Category: Parenthood

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incompetence

“Mine are three. It doesn’t get any better.”

That’s what she said to me as I wheeled my two baby girls into daycare this morning. “I’m sure they keep you busy. Mine are three. It doesn’t get any better.”

Well, I guess there’s no “It gets better” project for twin moms.

Which sucks, because for the last few days I just feel like life is hard. I feel incompetent. Like, not only can’t I do it all, but I can’t even do the little bit that I want to do. The little bit that I thought was achievable.

All I want to be when I grow up is an English professor. I’m beginning to think it will never happen. I’m beginning to think I won’t even get my freakin’ masters, let alone a PhD, because it’s all I can do to take two classes per term and stay on top of my coursework. A full load for most people is three courses, but two seriously puts me at my limit. And don’t even get me started on studying for my comps exam, which I’m supposed to be doing somehow on top of and outside of my course work. I truly cannot find the time. Not that I know where the time goes, except that there is always someone to be held or fed or changed, forever and ever, amen. Sometimes I manage to make dinner, or do a little laundry, but please don’t look at the tumbleweeds of dog hair on my floors or my dirty toilets and sinks. We’re just getting by here. Every night that we put two babies to bed feels like a victory.

And yet a few of my profs found out I hadn’t signed up to take the comps this term, and they told me I should take it, so I decided to give it a try, despite the whole not studying thing. And then I had a disaster morning and a baby peed on me, and a car seat came unbuckled in my moving car, and earlier daycare drop off was a nightmare, and I was ten minutes late for the first day of the test, and the door was barred to me, and there were many many public tears. And then someone fought for me, and I got to take it after all, and I’m still pretty sure I failed. And I still rallied for Day 2, the essay portion, and I think I did ok on 2 essays, but I needed to write 3, and I just didn’t have an answer for any of my other options, so I came home, and went to bed. I am not used to feeling this incompetent

I can try again in the spring, and I will make a study schedule and try again in the spring, but I just feel so defeated. I feel like it is such a battle to just make time for my academic pursuits, and I know that it’s not going to get any better, and then I wonder about all of it, and what I’m doing with myself. And we have to maybe move again at the end of this year, and I have to maybe start a new life in a new place all over again, and make a life for two small people, and it’s just exhausting.

I feel like a broken record lately, “But I have two babies.” Two babies. So small. I underestimated them. Perhaps I overestimated myself. It’s just so very hard sometimes, and I can’t even really explain the hardness, except to say that it is. And right now it feels a little too much for me. Two classes I can do very well on top of two babies, but graduating might just prove to be too much.

So there’s that.

I was afraid to even write this because I know my family reads this now, and I know they will freak out and also give me a bunch of platitudes about how I can do it. But I just need to feel my feelings, right now, and this is what I’ve got.

 

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labyrinth

Last weekend we took our first baby-free weekend to visit my sister in Nashville while the girls stayed with their Nonni and Poppi. A good time was had by all.

We also visited my heaven, aka the most amazing new and used book store called Bookman Bookwoman.

On the trip, I still had to do some reading for grad school, and this week it was Jorge Borges, an Argentinian writer. His short stories kind of warped my brain a little bit, as they explore themes of infinity, truth vs. fiction, what is truly real, the way fiction influences reality,and other crazy themes. They also feature a lot of labyrinths. At least two of the stories I read featured books, particularly 1001 Nights, influencing reality in strange ways. And then I began to feel the stories themselves were influencing me…..

First, I read a short story in which a man has died of an overdose of a drug called “veronal,” only to realize I had just read a completely unrelated story by a totally different author for another class that featured a woman trying to kill herself with the same drug. Coincidence, or books reading my mind? Then, I read a story about a labyrinth right before we went to check out a corn maze! (You can check out my sister’s post on the subject here.) Verdict on the corn maze: it was maybe 30 minutes too long, but hey, at least it wasn’t infinite! Also: do NOT tell us not to pick corn. Also: thank God we didn’t have a small child with us, because even we were very much DONE by the time we found our way out. And: essentially, any kind of scenic activity for my sister and me becomes an Instagram field trip. We may have even “styled” some cornstalks for better shots.

Many jokes of the “what the shuck?” variety were made.

 

 

 

American Gothic
Seesters.
Jon reaps a freaky-assed harvest. (If you aren’t squeamish about cuss words, check out the McSweeny’s piece “It’s Decorative Gourd Season Motherfuckers.” You will not regret it.)

