Kids Can Handle Death

Well, as my Facebook friends know, we had to put our cat to sleep today. I won't bore you with the reasons and details - it's always sad and always hard to make this decision. But I did want to note here that we were completely up front with Sam about the whole thing, from the decision-making process to the meaning of death. Sam even went to the vet with Adam for the procedure. She had intended to watch, but at the last minute, decided she didn't want to see him actually die. She saw the first injection that relaxed him, then left the room for the fatal injection. Then she came back in after he was dead and petted him a little bit. She saw that he was not moving and that his eyes were still open.

I'm really glad we allowed her to choose what she would experience. If she hadn't gone to the vet at all, I don't think it would have been as real for her. And I was gratified that she was so independent in deciding what she wanted to see and what she didn't. I asked her if she felt sad but she said that she was really just curious about it.

I was really worried about how she would take this. She loved that cat. She tormented him constantly, but that was just the form of her love. She spent much more time with Jinx that Adam or I did. But the thing is, she doesn't seem too bothered by his death at all. I'm sure it will sink in a bit more as days go by and he isn't here anymore. But she hasn't shed a tear or even expressed any sadness. The worst thing for her seems to be seeing me cry. (I'm a big baby right now because of the hormones.) And one of the first things she said when she got home from the vet was "Mommy, now that Jinxie died, I hope that we can get a new cat. And when Toby dies, I hope we can get a new dog." I don't know if I should worry at her callousness, or if I should respect her value-focus.

Anyway, we had lots of good talks in the past week about death, expressing emotions, respect for life, kindness to living creatures, the meaning of pets, and how important it is not to allow the investment in your home be destroyed by the smell of cat urine.

Jokes aside, it was a sad day. Goodbye, Jinx.

Alone Time

This afternoon, Adam and our babysitter took over so I could get out of the house on my own. It was the best three hours I've had in a long time. I:

• went shopping at Bed, Bath, and Beyond and found lots of great accessories for our new master bathroom


• got the best massage of my entire life


• bought a roasted chicken for dinner, on sale for five bucks


• put gas in the car


• enjoyed the fall colors on a beautiful drive through the winding roads near our house


• caught "Cum on Feel the Noise," "Safety Dance," and "Dance the Night Away" on the radio and sung them all as loudly and as badly as I wanted to

Bliss.

 

We Have Contact

Well, things are crazy right now, but I do have to note this most important milestone yet: Leo and Zoe are aware of each other now! They interacted today. They were lying on their playmat and they were looking at each other and cooing and smiling and even reaching out for each other.  Awesome!

We haven't taken any 2 month photos yet. It's probably too late now and we'll have to try for 3 months.

Things have just been overwhelming. Adam's parents came to visit and that was good but exhausting. Then there was the Fall Fair at Sam's school which was also good but exhausting - our first trip out with all 3 kids and no help from grandparents. Then Adam went on his first business trip. (I hired someone to stay overnight with me both nights but it was still a horrible experience.) Then there was Sammy's Halloween party. It was her first real big kid party with about 16 guests (plus maybe 10 adult chaperons, all in our tiny house) and tons of decorations and activities. Total chaos. Kids loved it. Adam handled almost all of it (I've delegated the party thing to him and he's very good at it) but that still meant there was less Adam to go around for other duties for a few days. Then there was Halloween itself. We wanted to bring L&Z along in the carriers, but it was too cold so Adam took Sam and I stayed home distributing milk to babies and candy to children. Now both Sam and Adam have infections of various sorts and Leo and Zoe both went through their first colds. I thought I had a little cold as well but now I'm thinking it's just massive sleep deprivation. I'm not functioning well at all right now.

Italy, Part 4 – Road Trip

Well, five months later, I’m finally continuing my travel journal chronicling our Italy trip. (I've been a little bit busy.) Be sure to read the first three installments, or re-read them just to get back into the mood. I did!

The middle leg of our Italy vacation was the road trip. We were driving from Rome to Florence which is only a three hour drive, but we decided to take it slow and explore for a couple of days along the way.

