Day 3 of pre-school = quiet time with Clair

Lester dropped the boys off by himself this morning at school. He SAYS there were no tears.

We'll see what Miss Toni has to say about that in the Daily Report.

This aberration in the drop-off routine (Lester goes; I stay) is what will happen on Wednesdays now, which means I get to have a full half-hour alone with Clair before Michelle comes.

Can I just say, it was soooo great! A half-hour doesn't sound like a lot, but it was really a good amount of time to just sit on the floor with her, read a couple of baby books, play with toys, play Peek-a-boo and tickle and snuggle with her. It's quieter and I could give her my full attention! I so enjoyed it and so did she.

I also decided to break out some of the boys' old toys, and this singing puppy was a huge hit!

The bottom left photo cracks me up! She was SOOO excited! "It talks! It sings! It tastes good! Hooray!"

All in all, it was a very good morning. And I think it'll prove to be really nice for Michelle, too, not having Cary and Dean for two solid hours in the morning. She'll get to play with Clairzy, and maybe sneak in a little downtime, when she takes a nap around 9:30. Win-win for everybody!

(And also, because I was already all dressed and ready to go -- not having two toddlers running me ragged all morning -- I could leave the house as soon as Michelle got there. That meant I was ON TIME to work! What a concept!)

Did I say #winning?! Yes, yes, y'all! Winning!!

Change is good

The boys start school a week from today.

To prepare, I wrote out a new schedule for the family that has me and Lester getting up at 6 a.m., and going to bed at 10 p.m. In between those hours, it is go, go, go, go go.

It is a very ambitious schedule that requires us to be on. the. ball. at all times, and leaves little room for spontaneity or screwing up or slacking off. In other words, I am sure I am setting us up for failure.

But we shall see. We're going to dry-run the schedule this week and see how it goes. Lester wants to start tomorrow, but we were at my Mom's all weekend, which means we did no grocery shopping/cooking or laundry, which means I have to cook tonight, which means I am already behind the 8-ball schedule-wise. So I think I will propose we start Wednesday. Or Thursday would be even better. Friday? Do I hear Friday?

Honestly (as you might sense), I don't really want to start at all. Mostly because I am NOT an early morning person, and I think I never will be.  I am sluggish and sloppy in the mornings, and not my best self. Also, I just fundamentally do not like change. I have realized this over time. I like things the way they are, because I understand them the way they are. I have a little bit of latent anxiety about certain changes in life, and this transition is proving to be one of those ones that is making me a bit crazy.

What if waking up earlier makes me highly unhappy?
What if waking the boys up earlier makes THEM higly unhappy?
What if the boys hate school?
What if the boys hate US?
What if Michelle has trouble getting things done now that she has to leave the house every day -- with Clair -- to pick the boys up from school? What if that makes HER highly unhappy?
What if this pre-school stuff just disrupts everything?

These are the kinds of hyperbolic things I think about when I'm fretting about the change on its way. I can see intellectually that I am making mountains out of molehills. But emotionally, I can't stop myself. Hi, I'm Insane. Nice to meet you!

Anyway, I am also -- in turns -- excited about this new chapter in our lives. The boys will love school and their new teacher and friends, I know. And a month or so into this new schedule, it will seem as familiar as the one we live by now.  C & D will learn so many new things, and Clair will benefit from at least a few hours every day of one-on-one time with Michelle, which will be very good for her, too.

It'll all be wonderful in the end, I know.  Even if I'm a thousand times sleepier -- and I have to be a hundred thousand times more organized, it'll all be fine. There's coffee at the office. And Google docs.

Change is good, I keep telling myself. Change is good. Change is good.

Lessons learned about solo parenting

Wednesday night, Lester had an event to attend after work, so I was home alone with the kiddos.

As most parents know, evenings are often the hardest time. In addition to kids having had enough of the all-day-long-ness of the day, they're hungry, tired, (if you're working parents) they've missed you and act the fool when you get home, etc. Add to that the fact that there are things that need to be done: dinner, dishes, bathtime, bedtime, etc. and you have a recipe for defiance and meltdowns.

We'd gotten to a place where the evening routine was pretty uneventful, but then we had a third baby. And that just blew the routine to pieces. Clair needs feeding just when it's time to get dinner on the table for the boys. And she's really tired and really irritable and wants to be held just when the boys have had quite enough of dinner.

That means I only have one hand (at best) to stop the cranky twins from tossing food over the sides of their trays, pouring their milk out into their plates, putting food in their hair, you name it. There's an inordinate amount of whining and obstinance, and getting up the stairs for bathtime takes twice as long as it should.

