Summer Thoughts

Ah, summer. For the first time in 3.5 years, I am almost beginning to remember what summer should feel like. Until now, summer has meant more work than the school year, in some ways—more logistics, more exhaustion, more efforts to be patient. Moving last summer surely didn't help. But now here we are, in a place with real summer. Thunderstorms. Cicadas during the day. Crickets and treefrogs at night. Fireflies. Katydids. And mosquitos.

Three-and-a-half is not an easy age: nobody *wants* to take a nap anymore, no matter how tired he is. An increased ability to explain one's emotions in words means tantrums have been mostly supplanted by whining, a far more difficult thing to endure. But is easier so far than two-and-a-half.

Besides, we've discovered the swimming pool.

We swim almost every day. Here's what's so great about the pool: I love swimming and always have. So when I'm in the water with my boys, I am totally happy. They are also totally happy. Never mind the chaos of getting from pool to home. The hour or so we are at the pool in the water is total bliss.

This summer, as they (mostly) play together happily, and as I'm (mostly) able to let go of the idea that naps will happen daily, we (mostly) have fun.

Sometimes, we actually go places and do things.

But not often. It's too hot for the park, and too crowded at most of the indoor places we like to go—even the library is packed. One nice side effect of still feeling new to a place is the luxury of just staying home.

Sometimes fun means lining up crayons in the couch cushions (only permissible on the junky old couch).

Sometimes we check out what the back porch brings us.

Sometimes fun means painting. Sometimes the paint doesn't stay on the paper.

Sometimes we venture far afield. That's gotten much easier, too.

This summer has been so lovely. But part of its loveliness is where summer falls in the rhythm of the year—it is so lovely because it is so fleeting. I wish it were longer. I am loving this time with my boys. And I'm looking forward to seeing what this fall brings.

I shouldn't have skipped breakfast.

I don't usually skip breakfast—I get up too early with the boys (5:45 today!) to last very long without food. But today was a bit different.

This week is Urban's trips week. That means that we all get out of the classroom and go out and do stuff, mostly in advising groups. Because I'm working part time this year, I'm no longer an adviser, though the kids I started out with are now seniors. So I'd hoped to participate in as much as I could, given the constraints of my schedule. As it turns out, I'm not able to do much when I can only be available between 11 and 3. So I left G at home with the boys early this morning and raced off to work to do the one thing that I could do—a lovely tea and conversation gathering with the women of the class of 2012. But because there would be tea and pastries, I skipped breakfast in favor of a quick cup of chai on my way out the door as I listened to Dash bawling because it wasn't my usual time to go.

I got to school and headed down to the tea. The adults involved were all helping set up. Lots of stories, tears, and teacups later, we disbanded. And I found myself starving. But someone needed to clean up after the tea party. A couple of us got to work hauling the dishes and tidying the room. In the process, I turned into the world's crankiest person ever—storming into the faculty room to wash dishes, carping at my colleagues as they asked that I close the door, and generally acting like a petulant, cranky, hungry toddler. Regardless, the tea got cleaned up; I finally got my lunch.

And then I collapsed in my office in tears.

I knew that I had been acting irrationally and unprofessionally. I could feel a black cloud of negativity all around me. I'm sure that everyone who saw me thought I'd lost my mind. But no, I was just very hungry—the pastries were small, and there weren't all that many, and really, two tiny croissants are not enough fuel for nursing two babies, driving through a rainstorm and listening earnestly for two hours. And the thing is: I know this. I've prioritized feeding myself ever since the boys were born.

Of course there is more to the story of today. There's the feeling of envy that welled up as I listened to my colleague describe her group of friends. The feeling of isolation as I finally bit into my mediocre, but free, burger and listened to people talk about preparations for a trip I wasn't going on with kids I care immensely about.

And maybe another part of the story is that my kids were sick last week with Hand-Foot-Mouth Disease, which sounds like a deadly plague, but is a virus just like a cold, only instead of a runny nose, the kids got a fever and blisters in their mouths and didn't sleep well for 5 nights (see: blisters in mouths). Nobody wants to be around kids with HFMD. Part of what makes me happy and sane is spending time with other people. We've spent the last week mostly avoiding other people. So  I was feeling a little imbalanced and isolated already.

This working and mothering thing is a delicate act. Not everyone does it the same way. Not everyone has the privilege of taking less time at work in exchange for more time at home. But working part-time doesn't  mean I have the balance thing figured out. My time at work is limited, but so, too, is part of what makes going to work a pleasure and a necessity for me: adult interactions and conversations and teamwork. And I felt deeply that I was missing out on that stuff this week.

