Trick or Treat Pictures

Time is short, so I'm taking the easy way out and throwing up a bunch of pictures. These are from the trick or treating we did at the Des Moines Zoo. My verdict: If it weren't for a good cause, it would have been a huge waste of money to get in. Happy Halloween.

How to Tick Me Off

I got this letter in the mail the other day. I recently subscribed to Parents Magazine and haven’t received an issue yet.



In case it’s too small to read, it’s addressed to Ms. Matt (insert last name here). Obviously I mistakenly subscribed to Mothers Magazine.

"I can usually smell a scam from two towns over."

I’ve found a lot of scams while raising Abbie. Every business that makes a child-related product is eager to cajole me out of money using trickery and gifts. There’s the diaper scam, where the diaper conglomerates give me a couple free samples and some quasi-valuable coupons in the hopes that I won’t notice the generic diapers that are basically just as good sitting next to them on the shelves. That scam worked on me for Abbie, but the twins are getting generics.

There’s the “Next Step” formula scam, where the formula corporations, correctly sensing that I won’t buy their products after Abbie’s first birthday, use multiple fronts to guilt me into buying their formula for toddlers. They send super-valuable coupons so it appears more expensive to not buy their product. They send free samples making me feel indebted to their generosity. They send creepy literature filled with odd implications about cow’s milk like “Is your child getting enough iron, calcium, and VFL-NKJ? Only our formula contains the necessary VFL-NKJ for your child’s eye and brain development.” This scam worked on me, but only briefly.

There’s the educational toy scam, by which I mean LeapFrog toys. These are toys that proclaim themselves to be educational, but upon closer inspection turn out to just be sucky.

The latest scam I discovered came straight to my mailbox. I received an envelope with “Disney” in the return address area. At first I assumed this was one of the approximately 78,914,023,114 credit card offers we collect every week, this one offering special rewards good toward Disney paraphernalia if we’re willing to use their card for everyday purchases and live with a 24.99% APR.

I opened the envelope to determine which pages needed to be shred and which ones I could just throw away. After opening, I quickly discovered that it wasn’t a credit card offer, but a sales pitch for Abbie’s favorite things in the world: Books.* They’re selling a Winnie the Pooh book series, and they’re practically willing to give the stuff away at first, much like cigarette companies. If I agree to their terms, they will send me three books and a calendar for the price of one book! That’s only $8! Plus tax! With no further obligation! Unless I cancel, they’ll then send three more books a month for two months at the standard price! That’s only $24! Plus tax! With no further obligation! If I haven’t figured out how to cancel yet, they’ll then send the rest of the series, 30 books, at the standard price! That’s only $240! Plus tax! Payable in ten monthly installments because no one is dumb enough to blow $240 on children’s books in one sitting! With nothing left to buy! If I’m not completely satisfied with any of the titles I can return them for a full refund,** but that would be silly to do since the 39 books create a picture on their spine when lined up on a shelf.

I chuckled and threw the offer away, or at least I will as soon as I stop needing it as reference material for this post. $8 per book sounds outrageous to me since thet look like small board books that I’d pay no more than $5 for new, and less than a dollar for at a garage sale. If nothing else, the offer clears up a mystery. I found a series of Sesame Street alphabet books at a few garage sales, but always only the first three books in the series, “A,” “B,” and, uh … “C.” Common sense says this series goes well beyond three books, especially since the spines form a picture when lined up in order as do the back covers, but I never found more than those three books. I now believe this Sesame Street series was sold with the same scam used for the Winnie the Pooh series. The parents who bought these books received the first three titles for the price of one plus a special gift, possibly a calendar. Then, like any other rational parent, they realized they had just committed next month’s utilities budget to buying a ridiculously large set of books that their child would probably quickly rip the covers off of anyway.

It’s good to know I’m not the only person who sees through corporate treachery. I will not waste my money on ridiculously overpriced book sets, “educational” toys, name brand diapers, or “Next Step” formulas. Name brand formulas? Those are worth the extra money.

* No, not dog food. That’s her second favorite thing.
** I’m guessing; it says I can return them, but says nothing about a refund.

I Won't Be Ignored, Dad

I cooked supper last night. It was nothing difficult, just spaghetti, a meal involving boiling pasta, simmering sauce, and broiling bread to accompany the steaming vegetables and microwaving chicken for Abbie. I’d have a harder time finding bootleg photos of Baby Spears than I did cooking supper. Cleaning up afterwards, that was difficult.

It was nothing unusual, either. I typically cook around our house, unless we’re eating out, an event that occurs with inversely proportional frequency to the number of children in the house. When the twins come, I’m assuming that “eating out” will involve “take out,” “delivery,” or “drive thru and eat it fast before anyone in the backseat realizes what we’re doing.” That will continue until the twins are at least old enough to threaten to behave.

What was a little unusual was I was working solo with no idea when Ellie would be home. Ellie is a picky eater, and when I know she won’t be home for supper, I usually pull something off the shelf or out of the freezer that’s been rejecting for a long time. We have a pizza sitting in the freezer that’s older than Abbie (probably twice as old), and I swear one of these days I’m going to eat it. I usually start working on this supper soon after Abbie wakes from her nap and is in a mood to entertain herself so I only have to pop something in the oven or microwave when the time comes.

When I know Ellie will be home for supper, like yesterday, I try to consult with her before preparing something. Like I said, she’s a picky eater, and pregnancy only makes her pickier. Usually, asking one of us what we want for supper only leads to maddeningly circular conversations,* but sometimes she throws out a good idea like Mexican takeout or frozen custard. At the very least, she’ll confirm my idea for supper so I know she’ll at least eat a couple bites of what I made before supplementing her meal with a bag of marshmallows.

