Me Meme

When DD tagged me for this Seven Quirks/Habits about yourself meme, I did this little happy dance because she said nice things about me.  I'm a real sucker about nice things said about me.  In fact, I clean the bathroom whenever G. tells me I do it well, even though his efforts are always so much more meticulous than mine and I really don't like cleaning the bathroom. 

This meme is a tough one too, because I've been writing in this space for over two years.  After that amount of time, I'm wondering if it's even possible to come up with seven things that folks don't already know and might possible think interesting.

So, here are my Seven Quirks/Habits:

1)  I can't cook.  At all.  In fact, I once helped to make a batch of cookies which were still in solid-as-a-rock form a year after the baking.  I think that the lucky recipients were using them as door stops.  I do still cook from time to time, but it has to either be something fairly easy or a special occasion.

2) I'm allergic to shellfish.   No lobster.  No crab.  No shrimp.  I found this out when they gave me bunches of iodine for an x-ray during freshman year of college when I was in the hospital for a kidney stone.  I don't know whether kidney stones are the pain equivalent of labor, as someone once told me, because I didn't get to experience it.  I'll just have to take them at their word.  And yes, if you don't already know, that person was male.

3) I always keep my window cracked when driving in the car, no matter the weather or the drifts of snow that accumulate on my sleeve. This is partially, I believe, because I'm terribly claustrophobic and can't imagine being completely enclosed in a such a small space as a car without even a whisper of the world outside.

This is hard...I'm only at three? 

4)  I have a slight problem with closure.  I leave the caps and lids off of everything and will leave doors slightly ajar everywhere if they don't close on their own.  G. and I have two separate tubes of toothpaste - one for him (lid) and one for me (no lid).

5)  I can recite the first 18 lines of the Canterbury Tales in Middle English and frequently do so under my breath when bored.  I used to think that this was pretty quirky until people started quoting these lines to me whenever I mentioned that I used to study medieval literature.  The most memorable was some guy that I rode next to in a ski lift.

6) I can't stand noise that I can't control.  The pizza guy who leaves his base thumping in the driveway while he stands in our doorway handing over the pie and collecting money drives me nuts.  Absolutely, completely, totally, nuts.

7) I'm happiest without surprises.  People tend to feel pretty passionately about this issue.  If folks like surprises, they really like them.  The good bit about this is that the twins won't have anything on me if they turn out to be non-surprise type of people.  I know how to hide a birthday present, but good.

Okay ... tell me your quirks, please:

1) Stiletto Mom

2) Christy

3) Bittersweet Mama

Bottle Bound

When the boys turned ten months, we introduced the sippie cup.

When they turned one year, we decided to restrict binkie use to bedtime only.

When they turned fourteen months, we decided to eliminate bottles.

When they turned sixteen months, we decided to eliminate bottles.

When they turned eighteen months, we decided to eliminate bottles.

The result?

At nineteen months, they still get two bottles of whole milk - one in the morning and one at night.   At this point, they can ask for their bottles.  They'll be sitting upright in the high chairs with an array of food spread before them, but the minute that either G. or I go anywhere near the microwave or the small collection of Dr. Brown's, we hear a growing chorus:

"BA?" 

"BA!"

"BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA!"

At this point, I turn to G. or he turns to me and we have a conversation that goes something like this:

Me: What do you think?

Him: Well, what do you think?

Me: I don't want them to become orally fixated.

Him:  They already are orally fixated.  They're babies.

Me:  But I don't want them to stay that way.

Him:  Better than anally fixated.

Me:  Bwhahaha.  You said anal.

Me:  So what should we do?  Should I put milk in the sippy cup?

Babies:  BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA!

Him:  Whatever we do, let's do it quickly.

Me:  I don't know.

Him:  They'll just fling it across the room.  You know that.

Me:  But we have to start sometime.

Babies:  BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA! BA!

Him:  Let's start tomorrow.

