"What color is Mama's hair?"
"Brown!"
"Yep, that's right. Color her hair brown."
scribble scribble scribble
The twins and I are sitting at our dining room table making homemade books I'm calling "All About My Mom" for Sharon's 40th birthday just days away.
"And what color are Mama's eyes?"
"Red!"
My first impulse was to argue, but then I thought about it.
"Yep, that's right. Color her eyes red."
scribble scribble scribble
The real reason my wife suggested we celebrate Kathryn's eighth birthday a full two months early by taking her to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? This:
A crystal skull cake.
I'm just happy she didn't suggest we take Kathryn to Sex and the City. God only knows what kind of cake she would have made for that.
Seven Things I Learned About My Wife While on Vacation
As odd as it was to be interviewed by the Japanese, it didn't hold a candle to being showered by Koreans.
Let me back up a bit.
It was late 2005, a month or two before the twins were born, and in the back of a Babies "R" Us, two Koreans had cornered my wife. Admittedly, this was not hard to do. Given her size and range of motion at the time, she could just as easily have been cornered by two pill bugs. As if you needed proof:
Sitting:
Standing:
The Koreans had clipboards and questions and the look of people way outside their comfort zone, like Lutherans with tambourines and flowered necklaces. They had been there for a while, wandering the store, timidly approaching people, and I had done my best to keep Sharon away from them, because I knew that whatever these people wanted, if Sharon could help, she would. And she'd probably bake them zucchini bread to go with it, too. And it turned out that what these people wanted was to shower an old pregnant lady. And videotape it.
Viola!
Okay, what they wanted was to interview an old pregnant lady, and in return, they would throw her a baby shower, and they would broadcast the entire thing on Korean TV. Of course, Sharon said yes. And then she rushed home to start grating the zucchini.
A few days later, our tiny New Jersey rental house was the scene of the most bizarre impromptu baby shower I've ever witnessed. The film crew arrived late in the evening, with wrapped presents, pink streamers, and a bowl of salad with no dressing. As they set up, we greeted our guests, who were really just neighbors as we had moved there not but a month before and we still knew very few people. Looking back on it, we probably should have brought in people from farther afield, because from that evening on, our neighbors never really looked at us the same again.
As everyone was getting into place, the producer told us two things about Korea. One, Korean women were beginning to have children later in life, and by that he meant in their late twenties. This has caused quite a bit of concern, because do you know what comes after having babies in your late twenties? Having babies in your early thirties! And what comes after that? America! America comes after that. America, with all its problems and social ills, comes when women start having babies in their late thirties. And that's why the film crew had been there that day, in the Paramus Babies "R" Us, looking for pregnant women in their late thirties to interview. The producer told us that, of all his previous assignments, this had surely been the hardest because it necessitated spending hours upon hours in that store approaching strange women asking, first, if they were pregnant and, then, their age, something that ranks up there with elective scrotal surgery in the pantheon of things men do not want to do.
The other thing we learned is that Koreans do not typically throw baby showers.
After a few minutes of filming idle chatter over salad, each guest was handed a pre-wrapped gift to present to my wife, then hustled over to a corner of the living room for an individual interview which always began with the same two questions: What gift did you bring to the shower, and why did you choose it? Strangely, neither of those two questions were actually included in the broadcast version of the event, possibly because the majority of the guests answered with "I don't know" and "I don't know" respectively. The questions following were much harder hitting, often including whether women over thirty-five should have children, and whether the guests thought my wife, sitting not five feet away and bending the room with the gravity of her bulk, was making a mistake. To their credit, nobody said yes to the latter. They didn't ask me.
A few months later, we received an envelope containing a videotape of the program. It turned out to be a sixty-minute science program about pregnancy, featuring footage of not one, not two, not three, but four complete vaginal deliveries, which is four more than I had ever seen up to that point. The baby shower came somewhere near the end, or so I was told by my wife who was still able to look directly at the television by that time. The whole program was in Korean with no subtitles, so we still have no idea what anyone was saying, and it will probably stay that way until we find someone with a strong constitution and the ability to speak Korean.
Maybe we'll look for just such a person at the Paramus Babies "R" Us.