We hit the point of no return on supper, the time when I had to start cooking something if we were going to be able to eat at Abbie’s strict mealtime (5:45pm). With nothing ready, I cast Abbie to the side for 15 minutes while I filled pans and opened jars. Right after her nap, she generally takes being ignored well, chasing pets and bending books into creative positions. Right before supper, she never takes being ignored well as she’s hungry and cranky, especially when daddy is banging around the kitchen and fiddling with something edible, where edible is defined as “anything that fits completely in the mouth.”

I don’t usually feel bad about ignoring her, especially after we just completed a vigorous session in the park like we just did. In fact, I sometimes intentionally ignore her when I have something important to do like cook supper or watch football, because she’s sure going to have to get used to being ignored when the twins come.

She still has some getting used to being ignored to do because she spent the entire time whining at my feet. I talked to her while working, but that was about as effective as an Astros reliever. She wanted my undivided attention for a reading session, but didn’t know how to express it. First she tried whining with no effect. Next she tried doing that one thing I was doing, what’s it called? … Talking. She hasn’t put the effort into learning to talk yet though, so she just kept saying the same syllables she always says, “mo,” “bo,” and when she wants to mix things up “mbo.” When that failed she tried throwing all sorts of new syllables at me, and when those failed she tried throwing books. At least she didn’t try biting, so I’m viewing this as progress.

I set everything cooking without experiencing too many shed tears. I washed her hands and set her into her high chair to start her on a chicken appetizer. About the time we progressed to spaghetti, Ellie came home. Fortunately the spaghetti met with her approval, and she sat down to half a plate of spaghetti and a couple pieces of bread. Then she retired to the bedroom with a bag of marshmallows.

*“So, do you want anything for dinner?”
“I don’t know. What do you want?”
“I don’t know. I asked you first.”
“Damn.”

"It's times like this I'm glad I flunked out of dental school."

Pet Care Week continues in our household as I follow Give the Dog a Bath Day with Take the Cats to the Veterinarian Day. Today could be Clean the Chinchilla Cage Day, followed Clean the Aquarium Day, and finally Funeral for a Fish Day. The cats had nothing wrong with them, unless you count their general aloofness and propensity for puking. This was just a general checkup and booster shot.

In order to take the cats to the vet, I had to coral them into a pet carrier. We have two cats, Cleo, the slightly overweight and somewhat active one, and Charlie, the morbidly obese and shamefully sedentary one. They both hate their pet carrier like Cub fans hate being the only cursed baseball team left, and will do anything in their power to avoid imprisonment. This adds a sporting element to their capture, a dangerous element that thrill-seekers participating in safer animal-based sports like bear hunting or lion taming only wish they could experience.

They’re very good at hiding when they sense something wrong. In our old home, the one with free space instead of piece of furniture covering every wall, I ended up being 20 minutes late and one cat short to one of their appointments. One of them scurried away when I tried throwing them in their carrier and danged if I could find it. While vet poked the captured cat, I returned home to see if I could find the other one, and found it sitting on my office chair like it had been there the whole time instead of hiding and probably peeing in some cramped quarter only it knows.

This time I tried something smart; I locked both cats in the bathroom before touching their carrier. To draw them into the bathroom, I used their favorite toy as bait, Sparkly Thing on a Fishing Pole. It looks like an odd toy, but as it dances and shimmers erratically about the room, no cat can resist it. Or dog. Or Abbie. Once I locked the dog in her kennel and Abbie in her crib to keep them from scaring the cats, Charlie followed it right into the bathroom. Cleo though, possibly realizing that we don’t ordinarily play with the toy in the morning, sat and watched from a distance. I had to pick her up and throw her in the bathroom, shutting the door before Charlie could scamper out.

At this point my cover was blown, but the cats were already trapped so I didn’t care. I hauled the carrier upstairs, and opened the door to enter the bathroom. As soon as I cracked the door, one cat tried running out. I threw it back in, opened the door a little more, and caught the other cat on its way out. This process repeated a few times until Cleo managed to dig a claw deep into my finger. She ran away at that point, but Charlie, as is his wont after exerting any physical effort, sat on the floor accepting his fate. I pushed the carrier in, shut the door before he changed his mind, and collapsed on the floor screaming words that made me glad Abbie isn’t talking yet.

Once I realized I’d survive the vicious cat attack, I hunted down Cleo. With few places left for her to hide, I quickly found her huddled behind the couch. I moved the couch, wrapped her in a towel to keep those claws sheathed, and threw her in the carrier with a level of disdain usually only seen when late-night talk show hosts comment on obviously underqualified Supreme Court nominees.

The vet appointment went well except that they were running about 15 minutes behind schedule. Keeping a toddler entertained for an extra 15 minutes, especially one who’s three hours removed from her last wake time, can make corralling suspicious cats look easy. I brought a couple toys to help pass the time, and the vet’s office had a few toys to keep her entertained. It had a trash can with a lid that Abbie liked to spin and I liked to close my eyes and pretend it was sanitary for her to touch it. It had a pet scale, a 2x4-foot rectangle elevated above the ground, that Abbie like to climb on and off of in blatant disregard of the sign hung above declaring “Parents, this is an expensive piece of medical equipment and not a toy. Do not allow your children to play on it!”* Best of all, it had a giant wall poster with dog breeds from around the world that she could point to and I would read. It was like a giant book, but without pages or flaps.

The cats took the appointment better than Abbie did, and we were home in 30 minutes. I released the cats from their carrier, not sure what kind of behavior to expect. I thought I’d find The World’s Biggest Cat Defecation on the floor/sofa/Ellie’s side of the bed within a couple hours, but they behaved themselves as best I can tell. Charlie actually seemed more affectionate than usual, possibly as his way of pleading that we never do that again. Cleo though disappeared for most of the rest of the night, so I may want to check behind the couch.

