad boys a few weeks ago:

This time, we weren’t trying (though as my friend says, if you’re not using protection and aren’t taking it in the bum, you ARE trying), but it happened and we’re thrilled.

When I found out I was expecting this time, all sorts of things ran through my head: How will I tell Chris? How will we tell our parents? Is it too soon? Will be be able to make it? Do we have enough love for another child?

What am I going to call my blog?!?

Telling Chris was fun. He was at work, so I stuck a hot dog bun in the oven and waited. When he got home, I asked him oh-so casually to take a look at the oven door because it seemed to have come off its track again.

He went to the kitchen and opened the oven door with no problem.

“Babe, it’s working fine for me,” he called.

“What? Really? How’d you do that?” I asked.

Still opening and closing the door, he says, “Yeah, it’s fine.” Pause. “But there’s a hot dog bun in the oven. Is that supposed to be there?”

I strolled into the kitchen and said, “Oh, I thought maybe you’d want brats for dinner so I put a bun in the oven for you.” I couldn’t help but smile. Surely he got it.

“Brats? No, I . . . Is this some kind of joke? Is this a treasure hunt? Are there hot dog buns hidden all over the house or something?”

Thinking I was playing a prank on him, he started to laugh. I, on the other hand, was shocked that he still had no clue what was going on. So I went to the freezer and pulled out a carton of ice cream. Then I opened the fridge and got out a jar of pickles.

Chris was still clueless as I plunged a spoon into the ice cream. “What are you doing? Pickles and . . .

“ARE YOU PREGNANT?!?!!!?????”

It would appear so, my dear. It would appear so.

I hadn’t planned on telling people so early, let alone The Whole Internet and all 9 of my readers, but one thing led to another and here we are.

The basics:

• I’m about 7 weeks along
• I have my first ultrasound on Friday. I anticipate it being JUST ONE.
• Terrible all-day nausea. Getting quite a bit of relief from a combination of ginger, B vitamins and Sea Bands.
• Getting tested early for gestational diabetes, since I had it with the girls. DAMMIT. I’ve been eating bagels, ice cream and bread for the past week in anticipation of failing it miserably.
• Estimated due date for now is Dec. 20

We’re thrilled. We’re excited. We’re happy. We’ve named him Squiggy for now, and he sounds just like the character on Laverne & Shirley. We love him.

Organized playgroups, preschool at two years old, flashcards, Hooked on Phonics, Baby Can Read . . . Modern parents do a lot of things to stimulate their child’s intelligence. God forbid we let the child be bored or unproductive for a single second of their childhood.

Well, you know what I say? I say learning begins at home, that’s what I say. It’s the simple things that a mother and/or father do on a daily basis that teach their kids how to discover their strengths and get along in the world.

So, even though I “just stay home” with my girls, I don’t ”interact well with productive citizens” and I frequently “make an ass of myself;” and although Chris can be “inappropriately humorous” and “a bit flighty,” if not “completely disconnected from reality;” we still do plenty of intelligence-boosting activities to help fire up those neurological synapses. Or whatever.

Sample curriculum, you ask? You got it.

Introduction to Hygiene and Self Care
Current grade: A
Notice the profound excavation into the nasal cavity with the single digit of the right hand, the slightly up-tilted eyes and firmly closed mouth. Clearly an advanced technique, surprising to witness in such a young subject.

Clothing Design for the Diaper
Current grade: D
Elise and Althea have made no progress in this class in the past 17 months. Despite continued efforts to train and instruct on the crucial skills needed for diaper-covering clothing, the children continue to defy design standards by exposing their size-four Huggies.

Photography: The Art of the Self-Portrait
Current grade: C
Only one of the four subjects is even pictured in near-entirety. The others show 3/4 of a face, a mis-aligned profile and a pair of feet in the background. Were it not for an inept instructor, the children might stand a chance at passing this course.

