Baby on the Move

We've been joking for the past several weeks that all Leo--who celebrated his 1/2 birthday the day after Christmas--wanted as a gift was to learn how to crawl. And, like so many other wishes this season, his came true! On Solstice morning, he crawled across the rug for the first time, and now, a week later, he's a fully-mobile, crawling, pulling-up, and cruising, disaster-waiting-to-happen!

Hooray for happy, crawling babies!
And hooray for arnica, too.

A Very Noisy Solstice

On Monday, December 21st--the Winter Solstice--we woke up early and sang happy birthday to the sun by means of this song from Circle Round:

The Sun is born again today
We greet the Sun's first morning ray
We sing and celebrate the light
The Sun is born in the longest night

The kids were just as excited to see the dining room table, decorated and set for breakfast as it is each year on Solstice, as they were to see the gifts, wrapped beneath the tree. It really is the traditions of our celebrations that make them so special and magical, isn't it?

I couldn't find the tablecloth that we usually use on Solstice morning

so I just used a long roll of paper and drew stars all over it.

Our funky Solstice candle holder and the snowmen
(the snowmen candles were recycled from a
Christmas party my grandparents threw last year)

Sticky, sticky, sticky and
oh so yummy

After breakfast, the kids opened the gifts under the tree. Last year we decided that we would only give the kids "sharing" presents on solstice, with only as many gifts as there were children (last year, 3, this year, 4) and that all of the items given would have been previously owned. We decided to continue with that plan this year, adding the stipulation that the gifts would be of value to our family for many years to come (i.e. that the children would not quickly grow bored with them). And once again, it was a huge success. I now can't imagine doing it any other way.

Our home will be filled with the sound of music through these long winter months, and for many more beyond that, I'm guessing. The kids handled the day so brilliantly, and Lena and I were so pleased. And the sun shone brightly, and everyone was warm and cozy inside our noisy little house.

Countdown to Winter

In the middle of this, the longest night of the year, I am finally now getting a chance to share with you some of the ways we have been anticipating the Winter Solstice this year.

Our "solstice mittens," as they are called by the kids, have been hung for the third year in a row, and yet again we've used them differently than we did in the past. The first year, we used them to disperse small prizes to the kids (really just Luke and Jaz at that point). When that didn't end up being a great experience, we changed things up last year and used the mittens (which are actually a mix of miniature hats and mittens) to hold daily message cards. Each card would say something about a project or activity we were going to do that day. But, still, we found that even with the cards, there was too much room for disappointment with the mittens. The last thing we wanted to do was to up the level of angst in the kids. So, this year, we mellowed things out even more.

I hung the mittens in the doorway between the living room and the dining room, and the kids simply moved a small stuffed animal bird from mitten to mitten (or hat) with each passing day. There was just about no room for drama, and yet for some reason, this activity was still a small daily excitement, even for Luke and Jaz, who can clearly remember the days when the mittens held much more excitement inside them.

These pictures are not of our traveling stuffed blue jay who has jumped all the way from day 1 to day 20 so far, but rather of the many small wooden animals who gather around the toy solstice tree each December. They were just hanging out in the solstice mittens, giving me some ideas for next year, and I thought they looked cute.


I did elaborate our wooden toy solstice tree set-up this year to include--of all things--a sun! I used one of the kids' circular tree blocks, and simply painted it yellow and drilled a hole through it before hanging it from our chandelier.

a wooden sun

all the animals,
gathering for the sun's birthday party

Additionally, we have been preparing for the Solstice by reading lots of books about winter. One of my favorite traditions growing up was the basket of Christmas books that my mom would set out just before the holidays. And thus the tradition lives on in our house, though without any reference to Santa or baby Jesus. Some of my most favorites: Winter is the Warmest Season, Snow, Waiting for Winter, and Winter Lullaby.

Lukas, reading "Snowmen at Night"

And, of course, we have our real solstice tree. We got a pretty tiny, tabletop version this year because there really wasn't room in our pretty tiny house for anything bigger. Zeben is most enamored with the tree, and is constantly taking the animal ornaments off to play with them and rearrange them. Everyone--each one of the animals--gets a turn at the top.

