The First Christmas

Christmas came and went in a blur. There was the usual frenzy of buying gifts. We were grossly indulgent this year so I'm feeling very poor now. There was also the usual sense of guilt for buying into the commercial side of Christmas and allowing the real meaning of the season to take a back seat. I'm glad though that we went for Christmas services because that always puts things into perspective for me and as usual, if not more so this year, I am overawed by the idea of sacrifice and unconditional love.

The only difference is that this year, we had the twins with us. No doubt they're too young to really understand what was going but I wanted it to be special for them. They seemed to know that it was a special day because they stayed out late, they slept in strange beds while Mommy and Daddy were at friends' homes being merry and they finally graduated to wearing sleepsuits to sleep. One, it's more presentable for them to go to bed in sleepsuits, especially when they're out, two, it took them this long to finally fit snugly into them.




But time doesn't really mean much to them and they're not at the age where they can clamour and bug us awake to open their presents yet. They could open this year's loot next year and they wouldn't be any wiser. As with all children, they had more fun tearing apart the wrappers in a bid to get some of it into their mouths. It was a great deal of rip, shred, tear and they seemed undaunted even if the presents came in plastic wrapping rather than paper.




Their loot consisted of a whole lot of clothes that they can't wear at the moment, some shoes that they can't use at the moment, although it would look quite smashing on their feet. Packrat is a little bit uncertain about that point because Aunt Threez bought Baby J Sienna Miller type ugg uggs with pink pom poms on it. I so have to get it on her feet and take a photograph of that! What puzzled me was that Baby E got a whole bunch of cool tops but not one pair of pants in sight. I'm wondering if it's part of baby couture these days to wear sneakers, cool long sleeved tops and just diapers. Judging from the gifts, yes. But then again, I'm being snarky because I have realised my son is extremely short in the shorts/pants/material to cover his legs department.

At the end of the day, their favourite Christmas gift were Beanie baby bears that Uncle Bryan got for them. Of course, how they showed affection for it was to devour it. Baby J likes her Bear Bear's nose, she heads for it all the time. Baby E likes his Bear Bear's ear. I'm encouraging this attachment because I think it'll be easier to get them to sleep with their favourite somethings instead of us being their favourite somethings and spending a great deal of dead time just lying beside them waiting for them to fall off to sleep. Plus, I have very fond memories of my own smelly pillow that is now replaced by a Bambi pillow case that I insist on having even though it's threadbare.

They've turned six months already. It's been an amazingly exhausting, fulfilling, heartbreaking and nerve racking six months. And they're growing so quickly. Yesterday, they graduated to blended porridge, two days ago, both of them assumed crawling position and crawled one step before falling flat on their faces. Baby J always wants to sit up on her own and Baby E pulled himself into standing position a couple of days back. He looked so proud of himself for about 5 seconds before his jelly little legs buckled under him and he landed on his diaper padded bum. And now, they're teething. It makes them cranky, it occasionally makes them feverish and it makes breastfeeding them a great challenge.

But when I look at the photographs of them, or when they snuggle up to me when they're asleep, it's all worth it. Right up to the point where Baby J screams blue murder into my ear and makes as if she hates every fibre of my being. But that's a different story and Packrat assures me it's not personal.

Technorati Tags: babies, Christmas

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The best and the worst of times

Things I love most about Evan
1. His easy smile
2. How he looks round for me in a room and when he sees me, he smiles.
3. Him being ticklish and once you set him off, even looking at him makes him feel ticklish
4. Him being able to sleep for 3 hour stretches in the day

Things that drive me crazy about Evan
1. His waking up at 4 am and not going back to bed.
2. The constant need to be carried and screaming as if the whole world has wronged him when he is put down.
3. The way he bites, twists and yanks when I breast feed him.

Things I love about Jordan
1. Her chatty outgoing nature
2. How she makes you feel that she is actually having a conversation with you, eye contact, gestures and all.
3. How she giggles when I dance with her.
4. How she feels against me when I breast feed her.

Things that drive me ctazy about Jordan
1. Her ability to scream and be inconsolable for 2 hours at a stretch in the evenings.
2. Being petulant. Yes, 6 month olds can be petulant too.
3. Eating like she were already an anorexic dancer. She eats so little, her little brother is almost twice her size.

Things I love about being a mommy
1. Carrying my children and having them nuzzle up against me when they fall asleep.
2. Having been on leave for the last 8 months
3. Smelling their baby baby smell and knowing that I can come home to cuddle them everytime I go out.

