The Learning Tower

This post originally appeared on the Bellani blog.

The Learning Tower is one of those pieces of kid gear that makes parents in the know say, “Oooooh.” It’s a pretty clever idea: an adjustable platform that can act as a sort of combination step stool, activity center, and jungle gym. The standard suggested usage scenario is that it enables kids to reach the counter or sink in your kitchen so they can “help” you cook or at least play with kitchen tools. (The website is full of pictures of adorable moppets in ridiculous chef’s toques.) It’s made of wood, rather than plastic, which is nice. Because we are cheap (er, frugal) we scored one secondhand off of Craigslist and we’ve been very happy with it.

For the first few months that we owned it, we kept our Learning Tower in the kitchen, pushed up against the island where I did most of the cooking and prep. The idea was to get the kids up closer to our level so that we could interact with them while still getting things accomplished. Unfortunately, given the age of the twins, our interactions with them largely consisted of repeatedly urging them to EAT their Cheerios instead of throwing them on the floor. No, seriously, if you throw your food on the floor you’re going to have to–that’s it. Get down.

Then we got the whiteboard/chalkboard attachment, which essentially turns the Learning Tower into sort of a Learning Easel. This seemed awfully promising. It even had a big magnet that could hold up a large piece of paper for coloring. The problem, of course, was that our kids didn’t quite get the concept of only coloring with crayons ON THE PAPER and not all over the tower itself. We had much better luck switching to chalk, but it didn’t take us long to realize that two toddlers sitting constantly underfoot playing with (throwing, eating, and occasionally drawing with) chalk didn’t make for a calm, productive, and clean kitchen. The Learning Tower was banished to the family room, and downgraded to full-time chalkboard status. We pushed it up against the wall next to the couch, and figured they could still practice climbing up and down if the wanted.

And the kids loved it! Still do! The chalkboard is magnetic, and they love sticking alphabet magnets onto it. They love coloring with chalk (they like erasing even more) and Julian will sometimes grab me by the hand, pull me over the chalkboard, and insist that “Daddy draw b’loon.” I’m getting very good at drawing balloons, as it doesn’t really tax my limited artistic abilities. (Although, having seen a drawing of one once, they’re now insisting that I draw hedgehogs. Hedgehogs!)

So, that was that. They draw on the chalkboard, got better and better at climbing onto and off of the tower itself, and enjoyed being up a little higher. Sure, we had to sternly remind them not to violently SHAKE the tower, since that didn’t seem safe, but it seemed like generally good, clean, quiet fun.

Until they realized there was another way off of the tower:

Honestly, this is now their favorite game in the world.

I expect that in 6-12 months, when the twins are a bit older, we’ll be able to get more use out of the Learning Tower in its intended use. They’ll be, hopefully, more interested in being involved in what’s going on in the kitchen and have slightly longer attention spans. Of course, by then they’ll probably be big enough that we’ll need two of the dang things. Sigh.

What Do New Parents Need?

This post originally appeared on the Bellani Blog.

I found something adorable on the internet the other day.

A mom (who lives in Finland) creates these somewhat elaborate scenes and photographs her napping baby in them. As she says, “While my baby is taking her nap, I try to imagine her dream and capture it.”

I find it almost too hipster/whimsical, although of course I wish I’d thought of it. Then again, I would never have dared to pick up my napping child, put them on the ground, take a picture, and put them back to bed, since the chance that the baby might wake up was too terrifying. When ours were sleeping, we tiptoed around the house and forbade anyone from even mentioning the fact that the twins were asleep, because that would jinx it.

But the adorable thing I want to write about isn’t this woman’s hobby; it’s what the government of Finland does to (indirectly) make this woman’s hobby possible.

Here in the United States, we don’t make it particularly easy for working people to have and raise children. We’re one of only five countries—along with Australia, Lesotho, Papua New Guinea, and Swaziland—that doesn’t mandate paid maternity leave from work. (Most countries offer at least ten weeks of paid leave, although it varies greatly. Many European countries even offer paid paternity leave. Oh, and it looks like Australia will start offering 18 weeks of paid maternity leave in 2011.)

What we do have is the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) which requires that employers with more than 50 employees offer 12 weeks of unpaid leave. New parents who work for smaller business, and parents who can’t afford to go without pay for three months are out of luck. (Rhode Island state law actually goes further and requires 13 unpaid weeks, and permits new mothers to collect temporary disability insurance, or TDI.)

