Clarification on "One of the Two"

Holly made a comment on my "One of Two" post that made me realize I should clarify and probably rescind some of the opinions expressed in that post. I sat back and had a good think about any specific examples I could find of friends whose blogs had turned into nothing but their children, and I couldn't think of any of my immediate friends. So I had to ask myself where this feeling came from and I realized it's from people I no longer really keep in touch with but just cyber stalk by clicking on links of friends of friends of friends, etc. I do have friends with blogs that do feature photos and information about their kids, but I always hear my friends' voices in their posts and so I've always loved them. The friends of friends of friends are really just cyber acquaintances and I never really cared too much about their kids anyways so they became an easy target for my ranting. Sorry about that.

I was thinking tonight as I cuddled with S, that the truth is I fell genuinely honored to know my friends' children and to hear about their lives-- not just because they are little mini extensions of my friends, but because they are all much better people than I am and they've only been doing this living thing for a few years. I didn't see what an honor it was to know them before because let's face it, I was a selfish person and was a bit bitter that no one would come visit us unless we had grandchildren to visit as well. Now I am still a selfish person but people have come to visit me and so I'm a bit less bitter and can see past myself and realize how amazing this whole family thing is.

The photos are just because who wants to read a blog post without photos and it seems a bit hypocritical to post more photos of my boys. In honor of the fact that we're catching up on Madmen, I give you our Madmen avatars. Comforting to see that Andrew looks like a terrorist in any era.

One of the Two

So I used to always get annoyed when my friends' blogs would turn into endless parades of photos of their children and stories of their children doing things that I mastered at least twenty years ago, if not thirty. And then I had a child. And I would still get annoyed, just a bit less. I still wanted to know more about what was going on with the friends I love but at least could share in the excitement of watching their children (who I love as well) grow. I kind of made a silent vow to not lose myself completely in post after post about the latest trick O mastered or developmental milestone S hit or child-oriented activity we did. But here I am, completely lost because let's face it-- I haven't learned much new in a while; I don't say the cutest things; and pictures of me just kind of depress me (do I really look like that?).

And the fact is we started this blog as a way to stay a bit more connected with everyone we're so far away from. There are a few grandparents included in that and a few other people who actually request more info about our children and not so much info about us. I mean, seriously, do you care that my eyebrows are growing in? That's the kind of stuff I have going on now.

All that said, the point of this post is to introduce you to O.

• He was 85cm, 11.2kg at his last appointment with Dr Hernandez, with whom he is getting braver and braver.
• He can get the most bright red diaper rash in the blink of an eye (or the few minutes before we change his caca nappy) but doesn't let that stop him from eating spicy foods. It should probably stop us from letting him.
• A couple weeks ago I counted about 25 words he knew but by now there are too many to count.
• He calls mandarins "juice" and can go through at least three whole ones in one go.
• He loves to lay on top of S to give him kisses but sometimes does it with his bum in S's face.
• He tries to climb the doorframe like Papa taught him but hasn't quite mastered the finer points of balance and grip.
• He goes completely nuts over his friend Martina's doll stroller and so we finally broke down and bought him his own for fear that he would wear hers to shreds.
• He can be amazingly still and silent while hiding in the curtains.
• One of his first words was "aweeee", which is his version of "put it away" and which makes me so proud.
• When he said "mommy" for the first time a few weeks ago, it seemed to be a real struggle for him and then surprised him when he got the whole word out. It kills me to hear it because he still manages to maintain this intonation of complete focus when getting out that last syllable.
• He spends a good amount of time each day sitting in his crib in the dark saying things like, "Mama, no. Papa, no. Cat, no. Nana, no...."
• When his biscuits break while he's holding them he lets out the most mournful "bwwoooookke" that it has more than once brought tears to my eyes.
• We have to hide leftover spaghetti noodles in the back of the fridge otherwise he opens it and begs to have one and then cries "bwwwoooookkee" when they invariably break.
• He must always be given biscuits in twos-- one for his eating hand and one for his holding hand.
• He counts to two but begins with a word that sounds more like "five".
• He gets very excited by tractors, trucks, buses, dogs, balls, coches (cars), and rhinos.
• He loves Barbapapa and goes through times when we must read it in French and in Spanish at least twice a day.
• Whenever he hears S stirring, he runs in the room and flips the light above S's crib on and yells, "Hola!"
• He doesn't seem phased at all by sucking on a lemon.
• When he concentrates on something, his lower lip starts protruding more and more.
• He loves to read and will go through the entire flat pulling out books and flipping through them like somewhere in there is the key to life itself if only he could find it.
• He can't quite understand why Mama would read magazines that don't have pictures of dogs or trucks or rhinos.
• He picks up Cat's brush and walks through the flat calling for her and then seems puzzled as to why she might avoid the boy with the thousands of tiny metal bristles calling her name.
• We can always tell when he spills something by the "uh-oh" he utters and perhaps him scampering to get his mop and bucket.

That's O. Soon I'll get a post up about S. And then, just so that I don't become one of those people, I'll put up a post about some of the things

I've been working on (warning, most are projects for the two).

P.S. We had one small victory in our quest for legality here.

