But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less. ~excerpt from Anna Quindlen's book Loud and Clear
I recently read this tid bit from Anna Quindlen and it caught my attention. I had an immediate defensive feeling but I strive to live in the moment and besides if I hurry through some of them, like the diaper changing ones, or the multiple screaming children at once moments, really aren't I doing myself a favor. Who wants to dwell in those moments? But then there are many many moments of the day where I am absorbed in the chaos and stress of life outside our home: finding childcare, attending to car issues, overseeing the fence project and I feel concerned that I do not document enough of the day to day around here. As I was playing with E today, talking to him, pushing against his little feet as he kicked forward, I found myself trying to remember H at this age. It's only vague recollections. A few instances stick out, but the routines don't so much. I'm not completely convinced that when I turn them all loose on the world that I will look back and bemoan the small details of habit, but I suppose it's worth recording now and then. Maybe it will help jog my memory or maybe it will give you a better glimpse into the mechanics of our day to day life. But here is a short summary of today's day for us.
Saturday Morning July 14, 2007
Midnight-Noon
H wakes up around 12:30 calling out for us. I stumble in to comfort him but tell him he needs to lay down. H complies but wakes up again at 1:15 screaming. He wraps his arm around my neck as I bend forward to hug him. It's such a strong and scared grip that I relent (I'm not sure that this is the correct verb as he generally ends up in our bed every other night) and bring him to bed with us.
E wakes up around 4:25. I didn't hear him crying but only realized that he was awake after I felt dad get up and leave the bed. Dad gets E and brings him into our bed. E is unhappy. He's having difficulty breathing and he wants a bottle. Dad goes downstairs and makes him one; he also makes one for B. In the meantime, B is up and Dad brings him in as well. A party. Babies are fed and brought back to bed. H is awake and laughing to himself. It's close to 5 at this point. Finally, H is brought back to his bed. Babies wake up again. E is comforted and B is removed to our room again. After ten minutes, B is brought back to our room and then deposited finally in his crib where he falls back to sleep. Miraculously everyone sleeps until 6:45.
E is awake as is B. They are babbling in their cribs. E starts to whimper as boredom sets in. H hears this from his room and chimes in, propelling us out of bed. Boys get up and slowly we get them dressed. E and B have diapers changed and outfits on. I chose onesies with shorts for both of them but I don't dress them alike. B wears a white plain onesie and khaki shorts. E is in a caterpillar onesie with white shorts. Occasionally, we do have them in the same outfit, but it's not a habit.
Dad gets H dressed. H doesn't get his diaper changed immediately because he wakes up dry in the mornings. Dad asks him "Have you peed yet?" And H declares a firm "No? No." H has yet to show any interest in the potty (I do not count throwing massive wads of toilet paper in as interest nor excessive flushing and subsequent giggling either). H does enjoy getting out of the bath and running over to pee on the floor. Always a nice touch at the end of the evening. I digress, Dad dressed H. He had on a blue and white stripped shirt and greenish khaki shorts.
We descend downstairs for breakfast. Dad offers H a waffle and H refuses. Instead, Dad offers H a muffin that Super Nanny made the other day. H accepts with a sniff. He wants juice (eh! eh! he says pointing to the cupboard where juice cups are stored having not master (or attempted as far as I can tell) the word for juice and/or drink. We are trying not to have a juice battle but I think it's being waged nonetheless. H loves juice (we recently realized that our apple juice is sweetened with concentrated apple juice in addition to the normal apple juice in there. No wonder he's always demanding the stuff, even under the moniker fructose it's still sugar. Anyway, we're trying to cut the juice with LOTS of water. H is retaliating by constantly demanding juice so his consumption of pure juice ounces probably has remained constant. Argh.
Then we pack everyone into the car to drop dad off at school. In goes the jogging stroller and the baby backpack as I plan to take the kids to the botanical gardens in the area. Dad has got an experiment that he's running for his research and it needs to happen this weekend since he has an abstract to turn in on Monday. We pile into the Pilot with three Roundabout cars seats squeezed along the middle row. It looks a little ridiculous- mainly because it is. We drive off (with me at the wheel) in the wrong direction. Dad politely inquires as to our route and then suggests maybe I should pick up a coffee. Good idea. We get coffee and a pumpkin muffin for H and a piece of lemon poppy seed bread for dad at our local coffee spot. We're now officially off. 20 minutes later we arrive, having discussed our wretched used car situation on the way over. It's a long story (not as long as this one I'm currently telling though...) nevertheless not worth rehashing. Suffice to say that we bought a used car that suddenly requires repairs costing half of what we paid for it. It's a saga a sad one at that.
