Two Under Two (plus two!)

Kindergarten already?

2010-08-18T00:26:17Z

Tomorrow, my baby is going to kindergarten. And like every parent, I just can't believe it.

Just under five years ago, Dylan and I used to go to the coffee shop together on Friday mornings for a cup of coffee and a danish. I'd carry him in and he would grin that toothless baby grin at the barrista, and then point at the ceiling fan and say "ta!" (his word for "fan"). On Wednesdays I'd take him to "Baby and Me Yoga," and I always had to bring his bouncy chair along because his patience for the activity lasted only half as long as the activity itself. And I had to warn all the other moms not to step in the puddles of drool. Dylan was a drooler.

And tomorrow he'll put on his brand new backpack, stuffed with a binder, some folders and some gluesticks, and I'll drop him off at kindergarten. I just can't believe it.

Sometimes I think I've cheated myself by having my kids so close together. If I'd spaced them three, even five years apart, would that have put the brakes on time, at least a little? It seems like I'm so busy with each new baby, and simultaneously so busy cleaning up after the older kids, disciplining them, cooking, doing mountains of laundry and mediating disputes that I don't have time to slow down and think about how to enjoy my children. So they grow up fast, way faster than they ought to.

Do parents of single children feel the same way? Surely there won't be a single mom standing there in the doorway of Room 7 thinking to herself, "wow, her babyhood seems like eons ago ..." When it comes to our kids, do we all perceive time as passing way too quickly?

I'm proud of Dylan. He's grown up so much in five years, but I have a hard time accepting that the next five years will pass just as quickly, and the next, and then next ... before I know it I'll be standing there in the doorway of Henry's new kindergarten class, and then it will be junior high, high school, and then I'll be driving Henry to his dorm room at college and that will be that. Kids all grown up.

Congratulations, my little kindergartner. You've come a long way, baby.

Two Under Two Supplies: Stroller

2010-08-05T17:53:08Z

If you're a two under two mom there are a couple of items that you need. Really, really need.

The first one is a baby sling. Properly used, a baby sling will help you hold and comfort your baby while simultaneously remaining hands-free so you can chase after your toddler.

The second one is a stroller. OK, maybe a stroller is the first one.

You can't run errands without a stroller, not really. I suppose it's possible if you are going somewhere that has shopping carts (you can put your infant seat in the basket and your toddler in the seat), but you can't go to a shopping mall or any kind of shopping center unless you have a stroller. You have to be with your baby at all times, and that means you can't be chasing after a toddler. And you certainly can't get any errands done if you're chasing after a toddler anyway.

I have owned four double strollers in my long career as a two under two mom. The first one was a very cheap stroller I got on sale at K-Mart. It was a tandem stroller, and it was so long it was impossible to steer. I couldn't open doors without the assistance of a kind stranger. I kept bumping into store displays. I never knocked anything over, but that was by sheer luck. I only had the stroller for a couple of months before I realized it wouldn't do.

My second double stroller was a BOB dualie. I love this stroller and still own it. It's perfect for traveling anywhere outdoors. You can drag it (with some difficulty) on to the beach, you can use it on trails (albeit very wide trails), you can take it on walks, and your kids will stay safe and comfortable. You can't use it for shopping, though. The BOB dualie is so wide it won't go through most doors, and you have to be careful at attractions like zoos and theme parks because it's usually too big to go through the turnstiles. (It's still a great stroller for these places, but you have to ask park employees if you can use an alternate entrance.) Yes the BOB is a great stroller, but an errand-runner it is not.

My third double stroller was a Graco dual glider. Nice stroller, worked pretty well, but when I traded in my Graco infant car seat on a FlexLoc I could no longer use it because it wasn't compatible with my new infant seat. It was also an older model that lacked cup holders. Now, I used to scoff at cup holders because they just seemed like such a gimmick. But when you have two adults, two older kids and two little kids at an event somewhere and everyone wants something to drink having cup holders is really, really useful. Really, really useful.

