for my mom only

This won't be of any interest to most of you, but I just bought this chair at Saver's for $7.50. I'm wondering if my mother, the former antiques dealer, can tell me anything about it, and I figured the easiest way to get her a bunch of decent pictures to look at without sending her a bunch of huge files was just to post them here. The chair is worn, and has had a couple of unfortunate repairs, but I wonder how old it is. I could be totally wrong, but it looks rather old to me. in any case, it's very comfortable, it fits well in our living room,and it was $7.50! I'm going to sell the little (rather uncomfortable) 1920's Mission rocker we had on Craig's List for the $100 we bought it for.

I promise my next post will be more interesting!









Look, no gum!

itchy for Spring

N also had a little Only Boy time the other day, since he got sick next. I gave him some snow to play with in the bathtub, and he really liked it. We missed church on Sunday because they were too sick, but they received a visit from Grandma and Grandpa to break up the monotony.




On Tuesday, we walked all the way to the library and back. It was a pretty warm day for once.


N calls this table at the library his "desk", and he calls the library "my library".


Daddy is much better at playing "dump twuck" than Mama is.







Yesterday, we were leaving to go to our Early Childhood class, and O noticed that a bird had pooped on our car. He said "Dat birdie should not do dat! Dat is wude!" N responded, "Dat birdie should not be awowed to poop again until he apowagizes!"

This weekend should be fun - we're going to the Railway Museum in St. Paul on Saturday, and J and I are going out to dinner to celebrate his birthday (which was today) on Saturday night. It's going to be really cold again, though. I am so very, very sick of winter. The boys have been particularly cranky and difficult lately, probably due to illness, and we all feel a bit cooped up, I think. It's been an especially cold and snowy winter, and I'm itchy for the first signs of Spring, still weeks away.

preschool? already?

We just signed up for our last trimester of Early Childhood Classes and have been busy visiting preschools. One of those milestones that is often different for families with multiples is that of enrolling in and attending preschool. Minneapolis is no New York or LA—things are still fairly relaxed here, there are a lot of decent affordable options and “interviews” or waiting lists that start at birth are almost unheard of. The really in-demand places do lotteries, the rest do some version of first-come-first-serve. Still, to even get in the lotteries, you have to start touring the January before in order to apply in time. The stakes are high when you need two spots at once.

We had some ideas about what we wanted: play-based, nurturing, a school that would be a positive first school experience for our boys to start out in together. We suspect that we will choose to separate the boys for kindergarten, so we want a place that will be sensitive to preparing them for that, by encouraging them to branch out from each other a little. We weren't set in stone on a particular philosophy, but we did want a place that had a decent child/teacher ratio and did some goal-setting with each child.

We visited a Nature Center Preschool that I thought would be perfect, but it was quite a drive, and then, through a friend, we heard about an neighborhood preschool that is run as a co-op, is right in our neighborhood, and is known by word-of-mouth only. Compared to the Nature Center school, this school wasn’t much to look at. There were no adorable statues of children as you come in, no airy skylights or expensive wooden toys and no parent lounge with fireplace and WiFi, just a church building lobby and a marked door to the preschool room. Inside, though, the place had a cheerful and orderly coziness. There were lots of collaborative and individual projects on the wall, all different interpretations of a theme. The toys were well-worn and even dated, but the spaces were organized in an inviting, kid-friendly way. The teachers were warm, and had a friendly, easygoing manner with the boys. One of them has been there 17 years, and is clearly beloved by both the parents and the students, and I also really liked the teacher that has only been there for one. The boys seemed right at home. It was clear that while this preschool is definitely “play-based”, the teachers also do a lot of work to help kids learn to function in a group setting, get along together, actively work on some of the concepts they’re starting to be able to understand. Because it’s a co-op, the teachers are very well taken care of and don’t have to do much administrative work. The parents do all that, through monthly all-parent meetings, committees, and individual volunteer positions. Because of the co-op model, this preschool is also quite cheap. I liked the schedule they keep – adding an extra half-hour to the day for a couple of parents to watch kids at the attached playground so that kids can burn off a little energy before coming in and parents don’t have to turn around and come right back by the time they get home. On the way out, we ran into Lisa, our local librarian, who had wonderful things to say about sending her little boy there.

My head was spinning as we left. Here I’ve been researching this at least a little since the summer after the boys’ birth, and I go and fall in love with a preschool that’s a mile from my house, which I didn’t even know existed until a few days prior. The Co-op Preschool was supposed to be a possible back-up for the Nature Center Preschool, but we actually felt like it might be an even better place to send the boys. We put in an application, but didn’t get any promises about the possibility of our getting in.

