what we do in between snowstorms

We go to the park and avoid the dirty snow and giant puddles:








we complain a little


but we make ourselves feel better by trying on last year's sun hat and this year's sandals*:


We go on boat rides in the living room. "watch out for the water, Mama! It's getting higher and higher!


We study for our upcoming trip to Holland:




We grab two bowls from the drawer and two chairs and have "cake" with our blocks.


Mama has her own diversions, some of which involve vegetable seeds, seed-starting spreadsheets and stacks of gardening books from the library::






We join some members of our church (and hundreds of other people from area churches) and meet on the La*ke Street bridge to ask and pray for peace in Iraq after five years of war.


We get our picture taken with the mayor of Minneapolis while we are there:


And Ollie falls asleep in the afternoon for the first time in about a week:


On the rare days that are warm and not full of rain and snow, we have picnics by the Mississippi River bluffs :










"Look, Mama! What is that? It's green!"


We put on the snowman sweaters one more time and try Daddy's shoes on for size:


*Both fit. Ollie needs a new hat, which I found at Saver's for him, and I bought the exact same Tar*get sandals that worked so well last year, but 2 sizes up. Always good to have covered toes the first year you ride a tricycle!

we are fwee!

Well, I may be 2 weeks late in reporting this news, but the boys are now officially "preschoolers" and not "toddlers". We still don't know for certain where they'll be going to preschool, but they're three, and three-year-olds are not toddlers anymore.

Omie and Opa were in town for a visit, so both sides of the family celebrated together. We dressed the boys in their outfits from Holland, and Auntie Je*n and Uncle Da*ve brought a big boquet of balloons with them.





Ollie has rightly observed that we don't have much pink in our house. He was mighty pleased to have a pink balloon.

They received many lovely gifts, but the most instant hit that afternoon was a pair of harmonicas from Uncle Ph*l and Auntie Me*gan. Mea*gan confessed that she had resisted the temptation to buy them harmonicas when she was still living with us. I figure she has many possible childbearing years left for me to return the favor.


Grandma was the life of the party, since she was dressed in a bunny suit to go pick up her friends from the airport. This type of behavior is a tradition among this particular group of friends. I'm glad she got the coconut bra out of the way before all the grandkids were born. You know, good example and all that...






It was the first time in a while that the boys and Opa had seen each other. They had all kinds of games together, and the boys were very excited to share their toy tractors with him so, as No*ah put it, "Opa would not be lonely for his tractor".





My mom stayed a few extra days, and we had a nice little routine going before she had to leave.



We spent a lot of time talking about and planning for our upcoming trip to Holland. Here, Omie is looking through the Holland picture book she gave us. She and Opa also gave the boys beautiful little backpacks for their trip.



Saying goodbye:






Since their birthday, we've had two sizable snow storms and we're in the middle of a snow/ice/thunderstorm as I write. The ground is still frozen, they're still quite a bit of ice on the lakes, and there is nary a crocus to be seen. I always follow the local advice not to uncover my flower beds until mid-April unless it is a very early Spring, and once again, that advice is spot on. There are an awful lot of Minnesota gardeners who've spent the evening re-covering their beds with mulch in the sleet. It is winter, Mama, the boys say to me every day. I've stopped correcting them. The good news, though, is that the boys play so happily on their own outside these days that I should be able to get lots of gardening done this year if spring ever does decide to join us.

zoo

The boys and I went to the zoo today to see the baby animals. On a beautiful spring day, on the last weekend of the baby animals exhibit. It was lovely – the boys were good, the animals were sweet and accessible, and while it was very busy, as anyone would expect, it was much worse 2 hours later when we left than it was when we actually went through the exhibit.

It was lovely except for the behavior we witnessed. The loud complaining and moaning about waiting in line. The whining about how long it took to see the baby chicks. The bumping other people without saying “excuse me”. The attitude. The bad language. The yelling.

