This precious little baby in the picture above is honestly driving me crazy. She screams. Pretty much non stop. I mean she isn’t even crying it’s just intermittent screaming at the top of her lungs. Out of nowhere it strikes. We went to the grocery store today and she wasn’t even mad about anything but she kept.on.screaming. Nothing I do makes her happy either. I thought it was her teeth? I gave her tylenol, rubbed them, gave her an ice cold popsicle. Nope. I thought it was a wet diaper. I changed her time and again. I thought she might be bored of her toys so I brought in new ones. I thought she might be hungry so I fed her baby food and followed it with a bottle. Nope. I tried carrying her around and showing her things in the house (did I mention she’s a twin so it’s not like I don’t have another baby demanding my attention) Nope. Nothing I do impresses her. I feel like this pathetic entertainer dressed as a loser clown or something-pulling various magic tricks out of my bag only to get a scream as a response. She also makes this horrible face when it happens that looks like a full fledged adult having a temper tantrum. She’s nine months.

It makes me so so so mad. I know that’s wrong and as mothers we are supposed to have endless patience for these beautiful perfect creatures we brought into the world. But the truth is, she is pissing me off like nothing else. I want to scream back at her and say “what the hell do you want?!” I want to slam the door to my room and refuse to come down until she has cleaned up her behavior. I want to give her the silent treatment. But I can’t do that because she is utterly dependent on me. Don’t get me wrong, underneath this annoyance and anger is real sadness that I can’t alleviate her problematic situation. I, her mother, can’t figure out what is wrong. I know she doesn’t want to be mad or sad. I know she wants to giggle and be the little delicious bundle she usually is. But these past two weeks she has just been downright angry about something. How can that be if she’s only nine months? Her brother, on the other hand, is relatively chill right now. He kind of does his own thing and ignores her. I can’t tell you how many times people have told me not to compare the two-as twins that often happens-but it’s so hard not to. I’m looking at two babies the exact same age and yet they are completely different people. I know that seems obvious to readers, but the thing is, I can’t believe they have so much personality-and such different personalities-this young.

I’m sitting in the other room having just about lost my mind with her. I put both babies in their jumpy things and they are bouncing around and talking to each other (little gurbly garbly sounds) and I can hear her giggling every so often. It hit me the other day that she likes her brother more than me. That she will probably always love him in some ways more than me. As a pretty egotistical person, that hurts. But, and I really mean but, it also provides me with such enormous comfort. They will always have a teammate; a protector; a confidant and a friend. That gives me such a warm feeling to consider. I was telling my mom the other day that having children has been such a strange experience in terms of how my heart feels. I am overwhelmed-breath knocked out of my, mind blown in love with them. It’s all encompassing. There is no separation with this love between what I think and process in my brain and what I viscerally feel. It is one experience-one wave of love that has taken over every single part of what makes me, me. Remember the movie “Titanic”? Remember when one of the characters is standing in the hallway in the basement of the boat? And all of a sudden out of nowhere this HUGE flood of water just hits him and barrels him over? That’s what this has been like. Life was one way before I had them, and everything in this world is different after.

It’s also the scariest love you can feel. My sister in law shared a proverb with me when I had my babies that to have a child means a mother’s heart will forever exist outside her body. That is such a perfect description of what this is like. I feel so incredibly vulnerable. As though my armor could be punctured at any minute. I feel like I have an open flesh wound pulsating and throbbing and it’s unprotected and completely susceptible to hurt or invasion. That’s how I feel about loving them. I usually end these things with some nice, cleaned up lesson that I’ve learned (whether true or not) about perspective and handling my babies. Truth is? I don’t have one right now. Today’s been hard. Tomorrow will hopefully be better. I love them so completely it’s astounding. And yet right now, she’s driving me crazy 🙂