Testing 1,2,3 ...

He's testing me and his dad a lot these days.

He says he's not going to Hebrew School ... and waits for a response, lolling idly on the sofa.  We ignore.

A few minutes later, he refuses to come put on his rain boots.  I give up on those -- that's an argument I can afford to lose -- and coax him into his room, where I put him in a cozy sweater and rain jacket.

A few minutes later, at the door, it's "I hate this day," and "I'm not going."  This time, he loses a sticker on his ready-for-school-on-time chart, and stickers mean something:  once you earn 20, you get a dollar to put in your piggy bank and save up for toys. 

He throws a mini-tantrum.  Then, when Dad gets stern, he starts to laugh.

Dad has had it.  So have I.  It's been testing, testing, testing ever since he's been awake, and it's not even 9 a.m.

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What We Say, What They Hear

Years ago, FAR SIDE cartoonist/genius Gary Larson drew a cartoon in which a man was talking to his dog Ginger about her habit of rifling through the garbage.  The cartoon was captioned, "What We Say To Dogs" and "What they hear."  The man went on about how Ginger had better not get into the garbage again, or else, but all the dog heard was, "Blah blah blah GINGER, blah blah blah GINGER."  (You'll find the cartoon here.) But you can already guess my point:  this is pretty much how six-year-olds hear their parents.

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The Return Of Grouchy Mom

I don't wanna be Grouchy Mom, really, I don't.  Neither do my mom friends.

But sometimes, we find ourselves being really, really Grouchy to our kids.  Take yesterday.  Thing 2 announced, more than two-thirds of the way home from school, that she'd left Cheetah, the stuffed animal with whom she sleeps nightly, back at school. 

This isn't the first time it's happened.  But despite my warning, the last time it happened, that I would NOT return to school for it, and the lecture I delivered about how HER toys were HER responsibility... well, I turned around the car and went back to get the damn thing.

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The Newden Days: Five And Counting

"Mommy, do we live in the newden days?" the boy asks as we read a bedtime story and I stop to explain that people sometimes wore hats to bed to keep warm "in the olden days."

"Yes," I say, after I stop laughing several minutes later. "We live in the newden days."

These newden days, I am getting used to having five-year-olds, and they are, indeed, very different from four-year-olds. The tantrums are fewer and tend to come only when someone hasn't had enough sleep. But they've been replaced by a near constant condition best called "selective listening," which is mostly not listening when asked to do something, but listening when there is the possibility of a treat, a new toy, or TV watching. Thanks to the inspiration of the president of the local parents of multiples club, I've instituted a sticker chart in which the kids earn a sticker if I only have to tell them to do something once. Fifty stickers -- a very big number for them to contemplate, but an achievable one -- will earn them a trip to the toy store at the Farmer's Market, and the chance to pick something out. We're only one day into the plan, so it's premature to say it's golden, but at least for now, it seems to be working.

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Mommy, Where Does Dirt Come From?

It's endless question time again here at Chez Twins.

Every book or TV cartoon with a bad guy prompts queries from Thing 2: "Is he bad? Is she bad?" "Why are Cinderella's stepsisters bad?"

Thing 1 just wants to know random things that occur to him to ask in the course of the day, as in the above "where does dirt come from?" question.

The earthquakes we've been having have prompted questions too. But explaining tectonic plates or earth's hot molten core to four-year-olds is beyond me. Believe me, I've tried.

On the one hand, I'm happy for the questions. It means all these excursions we've been taking the kids on lately -- to the Children's Garden at the Huntington Library, Gallery and Botanical Garden, or the Griffith Observatory -- are sparking their inquiring minds.

On the other hand, by the twentieth question of the day -- "Mommy, what color is turquoise?" -- I get a little testy.

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Becoming Your Mother

I now see it's inevitable.

At some point into motherhood, at some moments, every woman becomes her mother.

It happened to me this morning when I had to lay down the law to my four-year-old daughter. We had driven to ballet school and were getting changed for Sunday morning ballet class in the changing room there -- a weekly class she elected to attend, mind you, I don't force her and it wasn't my idea -- when she put on her ballet shoes and then firmly declared of one of them, "This one bothers me."