My little family was extremely lucky. My wife works for an organization that allowed her to bank up enough sick days and vacation that when added to the state’s TDI benefit added up to some substantial (for this country, anyway) paid time off. I was in graduate school, with all of the scheduling flexibility that entails. Even so, becoming parents was exhausting and expensive; if one of us had needed to return to work much earlier than we did, I’m not sure how we would have made it work. Families who do make it work have my utmost respect and admiration.

This is probably neither the time nor the blog for an extended piece on the economic and social impacts of parental leave policy. Instead, let’s focus on something else totally awesome that Finland does: in addition to financial support during their maternity leave, new mothers receive a maternity package of things a new parent needs.

Check it out! All new mothers get a package containing about 20 outfits, a mattress and bedding, cloth diapers, books, condoms, a rather stylish bib, and my favorite item, a “box (can be used as crib).” I just love the idea that every new parent in Finland gets this stuff, and I’m fascinated at the process that must go in to deciding what makes it into the package each year. It must be so reassuring to know that at least some of your basic “stuff” needs are going to be taken care of.

Month 20

Month 19

Vocabulary

For a while there, I was a little concerned about whether our kids were a little less verbal than some of their peers. Now that they’re eighteen months old, I thought I’d try to make a list of all of the words they can say. (As it happened, I mentioned the idea to Rachel, and she made a list, but I contributed to it.) Looking at the list, I’m no longer particularly worried.

This post, then, will serve as a little bit of history for later in life, when they won’t shut up.

Here’s all of the words the twins can say that we could think of, with the proper pronunciation in toddler dialect in parentheses. (If only one of them has a word, I tried to mark that as well.)

People

• Mama (occasionally “mommy”)
• Daddy
• Eloise (”Ellie” or “Alwee” or “Owie”)
• Julian (”Gi-gee” or “Doo-dee”)
• Grandpa (”Ba-pa”)
• Wapsy (”Wa-pee”)
• Grammy (”Ba-bee”)
• Several friends from school, including Avery (”A-wee”), Hannah (”Na-na”), and Apollo (”Uh-pah”)

Colors

• red (”ya”)
• yellow
• green (”dee”)
• blue
• purple (”puh-puh”)
• pink (”pee”)
• brown [J] (”bwow”)
• black (”bla”)
• white (”wha”)

Body parts

• nose (”no”)
• eye
• ear (”ee”)
• elbow (”ow-boh”)
• toe (”doh”)
• knee
• neck (”neh”)
• back (”ba”)
• leg [J] (”leh”)

Food

• peas (”peeeeeeez”)
• broccoli (”buh-la-buh-lee”)
• apple/applesauce (”a-puh”)
• Mum-Mum
• snack (”na”)
• cheese (”deeee”)
• water (”wa-wa”)
• bar (cereal bar) (”ba”)
• noodles (”noo-noo”)
• cracker (”kuh kuh”)
• pasta [J] (”tas-pah”)
• blueberries (”boo-bwee”)

Miscellaneous nouns

• balloon (”buh-loo” or “boo”)
• baboon (”ba-boo”)
• blocks (”blaaaaaaaaaah”)
• book (”buh”)
• bottle (”ba-ba”)
• bubble (”buh-buh”)
• bowl (”bo”)
• spoon (”suh-boo”)
• tree (”dwee”)
• flower (”fuh-vuh”)
• park (”pah”)
• outside (”ow-ee” [E] or “uh-tzuh” [J])
• window (E) (”wi-woh”)
• bus [E] (”buh”)
• truck [J] (”dwah”)
• moon (”moo”)
• star (J) (”daw”)
• baby
• ball (”baaaa”)
• barn (”ba”)
• iPod (”a-puh”)
• poop (”a-pu”)
• shoe [E] (”doo”)
• giraffe [J] (”doo-wah”)
• beep beep (”bee bee”)
• keys (”dee”)

Animals

• kitty/meow (”diddy”/”mow”)
• bird/tweet tweet (”buh”/”dzee dzee” or “tuh-wee”)
• woof woof (”wuh wuh”)
• quack quack (”kuh kuh”)
• the sound a monkey makes (”oo-oo”)
• neigh
• moo
• baa

Miscellaneous verbs and prepositions

• eat (”ee”)
• walk (”waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”)
• up
• down (”dow”)
• trade [J] (”doo-way”)
• rock (”wa”)
• ride [E] (”waaiiii”)
• sleeping [E] (”pee-pee”)

Miscellaneous miscellany

• yes (”yeah”)
• no (”no no”)
• hi
• bye
• please (”buh-lee” [J], “pee” [E])
• more (”muh”)
• all done (”ah dah”)
• uh-oh!
• oh no!
• me
• whee!
• choo choo (”doo doo”)

It’s worth noting that these are just the words they can say. They understand much, much more, so stay on your toes.

