Parenting – Katie Curtis

The Best of Us

22 March, 2022/4 Comments/in Parenting, Twins/by Katie

Before I became a mother to a child with Down syndrome, I had spent time deeply thinking about it. When I was pregnant with my first child, I was in a PhD program for Philosophy, and was assigned a paper about the morality of genetic testing and screening for genetic conditions. As I thought about the baby in me growing, I researched what several parents, doctors, hospitals and academics had to say about the subject. It was easy to ask myself the question, what would I do if my child’s tests came back abnormal?

Fast forward to my last pregnancy, and while I was sitting outside of Trader Joe’s one April afternoon, I got a phone call saying just that.

Free cell DNA Blood tests at 13 weeks can now determine Down syndrome with 99% accuracy.

Differing countries have different statistics about what they do with those results. In Denmark, the abortion rate after Down syndrome is detected is 98%. In the US, it is around 67%.

There is no more inflammatory topic in our country then abortion rights. But what if the prejudice that exists around Down syndrome (for what are we doing in deciding to abort a child with Down syndrome but pre-judging what their life, what our life, will be like if they live ) was swapped for some other feature of a child? What if people in the US were screening for and having abortions based on gender or race?

If we were suddenly able to detect muscular dystrophy or autism, and then eliminated those pregnancies at those rates, what are we saying about those who live with those things now, and how comfortable would we be with those numbers?

Having gotten that phone call, I know that the fear of the difficulties that come from raising a child with intellectual disabilities and special needs is what leads people to terminate. But here is the thing: his twin brother is so much harder.

In any given circumstance, his brother – who is very bright, and full of love and enthusiasm – is much harder to parent thanks to a combination of ADHD and sensory issues. As I watch my boys play together I think, if we could test for these things like ADHD and sensory issues, would we be aborting them too?

Recently The Atlantic explored this question in a story entitled ‘The Last Children of Down Syndrome’. Author Sarah Zhang’s compelling journalism shows how prenatal testing is changing who gets born and who doesn’t, and she cautions us that this is just the beginning. She writes: “Down syndrome is frequently called the “canary in the coal mine” for selective reproduction. It was one of the first genetic conditions to be routinely screened for in utero, and it remains the most morally troubling because it is among the least severe. It is very much compatible with life—even a long, happy life.”

A happy life is what is overwhelmingly reported by those living with Down syndrome and their family members. According to the NIH, nearly 99% of people with Down syndrome indicated that they were happy with their lives; 97% liked who they are; and 96% liked how they look. Nearly 99% people with Down syndrome expressed love for their families. Similar happiness numbers are reported by the family members that live and care for people with Down syndrome.

These numbers are even more staggering considering that only 14% of Americans report being happy in a recent post-Pandemic study. As one of those family members, I can tell you that people with Down syndrome bring out joy. In themselves, in others, in our world. So why is something that is reportedly yielding significantly happier people being targeted as a reason to terminate them?

In her research for the Atlantic piece, Zhang writes that a dark history of eugenics is part of the reason. Germany’s treatment of those with disabilities was the same as it was for Jews: the gas chamber. Denmark’s policies never became as systematic and violent as Germany, but they shared similar underlying goals: improving the health of a nation by preventing the birth of those deemed to be burdens on society. Zhang writes, “When Denmark began offering prenatal testing for Down syndrome to mothers over the age of 35, it was discussed in the context of saving money—as in, the testing cost was less than that of institutionalizing a child with a disability for life. The stated purpose was ‘to prevent birth of children with severe, lifelong disability.’”

I think Zhang has put her finger on the pulse of the problem. In educated, wealthy nations, money has become god, and like all true worship, things must be sacrificed to serve it. The problem is, we are sacrificing the very best of humanity.

So where do we look for the burden of proof that the lives of people with Down syndrome are worth living? Not the medical community. When you receive a Down syndrome prenatal test result, the medical community gives weight only to those facts which could require medical intervention. They focus on statistics and problems. This uncertainty leads to fear.

While the medical community has without question helped improve the quality of lives of those living with Down syndrome, when it comes to prenatal testing, they are extremely risk adverse. The group bias around bringing a child to term that has any medical complications is heartbreaking. Ask any mother who received a prenatal test that indicated Down syndrome, and she will tell you the story of someone in her medical team who encouraged abortion, told them how sorry they were, or outright instilled fear. This is where our society needs to start. At the point of care. Let’s talk to families who have children with Down syndrome.

There are signs of hope. Massachusetts General Hospital is a role model – they put families in touch with other families if they receive a Down syndrome test result or diagnosis instead of letting them read a pamphlet of health conditions or worse googling it to see poorly illustrated children that look scary (go ahead, google it and you will see). That is when those happiness numbers play out in the stories and faces of those in this wonderful community. (N.B.: A group of parents are trying to change the scary sketch on Wikipedia! Such a wonderful idea.)

And maybe the Down syndrome community feels very ‘over there. Not my problem’. But chances are someone you love who has a condition will start to be targeted through prenatal tests. If we are going to let fear, comfort, and cost determine what lives are worth bringing into the world, what group is next? The mentally ill? Those with genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis or hemophelia? How comfortable would we be with a screen for autism and a rate of abortion that hovers near 70%?

As a parent of a child with Down syndrome, it looks like a seek and destroy mission. And our world, humanity, has lost something precious with the void that has been created. When my own dentist learned my son had Down syndrome she said, “I used to love seeing my patients with Down syndrome on the schedule because I knew I would get a hug that day. Now, I don’t have any.”

This void erodes the collective human soul, because we are ultimately saying human lives are only valuable when they can ‘contribute’. And the logical deduction becomes that our own lives are only valuable when we are doing, instead of being, which is the source of unhappiness for so many.

Henri Nouwen, world-renowned professor, writer, and theologian, famously shared his story of feeling empty and purposeless as a Harvard professor, until he went to work at L’arche, a community for disabled adults. There, he met Adam, who he says gave him more fulfillment then being an academic, speaker or writer. He says: “As I developed this relationship with this very handicapped person, he taught me that being is more important than doing. He taught me a whole new way, that the heart is more important than the mind. I realized what makes a human person human is that incredible capacity to give and receive love. That’s the center of our humanity.”

My son has given me this gift. There is no greater happiness than loving and being loved. This is why their happiness numbers are so high. Instead of getting rid of these people, we should be learning from them. Instead of deciding what lives are worth bringing into the world, we should be getting clear on what the best of humanity looks like, and then protect that. Spoiler alert: it looks a lot like Down syndrome.

Media & Motherhood

31 January, 2020/2 Comments/in Marriage, Parenting/by Katie

Maybe because it’s winter and I’ve been watching too much TV, maybe because Michelle Williams shouted about how she needed to kill her baby to win her last award, or maybe because trying to watch a show with my 12-year-old daughter has ads for every kind of female empowerment message EXCEPT being a mother, I am just over what the TV has to tell me about motherhood.