First, we had to get our rental car. I was nervous about this part, but it ended up being very easy. We got a car seat for Sam, and everything worked in a similar way as it does in the U.S. Adam was the designated driver, but we both had been observing the traffic in Rome and it didn’t seem to be as bad as some had made it out to be. Still, there was a lot to get used to. Adam had studied all the road signs so even when we couldn’t read the Italian, we usually knew what was going on, and we got good directions from the people at the rental place. It helps that Italian is a Romance language so we could decipher some of the more unusual signs. (Otherwise, I’m not sure would have ever escaped the endless loop our GPS took us through the following day, until we noticed the sign saying, “Deviazione.” It made me feel pretty smart to figure that one out. I could only imagine what it would be like to drive in China.)  We got out of the city and onto the highway with no problems at all. Then we hit the Autostrade and headed north. I thought the drivers were very good, but it was hard to get used to the way they ignored the lane markers and just weaved around. I think Adam actually kind of liked that. He’s not an uptight Type-A personality like I am. He seemed right at home on the road in Italy.

There wasn’t too much to see in this area of the country. We did see a cool electric train just outside of Rome. The countryside was hilly and pleasant, but nothing stunning. By the time we got out of the city, it was time to eat, so we stopped at an Autogrille, which is kind of like a roadside diner. Here, we started having our first real problems dealing with being in a foreign country. First, we could not figure out how and where to park. The signs were unclear and we ended up in a truck parking lot, and could not figure out how to get back to the restaurant. Adam ended up having to drive the wrong way on a one-way traffic lane, which scared the crap out of me, but there really was no other way to correct our mistake!

Inside the restaurant, we had our first experience with the stupid Italian system of going to one counter to pick out your food, then another counter to place your order and pay, and then back to the first counter to pick up your food. It probably took us a half hour just to figure that out, even though Rick Steves had told us all about it. Also, once outside Rome, not everyone spoke English any more. There was very little help available, and we were all hungry and frustrated. The food choices were very limited, too. Again, way too much bread and cheese and almost no meat. I was hugely disappointed because I had been told that these places had much better food than you would expect. Maybe it was good bread, but that didn’t do anything for me.

The rest of the drive was very nice. We were entering Italy’s region of Umbria, which is pretty much just east of Tuscany, home of Florence. We passed through Perugia, the capital of Umbria, and the town where a good friend of ours grew up. We had wanted to stop there, but it was actually quite a big place and we didn’t see how we could have navigated around it. We had also planned on taking smaller roads, but we decided to head straight to our hotel just north of Perugia to get settled, and then to explore from there.

The countryside in Umbria is gorgeous. Our friend had told us that the road to our hotel would be beautiful, but we were still in awe. It was breathtaking! We climbed up steep switchbacks and I oooed and ahhhed as poor Adam had to focus entirely on driving. Sam slept the entire time and missed it all.

Our hotel was at the top of the mountain, and man, did I pick a good one! It was a renovated 11th Century castle and it was just as gorgeous as it looks on its web site.

This was our room:

And here are some of our own pictures:

The nearby town that we really wanted to see was Gubbio, but before we headed out, we explored the castle grounds. We met two cats (Sam was thrilled!), named Montefeltro and Cunegonda. I never found out if Cunegonda was named after anyone famous, but Montefeltro was the name of a duke of Urbino from the 15th Century, who was born at this castle. The hostess told us that we would see his portrait when we visited Florence, in the Uffizi Gallery, which we later did.

We also met an ancient Italian lady who lived in a very small house on the grounds of the castle. We tried to talk to her and it was hard to communicate, but we enjoyed it because she was such a stereotype – a small, wrinkled, friendly old woman, who wanted to chat and was enamored of Sam. I wish we had gotten a photograph of her.

We headed down the north side of the mountain road to get to Gubbio. I picked Gubbio because my friend told me that there was a funicular there, which would take us up a mountain to the oldest part of the town, and the pictures of the place on the web looked incredible. The hostess at the castle told us that the main road would take us straight into town and that we couldn’t miss the parking lot, where we’d have to get out and walk. But we ended up driving around the outskirts of Gubbio for about a half hour before we figured out what to do. Again, the Italians and their “directions.” Ugh.

