Etta and Claire are two today. The last two years have been the craziest, hardest, best, most beautiful years of our lives. And every day they just get better. I’ll spare the sap, but here’s a little photo retrospective.
And now they’re two. I expect a little bit of terrible but a whole lot of terrific.
I feel like every day a new post like this pops up in one of my social media feeds. Today it was “9 Things Never to Say to the Parents of a Newborn.” I’ve seen others about things not to say to pregnant women, or twin parents, or even parents of kids with disabilities. And even though I have even shared a post of things you actually CAN say to parents of kids with disabilities (because hey, that one was actually helpful), I think my list of things you should never say is rapidly boiling down to only one bullet point:
My rules for relationships are all summed up in one very wise quote from the movie Bill and Ted’s Most Excellent Adventure: “Be most excellent to one another, and party on, dudes.” The gist is: be kind to others and yourself. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Know that generally, things said by people who care about you do come from a place of caring. If they ask how your wife who just had a baby is doing, why not assume they are sincerely asking? Instead of writing a blog post about what a moron someone is for asking you to let them know how they can help out with your new baby, why not say “hey, actually, could you come rock and snuggle the baby while we shower and nap?” People LOVE to rock and snuggle babies, and lord knows every new parent needs a shower and a nap.
Being Most Excellent also means assuming that the people you care about and talk with are doing the best they can with what they know, and will generally ask for advice if they need it. Being Most Excellent means that if you can’t make that basic assumption, that someone is doing the best they can to make the right choices for themselves and their kids, maybe what you need is to not be friends with them, rather than attempt to shame them either outright or via passive aggressive article posting about baby sleep/baby feeding/car seats. Being Most Excellent means thinking for just a second before you speak, which would save you from something dumb like asking if boy/girl twins are identical, or offering some unsolicited advice to a mother of a child with a disability.
And Being Most Excellent means that sometimes, you might have to talk with someone about how they said that thing they just said and how it made you feel. I know I sometimes need to give myself a talk about using ableist language like using “lame” as a pejorative, for example.
Rather than publish a list of Things Not To Say to a Mom of a Child with Spina Bifida, I’d rather offer an open invitation to people who know me or read my words: if you have a question, even if you’re worried about how I might take it, please feel free to ask. If you’re coming from a place of Being Most Excellent, I promise to do my best to Be Most Excellent right back. I think if people felt more free to talk and ask about hard things in life, we might spend less time tiptoeing around each other and more time really connecting. I remember being sincerely asked how I was doing when the girls were newborns and breaking down sobbing in the arms of some friends, because it was exhausting and hard and I needed a break. And you know what? Just connecting, and literally crying on someone’s shoulder, and getting a hug and some encouragement? It was way more valuable than some weird polite attempt from someone who’s read too many “never say” lists and become afraid to ask how someone’s doing.
Note: this Be Most Excellent thing pretty much only applies to people you have an actual, established relationship with. A friend asking me about, say, Claire’s leg braces would be quite a different thing than a stranger in a store, where the asking serves to point out her difference and put her on the spot in a way that I don’t want her to be when she’s just going about her day to day life. But if you’re close enough to come over with food or rock my newborn, I promise you are close enough to ask me about just about anything, and I promise not to jump down your throat. I can’t promise not to tell you if the language you use is problematic or hurtful, but I do promise not to be a jerk about it. Let’s all try to Be Most Excellent. Party on, dudes.
In three days my two will be TWO. It at once feels huge and also like no big deal at all. Huge because they are definitely not babies anymore. They’re walking, talking, singing, thinking, hugging, kissing little humans. And no big deal at all because I am a giant sap who Lives in the Moment and Loves Each Phase as it Comes, and frankly, they just keep getting cooler and more interesting and more themselves, and there’s no room to be all that sad about that.
The best thing about firmly arriving in toddlerhood and leaving babyhood behind is the love. I am always telling my girls, “Thanks for the love! I love the love!” This is usually after some tiny arms have been thrown about my neck and a big, wet, open-mouthed kiss planted on my lips, with possibly some snot thrown in. Or after Etta has made a bee-line for me across the room, suddenly dropping all toys and play, to climb into my lap, lay a head on my shoulder, and let out a sweet little sigh before going back to the serious business of filling a doll stroller with play food. Or after Claire, sitting in a stroller pushed by her daddy as we go on an evening stroll, reaches out her dimpled hand to hold mine and holds on tight for 20 minutes to home. They still need me fiercely, but now they are able to reciprocate my affection for them, and I just love it. I can’t get enough of it. It explodes my heart.
