Departing

Departures are so strange and intangible. We have been leaving for several weeks now. We said goodbyes. We watched a team of Swedish movers box up our possessions, load them in a shipping container and drive it away on a semi truck. We have been doing all our lasts. 

Last visit to Magasin. Last trip to our friends' house. Last walk along christianhavn canal. Last paradis ice cream. Some lasts went unnoticed. When was my final visit to my Egyptian friend's delicious restaurant? When was the last time I walked by the round tower? Saw a swan family? Heard the bells on Holmens church chime in a song?

Today, to mark our final day living in Denmark, we went to Tivoli. It was a bit overcast and tourist season is dying down so there weren't many people in line for rides. I was lucky enough to have three sleeping children a d one patient cousin and was able to go up The Golden Tower four times in a row. Once on each side. The ride is one of the simple run you up a tall tower and then drop you in a free fall until you get close to the bottom where you bounce up and down as if you'd gone bungee jumping. Normally I wouldn't want to go on such a ride, but there is something about The Golden Tower. There is a moment at the top where everything is still and you can survey the beautiful old city of Copenhagen. And then you suddenly plummet from the sky back down to earth. 

I surveyed the city I have come to call home, trying to soak in the beauty, to remember how lucky I am to have lived here and then I fell. 

After Tivoli, we took the bus home and put all our belongings in bags. We threw out an embarrassing amount of food, packed an embarrassing number of suitcases and went to sleep for one more night in our echoey, empty apartment. 

I remember leaving our home in Washington DC to move here and feeling much the same way. A sense of profound loss at the life we were leaving and simultaneously thrilled at the new adventure awaiting us. People say you can always return. "You can come back to Denmark," they say. And it is true, you can, and we will - but it will never be the same. We won't live here again and we won't find all of our familiar people and places again on our return. Time will march on, we will change, our neighborhood will change, people will move away, the city will shift and transform. It will not be our Copenhagen in the way it is in this moment and we will not be the way we are in this moment. 

In the morning, we will gather our belongings, make a final sweep of all the rooms, slam the door so it locks and leap - free falling into our next adventure. Here. We. Go...

Farvel Danmark

I don't like leaving, and yet we are all always leaving. We decided at the beginning of August that we are moving back to the United States at the end of the month. There are many things I am looking forward to about moving to my home country, but there are so many things I will miss about this amazing country that I have come to love.

I will miss the friends we have made here, many of whom were instrumental in helping us survive my pregnancy and our early days with the twins. I will miss the bakeries. I will miss their pastries and also their amazing breads. I will miss taking Riley to Lagkagheuset and leaving with his free child's roll in a small brown bag. I will miss taking our huge strollers on busses, walking past the city's canals every day, hearing English spoken with a Danish accent, passing days or afternoons at Tivoli, talking to neighbors in our courtyard while Riley plays in the sandbox or on the pirate ship play structure. I will miss the Danish people who think they are unfriendly but who are actually kind and generous in their own quiet way. There is so much to miss.

Neil jokes that if we had to sum up our time in Denmark in two words those words would be "We reproduced." This is funny to me because on the one hand, it is true, we moved here with a 7 month old and are returning with a 3 year old and two 4 month olds. But children, while perhaps the most important thing to happen to us, were not the only thing to happen. We traveled, oh did we travel. We had my dream European vacation at least four times over. And we became a part of a community here. We learned to live abroad, immersed ourselves in another culture to the point that nothing here seems strange anymore except the language.

I fell in love with Denmark. A friend recently remarked that living here is like being at Disneyland, you can't stay forever. It is true. It's easy to live in Denmark. Sure, there are problems here, but compared to most places, it is utopic. Our experiences with the schools here have been outstanding. I feel it is almost criminal to take Riley out of the fantastic little bornehavn he just started attending in June. My time at the hospital was so positive in so many ways. Our family doctor is outstanding. Our neighbors are nice. We can bike, walk or take public transit everywhere. It just feels good to be here and I am so sad to be leaving this place and the people who make this place special for us.

