Sister Comfort

We just returned from a wonderful week in Hawaii. This was our first trip without a single diaper, wipe, stroller, or any of those other baby things that make traveling such a pain. It was perfect. The girls entertained themselves on the plane with drawing and coloring and ate real grown-up food without a fuss.

In Hawaii, we tried out every pool, hot tub, and beach in the Waikoloa area. We saw flowers, birds, fish, turtles, dolphins, mongoose, and feral cats. The girls made new friends each day and tried every kind of fruit grown in Hawaii. They built castles on the beach, chased myna birds together, made sand angels, and bickered, about all sorts of ridiculous things. For the first three nights, they shared a room successfully. It was the first time we’ve ever been able to put them in the same room and still get a full night’s sleep. Then, on the fourth night, they kept each other (and us) up half the night.

Peanut got the room, and String Bean was moved to the fold-out couch, and hubby and I holed up in our bedroom after putting them to bed. It was worth it to have a quiet night of sleeping kids and two non-cranky girls the next day. The next night, String Bean had a nightmare, and refused to sleep alone in the condo’s living room, so she ended up back in the room with Peanut, where they kept each other up half the night again. The following night we separated them again, and again String Bean had a nightmare, but this time, instead of coming into our bedroom for comfort, she went straight to her little sister’s room, woke her up, told her about the bad dream, and went to sleep in there.

Last night when we got home, they gave each other kisses and hugs at their bedroom doors and Peanut told her big sister, “If you have a bad dream tonight, you can come get in bed with me.” It was the sweetest moment. I asked String Bean why, when the girls clearly love each other so much, they fight over things like favorite colors and imaginary princess playmates. She shook her head. “I don’t know why we do that. I do like her. Maybe I’ll try to argue less with her.”

This morning they were right back to fighting, over who liked Hawaii better, who was dreading school more, whose waffle had the most strawberries in it. But I still have that little gem of an image, of String Bean waking, afraid, and wanting her sister’s comfort more than any other.

It’s a Girl Thing

During hubby’s last long trip, two weeks in Asia, the girls and I headed up to my mother’s house for a break from all of our 24/7 togetherness that was getting to be too much for all of us. My sister also went up with her 9-month-old daughter. On the drive up, String Bean asked if her uncle would be there, and when I told her no, she said, “Oh, so it’s a girl thing.” I chuckled about that for the rest of the drive. One thing about super-effeminate String Bean, she appreciates girl things.

We’ve had three of these girls’ weekends at Mom’s house now, with Mom, her two girls, and three “grandgirls” as she calls them, and I have to say, I like the girl thing. Trips up to Mom’s house are a great way to get some extra help when hubby’s out of town for a couple of weeks, but when my sister and her daughter come, too, it’s more like a weekend-long party of girlness. We’re not sitting around painting toenails and doing each other’s hair: my sister is as makeup clueless and hair-product challenged as I am, but there are some feel-good movies watched and a lot of chocolate is consumed.

String Bean is a pretty good babysitter-in-training. She follows her cousin around, diverting her from danger, calling out updates to us every few minutes: “She’s near the stairs! She’s heading for the plant! She has a poopy diaper!” So that we can visit a bit and yet still keep a decent eye on the baby, who is now crawling and pulling up and getting into a whole new kind of trouble, especially at Mom’s un-baby-proofed house. String Bean understands which size objects are baby safe and which ones aren’t, and is pretty good at trading her little cousin small objects for larger ones. Peanut’s great at being silly and getting her cousin giggling. One of my favorite things about these girl weekends is watching the three girls playing and laughing together.

My other favorite thing is just hanging out with my sister, catching up and reminiscing and laughing about nothing at all. With three kids between us, we don’t get much quiet time to talk when we get together for an afternoon here and there, but over the course of a full weekend, we get lots of opportunities to talk and laugh. And this is in large part due, of course, to my mother’s tireless efforts in caring for her grandgirls. They are fed, dressed, bathed, fights are broken up, activities are planned, endless questions are answered, and instead of the constant “No, I want Mommy to do it!” that I always hear at home, I get to hear the beloved “No, I want Grandma to do it!” which is currently one of my favorite phrases in the English language.