I used to love to move. I used to love to do a lot of things, actually. Ten years ago, if you had asked me to list the things I love, I would have rattled off a list as long as your arm. Now, I'd probably just break down in tears of thanks that anyone even bothered to ask.
Not that you did.
Today, as I was unpacking a box directly into a trashcan, I came across a file of papers given to us by the hospital when we brought the twins home almost three years ago. There, deep in the file, was a folded brochure with the inviting title Especially For Dads! and trapped within, unread for years, were these helpful suggestions. I thought I'd pass them along to you.
A massage can help a new mom relax.
Postpartum moms have tender feelings and mood swings; they need to hear, "You're doing a great job."
Many mothers do have less interest in sex during the first few months after childbirth...This doesn't mean she loves you less or needs you less.
New mothers may need help with household chores.
New mothers may have trouble finishing their sentences. Often they may sound incoherent or they may babble.
New mothers may not be as attentive to their appearance. Encouraging words like, "Your boob is showing," can be helpful.
New mothers hate you and what your penis did to them.
There may be times when a new mother will give anything to remove her own breasts and place them on your body. Do not give her the opportunity.
Do not turn your back on a new mother. Always back away smiling.
Okay, maybe not all of those were in there, but dammit, they should have been. Any more you might like to add?
Guess which one is the most colossally stupid.
I'll tell you all about it when we get back. If we get back.
I know that most of you come to Looky, Daddy! to read my husband's amusingly snarky takes on life with children. Bless you all for listening to him--it makes my penchant for ignoring him less noticeable. However, I'm taking over his blog for the next few days to hopefully give a bit of information to twin moms-to-be. If Looky, Daddy! comes up first for a "dad and babysitter sex" search on Google (which had better be a random coincidence), why not try for first on "full-term twin pregnancy"?
A coworker of mine who is pregnant with twins showed visible amazement and relief when I shared with her that Lila and Victoria made their entrance into this world a few hours short of 39 weeks of pregnancy. This was not my first experience with such a reaction of a twin-mom-to-be. Early in a twin pregnancy all one seems to read or hear are stories of weeks of bed rest, premature births, low-birth weight, and weeks in the NICU. Every parent of twins should plan for such things and should realize that if they do occur it's just one of those unpreventable things that often happen with the birth of twins. However, often does not mean always!
So I'm hijacking my husband's blog for a few days to invite all of you twin moms who carried your babies past 36 weeks to tell your story here. Or, if you are not the parent of twins but your cousin's sister's nephew's wife had full-term twins, feel free to share their story for them. I'll go first.
The night before I gave birth was New Year's Eve. We went to an outside event in a neighboring town. I probably walked 3 miles that evening from event to event. We even went to the circus. I rang in the New Year, and at noon the next day my water broke. Seven hours later, I gave birth to Lila at 6 lbs and Victoria at 6 lbs 6 oz. Three days later, we all went home from the hospital together. The Dad tried to stay, but he was forced to come home with us as well.
Now it's your turn. Let those expectant moms of twins know that, on occasion, without any good reason, twin pregnancies aren't any worse (or any better) than singleton pregnancies.
This post is about my mom. It is about how she loves her grandchildren enough to suffer a layover in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on her way up here. It is about how her plane was struck by lightning as it sat on the runway in Milwaukee. It is about how a forty-five minute layover became an overnight stay in Milwaukee.
This post is about my mom. It is about how she used up her one curse word for the whole of 2007 when she spoke to me on the phone from Milwaukee. It is about her love for her grandkids and her display of generosity by not spending their inheritance on such a frivolous thing as a hotel room last night in Milwaukee. It is about how the janitorial staff at the Milwaukee airport told her not to get up, that they would just clean around her, at 4 AM this morning.
It's about how I'm convinced that lightning struck her plane because a million years ago she told the Dean of Baylor University to go to hell, using up her one curse word for the whole of 1962.
This post is about my mom. It's about how she always flies with the makings for bacon, tomato, and guacamole sandwiches in her carry-on. It's about how, once she got here, she asked if we were drinking vodka or gin martinis these days. It's about how she told the twins she was going upstairs to take a shower and Lila turned to me and asked distrustfully, "Granma gettin' naked?"
