How to Get the Hairy Eyeball from Everyone in Your Local Trader Joe's

Take your screaming twins into the store in their double stroller. Even better, make sure one screaming twin has a big cut under her eye.* Wonder if you are making things better or worse by saying things such as, "Mommy will be as fast as she can at the store!" and "I'm sorry you're upset; we'll be going home soon!" in a loud, falsely cheerful voice.

Slink out of store with head bowed and invisible tail between legs.

(I know all parents have had such moments and I know more are to come [The tantrums! I fear the tantrums!], but boy can people give you the judgmental glares when your kids are crying!)

*Um, yes, so OK, yesterday I was holding Maddie on my lap and trying to open a package by slitting the tape with a mechanical pencil. The mechanical pencil slipped and cut Maddie under the eye. Thank goodness it didn't oh, say, GOUGE HER EYE OUT, but still. I felt horrible. My first really big dumb mom moment.

In Anticipation of the New Year

GH and I have decided that the coming year shall henceforth be called

2007: The Year That Scares the Shit out of Us

Cheese + Starch

My eating habits of late have been a little appalling. I'm always in a hurry and seemingly always starving. I'm still breastfeeding, so I need a lot of calories, crave a lot of dairy, and I need things that are easy to eat while holding/entertaining a little person.

This means that I eat a lot of cheese + starch combos:

• mac and cheese
• crackers and cheese
• pizza, calzones, etc.
• rice and cheese (This one makes my Korean husband recoil in horror.)
• bagels with cream cheese
• pasta with marinara sauce and lots of Parmesan
• grilled cheese sandwiches
• baked Kettle chips with aged white cheddar
• all manner of Chee-to type snacks

I'm starting to get sick of cheese. I never thought that would happen.

Things That Begin with C

CHRISTMAS
was lovely. Mostly. We spent the morning at home opening presents and just hanging out. The babies liked the wrapping paper as well as or better than an of the gifts, but they got a lot of nice things from Grandmas, Grandpas, and friends.

Christmas afternoon, we headed over to visit some friends who have one-year-old boy/girl twins. As if that wasn't enough, some other friends with two-year-old identical girl twins stopped by for a while. Twin-fest! It was crazy, but fun. Once the kids were all in bed, us adults had dinner and chocolate fondue by the fire. MMM. It was really relaxing, and the babies slept great. I'd been worried that they would freak out because of not being at home, but they didn't seem to care. All in all, a good first Christmas. Here are pictures of Riley Claus and a Maddie elf:



CANCER
sucks. Really, really sucks. GH's tumor marker counts are through the roof, higher than ever, even at diagnosis. He has swelling in his legs, a side effect of chemo. His mouth is filled with sores; it hurts to talk, eat, swallow. His nose bleeds a bit every so often. He's tired. His liver function is elevated. We're running out of options.

GH is seriously considering taking a leave of absence from work. He and I are both scared of this because of what it represents. He's always been well enough to work and thinking that he might no longer be is scary. Also, his work has no short-term disability plan, so I have no idea what we'll do financially. OK, I actually know perfectly well what we'll do financially: we'll mooch off of our relatively well off parents. It never feels good to be a 35-year-old married professional who suddenly can't take care of her own finances. Yeah. Our parents will be happy to help, but it still feels icky.

CONSTIPATION
Fun stuff! The twins have started solid food and love it: sweet potato, pears, prunes, peas, banana, and avocado. Green beans will be tried today. I'm making all of their food, which is easy and economical and more healthy (in my opinion). Here's the problem: all of this solid food is constipating them. We're feeding them tons of prunes, which is helping a bit. And our pediatrician recommended prune juice mixed with water in a bottle, which we'll try, although
Riley still hates the bottle so not sure that will fly. Other than "all prunes, all the time," do any of you have recommendations on un-constipating babies? I've heard that a bit of mineral oil in the food can help, but out pediatrician says that that's a last resort for babies who haven't pooped in days. We're not there yet. Thank goodness.

Fun times with solids:



I keep promising more interesting topics and I keep not delivering. I'm brewing posts about Maddie's physical therapy, my upcoming job interview (!), and a few other tidbits. Stay tuned, if you can.

Redemption

In an attempt to make up for my recent vitriol, here are two pictures of the twins taken today, Christmas Eve 2006.

They had their six-month pediatric exam on Friday 22 December, their six-month birthday. They passed with flying colors. Riley weighs 17 lbs 4 ounces, Madeleine weighs 16 lbs 10 ounces. If I remember correctly, they are 26.75 inches and 25.75 inches long respectively. They are squarely in the 50th percentile for height and weight.

