As Patrick cleared his place after dinner tonight a miscalculation caused his half empty glass of milk to travel south-by-southeast, bouncing as it went. Patrick instantly bleated, "I did that on! purpose!" as is his irritating habit whenever he makes a mistake.
I said, "It's just a spill" and I [...]
There is a door off our kitchen that opens onto a screened porch. It is a nice little space; shady, quiet and it overlooks the exact spot in our yard where Nature defeats Man as the raspberry bushes and maidenhair ferns sweep down from the woods every summer to engulf [...]
We had three or four disturbed nights here. Really disturbed. Like, Edward woke up around midnight on Sunday and proceeded to cry for four hours. I gave him Motrin. I offered milk. I coated his eyelids in Aquaphor mixed with a little Aveeno anti-itch cream. I refilled the humidifier. I [...]
So that was brief. Seriously, how long did my post-vacation haze of well-rested contentment last? Five minutes?
Steve, Caroline and Edward have all been felled by colds. Caroline woke up from her nap yesterday with a fever over 104 (รก la bum, but still - I could have baked a cookie [...]
I was on vacation.
Specifically, I was on the best vacation I have ever taken in my entire life; including (after judicious consideration) that time my father took me to Disneyworld for my eighth birthday. We went to [edit: Tyler Place in] Vermont and it was amazing. As I announced on [...]
Even before Patrick became a subject for whispered medical consultation I had lobbied to forego the big kid-filled birthday party this year. He was supposed to be at invention camp last week (missed the whole thing, poor pumpkin) so I suggested we have our good friends over for cake and [...]
I had to swear on a stack of Captain Underpants books (the library cart stopped outside the hospital room. Patrick took one look at the string of Words We Do Not Say on the cover said, "Well THIS looks interesting") that I would wake Patrick up at midnight and four [...]
Patrick was admitted to Children's last night with a bacterial infection of unknown origin and location.
Good thoughts appreciated.
How are you feeling, Patrick?
And when your temperature goes above 103 again?
We are on day six seven of Patrick's plague and... everything is mildly awful. I took these pictures of him after we returned from the doctor as it was [...]
I keep trying to figure out where I incurred the gypsy's wrath. Target parking lot? Family changing area at the Y? I am usually so careful to avoid an Evil Eye that I am baffled. But cursed I am, so I must have done something to the caravan at some [...]
I spent five and a half years with Patrick and never once learned where the children's hospital is located. Seventeen months of Caroline and Edward and I now have a favorite parking lot there (red) and a favorite parking level (E.) I also have a favorite grievance, which goes like [...]
This is the reason why I am not a journalist. Uh, one of the many, I should say, other reasons include my inability to talk to strangers, my lack of tenacity, the fact that I will happily take no for an answer and that I hate things that are sad. [...]
Patrick says, "What is that word I am looking for? Translucent? Imaginative? Carbon? No! I know!"
I wait.
"Well?" I finally ask.
"Well, what?"
"Well, what was the word you were looking for?"
"I'd rather not tell you. Do I have to? Do you insist that I tell you?"
And I say, no, I guess not, [...]
Category: Twin Study; Subheading: Blueberry Yogurt; Time elapsed: ten minutes-
Note any, uh, differences?
I wish I could post a similarly aged picture of Patrick so we could do a singleton/gender/intrasibling/tidynik cross-analysis but there are no pictures of a toddler Patrick feeding [...]
For about five days the move from spacesaver highchairs with trays to spacesaver highchairs at the table worked well. Caroline demanded to be picked up the minute she was done and Edward would remove his socks at the end of every meal and clean up after himself with them. You know. As one does.
Patrick is stoic.
Not when I am ruining his life by forcing him to stop building whatever he is building in order to go to school - you know, like he has done every single weekday since September and yet every day: unhappy surprise! - but when it comes to sheer [...]
I have just set the kitchen timer for twenty minutes. If whatever I do not really have to say cannot be said in that time it will go unsaid. Seriously. I felt embarrassed when I realized how long, how very very long that last post wound up being. My lack [...]
Last year Patrick presented me with a homemade Mother's Day card that featured the memorable line: I love my mommy she is so so sweet she is my favorite mommy... But more I love my daddy.
This reminded me ever so slightly of my friend Christine's friend Kristine's father who [...]
Oh damn it.
For a better (read: not completely wrong) explanation of the cranial nerves, check out Katherine's gossamer comment at the end of my last post. She nudges me from nerve VII to V and generally sorts everything out; all while giving me a nice scalp massage and without [...]
