Nerves of Steel

Don said to me the other night as I recounted the days events, "Do you think you care about what other people think more than you used to?" And perhaps it's true, since I can hardly begin to write this for fear of what "people" will think.
Here we are, the girls almost two, Clayton practically four.  They can all walk, talk (sort-of), feed themselves, make their needs and desires known. We can go to the park, the YW, in fact, just about anywhere without a stroller. Clayton has started to "read" his sisters books. Sometimes, even, they all disappear into his room together for twenty minutes at a stretch, or go outside by themselves to play in the front yard. Despite the girls' two-year-old tantrums and stubbornness, this should be when it gets easier. This could be the year I get to coast a little, having worked pretty darn hard for the last two.
So, why, I wonder, did I choose to disrupt that natural progression, the slow farewell to strollers and diaper bags and baby gear, the oh-so-gradual movement towards my kids' independence and self-sufficiency? Why in the world did I choose to take care of another newborn?
I know why. In the heat of last year's personality conflicts between Clayton and Townes, I resolved never to care for another child with a personality. A baby, I'd thought, would be better. A baby wouldn't bicker. A baby wouldn't whine, or push my buttons, or fight over toys. A baby would be easy! I remembered the hours I'd gotten to spend reading to Clayton on the porch while his infant sisters slept, the ease with which we'd gone to gymnastics, gone anywhere, when the twins had been immobile and fully portable. One baby, I'd thought? One baby would be a piece of cake! After all, one baby you could carry anywhere.
And so, last week, my time with baby Gemma began, a sweet little infant girl, eight weeks old. Oh, but wait. A newborn baby needs to eat every two hours, needs six, seven, eight diaper changes a day. A new born baby poops and pees on the changing table, cries for no reason, can't be put down just anywhere when Dee Dee says, "I pooped again!" On our first day together, Gemma gagged and coughed when I offered her the bottle, and I realized that I had, in fact, never given a baby a bottle. Feeding time with the girls was always liquid comfort, Mama's milk magic, so when Gemma fussed and writhed when I offered her the bottle, it shook my confidence. If what had been so easy could now be so hard, what would the truly hard things be like?
She is an easy baby, so far, calm and sweet and quiet. And yet by the end of the first day I was exhausted simply from the responsibility of keeping such a helpless little thing alive. On our second day together, we went to the park. In the warm fall sunshine with my kids playing happily in the sand box, I felt like I was getting my groove back. Her head smelled so good, and her unexpected little baby smiles pulled at my heart. By the end of the day, I was ecstatic with relief. This was going to work, I thought! What a perfect gig: to care for a baby three days a week, while someone else pumps the milk and washes the diapers and wakes up in the middle of the night to nurse.  (Although reportedly this little angel already sleeps through the night.) Clayton was enchanted with her faces-- "What is she saying?"-- and was tickled that we could "make her talk" just like one of his toy characters. "Oh no, my hats over my eyes! I can't see!" or "Is that a book? I can't read yet. I guess I'll just chew on this blanket. Yum." The girls, rather than being jealous, seemed genuinely happy that Mama had her own baby doll to play with. Dee Dee happily narrated her every activity: "Baby sleeping. Baby drinking milk. Baby crying." And little Sylvia cried when Gemma's dad came to pick her up on Friday. "No baby going!"
So, on Monday, a drizzly, grey day, I resolved to carry on with our life as usual.  Off to storytime at the library we went, along with half the other pre-school age kids in town whose mothers were equally desperate to get out of the house on a rainy day. There the moms were, waiting with their perfectly behaved pre-schoolers, the occasional baby asleep in a moby wrap or sling. And here I come with my crew, the bohemith double stroller resurrected, loaded up now with one baby, two diaper bags, a lunch box, a tote bag stuffed with library books, four water bottles, a baby doll, and my security blanket, the Ergo baby carrier.
I used to feel, under most circumstances, a certain amount of pride in my crew of kids. After all, twins were the hand we were dealt, and yes, I know, I certainly had my hands full, but I wasn't going to let it slow me down. But now it's not awe I see in others' eyes but rather something between shock and dismay, as if I had taken one too many cookies from the cookie jar. I want to make a button that says, "The baby isn't mine," just so people don't assume I'm more nuts than I actually am.
