Moving along

I am happy to say that me returning to working full-time has gone much smoother than I ever would have imagined possible.  I am more busy than I have ever been in my life, and when I am at work Ari and Eli are always in my thoughts — but things have fallen into place and we have actually figured out a routine and life continues to move along.

And my babies just keep on growing! 

Eli has begun to realize how cool toys are.  Unless he is hungry or tired, the boy wants to be on the floor with any and all toys he can find in the room.  And what is more amazing, he is able to get from point a to point b via a commando style body surfing version of crawling.  He is very slow, but I am sure he will be picking up speed in the coming months.  Oh boy…two mobile children is something that is coming upon us quickly!  I continue to be amazed by Eli’s strength and curiosity.  Eli also has developed a keen interest in watching Ari and our dogs at all times and will often let out a happy squeal or a “gggeeee” or a “dddeee” when they come into the room.  He likes his buddies! 

Along with learning new words and even saying a few phrases and humming some songs that we think are a cross between the theme to Elmo’s World and “Dinah Won’t You blow your horn”, what is even more amazing to me is that Ari has become very interested in hearing stories.  He especially loves hearing stories about things he has done with our family, like the time he got stung by a bee or the time we went to the zoo and he chased around a peacock or the time we went to get pumpkins and saw a tractor, a cow, some sheep and some chickens.  And he is even beginning to love story books and nursery rhymes.  Most interesting to me is that Ari is absolutely mesmerized by “The Velveteen Rabbit” and this just happens to be one of my most favorite books from childhood.  Also of note is that Ari has a huge book of nursery rhymes that is close to his size and every night he carefully lugs it off of his shelf, and goes right to the page with the nursery rhyme ”Humpty Dumpty” on it and insists that I read it to him at least three times after which he asks me to tell him the name of the big egg with the funny smile on his face (humpty dumpty).  Ari also has developed a love for showing off for Eli.  He really likes to get him laughing and will go to great lengths to do so.  Of course, Eli is a pretty easy crowd so he doesn’t have to try too hard! 

It amazes me how fast they are growing!

 

Modern Life

As I was sitting in the middle of an apple orchard watching Ari pick apples this weekend, it occurred to me just how unfair it is that kids have to be socialized to be a part of modern life.  As Ari stood perfectly still in the middle of a quiet row of trees nothing could disturb his peaceful concentration.  Picking apples, out in nature, working hard, content and engaged with his task, he would look up and make sure I was still there and then go back to work with a peacefulness that not even his favorite DVD on a rainy Saturday morning could bring to him.

It goes without saying, our modern life comes along with many conveniences that both Ari and Eli have already become very fond of.  But there are little glimpses I have seen in both of my children that make it hard to deny that the reality of socializing a child into our world isn’t as easy as I thought it would be before having children.  Come to think of it, the difficult parts of modern life were not something that ever crossed my mind before having children.  Without my kids I mostly spent my time at work or in my house alone or with my husband.  I would get out to shop or see a friend a few times a week.  But for the most part I spent a lot of time working or alone with multiple electronic devices to keep me company. 

This way of life does not work well with kids.  I may have been able to cover up my need for human interaction with multiple humans with Friends and Seinfeld before having kids, but toddlers and babies are not ready for this, and it becomes clear that their need for people and fresh air and apple orchards full of ripe delicious fruit that they can spend the morning picking is a must for their overall well being and happiness.

Well, the last part could be a bit difficult to achieve on a daily basis, but the part about seeing people is very necessary to achieve a content baby and child.  It has always struck me as odd that while there are several families in our neighborhood with kids the age of Ari and Eli, we see them at most once a week — and that is if we run into them outside or have a preplanned event.  We do see a lot of the same kids at the park each day, but we have yet to share a meal or have a meaningful conversation with any of these people.  We certainly have this at our house with our family, but a little one needs this beyond the immediate family.  And then, in the middle of an apple orchard, yearning for a more simple life, I had the first moment of actually looking forward to returning to work.  With winter approaching and even our psuedo-park community disappearing rapidly, there is a community that Ari and Eli will belong to – Ari and Eli will have a community at daycare.  As much as my guilt still brings a raging bubble of buring acid to the back of my throat when I think of dropping them off for 8 hours at a time each weekday, I realized that they may actually enjoy spending time with other people besides me all day.

