A Very Twirley Christmas

Every family has their own Christmas tradition. For example, there’s the Festivus celebration, in which George Costanza’s family initiates “the airing of grievances.” But since the “airing of grievances” is a daily, if not hourly ritual at the Twirley household, we decided to start a few Holiday traditions of our own.


Matching red shirts

There’s no color more festive than red and nothing cornier than the entire family wearing the same colored shirts. Festive and corny, that’s how we roll in the Twirley household. Next year we’ll have to bring the corny meter up a few notches by wearing matching red reindeer sweaters.

Gingerbread assembly kit

I’ve been buying the gingerbread assembly kits since EB’s third Christmas, and it has become quite the fun experience for both of us. In fact we had so much fun with it last year that I bought a gingerbread train kit right after the holidays (read: big post-Christmas discount), with the intention of putting it together on New Year’s Day. If you recall though, that was the day that EB gave us a big scare with her concussion, so it stayed in the back of the cupboard until this year. Let me tell you, gingerbread kits do not have a long shelf life. This thing smelled terrible – like a cross between Play Doh and….well, a year-old ginger bread. EB took a whiff of it and immediately declared it too yucky for consumption. This suited me just fine since I’ve always had a problem with the idea of consuming something that’s been kneaded and handled by sweaty, dirty hands. To me, these kits are for show, not for eating. So if you ever get an already-assembled gingerbread house from us for Christmas, it probably means that we don’t like you very much.

Hiking

This is the time of the year when I really love living in Arkansas. Just a few short months ago, I was dying from the heat of a thousand suns. But what a weather we had today -- sunny and in the high 50s. One would’ve never guessed that it was Christmas, which would’ve turn off some white Christmas fanatics but suited me just fine. We went out to the Pinnacle Mountain for a family hike and enjoyed the fresh air and some physical activity. B-Boy was strapped into Baby Bjorn and was asleep for most of the hike. He woke up every now and then and looked around all confused, his little brows arched and furrowed. He would look up at me, as if thinking: “Where the hell am I? And who the heck are you? And when are you crazy people going to return me to my cozy little capsule?”

A big ol' Merry Christmas, y'all!

Five!

EB turned five years old today! She woke up this morning, looked in the mirror, and said to me in a slightly disappointed voice: “I don’t look older, Mommy. Maybe I’m dreaming that I’m five.”

This girl just cannot wait to grow up. As for me, I just want to preserve her childhood forever. I get choked up just thinking about EB as a five-year old; something happens when you cross the boundary from four to five. For one, five years old is when you attend Kindergarten, or what I perceive as real school. As in I would need to worry about dropping her off on time, whereas now, I have no qualms about dropping her off 15-20 minutes late. Mathematically speaking, five is closer to ten than it is to one. Meaning, she’s just that much closer to entering the bratty tween years.

But for now, I won’t think too much about how quickly my baby has grown up. Rather, I want to take this moment to capture what she is like now, what makes her tick and what makes her the unique little girl that she is today.

• EB loves all things superhero. Unlike most other girls her age, she considers princesses “boring.” She wants to be where the action is and save the world , and her favorite superheros are Spiderman and Spidergirl.

• She loves treats—nothing lights up her face more than the prospect of eating candies, cupcakes and ice cream.

• Despite the fact that she loves her sweets, she has iron willpower. She will not eat any treats without consulting with me first, and if I allow her only three jellybeans, she sticks to those three.

• Along the same lines, she is obsessed about the idea of eating healthy food. She never tires of asking me which foods are healthy, which ones are not. In fact, She is so interested in this topic that she has proudly declared to me that she is an “expert of being healthy.”

• EB is insanely competitive, which drives me bonkers at times. She's even tried to be competitive with me, claiming that she is a better "drawer" than I am.  I was, however, very quick to point out that she is not a better artist. In fact, since I don't believe she should have an inflated self-esteem, I told her that there's probably not a lot of things that she can do better than I can at this point. The Tiger Mom's got nothing on me. 

• She is a good egg. Above everything else, she wants to please me and K. We feel lucky, although sometimes we wonder if and when pleasing her parents will drop off her priority list.

• She's had her first crush. Of course, she does not yet understand the meaning of a crush. But by the way she talks about this guy in her class, I recognize the signs of an early crush from a mile away.

• EB loves her little brother, and has surprisingly shown almost no jealousy.

• She also has an imaginary brother – her big bear Ian, whom she takes great pleasure in bossing around.

• EB knows how to work me and K. Separately, she will coyly tell each of us that she has a secret to tell us, dramatically motion for us to come close and then whisper in our ears: “I love you more than anybody.”

Wordless Wednesday: First Smiles!

Look Mom, No Training Wheels!

EB recently learned to ride her bike, no training wheels!

A little push from K to get her started....

Concentrating hard....

Look at her go!

Too Hairy, Too Scary, Too Mean

Part of the fun of Halloween is dressing up in a different costume each year. Unless you are my daughter, who insisted on being Spider Girl again. For the third year in a row. K and I took her to the Halloween store hoping that something different would strike her fancy this time: a witch? ("Too scary.") A ninja? ("Too mean.") Cat in the Hat? ("Too hairy.") We cajoled, begged and even tried bribing, but nothing would persuade her from dressing up as this Marvel Comics heroine. Don’t get me wrong—I’m pretty frugal and am all for reusing costumes. But, kids grow up fast, and I was hoping to put together an online photo timeline of EB in different costumes each Halloween.  We were finally able to convince her to at least take on a different Spider Girl look, one that adds a bit of flare to the otherwise traditional blue and red getup.