I asked my doctor about those percentiles. She told me that the sample for the norm was taken from a group of infants in Ohio. I don't know how many babies or when, but there you have it. How very representative! I'm sure there were tons of half Asian/half Caucasian, breastfed twins in the group. Yeah, right.

Christmas Eve

I have been an emotional roller-coaster today.

GH's nose is still bleeding, off and on. That scares the holy living shit out of me. Plus he has awful acid reflux that has given him a sore throat that has driven him to take Oxycodone along with the usual lozenges and tea with honey.

I'm tired of complaining.

I'm tired of being scared.

I'm tired of not getting what I want.

I'm tired of being tired.

I'm tired of cancer.

I'm tired of feeling like I get the short end of the stick.

I'm tired of feeling sorry for myself.

I'm tired of always being in charge.

I'm tired of making decisions.

I'm tired of posting complaints and sob stories.

Speaking of sobbing, I just listened to Riley SOB himself to sleep, and I mean full body shaking, red, angry sobbing, for 20 minutes. My back is so tense I feel like I might break in two. Riley is overtired.

Maddie went right down for her nap. She was just sleepy. Just right.

GH is napping, too. Not sure if he's sleeping, but at least he's resting.

I don't expect perfection, but this isn't the Christmas Eve I wanted. GH and I can't talk because his throat hurts too much. I'm frustrated that he doesn't feel well, so I lash out at him because there's no one else around. We squabble, and we're not squabblers. The babies have been cranky. I'm convinced that Riley has it out for me because of the CIO.

GH tells me to wake him from his nap when I need him. I find this difficult. On one hand, I need him all the time. On the other hand, I need to learn how to be without him. I know what he means, but it's still hard for me to judge.

Riley keeps making short outbursts every few minutes. I think he's actually sleeping, just not soundly.

As for me, I may be tired, but I'm wide awake.

Meme: The Year in Review

I've seen this meme at a few other sites and have found the results so interesting that I thought I'd tag myself. Here is the year in review using the first line of the first post of each month:

January
Resolutions 2006: #1. KILL CANCER

February
Went to visit friends with boy/girl twins over the weekend.

March
About three weeks ago, GH and I were laying in bed, talking about cancer and how much we hate it, and our conversation took this turn:
ME: I'm so tired of waking up in the middle of the night to cry.
GH: You do that too? I thought I was the only one who did that.

April
The in-laws have been taken to the airport.

May
Saw the twins yesterday.

June
The twins are scheduled to arrive on 22 June, the first day of the astrological sign of (drumroll please . . . ) CANCER.

July
Life with newborns is all about firsts

August
We've got the documentation we need for Canada, so we're out the door this morning.

September
I'm here! I'm alive! We survived Florida!

October
My mom came to visit for a week.

November
I'm a day late (and thus, I suppose, a dollar short) to officially register for NaBloPoMo, but I've made a personal commitment to posting every day for the month of November.

December
Hello, Monday that fits all Monday-related stereotypes.

Pretty accurate reflection of my year. Cancer, twins, travel, and visitors! That about sums it up.

Hanging In, Hanging On

GH has been sick since Thanksgiving. Just when we think he's on the mend, something else happnens. It's like he has the world's longest cold.

Now he has a urinary tract infection. Bring on more antibiotics!

He's jaundiced. High liver function will do that to a person. The jaundice in and of itself is no big deal, but the root cause of it is frightening. As some of my readers know, liver failure is eventually deadly.

GH pees orange. No, it's not the UTI. This is another sign of high liver function.

He's tired all the time. No surprise there.

He keeps losing weight.

And his nose keeps bleeding. Not a lot, but it just drips, drips, drips. Stops. Drips. Stops. It's hard for him to sleep. He has to hold a Kleenex to his nose all the time.

This nosebleed thing has been the straw that broke the camel's back to me. It's starting to feel like we've reached the beginning of the end. I sure hope I'm wrong.

Calgon, take me away.

Survived another uncontrollable bloody nose yesterday. GH spent 13 hours in the ER, but avoided having a balloon shoved up his nostril.