Bad Ass-ness: Theory and Praxis
Current grade: A+
From the windswept hair to the cooly askance sunglasses, Elise shows a natural aptitude for bad ass-ness.

Woodworking 102: Gifts of Sticks
Current grade: B+
Both children show incredible aptitude in stick-gift giving. They should now concentrate on mulch, branches and other wood materials to diversify their talents.

Practical Home Improvements
Current grade: B-
Excellent spectatorship, though actual participation lacks something to be desired.

There’s some really random shit that can set me off into giggle fits. Once upon a time, it was the words ‘desk,’ ‘slimy’ and ‘chicken.’

Desk and slimy just aren’t funny anymore, but chickens are ALWAYS funny.

Anyway. That tidbit is vaguely connected to the fact that, the longer I’m married to Chris, the funnier I find him — and not always in the ways he intends. He’s the master of awful puns and tasteless jokes, but those generally just make me groan.

It’s when he’s being totally serious that he says something unintentionally hilarious to set me off. Here is the latest comedy in the ongoing theater of our married life, as told in two parts:

Part I

Salad dressing. Not funny? Not normally. But sometimes, salad dressing is piss-in-my-pants hilarious.

Specifically, this incident:

My husband was getting amorous and I was feeling receptive. It was all sweet and romantic and junk. As I snuggled my face into his shirt, I smelled salad dressing. The smell made me wonder why the hell he would smell like a bottle of vinaigrette, and my God, when was the last time he showered?, and maybe we needed a stronger detergent, and you know, there’s always a kid in school that smells like glue so surely there’s  kid that always smells like spoiled salad dressing. And suddenly my husband was that kid. I pictured him sitting in the corner of a 1st-grade classroom with thick glasses and too-short shorts, reading a book about dinosaurs while intermittently sniffing a bottle of Elmer’s glue and obliviously passing gas, all while smelling like a bottle of expired Wish-Bone House Italian.

As he moved to feel me up, I collapsed into silent laughter on the floor, unable to express why I couldn’t go on with our romantic rendezvous. How could I possible have sex with a guy who farts alone in a corner and smells like salad dressing???

Now can you see why this is funny? My husband is the kid in school who smells like…..Oh Jesus H., whatever. It’s funny. This person would agree with me.

Part II

I think everyone who uses predictive text messaging can understand this one. You try to type “Be home soon,” but the auto-corrector changes it to “You’re a lazy piece of shit and I want a divorce.” Or something like that.

Anyway, I was waiting for a doctor’s appointment and texting with Chris to pass the time. The receptionist was being a bitch and asking for my confirmation number, which I didn’t have because who the fuck actually writes down confirmation numbers anyway, let alone keeps them on hand in case anyone should ever ask for it?

Since the receptionist was clearly incompetent, I texted Chris and asked him to check my email for the confirmation message so I could throw it in the receptionist’s face and be all “BOOYAH!!!”

Me: “are you able to get to a computer right now?”

Him: “Yes.”

Me: “nm. these idiots said i didn’t have an appt but they ‘found’ it. stupid.”

Me, two minutes later when it became apparent that they  had no intention of keeping to my appointment time: “okay, wtf. can you look on my screen and go to my gmail? one of the most recent msgs is a confirmation from the doc.”

Him: “I can’t. I’m sitting in the toilet.”

Him: “on, rather.”

I started snickering. Okay, not just snickering — I burst into hysterical, tear-inducing laughter. Because now my husband was not only the smelly salad dressing kid, but he was the smelly salad dressing kid who fell into the toilet at school and had to walk around with toilet-water-soaked pants the rest of the day while all the other kids made fun of him.

I literally could not control the laughter. I covered my mouth and tried to take deep breaths, but that just made me laugh harder. I started to perspire. Tears were rolling down my cheeks. Sweat dripped down my back and forehead. I could not stop.