* I had permission from the vet’s nurse for her to climb on it. They just don’t want children to jump up and down on it, which isn’t a problem for Abbie as long as it’s not a bed or a trampoline.

"Who wants to give me a sponge bath? I'm filthy."

I gave her a bath yesterday. I had to, I honestly can’t remember the last time she had a bath. It was probably sometime in the spring. It certainly wasn’t any time this past summer. Her hair was a matted mess, she was dirtier than a Vikings’ pleasure cruise, and she stunk worse than the Astros’ relief pitching. She didn’t like it, but she accepted her bath without crying. That night I gave Abbie a bath too, but that bath did involve a lot of crying. Of course I had to be sure to clean all the dog fur out of the bathtub first.

Ellie started warning me that the dog needs a bath weeks ago. I had no counterargument to “she stinks” because it was true. I just didn’t want to spend the time and money to have her professionally groomed like we did at least four times a year back when we had disposable income. For what I’d spend having her professionally groomed, I could buy one of those comically large boxes of diapers found in the warehouse club stores, the kind that hold enough diapers to keep the twins wrapped in relatively dry plastic for more than an entire week. Recently Ellie’s warnings grew more urgent with an underlying threat that she was going to take matters into her own hands and, cost be damned, she was going to schedule the grooming visit herself. And if she scheduled the grooming, I would likely have to take the dog to the groomers at an inopportune time, like during Abbie’s naptime, or worse, during my naptime.

I took preemptive action to save my nap and gave the dog a bath myself. We already had a nearly full bottle of dog shampoo in the cupboard, so all I had to do was fill the tub with water and throw the dog in. Literally, I had to throw the dog in the bathtub; she hates baths. She has willingly jumped in a lake or other swimming area on occasion for a couple minutes of dog paddling, so I know she doesn’t hate or fear water. If there’s a possibility that soap could be involved though, she avoids water like the Astros manager avoids taking responsibility. No doubt the dog’s love of swimming but hatred of bathing will prepare me for the day when Abbie discovers she can fight back when I lather her up.

Once I locked the dog in the bathroom, things progressed fairly smoothly. She didn’t struggle much to escape the bathtub, though she did insist on resting her front paws on the tub so as to minimize contact with the water, and to shorten the escape route should I turn my back for any foolish reason like preventing Abbie from climbing in the tub. By the way, how did I juggle a soapy dog that wants nothing more than to escape the tub, and a wriggly toddler who wants nothing more than to climb in the tub, or possibly just poke said soapy dog? Very carefully.

After rinsing, I toweled her off, gave her a blow dry, brushed the loose fur off her, brushed the loose fur off her, brushed the loose fur off her, brushed … let’s just say I’m still picking loose fur off her. And the carpet. And the sofas. And the bed.

I gave the bathtub a thorough wiping to clean the loose fur out of it before Abbie’s regular bath that night. Usually Abbie loves her bath, but she put up a struggle last night. About the time I finished soaping her up, she started screaming and actively trying to climb out of the tub, two maneuvers that the dog wishes she had thought of. I couldn’t figure out why Abbie suddenly wanted out of the tub so badly. Tired, cranky, and ready for bed? Soap in her eyes?* Wad of forgotten dog fur wrapped around her whatuzzit?

I grabbed a towel and pulled her out. As I held her on my shoulder, Abbie reached out to the bathroom shelves, and I realized why she wanted out of her bathtub. Earlier in the day, Abbie found The Most Annoying Toy in the World, her elephant organ, from its hiding spot, so I hid it in a new spot on the bathroom shelves. The last hiding spot lasted for months, the new one didn’t make it through the night. With her bath time cut short, we had a few spare minutes before bedtime, so I let her play the elephant organ naked for a few minutes on the bathroom floor by herself. I used my unexpected spare time to brush another wad of loose fur off the dog.

* You know the shampoo that claims “no tears?” They lie.

"So, tell me more about your day at the DMV."

Abbieupdate’s regular readers doubtlessly have one question on their minds: How many more posts can this guy milk out of the process of buying a new car? The answer is: One, but this is the last one. Probably.

We went to the Department of Motor Vehicles yesterday morning to register the new car and deregister the old car. Normally a trip to the DMV is an unpleasant experience, like losing Game 2 on a walk-off homerun from a guy who hit exactly zero homeruns in the regular season. My experience has been finding long lines, screaming children, and funny smells at the DMV. Maybe that was true later in the day, or maybe I just arrived on a good day, but when I arrived at 9am I walked right up to a helpful clerk with no waiting. I suddenly felt silly for filling the parking meter with 33 minutes, but at least the only screams and smells I had to deal with came from Abbie.

Not that getting to the DMV was entirely pleasant. Yesterday was the first morning of the season that I’ve seen a hard frost on car windows. We’ve had condensation and even light ice crystals form on windows this year, but that stuff scatters easily with a flick of the wiper blades, or sometimes if you just make a scary face at it. Yesterday’s ice was stubborn enough to require scraping. Sadly my ice scraper was not in my new car, but was instead still temporarily residing in Ellie’s truck, which was with her at the hospital at the time. Facing a choice between waiting 15 minutes for the defrost to loosen the ice or scraping with an improvised implement, I used the only flat plastic object I could think of: A credit card. Naturally I used my Discover Card, because even if most businesses won’t accept it, my windshield will.

