Twins + singleton + pregnant = losing count

I did it.

It took me 12 weeks to get the balls to do it, but I did it. I did it! And it worked.

I went out with all three girls all by myself.

We didn’t meet up with any friends. I didn’t have anyone to help. I was totally defenseless. It was just me and three children under the age of 2 1/2 at a local park.

And you know what? It was actually fun.

We’ve been stuck in the house for four days (something to do with the apparently ongoing saga of my terrible tooth – more on that later) and I was about to shoot myself the girls really wanted to go to the park. So I checked my drawers and, sure enough, there was a pair of balls in there. I made our lunches, packed up the kids, and took us all to go play.

The girls must have known that I needed a break because everyone was a perfect angel. Amaia peacefully slept while Elise, Althea, and I swung on the swings, slid down the slides, played chase, dug in mulch, and threw rocks into dirty rain water. Even the sun cooperated, baking the twins to a healthy flamingo pink to the point that they didn’t protest when I suggested we head home.

The best part about it was that I felt like I got a chance to reconnect with Elise and Althea. Though I had to tend to Amaia a couple of times, it almost felt like old times — just me and the twins, playing at the park. I could just tell that E & A were happy to be with their Ama again, too.

Maybe I’m overly enthused at today’s success, but my entire spirit feels renewed. You see, when I stop and realize that I have three kids, the very thought overwhelms me. I never (ever, ever, ever) pictured my life like this: married, with children, a stay-at-home mother. So when little things go right, it sure makes it easier to face another day.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, mommy has earned a hearty glass of wine.

We’re happy.

Are you?

After this weekend, I have three words for you:

Fuck potty training.

Fuck potty training and the horse it rode in on.

Fuck M&Ms. Fuck cookies. Fuck juice. Fuck potty training books, guides and advice. Fuck panties and training pants and pee-pee and poo-poo.

Fuck it all.

Nothing could have prepared Chris and me for what we experienced with our first attempts at potty training Althea and Elise.

We started out with the methods outlined in the book “Toilet Training in Less Than a Day.” (Oh yeah, fuck those guys, too.) We had the girls teach their little dollies how to “pee-pee” on the potty. They learned how to take the water-filled pot to the toilet, dump its contents, flush the toilet and take the pot back to the potty. Things were looking promising.

Interesting to note from the outset was that Althea, contrary to what I expected, was far more cooperative and interested than Elise was.

We put the girls in little character panties (Nemo! Toy Story! Snow White!) and started giving them whatever they wanted to drink. Every few minutes, we’d start in:

“Are your panties dry? Touch your panties. Are they dry? Good! Ama has dry panties. Daddy does too. Big girls have dry panties. Big girls do pee-pee in the potty, not their panties. Are your panties still dry? Check! Check if your panties are dry. Oh good, they’re dry! Have an M&M because you have dry –”

And that’s where things started to fall apart. Eight minutes into training, and things were already proving to be way more difficult than what the book led us to believe.

See, we really don’t give the girls junk food. Not that I’m adamantly against it, but I don’t want to start bad habits early on. Besides, it’s hard enough to get them to eat any food with any semblance of nutritional value as it is. I certainly don’t need to introduce them to Nabisco’s extended family.

So, at their first taste of the candy-coated chocolate treats at 9:08 on a Saturday morning, you’d better believe we ran into some issues. For Elise and Althea, nothing existed beyond the bite-sized cookies and little chocolates we were using to encourage their potty training. Chris and I stuck to our guns and emphasized that the treats were only for dry panties, but for some strange reason, our two-year-old twins wouldn’t stop asking for them . . .

Still, over the shrill cries of “CHOCOLAAAAAATE?!???? COOOOOKIIIEEEEEE??!????”, Chris and I persevered. We continued to ask about the state of panty dryness. We put them on the pot every 15 minutes. We doled out cookies, candies and juice when the panties were dry. We read new books on the toilet. We talked over and over about “Ama and Daddy go pee-pee and poo-poo on the potty. Grandpa and Grandma go pee-pee on the potty. Do you go pee-pee on the potty? You can learn how just like your friends do. Pee-pee goes in the potty. Does pee-pee go in the panties? No! Pee-pee goes in the potty! Very good! Look, your panties are dry! Only girls with dry panties get chocolate. Have an M&M!”

Within two-and-a-half hours, Elise and Althea had completely tuned us out.

Chris and I called a meeting to re-evaluate.