My current double stroller is a Baby-Trend Sit and Stand Double stroller. I love, love, love this stroller. It is super easy to steer, and I never have to ask for anyone's help opening a door and maneuvering my stroller inside. It has the coveted cup holders. It has a ton of storage underneath for shopping and errands-running. I can clip my infant seat into the front seat or the back seat, whichever I prefer. I can take the back seat off and convert the stroller into a sit-and-stand version when my toddler is older and no longer needs to be confined. It has a canopy for each seat. It's comfy. It folds and unfolds with one hand. It can be taken almost anywhere, even to a clothing store because it's narrow and maneuverable.

Two under two is challenging, but if you have the right tools it makes handling your day to day chores a whole lot easier (stay tuned for more product recommendations!)

Too Many Photos

2010-06-22T16:21:36Z

I have taken 32,437 photos since my first child was born in 2005.

I should be able to say I'm surprised, and I am ... honestly, I'm surprised it's not a lot more than that.

Digital has made me a fearless photographer. I can take hundreds of shots of a single event, and never have to worry about how much it's going to cost me to have all that film developed. I can waste shots with abandon. And because I fire off so many wasted shots, I get a lot more great shots than I would if I was just killing a roll of 36 during every event.

But when it comes to my photos, I'm a packrat. I don't delete anything, except for the very overexposed and the very underexposed, and the very blurry. This is how I know I've taken 32,437 photos. I still have every one of them.

I back them up on an external hard drive, and on DVDs stored in two places: one in a fire safe (in case there's a fire) and one on a bookshelf (in case someone breaks in and steals the fire safe).

Someone once told me you are supposed to go through and delete all but the very best of your photos. Ideally, you should only have one great shot per event.

Who made up that stupid rule? In just a few years, my kids will be grown. I don't want one great shot from every event that happened during their short childhoods. I want a shot of each one of the wonderful expressions they wore on their faces during those events. I want shots of what their hands and feet were doing. I want the smiles and the tears. I want pictures of them running, pictures of them standing, and pictures of them wondering what to do next. I want action shots and still shots. I want to know what the event looked like. When I view my pictures, I want to be transported back in time. How can I do that with just "one great shot?"

Childhood is over way, way too soon. I have a fierce need to document all of it, because you can't really go back, not really. Words and pictures can bring you close, though. And when the kids are grown with families of their own, that's all you have left. Words, pictures and memories.

Hang on to them.

Third Child Syndrome

2010-06-15T19:31:04Z

Poor little Natalie. She's child number three of four (all born within five years of each other).

When you have that many kids that close together, child number three gets the short end of the stick. It's impossible to keep track of a five-year-old, a four-year-old, and a two-year-old who doesn't care how far away she runs or who might be following her--so the two year old gets strapped into the stroller, rides in the shopping cart or gets carried by Daddy.

This, of course, just makes her want to run more.

I feel bad about this almost every day. I know Natalie needs her freedom. She needs to be able to run and explore, and she needs to be able to do so while properly supervised, so she can stay safe while she is running and exploring (something a two-year-old can't, obviously, do on her own).

How can we manage this when we have a four-year-old and a five-year-old to look after? They don't have the same running away issues, but together they require at least one parent's undivided attention. Natalie alone requires one person's undivided attention, and now that we have five-month-old Henry there just aren't enough parents to go around.

We've even resorted to that one evil I said I would never bow to--the dreaded child leash. Sure it's a cute little backpack, but it's still a leash. I still feel like I'm walking my baby. She handles it OK; it's better than the stroller, still not as good as absolute freedom.

I try to justify restraining poor Natalie by telling myself that the trade off is that she will have two very close older siblings and one baby brother, all of whom will be her friends and playmates as she grows up. It's a pretty good justification, but it doesn't stop my heart from breaking every time my husband takes the two older children outside and Natalie has to stay inside with me and the baby because there are just too many two-year-old hazards in our backyard (a pond, horses, potential rattlesnake habitat, ticks, occasional mountain lions). I just don't think risking her life is worth avoiding a few tears.