With a clear windshield, I had smooth driving, effortless parking, and easy walking right up to the clerk. Unfortunately the rest of the experience was more difficult. The DMV is not equipped to make the lives of parents with small children easier. If it were, they would have a separate supervised play area encased in soundproof Lucite and filled with the latest toys, books, music, and videos for the kids to enjoy while their parents finish their business with the clerk, and then enjoy a leisurely lunch at one of the fine nearby restaurants before picking their children up around closing time. Lacking such a feature, I had to juggle Abbie and the registration simultaneously. I had several options to do so, each with their own drawback:

1. Hold Abbie in my arms while standing at the window. Cons: She can squirm out of my grip in under a minute and right onto the floor. As a variation, I could dangle her by her ankles, but that only keeps her entertained for about a minute before she starts screaming, and I was at the window for about 15 minutes. Plus the dangling draws suspicious looks from strangers.
2. Set Abbie at my feet and hold her hand to make sure she goes nowhere. Cons: I might as well slather frosting on my hand because she will bite me in this situation. Plus she’ll start screaming when she discovers she can’t roam freely.
3. Set Abbie on the floor and let her go, returning her to my feet when she wanders too far. Cons: A 15 minute meeting will become 30 minutes if I have to stop every nine seconds to fetch her. Plus, God forbid someone grab her when I’m not looking.
4. Sit her on the counter next to me. Cons: She could fall if I’m not careful, and I’ll have to fight her for sole control of papers and writing implements.

I opted for #4, and kept her entertained with a steady stream of toys while I signed things and tried to figure out exactly why just registering my new car costs almost half of what I sold the old car for.* At one point I handed her a credit card to play with (the Discover Card of course) while I pulled the necessary cash out of my wallet. Abbie promptly threw it on the counter. The clerk, not seeing who threw it, informed me that there was a fee to use a credit card for payment. Thousands of business won’t accept Discover, but the DMV will! For a fee!

As I neared completion of massive signings, Abbie threw the latest toy I gave her on the floor. I dutifully bent down to retrieve it, and as I did Abbie slid right off the counter. She screamed her head off despite my catching her on the first bounce. The clerk appeared to hold a mix of pity for us, and wrath toward me for letting her fall, especially since she remarked earlier that she’s always afraid kids will fall when they sit on the counter. I tried reassuring her that this was nothing abnormal, that she falls and cries like this two or three times a day, but I don’t think that helped my case. Until the DMV installs their soundproof daycare center, these problems will continue.

I grabbed my new plates, and walked out of the office, still trying to calm Abbie. My guilt got the best of me and I gave Abbie a treat on the way to the car: I let her walk down the dozen steps leading to the street. This time I held her tight to ensure she didn’t fall.

* Stupid sales tax.

"A lot of companies would put in a pretty system that looks good, but doesn't provide any real protection." "Oh, let's get that!"

I’ve held a lot of job titles in my lifetime: DQ dude, lid boy, fish nerd. I’ve never been a used car salesman though. I’ve never been any sort of salesman unless you count the times I tried to sell customers on the idea of spending an extra $.15 to upgrade their shake to a malt.* Despite my utter lack of qualifications for doing so, I tried selling my old car this past weekend. I think I did fairly well, as long as you define “well” as “selling it in less than a week for 75% of the printed asking price.”

My old car was a 1993 Oldsmobile 88 Royale with 153,000 miles, but it still had a lot of things going for it. It’s about as fully loaded as a 12-year-old car can get with power everything, air conditioning, a CD player, and more useful accessories, most of which still work. Its color is a dark red, sporty enough to be vaguely exciting, yet dull enough to not act as a cop magnet. It’s a large car with a large engine that still has plenty of power, yet its gas mileage is mysteriously as good or better than any comparable new car. We know the entire ownership history for the vehicle: Us for a year, and Ellie’s grandmother bought it new before that. Some more trusting souls might believe that the fact that a grandmother owned it for better than a decade would give it an advantage of being treated gently. Little did they know that she has a bit of a reputation of having a lead foot. Not that I’d ever tell anyone that.

Of course it has some problems, starting with the fact that it’s a 12-year-old car with 153,000 miles. Not that any prospective buyers want to hear that; everyone wants to think that they’re looking at an enchanted car that still runs like it did the first day it came off the lot and will continue running smooth as silk in perpetuity thanks to the magic gnomes living under the hood. I started off wanting to be honest with people, that it runs like a 12-year-old car with 153,000 miles. As the days progressed, though, my answer to the inevitable “how does it run” question morphed from “pretty good” to “real good. It still has plenty of get up and go, doesn’t burn any oil, doesn’t leak any fluids, and doesn’t make any funny noises.” All of which is true and a convoluted way of saying what I originally wanted to say, even if “doesn’t make any funny noises” isn’t really a compelling reason to buy a car.

The first day it was listed we took three calls, one of which came out that night to look. He looked at it closely, asked several questions, and spent longer than an hour looking it over. Finally he asked me to give him a “nice price” and he’d pay cash right now. I took $100 off the asking price and he proceeded to look the car over for another couple minutes before saying it was too much for him. I asked what he’d be willing to pay, and discovered that no one buying a car actually wants to make you an offer, they just want you to keep throwing out figures until you screw up and say something wacky like “$2.62” or “I’ll give you my house if you just get it out of my sight right now.”

He spent at least five minutes looking at it in silence before finally uttering a lowball figure that was just over half our asking price. It was below what I wanted, and at the bottom of what I figured I’d accept when I got desperate. Since it was the first day of the listing, I told him to wait after the weekend and maybe we’d deal if I still had it.

As the days progressed I discovered another truism about used car buyers: They like to argue and insult you. I wouldn’t think that would be a smart move for someone who’s trying to shave 50% off the asking price, but people still do it. One guy balked when I asked him to call back in a couple minutes since I was busy at the moment, grilled me for several minutes, then asked what I’d take. Not in the mood to deal, I recited the book price, our asking price, and the offer I rejected.

“Oh,” he said seeming genuinely surprised. “You probably want more than that, huh?” He then told me all about a newer car he saw once with less miles that sold for less. I thought he should have bought that car.

