Let's just try and forget the last 141 days, okay?

Riiiiiight.

May 12th, eh?  That's like. . .uh. . .um. . .141 days from the last time I posted.  So there's no excuse for that.  The busy line won't cut it this time, huh? 

So let's start over.  You and me.  Me and you.  Let's try to put this all behind us and start anew.  Okay? Starting now. . .here's our update from the last third of our year.  *holding bloggy head in shame*

The kids are big.  I mean .. bi-heeehh-ig. They actually look like this.  They actually eat cheese sticks like this.  And they string them on their own!  Do you know how long I had to string the cheese for them?  It was like, at least 80 days.  If I'd been around, we'd have talked about it.

This picture is actually a fantastic representation of their little personalities.  Cole sizing you up from the shadows. . .the Tills right in front . . . ready to kick you in the shin at the first sign of her displeasure.  Oh, and she looks like a boy.  Her choice.

We ride bikes now.  Well, one of us rides our bike, the other pushes it around until they get tired of that. . .and then they start chasing the other of us that is still tryring to ride our bike.  We also like to wear our helmets in the bathtub.  And in the grocery store.  And when we go out to dinner.  To church. . .the doctor's office. . .

. . .but we don't usually like to speak in the 3rd person like that. . .that's creepy and I'll try to stop.

They aren't so easily detained anymore.  So, for example. . .when you've paid $8 at the country fair for a carousel ride and just before it starts to move. . .the kids feel like screaming and getting off?  Guess who's getting off?  Immediately.  Right now.  Because, man.  She can kick.

But...please note: I'm always, always thinking of you.  I always snap the shot before running to help.  And in this case?  I might have just waited a second or two to get a really good shot before helping Bill. 

There was a vacation at the beach in there.  Where we totally enjoyed ourselves as a family.  Just the four of us.  Liking each other almost all week.  Can you imagine?  Can you imagine if I actually remembered to put sunscreen on my nose one of these times? 

Cole and the Tills have really started to dig their own things.  Their imaginations grow every day.  And it's hysterical.  Like this time that the dinosaurs teamed up with the sea creatures and farm animals to totally kick the Lego's arses.  That one was epic. 

We've recently welcomed our first imaginary friend into the fold, too.  His name is Johnny.  And he tells Cole when he doesn't like what I've done to my hair.  As in, "Maaaaa?  Johnny wanted to tell you that he doesn't like your hair cut at dinner, but I told him that wasn't a good time."  Thanks Cole.  You're always thinking.

Johnny also doesn't like peas, baths, friends that don't share at school, pajamas, and the smell of mom's coffee.  I'd like to take this time to request any suggestions you might have on getting rid of imaginary friends as quickly and painlessly as possible. 

Johnny's running out of time.

And really? As much as I tried to fight it, the Disney princess thing took hold of my daughter.  Every. stinking. thing. in the world. must. be. Rapunzel.  Or purple.  Which she thinks has something to do with Rapunzel anyway, so it's one and the same.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about the time I practically was robbed by a 2 year old at the Disney store.   Completely embarrassing. You'll enjoy it.

For now, we'll leave it that the Tills usually looks like this.  Or she's wearing her Red Sox hat.  There's no in between with this kid.  The best, though?  The dress with the hat.  Classic.  And usually comes with a dirty face of some sort. 

But really? Over the last 140 days?  They've turned into little people more and more.  Little people, who cry when the junior high girls won't play with you at the park. . .and need their daddy to explain it while sitting on the sidelines.

And little people. . who tell jokes to each other that you and I totally wouldn't understand. . .but that makes them barrel over with giggles. 

And little people. . .who have just as much fun with each other now as they do with us.  It's one of the most amazing things to watch.  When they make up a game together and somehow, they both know the rules. . .

. . .like the riding dad, half-naked game with dirty diapers. . . .that was a good one.

(Note: this is one of those times I run for the camera before I run to help.  In case you forgot!)

But every now and then. . . when they aren't thinking about dinosaur wars, princess shoes, and who will be their best friend today at school. . .they'll still goof off with me in the bread aisle at the grocery store.

I mean really. . .why on earth are their mirrors up there, anyway?

my soapbox entitled: that time magazine article

So . . .

Have you seen this?

Have you heard about this cover of Time on the news?  Talked about it at work?  Maybe over dinner?  Heard the opinions? 

Sexualizing breastfeeding. . .exploiting a young child. . .waging a war on career-focused women who don't want to be home with baby every-given-minute. . . 

I can't take it.  And it's only been about 72 hours since the cover was leaked.  And you know me.  I'm rarely compelled to respond to something like this. . .(or is it that I'm always compelled. . .).