People were starting to stare, so I got up and walked into the hallway, thinking a change of scenery would stop the laughter. But that just drew more attention to me. The nurses started asking, “Are you okay?” and “Are you laughing or crying?” I was laughing so hard that I just waved them away — I couldn’t even respond. Every time I tried to sit back down, it would start all over again. Finally, I had to shut myself into a bathroom to get the fit out of my system and wipe up the sweat and tears.

Chris will read this and shake his head. Whatever. It’s hilarious.

At least as hilarious as chickens. Or sharting. Or sharting chickens.

Oh Jesus, I think I need to change my pants.

Been a while for video. Prepare for epic hilarity.

(Man, my blog post titles are getting stupid.)

It’s been eight days since I last nursed my girls.

::sob!::

Since I first started writing about weaning last month, I gradually reduced the number and frequency of nursings. We’d skip a day, then two days, then three. The couple of times we went for three days, my boobs ended up insanely uncomfortable — not really engorged, but heavy as bowling balls and very sensitive.

Then the tantrums started.

When it became obvious that we weren’t headed to my bedroom to nurse, the girls would start throwing a tantrum. That wasn’t worth it to me, so we’d nurse.

And then one morning, they didn’t freak out.

And they didn’t freak out the next morning either.

And here we are, eight days later, and my boobs have not freaked out and the girls haven’t freaked out and we’re all doing just fine, it seems.

My boobs have changed already. The last vestiges of hormonal brown discoloration are finally fading away. My nipples have regained their non-stretched-to-hell appearance. The aereola seem to be shrinking and looking less Nat Geo.

I think I’m doing okay with it. For a silly, superstitious reason, I kind of wanted to make their last time nursing be on the 17th, when they’d be 17 months old. You know, golden birthday nonsense.

But we did good. Sixteen-and-a-half months of nursing twins ain’t bad, in my book. We’re happy. We’re healthy.

I’m participating in ControverSunday, the most divisive post meme on the Internet!

This week’s subject (it may have been last week’s, actually, but I’m really behind on things) is comfort objects — pacis, blankies, thumbs and any other object that your baby uses to comfort herself.

During the girls’ almost-17 months on this planet, I’ve actually tried to push different comfort objects — stuffed animals and receiving blankets, mostly. As I’ve discovered, they would much rather choose their own comfort objects, thankyouverymuch.

Pacis: Both girls gave up on pacifiers by four months. I’m glad for that because man, have you ever seen a four year old with a pacifier??? Kinda sad.

Blankies: Woobie, security blanket, lovey (lovey? seriously? we never said that when I was growing up), whatever. The girls both have a blankie. However, they’re not your run-of-the-mill, soft-and-fuzzy, intended-to-be-a-blankie blankies. Their blankies are former Halo Sleep Sacks, which we used with them until six or seven months ago. I didn’t want to have 18-month-olds in sleep sacks — it just looked bizarre — but the girls couldn’t fall asleep without them. So, brilliant parents that we are, we left the sleep sacks in their cribs like comfort blankets. And that’s how that came about.

Althea only wants her blanket during bed time. She stuffs as much fabric as possible into her mouth and chews/sucks on the material. I have no explanation for this behavior.

Elise, on the other hand, loves her some blankie all day long. In bed, she’ll carefully arrange and rearrange the fabric around her fingers and hands while sucking her thumb. During the day, she drags it around with her if it’s available. At this age, it’s still publicly acceptable for her to have the blanket. If it becomes socially weird, we’ll address it then.

Thumbs: Althea, no thumb. Elise, left thumb all the way. Elise likes to drag the blankie around while sucking her thumb. It’s pretty adorable right now — much more adorable than the habit I had when I was a kid of sucking my index finger. Yeah, a little embarrassing in retrospect.

Stuffed animals: I’ve tried to get the girls “into” stuffed animals but, so far, they’ve only had fleeting affairs with them. We tried sock monkeys, fuzzy teddy bears, Ugly Dolls (those things are awesome) and baby dolls. No dice. The only constant has been the stuffed animals we leave in the cribs for them: Jeanine Giraffalo (a giraffe, duh) and Sherry Lewis (a lamb, duh). Most of the time, the girls either steal them from each other or throw them out of the cribs altogether.