It’s not a new problem. On the first Monday morning after I dropped out of my PhD program in Philosophy to stay home with my then six-month-old oldest son, I was jumping into the shower as the women on the morning news talk program was spouting her book, The Feminine Mistake, and said that the worst thing a woman could do was to stay home with her children and stop being able to earn an income. Because men leave, they die, they get fired, she said.

Sure they do. And women have this working apparatus in their head that is capable of overcoming fear, problem solving, and has an uncanny capacity for knowing exactly what her family needs the most at that moment. I already knew why I was making the decision to stay home: our family would have no family time if I continued. But for someone who wasn’t sure of their decision, her fear mongering tactics equated staying home with your kids as being one step away from the homeless shelter.

The cultural waters we swim in talk about all the things a girl can be except a mother. If someone already made the choice to be a mother then there are two avenues to talk about it. Either a) complain about how unfair it is that women have to do all the work (re: every podcast calling for daycare like Denmark) or b) parade your kids as a lifestyle accessory (see every celebrity mother in People magazine).

But when they aren’t doing these things, the only discussion of motherhood is based on fear.

I’m just wondering when the narrative we are being sold is going to get old for everyone. When I think about the characters on Sex and the City, Girls, Fleabag, and the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel the outcomes for these characters are so…depressing. That scene in the hotel where the only other woman who traveled with the band told Mrs. Maisel how to have one-night stands with dirty men “if you really need it”, to carry a gun, and not to worry about your kids never seeing you for months a time because you can at least say you led an ‘interesting’ life? That one’s such a heartwarming tale. I have two year old twins trashing my house as we speak and I would rather have that then what poor Mrs. Maisel is facing. Or how about Fleabag when she looks down at her ex-boyfriend (literally the only human she wouldn’t have sex with was the white male she was in a relationship with) for having a child? The take away is she is SO much more superior than him, but in the span of 3 television hours she’ll feel the need to make out with a woman and have sex with a blind date and the next night right after the blind date came to her door after her bidding she has sex with a priest. #empowered

From magazines to movies to shows there is this maxim that if you own your circumstances, no matter how horrible they are, if they are ALL YOURS and you’re not beholden to anyone who might hold you back, then that is all that matters.

I can’t help but think that this is why motherhood is so hard for someone like Meghan Markle. Sure it’s a shift for every mother to realize just HOW much you have to give, but if you have been told to live for your own advancement, for pleasure, for power, for hustling to get ahead, then all that sacrifice and set back comes as a pretty big shock. We have been conditioned to enter into marriage and motherhood with this playbook: I’ll do this family thing because it’s what I want at this point in my life. I own my circumstances. Once they get into it, the reality that they have to be self-giving, self-sacrificing, pour themselves out for others, in order to make it all work is totally against their code. They want to change the system, change their husbands, control all the variables because the fact that the answer might be to love hard is too hard to bear.

Why aren’t we telling girls that women who love are beautiful, and giving our lives as a gift to others is the most powerful thing we can do with them? It might be hidden, yes. It might not give you a lot of social cache, or attention, or money, but it will give you a chance to get out of yourself and that is where meaning and true beauty are found.

This is a hard sell these days. I can’t help but think it’s because all the hustling and achieving are so loud and glittery, and mothers doing this noble work do it without cameras or applause or awards. They are quietly loving and cleaning and kissing booboos, only to crash into bed and then get up again and do it the next day. But what they are pouring into their families will last generations. What could they do that is even remotely as impactful as building a family? The last powerful example of this type of gift in the media that I can remember was in Charlotte’s Web, who called her babies her magnum opus.

Andrew loving on baby Michael

Why can’t we say to girls that being a mother is noble and beautiful and can be considered a magnum opus? And like any great work it’s filled with sacrifice.

Last night at a cycling class, one of the girls said that she was too afraid to become a mom because her child might be just like her and she was also afraid that it might also be just like her husband, which equally horrified her. We can laugh and be entertained by these jokes, these shows, but even the ideas we know are ridiculous (Carrie Bradshaw, I’m looking at your whole relationship with Big) are trickling down into the water and our girls are drinking it.

I don’t want my girls to be afraid to become a mom.

There is so much anxiety, fear, need to control things, worry, and insecurity in women today. Just read the message boards. When we step back and try to trust that we’re working with God in this motherhood gig, because it turns out he loves our kids too, it gets a lot easier. And more fun and beautiful. It doesn’t stop being hard but the hard gets woven into the beauty and makes it even more beautiful.

So that’s why even though I am in one of my hardest seasons of mothering yet with a new teenager and a double dose of two year olds, I want to shout from the rooftops about how I am still struck all day long by my love for these humans. I want them to feel deeply loved. And I want them to see me loving my husband well too.

That’s my gig. That’s what I signed up for. Loving and being loved sure beats the heck out of a closet of stilettos.

p.s. Does anyone else worry about Gloria Steinem being all alone when she dies? Does anyone know if she has life alert? Oh what joys she missed.

The Twins Turn Two

11 October, 2019/2 Comments/in Parenting, Twins/by Katie

Our twins will be two on Sunday, and it hasn’t escaped me that their birthday falls in the middle of Down syndrome awareness month. They were also born on the 100th Anniversary of the last Fatima apparition, and given my Marian Consecration in February of that year, my husband likes to say they are ‘Mary’s babies’.

One of the strangest things about having twins and having one with Down syndrome is that when they were born we were all of a sudden part of two groups – parents of twins and parents of Down syndrome. These are two amazing communities because the experience of each is overwhelming and unique. I don’t actually feel like I’ve wrapped my head around either because we’re pretty much still drinking out of a firehose everyday. Still these experiences are rich and vast and worthy of some commentary. So in honor of their birth, allow me to share a little about each piece – the twin part and the Down syndrome part – separately in this post.

THE TWIN PART:

I think most parents of twins (or any multiples) would agree that from the second you see more than one baby on the ultrasound you’re in a state of shock, and it never really goes away. It stays as sort of an ambient huh! Two babies! awareness in your psyche. Unless you buy things like coats or car seats or day care at the ski mountain and then you hear “two babies!” loud and clear.

But I think they would also agree that nothing will give you more awe of life, more wonder at its teaming, thriving, pulsating fullness than having two babies born to you, echoing each other’s needs at first, and then joys, delights, tantrums, and celebrations. Each stage bounces off of the other and makes life feel very full. In our case, with Ronan often behind Michael by about six weeks, the stages bouncing off of each other were a staccato motion, and I imagine parents of typical twins having a bit of a rougher time in the more difficult stages when they happen at the same time. But then again, we stay in them longer so maybe that is harder? We’ll let St. Peter decide.

There is just a bountiful playfulness with twins. They’re like puppies, and they always want to find out what fun the other one has found. Our older kids adore them. They are almost two and still, whenever they come home from school or come back from outings, they love to dive into play with them, and it feels like Christmas morning every time they greet them. It’s hard to believe they only just saw them seven hours ago, the reunion is so sweet. I would have thought their novelty would have faded by now but their affection has only gotten deeper. All my kids are excited (even my six year old) to jump on the very contained trampoline with them. I love peering out the window while I cook dinner and see sibling hug fests with lots of laughter. (For the record, my older kids fight, but the twins tend to distract them from it with their antics which is the actual bees knees).

