i started considering the authorship of this blog about two weeks ago to commemorate chief's one month birthday, and my one month foray into momming two babies. at that point, the opening paragraph in my mind had a lot to do with constantly crying babies, general exhaustion, and wishing i'd addressed my budding maternal desires two years ago with a puppy. i decided to give myself a little time to settle more into our new life before putting anything in writing my kids can later use as leverage in family therapy.
reese gets cozy with nani
bean and i had become very attached to our previous routine, but resenting reese for interrupting it wasn't getting us far. i gave myself a few pep talks about how crying babies are not a sign of total failure, and that it's just literally impossible to wholly fulfill both their needs at all times. that means there will be crying, there will be disappointment and discomfort for all three of us. that means reese will cry more than bean ever did as a baby, because i just can't pick him up and attend to him the moment he needs me to...sometimes not for several moments. this is all reese knows, but bean is getting some tough lessons in having her needs come second sometimes. however, i have found the kids are pretty forgiving and don't seem to hold it against me that they both have to wait most of the time to get exactly what they want. although, i swear they sometimes conspire together to wake up alternating hours all night long to punish me.
fortunately, i have been able to ease in rather gently this time around, with grandma jeannette just two floors away, my mom here to help with bean while chief was transitioning from hospital to home, and then david had two full weeks of paternity leave, which was great in many ways. this is the most time we've ever had off together since he started residency, and the most time he's had with the kids. after a brief period of adjustment to stay at home dadhood, david really brought his a-game, doting upon one or both kids around the clock so i could catch up on sleep.
i think this exercise allowed david to relate to my experiences in a way he hadn't before...you can be the most all-star parent, but until you stay at home and have a kid totally your responsibility for at least 24 straight hours, you really can't grasp the essence of parenting. we're not talking sacrifice in terms of fewer late nights at the bar. parenting is the ongoing act of ignoring or defying the base of maslow's heirarchy, to never eat when you are hungry, sleep when you are tired, or pee when your bladder is about to explode, to put those basic needs on hold every second of your life because those needs of your child, and even lesser needs of your child, must be met first. also, it's required that you're always covered head to toe in some combination of poop, pee, vomit, boogers, and food with a healthy dose of diaper cream caked under your fingernails, and you must be very proficient at using all of your appendages as hands. days run together in a blur of diaper changes, swaddling, nail clipping, breast feeding, pumping, nap times, story times, meal times, play times... of course, it is this profundity and consistency of sacrifice that makes raising kids so incredibly rewarding...only that degree of investment can make something as simple as a smile or a coo so heartwarming and valuable.
however, this is precisely why neither i nor david feel we're particularly suited to stay at home parenthood. it sounds brash, but we're just not wired to fully devote ourselves to anyone or anything 24/7/365. it's not accidental that both of us have careers that we can essentially leave at work half the days of the month, spending the other half of the days focused fully and without distraction on our family. we both love what we do--work is our outlet, our personal time. we also do make a concerted effort, facilitated greatly by grandma living upstairs, to maintain the sanctity of our duality.
kids have so many needs and they are so lovable that it's easy to forget yourself and your marriage when you are so singularly devoted to raising them. it's a really difficult and fine, fine line to walk between giving them all they need, but also maintaining a sense of self, and a strong relationship with your partner. however, i think david and i would both make the argument that continuing to develop your own personal identity as well as nurturing your relationship is key to successful parenting and a healthy family life. we just happen to be people who find that very difficult when home all the time with the kids. i once again have to give props to the moms and dads out there who do make a career of parenting...a round of applause, nay, a standing ovation for those of you who can somehow forgo your needs, luxuries, and privacies to provide your little ones all the love and care they deserve every moment of their lives. i don't know how you do it, but more people like you in the world might make it a better place.
kids have so many needs and they are so lovable that it's easy to forget yourself and your marriage when you are so singularly devoted to raising them. it's a really difficult and fine, fine line to walk between giving them all they need, but also maintaining a sense of self, and a strong relationship with your partner. however, i think david and i would both make the argument that continuing to develop your own personal identity as well as nurturing your relationship is key to successful parenting and a healthy family life. we just happen to be people who find that very difficult when home all the time with the kids. i once again have to give props to the moms and dads out there who do make a career of parenting...a round of applause, nay, a standing ovation for those of you who can somehow forgo your needs, luxuries, and privacies to provide your little ones all the love and care they deserve every moment of their lives. i don't know how you do it, but more people like you in the world might make it a better place.