Off it came. Much readjusting of the shoe was attempted, to no avail. It's not that it's too small; it wasn't pinching at the toes. My daughter just didn't like the way it felt around the ball of her foot today. I offered trying it on the other foot. We did. No dice. I suggested taking her socks off. That was met with refusal. I offered to buy her a new pair at the store at some later time, when it would be open (it wasn't this morning and besides, even if it had been, class was starting). All I got was wailing.

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The Great Binky Withdrawal, Part Two

We're not out of the woods yet.

Thanksgiving Night, the binkies went bye-bye. Six nights of hell followed. She had four nights of bedtime fits, putting her fingers in her mouth and weeping for the departed binky. He turned hyper and got insanely wound up before the official "get into bed" time came,then when put into bed couldn't settle, tossing and turning for an hour and a half-plus. By the time sleep came for both that first night, it was after eleven. Though "bedtime" is officially 8:30, it'd crept to nine p.m. anyway. But after eleven? This meant no "me" time for mommy or daddy, no "us" time for mommy or daddy together. No down time, no catch-up on life time, and you can just write off romance entirely.

Naptime was no picnic either -- aside from a brief catnap in the car, they didn't nap at all on the weekend, destroying our precious afternoon respites. Yet once back at school, where they'd napped sans binkies for months, they slept. What do the teachers know that we don't?

When Day Seven dawned, it was time to appeal to a higher authority for help.

That authority, whom I'll call Dr. V. to preserve her anonymity, is a licensed family therapist who also happens to be a mother of twins. This makes Dr. V. a heady combo, a perfect mix of empathy for other parents of multiples, and PhD smarts. Her first reaction to our situation was a big sigh, and then: "It's tough. It's four nights of hell."

We told her it had already been six.

Dr. V. told us to be empathetic. We should tell our kids how hard it had been for us to give up binkies when we were kids. She pointed out we hadn't restricted the binky use as much as we should have before we took them away; sure, we didn't let them take the binkies out of the house, but hadn't consistently restricted them to the bed. But without judgment, she said there was nothing to be done about that now. Looking ahead, she had ideas, potential solutions, approaches: sticker charts for the bedtime routine, rewards given in the morning for staying in bed, the removal of privileges for not complying. She suggested leaving sippy cups in their room as a sucking substitute. She advocated getting them a replacement comfort object -- which we'd tried with limited success -- and the idea that the kids can "choose or lose," a concept of the kids taking responsibility for their problem instead of making it all ours. We were to tell them they had a choice, stay in bed or lose a privilege (naming it), and to be as emotionless about explaining it as a waitress explaining menu choices. Whenever the kids got out of bed, we were to avoid reacting at all, save to wordlessly escort them back -- twenty times, if necessary. She said to keep our emotions out of it so there'd be no payoff, in the form of parental attention. She told us to make a "doctor" the heavy: "The doctor says the new rule in this house is that you have to stay in bed." And she told us to find lots of occasions to praise them for good behavior throughout the day, as long as we specifically mentioned the thing they were doing that was good. ("Good job" would be too generic, but "you are sharing really well together" would work.)

We ended the conversation feeling armed and ready, and mutually agreed to hit the "reset" button on our emotions. We'd both turned into angry, grumpy, bear-like creatures, suffering from lack of sleep (Thing 1 had been up and in our room in the middle of the night every night, and our cat, not to be outmatched in the quest for attention, decided to throw up or poop outside the litter box for several nights as well). But we realized now, tired as we were, that our expectations had been out of line: binky withdrawal was no easy thing, and would not be conquered in a few nights.

That evening, the sticker chart, which had been retired awhile back, made its return engagement, with new explanations and rules. They still got stickers as the immediate reward for taking a bath, using the potty, getting in PJs, brushing teeth. But once they'd earned three stickers in the STAY IN BED column -- proudly put in the chart each morning after doing so -- they'd get a reward. (We picked making gingerbread cookies on the weekend as the first reward). They got to each go to bed with something they wanted: for him, a toy airplane, for her, a pink stuffed dog AND her sleeping bag on the bed.