And, even more amazing, I may also enjoy spending time doing what I went to a total of 6 years of college to achieve.  Something that I am proud of and enjoy doing greatly.  Something that makes me very happy to do each day.  And more than anything else, I think this will make Eli and Ari happy as they grow older and start to understand this modern world we live in.  Now if there was a way to have a community for all of us where I could have a job that I love and spend all day with my children, that would be a mother’s utopia.  Maybe if I could have this in the middle of an orchard of perfectly ripened green apples on a beautiful fall day, I would have absolute utopia.  In the meantime, I may have to learn how to go camping.

Enjoying the Green

I remember the first time I woke up hearing birds outside of my bedroom window this spring.  I got out of bed that morning very slowly and very uncomfortably — annoyed that I had no signs that I was in labor.  I broke my water at 3AM the next night and started having contractions a few hours later.  I remember looking out the front door and seeing Ethan carry Ari through the misty warm dawn to our neighbor’s house and I thought to myself, that is the last time I will see Ari as an only child.  

It seems like I have simply taken one very long blink of the eye and here I am puting jackets on my two children as we go out into the world to witness nature’s own transformation from fresh and green to red then orange then brown.  How did these last five months slip away so fast?

I was further reminded of this when we were out in the backyard last night and I looked around at the baby pool and various water toys and I realized how ludicrous it is to still have these out when they are totally useless to us.  Right now there is just a little chill in the air, but it is a hint at what is to come – time for the summer toys to be put away.  As I put all of them into the garage they became a time capsule of sorts to me.  I could write a message and put it away with the toys:

“You are living a blessed life and should be thankful for every moment”

“I know it is getting warm but don’t cut your hair no matter how good short hair looks on other people, it will never look good on you.”

“Go ahead and put the helmet on Eli as he is learning to walk to save yourself the daily heart palpitations that a newly walking child brings to every mother”

“I know you have been using the crockpot a lot, but go ahead and look up those salad recipes”

“The tank tops are in the purple bin in the attic — NOT THE BASEMENT”

And then I looked at them – with Ari in his toddler swing and Eli in his baby swing, fresh faced and happy with their world.  And I wished there was a way to freeze this period of my life  — for just a little while, as these truly are such very happy times. 

With a world with so much suffering and pain, it seems impossible that I got so lucky.  And yet everyday my babies are there, ready to explore the world and learn new things.  Ready to do it with me.

toddler bed and rice cereal

It is funny that I have always been certain that I was in the camp of let your child stay in the crib as long as possible or it will be a disaster, and my 21 month old now sleeps in a bed.  And it hasn’t been a disaster at all.  It actually has been completely and totally fine, and completely normal.  I had planned last summer that I would transition Ari to a bed NEXT summer when he was 2 and a half and I had the summer to work out the kinks.  Well, the boy can climb.  I think all of those mornings at the park were his basic training for how to climb anything and everything.  After mastering the bar stools, the table and the advanced ladders at the park, a few weeks ago, he climbed out of his crib and found me with a look on his face that said, “Please don’t be too mad.  I couldn’t help myself!”  I about had a heart attack and informed him that he should not do that and it was time to go night-night.  Two weeks went by where he followed those instructions, but then he remembered that he had discovered a new trick.  And it was much more fun to climb in and out of his crib than go to sleep. 

Yikes!!!  I actually felt extremely disturbed by this, and maybe am getting a taste of what parenting an adolecent will be like.  I have heard more experienced parents say over and over, there are some things about your children that you can’t control and you  just have to try to work with the situation.  So, off came the side of the crib and on came some Sesame Street sheets, and my 21 month old was set to sleep in a bed, despite that not being the plan!  Not following the plan makes me very nervous, and the first night Ari went to sleep in his toddler bed I think my knees were trembling a little for fear that it would all go wrong and I would be up with two boys each night — right in time to go back to work full time next mont.