Me:  Okay.  Tomorrow sounds good.

So, it's official.  We're starting tomorrow.  No more bottles.  Tomorrow.

Speler

Recently, Niobe asked her readers how they differed from the persona on their blog.  Although I didn't comment on the entry, my immediate response was "I can't spell."  Not on my blog and not in real life.  It's not that I have anything against spelling or people who spell correctly; I honestly can't understand all the fuss.

When called out on this outstanding non-talent, I usually deliver the same response -- that over fifteen years of grading student papers has eroded my ability to tell an incorrectly spelled word from a correctly spelled one.  This isn't exactly accurate and more than a little unfair to the learners.

The real answer is that I'm not a detail oriented person and spelling seems to be one of those details that consistently falls through the cracks.   Before hitting the "save" button on a post, I usually read it over a few times in order to try and catch any errors.   When I think that everything's correct, I click the button, only to read the post a few days later to find it riddled with misspelled words.   How did that happen?  I'm careful. I read voraciously.  I should be able to spell.

On Thursday, I gave a presentation to about 150 people for work and, in the middle of the presentation, in the absolute middle of it, a woman raised her hand.  Thinking that she had a question about my material, I acknowledged her.   "As an educator," she said, "I have to tell you that you have a misspelled word on that slide."

I was floored.  Completely and totally floored.  Now, I understand that misspelled words bother some people.  Presumably, they're like a fly in the ointment.  An irritant.  A thing out of place.  Misspellings can signify that the author didn't care enough about the work or the audience to spend the time proofreading the paper.   In regard to this presentation, however, this couldn't be further from the truth.  I read that presentation about 50 times.  Not only that, but I had no fewer than four people look at it.  One word slipped through, but it was enough for this person to use to humiliate me.

One of the reasons why I chose to major in English and go onto the Ph.D. in the field was because, as opposed to math and science, I saw this as a place where there were no "right" anwers.  As long as you used appropriate evidence, the text could mean whatever you saw in it, and intepretations differed only by degree.  Now, I realize that this is a very simplistic way of looking at the disciplines and I paid close attention to the specifics when I wrote literary criticism.  Equally, I would never overlook a vast amount of misspellings in student paper.  However, I find that, as the grammar and misspellings go, so does the rigor of critical thinking.   It's rare to find a paper that's been well thought out, but still has a plethora of misspellings.

Even though I have fantasies of Hen-Bug or Ty-Baby being one of those spelling-bee finalists on ESPN and respect the knowledge of languages that it takes to be really good at spelling, I have to admit that it's just not one of those things for me and I have a hard time seeing a scenario where it could be.  What do you think?  Can you spell?

Baby Talk

The twins are the opposite of Eskimos.  Rather than having many names for one thing, they have a handful of words which convey a variety of meanings.  To the casual observer, the word “dog” means only one thing.  To the twins, “dog” can mean a complex variety of things.  Elephants are labeled as dogs as are cats, sheep, llamas, and, mysteriously, tables.

The meanings explode when it comes to the word “door.”  “Door” not only means, “there is a door,” but also, “I would like to go through the door,” “open the door,” “close the door,” and “my brother is currently blocking the door.”  Because “door” means so many things, confusion is inevitable.

Yesterday, Ty-Baby went over to my office door and proclaimed “door.”

Now, Ty-Baby is not allowed in my office, so I said, “No, Ty-Baby.  No door.  No door.”  At the exact same time, the nanny was praising him for correctly labeling the door as a door:  “Yes!  Ty-Baby!  That is a door!”  Our voices overlapped:  “Yes!”  “No!.”

I have absolutely no idea which one of us was correct in our interpretation.  The baby didn’t pay attention to either one of us.  He did, however, share a look with his brother that seemed very clear in its ability to communicate his meaning:  "Adults are silly, frustrating, and slightly strange."