Surrogate Sister

The other day we had an impromptu play date with the neighbor boy two houses over. He’s four, and in String Bean’s preschool class, but while they had weekly play dates for their first two years of life, they rarely interact at school. My girls were outside waving at the cars and pulling weeds on our lawn (if I call them flowers, and ask them to pick them, they’re more than happy to do it all for me), when he ran over to visit, then invited the girls back to his house to see his favorite toys.

The girls had a great time with him, racing up and down the stairs, playing catch, exploring his toy collection, and his mom and I, who used to visit together almost daily, but now rarely do, had a nice chat together. When dinner time rolled around, I herded the girls home, to much protest. A few minutes later my neighbor called to say as soon as we’d left her son had said, “Why couldn’t you have had her first, Mom, so I could have a sister?” Apparently, despite the fact that he and String Bean don’t play together at school, he still has a fondness for her. I told String Bean what he’d said, and she laughed and called him silly, but I notice she’s repeated it about a dozen times. She also keeps asking when we’re having another play date at his house. So even though she doesn’t play with him at school, or even acknowledge that he’s there, I guess she still has a fondness for him, too.

Two Is Enough

Last week, my sister and I both found ourselves home alone with kids while our husbands were out of town. She came over to visit one afternoon, for a much-needed afternoon nap and dinner. I had it all perfectly planned: I’d get the kids lunch, and the excitement of seeing their beloved auntie and cousin would wear them out enough to take a good nap, freeing up a good hour of my time to babysit my niece while my sister napped in my bed.

As predicted, the girls were ecstatic to see their 7-week-old cousin again, thrilled by her open-mouth full gum smiles. I had to rein them in a few times, reminding them not to scream, grab the baby’s hands, or shove each other around as they leaned over the baby. They had lunch and, assured that their cousin would still be there when they woke up, consented to head up to nap. My sister nursed the baby, handed her off, and went up to nap herself.

We had a few quiet minutes before I heard one of my girls crying in her room, quickly growing louder. The baby was almost asleep in my arms, but I knew if I put her down, she’d start to cry, which would wake her mother, so I took her with me to see what was going on.

I opened my 4-year-old’s door to find her holding a dirty diaper in her hand, with a huge ball of poop on the floor between her feet. I kicked into crisis mode. I hushed my daughter, swaddled the baby tighter and put her in my daughter’s bed, with the Ariel pillow propped up for visual stimulation while I sent the pooper to sit on the toilet. I cleaned up the mess on the floor, then my daughter, all while keeping both kids quiet enough not to wake the 2-year-old napping next door, or my sister asleep down the hall. I got the baby up, the 4-year-old back into bed, and managed to make it all the way downstairs before the baby cried. And, miraculously, neither napper woke up, and the 4-year-old soon drifted off to sleep. All in all, a successful afternoon, but those few stressful minutes exhausted me.

If anything has ever solidified my decision not to have any more kids, it was that moment. I remember those games with my two girls, where you’d get one to sleep only to have the other one act up, exhausting yourself trying to keep her from waking up the first one. It was an exhausting time of scrambling to entertain a toddler while run-down on a baby’s ceaseless needs. How do mothers of three possibly do it? You ladies have my utmost respect. You’re stronger women than I am.

Cousin Love

My girls, who were so anxious to meet their new cousin a week after she was born, spent their entire first visit obsessed with my sister’s cat toys. They weren’t impressed by the sleeping swaddled baby who seemed oblivious to them, and barely interacted with her at all.

My sister recently came over with her now one-month-old baby for a visit. My niece is much more alert now, looking all around, making those ridiculously sweet grunting and squealing vocalizations, and she stretches with a single-minded joy, arching her narrow back and testing how far she can spread her toes. This time, with the ability to see their cousin’s eyes, feel her grasp, and convince themselves that her baby noises were just for them, my girls were all over her. Literally.

I gave the girls the run-down on the rules several times before my sister arrived: no touching baby’s face or hands, gentle touching of her belly, legs, and feet is okay, and no screaming in the room with her. They listened well and were able to repeat the rules back to me. Then our visitors arrived, and the girls squealed their welcome in ear-piercing tones (waking the sleeping baby), and proceeded to fight over who got to hold her precious hand.