On top of all the love, Claire has really really taken off in the talking department. By which I mean, she is constantly talking unless she is eating, pretty much. Etta isn’t much of a talker, and to be honest, I think Claire’s incessant babble wears her out a bit. She’ll actually say to her sister, “Shhhhhhh baby.” She calls Claire “baby” and Claire calls Etta “Sissy” or sometimes “Eddie.” (Claire’s first word was Etta, you may recall.) Sometimes the talking wears me out, too, but mostly it delights me. Her tiny voice is just crazy adorable. She loves to say “puppy,” possibly because what word in all the world could be happier? Her descriptive language is just exploding and the things she comes up with are amazing to me. I came into the room where she’d been hanging out with her dad, and asked her where he was. She said, “Daddy coming. He potty.” And sure enough, he had left to go to the bathroom. She’ll bump her head and say “I bonked it.” She talks about airplanes and elephants and her snazzy new braces and how she uses a cath to go pee pee. She’ll even say “tank you” when you give her something or do something for her. As a wordy mama, it thrills me to no end to hear every little thing she has to say, and I admit I sometimes have a hard time not worrying that her sister doesn’t talk all that much. She clearly understands most of what I say, though, and follows instructions, and does say some words, and luckily I live with a pediatrician who can reassure me there is nothing to worry about and like everything, language develops at its own pace.
My two are two. They are hugging and kissing and walking and talking and getting more interesting and coming more and more into their own. What a lucky lady am I!
It’s the second time she’s woken up in the night. Just 30 minutes ago, I was dosing her with ibuprofen and brushing her sweaty hair from her fevered brow, praying she’d go back soundly to sleep and wake up feeling better. But she’s up again, shivering and sweating, sobbing and shaking, and I scoop her up and bring her into my bed, nestling this hot little human against my chest, holding her tight as she sighs deeply, kissing the top of her sweet little head. These nights are long, but oh what a privilege. Oh what an honor to be what she needs and wants when she’s feeling so awful. What a blessing to be the arms that hold her and the heart that loves her and the lips that kiss her and whisper, “It’s OK. Mama’s here.”
Later, it will be her daddy’s turn. He’ll hold her and rock her and bounce her as I get some sleep. He will be the arms that encircle her and the chest that she rests upon. He will be the voice singing softly. He’ll be the hand brushing her hair from her cheek. Oh what a blessing. Oh what a privilege.
Our sweet Etta is on day 3 of a feverish illness, and she just wants to be held close until she wants to sleep again, and then she wants to be held, and then she wants to sleep. Last night she told us “night night” all through dinner and was in bed by 6 pm. I added some extra curtains to their room to help her sleep even through the bright Daylight Savings sunset in her West-facing window (thanks Pinterest, for teaching me how to do that using bungee cords). It’s been a sleepy, sweaty cuddle fest around here. I mind that she’s sick, but I don’t mind the snuggles a bit. I will always count it my privilege to be needed.
As I sat on the floor during naptime, muffin tin full of paint by my side, sponge brush in hand, Pinterest open on the laptop beside me, painting a replica of the exterior of It’s a Small World on a sheet, it hit me: 1) I might be insane, and 2) I was perfectly prepared for such a 2nd birthday party-planning moment as this by my deeply nerdy childhood. Specifically, by my involvement with Odyssey of the Mind, aka OM.
Did you do OM? Have you even heard of it? It’s an international creative problem-solving competition for kids. Picture TED Talks, if TED talks were actually entertaining, by which I mean, presentations that solve the world’s big problems, but enacted as short skits by kids wearing costumes they made themselves in front of sets they designed themselves, while speaking lines they wrote themselves. (I mean, maybe TED presenters should have to wear handmade costumes, and then I’d be interested.)
The year my team went to WORLD COMPETITION (in the metropolis of Ames, IA), our skit was about the dangers of substance abuse, and had to involve the work of an impressionist artist. So, our skit was about Toulouse Lautrec, hopeless alcoholic, in love with a can can dancer he could never have, and her efforts to convince him to stop drinking. Our set, like Lautrec’s work, was pastel on cardboard. I remember hand-dying a lace thrift-store dress to just the right shade for my can can dancer costume. And, though I was only a fifth-grader, I wrote our whole skit in rhyme, incorporating and interpreting the works of Edgar Allen Poe. Our team was comprised of 7 girls, and our girliest, blondest member dressed in drag to play Lautrec. Basically, when Moulin Rouge came out a few years later, I was certain Baz Lurhman ripped us off.
