Teddy’s Social Security card arrived in today’s mail – April 13. Thank God.

Can you guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow night?

I just finally bought a baby book for Teddy.  We’ve only done a mediocre job of filling Natalie’s out, but it seemed only fair to try to do one for him too.  I don’t ever want him to feel like he’s less loved because he’s the second child, or the only male in the family, or any other reason that he might come up with.  And I know that even careful planning won’t necessarily change what he feels about himself or his family as he grows up, but still.  What little I can control, I will.  So.  For Natalie we used the Todd Parr one.  It’s colorful, funny, simple, and most importantly for us, it doesn’t assume that the child has both a mom and a dad.  It’s also out of print.  And now sold for a small fortune (OK, 60 bucks or so, but for a fairly simple book, and a very broke family, that’s a lot.)  There are a few options if you don’t want to go through the entire book crossing out and correcting references to mom and dad, but certainly not the vast assortment of styles and price ranges available to the “standard” family.  For the most part, if you’re gay, single, or otherwise don’t fit the mold, and you want your baby book to fit you, you pays extra.  It’s a little thing.  There are ways around it, and certainly not every baby even has a baby book.  It’s not THAT big a deal.  But still.  Sometimes little things make a difference.  And today I found a copy of the Todd Parr baby book, new, for a little more than $10 including shipping.  It makes me happy that when Natalie pulls her book off the shelf to look through it (as she often does), Teddy will have one as well.  And that both books will fit their family without taking white out or a sharpie to them.

I’m in a place right now, emotionally, where little things DO affect me differently.  Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation.  Or the fact that I have less adult conversation these days, so I’m more likely to analyze the hell out of it.  And this weekend, it’s a little thing from a friend’s baby shower that has my brain turning.

My friend T is expecting her second child in a few weeks.  We have worked together for years, and she has a child only a few months older than Natalie, so we have shared a lot of motherhood stuff since they were born.  Yesterday, some friends had a shower for her.  As part of it, our friend R led an activity that we did for T before her first child was born, and that we in turn did for R before she gave birth to her daughter.  Each person chooses a bead, holds it, writes some wish for the mother-to-be regarding labor, birth, early days with new child, etc.  Then each person shares her thought as the bead is added to a necklace that travels with the mother-to-be and reminds her of our love and wishes during labor, birth, whatever.  As we were beginning to write, a friend that hadn’t been there for the previous rounds of this activity asked if it needed to focus specifically on labor/birth, because since she’d had an emergency c-section she didn’t feel like she had anything useful to say about that.  R responded that, no, it didn’t have to be specific to the birth at all, that we’d be doing this, “even if T was adopting or having a child in some other way.”

I froze for a second before the cynical voice in my head took over.  Then that voice was shoved aside and insecurity/self doubt began making itself at home.  Because they didn’t do this for me.  Even though R&T have known each other only a year longer than I’ve known the two of them.  Even though my children were born during the same period of time as their children, and they were part of celebrations before Natalie’s birth.  (There were none for Teddy– a fact that I’d attributed to his being born right after summer vacation.)  And really, I don’t care that it wasn’t done for me.  And there are any number of reasons why it wasn’t.  But I keep coming back to R’s one sentence and wondering where that leaves me.  And, while I’ve always been somewhat painfully uncool, I think the answer really is that, once again, I don’t fit the mold.  While my motherhood has never been questioned by this group of friends, I am still the non-bio mom.  And as such, I will never really fit with people who grew their babies inside their bodies.  But I’m not a dad.  And though I adopted Natalie and will (barring catastrophe) adopt Teddy, I don’t necessarily fit with adoptive parents either.  And in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a big deal, because I AM their Mama.  It’s just one of those little things…

I’m getting a wide array of gifts for my birthday, including 1) a visit from the social worker, 2) the strong probability of a photo-generated speeding ticket from my commute this morning (new camera! who knew!), 3) the bad Daylight Savings Time and 4) um. Something good. Hmm. I think it says something about my psyche that I had this post planned out with the four things I wanted to list, one of which was good and THAT is the one I can’t recall….

[Pause to call wife and check with her. In which 1) I call my OWN cell phone first and then 2) when I eventually do get her, SHE can't remember either. Clearly, one thing we are not getting for my birthday is much sleep or capacity for clear thinking.]