But eventually, we did park and we walked through the extremely hilly streets towards the funicular. Sam did not want to walk so Adam had to carry her. We were rushed because we wanted to get back to the castle before dark. The driveway to reach the hotel was so steep and treacherous that Adam didn’t feel he would be able to navigate it after dark! We were tired, rushed, and frazzled, but Gubbio was our first real experience of a medieval town.  It’s difficult to capture what it feels like to walk through those narrow streets, and photos only show so much. We didn’t even try to take any, but here is someone else’s that captures a bit of the feel of it.

Unfortunately, Sam was too scared to ride the funicular. We couldn’t blame her – it was just a tiny cage on a rope that went up an incredibly steep hill.

So Adam and I took turns riding up and down, but we never got to explore the part of the city on top of the hill, which is supposed to be amazing. I was satisfied just with the funicular ride. As you go up the hill, you can see the old walls of the city, half crumbled, but with their purpose still clear. On an adjacent hillside is an impressive but crumbling castle, which I later found out is inhabited by nuns. The view of the mountains was incredible. Adam had the sense to take a couple of photos before the camera’s memory card filled up, but we wish we had taken many more.

Walking back down through the streets of Gubbio, we bought some fresh berries from a market for a snack instead of our usual gelato. That was a treat. Then we came across a miniature carousel and Sam had a ride. Once again – no planning necessary!

Back at our castle hotel, Adam sat outside and smoked a cigar while Montefeltro sat in his lap. Then we had our best meal yet at the hotel restaurant: scallops, duck, chicken curry, and pasta with meat sauce for Sam. We also had Montefeltro wine and tiramisu for dessert. Our waitress, Isabella, could speak only a bit of English, but she loved Sammy and the service was excellent. After dinner Isabella cut slices of prosciutto right off a cured, whole pig sitting in the corner. I have to admit, I was a little bit afraid to eat it, but I did.

Tuesday morning we had to leave for our next destination: Volterra. We were all a bit disappointed that our stay at the castle was so short. I didn’t have a plan for the day in mind, and Volterra was only an hour or so drive away, but a quick look at a map and chat with the hostess convinced us to head for Lake Trasimeno, a huge lake just west of Perugia.

The lake was gorgeous. We were really hoping to take a boat ride, and we knew there was a ferry in the small town just north of the lake, whose name I can’t recall. Unfortunately, it was more of a commuter ferry and didn’t run often enough for us to stick around. What we did was have lunch at a lovely restaurant right on the lake. Sam took photos.

Another fabulous meal of salmon tartar, shrimp curry ravioli, pasta with lake perch, veal, salad, and pasta with meat sauce (again) for Sam. I noticed that this meal had a similar flavor as the one from the night before, and I identified the common element as the salt, which seemed different than the salt I am used to. I asked the waitress about it and she said it was “mountain salt,”whatever that meant. She said that it could be purchased at any store. I took a look at the bottle but didn’t take a photo, and that was a mistake. Nobody, including my friend who grew up in Perugia, seems to know about any kind of special salt used in Umbria or what the mountain salt really was. Oh well, it was delicious. The food in Umbria was my favorite of the whole trip.

Our next stop was Sienna, a very popular destination in Italy. On our way, we crossed from Umbria into Tuscany. The countryside was slowly changing. Both regions are mountainous, or at least hilly, but Umbria is much more rugged, whereas Tuscany is filled with gently rolling hills. At this point, I was more impressed with Umbria.

Sienna was another medieval town, similar to Gubbio. We didn’t have much of an agenda there, except to walk through it a bit and see the Duomo. Rick Steves describes the Duomo perfectly: “The interior is a Renaissance riot of striped columns, intricate marble inlays, Michelangelo statues, and Bernini sculptures.” He also says it is “heaped with statues” and “plastered with frescoes.” Getting the idea? It’s pretty gaudy. In fact, it’s ugly. However, here, more than anywhere else, I appreciated the whole purpose of the cathedral: to impress, to awe, to astound, and maybe to inspire but maybe to diminish all else by contrast. Even in this day and age, to walk through those narrow, mean streets, and to come upon this wide-open square with its immense, intricate structure is to have your breath taken away.  That is, unless you are four years old. I love this video of Sam chasing pigeons with the Duomo in the background. I wonder if 13th Century children had the same (non) reaction.