Things that make me miss being kid free
1. My non flat belly- damn that diastisis.
2. The fact that even after 6 months, I still don't know what the heck I'm doing.
3. New levels of insecurity that I never know existed all tied to my ability and my expectations of being a mom.

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Seasons

They say a woman goes through seasons in her life. Any woman will know that even within a month, a woman can do a Jekyll and Hyde based on the amount of hormones swirling round her body. And now, as a mother, I have discovered a somewhat Melbourne-sque quality of being able to cover all seasons in a day. But here, the seasons I mean here have to do with my feelings towards the kids. And even babies, especially my girl baby has the ability to be both in the best and worst of moods in the same day.

For me, it pretty much is a reflection of how they feel too. In the morning, when they're all cheery, all is good. Baby J laughs and chatters, Evan grins like a loon and cackles at every grin you throw in his direction. And my heart soars. If only they could stay that way the whole day. But then again, that's akin to asking for that first flush of warm fuzzy romance feeling to stay for the rest of your life. Through the day, if I'm lucky, they sleep when they have to and feed when they have to. And I look at them and feel warm and fuzzy and happy to be a mother.

Unfortunately, today was not to be such a day. We took Evan out because we were short of minders to help watch the kids. And since Baby J spent the whole afternoon with us two days ago, albeit in a hospital waiting room, we took him today. He was good and just chilled in the sling and then in the car but the moment we got home, he refused to be put down. So the boy became sticky and refused to eat, refused to sleep and refused everything, only dozing for seconds before popping his bright eyes open again.

If we only had him spread out between the 2 or 3 of us, it wouldn't be an issue. But Evan has a big sister, who is the quintessential girl, temperamentally unpredictable but charming at the same time. Today however, she chose to be just temperamental, screaming her little lungs out in long drawn screams that are often interspersed by long silences where she's just drawing more breath to let loose an even louder one. Times like that, when calming her down is as futile as draining the ocean with a spoon, drains me of every positive feeling I have towards motherhood. She is inconsolable and I become more desperate to soothe her. I try hard not to let her see how exasperated or desperate I'm getting and I try to be patient, afterall, there isn't much point losing one's temper at someone who is irrational and cannot be reasoned with. Eventually when our very effective helper comes round to relieve me because she feels so sorry that Baby J has spent the last half to full hour screaming, I feel like a total failure. That I cannot even calm down my own daughter and that a stranger that I employed does the job better than I do.

That's when I break down, beat my chest in despair and bemoan my inability to be a mother. If you looked at me in the morning and you looked at me after I have miserably failed to calm my own child down, I think the two me-s are unrecognizable. The confident, "I can take on the world" mother and the " I don't deserve to be a mother, someone call child services and rescue these children" mother. The thing is like Tym reminded me, it's not like school where the harder you work and the harder you try, the more likely you are to succeed and that's where I am. Because I find it so difficult to calm her down or put her to sleep, I try even harder. I stay home in the evenings, I have dinner at 9 pm because that's when all is finally quiet on the front, I sing and dance with her, I rock her and I do everything in my power including nurse her with sore nipples just to try to break through and be on her good side. Once in a while I succeed and my day, night, everything is made, I am in a good mood and I could skip through meadows. Unfortunately, most evenings end in despair, with me surrendering her to my helper. And what kicks me in the gut even more is that, I've spent two hours trying to soothe her or get her to sleep instead of dozing off and wake up screaming to no avail and the minute I hand her over, she keeps quiet and falls asleep on her shoulder.

Some will tell me and play deep into my already inflated guilt complex that it's because I don't spend enough time with her and this is my punishment. And I, stupidly enough, will believe every single word of it because it feeds into my "bad mother" self-flagellating insecurity. But realistically, I spend every moment I am at home either with them or doing things for them. I don't know what more I can do. I guess I could stay home more but I also know my limits before I hit the wall with severe cabin fever and start resenting the kids. So, this is where I am. Stuck.

I make it sound like Evan is a whole lot easier to handle. If I thought about it carefully, I don't think so. Handling Evan comes with its own challenges. The only difference is Evan is generous with his smiles and at the end of the day, our responses are based on very primal, basic conditioning. Smile at me and I will go to the ends of the world. I read somewhere, that's why babies are made cute. It's their means of survival. Anyway, that's Evan. No matter how difficult he can get and trust me, he can be quite a handful to handle, it doesn't feel so draining because he responds. He lets you know he loves what you do. Baby J makes us work a lot harder and I'm never certain that she loves me. I moaned to Packrat about being very low on her packing order and that hurt. He assures me that it's impossible because she's only a baby, is pre-verbal and has no sense of spite.