So, as I was saying, as if the social worker weren’t enough (she cancelled yesterday due to an emergency court appearance – we had the option to reschedule for later but did NOT want to have to scour the house top to bottom yet again, so opted for the special fun birthday visit), I think I garnered a speeding ticket on my way in due to the telltale flash as I went down the hill. Shortly thereafter NPR informed me that it is DST this weekend. Now I don’t know about you, but I hate DST for so many reasons, not the least of which is that I don’t %$^&*^@# understand it. I can never remember which way the clocks go, and worse than that, even when told which way to move the clock I still have a hard time figuring out what that MEANS. More sleep? Less sleep? Huh? The sleep thing is pretty irrelevant now that we have kids, which just makes it even more frustrating and annoying because THEIR clocks don’t reset. But I believe this is the iteration of DST that people without children consider the “bad” one because they lose an hour of sleep. We’re having a brunch on Sunday and certain childless people (ahem! brother! cough!) were already muttering about the early start time. With added DST fun, I don’t think we’ll be seeing them till tea time.

Anyway, despite all this grousing, I am getting or have already gotten some truly good material things, too (namely a Wii Fit, which came early and is a blast, and an absurdly expensive but beautiful laundry hamper from the Container Store… yes, I am at that sad age when a really boring and utilitarian household item is a great and much-wanted gift) but what is making this birthday really worthwhile is my family.

I’ve been on this earth for 38 years now (!!) and it’s only been the last three that I’ve had kids, of course. These have been the richest and most rewarding three years of my life. The days are full – full of madness, full of fun, full of stress, full of laundry/bills/snotty noses/dishes/clutter/goddamn nursery school glitter but also full of joy and wonder. I can barely remember my life before them, and I don’t miss it. For the second year in a row, I got a homemade birthday card from Natalie (and the concomitant early spilling of the beans last night with the stage whispered, “Mama? Can we give Mommy the card we made?” when I arrived home from work).

And I have a real Coke from Ireland with sugar (not corn syrup) to celebrate with.

Social worker, parking ticket, DST be damned. Who could ask for anything more?

In the past couple of weeks, Teddy has eaten yogurt and applesauce, and gummed on a cucumber slice and some naan. None of it was planned, nor imbued with any pomp or circumstance, and none of it was photographed. Oh, the poor second child! All of it was greatly enjoyed by the boy, and the moms did indeed focus a great deal of attention on him in the moment, but it’s a far cry from the way the first food was handled with the elder child.

While I was pregnant with Teddy, my mom gave me a book about second children (Your Second Child, by Joan Weiss). I read it with curiosity, disdain, and mounting anger, for it described the ways that parents treat children differently by birth order, claims I’d seen in passing elsewhere, but which were given full-length treatment (albeit in most dated fashion, as it was originally written in 1981 and only superficially updated since, most recently in the ’90s). As soon as possible after finishing the book, I sold it at a yard sale. Or gave it away. Or took it to Value Village. I can’t recall exactly how, but I disposed of it, with righteous glee.

And now I wish I hadn’t. For the things it described, which horrified me during my pregnancy, are happening without a doubt in our family. I think reading it now would be a very different experience than before Teddy arrived. For one thing, we don’t do all the things the book assured me we’d do, but more to the point, we do treat him differently AND IT’S OKAY. He gets less hovering, but more space to be himself. He often doesn’t get our full attention, but when he does, we’re really reveling in him, and he also has the added benefit of his sister’s attention and antics. The grin on his face when she talks to him and plays with him is delightful and electric.

One thing that has surprised me about raising a second child, however, is the difference in how *I* experience the milestones. When Natalie got a tooth, or tasted her first food, or any of the countless firsts we celebrated, we were thrilled beyond belief. In these past months as Teddy has chalked up new developmental achievements, I’ve discovered that there’s a tinge of melancholy this time. It’s more than likely that he’s our last baby, so while it’s delightful to see HIM develop, grow, and change, it’s also a little bittersweet to see him move past the sweet, tiny baby phase and think we may never experience gummy grins again.

Thank God the toothy grins are meltingly adorable. Not to mention the other reality of two kids: we don’t have a helluva lot of time to sit around being blue!

Convenience got the best of my frugality today and I added the 300 text message plan to each of our phones. (Well, I guess it’s more accurate to say that different frugal strategies were warring and paying less for a strictly unnecessary feature won out over avoiding the expense by not texting at all.)

In celebration, I sent Cait a text saying Text away, baby!

Only I have her phone in my bag. Mine too.

So I am texting myself. At least it’s not costing me $.20 a pop anymore.

We could use another bedroom, and more storage… elbow room in general. Unfortunately, we won’t be getting them anytime in the foreseeable future, but if we can’t, at least the kids can. We’re giving Natalie a dollhouse for her birthday, but don’t have room for a traditional one (see above). After seeing a suggestion for making a collapsible house from foamcore in a magazine, we decided to do a sturdier version using plywood. I’d write more, but Teddy has other ideas, so I’ll let the photos tell the story.