Happy Solstice To All!

Happy Birthday to the SUN!

Speaking of Babies . . .

Has anyone else been watching the trailer for the movie, Babies, repeatedly, through teary eyes?



I don't usually post this type of link in my blog, but I'm so moved by the Babies trailer--and so excited about the release in April--that I simply had to share. I'm hopeful that the full feature will, in part, give us Westernized baby-havers a refreshing reminder of what babies really need, what babies are capable of, and simply offer us new ideas about parenting.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, as well.

Half a Dozen Baby Tricks

Sometimes I feel really grateful for having had twin babies for our first mothering experience if only because we figured out such great coping skills that have been completely applicable to having singleton babies as well (but that I don't think we would have necessarily figured out if it weren't for the insanity of the twin baby thing). This post is a compilation of "baby tricks we learned from our twins" that I hope one of you might find helpful at some point.

The thing about having two babies at once is that you have to get kind of creative in the department of baby entertainment, assuming that you want to keep your babies relatively happy most of the time, and that you also want to have time and space to do regular human things like eat dinner with your wife or hang out with your friends in the evening or get any amount of sleep at all. At the same time, we also felt strongly that this "baby entertainment" be of the non-battery/electricity-requiring variety since neither Lena nor I can tolerate anything plastic or otherwise mechanical that lights up and/or makes noise. In our quest for solutions we did break down and try some things that we had previously considered to be in the "we absolutely won't do that with our babies" category. For instance, when the twins were 3 weeks old, I sent Lena out to the store to buy both pacifiers AND a wind-up baby swing. We were desperate (the pacifiers did nothing for us, the swing-o-matic was lovely for a few months).

Anyway, here are some of my favorite ways to keep our babies happy and make the whole first year much, much less stressful (I suppose I assume it goes without saying that the top two ways to soothe a baby are: breastfeeding and babywearing, possibly in that order, or possibly simultaneous (that's Leo's favorite at the moment--nursing in the sling), thus neither of those priceless tools are listed here):

1. Take That Baby Outside. We learned early on that Luke and Jaz were nearly always perfectly content so long as they were out in the fresh air. The same was true for Zeb and Leo. Sometimes even just a few minutes of standing under the sky can completely shift a baby's mood. The textures of the natural world (grass, leaves, dirt, bark) are also hugely entertaining for babies who have reached the tactile stage.

Leo, in a pile of leaves
4 months old

2. Remove Clothing! A naked baby is often a happy baby. Aside from Zeben (who never much liked being naked, and now today is probably the least naked-3-year-old ever), all of our babies have loved, loved, loved to be naked. With Jaz it was an especially magical solution, and since he was our fussiest baby of the bunch, I'd often find myself stripping him down all over town! For the most part, we employ this trick during dinner time, when the rest of us are hoping to do some eating in peace, and when babies are often not in their most easy-going states. We have an absorbent pad that we lay on the floor for little babies, so if they pee it's no big deal. Once they start crawling, it can get a little messier, but I'll take a peaceful dinner with a puddle of pee on the floor over dinner with a fussy little one any day.

Naked at Dinnertime
Leo, 3 months old

3. Bathe With Your Baby! Babies love water. They especially love water if they feel like they are safe in a parent's arms. All of our babies have been instantly soothed by a bath with one of their moms. With Luke and Jaz, I used to sometimes take 3 or 4 baths a day just for the calm that bathing provided. I do not believe that there is any reason to worry about the temperature of the water. Trust your instincts and your baby's reaction. You will know if the water is too hot (or too cold). It should be comfortable for both you and your baby (and for those who really must have a number, I generally suggest a water temperature of about 100-101°F).

Co-bathing
Me with 3-month-old Zeb

4. The Laundry Basket Trick. Put your newly sitting, not-yet-crawling baby in a laundry basket for some low-frustration play time. The basket keeps your baby's toys within easy reach. Plus, babies just like to be tucked into cozy spaces like that.