We drop dad off. And zoom over to the gardens. Out comes the backpack and the stroller. E is released from his seat. B starts bellowing. H is put in the double jogging stroller next to E. H has remembered that there are ducks at this garden. He keeps repeating the word "Uck Uck Uck" over and over to help remind me why we are there. The jogging stroller rolls forward to come to a resting place under the bumper of the car right at the boys' chests. H laughs pushes against the bumper and rolling the stroller backward. He repeats. It makes me laugh. B is in the backpack as he is the lightest of all the boys. His little sausage legs wiggle with delight. This entire process takes me upwards of 10 minutes. But the boys are silent watching the world around them. I try to find a hat for B. We usually have any number of clothing articles floating around the car- including but not limited to a collection of hats. I can only come up with one. A safari number that I purchased for H's first summer. H and B have particularly small heads, so I tried jamming it on B's head. But (to my delight mixed with frustration) it was too small. I chucked it back in the car. Hauled out the sunblock and applied it to the boys. B has particularly sensitive skin and occasionally he becomes splotchy when the block is applied. But that didn't happen today. So a grand total of 15 minutes after we arrived, we are set to go. I strap B on and push the stroller down into the gardens. We meet a rotundra of roses. I try to talk out loud to the boys, while I have no expectation of comprehension on their part. I think it may be nice to hear me describing what I see. On the other hand, they may just count it as background noise in comparison to everything they encounter on our walk. We make it to the pond. I am terrified of H leaping into the water as his water inhibition is low. He follows the ducks around. Excited and pleased to see them. He even has several crumbs of pumpkin muffin on him from breakfast. I pick these off and offer them to the ducks. We approach the water from a shallower direction and observe the turtles (which H reports making a lip smacking sound) and we watch big cat fish dart up for the crumbs faster than the duck or turtles.
We then head across the gardens to play ball in the field. We walk through the garden's glory: a terraced area that has gorgeous flowers crowned by a wisteria entwined pergola at its peak at a goldfish pond at the base. H demands to "walk" (a recently acquired word). H is extracted from the stroller. We make camp at the field and I take B off my back. H climbs a stone wall along the side and plays in the drinking fountain. He doesn't seem interested in kicking the ball around. I call Mimi. "Oh mimi, care for a visit?" "Ah," says mimi, "I've been watching my door anxiously expecting you to walk through my door at any moment." Silly, Mimi, if we were going to show up unannounced we would have done it well before the current time of 9:45. Now that it's a civilized hour, we call before showing up.
Off we go to mimi's where we change diapers. Get parched H some juice and haul out a piece of bark from B's mouth that he encountered on his tour around the kitchen floor. The babies have a bottle. H strangely demands to have his diaper changed (this desire is communicated with action rather than words. It involves H lying down on the changing pad, wiggling around and pointing in the area of his diaper. This is a first for such a request. I comply and change his wet diaper.) E takes a considerable interest in the play phone. H never gave the thing a second glance, but E caught sight of it, and with cat-like reflexes snatches up the phone and puts the handset in his mouth. We don't stay too long as I decide that it will be easier to put boys down for a nap at our house. I take shifts bringing the kids out to the car. And finally, I load E in the car. As we are bidding Mimi adieu, she offers to watch the boys while dad and I go out to dinner or to have dinner at her house if we'd prefer.
Once home, I take B and E in at once. I plop them down on the living room. And drag H away from the car. H loves driving the parked car. I probably gently suggested that we have lunch (food always being a motivator for H). Once we are in, I try feeding the babies some of the new pasta baby food that I bought. Although they have sampled chicken and rice baby goop, they did not like it having a definite preference for fruits and even vegetables. Pasta dinner turned out to be no exception: B promptly gagged as the first dollop his his tongue. He gagged and his eyes teared and finally he threw up. I put away the pasta dinner after that and brought out pears and raspberries. That went down without any special effects. H had half a peanut butter sandwich which he promptly unfolded and poked at the peanut butter. I suspect Oakley finished off the rest (well okay honestly the majority). I ate a pb sandwich half too. I gave H milk which he drank (at least a little).
Up to bed for nap time, the babies got changed first. B had a sneaky dirty diaper in the sense that I had no idea of what he had accomplished until I stood there wiping it off. He grinned the whole thing looking entirely pleased with himself and exceedingly cute. I changed his outfit as he was covered in puke and some pear. E also was changed and I put him in the exact same onesie (as we have two). B was put in a one piece plaid suit (that sounds terrible but it is quite handsome on him). The babies in bed, I put H down with his blankies and a few books. He wanted a hug and started making whiny distressed sounds as a I closed the door.
I came downstairs to spend some time researching our car issue. H started calling for me. "Mama? mmmaaaaama!" I ignored this for several minutes as it reached an increasing crescendo ending in tears and wailing. Back upstairs, comforting H and settling him back down. It works as I come to expect it would. Usually he goes down, cries, gets comforted and then falls asleep.
I think I will save you all from the afternoon part of this day. Trust me it is just as full as the morning was. I realize after writing all this, that I am doing it more for me. So that when I pause and wonder about the inner workings of our day, I can refer to something. I try very hard to live consciously in the moment and not to take it for granted. To take in all the details of their lives and all the day to day realities of small children. They're guileless, carefree and full of wonderment; for me it is this that I try to relish, to remember and hold tight too. Unlike Anna, I don't think I will mourn the inability to remember the details but rather to suddenly realize that I missed a stage, an attitude or an accomplishment would be much harder to accept.