If she were our only child it would be a different story. But she's not our only child.

That's a wonderful thing. For us, it's meant a lot of sacrifices--sacrifices that I was more than willing to make and would gladly make again if I had to do it all over again. What I didn't anticipate, though, was that Natalie would have to make sacrifices, too. And sometimes it just doesn't seem fair to ask a two-year-old to make sacrifices.

I just hope when she gets older, she'll understand.

Extra body parts for two-under-two moms

2010-06-08T15:35:21Z

It sure would be helpful to have an extra arm. Sure it would look kind of weird, but imagine how much easier it would be to manage two under two if you had an extra arm for things like closing doors, digging out your keys, or hanging on to one child while you put the other in his car seat ...

... and since we're talking extra appendages, I could also use a few extra brain cells. I must get my kids' names confused four or five times a day. Sometimes I even call the baby by his older sister's name, and vice-versa. I used to say that pregnancy was a form of dementia, now I think all of parenthood is.

An extra eye, I could use one of those too. In the back of my head. Yes, that's a cliche but think how handy that would be--when one child is walking ahead of you and the other is walking behind you and won't catch up no matter how wildly you gesture or how artful your combination of bribery and threats ("Hurry up so I can buy you a soda! Hurry up, or we won't get to ride the carousel!") you could still keep an eye on both of them.

How about four legs, in addition to my three arms. I could be a three-eyed, three-armed Centaur mom. Scary, but effective. Fast enough to chase down a speedy toddler (who would be running from me in abject terror anyway), nimble enough to carry two children and turn the key in the front door at the same time, sharp-eyed enough to watch one child on the swing set and the other at the opposite end of the playground, smart enough to help one kid with his flower project while calling the other one by her correct name. Yes, being a monster would be quite handy.

As a two-under-two parent, you do become pretty adept at using your foot as an arm. I am constantly hooking doors with my toe or shutting them with my heal as I lug the baby carrier with one arm and carry a screaming, kicking toddler under the other. But I still haven't figured out how to fish my keys out of my purse with my toes. I guess that's as close as I'm going to get.

I miss the hospital

2010-06-01T15:45:49Z

Life with two under two (plus two) is fun and fulfilling, but sometimes I really miss those days in the hospital with my newborn. I miss the break from responsibility (how funny is it to have a newborn yet feel like you're getting a break from responsibility), I miss the 24/7 room service, I even miss the awful hospital food (I loved lifting the heavy plastic lid off of my tray and discovering what disgusting concoction I was expected to eat, for the sole reason that I wasn't the one who had to cook the disgusting concoction).

I think the thing I miss most about the hospital, though, is that feeling of total commitment. During those four days after my c-section, I was able to commit myself to my baby 100%. I had no other kids pulling me in several different directions, I never had to put my baby down and let him cry while I changed someone else's diaper or refilled a sippy cup, I never got distracted from the all-consuming task of loving my new baby.

I'll never regret two under two or even four under five, but that small gap between children does make those early days complicated. When Dylan was a baby, I never put him down. He didn't touch the floor at all until he was three months old, and then when I put him down on a blanket I was always down there with him. I had that luxury because I didn't have to worry that my toddler would throw something at him, I didn't have to get up and tend to a dispute between my four year old and my five year old, and I didn't have to think about what to make for anyone's lunch except my own. I had all the time in the world and I could devote every minute to my only child.

Some days I envy moms who spaced their children out. I know one mom who put 10 years between her kids, another one who waited 14 years and one who has 18 years between her two. They all had the luxuries of raising only children and the blessings of having multiple children. They had babysitters already on call in their homes. They had a little bit of the chaos of raising a child but none of the chaos that comes with two under two.

