Mama Mama Quite Contrary

It seems that my first-born child went and turned into a big girl before I even realized what was happening. Vivi turned three yesterday and we took three days to celebrate it. (Hmmmm... three seems to be a magic number for us.) Vivi on her first birthday Saturday my mom and sister came down from Vermont and we had a little party complete with a brand new play kitchen which Vivi has asked for since January. Sunday, the birthday began with breakfast out at our local bakery. It then took us an hour or so to get organized enough to take her to a place where she got a two-minute celebratory pony ride. Daddy then dropped me and the Turtles at home so he and Vivi could go to Ikea (ostensibly to buy new office furniture but it seemed they spent the most time in the ball pit.) Her day finished with some skinny-dipping in the kiddie pool (her, not us) and then a backyard picnic. Second Birthday Her friends joined us today for a lunch time party. We turned our backyard into what I call "...

I am beginning to think that being the mother of multiple children launches you into an alternate reality. A reality well-known to parents of twins and other multiples and probably familiar to mothers of small children-- even if none of the children were born on the same day. Ladies and gentlemen, it is a freaky place indeed. In our reality, you can't leave your house without some woman coming up to you and saying, "Twins?! Oh dear, God bless you." Usually this happens several times during one outing. You will also find youself bombarded by stupid questions from random strangers. These questions include "Are your twins maternal or paternal?" and "How many months apart are they?" I guess in our reality twins barely a month old and almost exactly the same size can cause immense confusion to the uninitiated. A mother's vision of herself becomes distorted in this reality. In the one-child state, a woman can discover what she does well and work ...

I have a serious case of mommy brain. Any person who has ever had a baby knows exactly what I am talking about. For those of you who haven't, mommy brain is the inability to remember anything, to accomplish anything, and to function in a normal way because your IQ and reasoning skills are significantly diminished by a lack of sleep. This is the reason I won't be posting the Turtles' birth story today. I'm not sure I can remember it. My mommy brain kicked in almost immediately following the Turtles' arrival. I enjoyed a nice reprieve in the last year or so with Vivi sleeping well. I was even getting used to the idea of being somewhat together and then I accidentally ordered 12 bottles of laundry detergent from Amazon. That sealed the deal. I'm officially back on the half-assed parent train. I'm doing things now that I never imagined doing a year ago. Since the babies were born, Vivi has enjoyed such delicacies as trail mix, baby carrots with salad dressing, a...

When we found out we were expecting a baby last summer, my husband and I decided that we would pursue a homebirth. It seemed to make sense for us. I had a very straightforward birth with Vivi and was committed to doing it again without any interventions. Plus, with a $10,000 deductible for our health insurance, it would save us a whole heaping pile of cash. (And who doesn't love a bargain?) The discovery of twins at the end of November threw us for a loop. Our homebirth midwife begged off and we found ourselves negotiating a medical system with the label "high risk" stamped on my forehead. The fact that I had already birthed a nearly 9 pound baby smoothly didn't seem to matter. Nor did it make a difference that both of my grandmothers had twins vaginally at full-term. I was simply a uterus with two babies with the potential for a host of problems. Although I wanted to give birth in the comfort of my home, I had no one to attend it so I returned to the hospital-based m...