Two twin life

In my pockets: house keys rescued from the floor of the minivan, a green and white polka-dot hair bow, stack of paper napkins, orange plastic cap from. . .some type of bottle, red sparkly headband with a big puffy heart on the front, a wooden puzzle piece shaped like a lion.

Drinking a cup of coffee, sitting to blog while the kids are out on a walk with Stephanie. I turned circles at first, trying to decide what to do. My last post I wrote about being aware of how much energy we have to share with other people. The full statement should be--but giving energy to others means we have less for ourselves. Parenthood makes me aware of how many things are finite. Only so much time. Only so much energy. Only so much attention. Of all my worries the biggest one is that my kids won't get enough of what they need from me. Then I remind myself of how much they do have. How much we have. A home, food, a loving community. We will be ok. And then the worry will peek it's head out at me again, usually after someone bites (again) or someone throws a fit (again) and I go straight to "What am I not doing enough of?"
I had no idea how much room to second-guess myself there would be in parenthood.

The snippet of "life with four kids under two" that I didn't write last night would have said something like:
One kid with a temperature of 103.6, assessed rectally. One kid with a new inhaler after spending five hours in the ER to get an albuterol breathing treatment and a steroid to help with the newly diagnoses restrictive airway disease--inflammation of the lungs caused by the virus of two weeks ago. Steroid cream to rub into the chest rash on the boy who never stops drooling. But the other two are great! And so it goes. . .

This week as been an unwinding, a coming back into place after our weekend away. My husband and I were both taken aback by just how hard this trip was. We had fun! The kids did great. They were curious. They slept through the night in their pack-n-plays, despite the wrestling match going on in the one the little girls shared. They played, alone and together. They had great family time. They explored the beach. The slid down huge slides. They ran down wooden ramps and climbed wooden steps. They marched with sticks. They ate sand.

They also opened the front door and ran away before anyone noticed (they didn't get far). They opened all the cabinets in the kitchen. They opened the oven. They climbed every chair in the place. They lost their ever-loving minds after everyone else left and the overwhelm, excitement, exhaustion of the experience took over and exploded them into absurdity. Screaming, running, flinging. My husband and I looked at each other and slogged through it. Because what else can you do?

Everywhere we go people exclaim over us. "You sure have your hands full!" I want to find a way to add a counter on this site where I can keep track of how many times we hear that. People love seeing the four little kids. They love the quad stroller. They wrinkle their brows as they try to figure it out. "Are all these yours?"

No, I just thought bringing my own twins grocery shopping wasn't challenge enough so I borrowed my friends' kids just for fun.

That's snarky but really I mostly like it. It's fun. It's wild. It's a moment of recognition of "Holy shit how do you do this?!"

You hear it enough and you become used to it. Yes, it's hard. But it's fun. We feel lucky. Yes, we're tired.
All true. And then a weekend like this past one happens, where most things go incredibly well and we have lots of extra hands helping out and it's hard. But then everyone leaves and the kids relax into us and it's REALLY hard. It's constant. And a lot. A big bunch of a lot.

When I worked in organ allocation there would be busy shifts where you would push everything out of your mind and focus on the outcome, several hours in front of you. You felt mostly calm because you were just doing, just working, just making it happen. Almost a Zen experience. Though afterwards it was like forgetting how to speak English because your brain was slowly shedding hours and minutes of checklists and phone calls and problem-solving. That is what this parenting is like. It is one minute to the next, forgetting what day it is. It is loading and unloading, making bottles, changing diapers, bathing, picking up, comforting, losing my cool, reading the same book over and over, unfolding and folding strollers, unfolding and folding tiny pants, trying to think of what to make for lunch, cleaning up most of that lunch from the floor. It is sitting down in a moment of quiet and choosing to write it all down.

And then choosing to go clear off a surface or two in the moments I have left.