Once up the stairs, Clair refuses to be put down during the boys bath/pajamas/storytime, etc. so it's almost impossible to do that whole song-and-dance without a second adult to help. The few times either of us have done the post-dinner bath/pajamas/story etc. alone have all ended with Clair screaming bloody murder in her crib. Once, she even threw up, she was screaming so much.

So Wednesday night, I decided things had to be done differently. In short, I knew I had to PREPARE, ANTICIPATE, DEVIATE and BE FIRM.

I came home 20 minutes early from work, so that I'd have a few minutes before Michelle left for the day to prepare. PREPARATION is key, I am learning (the hard way). There's almost no substitute for it.

I put the boys' dinner together and put it in the microwave, filled their cups with water, set the table with their plates and utensils. I brought their pajamas and night diapers downstairs, and laid out on my bed Clair's pajamas and diaper for after her bath. This way, when it was time for dinner, all I had to do was push the start button on the microwave and scoop the food on their plates. And I could do that with Clair in my arms (thus, no crying). We played and  read books and at 6:30 sharp, I started the dinner process.

While the boys ate, I sat in the dining room with them, and fed Clair the last of her 4 p.m. bottle. And instead of lingering at the table after dinner, like we often do, I ANTICIPATED the boys' mood-shifts. So as soon as the eating started waning and the shenanigans started picking up, I quickly moved the boys' dinner plates and cups, preventing any over-the-top craziness.

Because Clair had been fed and held, she was in a good mood. So after dinner, I let her play on her activity mat, while the boys jumped around and got their sillies out, and I quickly washed up their dishes, wiped the table, trays and counters, swept the floor and straightened up.

By this time (about 7:15), Clair was running out of patience with Tummy Time. So I put her in her swing while I sat on the floor in the living room and got the boys dressed for the night.

Notice one key thing: no bath.

With three kids, usually a schedule is a lifesaver. With three kids, two of whom are twins and one of whom is an infant, the schedule often is King. But I had to face facts. Right now, while Clair's so young and still needs a lot of TLC in the evenings, there's no way to easily bathe the boys and keep her happy -- when by yourself. So I decided to DEVIATE from the routine and skip bathtime. After all, these kids are playing in the house most of the day. Let's be real: They ain't that dirty. 

In her swing, Clair cooed herself into a little snooze, which I'd normally freak out about because she is supposed to go to bed for the night at 8:30. But I needed this deviation to have time to deal with sleepy, wriggly, giggly boys who think it's fun to run from you, naked, and throw their pajama bottoms over the baby gate. I woke her up right after brushing the boys' teeth, so she got about a 20-minute power nap. And it actually made her quite pleasant.

In their beds (finally at 7:45), I read a story while the boys jumped around in their cribs and Clair laughed hysterically at them (she literally shrieks with laughter at their antics). Then I GOT FIRM with the boys and told them that Daddy wasn't home and Mommy was alone and had to give Clair a bath and give her a bottle and get her to bed, too. There was no one who was going to be able to come back in their room a thousand times. Whatever it was they needed, say it now, or go without. Blanket on? Blanket off? Monkey? Puppy? Get your kisses now, kids, 'cause I AIN'T coming back.

At 8:05, I bathed Clair, gave her her bottle, went back into the boys' room twice (raised my voice the final time and all went silent), held her while she sucked on her pacifier, and put her down in her bed, knocked out and peaceful, at 8:45.

The kitchen was clean. The kids were asleep. Lester came home and brought me back a chocolate dessert from his event (oh yeah!!) and everything was just dandy!

Hands down, one of the best nights alone with all three kids since Clair was born.

I know they won't always be this smooth, but I think I've learned some lessons that will help us all on nights of solo-parenting. So at the very least, we have some tools to use  -- at least for as long as Clair will curl up in a little ball and sleep sweetly in her baby swing.

After that? Who knows.

Swimming to the surface, slowly

I am here. I am alive and happy, trying valiantly to swim my way up to the surface of this murky new life Lester and I have ushered in. I won't lie; it is hard work. It somehow seems harder than even the first few weeks of having twin newborn preemies.

Perhaps that's because the first two weeks of having the boys were spent in the NICU, which brought its own difficulties emotionally, but also -- interestingly enough -- in hindsight, offered many blessings:

• It gave me time to figure out the pumping and nursing thing, without the worry of whether or not I was starving my offspring;
• It kept me busy during the day, but allowed my body to heal and rest during full nights of sleep;
• And it provided an army of trained nurses and baby-care experts ready and willing to answer all our questions, give us helpful tips and get the babies on a sleeping and eating schedule that all we needed to do to keep it up was, simply, keep it up.