That was a month ago. We had another couple of possibilities to check out, but I thought it was likely that we’d apply at the Nature Center Preschool and at the Co-op. we looked at two more schools, both nice, but not in the neighborhood. I kept thinking about N, who has a pretty tough time with separation and transitions. I’m not sure he’d really like being driven across town to an unfamiliar neighborhood and dropped off somewhere, versus being biked somewhere and running into his buddies, both adult and pint-sized, from Early Childhood classes, our church, the library, and our local Y. He’s the kind of kid who has an early appreciation for context and community, because they help him feel safe and connected. And the more I thought about that, the more I thought about the fact that most of us have some flavor of that need, the need to feel like we live within a village. The longer I live here and participate in all the places there are to bring little people, the more I run into the same likable loosely connected tribe of folks who are also bringing up little kids around here. That's a wonderful feeling. I am not daunted by the idea of putting in some volunteer hours at a co-op preschool, especially if I can bring my kids and get to know more parents right in my neighborhood while I’m doing it.

I was still worried about whether we’d get in to either of those schools though, and I thought maybe it was time to visit some more neighborhood-based preschools near us to see if there might be any other neighborhood gems to have as a back-up. I had a few leads—a big school with several classrooms that a lot of kids we know in the neighborhood go or have gone to, and a couple of tiny church schools.

We visited one of the tiny one-classroom schools this morning. I can honestly say that I’d rather my kids didn’t do any preschool than go there. My goodness, this school was depressing. The place was operated with military precision, with every minute scripted out, kids spending tons of time being drilled in letters and numbers, being told exactly what to do and how, standing on little of pieces of tape in the gym, doing calisthenics, and following directions every minute. Predictably, for the entire 5 minutes the kids were allowed to have “free play” in the gym, they screamed their bloody heads off. They had no art on the classroom walls, just a whole lot of those kit punch-outs about what season we’re in. There were maybe 15 books in the room, and no art easels. When I asked about art, the director told me that they don’t do art per se, they do crafts, and that the purpose of doing it was to teach sequences of steps. As in, there’s one way to do it, and only one way. The teacher’s assistant had a whistle around her neck, and a manner that she seemed to consciously soften for our benefit when she notices we were listening.

On the way home, we told the boys that they will not be going to school there. I was so frustrated at that point. We’d already looked at five schools. Nature Center Preschool was out, because they have it set up that you can only apply if it’s your first choice, since they let you know in March and expect the deposit a week later. We could not worry about it and apply at one of the less in-demand schools in late Spring or early summer if Co-op Preschool doesn’t come through with two spots, but the waiting list slots only come up one at a time. What if only one boy got in, or we were left hanging for weeks? Does it really need to be this complicated? I’ve met a twin mom whose daughter was accepted in May and whose son didn’t get in until the first week in September. They had to spend the whole summer worrying about it.

When I got home, I called the parent from the Co-op preschool just to get an idea of where on the waiting list we stood. “Oh, you’re in!” she said right away. “I was just waiting to call you to see if I could get In*grid (my friend Carrie’s daughter) and your boys in on the same days." We don’t know about that part yet, and it would be nice if Carrie and I ran into each other there regularly and maybe even carpooled, but we know we’re in, and we are so relieved.

And I am so glad not to have to think about any of this for a while anymore. If you’ve read this far, you probably are too.

Only Boy

Oli*ver woke up from his nap with a high fever yesterday. Jo*el took No*ah to the Global Ma*rket to get us all some food and run off a little of N's abundant energy, and I stayed home with O. He was kind of miserable, but happy enough to lay around with books and puzzles.

If you look closely, you'll see that a little chocolate cookie didn't hurt either. Did you know that at our Early Childhood classes, we mamas are all total hypocrates? For the kids we bring things like sliced apples, peapods, cheese cubes and whole wheat crackers. For each other? Bundt cake. Oreos. M&M's. Bottles of Dr. Pepper. So far, nobody has brought wine, at least.

Initially, O was pretty happy to have the bathtub all to himself, but then he got the chills, and I got him out and gave him some Tylenol.

This morning, Grandpa picked up N and brought him swimming, and I got to hang out with my "only boy" (as they put it when I have only one with me) for most of the morning. We had a nice time together, and I got three loads of laundry folded, the vacuuming, and some e-mailing done. We also went to the library in the "only boy stroller", and replaced one heap of books with another. O stayed in the stroller the whole time so he wouldn't get anyone sick.



O said,"I like to be your Only Boy and be in da Only Boy stroller and go to the Only Boy library" Then, at lunch, he said, "I want to see my No*ah now, please."