It was a long, awful day, and GH and I weren't even together. I dropped GH off at the ER, made sure he got checked in, then took the twins to day care. I then headed back downtown, thinking I was going to pick GH up as per a phone message he left me, but he called when I got downtown and said that the nose had started up again and he was going to have to stick around. So, I went by my best friend's workplace to pick up something she had for me (she works near the hospital) and ended up hanging around all afternoon with her because she had little work to do and there was parking by her office. I kept getting calls from GH saying, "OK, I can go now," only to get a call five minutes later that something else had happened: he had a fever, or he needed platelets, or he needed a chest X-ray or whatever.

I finally threw in the towel at 3:30 and went home to get the twins at day care. GH ended up not getting home until 10:00pm, ugh. Luckily for me, a friend was able to pick him up at the hospital so that I didn't have to trek back there with sleeping babies. Boy was I glad to see GH walk in the door at 10:00. He's doing much better, but home today resting since he didn't get much rest at all in the ER. Hospitals are terrible places to rest. Oh, the irony.

It was a long day. And this post is almost as boring as my posts about sleep! I promise to have something new soon.

Crow for Dinner, Humble Pie for Dessert

We did it. We did full-blown CIO for naps and bedtime last night.

It sucked. But at the same time, it was great.

For their morning nap, both Maddie and Riley cried for about 10 minutes, then both took great naps, over an hour each. Normally both of them top out at 45 minutes, one sleep cycle. They broke the barrier yesterday.

The afternoon nap was the killer. They both cried for 45 minutes. We checked on them, calmed them, and gave them kisses every 10 minutes. Once the fell asleep, they both slept great again.

At bedtime, we switched things up so that they ate at the beginning of their routine, then had baths followed by infant massage and PJs. Then, into the crib. If there was five minutes of crying, I'd be surprised. They slept until 1:00, cried a bit but less than ten minutes, then slept until 5:45.

I'm not going to lie: It was awesome.

And not only did they sleep great, but they were in their room, in their bed. This was the first time they did not sleep in our room and the first time in a long time they did not sleep in their car seats.

I just put them down for a morning nap. Five minutes of crying and they are out.

I don't want to get cocky. I know that CIO can be derailed by illness, teething, developmental spurts, etc. But for now, even for that one night, I think it was a good, if heart-wrenching decision for all of us. We all got more sleep, and that's a good thing.

Even better, perhaps now I can write about something besides sleep or lack thereof.

MMM . . . pass that humble pie, please.

Right Back Where We Started and Two Questions

Yes, more on our sleepless nights. Boring! But I need to vent about it.

Last night was as awful as two nights ago. Ri-Man was up constantly, Maddie was up constantly. I'm starting to think Maddie might be sick, but not sure. I spent part of the night with Ri-Man on the couch, some of the night in bed, all of the night frustrated.

Clearly, something has to give.

Here's my concern about CIO: the twins still eat once in the night. Contrary to what I read in sleep and other parenting books, I think they need this feeding. When I'm up and down with them at night, it's clear when they just need/want soothing and when they want to eat because when it's feeding time, they suck on my face! When they just want some comfort, they don't do that. And they eat heartily in the night.

CIO is all about not sending mixed messages. You make the rule that crying will not be rewarded with rocking, holding, eating, etc. But if the babies need to eat in the night and they signal this initially with a cry, how do I provide their feeding while not sending them the message that most times crying won't get me to come, but sometimes it will?

I know that developmentally a healthy six-month-old doesn't NEED a nighttime feeding blah blah blah. But I'm here to tell you that these kids are HUNGRY, and depriving them of food doesn't seem right.

Of course, neither does depriving myself of my sanity.

Also: the twins go to bed just fine. Granted, they nurse or bottle feed to sleep, but they go right down and that initial stretch of sleep is usually their best one. It's not going to bed that's our problem, it's nighttime wakings, but we put the kids to bed sound asleep, so we're kind of cheating. If we decide to do CIO, do we need to change our nighttime routine so that we put them to bed drowsy, let them CIO to sleep (with varying amounts of intervention--haven't decided whcih method we would use), and then hope that by doing CIO to sleep initially, they sleep through and eliminate the need to figure out nighttime feeding?

My head is going to explode. Honestly, I'm about ready to put them to bed tonight, shut the door, get my earplugs, and go back at 7:00 a.m.

Good Babies, Bad Mom

Thank goodness, the Ri-Man slept from 7:30 to 2:30 without a peep, then ate, then slept again until 5:30. I didn't want to get up at 5:30, but at least I'd gotten some sleep! Maddie was up a few times, but just required a binkie, so no big deal. I feel a thousand times better this morning.

Of course, I am feeling a little guilty that since they got up so early, I decided to plop them in front of a Baby Einstein video so that I could get some breakfast and write this. I don't use the videos often. I felt like I deserved a break today.

