A Conversation with My Elder-By-Two Minutes Daughter

E after nap this afternoon:

Here is a recent transcript of a conversation with E:

E (walking into my parent's kitchen where I am cleaning up after dinner, a concerned look on her face: Mama, I need to talk to you.

Me (internally): Now I feel that I've over done the whole "you can always tell mommy whenever you want to talk about anything" bit. I was trying to prepare them to be good communicators with us when they're teenagers. Please let her not already want to talk about boys. I have it on good authority her best friend in Sunday School is a boy named Noah...

(out loud): Okay. Do you want to talk here?

E: (sits down) Sit down on the floor, Mama.

Me: (sitting down facing her) What is on your mind, sweetpea? Have you been thinking about something?

E: Yes. Lawnmowers.

Me: You've been thinking about lawnmowers? (Asked, because, well, you know with two and half year olds it can be hard to tell, plus it's a good therapist technique to indicate that you've heard what someone said by repeating it back to them).

E: Yes.

Me: What have you been thinking about lawnmowers?

E: I don't like them.

Me: You don't like lawnmowers?

E: No. (Gets up).

Me: Did you want to tell me about anything else?

E: No, that's all. (leaves room).

Good talk. I want my children to be in touch with their emotions, but I might be getting more than I was bargaining for that way.


Rob wanted me to mention he feels I'm getting the easy end of the bargain, since for every two pages he writes he has to translate 6 or so pages of documents from the 15th century handwritten in Arabic. He would encourage you to show me no grace for not posting. He and the girls kindly consented to come out of the cave they had spent the better part of the post-afternoon nap time constructing and allowed me to photograph them.

My Dissertation Resolve (Unless I Get Lazy and Change My Mind)

As most of you know, Rob is entering the home stretch of writing his dissertation. Every evening, I encouragingly ask him, "how much did you write today?" and "make other remarks like "if you'd rather write on your dissertation than check 'the news' on ESPN.com or razorbackcentral.com, that would be fine with me." So in order to be less of a hypocrite (because if there is anything I value it's hassling others from a position of authenticity), I have decided that for every two pages Rob completes, I will post something on my blog. In seriousness, I want to be a better recorder of things that are going on here and I think that I would benefit from imitating Robert's incredible discipline at persisting in writing even when I feel like I'm too busy or that I have little to say. Because in real life having nothing to say doesn't really even slow me down from speaking. So in the next few days, I hope to post something in response to all of the e-mails some of you have sent asking me to discuss the octuplets in California, plus updates on the job situation here, E and L updates, and a discussion of why we love the Chris and Heathers and things we've learned from them. Feel free to suggest other things to you want to read about, because I can see this being a long spring if I really stick to this.
In the meantime, here's a fun L and E story. First, some background. As many of you know, I do all of the getting up in the middle of the night with the girls. This is not because Rob is a sexist. Although, if our friends in Atlanta would like to, they can begin, whenever Rob's name is mentioned, laughing and saying "Rob-he's such a sexist!" Here are some pictures I found this week of Rob being his sexist self- I like the one where he fell asleep reading to L from The Two Towers:

As I've mentioned before, I am a naturally gifted sleeper. I'm not trying to be boastful in saying that- I'm just stating a fact. Rob, however, is unable to fall back asleep once he is awakened. Given that he has graciously chosen to work so that I can stay at home with our children, it just seems fair that if anyone has to take one for the team in terms of sleep, it should be the person who does not have to be up at 6 to teach an 8:00 class. And, as I said, in most cases I can fall right back asleep. Now that the girls are two and a half, I'm only up proably twice a week. Last night, for example, I went in to help L at 4:00 am when she decided that she must have accidently gotten E's pillow by mistake and that she could best reslove the situation by sobbing heartbrokenly. (It was, as it turned out, a false alarm. She actually had her own pillow and, once she'd established that, we could all go back to sleep). Here's a picture of her from Christmas:


