evolution

This morning I sat down and read this article about when bloggers disappear. I have thought often about my little blog orphan here, and this article gave me the kick in the pants I needed to come back and check in.

The truth is, over a year ago when the boys turned two, I fell. The load I'd been carrying tumbled out of my grasp, and things simply became bad. I was depressed, angry, and unable to reach out for the things I would normally do to support myself, because I was in financially dire straights. I was embarrassed, and frankly, I felt no ability to account for my days, my choices, or even my thoughts. Ah, depression, my ugly old friend. I tried a few times to give myself prompts and other kinds of inspiration, but this particular story of hope and accomplishment and dreams realized just felt over.

It's funny that my last post was in April... as it turns out, it was the dark before the dawn. I met someone, and we quickly joined our forces together, and the tide of living life, raising kids, and forming a whole new parenting unit - consisting of me, my sister, and now Ted - swept us away. To add to that monumental change, we also had to move house, Max and Shoghi started school, Shoghi's evaluations for sensory processing disorder/ ADHD/ autism continued, Ted moved in with us, and if that all wasn't enough, last month my brother suffered a catastrophic injury to his heart, and after almost three weeks of being by his side in the cardiothoracic ICU, he died. Thirty-four years old. My brother. Dead. It's still unbelievable.

So, there's the catch-up. This whole arc of change simply paralyzed me and swept my voice away.

Now 1+2 as a title doesn't seem right anymore. We've gone from 3 to 5, we have such a huge community of friends, we now live in a co-housing community, and a myriad of other things are different. Finding Ted, and really finding so much of myself before him, propelled me into a new level of clarity about my path - and I am learning that living in integrity with my true wants, talents, and spirit is actually possible. In that spirit, I have started writing a new blog: a certainty of place. Now that I've touched down here again and made peace with the changes that came, maybe I'll come here to write more specifically about parenting, twins, household.... but I think we'll have to just see what comes.

For now, we can meet here and on certainty, and I hope you'll fill me in on your own changes and stories. I'd love to reconnect.

links:

my brother's facebook page, supporting simon

my sister's blog: lifecrafted

a certainty of place

just one thing

as adults, there are many things we need to accomplish on any given day. as parents, that list increases exponentially, and as working-from-home parents, the number of things-to-do seems endlessly growing. because everything is at home, you never get a break like you do when leaving things at an office. when you are trying to stay afloat in this scenario and are living with Depression, it's a whole lot harder.

my own energy for concentrated attention in the few free moments i get during the day is very limited. it's like you're standing in the middle of a hurricane of noise, activity, and emotional need (produced by two toddlers), and all of a sudden everything stops and you expect yourself to get right to work. the house is in a shamble, and there are a hundred uncompleted tasks piled up everywhere, and your mind and body are still humming with movement. since i started working at home in the winter, the amount of visual, mental, and physical clutter has mounted and now has finally overwhelmed me. the boys seem to be echoing the lack of calm back to me, as in the past several days there has been a huge upswing in toy-throwing. i have taken to eliminating the toys one-by-one from our play space as they are tossed around.

this has all resulted in a decision. for the next month, i am going to drastically simplify things around here. even though it feels like a huge responsibility i am failing to uphold, i am going to put the cloth diapers away for one month. washing has become something for me to avoid, and has led to a lot of stress for me.

rather than telling myself that today i will (for example) be present for the boys, reply to emails, bake, sew, do wash, hang clothes on the line, screen print, and package and mail orders from my shops, i will force myself to do just one of the non-parenting things on my list. it's actually incredibly hard for me to work in this way - i'm much more of an impulsive do-er. i am going to have to do a major cleaning and somehow box and organize all of my in-progress projects. i have to be ready with everything i need for my artisan booth at opening day of our farmer's market on 6/13, and i actually feel fearful that by putting things away, i won't get anything done at all.

the reality is, though, that i am already in way over my head and feeling ineffective at accomplishing my tasks.

we'll see how it goes. please send your prayers and helpful energies my way - i really need some calm and support!

recent nighttime changes

Ah, it's morning naptime. I have started writing posts about our most recent attempt at switching down to one nap, but since I never finish them, I'll just mention here that our 17-month experiment lasted 2 weeks and ended in disastrous sleep for all four of us.