There is a dimension with twins that even though they give double everything – more love, more hugs, more joy – they take away some freedoms temporarily. Like the ability to go into any environment that you can’t handle two babies or toddlers solo. Pools, parks, restaurants, parking lots. Most parents of toddlers know these are PTSD inducing with one spirited child. I found myself doing less with these toddlers than my other kids and felt the pangs of it at times. Even the mall is tough – Michael’s a runner and I can’t really leave Ronan alone while I go chase after him.

And if you happen to be a writer it will be a very big occupational hazard to have twins just so you know. Not a lot of time for reflection. Or processing. Or actual writing taking place. I totally trust God that I am exactly where I am meant to be right now and I know they grow up fast. I’ve made peace that there will be time for book writing when they are in preschool and for now food blogging and freelance writing are easier since they are much shorter time commitments.

We are buffered in some ways that Ronan isn’t waking yet and therefore isn’t trying to run out into oncoming traffic the way Michael is, but it is hard to have one of the twins crawling through wood chips at the park, or mud at the field. Ronan is almost walking, and when he does it will be a new dynamic for sure – we’ll be able to do some things more, like go to a park with pesky woodchips, but somethings less, like sporting events for the big kids where toddlers don’t see the invisible white line on the ground that indicates where ONLY PLAYERS SHOULD BE.

My memories of these boys’ first two years of life will mostly be this: that there were two sets of eyes watching me, and the minute one of them reached up and wanted cuddles and hugs, so did the other one. And so we spent a good chunk of these years on the floor, where I could always hold both of them, and my lap and my arms and my heart were routinely filled with giggling, cuddly, babbling baby boys, and I would constantly wonder how did I get so lucky? And also, how is the kitchen going to get cleaned?

THE DOWN SYNDROME PART:

For the most part, loving Ronan is just like loving my other kids. Being in tune, knowing and anticipating his needs, supporting and cheering reaching milestones. There are lots of jokes – he has the best sense of humor – and tickle sessions and hugs. We’re still working out the kinks in our relationship like a certain someone’s propensity to tip over the dog bowl or play in the toilet. No one is perfect.

Sometimes, when his Hirschsprung’s Disease gives him really bad tummy pain and he’s crying a lot or waking up in the middle of the night with a diaper rash, it crosses my mind that I’m a special needs parent. But I really never define myself that way, just like I don’t really define Ronan by having Down syndrome. He’s just Ronan, and I’m just me, and we love each other. It’s very sweet and pure and simple to be his mom.

Still, over the past two years, two very different types of parents of children with Down syndrome have been on my mind, and shaped my conception of being a parent to a son with Down syndrome.

The first was a professor who had a son with Down syndrome and wrote a book about it that I read in grad school. Even though he documented his joys and charms, he admitted he struggled with his son’s intellectual disability, since he was a professor and made his living with his mind. I get that he was being vulnerable and honest, but that is the bias that I detest the most, and the educated elite like doctors and professors are the most guilty of it. It’s pride and arrogance. He was given the best gift you could have possibly received and he didn’t understand it. He missed its worth.

The second is a family who I know through Instagram, who had a son with Down syndrome and thought he was so amazing, they felt pulled to adopt another child with Down syndrome because it’s so misunderstood everywhere, but especially in Bosnia and China. They have orphanages overflowing with children with Down syndrome. They found a child and knew it was THEIR son the second they saw him on Reese’s Rainbow. When they picked him up at the orphanage, no one had ever come to see him, no one came when he left, and he and many others passed their time licking their mattress. Now he has two loving parents and six other siblings, including an older brother with Down syndrome, and his life is full of laughter and love. These parents understood the gift they received with their son and were given more. I love this open heartedness and want to emulate it.

It might sound strange, but when I learned about the children on Reese’s Rainbow, I looked at Ronan, and decided to pour every ounce of love I could into this one boy, this one child, to make up for all the love I couldn’t pour into all these children. I know it will never be enough, and I will always try to fundraise to help these children find a home. But I hope the power of our love will help him grow up with every part of his potential developed, so that the world can see him and know how special all of these children are.

I think the biggest surprise about having a child with Down syndrome is what happens to your heart when you love someone so innocent and full of joy. They shine this back to you so freely and purely, that your whole being is overtaken by their charm. You feel peaceful, joyful, so supremely happy to be in their presence. Their natures are so good, and such a reflection of God’s goodness, that it just feels like a miracle every day to get to love them.

For example – Ronan’s hugs. They deserve their own post. Possibly their own book.

There is the tight bear hug with a head tilt on the shoulder, the way tired babies lay their head on you. And then there is the cheek to cheek hug, and then it’s like he is trying to pour his love into you via your face. Always his arms are around you so tight, like he never wants to let go. And nine times out of ten when he sees a friend or family member or new person – ok fine, everyone – he throws his arms out to them so he can hug them, fingers splayed out in his excitement. It is a very fast way to make friends I am learning. Seeing so many others cherish Ronan (and Michael too of course, but Ronan in a unique way) is the best and I am sure will be a joy for our whole lives.

He is delighted every morning when we pick him up out of his crib, and he is delighted when we tuck him in with his blanket and bunny every night. Of course he has tantrums and all the emotions his brother has, but his baseline is pure joy. He is sweetness itself.

I can’t help but think some of his sweetness rubs off on Michael, since he is quite the cuddler too. We spend a lot of our days on the floor, hugging. Which isn’t a bad gig if you ask me.

Happy Birthday to my beautiful boys. Like I say everyday, I’m so glad you’re here! We all are.

15 Annos

25 September, 2019/0 Comments/in Marriage, Parenting/by Katie

Today is our 15 Year Anniversary.

This week of September holds a lot of milestones for our family – my husband turned 44, my daughter turned 10, our marriage turns 15, and the twins turn two in a few weeks. All of these are leaving me head-tiltedly bewildered. How did time go so fast?

I mean, part of it is the feeling of getting old. I’m not old enough to have teenagers, or be married for 15 years. We just threw this awesome party like a nanosecond ago.

But part of it is also the season we are in too. It speeds up time.

Having teenagers and toddlers is a bit like straddling two very tall buildings at the same time. Your legs start to feel like jello after a while and you lose your bearings for what ground level (life with no kids, or one kid, or even two) used to be like.

It’s a time of breaking down, of digging deep and learning hard lessons. There are so many things that worked when our kids were all under 10 and in bed by 8 o’clock that don’t work anymore. We eat in shifts: toddlers get hungry early, older kids eat late due to sports. (Family dinner was a hard one to let go of for me for sure). The big kids want to stay up with us watching movies, and the twins want us to get up with the birds. There is candle burning going on at both ends and also somewhere in the middle too.