But, he went to sleep, he slept all night.  No big deal!  And he has continued to sleep like he always has since that night.  Hopefully, blogging about this will not curse me, but I am amazed and thankful that it all worked out.

On the topic of milestones, Eli also began his journey into solid food this week as he had rice cereal for the first time.  Like everything else about Eli, it was easy to do.  He took it fine and smiled and continues to eat a little bit more each time he has it.  It really is quite adorable to have Ari sitting at our breakfast bar eating a bowl of oatmeal and Eli on the breakfast bar sitting in his Bumbo seat being fed rice cereal.  And, even though the experts says that rice cereal should not affect how babies sleep, Eli has increased his longest stretch of sleep at night since starting to eat cereal.  Let’s hope that he keeps that up too — because I need my rest before cold season starts and Eli starts getting teeth and I am happy to get an hour or two of sleep at a time.

Two under two

Lately I have noticed that I can’t go anywhere without people staring.  Usually people say really nice things like, “What beautiful children” or “They are so cute!”  Sometimes people will make comments like, “You have your hands full!” and I think to myself, “That really isn’t helping me.  What would help me is if you stopped talking about my hands being full and you actually helped me by opening this door so I can push this huge double stroller through it.”  And on occasion, usually if Ari and/or Eli are making noise ranging from crying to loud talking, and I am trying to get to my car as quickly as I can to change a diaper or feed someone, I will get a look, most often from the over 65 female set that says, “I did such a better job making my children seen and not heard” or “Oh!  You should have used a condom.  Now look at what you have on your hands.  Better yet, you just should not have done the deed in the first place. ” 

Or not.  Or maybe I just hope this whole thing called parenthood turns out okay.  And while Eli is the greatest gift I have ever received, maybe it is a little scary to have two children under two, and I am doing my best, every moment of every day.  And the responsibility involved is a little overwhelming if you think about it too hard.   

It never ceases to amaze me how much people love to judge parents.  There are even several shows about this topic.  I admit it, I’ve watched Super Nanny and thought to myself, “Wow.  Who would be that bad of a parent” and then felt like I was a good parent in comparison and of course found myself wanting to watch the show again the next week so that I could get that feeling again.  I’ve also had countless conversations with other parents, that are more personal versions of “Supernanny” where we discuss what other parents do wrong.  And we both leave the conversation thinking, “Wow.  We are great parents.”  

The thing is, my children are the most precious thing in the world to me.  Lately I have thought that the first year of a child’s life is infatuation.  I soak in every moment of Eli and I did the same with Ari.  Every smell, every kiss and every little cherub-like laugh is pure perfection.  The second year though, has become the time when I feel like I have truly fallen in love.  He has become a human — capable of joy and silliness and frustration and mischief.  A combination that stirs the deepest love that I have ever felt in my life.  And they have both taught me much already. 

Perhaps the comparing and looking and staring and Supernanny judging are done because of how much we love our children.  And how we want to do a good job by our kids.  And we want the world to think we are doing a good job too.  And so the over 65 female staring me down with my messy hair and my spitup stained t-shirt as I try to buy milk while simultaneously giving Ari a goldfish cracker and Eli a bottle is thinking of her child and how furiously she loves him, and how desperately she hoped she did the right things when raising him.  And I suppose, there will be a little of that in me too. 

But, I think that really, to be a good parent, the best thing I can do is have faith in myself and take this lesson into the rest of my life and stop judging and comparing so that I can feel better about myself.  Although, I still may sneak in a Supernanny episode from time to time!

Goodbye G, hello Bum!

So, I have taken the plunge.  I have gone cloth.

Seeing the actual garbage produced by two children in diapers has been something that has disturbed me to my core.  One in diapers who spent most of his time in daycare was less disturbing.  Two in diapers who are home all day have given me a disgusting visual for the amount of trash produced from disposable diapers sending me on a quest for the perfect diaper solution.  I guess this is what people mean when they say that having kids changes your life completely.