I wish I was talking about the kids. No, the kids were almost universally fine – the appalling behavior that put a serious chink in my own enjoyment of the morning and that my children noticed enough to comment upon more than once came from the parents.

“This is a nightmare – why did we come here on the last weekend?”

“Next time, I pick where we go, and it sure aint here!”

“The next wagon doesn’t come for 20 minutes! What a rip-off.”

“I hate this. We should have gone to a movie.”

“If we go through the door where everybody is going out, we can get to the chicks without having to wait!”

“We have to GO! The dolphins are at eleven and our Imax tickets are at noon! Hurry UP!”

“Just butt your way through, Madison! Tell that kid to move over!”

“Parker, get your damn butt over here and give me your coat!”

Parker, incidentally, looked utterly miserable, and was wearing baggy desert-storm camo pants and a t-shirt that said, “Backin’ down aint even an option!” Does that refer to his parents (who presumably bought him the shirt) or the war? A few yards down, I spotted a toddler wearing a t-shirt that said, "A is for Attitude".

There was a giant beautiful John Deere tractor that would have been a wonderful thing to let lots of kids climb on at once (it was enormous), but the parents were more interested in the photo op, so instead, everyone had to stand in line to get their picture taken in the seat then get yanked out so the next parent could take a picture.

We waited in line because my boys just so very much wanted to sit on the big tractor. This situation repeated itself in any area that was “photographable”. The kids couldn’t just play on the concrete pig or sit between the wooden chickens or talk to the volunteers about the baby chicks; they had to stand in line, get their picture taken, and get out of the way. Most of these kids were little – age 1 to 2ish, and predictably, they cried when they had to get off the pig or leave the climb-able chicken 30 seconds after finally getting to it. I’m sure the tantrums didn’t make it onto the camera, though, and that’s what matters, right? Being a bit older, my boys rolled with it all pretty well, but N said at one point, "Everyone is mad today, Mama."

I heard so much loud griping about everything that it made my head hurt within a half hour of being there. I just don’t get it. Why is everyone in such a hurry at the zoo at ten-thirty on a Saturday morning? I rarely take the boys to any kind of in-demand exhibit. Mostly, I think they’re really happy to go the zoo or the Children’s Museum at all – they simply don’t need any kind of extra-special offerings like that. They really love farm animals, though, and I thought it would be a wonderful exception. And it was. I fully expected crowds, and I and my well-rested children were simply in no hurry, so it wasn’t a big deal. There was plenty of open space in which to catch our breath when we needed to. But I’ve never heard complaining like that at the DMV. I’ve never heard moaning and whining like that at our local INS (immigration) office, where people are forced to wait in line outside the building in the Minnesota winter. I guess when you're getting your driver's license renewed, you're not obsessed with getting the most "bang for your buck" on your one day off. If you're at the INS office, you may just be feeling lucky to be able to be there.

I try to wish these people peace and try to find some love for a stranger within me instead of letting their behavior make me angry. But it’s hard. I take it especially personally when I see my kids looking at the griping and yelling and wondering what that’s all about. When my children visit the zoo, the kids and the animals shouldn’t be a heap more civilized than the adults.

slushy haiku

Horizontal sleet

Expect up to 9 inches

Last day of March; why?

____________________________

In 2 years, a field

Now we have a Metrodome

Nine inches, in March

Spring?

As this never-ending winter breathes its last gasps of frigid air and heaves a few last inches of unwelcome snow every few days, Spring waits, coiled, inevitable, yet invisible. I know this to be true, even though the very idea of Spring is starting to seem like a fable we amuse the boys with as we read library books about the seasons. Is it my imagination, or do my children look authentically skeptical when I talk to them about the daffodil bulbs that will bloom in a month or so? Surely, we thought there’d be evidence to impress them with by now.

