I am on cold #3 since December.
They bring them home and despite all my handwashing, I get them.
But somehow, they get over them faster than I do.
This time, I didn't even have a chance to get rid of cold #2, which was kinda sorta on the wane, when cold #3 took up residence in my sinsuses.
By some miracle, Late Blooming Dad has escaped them all. Maybe it's because I tend to be the one wiping their noses with Kleenex. Or maybe he just has a better immune system. All I know is, I am ready for cold season to be done ... and hoping that the rest of Year 2 of preschool is less of a human lab experiment in just how many things a mom can catch from her kids than it has been so far.
Despite the recession, I clearly should have bought stock in the makers of pediatric Robitussin and Benadryl.
For the first two years of my kids' lives, I didn't blog.
Having twins without having had any kids before was akin to being shot out of a cannon. Four years later, I feel like I'm still flying through the air from that cannon shot.
But at least life got a wee bit more manageable in year three, and I found the time, space, and energy to write about my Late Blooming Mom experiences. Last month, this blog quietly hit its one-year anniversary mark, and I'm happy to have a written chronicle of at least some of my first mom-hood years.
But I find myself a bit sad that I didn't take time to keep much track of the first two. So before those memories get any dimmer, I'm going to try to reconstruct a sort of highlight reel here.
They keep coming: the holiday cards featuring happy, smiling, beaming even, faces of gorgeously perfect, attractive, seemingly well-adjusted kids and their apparently joyful parents.
I don't believe them, though.
What I believe is this: Every picture perfect holiday card family is only showing us PART of the story.
The only honest card we've gotten so far was from our friends Jenine and Bruce, who enclosed not one card, but two. The first featured the kids posing in front of a snow-flocked Christmas tree, looking angelic. But the second card, enclosed with the first, was captioned, "The Real Holiday Card," and it featured pictures of both boys sporting casts over various limbs, and the girl with a face almost completely covered in what I am optimistically hoping was chocolate.
This is the true picture of family life for most moments of the year for most of us.
Though I spent the better part of the afternoon and evening stuffing envelopes with a holiday card featuring OUR gorgeously perfect, attractive, seemingly well-adjusted kids and ourselves looking apparently joyful, I am admitting right here, for the record, that ninety-nine percent of the time, it just ain't so.
Even at the photo session during which the pictures were taken, Thing 1 was having none of posing for a nice photo, and it was nearly impossible to get a snap of him actually smiling. Though normally he's overly exuberant -- his nickname of late has been "Mr. Enthusiasm" -- the morning of the photo session, he was cranky from not having slept enough (his own fault, he refused to go to sleep the previous night) and therefore almost wholly non-cooperative. Thing 2 was more amenable, but even she had precious little patience with posing: "I already said 'cheese,'" she'd protest, then then head off in search of toys or a snack.
This Sunday was far more typical than what's represented on the holiday card: Thing 2 woke up howling and turned out to have not one, but two, ear infections (one in each ear). Late Blooming Mom caught Thing 2's cold (but thankfully, not the ear infections) and slept in on Sunday, then had a nap in the afternoon, leaving Late Blooming Dad forced to cope with both kids for far too long on his own. Everybody turned cranky by Sunday night, and Thing 1 capped it all off by refusing to go to sleep until nearly 11pm.
I can't help but imagine similar scenes occurring in the homes of these very same picture perfect families depicted on the holiday cards we've received. But I guess no one's in the mood to take pictures on those days.
I bet even the Von Trapps (of SOUND OF MUSIC fame) had moments when they couldn't stand each other. It wasn't all puppet shows and Edelweis at the Von Trapp Manor.
We'll still be sending out the card on which we look happy. And the truth is, for many, many moments during a typical day, we are. But there are plenty of moments when we are not the family on that holiday card. I guess no one wants to get a card that pictures Mr. and Mrs. Von Grumpenstein, and their Twins, Whiny/Needy and Hyper/Annoying. But I just want to go on record as admitting that such a picture would be equally true, indeed.