“I think they’re on to us,” I whispered.

“Definitely. Screw the treats. Not working. Let’s back off a little bit on the panty questions and turn on a movie,” he suggested.

So we put them in front of something Pixar-y and animated while they sat on their pots. Zoned out, Althea peed on the potty.

Mayhem erupted.

‘WOOOHOOO ALTHEA!!! YOU PEE-PEED ON YOUR POTTY!!! YOU’RE SUCH A GOOD GIRL!!! PEE-PEE GOES IN THE POTTY!!! YOU DID PEE-PEE IN THE POTTY LIKE AMA AND DADDY!!! YAAAAAYYYYYY!” we screamed as we jumped up and down with glee.

Oh, you bet she was happy. We were happy, she was happy, everyone was happy. She even took it over to the toilet, dumped the pee into the commode, and carried the plastic pot back to her own potty. Not too long afterward, Elise actually pooped in her potty, carried the pot to the toilet, dumped it, and replaced it on her potty.

YESSSSSS!!!

But these triumphs were overshadowed by the rest of the horror. The horror of potty training. The girls tantrumed, defied, ignored, and peed through it all.

I consulted the book. According to its authors, when faced with these sorts of situations, we were supposed to remain positive and “teach them to obey.”

That’s a quote.

And the first part of our day wasn’t even over. Naptime was a serious problem. Elise and Althea still pee a lot during naps and bedtime, but the book insisted that we not go back to diapers at this point. So we tried. And we proceeded to go through all six crib sheets and six more pairs of training pants as the girls peed through every cotton barrier we placed in their way.

After we realized we had run out of training pants, we once again re-evaluated. We needed to get them in diapers for sleeping or none of us would ever get any rest. After the kids finally fell asleep, Chris and I decided that this approach was definitely not for us or the girls. It was too intense, too militaristic, too overwhelming for everyone.  So we decided to completely back off on the panty-status question and just plop them nonchalantly on the pot every 30 minutes.

This approach lasted the rest of the day yesterday and through this afternoon. But all it did was make me consider becoming an alcoholic. Elise and Althea peed and peed and peed through every pair of panties we put on them. They tantrumed through every cleanup and panty change.

It actually got kind of creepy at one point when I got Elise to her room for yet another pair of clean underwear, and she stared me in the face and laughed maniacally over and over again. Determined not to waver, I pushed my way through the full 10 minutes it took to get her to stand up and help pull on her panties. This bizarre behavior repeated itself several times in the course of just a few hours.

Chris and I clung to each other for dear life. Our sweet, mild-mannered, beautiful little children had turned on us. “Who are these . . . these barbarians?!???” we beseeched an apparently unloving god.

The constant peeing turned from accidental to blatant. We would put them on the pot for 5 or 10 minutes. Nothing. They’d stand up and help pull up their pants, walk away, and pee on the carpet. We’d change their wet panties and they would pee in the new ones within 30 seconds. They finally stopped telling us they’d peed themselves and just kept playing through it, then deny they’d peed when we asked if they were wet. At one point, we caught Althea putting toys into the plastic piss pot while peeing her pants!

Within three hours this morning, they had peed through 12 pairs of panties. I broke down sobbing in a dark closet.

The book did not say anything about this part.

After what all of us have gone through the past two days, Chris and I have decided to hold off on potty training for a few months, or until the girls’ entrance into kindergarten four years from now forces us to do it.

Some of my friends who have up-and-coming potty training kids asked me to share any success tips. Obviously I don’t have any. I do, however, have a few lessons learned:

