Crawling implications

No updates on the attempts to learn how to crawl, Tina is still just flailing around the blanket with an occasional scoot forward.  Charlotte is still just lifting her arms and legs and hoping to body surf to her dream location.  She's been doing it since around the first month, it's a pose she really seems to enjoy.

A few hours before Tina's demonstration of her soon to be crawling prowess, I had called to schedule a bid for new flooring in the house.  That's on Monday and I'm really excited for it.  I want the new floor NOW!!!!

So I've been thinking about the logistics of the new floor and the work that's going to entail.  Along with the new floor, we need to child proof the house.  As I started thinking about it last night, I just got this wash of dread come over me because holy crap, we have a TON of work to do around here to make sure our children don't kill themselves once they can move.  And since we're getting pretty much every bit of our floor done, we're going to have to move just about every single belonging in our house during the floor installing process.  I think K is going to need to cash in a few of the vacation days he's built up because this is going to be a major undertaking.

Off the top of my head, the bookshelf in my office will need to move or just go away all together.  The shelves aren't secure and the backing is just cardboard, and right now it stores the inventory for my pottery store.  One kid tries to pull themselves up using one of those shelves and that kid is buried in planks of wood and pottery.  We have 50 billion cabinets and drawers all below waist level that will need to be secured.  There are computer cables and other electronic cables all over the floor that will need to be dealt with.  All of the general "stuff" that we have piled everywhere (I haven't seen the top of our dining room table since the girls were born) will need a place to go.  Litterboxes will need to be moved off the floor with mini steps made so the cats can get to them but the kids are less likely to nap in them.

Oh, litterboxes.  That reminds me of one of the very few things about K that drives me nuts.  In terms of husbands, he's as awesome as they come, but he's not perfect.  Very close, but not quite.  He has this habit of only listening to the first half of what I'm telling him and reacting to that first half, totally not hearing the second half.  However, my speech patterns are such that the first half of what I'm saying doesn't make any sense without the second half.  So last night we're talking about baby proofing and I talk about getting the litterboxes off the floor.  His cat isn't very agile anymore, we've set up small steps that lead to the hope chest at the foot of our bed so she can easily climb up the steps, onto the hope chest, and then onto the bed.  So last night I'm saying to him "we'll need to find a way to move the litterboxes up off the floor and ......." and he immediately jumps in with "we can't do that, my cat won't be able to get to them".  Argh!  Let me finish my damned sentence!  "Had you let me finish before jumping in to react, the rest of that sentence was going to be.....and set up a means for the cats to get to them that the kids are less likely to climb."  I know we can't make it impossible for the kids to get to them, but we can at least make them more of a challenge so they are far less likely to do so.  "K, see how we have the steps set up for her to get on the bed?  If we come up with something similar for other areas of the house and put the litterboxes up on surfaces like that, the cats can get to them, and the girls will have trouble climbing such itty bitty steps.  Or by the time they do, I'll be able to see what they're doing and redirect them before they manage it.  Besides, since our bedroom is going to be mostly off limits to the girls, your cats litterbox can stay on the floor where it is."

K claims he doesn't stop hearing me halfway through what I have to say so I had to call him on it in the moment that he did it.

Anyway, back to the implications of babies crawling.  Here's the big one - I get to wean off the pumping!!!  YES!!!  Once they are officially mobile, I wean down to 3 pumps per day so I'm only pumping once while K is at work during their nap, and then twice a day so I never have to do it when he's not home.  I get to change mindsets and go from having the frozen stash available to supplement if I have low production days to pumping to supplement what they eat from the stash.

Them becoming mobile has always been my stopping point in my mind.  My goal is to be the best mommy I can be, and while they're immobile, that means trying to produce as much milk as possible.  But once they can move and get into stuff, I think it's more important for me to be able to react to potential danger quickly than it is to keep them completely on breastmilk.  Everything in life is a trade-off and that's one that I'm totally cool with.  Even if my supply tanks to absolutely nothing when I start cutting back on the pumping, I'll still consider my primary goal as being reached.  If we can manage to keep them on breastmilk for a year, that's kind of my reach for the stars goal.

At their current consumption, we have about a months worth in the freezer.  There's a growth spurt coming up, abut they are increasing their solids, so I just have no clue as to what to predict in terms of how much milk they're going to need between now and their first birthday.  We might make it to the stars, but it's gonna be tight.

I think it would be wise if we broke open one of the sample cans of formula that we have, start using that for their morning bottles for a week just to make sure that they'll drink formula and that it won't upset their tummies too much.  I'd hate to find out that formula doesn't work for them after the freezer stash is gone and I'm no longer producing anything.  Besides, that's 12oz of breastmilk a day for that week that we can bank in the freezer while we're testing how they do.