Obviously this is all hard on a marriage. But immensely purifying. Any issues that we thought we could sweep under the rug have to be drawn out and dealt with because of the sheer number of logistics of our life. I remember some friends worrying the stress of too many kids would hurt our marriage, but I think the opposite might be true. It forges fox-hole loyalty.

The popular Canadian professor Dr. Jordan Peterson says, marriage is “a lifelong wrestling between two worthy adversaries who strengthen each other and help one another to sort out and improve upon their various personal struggles and weaknesses.” One of his main principles is the more responsibility you take on in your life the more meaning you will find, and when he says that I think he must know what having a large family is like. Or at least why it’s worth it.

Year 15 looks like: toddler dimples in hands, emerging personalities that are hilarious and witty, a boy so innocent his smile and hugs delight everyone, and his twin who manages to be salty and sweet at the same time. There is lots and lots of sibling love. There is probably too much screen time. A home that is more and more becoming our own, tailored to our life and not just some walls we inhabit. Days revolve around early wake ups, rides to school and sports, lots and lots of food, and walks outside. These are the core of my days, a half hour of quiet and calm in the stormy sea of chaos coordinating. They are magic every season but especially in this season, with gorgeous fall weather, when the twins are strapped down (read: safe and not trashing a room) and silently watch the wind blow leaves to the ground and autumn light glinting on the bay. I get to pray and breath, which feel like the same thing.

Our neighbors have fruit trees, and the twins know when we walk by them I’ll go over and pick peaches and apples. They point and get excited as soon as we get near the trees. Yesterday I went and all the peaches were gone, a reminder that everything is a season, including this challenging time.

They still they have apples though.

I’m also reading this book, which I highly recommend if you want to find peace and awe in your interior life but I don’t recommend it if you want to write and produce a lot of on line content for consumption because it will make you not want to contribute to the noise in the world in anyway. One of the chapters has a story about St. Theresa of Calcutta, and a priest who came to see her and ask her for prayers. She said she always prays for priests, and gave him a miraculous medal. Then she asked him how much he prays. Mass, the Rosary, and the Brevery every day was his answer. “That is not enough,” she said. “I thought you were going to ask me about my works of charity,” he said. She looked at him very seriously, and said “Do you think I am able to do my works of charity without praying first?”

A reminder that we need God to love well, through our limitations and theirs. And that is probably the most important thing I’ve learned about marriage. That and there is no one I would rather do it with than Rob.

God in the Dishwasher

17 July, 2019/0 Comments/in Parenting, Writing/by Katie

^A picture of part of the holey kitchen and a toddler who keeps tipping over those trash cans

If you ask me what I needed the least with 20-month-old twins, my answer would have been a home renovation. I can think of other things that would be worse, but a home renovation would definitely be in the top five. But as a fellow human you know about those times life presents us with something hard that makes us want to shout back, no I cannot handle that right now, and proceeds to give it to us anyway despite our protests.

So it was that in February, our dishwasher motor sprung a small leak. The kind that goes for weeks without any indication it’s there, silent and menacing, and soaks your dry wall and your subfloors until they buckle and requires those emergency companies that bring in massively huge and loud fans and dehumidifiers and tear up parts of your house right before your eyes and sprays for mold. Then, after you’ve register what has become of your kitchen, you play tug of war with your insurance company on how to put it back together again. Much like being heavily pregnant, you have a distant hope that things will turn out great but also a slight fear that you’ll be in this state forever.

We decided to do it all after school got out, and live at our camp while the work got done. For the most part, we worked around the holes in our daily life, and other than having to move the trash cans so the twins didn’t dump them over and having to switch the photo shoot with the magazine I am a food columnist for to another kitchen, we survived. Turns out you can make spring pea and mint raviolis in any kitchen.

Still only 73% sure it would ever happen, we began to plan the kitchen remodel. We found a company that can reface our existing cabinets and rebuild the ones that were gutted at half the price of getting new ones and fit into our budget from the insurance company. We watched happily when the flooring company replace the wood that was ripped out so we could stop stubbing our toes where the planks were missing. We’re moving a few things around, and it’s mostly a face lift, but it’ll become the clean, well-lit space that we’ve always wanted. Even if I didn’t want it precisely right now.

Because all of our floors were being redone, we had to book movers to take out ALL of our belongings from the first floor. We scheduled them for July 2nd. The date loomed larger on the calendar as school ended, mostly because it was harder to pack with my big kids than it was because of toddler twins, a fact I hadn’t considered and did not handle well at all. Then there were the loving people who were scared for me. I must have had eight conversations with friends and family that went like this:

Them: You have to take out everything? Me: Yup.

Them: Really? Even the fridge and the stove? Me: Yes, everything.

Them: Even the pantry shelves? Me: Yes, the pantry shelves stand on the floor they need to refinish. Ergo…

By the middle of June, I was having heart palpitations at the thought of having to pack up everything (everything? Yes everything) over the next two weeks, including the pantry, fridge, freezer and those clutter corners of our home that had grown since we had twins. I was simultaneously terrified but also ashamed of my stress and panic since it would all be ok. Our kitchen and floors will end up beautiful! At least we can go to the lake while it all got done! Still the amount of work paralyzed me. The kitchen is like the heartbeat of a family and it felt a bit like open heart surgery on our home.

I generally like to operate with a pretty strong center of peace, and I disliked that I was losing mine. Especially when I was interrupted from my goal of packing while toddlers slept by fighting grade schoolers. But where I erred was in thinking that something like a leak in the dishwasher, and the stress of a renovation, is something outside God’s domain. That something so earthly and busy and has so many pragmatics is in the material realm isn’t the stuff of God. But he wants all of us, including our stress and holey kitchens and leaky dishwashers, so he can give us good things. When the tsunami of life’s anxiety hits, he’s waiting in it. For us to attend to him, instead of it.

When I remembered this, my perspective changed. Those little people keeping me from my work were who all of this was for. Because God wants to give them good things too.

I focused just on what I could do each day to dismantle our busy house, and surprise, rediscovered that staying in the present brings peace. I also realized how therapeutic it can be to scrub out the molasses from the upper cupboard shelf and the melted popsicle in the bottom of the freezer. To sweep up the mess that’s been living under the couch since you last looked for the remote in 2017. I stopped dreading the amount of work and instead embraced things moving from the realm of chaos into order. I had watched the Konmarie show on Netflix like the rest of the world and really wanted to do what they were doing but I didn’t ever think I had the time. Well guess what a leak in your dishwasher will give you? FORCED Konmari-ing. Which ends up feeling pretty liberating.

On moving day, my husband took all the kids up north, and I worked with the movers all day to clean out everything (everything?) even the pantry shelves. As a food writer and blogger I am quite devoted to these pantry shelves, and I often write about the benefits of a well-stocked pantry for easy meal planning. There are no benefits to a well-stocked pantry when it comes to moving, however.