Measuring

Using those junior high shop* skills

*only they called it “Industrial Arts” !

Mocking up wallpaper

"Installing" wood flooring

And kitchen tile

Aerial view

Bathroom

The BEST part: It stores flat...

...like THIS!

Photos of the finished version will have to wait a bit.

The only thing we don’t like about it is that it is weeks and weeks until her birthday!

The scene:
Jen and Natalie are getting ready for the day, Cait is showering, Teddy is squirming around and chewing on toys. Jen informs Natalie that jumping on the bed while holding onto the bedrail is not a safe choice, and that she really needs to get dressed before her uncle comes over. Natalie starts to make up her own rules about the bed jumping, so Jen interrupts.

J: Natalie, I get to make the rules about that.
N: (grabs something invisible from the air) I just took the rules out of your mouth.

We are so, so in for it.

First of all, here is the video discussed in yesterday’s twitters.  It took some fighting with the camera, as always, but it’s finally up.  Yes, you are hearing another baby in the background at some points.  I edited out the parts that actually show her, since asking her parents for permission would mean telling them we have a blog, and we don’t really like to just spread that info around willy-nilly.

Much to our annoyance, none of the various grandparents saw fit to give Teddy the babydoll on his Christmas list.  The car, yes.  The baby, no.  Much to our twisted joy, he fell in love with a brightly colored doll at a friend’s birthday party over the weekend.  After he spent a great deal of time drooling on her, they said we could keep her.  He loves her.  He talks to her.  He chews on her pigtails with gusto.  We’ll go ahead and buy him the babydoll to give at a later date, because as much as he loves his sister’s, she’s a little possessive of them.

I am doing better than I was when I wrote my last post.  Jen and I have had some hard conversations, have made some minor changes in our weekly routines, and I’m also going back to my shrink on Monday to talk about switching meds again.  I’m still finding the entire homestudy process frustrating and insulting, but I don’t think that’s going to change.

We’ve realized that Natalie is, in fact, going to turn 3 in two months, no matter how much we may enjoy our denial.  After watching her carefully and happily move dollhouse furniture around other people’s dollhouses and admire the little teeny details, we started exploring the world of dollhouses.  And then quickly realized that we so don’t have floor space for any of them.  So we’re trying a variation on this.  Made of wood instead of foam core.  It will come apart and store flat until she wants to use it.  In our heads, it looks great.  Hopefully the reality will be OK too.  We’ll let you know.

For whatever reason, I seem to be incapable of putting a picture or video or anything fancy into wordpress posts.  Any words of wisdom?

Since our blogging ability sucks lately, I’ve added our twitter feeds to the sidebar. It’s not award winning writing, but it’s something…

Aaaaaaaaaaaa We were up until 1:00 AM cleaning and organizing for the first of our social worker visits today and the house looks great (minus the areas already covered in toys) but I’m fucking tired and I don’t want to answer her questions and I don’t know how I’m going to manage to get all the clearances done when during most business hours I have at least one extra child, usually an infant, and dragging 2 babies and a 2 year old through DC bureaucracy is the last thing I want to spend my days doing and Natalie is alternately completely ignoring me when I ask her to do something or is clinging to me like saran wrap, making it nearly impossible to do anything and I just slammed my toe into the big, heavy stepstool–the toe next to the big toe that I broke last month that I keep bumping and banging into things so that it will never heal, and the stupid cracks in my fingertips won’t go away no matter how much lotion I put on them and they hurt and Teddy is teething and has a cold and is waking up at hours of the morning beginning with 4 and staying awake and as cute as his love for his thumb is, it gets kind of frustrating to spend each feeding shooing his hand away from his mouth, because as much as he wants bottle AND thumb, it’s just not an effective feeding strategy, and my neighbor just tried to drop his baby off even though she’s not supposed to come until 1:30 which is why the social worker is coming at noon and I felt like an asshole sending him away, but this is why we HAVE a schedule, and Obama visited my school on Tuesday, but since I’m home this year, I missed it, and I feel like my parenting skills are getting a little worse each day and I just did something funky to my wordpress screen, so everything is all jumbled up and weird, so perhaps I will end my rant here.  (Deep breath)  Thank you.  Maybe it’s time to meet with my shrink and get better meds.  Or maybe just get better sleep.  Or, you know, have an adult conversation every now and again.

And for the record, I adore our kids and am very happy to get to spend this time with them.  Some days are just harder than others, is all.  And I actually feel a little better already.

Now I must go wipe my daughter’s bottom.