A Good Day

Das Fenster is back! Yay! He arrived home last week, and we're all glad to have him here again. The boys were kind of out of whack that first day - I think it finally hit them that Daddy had been gone so long. There was a lot of screaming and crying :(  But they've recovered now and are in much better spirits.

Yesterday, DF had the day off and we spent a lovely family day together. Having to be the solo parent for so long really makes me appreciate when both of us are here. I mean, life just seems so much easier when I don't have to do everything by myself! Here's what we did yesterday.

Morning
DF took the boys to the park for more than an hour, early in the day to beat the heat. While they were gone, I was able to reorganize the boys' closet (which we are using for storage) and move some boxes out of our room into theirs. This includes some under-the-bed boxes that I'd been wanting to put under their cribs for weeks, but I just wasn't interested in doing it when they were home because they'd want to dump out all the contents, pull the boxes out from under the cribs, shove them back in again, pinch their fingers, climb on the boxes, fall off, hurt their toes, etc...

I also vacuumed under all the furniture (found 20+ Cheerios under the couch) in addition to my regular vacuuming, and swept the non-carpeted floors. They still weren't home, so I just sat on the couch and enjoyed the peace and quiet.

After they got back and the boys ate a snack, they took all the cushions off the couch and jumped/rolled around for quite awhile. DF played with them; I mainly observed and provided comfort for all the minor injuries that ensued.

I can't remember what happened during lunch, but they must've eaten something and it wasn't a total disaster. Oh, I think they mainly had cantaloupe. They like to take the chunks of melon and drive them around their trays like trucks. It's pretty cute.

Afternoon
During nap time, I went to the grocery store by myself. I was able to pick a store that does not have huge shopping carts with two kid driving wheel seats. And, I could stop and consider products for as long as I wanted to make a selection. I think that's my favorite part of shopping by myself - having my whole brain available to think about what I'm buying. I have purchased the wrong item before when the kids were literally trying to jump out of the cart so I just grabbed something and hoped it was what I was looking for.

Instead, I stood in front of the butter/alternative butter section for quite awhile deciding which non-dairy option I was going to try. (I opted for Smart Balance, even though I was skeptical since it listed fish oil as an ingredient and I'm not really interested in adding sardine flavor to my English muffins. But, good news, it's pretty tasty and not fishy!) The only other person I had to be aware of during that time was the guy stocking the shelves near me. He seemed capable of handling life without my intervention. Good, good.

After shopping, I mopped the aforementioned non-carpeted floors (although I did not want to, but given the amount of orange juice that gets sloshed around the kitchen, a once-weekly mopping schedule is necessary). Then I read an easy-breezy fiction book for awhile.

When the kids woke up, we all went up to the pool to go swimming. Can I just tell you, it is soooo much easier to take them swimming with a 1:1 ratio? Wow, how did I forget that?! There were a fair number of people at the pool, probably since the temperatures were soaring over 100. We tried a new technique for post-swim time where we brought their diapers and clothes up to the pool with us and changed them there, rather than making them walk back to the apartment dripping and shivering. It was remarkably successful! They liked lounging poolside and drying off, too.

Later, DF entertained the boys while I got dinner ready. I surreptitiously ate a burrito while they watched cartoons, so I wasn't starving while trying to feed them. Score! The boys enjoyed smooshing refried beans everywhere during their meal.

Evening
We decorated little pumpkins by drawing on them with Sharpies, and they also colored pictures of pumpkins that I drew. Then they ran around the house with their pumpkins saying, "Spooky! Boo!" They think that pumpkins are supposed to be scary, based on an episode of Bubble Guppies. We got some cute pictures of them with their gourds.

The rest of the evening was unspecified play time with blocks, books, pretend cooking, and general two year old silliness. We probably watched more cartoons, though I don't exactly recall.

They were in bed shortly after 8, and DF and I were able to have a normal conversation without any particular agenda or needing to make decisions/plans. It was like two friends talking to each other. Wowzers! I wrapped the day up by going to bed early to try and catch up on sleep after a not very restful night a couple days before.