We're back to two naps on most days, at 8:30 or 9 and again at 1:30 or 2, and if one or both of them skips one, I just don't sweat it. It's hard - my friends with children a little older than my boys all think switching to one nap is the right thing to do, especially because Shoghi was having some really traumatic and long wakings over the past month, but I know he's not ready. Again, I could probably switch Max easily, but Shoghi just sleeps more, and he needs it. In hindsight now, it seems like his sleep disturbances were related to both teeth and language development. But as the mom of kids who were born two months prematurely, I never know when to factor in their age difference - it seems common for 18-month olds to have switched down to one nap, but more acceptable to think of 16-month olds to be taking two. Whatever the case, I have to follow their lead.

January brought a big leap in language for both Max and Shoghi - here Max is touching a sculpture and saying "bear."

Early in January, we had five blissful nights when Shoghi slept completely through until morning with no wakings for bottles. This ended abruptly with the emergence of his four canines, which coincided unfortunately with Max's own top canines, causing him to wake at 3am for the day several times. It seems that Max's bottom canines are about to emerge, evidenced by two days already of a low grade fever and lots of whining and then crying at night, but fortunately Shoghi finally seems to have broken through his weeks of terrible nights - he's on his third day of sleeping straight through again. You see how this is a balancing act for me to get any sleep at all? The stars really have to align.

my poor little muffin has had a hard month, leading to a resurgence of biting. sometimes this is mitigated by sucking on bottle nipples.

I've decided to bite the bullet - once and for all helping Shoghi end his dependence on nighttime bottles. My parents are going to be here in a week, so I hope by the time they get here we'll be officially done. I've been letting him have a bottle in the morning after we come downstairs, and another at bedtime (also downstairs), so once he stops associating them with getting back to sleep, I'll deal with eliminating them from the rest of the scene. It seems like Shoghi must be going through some more developmental changes, because for the past week he's been reaching into the drawer where I keep the bottle/ sippy cup parts and finding bottle nipples to suck on. He walks around the house biting and sucking them... it seems a strange age to possibly introduce a binkie, but I might try it.

On Monday, we'll be celebrating the boys' 18-month birthday! A year and a half already, and Sunday I'm meeting a potential babysitter - very exciting changes are happening.

somewhere beyond here

The picture doesn't show it, but I feel so adrift, so stressed out, so lost these days. My patience has washed away under a flood of anxiety, and I find it challenging to make it through the days without terrible feelings of failure - failure to discern my path, to find enough creative and engaging things for the boys, to manage this household calmly and with the finesse I tell myself most adults possess. I ask myself every day how I ever thought I could do this myself, and then I remember that I am doing it, that I couldn't have imagined how it would be to parent twins in this situation (or that my pursuit of parenthood would give me the blessing of having two babies at the same time), and that I would not change any of it, no matter how hard it is for me right now.

The fact is, I am trying. I am digging deeper than I have ever had to in my life. I do come up with new things for us to do every day, we get out and spend time with friends, and I am working hard to prepare good meals and bake bread. These things are important to me, and despite my inner turmoil, I am doing them. I have no choice but to reach for something better, to find myself in the midst of this personal crisis.

To make sure I have various kinds of support and a structure to focus my thoughts of creating a more healthy life, I've decided to take Mondo Beyondo again - the online class I took in October that guides participants through a process of becoming clear about their dreams, and then pursuing them.

This is all in line with my stated goal of 2010 of finding my voice. I'm relieved that the class starts today and I can place my frenzied mind into a calm, positive space.

calling it in

Sometimes you just have to call in favors. Yesterday was one of those days. It wasn't a bad day for me, but Max was finally back to his normal goofball self at the same time that poor Shoghi fell under the curse of whatever illness is going around. Laurie pointed out this morning that it seems like the second twin to get sick over here always gets something worse... why is that? Shoghi is burning up with fever and completely lethargic, and poor Max just wanted both of our attention for playing. I asked on facebook (also known as facecrack to those of us who spend most of the day alone with children and feed our desire for connection through our daily postings) if anyone could take Max for a while, and sure enough, soon I had both a friend to take him out and another friend saying she'd bring over dinner. Seriously, how lucky am I??