So right now, one last push to get as much out of me as I can for the next couple of weeks and when the girls get moving, I wean down guilt free.  Hopefully by pumping twice a day, I'll still produce a significant amount for a while, but if I don't, that's ok too.  I'm totally looking forward to no longer running into that moment when the girls need me, but I'm really needing to pump too.

Flooring

Well, it looks like Tina is going to crawl any day now.  I'm not sure, but perhaps her first official crawl was today while I was taking numerous videos, but I don't think one or two successful inch long scoots count, so I'm saying it's still a few days away.

Our carpet is gross.  And it smells.  Wanna know why?  Yeah, too many cats and the two males have been competing for territory.  Since the babies came, that big orange fluffy one in the middle has been taking at least one pee a day somewhere on the carpet.  I'm not talking a bit of marking, I'm talking puddles.  Most of the time we find it right away and pull as much out as we can then go over it with the steam cleaner but the whole house just stinks.  It's embarrassing.

A few years ago, we invested in getting all new carpet for the house.  That was a bad move.  I thought that if we started fresh, we could keep up with it and it would remain somewhat nice.  Nope.  The cats just became bigger jerks.  For a while we were able to contain it because the gray cat was consistently peeing in front of the litterboxes.  We put down washable puppy pads and are constantly washing those damned things.  But hell, at least that cat is consistent in his jerkitude.

Last month, as we purchased yet another device designed to clean up cat messes in the ever losing battle of keeping the carpet from stinking, I decided I'd had enough.  As much as I love this little spot cleaner, after a week of owning it, our floor is completely polkadotted with little scrubbed circles from all the messes we've used it on.  It really demonstrates just how much the cats have been messing up the floor and how chasing after them is a losing battle.  I thought about all of the devices and products we've spent money on in an attempt to keep the house smelling halfway decent, crap, we've probably spent near what it's going to cost to just put in a better floor.  We should have just done that in the first place and saved ourselves the money, aggravation, work, and time that all ultimately failed anyway.

We're taking out a new mortgage on the house to pay off all of the IVF credit card debts at a lower and tax deductible interest rate.  We've decided to take out a little more than we need to pay off those loans and redo the floor entirely in the house.  We're getting rid of the carpet and putting down laminate (probably).  Who knows what damage we're going to find when we pull this carpet up, probably massive amounts of urine soaked plywood (it's a manufactured home), but we're going to take care of this once and for all.  We're going to get it done right.  No more bandaid fixes.  If the entire floor has to come up and be rebuilt, so be it.  Hopefully just a good thick layer of Killz will be enough, but if it's not, oh well.  We're going to put down a cleanable floor and area rugs that can be replaced when they get gross.

With the girls poised to crawl any day now, and knowing that they're only going to grow into toddlers and kids that will spill milk and have potty training accidents, it's time.  We have a guy coming on Monday to take measurements, give advice, and ultimately sell us a new floor.  And with this, we commit to living here for several more years.

Nature vs Nurture

I've always been curious about the nature vs nurture debate.  One thing about multiples, it's a scientific experiment you get to watch unfold every day.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that basic personality traits are nature.  From the time the girls were in the NICU, I've been saying that Tina interacts with the world while Charlotte prefers to observe it.  Over 7 months later and so far this is still holding true.

While it obviously doesn't compare to children, I saw this in my cats as well.  I captured 2 stray cats from a litter when they were around 12 weeks old.  One was a little more trusting and affectionate while the other was a fighter.  I raised them both the same but those personality differences never evened out.  The fighter was just an angry bitch no matter what we tried to make her happy (she died a couple of years ago).  The affectionate one (still living) is still a bit skittish, but he just wants the love and is very snuggly when he feels safe.

I'm seeing similar differences (though much more flattering differences) in the girls.  We've been trying to get out of the house a little more often lately and when we're out, these differences become really pronounced.  Last week we went to the mall to have a hang out with other twin moms.  Charlotte was happy to just sit in the stroller the whole time sucking on her wubba and would just kind of look up at anybody who stuck their nose in to see her.  Tina on the other hand, she was itching to get up and interact.  I was holding her for a good part of the outing and she was flirting up a storm with anybody who would grace her with eye contact.  While grocery shopping the other day (yes, we got out grocery shopping!), Tina was bright eyed and begging for attention from all the "oh how cute, twins!" gawkers while Charlotte was perfectly happy to just watch the world go by.

At home, Tina needs pretty constant stimulation.  She gets distracted while eating, and is energetic as all get out in her exersaucer.  She's jumping around and making sure we're paying attention to her.  Charlotte is just much more content.  She plays of course, but she's not as energetic and needy about it.  Just kind of quietly goes about her business and doesn't make a bit tadoo about it.

When I'm holding one of them on the couch, Tina is bouncing around and demanding attention.  If I'm not bouncing her, she'll do it herself, she'll try to climb and talks constantly.  Charlotte can sit snuggled under my arm, will occasionally glance up at me and grin and then happily goes back to just snuggling.

