My husband and I adopted our twin boys when they were a mere seven months old. Ever since, people have been telling us how much one son looks like my husband and how the other looks like me.

TwinBoyA jumped into kindergarten with great enthusiasm. TwinBoyB hated the very idea of kindergarten. By second grade, TwinBoyB was sitting in the hallway getting additional help with math, while TwinBoyA was in another classroom, freaking out over timed math tests. Their handwriting was illegible and on Open House nights at school, I could compare their schoolwork on display with their classmates’ work and see that they were lagging behind.

By fifth grade, I realized that things had gradually gone from disconcerting to seriously wrong. The second week of school, TwinBoyB’s teacher called to say that TwinBoyB was failing every subject. We had his ears cleaned out and his eyes checked and bought him glasses and tethered him to the kitchen table for grueling homework sessions, but he struggled through the year. TwinBoyA had a compassionate, encouraging teacher, and he did great work (despite his scrawling handwriting with no spaces between the words and no regard for margins). That’s why I didn’t realize until the end of the year just how bad things were for him socially.

I asked him yesterday, “So, did the kids call you names the whole year last year?” He paused and looked out the window at the flat gray sky. He said, “Well, they didn’t really call me names. They just made fun of me.” I said, “Was it just the last year or two?” And he said, “Well, really the last three years.”

And what I have to ask myself is this: Did I not notice them drowning? Couldn’t I see their heads bobbing underwater? When the other kids splashed them until they couldn’t breathe and pressed their faces into the water, why didn’t someone intervene? Why didn’t I intervene? Why didn’t I see that it wasn’t good-natured fun, but cruelty? How could a mother not see that her children were tiring and about to go under?

Well, I did finally pluck them out of the water. And I didn’t even push anyone else under, though by then, I was tempted. I once overhead my son being mocked and ridiculed and I wanted to knock together the heads of the culprits. But I thought, it’s all part of growing up.

No more. I won’t let them sink or swim. Not until they are stronger swimmers, able to swim against the current and smart enough to avoid the jellyfish and driftwood. And the bullies.

I’m still reading a book about learning disabilities and as I read it (“A Mind at a Time”, by Mel Levine) I cringe. What I have attributed to quirky genetics and annoying personality traits are probably actual learning disabilities, neurological impairments. I wonder how much of this is genetic? I wonder why the teachers at our acclaimed schools never investigated further? I wonder if my boys will actually grow up to be productive members of society? Or did I leave them floudering too long?

Our adopted sons do not look like my husband. Or me. They don’t think like us, talk like us, walk like us, or resemble us in any way. But we are family and we will stick together, lashing ourselves to our life-raft if need be. I will not let these kids drown.

That’s my job, the job I accepted without actually reading the contract. . . the one that says in fine print, “Please note. No refunds, no returns, no do-overs. Good luck and don’t call us when you find out how poorly prepared you are.”

Try this. Put these words (poopy platter is open at midnight now!) into Google.

Mel’s number one! Mel’s number one! Mel’s number one! (Say it with me!)

Yeah. I’m so proud.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, winter brings rain. My yellow daisy-like flowers are still blooming in the pot on my sidewalk. The pansy occasionally shoots up a purple bloom. The hyacinth bulb is sending up greenery. And so, just when I think spring should arrive–after all, the weeds are actually growing–the temperature drops.

By our standards, last night was really cold, down into the twenties. My boys were delighted to find water turned into ice in the sandbox (filled with rainwater now). It was thick, too, and lasted through the day.

I hear there are rumors of snow on Thursday.

Okay. Fine. But after that, no more winter. I’m ready for spring.

School Breaks
Before I schooled the boys at home, I looked forward to the end of school breaks. The kids would go back to school and my days would resume their lilting schedule and rainbows would appear in the sky. Now I dread it. I’ll have to drag my school-at-home boys by the ears to get them to the kitchen table, ready to tackle math. YoungestBoy has started to proclaim that he “hates” school, which I just can’t believe because he does so well and reports he had a good day every single day. But I’m going to email his teacher, just in case.

Tomorrow DaycareKid will be here, too, so we’ll just suddenly be going full speed ahead. I’d rather lounge in a hammock for a few more days. Not that I own a hammock, but still.

Outright Refusal
Tonight, when I put Babygirl to bed, I said, “Good-night. Have a good sleep!” and she said, “No.” Well. Okay, then.

On Printers
My printer died. It was a HP PSC 1210 All-in-One. I loved that it printed, copied and scanned, but now it’s dead. I’m not so sure I want to replace it with the same model, given it’s unreliable history. But I’m cheap. So, what do you recommend, Internet? What annoys me is that I used to have a perfectly reliable plain old printer. Then a friend gave me a similar plain old printer. So, I switched to that printer and got rid of my printer (after it clogged up my storage room for a few months). When I got this new printer (a year ago), I donated the other printer to charity. And how does the universe reward my good deed? Now, I have no printer! Two computers, no printer and I gave away two printers in working condition.