Other nights, when someone takes her hard, plastic octopus to bed, it is not uncommon for that person to roll on to that very octopus, possibly to avoid rolling onto the stuffed bear, seal, frog, rabbit and flamingo who, I am assuming, are contractually guaranteed a spot in the bed every evening. Naturally, my assistance is required to recover from the extremely unpleasant awakening that results. I don't feel that my words here have done the octopus justice. Here's a picture:
Just imagine how difficult it was for me to choke back my hysterical laughter the day that I witnessed E sweetly singing the lullaby we sing to them "Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep pwecious ock-o-pus," and them gently kissing each of his tentacles before wrapping him in a blanket and putting him down for a nap. Where was I going with this?
Ah, yes. So, I am the primary nighttime parent. On the weekends, though, Rob kindly allows me to sleep in as late as I would like on Saturday mornings. Which is why, in the story I am about to finally get around to telling, Robert was parenting alone. Saturday is pancake day, so he was in the kitchen making pancakes when E began to emit piercing shrieks. He rushed around the counter to see that L had E pinned against the floor and was shoving a nasal aspirator up E's nose, while E writhed around on the floor in protest. L, knowing she was probably in trouble, looked up and said, "Daddy, Eh-we's nose is stuffy. I am using the naso aspoator to clean it out." And then she smiled brightly and trotted off. Sweet sisters. Here's a picture of E, partly in her dress up clothes:

And here's a shot of the two together on the couch, attempting to avoid going to bed. Can you believe they once shared the bassinet of a single pack and play?

Orthodontically in Arkansas

Just a quick note to say that I love Arkansas as much as the next person. Okay, that's a lie- I do love it here, but if the next person is, say, for example, my spouse, I lack the passion one associates with one who was born here. Because everything here is named after the primary state university's football team and although this is a wonderful place to live and raise a family and all of that, I just think that's a little odd. There is (I promise) a chain of pizza places called Jim's Ra*zorback Pizza. Since I have issues with food prepared in gas stations I have never personally eaten any of that pizza, but it's a local dining option nonetheless. There are Razorback bookstores (Razo*rBooks), schools of Razorback hair design, radio stations with the call letters HOGZ. You can (and, again, I promise) buy platinum, gold, silver and even diamond studded razorback jewelry at local jewelry stores. What I'm saying is there are times I'll be driving and around and I start to laugh out loud thinking of what Rob suggested one afternoon as we drove past a brightly colored mural of a razorback frolicking on a football field painted on the side of a gas station/laundromat. He looked at it and said "It brings me a lot of joy to know that if a natural disaster like Pompeii ever happens here and Fayetteville is frozen under volcanic ash that archaeologists thousands of years in the future will say things like the 'people of this city worshiped the wild mountain pig.'" In reality? That's totally what they would say.
As I was coming home to SmallTown yesterday after a trip to Fayetteville, I was troubled when I noticed yet another thing that tried to cleverly combine the name razorback with the services they were offering. There is (once again, I am not in any way making this up) a website for an orthodontic practice called Razorbra*ces.com. I have two primary thoughts on this: 1.) the unfortunate orthodontists in this practice must have hired the marketing people who do Oklahoma's advertising and 2.) these marketing people must have never had braces to think that people who did at one time have braces are driving by their billboards without cringing a little. Excessive, that's what all this "razor-worship" is.

*I have just had one more thought- I typed this up without first checking to see that this practice is in no way associated with my cousin Adam, who is smart and funny as well as an orthodontist in Arkansas. If it is, please have Kim e-mail me, and I'll take this post down...
Edited to add- as near as I can tell from the website, my cousin is not in any way associated with this practice, so let's feel free to think there's a problem here.

The Hypochondria

I have this friend I met in college who is a little like me in his response to and worry about illness. To protect his privacy I will refer to him here as “Seth.” To further protect his privacy, for his birth date and social security number you will have to e-mail me in person. A few years ago, Seth was experiencing a few sort of weird symptoms and quickly sought medical care to rule out anything serious. His medical professionals did a little testing and called him a few days later to inform him that it appeared that he had multiple sclerosis. Naturally, Seth and his wife, who I will call ”Jenni” were naturally upset and immediately sat down to try and process the fact that Seth had just been diagnosed with a chronic, progressive and, most often, ultimately debilitating condition. They had been thinking about having their first child, but suddenly, all of their plans were on hold. A few minutes later the phone rang- it was the doctor’s office saying “Ooops! We inadvertently switched your test results with someone else’s. Good news! You don’t have MS!” Of course, Seth and Jenni were relieved, but it took a few weeks before Seth was back to his old self. It would not surprise me to hear that Seth has some sort of post-traumatic stress reaction to these events, even today. So whenever you see him breathing into a paper bag in public, you should just assume that he is re-experiencing those events and not become alarmed. I tell that story to illustrate the risks of hypochondria, as well as the benefits- you can’t be treated for an illness you don’t have UNLESS you first see someone to misdiagnose that illness in the first place.