Recently I dipped my toes into the pool of cloth diapers by changing over to the first biodegradable diaper — the g diaper.  It has helped immeasurably with the trash situation, and it just makes me feel good about the world knowing that I am adding one less piece of trash that will sit around for hundreds of years.  (Of course I still have to work on that whole disposable coffee cup habit I have, among others).  But the g diaper solution has been a great way to acquaint myself to the wide world of diaper options.

I have been very happy with the g dipers.  But there is a catch with them.  You are still washing diapers.  While throwing away the biodegradable part, the g pants still require washing.  And…well, if you are going to be washing diapers anyway, why not save money on the biodegradable insert and go all the way?  So, that is what we did.  Starting with a few with an experiment, it became very apparent that the bum genius cloth diapers are fantastic.

Okay.  Now I hope I don’t sound judgemental here or like I am preaching, but I really have to say this because I was so in the dark.  Cloth diapers (at least the bum genius brand that I purchased) are really very user friendly.  I always  pictured cloth diapers being gross.  I thought I would be sticking myself with pins in the middle of the night and finding leftover poop under my fingernails from scrubbing them.  But that is not it at all.  The modern cloth diaper is like a disposable that you stick in the wash when you are done.  I think they should rename them reusable disposables.  Doing a load of diapers is like doing a load of laundry (minus the poopy ones that I open up and toss the poop into the toilet — it sounds gross, but a mountain of poop in your garbage can all week is so much grosser).  I pictured myself soaking and rinsing and scrubbing.  There is none of that.  There are no pins or inserts or pants.  They do not leak.  I put them on the babies.  I take them off.  I throw them in the washer (do a double wash and rinse) and dryer, and that is it.  I do laundry everyday anyway.  What is one more load of diapers?

Which leads me to my next question.  Why are bumgenius cloth diapers a secret that are often thought of with “granola” moms or “trendy” moms?  Seriously, I don’t get it?  Why can’t I buy these at Target?  I bought them in my local earth mother store that specializes in wooden toys and organic fabric clothing.  Definitely not my scene, but it is the only place that sells them in my area. 

Why isn’t there infomercials for cloth diapers (I mean reusable disposable, that is)?  They are cheaper than disposable.  They are much better for the environment.  They happen to be very cute.  And I seriously love them.  I am certainly not a granola mom, and I don’t have enough money to be trendy.  I just don’t want mountains of poop in my garage.

Maybe when Ari and Eli grow up there will be the target brand “Up and Up” cloth diapers and they will be more common, and something that is not associated with any demographic.  Seriously, there should be commercials for these on tv and in magazines, there should be billboards and radio ads, because I think if I continue to talk this much about poop I may need help!

back to school

In my mind I have divided my maternity leave into three sections.  The first section was when Eli was a newborn and Ethan was still in school.  Eli was teeny tiny and slept about 20 hours out of each 24 hours and Ari was still in love with going through the contents of the kitchen drawers and cabinets and wanted to be carried around a lot of the time.  I also remember this time as a very happy time, as there were fresh buds on the trees, birds chirping to welcome the spring and help me celebrate that I had six months ahead of me with no worries of daycare or work clothes or bottles.  And I was blessed with a very mellow newborn along with my adorable toddler who I would spend each day with.

The next third of my maternity leave was when Ethan was on summer vacation.  Eli spent this time coming out of his shell a bit and noticing his family members, and started to be awake for whole hours at a time.  While Ari spent this period expanding his vocabulary (although some of it is a bit of a personal language that only Ethan and I understand) and has developed a love for stacking things (especially Legos), doing puzzles and climbing anything that he can find.  And while he loves to snuggle, he prefers to walk on his own when he needs to get somewhere.  Most of my memories of the second part of my maternity leave take place at the park on warm summer days with Eli in the pack and Ari climbing and running around.  During this period I realized that I have two children under two, and that there will be times when I have to focus on breathing and staying calm.  It is also the time that I have rekindled my love for yoga.

And now begins the last third of my maternity leave.  The part where Ethan is back at school and I am home with Eli and Ari each day.  The part where I am looking to the future of being a working mother again.  So, I am getting Eli on a schedule for his daytime hours and getting him used to the bottle more, and putting together a work wardrobe that will fit my post 2nd baby body while savoring every precious moment that I have during the day with both boys until then.  And mostly hoping that all the complicated details that must fall into place when working and raising children work out and that everything will be alright.