N seems to have had a really nice time at the Y and got to see Auntie Em*ily and baby Aug*ust there along with Grandma and Grandpa. At lunch, O said "I was missing you a widdle bit, bruddah." N said, "I was swimming, Oli*ver."

sniff

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted - Oliver ( I suspect) made off with our camera battery, and I've been unable to take pictures for a few weeks. I just found it in a drawer, and I'm snapping away, so I'll get some nice pictures up soon.

Meanwhile, a few of you have met my parents' wonderful black lab, Jake, and I have some sad news about him. Here is the e-mail my mom sent out this morning:

Dear All,

We have some very sad news to share with you.
Yesterday afternoon we had to put our dear Jake to sleep.
After starting the year as his usual energetic and enthusiastic self (see
picture taken on New years Day),in recent weeks he started limping on his
right front leg. When we had this checked out further by specialists and to
our shock we were informed that he was suffering from a very aggressive and
irreversible form of bone cancer.
There were no dignified options for our friend and we had to make a very
difficult decision. Jake had a wonderful life almost to the end.
Of course we will miss him dearly and cherish fond memories of a great
hunting dog and family dog, of how he loved the farm and his friends in the
park and of what a warm and thankful companion he was..

Hein and Elisabeth.

Jake was ten years old. He was one of those dogs that everyone just falls in love with, and he made friends wherever he went, whether it be in upstate New York or the Upper West Side of Manhatten. He had this big, beautiful head, and he'd just lay it on your lap and look up at you. He was very calm and gentle, even for a lab, and wanted nothing more than to run around outside and be with his people.

RIP, Jakey.

Christmas 2007

We had a really nice Christmas in Minn*apolis this year. J’s family opens gifts and shares a meal on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve morning, I left the boys with J and went over to his parents' house to do some major cooking. It was very relaxing to spend several hours cooking without interruption. We enjoyed a huge, amazing meal together, and opened gifts for the kids afterwards. J and I spent some time beforehand rehearsing the "giving" part as well as the getting, and they were pretty good about saying thank you.

(I totally stole the picture above from cousin Au*gust's blog) Auntie Mea*gan made the boys beautiful kid-sized aprons. They do a lot of cooking with us, and they're always wanting to wear mine. Here they're unpacking some train table additions.

I was glad that they were so grateful for their wonderful gifts, because they’re capable of being brutally honest by now. The other day, N said, “Oh! We read this book at MOPS!” I said, “You did?”, and he answered, “I didn’t like it then either.” Well….

It was so nice to do everything in one place and not have too much running around. There were four kids under age three, and everyone stayed happy. The meal was amazing. I made three dishes and everyone else brought something, and there were so many delicious dishes on the table that not everyone even got to try them all. Before dinner, we put together some bags of groceries for the food shelf and J said a prayer for all the folks who don’t have enough when we have so much abundance. The boys sat pretty long and happily to eat, though on opposite ends of a table that was as full of people as it could possible be. After dinner, the boys got quite a pile of gifts, and all the gifts were thoughtful and useful. Floor puzzles are very popular right now and they now have 4, and they received some nice train set additions and books. J had to go and play piano at church for the candlelight service at 7:30, and I went home to put a couple of very content, very exhausted boys to bed.

On the way into the house, the three of us stopped and stood in the front yard to look at the just-past-full moon, which had a beautiful ring around it. It was completely silent except for our breathing, there were Christmas lights on all up and down the block, smoke coming out of the chimneys, everything covered with thick, white snow. After I got their pajamas on, we read three nativity story books before bed, and from what he was saying, I think that O seemed to really kind of get it for the first time – at least that Jesus was the Son of God and that he grew up and did amazing things. He said, “That Baby Jesus is gonna get bigger and growed-up and he’s gonna walk on the water and he’s gonna give everybody bread and fishes!”

The next morning, we had a nice breakfast together, and opened a few gifts. J and I didn’t get them much, and besides a few books, the biggest hit was a pair of $3 mini Magna Doodles for in the car. J and I both took boys shopping for each other the week before so that the boys wouldn’t think Christmas was only about getting stuff, and that worked surprisingly well. After breakfast, we played with some of their new toys. They love all their new puzzles, and J and the boys have been putting them together every single day.

Then we took a walk in the neighborhood.

A snow angel:

The boys have been playing "David and Goliath" lately. N pretends to throw a rock at O, and O falls over backward, kind of like the Sunday School version of "Ring Around the Rosy".

Here they are acting out a scene from one of their very favorite books, "A Day On the Farm". O is the pig, and N is scratching his back with a stick. O got tired of this game pretty quickly.

