13 months, one day, and still breastfeeding twins!

...I say not because it seems like a big deal anymore, but more as an experiment with Google...will I show up in sombody's search? Will a real live person one day leave a comment? (Mom, you count. Chris, so do you. And I heard you're out there, Jessica.)

I want to post the breastfeeding struggle I posted to the Breastfeeding Forum at twinstuff.com. I want to edit it first; in the meantime, here's a link. Which will probably have to do for quite a while seeing how sparse free time is around here. I don't think my laptop will be sitting near my old nursing chair for much longer, either, as the girls' hands get
busier and faster. So my "review" of Hold On to Your Kids may have to be summed up as: it affected me. Actually, it really affected me--made me cry and freak out and feel that I did my girls serious damage by not being able to breastfeed them for the first two months. I had to put them in car seats to bottle feed them at the beginning, sometimes propping the bottles. I didn't know what I was doing; there were two babies and just one sleep-deprived me. I was trying as hard as I could; I was so depressed; I wished I'd asked for more help. I know I'm too hard on myself; still, I really want to be perfect for these girls.

And I have improved myself in a lot of ways, I think. I eat more healthily than I ever have in my life. I think I'm more organized (thought I see that I get more flustered when I'm without a back-up plan when something doesn't work out). The house is cleaner. I spend less money on stupid things. (Really!) I'm more concerned about recycling (though I was pretty good before), and definitely more conscious about reducing waste and cutting down on using chemicals (I'm almost done with a huge bag of Splenda--then, no more). Using disposables is a conundrum. I'd rather use cloth, but it seems too expensive and overwhelming to start now. My original research showed that it was a draw enviromentally, but perhaps that isn't accurate. (Here's a link that lukewarmly supports the it's-a-draw theory.)

Somehow, I think the fact that Chris got his first professional haircut since I've known him is related to the same urge to become a better parent by becoming a better person--a byproduct of attentive parenting that Hold On to Your Kids also mentioned. I know it's ostensibly for Wednesday, but Wednesday is for a whole chain of things that go into creating a better life for these kids. And us. So maybe that's what I was really so upset about by reading HOTYK; I feel we're so isolated in Boston; maybe Rhode Island will be closer to the attachment village HOTYK advocates. Mom and Merce are there; Chris' dad is nearby. There will probably be more sahms (who can afford to stay at home in Boston?).... It's a dream; maybe we can make it real.

The above picture of Lena is so sweet, no? I'm using it totemically to keep the girls asleep. So far, it's working. They went down at 6.45. (Well, Nico was kinda up until 7.30.) Then I took a bath and put away the spaghetti sauce. They both cried out; I patted them on their backs instead of nursing...and I just jinxed myself.

So my sweet, still-nowhere-near-sleeping-through-the-night babes' 13 months activties:

• Nico can throw a ball!
• Lena can sign bunny rabbit! (She was also doing hungry and butterfly when I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar. She points on the page like I point at the words when we're reading. Wow.)
  
• Nico is pointing (has been for a week or two).
• They are both getting better at using a fork.
• They love being naked! Nico will start pulling off her clothes, then Lena will want me to do hers. Usually I just let them go shirtless for a little bit.
• They can do the shape-sorter with the tiniest bit of assistance.
• They continue to fight. I'm trying to say, "Let's use our words," even though they don't really have any yet. I just say what I wish they would say about agreeing to share or whatever. I really hope I am modeling some good strategies for them. I wish it would work. This "discipline" aspect of parenting may be the hardest part.