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Oh, those two. Update?
Liv is mobile. Mobile! God help us all. Especially Liv. She started crawling about two weeks ago, moved on yesterday to pulling herself up to standing, and actually stood in place, look-ma-no-hands, tonight. I swear she'll be walking by Thursday. She is growing up way too fast (cliche, anyone?), but still manages to do painfully sweet baby things like fall asleep in the baby carrier with a finger in her mouth.
She is smiley enough that we occasionally get comments like "how old is she? Wow, she is really smiley for an 8 month old." Whatever that means. She still wakes up every three hours at night, but dangit all if she isn't so sweet and accommodating about going right back to sleep. She also still refuses to cuddle, which I think is just fabulous. Shine on, you crazy diamond! We love your independence.
And Nils? Such a little card. He continues his passionate love affair with vehicles. Time for a shirt? Make sure it has a bus on it. Put together a puzzle? How about the puzzle of a cement mixer. Sidewalk chalk? Hey, let's draw a dump truck. People say toddler boys have such short attention spans... I beg to differ. Come watch my son play with his trains.
Such a little builder, he is. Tunnels, towers, cranes, etc. Puzzles, too. He can do some pretty big ones with assistance, and simple 12 piecers? He does those with his eyes half closed... that is, while he's supposed to be napping. Hard to chide him - "Now Nils, you're supposed to be laying down" - look at all those little puzzles! So sweet.
The days are such a blur. I looked at Liv recently and felt like I had blinked and missed months of her life. Quiet moments alone with each child are rare, so I'm doing my best to give each of them all of me in whatever small way I can. The "all of me" is usually doled out in 30-second parcels, only to be abruptly snatched away when a sibling does something that requires immediate, emergency-level attention. All in good fun.
Leaving for work in 5 minutes... time for a quick bulldozer puzzle
I put the kids to bed most nights. I get them ready in the morning too, with the exception of Oliver and Nils's ritual of Rice Krispies and cups of milk / coffee at the breakfast table. I do just about all childcare solo throughout the week, and Oliver often comes home, tired, after Nils and Liv are asleep.
It's strange to think that this is a choice we have made, to have almost nothing of a family life during the week. It is a choice though, and we made it, long before the kids were born, with an eye on future financial security. "Why are we doing this?" I ask myself sometimes when Nils asks if we can call "Papa" at work, or when Liv follows Oliver everywhere with her eyes in those 20 minutes they have together each day.
Oliver came home early one night the other week just as I was turning out the lights for Nils. "Let's go out," he said. "It's so beautiful outside."
I wasn't interested. It was already after 8, they were both just about to go to sleep, I had so much to do to get ready for work the next day...
But no, we had to go out. This was our chance to steal a little time. To walk across the neighborhood with a cool breeze on our faces, to get hamburgers and root beer floats. Nils wore his monster truck pajamas and lined up all the condiment bottles on our table. Liv stared at the baseball game on the screen above us and tried to eat a napkin. Oliver shared his fries. I tried to convince everyone else to try malt vinegar instead of ketchup. The restaurant's other patrons probably thought Oliver and I were terrible parents (sugar, fat and salt at 9 pm!), but good lord. We could not care less.
Every choice has a consequence these days. I am constantly balancing the cost of one decision against another. We had a family hour and treats, but that meant I rushed around frantically the next morning filling bottles and packing bags. If I decide to make a nice-ish dinner, that means I will have to sit with a kitchen full of dirty dishes overnight (the joys of a light sleeper who goes to bed shortly after eating!). If I want to restore order to my living room, it means I play less with the kiddos.
It's a mental thing, too. Nils and Liv take up almost all of my bandwidth, so any attention turned to any one thing (eating carefully to shed some baby weight) means other, random things fall to the wayside (clipping tiny fingernails, studying a bit of German). I say "yes" to one thing and know that it means saying "no" to a half dozen others, just because there's no room.
Thank goodness there is still room for root beer floats.
About 6 months after Liv was born I read a book. A real book. Hundreds of pages and full of things that had nothing to do with either of my children. I stayed up late three nights in a row while we were in Vermont, glued to the book. After we got home I started looking up videos on YouTube of speeches and events detailed in the book. It was just about the best book I have ever read... possibly because it was the first "real" book I have read in what, a year and a half? Doesn't food taste that much better when you're starving?
Some weeks back I also started noticing that I was thinking again. Nothing earth shattering of course, but it was like I had rejoined the world. I watched chess players in Washington Square Park and had this little epiphany vis a vis I can stop feeling bad, deep down in the place where feelings are never clearly articulated, that I'm not a part of all New York's wonderful subcultures. Old guys who love to play chess. Chinese immigrants who dance in
Chinatown's parks. The West
African guys who play soccer on the weekends in Prospect Park. No one can have every experience. Knowing that these other groups are here, that's enough.
I woke up a couple Saturdays ago and a voice was screaming in my head: "Make all the food! Make it!" I've got a list on my fridge now of things I want to cook. Because I want to cook again! Who knows how much I can actually do (a teething Liv does not usually make me more productive), but who cares. It no longer seems hopeless. It seems do-able.
Oliver and I went out on an actual date too, which was, just like Passage of Power, mind-blowing. We had a conversation. We didn't rush off in two different directions to take care of two different problems. First date in um, 8 months? And my goodness, there's a whole city out there! Stuff happens at night! Stand-up comedy, jazz concerts on side streets, Katie Holmes sightings. Food... better... starving.
Good lord, my children have owned me these past few years. Hormones? Nature? Just me? Whatever the cause, those first 6 months or so (and the nine that precede them) just wipe me clean. Greatly diminished mental capacity, no familiar sign posts. Just babies and some weird, primal drive to serve. It's lovely and I'm glad I can drop everything to care for them... but maaaaaan. Is it good to be coming back.