Month 18

Mama’s Got a Brand New iPhone

And that iPhone takes video that can be uploaded straight to YouTube! I am semi-addicted.

Eloise’s First Haircut

As impressive and fabulous as Eloise is by almost any measure, she has never been an overachiever in the hair department. Yet her mullet was growing completely out of control, even by mullet standards, and we decided that a little trim would, at the very least, not hurt. Her Aunt Rachel and I took her to Kidz Adventure Cuts in Seekonk for the procedure.

At first I almost dared to be pleasantly surprised by how well she was handling it…

…but quickly began to get a sense that my optimism would prove unfounded.

There’s the Eloise I know and love!

(Hmm, looking at this picture I’m thinking we should have double-teamed her with a dentist on the other side.)

In the end they only charged me for the equivalent of a bangs trim, since they only cleaned up the back. (When I brought her in, the “stylist” incredulously burst out, “What are you going to cut, Mom???” I explained that I wanted it tidied up to all one length in the back, she exclaimed with an emotion I would describe as just shy of horror: “But if you do that she’ll look like a BOY!”

Needless to say we went ahead with it, and while the result will not exactly win her a job as the Pantene poster girl, it does look a bit less unruly.

By the way, Julian got his first haircut back in December (and his second on the same day as Eloise’s first). Let’s just say that his handling of the trauma didn’t do anything to make Eloise look bad.

What Happened?

Matt and I did not intend to allow sparveys.com to grow dormant, but it just seemed to happen. We were talking tonight about how we can’t possibly be more tired now than we were during the first year, so why is it that we could find time and energy then but we can’t now? Part of it is that the newness of being a family of four has worn off a bit, and with it the compulsion to blog. Another part is that the longer we have gone without posting, the more we’ve felt that to start up again we must create some sort of epic post that sums up all of the last 4-5 months in a way that is funny, insightful, and poignant.

Well, that’s not going to happen, so I’m just going to launch in again with a minor post and hope that I can manage to do that sort of thing with moderate regularity. I hope that those who are interested in such occasional updates will still check in every so often!

Just over a year ago Matt and I took the twins to the playground for the first time. It was a day that stands out in my memory as a particularly enjoyable one during the rough early months. It is also astounding to us that it was just a year ago — it feels like an eternity has passed. And who can blame us for feeling that way, when you look at how far Julian and Eloise have come in that time.

Then:

Now:

v

Month 17

Month 16

Fluster

In the fall of 1997, Rachel and I (who were not, I believe, technically dating yet) started talking about (me) getting a cat. We happened to have this conversation at a party in a dorm room in earshot of a friend of a friend who was hoping to be a veterinarian and so was interning at the Warwick Animal Hospital. He told us that one of the nurses there had found and rescued a litter of abandoned kittens, and so if we were interested, hey, free kitten. So it was that we found ourselves in the back room of the animal hospital watching three tiny kittens frolic and mew and play, and we decided to take home the one the nurse had named “Stupid.”

I had decided in advance that my cat would be named Fluster.

I seem to recall that we drove home from the animal hospital with Fluster on Rachel’s lap in the backseat, and when we arrived back at my apartment in Providence I raced around to solicitously open the door for her while she gingerly carried Fluster inside. He was five weeks old, and he fit in the palm of your hand.

Being a responsible person, I’m sure I wouldn’t bring home a tiny new kitten without having all of the necessary things in place, but I seem to remember not having cat food (or, perhaps, not having enough cat food) and so one of Fluster’s very first meals was a small piece of Pizza Pie-er crust. I think we can probably trace his love of baked goods to that moment. It was a rule in our house that one must not ever leave bread, or pizza, or cookies, or cake, or crackers, or really anything made of grain, anyplace that Fluster could reach.

Fluster started out unbelievably tiny, but he didn’t stay that way. We fed him little cans of Iams cat food, and he just wolfed them down. After he ate, you’d pick him up, and you would be holding a warm ball of mushy cat food with a thin layer of kitten wrapped around it, his little legs dangling off of your palm. I don’t know if it was the food or genetics, but in two short years Fluster went from this:

To this:

He was a frankly enormous cat: not fat, just long and tall. We used to joke that he was part mountain lion. He was, however, a most un-cat-like cat. He was not shy, or cautious, or graceful. He would gallop into a room, rubbing his face on every available surface or person. No one could visit our house—not friends, not family, not repairmen, not painters—without getting an enthusiastic greeting from Fluster. In 2004, we bought a house and had the kitchen renovated, which involved teams of contractors and workmen in our house for months. The other two cats, as cats will do, spent most of the time cowering under the bed upstairs. Fluster became a part of the workday. They had systems to keep him from dashing out the door; they called him Schmitty.

