RaJenCreation

Yesterday afternoon, I took these pictures of the kiddles. It was the first time we had taken pictures where they are both awake and looking at the camera.

They are fourteen weeks today. FOURTEEN. That’s more than one-third of the time that I spent pregnant. Which got me curious to know what was going on fourteen weeks before their birth. That was January 9 and I was twenty-three weeks pregnant, staying at work late so I could feel the RJBs kick. And now here we are 14 weeks on the outside taking a picture of Bruiser (l) and Birdie (r) together. Daily, I trip over the wonder of being blessed with these little miracles.

Except they are not so little anymore. Birdie is weighing in at 13lb4oz and Bruiser is a sturdy 15lb0z. We’ve stored away all of their 0-3 month clothes, although they can both still wear certain brands’ three month threads. Birdie is comfortably in 3-6 month clothes though we do have to roll up the pants at the waist a bit. Bruiser, in the picture above, is wearing a certain brand’s 6-TWELVE MONTH collared onesie. At this rate, they will be wearing their winter clothes by October and their next spring clothes at Christmas.

Birdie is assigned the task of finishing off the Size 1 diapers that we have. We excused Bruiser from this assignment after frequent protests - in the form of poop exploding up the back of his too-short diapers. He’s been testing our Size 1-2 diapers for a while. We have one box left of a hundred-and-something Size 1-2’s, but in twinland, that means the supply will be exhausted in about 15 days. Just in time for Size 2’s. SIZE TWO’S!

So much for thinking that twins would result in smaller babies.

I was on my way to work this morning and there was a sign on those highway blinky pads that read “HURRICANE SEASON IS HERE. KEEP YOUR GAS TANK FULL.” Which read a lot like C-O-N-S-P-I-R-A-C-Y to me, this sign being on the highway of a city booming with petrochemical and drilling and exploration companies. One of which I work for.

Back when I was a kid - and I will say that the time that’s passed since then is shorter in my head than on a calculator - my mom used to tell me that every ‘bad’ thing I did would result in a Black Dot On My Heart. She was Catholic, after all. And since I was too afraid to go into a confessional and tell my priest that I had vandalized a car or poured salt onto a yard or other junior high experiences, I read up on the Protestant faith and learned about forgiveness. And I didn’t even have to recite such number of Hail Mary’s or Act of Contritions or what have you.

My understanding of forgiveness and faith are a little deeper now. A little. But I try to even out my Black Dots - like my carbon footprint - with Good Deeds, like recycling cans and plastic and cardboard boxes. But if I was thinking my slate was anywhere near half clean, boy was I wrong!

By virtue of parenting, I belong to a couple groups in my area where the adults bounce ideas off one another, provide warnings or accolades about products, opinions about schools and the like. And it was on these boards that I discovered how very far removed I am from Taking Care Of The Earth or even Doing What Is Best For My Children.

Take water. Seriously? I think the water in the bottles is the same as the water from the tap. The labels say otherwise, some people agree, but I’m not sure drinking bottled water is necessarily better. I mean really, all those decreased chemicals we put in our bodies is made up for with what we toss onto the earth. But from the very first nanny we hired, we were strictly informed that we should not use tap water with the babies’ formula because their bellies were just brand new and they shouldn’t be subjected to such evil.

And the bottles. Watch out for BPA!! LORD HAVE MERCY don’t use platic bottles! Lots and lots of conversation and talk about the estrogen imitating chemical and how it can prevent your offspring from ever having offspring of their own. And yet I was fed with plastic bottles and I conceived.

Maybe that was part of the problem - that I wasn’t breastfed. Because OH MY GOD if you don’t breastfeed you are deliberately choosing for your children to have lower IQ’s and the ability to handle rejection when they are fourteen.