I liked the neurologist. The last time I saw a neurologist she neither sat down nor took her hand off the doorknob as she breezed in to tell me that although I probably could not feel my pinkie it was not caused by any damage to the major nerves; so [...]
Thank you for the design input. I squashed the banner, moved the title around, spent three hours trying to get the pretty dropdown link menu to work before giving it the digital finger... I think that's it. I would love to make the text column wider but typepad charges another [...]
The consensus seems to be that I cannot get rid of the stupid curly hair that is currently surfing above the normal wavy hair; I can only try to cram it down somehow. Damn it. Meanwhile Steve assures me that it actually is a big deal to replace all of [...]
Spring!
At last Caroline and Edward are able to go outside and gnaw on dirty rocks collected in their natural habitat rather than picked off the mud room floor. Turkeys are yet again treating our backyard like Woodstock. Steve can finally rake up all those dead leaves that somehow don't fall [...]
I am torn.
As it so happens I agree that the boys and the dominoes and Patrick and the scene at school was about childhood / exploring power / fumbling around with friendship / ins and outs. Briefly hurtful, maybe, but all very normal. We've had one of the kids over [...]
Sometimes I write a post and then I worry that I did a poor job of explaining myself. So I have kinda been following the comments on that last one with my face half-averted, lest someone blow up at me. My concern was that you would think I was mad [...]
I was sitting on the floor of Steve's office tonight; talking to my mother on the phone. Caroline ran towards me as fast as she could, both hands wrapped around one of the billion little things we have in this house that run on batteries and play thirty second bursts [...]
I took Caroline and Edward to Target the other day. While it is nice for them to leave the house every now and again (my secret to Raising Twins Without [Maternal] Tears? stay in the living room. seriously) it meant that I had to get in and get out like [...]
So far this is a pretty good Friday.
Patrick, for the first time in recorded history, woke up and then (I can hardly type the words) GOT DRESSED before coming downstairs. Usually he prefers to stay in his pajamas until his life is threatened so his appearance at the breakfast [...]
"Mr Gorbachev," said Caroline, "tear down this wall!"
Baby Jail is no more and a careful examination of this photo will tell you why. Late last week I glanced over from my guard tower, noted that both finkles were present and was about to return to the decadent self-indulgence of [...]
You might be right about the weather affecting my mood. The sun is out, the snow has melted and I no longer feel like lying on the floor with pennies over my eyes: when Cameron was in Egypt's land; let my Cameron gooooooooo. There was also a comment on that [...]
Old friends from Chicago are in town so we had them (plus child) and another couple (minus children) over last night. It's hard to keep conversation general with eight people stretched on either side of a rectangle (I wish we had a big round table but Steve - oddly - [...]
I need to put on my most comfortable pajamas, pour a rundlet of wine and watch as much Veronica Mars as I can squeeze into the remainder of my evening. I have developed a thing for Logan - I'm not proud of it but there is something about a poor [...]
Huh. So much for tasteful shoe ads. I... I am not sure what to say about the cloned milk thing. It just showed up this morning. I clicked on the link (thank you for the shoe clickage, by the way, it really helped - it is, incidentally, a two week [...]
I don't usually read my own blog posts for subtext but I couldn't help but notice a couple of glaring-yet-unspoken points from that last one:
1. I am subconsciously connecting Cricket's failure since Christmas to grow with her lump and it is freaking me out.
2. I have Tivo'd entire [...]
Back to Caroline's chest lump:
Before the doctor started examining Caroline for swampy ears he asked how she has been, in general, since her last visit. This gave me the opportunity to effortlessly call for the sidebar that I was going to introduce anyway - although I do recognize and sympathize [...]
I thought Caroline could not get any worse and then, last night, there she was - worse. She coughed so much she threw up. And later she was just screaming and screaming until I put her on my shoulder and started to jostle her in compound triple time, at which [...]
Patrick has a yurpy cough. Caroline has a yurpy cough plus a completely blocked nose (Mem. should have outfitted baby with larger nose) plus two molars just breaking through the gums. Edward... well, Edward looks ok (apart from various swollen toothy areas of his own) and he sounds ok; but [...]
At first I thought Steve was just being lazy about getting a vasectomy. I really did. I mean there are times when I will have sorted clean clothes into piles on our bed (mine, his, finks) only to come into our bedroom to find that he has chosen to crawl [...]
