Twice Blessed Life

This year for Halloween, Zanna was a ladybug and Halle was a bumblebee.  They both, however, detested their antennae, and Zanna felt quite strongly that she shouldn’t wear wings.

After dressing them, we tucked them into their stroller, and proceeded around our apartment complex collecting…..donations for hurricane victims in Haiti.

None of that high-fructose corn syrup, melamine-tainted %*#)( for us!

The night before, I leaflet-ed a couple of buildings in our complex with a note in English/Spanish (my best friend Liz did the translation - thanks so much!) letting people know we’d be by the next night with the girls to collect.

Then on Halloween, when we knocked on doors, people were right there to meet us with little ziplock baggies stuffed full of coins.  We also got a few donation of paper currency, too!    They oo-d and ah-ed over the girls, who cutely waved back.  There were a few curmudgeonly types that initially didn’t want to donate, but in the face of Zanna and Halle peering up at them with big adorable eyes and innocently sucking on thumb and pacifier, respectively, they caved.

All in all, we collected $70.29!

This has gone to a great charity called IRFF - International Relief Friendship Foundation www.irff.org .

We’re thinking of doing this every year, and then having a victory party afterwards for the girls, so they can still get (healthy) treats like their friends, but it’ll be positive reinforcement of socially-consious behavior, too. 

We mama’s have to multi-task.

Well, I’ve done my bit for democracy in action and voted early.  I’ve never done the early thing before, but everyone kept saying the lines on Election Day would be HUGE! and having to bring 15 month old twins along to stand on line for HOURS just didn’t seem to appeal to me for some odd reason .

So I went early.  It seemed like a sunny day, so I packed juice, extra water and lotsa snacks and fruit.  Lucky us, as soon as we got in line it became overcast, so I didn’t have to worry about baby heatstroke.

The girls were pretty well behaved.  Now and again, I’d have to break into a song and dance routine of “The Eensy Weensy Spider,” but the people around us were pretty good sports about the many encores the girls required.  Halle even fell asleep after an hour and a half. 

Then it started to rain.  Thankfully the librarians (it was our local library) let as many people in as possible and the line snaked in and out of the book aisles.

Finally, after two and a half hours, we reached the head of the line and were about to enter the voting area.

Then this big, bossy behemoth stepped in front of us to block the way.  “You can’t go in there with them,” she declared with a frown on her face, as she eyed my little cherubs as though they were a particularly loathsome specimen of insect.

Then she told me to bring them home, get “someone” to watch them and come back alone.  As though I had oodles of “someone”s on tap to watch the babies at my leisure.

I assured her politely but firmly that the babies were both American citizens.  She still insisted we leave.  I also assured her that they were not spies or terrorists.  She would not budge.

Then I began to be ticked off.  I told her that after waiting in line for two and a half hours, we were not going anywhere, so she’d better step aside and while I was at it I wanted to talk to her supervisor, too!

She grumbled and grunted, I glared - I won. 

Then the supervisor did that irritating thing and said “You must have misunderstood her, she would NEVER say anything like THAT.”

Uh-huh, yeah, right buddy.  I know when my rights have been trampled on.

Then they stashed me in a corner and make me wait extra while they insisted I have a voting booth “out of the way”.

Finally, I was allowed to fill out my ballot.  Then one of my daughters started shrieking and I looked down to see why.  Apparently one of the poll workers took it upon themselves to steal the library receipt I had given Zanna to amuse herself with.

I know the government is uber-intrusive and privacy-violating when it comes to library records, but stealing them from a BABY is reaching new heights of low, even for them.

I stalked over, plucked it from their grasping paws, gave them my best “thou shalt crumble before me, for I am MAMA” glare, while he stammered and sputtered, and handed the thing back to my daughter who promptly quieted.

 I went back to my ballot, finished it up and went over to the scanning machine thingy.  I’m pretty sure that’s the official name for it - “the scanning machine thingy”.  Comes from latin, or something.

Anyway.

Again, while being urged to move forward to have my ballot scan, there was ANOTHER poll worker blocking my way and refusing to move.  I said “Excuse, me sir.” several times but was ignored, so I forged ahead, running over his foot with the double stroller.  He looked at me a bit shocked, but tough cookies, fella.  Get in the way of a twins mama practicing her fundamental rights at your peril.

I was, by golly, going to participate in the democratic process, or know the reason why!  And if I have to mash a few recalcitrant feet to do it, then so be it! 

Then we went and had lunch.

Zanna  has now learned how to say “What’s that?” and point to something.  Of course it sounds more like “Gwah dat?” but the meaning is still very clear. 

Halle has also discovered how to stack her oversize blocks together!   I’m so proud of my babies’ progress!

I’m trying to read to them as much as I can.  They seem to prefer rhyming text with colorful pictures.  We’re signed up with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which sends 2 copies of a free book once a month to them.  We signed each of them up separately, so they each get their own copy of the same book. 

Here’s the link:

http://dollysimaginationlibrary.com/firsttime.php

 

So far, we’ve received “The Little Engine That Could” and “Raindrop, Plop!”  The girls are wild over the raindrop book!  They love when I count the objects, and ask them to find the doggie in each picture.  They also like pointing to different objects and getting me to tell them what it is.

I also made swedish meatballs for them using ground turkey, which they liked, so hopefully the tryptophan in the turkey will help Halle sleep better.

The Holistic Mom’s Network email group also recommended a book, “The Happiest Toddler on the Block” and whitenoise cds or machines, so we’ll try them one-by-one and see if we can get our littlest insomniac settled down.

I’ll keep ya posted.

-Lara

Ya know, it’s just come to my attention that an inordinate amount of my posts on this blog in some way or other reference my daughters’ eliminatory processes…in other words, poo.

Baby poo has in fact taken over our lives.  I plan their diet according to their quality of poo, and even sometimes tweak it (the diet, not the poo) to arrange for a slowdown when we go on a car trip.

By this time, I can pretty much create a made-to-order poo, depending, of course, on whether the girls will eat the requisite foodstuffs necessary for proper elimination.  Anyway, I could go on and on like this for days. 

At least my husband and I no longer do a victory dance when the babies succeed in having a BM.

I’ll try to refrain from mentioning the p-word in posts for awhile, unless of course I get comments practically begging me to write about the time one of the girls had a champion long-distance poo-shoot that reached a distance of over a meter away.