I actually still have a comfort object. I refer to it as my Stinky Pillow and I’ve had one since as long as I can remember. The Stinky Pillow isn’t a specific pillow, but rather a general type of pillow and a certain way of caring for it (or not, as you’ll learn) that creates the beloved stinkiness.

The SP has to be a real, down-stuffed pillow (I know, I’m going to hell) of a regular size that cannot, under any circumstances, be washed, deodorized, or cleaned in any fashion. Ever. The pillow case can occasionally be laundered, but preferably stays on for a couple of months at a time. The pillow then takes on the comforting smell of — I don’t know. Hair? Scalp mites? BO? Special magical fairy comfort dust? No matter. One whiff and I’m four years old again and all is right with the world. Ahhhhh.

So yeah. I totally just admitted that I’m 32 years old and I have a woobie. Time to start blurring my face out of every photo so you can never, ever identify me in public.

Scrolling through the latest posts, you’d think I misplaced my children. I haven’t been posting pictures lately. So here you go.

Two years ago today, I drove up to the mall and, before walking into Dillard’s, threw out my last half-pack of cigarettes. I’ve been smoke-free ever since.

I loved smoking. I loved the taste, the break, the relief, the habit. I loved my brand (Parliament Light 100′s). I loved the instant friends I could make just by virtue of being a smoker. I loved sitting out on the back patio during hot, humid summer nights, smoking and drinking and talking to friends.

But I got pregnant. I had to quit.

Being pregnant made quitting smoking considerably easier than I think it would have been otherwise. I felt sick all the time and the taste of a cigarette was the last thing I could handle. I relied on Commit lozenges for the worst cravings for the first couple of weeks, but mostly I would just chew 18 pieces of gum or take a short walk when I wanted to smoke.

Though I smoked for more than 15 years, it feels so foreign to me now. Sometimes I’ll get a random craving, but in general, I don’t miss smoking at all.

Part of it is health, sure. That and my kids. But another big part is just the convenience of being a non-smoker. I don’t have to panic before a plane trip or have second thoughts about seeing a long movie in the theater. I can do intense cardio exercise without getting winded. I don’t have to constantly chew gum to mask the smell. I’ve even been able to downsize my purse now that I don’t have to carry a pack of cigarettes and a lighter everywhere.

The fact that a carton would now cost me about $60 pretty much seals the deal for me. At that price, I’d be spending about $3,100 a year.

Anyhow, congratulations to me, dammit. This is one thing I’m pretty proud of.

After everyone’s awesome, insightful and suportive comments on my “Wean Me, Seymour” post, I got the courage to do something good for myself.

We’re starting the weaning process.

Since the 11th, we’ve gone down to just one feeding a day, the morning feed. The girls don’t rely on nursing to sleep, but we all love the morning feeding, so it was easy to eliminate the night feed.

Then, yesterday, we just didn’t nurse at all. I went 48 hours without nursing. I didn’t get engorged at all, but something clicked in my brain last night and I started to panic a little bit. I don’t know — it was just this internal impulse to nurse the girls. So I went ahead and nursed them this morning. I’ll do every other day for a little bit until it feels right to just stop.

I have mixed feelings, of course. I’m sad to let go of this phase in their lives and this phase of our relationship. On a selfish note, I’ll be very sad to see my boobs go to the great nursing bra in the sky.

But after experiencing a full day of not breastfeeding, it was kind of liberating. Like, “Wooohooo I can get wasted at 9am!”

Which of course I didn’t do. But I could have.

Also, I’m kind of excited at the idea of buying a bra that doesn’t unsnap to full-frontal nudity.

I’m curious about the hormonal shift when you stop breastfeeding. Any experienced mamas out there have any input?