As much as I resisted having to do it, when it was happening there was such a sense of relief that these messes were leaving us, being dealt with, that they would be replaced with order and calm. When we move back in at the end of July, there will be shiny floors and a bright kitchen. As I was cleaning, I had this nagging feeling that God wanted this all for us even if I didn’t want it myself right now. And not just the shiny kitchen. He wanted me to be forced to clean up the messes. And while I’m sure there’s a metaphor there about how he wants to do this to our souls, to scour out grime and filth and leave beauty and order, I had the distinct sense that he wanted this for our physical space too.

After almost 10 hours of hauling and cleaning and pitching, I pulled away from the empty rooms, and drove up to the lake house with six sleeping children and a husband holding a cold beer for me, my heart overflowing with gratitude for all these gifts he keeps giving us. I’ll return in a few weeks and help the movers put everything back, but in the meantime we’re enjoying slow summer time with each other, which God probably knew we needed too. And when I go back to set up the home he’s so generously given to us, he’ll be right there in the middle of all of it, and I’ll keep telling him thank you.

Thoughts on Mother’s Day

10 May, 2019/0 Comments/in Marriage, Parenting, Writing/by Katie

I just left the Kindergartener’s Mother’s Day tea with my 6 year-old son and it was as adorable as it sounds. I got to thinking a lot about being a mom on the way home and I mostly thought about what a gift my kids are to me. I am keenly aware of the relationships around me that can’t celebrate all the good that this bond should be, either through death, or brokenness, or distance. But it is also my best friend’s first Mother’s Day with her 7 month-old daughter, and I know the road that led to her and it’s paved with heartache and hope and the power of love, just like all the best stories. When I think about her experiencing such a powerful relationship for the first time, I think about what it has taught me over the last 13 years. Here’s the highlight reel.

Learn to forgive yourself. You will always fall a little or a lot short of showing them the love you want them to know. This is because it’s really, really hard to take care of a human being while you already have to take care of yourself. You will regularly have to choose between going to the bathroom or changing a diaper, feeding your growling stomache or the starving beast having a meltdown, dealing with your own fever/stomach flu/worry/hormone swings or any other discomfort a human can feel and helping them with theirs. This is the trickiest business of motherhood. And it makes us short-tempered and crabby at times. Also, you aren’t perfect and you never will be, so there is a lot of room for self-doubt and uncertainty to creep in. Every time it does, ask yourself, ‘Are you doing the best you can?’ and ‘Do they know they are deeply loved?’. If the answer to those two questions is yes, you are succeeding. Remind yourself of this often.

Hold them closely and loosely at the same time. You want to squeeze them and breath in their smell after a bath, and kiss the sweet baby cheeks when they fall asleep on your shoulder. But motherhood is at its essence being one with another person and then losing them, little by little, every moment since birth. Every step of independence is leading to them leaving you, and you have to both mourn each loss while cheering them on with every ounce of your being. It’s not for the faint of heart.

You shouldn’t be their whole world and they shouldn’t be yours. It’s tempting! I know. And there are times when they are. But every time you go out to book club or take a job or a class or go for a run, you are actually expanding their world because you will come back filled up, refreshed, or wiser. The stronger you are and the more you invest in yourself, the stronger their mother will be. All women lose themselves in motherhood at times. You get capsized by newborns and different ages and stages. But after a while, you have to find your newer, wiser, changed self again, and doing this is hard work. It’s easier not to. But your kids will be immensely better off if you do. And keep your marriage a priority, as much as it’s in your control. Showing your husband and your kids that your relationship with your husband comes first gives the family so much stability.

Keep the end in mind. This phrase is actually one of Stephen Covey’s habits in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. There is a lot of wisdom for moms in this book that is usually read for succeeding in business. In it he has what he calls the ‘Maturity Continuum’, and he places all 7 of the habits on the continuum from dependence to independence to interdependence. You are a highly effective person and family if you are interdependent. (To read more about the habits, go here or better yet read the book.) But this habit helps me immensely, from disciplining, to shaping them as people, to talking about problems in the world and death and going to Heaven. And not sweating the small stuff along the way.

Help them to see who they really are. When Oprah interviewed Ralph Lauren’s family, his wife Rickie said this was her main goal as a mom, and it just stuck with me. Being a mirror for them, helping them to really know themselves, seemed like such a beautiful thing. To me, this involves a lot of pointing out moments they were at their best, qualities they have that are unique to them that are wonderful like their laugh or their sense of humor. It’s playing them videos of when they were little and talking about the memories I have of them. It’s saving all of their special artwork and awards through the years in their own special file box that they can look through whenever they want. It also involves talking about actions that don’t display their best self, like fighting or being selfish or gloating. ‘You’re better than that’ is a powerful statement that validates who they really are while pointing out bad behavior.

Trust your instincts. All the great artists do. Plus Dr. Sears or Ferber or the nurse who lives next door won’t ever parent your child. Only you will.

The dishes and laundry and housework will never be done, but their childhood will. Prioritize accordingly.

Fellow moms – what would you add to this list? Leave your thoughts in the comments as I am sure my friend will love to read them. Happy Mother’s Day!

All At Once

7 April, 2019/0 Comments/in Parenting, Writing/by Katie

All at once, the snow is gone. And the trees have tiny pointed buds on them in deep colors. And the temperature is warm enough to make a winter jacket a burden. The birds are singing in the morning, the sweetest song, seemingly just for us. It all feels like a surprise, like my first spring ever.

The babies stare out the windows for hours. What used to be all white all the time is all at once colors and light and the flicker of birds and chipmunks and squirrels. They toddle over to their fleece snowsuits and pull. They want to go outside. And when I buckle them into their stroller, their eyes are wide and excited and the corners of their mouth are turned up in a smile.

All at once the air is so fresh. Our dog has taken to running away in the mornings, breaking through the invisible fence, because suddenly the smells are so strong and tempting and new that he just doesn’t care about getting electrocuted. It’s terribly inconvenient and yet completely understandable. Spring has sprung.

All at once the streams have thawed and bubble happily next to the road, so that I turn the stroller for the babies to watch. I wish I could record the sound of the water gently gurgling over the stones since for some reason it makes me so happy and peaceful.

It happened so fast – the end of winter and the start of spring – that it feels surprising, shocking even. Of course we knew spring would come, in our minds, on our calendars. But being in it, inside spring when the earth is gently waking up, is something else.

I know part of my awe this year is seeing it through my children’s eyes. The babies didn’t even remember the sun. The warmth of it, or the feel of the breeze across their skin. They lean forward in the stroller, eyes wide, taking it all in. Taking in the earth and the sky and the trees and the brook and the birds and the sun. They don’t make a peep, and they sit very still. Like it could all disappear again on them and they don’t want to miss it.

The big kids come home and throw down their bags and hop on their bike, or take a stick and push it into the soft earth or the streams that run around our house. Every other driveway on our street has a kid shooting baskets, the staccato rhythm of the ball bouncing blends into our afternoons. The sound of giggling laughter as kids jump on trampolines is so sweet I think it might be the path to world peace.

