Better Make It A Double

home

In a few days, our family is hopping the pond to the for a family reunion. I was born there – we moved to the U.S. in 1981, when I was seven. We’ll be gone for 9 days, staying in a cottage resort not far from my grandmother’s house, about 40 minutes outside of Amsterdam. I am already a bit emotional about this trip. It is a bit of a pilgrimage, as my grandmother is in her late 80’s, and has declared that she’s to spend the rest of her life on her side of the pond. It’s extremely expensive for us to go there, and I’m not at all sure I’ll ever see her again after this. We’ve been planning this trip since the boys were born.

On the night of the summer solstice, we’ll all be celebrating together in her house—all the cousins, aunts, uncles, and spouses. The boys and one cousin’s baby girl will represent the fourth generation. In the fall, my grandmother will probably move into a retirement home in town. She will undoubtedly mourn the loss more than I, having spent 50 years there, but I also cannot imagine not having that house and garden to come back to. With the exception of one family friend, it is the only home that’s been there my whole life. My earliest memories are of going carefully down the winding staircase, of feeding her hens, and of looking out the screen-less windows from the little upstairs room I often stayed in over the gravel drive. My grandmother’s house is a classic Dutch house, with timber framing, red and white checkerboard shutters, and a thatched roof. I can easily understand why my grandmother is so attached to it, with its friendly, open kitchen, large windows, and sprawling garden. She insisted on staying after my grandfather’s death in the mid-eighties, but no-one thought she’s still be there today.

Things are kept simpler there than they used to be, but once, there was a sprawling vegetable garden neatly encased in a rabbit-proof fence. There were egg-laying hens (her flock is now reduced to a few aging pet bantams that don’t lay anymore), elaborate gardens containing many hiding places, and in the small woods, even a little wooden playhouse. There is a pond that I skated on, with double-ridge skates, leaning on a child’s chair at age two. Every time I’ve been back as an adult, I realize how seeing a place again helps to preserve our early memories of it. I barely remember our other houses, but I have so many early memories of this one. I loved it then, and now I can see better how she did too. She doesn’t have a yard, she has grounds. My own gardens are tiny compared to hers, but somehow I spend my summer evening time very similarly to the way she always has. I make rounds around the house, examining all the beds, weeding a patch here and there, making mental notes, harvesting vegetables, checking on hens or calling them home to roost be scattering a bit of scratch. When I was little, I tagged along to those very activities whenever I visited my grandmother, which was often.

I know that my grandmother is burdened by her house now, that she doesn’t feel safe there anymore, rattling around all by herself. She had a fall recently, and she’s increasingly forgetful and confused about things like the day of the week. I am grateful that she’s leaving at her own initiation, and that we all have a chance to mark those 50 years with her, that even my boy will have a chance to run around under the trees and through all the little paths. I’m grateful that my decidedly non-religious family—my grandma and I being the sole exceptions —we seem to have found some way to ritualize this very rare reunion, as well as the passing of an era. My grandmother is the family matriarch, and I, her eldest grandchild, live furthest of away from her. Nonetheless, I feel that our connection is both timeless and eternal, beyond a place to come back to.

fledglings

I’m always grateful for the Ames & Ilg frankness about the fact that older toddlers and younger preschoolers are often most poorly behaved with their mothers. I think that’s very true at our house right now, and it does make me feel better to think that this may have a developmental explanation. Our Early Childhood teacher explained it well by drawing circles on the chalkboard. The first set of circles is a set of one quite large and the other small – the young toddler thinks of himself as huge, the center of the universe, with everything around him just sort of peripheral, there only for him. The second set of circles, one small, the other much bigger, represent the older toddler/preschooler, who is starting, somewhat painfully, to realize that the world is huge and that they are only a small part of it.  They lose a bit of confidence during this time, and cling to what they know, but as they're growing more sophisticated and competent, they're naturally conflicted about that.  This is a helpful perspective. The intensity with which my boys pull me to them and push me away these days (Friend or Enemy, indeed) would otherwise be rather baffling, as some of our afternoons together are full of tears and moaning on the floor at having to share me, my having left earlier or soon leaving, me not having heard them quite right in time or not able to understand either of them as they babble in unison. Me just being me: the mom, not quite there enough, not quite able to fill them both somehow. Then they push me away, resentful, maybe, of wanting me so much. Sometimes it looks almost like grief.