As I have mentioned before, my family of origin is all about seeking immediate medical care. And, as I’ve mentioned before, we have a good reason for this and it’s not because my parents are crazy. In reality, I am not a hypochondriac. I’m in reasonably good health and my primary illness are colds and allergy related things. But my family has a fun tradition of calling our various viruses and injuries something more serious. For example, it sounds much less dramatic to say “I have a headache” than “I think that I have an aneurysm rupturing right above my left eye. Be sure to tell them that at the ER after I pass out.” Why say “I have a low grade fever” when “I have horrible chills. I think I have malaria” sounds even better? I forget that not everyone who knows me has known me since the dawn of time and, consequently, might not be familiar with this habit. My friend Gwen, the P.A. was a little startled, I think, when I called her to let her know that I thought my hacking cough was probably black lung. She was quiet for a minute and said in a really interested voice “I didn’t know you had ever worked in a coal mine. Tell me more about that.”

Just about everyone in my immediate family (okay, mostly Erin and I) will call all of the other members no matter where they are, work, church, a wedding, to let them know if we feel ill or have some sort of pain that we wish we did not. It took awhile for Rob and Elliot to begin to participate in this, but I am pleased to report that in the not so distant past Rob was sitting on the couch after dinner and said “The second toe on my left foot is numb. I’d like for us to call and tell Erin about it.” Another fun family tradition is my mom’s symptom book, which she’s had since I was in high school- you can look up your symptoms and it gives you a graphic description of what might (or might not) be your disease. It was through the help of this book that I learned last winter that an enlarged lymph node in my leg was either an infection in my leg or foot OR prostate cancer. You’ll be pleased to know that it was the former and I seem to have recovered fully. Rob especially roll his eyes when any one of us wants to look up something in the symptoms book, not that he tends to be a lot more supportive when I try to google the possible options. We’ll see who’s laughing when he assumes that a simple rash he’s got on his arm is actually a flesh-eating virus. Oh- well, probably at that point no one will be laughing, because I hear that’s really contagious. Anyway, we were visiting my parents recently and when Rob noted the symptom book had been moved out into the open as part of the décor, we had to take a picture. A lot of people use books this way as a way of being intellectually pretentious, but I appreciate that my parents are not trying to pretend that they sit around reading Thomas Aquinas in the original Latin or whatever- they're just being true to who they are, while having the Symptom book within easy reach:

It seems that our daughters have been observing all of this behavior and that became apparent a few weeks ago. They had just finished their bath and I was putting on their lotion in the living room when E dramatically threw the back of her hand onto her forehead and announced “Eh-wee has a feef-er.” I checked her forehead and stomach and she felt normal to me. So I asked, “You have a fever?”

“Yes. Eh-wee has a feef-er and needs med-sin,” she replied. I suddenly saw where this was going.

“What medicine?”

“The o-wange mo-twin.” E and L LOVE the orange motrin. It’s a small step from faking a fever to get Equate brand ibuprofen to claiming that one’s stomach pain is most likely their spleen rupturing. I wonder if this is really all learned behavior or if it’s dome sort of genetic disorder. It’s probably the latter. I’ll let you know what the geneticist says about it.

More and better pictures are coming, but in the meantime,here are some pictures of the girls at the pumpkin patch and trick or treating (as butterflies):

L. at the pumpkin patch:

E picking out a tiny pumpkin:


L thinking through her candy options:

The girls with Grammy:
E with the look she had on her face the whole time she was very seriously trick or treating:

Also: if I haven't personally harassed you into watching this clip yet and you are involved with a man who is sometimes sick, please do so now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz6DktXFvg4

Long Time, No Blog.

Another way that Tiger Woods and I are not alike is that he probably updates his blog on a more regular basis, because he is not a bad person. But tonight I received what can only be described as a threatening e-mail from a reader, and as I wish to remain her friend, I am posting, even before my carefully crafted, novel-length excuse for why I have not updated is not yet complete. Although I wish to state for the record that I feel that friendships should not be conditional.