Of course, as a first time mom at 33 I never had the luxury of time, so putting even 10 years between my children would have been really out of the question. But if I'd started having kids in my early 20s would I have chosen any differently? My sister and I had 15 months between us, so the concept of two under two never seemed odd to me. In fact, when I had my first two 15 months apart and started hearing criticism about it, I was surprised that anyone would find it strange.

So yes, sometimes I wish I could go back to those hospital days. It was like the Ritz Carlton compared to my house, and Henry and I were first class guests. But then I remember how it felt when my husband and my other three kids walked out of our room after a visit, how much I missed them before the door had even closed behind them. Sure, life with two under two is tough, and it's even tougher with four under five. But even the Ritz Carlton isn't as good as home.

Cooking for a big family

2010-05-25T17:26:14Z

It's hard to cook for a family of six, but it's even harder to cook for a family of five.

I'm saying that because I have a family of six, but one of us isn't eating at the table yet. So technically I'm cooking for a family of five, and that sixth person is complicating matters.

He won't let me prep, chop or saute. The best I can manage is leafing through a recipe book with one hand. Of all my babies, four-month-old Henry is the most demanding--he doesn't want to be put down long enough for me to go to the bathroom, let alone long enough to make a meal. Thank goodness I anticipated this and stocked up my freezer before he was born; I have enough frozen meals to last until he's six months old and hopefully a little more tolerant of his mother's need to do household chores.

All two under two parents-to-be should be stocking up the freezer, or planning on a few months worth of frozen lasagna, pizzas and ready-to-cook convenience foods. Even if your baby-to-be turns out to be tolerant, chances are you don't have a lot of time to spare between caring for him and caring for your toddler, so you're going to be thankful of a well-stocked freezer.

Visit my Freezer Cooking for Pregnant Moms blog for weekly recipes and tips for stocking your freezer before your baby arrives.

Back Seat Parenting

2010-05-14T21:16:41Z

My husband and I took our family to a crowded event over the weekend. There was a bouncy house, go-kart racing, mini-golf and all kinds of fun kids stuff, but there was a crowd. At events like that, I am enormously thankful for my double stroller.

After letting Natalie, my overactive toddler, bounce off the walls of the mini-golf course for an hour or so, my husband and I decided to give the older kids a turn on the go-karts. He went down with them to the arcade to get tickets, and I put Natalie in the front seat of the stroller while Henry, my three month old, slept in the back.

Natalie was not having any of it. She's two years old, and all her little legs want to do is run. She doesn't care where I am, and she isn't afraid of anything. Cars. Strangers. Cliff edges (not that there were any at this event, but you get the idea). So she sat in the front of the stroller wailing, shrieking, and fighting the straps while I studiously ignored her.

A few minutes into the meltdown, I noticed a very crunchy looking lady with a four or five year old girl giving me a cold look. I studiously ignored her, too, but a few minutes later she approached me, smiling a fabricated smile, looking very crunchy indeed in her hemp vest and organic cotton beret.

"Why don't you let her out? She just wants to run." Then she added, broadly gesturing around the crowded park: "Because you know, that's what this is all about."

I looked at her and at her one child and saw red. First of all, she had no idea what Natalie was like. Second of all, she was talking to me as if she was a graduate of Dr. Excellent Mom's School of Being a Perfect Parent, and I but a lowly dropout from the Unenlightened Institute of Stupid Mothers.

"I would," I said, "but you see I have this baby here, and I can't watch him and a loose toddler at the same time."

"Well I'll watch her," she replied, like it was so obvious, like I should have pegged her right away as the free-nanny-to-total-strangers'-children type.

"Thanks, but my husband will be back in a minute." There was no way I was going to leave a stranger in charge of my child, especially one who was distracted by her own kid and had no idea what she was getting herself into when offering to watch Natalie the Hazard-Seeker. And also I thought she was a bitch, but there you go.

She persisted. At that point I really couldn't believe it, the persisting. I was doing my best to present an air of "get the hell out of here," but there she was. Still.