I look forward to being closer to my family and in the same place as much of Neil's family and I am sure I will enjoy things like understanding other people's conversations, reading signs, going to Target, etc. But right now I am determined to soak in as much Denmark as possible before flying to Oregon with two 4 month olds, a three year old and a 14 year old dog (and Neil and cousin Brittany). You just know that day will make for a good blog post or two.

Movers will come this Thursday and take all our belongings and put them on a boat. As we go through our flat and sort and pack it feels like both yesterday and a lifetime ago that we were doing the same thing in our apartment in Washington, DC in preparation for our Denmark adventure. I hope our next adventure will be just as good as this one has been.

Terrible toddler

For the first two years and eight months of my son Riley's life, I was frequently convinced that Neil and I deserved a medal for outstanding parenting. What else could explain the adorable little person we had created? He was polite, he easily tried new foods, was a dream on airplanes, behaved well at school and at home, loved to snuggle and hug and wasn't nearly as crazy as some of the other little boys we knew.

I remember when his second birthday approached, I was walking around on eggshells waiting for him to become a terrible two year old. It didn't happen. He was two and a half and it still hadn't happened and I took a big sigh of relief. "Our son is so great, we got to skip the Terrible Twos," I thought.

I would look at the parents whose kids were wheeled by in their big Danish strollers while screaming and flailing around and feel immense pity for them while simultaneously thinking, "Thank God my kid doesn't throw tantrums like that."

Perhaps I was too smug? Too sure that Riley's sweetness and compliance were due to my superior parenting skills. But really, I think I was just a silly first-time mom who somehow thought I could skip over a key developmental stage with my kiddo. The technical term for that stage, as I have now learned is, The Do Not Listen To Anything Anyone Says, Lose All Self Control, Throw Tantrums and Perfect Your Ability to Say "NO" in The Most Annoying Way Possible Stage.

I suspect that even if I hadn't disappeared into the hospital for 9.5 weeks and returned home with two baby sisters, Riley would be going through some growing pains right now, but certainly the addition of the babies to his life has complicated things. Riley also changed schools recently and was coaxed into giving up his pacifier for good. Not to mention the rotating cast of characters that have been staying with us to help with our massive increase in children. Just as Riley is comfortable with one grandma,  the other comes and just as he is comfortable with the other grandma, our cousin comes, the kid is having a tough summer. But, he has also turned into a total monster. Don't worry, he is a monster that I desperately love and would defend with my life, but he's exhausting to be around.

In the past 48 hours he has: head-butted one of his sisters and made her cry, hit a sister with a (padded) hockey stick, spent at least 15 minutes in a heap on the living room floor screaming "No, No, No" to no one in particular, drawn on a kitchen chair with crayon, kicked a half-eaten nectarine across the room, thrown a full cup of milk across the kitchen, punched a girl he doesn't know at a birthday party, and dumped 3/4 of a bottle of nail polish remover on my leg and all over the bathroom floor while saying "I know it's not a good thing to do, but I do it anyways."

I have gone from feeling like parent of the year to feeling like I should be sitting in the corner with a dunce cap on. The worst part is that I can see that Riley is hurting on some level and that is probably what a lot of his acting out is about. But I am powerless to help him. He is going to have to get used to having sisters. If it takes much longer, I am going to be the one in a heap on the living room floor throwing a tantrum.

All parenting advice is welcome. We clearly do not know what we are doing.

Drowning in Children

Let's not sugar coat this: caring for two babies is tough - really tough. Caring for two babies and a jealous toddler is, well, I am not sure there is a word for it. If you asked me most afternoons how I am feeling, I think the first thing that would come to mind is, "I am drowning in children."

Yep, drowning. My adorable monoamniotic twins still eat every three to four hours during the day and then spit up for a bit after eating. Often they wake up and want to be held for several hours, apparently not realizing I do not have enough hands. My formerly perfect little boy is acting out in any way possible which includes whining, temper tantrums, yelling when babies are sleeping, throwing things, purposely spilling liquids and foods, saying "no" more times in a row than I thought humanly possible and constantly turning on the baby swings and bouncer so as to waste the batteries and inflict multiple annoying baby toy songs on us at once.

With all the spit up going on in my home, I am doing multiple loads of laundry daily and changing my clothes at least three times before bed. It has been warm and some nights, I just take off the spit-upon pjs and don't bother putting anything else on thinking it is easier to just hose myself off in the shower than it is to wash one more t-shirt. That, and I usually don't have any clean shirts left at that point anyways.

My kids are all such wonderful blessings, but to say this is a lot of work is a gross understatement. It is a miracle if I get anything done in a day aside from showering and eating. I am either nursing, changing diapers, sitting on the floor of the bathroom reading potty books to Riley while he is on the potty, rocking a baby to sleep, dealing with a toddler tantrum or some other child-related task. And keep in mind, I still have family here helping. Some days, the absurdity of it all makes me laugh, other days I cry.

Thank goodness for the funny stuff that happens around here, if not for that, I might not survive. Allow me to relate what is sure to become a family classic. The other evening, while our cousin Laine was visiting, Riley decided he wanted to get his "outside toys" (bubbles, frisbees, tennis rackets and other things that can create havoc inside) and play in the courtyard. I decided I would go with him and Laine, but I happened to be holding one of the girls (couldn't tell you which one). Riley walked over to where I was sitting on the couch and in his normal inside voice, which is loud enough to wake a hibernating bear, he said "Come to the courtyard Mommy!" I probably shushed him instinctively and then I said, "I am going to Riley, I am just waiting for Grandma Terri to take the baby and then I will come play." At this point, Grandma Terri had already approached for the baby hand off, but Riley turned around, filled with his excitement that I would be going outside with him and looked at his grandma and shouted:

 "Take it! Take IT!!! TAKE THE BABY!!!!"

Each "take it" louder and more emphatic than the last. The whole episode was accompanied by Riley's wildly gesturing arms. He was not messing around. He meant business. Of course, grandma Terri took the baby and instead of talking to Riley about how he shouldn't talk to adults (or anyone) like that nor should he refer to his sisters as "it", I burst into laughture.

When you are drowning in children, you take the laughs where you can get them.

Little Ears

When our monoamniotic twins were born at 32 weeks and 3 days gestation, their tiny ears were just ear-shaped flaps of skin. They could bend and fold and we had to take care not to put the babies down with their ears creased. The neonatal nurses told us that the cartilage would develop in the coming weeks and it did. The tiny ears were just one more fragile thing about our little babies.

When we checked out of the hospital, Aviva's and Violet's ears were beginning to take more shape and were much less flexible. We had instructions to get two additional screenings for the girls after being discharged - a hip screening (twins can have hip issues, ours do not) and a hearing screening (done on all newborns, but not done while in the neonatal unit).

When our son Riley was born, they checked his hearing the very next day and before we left the hospital. I remember the nurse coming in the room and saying "Congratulations, he will hear and develop speech normally." I thought it was a strange thing to say at the time, but was glad to know his ears were working. This time, when we left the hospital without knowing if our babies could hear, it felt odd.

Fast forward to about a month ago when we finally went in for the hearing screening - a normal day and we were doing what I thought would be a routine test. Until both girls failed the test. The woman who conducted the test seemed very sad and said that sometimes a failed test was due to having a cold (both girls did), but she also didn't give us any false hope. The fact was, it was possible that our babies could not hear. We were refered to a hospital specializing in ears and hearing and we waited to get our appointment. Due to some Danish holidays, we waited a while. And this is how I came to spend nearly a month not knowing if my babies could hear.

While I know that hearing problems can be overcome, no mother hopes for her babies to be hearing impaired or deaf. After worrying about so many things through the pregnancy and our NICU stay, I was completely deflated when we sat in the hearing test room and watched the little light on the machine flash red over and over again.

We spent the ensuing weeks asking questions. Did she hear the dog bark? Why didn't Aviva turn her head to see the mobile when the music went on? Did Violet just wake up because of the creaking floorboard or was it a coincidence? Would I ever get to hear Aviva and Violet chatter away like their big brother does, or did we have something different in our future? I didn't share the hearing test results with many people for fear of making it more real. We just waited.

Today was hearing test day at last. We took the regional train to the hospital this morning and finally got the news we were waiting for. Both girls can hear! The relief I feel is enormous. I wanted to hug the nurse who did the tests, but I refrained. Our babies can hear! I'd like to say that I will sleep well tonight since I no longer need to worry about their hearing, but they will wake me up too many times for a good nights sleep.

Tubeless and Officially Discharged from the Hospital

It has been a full week since either of our monoamniotic twins has had a feeding tube in her nose. The final medical equipment from their time in the neonatal unit is gone and my babies are just babies. As each cord, wire or tube was removed while we were in the hospital a bit of relief set in. I felt happy that the removal of equipment meant the babies were doing well and happy that it was incrementally easier to hold my babies without fear of hurting them, disconecting monitors or tangling cords. When I took Aviva's feeding tube out last Tuesday and could look at my little girls' faces without funny tubes taped to them, it felt fantastic.

No more tubes means that the girls are eating all they need on their own. They are growing and thriving. Violet weighs just over 6 lbs and Aviva is catching up quickly at about 5.8 lbs. This Tuesday we received our final visit from the neonatal nurse and she officially discharged the girls from the hospital. With a hug and good wishes for our future, Lise walked out of our apartment and closed the hospital chapter of Aviva and Violet's story. (Hopefully permanently)

I am more exhausted now as I am solely responsible for all the feedings, but it's a good kind of exhaustion that only comes with new babies. Soon, we will introduce some bottles and start using our milk supply in the freezer from all the pumping I did before they could eat on their own. It will be nice to have a little more freedom to do things without worrying the girls will go hungry.

Because we are in Denmark, we will have a home health visitor (a nurse trained to work with babies who comes to check on Violet and Aviva every week or so. Unlike in the US, where we had to take Riley out to the pediatrician for check ups when he was really small, here the healthcare professionals come to us as much as possible. I remember having Riley at the pediatrician when he was a few days old and feeling incredibly uncomfortable and nervous about him getting germs from one of the sick kids in the waiting room. The system here is so much better in this way.

As the weather improves and Danes are getting outside and occupying every spec of bare grass in the parks, Aviva, Violet and I are getting out more, too. Hopefully we will get a few more nice days before the rainy summer begins. In a way, it feels like my life is beginning again as I climb out from the shadow of worry that nearly consumed me since last fall. It's nice to feel this way and have it complimented by sunny weather.

One month old

Hooray! We are one month old! (Aviva on the left, Violet in yellow)

My adorable girls are a month old. We have been home with them for two weeks and it has been exhausting but fantastic. The beeps and alarms of the NICU are fading from our memories, we aren't kept awake by other people's screaming kids and we get to have our family together.

Violet and Aviva are still gaining strength and getting bigger. We think they will be eating all their food on their own within a couple weeks and the feeding tubes can finally be a thing of the past.

I am loving being in my own home and with Riley and Neil more. It is crazy to think that I was living at a hospital for nearly nine weeks. I miss some of the midwives who cared for me while I was there, but not enough to move back in.

The reality of being a mom of twins is slowly sinking in. I didn't let myself think about it too much during pregnancy because I wanted to get the babies out alive first. But as we inch toward being finished with the feeding tubes and the nurse visits, we are coming out of being in a rare and perilous situation - monoamniotic twins! Premature babies! Extended stay in the neonatal unit! to being a normal family with newborn twins. Turns out, this isn't very easy. We have three kids under three years old. It is a zoo around here.

The girls eat and get diapers changed every three hours, and until they are done with the feeding tubes, I pump every three hours at different times from their meals. This basically gives me 30 min between things to do things like nap, eat, and shower. It is brutal. And yet, I feel it has all been worth it and will continue to be so as long as I am blessed to be these little girls' mom.

I must now give into my exhaustion and get some sleep.