so, while we enjoyed our two week stint as a stay at home family, david was itching to get back to medicine, and i was ready to see if i could take on the two kids myself. the transition was difficult, but not nearly so bad as i'd imagined, largely because bean somehow morphed into a mature young lady practically overnight. as i suspected, the first few times i fed reese she was absolutely hysterical, he was already hysterical, and all of these hysterics made me a little hysterical. i am a career prioritizer, yet i was really torn between feeding my infant so he could live, and consoling my baby so she and i wouldn't be permanently traumatized.
i wanted to explain to her that this little lump was a stranger to me, too, that i didn't want to have to interrupt our playtime to feed him, or disrupt our routine in any way to accommodate his few but pressing needs. after devoting every second of my life for almost a year to, intentionally or not, growing and feeding and nurturing this bond with my daughter, this new baby felt like an imposter to both of us. of course, the situation is riddled with guilt, guilt that i have to take any time away from my beautiful, wonderful little girl, and guilt that i don't have the resources to devote the kind of attention bean got to reese...in fact, he's often kind of ignored. for weeks it seemed like one or both of them was always crying, a constant reminder that, at any given time, i'm not a good enough parent as far as one (or both) of them are concerned, when all i'm doing is not eating/sleeping/peeing to ensure just the opposite. that's tough.
reese gets cozy with nani
rather than allowing myself to spiral into an ocean of self-pity, i decided to sack up. given the continued shitty job market, i don't have my ticket to half time parenting, so i decided i'd better figure out how the hell all those other moms of two (or more) out there are making it work, many of them looking pretty effortless. and you know, it's gotten much better. like all of parenting, adding another to the mix successfully seems to come down to surrendering ideals, flexibility, and finding a routine that works for everyone.
bean and i had become very attached to our previous routine, but resenting reese for interrupting it wasn't getting us far. i gave myself a few pep talks about how crying babies are not a sign of total failure, and that it's just literally impossible to wholly fulfill both their needs at all times. that means there will be crying, there will be disappointment and discomfort for all three of us. that means reese will cry more than bean ever did as a baby, because i just can't pick him up and attend to him the moment he needs me to...sometimes not for several moments. this is all reese knows, but bean is getting some tough lessons in having her needs come second sometimes. however, i have found the kids are pretty forgiving and don't seem to hold it against me that they both have to wait most of the time to get exactly what they want. although, i swear they sometimes conspire together to wake up alternating hours all night long to punish me.
bean turns 1!!!
and, life has gotten easier. little things like the umbilical cord falling off and the circumcision healing cut minutes off diapering, which adds up throughout the day. reese is sleeing better with every passing night, often putting his sister to shame. bean no longer throws tantrums when i feed reese and has gotten even more proficient at entertaining herself around the apartment. with such a tiny baby around, my sweet little bean all of a sudden seems so big. huge! her hands and feet that always seemed so small are suddenly giant. and she is turning into a real little girl...starting to cruise bipedally, doing her animal noises in spanish and english, drinking cow's milk, always adding to her expression and communication. she doesn't have her own words yet as monolingual kids do at this age, but she understands and follows commands in both languages, so we're not very concerned about her language development. she speaks her own languge that is full of inflection, tone, color and cadence...it's just not spanish or english. yet.
the big boy!
bean makes a break for the horizon (lake ontario)
bean is still waking once at night to eat, unfortunately, and continues to refuse holding a bottle or feeding herself. she goes absolutely apesh*t if you place a full bottle in front of her without holding it to her mouth. she'll actually dive for it mouth first, but refuses to use her hands. she is the most dextrous, meticulous little child, so this issue is purely behavioral. at this point, it's just not a battle worth fighting. we're taking on the sleep issues first! she's still toothless as well... however, given how smoothly she's transitioned to the tremendous change of having a little brother around and sharing her parents (she always has a smile and a kiss for reese without prompting, wishes she could play with him all the time), we can cut her a little slack on those minor issues. besides, her big gummy smile is really adorable.
and, life has gotten easier. little things like the umbilical cord falling off and the circumcision healing cut minutes off diapering, which adds up throughout the day. reese is sleeing better with every passing night, often putting his sister to shame. bean no longer throws tantrums when i feed reese and has gotten even more proficient at entertaining herself around the apartment. with such a tiny baby around, my sweet little bean all of a sudden seems so big. huge! her hands and feet that always seemed so small are suddenly giant. and she is turning into a real little girl...starting to cruise bipedally, doing her animal noises in spanish and english, drinking cow's milk, always adding to her expression and communication. she doesn't have her own words yet as monolingual kids do at this age, but she understands and follows commands in both languages, so we're not very concerned about her language development. she speaks her own languge that is full of inflection, tone, color and cadence...it's just not spanish or english. yet.
the big boy!