And when you want to give them a quick meal in their youth, DON’T FEED THEM RAVIOLI because the cans you find on grocery store shelves are teeming with BPA and other things that will certainly stunt our brain development. Want to make it fresh, instead? You CAN’T! Because of the tomatoes! HOLY SHIT, THE TOMATOES! I actually read a post/response from a neighborhood mom who buys non-BPA packaged tomato paste for $10 for 24oz. I am sure the tomatoes are plucked directly from God’s garden. Only to find out it’s the JALAPEÑOS! THE DAMN JALAPEÑOS!

Then there was the mom who bought milk in TetraPaks from South America and Australia. Or the folks who don’t use certain dry cleaners because they use perc or CO2. I don’t even know what some of this stuff is!

Suddenly, putting cans and plastic into my green recycle bin that gets picked up twice a month is so insignificant. Even though something is more than nothing. I thought all the reading I felt I had to do before giving birth was a lot of material. But in terms of educating myself about products/schools/environmental factors, I have this perpetual feeling of having to take a final exam tomorrow morning, and I just now got the textbook.

In the quiet of early morning - the part of the early morning I never saw before having kids - I can look out the window and often find my neighbor tending to his gardens. It is one of the most peaceful and serene moments of my days. And if you could squeeze musical notes out of the visual, it would end up a score on some award-winning National Geographic program.

Several months ago, our neighbors asked if they could tear out the grass in a 5 x 5 section of yard that we share. He wanted to plant some flowers. And the little section, bordered by driveway on two sides, a side walk on another, and the street curb on the other, seemed like a reasonable piece to give up to his calming green thumb. This relinquishing of control is something I’m becoming accustomed to in parenting. And I’m discovering that the results create beauty nonetheless.

Most recently, a sunflower has stood upright, shoulders broad and confident. It’s a startling contrast to the transitional urban area where we live. For a short time, rather than telling folks we’re the fourth residence on the left just past the commercial auto lot, we can say our driveway is the one to the right of the Sun.

My mom was in town for a few hours over the weekend and got to visit with the RaJenBabies, four days short of them turning THREE MONTHS OLD. She would not let them go, even as she was leaving. And when we finally did pry them away, we had to slather Desitin on the insides of her forearms what with the heat rash she had developed from holding onto them so tightly.

Now that she’s back home, she’ll likely have to see a physical therapist to help tone down that facial expression that the twins were responsible for eliciting. Lord knows you don’t want the nurse that comes to tell you your family member just coded and is on the way to ICU to have a look like that on her face.

me: “What did you end up paying for your Altima? And what’s your monthly payment based on the amount you financed?”

sister: “Crap. My memory left with my placenta.”

When I was in the third grade, I used to do things like read Scientific American and write stories about black holes and wonder if there was someone, somewhere in this whole wide world that looked just like me, born to another mother, speaking another language, but who also liked pickles, science, sports, and art.

And I hadn’t thought much about this kind of thinking until our night nanny told us her granddaughter had a doll that looked uncannily like Birdie. So she snuck the doll out of her house and brought it over the other night. And the next morning, just after Birdie woke up, we put them side-by-side on a chair and there it was, her twin in pliable plastic.

Early on, I used to dread those few hours per day when I would be alone with the RJBs. Not because I didn’t want to be with them. Not at all. My biggest fear was that they would be hungry - AT THE SAME TIME - while I was by myself. Why? Because babies with reflux need to be fed upright, and remain upright for a period of time after eating, lest they throw up. And for us, feeding them in car seats or bouncy seats didn’t negate the issue. Their anti-gravidational reflux could launch rockets, I kid you not.

Holding one baby off could sometimes work. Most of the time not. In not feeding one while I fed the other, I felt they thought I was neglecting them, abandoning them to a swing or boppy to cry alone with no security in their young lives that someone was there to care for them.

In feeding them together, it often initiated a cycle of feeding, throwing up, and crying. When they would throw up, it seemed more made its way up than went into them. Not only out of their mouths, but out of their nostrils. And then the need to suction them, to get the milk and mucous out of their airways. While they are scared and crying. While the other one is crying because you took the bottle out of their mouth. For which they would then cry themselves into throwing up. Because they weren’t sitting upright in your lap. All of which served to fester the wound of feeling like a parental failure.