The article is about the attachment parenting movement, it's founder Dr. Sears, and if this approach is psychologically damaging women who are trying to live up to its' goals.  Is attachment parenting just a misogynistic way to keep women in the home by psychologically guilting them to believe there's real developmental harm to be done by leaving baby in the care of someone else?  Is it simply the return-to-nature approach to parenting?  Which approach produces more socially-adept citizens at the end of childhood?  Who cares?

We're missing the point here, folks. 

This debate isn't pitting a parenting style against another.  It's pitting women again women.  Mothers against mothers.  And I'm having a tough time believing that we can't see this for what it is.

I've heard some say 'to each their own', and I guess that's good in a non-judgemental kind of way. But I also think it's a cop out. Why not take a stand and say that you support women. You support mothers. Whether or not you agree isn't the point. The point is that by being passive, you're wasting a chance to voice support for each other. . . while we're all trying to get through this really, tough thing called motherhood. 

We ought to be discussing how tough it is to be a mom.  It's really, really tough.  We're living in an age where we have so much information available to us. . .to guide us. . . to help us make decisions about our lives and our families and determine what approach we'll take to it all.  Doesn't that sound funny?  We actually decide what approach we'll take to parenting.  I'm pretty sure my mom just did what her mom did, like her mom did before her.

And it's tough.  It's tougher than any of us thought.  Isn't that the biggest common denominator we could have?  Shouldn't we be talking about how we can support those that want to breastfeed, and those that don't?  Supporting moms who work and moms who stay home?  Gymboree and ballet classes or the backyard?  Limited TV time. . .no TV time.  Co-sleeping, baby-wearing, cloth-diapering. . .or none of it? 

Who cares?  They are all tough decisions.  And none of us knew what we were signing up for before we were thrust into it.  No one could prepare us. None of us knew we'd be making these decisions and that in making them. . .we'd polarize ourselves from other moms.   From women, just like ourselves.

We tried to prepare though.  We read books.  I've read Dr. Sears' books.  I've read those by doctors who disagree with him, too.  I've made charts and menus and chore lists.  Bill hates when I do that.  And at the end of the day, it didn't matter.  I made the best choices I could and leaned on my family, my other mom friends, and my partner for the confidence I needed to be secure with our decisions.

But I still don't know if I'm doing it right.  I don't think I'll ever know.  Just like I would say my mom didn't always make the best choices for me, Cole and Till will say the same.  All I can do is make the best choices with them in mind, given what I know, what is available to me at the time, and what I'm capable to do.  Just like my mom.  Just like yours.

The world that I parent in is a different world than the ones we were children in.  Is it tougher?  Maybe.  Most likely just different.  Why not write an article in Time Magazine about that?  About the decisions we all make as mothers to shape the best little people we can.  Maybe about all of the white noise out there about parenting. . .and how it's so darned tough to find a quiet moment to think.  Make a decision without guilt.  Without labels and without having to choose a side.

Okay.  So speaking of a side. . .I suppose you will want to know where I fall with the attachment parenting thing. . .because we all do fall somewhere, I suppose.  In the spirit of being 100% honest with you, here goes.

I'm 100% for living a 100% attachment parenting lifestyle.  But that doesn't mean I pulled it off. 

With Cole, we were 100% attachment parenting.  I wore him or held him all day.  He slept with Bill and I at night (and still does, quite a bit. . by the way. . .) and I breastfed him past age 1.  Thinking back on it though, I had no idea that what I was doing was called "attachment parenting."  I held him all day because he was colicky.  He would only sleep 20 minutes outside our bed.  We did what we did mostly out of survival in those early days. . .and it stuck.  And before I could realize. . .we were all, really happy with the way we lived our new life of three.

With Tills it was different.  I was different.  I was 100% attachment parenting until she was about six months old.  Then she slept by herself.  I went back to work.  Our breastfeeding slacked off.  And we adjusted and chose a path that worked for us. . .a hybrid.  I think she'd tell you she's a happy kid.  Well-adjusted.  Connected.  We're just as happy with the way we live our life of four, as we were with three.  It's just a different way.  It's not 100% what I would have chosen,  but it works for us.  For now.

We're doing okay. . .but man, it's tough.

When I yell at them (again!)  to stop taking off their shoes and hiding them on me because we're already 25 minutes late and I know I'm going to be late to work. . .(again!). . .I wonder if I'm making the right choice.  When it's Spaghettios for dinner for the second time this week (::holds head in shame::), I wonder if spending my time at work and on my career is the right choice.  If I was home, we'd be having something homemade.  If there wasn't anywhere to be in the morning, I wouldn't yell . . .and they could take off their shoes all they wanted.  Hiding-shoes-from-mommy might be a pretty fun game.