bean makes a break for the horizon (lake ontario)
bean was so excited to see her first horses she forgot what noise horses make and barked at them instead.
bean is still waking once at night to eat, unfortunately, and continues to refuse holding a bottle or feeding herself. she goes absolutely apesh*t if you place a full bottle in front of her without holding it to her mouth. she'll actually dive for it mouth first, but refuses to use her hands. she is the most dextrous, meticulous little child, so this issue is purely behavioral. at this point, it's just not a battle worth fighting. we're taking on the sleep issues first! she's still toothless as well... however, given how smoothly she's transitioned to the tremendous change of having a little brother around and sharing her parents (she always has a smile and a kiss for reese without prompting, wishes she could play with him all the time), we can cut her a little slack on those minor issues. besides, her big gummy smile is really adorable.
story time
i'm ashamed to say that i have little to chronicle about reese...i blinked and he's suddenly 7 weeks old. if he were our first child, i'd be recording every noise, every yawn, every movement. for better or worse, he's taken the back seat to his big sister in a lot of ways. we relish his nap times and don't take advantage of his awake time unless she's napping (the loss of naptime as my personal time is really a big change...now one or the other's nap time is the only one on one time i get with either of them or to do anything around the apartment, which means it's no longer my sliver of alone time during the day). i realized a few days ago i haven't so much as shaken a rattle in the poor kid's face, it's just been all i can do to manage both of them with some suggestion of normalcy.
the boys sharing a siesta
he likes to sleep in this "tripod" position.
typical bean, applauding herself and doing crazy things with her tongue...
unfortunately, chicago weather has not cooperated much this season, and it seems like 48/52 weeks this year we had to stay indoors. grandma jeannette did just invest in the cadillac of jogging strollers for us, so now at least bean and i (and dad sometimes) can get out a little while each day to move around. we have a great time.
not surprisingly then, most of the summer has been spent cooped up in our tiny apartment. but, a fortuitous stroke of scheduling allowed david to join us last week for a great trip up to pultneyville to visit the higgs clan. with our luxurious minivan and one grandma per child, the trip was actually quite painless. we had a wonderful couple of days in rural new york, spending quality time with family and having nothing to do but walk around the country and relax. reese was very happy in heidi's arms almost the entire trip. apparently, he loves tai chi.
after a brief pit stop at niagara falls on the way home (babies were underwhelmed), the kids and i stayed on in michigan while dad went back to work in chicago. his father's day gift is an apartment all to himself! it's funny, because growing up in the suburbs i would have much rather lived in a city, but gosh, it is nice to come home. everything is so lush and green, the streets are wide and empty, and there are huge trees everywhere. we wake up to the sound of birds chirping and the smell of freshly cut grass, rather than the sound of sirens and the smell of sewage and old frying grease.
it has been a nice opportunity for mom and dad to both catch up on sleep, just unfortunately in different beds. it's also been my first chance to really bond with reese. he's a really sweet, good natured little boy and i really fell in love with him (took me about that long to feel that way about bean, too, for the record). all the open space is great--bean can't get enough of climibing up stairs, and a big grassy lawn is just like heaven. reese is pretty immobile, but the second he gets fussy, i no more than open a door and the breeze casts some sort of spell on him. breaks my heart a little that i have to bring them back to our tiny city apartment where it'll soon be too hot to venture outside at all. some day, we will live among trees again.
however, he is definitely growing in many ways! first of all, he's huge. i don't know how much he weighs, but he looks like bean did when she was twice his age. he's doing great with his eye contact and smiles. little grins have turned into big open mouthed smiles, and he's always trying to talk. he is definitely noisier than bean, who was totally silent but for the 8 hours of screaming before we learned how to control her colic. reese is very verbal all hours of the day, and sounds much like a constipated turkey. asleep or awake, he's almost constantly grunting, chortling, gobbling or squeaking in some way. this has led david and i to become totally dependent on his white noise machine for our own sleep--to drown him out.
he likes to sleep in this "tripod" position.
it occured to me around his 3rd week that not all babies are colicky--in fact, a majority are not, and that we might be able to avoid it on round two. i'm thrilled to report that while reese, like most babies, has a fussy period a couple of hours each evening (i'm rocking him with my foot as i type), he's consolable and definitely not colicky. thus, we've been able to avoid the pacifier, a tool i'm a large proponent of and which saved me from throwing bean off the balcony in her first months, but which now has become a large pain in the ass since she's totally dependent on it for sleep and refuses to put it in her own mouth. as a result, there are still nights where i'm out of bed a few times just to put in her pacifier. large bummer. i am however very reliant on the swing, which is the best babysitter. if he's fussy during the day, he goes right to the swing to calm down, because it's impossible to rock him for hours and take care of bean. that swing is a lifesaver.