Celebrity Babies (and Moms)
I’ve been thinking about why the paparazzi is so eager to snap a photograph of new celebrity moms . . . first the hoopla about Gwyneth Paltrow and the Apple of her eye . . . and now Julia Roberts and Phinn and Hazel, for example. Does the media actually think the public cares about the mushed up newborn face of a baby? No way! What we really want to see (you know you do, admit it) is the condition of the post-partum mother. We want to see if Julia has the same mooshy tummy that childbirth imposed on us. We want to see if Gwyneth looks haggard and chubby. I freely admit that when I saw a post-partum picture of Kate Hudson, I felt gleeful–she looked like she’d had a baby. Her face was round and her body reflected her pregnancy weight gain–for about twenty minutes. Then suddenly, she was lithe and lean and not just unpregnant, but looked never-been-pregnant-shaped again.

I ask you. How is that right?

Desperate Housewives
My blog-tracking device thing-a-majig tells me that I have visitors who come here after googling “Desperate Housewives.” To them I say: Sorry. There are no actual unretouched photos of those “desperate” housewives here. Just the ramblings of a real-life desperate housewife who has never seen anyone like that at the PTA.

Well. Today is the first day of January, which means that my fortieth birthday approaches quickly. You’d think that maybe I’d be alarmed at the thought of such advanced age, but given the alternative, I think aging is a fine idea, even though it brings wrinkles and loose skin. I have a lot of things to do, work to accomplish, books to read, a storage room to organize, scrapbooks to update, and the never-ending laundry to do. I am nowhere close to finishing my life’s tasks, so if I die soon, I will die with a big mess in my wake. And that’s just not an option.

I’ve had most of the week “off,” since my daycare child hasn’t been here and I haven’t been schooling the boys. I finished the dreaded paperwork for school at home. I switched the contents of a kitchen cupboard with the contents of a kitchen drawer. I threw away expired medication. I undecorated. I stocked the refrigerator with vegetables and low-fat dairy products. I shopped a few clearance sales. I saw a movie. I took Babygirl to visit my mother (just a few miles away) for the first time in a long time. I’ve slept until Babygirl has called my name at nearly 8 a.m. each morning. I took the cat in to be spayed. I cleaned up the storage room. I emptied out the front hall closet, sent a bunch of coats to Goodwill and tidied it up. Now the vacuum cleaner fits in the closet again. I bought more books at Value Village, because you never know when you might be bedridden and suddenly have enough time to read two hundred books.

I even sat down and edited a piece from this blog for submission to the local newspaper. I plan to send two pieces (600-700 words each) as a sort of audition for a guest columnist spot. This morning in the shower, I had a moment of clarity and panic. What in the world am I doing? If I don’t get it, I will say, “Well, I am a loser.” If I do get it, I will actually have to come up with an article once a month! What if I can’t do it? What was I thinking?

I’m going to send in the pieces anyway because I’m a glutton for punishment. And I don’t have anything to lose.

I’ve been reading a book by Mel Levine called A Mind at a Time. Each chapter brings 11-year old TwinBoyB to mind. He has difficulty paying attention. He has trouble with short term memory. He struggles with decoding language and writing. As I read along, I see him more and more in the pages of this book. He’s a bright child, but really agonizes over schoolwork. Over the course of his public school education, he’s come to believe that he is dumb. I am trying to reverse that idea, but I feel like I’m trying to stop a speeding car by holding the bumper with my bare fingertips and digging in my heels. So far, I just feel like I’m being dragged along, getting bumped and bruised. It’s not supposed to be this hard.

I never anticipated having a child like TwinBoyB. I fit perfectly into the public school system’s system. I am a visual learner. I love handwriting. I read voraciously. I pay attention and I remember anything I see and most of what I hear. I am sequential and was the first girl in my class to learn the multiplication tables because I thought it was fun. I wrote stories to amuse myself. I won every class spelling bee and math contest.

And as smart as I was, I never thought I’d be mothering a boy so different from myself. How smart is that? Not smart at all. I really didn’t think there’d be much to this parenting thing beyond teaching manners and keeping the kids safe. Everything else I thought they’d “catch” from us. They’d learn from simple modeling of behavior. And I was a good student and had friends. My husband had plenty of friends and was an average student. Neither of us gave our parent’s one second of grief–other than that time I wore mascara against my father’s wishes (boy, he was strict).

Now I am having to practically earn a master’s degree in the neurological development of children. I will be meeting with a team of specialists at the school to discuss my son. I feel like I need to be one hundred percent versed in the issues I see facing him. I need to have samples of his work and a timeline of his development. All this comes as such a surprise to me, for some bizarre reason. I thought frosting cupcakes would be the biggest issue facing me.

So maybe I went into this whole motherhood thing with my head in the clouds and unrealistic expectations. Even if I had known what would face me, I would have glossed over the trickier parts, the messier parts, the most aggravating parts because denial is my friend. I’d say, “Hey, how bad could it be?”

And so, that’s how I go into 2005. I say, “Hey, how bad could it be?” and “Could I please have a refill? My glass is half empty.”

Happy New Year!