Odessathlete

Crawling, but needs a rearview mirror....

Thanksgiving

Although neither Odessa nor Georgia pitched in to cook anything, they were a big hit at our belated family Thanksgiving in Rhinebeck.   They were warmly appreciated by the Weintraubs.  And they did not violate the rule "if you don't cook, you don't eat" because they did not eat.  Next year will be a different story... tiny cooks coming up!  

Zeyde's portraits

More portraity shots are here.

We have tooth.

Odessa has a tooth. Yes, not the beginnings of a tooth, but a tooth that's in and biting. Took about 3 weeks to come in. Just the one. It's... I don't know. Cute! Very square, as they often are. Tiny and porcelain-looking, when we're allowed to see it.

Everyone is playing together now. We steal toys out of hands, pacifiers out of mouths. Sometimes, when it's done to us, we complain, but mostly we just find something else to grab and chew. Apples are especially delicious, when there's a bite out of them and we can lick the white part. They bounce nicely and make a loud thump.

We have nice grins. Georgia's is, as always, pure flirty sugar. Odessa's has gone from the excited gaping maw to a big wide smile that seems positively joyful. We laugh at each other and smash our hands up and down when we see each other. Or the cat. Animal sounds are funny. Life is pretty fun. Also, all the grown-ups we know are pregnant, which seems very promising.

O & Geo show off their sitting skills

 

Boo!

Who would have guessed you were going out for Halloween?  Then Mama called to say you should be delivered to her office at 6 pm for the Halloween party.  (Mama was dressed as Joe the Plumber -- by the time you read this an obscure political reference that will need explanation).  Uh oh -- what to wear?  Your Zadie and your Nana piled you into the stroller and set off for Main Street Tarrytown to survey the costume possibilities.  Lucky us, we found just the thing!  

OBAMA!!!! OBAMMAAAA!!!! Day one of the new world.

Babies, there's hope! There was hope before, but it was theoretical. Now you can touch it. We went to flip the levers! There were lots of people, lots of first-time voters (not young) and people like Mommy who hadn't voted in a long long time because there wasn't much to vote for, lots of kids being shown the polls -- Christiane Amanpour said that New York City looked like places she'd covered where the first democratic election was happening, where people were so excited about casting their vote because it feels like it actually matters, and that really is what it felt like.

When we woke up on Tuesday morning it felt like Christmas! What is that feeling? Excitement, possibility, knowing that everyone else is going to show up in the living room all shiny and full of the same feeling... Not just hope, but having the exact same hope as billions of other people. When does that happen?!

And you were there, babies. We were too excited to take decent photos but look some up when you come back to read this because it was really something...

After voting we went to the diner, as you do, and you passed out from the excitement. Then later we saw the early returns in some plasma-TV-filled sports bar, where your moms nervously watched the first states come in for McCain, and you entertained some Brazilian ladies in the booth behind us; and finally to a news-watching party at Aunties Lili and Leki's, which moved upstairs to Roz and Craig's house.

We watched as some Republican talking head said that McCain had run badly and Anderson Cooper cut her off to say "ah, we have a projection," and then one more state came in and then OBAMA!!!! O-BA-MAAAA!!!!!! OBAAAAMAAA!!! and everyone was cheering and jumping around, and we ran onto the balcony and everyone outside was whooping and we could hear the roar from Times Square. We went back in and waited what seemed like forever for Obama's speech, watching the crowd in Grant Park going crazy with happiness and crying... McCain gave his concession speech to a pretty scary-looking audience, and Saida said it was like Peanuts -- just "wah wah wah" because we didn't care what he said anymore. And finally, at last, Obama came on and we listened to him on TV, and heard every word again a few seconds later, coming from the huge screens in Times Square and rolling down every street in the city. You were there.

Your moms haven't completely lost their edge, babies. But what happened on election day can't ever be taken back! It demands at least a completely fresh try unburdened by the tries that tanked before. We hope the world you're about to receive stays changed like it was last night.

xoxo

Mommy

More photos of canvassing, post-vote nap & election watching here.