"I know what it's like," she continued. "I have two of them really close in age like you do." I looked over at her one child and wondered, if it was so easy, why the hell she'd only brought one of them with her, and why she had to have two girlfriends there to help her. But of course I didn't say that, dang it. In these situations, the clever comebacks don't occur to you until much later.

Here's what else I should have said:

"Well lady, since you too have two under two, why don't you tell me, which one of your children is least important to you? Would you leave your baby sleeping in a stroller in the middle of a crowded park while you ran off through the grass after your toddler, because you'd care less about losing him? Or would you rather let your toddler disappear into the crowd because she's less important than the baby? Please, help me decide, because silly, naive me, I love my children equally and I just can't seem to choose between them."

At that point my husband returned, and I steered away from the still-smiling crunchy lady and tried to stop feeling angry, lest it ruin the rest of my morning. (By the way, I really don't have anything against hemp and organic cotton, just that particular lady and the way she was wearing it).

I vented to my husband, who told me I shouldn't worry about what stupid people think. He's right, but as long as I live I will never understand why some people feel the need to parent other people's children. Most parents are doing what they think is right for their own children, and if you disagree, well, please keep it to yourself.

Memories Lost

2010-04-27T17:03:27Z

When Natalie was about six weeks old, we were at the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon. She was snoozing in her infant seat and I was browsing the avocados when one of the store's employees peered into her carrier and smiled.

"I can't remember that," he told me.

"Remember what?"

"That. My daughter is 18 months old, and I can't remember her being that age at all."

I smiled and gave him a canned response: "They grow up too fast."

But later I thought about what he'd said, and realized how frighteningly true those words were for me, too. Natalie was my third child, and no matter how hard I thought about it, I could remember very little about my two-year-old's babyhood. I mean, I could remember how much she weighed at birth, I could remember that we had nursing difficulties, that she had acid reflux, that she would "army crawl" and that she could say "elbow" when she was 11 months old, but I was just remembering the facts. The feelings were all gone--that feeling of holding a newborn, of hearing those funny little sounds newborns make, the experience of seeing your baby roll over for the first time--all those things were gone. I could remember the facts but not the details, not the things that really mattered. Why?

None of my other life experiences were like that. I can vividly remember sitting on the battlements of Dolwyddelan Castle in North Wales, I can remember what it felt like to touch the names on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C., and I have very strong recollections of exploring the Tower of London. And all those things happened many years before I had my children, and they were far less significant to me.

Maybe it's because as parents, we live for the moment every single day. When we travel, we do it for short periods of time and we file those memories away when we return home, to be revisited during duller moments. But as parents, every day is a new experience. Every day is something to be cherished. We don't file those memories away because we are so busy making new ones.

Your children will always exist for you in the moment. I love my two year old because she is my funny, chubby faced little girl who likes to walk on her toes and laughs the most wonderful belly laugh. When I look at her I just can't imagine her being anything other than what she is right now, at this moment.

That's why I write everything down. Everything. Everything my kids do, everything they say, every funny little mannerism they have. I take pictures. Lots of pictures. I journal and I take video.

If those memories are going to escape me, they aren't going to get far.

Coping with Two Under Two

2010-02-21T19:23:38Z

"I don't know how you do it." I hear that a lot.

Mostly, I don't really know how I do it either. But people come to me a lot with questions, especially those who had an "oops" ("oh my god, my baby is only seven months old and I just found out I'm pregnant again ... please tell me how you do it!") I guess that's because I've had two under two not just once, not twice, but three times ("You're insane" is another one I hear a lot).