Also mind-bending was the simultaneous feeling of absolute freedom to be away from the girls, staying up late, having cocktails, sleeping in, and also missing them to pieces at the same time. We squeed over every picture and video Nonni sent of the good times they were having. Overall, it was very needed. We had a blast and came home overjoyed and re-energized to see our girlies.

This week we face a challenge possibly even more mind-stretching than a labyrinth: flying to Denver with TWO BABIES. If you have any tips, I’d love to hear them. Right now my plan is to strap them to us in carriers, and possibly to bake and hand out cookies (and possibly earplugs) to everyone unfortunate enough to sit near us. I know if I were on a plane and saw two people lugging two babies come aboard, I’d seriously be praying “Oh PLEASE let them sit far far away.”

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they come in peace (I hope)

Today, I have 6 month olds. I am still trying to wrap my mind around it, because in my crazy mom way of thinking, it’s like their babyhood is half over.

I’ve also recently come to a new understanding of the babies. I know in the past I’ve said that babies are pandas. And I still stand by that comparison. But I’ve come to a new way of understanding these tiny beings: they’re aliens, sent to learn about our way of life and report back to their people.

They watch us, but they don’t really understand what we’re saying, and we don’t exactly speak their language, either. They find our culture strange and often bewildering, but they’re generally willing to humor us, with our strange rituals and insistence on things like giving them baths and changing their diapers. They’re observing us and compiling data for their report to their leader, usually with a sort of detached wonder, the appropriate posture for a tiny scientist or anthropologist sent to another world, but occasionally their faces betray other emotions, and sometimes, they break down altogether under the strain of their difficult and top-secret mission.

I often wonder about the stories they’re going to take back to their leaders, but sometimes, when they scream in the middle of the night, I’m not so sure they really come in peace.

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on re-reading The Awakening

The graduate student in her native environment.

While driving home from school today, I was thinking to myself about all of the stuff I’ve been reading this semester. I’m taking a women’s lit seminar and a “literature of the Americas” seminar (Latin American and Native American) and really enjoying the readings for both, which has stirred up a lot of thoughts. I realized, in a sort of meta way, that I tend to think almost in essay form. I’m not sure if it’s because of all the school I’ve had, or if I like all this school precisely because I’m constantly composing essays in my head, but my musings tend to become thesis statements and paragraphs in my mind. Of course, the problem is, I rarely get a chance to write them down, what with actual assignments to do and something about two babies to take care of….

But, I do have a blog, and I can at least get down these essay embryos and maybe one day return to them and turn them into something if I want.

One of my most striking realizations stems from re-reading The Awakening by Kate Chopin. It’s the story of an 1800s wife and mother experiencing a literal awakening to herself and her place in the world and her realization of her profound unhappiness the more she gets to know herself. When I read this novel for the first time, I believe I was a college freshman. I was 18, and it was a purely academic exercise. Now, I’m reading it nearly 10 years later as a wife and mother, and I’m practically a completely different person reading a completely different book.

Upon first reading, I vaguely remember feeling sad for Edna Pontellier, but I didn’t really understand her in any meaningful way. She wasn’t a very sympathetic character to me, and I found her largely selfish and annoying. She has a live-in nanny, for crying out loud, and she’s supposedly stifled by her role as a mother?! Of course, she’s still a little annoying, with her privileged white girl problems, and I think even Chopin would admit her protagonist is selfish (though how hilarious is it that Edna reads Emerson, perhaps the paragon of selfish male introspection, and he doesn’t get such criticisms). However, now I have a much greater personal window into Edna’s frustrations, even as I realize that maybe it’s precisely because I read The Awakening and other books like it before I became a wife and mother that I largely do not share her pain.

It is precisely because of characters like Edna Pontellier that my greatest fear before becoming a mother was that I would somehow lose myself. Edna argues with the great mother-figure of the book, her friend Adele, about what she would be willing to give up for the sake of her children, baffling Adele with her insistence that while she would give up her life for her children, she would not give up her self. Adele does not understand the difference. And of course, Edna does not understand Adele’s happiness, either, unable to comprehend that a woman who sees almost no distinction between herself and her role as a mother could be truly happy and fulfilled.