Their new and sudden shyness comes as a bit of a shock, though some aspects of it are not entirely unwelcome. They are at long last somewhat cowed by a new situation, and this leads to some cautiousness that comes as a relief. They cling to my legs instead of bolting in opposite directions; and, at least some of the time, they ask me if something is OK instead of pulling something off of a friend’s counter. Yesterday, they both sat up front in church with me for the first part of the service, quiet as church mice. Even four months ago, this would have been unimaginable.  But, when we meet new people, they also sometimes collapse into my legs, pull me down to them, wrap their suddenly long arms around me and bury their faces in my shirt. When they got up to the front of church with the other kids to sing their song to thank the year’s Sunday School teachers, they were mute and nervous. Both boys made their way down the row of kids and into my lap halfway through the first song, hands doing the hand movements but faces buried in my shirt.  It doesn’t usually last long, this complete burrowing into me, but for that moment, I am their entire universe in a way I haven’t felt since the stranger-anxiety phase of 10 months-or-so-babies.

As was the case a year ago, we’ve been watching the bird feeder and re-learning the bird calls this Spring. We’ve been watching our baby chicks grow, and admiring the robin’s egg I brought home and put in our china cabinet along with a butterfly wing and a couple of feathers. We’ve been reading about nests and baby birds, putting out dryer lint for the mama birds to line nests with, and talking about what baby birds eat. It should come as no surprise, then, that some of their play together involves baby birds. The couch is often their “nest”, and they each lie behind one of the blue back cushions, feet to feet, and call out, “Mama, mama! Feed me!”. I pretend to bring them a worm, and they wiggle all over in delight, giving me a kiss in return for my offered treasure. They seem revel in playing the role of utterly helpless.

Yesterday afternoon, their game took on a new twist. From a book at the library, they’d learned about fledglings, and seemed a bit concerned at the fact that the mama sometimes pushes the baby birds out of the nests. We spent a long time talking about it. With the setting sun angled low and bright through our living room windows, they took turns being the mama and the baby bird, pushing each other gently out of the “nest” and onto the floor. Sometimes they could fly and sometimes they couldn’t, but their joy in trying out both options was obvious, each boy taking his turn flying around the room, or dusting himself off, climbing back onto the couch and saying, “not yet, Mama bird”  to his brother.

Sitting on the floor folding laundry, I choked up unexpectedly, watching their pageantry, their rising and falling, flapping, and laughing. I’ve been a little weepy like this all week – probably from knowing that they’re in a preschool for Fall that we’re comfortable with, a sweet, nurturing place that feels anything but institutional. Wiping away tears while watching my boys play, I feel silly—it’s only preschool— but I am reminded that separation is hard for me and for them, and that we’re all a bit new at it. I’ve never really had to push them out of the nest, to tell them they’ll be fine, they’ll have a good time with the nice lady, the nice new toys. It’s hard. Leaving them in a school is not the at all the same thing as leaving them with their Daddy. We haven’t had to reach this milestone yet—to grow in confidence that people who are not family can also nurture them, look out for them, even love them.

I think that’s what’s been hard lately: having faith in the world they’re moving out and into. I can build the nest, but I can’t build the world. And this is only the first, tiny step.

 

expectations

The boys and I went to the zoo today to see the baby animals. On a beautiful spring day, on the last weekend of the baby animals exhibit. It was lovely – the boys were good, the animals were sweet and accessible, and while it was very busy, as anyone would expect, it was much worse 2 hours later when we left than it was when we actually went through the exhibit.   

 

 

It was lovely except for the behavior we witnessed. The loud complaining and moaning about waiting in line. The whining about how long it took to see the baby chicks.  The bumping other people without saying “excuse me”. The attitude. The bad language. The yelling.

 

 

 

I wish I was talking about the kids. No, the kids were almost universally fine – the appalling behavior that put a serious chink in my own enjoyment of the morning and that my children noticed enough to comment upon more than once came from the parents.