Last week I had an envy (an ahnvee) for cajun food and my friend Noelle was moaning about king cake (which she finally just whipped up - BEAUTIFULLY - on her own; I was purple and green and gold with admiration) so we decided to do a dinner here on [...]
When I was twenty I fell hopelessly in love with a guy named Julian. He was funny. He was smart. He was gorgeous and random and artistic and athletic and perfect. I had always kept the corner of my eye on him as he floated around campus, playing rugby and [...]
It's impossible to offer an opinion online without offending someone. And I want you to like me, I want everyone to like me (I probably need to work on this) so I have tried over the years to file down some of my edges. Whenever possible I limit my observations [...]
One minute Edward was sitting here eating oranges (confession: they were mandarin oranges in light syrup and therefore 137% sugar and I don't care; I like 'em) and the next he had slumped over in his seat having fallen into a gentle doze. This was a little odd since it [...]
I. It is with a head thunk that I acknowledge virtuously embracing Goodreads (reading is fundamental) while even more virtuously rebuffing Facebook (make new friends; keep the old; maintain both via constant online monitoring.) As you might recall I cited my compulsive nature; my inability to stop at just one... [...]
I have had insomnia my entire life. I am of the cannot-fall-asleep in the first place variety but once I am asleep I can usually stay asleep. I mean, provided that I am not woken up by Patrick's middle of the night theories on dark matter or Edward's sudden realization [...]
For a week I worried about which team would receive my valuable moral support in the event of a Ravens-Eagles Superbowl. On the one hand we have Donovan McNabb. I like Donovan McNabb. I like the way he came back after being benched and I like that he's a battered [...]
Flippy wanted to know who was born first (Caroline.) For some reason I mentioned this question to Steve and it lead to my discovering that Edward was born a full ten minutes later than I had thought. For a year I have told people - not a lot of people, [...]
Leaping nimbly over the fact that the surgeon (who swore he would call me yesterday morning but if not I was simply to call the office and they would pull him from the very bowels of hell to speak with me) was not actually scheduled to work yesterday and therefore... [...]
The surgeon examined Caroline for a minute or two and decided to get an ultrasound done on the mass. They called over to the hospital's radiology department and they fit her in immediately, which was nice.
"I have a little one year old baby here in clinic," said the receptionist over [...]
Caroline's mysterious chest lump is worrying me. I mentioned it at REDBOOK but the shortest possible version is: Caroline has a lump about an inch in diameter that has developed in the area of her left breast and her doctor thought that she should be seen by the pediatric surgeons. [...]
I knew before I even began my freshman year that I was going to be an English major. I possessed from childhood's earliest hour a laziness that passed beyond mere intellectual lassitude and transcended into the empyrean heights of pure torpescence, so I approached the need for a primary course [...]
Happy birthday, Caroline
Happy birthday, Edward
Happy birthday, gorgeous twinkly baby finks
We adore you.
PS The other half of the cake is pink. Extended Family Consensus: ugliest cake ever frosted.
[...]If you had asked me yesterday to name my most embarrassing naked moment I would have said it was that time in Utah when my loser boyfriend's high school friend's girlfriend's parents' friend accidentally got his penis stuck in my hair.
However, a new day always dawns, doesn't it?
Now if [...]
I threw the highchairs into the empty bathtub, stripped, and then climbed in after them. I clutched a sponge, a bottle of Palmolive and my beloved wooden floor scrubbing brush. As I started chipping away at the layers of dried sweet potato I tried to remember when I first dimly [...]
Updated at the end:
Chilblains. Definitely chilblains. See that shiny red toe on wikipedia? Mine is more purple (and therefore prettier) but other than the palette distinction it's like looking into one of those short angled mirrors they had in the shoe shoes of my childhood (and very helpful they [...]
If I had realized that Caroline and Edward would both be teething like little minks last week I would definitely have been less ambitious in my party planning. I had all of these things that I intended to do while they slept but they cleverly thwarted me by never sleeping. [...]
If I had gotten a new camera for my birthday instead of the koshigatana that Steve felt I needed I would be able to post this as a video (I also would not have blood stains on my mactop keyboard - but... oh well.) However, I am able to cut [...]
- Letters. Patrick acquired his wooden letters over a long period of time from various sources. There is a rather amusing story (if I do say so myself) attached to the initial purchase but for those of you who asked where to buy them I can direct you to [...]
I feel very fortunate to be Patrick's mother. I know that sounds cheesy and sometimes it is less true than others (4:05 pm - Patrick has been home from school for three minutes - he says "Can I have some Jarlsberg cheese and crackers" - I say "Oh, I'm sorry [...]