You know the best part of it? It's when the favor you need ends up making someone else's day better! Here's Korin's post about taking Max and her daughter shopping yesterday.

weekend contrast

Back when I was first really learning about the law of attraction, I learned about contrast. That is, I learned that sometimes the things that are resonating as DON'T WANTs are there to provide you the contrast to see what you DO want. You might have a dishwasher you hate. Either you can focus your attention in a negative way on the situation, saying over and over "I hate this stupid dishwasher," or you can choose to create an alternative in your head, so you might say instead, "Wow, this is dishwasher of my dreams!" even as you are loading an unloading the current one. You're not denying that you have a crappy dishwasher, but you're focusing instead on the dishwasher you wish to have. What you're going for is to elicit the emotion you wish to have in relation to your dishwasher (or whatever). Does that make sense? It's a little Depression Era psychology, perhaps... a little trick of the mind.

Weekends are a particularly contrast-ful for me. My sister who lives with me and the boys works on the weekend days, and most of my friends here spend family time on the weekend, doing chores around the house, spending time together, going on outings. This leaves me by myself with the boys most of the time. I often find myself throwing a little weekend pity party out of loneliness and the wish that I had someone I was sharing this with.

It's just not how I ever imagined I'd be raising children. Having been married before, I had every expectation that I would be hanging around in my pajamas with my hubby and kids, drinking hot coffee, eating a warm breakfast, shuffling around the house on Sundays (at least sometimes). It's the feeling I liked to cultivate when I was married, and it's the resonant memory of my childhood home. Instead, it's just another day, and if the boys are particularly whiny or bored, it makes me all the more grumpy that there isn't anyone else who can just take over as their parent for a moment.

I guess it would be different (jeez, soooo different) if I was working, and the only long days I had together with the boys were on the weekend. It surely will soon come to pass that this becomes our rhythm, and realizing this gave me pause.

As I was driving today, I was thinking about all of this, and I remembered someone's recent facebook (or was it on mothering?) comment where they were remarking how we often don't see a milestone until it's past. It made me think that these long days of babbling, whining, playing, toddling, and diapers are indeed fleeting, and that there are things I will miss when they've moved onto other things which will, no doubt, bring me equal amounts of delight and frustration. It's just life, and time, and we don't get to do this again, no matter how tired or bored or lonely the mama feels.

Maybe I'll try to think up something special (and free) that we can do every weekend. Since a relaxing day with a life partner isn't happening right now, I should think of a way to give to the boys in a fun and memorable way. I need to set the stage for the emotion I desire.

In the end, all these months of weekend loneliness have brought me to this place. It's provided me with contrast, showing me what I ultimately wish for --- the relaxed, homey feeling of my childhood Sundays. My task now is to figure out how to make it happen - to create the emotion I wish for, rather than dwell on the feeling of lack.

Tell me, what are your happy weekend routines and traditions? Have you ever blogged about it? Let's hear your ideas!

the new normal

I am totally overwhelmed. Today, it seems, nothing is going right -- in fact, I'm so screwed, I am just sitting here on my couch, feeling frozen and unsure of what I can even do.

I hate feeling this way. I look at other women mothering toddler twins and can't imagine how they do it. Keep a clean house? Cook good meals that the babies will actually eat? Keep up with laundry; keep the children from biting or hitting, or otherwise hurting each other; pay the bills; deal with paperwork; create interesting things to do; find a way to earn some money???? I feel like I am failing on every single front.

I am trying to run my Etsy shop and get a marketing workshop organized for January. It's becoming clear to me that this path isn't going to work. Not only am I not making any money - I'm losing it. Re-investing in my shop is turning into a nightmare. Finding time to promote either of these ventures is completely impossible. I want to cry at the thought of it all.