And when I was home with Cole and not working I always wondered if he was developing socially the way he might if he were at a daycare with other kids.  Was I able to teach him all he needed to know?  Were we making the right choice?  What about me?  Was I the best woman I could be for Cole and Bill, if I wasn't attending to all of me and only focusing on the mom part?

You just don't know.  But you need to be confident in your choices as a mother, and other moms are the best people to help you find your confidence.  They are also your toughest critis.  And I think it's time that we think more about that.

The article, ironically, isn't really about breastfeeding at all (or even that much about attachment parenting) as it is about it's founder, Dr. Bill Sears.  What I found most interesting were the researchers that were studying indigenous moms in the South Pacific, and how they influenced his work.  It all comes from somewhere.  There are no new ideas. . .just recycled ones.

Twenty years from now, will we be reading about the link between attachment parenting and some new social disorder that many of our young adults are displaying? Who knows? It's wasted energy to think that way.

Let's just be confident in ourselves as mothers to know that we all want what is best for our kids. We make decisions with them in mind. We sacrifice ourselves in ways that none of us could have imagined, for no other reason than their happiness.  Let's really think twice before we criticize another for what she thinks is best.  Reconsider your silence and what saying nothing really says. . . or passing the buck and saying you've no opinion. You know you do. . .share it and start becoming part of the solution.

Enough on my soapbox.  Phew.

No new pictures of the kids for now.  Bill and I are going to try and take the kids bike riding the afternoon.  I'm sure I'll have something to share with you then.

from the purgatory of potty training

So, we've really had a hell of a winter.

Don't get me wrong.  We were healthy (mostly).  Happy (mostly). But in terms of two little tiny people living in a little tiny universe. . .we had big changes.

Bill went back to work full time.  They went to daycare full time.  Till's officially entered her terrible-two's.  Cole is still terrible in his four's. We still live with my parents.  That's still as terrible as you remember me telling you it is. 

And they've adjusted.  Amazing, resilient, little creatures.  They smile, and hug me and say "more cheese, please!"(they really like cheese),  and keep going.  I believe that parents place their anxieties onto their children and then pretend it's the kids' hang up.  Because kids?  They just want to feel safe, loved, and to know that they have cheese.  The kind they like.  You know, cut just so in sticks the long way, maaaa. 

When I think back to this past winter. . .I will never. ever. forget. . .Cole's potty training.  It's supposed to be easy (mostly).  A bazillion and two kids have done it before.  A bazillion and two parents have made it through.  I'm still somewhere in the middle.  Somewhere in the purgatory of potty training, if there's such a place. 

I'll give you the Reader's Digest version of the story because you probably have somewhere to be. . . .

Cole ended up in the hospital for a week in early December because he wouldn't poop.  I mean, not because he wouldn't poop just that week. . .this was chronic.  He wouldn't poop for weeks.  And when he did, he wouldn't poop all he had to poop. 

People.  Poop doesn't just disappear.  When you don't poop when you have to poop, it eventually backs up into your body and creates major problems. 

Truly?  One day Cole looked normal.  The next? He looked about seven months pregnant.  We put him on laxatives.  We gave him mineral oil (which, by the way, is horribly dangerous for little people who might choke and inhale it. . .score one for my terrible health insurance and the second rate docs we have had to go see!)  We gave him *shudder* enemas.  Plural enemas.

Nothing worked.  We ended up giving him a colonoscopy prep in the hospital to clean him out.  It look 4 days.  That's how determined my little guy was to not poop.  He was literally sedated, unconscious, and still trying not to poop.  Now, if I could only apply that kind of willpower to not eating every Cadbury Creme Egg I've seen at 50% off this week. . .

So we had a big problem.  A problem that maybe started out as a potty training aversion but has since developed into something so much more serious. . .it borders on the psychological.  And come on!  I can't be changing his diaper before he heads out on his first date, so we had to get this thing under control!

The doctors finally put Cole on a heavy regimen of laxatives and referred him to the Potty Clinic.  The Potty Clinic.  In the Children's Behavioral Ward.  THE CHILDREN'S BEHAVIORAL WARD.  Can you hear me screaming!?!?

I meant to tell you after coming home from that first appointment on a cold January afternoon that I felt like a shell of mother after meeting Dr. Potty Clinic.  Because come on.  If your kid has a psychological issue with pooping. . .it's your fault, right?  Let's just cut to the chase.  This is MY potty clinic.  And that's just what it felt like.

I had to chart his daily poop for months, like this:

"small amount, 5:00 p.m., full diaper, sort of runny." 

