Products I will not be buying

This product allows you to nurse modestly in public while looking like that kooky guy you knew from college (or was it high school?) who was funny but bordering on annoying, who came to that Halloween party dressed as someone in the shower, with a shower curtain around his neck, no shirt, and a shower bonnet on his head. You know; the one who brought that big bottle of Jaegermeister and two bags of Cheetos, one for himself and one to share? Yeah, him.

I don't think I'll be buying one. I'm sure it does its job quite well, but I'd rather master the traditional blanket-slung-over-the-shoulder approach. I gave it a shot last weekend -- my first public nursing attempt! -- when we took the girls on an outing to the Institute of Contemporary Art at its shiny new waterfront location. (OK, really, we took ourselves, to avoid cabin fever, and brought the gals along.) The museum was, not surprisingly, rife with babies. When it's 14 degrees out, your choices for outings with babies are basically limited to museums or the mall -- the two extremes of American culture, high and low. We've done both twice now.

So, we found a place to sit in the media room off of one of the galleries, and I nursed Elsa, who is the more reliably adept latcher-on at this point, while A. gave Clio a bottle. I had my back to a big glass wall overlooking the shaft where a humungous glass-walled elevator rose and fell, bringing people to and from the galleries. I wonder if the passengers thought I was an installation myself: in the midst of this ultra-modern building full of avant-garde, contemporary stuff, a mother sits with a pink blanket over her shoulder, nursing, reminding us that no matter how technologically advanced our society becomes, we are still ultimately ruled by our biological nature. Or something like that.

Anyway, the point is, I managed to feed Elsa without exposing myself or traumatizing her, which I was quite proud of.

While we were at the ICA, we saw two other sets of fraternal twin girls: a pair of 4th graders, who were cool as can be, one tomboy and one not, and a pair of sharply dressed one-year olds with their two dads. (I heart Massachusetts!) We've found that parents of twins or people who are twins themselves are always eager to stop and talk -- an instant bond. Of course, other folks like to gape and chat and ask questions too. So far the attention hasn't been too annoying, but I can imagine how it could be if I was trying to run errands or was in a pissy mood.

Or if I had a shower curtain hanging around my neck.