All in all, a good day :)

Home Stretch

I'm happy to say that we'll be welcoming DF home later this week, barring any travel delays. Hooray, the boys and I have almost survived this month and a half of his deployment! At first, it was really hard. Then it got better. Now it seems almost normal. We're all looking forward to having him back, and I'm sure we can adjust to a new normal with a 4-person family.

In time, I suppose I'll look back on this season as a monumental event in our family's life. But in living it, I've just been trying to get through one day at a time. Now that it's almost over, I thought I'd reflect on some of the highlights.

Visitors

My sister, cousin, and mom all came to visit during this time and it was awesome! I didn't expect visitors to come so soon after we moved, but I guess people took pity on me :) It was really nice to have extra hands around to help out. I was able to accomplish such tasks as picking up dry cleaning, retrieving packages from the leasing office, exchanging items purchased in error because I couldn't read the fine print and keep my kids from destroying a store at the same time, going grocery shopping by myself, etc. You know, glamorous stuff!

Exploring the Area

I don't mind taking the kids to most parks or libraries by myself, but there are other places that I'm not interested in attempting solo. With the visitors in town, we were able to check out the Natural History Museum, the San Gabriel Mission, and the beach (Santa Monica). Wow, LA sure has a lot to offer!

Making Friends

Since I enjoy talking to people who can form complete sentences and discuss complex ideas (as contrasted with my usual conversations of "choo choo! choo choo!"), I have joined a couple moms' groups here to try and meet other grown ups. I'd say that, compared to Memphis, people seem a little more open in talking about real life stuff, but not quite as friendly as Southerners overall. So, I'm still working on that front, but I think I have some good potential connections in the works. At least people are accepting my Facebook friend requests, so I'm going to take that as a good sign :) And I randomly reconnected with a friend from college who lives in the area, which was cool.

Connecting with the Kids

I've heard you are supposed to spend one-on-one time with your kids to be a good parent, but that's rather tricky in my situation. Sometimes one of them wakes up earlier than the other from nap time - today it was Gibson. So I got him up and said, "Since Gus is still asleep, you get to have special time with Mommy! What do you want to do?" He wanted to play with some toy animals, which was fine until I made the elephant pretend to eat a snack and Gibson got all pouty and sad. Really not sure what I did wrong there... Then I asked him if we should wake up Gus, and he excitedly ran into the bedroom. Apparently he was craving brother time, not mom time! At any rate, I've tried to spend lots of time playing with them (together), reading stories, coloring pictures, going on walks, and all that good stuff. 

Creative Problem Solving

Without DF around to bounce ideas off of, I've been left to my own devices with these two little munchkins. Bedtime has been extra...interesting. Back in Memphis, we had a pretty good routine going on that required the full involvement of both parents. So not only have I had to adapt to doing it all by myself, but the boys are also getting more creative in their bedtime stalling techniques, which requires a new level of strategizing! 

For example, I've figured out if I let them sit on the bathroom counter with their feet in the sink, then they will let me brush their teeth. (I used to be able to kind of hold them down and force the toothbrush in their mouth, but they are getting too strong for me, so I have to use psychological techniques. And DF is the one with a degree in psychology, not me...!) Then we used to sit in our glider chair for story time (all 3 of us), but that wasn't working. I tried having the boys sit in the chair with me on the floor, but once one of them flopped over the side and landed on his head, I decided that wasn't the best approach. Now, we all sit on the floor together while I read two stories - they each pick one. (Of course, then they both want to read a bunch more...) And while typing the above I literally thought of 5 more things that are different than Memphis, but I'm going to stop the list there because, well, it's becoming obvious that I didn't get to talk to any adults today, isn't it? ;)

3 Days Down

And then there was that time when the twins were two and we moved across the country and like two weeks later, DF had to leave town for a month and a half...

At least, that how I assume this story will be told decades from now.

Hurricane Harvey, I'm sure you've heard, left a giant swath of destruction in its wake. The cleanup and recovery efforts required will be massive. DF works for the federal government, and he's part of a team of employees who have volunteered to be deployed to assist in these situations. Well, last week he got word to stand by for orders. He flew out over the weekend to a central assembly area where he's meeting up with his team to be sent out to help. 