All of our cats were inside cats, but Fluster wanted nothing more than to get outside. If you left a door open and unwatched for more than a second or two, chances were he’d make a break for it. A very few times in his life we let him outside on purpose: he’d generally find the dirtiest patch of ground and earnestly roll around in it.

The classic Fluster story, of course, involves his trip to the emergency vet many years ago for some kind of urinary blockage. He had to stay overnight, and when we picked him up the next day, the report we got included the log of the staff’s attempts to care for him:

Attempted to feed cat. Cat was fractious.
Attempted to give cat medicine. Cat was fractious.

The best quote, though, and the one Fluster was unable to ever live down, was the first notation by the vet who placed his urinary catheter: “Difficult to exteriorize the penis. Small?”

That was when we started calling Fluster our “little guy.”

Fluster had the loudest purr of any cat I’ve ever heard. You could hear him from across a room, just rumbling away like a motorcycle. He was not always the most accommodating cat, but he was sociable, friendly, and occasionally cuddly. He was a happy cat.

When we brought the twins home, I don’t think Fluster knew what hit him.

Like all the cats, Fluster was astoundingly patient with the babies. When we ignored him to take care of the children, he kept on purring. When they tugged his fur and swatted his face, he kept on purring. When we left their food out on the table, he ate it.

Still, while I don’t want to say the babies gave Fluster cancer, they couldn’t have helped his stress level. For about nine months, we gave Fluster his medicine, and hoped he’d hang on. And he did hang on, until one day he couldn’t anymore. He made it easy for us: it was obvious he was in pain, and that he wasn’t really going to be able to be our Fluster anymore. So I held him, and stroked his head, and said goodbye, and now we only have two cats, and it’s totally strange to be able to leave groceries on the counter for 15 minutes without having the bags torn open or to be able to go downstairs in the morning without having to crush up a pill in wet cat food or to be able to leave the door open while ferrying packages from the car.

I won’t deny those things are very convenient, but I’d trade them in a heartbeat for our Fluster.

Month 15

Week 65

Photos taken between January 11 and 17, 2010. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Week 64

Photos taken between January 4 and 10, 2010. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Week 63

Photos taken between December 28, 2009 and January 3, 2010. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Week 62

Photos taken between December 21 and 27, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Week 61

Photos taken between December 14 and 20, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Tumbleweeds

Sorry that the blog has been so quiet lately. Matt is finishing up school (and he even has a job waiting for him in January!), the babies have been quite stubbornly sick, and in our limited free time we’ve been trying to get ready for the holidays (and, okay, I spent a few evenings watching Pride and Prejudice for some much needed escapism).

The babies turned 14 months yesterday, so I’m due for a post about that. Matt’s out of town this weekend for his grandmother’s memorial service, though, and of course he’s trying to return during a giant snowstorm, so I’m pretty much on my own with the kids for the next day or so. So in anticipation of that post being tardy, here is a video to hold you over (for the few of you who didn’t see it posted on Facebook):

Month 14

Week 60

Photos taken between December 7 and 13, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Week 59

Photos taken between November 30 and December 6, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Week 58

Photos taken between November 23 and 29, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Week 57

Photos taken between November 16 and 22, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Thirteen Months

After the fanfare of the 12-month mark, this subsequent monthly update is bound to feel rather lackluster and anti-climactic. But in fact, the month was not at all lackluster: it was busy and fun and challenging.

The excitement of the first birthday festivities was quickly followed by the excitement of Halloween. It didn’t start out well: the babies were none too thrilled to be woken up from naps, stuffed into hot, cheap, polyester fleece costumes, and carted into my office to be shown off at the annual “Goosebumps” party to which the children of all employees are invited. Let’s just say that when the head of HR distributed the photos of adorable be-costumed children frolicking merrily at the party, Julian and Eloise were notably absent.

Things improved on Halloween itself, however. Our good friends Ilissa and Dave came to visit with their darling three-month-old son, Ethan, and we dressed all the babies up and took them on a late-afternoon stroll around the neighborhood. We returned home to greet the torrents of trick-or-treaters, and a torrent it was – the street was packed with children and parents. It was a very warm night, so we brought the babies outside to witness the action, and Eloise seemed to be electrified by all the activity. She ran laps up and down the street for as long as we would let her, trying to climb the stairs on the neighbors’ front stoops, weaving in and out of the throng of trick-or-treaters.