Insane or not, I do have tips. You develop coping strategies when you have so many little ones--some of them obvious, some of them not-so-obvious. Some of my favorites:

Get a wrap-style baby sling, like a Mobiwrap. Wrap style slings are very easy on your back and shoulders, and when you are hands-free it's much easier for you to chase after a toddler, not to mention clean up after one.
Drive thrus are your friend. I don't advocate using drive thru for dinner, at least not very often, but many other services have drive thrus: banks, drug stores, coffee shops, dry cleaners, etc. Any time you can do your errands without having to drag everyone out of their car seats you'll be ahead of the game.
Containment! Get a double stroller and make sure the younger ones are always strapped into it in shopping malls and other busy places. Shop at club stores (two reasons: bulk discounts and those huge shopping carts where you can sit two kids side by side in the cart seat). At your regular store, look for those shopping carts that have a ride-on-car attached to the front. You can put two kids in the car and still have room for one of them in the seat. In a pinch, you can also use two shopping carts. Put one child in each seat, and walk between the carts, holding on to the sides to steer them.
Only go to parks that are completely fenced in. Then if you have to chase one of your children you'll have time to turn around and grab the other one before he runs out of the park.
Get a "child proximity alarm" for your toddler, and don't worry about those parents who scoff and accuse you of trying to pawn off your parental responsibilities on a piece of technology. I guarantee you, those people either have an only child or kids with large age gaps between them. They have no idea what it's like to have two under two (or more), and if they were ever given that responsibility they'd probably have a nervous breakdown.

And finally, ignore dissenters. Having two under two is hard work, but it's wonderful in many ways, especially for your children. Remember that you aren't just giving your older child a sibling, you're giving her a best friend. You'll develop your own coping strategies, and when someone you encounter accuses you of insanity, you can just roll your eyes and tell them how wonderful it is to be crazy.

Perspective

2010-02-18T18:15:13Z

Here we go again. Breastfeeding.

My pediatrician told me she prefers the pain of labor to the pain of breastfeeding. Labor, she says, you only have to do once. Breastfeeding is something you have to do eight to 12 times a day.

I have to say I agree. I'd happily go through a c-section a couple more times in exchange for smooth, trouble-free, painless breastfeeding.

I had to give up nursing when Dylan was just six weeks old. I got to 10 months with Hailey, and four months with Natalie. None of my kids were exclusively breastfed. I have a host of different problems, which I won't take the time to outline, instead I'll just say that breastfeeding is physically difficult for me. And very painful. At times I feel genuine despair because I'm just not able to accomplish a normal breastfeeding relationship like pretty much everyone else I encounter in my hometown.

At those times, I try to remember what a friend said to me right after I gave up breastfeeding Dylan.

My friend has three healthy boys. What I didn't know at the time was that she also had a fourth baby--her first--who died at birth. She came over to visit us when Dylan was a couple of months old, and she indulgently listened to me lament my lost breastfeeding relationship. Then she told me about the death of her first baby.

"I used to hate it when people would complain about their uncomfortable pregnancy or difficult labor," she said. "All that pain means nothing if you have a healthy baby. My first baby was stillborn, and you know I would have had him through my nose if it meant I'd have been able to keep him."

And that was it. Perspective. As trying as those first couple of weeks are, as frustrating as it is knowing that I can't give my baby as much breastmilk as I'd like to, in the end it doesn't matter. My baby is healthy, he's happy, and I'm grateful.

Everyone's got an opinion

2010-01-14T18:15:53Z

One thing that never occurred to me when I became a mom was that anyone would care how many kids I had or how close together I had them.

My mom's two kids were 15 months apart, so that never seemed unusual to me. When Dylan was about six months old I remember how everyone at his "moms group" gaped at me in appalled silence when I announced that I was planning to have another baby. I was astonished, first of all, that it was thought of as such a shocking idea, and second of all that anyone would care how I personally chose to space my children.

I gradually got used to the comments and the looks. "Wow, you have your hands full!" Sometimes I wish I had two kids spaced exactly three years apart, which is apparently "normal," just so I can go out in public with them without attracting any attention.

Everyone's got an opinion. Sometimes people actually have nice things to say "You seem so together. If you can do what you do with three of them, the fourth one will be no problem."