Schools and Sick

I think one of the reasons why I continue to blog, even after having the twins, is that it helps me to know that I'm not neurotic about some of my worries.  It seems that pretty much everyone worries about schools, although I don't know whether that speaks more toward individual neuroses than to the sorry state of public schools.  Perhaps a little of both.

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In the middle of this worry about schools, we got hit by some sort of sickness that looks like bronchitis, feels like bronchitis, but which isn't bronchitis.  This is our first major sickness since March.  Don't you just feel a little betrayed when fever and coughing comes at you in the middle of the summer?  In the middle of one of a pretty damn hot summer?  Sickness belongs in the winter, when all you want to do is cuddle on the couch with a mug of hot chocolate anyway.  A fever on top of 102 degrees in the shade is just wrong.

Summer or not, G. is sick.  I am sick. Hen-bug is sick and Ty-baby is sick.

We can all tell that Ty-baby is sick because he's taken to moaning to himself, sounding like nothing so much as a little owl:  "whooo...whoooo....whooo....whooo."  The likeness is so remarkable that he's attracted an actual owl, which sits on a nearby tree branch at dusk and sings back to Ty-baby.  I think that this is sad and beautiful.  G. believes that the owl might just be horny.

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It's also been a little frustrating over here of late because I can't seem to comment on Blogger.  Every time I try to comment, the textbox just refreshes over and over and over again.  If you're on Blogger and thinking that I just dropped off the planet earth, please know otherwise. 

This, and I've been trying to find someone who can work on my Typepad template, but nobody I've contacted through the internet will return my emails.  Does anyone know of anyone who can work with a Typepad template for cold, hard cash?  I'm really tired of seeing this admittedly beautiful template and would very much like another one.

Big Move

When we bought the house we liven in now, G. and I were just dating.   We had discussed engagement and marriage, but just weren't at that point.  You might wonder what that has to do with anything, but our status meant that I had limited influence over the decision making.  G. financed the purchase completely and, although he listened to me in some respects, he already had decided where he wanted to live.  G. bought the house in the expanding area, near work, and I moved in three months after he signed the papers.  We were married a year after that with my name being added to the deed and the mortgage.

We did not buy nor consider buying in the small university town where I lived.

By and large, I've been happy in this home.  It's a good house, a comfortable home, and one that's filled with light.  Also, it's relatively isolated with large "open areas" both in front and behind.  It would be hard to find a home more perfectly situated.  I love not having neighbors across the street and having a backyard filled with trees is priceless.

However, it is in the flight path of the airport and, more problematic, in a school district that is not ideal.  Our county faces a huge growth problem with many schools moving to year-round, which I don't mind, and the schools being short over 100 teachers for the fall semester, which I do mind.   Due to this growth, students are routed from school to school to school with mind-numbing speed.  I don't know about you, but when I grew up, the school you went to didn't move unless you moved, and sometimes not even then.

Looking at this scenario, I gave G. the opinion of either sending the twins to the private school around the corner or moving back to the small university town, which has some of the strongest schools in the state, especially high schools.  I'm willing to admit that I might be a bit hasty in washing my hands of our county's public schools and the decision is not set in stone, but the overcrowding, the statistics, and the rate of change frightens me.  When we discussed the issue, G. has always decided for the private school near our home; however, just recently, he changed his mind.

For the first time in our marriage or, indeed, since I've known him, G. has acknowledged that he would consider a move to small university town.  I should be over the moon.  I've always wanted to move back to small university town, but instead, I'm conflicted.  I like where we live and visiting small university town is always an option. 

Small university town is also much more crowded than our current area.  It's also, how do I put this, more competitive.  A good friend of mine had kids who went to the high school and she described it as a "pressure cooker," with her children being more active and stressed than she remembered being in college. 