It's funny. I never thought of the NICU that way before, but now that I have had a healthy singleton and been sent home from the hospital, C-section pain and all, to figure a brand new person out all on my own, I'm seeing things a little differently.

It could also be that, as LauraC says, we were prepared for twins to be hard. How could twin newborns not be? But we (well, I, mostly) had been naive to think that one baby wouldn't be so hard. And people, meaning to be helpful, often reinforced that, telling us that we'd likely find having one baby -- after having twins -- to be a walk in the park. One person even said we'd probably be bored!

Or perhaps it is just that we have really forgotten how hard it really was to have twin newborns at home for the first few weeks. Perhaps the many months of charting the boys' growth and development, of watching them smile and learn and walk and laugh, have made misty the memories of sleepless nights and eating breakfast at lunch time and skipping showers and raging emotions and too many tears to count.

Who knows exactly why having just one this time around seems so difficult. Maybe it's a combination of all those things. Maybe it's just because having a new baby is hard at times, and that's just the way it is.

Whatever the reasons, it is better today than it was yesterday, and yesterday was better than the day before. That is encouraging. And besides that, I am here with the people I love most in the world. I am alive and healthy and blessed beyond measure. I am happy.

And because I have been through this before - double time - I know I will get to the surface of this. I will get there. I will.

--------------------------------------------------
Update on Clair:

1. I am pretty sure she has colic (Yay!) but we took her to the doctor today for a regular two-week appointment and he said we should try to regulate her eating a little bit more before making that diagnosis, getting her on an every three-hour schedule, instead of snacking all day (an ounce here; a half an ounce an hour later, etc.) and see if that helps her not feel so gassy and bloated at night. So we're trying that.

2. She slept in her crib today for three naps! Each nap she tolerated it less and less, but at least she saw the inside of her crib! And with any luck, she'll see even more of it from now on.

3. She's 8 lbs., 10 oz. now, which means she gained a pound in 10 days!

4. Trying to get her to drink her bottle on a schedule is going to be hard! When she wakes up hungry two HOURS before her next feeding -- like she did today -- it's torture to watch her cry and cry and cry. This of course leads to tears on my part and boy oh boy am I sick of the post-partum weepies!
Anyway, I know this has to be done, just like the slow transition to her own bed/bedroom. So, I just have to do it. Man up, Tanika!

5. She gets cuter and cuter every day. Especially since packing on the pound (ha-ha), which filled out some of the newborn wrinkles in her face. I can't stop kissing her face. Which also makes the feeding schedule hard, because every time I kiss her little cheeks, she thinks I'm food, and starts rooting. Awww. Poor thing.

6. Nursing is officially done. And I can't stop crying about it. I feel so many ways about my inability to nurse my baby and some of the feelings are in direct opposition to one another. Completely crazy, right? It's also hard because people keep asking me how it's going. And some people are quite opinionated about how I decided to handle things. But mostly I just hope that, if Clair reads this sometime in her future, she'll know that I wanted to nurse her. I wanted to give her the very best of everything, even from the start. And I couldn't or didn't, for many reasons, but I love her fiercely, and I'll work hard every day of my life to nourish her with my love.
(And Enfamil. :-) )

P.S. Ugh! These darn weepies! Man up, Tanika!! Ugh!

Separation anxiety and schedules

I am trying to get back into some sense of normalcy, even though my life is completely upended and I feel at loose ends all day long.

But I thought I could take it one day at a time, and jumping back into blogging (about the babies) might help.

So here goes:

The boys will be 11 months on Apr. 11. They are totally cute and really hysterical at times, but I would be lying if I said this stage with them is a thousand percent easier.

Here's why:

Separation anxiety

Dean is in a MAJOR "Mommy" phase. If he sees me, he wants to be in my arms or on my lap, and nothing, nothing, nothing can deter him. Oh, the whining. It is truly epic. I thought it couldn't get much worse, but he's even gotten to the point where he wants me even when he doesn't see me! Since I have been gone a lot the past two weeks at the hospital with my brother, Lester has been a single parent essentially. He's done an amazing job, never once complaining (seriously, not even once), but he has let on that Dean has had times when he has been inconsolable while I was gone. Usually if he's hungry or sleepy, Lester said, and he's been busy with Cary or chores or various must-do things. But when I walk in the door, Dean takes inconsolable up a notch -- until I pick him up. Then, it's like someone hit the 'off' switch. Instant quiet.

