Back in the heyday of blogging, when I read all the popular mom blogs (despite being myself single and without child, in those days), everyone used to write about Things Nobody Told Them. Bloggers pulled back the curtains on some shit back then, man. You know, literal shit like pooping on the delivery table. Figurative shit like the fact that breastfeeding was often difficult and painful. The sleep deprivation, constant worry, and PPD. All of a sudden, women were talking about things that had previously been, at best, only whispered about.

So since I read all of this stuff years ago (I liked reading about other women’s lives, even if not immediately relevant to my own), I figured I had a pretty good handle on the Things Nobody Tells Us category of pregnancy and parenthood. I was prepared.

But as you might guess, there was something about which Nobody Told Me: the sheer strenuous physicality of absolutely everything. The way you and your parenthood are inseparable from your body. The way your body never, ever gets a break.

I’m not referring really to breastfeeding, sleep, or even carrying a pregnancy. I mean the little daily bullshit. For example:

• Wrestling a child into/out of a diaper
• Wrestling a child into/out of clothing or pajamas or a coat or shoes
• Wrestling a child into/out of a car seat or a stroller or a high chair or a booster seat or a shopping cart
• Wrestling a child into/out of a crib or a bathtub
• Picking up a limp-noodling child who is now a textbook example of passive resistance
• Applying sunscreen to a squirming child
• Brushing or styling the hair of a squirming child
• Brushing the teeth of a child whose jaws are clamped down tighter than the jaws of an alligator
• Lifting a child onto/off of a public toilet
• Wiping the butt of a child who, instead of staying in the approved downward-dog-style wiping posture, is insisting on doing a series of unpredictable vinyasas
• Holding a child up high enough to reach the counter and sink in a public restroom while they dawdle over hand washing and drying
• Dodging the jammy hands of a child who is trying to use your white blouse as a napkin five minutes before you need to leave for work
• Being bitten
• Being slapped
• Having the eyeglasses slapped right off of your face
• Having handfuls of hair ripped out of your head
• Being head-butted in the mouth

In the past month, I’ve been head-butted in the mouth twice, most recently last night. That seems like a lot of head-butting and fat lips, doesn’t it? And nothing will flip my rage switch faster than being suddenly physically hurt like that. Inside my head, it’s like a bomb goes off. Outside my head, I just yelp in pain and then speak very calmly and carefully to everyone around me while also glaring at them pretty hard as I dramatically count my remaining teeth and apply ice to the affected area. Which is an unsatisfying vent for my frustrations, so here we are.

Why is my body so tired? When will my body feel less tired? When will I stop worrying about my offspring (accidentally, but still) physically assaulting me? Will I make it through the next couple of decades with all my original teeth? More importantly, why did nobody tell me?

Don’t worry, though: I did hear about the importance of cherishing every moment.

 

My children are now one and a half years old. By the time I post this, they’ll actually be closer to two than they are to one, which seems crazy to me, but the facts check out. Time is indeed passing. 

I’ve chosen not to do monthly updates this year, but I thought 18 months seemed like a pretty nice milestone to bring back the scrapbooky twin blog post. I haven’t been writing here, but I have been taking photos every month — a project that gets tougher and tougher the more mobile and independent these two become. They certainly do not pose or smile for the camera, but they are, as ever, fully themselves. Here are a few photos from the last six months:

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Since I last updated here, they’ve had so many milestones. Some were not so fun: first (among many) sick visits to the pediatrician, first surgeries (ear tubes for both). But then we got to enjoy things like their first Easter egg hunt, first artwork brought home from “school,” first time in a swimming pool, first time walking through the parking lot holding hands instead of being carried, and of course first words! Neither baby is talking much yet, but now that they’ve got their ear tubes and can actually hear (after months of constant infections and fluid in their ears), we’re not worried. They’ve made a lot of progress since getting their ears clear. 

They have their own little world at daycare every weekday, where they hang out with their little friends and their teachers and do art projects and sing songs and take naps on tiny little cots, which seems insane to me, but their teacher says it’s going well. They love to go on wagon rides around the neighborhood and climb up the play structure at our neighborhood playground and they really love to point out anything and everything to ask what it is. “Da?!” “Tree.” “Da?!” “Bird.” “Da?!” “House.” “Da?!” “Kitty.” “Da?!” “Tree.” “Hiiiiiiii!”

They are fun and funny and love to imitate each other and make each other laugh. They run to hug each other at the end of the day whenever one of them has been home sick from school. If one of them is crying, the other one will offer a binkie, stuffed animal, or book to ease the pain. The other day, E was crying about something in the tub, and L just reached over to her and started gently touching her face, pointing out her nose, eyes, ears, and so on — this is one thing I often do to distract them from fussing (“Where’s your nose? Where’s your belly button?”). Let me tell you, when L started doing it for E, it was the sweetest thing in the world. 

At 18 months, E: 

• Can consistently say dada, mama, ba(ll), hi, hello (when pretending to be on the phone), bye-bye, da (what’s that?), and something that sounds like shoes. Occasionally she will also say do(g) and something that is either milk or mine.
• Can sign more and all done.
• Loves to eat cheese, yogurt, and veggie burgers.
• Has 12 teeth.
• Will finally wear a bow in her hair all day, unless she sees it in the mirror (for example, while riding in the car), in which case she will promptly remove it to play with. 
• Is obsessed with shoes and is super excited whenever she gets new ones. She carried her pink Chucks around lovingly all day the first day she saw them. She even gave them rides on the toy tractor. 