Everyone I know seems just a little depressed these days, a little struck by weary disbelief at the recent weather, which was actually quite beautiful, just untimely. Last weekend brought a fairytale wonderland to Minnesota, full of powdered sugar-coated trees, thick blinding flurries, heavy clouds of deep steely grays mixed with spots of blue sky, making for beautiful strange light felt in the back of my neck. This is exactly the type of weather that would have been so welcome in mid-December, but only the kids seemed to appreciate the several inches that came just after the snow that had laid for months had finally started to fade to spots of ever-so-slightly greening grass. Snowmen abound in our neighborhood this year, evidence that kids have had the more optimistic view that we might as well do something with all this snow. One family a mile North of our house has even created an entire installation of snow creatures in the front yard, some of which were spray painted various colors. A brown cat, a pink Easter bunny. If the little springtime animals won’t come and assure us of the annual fecund end to our frigid Minnesota hibernation, a can of spray paint doesn’t quite do it for me as a substitution, but I suppose I needn’t judge another’s attempt to make the best of things. My own attempts seem to involve a lot of tea, sleep, and complaining.

I have a package of spinach seeds sitting in my kitchen cupboard, and my hand reaches for it, fingers the substantial seeds two or three times a day, willing the white away and the ground to thaw just enough in one of my raised beds that I can suspend an old storm window over the seeds and semi-frozen dirt to make for a workable cold-frame.

So close. Water drips from the roof so fast it runs like rivers into basements and down the street into full-to-capacity storm drains. Birds chirp the way they only do in springtime, looking rather desperately for food and finding only melted puddles of water, their little mating clocks ticking the same way they always do regardless of our relentless winter, hard, under feathers. Buds swell despite the cold and snow, coiled, like a shotgun of life, of rescue, of a promise fulfilled like a fable. It is here, we just haven’t been invited quite yet.

(P.S.Fond greetings to my Dutch family, who have also just experienced an unseasonably cold Easter!)

(P.P.S. I'll try to add some more pictures and do an update on the boys' birthday and the nice visit with my family soon. Does anyone have any decent blowing-out-the-birthday-cake pics? We didn't get any, so please e-mail me if you did!)

feast or famine

Let's see. The cost of jet fuel has doubled over the last year, sending ticket prices through the roof, the U.S. dollar just keeps sinking against the Euro, we have 3 year old twins, and we Americans aren't all that popular abroad at the moment. So what shall we do? Why go to Holland, of course! Must be because we love our Dutch family so much. We have passports (3 American, 1 Dutch + Green Card), tickets, everything, and we can't wait to see all our Dutch friends and relatives in June. Now, back to Minnesota, where we got snow again today after a week's steady thaw.

I think I've mentioned this before, but breakfast is an extravagant affair around here, at least when J is home. I am usually getting ready for work in the morning, leaving Daddy in charge of breakfast. He cooks any combination of waffles, pancakes, french toast, scrambled eggs, and hot cereal (the good, non-instant kind). On Saturday mornings, O has been known to tell me that Daddies cook breakfast, not Mamas. As you can see, they've gotten quite adept at helping. They can both crack an egg fairly competently, and they love to mix and stir. They're not shown here, but they own two aprons apiece, and wear them every day.



And sometimes, while J is cleaning up, Grandma comes by.

Visiting the coop. The boys still talk about Fanny (who is going into the soup pot a week from Wednesday, when Me*agan comes over to help, and brings her fabulous chicken noodle soup recipe.) Clara is doing fine, and seems to be at the top of the pecking order all of a sudden. She's docile enough that even the boys can hold her. You can see below that N is spreading scratch, a mix of grains that keeps the girls busy digging since they can't run around much at the moment.



O showing off a watercolor masterpiece. In addition to painting and drawing (which he loves, but only at home) O is really into memorizing all of a sudden. He can say the words to whole nursery rhymes, and then take a little bow.


Bath-time is a rarer event around here than it used to be, as it gets them kind of riled up before bed now and finding another time of day to do it never seems to work, but it is still a lot of fun. I'm sure that come summer, we'll have to go back to daily baths, but then they should be able to get their wiggles out in the park and not in the tub (and all over my lap as I dare pull the plug).