typical bean, applauding herself and doing crazy things with her tongue...
so, pacifier free, reese has gone from 45 minute naps to stretches of 4-6 hours overnight (not with the swing going constantly, as we did for bean the first few months), which is great. ironically, we think of newborns as being this huge drain, but when i need to catch up on sleep or chores, i actually have a grandma look after bean. as it turns out, once you're used to functioning on weird sleep cycles and have emotionally transitioned into parenthood, newborns are a piece of cake. they have no schedule, they sleep all the time and everywhere, so life can basically continue as usual, just with a few feedings and diaper changes thrown in.
unfortunately, chicago weather has not cooperated much this season, and it seems like 48/52 weeks this year we had to stay indoors. grandma jeannette did just invest in the cadillac of jogging strollers for us, so now at least bean and i (and dad sometimes) can get out a little while each day to move around. we have a great time.
while this stroller is probably more luxurious than any *car* i've ever driven, you can imagine it's somewhat difficult to navigate this monstrosity around a city. while it allows us all to leave the house together somewhat seamlessly, which cannot be underestimated in terms of value, it is a PROCESS. i have to add another half hour on top of the requisite double baby hour cushion if i want to be on time for anything (and am still always late)...i wonder constantly who the hell timed handicap accessible doors. i have the use of my legs and i have to SPRINT to get through the door, and it still shuts on us halfway through. my lower half is covered in bruises from all the wiggling and wedging we do through too-tight spaces. many el stops are not handicap friendly, and i've gotten stranded more than once at those that are supposed to be because of dysfunctional elevators. while many passers-by will open doors and risk life and limb to hold elevators (with the requisite comment about either the stroller's size, the closeness in age of the babies, and usually both), many are generally impatient with strollers and children in general. i spend a lot of time smiling apologetically while the kids scream bloody murder on packed el cars, and smiling condescendingly as i thank people through gritted teeth for sharing their idiotic opinions about breast feeding in public.
uncle zach considers adopting reese
not surprisingly then, most of the summer has been spent cooped up in our tiny apartment. but, a fortuitous stroke of scheduling allowed david to join us last week for a great trip up to pultneyville to visit the higgs clan. with our luxurious minivan and one grandma per child, the trip was actually quite painless. we had a wonderful couple of days in rural new york, spending quality time with family and having nothing to do but walk around the country and relax. reese was very happy in heidi's arms almost the entire trip. apparently, he loves tai chi.
quiet time in the car
after a brief pit stop at niagara falls on the way home (babies were underwhelmed), the kids and i stayed on in michigan while dad went back to work in chicago. his father's day gift is an apartment all to himself! it's funny, because growing up in the suburbs i would have much rather lived in a city, but gosh, it is nice to come home. everything is so lush and green, the streets are wide and empty, and there are huge trees everywhere. we wake up to the sound of birds chirping and the smell of freshly cut grass, rather than the sound of sirens and the smell of sewage and old frying grease.
it has been a nice opportunity for mom and dad to both catch up on sleep, just unfortunately in different beds. it's also been my first chance to really bond with reese. he's a really sweet, good natured little boy and i really fell in love with him (took me about that long to feel that way about bean, too, for the record). all the open space is great--bean can't get enough of climibing up stairs, and a big grassy lawn is just like heaven. reese is pretty immobile, but the second he gets fussy, i no more than open a door and the breeze casts some sort of spell on him. breaks my heart a little that i have to bring them back to our tiny city apartment where it'll soon be too hot to venture outside at all. some day, we will live among trees again.
bean helps nani in the yard
so, that is about it for us! overall, things are going very well, and we're definitely settling in to being a family of four. we like it. while some things get easier every day, some also get harder...i'm sure a year from now with both of them up and about i'll be longing for the days where at least one of them would say put! as it turns out, you can be parent of the year, but until you have two kids, you're really just "dabbling" in parenting, as my aunt linda put it. there are a lot of significant adjustments and yes, a lot of the time it's hard and really unpleasant, but i would say most of the time we do okay, and even manage to have fun together. i love my family. more adventures soon to come!
so, that is about it for us! overall, things are going very well, and we're definitely settling in to being a family of four. we like it. while some things get easier every day, some also get harder...i'm sure a year from now with both of them up and about i'll be longing for the days where at least one of them would say put! as it turns out, you can be parent of the year, but until you have two kids, you're really just "dabbling" in parenting, as my aunt linda put it. there are a lot of significant adjustments and yes, a lot of the time it's hard and really unpleasant, but i would say most of the time we do okay, and even manage to have fun together. i love my family. more adventures soon to come!