• Unless you’re in a situation where you’re forced to train the child, don’t potty train until everyone is seriously ready, parents included. As I mentioned in my last post, I was not — am not — ready to potty train the kids.
• Find a potty training approach that fits your parenting style, not just whatever seems fastest or most convenient. “Toilet Training in Less Than a Day” obviously works for some parents, some households, some kids. But it’s not for us. Trust me — I’m a special kind of lazy. I’m the type of person that will put in a ton of hard work now if it means I can relax later, so this approach seemed like a good fit. But Chris and I are pretty laid back folks overall. We have our own brand of parenting, like everyone else. We took away some very good concepts and guidelines from this book. But the intensity of the approach felt unnatural for us and our children.
• It is impossible to be totally upbeat and positive about toilet training 100% of the time. It’s impossible even 90% of the time. Everything I read made me feel that, as long as I stayed positive and encouraging and followed the rules, the method would work. Yeah . . . No.
• I honestly don’t know what to suggest for parents like me who have twins to train and a needy infant to care for. I think that, unless the girls come to me and request to use the potty, I’m just shelving the whole project until Amaia is more self-sufficient, or at least able to be watched by someone else for a few days. Even with intensive training over a weekend, I definitely know I can’t do it on my own once Chris goes back to work on a Monday. Picture this: By 10 a.m. on the first day, I found myself breastfeeding on the kitchen floor while the twins sat crying on their respective pots as a hungry infant screamed at a lost nipple while I tried to read and turn the pages of “The Little Mermaid” with my toes — all while remaining upbeat, encouraging and positive. (If you’re exhausted by reading that sentence, just imagine what I was feeling.)
• No matter how you choose to potty train your child, buy several bottles of your favorite alcohol before you get started.
• Also, OxiClean — for the carpet and clothes.

For the past three or four months, Elise and Althea have been showing more and more signs of readiness for potty training. They both know when they’ve peed, they often announce when they poop and dislike the feeling of it.

Most recently, Elise has taken to completely undressing herself during naps and bedtime and peeing in her bed. When we get the girls in the morning, there’s Elise, naked as a jaybird and proud as a peach of her accomplishment.

Me, exasperated: “ELISE. Why did you do that again??!?”

Elise, jubilantly pointing: “Pee-pee! Hoo-ha! Culo (butt)! Naked!! YAYYYY YIPPEEEEE!!”

It’s extremely difficult to be angry at this.

I didn’t want to take the potty-training plunge, so to speak, when I was still pregnant because — uh, because I was pregnant. And massive and not very mobile. I haven’t wanted to do it since Amaia was born because it just seems incredibly inconvenient when she’s so little, nursing frequently and erratically, and not on a completely reliable schedule.

For instance, what do I do if we’re at a park and I’m nursing the baby when one of the twins announces she has to go potty? Jump up and take the child to the bathroom — and run the risk of losing a nipple in the process? Yeah, I don’t think so.

BUT. I can’t deny the girls the next big step in their development just because it’s not super convenient for me right now.  Chris and I are also tired of constantly washing sheets. Plus, the girls are pushing size 6 diapers, and that’s just embarrassing.

So, I’ve got a plan. (Famous last words for a parent, I know.) A friend of mine with five kids, including a set of twins, recommended “Toilet Training in Less than a Day.” We’re taking this weekend to give it a go. I’ve got training pants, big-girl panties (Yo Gabba Gabba and miscellaneous Disney characters), and lots of delicious juices and candies. I’ve got the potties, which I’m somewhat wary of since the girls have been using them as push toys and cowboy hats — and boy, would that be messy if they decided a doo-doo-filled pot would make an excellent sombrero.

I’m also worried about Althea. Elise seems more interested in how her thingamajigs work than Althea does. Althea can also be more resistant to following directions in general, especially when she senses it’s something we really want her to do.

So readers, bring it on. What are your potty-training tips? What worked and what didn’t work for you?

Thrush? Seriously?

Between the mastitis and the baby constantly losing suction, this breastfeeding experience has already been, in just eight short weeks, more eventful than breastfeeding twins ever was.

Amaia’s left eye has been inflammed and tearing up off and on since yesterday. She’s also broken out in a pretty gnarly rash on her left cheek, so I went ahead and got in with her pediatrician this afternoon.

I expected him to diagnose the rash as eczema and give me some drops for her eye. Instead, he noticed the white patch on her tongue and announced, “Oh, you have a bit of thrush.”

Thrush? What the fuck?

The name alone — thrushhhhh — sounds like something slimy and wet oozing from some dank, pulsating bodily orifice. Then, when you find out it’s a yeast infection in the mouth, you really get the willies. Gross.

I guess it only makes sense. I had a yeast infection toward the end of the pregnancy, then was on a week-long round of antibiotics shortly after delivery when I got mastitis. I’d seen the white patch on Amaia’s tongue, but I figured it was milk residue since it’s nowhere else in her mouth and I have no symptoms of thrush on my nipples. Explain that one.

Now I feel like the whole house is infested with VD or something. Am I covered in the infection? Does Chris have it all over his peen? Do I throw out all the pacifiers, wash rags, clothes, baby bath tub, and my underwear? Will I ever get to wear a bra again? How freaking long is this going to last?