My children have dug through their summer clothes and pulled out their shorts and flip flops. They put Alexa in the basket on their bike so they have music when they stay inside the wifi zone. So they go back and forth in front of our house, singing while they ride, the wind blowing their hair back, which is basically the same thing as flying.

The sweetness of this moment is knowing what we’ve just come from: frozen tundra. Air so cold it hurts. Chapped lips and hands and cheeks. And knowing what we are still facing: scorching hot days, where babies will sweat taking our walk, and I will beg for air conditioning and cold water when we’re done. The sun will beat down and the grass will wither and scorch, and bugs will annoy us more than the heat. Going outside will become the same quick dash to the car that winter was, and we’ll try to get away from the elements instead of sinking into them.

But not now. All at once, going outside is like a siren song, like getting kissed by Mother Nature. So we’ll obey, and go outside, and linger in the soft sounds and the sweet smells of spring.

The Midspace Summer

7 September, 2018/0 Comments/in Parenting, Writing/by Katie

When the school bus pulled away from my house last Tuesday morning and took away my four oldest kids, you could feel the vacuum of their energy leaving the house. In many ways it had been a hard summer, with many different needs happening for everyone in our family. But it was also a really good summer, and one I’m going to remember.

This summer I tested a theory. If I signed up my kids for nothing, made zero commitments to getting our twins in and out of a car to take them to something that would stimulate them from the outside, they would be able to get bored.

And if they got bored, they might have to listen to their insides.

And if they listened to their insides, their own mental chatter, they might have a glimmer of who they really are, and be able to sit with that person. They might actually engage with their insides long enough so that for the rest of their life, they would have a memory of who they really are.

I think a lot of moms instinctually try to do this, to slow their kids down. The world moves so fast. I remember listening to the writer Anna Quindlin years ago talk about kids, and how they need to stare off into the midspace sometimes. They need to be free enough to let their mind wander to know what it tends to wander towards.

Of course my kids got bored and wanted to watch TV. But we had all screens off policy between 9:30 am-5:30 pm. Inside these hours you could read, play games, play outside, anything but fight with your siblings or watch a screen. Halfway through I signed up three of them for the local soccer camp. On most days I had an outing – the pool, the beach if I had a sitter for the babies, a movie, a shopping trip, going to a museum or nature center – that would take up some of the day. But the rest of the time it was choose your own adventure.

Here’s what we learned: Lucy really likes music and loves to make slime. Sophie can whip up blueberry cobbler, brownies or pancakes on a whim and is in that chrysalis-like season where she is starting to leave girlhood behind in moments and in others cling to it. Her own type of midspace. RJ has encyclopedic knowledge about sports and is beyond passionate about airplanes and flying them and learning about geography. He had his first flying lesson for his birthday, and even his 5-year-old brother knows that his favorite overnight flight is Dubai to LA on his flight simulator app. And Andrew got to marinate in that summer before Kindergarten, where he can be a cop one minute and a rock star the next. Where books are enormous windows to another world and into their minds. And he fell in love with nature so much we are now the proud owners of an ant farm and an aquarium.

Here’s what else we learned: Like most kids, mine have a lot of energy and it needs to be directed somewhere. This experiment was actually really hard, and I will likely throw in a little more structure next year. I put in forced reading time for everyone when ever it got too hard (for me too!) which did help to get the kids hooked on books (see what boredom can do!). I was crawling to the finish line of the start of school because I was so depleted directing all that energy. Particularly when babies woke up at 6 and big kids wanted to stay up until 10. Minus the 10 hours a week I had a baby sitter to write and breath and run, I was on 16 hours a day.

I thought about when I was a kid, and how mothers weren’t in charge of directing that energy. Kids directed it outside, with friends. We could ride around the neighborhood at any given time and find kids to play with. We would hover over bridges dropping sticks for fun, swing a rope over the Itty Pitty, play hide and seat, and generally create universes out of our tiny wills that were fascinating. Now, kids are booked. They are really structured and have a lot of camps and activities. And I get it. Kids have a lot of energy. Channel away, fellow parents. But I can’t help feeling nostalgic about our roving bands of free-range kids and wishing our kids could have a taste of that because it was awesome.

Still, we all have to bloom where we’re planted. And they did in so many ways. Sometimes they got on their bikes and got lucky, and found a friend at home. Often they played with their baby brothers. Each of them will have major memories of the twins as babies because we went slow enough that we had a lot of time to play with them. That was the highlight of summer. The year of the babies was entertaining for everyone. And the best parts were when the big kids actually played with each other. Dance parties, and pretend school, and hide and seek and baseball in the back yard.

I recently read an accomplished photographer describe their style of photography, and in it they said that most of their work is done by instinct. It got me thinking that maybe parenthood is like that. The next few challenges or choices I was faced with, I tried to pay attention to what my instincts were telling me. And you know what? It works. Except for that detour with the ant farm (instincts, where were you on that day?), I realized that I am better at parenting when I listen to my instincts.

Like most parents I am generally winging it most of the time, and whenever I hear people who feel the need to share that their baby was exclusively nursed until 12 months (not a drop of formula!), or are eating the same thing as their parents by 10 months, I know that that parent is still trying to pretend like they have control over their child (an illusion that is really shattered after your third kid). When you are not parenting by outside scripts of success, and you are listening to what your instincts are telling you, you tend to instantly prioritize. You tend to ask yourself, “do my kids feel loved? Have I made eye contact? Have I uttered words of affirmation? Have I nipped that bad habit in the bud?” Then, if all those things are for the most part happening, and you leave the house and everyone has shoes on, you know you are #winning.

More than that, you know that each one of your kids is a totally different person, who needs to be treated individually, and who will go off and do all kinds of amazing things without you. I hope they don’t do those things because of a race to keep up with peers, or because of forced expectations. I want them to be called to them. And in order for that to happen they have to be able to know what it’s like hear a call. They need silence and quiet. Stillness and space. And they had plenty this summer.

So I am trying to give my kids opportunities to listen to their voices, to their instincts. To even just recognize them. It means I have to slow down – so I am not rushing them, so I can ask them questions that help them tune into their instincts. To have the space so that they can solve problems on their own.

This summer’s slow speed let me cultivate things in my kids’ hearts. Character building, perspective building, confidence building. Was it in between putting out fights and cleaning up messes? You bet. Did I yell sometimes? Double yes. But it was worth it. I’m hoping to hang on to this lesson as we navigate the rapids of our fall schedule, which with four kids committed to sports is non-stop.

And while I am rejoicing that the school bus now comes to my house every morning, and that they’ll be tired enough to go to bed at 8 (praise hands), I can still remember watching them swim in the ocean on our last night of summer, and feeling like I deep down knew them all, and had snapshots of who they are at these ages. I thought about how we spent this slow summer, and I my instincts said, yup. That’s just what we needed.