Another guy looked at the car with the express purpose of starting it, revving it a few times, and arguing with me over how it got scratched. The car, like most 12-year-old vehicles, has some scratches and door dings. They’re not big enough to draw laughter on the interstate, but they exist.

“Where did these come from?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It’s a 12-year-old car. I guess things happen.”
“This looks like a dog.”
“It used to be on a farm with a lot of cats. It could have been them climbing on it.”
“Nah, that’s not from cats.”
“It’s a farm, could be lots of things. Raccoons. Opossums.”
“That’s a dog.”
“I don’t know, I never asked how it got scratched.”
“And this looks like kids scratched it.”
“… I don’t know, I never asked.”

He didn’t buy it either. Fortunately a young guy called Sunday morning, came out within an hour, and looked at it for about 15 minutes. He left telling me he liked it and he’d likely be back. An hour later he came back, offered 75% of our asking price, and I bit. It was less than I originally hoped for, but close enough. We’d only taken one call on Saturday, and I figured I’d better take his offer before they dry up completely. Then I took two more calls later that afternoon. I’m going to stick to my day job taking care of Abbie.

* “What’s the difference between a shake and a malt?”
“A malt has malt powder.”
“…Okay.”

Abbies Bounce

Abbie’s latest favorite game is bouncing. I’m not really sure where she picked this up, but it probably has something to do with her love of being roughed up. While she’s on the bed, she loves it when we tackle her flat on her back and (gently) dribble her chest like a basketball. Instead of, or possibly in addition to, having her brains scrambled, she giggles uncontrollably, which is a welcome change from the biting she often tries to do while on the bed with us. I guess eventually she tied of having to rely on us to bounce her, and figured out how to bounce on her own. So it’s good to see she has a head start in ruining her first bed.

She usually bounces from the queer sitting position she devised. She will sit with her butt on the floor, both knees in front of her, and both legs bent to the side and pointing back. She looks like a baseball or softball catcher blocking a ball in the dirt, or possibly a very brave hockey goalie with a lot of trust in his cup blocking a 5-hole shot, except those sports figures only stay in that position for a couple seconds at a time, while Abbie will leave her body in her joint-popping posture for minutes at a time to read several books. I’m sure she does more damage to her knees sitting like that than I do in any jogging session or battle with my stair climber.

To bounce from that position, she starts to stand up enough to lift her butt off the floor, or at least to lift her head a couple inches. To encourage her, I’ll say “bounce, bounce, bounce,” and she’ll dutifully bounce three times with the kind of grin that most children reserve only for Elmo.

Her favorite place to bounce is our bed, though she also enjoys bouncing on the neighbor’s trampoline. Of course it was erect all summer while the weather was beautiful, or at least warm enough to go outside, and she hated the trampoline. Every time we tried putting her on it to bounce she would almost immediately cry like we just did something extraordinarily heinous like lock her out of the bathroom while we use the facilities in private. Now that the days are growing shorter and colder,* she decides that maybe the trampoline is an acceptable form of entertainment.

Of course it’s not just enough entertainment for her to just bounce on the trampoline. Yesterday I helped her climb onto the trampoline, watched her take a few bouncing steps into the center and back, and helped her climb down. Then I helped her climb back up, watched her take a few more steps, and helped her climb back down. This continued for several minutes until I decided that I’d tweaked my back enough picking her up and down, and collapsed the folding stairs used to climb up and down. Abbie then cried on the collapsed steps, frustrated that she couldn’t climb a vertical step no matter hard she tried to bite it.

We moved back inside because she wanted to do nothing outside but go up and down on the trampoline, plus it was cold out there. We moved to her room to read. Eventually we moved to “Sunny Day in the Hundred Acre Wood,” a Winnie the Pooh-based book about spring. Why a children’s book exists that focuses only on the subject of spring is beyond me. Presumably three other Winnie the Pooh-based books exist somewhere about the other season, but those aren’t in our book collection so in her mind Pooh will simply live in a land of perpetual springtime.

We flipped through the pages, eventually arriving at the magic pages: “Spring is just right for flying kites … (page turn) … and bouncing!” On cue she will bounce up and down with that huge grin. I usually stay on this page for a while, encouraging her to “bounce, bounce, bounce” while she giggles away. She likes this so much that she usually flips past the previous page before I’ve finished reading to reach the magic pages extraordinarily quickly. She enjoys the bouncing and recognizing the pages and words, and I enjoy watching her have fun and getting a little exercise. Plus we’re sitting on the floor so she’s not ruining her bed with her bouncing.

* It almost froze here this morning. Whee!

"I don't want you driving around in a car you built yourself." "You can sit there complaining, or you can knit me some seat belts."

Okay, so I’ve moved the aquarium out of Abbie’s bedroom, creating the necessary space to set up three cribs while leaving enough space to navigate the room as long as you don’t make yourself too big by holding something like a laundry basket or a baby. The other area where we’ll need more room is my vehicle. My beloved 1993 Oldsmobile 88 just won’t cut it with three screaming children.

It’s a big car, about as big as sedan gets, with plenty of passenger space for three car seats across the back assuming that I can keep our little angels strapped in tight enough to prevent them from poking each other. Where I run into problems is the cargo space since by the time I fill the back seat with car seats and diaper bags, and throw a double stroller in the trunk, I don’t have much room for hauling our Vital Supplies. What good is a Grocery Getter if it doesn’t have room to get groceries? As for trips to see the grandparents, we can barely cram everything we need into the car now; if we add two more infants to the car we’ll have to tie things and people to the roof Beverly Hillbillies style.