Of all the breastfeeding complications to have, I had to get the one that’s the biggest pain in the ass to treat. Rad.

And here I was, trying to watch my carb intake….

Woohoo!! Amaia is eight weeks old!

I’m excited because, though she’s clearly still a tiny baby, she’s no longer really a newborn and it’s starting to show. She sleeps better, she eats better, she doesn’t cry as much. I sometimes feel like we might be able to survive this after all.

Sleeping

Amaia is technically sleeping through the night! But not really! Because according to some idiotic pediatrician who smartly decided to remain nameless, sleeping through the night is a mere five or six hours. Still, I won’t complain. She usually gets in a good five-hour stretch after going to bed for the night. I’ll take it.

Eating

I’m feeding her 7-9 times a day. Her problem with losing suction during feedings seems to get a little bit better each week. She still doesn’t have any problems with diaper output or weight gain (she’s at about 10 pounds now), so I think we’re just riding it out.

Schedule

Over the past couple of weeks, she’s fallen into a relatively predictable pattern. For bedtime, I noticed she was falling asleep around 9pm, so I embraced that and started a nighttime routine. And without any prompting or pushing, she takes a long afternoon nap starting at 2pm, pretty much on the dot. (I had her on her playmat one afternoon as I put Althea and Elise down for their nap, and at 2pm exactly, Amaia zonked out for her nap, too. YAY.)

This is MAJOR because it’s Elise and Althea’s usual naptime too, which means Mom gets a nice break from all three kids almost every day.

There is a god.

Anyhow, the general-ish routine — which is totally flexible, probably unreliable, and completely subject to change at any minute — goes:

8/8:30am – wake and eat

10am – eat and sleep

12pm – wake and eat

2pm – eat and sleep

6/7pm – wake and eat

8:30/9pm – eat and sleep

3/3:30am – eat and sleep

Milestones

Amaia is smiling more and cooing when she’s in a good mood. She has also discovered her hands, which are quite delicious by the looks of it.

Amaia’s pretty strong, lifting her head up like she owns it or something. She has a lot more head control; I can hold her upright and she’ll check stuff out. She LOVES looking all over the place like a big girl. Actually, she’s pretty much ready to beat your ass if you look at her sideways.

The best part is that the daily crying and screaming is getting less intense, little by little. What a relief! It’s still a toss-up as to whether she’ll scream her face off in the car seat, though. I really (really) hope she outgrows that soon, because my head is about to explode into tiny chunks of brain matter all over the inside of the family van.

My kids are wonderful.

No, more than wonderful. They are talented, vibrant, hilarious, engaging, unique, capable, intelligent, endearing. They are my world, my soul, my heart, my breath. They have changed my life and every ounce of my being. I am a better person for having them in my life. I would do anything to help them fulfil their dreams.

So why the hell do I have critical thoughts about them?

I get impatient and angry when they don’t listen to me. If one of them has an off day, I say they were “bad.” I expect them to act like adults because I’ve “taught them” and they “know better.” What’s really shitty is when I find myself sometimes mentally negating something positive someone says about them. “Yeah, they’re great little girls, but . . . ”

I know I’m not the only one who does this, but I don’t understand why. Why do we feel so safe to degrade those we feel closest to? Why do we feel okay hurting the people we love the most?

I’m supposed to be their biggest cheerleader, their soft place to fall, their source of undying enthusiasm. Why is it so hard to do that?

Of course Elise and Althea have behaviors I’m not wild about and that need some work over time, but I have to constantly remind myself that they are two years old. Amaia has been on this earth for a matter of weeks. They’re all doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing. What exactly are my expectations of these little people, anyway?

Then again, what exactly are my expectations of myself? To be perfect? To never lose my cool?

I don’t always give a voice to the criticisms I feel toward my children. Most of the time, I bite my tongue because I know that I’ll regret it and I know I don’t truly feel it. But the fact that these feelings even cross my mind riddles me with guilt and shame.

What worries me the most about critical thinking toward my kids is that I don’t want them to grow up and feel that they could never please me. That I loved them but . . .

Every morning, I wake up and tell myself that today will be a good day. Every night, I go to bed and wonder how I could have done better.

Althea, Elise, Amaia. I will always want you to be the best people you can be, but . . . I love each of you just as you are.

Comparison photos. Elise and Althea at 9 weeks old, next to Amaia at 6 1/2 weeks.