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Watering Your Roots

24 July, 2018/0 Comments/in Marriage, Parenting, Writing/by Katie

There is this unfortunate thing that happens when you are the proprietor of a bed of lettuce and summer hands you a string of hot, sunny days.

They start to bolt.

This means they grow straight up into the air, with leaves that are tough and bitter, as opposed to growing more tender leaves around the base that are good for eating and harvesting.

The only way to protect them from bolting is to water them faithfully, particularly during hot days. Which I couldn’t do when we were traveling.

Even though this summer has had so much sweetness – babies swimming! Big kids around! Visiting family near Lake Winnepesaukee, and then splashing in the rivers near our condo in the White Mountains near North Conway, NH. Slow lazy mornings and fun evenings at the pool, with lots of fresh fruit and veggies and enough hot dogs and s’mores to make kids happy – I still had to admit that I knew how those lettuce plants felt in the heat of the summer sun. When we got home and saw that they had bolted, I mourned the loss tender romaine and butter leaves at the ready for salads and sandwiches. But I realized this phenomenon was a great way to describe how moms of kids in the summer might be feeling too. Lots of hot sunny days and not enough time to water our roots can make our leaves tough and bitter, too.

My mantra this first year of having twins is to be aware that my life has fallen into a black hole temporarily, and be gentle on yourself. But I am not good at stagnating. Like, at all. I have to be growing in some area to feel alive. Having new experiences – travel, food, writing, learning – are easy ways to grow. But not easy when you have twin babies.

I was most definitely bolting.

So I quickly took stock. My husband and I decided to cancel our upcoming trip to Pemaquid, Maine. It’s where my novel was set, where we feel very alive with the wild ocean and fresh seafood. Instead we stayed home, cleaned out our attic before our new au pair arrives in a few weeks (hallelujah). It felt so good to throw away bags of things we didn’t need, and I felt my stress falling off of me as stuff got hauled away. It wasn’t traveling and experiencing new things, but instead putting my life in order, that brought me happiness and peace.

Likewise, I trimmed back the overgrowth in our front yard when the babies napped and weeded all of our beds with my kids. When the babies woke up, we set their circles of neglect in the shade, where they watched us bend up and down with so much curiosity they barely made a peep. Somehow all that hard work made me feel…better. Calmer. Less veering out of control-y.

I made plans with my best friend from college to meet at Mass at BC with the babies while the big kids went camping with their dad (who would make an excellent professional nature guide if he wasn’t so good at his current job. If you see Rob, ask him to tell you about the bears). Being on campus connected me to my 20 year old self in unexpected ways and reminded me, even though my current life was heavy and my roots were thirsty, I had lived other lives, had been in rich soil which helped me grow. That there were seasons in life, and a growing season would come again.

I hired a sitter for a day not so I could work or entertain my older kids, but just so my best friend and I could spend the day relaxing and talking and eating, which filled me up in so many ways. I am so thankful for her friendship and her driving out here to water the roots of it.

I started a 30 Day Health Program with Isagenix. It’s worked for me in the past, and I was waiting to stop nursing to start. For the last two weeks, I’ve worked out with my oldest son who is getting ready for football conditioning in a few weeks. Turns out he is the best workout buddy as he motivates me on the days I am not feeling it and vice versa. It feels like next-level parenting to multi-task excercise with him. Our jumping around also elicits much wide-eyed starting from the babies as they sit on the rug next to us.

After my PMDD came roaring back a few months ago, I knew I had to do something, since it made me jittery and snappy with my husband and kids. It is like having depression and anxiety for the ten days before your period, and it made me so sympathetic to those that have it all the time. Stress tends to exacerbate it. I researched the nutrition I needed to battle these hormone issues (read: I watched a lot of YouTube videos made by women who have it). This 5-HTP supplement is ahh-mazing for PMS/PMDD, especially with 1 gram of melatonin during the last two weeks of your cycle, since together they increase your brain’s serotonin levels naturally. And so is this one since it helps to break down the excessive amount of Estrogen that triggers most of the symptoms. If you think you fit the profile for having PMDD or other hormone related issues, these have helped me so much I wanted to share in case they can help someone else. Please research their use if they sound like they could help you. One thing to know is that it is really important to just use the 5-HTP + melatonin for just the last two weeks of your cycle so your body still produces them on its own, and don’t use it if you are on any SSRI’s. I am only one month in, but so thankful for the results. It’s eliminated my PMDD symptoms by almost 90%. In other words, while I used to feel like the Dementors in Harry Pottery were sucking my face, now I feel like myself. (Please be kind to judging this info as it feels very hard to share but I am doing it in case anyone else has those dementors in their life. It sucks.)

I finally mapped out the novel that was knocking on my brain and started to research it. Now it gets chewed on all day while I am rocking babies and folding laundry, and I dive in writing when I have a sitter. I’m thrilled and excited to be writing fiction again. And I picked up Kristin Lavransdatter again on our trip and can’t put it down. I feel lost and adrift if I am not reading a good book, and consequently feel solid and found when I am. Writing and reading aren’t just watering my roots, they’re adding nourishment to my soil. (Side note/mildly funny story: Last week I was in front of the row of books at Target with the twins in my 2 (!) carts. A group of older ladies walked by and one of them said, ‘Oh dear, you don’t have time to read with those babies do you?’ I just stared wide-eyed and said, ‘the babies make me need to read more’! I love when people refer to reading as self-care, because its true.)

I tried hard to reach out to others and avoid getting isolated. I texted friends and made plans. Blueberry picking with the kids. Dinner at the pool. Dinner without kids at the new restaurant that just opened. Date nights with Rob. I brought my sister with special needs her favorite dinner at my mom’s house. My other sister met us at the fair with her kids while Rob stayed with the babies for the first time solo. (Now that I think about it, our babies have really rolled with our schedule and done so well with most of our fun outings. So thankful for their flexible natures.) Next up: taking them all to an outdoor concert with friends.

Of course, the quickest way to water our roots is to pray. A few lovely novenas felt like they dumped extra water on my roots and perked my spiritual life right up. This one to St. Anne whose feast day is tomorrow has been beautiful, and I swear it feels like taking mom vitamins since as the mother to Blessed Mother, I think she has a soft spot for mothers. (I’ve also heard great things about this book and am looking forward to reading it.)

These efforts have paid off. Little by little, I feel more like myself. Like my new leaves are more tender and soft. I know it’s a function of the babies getting older and sleeping more, and of seeking help for my health issues, but I also know that trying to proactively carve out ways to do the things that nourish my roots is essential. (Lest you read this and think any part of it says I have my act together – I had to binge a late-to-the-party Game of Thrones addiction to the very last episode just to get it out of my life.)

My time-wasting journey into GOT aside, I know that self-discipline, when you can dig down and find it, is always the best path to growth. And yours no doubt looks different then mine. Maybe it’s Weight Watchers and knitting or Work out classes at the gym and your side business that get you closer to your best self. To water your roots. Either way, finding a way to tend to each part of you – your mind, your soul, and your heart – always pays dividends. Like lettuce gardens and unruly attics and front yards, it’s often about pruning and weeding to get to order and goodness.