The problem for Edna is not that there is something inherently wrong with being a wife and a mother, or that no woman can be fulfilled in those roles, but that not all women are, and for Edna, there were few other options. She is not an Adele Ratignolle, joyfully consumed by her children, but neither is she content to remain a single woman like musician Mademoiselle Reisz. For all her supposed failings as a mother, the Edna we see in the novel is a woman who deeply loves and is very tender with her children. One scene that stands out is her tender rocking of her child to sleep when “the quadroon” is unable to get him to bed. She misses them when they are absent at their grandmother’s house. She would miss them were they not in her life at all.

She is a woman of privilege, even has the much-coveted “room of one’s own” in which to paint, and the childcare to give her time to do so and to think and wander the city as well, and yet she has no meaningful activity outside of her home, and no one in her life who truly understands her. She is a woman who favors the relationship of motherhood but is not well suited to the jobs of motherhood, a distinction made in this very compelling post from Ask Moxie.

Unlike Edna, perhaps because of Edna, I have remained determined to finish my graduate education and continue pursuing my dream of being an English professor. Because of Edna, I know how crucial it is that I get time away from my girls to tend to my other interests, because it makes me a better person and therefore a better mother. Because of Edna, I am grateful for a marriage to a partner who knows me deeply and loves me as a person, not for any prescribed roles I might fill. Unlike Edna, I got to go to college and get to know myself, to become an adult on my own terms before I became a wife and mom, and to discern what it is I want to do with my life and how to define my place in this world. Unlike Edna, I have options.

Somewhere between reading The Awakening for the first time and reading it for the second, I have had many, many awakenings that have made this experience of Edna’s story completely different from my experience the first time around. And in that difference, and in the difference between her life and mine, there is much much gratitude.

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5 months

Technically the gals turned 5 months on August 28. So this may not be the most timely of posts, but I wanted to share the results of my little photoshoot with them (I’m going to eventually have a photo book of their monthly photos). I have zero photography skills and usually end up using my iPhone, so I’m lucky my subjects are adorable.

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cloth diapering twins 5 months in

My initial post on cloth diapering our girls has been so popular, I thought I’d write a follow-up now that we’re 5 months in, as I wrote the original only a week or so after we moved into our one-size diapers. So, see that post for the most detailed newborn cloth diapering info, and this one for cloth diapering past the newborn stage.

The short version is that yes, folks who keep asking me if I’m “still doing that cloth diaper thing,” I am, and I still love it. Here’s the more detailed version:

What diapers are we using? Which are our favorite? Least favorite?

For daytime, we exclusively use one-size pocket diapers. We have well over 50 changes, as a few friends gifted me some used BumGenius pockets since my last post. We have mostly BumGenius 4.0s, and we really like them. I can see from the used ones that the aplix (Velcro) closures don’t necessarily hold up great long-term, but I still like the aplix best for fit. So that might be something to consider if you plan on using your diapers for multiple kids– the snaps hold up better over time, even if you can’t quite customize the fit as well.

My second favorite diapers are probably Alva Baby, and they’re only my second favorite because they run slightly bigger, and because I just don’t have as many of them. Honestly, though, if I were buying a completely new stash, I’d probably just order Alvas. You could get 24 Alva pockets for $115 and have a great stash of diapers to last from about 10 lbs through potty training.

My third favorite is probably our Rumparooz, but because I don’t absolutely love them, I sold I’m planning to sell the 6 I have (so let me know if you want them!). On the bright side: they’re well made, I like the colors, and I love the inner gusset for containing runny baby poo. Their inserts are probably the most absorbent microfiber inserts I’ve seen. The downside for us is that they just don’t fit our girls great. I often have gapping at the waist. It rarely leads to leaks, but it did cause my one and only poop blowout in cloth, doubly frustrating because we were in a waiting room when it happened… (It came out the waist in the front. Ick.)

My least favorites are Fuzzibunz OS Elite. The PUL (the waterproof outer fabric) is “sticky” on the inside, and the pocket is narrow, which makes them really hard to stuff. I can’t even imagine getting an extra insert into them for when I want extra absorbency. I also had one of the snaps pop off one of my diapers (I’ll be contacting customer service to get a replacement under the warranty).

What about nighttime?

We have a couple methods for nighttime. The most bullet proof is still a Thirsties Fab Fitted with a Thirsties hemp insert in a Flip cover. Fitteds are a popular choice for nighttime because the entire diaper is absorbent, not just the insert, so you’ve got the “soaker,” the outer of the fitted, plus an extra insert, all absorbing. We can go over 12 hours without leaks in this combo. (Some folks also let their kiddos run around in just a fitted and no cover at home, because it allows more air flow which can prevent rashes. You’d definitely need a cover for leaving the house or if you were putting pants over, though, because otherwise you would have soaked pants! At home you can just change the minute you notice the wetness has migrated to the outer layer.)