Everyone said that having twins would be hard at first (and they certainly weren’t wrong), but that eventually having two children exactly the same age would be easier than having two children close in age. The constant threat of two people having a dramatic public meltdown simultaneously is always there, which once you’ve experienced you totally understand why God designed it so most families have one toddler at a time, but in a lot of ways it seems like I’m dealing with easier things than my friends who have children spaced more than two minutes apart. It’s not like when I’m reading a book one of them gets annoyed because she feels Elmo is for babies or that one of them needs three naps a day while I’m struggling to get the other to take one. Plus, I get to have a lot of moments where I have to hold back my hysterical laughter because of some of the things they come up with that I am forced to come up with a serious parental looking response to. For example, Monday I was making dinner while L and E ran around playing what I call “RUN, RUN!” because of the dramatic shouts of “RUN! RUN!” they make while they run around with the excess energy that they get from the methamphetamines I am assuming that they have somehow managed to acquire. Suddenly, the happy shrieking turned into agonized wailing from the living room. L was crying her “I’m really hurt cry,” while E’s sounded more like her “I’m freaked out by something” cry (kind of an “Enhhh! Enhhh!). Because L was hurt, I made it to the living room amazingly quickly for a non-athlete. L was sitting on the floor by the couch holding her head and weeping; E was sitting on the floor shaking her hands and looking panicky. L’s need was greater at the moment so I pulled her into my lap and asked her what happened. “Eh-wee pull Lah-wen’s hair and Lah-wen feels sad,” she choked out between sobs. So I turned to E and asked, “Why are you crying? Did L do something to you, too?” And she said “No, Momma! Eh-wee has Lah-wen’s hair on her fingers. Want it off.” And looking more closely, she did indeed have a handful on L’s hair tangled around her fingers. She spent a few minutes in time out and then we had the talk about how if it skeeves you out to have hair on your hands, you really just shouldn’t pull hair. Because, frankly, if you have issues with, for example, blood, you won’t receive a lot of compassion when you complain about freaked out you get when you stab someone and they get his or her blood on you. It’s a hard lesson, but one I’m glad their learning now, rather than later.

Speaking of hair, here are some pictures of E and L’s first real haircut. (Please bear in mind that I like longish hair on girls- just the ends need some evening up. I am particularly sensitive about this because I rarely look at pictures of myself when I was small and think “Man, I wish my parents had cut my hair shorter).

E and Colby:

L and Colby:

How Tiger Woods and I Are Not Alike

There are many ways that Tiger Woods and I are different. In addition to the obvious things like his being male and playing a lot of golf, I mean. After his US Open win last week, everyone kept talking about how he is an amazing sportsman, perhaps the greatest golfer ever, a spectacular athlete that plays through the pain and so on. It’s quite probable that he is all of those things. But I was struck more by how differently Tiger and I would have handled the same situation. Because, please believe me when I say that the minute I began to experience the pain of a torn ACL, I would not have gone on ahead and an played a total of 54 more holes of golf and walked that extra fifteen miles. Go ahead and call me a lazy, non-athletic, namby-pamby pouty pants in the comments if you wish. Please don’t get me started on the things I would not have done upon beginning to feel those first twinges of a tibial stress fracture. Too late: I would have withdrawn from the US Open before you could say “swing a metal stick at a ball.”

Instead, when I tore my ACL, I would have followed my usual “fairly significant physical injury” protocol. I would have thrown up. Next, I would have proceeded to my couch where I would have phoned my two-part orthopedic medical care team- my father-in-law, who fortunately for me, was thinking ahead to having a daughter-in-law with knee problems when he was 18 and decided that he wished to become a physician specializing in bones. And then my sister, Erin, a physical therapist, who will tell me that no matter how much better heat feels on my injury that I must instead ice it. Like Mr. Woods, there would be many decisions I would need to make over the next few days; however, none of mine would involve my continuing in a major. Could my parents or in-laws watch the girls while I received appropriate medical treatment? How could I convince E and L that just because they don’t like Mommy’s knee brace that they should not hit it as hard as possible with a book (this actually happened during the “knee incident of December 2007")? Should I take the narcotic pain medication left over from my c-section? (It was good medication. I probably would). I would need to assess with Rob how much he has left to write on the dissertation and try and make a convincing case for our getting cable television, since, obviously, I would need to lie around so much. But I really wouldn’t consider continuing my theoretically planned, twice weekly five mile walks with my friend Julia or any other of my normal workouts. All of which to say- I was duly impressed by Tiger Woods, let’s call it “endurance,” but, frankly, a little perplexed. I mean, if he had never won a major tournament and it was his big chance, if he needed the money to support his family, or if the other golfers had been making fun of him for his game or something- but really- just to drive home that he is the golfer who has dominated the sport since he first started golfing professionally at age 5? I just don’t get it.