Our current neighborhood is very laid back.  People are professionals and children graduate the high schools to go to college, but the college choices announced in our neighborhood newspaper tend to be the second tier state schools and community colleges.  I don't find anything remotely wrong with this, but I know that it's different in small university town.  Part of me is comfortable with this.  I want the best education that I can find for the boys, but having lived under academic stress for most of the first thirty years of my life, I'm not entirely sure that it's a good thing. 

Any move that we would make is at least three years in the future.  We can't go anywhere until we stop paying a full-time nanny, but we do want to have a clear and good idea of our options.  In this respect, I guess that G.'s new openness to small university town is not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm not quite sure of what we should do.  Although we have a while to detemine what will be the best option for our family, the planning part of the person I am won't be happy unless we not only have a decision, even if it ends up changing later. 

This leaves me wondering if I'm alone in this.  If you have toddlers or small children, have you started thinking about schools even though it might be years away?  Would you move to get into a specific school district and why (or why not)?

I'm curious.

It Must Be The Heat

It's been difficult to put together a decent blog entry recently, mostly because it's been so darn hot and our grass is dying.  It's gone from green, to mostly green, to green with spots of brown, to little spots of green in a sea of brown.  Although I stare at this mostly brown lawn every day, it's hard to actually do something about it mainly because the "something" would involve dragging out the hoses, turning them on, moving the sprinklers, getting wet, moving them again, getting more wet, and then going into the house to change into dry clothes.

I might do it tomorrow.  On the other hand, I might not and just say I'm conserving water.

This general malaise extends even to the Hen-Bug's and Ty-Baby's hair.  Our nanny took them to the get their hair cut yesterday, bringing them home a little later than normal.  I knew that it wouldn't be good when she came into my office without the twins, leaving them to play in the den. 

Now granted, the twins don't have the most symetrical of heads, but this just wasn't a good haircut for either of them.  It looked like someone just put a motorcycle helmet on Ty's head and cut around it.  Hen-Bug?  Well, it looks like he's wearing a hat. The worst part of the matter is that their hair doesn't grow all that quickly, so we're stuck with this for a few months.  The best part is that neither twin really cares.

Normally, paying a chunk of change for such an unsatisfactory service would have me all up in arms, calling, complaining, and trying to get my money back.  However, two things are mitigating against this action.  One is the aforementioned heat.  The other is the fact that the nanny took them for this haircut, and she feels bad about it.  Now, granted, she took them to a different place than the one that I selected, but she was honest about it and feels terrible.

And really, do I really want to be the type of person who makes a big issue about an 18-month old's haircut?   No.  I do not, even though I feel the clarion call towards anger when I look at those bad haircuts.  Whether you call it the heat or something else, I've decided not to be angry and not to water my lawn in a drought.  Maybe there's something to August after all.

Anniversary

It's good that G. took me out to a nice dinner on Thursday, our fourth anniversary, because he's leaving again tomorrow for another five days.  G. didn't travel for the pretty much the entire duration of our marriage, but he has these two trips back to back.  I'm usually the one who travels in this relationship, but we're both learning something from the change in roles.

1)  I'm learning that it's impossible, just impossible, to keep the house clean if you're the sole care-taker of 18 month old twins.  The fact that G. does it when I'm away speaks to a super-human effort, one that I'm disenclined to make when he's gone.

2)  G is learning that exhaustion sinks in deep after travel, especially when crossing multiple time zones.  Having to immediately take supervision of twins can be rough, as he found out when I told him to take the twins the second after he returned and went upstairs to take a nap.

3)  Taking care of the twins alone, even with the nanny's support during the day, is infinitely more difficult than I thought it would be.  Even though I'm looking forward to my next trip, it will be with the realization of the toll it takes on G. when I'm gone.

All in all, this switching roles has been a good thing for us.  Our roles are what they are for good reason.  G. actually gets some satisfaction from cooking and cleaning, while I'm probably close to a zero on the Martha Stewart scale of domesticity.  We're not looking at changing them as it works for us; however, switching it up a bit has worked as well.  It's taught us both a little tolerance and given us a capacity for forgiveness, which we didn't quite have before.