In Sienna, we also found a little playground, where I took this photo of Adam pushing Sam on a swing, and she is beyond horizontal. It has nothing to do with Italy, but it’s one of my favorite photos of all time!

On our way from Sienna to Volterra, we had the most beautiful drive of the trip. The Tuscan hills are not overrated. We were lucky enough to climb through those hills at sunset. It was just gorgeous.  We arrived in Volterra at night and didn’t have the time or energy to do anything but grab a quick dinner and go to sleep. This time I picked a really dreary hotel and we had a hard time finding a place to eat and so the night was a bust. We did get adventurous and ordered wild boar and hare ragu for dinner (which Sam tried too), but it wasn’t very good. The restaurant was filled with a huge group of noisy teenage girls. There were a couple of adults in attendance so it seemed like a school group or something. Later I found out about Volterra’s connection to the Twilight books, and I wondered if that’s why the giggling group was there.

The next morning we only had time for a quick walk before we had to head out for Florence, so all I can say about Volterra is that it seemed to be the most dramatic of the small towns we visited. It’s set up high in the hills and the streets are just a little bit narrower and a little bit steeper than the others I’d seen.

The views from the city are incredible.

When you arrive you feel like you are entering a fortress, which of course, it essentially was. The streets we walked were filled with beautiful shops and I bought a pair of earrings - my only souvenir from the trip. Rick Steves claims Volterra is less touristy than the other small Tuscan towns. It’s his favorite. I was very disappointed that we weren’t able to spend more time there.

The road trip was stressful and frustrating at times. We didn’t do or see nearly as much as I had anticipated. By the time we left for Florence we were exhausted. But still, the experiences we had did give us a feel for what lies outside of the major cities of Italy. If you’re planning a trip to one of those cities, make time to take at least a day trip to one of the medieval towns. It’s hard to believe that these places still exist. It’s like another world.

I’ll wrap up my journal in the next installment: Florence.

The Twins Update - 2 Months Old

Wow, the second month went much faster than the first! That whole NICU experience slowed time down to a crawl, but now that we're settled in, time is flying by. We'll take the 2-month photos soon so I'll tide you over with these:





Mostly, life with twins has continued to be good. However, things have gotten more difficult in the past couple of weeks. Leo's reflux got worse again. We've upped his dose of Zantac and we'll see how it goes. Zoe has started spitting up more, which is not really that big of a deal, but it caused a problem the other night. She had spit up through her nose a couple of times and the milk and mucus got dried up in there and caused her to have trouble breathing. We ended up calling our pediatrician's nurse line around midnight. (There is nothing more important in choosing a pediatrician than the availability of 24 hour advice and weekend appointments. I don't care how good the doctor is.) Anyway, we just had to put some saline drops in her nose, but it made for a terrible night. And we've been having company and visitors over, which is wonderful, but ends up throwing us off our rhythm and putting me behind on jobs like laundry and paying bills. I think that no matter how boring the baby duties are, I need to limit my outings and visits so that I can maintain that discipline I wrote about earlier. Keeping the routine is the only thing that allows me to sleep, shower, and eat well enough so that I can feel like a human being.

Speaking of outings, I finally got Leo and Zoe out for a walk in the stroller last week. We've had fabulous weather lately and I've been wanting to take advantage of it, but for a long time I just didn't feel ready to go through all that hassle. But I finally took the plunge and we all enjoyed the walk. My Baby Jogger stroller was well-worth the money.