Laundry Leo,
5 months old

5. Hang a Swing Inside! The indoor swing is one of our most favorite parenting tricks. All of our babies have loved swinging. We find it's especially helpful for Leo during fussy times when he's craving motion (and thus simply being in the sling while I stand at the counter preparing a meal isn't enough for him). And it's especially, especially helpful if you have older children in your home who can help with pushing the baby and making faces at him while he's swinging. We got a swing from a swing set supplier and hung it in the doorway between our kitchen and our dining room. The swing allows the baby (or toddler . . . or 6-year-old!) to face in either direction, so Leo can watch his brothers draw at the dining room table, or watch me cook dinner. I suggest not hanging a swing with chains (we did this originally in our new house, using our outdoor baby swing, but have since replaced it with a chain-less version), and instead using rope (we like climbing rope best). You can get swing-hanging hardware at your local hardware store. In some previous homes, we've found a joist in the ceiling and hung a swing in the middle of the room, but the doorway is an easy solution if ceiling joists aren't easy to come by in your house or if the rooms are too small to accommodate something swinging back and forth inside them.

Swing More, Fuss Less
Leo, 5.5 months old

6. Put Your Mattress on the Floor. We did this right away with Luke and Jaz since we were intending to co-sleep with them from the start. I knew that I didn't want to have to worry about two babies rolling off the bed in the night. It worked so wonderfully for us, that we've put our mattress on the floor for all of our babies once they hit the rolling stage (and generally we've left it that way until they've learned how to safely crawl off of a higher bed). I truly believe that the key to getting good sleep with a newborn--or a baby of any age who is not sleeping through the night independently (lest I make it sound like it would be typical for a non-newborn to be sleeping through the night independently, let me remind you that one of our nearly 7-year-olds is not yet sleeping through the night independently, and none of our kids (thus far) hit that milestone before the age of 2 years)--is to share sleep with your baby. And by "share sleep" I do not mean "sleep when the baby sleeps" (such great advice that is entirely inapplicable to those of us with twins), but literally sleep with your baby, in a bed together. And I think the best way to make co-sleeping actually work for your family is to be doing it in a big enough bed that is as close to the floor as possible (low bed frames work for some families, but I do think putting the mattress directly on the floor is the easiest solution). Sleep deprivation has hardly ever been an issue for us (I went through a rough patch with the twins in the middle of their second year, but that's it), and I attribute this parenting anomaly to our fabulous Family Bed and realistic expectations.

I'd love to know what baby tricks--conventional or, especially, unconventional--you've come up with. Please share in the comments section!

Where the Hearth is

When we first toured our cute little house back in August, I felt nearly instantly that it was the house we'd been wishing for (even though we'd actually only been looking for a couple of weeks, and it was the first single-family house we looked at). It was, in many ways, our dream home. If it had had a wood stove and a two-person claw-foot tub (and maybe some cathedral ceilings with skylights) it would have been too good to be true. Aside from those oversights, it was nearly perfect. There were only a few things that we decided were worthy of immediate change once we bought the house: pulling out the carpet in the playroom and putting in a wood floor, taking out the popcorn ceiling in the playroom, installing a wood stove in the living room, and adding some open shelves to the kitchen walls. The playroom was finished soon after we moved in (and it's fabulous and I'm planning to do a post about it soon), but the process of installing the wood stove has taken much longer than we originally anticipated.