Signs

I hate to get up on a high horse, but it completely boggles my mind as to how a grown man can sit in an airport, right next to the gate, and have his flight leave without him.  Although G. insists that the gate agent never called the flight, much the less his name, I still have trouble seeing this happening.  Yet, happen it did, with the result that I spent another night by myself and spent my morning driving to the airport to pick up a very grumpy G.

While we were both at the airport, Hen-Bug and Ty-Baby went with the nanny to a toy-store which offers free entertainment on Monday and Wednesday.  This entertainment happens to be a clown who sings, dances, and offers musical instruments to the kids so they can strum or bang or rattle along.  Although Hen and Ty typically play these instruments with gusto, some else grabbed their attention.  Seeing a little girl press her head against the drum as she played, they did likewise, and probably got an earful.

Our nanny used this behavior as a chance to strike up a conversation with the little girl's caretaker and learned that she (the little girl) was hearing impaired.  Finding that they had some other interests in common, our nanny chatted with the caretaker, who was glad for the conversation and admitted that they rarely got the chance to play with other kids.

It was during this conversation that they noticed that all three kids were keeping very quiet, but didn't think anything of it.  They did think it odd, however, that the little girl kept going to her nanny for food, taking handfuls of crackers and fruit, and toddling off with them.  At this point, I should mention that the boys know one sign and only one sign.

The sign for "eat."

When our nanny poked her head around to look at the boys, she saw them with both cheeks stuffed full of crackers, busily trying to figure out how to peel a bananna.  With his mouth full, Ty smiled and signed "eat" again.  If he knew the sign for "candy," I'm sure that he would have used it.

The little girl responded, but with what her nanny recognized as the sign for "friend."

I hope that the nanny does follow up on her plans to get the boys together with the little girl again.   Although I think that a "friend" in toddler-land is someone whom you occasionally allow to steal your toys, I hope that they could eventually sign it back to her.

Second Day Down

Surprise, surprise ... today saw us returning to Playspace, the children's museum in our town.   We spent the morning around the yard and, afterwards, the boys took a short name.  On rising, they soon became bored of all the amusements that our humble home has to offer and started begging to go outside.  As far as I was concerned, this was a non-opinion as the heat had climbed uncomfortably close to 100 degrees.  So, back to Playspace we went.

All in all, it was good.  I remembered to drink plenty of water this time and came home earlier to feed the boys before they started getting irritable.

Although I'm looking forward to the nanny coming in on Monday, I discovered that I very much enjoyed spending time with the boys.  They're turning out to be two funny and happy little people.  While at Playspace, Ty Baby returned to his favorite little red car time and time again to twist the wheel and yell out "beep...beep."  Seeing this, Hen Bug would stand in front of the car, slapping his hands on the front and hollering back "beep....beep."

However, the weekend has taken its toll and there have been some casualties:

1) Red Hot Chili Peppers CD (belonging to G):  Broken when Hen-Bug knocked the camera off the end table onto the CD, which somehow happened to be on the floor.  Thankfully, the camera is not also on the injured list.

2) Blue Elephant:  Imagine my surprise when I lift the toilet lid to see the stuffed blue elephant that the twins have had since they were little resting at the bottom of the bowl.  It turned out to be a good thing because, beneath the blue elephant lay the little keyring with our housekeys.

3) Ty Baby's Shoes: I don't know exactly how to put this, but I noticed that Ty-Baby's shoes smelled a little "off" this morning as I was gathering them off the floor.  I couldn't figure out how the baby could possibly step on dog dirt....until I remembered the incident of last night and the realization struck me. Ugh.  And yuck.

4) I can't do it without G.  And he can't do it without me.   

First Day

This was my first day of having the twins all to myself.  They are all mine until G. comes home on Tuesday.  I know, I know, I still have the nanny coming in on Monday, but it still feels like they're all mine and the house is all mine, as well. 