We also use a BumGenius 4.0 with a Thirsties hemp insert overnight with success. This is also my go-to method when we’re going to be in the car for a while, or when we’re going to be out running errands and I don’t want to have to drag both babies into say, a Target bathroom for a change. (My pockets with their microfiber inserts are good for about 2 hours between changes. Adding one hemp insert really makes a difference.)

How does it work when you’re out of the house?

I still do cloth diapers when we leave the house. They’re definitely bulky for the diaper bag, but my diaper bag is now a Patagonia Half Mass messenger bag that holds all my twin gear. Not a problem. I just change them like normal and stuff the dirty diaper into a wet bag to deal with when we get home. I also carry an emergency stash of disposables in the event we blow through 4 cloth diapers while out and about.

What about daycare?

Our girls go to daycare 3 days per week while I finish grad school. Our daycare does not cloth diaper, and I’ve yet to hear of any in my city that do. I keep disposable diapers on hand at home so I can send them to daycare in a disposable. They supply the diapers they wear all day while there, and then I put them in cloth when they get back home. I’m not so militant that I can’t allow my girls to wear disposables a few days per week so I can get my degree finished.

It’s also good to have some disposables because of what I call…

The diaper rash cream situation

You can’t use just any diaper cream with cloth diapers. Desitin, Butt Paste, A&D, Balmex, they’re all out, because they coat the fibers of the diapers and ruin their absorbency. California Baby is the most readily available cloth diaper safe cream, and I can get it at Target. It’s not very thick and doesn’t sit on the skin as a protective layer, so it’s not the greatest for major rashes. Burt’s Bees is cloth diaper safe according to many, and it’s nice and thick, but I’ve found it sometimes leaves a residue on my diapers that has yet to affect their function, but annoys me nonetheless. If I’m really dealing with a rash (mostly this is with Claire and I believe is specific to her because of her spina bifida and having many many more frequent wet diapers than her sister), I either use a flushable liner in my cloth diapers or put the girls in disposable diapers so I can use an “unsafe” cream.

I also go super hippy dippy and use coconut oil as a moisture barrier and rash preventer. I keep it in a little tupperwear and slather it on at changes to keep wetness off their skin.

The laundry routine

I still don’t find cloth diaper laundry to be much of a burden. I generally wash every day, but now that the girls are in daycare, they don’t go through the diapers as fast. Basically, once the wetbag is full, I start a load of wash in the morning. I have a front-loading Samsung HE machine. I do a cold “quick wash” with no spin, then add my detergent and do a hot/cold “normal” wash with an extra rinse. We use Tide Ultra Original HE powder, and it works great. I wanted something I could buy at Target. I usually tumble dry my inserts and hang my pockets to dry.

Currently, I just toss the dirty diapers right in the wetbag and then they go straight into the wash, but we are rapidly approaching the end of this simple era because it’s almost solid food time. Solid food poops are not water soluble like formula and breast milk poops. With solid food poops, I will have to “plop” what I can into the toilet, and am planning to get a diaper sprayer to rinse them off into the toilet. When we leave the house, I will use flushable liners.

In the evenings, after the girls are in bed, I stuff the inserts into the pockets, usually while drinking wine and watching TV. It’s really no big deal.

Overall, I still love cloth diapering. In fact, I may or may not have made up a parody version of “I like big butts” by Sir Mixalot, dedicated to their fluffy cloth diaper butts.

Update: If you like this post, you might like my later posts on cloth diapering:

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lovin’ spoonful: the bufflogals meet solid food

Recently, our doctor told us it was time to start feeding the gals some rice cereal, to let them practice eating from a spoon and start them off on a solid least-likely to cause an allergic reaction (food allergies may be an issue with Claire’s spina bifida). Claire, who is already our happiest eater when it comes to bottles, took to the rice cereal immediately. Etta seemed to think we had devised a fun new way to kill her. The results were pretty funny:

“What do you think that stuff is for?” “I dunno, man.”

I think she’s looking rather Most Interesting Man In The World here. “I don’t always eat solid food, but when I do, it’s rice cereal.”

And for my friend Stacy who said Etta needed to be a meme:

Major side-eye here.