Accepting that I need a new car is part of the battle, the easy part. Choosing a new vehicle type was the other, more difficult part. If I need a vehicle with more space, then logically I need a bigger vehicle. The problem is I hate large vehicles, much more than I hate snakes, spiders, and wolverines combined. I hate the way they handle like a pig ready for market. I hate that massive amounts of steel block the view to the sides and rear preventing you from accurately seeing anything important like a child, another vehicle, or a board with a nail in it before changing lanes or backing up. I hate they way that they burn through about a diaper’s worth of fuel every mile.*

That immediately rules out an SUV, a large vehicle that epitomizes everything I hate about large vehicles. The other obvious option is a minivan, the choice of parents everywhere who aren’t ready to dive into an SUV and don’t mind looking lame driving a minivan. I wasn’t very enthused about driving a minivan, but didn’t see much choice so we looked into buying one.


The big problem we found with minivans, besides the fact that they look like minivans, is that most models have two bucket seats in the second row, or at least a short bench seat, while we’ll have three car seats to deposit children into. That means that in order to strap all three children into their seats, someone (i.e. me) will have to climb into the third row of seats, at least until Abbie is old enough to climb into the back row by herself, which if she learns that task as quickly as she’s learning to talk, will happen some time around her 16th birthday. We discovered that the long third row bench seat can be moved to the second row in some models, but then we’d have to store the second row seats somewhere, and I mentioned we have a tiny house on this blog before?

We thought about a station wagon, but who makes station wagons anymore? Turns out Subaru does. A week ago I found a used one in the paper at a price I was willing to pay. I test drove it and found things acceptable. It had glass everywhere that let me see my surroundings, it handled like a large car, and its gas mileage was similar to that of a large inefficient car. The big test was when I tried installing all three car seats across the back seat simultaneously. They all fit provided I had the front seats pushed forward a little. The seats all touched each other and the doors, but it still counts. As a bonus, the car had many useful options, like a CD/cassette player and remote entry, in addition to the standard features found on all Subarus (Subarues? Subari?) like all-wheel drive, disc breaks, and a Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker.**

I bought it, and now have a Subaru sitting in my parking space ready to haul my children until they grow big enough to poke each other to the point that they refuse to sit three across. At that point perhaps science will have devised a way to fit three children and all their stuff into a vehicle with the essense of a car. I’m not holding my breath. By the way, would you like to buy a 1993 Oldsmobile 88?

* I plan to measure the cost of practically everything in diapers over the next three years.
** This Subaru did not have a Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker. The previous owner must have done a good job peeling his off.

"See the happiest fish in the world at our fabulous Beer-Quarium!"

Our home is tiny. Once we bring a set of twins* into our home we will be cramped. Very cramped. Threatening to break fire codes cramped, especially if the authorities discover the zoo we’re housing too. I must carefully plan a furniture layout and pare down to the essentials in order to fit everything. It’s like I’m living in a dorm room again except my stuff is (slightly) nicer and I have (slightly) less privacy.

The shelves previously mentioned on here are part of my plan to pack our home with crud more densely than a Big Box Store clearance aisle. Making efficient use of wasted wall space will only take me so far though. I have to eliminate a few things, like the coffee table we removed from the living room as soon as we realized Abbie needed the space to crawl and throw toys. Then there are things we have to dispatch with that, unlike the coffee table, I actually like, such as dresser space. In anticipation of the twins’ arrival, the hardest thing I’ve had to remove is our saltwater fish tank.

In an earlier time, i.e. before Abbie, I enjoyed keeping fish, much more than some activities I do for fun now like vacuum the floors. At the height of my fish nerdiness, I had six fish tanks, 173 gallons worth, filtering simultaneously, but one was just a 1-gallon betta tank that I hardly think should count. Upon learning that we would be parents, I realized that the time and money required to care for began tearing down fish tanks. Naturally the betta tank was the first to go. When Abbie arrived I quickly discovered that I needed to free more time.

As fish died in the smaller tanks I stopped replacing them so that by the time we moved into our tiny home, I only had successfully reduced my burden to two tanks to care for. I had to inadvertently destroy one of the tanks in the moving process, killing the fish inside to cut back that far that fast, but I made it. Of course, the two remaining tanks were my two biggest, 55 and 72-gallons. Caring for just these two was feasible, especially once Abbie could entertain herself during their biweekly cleaning. Fitting them into the house was a little more difficult, but fortunately Abbie can’t complain about precious space in her bedroom being taken up by a giant 55-gallon fish tank.

When I discovered the twins were coming, I had to pare down even further. Abbie’s bedroom barely has space for three cribs, let alone three cribs plus a crib-sized aquarium. The tank in her room had to go immediately, but since one tank was saltwater and one tank was freshwater, I didn’t have anywhere to put the fish.

Fortunately the Des Moines Public Schools have a top-notch marine biology program. I imagine all major cities in landlocked states 1000 miles from the nearest ocean have top-notch marine biology high school programs. The one in Bismarck probably focuses on jellyfish. And Miami’s public schools probably have a 4-H program that puts Iowa’s to shame. Anyway, the program was happy to accept the donation of my fish since they, like pretty much every other public school program I’ve ever seen that doesn’t involve moving a ball, are desperately underfunded and have to beg for every resource they can get.

I spoke to the department and made an appointment for a couple of the kids to come to my place to pick up the fish at 10am, and they were at my door with shining faces at 10:35am. Ah, to be in high school again and go on field trips on my own schedule.

Now I’m down to one freshwater fish tank. Caring for fish can’t get much cheaper or easier, unless I was to tear down the 72-gallon tank and move everything into the spare 20-gallon tank in my basement, but that’s just crazy talk. We have plenty of space (barely) in Abbie’s room for three cribs. At least we will as soon as I move the empty 55-gallon tank out of her room. Want to help? I can let you feed my fish while you’re here.

* The twins by the way are as of yesterday both over three pounds and threatening to top Abbie’s birth weight of 6lbs, 12 ozs in a couple months.