Two Boys

It really is amazing to me the transformation that occurs during the first year of life.  Having been through it before so recently with Ari one would think that I would be less stunned that Eli has also come out of his infant cocoon and blossomed into a full fledged baby.  It is truly miraculous that in just four months time the newborn who used to sleep most of the day is now reaching for toys to play with, rolling over, and most enjoyably to his family members — laughing and smiling every chance he gets.

It still shocks me: I have two children. Two beings with their own set of needs and personalities.  Hard to believe.  It seems like just last week that my biggest concern was what color of nail polish to get when I went to my bi-weekly nail appointment.  Yet that world seems like a lifetime away when I look down at my toenails and see an inch of unpainted nail, reminding me that it has been a season since my last pedicure.  And instead my biggest concerns have become much different.

Lately I have been trying to figure out how to get through our daily routines with two children while avoiding, what I like to term “chaos bursts.”  A chaos burst usually involves both children crying and needing me at the same time, and basically making me temporarily feel like a failure as a parent.   If both Ethan and I are home, a chaos burst is very rare.  But when there are two children and one parent, I have found that it is necessary to have a strategy to try my best to avoid a chaos burst from happening.

Without a doubt the biggest challenge for me is having a bedtime routine with two children when I am the only parent putting both Eli and Ari to bed.  Getting Eli and Ari bathed, changed, fed, read to and asleep during the crankiest hour of the day is definitely a tall order, and is something that I have obsessed and planned and taken deep breaths through whenever I have had to do it alone.  So it came as quite a surprise that in the middle of this fighting of the chaos, I saw something amazing. 

I had gotten both Eli and Ari out of their bath and into their diapers.  Ari was running around Eli’s room, while Eli was laying in his crib kicking away like a future soccer star.  All of the sudden Eli caught Ari’s eye.  Ari ran over to his crib and climbed up the rails so he could get a good look at Eli.  He froze to try to understand what the baby was doing and all of the sudden it dawned on him: Eli was being funny!  Ari found this to be one of the most hilarious things he had seen in days and was laughing very hard and shouting “baby!!!”  as he discovered that his brother was funny!  And I could be imagining this, but it seemed like Eli could tell that he was making Ari laugh and he was smiling and kicking away as hard as he could to make Ari laugh even harder.  My two boys were making each other laugh.  Maybe I am not a failure as a parent.

As a parent of boys, my hope is that my sons will grow up to be men who are respectful of women, who can love and be kind and who know themselves and do something to make the world better.  And most of all, I hope they are nice.  And in that moment of a toddler laughing at a baby being silly it seemed like I have a very nice toddler and a very nice baby, and it makes the chaos bursts much more easy to wade through.

vacacation

While I have done much complaining, whining and obsessing during the wee hours of the night about being a working mother, the profession that both Ethan and I have chosen really is wonderful.  We both are very lucky to love the jobs that we have —  and in addition to this, we also get lots of vacation time.  And right now, we are in the thick of said vacation time.  Ethan’s summer job ended at the end of July and I will be on maternity leave until November; leaving 4 weeks where both Ethan and I are home every single day with Ari and Eli.  With this we have had multiple days with sunny, bright blue skies and soft breezes, making life just about as good as it gets.

Note to self: remember this feeling during that special time at the end of February when it has been snowing and icing for weeks on end and the whole family has various ailments requiring both Ethan and I to be up for hours at a time each night while still needing to be up at 530 to go in to work in said ice and snow while worrying about the snot freezing in our noses while walking from the house to the car.

I always think that the winter is a bit like labor, very easy to forget when you are in the middle of this time of year (or when you have that beautiful baby in your arms the first time looking up at you with an expression that says, “Thank you for having me.  You’re the best mommy ever.”)  And while I know that winters are tough, it is hard to believe that all that snowy nonsense will be here again after looking down at Ari’s tanned mosquito bitten skin that is a byproduct of spending most of our waking hours outdoors.  Oh vacation — time of the beach, the zoo, the children’s museum and thorough exploration of all the parks in our area — you are truly wonderful.  And, even more amazing, Ethan and I have had the time to rent some movies and play some board games after Eli and Ari are sleeping.  Ahhh, the wonders of having nobody needing to be anywhere anytime soon. 