Thing 1 has been suffering: fever, and a cough so hard it can make him throw up. Poor little guy did so in the middle of his nap yesterday, so I had to give him a bath. Then he did so again at 5 a.m. this morning. These past few nights he's been up at one or two, then again before sunrise. There's been a trip to the doctor, the introduction of new medicine -- with a mask, nebulizer and chamber to breathe into -- and lots of generally icky feeling moments.
No matter how hard a slog it is to get through the nights -- and it's a slog for sure -- I just wanna wrap him up in love and make it all better. It breaks my heart that I can't. I wonder how many nights I had like this when I was a kid, and my heart goes out to my late parents, who surely had to deal with some of the same. This is how parenthood can soften you, in a good way.
But I'm amazed at my own tenderness, given that just a few days ago, Thing 1 was being impossible. His terrible-threes seem to have been peaking of late, fits aplenty, with kicking and whining and a million surly "I don't want to's". As a result, I've been furious at him. Furious to a point of fury that you can get to only with someone you love.
I simply can't get over how my feelings can go from teeth-gritting anger to heart-melting tenderness toward the same small, 30-plus-pound being.
Yesterday when I walked into his room and found him covered in throw-up, he gave me the saddest look, and then said, simply, "You take care of me."
At moments like that, I know what I'm here for.
Later, I dried his hair and carried him back to his room from the bathtub, snug in a towel, all wrapped up like a human cannoli. He still asks me to carry him using the wrong pronoun. He says, "I carry you" when he wants me to carry him.
But in some ways, he's right. By allowing me to love him, he's carrying me.
I just hope the lil' guy feels better soon.
The day started out badly. Thing 1, who'd had a fever yesterday, threw up at the breakfast table. Thing 2 began making incessant demands while I was cleaning up after Thing 1. I had to rouse Dad during his usual Sunday morning sleep-in (we switch off: I get to sleep in Saturday, he gets Sunday) to help. It did not look like a promising day.
So we divided and conquered. Dad stayed home with Thing 1, administering TLC and cartoons. Late Blooming Mom hit the road with Thing 2, first to an awesome music class at Toddle Tunes in Westwood (you guys are great, btw), where Thing 2 got to try her hand at maracas, wave drums, and the violin, then to the mall -- not my fave place, but perfect on an unseasonably hot L.A. day. There, Thing 2 enjoyed her favorite lunch of late: Sbarro pizza and a banana-strawberry smoothie. This was followed by a couple of rides on a coin-operated merry-go-round; then the purchase of water shoes for summer (in pink, natch -- her favorite color). Thing 2 was insistent that we return at a later date to get water shoes for Thing 1. Then, when I suggested we go to the toy store in the mall to pick up something to cheer up Thing 1, she enthusiastically agreed. I let her play with the open toys while browsing the store, then picked out a gift she'll share with Thing 1, and miracle of miracles, we left the toy store without a fight.
Basking in my undivided attention, Thing 2 couldn't have been nicer all morning. The capper came when we got back to the car. When I buckled her into her car seat, Thing 2 insisted on giving me a kiss. And not just anywhere. Last night, while cooking dinner, I'd burned my chin when some hot oil spattered. So now, she insisted on kissing me "where it's burned," so I would "feel better."
I just about melted right on the spot.
When I got home, Thing 1 was already napping, but Daddy reported a similar account of his morning. Thing 1, though sick, perked up quickly once he realized he was getting a parent all to himself all morning. And just like Thing 2, he was as sweet as pie.
"We made a silk purse of a sow's ear today," Dad said. I had to agree. Something about not having to compete for attention had turned our siblings from impossibly demanding and petulant into huggy, kissy creatures capable of a spontaneous "I love you" and of thinking of each other too.
I suspect there will be a lot more one-to-one parenting on our weekends. Good for them, good for us. Good for the heart.
Who knew that by starting Thing 1 and Thing 2 (son and daughter, respectively) in preschool last fall, we'd be automatically enrolled in this heinous club? Since beginning school, Thing 1 hasn't met a germ he hasn't liked ... and I mean liked enough to bring home to mom.
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