Whole Tiny People

The babies are short wobbly people! They don't have language yet, but they study the things around them (using their tactile little monkey tongues as much as anything else) and they look to see how other people are responding to them. Their eyes are really lit up and attentive and much more advanced than their hands. They get a little shy now around people. Odessa even cries when something scary happens (although I did trip over the stroller and face-plant in the babies' laps last week, and all I got was shocked stares, and, from Georgia, the special are-you-kidding-me-with-this? eyebrows.)

Milestones show up every day. The bouchkies had their first East Village garden klezmer show the other night, with the magic of tight quarters, mosquitos, dim lights and razor-witted, love-laced songs, and reunions with all the friends who had heard about them but not yet pinched their pajamaed tushies. They wear shoes now. They're outgrowing the co-sleeper, and we fight with ourselves over whether it's okay to keep moving them into the bed, and for how long? They still don't like rice cereal, but it doesn't seem important enough to force them. They only have one cat now. They didn't watch the first presidential debate. Lots of stuff...

I don't know why the babies must be called bouchkies, but bouchkies they clearly are. I googled it, thinking it might be an inherited word and not just a mishmosh of the kutchky and buba and kush-kush my cousins and I were called. And look what turned up: "Buchky is a Georgian toast (Republic of, not State of), sort of pronounced "butch-kee," that means when you tap glasses it's like the leaves of a bush all coming together." That's so lovely! If it's true. And it has Georgia and everything.

Hey babies: speaking of Georgia, do we need to talk about Georgia, the place, not in the south? The question of whether we had it in mind when we named our Georgia has finally left your Mommy with Georgia of Eastern Europe in mind. And now the war. What a strange sweet mix of sounds -- it looks in transliteration like Scandanavian and maybe Arabic, and Latin, some Slavic ones. Will your names draw you to it?

New photos are here.

Late Summer

Dear Babies,

Summer is winding down and the ceiling fan is still hanging half-installed. Your mama goes back to work in a week and a half, and it seems like there are no Bronx childcare slots for babies till next September. The living room is a parking lot for the jumperoo and its many sisters: a swing, a rocker, two bouncers, an exersaucer, three strollers, many car seats for various reasons. Babies, you still have cats, in spite of your mommies' dogged efforts to find them homes where they'll score at least a little human attention and won't send Mommy on frantic searches for the inhaler. SNL is still in reruns, but we're waiting so hard to see the [Tina Fey cameo] mock of Sarah Palin and (minus the outrage) of Michelle Obama. You only have one Obama t-shirt between the two of you, but someone wears it at least every other day. Not because, as they say, "we've drunk the Obama kool-aid," but because we're even more terrified of a McCain world now that he's McCain-Palin. (When you're old enough to read this, will people be as grateful for the Anne Kilkenny letter as we are now?)

You're growing like weeds, and constantly seem just ready to do something new: talk, crawl, eat... We've moved on to a whole new size of clothing, and are ready to pass off a whole crate of hand-me-downs already -- you're bigger than other kids, how crazy! And you do bigger baby things, like crying to keep yourselves awake instead of going to bed; screaming, shaking and gasping until finally, miserably, you pass out. Like going from your big open-mouthed grins to laughing heh-heh-heh-heh-heh when Mommy's being so so funny or holding you up in the air. Like you can reach all the stuff on the jumperoo and the exersaucer, which you couldn't do two weeks ago.

You went to Wave Hill, touched and smelled all kinds of summer flowers, sat your naked tushies in the grass, and fell asleep in the shadows of leaves. You had a house-sit staycation in Chelsea, very glam, and saw lots of your downtown grown-up admirers. Later you came back down to fall asleep on the benches of a great Indian restaurant, among mosquitos from the balcony and coos from your cousine Jessica, and from Bruce and Alfonso who helped you get born.

You went for your vaccinations and the doctor didn't make Jojo get the one that made her so sick last time. We tried to start you on rice cereal but you puked it up like crazy and cried for milk, so jeez, okay, we'll try again in a little while. You drool buckets and it seems like you're teething -- got some sharp ones under those gums -- but nothing yet. You talk to each other sometimes now, which is most exciting of all, to see each of you find your first friend.