New Low: How to Have a Seriously Crappy Evening and Night

I really, really want to post something positive. It's Christmastime, I spend a lot of time complaining, and there are some good things going on with me. I even have some posts brewing that are not about me, my husband, or the twins, but are rather actual thoughts and reflections and maybe even insights.

But today I have to vent. Today, I give to you:

How to Have a Seriously Crappy Evening and Night
by snickollet

1. Make sure it's a treatment Wednesday so that your husband will fresh off the chemo drip.
2. Extra points if it's a new treatment, meaning that he's been at the clinic for hours waiting to see his doctor, sign consent forms, and actually get the treatment.
3. Extra extra points if he's actually going back on an old treatment that was stopped because of the severity of the side effects.
4. Extra extra extra points if tumor marker numbers and liver function tests are at near all-time highs.
5. Make sure your husband does not get home until it's bedtime for the babies so that you have to race around frantically to get things ready.
6. Have a long, depressing conversation with your husband once the twins are in bed, peppered with comments from him such as, "If something happens to me, they won't even remember who I am." (where "something" = "death" and "they" = "Maddie and Riley).
7. Finally stagger to bed only to have your son start yelling five minutes after your head hits the pillow.
8. Bonus for your daughter waking up and starting to cry while you try to console your yelling son.
9. Knowing that your husband needs sleep, temporarily abandon screaming children to find him some earplugs. Give him earplugs and instructions to go to sleep. Take children into their room (they still sleep in ours) and deposit them into crib. Declare this "Baby Boot Camp" night.
10. Two hours later, after repeated attempts to cajole your son into sleeping in the crib (on his back, on his stomach, with a blanket, without a blanket, letting him cry, rocking him to sleep only to have him wake up when you try to lay him down . . .) give in and let the boy sleep in his car seat. Only by now he's totally awake and upset, so swing the car seat back and forth for about 10 minutes, during which you think your back will break in two.
11. Pause for a moment to be grateful that your daughter has been asleep since 11:00.
12. Get up at 2:30 with shouting son. Feed him.
13. Get up at 2:45 with crying daughter. Feed her, but first conk her head on the wooden arm of the glider so that she screams for a while.
14. Do the up and down routine with daughter until 3:30.
15. Collapse. Sleep.
16. Get up at 5:00 with shouting son. Swing car seat again.
17. Get up at 6:00 with crying daughter.
18. Give daughter to husband at 6:20. Try to sleep a bit more, but instead get up with awake son at 6:30.
19. Take shower. Feel vaguely human. Pack up kids for day care and go out to car. Discover parking ticket on said car. Curse humanity.

I am seriously going insane. I thought about not coming to work, but I'm really behind and when I negotiated my work-one-day-a-week-at-home deal, my new boss, who HAS MY JOB, said flat-out to me, "I've supervised people who work at home before and their productivity always drops. We'll be reviewing this arrangement in six months." GREAT. So here I am, blogging! Heh.

I'm so tired and so scared. I'm at my wits' end with the sleeping stuff. I don't want to do cry it out, but I'm running out of options because I cannot work full-time, take care of our house, take care of my husband, and take care of my kids on four to five fragmented hours of sleep. I just can't. But I also know that Riley is capable of screaming at the top of his little lungs for two hours because he did that once when I was home alone with him. That will just do me in if he does that. And if he doesn't sleep after screaming for hours? Oh, I can't even contemplate.

I think tonight GH and I are going to divide and conquer. GH is going to keep Maddie in our room (she sleeps pretty well when Mr. Yellyellyell isn't right next to her) and I'm going to sleep with Riley in the twins' room. We'll see how that goes.

Is parenting specifically designed to make you feel like you can't do anything right?

I just don't know if I can do this. I really don't. Boy do I wish that we lived near my family.

Where did that week go?

NaBloPoMo ends and I functionally disappear! Oops. I can't believe that I haven't posted in a week.

I've thought about it, but a lot has happened.