Storytime itself went off without a hitch, the girls vying with each other, but quietly, for seats on my legs, given that my lap was taken up with Gemma and her bottle. Afterwards, they begged for lunch, so I got them their sandwiches while I changed Gemma's diaper on the floor in the hallway. So far, so good, I thought. But then my luck turned. Gemma had pooped all up the back of her onesie-- how had I forgotten that babies did that?-- and as soon as I had gotten her changed, Clayton had to pee. All the nearest bathrooms were locked, so into the children's section of the library we went. "Wash your hands!" I called to Clayton, propping the door open with my foot.  "Dee Dee wash hands! Dee Dee wash hands!" Dee Dee insisted, loudly and repeatedly, while Gemma began to cry. Quickly I washed Dee Dee's hands, washed mine... That's it, I thought, my pulse rising and my underarms growing damp, we're checking out books and we're out of here. I tried offering Gemma her pacifier, and then glanced down to gather my kids. There was Dee Dee, methodically pushing a whole row of books off their shelf.  Whenever cornered, Dee Dee, compliant child that she is not, hastens to do whatever bad thing she is doing even faster, as if to be sure that it gets done before we stop her. Books were falling off the shelf faster than I could right them. Jump ship, I thought, and quickly. I fastened the Ergo around my waste and pulled a protesting Dee Dee onto my back. "Let's go," I told Clayton, only to find that he, too, was pushing down books. Both of them know better, of course, but he REALLY knows better. I was livid. "Go NOW!" I commanded. I scooped Sylvia up onto the handlebars of the stroller just as she was beginning to contemplate maybe pushing her own row of books, just a little. At that moment, Gemma spit up, and-- there is a God-- immediately quieted. Back in the hallway, I ordered Clayton into a time-out sitting by the wall, just as the children's librarian walked by with eyes averted, as if she couldn't bear to witness our shame.
Back to the van we go, up the library elevator, out the electronic doors, down the long passageway to the garage, through the double doors to the parking deck elevator. All the while I'm lecturing on why we couldn't get new library books, and Clayton, for whom fresh library books are a true highlight of his life, is ashamedly traipsing behind. Finally we're at the last elevator, which will take us to our floor of the parking deck. We reach the third floor, the doors open, Clayton goes out. But before I can manage to maneuver the stroller out of the elevator, the doors begin to close and although I'm frantically pushing buttons, the doors do close and the elevator starts to descend, leaving Clayton alone in the dark and deserted parking deck!  The elevator stops at a lower floor, and an elderly woman gets on. "My son! He's up there!" I say frantically. When the doors again open on our floor, there is poor Clayton, hand in his mouth, tears streaming down his cheeks. My anger at him has completely evaporated. My poor little brave boy.
"Let's go home," I say.
Still crying, he climbs into his carseat, tearfully accepts a cheese stick. "I'm having a bad day," he sobs.
"Me, too," I mumble. As we drive, though, the adrenalin dissipates. I realize with surprise that I feel amazingly calm. The whole incident has taken me right back to the girls' infancy, to the challenge of caring for two newborns while managing a head-strong toddler. It's a memory stored in my body, and all of a sudden I'm back there. I can immediately recall the cold sweats, the shaky surges of adrenalin  the clenched stomach feeling that things were barely under control. I remember the relief I'd feel when I had the three of them safely strapped down in the car, how I'd be so hungry from nursing that I'd have to eat peanuts by the handful before I could even turn the key. And then I realize what feels different now. It's me. Mostly, I'm embarrassed by my kids' behavior, ashamed to not have had them more in hand. (I think of a friend of mine with twins who avoided such situations when her kids' were toddlers by simply not allowing them out of the stroller. Surely there's a lesson there.)  Still, the damage was minor and could easily be set right in a few minutes by someone not containing a toddler on a rampage. Gemma was fine-- fed, changed, safe-- and Clayton, despite our scare, was fine, too. We wouldn't be going back to that library any time soon, but we were all fine. I thought of what someone had said to me at the grocery store a few days ago: "You must have nerves of steel." It was a nice change from "You've really got your hands full," but I'd been surprised. I really don't have nerves of steel;  I'm probably anxious about one thing or another more often than not.  (A good friend gave me little clay worry warts as a gift once, so they could do the worrying for me.) But as we circled out of the parking garage, Gemma sleeping peacefully, Tom Chapin's school bus song pacifying the girls, Clayton debriefing from the back-- "What happened?"-- those were the words that came to mind: nerves of steel. I took a deep breath and almost smiled. I think I'd found a mantra.