These are real Minnesota boys: they don't seem to mind the cold a bit as long as they're well bundled. That evening, our good friend D came by and we lit the fire and had a nice dinner of leftovers together.

Here they are in their new Christmas pajamas.

Happy New Year!

catch up

Happy New Year!

I'm still catching up on photos, so here are few more from my mom's visit.

The Children's Museum.


What are our favorite animals at the zoo? Elephants? Nope. Monkeys? Nope. Ladybugs!



Putting up the tree.



Making pine cones covered with sunflower seed butter and rolled in birdseed to hang in our front yard tree. Did you know that the origin of Christmas trees had nothing to do with Christmas? People in parts of Europe used to hang pine cones like ours, dried fruit garlands and the like in evergreens just before the winter solstice to help the animals get through the darkest part of winter, kind of like we have birdfeeders today. Maybe next year' we'll do cranberry garlands too. I am always so happy when the days start getting longer again.

mothering in the 21st Century

Anyone who has had kids knows they change just about everything. Sure, we tell ourselves this and that won't change, we'll still be the same people, will still relate just fine to our friends without kids, but in my experience that isn't as true as we might like it to be. Maybe we just need to believe that it's true in order to take the leap. In my 3rd year of being a mom to N and O, I'm much happier about what that looks like than ever before. I've always loved my boys to pieces, but I'm now also more happy with the life that goes along with being their mom. The first year was exhausting and a bit lonely. I didn't have a lot of mom friends yet, and getting out of the house at all was hard, and I was SO tired, mostly due to the insomnia that lasted until the boys were about 20 months old. Our Early Childhood program, getting to know the women from church better, joining a writing group, and some online connections changed all that, and I have lots of friends with kids now, lots of women to see in real life who totally get what it's like. I'm rarely short of an option for a play date or outing. I've found my tribe, and it is such a relief and joy to have a peer group.

I wonder sometimes what my parents' generation makes of the way we do things, with all our classes, and books, and e-mail lists. I think that one of the best things about our very wired generation of parents is the knowledge that we are not alone if we find some things frustrating. We're informed, to be sure, but I will say that all that information can be overwhelming too. The other part of being a mom that's gotten easier for me over the last year of so is just getting it through my head that there's more than one legitimate way to do things, and that whatever answer I find to whatever issue I'm trying to deal with is just the one that happens to be right for me, my child, and my family. At some point, you just have to say, the heck with this or that "system", I need to parent the kid I have and listen to some of my own instincts and common sense. No one book has a perfect system for our particular family - but books can have some great nuggets that expand my toolbox a bit, and that's pretty much how I approach them. There's a lot of peer judgment among today's mother's though, perhaps because finding that "answer" can be such hard-won knowledge. It is sometimes a real blessing to be a mother of twins: the "answer" is rarely the same for both boys, and it's been pretty obvious from the beginning that we can take neither all the credit or all the blame for the wonderful or difficult things they do.

My generation doesn't really have the coffee klatches of previous generations, or the knowledge that many or even most of the moms on the block are home all day too. We are more mobile, and people often only live here for a few years. We are told that if we work, we're letting someone else raise our kids, but that if we don't we're letting our brains rot and setting a poor example for our kids. We are told from the moment we're pregnant that we're not only responsible for our children's basic needs, but also the intricacies of their social and brain development. We aren't just raising kids, we are, as a recent headlines stated "optimizing their development". Playpens and the like are frowned upon - we are expected to have pretty much constant meaningful interaction with our kids, and have lots of books at our disposal telling us exactly which games to play at which month to encourage a specific skill. Our Early Childhood teacher shared a study that showed that stay at home moms in the 70's and full-time working moms in the 90's spent almost the same amount of time daily actually directly interacting with their kids. We're informed, but we're also under a lot of pressure. I have a feeling that the generations before mine were a little better at just letting kids be part of life - being able to say "go play" and getting on with the needs of the household, or an adult conversation. I know that when I was a kid, I was also allowed to roam the neighborhood, something few of today's kids are allowed to do. Today's American kids grow up under an adult microscope, with a whole lot of structured activity or indoor screen time. I suspect that we're losing a lot by not letting kids have that unstructured outdoor time to explore the geography of both the neighborhood and of their own imaginations.

I'd be interested to see how all this works in Holland, or, if you're old enough to be my mother, how it worked for you. Were the early childhood years lonely? Did you obsess over the choices you made like this generation (at least this generation of middle-class mothers) does? Who did you go to when you had questions about discipline, or health, or sleep?

If you're interested in another take on what it's like to be a mom in early 21st century America, you can go here for an article I really enjoyed.

