testing our patience

If you asked pretty much anyone who knows me, they will confirm that I am generally not a patient person. I always thought that it was a good thing that I married Jon, because he brought a calm, steady patience to the table, mediating my fly-off-the-handle tendencies to balance me out a bit. While pregnant, I was sure our children would like him better, because he’d be the endlessly patient one, and I’d be the frustrated, snippy one. It’s also a fact that I generally fall apart and begin to freak the eff out when sleep deprived, with deprivation meaning anything less than 8 consecutive, unbroken hours of sleep, possibly less than 10. (Seriously, ask Jon sometime about that incident where I *sobbed* on a red eye flight.)

But, as Jon noted during an epic Etta screamfest yesterday: maybe it’s maternal instinct or something, but somehow I’m the one with more patience with the babies. Now, I am generally opposed to making biological generalizations about things like “maternal instinct” and other forms of gender essentialism, so I have another explanation, one I offered to him: it’s just that, if I freaked out over all of this, I would literally be freaking out every day for the rest of my life. Being patient is just a self-preservation technique for living with two tiny humans who occasionally like to SCREAM THEIR EVERLOVING FACES OFF FOR SEEMINGLY NO REASON.With whom I am often left all alone.

That’s not to say I don’t sometimes *feel* like freaking the freak out. This newfound patience is not without limits. Heck, there was even that one afternoon where I handed screaming Etta to Jon and literally flopped on the floor toddler-tantrum style, in a silent flail that expressed all the frustration and exhaustion I felt. There have been evenings where I swear, if I have to do one more baby-related thing, I will just lose my shiz, so I have to sit and drink wine and read fashion blogs for 30 minutes while he handles the babies, no, do not even ask me to draw up a syringe full of one of their myriad medicines. I have a feeling these moments will keep occurring.

In the meantime, it’s been a strange world to be the patient one. I basically don’t even know how to deal with Jon being frustrated and impatient, because it’s such a complete role-reversal. Not that he (or anyone else in a similar situation) isn’t totally justified in his frustration, but he’s usually the rock and I’m usually the tornado, and we whirlwinds don’t much know what to do when our rocks go flying around. Not that he’s really flying off the handle. My husband is so naturally even-keeled that his impatience and frustration looks like anyone else’s level-headedness, but still, I find myself getting frustrated with his frustration, as if I’m saying in my head, “BUT YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO FREAK OUT! YOU HAVE TO BE THE CALM ONE, ALL THE TIME, EVERY DAY!” Which is, of course irrational. He gets to feel his feelings, just like I do.

All of this is to say, this whole parenting thing is a strange new world. I was afraid of the ways it would change us, but it’s changing us anyway, like it or not.

In closing, here’s a triptych of Etta demonstrating how we freak the freak out around here:

 

 

babies=pandas

I have had an epiphany. Panda bears are like babies. Babies are like pandas. Bear with me. (ha)

The other day I tweeted this picture and had the following exchange with my friend Kyran:

And that’s when I realized: BABIES ARE LIKE PANDAS.

See, I’ve long been convinced that cuteness is pretty much the only thing keeping pandas alive at this point. I once visited a panda exhibit at the Memphis Zoo and learned that pandas, biologically, should be omnivores. They have the teeth and the digestive system necessary to digest both plants and meat, like every other bear. But pandas, they are not so into the meat eating. In fact, they are like the hipster vegans of the animal world. They’re like, listening to Morrisey and munching on roughage instead of hunting some prey, and as a result, they have to literally eat bamboo all day long, just to get enough calories to stay alive. This means that all they do is eat and sleep, because they basically don’t have the energy to do anything else. I mean, do pandas even mate in the wild anymore? I’ve read about zoos basically having to use panda pornography to try and convince their pandas to get it on. And would we even be going to all this trouble to save pandas (who clearly don’t WANT to be saved), if pandas weren’t one of the cutest things in the world? Nope. Cute: it’s keeping pandas alive.

Same thing happens with babies. Nature gives them giant heads and googly eyes and thigh rolls so that we will want to keep them alive, because Lord knows they can’t do it themselves. Claire, for example, seems determined to kill herself with her favorite thing in the world: food. At least once during a feed, she will either try to breathe milk– perhaps she loves it so much, breathing it seems to be the next best thing to eating it–or will suck the nipple so far down her throat that she gags herself. Meanwhile Etta, like many babies, seems determined to fling her giant head around and hurl her body out of our arms on a regular basis. And so we spend all our time trying to keep these very cute and possibly suicidal tiny beings alive. Because they’re adorable.

Babies are the pandas of the human world. Pandas are the babies of the animal kingdom. Cuteness is the only thing ensuring the continued survival of both.

two months

We’ve now officially been at this parenting thing for 2 months, and I’m again thinking that time has flown. Days have certainly flown by without posting around here, sorry about that! The truth is, my days are pretty dull and repetitive. Change, feed, sleep x’s two, repeat, repeat, repeat. The work is not particularly hard, but it’s pretty all-consuming, and there’s just not that much to say about it. Right now, my girls are just now starting to smile and hold their heads up on occasion, which doesn’t make for much blog fodder.

But oh, the smiling!

One of Jon’s pediatric colleagues tells new parents they just have to make it to 2 months, when social smiling starts up, and then it’s all worth it. And it’s true– a little baby-smiling goes a long way. Etta in particular has taken to the smiling this week, and is particularly happy in the mornings. The memory of our morning smiley girl either holds us over or makes us extra frustrated during our evenings with her, with a multi-hour witching hour in which she basically hates life until she finally falls asleep. It’s amazing how just getting a few smiles out of a kid will make me happy to deal with all the other stuff.

Claire, meanwhile, has marked another milestone– she is getting more consistent with her ability to get her fist into her mouth. This may seem like a silly milestone to you, but that’s just because you’ve probably not popped a pacifier back into the same mouth 15 times in the last 10 minutes. The ability to suck on a fist and thus self-soothe is priceless! Overall, I’d say we’re doing quite well. Jon has started back to work, and the girls and I are surviving at home on our own, even when he works a 24 hour shift. I’ve even made a successful shopping trip with both girls in tow! The thing other folks seem most interested in is our sleep, and the girls are still giving us 3-4 hour stretches for the most part. One night recently, Claire slept a whopping 6 hours in a row, but that has yet to be repeated, and Etta still woke up in the middle of that. Still, perhaps because I so adequately prepared myself for the worst, I have been pleasantly surprised that this whole twin parenting gig is not as bad as I imagined, possibly because it couldn’t have ever been that bad. We’ll see how I do when Jon is gone for several days in a row this month, off to Chicago for a work conference!