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

Shave and a Haircut

An inner voice started whispering something about it being time for a haircut around the time O insisted on having his hair put up for dinner. It's always been a debate: go to the gym or stay home and cut O's hair. One option makes me feel healthy, the other just makes me feel anx

ious and itchy. Finally Friday night I managed to find energy enough to do both.

Haircuts have always been a bit of a struggle-- nothing epic, which means they're also nothing a bit of youtube can't handle. We brought up O's favourite video. You got it-- MahnaMahna (I've never felt comfortable with spelling it that way but whoever posted the video clip did). O is a bit obsessed. We had to put him on MahnaMahna detox after I came home from the hospital with S. O's sitter had let him watch it for about a half hour straight and it took us two weeks to get the high out of his system.

So we set up the laptop, set up youtube, and I fired up the beard trimmer. Nothing but class around here. Things went pretty well until Andrew asked me to trim up some longer hairs that hte clippers hadn't gotten around his face. He went to get the scissors for me to use but I figured I'd give it another pass with the trimmer. Problem was I'd forgotten that I had taken off the clipper guide to trim around O's ears and neck. I started to take a pass at the longer hairs with the trimmer but the look of horror on Andrew's face accompanied by a very loud, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING????" stopped me before I got too far.

Instant flashback to when I was cutting Lauritz's hair in high school and did the same thing. Fortunately for O, he just looks like he has a bit of early onset male pattern baldness-- on one side of his head. We blended it a bit and it doesn't look nearly as disastrous as Andrew's reaction would have led me to believe. Unfortunately for Lauritz, I'd started on the side of his head and just made him look like he had mange. I'm not sure how long it took for him to forgive me, if it's ever happened.

Here's O getting ready to do the big reveal.

Sneak peek.

Should I put a matching bald spot on the other side just to even things out?

Ah-hah!

Ever since this little guy came into my life, my mind has been going absolutely crazy with all kinds of projects I want to complete. I've started having to carry a notebook to bed every night because if I don't write down all the things I want to make and do, I keep myself up trying to remember them all. I've come to think of S as my unofficial muse and couldn't figure out what it was about him that has unleashed this force in me. Well, apparently it's all just biological. Andrew found an article that explains exactly what's been going on (click on the link in the previous sentence to read the article). It's a much less romantic explanation-- my brain is growing as opposed to my baby boy being some kind of inspiring angel to me.

I think I'm going to still hold on to a bit of the more romantic explanation. O's birth seemed to unleash this amazing capacity to love and S's gift seems to be this amazing desire to create. Best part-- I actually am completing some of the projects.

Marie and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

As I went to bed last night and made the "woe is me" list in my head, this rash wasn't even on there. Just remembered it this morning and figured it at least gave me a photo to put up with this post. I know I'm allergic to nickel but apparently I'm also allergic to very cheap 1 Euro acrylic scarves with pretty little butterflies on them. Next time I'll try one without butterflies.

So my day yesterday started going bad around about 12.01am. Ok, more like 12.45am when I crawled into the bed I'd made on the couch. I was feeling sick and didn't want to keep Andrew up so I made my home there for the night. I was so excited to be in bed so early and had high hopes for the night. That lasted about as long as it took for my dream to take a really really bad turn. At 3am I woke up freaked out and wanting my bed. Felt like a little kid as I took the frightening long walk down the hall in the dark to the safety of the parents' bed except this time I'm the parent.

So crawled into bed with Andrew and drifted off again, no problem, until 4am when S woke up screaming. He's normally good about sleep during the night so I indulged him and gave him some milk. Felt much less indulgent at 4.45am when he was refusing to go back to sleep and I was falling asleep holding him. Finally got him down and drifted back to sleep again for about ten minutes before some crazy guy started yelling for Diego to come outside now-- right outside each of our bedroom windows. I have no idea who Diego is but apparently he lives in our building because the crazy guy then decided to go and ring every single apartment's buzzer at least twice until Diego gave in and talked to him. About the second time the buzzer rang I was considering putting hate mail in Diego's mailbox if he didn't take care of this. Finally heard the lift go up and down, front door to building open, and shouting stopped. Got a good four hours of sleep before we had to be up.