“This is a nightmare – why did we come here on the last weekend?”

“Next time, I pick where we go, and it sure aint here!”

“The next wagon doesn’t come for 20 minutes! What a rip-off.”

“I hate this. We should have gone to a movie.” 

“If we go through the door where everybody is going out, we can get to the chicks without having to wait!”

“We have to GO! The dolphins are at eleven and our Imax tickets are at noon! Hurry UP!”

“Just butt your way through, Madison! Tell that kid to move over!”

“Parker, get your damn butt over here and give me your coat!”

 

Parker, incidentally, looked utterly miserable, and was wearing baggy desert-storm camo pants and a t-shirt that said, “Backin’ down aint even an option!” Does that refer to his parents (who presumably bought him the shirt) or the war? A few yards down, I spotted a toddler wearing a t-shirt that said, "A is for Attitude".

There was a giant beautiful John Deere tractor that would have been a wonderful thing to let lots of kids climb on at once (it was enormous), but the parents were more interested in the photo op, so instead, everyone had to stand in line to get their picture taken in the seat then get yanked out so the next parent could take a picture.

We waited in line because my boys just so very much wanted to sit on the big tractor. This situation repeated itself in any area that was “photographable”. The kids couldn’t just play on the concrete pig or sit between the wooden chickens or talk to the volunteers about the baby chicks; they had to stand in line, get their picture taken, and get out of the way. Most of these kids were little – age 1 to 2ish, and predictably, they cried when they had to get off the pig or leave the climb-able chicken 30 seconds after finally getting to it. I’m sure the tantrums didn’t make it onto the camera, though, and that’s what matters, right?

Being a bit older, my boys rolled with it all pretty well, but N said at one point, "Everyone is mad today, Mama."

I heard so much loud griping about everything that it made my head hurt within a half hour of being there. I just don’t get it. Why is everyone in such a hurry at the zoo at ten-thirty on a Saturday morning? I rarely take the boys to any kind of in-demand exhibit. Mostly, I think they’re really happy to go the zoo or the Children’s Museum at all – they simply don’t need any kind of extra-special offerings like that. They really love farm animals, though, and I thought it would be a wonderful exception. And it was. I fully expected crowds, and I and my well-rested children were simply in no hurry, so it wasn’t a big deal. There was plenty of open space in which to catch our breath when we needed to. But I’ve never heard complaining like that at the DMV. I’ve never heard moaning and whining like that at our local INS (immigration) office, where people are forced to wait in line outside the building in the  Minnesota winter. I guess when you're getting your driver's license renewed, you're not obsessed with getting the most "bang for your buck" on your one day off. If you're at the INS office, you may just be feeling lucky to be able to be there at all.   

I try to wish these people peace and try to find some love for a stranger within me instead of letting their behavior make me angry. But it’s hard. I take it especially personally when I see my kids looking at the griping and yelling and wondering what that’s all about. When my children visit the zoo, the kids and the animals shouldn’t be a heap more civilized than the adults.

walkability

Someone sent me this link, and I thought it was such a neat idea. It calculates the "walkability" of any U.S. address you enter. I entered every Minn*eapolis address I've ever lived at, and it was pretty darn accurate. My neighborhood was a 66. ,

How about yours?

separation anxiety

Caro's Ingrid started preschool this week and her feelings about it resonated with me. Ingrid, who is the same age as my twins, is going to preschool for a couple of mornings a week. My boys go to MOPS for just two hours every other week, and I'm always a little obsessed with what they did there exactly. I peek carefully through the window before they see me or the nursery worker says "here's mommy!" I scrutinize the little coloring sheets they carry out with them, and ask them questions in the car on the way home, stating with the open-ended kind, and resorting to yes/no's when that doesn't work. I don't get much, just an equivocal comment here and there, sometimes days later,  the toddler collision of real experiences and imagination leading to statements like "We had crackers for snack. And then a dinosaur jumped up on the table and ate them all!" 