Though one of us stayed in the room for a while, listening to Thing 2 talk herself to sleep (a new comfort mechanism) and Thing 1 do endless take-offs and landings, eventually, by ten, both were out.

The next couple of nights had some setbacks, but no tantrums, no hyper giggle fits, and when there were nocturnal wanderings, the kids went back down after being quickly escorted back to bed.

Weekend naps are still proving problematic, but at least they took one today after being separated into two different rooms.

It's far from perfect. The war isn't won yet. But we know, and they do, that there will be no retreat. The binkies are gone.

Bleary-eyed, we continue ...

"But We Could Have Adopted NICE Children."

I realize my latest entries have been all sweetness and light. But it's the fourth day of a four-day holiday weekend, parents alone with the kids, who are being their relentless selves, and THE GLOVES ARE OFF.

Yesterday, I nearly lost my mind. Here's how it happened.

Took Thing 2 (my daughter) to the beach, which is one of the amazing things you can do if you live in Southern California and it's two days after Thanksgiving. Let her play in the sand to her heart's delight, getting pants, socks and feet thoroughly filthy. Brought her to the amusement pier, where she rode on the kiddie merry-go-rounds, then met up with Daddy and Thing 1 at the carousel. Let her ride the carousel four times. Even let her eat a tootsie roll.

She fell asleep on the way to the pizza restaurant, even though it was only a five-minute drive, and though she briefly rallied to inhale a slice and a half, our troubles began soon after.

She would not leave the restaurant. Daddy and Thing 1, who'd already gotten too restless to remain, had gone back to the car in a garage that was charging us by the minute to park. I had to carry her out. She flailed and protested. I set her down. She wanted to dawdle on a bench. I picked her up again -- already a mistake on my part, since I've been nursing a hernia since I was pregnant with twins. I set her down again in an attempt to get her to cross the street. Protests continued unabated. And on it went, the sturm and drang, the whining, the flailing, all across the street, into the lobby of the building where we'd parked. That's where I made the big tactical blunder.

I put my purse and the diaper bag into the waiting elevator and turned to pick up my daughter. She darted away and the elevator doors closed. My money and drivers' license and house and car keys all disappeared behind those closed doors.

I lost it. Screamed at Thing 2. Called her an idiot, which was not at all the right word for the situation and not a word with which her nearly four-year-old brain is familiar. Uttered some curses. And desperately rang every elevator button hoping for the return of my stuff.

In a few moments, the elevator returned, and the doors opened.

My stuff was gone.

Round two of yelling commenced.

Within seconds, Thing 2 turned into a blubbering mass of jelly. She was crying. She was also terrified that her mostly kind, occasionally irritated, but normally loving Late Blooming Mom had turned into a red-faced, foot-stomping, yelling and bad-word-saying toddler who just happens to be in her forties.

I grabbed her and took her in the elevator down to her Daddy, handing her off rapidly while quickly shouting a terse version of what had transpired. I stomped off to the woman running the parking booth, hoping against hope -- but not believing -- that my stuff would have been turned in.

I steamed and seethed on the brief elevator ride to the parking attendant. And there, just outside the elevator, near her booth, sat my purse and the diaper bag -- rescued by some good Samaritan. Everything was undisturbed.

I'd blown a gasket for nothing.

Well, not exactly nothing. My daughter had disobeyed every request in the last twenty-plus minutes, after I'd done nothing but let her do as she pleased all morning. And she'd risked getting my wallet and keys stolen, even though she doesn't yet understand about that risk.

It was a good thing Daddy drove the kids home.

She fell asleep on the ride home, since we were way late for naps. So did he. But both woke up in the dreaded transition from the car to their beds. She refused to sleep. Daddy sat with her in front of the TV. I wanted nothing more to do with her. But I couldn't get him back to sleep either. And the cat wanted me to nap with him. He was meowing incessantly, the third "child" in need of mom's attention.

I snapped all over again.

I told Late Blooming Dad I was going out, and didn't know when I'd return.