I don't remember the last time I was alone in the house.  My natural state is isolation.  I don't know whether this is as a result of choice or necessity.  I spent most of my 20's alone in a library, pouring over texts in my carefully selected carrel.  It's probably a little of both.

I told G. that I was looking forward to his absence and he snickered.  "You think you'll be alone?" he said, "what about the babies?"  When I told him that I'd be alone when they slept, he told me that I would be too tired to do much of anything.

He was right.

This first day has been hard.

After dropping G. off at the airport, we came back home for lunch and a brief nap.  We then headed out to Playspace where the twins happily spent most of their time in the music room or in the little pretend kitchen.  Picking up some Chick fil' A, we headed home for dinner, which is where G.'s absence started being felt.

Usually, after a visit to Playspace, I hand the twins over to G., who feeds them dinner as I rest and take a shower.  Maybe I didn't drink enough water during the day and maybe I completely under-estimated the effect of the usual quick break, but I didn't expect the exhaustion to hit me so hard. 

After a quick dinner, I set the twins down on the floor to play and settled myself there as well.  I closed my eyes.  I opened them.  I watched an episode of Hell's Kitchen on Tivo.  Gently parented in this fashion, the boys played more or less well together until I noticed that Ty Baby had been sitting, oddly quiet, in the same place for about 20 minutes.

I picked Ty Baby up and noticed that he left a wet spot on my shirt.  Alarmed, I set him down and ran upstairs to get a diaper and wipes.  When I came down, his diaper had clearly become undone as the entire room smelled like poo.  I changed him quickly, but the evidence still remained.....

I think I'm going to bed early tonight.  But that's only after I clean the floor, clean up after dinner, walk the dog, feed the dog, and do a load of laundry.  And, now, I'm looking forward to G's return.

All About Shoes

Although I don't have a great many shoes, I do have a considerable shoe fetish.  In fact, my fetish is so pronounced that I would never buy the shoes I covet because I would then have to wear them.  In short order, they would become scuffed, bruised, and worn.  They would cease to be the beautiful shoe that I saw in the store and just become another item of clothing. 

The only way I would buy the butter-soft works of art that you see at Saks, Barney's, and Nordstrom, to name a few, is if I could put them in a curio box and hang them on the wall.

I can't see my way to spending over $500.00 for a shoe that I would refuse to wear.  Or $500.00 for a shoe, period.

However, spending money on shoes for the boys seems legitimate, almost necessary.  Admittedly, I was a little phased when they outgrew their cute little Stride Rite sandals in a matter of two months, but it didn't slow me down much.  After all, the boys have unfortunately inherited my flat feet, which dooms them to a childhood of carefully calibrated shoes with good support and strong backs.  The least I could do is make sure that they're somewhat attractive.

I also feel strongly about giving the boys different shoes.  Ty-baby's feet are slightly larger than Hen-bug's.  Giving them the same shoe would give us a high probability of putting the wrong shoe on the wrong baby, so I'm stuck trying to find two pairs of baby shoes that I like rather than a single pair.

This time, we went for sneakers where a whole different situation presented itself:  Velco or Tie.  I liked the tie shoes better, so I purchased those for Hen-bug, who has a habit of removing anything velcroed to his feet.  I left the Velco for Ty-baby, who really never seems to care whether he's wearing shoes or not.  This, I figured, gave me the best of both worlds.

Today?

Ty-baby removed his new velcro sneakers and tossed them out of the stroller when I wasn't looking, necessitating a sneaker search around the block.  Hen-bug has taken to untying his triple-knotted laces and walking around with them slapping against the floor.  Neither baby seems to be aware that there could possibly be any difficulty with this behavior.

I'm looking into super-glue and thinking that a pair of shoes mounted on the wall isn't as silly an idea as I once thought.

Shoes?  What shoes?