Month thirteen was a challenge because both babies were sick nearly the entire time. While neither had H1N1, their illnesses seemed to add up to a sort of deconstructed swine flu: first they each had a cold with some respiratory symptoms, then they moved on to a nasty gastro-intestinal virus, and finally they rounded things out with a 48-hour flirtation with high fever. They took turns — always Julian first — and while I think it was probably easier that they never were both very sick at the same time, it certainly was a long few weeks. Matt and I managed to stay healthy, mercifully, but this glimpse of the non-stop illness that comes with having young kids in winter has left us a bit apprehensive about what’s ahead.

Developmentally, the babies seem to be gaining receptive language at a rapid clip. This feels like a momentous change: now, whatever I say to them, there’s at least some slight chance that they’re going to derive some glimmer of understanding from it! I know that doesn’t sound like much, but after a year in which their knowledge of English words was inferior to that of the cats, it’s a huge improvement.

What they aren’t doing much of is talking. Both babies can say “Dada” pretty reliably, but that’s it. Eloise says “hi,” her catch-all syllable for “this object is interesting to me,” nearly incessantly, and won’t say anything at all if you prompt her with something like, “Can you say ‘kitty’?” Julian, on the other hand, responds to that prompt with a pause and then a jubilant “Dada!” It’s kind of adorable. “Julian, can you say ‘kitty’?” Pause. “Dada!” “Julian, can you say ‘Mama’?” Pause. “Dada!” We aren’t worried about their lack of verbal giftedness, because they seem so engaged and communicative now even without words (and they continue to love books, racing over and sitting down attentively when they hear the word “read”), so we know that language will come with time.

One area that has seen some advancement at last is Eloise’s hair growth. She has progressed from complete baldie, to John Stamos on Full House (weird on top, long in back), to David Bowie in Labyrinth (really weird on top, really long in back). Okay, those are exaggerations, but that’s the impression that she gives me. Things seem to be picking up in that area, and it’s sort of nice to imagine how she’ll look in a few months with a regular head of hair. (Julian, on the other hand, is starting to look scruffy, and our first baby haircut is on the horizon, though Matt is in denial about this.)

There’s no question that the 13-month milestone feels different to me than the others. Each previous one felt momentous for one reason or another, especially since they seemed to be counting down to the one-year mark. And now the first birthday has come and gone, and the monthly milestones feel less like hurdles cleared, less like goals attained, and more like small signposts marking off the passage of everyday life. That said, the babies are still changing all the time, and the changes now are even more interesting to me than the changes in the first year (I remember that the changes from month one to month two were mostly things like a reduction in the amount of grunting they did in their sleep). So it’s nice to pause and regularly reflect on how fast and how far they come each month. (In a nutshell: Fast. And far.)

Month 13

Stacked

It’s been crazy around here, with the babies taking turns coming down with first some kind of nasty stomach bug and then some kind of 48-hour virus that, while it appears not to have been H1N1, still shot Eloise’s fever up over 103. We’re glad that’s over with.

Apropos of nothing, here are two pictures documenting Julian’s facility with neatly stacking his toys:

It’s worth clarifying that the wooden post on the ring stacker only comes up to about the orange ring. He just grabbed discs from another set and kept on stacking.

Week 56

Photos taken between November 9 and 15, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)

Maclaren Mania

I think people are going a little nuts with the Maclaren recall. It’s terrible that twelve children were injured, but I think it’s important to keep in mind how small that number is in comparison to the number of Maclaren strollers on the market.

The coverage has been a bit maddening. The NYT’s Motherlode breathlessly wonders:

Add frustration with the logistics of the recall to fears about finger amputation — not to mention the question of how on earth to get junior to the park or the supermarket if the stroller is now too dangerous to use — and you have some cranky parents.

Except, as I understand it, the strollers aren’t too dangerous to use. They’re just potentially dangerous to fold if your kid is sticking their fingers in there. We never fold up our stroller (it just lives on our porch) so there’s really no reason for us to freak out.

Motherlode also wonders if “too much damage to customer loyalty has already been done” by the fact that Maclaren’s website was overloaded by requests for hinge covers yesterday. Who in their right mind would stop using a stroller they already own and like because a company’s website crashed? I don’t think I understand people. Handling a recall is a very delicate operation, and customers are bound to get nervous and angry, but I don’t understand why the media is calling this a PR disaster just because the recall was successfully publicized.

Week 55

Photos taken between November 2 and 8, 2009. (Click on any picture for a larger version.)