Spent the next two hours wandering around the neighborhood. Cried. Brooded. Felt ashamed. Felt pissed off. Tried hard to get it all out of my system. Tried to remind myself this life -- family life -- is the life I've wanted and longed for. But just felt trapped. Wanted to be anywhere but home.

By the time I wandered back home, Dad had things under control and was plotting to take them out to dinner to get them off my hands a little while longer. I decompressed for another hour or so.

Later, after Dad gave them baths, I was able to get them changed, teeth brushed, books read, and into their beds. Going down for the night was a challenge, especially for my daughter -- I'd apologized already for screaming at her, reassured her I loved her, lectured her on the need to do what mommy asks, but she still had questions about the incident. Mercifully, they both finally drifted off by about nine-thirty.

Then it was time for the debriefing, on the couch, with Dad.

As we went over the day's events -- Thing 1 had had his share of fits, it wasn't all on Thing 2 -- and talked out our anger and exhaustion, I found myself ruefully telling dad, "We could've adopted, you know. After the miscarriages, you were the one who was so adamant that I soldier on, so we could have our biological offspring. When all along, we could've adopted NICE children."

We both cracked up.

Then Dad pointed out we were three days into a four-day holiday weekend, and he fully expected it to be like this. "My thought when the holiday began was, let's just get through the next 96 hours and make it back to work on Monday," he said. I was the one who'd had dewy-eyed, sentimental expectations of a perfect family holiday weekend. I was the one who'd been the idiot.

Now I realized that all over America, families had hit the day-three wall of the four-day holiday, and there were probably short fuses and fit-throwing kids and screaming parents all over this land of ours. Why should our family be any different?

Thankfully, it's 2/3 of the way through Day Four, and things are going a lot better.
But as Yogi Berra says, it ain't over till it's over. Wish us luck.

The Extinction Method Ain't Fast Enough For Me

Lots of parenting books recommend something called the "extinction method" as a way of getting rid of bad or unacceptable behavior. The basic idea is, when your child commences the unacceptable behavior, you immediately withdraw all parental attention from the child. Do this often enough, so the thinking goes, and the unacceptable behavior will cease; it will become extinct, much like dinosaurs.

Well, maybe it works ... eventually.

But it sure isn't working around here, or at least it's not working fast enough for me.

Thing 1 has lately been going through a rebellion worthy enough of adolsecence, even though he's only three and a half. Contrarian when it comes to ... well, nearly everything, he balks at whatever he's given to eat or drink, or asked to wear, and wherever he's told we're going, he declares with stubborn, foot-stomping intensity, "I wanna go somewhere ELSE!" It matters not to him that he has no idea where "else," only that he register his refusal to go along with whatever's planned, even if the planned destination is a birthday party that will undoubtedly feature pizza, cake, and the parting gift of goody bags. Hell no, Thing 1 won't go ... unless bodily picked up and carried, arms and legs flailing (usually aimed lethally at daddy's private parts; what the hell, we weren't planning on giving him another sibling anyway).

When this phase first began, we tried reasoning with our Little Dictator. Clearly that was a mistake.

Then we simply told him "no," he could NOT have whatever thing he wanted, but must comply with our request.

That only resulted in more high-pitched, ear-grating whining, or worse, an all-out fit.

There have been time-outs where possible, and there have been sessions where clothes have been taken off against his will (when it's time to change for bed and he's refusing), or occasions when he's been carried out of wherever we are, howling to the Gods of preschool about his unjust fate.

Once in a while, dad has been able to turn a whining session into giggles. Or mom has succeeded in distracting, changing the subject, bribing with a promised treat or toy.

But those have been brief respites. Sir Whines-A-Lot continues his dread reign.

The best method seems to be to ignore the whining, fit or protest in whatever form it takes, by leaving the room and ignoring him altogether.

Eventually, he seems to tire of his protests.

The problem is, "eventually" takes too long. It takes too long on each occasion, because the whining and protesting either goes on for what seems like an hour but is probably just ten very annyoing minutes, or it goes away briefly, only to reappear moments later when the next parental request is issued and met with refusal.