In my darkest moments, I'm not sure. I'm racked with insecurity that I don't know how to parent my own daughter and how she will not love me and how this might be the beginning of a difficult mother-daughter relationship. And all it takes is for her to smile and to chatter to me or to fall asleep nuzzling into my chest for all these insecurities to melt away. Similarly, it just takes a day like today to cause all the insecurities to come flooding back ten fold, making me doubt myself and driving myself crazy.

While listening to her cry and feeling so helpless in the midst of her screams, it dawned on me why people end up accidentally killing their kids. When you're at wits end and the husband is out somewhere, it's very easy to employ any means to stop the kid's crying. No, I would never do that because my coping mechanism is to try and work it out, keep it all inside and then burst into tears after that. No doubt that has got repercussions too- stress induced headaches, swollen eyes, severe sleepiness- as if I'm not sleepy enough. But thankfully, these side effects only affect me and leave the children unharmed.

But yes, within a day, I went from " I miss you and I want to spend more time with you" to " my daughter hates me, I am a complete loser and faliure, I do not deserve to be a mother". Tomorrow is a brand new day and who knows what it'll bring. By the way, to who ever who told me, that after they hit a certain age, they stop being difficult because everything around them becomes more fun...You obviously have not met my daughter.

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#409th way of using breastmilk

When I was young, my mom told me never to waste food because of all the starving people in the world. When I was growing up, I didn't really care but I gradually did as I grew older.

And when I needed to dump freshly expressed milk, I felt the same guilt, knowing that there were starving infants in the world and I was dumping good and fresh milk. I couldn't bring it back like I did from Bali. I tried expressing in the shower but that took too long and that whole guilt thing surfaced again because I had to keep the water running.

Add to that was the fact that being in sunny Phuket and spending all day in the ocean meant sunburn and I hate sun burn. Get quite miserable with the sunburn. So then Packrat came up with an inspired idea. Instead of dumping the milk, instead of getting sun burn, instead of wasting a jolly decent looking outdoor bath, I should run the bath and create a milk bath like they do at the spas and charge exorbitant amounts of money for and soak in it.

And I did. It gives a whole new meaning to swimming in milk but it sure felt good and my skin hasn't been in better condition. All I needed to do after soaking in it was shower off with water and there wasn't any danger of me walking around smelling like my own milk.

Gold star for Packrat and his inspired idea!

Technorati Tags: babies, breastfeeding

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Crossed Eyes

When Baby J was born, we noticed that she was crossed eyed. At that time, we thought it funny and that it would go away but it didn't and the doctor picked it up at one of her monthly check ups. He said it was a convergent eye squint and mentioned something about it needing surgery or at the very least a patch. I was heartbroken to hear that and did not sleep for 2 days after hearing about it. I mean, what mother would be able to laugh off the fact that her child needs to go through any sort of medical procedure. I now know what I put my parents through living at the sprts medicine and physiotherapy clinic with a litany of injuries sustained during my running days.

Anyway, we went yesterday to see the paediatric opthamologist. And let me just say, while it is much cheaper to seek specialist attention at a public hospital, waiting four hours for the entire consult to be over is just not funny, especially with a not yet 6 month infant, who on a good day is already a little testy.

To her credit, she was pretty good most of the time. It had alot to do with the fact that Packrat had her strapped to his front so she had every opportunity to interact with the world. On top of her voice, she commented on how crowded and noisy the waiting room were and how irritating it was that there were all these kids running amok and why they could run amok and all she could do was flail her arms and legs.












When she truly got bored, we discovered blowing air at her entertained her too so her she is shuddering with every fresh breath, not realising that it was the same thing again and again. We only gave up because our cheek muscles got tired and we didn't want to spit on her face.











Anyway, she didn't mind the doctor too much since he had a bright shiny torch that he kept shining all over the place and she kept trying to chase it with her eyes. She also didn't mind the optopist, whoever that is and whatever it is she does, because she had pencils with toys at the end that sprung all over the place. She was particularly partial to Minnie Mouse in pink. And Mommy liked the optopist too because she only had good things to say about Baby J, like she being very alert for her age and she taking a long interest in the optopist and responding to her more than to her own boring parents, what I remember as habituation and dishabituation.