We aren't sure exactly when he'll be back. His presence was requested for "up to 45 days." I don't know if that means they'll need him for the full amount of time, or he'll be back sooner, or they might ask if he can stay longer. For now, I'm just going to assume it's approximately 6 weeks. And I can't help but recall that's the same amount of time the boys were in the NICU. 

On the one hand, I'm really proud of him for his dedication to serving his country, which started during his military days and continues on in his civilian career. He's calm and level headed in times of crisis, and he's a strategic thinker. He'll be a great asset to his team!

On the other hand, I wish this storm hadn't been so horrible and affected so many people. I wish DF didn't have to go at all. And I really wish this wasn't all happening right after we relocated to a new place where we hardly know anyone.

So far, the boys and I have survived three days of being alone together. I know that I'm not a "single parent." I'm grateful not to have the added pressure of financially providing for my family. But the longest I've ever had to be the solo parent is one week, and that was back in Memphis where we had lots of friends to visit and activities to occupy our time. It's a whole new ballgame here.

<As I write this, I'm intermittently hopping up to comfort Gus and convince him to go to sleep. He's had a rough time sleeping lately. Maybe it's because Daddy is gone...?>

Here's what we have been up to:

Day 1: Sunday

• DF departed at an ungodly hour
• The kids and I attended a church that we have visited before. I didn't have it in me to try a Sunday School class by myself, so I just went to the service. Then during coffee hour (outside, 90 degrees at 10 am) I sat under a tree and tried to enjoy a few peaceful moments to myself (the nearby freeway traffic notwithstanding).
• While the boys napped, I read a parenting article that basically said, "I like being needed as a mom because my kids need ME and only ME and that makes me feel special." I found this strangely encouraging and did my best to savor my time with my children for the rest of the day, reminding myself that they'll never be this young again.
• Got brave and walked with the boys to Whole Foods, just a couple blocks away. It was not a total disaster, but also could've been better. I made mental notes for next time as I stuffed cookies in their mouths to keep them from hopping out of the wagon on the walk home. Later realized I forgot to check out their whole bean coffee selection, which had been one of my main goals of the trip. 

Day 2: Monday

• Let's just call this, the day when reality hit and none of us coped very well. 
• Got out of the house briefly to visit the park across the street but we were all overheating by 9:30am
• Made a grocery store run in the afternoon
• Otherwise, the kids were alternating between watching videos, fighting with each other, eating snacks, and getting in to everything that is a no-no. 
• I read them stories, played pretend games, intervened in fights, ignored fights, tried but failed not to yell at them, ate too much junk food, and generally wished the day was over. 
• Bath time went better than usual - the end of bath tends to elicit much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Day 3: Tuesday

• I decided to make more of an effort today. They aren't going to MDO anymore, so I should probably try to stimulate their brains a bit...
• Since the heat wave finally seems to have lifted, I thought maybe we'd hang out at a different park and I'd pack a picnic lunch. Well, I asked the boys and they said they didn't want to go to the park ("no!"), so then I decided not to try too hard and instead just took them to the neighborhood park. They lasted nearly an hour! I brought their dump trucks and toy dustpans so they could play with the bark chips. That was a hit. 
• I tried to do a craft project I heard about, making "instruments" out of plastic containers and household items. I used dry rice, lentils, and pasta. Lately the kids won't eat any of these items cooked, but apparently in their raw form, they are desirable snacks. So that led to some screaming when I wouldn't let them choke themselves on the craft. But, they did still sort of have fun making noise.
• We made grandparents' day cards, although Gibson did most of the coloring. Gus was more into hoarding all the crayons.
• Ran errands including a stop at Walgreens that for some reason had no regular sized carts for kids to ride in! :-O I managed to keep them from destroying the store and feel that I deserve several pats on the back for that! I grabbed two containers of dental floss and put them both in charge of holding one :)
• Went to Chick-Fil-A for dinner. Technically, we played in the play area then picked up food from the drive through on our way home because the inside line was just too long for us to wait.

Ok, that's the log so far. Obviously, I have no one to talk to about the minutiae of my daily life, so thank you all for reading along, ha ha. I'll try to make some more California observations next time.