Just this past Monday, we finally got the OK to start the first fire. And oh, how lovely it was.

the first fire

The wood stove dream comes from several different places. First, I generally run cold in winter. And I don't particularly like to feel cold. I find that I tolerate the cold much better if I have a warm place to sit by. In many of our past homes, I spent much of each day parked directly above a heating vent (in my college dorm, I think I spent most of the winter sitting on top of the radiator). Using a wood stove to heat the house solves my cold issues in two ways: we can keep our house warmer overall, and there's always a super warm place to sit by. Second, I love the smell of burning wood, and I love watching flames dance around in a fire. Third, I think of it as a sustainability issue. I like knowing that if--for whatever reason--gas is not available to us for use as a heating agent, we'll still be able to keep our house and family warm. Fourth, it's much cheaper to heat with wood than with gas. Fifth, it's just kind of quaint. From the chopping to the stacking to the carrying-the-bundles-of-wood-inside-while-snow-blusters-about-outside, the whole process just makes me smile.

half-naked babies lying in front of the fire
make me smile too

Now that we have our wood stove up and burning (and it's been doing a most excellent job keeping our house super warm (as in maybe a little too warm, but I am not complaining (though my children are)) without any supplemental gas heat thus far--even overnight!), our house really feels like OUR home. It reminds me of how when Luke and Jaz were first born in the hospital, they wore the teensy disposable diapers that the hospital provided. On their second day, once I was feeling less drugged, I made Lena go home and get our stash of cloth diapers because I just couldn't stand it. And as soon as their newborn bottoms were wrapped in soft cloth, I remember feeling suddenly so strongly like they really were MY babies. And that's how it was with the wood stove, too.

Leo, 5.5 months

Apparently, for me, home is where the HEARTH is. We are quickly growing accustomed to the new routine that involves maintaining a fire (our stove has a catalytic combustor--so cool!--which makes it slightly more complex to use than some stoves), and simply loving the fact that the stove will be the new back drop to our winters. Leo will learn to crawl (soon!) in front of it. 100 games of Monopoly will be played in its glow. Dozens of novels will be read to the sound of the crackling fire.

Wishing that everyone everywhere could be blessed with such a warm and cozy home this December.

Common Denominator

Back in the day when the plan was for me to gestate our first baby and for Lena to gestate our second baby, we did not plan to use the same donor for both pregnancies. We theorized that using the same donor would result in siblings who were genetically linked only through the donor--someone we didn't, and wouldn't ever, know--and we felt like making that choice would over-emphasize the importance of genetics, and the donor's genes in particular.

After Luke and Jaz were born, we began to rethink the idea of never using the same donor twice. Here, we already had--unintentionally--created two children from one donor, and since Lena was no longer feeling the least bit interested in experiencing gestation (I just made it look like so much fun), it started to feel like it made sense to perhaps bank some of Luke and Jaz's donor's sperm for a third child (who I would gestate). Why have two kids from one donor, and a third from a separate donor? We were already appreciating the fact that Luke and Jaz would be able to share in the experience of being conceived with help from a particular donor's sperm, and adding a new donor to the mix would only serve to add more unknowns to the process. I've always been aware of the fact that the kids may one day question our choice to use an anonymous donor, and they may very well long for more information about their donor and his family. I can only hope that having each other--being in the same "genetic boat"--might prove to be somewhat of a condolence.

When it came to be that we were thinking about trying to conceive a fourth child, at first we didn't even consider the possibility of using the same donor we had used previously (referred to as "your donor" when speaking to the children, and as "daddy" when Lena and I were speaking privately). The Cryo Bank had been sold out of his specimens for years (he made most of his donations in 2001), and as I said, we had never intended to have Lena and I both gestate babies conceived with the same sperm anyway. But one evening, after a few hours of searching through the sperm bank database looking for a new anonymous donor, we started to wish that we didn't have to make this choice again. Choosing a sperm donor is a nerve-wracking process. I remember at times wishing that the bank would just give out generic, standard-issue sperm, removing us from the responsibility of selecting attributes that we'd like to see reflected in our children. At other times, I wished we could be more specific in our search, that we could choose our donor based not only on his physical traits, medical history, educational success and athletic abilities, but also on whether or not he liked to climb trees, and if he was bothered by the cold, and how he felt about flying in airplanes or what kind of sheets he liked on his bed. We eventually chose our donor basically by a process of elimination. We never felt any "a-ha!" moment about his profile, nor would we have been the least bit devastated if we'd called the bank and they'd been sold out of his specimens. But after Luke and Jaz were born, we did begin to feel a bit of an attachment to "our" donor. He had, after all, donated the genetic material that had in part contributed to our beautiful, perfect babies. Using his sperm for a second time, when trying to conceive Zeben, did feel like less of a gamble since we already knew something about what babies made with our donor's sperm were like. Thus, as a last-ditch effort before moving forward with choosing a new donor for a fourth baby, we emailed out the listserve of families who have conceived babies with the same donor we used, asking if anyone had an extra vial of sperm that they didn't need. And, as is now perfectly well known, there was one more vial out there, and the genetic material within it contributed to the creation of our sweet baby Leo.