All this is new to me because we haven't done any kind of daycare. It's just, well, a little disconcerting to simply relinguish them in this way, to people who understandably don't have time to give me a play-by-play of their every activity. My little boys are starting to have experiences that are beyond my purview, even if it is only in carefully chosen, nurturing settings. They bring home words and concepts that are clearly from outside our sphere - words like butt and smartypants and dude, games involving races and jumping and yelling "hooray!"

What gets me too is the nice things their teachers say. "They're so sweet to each other"  or "so polite", "so cooperative" etc. Really? They are? Does this reflect that they actually learn from me and J and take that into the world with them, or that I'm ineffective at getting them to be kind to each other, polite, and cooperative? Will I ever know? That isn't how I'd describe their behavior at home lately. It's not horrible, this two-and-a-halfness, this minute-to-minute seesawing between regression and autonomy, but it's not always pretty. N and O can be absolutely tender with one another, and chatter back and forth almost every waking moment. They can be so cooperative as to help set the table, clean up all their toys, help each other find something, say an evermore consistent "please" and "thank you" and put on their own coats and many of the rest of their clothes, though often backwards and inside out. They also argue, whine, and fight, throw fits, refuse to cooperate, and test every limit. Every day. So far, though, they seem to be on their very best behavior out of my sight, which is, well, interesting.

One thing hasn't changed, apparently. Since he's been tiny, N's been mad if I'm gone for more than a typical workday. At his worst, after I was gone for an entire day and a half, he refused to even look at me and acted mad for days, our connectedness frayed for a bit until he finally either forgot or forgave me. He was about 20 months old then, I believe. I left for church retreat at 8AM this past Saturday and came back after bedtime that evening. The following morning, he was crabby with me, wanting only Daddy to do this and that. He seemed OK at church, but after we came home, he started screaming over a trifle, and screamed and sobbed for a good half hour. "Hold me!" "No mama, let me go!" He screamed much worse if I stopped trying to hold him, even though he resisted it, so for a while I held him as he thrashed. It went on for what seemed like ever, and then it was gone. He got up and walked to his booster seat. He ate lunch happily, and told me he loved me as I lay him down for his nap. He's been especially sweet since, grabbing my hand and holding it against his chest, leaning back against me as we read together and grinning at me, just saying my name with a sigh as he walks by, Bunny in hand.

O is going through his own little separation woes, wanting to be rocked and held all the time (I''m a baby! Noooo! I'm not a baby anymore!), crying at times when I leave for work. This is new from him, and it kills me a little to see him so sad. I'm mostly happy to rock, and soothe, redirect and reassure. Between O's almost forty pounds often draped against me or filling my arms, his head leaning heavily on my shoulder as he stands on my folded knees, and N's aggressive "affection" involving pinching and head-butting and pushing (none of which I tolerate, though I try hard to find other ways to connect with him), it feels a little like they're trying to crawl back into the womb.

It's hard to reconcile all that with the version of themselves my boys bring into the world with them, mostly pretty self-assured, cooperative, even polite. If "separation anxiety" as a useful term weren't already taken to describe the experiences of small children, it would be a pretty good description of my own state of mind.

I'm also so very grateful to these wonderful people who take such loving care of my children in my absence, so grateful that we'd all be embarrassed if they knew it. It's a beautiful feeling, to know that my kids can have experiences without me and do just fine, even quite well; that their care no longer requires the constant attention of someone with whom they'll necessarily have a permanent relationship. The world is full of people who wish them well, from MOPS,  the library, our school system's excellent Early Childhood program, to our close-knit church and friendly neighbors. I think that for now, home is still where they work out most of the messy stuff, the conflicted feelings, the fears and the ambivalence. I hope that it will long be a base from which to make their way into the world, and that they'll someday share a little about what they find there.

The irony....

Seen today while waiting at a red light on a freeway exit ramp:

One scruffy white guy holding a sign that said, "Homeless Republican could use spare change for food."

Yeah, buddy, I could use some change too. I wish I had the materials handy at that very long red light to make a quick sign that reads "This smirking taxpayer thinks you ought to VOTE for change. Social change".

I wish him the best of luck, but, honestly. You proudly advertise voting for the party that cuts all the social welfare programs and expect me personally to pick up the slack? Now if the sign had said "Homeless former Republican could use spare change for food".....