Lunch Date with Sneezy

DF has the week off (thanks, "use or lose" vacation time!) and the boys went to MDO yesterday, so we had another exciting day date. DF stopped at Gibson's donuts on the way home from dropping off the boys, so we were sugared up and ready to go! The day started off with household chores including leaf raking, bathroom scrubbing, and searching for rechargeable batteries + the charger. It continued on with sweeping, mopping, and TV viewing. Oh yes, thrilling stuff folks.

But wait, before you lose interest, there was a tasty lunch! We went to the buffet at Golden India in Overton Square. It was great!

Why, yes indeed, those are lamb meatballs in the picture, how did you ever guess? The meatballs were good, though I have to admit they were not as spectacular as the ones I had at a random Indian restaurant in Bellevue (WA) several years ago. Golden India's fresh naan was super delicious! I love naan. I mean, I love bread/carbs in general, and naan is especially wonderful. 

Over lunch, DF and I discussed if either of us have a favorite "ethnic" food. Is it politically correct to say ethnic food? What I mean is a cuisine specific to a certain country or region. Neither of us could pick. DF said maybe his favorite is American because we have pretty much every type of food here. Fair point! I really like Indian, Middle Eastern like Lebanese, and Ethiopian. If I had to pick one type of food to eat every day, I'd probably go with Caribbean. I never get tired of rice, beans, and plantains! (This was a good thing when I studied abroad in Costa Rica, since I ate rice and beans 2-3 meals a day for the semester.)

I'm sure I could find some food I would enjoy in any culture. One of my favorites is the multitudinous variety of "bread/grain product filled with meat or veggies then fried or steamed" morsels. Think Indian samosas, Argentinian empanadas, Polish pierogis, Japanese gyoza, Ghanaian fufu dumplings, Mexican tamales...ok, I'm getting hungry now :)

One thing that limits my enjoyment of other cuisines, unfortunately, is my sensitive palate. Well, not so much my palate as my nose/mouth combo. (Is that my otorhinolaryngological system?) Big words aside, the issue is that I tend to have sneezing attacks when I eat spicy food. And not just hot-spicy, but also big-flavor-spicy. So yeah, that means after lunch yesterday I went to the restroom and spent 5 minutes coughing, sneezing, and blowing my nose. In my opinion, it's worth the overactive sinus reaction to enjoy flavorful food. But are there any medical professionals in the audience (or informed lay people) who can tell me if that's a problem I should be worried about? It's not a new phenomenon; ever since I started eating more adventurously in college, I've been a sneezer when it comes to spices. In fact, I sometimes do myself in when cooking at home by adding too much pepper to my own dishes!

Date Night in Memphis

This is a reader-suggested post. What do DF and I do for "date night"?

LOLOLOLOLOL

Ahem <cough>, sorry, let me catch my breath here. People, we have two babies, er, toddlers. Two VERY ACTIVE little toddlers who would love to destroy your house/store/restaurant/pet store/etc and giggle while doing it. Hence, we very rarely take them anywhere that isn't super baby friendly, unless they can be constrained in their stroller.

We live approximately 800 miles from their nearest grandparents. We do have some very nice friends here who have offered to watch the boys, but we know how exhausting watching the boys can be, so we try not to wear people out too much. (Also, see note above about their destrucive tendencies to explain why we don't really want to bring them over to someone's house for babysitting.) The kids take some time to warm up to new people. They are also very skilled at screaming to delay bedtime. If you let a volunteer babysitter listen to too much screaming, they may not be so eager to volunteer again...

Hiring a babysitter to come over to our house is a possibility, and we actually have done so before. The going rate around here seems to be at least $10/hour. So if we're planning a traditional dinner + movie date, we have to decide if it's actually worth it to tack on an extra $30-$40 to the cost. I know, I know, everyone says you should do it, that hiring a babysitter is money well spent. And we can afford it if we want to. But we have to reeeeally want to do something. Plus I tend to worry about the boys a lot when I'm not with them, so I have a hard time actually relaxing and enjoying myself.

