CousinFest

I am here to tell you that a roll of scotch tape is all you need on an airplane if you're traveling alone with preschool-age twins. That and a portable DVD player. Since, as we all know, the airplane has rules, the DVD player can't come out until the fasten seat belt sign goes off. And three-year-olds will show unprecedented attention spans while watching for it to chime off. (They'll also ask if we're in the air yet while people are still boarding and announce they have to go to the bathroom during landing.) Until the magic of the DVD player can offer some distraction, there's the tape. It's sticky, it's tricky, it makes a mess, and most of the time they're not allowed to touch the stuff. So I give each girl her very own roll when we board and it keeps them occupied for the whole flight. They put it on the window, they put it on the seat. They try to cut off "little" pieces, and then stretch it the length of their arms. We play a game with it: they'll tear off a piece and I'll say "put it on your hand" and they will. Then the cheek, and the nose, the ankle, knee, wrist, forehead, and belly button. Then when they're covered in tape I'll have them hand it back to me one piece at a time. First the knee, next the hand, and so on. By the time you're tired of the tape game the plane will be in the air and you can break out the child-size earphones (bright red, of course) and the DVD of something they love, and suddenly you can read. Until the lady with the apple juice comes by.


The wonder twins and I just returned from a little jaunt back east to visit family. Funnydad had an extended business trip, and faced with eleven days as a single parent in a new town where I have at best a fledging support system, I decided it would be a good idea to visit my parents. And brother and grandmother and aunt and cousin. Old family friends, too. In hindsight I think I could have been okay in Boulder by myself, perhaps a little weary, but okay. However, I'm not at all sorry we went. A trip like this without the backdrop of a holiday was so much fun and so low stress – we’re staying put for Thanksgiving, so it’s like we had a holiday without a holiday. On Monday there were 17 people at my brother's house, eight of whom were children, all six or younger except one. Let that soak in for a second. It was chaotic. It was nuts. I wished I'd had experiences like that when I was a kid. All the children involved were cousins of some sort, so we called it CousinFest 2007, mostly as a joke since an event of this scale seemed to need a name. Not enough time to catch up with everyone, but there were a few good conversations as we rooted things out of the fridge, tried to make the guacamole, and applied temporary tatoos (to the young ones). Sometimes it's better when there's not quite enough time, you know? We didn't have a chance to get sick of each other.

My sister-in-law, Cate, gets some sort of Martha Stewart award. She had people sleeping all over her house, on floors, on couches. She fed us all so well and kept the coffee and wine flowing. But most of all she was unflustered by the whole event -- she claimed that the more kids there are the easier it is to watch them. (I began to believe her since I hardly saw mine unless I sought them out.) You should have seen the way Cate and my cousin Jess sat all eight kids at the table, said grace, passed out chicken nuggets, cleared it, and then ushered in the adults. When I have guests, even just a low-key small gathering, I'm a flittery mess, always worrying about something in the kitchen, or if the towels in the bathroom have fallen on the floor yet. I try, mind you, to channel calmness, but I rarely achieve it. I’m telling you Cate was amazing.

The next day when we flew back to our Rocky Mountain roost, glowing and worn out from the day before, I happily broke out new rolls of tape for the funny bunnies. Then when the time came for the DVD, they fell asleep almost instantly. Funnydad returns tomorrow. We'll all be happy to see him.