What Baby J had great issue with and made no qualms sharing it with the whole world was her new found abhorence for eye drops and any one who was going to go near her eyes with that strange bottle with the red tip at the end that dispensed smarting drops of liquid into her eyes. The first drop, because she didn't know what was coming was received with bright eyes staring at the nurse with bright red lipstick. The minute it entered her eye, however, was a totally different story. The screams were almost bloodcurdlingly angry and dismayed. Once again, my little girl showed that she learnt very quickly because she squeezed her eyes shut even though there was to be other drops to follow. And if the nurse actually managed to pry her eye open a milimetre to drop another drop in, she would scream even louder. The poor nurse kept apologising to this 5 1/2 month old infant and begging her to open her eyes and stop crying. I think she also feared that if she cried some more, her tears would wash out the eye drops and we or rather she would have to start from square one and I don't think she relished that thought since Baby J has one very powerful set of lungs.

I was more nervous about the fact that after the first dose, we had to wait ten minutes for the second dose (Round 2) and then wait a half hour for the drops to work before seeing the doctor. How was I supposed to placate an increasingly restless, tired and now angry baby?

Thankfully, her milk feed took up the whole ten minutes and after Round 2 of screaming, the workout her lungs got left her so exhausted she napped through the half hour, as did Mommy because I was exhausted from the activities of the night before and the morning.

The verdict? For now, we don't need for Baby J to become Baby Pirate J with the patch but we'll have to go back and check on her again and go through the whole ringmarole again. Next time, I bring toys. But for now, I shall ignore the fact that her eyes are crossed, because even then, she is mighty pixie cute and her crossed eyes just make her look all the more intense.



I think with those eyes, there is great potential for her to inherit Mommy's evil eye and with that personality of hers, I have no doubt she will learn how to use it very quickly and very effectively.

Technorati Tags: babies, seeing the doctor

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Head and tail

The easiest way to get a headache is to have spent 2 hours trying to put a screaming baby, who has decided she'd rather stay up after her bedtime to see what the adults are up to, to sleep and then be woken up at the obscene hour of 4.45 am by her brother who requires a feed and has decided that his day will start at that point.

My head is pounding and I'm so blurry eyed I don't care if the previous sentence-paragraph is ungrammatical. At least it won't kill me the way having nearly walked into a door just now would have.

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Part Jewish part Catholic

We're back from a week away from the twins. It's not the first time we've been away from the kids but it's been the longest time we've spent away from them. Everyone thought we couldn't do it or rather, more specifically, I couldn't do it- to leave my kids for a week and go away.

Truthfully, I never thought I would have a problem. Afterall, my parents left me behind and went on vacation (I've never quite let them forget about it but it's just me angling for a free trip to the US). On top of that, the role model for my mommy behaviour was my sister-in-law who believed truly and subscribed to the belief that husband came before children and would go away with my brother just so that they had couple time. Before I got married, this was also the advice that was given to me by many couples as well as our marriage counsellor- the marriage before the children. The children would be worse off if all the time was focussed on the kids and not on the couple who were their parents.

Knowing all this, I knew from the beginning that I would be leaving my children at some point to spend some major quality time with Packrat. In fact, there have been many a times when I've looked forward to it because of how emotionally and physically exhausted I was with the twins. We had planned very early on that we would go away at the end of the year. We toyed with the idea of going to San Francisco but did not book early enough to avoid the Christmas rush so there was the slight issue of being able to fly there with no way of flying back. So we decided that we would go somewhere regional and splurge a little bit. Phuket Banyan Tree seemed the perfect way to indulge so off we went. I knew I would miss my babies and true enough, when the plane took off, I burst into tears with the irrational fear that my babies would forget me and not love me anymore.

This however was replaced very quickly with the beauty of idyllic nature of the resort. Little was I to know that this was just a temporary reprieve and my missing the children would manifest itself in great amounts of guilt later on. It reared its ugly head when I saw cute babies on the beach and then questioned myself on why, if these mommies could handle their babies and take a holiday, why couldn't I? Was I that selfish or just that inept? Packrat's exasperated response to that was that the difference lay in the fact that I had twins! Even watching a dumb Jackie Chan movie that we borrowed from the library where Jackie Chan had to babysit a baby he kidnapped damn near sent me to tears everytime the baby in the movie cried. I think Packrat must have thought that his wife was turning into a loony nut job who had dropped a couple of her marbles in the Andaman ocean in the day.