They were so muddy after this outing that I had to pull their snowpants off before I could let them into the house. We've been talking a lot about how when it's warmer, we won't wear jackets outside, and we'll wear sandals. N is very excited to wear sandals. The other day O said, "and when it's really, really warm, we'll go naked!" Umm, not quite (at least not in the U.S. --Europe is quite a bit mellower about these things).


N is SO in love with the cat. He still gets too excited around the animals and bugs them a bit much, but he's starting to earn more and more moments like this with Orbit.





O was sick and had a high fever a few weeks ago (look at those cheeks and that ear!), and N doted on him. He was so cute--bringing him a bunny and letting him choose which one, asking me if O needed water or a snack, finally just giving him kisses on the head. I let them have fruit juice lollipops when they have coughs, because it's the closest safe thing to a cough drop I can give them.


A couple of days later, O was all better, and it was back to this:



As N would say to everyone under the sun plus his uncle:

GOOD BYE!!!!!!



(Oh, and by the way - that last entry photo was NOT of O's middle finger. It had not even occurred to me that it could look like it was! It was his pointer - sorry if I offended anyone.)

jolly good fellow

If one word could be used to describe how most people would see O, it would be “jolly”. As his parents, we are also privy to a lot of dramatic wailing from this particular boy, but jolly is a good word to describe him a blessedly large majority of the time.

Yesterday I took my jolly good fellow to his 3-year well child visit. Our pediatrician is a wonderfully comforting and knowledgeable woman that is likely already eligible for retirement. She and her patients benefit greatly from her commitment to reading the latest research balanced with by many decades of experience. As the parent, I am so grateful that she is willing to explain her reasoning for various recommendations and leave the final choices up to us.

At the beginning of the appointment, Dr. M took out a box of blocks and pulled out four and lined them up. He identified all the colors, the shape of the blocks, and counted them for her, pointing out that there were no pink or brown blocks, but that the windowsill was brown and the plastic coating on her stethoscope was pink. She asked him to make a tower, and he said, “I need some more, please”. He pulled four more out of the box, made two towers of four, and pulled out a rectangle and made a bridge across the top. Then he said, “You should not go through this tunnel, Dr. M, because you will bump your head!”. She laughed again, and said that in all her years of doing this little test with 3 year olds, that was a new one. The boys have lots of practice with blocks!

After she did all the usual tooth-counting (19 out of 20 are in), tummy-poking, and ear-peeking, we talked about the asthma. Dr. M was more reassuring about O’s asthma than I expected given his troubles this winter. She agreed with the doc we saw a few weeks ago that his asthma is officially “severe”, but also said that she thought it most likely that the severity will improve to moderate or even mild over the next couple of years. He needs to be on preventative meds until at least a year from this coming May, and we’ll need to work out how to limit his cold-air exposure when he starts preschool (it’s a good thing we didn’t go with the nature-center based preschool we looked at, because they go out for an hour every day unless it’s dangerously cold, and poor O would have had to stay inside an awful lot). After going on preventative medication, he’s gotten through the winter with no more prednisone and stayed out of the hospital, which is wonderful. He has a cold and cough now, and she said his lungs sounded great. Now that he’s three, he can take a chewable tablet, so we’re switching his meds to a non-nebulizer kind. He’ll still use the neb for when he has colds or other exacerbations, but he won’t need the 2x daily 10 minute treatments anymore, which is nice. That actually wasn’t as bad as you’d think – he was very good about it, and it meant that we got in an extra 20 minutes or so of reading with both boys every day. They beg for books often enough anyway that we should be able to stay in the habit, and there’s also bedtime and naptime.

The switch in meds means that we most likely won’t have to lug the neb to Europe, which I was concerned about. We have an inhaler to try with albuterol (the med for acute asthma) the next time he gets a cold, and if that goes well, he should be OK with no nebulizer for the trip. If he’s not quite ready to use an inhaler and mask, we’ll get a special order to rent a battery-powered nebulizer.

