Did I say Monday?
Because I actually meant, "three months from now."
On Twins, Part II
We recently had a Little Red Hen emergency. Naturally, I'll explain.
My father, ever hard-working, absolutely adores the folk tale of the Little Red Hen. The gist is, the Little Red Hen finds a grain of wheat. She asks all her animal friends to help her plant it. One by one, they all say, "Not I." So she does it herself. When it grows, she asks them for help reaping it (same response), grinding it into flour (ditto), making dough, etc. You get the picture. Then, when she removes the fresh, hot, crusty loaf from the oven, they all volunteer to help her eat it, and she turns them down and eats it herself. A good, classic tale, and an early female protagonist. I like it very much.
The storybook version was an early baby gift to my sons from my father. I read it to them many times, making the animal sounds each time. However, it wasn't until I animated one of the atmospheric background birds that it truly captured their attention. Sage ran all around the house making bird sounds. Out in public, he would make bird sound for anyone who would listen.
But, see, with twins, one child may adore a specific page in a book, and the other, not so much. One day, the babysitter left and I settled down with the Little Red Hen, intending to read it to my sons. I opened it up and prepared to make bird sounds.
But the page was gone. Torn clean from its Little Golden binding.
I searched the entire apartment--garbage pails, diaper pails (where shoes and washcloths frequently wind up, don't ask me why), the insides of tiny pairs of shoes, the minute spaces between radiators and walls, the refrigerator, the menu drawer. EVERYWHERE. No luck.
Frantic, I called Barnes and Noble. Nothing.
By now, there were frantic baby sobs in between the bird sounds. And Thyme was sobbing as well, knowing that something was up and I couldn't read the story.
Doubly desperate, I called our local anarchic-leaning book store, with which, due to my somewhat libertarian leanings, I'd frequently had philosophical differences of opinion. But, hey, desperate times call for desperate measures. I figured if anyone'd have Red, it'd be them (the irony of the capitalist nature of the story and the Commie-type title eluded me then, in my state of frantic parenting, but it kinda tickles me now).
THEY HAD IT. Screw philosophy. I made the guy promise to set it aside and headed down there as fast as my tired legs could carry me, two now-enormous babies, and a double stroller that's really heavier than it should be. I have forgiven the bookstore, for when I was hungry, they sold me a Hen.
The moral of the story is, when your child cries, your wants, needs, and opinions no longer matter. This is true, of course, for parents of singletons as well, but it's doubly-true with twins.
On Twins, Part II
We recently had a Little Red Hen emergency. Naturally, I'll explain.
My father, ever hard-working, absolutely adores the folk tale of the Little Red Hen. The gist is, the Little Red Hen finds a grain of wheat. She asks all her animal friends to help her plant it. One by one, they all say, "Not I." So she does it herself. When it grows, she asks them for help reaping it (same response), grinding it into flour (ditto), making dough, etc. You get the picture. Then, when she removes the fresh, hot, crusty loaf from the oven, they all volunteer to help her eat it, and she turns them down and eats it herself. A good, classic tale, and an early female protagonist. I like it very much.
The storybook version was an early baby gift to my sons from my father. I read it to them many times, making the animal sounds each time. However, it wasn't until I animated one of the atmospheric background birds that it truly captured their attention. Sage ran all around the house making bird sounds. Out in public, he would make bird sound for anyone who would listen.
But, see, with twins, one child may adore a specific page in a book, and the other, not so much. One day, the babysitter left and I settled down with the Little Red Hen, intending to read it to my sons. I opened it up and prepared to make bird sounds.
But the page was gone. Torn clean from its Little Golden binding.
I searched the entire apartment--garbage pails, diaper pails (where shoes and washcloths frequently wind up, don't ask me why), the insides of tiny pairs of shoes, the minute spaces between radiators and walls, the refrigerator, the menu drawer. EVERYWHERE. No luck.
Frantic, I called Barnes and Noble. Nothing.
By now, there were frantic baby sobs in between the bird sounds. And Thyme was sobbing as well, knowing that something was up and I couldn't read the story.
Doubly desperate, I called our local anarchic-leaning book store, with which, due to my somewhat libertarian leanings, I'd frequently had philosophical differences of opinion. But, hey, desperate times call for desperate measures. I figured if anyone'd have Red, it'd be them (the irony of the capitalist nature of the story and the Commie-type title eluded me then, in my state of frantic parenting, but it kinda tickles me now).
THEY HAD IT. Screw philosophy. I made the guy promise to set it aside and headed down there as fast as my tired legs could carry me, two now-enormous babies, and a double stroller that's really heavier than it should be. I have forgiven the bookstore, for when I was hungry, they sold me a Hen.
The moral of the story is, when your child cries, your wants, needs, and opinions no longer matter. This is true, of course, for parents of singletons as well, but it's doubly-true with twins.
Copyright 2005-2010 by Arabella and Trattoria Breve. All rights reserved. 10:32 AM
4 Comments:
Hooray! You're back! Welcome, and thank Mignon for alerting me to your new post.
Amen and hear hear to to your point about how children change what matters. It's also when they cry, sleep, poop, laugh....you get the picture. Glad to hear that yours are continuing to change your life.
I know that frantic feeling. The cries of desperation reach me somewhere deep inside, as if I've somehow remembered all my own feelings of panic and hopelessness. It must be a chemical thing, our responses to those cries.
So did Thyme eat it or what?
Worth the wait. Who razored the pertinent page? I suspect the baby-sitter.
Still no clue as to the missing page! My guess is that one of the following happened:
1) The page was torn up into little pieces, which became "ca ca," and then were disposed of behind the radiator;
2) Whoever killed the Black Dahlia took the missing page.
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