The guilt of leaving my kids behind only really hit full force when we left Phuket and headed down to Bangkok. I think, by then, I was already rested and my crazy mind couldn't justify why I was away from my babies if I already had had the rest I needed. Even expressing milk and tossing it made me feel bad because, the milk was solely for them and here I was pouring litres of it down the drain. And then the breast pump broke down and it breaking down in Bangkok wasn't a matter of over-expressing for my children but more a case of expressing just so that I could go shopping in peace and not have to worry about aching boobs. Totally self indulgent and reason enough for self-flagellation. I realized the only way for me to alleviate the guilt was to shop for the babies. When I was buying things for them, I felt much better because at least, I could, in a warped sense justify what I was doing away from them. So shopped I did and when I had in mind something I wanted to get for them and almost didn't have time to, once agaib the water works started with me feeling heartbroken for my kids who didn't have their mommy. Did I say how over the top and melodramatic I was being?

I think it's the same reason that propels absent parents to feel that it is necessary to buy stuff for the children to make up for their time away. Although, having said that, I don't know anyone in my immediate circle of friends or family that has used gifts to make up for not being with their children. But then again, I came back with quite a substantial amount of loot for them.

It's so easy to feel guilty about so many things. We are so pre-wired to do so and any slight hint or insinuation that what we are doing might hurt our children, the sense of guilt multiplies. The only good thing about feel guilty and missing my children terribly is proof that I have genuine feelings for my children. I love them to bits, I have no doubt about that. But all the recriminations about me leaving my children in the care of other peolpe while jetting off with my husband had penetrated my inner mommy psyche leaving me to wonder if I actually did love them in the lay down your life for them kind of way or whether I just liked them like puppies. In my darkest of moments, I actually questioned if I was a good mom if I was able to leave my kids without looking back. I now know I can't and miss them like crazy and feel like I might be doing something severely detrimental to them by leaving. But then again, I love my husband enough to know that if I don't find time to be with him alone, it would be detrimental to us. So for most part of the year, my children will have my attention but that will be interspersed with sojourns with Packrat, even with the guilt.

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Sniff

I'm leaving in about 20 minutes for a vacation with just Packrat. We're in dire need of some couple time together but I'm going to miss Evan's grin, Jordan bouncing up and down, the two of them jabbering away 19 to a dozen and their baby baby smell. Boo. I hope I survive the week.

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To be politically correct...

The two munchkins are pretty indifferent to music. They'll stop and listen to it when it's there but they don't show as much excitement to it as they would say, their own reflection or a piece of tissue paper. Having said that, music does soothe the savage beast, or in this case, the cry-ful baby. I like singing them to sleep, in a soft whisper tone just by the ear. I usually sing them Sunday School songs because those ones I remember all the words. I tried nursery rhymes too but then decided some nursery rhymes were written by one who was macabre and sick in the head.

Let's see... there's Rock a bye baby who's on the tree top. Now why why why would anyone put a baby on the tree top? Then when the wind blows... obviously not an Asian parent because Asians are petrified of wind...the cradle will rock. At this point, wouldn't the wise thing to do be to take the cradle down since it's precariously rocking in the wind? But no, the bough breaks and the cradle comes down, with baby and all. All the parenting books emphasise the need to establish secure attachments in the baby and surely, leaving a kid on the top of the tree, to fall down at that is surely to keep the kid in therapy for a long long time. And this is assuming that the baby survives the fall in the first place.

I try extremely hard not to be tempted to sing Rock a Bye Baby to the kids even though it's got soothing tones to it. There are other songs I refuse to sing because of their macabre nature as well.

This Little Piggy as well is somewhat disturbing. The piggy went to the market. Why? Probably to get sold off to the other person singing "To market, to market, to buy a fat pig!" So, in my mind, I'm like why is the piggy going to the market if it knows it's going to become char siew? Or worst still, if the little piggy was going to the market to BUY the fat pig! What is a piggy buying a fat pig for? Hog servitude? Hog cannibalism? Singing about cannibalism to kids? No.

It's a pity though because the rhythm in it makes the kids chuckle. And then there's the inherently racist song about Indian boys that purports to be teaching counting amd numbers. I decreed it very much earlier on as a non kosher song much to the puzzlement to my in-laws whose repertoire of nursery rhymes consisted of that and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. So I relented and told them they could use the tune and add in whatever they wanted. I demonstrated the UN potential of the song to them by going on abt Kenyan, German, Asian, Aussie etc boys and girls ( it had to be 2 syllables). I think at that point, my in-laws must have been questioning the wisdom of my parents educating me so much especially if I was going to be spewing all this pseudo intellectual crap at them when all they wanted to do was sing to my children. Just like how they, as well as their son, my husband and my children's father are puzzled as to why I have declared that my children's toy chest be a gun and sword free zone. He laments that the children will then have nothing to play with but I'm standing my ground on this one. No guns.

Now, to find more songs that would not offend any sort of sensitivity. Tough.

Technorati Tags: babies, nursery rhymes

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