For one, my mom was here. I am not going to spend any waking moments when my mom is in town doing anything that does not involve interacting with her. We had an awesome visit. She was so much help with the twins, who always seem to freak out a little when she comes to visit. It's annoying to me that they save their difficult times for when their grandmother is in town, but it's good in the sense that she's around to help when they are being squirrley. (More on twin squirrliness later.) Mom and I got some nice mother/daughter time in yesterday when we put the twins in daycare for four hours (hey, I have to pay for it anyway, why not use it?) and I treated her to a manicure/pedicure and lunch as a belated b-day present. Fun times. She also got to go to our class with us last Friday and had a great time at that. And then, on Friday night, Mom was brave enough to babysit while GH and I went out to celebrate his 34th birthday which had been on the 7th. We had a real grown-up dinner at Craigie Street Bistrot, Dinner was actually rather disappointing, but it was really nice to get out and have some time to ourselves. And happy birthday to my wonderful husband. I'm so glad you made it to 34.

About that twin freakout: Every night that my mom was in town, Riley woke up hourly. Yes, hourly. Shouting. Not crying, not screaming, but shouting. Most of the time, he was not even really awake, but if I didn't pick him up and hold him for about 30 seconds, he would shout and shout until he woke up for real and started sobbing. It's been awful. And then he gets up for the day at 5:00, happy as a clam. We've tried swaddling, unswaddling, Tylenol (thinking it could be teething pain), Hyland's teething tablets, you name it. Oy. I'm losing my mind. He's had night terrors before, but this is a bit different--a different shout, if you will. The first few nights I figured it would pass, but last night was night five, and I'm really starting to feel the effects. I'm going to a Moms of Twins meeting tonight and am hoping for some good advice. Might also call the pediatrician. I feel so bad for my little man! And, frankly, myself.

I have lots to write about: potential job interview, Maddie's EI evaluation. But for now I need to do some actual work. The day is flying by.

Horrifying? Awe-Inspiring? Both.

I was feeling a little smug that I didn't feel like I had anything to share in response to Ask Moxie's call for egregious parenting mistakes. Almost six months and I'd done nothing horrifying! I swelled with pride.

All that changed this morning.

It was another hectic morning at our house--kids slept great, but GH was sick so I had to get myself and the kids ready with no help. They played in their exersaucers while I showered, then I fed them and got them dressed. It's all good so far, but they were starting to get a bit fussy. I still needed to fix bottles and pack my lunch and the day care bag, so I put Maddie in the swing in the living room and Riley in the walker in the adjacent dining room, and went back to the kitchen to take care of business. I couldn't see either of them, but figured they were safe. (Cue ominous music.)

Maddie immediately started to cry. She's been really clingy lately, so I figured she just wanted to be held and I went about my business in the kitchen, singing the ABC song loudly (the twins LOVE that song), hoping to calm her from afar. Didn't work, but I kept trying.

It took me about 10 minutes to finish up in the kitchen. I then went into the living room to check on everyone and console the poor still-crying Maddie.

To my horror, Maddie had slid halfway out of the swing. Her entire lower body was hanging out. No, I had not buckled her in, bonehead that I am. To my amazement, what saved her from being on the floor was that Riley had maneuvered the walker over to the swing, where it had become wedged under the swing, preventing the back-and-forth motion. Maddie's lower body was resting in the tray of Riley's walker. I don't for one minute think that Riley had the smarts or dexterity to wedge the walker under the swing on purpose. But I am quite sure that the reason he was over by the swing at all was because Maddie was crying and went to be closer to her. The twins have started interacting more and more, and this was a very striking example of that. I was so grateful that Riley had gone to check on Maddie, even though I felt like a moron for not buckling her into the swing. Live and learn.

Yesterday was a trying day. Today didn't start out much better, but things seem to be sorting themselves out. I got a big presentation out of the way at work this morning and the rest of the week looks pretty even. My mom gets here for a visit on Thursday. I know that I need to buckle the kids into the swing now. My fingers are crossed for a quiet evening.

One More Thing

Just went to pump and realized that I left the power supply cord for my pump at home. Curses!

Thankfully I have a coworker who pumps, so I borrowed hers. It's just one of those days.

Monday

Hello, Monday that fits all Monday-related stereotypes. Kids wanted to get up at 5:00, and no attempts to convince them that was a bad idea would work. Had argument with husband at 6:15am. First snow (not enough to be a problem on the commute, and it's actually rather pretty, but still!) Forgot my lunch. Have waaaaay too much to do at work and waaaaay too little motivation. Have to spend afternoon at company sales meeting. First phone call of the day was to Early Intervention to make an appointment for Maddie to get evaluated (more on that soon; nothing serious, but still).

On the plus side, I'm wearing pre-pregnancy dress pants (have to look nice for aforementioned sales meeting) that I pulled out on a whim thinking they would never fit, but what the hell, why not try. And lo, they fit just fine. Shocker, in a good way.