And that was just the night. Won't bore you with details but the day involved having to stay home with two cranky kids in order to let workmen come in and out of our flat to work on our patio. That involved lots of ringing the doorbell right after either child had fallen asleep or started crying, lots of dust everywhere, and lots of just being in the house with no way of escaping to let everyone work off their bad vibes.

I was so tired, so cranky, and still recovering from being sick and just didn't have the resources to deal with things. We had to take S up to the pediatrician and couldn't leave until after 7pm. That meant we didn't get out of there until about 8.30pm and had to find food. Managed to just barely miss any bus that would be helpful, finally got some food and found the last open bakery of the night for some bread but by the time we got home, got boys to bed, and cleaned up enough to eat, S was awake again and it was 11.30pm. I gave up one eating and decided to just pump some milk for S and head to bed but was too stressed to get more than a drop. Which made me feel more stressed and made even less milk come out. Gave up and went to bed thinking about all the things that had made the day so absolutely rotten (did I mention I read an article about a woman miscarrying just to make sure to make myself cry).

My one consolation for the day was that I got into bed before 2am-- a major accomplishment lately-- but then I stayed awake reliving and working through everything in my mind. And here's the thing (I hate that I say that but somehow can't stop myself), as I lay there I realized that the boys and I have this symbiotic relationship in which all of that frustration and self pity I carried around all day just got sucked up and magnified in their tiny little bodies that are still trying to figure out this world. They don't know how or why they're feeling so awful and so they don't know how to communicate it and solve it. I can lay in bed and list everything that went wrong so that I can blog about it and ask anyone who reads it to feel sorry for me or to sympathise with me so that I can feel better. But poor O just feels unhappy and can't decide if he wants to drink his milk out of his sippy cup or out of his bottle because neither one takes away that icky feeling he's had all day. Poor S just can't sleep because no matter how much he cries or suckles, he can't seem to get the comfort he needs because he doesn't know that his mama just couldn't find it to give to him. At the end of the day as I lay there thinking about all the things that went wrong, I couldn't help but think about all my boys that need me to get over myself and make it right for them. Sorry for such a long post. Needed to work through it all. Thanks for listening.

See that fine looking piece of technology? Who wants one of those? I did. Who got one of those? I did. Who is absolutely terrified to take it out of the box and actually use it? I am. Most expensive piece of desk decoration we'll own. Right next to the most expensive bookend we'll ever own, formerly known as our iPod (it's spirit is gone but it's body remains to hold various notebooks upright and in their place on our desk).

A wonderful man at Andrew's work decided to work a bit of his Catalan charm with the mobile phone shopgirl that he thinks has a thing for him. Apparently she does because he managed to wrangle up free iPhone 4's for himself, me, and Andrew when his name is called on the list we were on. Mine came Friday. I was a bit too sick and stressed to be very excited but eventually after the wee ones were in bed, I opened it and touched it. Beautiful. I loved it. And then the warnings came. As I caressed it and thought of our possibilities together, Andrew started to tell me about every review he'd read and every horror story he'd found about people who dropped it from ankle height and had the glass shatter. And how even some cases were no good because a speck of dirt could get in between the case and the phone and start working scratches into the glass that will eventually shatter it. And so I figured maybe touching it wasn't the best idea.

So here it sits. On the desk, in the box. I came home today and the box lid was off and it made me quite nervous all afternoon. I kind of jokingly told Andrew he'd made me a bit paranoid and afraid to use it. Instead of reassuring me, he quickly came back with a very sincere, "You should be." When I tell my friends this, they laugh. But then I realized that none of my friends have two little kids under 2 years, with one that has an incessant need to see rhinos on his father's smartphone.

The apple website was no comfort. They have a little video about the iPhone that shows the glass being put through its stress tests. At one point they bend the glass to an angle that would be about the angle my grandmother could make when trying to bend to put on her shoes. Not an impressive angle for a piece of paper, but for glass it's good. The only problem is that it was being bent at about the speed my grandmother could go when trying to put on her shoes, not the speed with which a toddler who wants to see rhinos would grab it and drop it.

At about 4.30am this morning I got a text message on my old phone saying my iPhone was all activated and ready to go and my stress level for the day went seriously up as I contemplated parting with my old phone and riding off into the future with my beautiful, sleek, and oh-so-fragile iPhone 4.