When I was pregnant, I thought of China as my backup plan. If I ran out of money and couldn't find a job, I'd just move back there for a year or so. It's cheap to live, the food is great, work is plentiful, and it's easy to hire a nanny. Now that I have children, moving to another country seems insane. There's no way I can take the boys away from their auntie - their other parent. This morning I was lying in bed with Max, and in the dark he awoke, saying "Mama, Mama, Mama. Auntie, Auntie, Auntie. Shoghi, Shoghi, Shoghi." It was so sweet - that litany of his favorite people. It still amazes me to be at the top of that list. Hell - it amazes me to be ON the list. I'm a mother! Despite the feelings I describe in this post, I am filled with gratitude for even having these problems... to say I love these boys and being their mama doesn't even begin to convey the depth of that emotion.

Anyway, it is just so clear that I have to make this work. Here, in Portland. And "MAKE it work" is what it feels like. Forcing something to happen. "This shop must generate some income;" "This workshop must get off the ground." This feeling of desperation is backfiring, though... I feel everything I try to push into existence full of resistance and refusing to budge. My grad school application got filled out, but when it came to sitting down and articulating my goals, I froze. I tried for weeks. Finally, I gave up and told the admissions coordinator that I'd finish the app for summer session.

This morning was our last day with E, our babysitter who has taken care of the boys on and off since they were about 2 months old. Just thinking of it brings me to tears, not only because of how much the boys and I will miss having her around (she's about to have a baby herself!), but on a very basic level, it simply means that I have no more help. I have no more mornings to sit at the cafe for a couple of hours and organize my thoughts. I have no more time to deal with a job search without the boys pulling at me or threatening to bite me (or each other). I have not been able to afford having her for some months, but the alternative of not having anyone has brought me to keep having her over. That luxury is over, though... I'm not in a position to find someone else.

I just feel like it's all building up to a big disaster. I feel incapable and paralyzed. I feel, every hour, overwhelmed. Sadly, this has become my new normal.

differentiation

When you have twins, you're gonna get questions. Starting when you're pregnant, people feel very comfortable stopping you to chat about your size, how you became pregnant with twins (does it run the family?), and how you're going to cope. After the babies arrive, the questions - and comments - continue.

Are they twins?
How do you do it?
A boy and a girl?
Oh, that's double trouble!
You must be really busy!

They stop me while shopping to chat, they ask personal questions about my pregnancy, the boys' conception, and make guesses about their personalities. They want the boys to smile, and wave, and say "hi." They guess at who is older, which I find ridiculous because they're basing their guess on the fact that Shoghi is bigger - as if being a minute older than your twin would contribute somehow to your size??

I try to use this as an opportunity to connect with people - to stop for a moment and breathe, and remind myself that in our busy society, most of the time we don't even look at each other, nevermind stop to chat with strangers. I want to model openness and patience to my children. I want them to learn to offer a friendly smile when people bend down to talk to them.

Sept 2009

Sometimes, though, the questions and comments are less welcome. When I am running to enter a restaurant in the pouring rain, with one toddler in a carrier tied to my front, and the other in my arms on my hip, with my bag falling off my shoulder and rain dripping down my face, it would be nice if they'd just offer to help - to get the door or even hold a baby - rather than smiling and offering a mere "you've got your hands full".

playing together at Oxbow Park

Starting this summer, some have begun to ask me how close in age the boys are. When I say "one minute apart," they stare at me blankly before I add "they're twins." "Really?" they balk. "Yes, twins. They're fraternal, so it's just like two brothers in a family - except that they developed at the same time." "Wow, they look so difffffffferent," they say, not in an altogether kind way. Now that they've got a year under their belts, and their teeny-tinyness is gone, Shoghi and Max are obviously different. Shoghi is much bigger - two weeks ago, he weighed nearly 25 pounds, while Max was just hitting 20. Shoghi is about 3" taller than his twin. Max has straight, reddish hair and brown eyes, and Shoghi's got sandy, wavy hair and gray eyes. Max wears a size smaller in clothes and shoes, and soon, diapers, too, as I'm afraid I'm going to have to buy size large cloth diapers for Shoghi in the next couple of months.

