Kitchen Disaster Awards Night

I'd like to thank the Easter ham. It was delicious on the holiday and days immediately thereafter, and its long-refrigerated remains were perfect to make hot ham water with. But I'd like to apologize for forgetting about it in the stockpot until it became readily apparent that no amount of reboiling would make it okay for human consumption, and then abandoning it on the counter for far too long as it faded into the background of dishes to be washed. Easter ham, I am truly sorry. What a waste. Stockpot, you are lucky I like and need you, otherwise I'd be tempted to dump you along with your contents in the trash.

Birch trees, I thank you. Thank you for letting us tap your trunks this spring. Wow, some of you produced a lot of water! Way too much for us to drink, and even way too much for us to boil down into syrup. But we sure tried. How many propane tanks did we go through? How many hours of boiling that stupidly huge pot on the deck, with the wind blowing out the stupid stupid flame, refilling the pot with endless buckets of  infinite birch water until finally we had a gallon of rich, dark almost-syrup ready for one last boil. 

So, thank you birches. And sorry. Sorry for taking that last precious, hard-won gallon of sap and pouring it into the dutch oven on the stove inside ... and then forgetting it while it boiled down to an infinitely black carbon ring. I am truly sorry, birches. But shout out to vinegar, baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, boiling water, and elbow grease for eventually removing the diamond-hard ring encrusting the precious Le Creuset. I couldn't have done it without you. I love you all. Goodnight!

Embracing Imperfection

What's currently making me laugh on this Easter Sunday as the ham bakes, Theo naps, my mom cleans up two months' worth of junk mail from her counters, my dad chuckles a-(be-?)musedly at it all, and John watches the babes whilst drinking a rosemary infused Tom Collins (we are not barbarians, after all, at least not when we're in proximity to my father's liquor cabinet), is that I have thoroughly confused iPhoto face recognition.

"Is this Theo?" iPhoto asks me, showing me a picture of definitely (probably) Lula.

"Is *this* Theo?" it asks, when (not so) obviously, that's totally (possibly) Nell.

"Oh, FINE – this is effing Lula then, surely!" And it shows a photo of Theo from six months old.

This is not a picture of Theo from six months old. This is a picture I took of Theo on his scoot a few days ago, which I thought was more interesting. This kid is so excited about summer that he doesn't care he's riding through the icy slush. I want his hope, enthusiasm, and shirt.

Everyone tells me that the girls take after John, but I think if their hair were just a shade lighter and a twist curlier, their eyes blue instead of river silt brown/grey, I'd have a passel of genetic doppelgangers on my hands.

A necessity in life with twins (at least life with twins without a nanny, a housekeeper, a security detail, a personal chef, a life coach, an editor, a magic fairy, etc.) is to embrace slight (e.g. total) imperfection. My Easter carrots that I had envisioned as delicately braised have just turned out this side of blackened. Fine. I call them rustically roasted. My house bears more resemblance to a weirdly-themed baby frat party (a million empty bottles of kombucha on the counter; toys, diapers and clothes strewn with abandon on the living room floor, couch, bed). And I'm afraid that chaos is leeching its way into my parents otherwise refined condo dwelling. It's cliché, but if I were to om a mantra every morning, it would be: "My children are fed and dressed and I am living in a first world country. My children are fed and dressed and I am living..."

When I meet up with friend moms/mom friends/friendly moms/mom-ish friends, I am always asked, "So what else are you up to?" Maybe I've explained this before (a problem with post-twin brain is that my memory of previous conversations, valuable vocabulary, and the ability to talk about politics, literature or current events has been eaten away by sleep deprivation and a scattered attention span), but my mind goes immediately blank.

I guess ... I mean, I *do* do things that aren't related to child rearing. I sing in a choir on Tuesday evenings and can rhapsodize about the passages of Poulenc that are really thrilling me this semester. I can still cook a meal, though I've forsaken the complicated Julia Child-esque dinners of the past (oh, lovely past) with things that are fast and easy and vaguely toddler-friendly. New standbys: pasta with a quick homemade red sauce, lemon chicken soup, sautéed kale with rice (ha, yeah, right, like Theo eats the kale).

Oh, yeah – I shower! (That's something interesting that I can mention that will contribute to the conversation! ... right? I probably have mentioned it before! It's probably been the punchline to every single post, but I have no memory of this!)

This almost-year has been ten months of routine, an almost year of every day being lived with the survival mentality of getting from wake-up to nap to bedtime intact and alive (and hopefully vaguely happy). And it seems like John and I are only recently emerging from this survival existence to something more. I am typing faster and faster because I can hear babies fuss in the other room, and I had promised John that this would only take 15 minutes (it's been 45) ... a holdover from college days when I would spend hours polishing and crafting the introduction of a paper, only to finish the meat of the argument in a blaze of incoherent fury the hour before class. Okay, now the babies are scratching on the door to the office. This has been a year of furtive breaks from the reality of caring for three under three (three kids two years and under). Even now, that makes me laugh in a nervous titter about the surreality of it all. Yeah, I'm going to post this without rereading or copy-editing anything. That's the new me, too busy to care, blizzoooow!

Silence

What started off as a challenge to myself to *not* announce my pregnancy (with twins – bonus shock points!) on social media became a self-imposed exile from any communication on the blog. Laziness might have played a part. Or being too busy. (Oh, for the days of being too "busy" with only one kid! Ha!) Maybe it was a smug satisfaction with self-control that begat a willful denial of self expression. But eventually, after the twins' arrival, the absence of writing became an almost tangible thing, a mental obstacle that prevented anything from being chronicled outside of my "Mother's Journal" of five lines a day. And even that slip of a book I have problems keeping up.

This post has been percolating in various narrative forms in my head for over a year. I'm a creature of self-control, and even though I'm tempted to labor over self-edits ad infinitum, the fact is, for tonight, this Sunday night ... dinner is eaten, the Olympics are on, and I'm running out of time. So, I'm writing; I'm  publishing. Lula is asleep in Mormor's arms, Nell is lurching forward (army-crawl style – she knows how to crawl but just chooses the easier route?) over Theo's drawings of an Easter train ("It has to be pink! Draw me a pink train; the bunny goes here!"). Theo just ate some soufflé and is playing with Papa. Our time at the condo is ticking away and I want to get something, *anything* down.

I could write about the simultaneous joy and terror of discovering that we were expecting twins: at the six-week ultrasound, after the tech's pronouncement of monochorionic/diamniotic (identical) twins, John's extremities went numb and he started laughing uncontrollably. Or I could talk about the complete and utter normalcy of my pregnancy's progression, punctuated with numerous false scares and an eventual switch to a new OB/GYN (yeah ... maybe that's a topic that deserves its own post).

Or maybe I'll just leave here a promise to eventually capture more than a sketch of this crazy reality ... plus a few photos.

Hey, family and friends. Thanks for reading. We really appreciate it.

I'll write soon.

Photo credit: Grace Wilson (Sweet Pea Photography)