Funny, But Not Ha Ha Funny

Sometimes I wish I knew what was happening inside Abbie’s head. There are times when the answer seems to be “not much,” like when I strap her into her car seat, turn on her Sesame Street CD, and watch her go limp as she tries to make time move as quickly as possible. Then there are the times when she’s thinking something, and it’s strange. That little hamster inside her head is growing stronger, and sometimes it turns its little wheel in an odd direction.

The other day we were sitting on the floor in her room reading after lunch. Post lunch is prime reading time as it helps to calm her down for the impending nap, and helps me make up for ignoring her all morning while I performed essential tasks like running errands, cleaning the house, and reading the newspaper. I usually let Abbie choose the book to read, a process that usually involves her pulling the top book out of her basket o’ books and throwing it in my lap. This usually means that last book she read and put away earlier is the first book she pulls out later, leading to repeated reading of the same book. Those top books become the Yankees of her book collection, showing up in the playoffs of reading time and again until I just get so sick of them I want to punch Derek Jeter. That’s when I rotate some books between the basket and the shelf.

On this particular day, she was looking for something a little different, as evidenced by her insistence on throwing books across the floor in her effort to find what she wanted. Finally she threw her desired book into my lap, “My First Counting Book.” This book is not to be confused with other fine counting books in our collection like “My Little 123 Book,”* “My First 123 Book,”* and “My Little Counting Book.”** Those other titles are sturdy board books with thick cardboard pages resistant to bending and gnawing. “My First Counting Book” has regular paper pages like the kind you’d see in your standard novel, assuming that your novel has cute drawings of animals. We have many of these books with paper pages on the shelf, but I don’t ordinarily let her access these books for fear of her ruining them before she has a chance to comprehend them, or at least before she has a chance to draw in them. This book is an exception because she loves counting, by which I mean she loves watching me count. I try to keep as many counting books in the rotation as possible to keep the experience varied and my ARod punching desires low.

The book uses animals to count to ten with a little poem accompanying each number. The last four pages review the numbers, cramming all the animals and their accompanying numbers from the earlier pages into tiny lines. This is kind of like a study guide for the book in case I want to start giving Abbie closed-book quizzes about the material in a few months, which I do, assuming she starts talking.

I counted the animals, read the poems, and reached the review section. When I reached “seven ducklings,” Abbie started laughing. As soon as I stopped counting, she stopped laughing. I counted the eight fish, and got the same laughs. Same with the nine geese. The ten nuts weren’t quite as funny, so I returned to the fish and got more laughs.

I really didn’t understand where this laughter was coming from. The drawings were more realistic than silly. I was reading with my normal droll inflection, not some goofy voice. The dog wasn’t running around behind me. She just found something very funny on those pages. Maybe found the punchline to a toddler joke.*** Maybe she was just getting goofy so close to her naptime. Maybe she too thought it was funny the Yankees were out of the playoff already. Regardless, I wish I knew what triggered her hamster to run in the “laugh” direction.

* Those are actual titles from her collection.
** That’s not an actual title from her collection. If it doesn’t exist somewhere, though, I’d be shocked. And I know a good title for a children’s book.
*** Like “Why was six afraid of seven? Because seven ate nine!” but unknown to anybody old enough to measure their age in years.

It's Been a Busy Week, and It's Only Wednesday...

In lieu of* my standard lengthy ramblings, today I offer a quick anecdote.

Ellie came home just past noon today to rest up for the Worst Night of Work of This Pregnancy, a night that will remain unsurpassed in difficulty until the next night she’s on call. She laid down for a nap, and when I set Abbie down for her nap at 1pm, I decided to join everyone else in napping. As I climbed on the bed with Ellie, the dog hopped up to accompany us on the bed, but since our full-size bed only has room for two nappers at a time, I quickly kicked her off. Before resting my head on the pillow, I leaned in to Ellie to give her a peck. As I leaned close to her cheek, she suddenly shoved me back and threw her face in the opposite direction.

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I thought you were the dog about to lick me.

Geez, I shaved Monday, I’m not that shaggy yet.

* “In lieu of” being an Americanized variation of a French phrase meaning “I’m short on time, so I’m taking the easy way out.”

Papa's Got a Brand New Bag

We lost a dear friend recently, a close friend who had been with us since Abbie’s birth. Everywhere we traveled, our friend was at our side. Whenever we needed a diaper or a toy, our friend had one ready to go. A horrible accident involving shattered glass took our friend from us. I knew something was wrong when I discovered an orange chunky mess oozing from a pocket. Yes, our diaper bag was a wonderful friend, but I wish it were waterproof so it wouldn’t have leaked baby food all over the kitchen.

On our last trip to see the grandparents, apparently the diaper bag received some rough treatment. Maybe I threw it in the car too hard. Maybe it fell onto concrete when I unloaded the car. Maybe the car’s contents shifted during the drive and one of Abbie’s toys or books or 27,528,454,025 other travel essentials fell on the bag wrong. Maybe it finally wanted to be put out of its misery. Regardless of how it happened, a jar of baby food stashed in the bag’s bottom shattered, spreading glass shards and carroty goodness throughout the bag and its contents.

Fortunately, most baby toys are plastic and washable, meaning I could salvage them after rinsing and putting them through the kitchen sink with the rest of the day’s dirty dishes. The only contents at risk of being ruined were the diapers, which stayed clean by floating at the top above the goo, and a couple of beloved board books, which were sadly doomed by a thick coat of carrot puree and glass.

I originally wanted to try to save the diaper bag. It’s machine washable, so I just had to wipe it out and throw it in a load of darks (preferably not underwear in case I missed a few shards). We’d been through a lot together, and I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. We even had a nifty story about how we got it. It was a shower present from Ellie’s aunt, and thoughtfully came with a gift receipt just in case we needed to return it. Shortly after receiving it but before using it, we found the exact same diaper bag in the store, but this one was in the clearance rack. Ellie devised the ingenious idea of buying the clearanced diaper bag, and returning it for full price with the gift receipt. I thought this idea was dishonest if not dangerously close to stealing despite my inherent cheapskateness. Ellie though said her aunt would be proud of us for making such an exchange, and far be it for me to dishonor her aunt’s wishes.