Forest Hills Park, September

But there's one more question I've been hearing a lot lately... and it's one that sits so strangely with me that even as people continue to ask, I continue to not know how to respond. Complete strangers ask me if Shoghi has Down's Syndrome. In fact, it's been happening enough that we'll be seeing his pediatrician to find out conclusively. You know, it's been quite a meditation for me. If he does have this chromosomal abnormality, he will still be exactly my same Shoghi. We will just know something different about him - albeit something that may have siginificant implications. My perception will have to shift, my expectations for how I will parent him may have to be altered. But in a way,that's just the life of a parent anyway - personalities, temperaments, learning abilities and styles, physical strengths and weaknesses... sicknesses and diagnoses; they all come with the territory.

But there's that part of me that's always hurt. Why are people asking me this? Even more - why do they think it's ok to ask me? Maybe it's the shape of his eyes. Our donor is Bolivian - maybe AmerIndian. Shoghi's eye shape has never seemed strange to me. In fact, he actually looks a lot like I did when I was his age. But still, having people ask me if my son has a possibly life-altering medical condition is - to say the least - uncomfortable. I hate that strangers make assumptions about my children, and while it's just a normal part of being a parent to discover that people do this, it has come as something of a shock. Why is it ok to ask something like that about a baby? Is it alright if I turn back to the same woman and ask if she is in menopause?

Shoghi

Just as I'm sure I'd have loved to have identical twins, I really adore the experience of having fraternal twins. It is an endless source of fun to have two such different children developing side by side. Whatever their similarities, whatever their differences, I am just so grateful to have them.

*top photo by Amy Crawford Photography

recently speechless

I don't know what's wrong with me lately. Posting, both here and on facebook, has felt like a chore - I've been so uninspired, despite the fact that a lot is going on! We've been so busy... perhaps it's just that. Anyway, sorry for being a bad blog-keep.

I'm in a big transition in my personal life, as I've mentioned before. Aside from the constant (and wonderful) evolution of my mama-life, I find myself unsure of my next step professionally. I started a business in the spring, and find myself not wanting to grow it much beyond where it is. Every few months, I get to work with a small group of amazing women entrepreneurs, sharing my knowledge of marketing and coaching them to become clear about their business values and core. This has been a real pleasure, but I thought I would grow this business into a small marketing firm, and now that feels very unappealing. Keeping the business at its current size won't support this family, though.

Maybe this is part of why I haven't been writing here - it's hard to have a professional online presence and then talk about aspects that I find unsatisfying. I'm afraid to come across in a way that would make my friends and clients think I'm not happy about working with them, which isn't true. I am also resistent to the tension between running a business for the love of the work and having to make a certain amount of money. I know other small business owners also struggle with this - wanting the work to be about passion and not about the bottom line. I have owned several micro-businesses in the past, but never had to rely on one as my sole source of income... and I have learned in the past few months that at this point in my life, that tension comes at the detriment of the work.

As a result, I've been working with my wonderful friend and life coach to get clear about what does feel good. Keeping the workshop going but teaching it as a service and as a little extra income feels like a choice with integrity for me. I've been looking at going back to school for a Master's degree, too, and if the finances look like they're going to work, I'll be going back to school in January for a degree that will allow me to teach English as a Second Language in colleges and private institutions both here and abroad. I'm not 100% about this decision yet, but it is evolving as the likely path.

I have found that blogging about life challenges on this particular blog has resulted in anonymous commenters admonishing me for complaining. I have written in other places before during huge transitions, and was amazed to find myself surrounded by support - some of the people who I "met" through that old blog are now my close friends. So to talk about the challenges of motherhood and life here - on a blog about single parenting - and find myself criticized... well, it kind of took the wind out of my sails. I believe in telling the truth - and I believe that it is through being real about the things that challenge us that we can truly connect with other people. I've never shied away from talking about the major tests in my life before, and I think that the story I am telling here for myself and for my children is best told with all the facets of experience intact.

So, there you have it. Hopefully getting it out there that I've been hitting up on this wall will help me break through and actually start writing again.