Of course, a paycheck will be nice to have in September!

Garbage Crisis

It is funny to me how when I go places with Ari and Eli, people look at me with a big smile and say, “wow!  you have your hands full!”  And, well, it is true, I do have my hands full.  Ari and Eli are the center of my days and nights lately.  When I was pregnant with Eli I remember being up in a panic many a night wondering how I would get through the newborn stage while having a toddler at the same time.  But amazingly after three months of having two under two, the adjustment has been very smooth and the whole thing has been a very positive experience.  But there is one little thing that I was not prepared for.

When people see me with two little ones, they should not say, “wow, you have your hands full.”  What people really should say when they see me is, “wow, you have your garbage cans full!”  While I spent my pregnancy worried that I would not be able to give Eli and Ari enough attention or that I would have trouble figuring out how to nurse and entertain Ari — which have taken very little time to figure out, what I should have worried about was how to manage two children in diapers.

Let me blunt.  Two children in diapers produce a lot of poop.  It is seriously gross.  There are THREE diaper genies in our house and it seems that I am always asking Ethan to empty them because they fill up so fast.  And then there is the main garbage can that is taken away once a week.  It is at least half full of diapers at the end of the week, making our family dangerously close to a place I am not ready to go: two garbage cans to be wheeled to the curb each week.

About a month ago I realized that our trash was out of control and I found the recycling guidelines for our town and became OCD recycler.  I found myself happily washing out jars of peanut butter and smashing down aluminum to-go containers to recycle so there would be room in the garbage can for the diapers.  Then we got our latest heat wave and I made the mistake of going into the garage the day before trash pick up.  You would think it was medieval times and my garage was where the black plague was originally spawned.  It was stinky and buggy and seriously not okay.

I couldn’t believe it, but I found myself somewhere I never thought I would go.  I was super recycler and I was secretly researching disposable diaper alternatives.  I was becoming “one of those moms.”  I think there is a secret annoyance that mothers who use disposable diapers have for cloth diaper users because as mothers we are all so overworked and sleep deprived and really trying to do a very difficult job that is on a wicked 24/7 schedule with no vacation days.  And to add washing out poop and pee is asking quite a bit when you can have the convenience of just throwing it away and being done with it in under a minute.  If I stop using disposable diapers, then am I making all the disposable diaper mothers wonder if I think I am superior or trying to out-mother them?

As a parent, I have spent a lot of time looking at all of the different theories on how to raise babies, and I always come back to the middle option.  My kids sleep in cribs, but if there are unusual circumstances, I have no trouble with them in our bed every once in a while for part of the night.  I have nursed both Eli and Ari, but both also got a nightly bottle of formula to give me a break.  I had a midwife and an epidural.  I am okay with Ari watching TV as long as it is educational.  I have never been good at listening to babies scream in their room for endless amounts of time alone, but some timed fussing I can deal with.  The list goes on.  And I decided to apply this way of thinking to my new diaper solution.   After talking to mom friends and researching my options I decided to go with the diaper that embodies my parenting philosophy and use the hybrid of diapers — g diapers.  They are a bit more high maintenance in that you have a few steps to follow, but it is so worth it because you get to….flush away the poop!  No more poop in the trash can.  No more black plague in the garage.  I am pretty excited.

And there is the whole issue of it taking hundreds of years for diapers to decompose.   From my research I found lots of conflicting, very strong opinions on the subject of diapers.  G diapers are biodegradable, and if you don’t flush them, you can compost them or throw them away, and know they will turn into compost within a month.  But they do take water to flush them down the toilet.  And the diapers are still requiring quite a bit of energy to be produced.  And, they do come in a plastic package that is not recyclable.  So, I don’t feel high and mighty.  I think those who use cloth diapers deserve the feeling of making the most responsible diaper decision.  For now, I am enjoying having a house with less poop in it.