On Friday I took Zoe and Leo to the doctor (by myself!) for their 2-month checkup. Zoe is 8 pounds and Leo is 9 pounds 8 ounces. They are on the growth chart now. For weight, Zoe is 2% and Leo is 7%. That sounds terrible, but that is compared to all two-month-olds, including full-term babies. Their adjusted age is just 3 weeks, and they are both around 50th percentile on the adjusted chart. They are growing exactly as they should be. Leo has one health issue besides the reflux which I'll keep private, but which is not a big deal.  And Zoe has something which will resolve itself but is pretty funny right now. As Adam wrote on Facebook:

Yesterday, Zoe's pediatrician told us that her narrow, square-shaped head is a preemie condition the doctors and nurses call, "toaster head." Jeez, just our luck that one of our twins is a cylon!

We finally have the doctor's permission to let them sleep longer at night. We had been doing it anyway, but now we'll start to try to actively encourage longer stretches of sleep. Cluster feeding them at night seems to help a lot. They can go about 5 or 6 hours between feedings now, but that doesn't happen consistently. We're limited by the lowest common denominator - the baby who gets hungry first sets the schedule. And there's always someone who is going through a growth spurt or not feeling well or whatever. It really keeps us on our toes.

Leo is just a monster - we can practically see him growing. And he feels so solid. I guess it's a boy thing, because he feels about twice as heavy as Zoe. She feels delicate and almost hollow compared to him, but she's really not that much smaller. In fact, in length she's only half an inch smaller. But everything about her is dainty - her hands, her eyelids, even her tiny little butt. Leo is a football player, a bruiser, a solid mass of muscle, in short: a boy. And his butt is huge! It's so wonderful to have a boy and girl at the same time; I love seeing the differences between them.

And are they different! They are becoming more and more different as they get older. When they were born, they looked somewhat similar. There is even one photo from the NICU which we can't identify as of Leo or Zoe. But now it seems like they got exactly the opposite genes from each side. Leo seems to have Adam's eyes but The Italian's face shape. Zoe has Adam's face shape but The Italian's eyes. Their noses are different, their ears are different, their coloring is different, their body-shapes are different (even given the boy-girl differences), and their personalities are different. Overall, I think Zoe got more from The Italian and Leo got more from Adam. And maybe this is why I had trouble bonding with her early on, more so than because of the breastfeeding. From the start, she's just been more alien to me. But now, I'm in love with her alien-ness. She is a mystery to me and I can't wait to find out what she'll be like when she is older. Of course, Leo is a mystery too, but he is so much more like Sammy that it feels familiar. Then again, he's a boy, and that makes him exciting and new, too.

I can't imagine any more perfect set of children than the three that we have. And of course, that is how every parent feels. Because once they arrive, they are yours and they are perfect and you can't imagine life without them. Not just life without children, but life without your particular children.

Video: Zoe and Sammy

Zoe's first smile was for Sammy. Isn't that the sweetest thing ever? And she is learning to use her hands, too! Unbearably cute and sweet:

 


 

egg donor

So far, I have no qualms at all about having used the egg donor. It's not that I feel the same about Zoe and Leo as I would have about children with my own genes. There are differences. I can't look at them and say to Adam, "We made them." Even though we did make them in an even more deliberate way than we made Sam, I don't feel that sense of having created them out of nothing that I have with her. That's a real loss. I can face that. But that mystery that I mentioned - that is a positive. It's hard to describe, but it's just kind of exciting. I think I just like the idea of having three very different children, and having to learn how to relate to each of them. I also know that the love that I feel for them comes from all the things that are more important than genes: our choice to make them, their uniqueness, and the relationships that we are forging. Then I look back at Samantha and I know much more clearly what part of my love for her comes from her being a mini-me. It definitely is part of what I feel for her, and since she'll always be my only child in that way, it is precious to me. But I'm pleased to know that most of my feelings for her do indeed come from everything else: how we've raised her, her own personality and choices, and all the shared experiences we have as a family.

So, the egg-donation is really a non-issue. Despite what I've just said, I hardly ever think about it. Leo and Zoe are my children, and Adam's children, 100%. What is more interesting is how my feelings for Samantha have changed and how I see all of them differently now that we have more than one. That is an adjustment that I'm still working on. And I'll have to write about it some other time.