During the appointment, O, in a t-shirt and underpants, was asked to hop across the room. His answer?

“I would prefer to gallop, Dr. M.”

She laughed, and he did. And then he said, “And now I will dance.” And he did.

no pictures because:

--my camera-to-computer cord is missing. Again. The last person I saw with it was O, while I was on the phone last week and didn’t have much time to monitor whether he minded me when I told him to go put that back.

O has always been one of those kids who is into everything. Even when he was just barely standing unassisted he was finding keys and trying to stick them into locks, putting small toys into the heating grates, reaching waaaaay under the couch for some tiny forgotten choking hazard. I suspect that he has a bit of an engineer in him, wanting to understand how things are put together so that someday he might be able to put them together himself instead of just take them apart. I see much evidence in this with his current Lego fascination, and I think he’ll be very happy when his rather good fine-motor skills start to catch up to his vision. One of his quirks is the habit he has of moving objects to unknown-except-to-him locations, and while occasionally entertaining, it more often drives us a bit nuts. He’s been doing this since he could crawl. I find my toothbrush in a kitchen drawer, my underwear in the bathtub and a bra around his neck (the drawer is in the hallway next to the bathroom), and my keys in my shoes. We lose important items for days at a time until O wanders into the room with whatever was missing, oddly mute when we ask him from where it was retrieved.

N, for his part, is more likely to grab things from high places simply for the feat of figuring out to get to them. He moves along the kitchen counters on his tippy-toes, craning his neck for something interesting. If he knows we’re watching, he’ll refrain from actually grabbing (“I’m not being grabby, Mama, I’m not!”), but instead request something or make some justification for why he needs it. He’s very aware of what he needs permission to do, and while he crosses that line at times, he’s more likely by now to say, “may I” and request things verbally, though sometimes with a hand already reaching towards what he would like to have in his possession. I was seriously trying to get used to the idea that we might be facing a childhood of children that need very close supervision, but these days, I am more likely to know where my toothbrush is, and less likely to find boys on top of the kitchen table or destroying something than was the case of few months ago, and this is a relief.

Still, there are exceptions. Yesterday, I was looking all over for a hairbrush or a comb. O asked what I was doing. I told him, and as N wandered by, he said, “You could take a comb from a chicken, Mama!” They both giggled for a long while at that one, and even harder when I asked which chicken I should hold upside down to comb my hair with. Later, I found the hairbrush in one of my boots.

Both boys are doing very well. They have been a lot more fun to live with lately, after a couple of months where both J and I were regularly having some pretty frustrated days with both of them. They love to draw, craft, and watercolor right now, but their very favorite thing seems to be talking. Rhyming, singing, describing, arguing, yelling, whispering, talking, talking, talking. In two weeks, I will take off for a weekend solitary retreat like I did last year. While I truly love to hear my boys explore language and all its joys and particulars, the silence will be welcome.

O has had a bad cold that started with a high fever, but is slogging fairly happily through it. I did get some extremely unwelcome news yesterday: It turns out that we are on the waiting list at our chosen preschool after all, though we are at the very top 1 and 2 slots. We’d received some verbal reassurance last month that we were “in”, but as it turns out, there were an unprecedented amount of returning families that wanted 5 days for next year. The coordinator was extremely apologetic, and said there is hope, but it means that our fear has come true: we may not know what the situation is until the end of the summer. It is possible that we may not get in at all, or that only one will, which essentially means neither. We have a call in to look at one more not-so-in-demand school, but most of the deadlines for any schools have passed, and I just don’t know what we’ll do if we don’t get in anywhere. For previously stated reasons, I think that two years of preschool would be a good thing for our boys, both as twins and as individuals. I am a little like N in not liking change and uncertainty, so this is all just a little bit torturous.