Maybe I'm making too much out of a bad day. But I hear my colleagues were wondering what had gotten into me or what was wrong. So I'm writing this post for them to say I'm sorry. I shouldn't have skipped breakfast.

Back to Work

It has been almost exactly three months since I last posted here. I have several posts that I started, but stopped working on when babies woke up or while I ran to the store, or did any of a million other things I do with my time when I'm not feeding or entertaining babies.

But school has started, and I'm back at work. Fortunately, I'm teaching my favorite class in two sections this term (and that's all--I am very grateful to be teaching only part-time). The lovely thing about teaching a writing class is being able to have some time, even if only a few moments, in which to write for myself.

So here I am. And, dear readers, I have so many things to tell you about. I have notes all over the place about things I want to write about. About being a mom and a teacher at the same time, about trying to also fulfill my other roles (wife, daughter, friend) and mostly failing. About sometimes thinking I'm not so good even at the mom stuff, even though I've been working really hard at it for 8 months now. And about how quickly the boys are growing and changing and how amazing it is to watch. And how I can't wait for the day when they sleep just a little bit better, so I can sleep better too. And, yes, about what I'm doing in my class this fall, and whether I think it's working.

And maybe I'll get to write about all of those things sometime soon. For now, being back at work--even part-time, even teaching a class for the fourth time--is hard. I'd like to say that I feel more whole and more complete interacting with older children and adults than I did while endlessly walking around the neighborhood with the twins. And in some ways I do. I love my job. I love working with teens. I love teaching writing. It's nice to see other adults and to think about the nuts and bolts of teaching. But few of my colleagues are really interested in the two small people that I'm most focused on right now. And that's isolating in a different way from being stuck at home trying to maintain a nap schedule.

Theory vs. Practice

I know that I've written before about the differences between thinking about how to do something and actually trying to do it. With teaching, it's usually obvious when something that sounded right in theory falls flat in practice. I don't know why I didn't think this was the case with parenting. I suppose some lessons are best learned by doing. Before the boys were born, I knew exactly what kind of parent I wanted to be. I remembered my own childhood as a time when my mother was always available to me; my brother and I spent hours playing on the floor of her studio while she painted. She wore us in a Snugli and breastfed us. Attachment parenting sounded like what I remembered. Babywearing, breastfeeding, bedsharing, etc. all made sense to me. I knew that there were people who wore their twins together in wraps. I figured the rest would come naturally.

Once the boo boos made their appearance, I plunged right in, and though it took ten weeks of pumping 8x a day, five or six visits with the lactation consultant, and a lot of tears (mostly mine) for the three of us to get on the same track, the boys are now exclusively breastfed. There were days when the boys had to have a couple of ounces of formula and I thought (thanks to The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding) that I was the Worst Mother Ever, Poisoning Her Children. Obviously, I wasn't. Those couple of ounces of formula here and there freed me up to get some rest, which is just as important to good lactation as pumping and nursing constantly.

For their first three months, the boys slept almost nowhere but on people--either in a Moby wrap or sling, or (more often) cradled in the arms of a parent or grandparent or generous friend. We wore the babies tons, and they still sleep in bed with us at night. We love snuggling with them and know that they won't always be in bed with us. But when the grandparents all left and the friends stopped coming by, we still had two boys who needed to sleep during the day. They were getting too big for this treatment:

We love wearing our babies, and prefer to do so when we're out for walks as a family. No pushing our babies away from us! (I do like a double stroller for getting out of the house on my own, though. And the babies seem to like it, too!)

When my husband started going back to the office, I had to do something to make the days bearable. Here's how we spent many days:

They'd have a meal, then we'd do a little tummy time or playing, then they'd get cranky and need to sleep. And I didn't know how to put them down, and I couldn't figure out a way for the three of us to all snuggle comfortably in bed. And I'm a terrible napper, so it wasn't restful for me to nap with them anyway. I called my mom. She told me to put them down in their cosleeper and leave the room. Wait...my mom, my perfect mother, put us down to sleep in another room? And then did other stuff while we slept? And yet we still grew up deeply attached to her?

One of the "B"s that Dr. Sears writes about is balance. It's the one thing I seem to have forgotten. Being a good parent isn't always all about sacrifice. It's about finding what works to keep the whole family sane, possibly even happy.