Another year, our problem was something historical, and our skit interpreted the French Revolution. Instead of seeking world domination, our Napoleon was trying to market a new energy snack, Power Balls, which were shot out of a small working cannon, and his enemy and arch-rival Wellington was trying to rip him off. I had some super techy boys on my team that year, so there was a Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates vibe to the rivalry. I played Josephine, a hapless secretary. There was a mime in the style of Marcel Marceau. And the whole thing, again, was in rhyme.
After this kind of extra-curricular, throwing my kids an elaborate yet homemade birthday party almost seems too easy. Sure, I can make It’s a Small World setpieces and sew custom dresses, but don’t I also need to work in a moral lesson and maybe some rhyming? Will there be a spontaneous round where I just brainstorm creative solutions to weird problems? And is there a medal at the end? Can I go to World Competition in some small town in the midwest, maybe?
Instead, there are no medals. I’m just in the throes of birthday party planning for my almost two year olds, and I’ve gotta admit, I’m loving it. In an age of Pinterest overload and crazy party-planning moms, it turns out, I might be in my element.
Hi. I’m an English major. I can write you at least five paragraphs analyzing ANYTHING. This makes it somewhat problematic to enjoy normal things. Like kids’ TV.
This morning, tired of Elmo and Curious George, I turned on Clifford. You might remember from childhood that it’s the story of a little girl and her bff, a Big Red Dog who’s basically the size of a house.
What I didn’t remember was that it’s basically a cautionary tale: family adopts shelter pup, no idea what they’re getting into, Â it gets bigger than expected, and they end up losing their home, having to leave the city they love, and wind up living on an island.
But then, I think to myself, NO! Clifford is like a perfect analogy to our fetal diagnosis experience: you think you’re just having a baby, and then something big comes out of nowhere and changes the whole experience. You might have to reconsider your living space, you may have to make some life changes, but ultimately you and your unexpected addition are very happy together in a new kind of normal.
Or maybe it’s just a kid show about a giant red dog. Yeah. It could be that.
As Saturday began, I didn’t think it was going to be a good day. I had made plans to meet some of my friends at the zoo with the girls, and getting the three of us up, dressed, fed, packed, and loaded wasn’t going so well, particularly because Etta seemed to be having some teething-related pain and was screaming her face off. Determined to get out the door and spend some time with friends I love, I gave her some Tylenol and a frozen teether, and got us on our way, practically chugging my coffee.
Then a funny thing happened: a perfect day. It turns out 5 adults, 1 elementary student, and 2 almost-two-year-olds is a good mix for a zoo day. I had help dragging the little red wagon, lifting babies to better vantage points, and entertaining kiddos at lunch. The girls had a big kid to watch and copy. The weather was amazing– sunny and 70s after what seemed for a while to be an interminable, cold winter. And for some reason, despite our screamy start, my children, perhaps because they love the outdoors, people and animals, were the best-behaved toddlers in the whole dang place. They made mostly-appropriate animal sounds when they saw elephants, tigers, lions, and monkeys. They may have called the penguins fish, but they seemed to really enjoy feeding time. And they rode in the wagon and were hoisted around by people who weren’t their parents with nothing but smiles and giggles. Only at the very end of the route through the zoo (we saw everything but the reptile house, which we all agreed could be skipped due to creepy) did anyone get the least bit tearful, and as we were an hour past naptime, it seemed completely reasonable.
We came home and Etta went down instantly and soundly for a nap. Claire needed some snuggles, so I made the real sacrifice of lying down with her in a cool, dark room, dozing and smelling her hair for two hours. We all woke up just as their daddy got home from work, and we cuddled in the den and watched Tinkerbell as we came out of our nap trances. We all spent the rest of the afternoon outside, soaking up some much-needed sunshine, and ended the day with more snuggles and some storytime. As I put Claire down to sleep, I was practically tearful with love for my amazing little family.