New things now: yesterday we went and worked on your Mommy papers, and ate great bagels and you got to play with all the slightly bigger kids, and then you went to Brooklyn in the middle of Hurricane Gustav... and today we went to visit my Nana in Woodlawn, where we sat under the magnolia tree that she makes grow into so much shade, and told her all about you.

Photos of some of all that are here.

The Pill's Progress

More new pix are here.

When you are an only child, a mishmosh and a Gemini, and not a blond & blue eyed Aries twin (began your mother's somber tale) the world tends to feel like it has a very sharp and special kind of teeth. The world says: A baby? A joy. Two babies? Triple happiness.

But you are not so concerned with your own bliss. You look into your babies' perfect, silent faces, which look like wizened, grown-up faces of people who are silent because it's judicious; who could talk if they liked. You look at gas pain that tightens the lips and clenches the eyelids. You see the eye-widened gaze at rustling leaves and flashing lights. When you push the stroller too fast, you see fawnlike panic. Eventually they giggle at you -- and also at anyone else. You stare and stare, waiting for some sign of recognition that you, and not the subway token clerk, you and not the take-out man, you and not the super, the neighbor, the babysitter, or the lady in the elevator, are the mother of these babies. And you think, GODAMMIT! Why won't you talk to me?! How else, when you make googly eyes at everything that moves, can I notice that it's me you love?

It's only a question, I'm told, that a Gemini lonely would ask. And maybe even then only if they were the workaday stiff who just put in family appearances in on mornings and weekends. Apparently you're just supposed to know.


Luckily for us and unluckily for the therapist, Odessa has started to laugh and smile at us more regularly, and in response to happy things. And our Georgia, who has been so pliant and good, has started to complain sometimes when we put her to bed before she's ready. They have opinions at last, so every smile is that much sweeter. We do stand around like collectors waiting for them. Especially the desperate, craven Geminists who turn out to be ruled by their children's rationed affections.

Morning people

Odessa in the new pants
-slide show-

Georgia's sweet morning face
-slide show-

Plus ça change

The babes are changing madly... Stand them in the Jumperoo and they're whole new people with real person faces, cooing strange and beautiful whale noises at anyone who'll listen: plastic roos, spinning gears, clacky beads, singing frogs. Lots of photos here and hopefully more to come -- including the video of Odessa finding her feet -- from Bethany.

The constant attention of many cooing aunts, uncles, grown cousins and baby cousin, all gathered at Myrtle Beach, seems to have the babies growing and waking faster than ever.
They're getting Habits now. Odessa is no longer willing to go out to dinner no matter what's on the menu. She wants to walk around, and better yet, to just leave out of the restaurant. (If you try to come back in, the lip starts to quiver and curl and you're in trouble all over again.) Georgia, if you lean her back, slams herself forward in a sit-up... a trick she first unveiled for Great Grandma Dot. And she seems to have learned how to eat. Amazing!

The beach itself may have been incidental -- who knows what a baby takes in, when so little of it is remembered? But they looked devilishly cute in their stripey kits... which are more for the mothers, as we found out when we dipped everyone in the ocean. Really, the baby bathing suit is not the issue. Naked would be fine. The bigger problem is the sopping gelatinous diaper mess. (Although plastic diapers, grossly, don't seem so wet once the outside dries off. Chh! Feh.)

The funny part is that, the more conscious the bubelehs get, the more they look alike... till finally we took a picture and found, for a second, that we almost couldn't tell the difference.

P.S. What's with all the French? Don't know. Staci thinks all dogs are boys and all cats are girls. Maybe all babies are French. They certainly wear a lot of very daring horizontal stripes.

BoheMaman

And has anyone noticed how easy and dextrous our Staci has become with the babies that we once feared to break? Check this out... Yes, it's what it looks like, she's got that baby in the Big Purse Hold, chowing down. (True, we were in search of late night ice cream, which is a pretty strong motivation for just *making it work* on the go. Still, admirable, right?)

