On Thanksgiving 2010, Devon was eight months old. We spent the holiday in Nashville with Craig's family and took photos together just after dinner. I like to think that sometime that day, perhaps between the stuffing and the pumpkin pie, a few cells split off the tiny embryo I didn't even know I was carrying and Carrie Melina Keathley became Carrie and Melina Keathley.
Of course, that single baby probably wouldn't have been named Carrie OR Melina. I had the name Verity picked out for a girl. We decided that since it meant "truth" it wouldn't work well for a twin. If one girl's name means that she's truthful, does the other one get to be a liar? What if the twin named Verity wasn't particularly truthful? Irony?
On the drive home from Nashville, I felt a twinge of nausea contemplating the turkey and cranberry sandwich my mother-in-law had packed for me. The next clue that I might be pregnant came almost a month later when the belt on the dress I had bought for a Christmas party was mysteriously tighter and I was in a serious romantic relationship with The Gingerbread Man.
Now I'm spending the day with three times as many kids as I thought I had back then. If you've wondered why I haven't posted in a while, it's because sometimes I can either be a parent or write about being a parent. I can't do both at once.
This has been a busy time for me because the girls are starting to take a little cereal twice a day. Like any parenting decision, this one was difficult, particularly because the Breastfeeding Mafia recommends ebf (exclusively breastfed) from birth to at least six months.
I caved at four months. I love nursing, but it was taking over my life. One night I was eating a bowl of Raisin Bran at 9:30 and realized that I had skipped dinner every night that week. What did I do instead? Tandem nurse, and not just at 6 pm, but every hour all day except for a short break in the afternoon. Tandem nursing was closing in on showering, taking care of Devon, eating three meals a day, keeping up with the laundry, and checking in with my patient and neglected husband.
The worst thing about spending so much time on the couch is not the backaches. It's that I had hours a day to surf the Internet with my one free hand and learn about all the things I should be doing for my kids. Making my own vegan organic formula from ingredients I buy from a health food store in New Zealand. Pureeing my own cereal from whole grains I cook myself. Wearing my babies on my body until they're old enough to drive a car.
Oh well. Twice a day the twins get 15 ml. of liquid cereal mixed with formula dropped into their mouths with a supplementing syringe. We'll transition to a spoon as soon as they get a little more practice moving a little squirt of cereal from the front of their mouths to the back. Right now it's cute to watch them stick out their tongues as if for a communion wafer, swallow, smile, and open for more. The cereal comes from a box with a smiling baby on it. The formula comes from a canister. The Breastfeeding Mafia says that you might as well feed the packing materials to the baby for all the nutrition they're getting, but the Mythbusters debunked that suburban legend last year before they turned their attention to sending cannonballs through peaceful Dublin homes.
I feel a little like I've gone over to the dark side, but the girls don't. They take a good morning nap, a good afternoon nap, and still nurse 6-8 times a day. What matters most is that they're much happier now...
...which means Mommy is, too.
The girls enjoy spending time in the "baby gym", which works better than a bouncy seat because they can lay side-by-side, or enjoy some tummy time. Melina just dropped her head, twitched her right leg, and became the first twin with a confirmed front-to-back rollover!
Last Saturday morning, we read in the paper about the Vero Beach Christmas Parade. "How quaint! A small-town parade. Let's go!" we cried, and packed up the kids for a rare evening outing.
As it turns out, five thousand people line Ocean Drive (a stone's throw from the coast) to watch handcrafted floats covered in Christmas lights amble down the street. It was part Main Street Electrical Parade, part Almond Blossom Festival, and the event of Devon's young life. When he was handed a flag by a passing walker, he gripped it firmly and waved it for two hours.
On the way back to the car, we ignored passing strangers who ironically hummed "Everyone Loves A Parade" while watching us file by with the twins in the double stroller and Devon still waving his flag in the single. I heard a voice call after us: "Wow, you guys make THAT look easy!"
It's NOT always easy, as you can imagine, but there are other words I would use to describe it: fun, exciting, rewarding. Of course, it's also time consuming. Why shouldn't it be?
It's the one thing in my life that, more than anything, I want to do well.
And blog about it if I have the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment