Monthly Archives: January 2010

What Reality Shows Can Teach You about Parenting, Part 1

Posted on January 18, 2010 | 4 Comments

I wipe snot off the wall and proceed to scrape the remaining crusty boogers with my finger nail. This is what my evenings have become now that I have five-year-old twins. I have no time to do DNA analyses to determine which urchin is guilty. I still have to pack lunches, reply to half a dozen birthday party invitations, and locate William’s left shoe which, according to him, is “somewhere outside.”

What I Should Do When Tempted To Watch Reality TV

No wonder then, when I finally flop in front of the television, I am incapable of watching a documentary about clubbing baby seals or trafficking children, the type of pre-parenting programming I once viewed. Educational TV once gave me anecdotes to offer to flat dinner party conversations around tables without high chairs. Now though, like many overwrought parents, I surf aimlessly, pausing occasionally to watch the drama that can be found only on Jerry Springer and reality TV. Each night, I think I’ll break this habit and go back to documentaries. But, like a gambling addict playing one game of blackjack, I flip to a reality show…and watch just a little bit.

Many wasted evenings later, I’ve learned to justify my addiction to flipping through reality shows. Like it or not, watching snippets of reality TV has taught me a lot about parenting. In fact, for most of us, it’s all the training we get. And I’m not talking about those nanny shows that preach time-out techniques. I’m talking about trashy, reality TV that’s akin to boogers-on-the-wall in its level of sophistication.

I Can't Even Count This High Most Days

From Jon and Kate Plus 8, I learned that one set of twins is enough. Seriously, if Jon and Kate had stopped after their first set of multiples, no one would know who the Gosselins are today. Jon and Kate Plus 2 doesn’t have the same euphonic quality, so no network would cover this, not even your local cable TV programmer who thinks a change in décor at a nail salon constitutes a story. I’d be better off without this show, just like I’m pretty sure I’m better off without my own army of children.

My motto for parenting has come from Survivor: Outwit, Outlast, Outplay. Isn’t that the maxim for parents the world over – to make it past your child’s bedtime while maintaining a shred of sanity? The nanosecond the postnatal-endorphin-rush ends, it’s all about survival. If you have twins, they form an alliance around age two, spurring each other on in contests such as let’s-smear-our-poo-all-over-the-wall when we should be napping. Once they enter preschool-era of no naps, the balance of power shifts permanently, as the little urchins seems to have immunity from every form of discipline that’s legal. I haven’t yet resorted to voting either of my children off the island – I’m saving that one for the teen years.

Stay tuned for more Reality Show Parenting Skills, coming your way Wednesday, the same day Toddlers & Tiaras (insert gag reflex here) resumes its winter season.

Photos courtesy of schmilblick and Spigoo, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike Lisence.

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5 Funny Memories from the First 6 Months: Raising Twins in Bangkok

Posted on January 15, 2010 | 2 Comments

I’ve spent a couple days trolling through emails from 2004, the year our twins were born. We lived in Bangkok at the time, and email was the way we communicated with people from home. What is interesting is how little the base personalities of William and Vivian have changed in the five years that have now passed. I find this comforting and a right-bit scary.

Thai Flag

Here are five excerpts from emails I wrote in the opening six months:

Memory One: June 17, 2004 (Age: 19 days)

Greetings on Day 19 of our new one-day-at-a-time worldview. My short and long term memories seem to have gone the way of the placentas. We are in the process of applying for Canadian citizenship for our babies, a “formality” that involves four pages of questions such as “are you married?” and “eye colour.” Apparently it takes six months to process these applications, which begs the question: are they currently citizens of nowhere?

Memory Two: July 23, 2004 (Age: 2 months)

We are amused daily. Vivian has more facial expressions than Andre Gagnon. William, when he’s sleeping in the crib he and Vivi share, does this interesting break-dancing move: he uses one of his eyebrows as a pivot point while he hurls both legs in one direction. Eventually he ends up rotated ninety degrees and sometimes even kicks Vivian in the head. Then we see (and especially hear) more expressions from Vivi. We continue to swaddle Vivian because she sleeps better (not because it makes her defenseless against her brother). She does attempt a nightly David Copperfield escape routine, but she usually conks out before she succeeds. She is energetic and fearful of missing anything, so that if her arms and legs are free, she flails and wakes herself up. We used to swaddle Will, but with his big head arched back from his body (his favourite position), he looked like a human Pez dispenser.

Memory Three: September 10, 2004 (Age: 3+ months)

The troops are getting more and more interesting. Will has decided that humans might, after all, be worth smiling at, though he still prefers grinning at inanimate objects such as ceiling fans and the plastic basket on the change table. Vivian, with her intensely competitive personality, has learned that when in her rocking-lounger-chair she can kick the roller balls with her feet at about 90 mph, providing her fists are clenched and her tongue is sticking out. Yes, Vivian has unfortunately inherited the stick-your-tongue-out-while-you-concentrate habit from me (I am still scarred by the memory of my organ recital when I was nine-years-old. Some old bird came up to me afterwards and pointed out how it was “cute” the way I stuck out my tongue while I played).

Memory Four: Oct 16, 2004 (Age: 4.5 months)

William is doing his own trial version “crawling,” as is evident by the blisters on the ends of his toes. He doesn’t quite have the arm thing down, but he can cover some ground. Vivi isn’t quite doing the crawling thing but does hoist her butt so high in the air that she topples over. She has rapid mood swings that range from happy to “assertive”. My favourite is the scream-really-loud, turn your head, then fall into a deep sleep (all in under 10 seconds).

Memory Five: Nov 18, 2004 (Age: 5.5 months)

Vivian is very close to crawling. She rocks in the crawling position for hours, it seems, and has recently began to extend her legs so that it looks like she’s in the starting blocks for the 100 meters. (Bad news, Vivi: poor genes means that it’s unlikely you’ll ever run the 100 in less than a minute. Try the big thigh sports: speed skating and sprint cycling). William spends hours in the free-fall position (also reminiscent of Superman flying). Will prefers to roll, especially when we’re not looking, prompting comments such as “How did you get over there?” He loves babbling and, unlike his sister, he actually has an inside voice.

Since my memory – like my placentas – is long gone, I say thank you to email’s “sent” file, the dinosaur’s version of a blog.

(cc) Brandon Fick, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License

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Dinner Tonight: Another Twenty Minutes with Twins

Posted on January 13, 2010 | 1 Comment

Musical chairs.

Every night before the four of us sit down to eat, we play a game of musical chairs. Well, not really. There is no music nor is there a shortage of seats. Where we sit each meal, however, always changes. Vivian and William seem to delight in determining this nightly seating plan, declaring where they want to sit and which parent they want beside them. It all sounds lovely enough: I could philosophize about there being no head of the table or giving children choice or blah blah blah. Ultimately, though, it’s a pain in the butt: we shift and re-shift while the pasta grows colder.

India.

Perhaps tonight’s musical chair experience exhausted Vivi and Will, because their dad and I actually managed to have a five-minute adult conversation at the dinner table. We reminisced about our trip to India twelve years ago. It was our first vacation together; we figured if our five-month-old relationship could survive three weeks in India it could withstand a lot. We have a thousand stories to tell, from the man with no nose who was our rickshaw driver, to the monkey squatting on top of our buffet table shoveling rice into his mouth while he looked at us. But the biggest lesson by far is that tea and toast make any crisis better.

Dancing.

Our micro-conversation ends when William scoots off his chair-du-jour and starts doing the Chicken Dance. He flaps his way through a round or two, then switches to The Macaroni (which vaguely resembles The Macarena). Next, he starts disco-dancing, shouting out four not-so-random letters: Y-M-C-A.

If my kids dance the YMCA instead of eat at the dinner table, this will be them.

Vivian soon realizes she’s being upstaged (she’s still trying to make up for the fact that she was born two minutes after her brother). To get our attention, she stand on her chosen chair and continues the YMCA, complete with the move where one hand rests behind her head, while the index finger on her other hand points around the room. I object when she starts to step onto the table.

William, thankfully, is rarely bothered by Vivian’s hyper-competitiveness. He just dances to the beat of his own drum – sometimes literally. Instead of hopping onto the chair or table to compete, he says, “I’m just going to do my own dance.” He launches into his signature William-dance. Imagine a five-year-old doing the Running Man and cross it with Pulp Fiction. The boy’s got a bit of groove, the kind that emerges when you don’t give a crap what anyone else thinks.

William’s dance ends, Vivian climbs down from her chair, and the kids go off to tidy the living room.

“How’s that cleaning up going, Vivian?” my husband asks.

She looks up from the flashcards she’s studying for the umpteenth time. “Going fine,” she says. She settles more into the sofa cushion.

William is nowhere to be found.

And that, my friends, is another twenty minutes with twins.

Photo Credit: (cc) bogdog Dan, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License


(cc) bogdog Dan, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License (profile: http://www.flickr.com/people/25689440@N06/)

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