But then there's those folks who clearly don't think I can handle the ones I have, and seem to think I've personally offended them somehow by daring to have a fourth one.

Everyone's got an opinion, you just have to let them all wash over you.

What's the big deal about footwear?

2009-11-25T22:03:41Z

When I need a new pair of shoes, I buy a decent pair of sneakers--usually men's, because I hate all those bright white women's sneakers with glittery pink details--for about $75. Then I wear them until they literally fall apart around my feet, toss them and get a new pair.

I don't understand the women-and-shoes thing. I never related to Carrie in Sex in the City and her desire to own multiple pairs of hideously uncomfortable $400 high heels.

And that's why I have no idea where my kids' shoe fetish came from. It certainly wasn't my genetics. All my kids are shoe freaks, though Dylan is the worst. When he was a toddler I had to shield his eyes when we walked past the Target footwear department because he would lose his mind if he so much as glimpsed the shoes. He could have cared less about the toy department. And when it came time to actually buy him some shoes, he would scream bloody murder the whole time I was sifting through the shoes on the shelf, looking for the right size, and then he'd burst into a delighted grin while I was trying the shoes on him, revert to screaming if they didn't fit and I had to take them off, and then back again to a grin once I finally found the right pair. Shoe shopping with Dylan was a total nightmare.

Buying shoes for kids is a difficult task even when you aren't wrestling a now-screaming, now-grinning Jekyll and Hyde child. Dylan had wide feet so I couldn't just put him in any pair of size fives--they had to be a 5W, and they couldn't lace, they had to have Velcro closures because I just couldn't shove his fat little feet into anything else. And kids' shoes have to fit; active, growing feet can be damaged by an ill-fitting pair of shoes. These days I actually find it easier to buy shoes online--the better sites have really accurate fitting instructions, and shopping online is blessedly tantrum-free.

Now that Dylan is older, he doesn't have quite the same reaction to shoe shopping (his little sisters have taken over that role), but he still displays a strange attachment to his footwear. He slept with his first pair of cowboy boots for a month. Not on his feet, but tucked next to his head under the blankets. I used to cringe when I saw them there, sometimes caked with mud, but I left him alone because the consequences of removing them were far more severe than just washing a little dirt out of his sheets.

I'm still baffled as I watch my kids fuss over their footwear. I'll never know where that gene came from, though it appears to be a dominant one. Personally, I'd die a happy woman if I never had to wear another pair of high heels. Hailey, on the other hand, just can't wait to get her feet into the most spangly, purple pair of pumps she can find. Go figure.

The Pressure for Perfection

2009-11-19T17:25:07Z

Every parent wants to be perfect, and no parent is.

For the most part, no one expects moms and dads to be perfect, especially other parents. We've all seen parents in public who are clearly having a bad day. They snap at their kids, they wear faces of exasperation and exhaustion, their kids scream and they don't handle it well--and for the most part, we other parents are sympathetic. We've all been there, after all.

For the two-under-two mom, though, it's different. For the three under four mom it's even worse and for the three under four pregnant mom it's really, really difficult. You simply can't have a bad day in public. You have to be the picture of patience and good parenting. You have to be Zen, with a capital "Z." Because if your kids are screaming and you look frazzled, or if you snap at them or you behave in any way but calm, cool and collected, people shake their heads at you and think "Well, she can't handle all those kids. What was she thinking having so many of them so close together?" And they use that scene as an argument against closely spaced children.

OK I sound paranoid I know. But now that I am very, very obviously pregnant I am scared to go anywhere with all three of my kids. Just the other day I had to drag them all with me to my OB so I could get my swine flu shot. I was petrified of an outburst. I found myself speaking to them with more serenity in my voice than I ever use (if only I could be that way all the time) just so the nursing staff wouldn't mutter to each other about the absurdity of my fourth pregnancy. And in the parking lot I was actually approached by an elderly woman who looked at all of my kids and then at my belly and said "And you're expecting again? You know what causes that, right?"