"large amount, on potty, 3:00 p.m. for a Cabury Egg (he is his mother's son. . .)"

"medium amount, 12:00 noon before nap, because he heard his mother sobbing that she was such an inadequate potty trainer. . ."

Potty clinic . . .pshhhah.  Embarrassing.  Lame.  It's certainly not going to work. . .  But we did it.  Week after week.  And we kept going to see Dr. Potty Clinic week after week.  Cole would play on his floor in his office with his awesome toys, and I would sit. . .in the chair the farthest away from him. . .and sweat. 

Please don't say I'm a bad mom. . .Please don't say I'm a bad mom. . .Please say Cole will poop in the toilet before he goes to college. . .

Dr. Potty Clinic never said anything like that.  He gave me crazy instructions of the land of madness to try when we got home.  But, exactly three weeks later, when I was sitting in the chair farthest away. . .I would report that his suggestions worked like magic.  And he'd give me another.  "

Now, I want you to try something else that sounds completely insane and will also cost you about $100 bucks over the course of three weeks.  Go ahead, go home and complain about me to your husband tonight over dinner, but do it anyway.  Trust me." 

He was right.  Damn it, Dr. Potty Clinic.  Eventually, I started calling my friends on the way home from our appointments, relaying to them the crazy and insane next step that he had given me.  We were all followers of Dr. Potty Clinic.  Mesmerized in his power to make these little creatures poop at will. With no crying.  No tantrums.  No seventh-month pregnancy tummies. 

In fact, last week was our last appointment.  I didn't know it at the time and I'm glad I didn't.  My mascara would have been running for sure. 

I sat in the chair farthest away and Cole went for his favorite toy and played.  I showed him our potty chart.  He shook his head and said. . .as if he were talking about the weather, "I think we're done here." 

Done here?

Done here?  Like that we'll go out the waiting room and schedule a new appointment for three weeks from now when you will do something else amazing like poop while you're walking on water? 

"Cole's fine.  I don't need to see him anymore. You just keep up with what we've been working on."

Huh?  Are you breaking up with me?  (I might have actually said that out loud. Nope.  I did say that out loud.)

Dr. Potty Clinic looked at me and said I'd do fine.  I'd been doing fine.  Cole wouldn't be done seeing him if I hadn't done such a good job.

Ahhhhh. . .but I need you.  I need to see a specialist on a regular basis so I don't go screwing this up again.   Or worse?  Screwing up another kid all together.  "You know I have two, right?"

Dr. PC put his arm around me and walked me out to reception.  I was quiet.  Head was low.  I guess he knew to get me out of the office before I started begging.  He said to the receptionist, "She just needs a summary today, no follow up to schedule."  Like we were no big thing.  Like we didn't just have this journey together of poop. 

He was giving Cole his last you've-been-so-good-today-that-you-get-a-sticker sticker and I must have looked very sad.  Lost.  Dumped.  Because he said, "you can always call me if you feel lost."

Phew.  So you're saying there's a chance. . .

So you know?  It's like this.  I do feel lost.  I feel nervous and anxious and angry because I don't know what's going to happen with Cole and his potty training.  He's already older than most of the kids at school that isn't completely trained.  And we've still got a long road ahead. 

It's tougher for me because we never really figured out Cole's trigger. . .so I have to be so incredibly careful when it comes to the potty.  No pressure.  No stress.  No crying.  Just free-poop in a very caring and supportive atmosphere.  A pooposphere, if you will. 

I thought about all of this on our ride home from Dr. PC that afternoon.  Everything I do in my role as a parent is an unknown.  And just because it's worked out for a bazillion and two other parents and kids before, doesn't ever mean it'll work out for us.  And just think of all of the other milestones we've passed uneventfully that might have been a struggle for someone else. 

I'm definitely keeping the potty chart to give adult-Cole one day.  Until then, it'll remind me to take it easy, and to remember "No pressure.  No stress.  Embrace the Pooposphere"  And that anyone will pretty much do whatever you want them to do for enough Cadbury Eggs. 

And....because I know you want them. . .Here are some pics from Easter. . .



Till can really clean up.  And check out the pigtails!

Cole can clean up too!  But he does it with an Easter 'stash.



overdue pictures.

I really owe you some pictures.  Since we've last seen each other. . .

. . .Cole had a birthday. . .

. . .Till still does that freaky eye thing and her face is still constantly dirty. . .

. . .Cole started dabbling in his own photography. . .I really appreciate the way he's able to white-wash my wrinkles away. . .

. . .his talent for photographing close ups of faces, both in person and from other pictures. . .is unprecedented. . .

. . .And he got his head stuck in a Tupperware.

More soon. Promise.