Ignoring one fit hasn't yet eliminated the next one.

And until it does, I remain about skeptic about the much-lauded "extinction method."

Still, I'm desperate. So today I told his dad, it's gotta be Zero Tolerance: at the first whine, we've got to start ignoring him. Perhaps by continued repitition, he'll finally get it: the whining gets him nowhere ... except stuck with himself, and without whatever it is he wants.

Let the ignoring begin.

(But I'm not holding my breath.)

"Childhood Is A Period Of Transitory Psychosis"

Not my words.

In fact, they're not even the words of Thomas W. Phelan, author of the best-selling discipline-your-kids book 1-2-3 MAGIC. But he's the one who quotes them, attributing them to some anonymous author. I first heard them quoted to me on Friday, from my high school pal Jode, who's another late blooming mom -- of twins. When she said them, a bell went off in my head. Did it just ring in yours too?

It may sound like a harsh statement, but for those of us on the front lines of parenting toddlers, it's just the truth.

I freely admit I'm no model parent -- this blog can attest to how I've lost it and blown up at my kids, for example. But I try hard not to be raising little brats. I want to raise little mensches. (For those of you not familiar with Yiddish, a rough translation: a good, compassionate, giving person of integrity.) Nevertheless, the kids aren't born acting like mensches. They've gotta be taught. It's not that they don't have the sweet gene. It's that they also have the selfish gene. The irrational gene. And the persistent-to-the-point-of-intransigence gene.

I try hard to encourage the sweet gene. But there are moments when the others are just gonna win out, no matter what kind of parent I'm trying to be.

Last Friday I went on a parenting-book buying spree, out of desperation. For five solid mornings, our children were impossible when we tried to get them ready for preschool. (Our amazing part-time nanny, who usually helps me get the troops to school, wasn't working those mornings. Coincidence? I think not.) So this weekend I cracked open the first -- the aforementioned 1-2-3 Magic -- and began putting it into practice. So far, so good. The fits didn't go away. But they were of shorter and less painful duration. The sticker chart with all the morning tasks the kids need to accomplish, is doing us nicely too (the kids get a reward -- an inexpensive toy -- from the "treasure box" if they complete the tasks). I'm encouraged.

But I know not to get my hopes up too high.

"Sometimes," Jode reminded me, "they're just gonna be crazy." It's our job, as parents, to live through it. And our choice whether we do so gritting our teeth, or philosophically, calmly, waiting out the crazy moments. Sometimes, I hope to do the latter. But parenthood being what it is, I know I'll have my crazy moments too.

When They Just Make You Crazy

My teeth hurt.

It's not because I need dental work.

It's because I have two three-year-olds who won't go to bed.

It matters not to them that they are overtired, exhausted, and one of them is sick. They just want to prolong their time awake, at whatever the cost to Late Blooming Mom's (and Dad's) sanity.

Or so it seems.

It's not fear of the dark that's keeping them up (they have a night light). It's not fear of abandonment. They know damn well we are in the next room if they need us. It's all about control -- them, over us.

It's at the point where one or the other parent has to stay in the room, laying between the cribs to make sure they keep quiet and stay in bed.

This only exasperates me or my husband, and leads to us having precious little time for each other, or to ourselves, after bedtime.

We've pulled out the threats -- no TV the next day, none at all -- and we've made good on the threats twice already. They're good for a night, then fall right back into their bad habits the next night.

No wonder my teeth hurt.

As I wrote in this space once before, as I child, I fought bedtime so hard that my own mom put me out in the hallway of our New York City apartment building with my blanket and my stuffed rabbit. I've been determined to avoid inflicting such trauma on my own kids; I know it was traumatic because forty-plus years later, I can still remember it.

But I can sure as hell see where she was coming from.

We have a bedtime routine. We limit the number of books we read. We cuddle to the same three songs on the same CD after books. Then we walk them to their beds, and put on the CD they associate with sleeping that they've heard practically since birth.

Some nights it works.

Some nights, they make me insane. Tonight is one of those nights.