In the end, of course, it doesn't matter what people say to me or how badly everyone melts down in public, I'm never going to regret having my kids in the order that I did. I love all of them, and I know that any difference in that decision would have resulted in one or more of my children never becoming a part of my life. I do regret that I'm not a Super Mom. I regret that I can't be Zen all the time, that I can't always talk to them with the same serenity I somehow summoned at my OB's. I regret that I'm not stronger. But regret my children? Never.

I'm not a perfect parent, and neither is anyone else. The number of kids I have doesn't really have anything to do with it. Now if only I could convince that mom at Target with her one child who is giving me a backwards look as my 19 month old screams bloody murder as we pass by ...

Paranoia, paranoia

2009-11-04T00:01:01Z

When I was a kid I had a few close encounters with bats. I remember getting dive-bombed by a bat while swimming in my grandparents' pool at dusk, and I can also remember finding a dead bat in that same pool. While camping a bat once flew so close to me that I felt its wings brush against my hair. And my mom once discovered a dead bat in our house--later she recalled "something black" swooping past her head when she opened the front door a few mornings earlier. Once there was a very suspicious bat flying around in broad daylight next to our barn; when we called Animal Control the officer failed to locate it and we never found out its fate. Of all the bats I've encountered, that one was probably the most likely to have been dangerously ill. I guess we were lucky that one of our dogs or cats didn't get hold of it.

Despite all these close encounters, I never once worried about contracting rabies. So how come my 18 month old's near encounter with a bat on Halloween sent me into a freakishly irrational state of paranoia?

Here's what happened: we were walking with a small group of fellow trick-or-treaters at dusk when I saw a bat swoop down to where my 18 month old, Natalie, was walking. It veered in quite close to her, flew back towards one of the houses, flew along the wall and then back up into the sky.

I don't know if it touched her. She certainly didn't react as if anything strange had happened, she just kept obliviously walking along in her (adorable I might add) strawberry costume. But for me it was the beginning of an obsessive search for information.

I called the pediatrician on call the next day. "There's always a small chance that a person could contract rabies from that kind of encounter," he told me. "But it's about as close to zero as you can get without actually being zero."

Of course, I didn't focus on the "close to zero" part of his answer. I focused on the part where he said "There's always a small chance."

The internet wasn't really helping me. It was full of stories about people dying of rabies after simply finding a bat in their bedroom, or about entire soccer teams getting rabies shots because a bat flew too close to them during a game. The CDC even went so far as to recommend rabies vaccination for "when a bat flies into a person." Of course, I had no idea whether the bat really did fly into Natalie, or whether it just came close.

And I read about Jeanna Giese, the world's only unvaccinated rabies survivor.That small glimmer of hope for what might happen if Natalie got sick because I didn't succumb to my paranoia and vaccinate her faded when I learned that the medical protocol used to save Jeanna had never been successfully duplicated. Rabies was still pretty much considered a death sentence.

So I waited until my regular pediatrician was in the office, and then I called her for a second opinion. She told me the same thing."I wouldn't vaccinate either of my girls in that situation," she said.

Those doctors must think I'm a basket case.

After talking to them I feel a little better. I guess. Still, this is just one example of what happens to you when you become a parent. I remember in my pre-child days worrying about myself--when the SARS outbreak was spreading through Canada, I obsessed over my own safety. Now my own safety means nothing to me, except of course for what it will mean to my kids if they lost their mother.

And my paranoia for them is far more severe than it ever was for myself. I am told this worrying and obsessing over the health and safety of my kids will never go away. I wouldn't really want it to, either, although I would prefer for it to be more of a rational paranoia rather than the lie-awake-at-night-worrying-about-slim-possibilities kind of paranoia.

I used to dream that one day I would have a nice house and plenty of money to spare. Now I dream that on my death bed I will be able to say that all of my children are happy, healthy and secure in their lives. And rabies-free.