Schedules

We are total SLAVES to the schedule!
When the babies were tiny things, the eating/sleeping schedule saved our lives. It really helped us to keep them doing the same things at the same time (for sanity), and also to get them sleeping through the night (for sanity and our own sleep!)
But now that they're older and we are really ready to get them out and about, we really feel hindered by the schedule. They're so used to the schedule, the boys want to eat and sleep at their familiar times, no matter what is going on. The eating part is sort of an issue, but workable with snacks and the fact that they can now hold their own bottles. The napping thing, however, is a real roadblock.
For months, they've taken a nap around 9:30 and then again around 1:30 or 2. We have learned to make sure we hang around the house until after their first nap, which is fine because we can never get our acts together before then anyway. But if we want to go anywhere or do anything, no matter what it is, the activity almost always runs well past their second nap.

And if Cary and Dean Davis don't have their second naps, they are miserable, whiny, clingy little monsters.

And of course, I have the only two children on Earth who don't really sleep well in the car. Dean sleeps a little bit better, but he always waits until 10 minutes before we get where we're going to drift off. Cary refuses to sleep at all. He thinks it's much better to complain - loudly - the entire ride.

And then...the babies go to sleep at 7 or 7:30 at the latest. By 6 p.m. they are DONE with the day. They want their bath and they want their bottles and they want to go to bed. Their OWN beds. STAT.

So this means that if we go anywhere, we have to leave after their first nap -- which ends around 11 or 11:30, get back to the house for a nap around 2, and then possibly we can head back out after that -- around 4 (after the nap has ended and they've eaten), only to be back by 6.

Careful readers will note that that is like 2 hours of safe-out-of-the-house time. Two hours! And not even consecutive hours!!

It makes us not want to even leave the house. Except we really want to leave the house.
(I'm getting a distinct Jimmy Durante urge to sing right now, but I will ignore that.)

Moms, anyone else ever have this problem? When does this get better? How come I see all these other parents out with their kids at all times of the day and night, and no one seems to be having a monstrous meltdown?

More from the annals of schedule-breaking

Because the boys have a firm bedtime (7 p.m.), Lester and I sometimes feel caught between a rock and a hard place. We love the bedtime, because it gives us guaranteed time to ourselves, both as individuals and as a couple, before we shut it down ourselves for the night. But we also feel like we have to boogie home from anywhere we happen to be not just before 7 p.m., but before 5.

If we get in the car after 5, the boys -- who have been up since their last nap ended around 3 -- inevitably conk out.

Which means we either have:

• cranky, sleepy babies who scream the entire ride home and, when we get to our house, are annoyed at having been awakened, or
• cat-napped, energetic babies who don't want to go to bed!

So, when we go to my mom and dad's for instance, we usually just stay overnight, because by the time we get out of our house at 12:30 or 1, drive an hour down there, and the boys finally get over being unfamiliar and shy, it's time to pack it all back up again and hustle on home.

But yesterday, we had an appointment in D.C. at 3, which then got pushed to 3:30. It was over around 4, and Lester still needed to run to Costco to buy our king's ransom's worth of formula. There's a Costco near my mom's house, which is about 20 minutes from D.C. So we decided to run to my mom's for a second just to say hi, while Lester went to Costco. Thus began the downfall of the schedule.

At 6:15 when Lester got back, we hurried to put their jackets on, strapped them in the car seats and began praying for a non-scream-filled ride.

I gave Cary and Dean their bottles in the car (so great that they can hold their bottles themselves now) and they fell asleep by 6:45 (OK, Cary screamed a little bit.)

At 7:30, when we got home, I wondered which scenario I'd have: cranky babies or energetic babies.

Being the mother of twins, of course I got both!

Dean was annoyed and whiny, as Lester changed his diaper and put on his jammies.
Cary, on the other hand, thought it was apparently 2 in the afternoon. He was wiggly and giggly and thought me trying to put his PJs on was the funniest thing, especially since he was turning over and twisting his body so as to make getting him dressed nearly impossible.

When we put Dean down in his crib, he fell right to sleep. He seemed almost grateful.
Cary, of course, stayed awake, complaining in his crib for about 45 minutes and then finally, finally crashed.

All in all, it wasn't so bad. Color me surprised.