So to all those other parents out there who may, this very night, be gritting their hurting teeth and wanting to slam doors and scream and tear out their last non-gray hairs, I say, I hear you, brothers and sisters.

Wanna meet for a drink?

The Rails Are Off ... And Bedtime Is New Year's Eve

Way back around Thanksgiving, Thing 2 figured out how to climb out of her crib, though she managed to scrape herself while doing so. She proceeded to climb out several times a night, and so we figured it was time to take a rail off one side of her crib. And since Monkey See, Monkey Do seems to be the rule with twins, we figured we'd best do the same for Thing 1, even though he'd shown no signs of wanting to imitate her feat.

That very first night, it might as well have been New Year's Eve in the kids' room. They were up playing with toys every time we re-entered the room (having been alerted by the giggling) . We kept marching them back into bed and leaving.

Finally they slept ... but at three a.m., Thing 1 appeared at our bedside, proclaiming, "I'm all done sleeping. I want breakfast."

One of us -- I can't remember who, I'm too bleary-eyed at the memory of that night -- got up and marched Thing 1 back to bed.

The New Year's Eve thing seemed to die down after a couple of nights, but Thing 1's middle-of-the-night appearances at our bedside continued ... to the point when we decided enough was enough. Thing 2 was staying in her bed all night, having adjusted to the freedom of losing that rail. But Thing 1 was clearly not ready to be let loose from the crib.

Thing 1's rail went back up.

Thing 2 maintained her freedom.

In the ensuing weeks and months, Thing 2 routinely appeared at our bedside in the morning -- though thankfully never before six a.m., and frequently not until seven -- to inform us that Thing 1 was awake, needed a diaper change, and wanted his morning milk. She became her brother's keeper, and was quite insistent that his needs be met, since he could not get out of his crib himself to tell us what they were.

Then a week or two ago, Thing 1 began to climb out of his crib, and landed with a thud. Fearful of an injury, especially since Thing 1 has a tendency toward obliviousness to all danger -- we realized it was time for his rail to come down again.

Saturday night, Dad took off the rail, after we'd prepped Thing 1, explaining he was now ready for a Big Boy Bed, but the rule was, he had to stay in it after we put him in it at bedtime.

Saturday night was New Year's Eve all over again.

Thing 2 joined in the shenanigans, even though she's been staying in her bed for months. After repeated visits back to their room, to march them to bed, Late Blooming Mom wound up sitting in their room, back against the door, keeping a vigilant watch until they both fell asleep.

The second night -- a school night, which made getting to bed on time more important -- New Year's Eve returned. Toys were overturned, closets accessed, drawers rummaged through. Every book on the book shelf seemed to have landed in Thing 1's crib. And when I walked in on the two co-conspirators, one kid was standing up legs apart, the other was crawling underneath said legs, and both were in the midst of uncontrollable giggles. They gave me looks that said, "We know we're busted -- but it was sooooo worth it." I marched them to bed and did my mom cop act, sitting against the door till I heard snoring from each crib.

Realizing I couldn't keep this up, the next night, I wound up making repeat visits again, but it was only to guide Thing 1 back to bed. His sister, who'd failed to nap at school, had fallen into a deep sleep the moment her head hit the pillow. This mystified Thing 1, who kept complaining in a loud voice that his sister wasn't talking to him. I told him she was asleep and he'd better get to sleep too. The third time I came in to check on him, he was practically asleep, but sprawled face down on our folding futon beneath the crib, toys and books strewn everywhere about him.

The next night, we had a sitter.

The kids behaved like perfect angels and though the sitter had to pop back in once, briefly, that was the extent of the bedtime battle.

But then, the next night, New Year's Eve was back. Cop enforcement was necessary. Worse, Thing 1 showed up in our room at three a.m. requesting we help find his apparently lost binky.

Tonight, it's daddy who's doing the cop bit at the door.

Every morning that Thing 1 awakens without having gotten enough sleep, he's a whining, complaining, annoying pain, kvetching about everything. We explain to him that he's like this because he hasn't gotten enough sleep, and the reason for that is not staying in bed at bedtime, when we tell him to do so. But he's too cranky for the truth to penetrate his sleep-deprived mind. Several times, we've carried him kicking and screaming down to the car so he can go to preschool.