Here she is…pretty in pink, but deadlier than the Black Widow.

I had every intention of dressing up BB in something adorable, but I never got around to it; having a newborn sucks every ounce of energy out of you. I did manage to create an impromptu costume for myself and the little guy. Here's a pic -- got meself a right fine wee li'l pirate-in-training!

Full-Moon Celebration

BB turned one month old last Wednesday! Here are a couple of pictures of the little guy and me. I was going through our photos and realized that there were virtually no Mommy-BB pics in our collection, so I took the liberty of staging our own photo-shoot session.

The Chinese tradition calls for a Full-Moon celebration for babies once they hit the one-month mark. It is a big deal celebration, since that's when the babies are first introduced to friends and relatives. My parents had a huge Full-Moon celebration for me at a banquet hall and invited over a hundred (yes, a hundred) friends and relatives. K and I neither have the money to throw a huge banquet, nor do we know a hundred people locally in Arkansas (come to think of it, we do not know a hundred people that we would invite to this event). So, we decided to scale BB's Full-Moon celebration down just a tiny bit--the guest list consisted K, EB, my parents and me.

EB got to choose her brother's birthday cake, although in the process, she decided that it was only fair to celebrate her birthday as well. Despite the fact that her birthday is still a couple of months away, we thought: why not? After all, BB wouldn't know the difference anyway. Or so we thought...look at the picture below. BB was fighting hard to reclaim his place in this celebration.

It was a grand celebration indeed. The grown-ups enjoyed a nice bottle of 2007 Earthquake Zinfandel, and BB enjoyed a nice bottle of 2011 Mommy Milk.


Happy Full-Moon, BB!

My Long Vent About Breastfeeding

I've been feeling anger lately towards the La Leche League and lactation consultants in general. It's nothing personal; they all seem like very nice people, and I am sure they just want to trumpet the wonders of breastfeeding to the world and help new mothers nurse effectively. The thing is, though, in all their enthusiasm to shout from the rooftops about the life-enriching, immunity-boosting and mother/child-bonding powers of breastfeeding, they have a way of making somebody who's struggling to nurse effectively feel pretty darn crappy.

I recognize that most of what I've been feeling stems from my frustration with my own breastfeeding inadequacies: piss-poor supply and intense pain from a difficult latch (imagine your nipples being grated down with an industrial-grade sanding machine). But I also feel plenty beat down by the lactation industrial-complex. In my experience, the breastfeeding evangelists promote it as a cure for everything: Want to cure colic? Start breastfeeding! Want to lose post-pregnancy pounds? Start breastfeeding! Want world peace? Start breastfeeding!

I've always had a hard time breastfeeding, but I desperately wanted to make it work this time around. With EB, I went to multiple lactation consultants, all to no avail. The poor thing was losing so much weight that the pediatrician talked me into pumping and supplementing big time with formula. While I quickly obliged, it took me awhile to come to peace with it. I knew it was the right thing to do, but it made me feel inadequate. Especially when the lactation consultants continuously tried to convince me that while pumping is a fine interim solution, I should still work towards directly breastfeeding. They buzzed around me like the Dr. Seuss character Sam-I-Am in a sequel called "Green Eggs and Lactate" -- "Try it, try it and you may...try it and you may I say!"

With the new little one, my usual breastfeeding problems were compounded further by a delay in milk production: it did not come in for almost seven days. As in, back in the pre-formula days, my baby would've either starved to death, or I would've had to bring the wee one to the village wet nurse to keep him alive. And since we no longer live in the Middle Ages, formula was in order.

I'm a glutton for punishment, so I once again, turned to a lactation consultant. And of course, she discouraged me from using a bottle--"We wouldn't want the baby to experience nipple confusion, would we?" She talked me into using an “infant feeding device”–a syringe that's connected to a long strand of IV tube. You had to fill the syringe with formula, tape the end of the IV tube onto your breast, and while breastfeeding, squeeze little pumps of the formula so that it mimics milk coming out of your breast. It looked ridiculous. Absurdity aside, it was difficult to coordinate—the IV tube would pop off, or I'd accidentally pump too much formula, causing BB to choke and sputter.

I did this for two days straight, and finally, bleary from lack of sleep, nipples raw and scabbed, my baby still shrinking and sputtering, I said, "F#@k IT!" and pulled out a bottle. From that point on, I resumed a combination formula feeding/pumping, and the little guy started plumping up like the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

Despite my previous experience with EB, I felt guilty for days. To console myself, I pored through baby books to help reaffirm my choice; surely somewhere out there, there would a story of somebody experiencing what I am, someone will surely reaffirm my decision to supplement with formula. Not so. Here is an excerpt from the book from the American Academy of Pediatrics:

“While recognizing the benefits of breastfeeding, mothers may feel that bottle-feeding gives the mother more freedom and time for duties other than those involving baby care...there's no need to worry about the mother's diet or medications that might affect the milk.”

Translation: You are a self-centered, selfish bitch who cares more about your own comfort than giving your baby what's best for him.

The especially maddening thing about this is that I couldn't even find something in these texts that suggested that anyone would ever really have inadequate production. Instead, all the advice seemed to ultimately boil down to this: You're not trying hard enough. So after talking with multiple friends who seem to have gone through similar issues, I put away the books, stopped calling the consultants and once again came to peace with my decision. I've done what I can and am now doing what's best for us. To hell with the lactation advocates, Le Leche League, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

That is all. End of my breastfeeding saga, and end of my venting.