 

 

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seeing life through a rose colored filter

I have literally thousands of photos on my iPhone at any given moment. It’s become second nature to use it to constantly document my life as I go about my day– the sweet, the surprising, the routine, the beautiful–it all gets snapped. And a tiny fraction of those photos gets sent through what is probably my most favorite app: Instagram, where photos are cropped into squares, run through filters that mimic the look of old-fashioned film, and shared on a timeline among similar photos from all of my friends.

I know it might seem silly to say this about an app, but Instagram literally makes my life better. I’ve said it before when talking to fans who also love the app, but I feel that going through my day, looking for moments to Instagram, forces me to be more aware of the beauty and amazement all around me. And being able to see similar moments shared by people I care about? Super special.

It’s why I mostly loved this piece on Huffington Post from another mom about how Instagram serves as sort of a light in the midst of a lot of the difficulties of parenting. However, the author feels like the filter of Instagram– both the literal filters of the film and the way we each filter what we decide to share– necessitates a kind of confessional, a disclaimer that her life isn’t always as pretty as it may appear onscreen. I guess I’m just not sure that’s necessary. After all, and I’m only half-joking, isn’t the sharing what’s hard what Twitter is for?

I don’t think I or my friends are somehow being false or one-sided by choosing to mostly share beauty and interest and humor through our Instagram feeds. Instead, we’re looking on the bright side of life. Heck, sometimes we’re clinging to it. And that’s OK. It’s necessary, even, in a world where we have dozens of outlets that give us negativity and bad news, to have one that focuses on the good and beautiful.

All photos above from my Instagram feed, where you will find me as erniebufflo.

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I don’t know how you do it

You should stop whatever you’re doing right now and go read this amazing piece called “What My Son’s Disabilities Taught Me About Having It All.” I really love what she has to say about how realizing that we have “enough” is the greater key to happiness than “having it all.”

This is kind of a tangent, but one thing that really struck me about the post besides the much-needed reminder that I do in fact have more than “enough,” is the author’s annoyance at everyone constantly telling her they “don’t know how [she] does it” with the “it” being get through her life with a severely disabled son. I don’t share her challenges, but I also get this a lot. People tell me they don’t know how I do it, with the “it” being twins, or a daughter with spina bifida, or my own near death experience and health issues. She writes, “Other friends declare, ‘I couldn’t do what you do.’ If I am to conform to their expectations, I’m not sure what I am supposed to do.” I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing, or what people think I really am doing, either.

How do I “do it?” Well, for starters, I don’t always “do it” well or with any amount of grace. I get frustrated, and angry, and overwhelmed. We “do it” because we have no choice, because we love our kids, because we want to survive, because we have a lot of help, because I have a great partner, because there is no other option, because there’s a lot of beauty in it, because it could be much worse, because, because, because…

I guess the bottom line is, for every person who says something like “I don’t know how you do it” to someone, there is that someone thinking, “Well, what other option is there?” A lot of the time, it feels like a nice way to say, “I’m so glad your life isn’t mine.”

We all have challenges. We get through them. We all have our blessings, and we need to be grateful for them. I’m thankful to Marie Myung-Ok Lee for reminding me to do just that. Particularly as I write this after a challenging day that led to me having to set down my screaming baby to go take a breather in my bedroom. And I am thankful that in that moment, I had a husband to take over, to transfer her to her bed when she almost immediately fell asleep, and to clean up the kitchen and give me a hug when I returned from yoga breathing and listening to the sound of our ceiling fan.

How do we do it? BOUNCY SEATS ARE THE KEY.
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necessity is the mother of invention

We’ve been having a rough time with fussy Etta lately. When she is happy, she is very very happy, but when she is bad, she is horrid. After a few nights in a row, I was looking for solutions. She loves to be bounced, HARD, in her bouncy seat. And she loves to be swaddled tightly. But those two things can’t be combined very easily, because the swaddle gets in the way of the seat’s straps.

Enter inspiration. I knew there were folks who make “swaddle straps;” I just didn’t want to pay for a baby straight jacket that seemed simple enough to sew myself. But then, I got an even easier idea: why not just cut the swaddle part of an outgrown sleep sack? A little quick cutting, and I had my very own swaddle strap. It worked great, and it was certainly put to the test last night– Etta was up 3 times instead of her usual 1. The problem wasn’t the swaddle strap so much as that she seems to believe she must be bounced at all times, and, well, I want my sleep. Still, I’ll take drowsy bouncing over unswaddled screaming any day.

Pissy baby knows she’s about to be defeated.
And she’s zonked. Just do. not. ever. stop. bouncing.