another reason parenting is hard...

The emotional attachment to these little creatures who are amazing, incredible, so loving and adoring, all the while knowing that they're growing & changing (so fast!) on the path toward being tweens, adolescents, teenagers, adults. Getting used to (and reveling in!) arriving home after work to little arms raised up, wanting nothing more than my attention, loves, hugs, kisses, dancing in my arms - but knowing that I won't have this at some point in the future.  I guess it just feels so different than any other relationship. For example, it would have been so strange to be falling in love with Jerry and knowing all the while that eventually we would no longer have the same sort of loving interactions.  Of course I hope that the boys will always want affection from their mom in a certain form, but I know these days of innocent, unedited expressions of love are finite. And there's grief in that knowledge.  I'll love the men they'll be some day, but I'm going to miss the toddlers they are today.

(The bottles are "pretty much done" at this point. The last 2 nights they've had a sippy cup with milk before bed instead of a bottle and they've gone to sleep just fine.  Yesterday they had no bottles at all.  This morning, I had time to put change the boys's diapers and get them into their chairs for breakfast before I left for work and G was having a meltdown about not having a bottle - I've yet to hear from Jerry as to whether or not he had to give in & give a bottle).

parenting is hard.

W continues to giggle when we say "no".  It's so frustrating, because I don't know how to teach him that we're the parents, we're in charge, and when we say "no" that means he has to stop doing what he just did and not do it again.  Maybe he's unable to really understand those concepts very well yet, since he's only 15 months old (that's Jerry's opinion).  Of course my anxiety ridden brain jumps to the possibility that W is going to be a rebellious child who has no regard for authority and nothing we can think of to do will change that. I'm really hoping to find other moms who have struggled with this and made it through to the other side.  One of my main goals is to raise two kind & respectful boys.  How to accomplish this?

Then we have G who this morning had a complete meltdown and wouldn't stop freaking out when we tried to sit him in his chair to have breakfast. Yesterday he'd done just fine with the sippy cup instead of his beloved bottle with breakfast and so I had high hopes that this transition away from bottles was going well. Not so much.  He wouldn't settle down until we poured the milk into a bottle and gave that to him instead. Augh. I guess he might be a "strong willed child".

I'm trying not think about the fact that these two scenarios will pale in comparison to the future problems we're certain to encounter, probably sooner than we realize.  Good thing that these sweet boys also provide the biggest joys we've ever experienced. 

Toes

Sweet boys helped celebrate my birthday.  Love those toes!

a big difference between "100 and 5" and "100.5"

Just got a call from Jerry saying that W's temperature is now "100 and 5" after his nap.  I immediately said he should call the nurse line right away.  I asked more questions about how he was acting/feeling and as Jerry was talking, he referred to the fever not being as high as before the nap (which I knew had been 102).  Soooo, we got clarification.  W's fever was down to 100.5.  Much less scary and changed our whole conversation.  One little word.  And who's to know whether Jerry actually said the wrong word or if he said the right one and I miss-heard him because I'm worried about W?  I was just relieved to know we weren't dealing with an emergency type of situation and I felt I could breathe again.

This fever seems to be a strange one.  He'd been acting normally yesterday, with no signs of cold/congestion. Neither boys have been sick with colds or anything else in the last month, so when W was extremely clingy to me when I got home from work and just wanted to be cuddled I knew something was up, but didn't know what it could be.  Jerry thought for sure that it was just W being really attached to me & missing me.  But he's just not a super-cuddly guy.  Even G is more so and he's not even one who will sit in laps for long periods of time.  They're both so interested in being active that cuddling takes a back seat to climbing, walking, hiding, and throwing.  So I gave them dinner last night and W did eat & drink as normal, but afterwards he wouldn't stop crying and I noticed as I held him that he did seem warm.  Sure enough, when I checked his temp it was 102.3.  It just seems so strange, since he's had no recent colds and no other current symptoms.  He got Tylenol at 7 pm and G wanted some too (they both love the flavor of this medicine).  They went down at their regular 8 pm bedtime without a fuss and slept through the night.  I'm hoping that whatever is causing the fever is not some really bad thing and it just goes away as quickly as it came on.

kisses, popcorn buckets, and laughing at "no"

The affection was being handed out like candy this weekend.  And this time it was from boys to parents, boys to grandparents, boys to each other.  Suddenly they want to express their love through touching open mouth to cheek.  It's endearing, funny, adorable.  