All that being said, DF and I actually do get some time to ourselves once in a while. We send the boys to Mother's Day Out twice a week. They stay for 5 hours, and they always seem to have fun. DF is usually off work twice a month on MDO days. Since we're already paying (a very affordable rate) for childcare, we've tried to make the most of these day dates! We tend to go out to breakfast and/or lunch and maybe do something else fun. One day we went to the Rock 'n' Soul museum. Another time we went shopping at Babies R Us and had lunch at Red Lobster. I felt very suburban that day, haha. This week, we voted then caught up on DVR'd episodes of The Big Bang Theory.

Here's my latte from one of our recent breakfasts - at Tamp & Tap

Cooking, on Occasion

I'm a big fan of baking. Cooking, not so much. It takes a lot of effort to cook, but you only get to enjoy your labor for a meal or two. When you bake, the rewards last longer!

Now that I'm a mom, though, I feel like I should probably cook real food more often. When DF and I first got married, I tried to cook dinner fairly frequently because I thought that's what good wives did. Ha! Over the years, we've started going out to eat more and more. We like exploring new restaurants and eating a variety of flavors. Plus I got super lazy when I was pregnant.

Since the babies were born, I have hardly cooked at all. I mean, literally, I maybe cooked something for dinner like 10 times since June that wasn't a frozen pizza or similarly easy to make. I just haven't had it in me to plan a menu, buy the ingredients, cook, and clean up.

Some readers might be saying, "But Salmonista, why doesn't DF make dinner instead?" He is even less a fan of cooking than I am. He is in charge of going to pick up our take-out orders :)  And he's also a good grocery shopper. He also has been known to load the dishwasher.

One of my New Year's resolutions was "Try to cook something once in a while." Yes, I made it vague on purpose so it would be easy to accomplish! Well, I'm happy to report that I successfully made dinner last night, and I have tonight's dinner cooking in the crock pot now. I also made a weekly meal plan and wrote it on our message board in the kitchen so that I'm not left scratching my head every day saying, "What should we eat tonight?" Seriously, I was feeling like dinner kept sneaking up on me, and I was like, what? didn't we just eat dinner yesterday?

Now that I started a Pinterest recipe board, I'm hoping this will spur me on to action. I can save the recipes we like and put them into a rotation. After all, I don't want my kids to think that dinner always comes in a styrofoam container or a pizza box.

All this being said, in the last few months, I have managed to cook for other people a few times - friends from church who've had medical issues, new babies, etc. There were so many people who were kind enough to bring us meals while I was recuperating that I feel compelled to pay it forward. I certainly appreciated everyone's generosity, so I hope my friends appreciate my attempts as well! (even though I think I did overcook the chicken one time...)

Marriage Advice

No one's ever really asked us for marriage advice, but that won't stop me from dispensing some anyway :) Here are a few tips I think make for a happy marriage.

Find common interests so you can do things together
For us it's been choir and board games. Choir has given us a vast repertoire of songs from which to create new baby-related versions, such as "This little burp," and "Why won't you sleep?" Board games were more of DF's thing before we got married, but he's converted me into a gamer over the years. We (used to) go to a board game meetup group with a bunch of people, so that was good because he could play his more hardcore strategy games while I played something a little more social.

Work out systems to avoid having the same problem over and over
I have a semi-reliable sense of direction; his is much better. We were getting frustrated when driving because I'm not the best navigator. So, we came up with the solution that when we're going somewhere new, I drive and he navigates. It works much better! Also, we instituted a "no commenting" rule about the other person's driving unless you legitimately think a wreck or ticket is imminent. This is good because then if the other person does comment, you can say, "Were we going to get in a wreck?" If the answer is no, then they know they probably should've kept their mouth shut.

Sleep is a love language
People are all into that Love Languages book. That's fine, and yes, you should try to speak your partner's language. But what that author missed was a 6th love language for new parents: sleep. If my spouse says, "Why don't you take a nap?" or gets up at 3AM to see why a baby is squawking, to me that is so much more meaningful and loving right now than a dozen roses. Sure, maybe it's like an act of service, but I think it's beyond that because he's also sacrificing sleep so that I can snooze. It means a lot :)

File under: NaBloPoMo Day 15