This makes me feel a tad bit more at ease about occasionally breaking the schedule, now that I know that there won't be WWIII in my house when we do. Could that be a light I see at the end of that thar tunnel?! Perhaps. We shall see.

Show Me the Mommy Sunday and other random thoughts

It was really, really windy here yesterday. So windy in fact that there were unprecedented brush fires of such magnitude, parts of I-95 were shut down. This is unheard of here. We live in the Baltimore/Washington. D.C. area -- not California.

Of course, this was the day we decided to take a trip 40 minutes down the road to Buy Buy Baby to pick up some things we needed - namely, baby gates. Please, for a moment, picture us struggling to get two infants into their stroller with the wind whipping some 40-miles an hour. It was quite an adventure, I'll tell you that.

I was worried about the boys with all that wind, but they thought it was hysterical!
Here's a photo of them as the wind was really whipping and taking their collective breath away. Is this picture priceless or what?



We probably should have had hats on them, but oh well...

It was a really fun day. We even went to a (gasp!) restaurant for late lunch/early dinner. I had a crabcake. It was awesome. The boys had smushed hand-cut French fries for the first time -- and a little sorbet. They loved both.

Here I am with Cary at Matchbox. (This is the Show Me the Mommy portion of the post, before the French fries were ground into the table).

And not to leave Dean and Dad out, here's a picture of the two of them, across the booth. Hi boys!

To recap: We ate out as a family at a restaurant. We bought gates. We got new adorable pajamas for the boys. We didn't have any meltdowns. The boys now have the synapse for "sorbet." (I think.) All in all, a good time was had by all.

Sidebar: Can someone please explain to me baby math? My child went to bed Friday night at 6:45 and slept until 7 a.m. Yay! Then, on Saturday night, because of our long day, he went to bed at 8:30 and woke up this morning five minutes shy of 6. Huh? I don't get it. .... But never fear, I did not revert to my old ways. I got up, got him a bottle and he was back to sleep in 20 minutes. I had to actually wake him up at 7:45, when Dean woke up. The lesson: Cary got his needs met and Lester and I got to sleep for an extra hour! Whoo-hoo!!!

Extra sidebar: Today my sister is coming over and tomorrow is Family Fun Day! We're all going to Port Discovery, and Michelle is coming with us so she can see how to take them out of the house. I'm excited! Fun, fun, fun and more synapse-creation!! :-)

(Clearly, I'm obsessed. I need an intervention.)

Cary's off the market.

I have been shamed by my Mom.

Last night on the phone I complained to her about Cary's early wakings and pre-dawn whininess.

I don't understand, I (also) whined. It's not like he wants to play or be held. He just whines and whines for no reason.
She asked me if I fed him when he woke up at 5 or 5:30.
Well, no, I replied. He's on a schedule. He and Dean both eat at 7:30. It's been this way since they were half-past-newborns.
Ummm, hellllo! she said. Cary is moving around now. He's probably moving every waking minute, isn't he?
I had to admit that he was, in fact, moving every waking minute. And even some of his sleeping minutes. That kid is constantly on the go.
Well, since he's more active, he needs more to eat, Mom said, in a reprimanding tone that sent me back to my middle school days. He's burning more and more calories all day. Babies don't just whine at 5:30 a.m. for an hour for nothing.
Hmmph.
Picture me chagrined.
I couldn't even argue with her.
Well, I guess that could be it, I finally mumbled. I hadn't thought of that.

Then I felt immediately like the WWM (world's worst mother). I ignored my child's hunger whines in order to keep him on a schedule! Then, I tried to sell my child on the black market simply because the poor thing was hungry.

I'm pretty sure this gives me the International World Title of Absolute Positive Hands-Down WWM.

So today, when he woke up at 6 (not 5 or 5:30, yay!) he played for awhile with Lester and when he got really whiny at 7, we just fed him. No questions asked. I almost cried. Could it really have been that simple? My little baby was ...hungry. Ugh! I wish I had the last couple days to do over again.

So, no more worrying about the schedule. Cary eats when he's hungry. That's just it.
For the nanny's sake, I hope he's not too off schedule during the day now. It makes life easier for her (having to do it all on her own) when things are somewhat predictable and when both boys eat and nap at roughly the same times.

But other than for that reason, I'm not going to stress anymore about that darn schedule. I have learned two valuable lessons:

1) Babies' needs should always, always come first. Especially when we're talking about them being hungry! (Gracious, I can't even believe I had to be reminded of that! I really am ashamed.)

2) Even at 37 years old, I still need my Mommy. :-)