Tina is just bigger about everything.  As far as babies go, this makes Charlotte the easier baby.  When she's upset about something, it's pretty easy to narrow down what's upsetting her because if she's making a fuss, something is really wrong.  Tina's reactions to everything are so much bigger that it makes it harder to figure out.  While Charlotte needs to really be hurting (from teething or something) in order to be upset, Tina can be screaming her head off because it's not her turn with the applesauce spoon.  On the other hand, Tina tends to be the more, well for lack of a better word, attractive to play with because she's going to be quick to smile and laugh and she smiles and laughs big.  These pictures really sum up the difference.  Both are happy and laughing, but Tina's whole face has gone squinchy while Charlotte just kind of looks like "yes, that amuses me."

So, this boils down to why I believe that personalities are inherent to a person, but it's nurture that determines what people do with these personalities.  Tina is so gregarious, I feel like she's going to be a social butterfly. People are going to be naturally drawn to her.  That is going to give her power in life.  It's what she chooses to do with that power that's going to determine what kind of person she is, and that's where the nurture comes in.  That kind of dynamic personality has the potential of becoming the mean girl in high school.  But she also has the potential to make high school a great experience for a lot of the shyer kids.  Is she going to choose to be exclusive at the cool kids table, making everyone who doesn't sit there feel like crap?  Or is she going to choose to sit with the new kid and offer to show that kid the ropes?  When she's team captain, will she only play with the good players, or will she pick all those kids who usually get picked last and make sure they all have a chance to get the ball sometimes?

Some of you might be asking yourself why I'm focusing so much on Tina's choices.  Well, that's because I grew up as a Charlotte.  Being an introvert myself and not naturally charismatic, it's easier for me to see the benefits of the personality type that I don't have.  In grade school, I remember a girl with Tina's potential who decided to become the mean girl, and I was the nerd that she often tormented.  In high school, there was a guy with that same personality type, but he chose to be very inclusive and was just a blast to be around.  He was physically ugly as all get out but he had this gift for making you feel like he especially liked you so most of us had a crush on him at some point.

Since it appears that their personality types are inherent to them, my challenge as a parent will be to guide them toward making good choices with those personalities.  To teach Tina the benefits of being kind and inclusive when it will be so easy to be a jerk and to teach Charlotte that attracting more people to you is less important than attracting the right people.  While Tina is running around with her 50 friends, Charlotte can get just as much companionship from a few very close friends.

It's like looking at the differences between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.  One was a seeker of the limelight, a natural leader, the other was just as brilliant, but more content to be behind the scenes.  K and I are both theater people.  I was an actor in high school, but I was eventually drawn to the jobs that took me out of the limelight.  I was an awesome stage manager.  K is an actor with a gift for making people laugh.  Both valid and necessary for a good show, but one gets a few more accolades in our society than the other.

Of course, these are all observations and predictions based on baby personalities.  I'm totally open to being proven completely wrong about my predictions.  Maybe they'll switch at some point and Charlotte will be the butterfly while Tina is happy at home with a book.  Heck, even I had a couple of years in there where I was the butterfly with a packed social calendar.  But in terms of nature versus nurture, I currently believe that as a parent, there's not much I can do about personality, but there's a lot I can do about the choices they make with the personalities they seem to be born with.  I hope I'm able to steer them both towards the choices that are more difficult in the moment, but lead to a much happier life over the course of time.  Tina, please sit with the nerdy new kid in the cafeteria, that day will be remembered forever by that kid as a positive experience. And Charlotte, please have faith that you can enjoy your quiet talents even if it's hard to find others who recognize those talents.  One day, you'll find a crowd of people who think it's totally awesome that you're so good at something even it's not a popular skill to develop.

Mama Moron

So I figured out why the last week or so hasn't been working for us.  I've been responding to the girls too quickly!

Today, they woke up after a half hour and I rolled my eyes and decided, screw it, they're fine, they don't sound unhappy, they can just sit there until either I finish my lunch or they start sounding upset.  I looked at the monitor when I finished my lunch and they were asleep again!  They were asleep for another solid hour!

Duh!  I can't believe I've been stuck in this cycle of only a half hour per nap when if left to their own devices, they would sleep for about 90 minutes.

This feels like the moment when I discovered that Tina will resist sleep for as long as she knows I'm around, but if I leave completely, she'll nod off quickly.  I felt like a horrible mom when I would step outside to clear my head because she wouldn't go to sleep in those first months until I realized that me being outside for 5 minutes was more productive to her sleep than me trying to soothe her for an hour.

Well now apparently me going to get them as soon as both are clearly awake and chatting with each other isn't the best move either!  I felt like a real jerk today making them wait for a while but I guess it's what I should have been doing all along.  I bet they'll be awake a lot longer before showing tired signs now that they've taken a long nap.