Toddlers can be difficult, no doubt. There are lots of big emotions crammed into tiny bodies. They don’t quite speak English, which causes a lot of confusion on both sides. They don’t always understand why they can’t have their way/that thing they want, and they sometimes throw really impressive fits. But oh, once in a while, just often enough to keep me going, they have utterly magical days. I am so very thankful Saturday was one of them.
I am unabashedly obsessed with the Olympics. Winter or Summer, it doesn’t matter. I love watching people achieve their dreams, compete for their countries, and doing their parents, always featured in NBC’s heart-wrenching human interest stories, proud. The summer after the girls were born, pinned to a couch under sleeping or eating babies, I watched a lot of the London Summer Games. This year, my only couch time is after those babies are in bed, but I’ve been watching quite a bit of the evening coverage as well. (If you’re also into watching the Olympics, follow me on twitter and join in on the live tweet action after 7 pm– just make sure to use a hashtag so your friends who are less obsessed can filter your Olympic tweets from their streams.)
One thing that stands out about the Olympics are the ads. Pretty much every spot you see that isn’t for a car or truck features an Olympian of some kind. Proctor and Gamble have been running a series of ads called “Because of Mom” in which athletes thank their mothers for helping them achieve their Olympic dreams. I have no real beef with people celebrating their mothers or motherhood. Motherhood is great! It’s just that…you bet your sweet bippy that if my girls ever make it to the Olympics (I’m thinking 2 man bobsled, maybe?), they’ll have their dad to thank as much as their mom. Because they are blessed to have an amazing dad, and I am blessed to have an amazing coparent. My husband and I are both blessed with amazing and involved dads, too.
I mean, it’s really no wonder I grew up to marry a man who turns out to be an amazing dad, because involved parenting is just what I expected based on what I grew up with. My dad, a doctor, but also a scientist, came into my science classes with a little red wagon full of props and gave talks worthy of Bill Nye. He worked odd shifts, so he drove a lot of carpools. He created elaborate treasure hunts for us with riddle clues. He got me into nerdy stuff like Star Trek and the Civilization computer games. He got me through high school math and science, both of which were hard for me, with intense, one-on-one homework help, complete with antics like “the ribosome dance,” which I will never forget, ever.
I’m willing to bet at least a few Olympians had dads like my dad and my husband. Unfortunately, P&G isn’t talking about them. I say unfortunately, because just as I mentioned in my “inspiration” post, kids need to see normal, everyday people as role models– how can people who may not have amazing dads in their life grow up to be or expect to co-parent with amazing dads if we don’t see dads being normal and amazing in our lives?
I do want to shout out a company getting it right. I loved this Frosted Flakes ad featuring one of our women ski jumpers (first year in the Olympics for their sport after decades of fighting for equality!), Sarah Hendrickson and her dad:Â Sarah clearly has a dad like mine. They even have the same taste in names for their daughters!
Meanwhile, if you go looking for a P&G ad featuring a dad, you’ll find this, from Tide:Â
DADMOM? REALLY? A dad who stays home with the kids and takes care of the house isn’t Mr. Mom. He’s not a dadmom. He’s just a dad. He’s parenting. He’s caretaking. He’s not stepping outside his gender or being anything less than a man– a man who has and cares for a family. It’s like when I hear people say a dad is babysitting his own children. Nope. That’s parenting, folks. People of all gender identities and expressions can do it.
P&G claims to be a “proud sponsor of moms.” Well, sponsors usually pay people, rather than expecting to be paid, P&G. And I’m not buying the gendered view of parenthood that you’re selling.
I also have similar issues with their vision of disability:Â
While on the one hand, I love that they’re running ads featuring athletes with disabilities that showcase them as athletes, using the same visual style and soundtrack as the able-bodied athletes, they lost me at the final tagline. I’m not one of the world’s toughest moms just because my daughter has a disability. As I said on twitter when I first saw the ad, I think most people are as tough as their circumstances require them to be. We all rise to the occasion. If you “don’t know how I do it,” it’s just because it hasn’t been required of you (yet). Just as it doesn’t take a special person to love someone with special needs (because they are no more inherently easy or difficult to love than any other person), it doesn’t take a tough parent to parent a child with a disability. Because you just parent them, because they’re your child.
If someday Claire is a Paralympian, she’ll be thanking both of her parents. And she certainly won’t be calling us any tougher than anyone else.