I'm often surprised by how surprised others are upon learning that all of our kids have the same donor. "That's so cool!" they'll say, "amazing!" As if we were the first family ever to conceive all of our kids with sperm from the same man (what a novel idea!). That said, I feel the same way about our heterosexual friends' offspring: the fact that they were conceived out of a combination of their parents' genes just blows me away. I overhear our friends complaining about birth control or worrying over the potential for unplanned pregnancies, and I think, "but do you even realize how truly, outrageously wonderful it is that you guys can make babies by mixing your very own genetic material?!" What troubles me most about the exclamations over our kids' biological relationship is that I often feel people placing value on the fact that all of our kids are genetically related. Some acquaintances have even gone so far as to say, "so they're all real brothers!" Which, of course, they are, but it's irrelevant of the fact that we used sperm from the same man to conceive each of them. This is one of the main reasons why we originally did not want to ever use the same donor twice, because we did not want to place value on a genetic relationship when clearly, in our family, genetics are not a key factor (after all, Lena is not genetically related to Luke, Jaz or Zeb, and I am not genetically related to Leo). If Luke, Jaz, Zeb and Leo are perceived to be real brothers because of their genetic relationship, are Lena and I then perceived to not be real mothers to the children that each of us did not conceive? How can you place value on the fact that the boys all have the same donor and yet at the same time, not infer a lack of relationship between those members of our family who do not share a genetic link?

I am glad that all of our kids (thus far) have the same donor. I'm glad that they have him in common, that when they reach the (inevitable?) developmental stage wherein they can see their sperm donor conceptions as a loss, that they will be able to turn to each other, and perhaps find solace in their shared genetic history. And I appreciate the fact that I can see all of our older sons reflected in Leo's physical appearance, or in expressions he makes, or in the way he holds his body. Now that we have Leo, the donor has become a Common Denominator of sorts. Whereas, when the other three kids shared a physical trait, we could never be sure if it was something they had inherited from me or from the donor, shared traits between Leo and any of his brothers obviously came from the donor (aside from those traits which could be attributed to nurture vs. nature, of course). One strange example: both Zeben and Leo were "early" sitters. When Zeben started sitting independently just before 4 months of age, I assumed it was because he was such a chunk (seriously, his bottom provided him with a solid base). But then when Leo started sitting at exactly the same age (nearly to the day), yet without said chunk factor, I instead wondered if this strange early sitting gene had come from the boys' Common Denominator: the donor. Similarly, Zeben spent many of his first months with his bottom lip sucked completely inside his mouth, a face we lovingly called his "funny face." And Leo? Makes the exact same face all day long. Who would've thought that something like that could be genetic? (As an aside, Zeben's "funny face" drove me absolutely crazy, but I find the same expression on Leo to be incredibly endearing . . . perhaps because it is now a reminder of baby Zeb).

Zeben, just shy of four months old

Leo, just shy of four months old

I wonder more about the donor post-Leo than I did pre-Leo. For me, his presence is more pronounced now that his genetic material has helped to link us all, biologically speaking. Just as, I suppose, I feared it would be were we to choose this path of using the same donor repeatedly. And, yet, of course, nothing has really changed, and in reality the donor has no presence in our family at all. He's like a ghost. And I find that I don't mind this ghost-like presence as much as I thought I would. In fact, I don't mind it at all. I am certain we made the right choice.

******

Some previous thoughts on having used a sperm donor