Take the pledge

The thoughtful and knowledgeable Moxie answered my question today on her advice blog. A very good answer too, though my options for playgroups are limited to a couple days per week from 4-5:30ish right now due to car, work and nap scheduling issues, and not even Moxie can fix that. Maybe I will take her advice and slowly try to start my own playgroup.

Meanwhile, please join me in reciting my handy new Playgroup Sanity Pledge:

• I solemnly swear not to pull my kid away from another kids without a good reason (screeching happily does not count)
• I solemnly swear to say the word "gennnntle" gently, if I must use it
• I solemnly swear not to apologize for my kid’s normal and appropriate behavior, or to expect that of other moms
• I solemnly swear to be supportive and open-minded, or at least hold my tongue when it comes to hot-button issues like sleep, food, and childcare
• I solemnly swear to intervene if things are getting out of hand (between the kids)
• I solemnly swear to pick up my 3 year old’s Legos before hosting playgroup for 10-24 month olds. Even if your 13 month old “knows better”. Jeez.
• I solemnly swear not to bring my 22 pound sniveling petrie dish sick child to playgroup
• I solemnly swear not to say snarky things about the other mom who just left, because we'll wonder if you do the same thing to us

Anything else? Say it here. You might feel better. I know I do!

repost: 20 Things About Emmie

(I'm reposting this because the HTML was all wonky the first time, making it almost unreadable, and I've finally figured out how to fix that.)

1. I’m Dutch. That is, from the Netherlands. My family moved to the USA in 81' when I was almost 7 years old. I still speak Dutch, and I go back about every other year (though we probably won’t go now until the boys are at least 3).

2. I left home early and lived on my own as a teen. I went to college a few years later, also on my own.

3. I lived without a car for ten years, exploring the limits of a crappy bus system. I finally got a car after I got mugged at a bus stop and I was sick of spending hours a week waiting for a very unreliable bus. I still hate having a car, but the trade-off is worth it at this point. J and I share a little wagon, so I rarely have the car when I’m with the boys. That part is really starting to suck.

4. The one thing I have always known is that I wanted to be a mom. Yes, it sounds retro, and yes, lots of ambivalent folks end up making great parents, but the truth is, I was never ambivalent about that.

5. I am a Christian. A tolerant, welcoming, inclusive sort of Christian, but nonetheless, unabashedly a Christian. Mennonite to be exact. I don’t always bring this up, because I want my faith to speak for itself. That is, I want people who meet me (or read my blog) to observe that I’m a reasonable person with good values, and the when they find out I’m a Christian, maybe (if they are not Christians) that will not seem contradictory. Because, let’s face it, we Jesus-followers have a lot of very bad PR right now in terms of actually loving our neighbors, turning the other cheek, etc. Indigo Girl said much better than I just did. (We twin moms are just naturally wise people, you know).

6. I’m also a leftist. That is, I don’t just want a bigger or better piece of the pie, I want a whole different pie. It’s a good thing I have plenty of distraction in my life right now, because, it’s a hard time to be thinking like that. See number 5.

7. I’m left-handed.

8. I have celiac disease.

9. I have endometriosis.

10. I have an uncanny ability to gage the amount of something by looking. When I was a kid, I often won the “count the beans in a jar” type of contests. When I grab a stack of paper to make copies or something, I often grab the exact right amount. I believe that this is not particularly brilliant or useful, just interesting.

11. I am terrible at the more ordinary kind of counting, (math, that is). This might be because we moved all the time when I was a kid and I had a rather disjointed math education.

12. We moved all the time when I was a kid.

13. I never want to move again.

14. When I was dealing with infertility, I poured a lot of energy into gardening. I am rarely happier than when I’m puttering around back there, and I miss it. Of course, I’m often just as happy playing with my boys.

15. I gained about 11 pounds when I was pregnant, and I now weigh about 25 pounds less than when I got pregnant. While going from a size 12 to an 8 is very nice in some ways, I have a hard time with the compliments. What did I look like before, anyway? After all, a 12 is not that big, especially on a woman who is 5’9. And gaining only 11 pounds, that was because I could barely eat from the pain and nausea. I wanted to drop a few pounds, but not like that. Plus, I’ll probably go back to a 12 after I stop breastfeeding, and then what?