Although I finally closed comments on my “Not a Hero” post, likes and feedback continue to roll in. Nothing I’ve ever written has generated such a response before, and I am so thrilled and humbled. Perhaps most of all, the feedback that has meant the most to me is that of adults with disabilities, who without exception, have told me basically, right on, I’m not a hero, just a person living my life.
And while it may sound counter to my “not a hero” message, I find them, the people who have left these comments and messages, incredibly encouraging. Not in a patronizing way, but in a window to the possible future for my daughter sort of way. Just as I want my girls to know and see strong, smart women out in the world as encouragement, as windows to their possible futures, I want Claire to see normal, everyday people with disabilities to let her know that there are all sorts of possibilities for her life. Possibilities that include meaningful work, deep relationships, fun hobbies, athletics and exercise, and anything else she may so desire.
When we got our diagnosis, I knew nothing about spina bifida, and our doctors seemed to know very little about what we could expect for our daughter, because spina bifida includes such a range of disability and experience. This whole journey has been characterized by a deep hunger for knowledge on my part. I remember finding the blogs of parents raising kids with SB, and just putting a face, a beautiful KID face, to what was at first a scary and mysterious disease gave me so much peace. Now, as she grows, I find myself still hungry, not so much for facts, but for glimpses of what her life might be. And the more I read and hear from adults with disabilities, the more I realize that my hopes for her as a person with a disability aren’t that different for my hopes for my girls as future-women. I want freedom, autonomy, and bravery for them both. I want them both to have the courage to stand up to both sexist and ableist oppression that they may encounter in their lives.
It’s why I related so well to this post, which I found via Rachel Held Evans. The writer talks about seeing adults with disabilities in a new way as the parent of a child with a disability, and finding them inspiring, and in the piece she tries to draw a distinction between that and the patronizing, limiting “inspiration” I addressed in the “Not a Hero” post. I think, as Ellen seems to be saying in her post as well, that the difference is largely a problem with the word “inspiration.” We rightly bristle at the idea that our kids are “inspiring” just for navigating the world in the only bodies they have ever known– that’s no more noble than any of us learning to navigate the world in the only bodies we’ve ever had. But we also, like any other parent, are searching for role models for our kids. Not role models as in Batman or even Olympians, but actual people, whose lives look like their lives. We face a future full of unknowns, and we just want to see that there are lots of possible futures, and they’re good. I’ve heard moms of boys talk about finding good male role models for their sons. As a mom to girls, I feel no qualms talking about my desire for good female role models. And as the mom to a daughter with a disability, I look for the same.
I’m thankful my post has connected me to so many perspectives from so many voices I wasn’t reading before. I’m just starting out, and I have much to learn in order to best raise my daughters to be women in the world.
Kid President is pretty amazing. I think most people need to watch that video sometime before or after their high five just for getting out of bed in the morning. Because the world IS amazing, and we all mess up, and we do need to forgive each other’s mess ups. And maybe dance some more and have some more corndogs.
He actually echoes a favorite bit of Kurt Vonnegut that I’ve loved since I found out I was pregnant with twins. It’s from a baptismal speech the protagonist of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater plans for his neighbor’s twins: “Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
This quote actually led to me experiencing a moment of kindness. I had tweeted about my love for the quote and how I wanted to hang it up in my babies’ room. Then I almost died and came back again, and a friend I had only met via Twitter said she had made me something to celebrate my survival. One night soon after we had both babies home, she came by and gave me this beautiful (and slightly censored because kids) canvas:
It’s one of my favorite things in my favorite room of our house. I want my kids to know that they have to be kind. But I also want them to know that people are kind. That the world is full of good and beauty, if we look for it. I guess that’s my answer to Kid President’s question about what kids need to know.
It reminds me of a bit in Thomas King’s The Truth About Stories. King’s refrain throughout the (excellent) book is that the truth about stories is that’s all we are. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and about the world literally construct the world we experience. He points out in one passage that we can tell ourselves or our children that “life is hard,” but we can equally teach them that “life is sweet.” Each perspective constructs a way of being in the world. Sometimes life is just hard, it’s true. To quote Vonnegut again, “so it goes.” But I think the balance bends toward the beautiful and the good, because I believe in a God who is at work on a great project of reconciliation, re-creation, and renewal. And I think we get to participate in this project, to be agents of beauty and goodness and change. I’m raising up revolutionaries to participate in this project, too. So I want them to be kind and see kindness, in their hundred years here and beyond.
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