Tonight daddy threatened Thing 1 with putting the rail back up. But I don't want him to follow through on the threat because, as bad as the mornings are, as icky as playing cop can be, and as much as I long for the path of least resistance, I know Thing 1 has gotta work through this. He must learn that bedtime means bedtime, and he's got to get to the point where no parental cop need be present to enforce the rules. A real Big Boy bed isn't too far in his future. And we're planning some out of town trips this summer, which can only be accomplished if he can stay in a bed all night, since he's gotten too big for a port-a-crib.

We're gritting our teeth and carrying on as best we can, sleep-deprived and grumpy.
But I think I understand the meaning of the expression "off the rails" in a way I never have before. He's gone off the rails, and we can only keep firmly putting him back in bed until he figures out that Big Boys Stay In Bed, so that, god willing, their parents can too.

The Longest Day

The other night, I took Thing 1 and Thing 2 to Koo Koo Roo, an inexpensive chicken restaurant chain, for dinner right after picking them up from school.

They're always excited to go out to dinner, though Koo Koo Roo is one of the rare places I dare take them these days, given their proclivity to stand up in restaurant booths, run around the tables dancing, and in general, behave in ways that would make Emily Post resign her post.

Dinner actually went okay, despite a few overly rowdy, loud-voiced, gleeful (on their part) and mortifying (on mine) moments, and their insistence on ringing the big bell by the door that you're supposed to ring if you've had a great time, but which annoys staff and customers alike. We'd even managed to get out of the ladies room after a semi-reasonable ten minutes (both kids had insisted on using the toilet, rolling out too much toilet paper, changing their pull-ups, washing hands with too much soap, and pulling repeatedly on the paper towel dispenser). I was counting myself lucky, and considering the excursion a success, when we left the restaurant.

But once inside the parked car, it all went south.

Thing 1 announced he had pooped in his pull-up and needed a change, clearly not caring at all that he'd had every opportunity to poop in the bathroom just moments ago. Thing 2 refused to get in her car seat -- yet again -- even though we were but a three minute drive from home, where I could easily and quickly attend to Thing 1's needs.

Late Blooming Mom tried in vain to convince Thing 2 to get in her seat. There was car door slamming and there were raised voices -- hers and mine. Tempers were lost. Finally I had no choice but to troop back into the restaurant bathroom and have yet another marathon session. Thing 1 successfully cleaned and changed, we trooped back to the parked car ...

...whereupon Thing 2 once again refused to get in her seat.

Late Blooming Mom had already lost it once. And as the clock crept closer and closer to bedtime, the battle to control my temper was already lost.

I'd worked hard all day and tried to give my kids a treat by taking them out. This was how I was rewarded. I realize, of course, that's not at all how my three-year-olds saw it. But battle fatigue had set in.

After asking her to be a big girl and make me proud, after counting to 5 repeatedly, after an exasperated attempt to force a thirty-pound toddler into a seat, and after calling daddy, asking him to come and pick up Thing 2 because I was at my wits' end, Thing 2 twisted her foot in a seat strap. The injury was nothing at all serious, but it smarted enough to cause her to cry and to finally give in. She'd scared herself.

We drove home and I turned both kids over to daddy for their baths, unable to face them again until their much-delayed bedtime, when I -- and they -- were calm.

I hauled out the parenting books again in the aftermath of what seemed a never-ending day. I read all about how you can't give in, you can't reward the limit-testing kid with negative attention, and how most of all, you're not supposed to lose your temper. You've got to manage your own anger or you're modeling bad behavior, not to mention playing into their drama.

The books are right. But in practice, they're hard to put into practice.

Again I am confounded by the fact that being a later-in-life mom hasn't given me any more patience than a twenty-something mom ... in fact, because I get tired more easily and it's harder to recharge my batteries, I may have less.

I also wonder about the differences in temperament and gender: so often it's my daughter doing the limit-testing these days, and I wonder if it'll always be thus. The kid makes it harder for herself. But I am doing her no favors, I know, by not figuring out ways to short-circuit the drama before it blows up.