My unflappable sister was her usual jovial self, gently admonishing them without seeming truly alarmed. I can count on one hand the number of first-time moms I’ve met who wouldn’t panic at the sight of two over-stimulated kids bearing down on her newborn. Actually, I can count them on one finger, as my sister is the only one I’ve met.

After the initial enthusiasm wore off, we were able to get the girls to only hold their cousin’s feet with that vice-grip of love. It’s a good approximation of how we all feel about this newest member of our family, the baby that it took a decade of trying for my sister to have. Most of us are better able to restrain ourselves in the baby’s presence, but as I watched my two girls beaming brightly down at the cousin who has just learned to smile and beamed right back at them, I was immensely grateful for the dog-pile of cousin love on my lap. We should all be so lucky, to enter the world with so much loving anticipation, an entire family desperate to meet us, and two adoring cousins gushing with joy at our mere presence.

Skinny Kids

The night that I met my husband, the lanky guitar player who’d mesmerized me on stage, long and lean at 6’3” tall and 165 pounds, with the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen, my sister was already rooting for us to be a couple. She wanted me happy, in a good relationship, and back on track to the future of marriage and kids that I’d always expected.

As my sister and I drifted off to sleep that night, crammed hip-to-hip in our dad’s RV (we were camping at a bluegrass festival), she turned to me and said, “You’d make a great couple.” I thanked her, but reminded her that all I knew about him was his first name, that he had a great singing voice, and that we had one friend in common (the fiddle player in the same band). She nodded, as if thinking this over, then said, “You guys sure would have some skinny kids, though.” It was hysterical at the time, given that he and I had only known each other for about eight hours. While it seemed like he was interested, you can never be sure about these things, and planning for children with him seemed like jumping the gun just a tad.

We laughed about her looking so many years into one of many possible futures, ignoring the fact that we knew virtually nothing about each other yet. This is typical of my sister, both her relentless optimism as well as her determination to see any new venture to its best-case conclusion, even if that means taking over the situation and giving it the nudge she thinks it needs. Proof in point: at the end of the weekend, as we were heading home, it was my brazen sister who gave the cute guitar player my number, not me.

He called me a few hours later to schedule our first date. Two years after that we were married, and two years later we had our first daughter, then our second. The thing is, my sister was right. Both children are the chronically skinny kids that she predicted. My husband and I laugh about this frequently, the absurdity of the prediction come true. Maybe she saw something between us that night that we didn’t see ourselves just yet, or maybe every new relationship just needs one relentless optimist on the sidelines, rooting for the best possible conclusion, to make the couple think it’s really possible.

Sleep

Ah, the plight of the light sleeper. Sure, sleep when the baby sleeps, everyone said. They forget to tell you that the baby’s longest nap will be at 10am, when you can’t possibly make yourself sleep. Or that her naps will last all of 40 minutes, and if you’re like me, and it takes you 20 minutes to fall asleep, and you’re a light sleeper who jerks back awake at the sound of the baby stirring, you’ll get maybe 3 minutes sleep per 40-minute baby nap, and feel like you’d have been better off not even trying.

My sister is not a light sleeper. She’s one of those “anywhere, anytime” sleepers, and she seems to be coping with her newborn quite well, grabbing a 20-minute nap here, a 30-minute nap there, sleeping in that deep, restful way that I didn’t until my baby was no longer a baby. I’m not saying she’s not tired. She has the puffiness around the eyes and slowed-down thought processes that are the hallmark traits of any new mom, but she doesn’t seem to be suffering from total sleep deprivation the way I was when my firstborn was only a month old.

Part of that is mindset, I think. I expected to handle those early weeks of motherhood quite well. I figured as a lifelong insomniac and light sleeper I’ve had plenty of practice at functioning on far too little sleep. My mistake was the definition of “functioning.” I meant sitting at a computer in a quiet office, editing technical abstracts for 8 hours a day, on a steady stream of coffee. Not having to navigate a 2am diaper explosion while a baby screams to be fed, or trying to figure out how to calm a baby in a swing she hates while taking the shortest shower on record.

My sister also has the benefit of my experience to help her get through. I think while I expected the best-case scenario, she anticipated a much harder one than she got. I have to admit, I have a measure of pride in that. She’s the big sister, the brave adventurous one, and it feels good to be the one going through a tough experience first and doling out helpful advice for a change.