Jerry and I got to go on a date yesterday, including a movie with popcorn in a bucket.  We brought said bucket home with us, because it was so huge that we didn't eat all of the popcorn.  W decided it is the best toy ever.  It will probably occupy that status for at least a week.  That is, if G doesn't do an intentional nose-dive onto it, smashing it flat.  These scenarios are equally plausible.  So W likes to wear this bucket on his head and then put it on our heads to see our reactions, "I can't see!!!".  This cracks him up.

Speaking of laughter - apparently we're so unfortunate as to have two toddlers who aren't phased by a stern, serious-sounding "NO".  In fact, rather than be reduced to tears, they laugh.  Yes, they somehow think it's a game.  So we're going to have to figure out whether time-outs can be effective this young (not-quite-15 months).  How do we teach them not to do something and that we're the parents-in-charge, if they laugh at "no"?  Any suggestions are welcomed!

One-on-one

Oh, what little gifts these boys are.  I feel so grateful to have the two of them.  Still, sometimes I really wish they would have arrived "one at a time".  And it's not because of the extra work involved with twins.  I don't have any way of knowing whether the work with two the same age is really that much more than two of different ages.  It's that I'm really a person who bonds well one-one-one.  I can participate in group conversations, but I'm always much more comfortable talking with one person at a time.  And last night I was playing sitting on the floor with W on my lap and G was playing in the same room and I realized once again how much my attention is divided.  I really crave time to just focus on my relationship with one little boy.  I end up being "half-there" with each of them.  In last night's instance, I had W on my lap and he was interested in the water bottle, playing with the attached cap and I wanted to interact with him, but I was aware of G pushing his rocket ship across the floor and wanted to participate in that with him too.  So it didn't feel like I was having a satisfying time with either of them.  I have a constant stream of thoughts in my head that I need to make sure G sees me and I need to give W attention, etc etc etc.

This is what people call a first world problem, I realize.  Or perhaps more specifically, a 21st century first world problem.  I can't imagine that a United States farm wife in the early 1900s had the luxury of worrying that she wasn't able to give enough adequate play time to all 5-10 of her children.  I think she likely had much more pressing concerns.  Sadly, it's likely that today's second & third worlds also require the need to bypass such trivial thoughts.

So, yes, I realize I'm privileged to have the kind of life where these worries even exist.  Still...I'd like to RELAX a bit and enjoy these days more than my worries currently let me.  I think I need to build "Mommy & W", "Mommy & G" outings into our calendar.  Actually I think something simple like taking just G out to Target even without (maybe especially without?) a shopping list would be really satisfying.  Because there's two of them, I've taken them shopping a total of twice.  I'd like to do it more, especially to fit these in before they're talking & demanding the toys and treats they see!

olives & spinach & mushrooms, oh my!

W loves olives.  We found this out last night, as I was cooking a new recipe (Pioneer Woman's Turkey Tetrazzini) and had W in the kitchen watching me cook.  I was chopping olives and he looked interested so I gave him a slice, thinking he'd probably spit it out.  Nope - he loved it and had his hand out for another.  And another.  In fact, I figured he was probably hungry with dinnertime approaching, so I gave him a little cube of turkey.  Which he took and ate, but when offered a second cube, he rejected it and pointed to the pile of sliced olives.  So cute.  Of course olives have fat & sodium and so we obviously aren't going to make this a habit.  A little later, since dinner prep was taking longer than I thought and both boys were now in their chairs watching me & getting whiny, I decided to give them some canned spinach to see what they thought of that.  (I personally despise canned/frozen/cooked spinach by itself - will only eat it raw, like in salads & sandwiches or cooked in a sauce).  They gave it a try and neither of them seemed to mind it.  It was definitely a new texture experience for them. And then when we all sat down to have dinner together, they tried mushrooms for the first time, as this was a prominent ingredient in the recipe.  And once again - no problems there!

After dinner, W showed off his skills - throwing the ball and kicking it.  We actually said, "Throw the ball to Daddy!" and he did that.  Sometimes the ball would fall off his hands behind him and he'd be momentarily confused, but not deterred.  So cute.

G, meanwhile, somehow got a big red bump on the side of his head.  With all of the wrestling, tackling, climbing, falling, nose-diving that these two participate in throughout the day, this isn't shocking.  Boys will be boys?  Although I'm sure if we had girls we'd likely have the same sort of thing going on.  Ultimately, I loooove how active they are.  The entertainment component is reason enough!  They make me laugh daily.