Amaia turned six weeks old on Wednesday. I think it’s generally accepted that the first six weeks of a newborn’s life are the roughest (followed by the subsequent, oh, 27 years or so) and it’s certainly been true for us.

I don’t want to say Amaia’s an unhappy baby, but it certainly feels that as long as she’s awake, she’s crying. She cries after she eats, she cries in her car seat, she cries during car rides, she cries in the stroller. She cries if you hold her to the left. She cries if you hold her to the right. She cries in the bouncy seat, the swing, the Boppy. You get the idea. She’s hard to please and it’s been rough. I find myself really agitated sometimes when she’s especially fussy. My patience gets short.

I remember feeling this way with Althea and Elise too, but that may have been because there were two of them so chances were that someone would be crying at any given time. And as the weeks went by, things got better and better. I’m hoping that’s happening with Amaia, too. We’ve had a few decent nights of sleep the past few nights. She’s sometimes awake without crying.

She still screams in the car seat, though, and that’s incredibly aggravating, not to mention stressful and almost dangerous. There’s really nothing I can do except drive and hope I don’t hit something. I tried dangling some toys from the carry handle, but she’s not especially impressed so far. I got some of those pads for the shoulder strap in case the belts are hurting her neck, but they interfere with the correct positioning of the harness so I can’t use them. I’m out of ideas. Help?

I think I’m noticing a still-unreliable but vague pattern to her feeding and sleeping. My closest estimation:

8:30am – Wake and eat

10:30am – Eat, fall asleep shortly after

12:30pm – Wake and eat

1pm – Sleep

3pm – Wake and eat

4pm – Sleep

6pm – Wake and eat

7:30pm – Eat

9pm – Eat and sleep

1am – Eat, sleep

5am – Eat, sleep

I also had my six-week post-partum checkup this week. Everything is where it’s supposed to be, with the exception of, um, my butt. I don’t want to talk about it.

Okay, I’ll talk about it. (TMI Alert! TMI Alert!) Things are kind of falling out. It’s not pleasant. Turns out that the ligaments and stuff that hold a woman’s junk all together are estrogen sensitive. The doctor said that for some women who have had multiple deliveries and who are nursing, the suppression of estrogen due to breastfeeding inhibits the repair of the ligaments and muscles of the, um, nether region. So stuff can kind of . . . prolapse. As you wean or your period resumes (and thus the production of estrogen resumes), those things will naturally repair. So in the meantime, I guess I’ll just keep peeing when I run and crapping myself, thanks.

On to other subjects.

Speaking of breastfeeding, it’s going mostly better. Amaia still loses suction at times, but it’s less frequent and I definitely don’t think it’s a tongue tie anymore. Thanks to everyone’s suggestions, I did some reading and I think it’s partly an intense amount of milk for her, and partly just her. She’s gaining weight, she has plenty of wet and dirty diapers, she eats well and has become quite an efficient and thorough nurser.  So I’m just chalking it up to being her nursing idiosyncrasy unless something else becomes cause for concern.

Today, we gave Amaia her first bottle. Next week is my birthday and I wanted to go out for booze with some girlfriends. I’m happy to report that she took the bottle with no problem.

Bacardi, I am looking forward to being reacquainted in the near future.

And how am I doing? Well, I have good days and bad days. Good days tend to follow good sleep. I’m hoping for fewer bad days ahead. I have discovered the frozen foods aisle and can report that Bertolli makes some mean frozen meals. The bathrooms have been cleaned exactly once in the past six weeks and I’m not sure I give a shit. I cannot see the kitchen counters, but I can see most of the floor and that’s good enough for me.

I started working out again this week and I’m aiming to exercise every other day, even if it’s just 20 minutes and even if I can’t get around to showering for many hours afterwards. Considering Amaia tends to nap at the same time that Elise and Althea do in the afternoon, I think I might be able to pull it off sometimes.

Meanwhile, Althea and Elise are very much two year olds and provide plenty of challenges throughout the day. They are defiant and opinionated. They throw tantrums. They kick and protest. They run away when you come after them.

They are also awesome, amazing, intelligent, entertaining, creative, hilarious and beautiful.

Overall, I’m still happy to be a mom, and that’s what matters.

People, we have smiles!

The past few days, we’ve been debating whether the smiles have been coincidental or purposeful. After all, we’re not THAT funny. But now I’m certain — Amaia is smiling!