At Swim, Two Pupchiks

The kids had their first dip this weekend in the Roe-Jan swimming hole in Milan. It was hot hot hot and the babies were surprisingly willing to be dipped in cool water (although today Odessa cried about what was coming when we ran the water for her bath. Anticipation has arrived!*)

As we swished the babies around, a pickup full of 14 kids and 3 dogs arrived, all of whom started swimming a bit up the stream, which meant we were in the wrong spot... so we went back the next day with friends, neighbors and faraway visitors to the nice deep currenty part where they'd been. 24 years it took me to figure out where that swimming hole was. And the babies? Less than 4 months, the smarties.

So it looks like the baby-blob days are over. The kids are watching things that move (like the ceiling fan), talking to bears, giggling at each other and barking to let us know whenever the plinking musical mobile needs to be rewound.

More photos of the babies waking up are here...

*Aaaaaahahaha

First Wedding

Nathan and Maki
were wed on Bremen Island.
A beautiful step forward
for them and us too.


Odessa and Georgia
attended as tenugui girl
and lemon meringue girl
delighting everyone.

Cousin love

Bethany said...

My ploo for the "threesome" pic:

One of us questions
the camera's strange purpose
unamused with the bright light
Silly mommy's fun

The other content
go ahead flash away more
I'll be my sleepy wee self
Teddy bear will watch

Goodbye to Kalyani

Babies, don't fret much:
Kalyani (whose name is
one-sixth of a haikuPlus!)
will squeeze you again.

June in haiku

The blog is on summer vacation. No more prose, just Haikus like little tinkling ice cubes. Since twinness is all about squishing in extra things, our ice cubes are actually HaikuPlus, pronounced "ploo", which (obviously!) goes 5,7,7,5. The babies invite you to post your own, especially if you're a supposed blogger who never actually posts (Staci... FG...) Surely you can squeeze out 24 syllables.

Here are photos:
The First June

Some days were so hot,
even the babies sweated;
slept, woke, cried, ate; cried again,
now for no reason.

Grabbing the nummy
was Monday. Wednesday was
propping up on arms. Some days,
growing is enough.


At the Thai Mission,
the babies opposed drug wars.
Later, they marched for trannies,
dykes and queers. Good kids.

We wonder: how much
do they know? Do they have things
they'd say if they could? Mommy?
Or: Who are these two?

.
.
.

[Your haikuPlus here!]

Heat wave

It was HOT and the babies wilted.

The grins are in

The books and the bad, bad internet said the babies should've been smiling a a few weeks ago, but they weren't. It wasn't clear if they didn't like us, were already doing the teenage sulk or thought they were supposed to be posing for some grim daguerreotype portrait, but their range of emotion was limited: sleeping was as close as we got to "happy," when chomping on a nipple they showed a sort of relief, and on the other end of the spectrum was hellacious screaming associated with stinging, bilious spit-up. Being a baby has looked like a huge ordeal.

But all that is suddenly over now. They're smiling like champs. Odessa is still a little coy with the grins, doesn't want to give 'em out too easy. Georgia cheeses from ear to ear whether it was funny or not, and the other day she said "ha!" Odessa is saying more serious things like "ah, hmm, er," and little throat vibrations.

Here are photos from the smiling, and from the heat wave that happened at the same time... (Steel yourself, Bethany!)

And bébés, listen: just don't do anything new and exciting this week while you're away, okay? Don't go any further than "ha!" -- save your first multisyllabic laughs and muttering for when you get home...

xo

Mommy

How they grow

Georgia is up to 8lbs 3oz. Odessa is almost 9lbs (8'13, but she squirmed on the scale.) They feel more different than that... although they both feature that same squishy delishusness. Two babies!

More photos are here.

Where are they now?

Because moms like to be scolded about our child-rearing practices, we like to take the babies directly to the strangers who make themselves available to berate us. Apparently 1am is too late to have the babies on Metro North, even if they've been asleep for the previous 6 hours at Aunties Lili and Leki's house (while their mothers have gone, for our sins, to see Cry Baby and do some off-duty boozing.)

