Sunday, September 21, 2008
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Happy Full Term Day!
It's hard to believe, but today is their due date. It's also four weeks since Anna came home.
I'm thinking back on all of the times that people asked when we were due. I'd say "September 20th, but they tell us that multiples are often early." Little did I know.
And then when they came early, September 20th because more like a threat, because some preterm infants have to stay at the hospital until they reach term.
So now September 20th will live in infamy as the Milestone That Didn't Happen Twice. Happy Full Term Day!
Friday, September 19, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
How long do you intend to keep this blog going?
I don't know. Frankly, once the girls got home from the NICU, the major reason for blogging went out the window. The girls have now been home for three weeks, and yet I still find myself answering the question, "How are the girls doing?" with the galactically stupid response, "They're at home." For the longest time it was the single most important thing, but that's going to be some pretty stale news when I'm still answering the same way when they're 12.
And now that they've been home a while, I've had to be very careful to avoid insulting people's intelligence by posting about typical newborn stuff, which many of you already know all about. I have enough trouble being a pompous ass, and telling a bunch of people that having a newborn at home is "incredibly hard but ultimately rewarding" could very well cause some kind of rift in the space-time continuum and create a black hole of pomposity, ending all life on this planet. I've tried to avoid that, because I'm a giver.
This means that I've tried to restrict my posts to things that are or were surprising to me, which was my way of focusing solely on the twin experience and not rehashing the baby experience. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to guess that caring for twin infants is a lot like caring for one infant, and then immediately doing it again. And this is never going to turn into one of those every-bottle-every-poop kind of besotted parent blogs.
So, if you find yourself visiting Bambine al Dente and thinking to yourself, "I wonder what's going on now," and there aren't any posts that answer that question, just mentally visualize the caring for one infant, and then mentally walk though all the same steps again. In return, I'll promise to post new observations as they come to me.
Finally, I'll leave you with a bona fide twin observation: The task of holding two swaddled infants at the same time, while very cute in concept, is in reality substantially more uncomfortable and difficult than holding one. It requires more than twice the muscle exertion and coordination. It leaves your arms tired. If you're on the couch and have two babies on your chest and the phone rings, you were pretty much screwed before the phone even rang, so don't even try to stand up. If you stop by and want to hold them both at the same time as a bizarre photo op, feel free, but even the experts struggle with the execution of very basic maneuvers while holding two infants, so somewhat like quicksand, it's best to remain perfectly calm and still until someone comes to your rescue.
And now that they've been home a while, I've had to be very careful to avoid insulting people's intelligence by posting about typical newborn stuff, which many of you already know all about. I have enough trouble being a pompous ass, and telling a bunch of people that having a newborn at home is "incredibly hard but ultimately rewarding" could very well cause some kind of rift in the space-time continuum and create a black hole of pomposity, ending all life on this planet. I've tried to avoid that, because I'm a giver.
This means that I've tried to restrict my posts to things that are or were surprising to me, which was my way of focusing solely on the twin experience and not rehashing the baby experience. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to guess that caring for twin infants is a lot like caring for one infant, and then immediately doing it again. And this is never going to turn into one of those every-bottle-every-poop kind of besotted parent blogs.
So, if you find yourself visiting Bambine al Dente and thinking to yourself, "I wonder what's going on now," and there aren't any posts that answer that question, just mentally visualize the caring for one infant, and then mentally walk though all the same steps again. In return, I'll promise to post new observations as they come to me.
Finally, I'll leave you with a bona fide twin observation: The task of holding two swaddled infants at the same time, while very cute in concept, is in reality substantially more uncomfortable and difficult than holding one. It requires more than twice the muscle exertion and coordination. It leaves your arms tired. If you're on the couch and have two babies on your chest and the phone rings, you were pretty much screwed before the phone even rang, so don't even try to stand up. If you stop by and want to hold them both at the same time as a bizarre photo op, feel free, but even the experts struggle with the execution of very basic maneuvers while holding two infants, so somewhat like quicksand, it's best to remain perfectly calm and still until someone comes to your rescue.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Comments enabled.
A bit of housekeeping:
Susan asked me why I hadn't enabled comments. In fact, I thought I had, but that's only because I'm unfamiliar with the Blogger software, which uses a default setting by which only users with Blogger accounts have commenting privileges. What I needed to do (as I've since learned) was to enable Anonymous commenting, so you don't need credentials to leave a comment. So I just did.
Now, some ground rules. People are free to leave any on-topic comments they like. I will delete any commercial spam (which isn't written by real people anyway, but rather by automated software that goes looking for unmoderated blogs with commenting enabled).
I will also delete any use of last names -- yours, mine, or ours. So please, no last names. If it's possible for me to edit a comment to remove identifiable material in lieu of rejecting the comment, I will, but I can't promise that the software will allow this, so please make my job easier.
Also, please don't feel obligated to leave a comment just because you can. We have already felt very cared for in all of this, and I don't want people to feel like the absence of a shout-out means you've stopped caring, because we know that's not true.
Susan asked me why I hadn't enabled comments. In fact, I thought I had, but that's only because I'm unfamiliar with the Blogger software, which uses a default setting by which only users with Blogger accounts have commenting privileges. What I needed to do (as I've since learned) was to enable Anonymous commenting, so you don't need credentials to leave a comment. So I just did.
Now, some ground rules. People are free to leave any on-topic comments they like. I will delete any commercial spam (which isn't written by real people anyway, but rather by automated software that goes looking for unmoderated blogs with commenting enabled).
I will also delete any use of last names -- yours, mine, or ours. So please, no last names. If it's possible for me to edit a comment to remove identifiable material in lieu of rejecting the comment, I will, but I can't promise that the software will allow this, so please make my job easier.
Also, please don't feel obligated to leave a comment just because you can. We have already felt very cared for in all of this, and I don't want people to feel like the absence of a shout-out means you've stopped caring, because we know that's not true.
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