I know I will probably get a little ugliness here from people like Phil, who are passionately committed to sports of any kind, whether they personally like those sports or not, you know, the sports-for-ESPNs sake sort of people. (Much as I have here at home, from Rob, who just looks at me incredulously and says something like “and that is why you are a therapist and do not play for the PGA)” One of my more memorable community group dinners in Atlanta was a discussion of how collegiate sports are money makers for universities (Rob and Phil’s position), as well as being fascinating in their own right, especially Razorback and Gamecock sporting events-have I mentioned Rob being a Hog’s fan here before? My position (and the fact that Rhianna and Christy are scratching there heads attempting to remember this at all is emblematic of how they totally didn’t come to my aid in this discussion) is that it doesn’t seem fair to give scholarships to athletes at an academic institution when there might be people who would benefit from a scholarship to study. And it seems suspect that as much money is spent on sports complexes, arenas, and all of that as appears to be spent on all of the actual academic workings of the Division I schools. Please understand that 1.) I was only arguing this not because I believed it, but because I had just had an agonizing night the night before with Rob sighing a lot while I was trying to sleep because someone who had committed to play for Arkansas had changed his (presumably) mind about playing football and was probably going someplace like Alabama, which is what would frustrate Rob the most, I think (in fairness to Rob, he only laid awake at night worrying about this BEFORE we had children. Now he is too tired.) and 2.) I have seem the ads before every major college football game that I have seen over the past 10 years that there are something like 600 million NCAA athletes and 590 million of them will be going pro in something else. Sometimes it’s just satisfying to see committed fans of college athletics look stunned at the lack of comprehension of the importance of football/basketball/golf.

And I could discuss golf as a professional sport here also. Again, I completely get that you must, for the most part, be able to walk a fair distance and move your arms in a swinging motion and that not everyone is able to do this, I just feel like it’s not the most “athletic” of all of the sporting events. I’m just saying that, say, for example, soccer players, probably wouldn’t play as well if they were overweight or couldn’t run consistently for 45 minutes. Whereas you don’t look at the guys on the PGA tour (I’m generalizing- in the interest of full disclosure I only know a few of the major players and did not pull up pictures and information about the physical fitness of any of these people). But John Daly and Phil Mickelson aren’t people that you look at and think “Man, I wish I was in as good a shape as that guy.” Although, in my post baby having days, I am in no way suggesting that I am in better shape than they are. So while I’m not saying my official position is that golf is not a sport, I am saying that we should probably sit down and discuss this issue while PGA players and college basketball players run sprints and just see. If all of this enrages you, please look at these calming pictures of my children:

L. having a swing in our backyard one Sunday:

E. having a pre-church camel ride last weekend:

A Quick (I Know! Atypical!) Update

When we were in my hometown a few weeks ago, Rob and I took the girls out to the Rose Garden in a local park. We have a lot of happy memories there and the girls are enjoying making dramatic sniffing sounds every time they see a flower, whether in real life or in a book, so it seemed like the sort of place where they would have a good time. E was more amenable to the picture taking that day, so I've included a few more of her here; being busy climbing up and down stairs without parental support is difficult work and L could not be bothered to sit still for long periods of time required for photography.
I still have pictures I've been meaning to post from their second birthday party, so let's hope I'm able to get those up before they turn three.

This is a sweet picture of E hugging L. Sometimes they are kind to each other like this. Which makes up for the time they are rolling around the living room floor attempting to bite on another like crazed wolverines. They must have learned that from Rob. But in our family, love DOES mean having to say you're sorry and give hugs when you have injured someone else, whether on purpose or accidentally:

L or (Lah-When as she is sometimes called) is in the blue and E (or Elh-We)is in the melon.