So these are the things that are helping me in this season. I’d love to hear about what’s helping you, since I am currently still failing at keeping my house clean and having my five year old reliably wearing matching shoes. So leave a message in the comments and let me know.

p.s. If your lettuce plants do bolt, the gardening rule is to break off the top part of the plant, and wait for cooler temperatures and they’ll start growing tender leaves again. Which as a mom sounds a lot like ‘when school starts you’ll have more time to take care of yourself and you’ll feel more balanced.’ But maybe that’s just me.

What I Learned Having Twins

25 June, 2018/0 Comments/in Marriage, Parenting, Writing/by Katie

I thought it might be fun to record what life with 8 month old twins is like for my future self to look back on, and for anyone who has this experience waiting for them in the near future. I should add that not a day goes by that I don’t think of those who have lost one or both twins. We are blessed to have them, I know, and my heart goes out to those who if things had been different would share in this experience too.

This list is actually useful to any parent of children who are close together, really – many of these applied to my life with 3 kids 3 and under as well.

1. Get Used to Humility – Last week I ran to tell my daughter’s coach something at a lacrosse jamboree, and I had two babies crawling around on a blanket. So I scooped them up and ran with one under either arm, and promptly horrified everyone watching. Whether it is getting through a day or a doorway, it will not look pretty sometimes. Any previous notions of having it all together will fall as fast as that next spray of baby spit up. People will just watch and stare as you do normal life events like walking down the street and checking out at Target (because NO cart has room for two car seats). You will need to push two carriages (or a carriage and a stroller) to shop. Which leads me to my next point…

2. Accept all offers of help – seriously. Hold a baby? Help you carry one of those two carts you have? Tie your shoes? Perhaps catch one of the myriad things you will be dropping every day? Yes please, sure. You will cut through that feeling of ‘gee I really should be able to do this on my own’ the first time you try to hold two babies at the same time. In turn, you will feel so much gratitude for the kindness of strangers. The first time I went to the grocery store with the twins, it was to buy dishwashing detergent. I realized in the checkout that I forgot to grab it. The woman behind me sensed my difficulty when I called home to make totally sure we were out (we were) and said, go grab it, I’ll watch the babies. And I let her. And I was so glad I did when I ran my dishwasher that night.

3. Know that no plan for help will be perfect – I was pretty open about the fact that we got an au pair before the twins came, especially since one of them might have Down syndrome. At first it was great to have an extra pair of hands when it took Ronan an hour to drink his bottle. He aspirated anything faster then the preemie-flow nipple, so needless to say he ate *s l o w*. But as he got faster, and didn’t need as long to eat, it became clear that there wasn’t much else she could do, and she struggled with following even the hour by hour schedule I made for her and couldn’t, say, make a meal or reliably get kids ready for sports. We went into rematch. And we waited. I pieced together some sitters, and was so thankful for neighbors on the same teams as all of our kids who were more than happy to give rides. It was much easier to have a great sitter for 10 hours then someone who hung around for 40 without really taking anything off my plate. Since my husband travels for work, and I am approaching a military wife level of solo parenting, I am hoping our next au pair is a help, and we screened her a lot more carefully. But its still a gamble. With the end of school, our needs will reshuffle and (hopefully) there will be a slower pace, but who knows what next week will bring.

4. Live in Day Tight Compartments – This is my mantra. Of course, future planning and being organized does help, but when I think about everything that needs to happen, I try to stay focused on just today. It’s all I can handle.

5. Expect to drop at least one ball a day – somewhere along the way of motherhood I felt like its a good day if I didn’t drop any major balls. With twins, I quickly realized that at least one ball was going to be dropped each day, for sure. Forgot about a birthday party? Didn’t get the memo that its red white and blue day? It made it a lot easier to not beat myself up when it happened.

6. Know that your marriage will be challenged but you will come out stronger for forging the experience together. When I was pregnant and scouring tips for life with twins, one couple shared that they made it a rule that they couldn’t get divorced until their twins first birthday. By taking it off the table, they were able to go through the most brutal times without that option. You are both so stretched thin that extra grace and forgiveness is required. And giving each other breaks has always been important to us, but this is definitely more challenging with twins. In the end, hocking your wedding ring to pay for help or a date night now and then is the best way to weather your first year with twins.

7. Know that it will take you 30 minutes longer to do anything – this is partly because twins draw a lot of attention, so getting through a store or down the street for a walk seems to attract people. I remember leaving the school music concert and my husband was just standing at the door tapping his wrist saying ‘we have to go!’ because so many people wanted to stop and see the babies. I always say we love baby lovers, but it has lead to being a few minutes late for picking up my son at preschool or for a sitter because of people stopping me to see them. And of course there is the other end, which is packing up everyone to leave. Getting two small people in their car seats packed for the day or an outing takes a shockingly long time. I started to watch the clock and realized it always takes 30 minutes longer than I think it should.

8. Get used to your own company – it is a good thing that I am ok spending time with myself, because there is just a lot of isolation with babies. I suspect having older kids has buffered me a bit from this, because of seeing people at sports and birthday parties. But there are long weeks and even longer days where I think back and realize that there was barely 5 minutes I had to spend on myself, and with that comes little time to invest in friendships. Thankfully I have wonderful friends that are there for me through this year. But there are hours where I am rocking a baby, or entertaining two laughing faces while I shoveled food into their mouths. Music and podcasts help too when your hands are occupied. So does plotting my next novel.

9. Have a lot of grace for yourself – Another twin mom (Christy Brunk for those who know her) messaged me this sage advice right after I had the twins. I am so glad she did because I repeat this to myself almost every day. There are so many times where my writing brain hurts because I don’t have enough time to write, or things aren’t where I want them to be, and I just have to remind myself that this year is not the year for a whole lot of progress or self-improvement. Surviving is enough. There is a peace that comes with being enough right where you are, and I am thankful that this year has taught me that. Not that any of this is easy, because for some one like me who loves to grow, it is still hard. In fact the number one thing I have to have grace for is not doing enough self care. I will find my way back, but for now, granting myself this grace + living in day tight compartments helps me to not get discouraged.

10. Stay in the present moment – Like #4, the beauty of keeping your focus on the now helps in so many ways. I know it is overly talked about but staying in the now is the only tangent point to eternity we have. It is harder to have anxiety about the future or depression about the past when you are in the now. It is where we can access the grace and strength we need to get through hard things. There were so many moments in the middle of the night that I just couldn’t figure out how I was going to last until morning, or when two babies were crying and needed diaper changes, bottles and naps simultaenously. But I prayed in those moments, and here we are, months later, and we are ok. I hope to take this lesson far deeper into my life than just this year.

So there you have it, a few of the ideas that helped me survive having twins. I’ve said before, this year is one of our most intense. But these smiling faces get me through it every time.