My friend Melanie, reading an exasperated email, writes to me about how she responds when her three-year-old acts up. "Let me know when you are ready to listen," she says, then leaves the room. I'm going to try that advice when the tantrums happen at home. But I'm not sure what to do when you've got two toddlers in the car you've gotta get home, and one is throwing a fit about a car seat that she's required by law to sit in.

For starters, I'm going to forgive myself for losing it. I have a feeling the kids are more resilient than I suspect, and watching mom lose it is not going to scar them for life. Then I'm going to pray to the patience Gods for more. I'll vow totry to enforce limits quickly without negotiating -- the bad habit/crutch of educated parents turning kids into mini-lawyers -- and hope with all my heart that Thing 2 will someday soon be a little easier to manage as a result ... or at least as a result of getting a bit older.

Fingers crossed.

The Payback Kid

Whenever I gave my own mom an especially hard time, she used to say to me, "You should have three just like you."

Though sometimes it feels like I do -- with demanding twin three-year-olds and a neurotically needy, if adorable, cat -- the reality is that only one of them lives up to the moniker, "The Payback Kid."

One of them at a time, that is.

Within two weeks of being born, my daughter clearly held the title. That's because she came down with a mysterious virus, developed a high fever, and had to be hospitalized for ten days, undergoing two spinal taps, giving us all a terrific scare that she had meningitis (she didn't, and I'm still awaiting an apology from anyone responsible for the mix-up at the hospital's lab). I was forced to shuttle back and forth between Thing 2 at the hospital's neo-natal intensive care unit (AKA the NICU) and home, where Thing 1, like his sister, was in need of feeding and cuddling.

But a funny thing happened during Thing 2's hospital stay. Thing 1, who seemed to begin life as my mellow, Zen baby, turned into a needy Thing indeed, refusing to calm down without near constant holding, swaddling, and swinging. Thing 2 returned home healthy but more independent, content to snuggle into her swaddle blanket and settle down without much fuss. Thing 1 continued his demanding ways for months on end. It looked as if Thing 1 was going to lay claim to the title after all.

Smash cut to about two and a half years later: Thing 2 learns to say no, refuse to go to bed, stamp her feet in vehement protests. Thing 1 picks up a few of these tricks from her. They both throw tantrums when they don't get what they want, whether it's ice cream, another ten minutes of Baby Einstein, or the ability to wander off into a busy street unattended. But while Thing 1 can be easily distracted, or at least we can wait him out (he recovers from blowing his top quickly), Thing 2's temper proves longer lasting. Her fits are tougher to squelch, her desire for limit-testing seemingly insatiable. The title has been swapped again.

Six months later, Thing 2 seems determined to retain her crown.

Bedtime is her battleground. But then, I recall, it was mine too. One of my most vivid childhood memories is being put out into the hallway of our New York City apartment -- not an internal hallway, I mean the one where people got on and off the elevators -- with my pink blanket and furry bunny. Apparently, mom had had enough of my refusal to go to sleep. I'd been banished.

Today you might call child welfare if you saw an unattended kid curled up with a blanket and a bunny in the hallway of a New York apartment building, but in those days, when we knew all our neighbors and nobody got by the doorman without being buzzed in, I was safe.

I was also undoubtedly a pain in the neck.

Sadly, my mom isn't around to see me struggle with getting Thing 2 to bed. One of the hazards of being a late blooming mom is that all the grandparents don't necessarily come with the package(s) that took so long to arrive. Mom never got to see Thing 1 and Thing 2.

Despite the temptation to do what mom did to me, I've never put Thing 2 outside the condo with her striped blanket and cherished toy ducks. That's one childhood memory I don't want her to have. But I've lost my temper, I've yelled, I've stormed out of her room -- I've basically lost it in front of her. I've run the gamut of stuff a good mom is not supposed to do in this situation, and vowed to do better.

Whenever I've had enough sleep to get some perspective on it, I laugh.

That's because somewhere, I know my mom is laughing ... at me and my payback kid.