Parent of Two

This last weekend in our latest attempt at improving our legal status here, Andrew went to visit Nate and Claudia in Cambridge. Andrew went. I did not, nor did either of our little darlings. That meant I got a little taste of the single parent/multiple children flavor of life. I thought I would be exhausted. I didn't know when or how things like showers would happen. I was looking forward to losing several pounds because of my lack of time and energy to actually eat. I figured I would be crashing into bed nightly as soon as the boys were down because I didn't have the energy to do anything else except for the pedicure I'd been hoping to get done. I had so many expectations for the weekend and felt more than a little trepidation-- although it should be noted I fully supported Andrew leaving and even felt like I pushed him into it a bit.

What happened and what didn't? Showers turned into baths taken while O "watched" Thomas the Tank Engine (I can't really say O watched the TV since his version of doing so is more like standing by the bathtub and making me play with plastic boats while shaving my legs but at least he wasn't hiding in the shower curtain while I tried to shower). I didn't really eat except for when friends graciously invited me over for lunch or I broke down and tried to fancy up some frozen pizza with a bottle of Perrier and arugula. I stayed up until 1, 2, and 3am in an effort to get a few things done. None of those things were a pedicure, however. And I think I had at least one moment every day of complete and utter breakdown-- but they were just moments.

But most of all what happened is I remembered how much I genuinely love my boys and how lucky I am to have a job that can completely exhaust me but also completely fulfill me. On one of the days I was in the kitchen cleaning while O w

as drawing. I heard him start to get frustrated and came in to see what was wrong. He was sitting with his paper on S's lap trying to push a marker into S's hand so they could draw together. After trying to explain that S couldn't draw yet, which O was not accepting as plausible, I placed the marker in S's hand and helped him do a few little scratches. It was one of those moments I wanted to melt into forever with my boys.

And as a bonus in this post-- here's a photo of S I took while trying to get him to wake up. Seriously took twenty of these with the flash right in his face and didn't even get so much as an eyebrow twitch.

Parents of Two

The other night I found myself walking very slowly up and down the street staring at the ground at about midnight. A man walked by me and gave me a funny look and I had a quick glimpse of who he probably thought I was-- drunk British tourist trying to find my way home. What I actually was was a mother of two searching for a lost dummy for her three month old. As I came home empty handed, I had one of those moments where I realize that somehow, somewhere between high school and here, I became a mother. I remember telling Andrew after S was born that it was so weird to me that my obituary would now read "mother of two". Morbid, but I find it fascinating.

I had another "I'm a mom?!?" moment the other day. This time instead of being surprised by it, I felt so genuinely happy and grateful for it. The other day I was sitting on the couch in the nursery with the boys. O was drinking his bedtime milk and sitting next to me and S was in my lap watching him. O very casually reached up and put his arm around S and sat there drinking his bottle and side hugging his brother. It was the most natural little gesture for him but it was one of those moments that I wanted to melt into for eternity. I've been reading a physics book about extra dimensions and I'm so grateful science backs up a belief that I hold and that I need to be true. I need to believe that time is not linear and that somewhere someplace moments like that still exist. I'm grateful for my belief in a God that exists and that loves His children and that with my beliefs there are also many many things I don't understand because then I can still believe that those moments are not lost to the past, but are held somewhere in the eternities waiting for me to visit them again.

A Word of Warning

I need to warn you that if you click on the link below, you are going to be confronted with a whole lot of photos. There are a few reasons for this that I feel like I need to explain out of fear that if I don't, I will be considered narcissistic or at the very least one of those people who thinks everyone in the world wants to see pictures of their children.

First, I have this whole system of organizing photos in which I copy all the best photos from each month into a separate folder so that I don't have to go through every photo searching for the one or two that I'd like to print. Then when I want to upload some photos to FB or Picasa, I can just do the whole folder without having to go back through all my photos just to find the good ones.

Second, at the very end of July I found myself with a new baby and a new camera, both of which I loved very much. Given the whole "new baby" part, I didn't quite get around to exploring the whole "new camera" part until August. This meant lots and lots of photos in August. And then lots and lots of photos in September. Having the new camera stolen slowed me down a bit, but the arrival of a second new camera ensured the photographic juices kept flowing.

Third, I am just way too obsessive compulsive to only post some photos from the "Best of August 2010" folder. I have to post them all. There are several minor variations on a theme but I couldn't choose which ones I liked best and always had a voice in the back of my head saying things like, "Maybe you'll want to print a couple versions of this scene later so you can hang a series of prints. Better just put all the shots in one folder." I like to think this is akin to Picasso's Las Meninas series of paintings. Anyone who has visited us and heeded our recommendation to see the Picasso museum knows what I'm talking about. For those who haven't-- Picasso did a whole series of different variations of his interpretation of Diego Velazquez's Las Meninas. Over and over, the three girls, the dog, the midget, the painter, just slightly different each time. These are my photos, minus the artistic genius.

Fourth, I am just way too obsessive compulsive to skip a month. I've already made some concessions in just posting the giant folder from August on Picasa and not submitting the FB world to the full version. Skipping the month altogether would just haunt me. I'm already a bit disturbed by the fact that I skipped August on FB by accident and have only been posting the latest albums in FB.

Finally, I know there are a few blog readers who are not regular FB users or even on FB at all or just forgot their FB password (Abram). For this reason I put the links in both places (I'm winking at you, Dad and Lauritz). And I have received requests for more photos but I absolutely do not think the world needs to see photos of my children. I love them and they are perfect to and for me, but you certainly don't have to agree. We can still be friends.

Without further ado, Los Meninos.

August 2010

September 2010, part 1

September 2010, part 2