So our latest round of photos is mostly road shots. (Here's the link.) Google doesn't let you write captions, so maybe it'll be fun to guess where they are.  Here are your choices:

1. With Cousin #3 at the Daily Planet in Poughkeepsie

2. In the hospital after a scary post-vaccination seizure (which the doctors tried to pawn off as "an incidence of severe acid reflux!")

3. On a first country outing to Rhinebeck, with Nana and Him

4. In the Upper West Side pied-a-terre of Yossi, attaining a level of glamor generally unknown by their parents

5. At the Working Families Party office, attaining the more usual level of glamor

6. Riding Metro North at 1am
 

7. In Odessa

8. On the Bronx balcony, enthralled by rustling willow leaves

Juggling act

A developing skill set....

Babies on Tour

Mother's Day -- not my favorite holiday, but who's asking? Babies Geo and O took their first museum tour -- with Grandma and Nana -- a quick scamper thru the picturesque Philipsburg Manor in Tarrytown. The site of many class trips from Nana's school days (in the 19th century?), what better place to begin the tourist life? Does it count if you're not awake?

Things that matter, things that don't.

Things that matter:

Georgia weighs seven pounds, and Odessa weighs almost EIGHT.

They're growing faster than zucchini in July, but more delicious (and unlike zucchini, we don't wonder what in the name of Britney we're going to do with that much baby.)

They eat four thousand times a day. They no longer sleep for more than an hour or two at a time. When they wake up crying, they wake up the other one too. Also, we've taken to calling them "that one" and "the other one." We're tired.

(Photo: Odessa at Odessa (the diner) with Aunties Lorna and Mary Ann)

Things that don't:

Everyone is very concerned with whether the babies are boys or girls. Staci has taken the brunt of it... She got yelled at by a lady who thought we were creating traumatic confusion for them by not draping them in pink. Another person was upset because they were wearing blue (which is mostly all there is besides pink) but then realized that there was a pink blanket in the stroller and calmed right down.

It boiled over this weekend. Previously, an old queen had called to congratulate and inquire about gender, but was adorably addled and ended up asking "what's their sexuality?" Which seems no weirder or more intrusive than the demand to know what bits the babies are sporting Down There. I said "they're queer, haha!" and we shared a little guffaw.

But then this weekend at Bob Kohler's memorial, we were loitering by the pop'ems when Penny Arcade asked the boys-or-girls question, and I had just had enough and reverted to "they're queer!" Penny freaked out.

- How do you know?! Did you do The Test? The Test that the whole country is hoping for, so they can abort the gay babeeees!!?!

- No, I'm pretty sure it's nurture.

- I thought we were about freeeedommm!

Flotilla was nearby, and whispered to her "No, it's good -- then they'll be on our side!"

(Photo: Baby O with Aunty LaurieWen at Bob's memorial.)

Later, during her eulogizing of Bob, she performance arted us in retort. Penny repeated the conversation we'd had 20 minutes earlier, but shriekier, even more accusing, over twanging guitars. I'm not sure how it was related to the eulogy...

Anyway, turns out that babies' gender coding is a topic that seems to strip onlookers of all decorum and erase strangers' sense of boundaries between themselves and our family. No such thing as just letting the babies be -- people want you to graffiti their grown-up identity onto them right now. And if they think you've written it wrong, you're in for an all-out intervention. Yikes! I was thinking I just wanted the babies to experience the exciting breadth of the world, but now I've gone all protectionist. Kindly step away from the babies.

Hey, are you guys getting much sleep?

 

Define "sleep."

Cryface

And now for our next episode of hate-us-later, we te presente: Cryface. The spit-up factor(y) is becoming rather enormous. And although we're really assiduously working to fix it -- trying everything from special starchy formula to propping up the babies in terrible positions all the time to denying Staci the cheese and caffeine that she can't believe she's not allowed to eat again -- the heartwrenching story of the cryfaces demands a public. Prepare to weep, our public.