I noticed last night as I went up to Edward and then Caroline and then Edward and finally Edward again that their rooms seemed a bit chilly. Downright cold, actually, and I made a mental note to ask Steve what the deal was. Then I wondered if maybe I was [...]
How goes the party prepwork with my beautiful-but-scary birthday knives, you ask?
Great!
Steve did the gauze and tape. Patrick provided the superfluous bandaid. He also left the following oblique commentary on the floor of his bedroom.
[...]Caroline and Edward succumbed to head colds and Steve came home from his trip a day early. That sentence makes it sound like his return was the result of a generous and loving impulse but it was actually a coincidence.
When I said over the phone, "The babies are being [...]
Steve left yesterday for another long weekend that he will spend appreciating the magnificent changing foliage and the thwipppp sound an arrow makes as it zings from the bow. Technically he has been gone for about thirty-one hours but my calculations indicate that it has been just under eight years. [...]
Once upon a time there was a little girl who was very happy with her new pink hair bow; despite the fact that she had been dressed that morning in such an unlikely combination of colors as to prompt her mother to inquire whether her father had intended for her [...]
Steve's recent (misguided) foray into low-fat, high-fiber eating caused him to abruptly lose ten pounds last month. Maybe fifteen. His jeans would creep off his backside as he walked; revealing his underwear and forcing him to hoik his pants up a million times a day to keep from tripping. It [...]
When the dentist asks me tomorrow how I managed to chip my front tooth I will tell him that I do not know; however, this will be a lie. I do know but I refuse to admit that I found an old Charms BlowPop in my desk drawer this afternoon [...]
For those of you keeping score on Steve's waterfowl death trip I would say the current tally is:
Steve & Co: North Dakota: $3000
My mom, Patrick and I returned last night from a superspecialPatrickonlynobabies dinner out to a cryptic message from Steve.
"Your husband called," the babysitter said. "He [...]
If you had told me back when I was young and starry-eyed that a person could be married to someone with whom they were not in perfect accord on all things I would have been shocked. Shocked and horrified and forced to put down with shaking hands the Signet Regency [...]
I know people who successfully imposed schedules on their babies. One friend with twins swore by Gina Ford (yikes) and who am I (scary) to question (seriously) her success. Whatever (potentially dangerous regimen condemned by the AAP) works, right?
Personally I am much more comfortable being the imposee than the imposer, [...]
Wow. That was extremely kind of you, thank you so much. Patrick was... there are no words to adequately describe how excited Patrick was to get so many answers to his question about mashed potatoes. He originally wanted to record the data on a 100ft long roll of paper that [...]
hi it's me patrick writing for my mommy. and, please answer me. okay, ...DO YOU LIKE MASHED PATATOES?
we are making a statisticks progect. YES NO
THANK YOU!
Caroline and Edward are sick and it has been a crummy week. It's all so illogical. If babies are going to insist upon both breathing and eating then they should either have greatly increased nasal capacity or possess a backup system that defaults to cutaneous respiration as needed. I have [...]
Steve hit himself in the face with a hammer, creating an apex for violent physical comedy that I doubt this household will reach again any time soon. He has a nice black eye. When asked (innocently) how he managed to suddenly misjudge the distance between his eye (his eye) and [...]
I have been trying to convince my mother that Caroline scowls, actually scowls, when something displeases her but to date I had been unable to produce any evidence to support this claim. She tends to get all smiley when she sees a camera
Or at least [...]
Steve sings the following to the tune of On the Good Ship Lollipop:
On the pirate ship Sweet Potato
My little first mate she's a pink tomato
And anchors aweighhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....
Sinking ships, every day
So I was only slightly surprised when I found him and Caroline sitting in a laundry basket in [...]
-The comments on the last post did not cause me to completely revise my opinion on volunteer background checks but quite a few of them enabled me to expand upon my assumptions - so thank you. The idea that a person might use a volunteer situation to assess children for [...]
As many times as Steve has tried to explain the term "play action" to me I still remain mystified by it. Not the actual play - that makes sense: fake a handoff, then pass - but "play action" sounds like it was coined by someone who did not really know [...]
Patrick was in the bathtub tonight, narrating as he is wont to do. As he pushed a lego shark through the bubbles he intoned: "In the beginning there was nothing but vastness darkness... then! The Shark of the Universe! arose from the depths snapping up molecules" - Patrick scooped bubbles [...]