Christmas pictures coming soon.

bellybuttons

I took the boys to the zoo this morning, and we had a really wonderful time. They walked around holding hands, the bathroom breaks were easy, and they were full of smiles. N kept saying, "This is my brother!" to anyone who made eye contact with him. It is amazing how different one week from the next can be at this age. Last week, and the week before that, the boys were quite moody and difficult a lot of the time, though N more than O. Both J and I were kind of pulling our hair out, and it was very nice for us that Omie was around during part of that. This week, they've been just great: really happy, playing well on their own and together, fairly cooperative, excited about Christmas. This week the boys started giving their evaluation of things more regularly, saying things like, "I like the zoo a lot!", or, "I really like this food!" N continues to take me more literally than I intend. I joked that I was unbuttoning his flannel shirt all the way down to his bellybutton, and he backed away and said, "Mama! Don't unbutton my bellybutton! My smoothie will come out and fall aaaaalll over the rug!"


Some people ask if they fight much. About 6 months ago they fought a lot more than they do now. They have a bad day together every now and then, and can occasionally hurt each other's feelings, but they really don't fight much at all. Their tendency to get each other wound up is a MUCH bigger problem than fighting is. N has a tendency to be a bit bossy with O, and we try to help O out by giving him some words he can use to stick up for himself, but often they just work that out best on their own. It takes two to tango, as they say, and I think that O sometimes kind of prefers that N is in charge of some of the decision-making. N seems to care much more about making choices than O does right now. He's more concerned with doing things in the exact way and order he prefers.


Earlier this week, the boys and I went to Tar*get to buy daddy's Christmas present (they picked it out, with a little guidance). Today, Jo*el took N to buy one for me, and O and I played at a coffee shop (note to my Dutch readers: they actually serve mostly coffee in our coffee shops) for a bit. Then we went home, lit a fire, spread a table cloth on the floor, and had a picnic dinner in the living room. (Myra: see how we're putting the keepsake boxes to good use?)

O now has a twice daily appointment with the nebulizer, and we're continuing to see a big difference in him. We have somewhat mixed emotions about this development. When we agreed to this course of treatment, we just hoped that a preventative medication would keep him off the harsher drugs and avoid the visits to Urgent Care and future overnight hospital stays.

Since O was about 15 months old, I’ve had a nagging feeling about his gross motor skills. He walked soon enough, but awkwardly, and his balance wasn’t great even for a toddler, though he could scale playground equipment (and anything else) with an agility and determinedness that scares me even now. His skills seemed so uneven to me. He didn’t really quite run until he was over two, and even then, it seemed to be with great effort at actually lifting all the appropriate limbs in the air at once. He was evaluated for a gross motor delay at 22 months, and he passed, but not by much, and all the things he scores low on were the kinds of things that required sustained stamina to master. I've tried really hard not to worry, and I really don't care all that much if the boys are great at sports, but as I watched O’s uneven skills develop, watched him struggle to run and ask to sit a while as we went for hikes and his brother ran in impatient circles around him, I have continued to worry.

He’s been on the new meds for a little over a month, and the cough that lingered far too long is gone. A few weeks ago, I also started to notice other changes, a lightness in his body that I’ve never seen before. He’s really running, and getting real air underneath him as he moves, his face full of the joy of movement for the first time. He’s got more sustained energy, the kind with stamina and not just physical strength. His newly official diagnosis of asthma has been with him more severely and for longer than we’d known. All those things that worried me are sorting themselves out before our eyes, as air rushes in and comes right back out in the fairly effortless rhythm it ought to be. Asthma can be tough to diagnose in toddlers, and there isn't really anything anyone could have done differently. It makes me sad that he's clearly not been breathing as well as he could for some time now, but mostly, I am happy the kid can finally breathe, and we are still hopeful that he’ll grow out of it yet. J and I are filled with joy when we see him running down the sidewalk neck-and-neck with his brother, and I think I've already got everything I could ever want for Christmas.

fingerlings

Tonight, we ate potatoes, green beans, and salmon for dinner, and as I loaded up everyone's plates, I mentioned that these were "fingerling potatoes". N looked up at me with his big blue eyes wide open and a scared look on his face. He said, "These are somebody's fingers?"

I was able to reassure him, but he insisted on picking off the skins, and he looked nervous again when I referred to them as skins. I talked about different vegetables having skins and said "The skins taste good, and they're healthy". N tried them and said, "Actually*, they taste like very fancy paper!"

O said, "They taste like socks."

*his latest favorite turn of phrase, along with "Oh! But I thought....." and "I never seen that before!"