And guess what? Inevitably, they WERE hungry simultaneously. Because you can’t schedule-feed babies with reflux. And the cycle happened. And I got through it - sometimes barely. But not without tears and that anxiety that tingles warm through your body and makes your heart race. You know that near-miss car accident feeling? That’s how it felt, the anticipation of this situation.

Now? This whole three months of their lives later? Totally do-able. But it is not solely due to my experience as a parent, IF AT ALL. And not because Bruiser’s reflux, cross my fingers, seems to be going out with the tide. It is because we’ve had lots and lots of help from nannies.

There it is. I admit it out loud. You want to know how I’ve had time to post? It’s because someone was sitting with the RJBs while I had ten minutes of sanity. How it is that I’ve managed to gain 5 pounds in the last three months? Because someone has brought us a meal while we do tummy-time with the kids. How we’re not completely exhausted? Because someone gets up with them most nights so we can sleep. How I haven’t run out of clean underwear? Because someone is doing most of the laundry.

We’ve had a night nanny since the RJBs were nine days old. Not every night. But probably five nights a week on average - 10pm to 6 am. We’ve had a day nanny slash housekeeper five to six days a week - 8 am to 6pm. Gulnoz. Ann. Regina. Jenny. Marisol. Our house has been a revolving door of hired help. We might as well leave the front door unlocked.

This three months later, we’re weaning the RJBs ourselves off. The kids will start daycare in August and we’ll keep our day person for Saturday’s so I can run needed errands and Matou can go to work. We’re down to 3 nights per week with the night nanny and that will discontinue entirely by mid-August because she has another family she’s committed to. And because the RJBs are, for the most part, sleeping through the night - 7:30pm to 5 or 6:00 am. which means we’re just paying for a co-dependent relationship. Well, that, and I don’t have any more internal organs to sell to finance the expense.

I’m back at work now, full-time. Matou has been back at work for two-and-a-half months. And we’ve discovered that the bittersweetness of having kids is the imbalance it creates for working parents. It’s counterintuitive to me, this two-income household for the purpose of paying for someone else to spend 10 hours a day with our kids. And yet, neither of us make enough for one of us to stay home.

The result is, I sense the RJBs feel loved and secure and like their needs are met, but I’m not sure they know WE are their mom’s. Just last Friday, I rushed home after work to find Bruiser smiling and laughing with the nanny. And when I went up to him and said Hello, he looked at me with the expression of “Who the hell are you?” And then there was a sense of connection, a connection that said “Oh, yeah, you’re the bath, bottle, bedtime nanny.”

Which is about what it feels like five days a week. We get home at 6pm. Take a short walk in the neighborhood. We each take a baby and give them a bath and feed them, alternating babies each night so we have equal time with them. Put them down to sleep at 7:30. Leave the next morning oftentimes before they wake. That’s TWO HOURS A DAY WITH MY KIDS. Deflating. Oh, sure, we could wait longer to do their bedtime routine. But that would be selfish of us, and fussy of them because 7ish is their internal bedtime. As it is, they usually end up alseep by the time we get home from our walk.

Jen stays home Mondays and Tuesdays. She called me the other day and said someone wanted to talk to me. She put Bruiser and Birdie on the phone and they were cooing and squeaking away. Me? I was at the office reviewing operating agreements and writing formulas for a spreadsheet.

My mom said it’s the quality of time we spend, not the quantity. But this time it is taking to wrap my head around that reality and do so without immense guilt is expansive. All the more reason that I look forward to the weekends now more than ever.

Butterfly iris in the front yard.

I was curious to know what Bruiser and his great-grandmother were talking about but thought the better of asking. I mean, you just don’t interrupt two angels this side of heaven having a little chuckle. Even if it might be about the silly things God can do like make clouds in the shapes of dinosaurs or make it rain while the sun is shining. And that we have these moments frozen in time to just marinate in. What a blessing.

Photos taken by the Beloved, June 28, 2008.