16. I am cheap, but generous. J and I decided a long time ago that we value time over money, and we are also pretty environmentally conscious, so we buy everything we can used, pretty much. I love a good bargain, and I love reusing things. The boys wear almost exclusively used clothing. However, we tithe (we split it between church and other groups) and we have been known to give money to friends when they needed it.

17. I have 2 cats and a dog. I love them. They are waaaay down on the pecking order now that the boys are here.I feel vaguely guilty about this. I also think they have it pretty good.

18. I used to ride horses competitively until I had a bad accident at age 15. Let’s just say that I was much luckier than Christopher Reeves, because that could have been me. I still have constant back pain and it limits what I can do.

19. J and I have a good, though certainly imperfect marriage. We did the infertility thing together really well. Parenting twins has been a challenge. We are always moving apart, or toward another it seems. Sometimes the squabbling really gets me down, but we are still each other’s greatest source of support, and we laugh a lot together.

20. Some people think I can be funny. Other people think I can be “funny”.

21. I am a long-winded introvert, if there can be such a thing.

22. Sometimes I have trouble following the rules...

In case you were wondering

In red are the states I've visited or lived in. ( Thanks Lisa)

Wow. I have a lot of US-of-A left to visit.

Other randomness:

Today, at church, friend had O while I took N to the carpeted area in the back to crawl around. There's a nice space back there where babies won't get stepped on, it's clean enough, and you can still hear/see the service. N is so loud and active that I always end up letting him crawl around so he'll be a little quieter. Loud cries of "die-die-die!!!!!" are not so cute in church, even a tolerant informal church like ours. (In case you're wondering where J is on Sunday mornings, he has a church job playing the piano and organ at another church. So instead of 1 baby, 2 parents, I have 2 babies, 1 parent every Sunday.) The entire church floor is at a slight decline until you get to the front of the santuary. At the very back, N was playing with the plastic rings of a stacking toy, and he threw one of them. Last week he picked church to start crawling, and this week he picked throwing. It landed on it's side and rolled. It kept rolling when it got to the pews, kept rolling under the pews, rolled between feet and other obstacles, rolled across the aisle and into the next set of pews, between more feet and other obstacles and all the way to the front of the sanctuary. It finally stopped when it hit the step that leads up to the pulpit. Where the pastor was preaching at the time. He looked down briefly and went back to his sermon. I'll have to ask him what he was thinking when he saw that little yellow doughnut roll out to him. I won't tell him that I about peed in my pants from trying not to laugh out loud.

warning: much obnoxious gushing ahead!

I'm not a superstitious person, and therefore not particularly afraid to jinx myself. I am, however, afraid to eat crow. So it is carefully and a little hesitantly that I say things are starting to get a bit easier. The boys are just so damn much fun right now. They are such great communicators, and have such personality. O has a scrunched up face look that makes perfect strangers burst out laughing. N can belt out such an emphatic bunch of sylabbles that it pretty hard not to agree with whatever the heck he's trying to tell you. "Yes sir!" is about the only appropriate response to his rantings. And they can now play by themselves and together some, which just makes everything so much easier. Neither boy is all that clingy, but both definately prefer mommy right now, with daddy as a close second. I just love this age. Now if they'd only sleep in just a little later.... And, as of today, N is officially crawling. As in, forwards, with his entire torso up in the air.

Today at church, both boys did well, but I always end up on the carpet in the back with one or both boys by the time we get the the Prayers of Thanksgiving. I brought a bunch of their old toys in for the baby toy basket that's kept back there (my boys are outgrowing toys! unbelievable..), and one of the stacking rings (we'd been given too many sets) was about 10 feet in front of N. He'd almost made it there, and a lean, mean, much faster little 12 month old beat him to it. His face just fell - he was absolutely crushed. He'd worked so hard to crawl further than he ever had before. And then she turned around and handed it to him, and he squealed with delight, rolled over, and cradled it in his arms. Oh, I love it. I love being a mom. I love being their mom.