It's about how she reacts with equal enthusiasm when one twin sings her the alphabet song and the other twins tells her she's headed behind the couch to make a poop. It's about Victoria reaching up and stroking her hair as she read the twins good-night stories. It's about how tonight, when she finally got a bed to sleep in, she elected to share it with her oldest granddaughter, Kathryn.
This post is about my mom.
Today is our ninth anniversary and we are spending it as most married couples would prefer, in separate timezones.
You are on Day Three of a six-day conference in Seattle, complaining to me on the phone yesterday that your hotel room has no coffeemaker. In Seattle. I don't know how to talk to you anymore.
I am on Day Three of a six-day solo stint with the kids, a technique that falls just below waterboarding in the United Nations list of prohibited interrogation methods.
Hearing that your flight there was forced down in Denver when the pilot's windshield cracked was sobering to say the least. I don't even have a joke to make about it. Come home safely.
I'd write more but you took my laptop. I'm using our daughter's hand-me-down desktop. It has only crashed a four times during the composition of this post. My efforts at debugging it must be working.
So happy anniversary, The Mom. Celebrate it by going out to dinner tonight someplace nice. Me and the kids are having corn dogs.
Love,
The Dad
When Sarah came to pick up her son, Jonathan, I told her about it.
"You'll never guess what you son said to me."
She looked at me. "Was it about the twins?"
Sarah is a very good guesser.
This was at a playdate just under a year ago, when Sarah's son and Kathryn were in the same kindergarten class. Upon meeting Kathryn's twin sisters, Jonathan came right up to me.
"My mom had twins, too."
"Really?" I said, with that same little smile I use for such statements from children, statements like "I'm wearing Superman's underwear" or "Bats poop from their mouth" or "I'm not supposed to talk to you anymore." I had only known Sarah a short while, but I was certain she didn't have twins. Where were the circles under her eyes? Where was that half-drunk, shuffle-step of the terminally tired? Where was the magic-markered "Do not resuscitate" written just below her collarbone?
"Yeah. She gave them to my Auntie."
My smile faltered.
Later, over coffee, Sarah told me the story. For her sister-in-law, Jen, and her husband she had been a "compassionate gestational surrogate". Of twins.
She's had what she calls the "Clean-Up Conversation" many times, usually after playdates or when her son sees twins or when he just feels like telling the check-out lady that his "mama had Auntie Jen's babies" as he casually passes soup cans down the conveyor belt. He's helpful like that.
I've invited Sarah to share the details here.
I was a compassionate gestational surrogate on behalf of my husband’s sister and her husband. After many, many failed attempts, my sister-in-law and her husband were given the soul-crushing news that they would not be able to have kids. They had just tried IVF and were about to go for their second round with frozen embryos when the doctors told them that they would need to consider other options. Not wanting to leave potential family members frozen in time, I volunteered to baby-sit for nine months. My plan was very simple really: in exchange for letting them use my womb, I’d be forever absolved of having to change dirty diapers. So far, so good.
What I hadn’t planned on however, was Jonathan’s propensity to advertise the surrogacy to anyone within earshot, at any time, in seemingly random situations. You can imagine my awkward surprise when standing – nine months pregnant - at the counter at the US Embassy in London, trying to secure a passport for Jonathan, solemnly and dutifully answering all the questions being asked of us, when he decides to announce to the official that I’m having his aunt’s babies. Or the time when I picked him up from school after we’d just moved to New Jersey from London and his teacher pulls me aside, The Look firmly planted on her face, whispering to me that she’s worried about Jonathan because he thinks I’ve just had twins and clearly there was no evidence of that because I still had my sanity intact. Indeed. We are never at a loss for ice-breaker conversations, that’s for sure.
To help explain the compassionate surrogate experience, Sarah has written a children's book, The Kangaroo Pouch, which she used to introduce her own kids to the idea that their mom was actually carrying their aunt's babies. I've read it and it didn't answer any of my questions, like why don't I have an Auntie Jen or why doesn't Sarah's halo show on overcast days, but maybe those aren't the questions she was trying to address. The book is available here and here. And if you'd like to learn more about Sarah and her experience, visit Lake House Books.
And, no, Auntie Jen is not accepting any more twins. I asked.