We hired an awesome postpartum doula to help us. She taught us how to put the babies down in their cribs, and helped me realize that I'm a better parent when I can sneak in a shower, some dishes, and some blog posts while the babies sleep. Linda kept repeating the idea (until I really got it) that the family bed, babywearing, etc. only work if everyone's happy. If mom's exhausted, the babies won't be as happy, and the family can't thrive. So now I am devoted to letting my babies sleep in their cosleepers, and they get a bottle (of mama's milk) every other day or so, so that when I need to leave the house I can do so without worrying too much about my babies' basic needs. Maybe this isn't really attachment parenting anymore. But it feels much more balanced for me.

Exiting the Vortex

D's belly, N's toes

Hello world. How nice to see you again. Wow. How did so many months go by so quickly? Well, the toes and belly above have something to do with it. Funny thing about having babies: everybody says you have no idea how hard it is until you do it. And (stupidly) you don't believe what you hear. You think: well, yeah, having twins is going to be tough, but I'm a tough lady. I can handle it. And then you have two real, live, squirming, fidgeting, hungry, poopy, wonderful packages of consciousness to tend to. I could have written any number of posts about much of what I've been through in the last months: the complication that brought D and N into the world sooner than I was ready to meet them; the fact that nursing is much harder than you'd think it should be, and with twins even more so; the miracle of the first smiles we got from the babies; the funny way they laugh; their bizarre choices of favorite toy; the difficulty we have with getting them to nap sometimes; the list goes on and on. But if you want to know that stuff, you'll just have to ask me in person. Or wait for me to feel like writing about it here.

The first few months are all a blur now, anyway. They all say that, too. But it's true. Time, sleep deprivation, and an endless cycle of feedings and diapers have a way of erasing the neat borders of the days and blending them all together. It's for the best, really. No one would have children if those things were clearer in one's memory.  And I hear it just keeps getting better.

I'm writing today to remember myself--not the new, mama bear self, but the self I used to know. I'm testing out the waters out there, slowly sticking a toe into the world beyond the vortex of early motherhood. It's scary, and good.

On mother's day, I went to my regular yoga class. I spent a lot of time reconnecting with other folks in the kula, hugging my teacher, etc. I knew I missed the community, but what surprised me most was how deeply I missed the practice itself. For an hour and a half, I wasn't keeping an ear out for a baby. I wasn't using my body to carry or feed a baby, or sneaking a shower, or checking Facebook. I was just living in my bones and muscles. I felt like I'd been dipped in bliss. I dropped out of down dog into child's pose more times than I can count, and I modified the arm balances plenty. And I know it may well be another six months, or a year (or two!) before I get back to going to that class regularly. But every moment on the mat that day was precious: missing out on something so crucial to your identity makes seizing every chance so much more important. I know that my practice over the next couple years will not often involve rolling out my mat and smiling at my teacher. Yet I am grateful both for my teacher and for the years of mat-practice I've already put in. On the days when I'm doing pick-up-one-crying-baby-while-holding-the-other-asana over and over again, I can (if I'm mindful) remember that these repetitions too will bear their own fruit in time. And I can savor far better the times when I get to focus on savasana.

There's more to savor: I spent an hour last week doing yard work. That's an hour more than I've done in nearly a year. The yard is slowly reverting to a state of nature. All I did today was prune shrubs and pull a few clumps of invasive grass. An hour of sunshine, the smells of the plants (salvia and lavender, a lemon tree in bloom, and a honeysuckle), and I felt a sense of rightness in the world. Ah, I am in fact something other than a source of food and comfort! In time, I'll be able to share the world of the garden with my boys. They'll "help" me, just as my brother and I helped my mother in her garden. Yeah, insert your metaphor of choice about the cycles of life, etc. I'm too tired to come up with those words.

And then: a brief visit to Urban with babies in tow felt less like I was being drenched in bliss, and more like being on the edge of a fire--so much to start thinking about again, and so many questions of how to be fully present both there and at home. The students were excited to see the boys, and I was happy to see my students. (But they're so big! So loud!) And I'll be excited to use parts of my brain that have been lying dormant the last few months. But as I ponder the details of going back to work (how can a teacher possibly find time to pump milk during the day? What's better, to take transit so I can grade on BART, or to drive, so I can have more time with the boo boos?), I wonder how I'll be able to find balance in this new life equation: how will mom, teacher, gardener, and yogi live on in the same body? Stay tuned...