At 18 months, L: 

• Can say hi, bye, da (what’s that), woof (when asked what a dog says or when seeing a picture of any animal) and will babble all the livelong day in sounds that really sound like words, but aren’t any words I know. 
• Can sign more and has turned the sign for drink into something that means “give me that thing.” 
• Can feed himself with a spoon and loves to dip his food in any kind of dip or sauce. Loves all fruit, cheese, bagels, yogurt, and avocado. 
• Has 10 teeth all the way in and two new ones just surfaced.
• Loves his stuffed snow leopard, Leonard, and likes to carry him around and give him hugs. 
• Loves books and will happily flip through, studying the pictures, endlessly.

They are exhaustingly wonderful and I am often in grateful disbelief that I get to be their mom.

One year old. I can barely believe my babies are ONE YEAR OLD, but the calendar does not lie. This time last year, they were squishy, tiny, wrinkly little babies who weighed a total of almost-twelve pounds at birth (and less than that when they came home from the hospital).

Today, they’re learning to walk, trying to talk, climbing the furniture, expressing their preferences for food and toys and books and fashion accessories, and it’s almost like they’re actual little people or something. TWO of them. Some people would even call them toddlers. (Not I, though. They’re babies. Large babies.)

In the past month, they’ve had their first Thanksgiving, which was great fun. Last Thanksgiving, we were just not sure how soon the babies were going to come, so we held off on making any plans because we thought we might wind up in the hospital. It turned into a quiet day at home (my husband cooked) and the babies waited another week or so to make their arrival. This year, we had two new little faces at our table! We let them try all the foods we were having: roast chicken, mashed potatoes, roasted root vegetables, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. They loved everything except the moment when CW sprayed a tiny, tiny blob of whipped cream into their mouths directly from the can (they were not into that at all, whoops!), but then they wound up enjoying dessert when we put a little bit onto their trays for them to pick up themselves.

Saturday, we had their birthday party, which turned out to be really fun. My BFF Claire a and her son visited for the weekend, plus we had our local friends over, many of whom also have little ones. There were a few kids around from age 5 months to 9 years, and they had fun running around and playing with some of the twins’ toys. We had brunch food and mimosas and cupcakes, and of course tiny smash cakes for the babies to try.

Y’all. The cake. It was amazing. E enjoyed her cake, which she dug into with one hand and ate fairly neatly. L, on the other hand, quickly realized that cake is delicious and that eating with one hand is not nearly effective enough. Perhaps he realized that this was a limited-time situation and that the cake would be taken away at some point, so he decided to dig in with both hands — and then quickly moved on to diving face first into the cake. We were DYING laughing. I will never forget it. Dude just kept going and going, both hands sunk knuckle-deep into the sides of the cake, frosting all over his face, and eventually ate (“ate”?) a not insignificant portion of cake and frosting. I am so proud.

At one year, E is 29.75″ tall (72%) and weighs 22lb 4oz (83%). She:

• Has four five teeth. Her top two were slowly, slowly coming in over the past few weeks and they finally broke through. In the time it’s taken me to get photographs ready for this post, her fifth tooth (bottom left) came in!
• Has taken 10-12 independent steps at a time on several occasions, but still doesn’t choose to walk very often. She prefers to walk while holding one of our hands or to crawl. I’m sure she’ll get to walking full time very soon, though.
• Still scrunches up her nose when smiling and generally smiles with her whole face. She has the best dimples.
• Has started refusing to wear her headband bows, to my great dismay. And so it begins: soon I’m sure I’ll have no influence at all over what she wears, so I’d better enjoy choosing her clothes while I can.
• “Talks” quite a bit, though not with (m)any real/intentional words, mostly just babbling. She’s said “mama” and “dada” a few times, and “da” (possibly directed at the dog?) but we’re not confident any of those counts as a purposeful first word yet.
• Points, claps, waves, and gives high fives — the lattermost she just learned this past weekend from her big buddy, Liam (my BFF’s son), age 9, who came to visit and is an excellent teacher.
• Can be both a little bit shy and extremely friendly in the same moment — she loves to smile and wave at new people, but often only wants to do so from the safety of her parents arms/laps.
• Loves to play with her Little People farm animals and put them into their places in the barn. Sometimes she also loves to stick the animals in my face until I let her put them in my mouth. Why, E, why?

At one year, L is 29.5″ tall (35%) and weighs 20lb 14oz (43%). He:

• Has four teeth. The second top tooth came in shortly after I last posted about this, so they’re well established now and he’s been putting them to good use gnawing cantaloupe off the rind and digging into birthday cake.
• Has taken 1-2 independent steps at a time, but mostly has been working on his climbing skills. He’s able to get up onto the futon in the nursery and onto the ottoman in the playroom without assistance.
• Has the most delightful full-belly laugh. The other day, I started goofing around with him and something about the way I was shaking my head back and forth made him laugh, so of course I just kept doing it over and over until he was completely CRACKING UP and it was the absolute best. I love making this kid laugh.
• Loves to read stories. He will get his favorite books off the shelf and bring them to us to read. I love letting him cuddle up in my lap while we read — he usually holds my hand/wrist and just snuggles up so sweetly. His favorite books recently are Brown Bear, Brown Bear and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. 
• Has just started “talking” a lot more. He’s always been a bit quieter than his sister, but lately he’s really got a lot more to say. He’s experimenting with new sounds. My favorite one is the “ga” sound he makes every morning when he sees the lit-up Christmas tree for the first time. He really likes it, I think.
• Points, claps, waves, and gives high fives. And loves to grab people’s glasses right off of their faces! I find it a lot easier to wear my contacts, quite honestly. He’s obsessed!
• Loves his stuffed animals, particularly an old monkey of mine that I handed down, and a new snow leopard his dad picked out for his birthday. He’s so sweet when he hugs them.

I love watching them grow up so much. We’re so lucky and thankful to get to be their parents.