Ellie pointed out cleaning it would be unpleasant, possibly dangerous to my hands, and probably fatal to the bag since its stuffing was already leaking out of large interior tears. We should just let it go she said, especially since, much like my car, we needed to replace it with a bigger version once the twins came anyway. In spite of my aforementioned cheapskateness, I agreed, and off we went to buy the super new diaper bag we registered for long ago.

Sadly the store was sold out of that model. The store said they would have another shipment in a week, and we decided that that specific diaper bag was super enough to warrant waiting a week. In the meantime I limped through life and the grocery store with our spare “compact” diaper bag. This bag was another shower gift that we held onto in case we needed an extra bag, but it’s small, so small that I only had room to carry one of Abbie’s two orbiteethers.

After a week of coping, we found our super new diaper bag in stock. We picked it up, brought it home, loaded it up, and remembered why it’s so super. For starters, it’s huge, much larger than the original diaper bag, with three zippered main compartments. That’s one compartment for toys and books, one compartment for diaper paraphernalia, and one compartment for, um, I don’t know, a small pet rodent or something. I’ll find a use. I emptied the contents of the compact diaper bag into the new super bag, and still had one empty compartment and two compartments with plenty of spare room.

It has three zippered side compartments. No more will I have to fear my checkbook or, more importantly, my coupons falling out of a zipperless pocket. It has a “mini fridge,” a small zippered insulated pouch to keep food cold. Sadly, I tried it last night and discovered that the only way it could keep milk fresh is if the ambient temperature happened to be 33 degrees. Still, it’s pretty cool to say that my diaper bag has a mini fridge. It has three removable pouches; two mesh pouches for storing clothes I suppose, one solid pouch for storing glass jars to prevent a repeat of the same fate that killed its predecessor. It has a cushioned changing pad for when I have to change someone on the floor of a gas station restroom. It has a clip-on pacifier holder pouch in case one of Abbie’s brothers likes pacifiers more than she did. Its color scheme ranges from blue to dark blue, a manly color scheme that insures no one will mistake it for a purse in spite of the bag’s packaging that claims it has “mom’s favorite features.” Most importantly, it has a cushioned shoulder strap, preventing the strap from digging into my shoulder when the bag is loaded with pacifiers, a cushioned changing pad, a mini fridge stocked with multiple bottles of milk, a checkbook, coupons, toys, books, diaper paraphernalia, and potentially a small pet rodent. And a couple jars of baby food I suppose, but only if they’re encased in the solid pouch.

Too Busy to Blog Day

I had a wonderfully insightful post planned for today. Then Abbie cut her nap short by about two hours this afternoon. I'll have more exciting adventures tomorrow, assuming she naps better.

"You know I gotta wear the shirt what Dairy Queen gave me."

Of all the life skills Abbie needs to learn, maybe the most important is dressing herself. If she never learns to talk, she can just use a pad and pencil to communicate when pointing is insufficient. If she never learns to use the potty, they make diapers in all sizes right up to adult nowadays. If she never learns her colors, honestly, when was the last time you had to make an important color-based decision? As long as she never becomes a cheerleader or a bomb defuser, she could coast through life without knowing her colors. Dressing herself though, that’s important. We she leaves home for college in 16 years, 10 months, and 3 days, she’ll need to know how to dress to fit in. I know college campuses are open and tolerant places, but only towards those of a different culture or lifestyle, not towards people who wear pants on their head.

For the past few months, I’ve been forcing Abbie to pick what she will wear for the day. Actually I’m just forcing her to pick a shirt and bib to wear; after she decides on a shirt, I pick pants because I don’t trust her coordinating abilities to properly match a shirt and pants. This is somewhat ironic since Ellie doesn’t trust my coordinating abilities either, but I bought those green pants and she has to wear them with something.

The way I make her choose is by holding up one shirt in each hand and asking which shirt she’d like to wear today. I then briefly describe each shirt because missing a chance to encourage language development in her is like missing a chance to win your first conference game on the road after leading by ten with 4:45 left, you just can’t waste those golden opportunities. I say things like “this is a pink shirt,” or “this shirt has butterflies,” or “this shirt is a 50/50 cotton/polyester blend.” Ideally I want her to use her words to tell me which shirt she wants to wear, be it “pink,” “butterfly,” or “cotton/polyester,” but since she still seems to harbor a conscientious objection to most words, I still accept pointing or grabbing as an answer. The winning shirt goes on her, the losing shirt goes next to her changing table and it stays until it becomes a contestant the next morning or until Abbie dumps marinara down her shirt and needs changed.

This process should provide insight into Abbie’s personality, revealing the earliest signs of her likes and dislikes. Instead I’ve discovered that she usually wants to wear whatever I have in my left hand. I use this to my advantage when I know the day will be warm and I hold the tank top in my left hand that’s been shoved in the bottom of her dresser for weeks because it’s getting too cold to wear something so small. The only real personality trait I’ve discovered is that she tends to prefer not to wear pink if given a choice. On one hand, that’s fine by me because I’d also prefer not to immerse her in pink. On the other hand, she has a lot of pink shirts that need wearing someday.

The next step in teaching her dress herself is to actually put the clothes on her body. Sadly this step is too mechanically advanced for her age; like asking a cat to sleep less than 18 hours a day or a daddy to surrender control of the remote during football season, it just isn’t physically possible. The closest she can come is to pull the shirt over her head. When I dress her, I pull the shirt just over her head so it’s around the top of her head but not covering the eyes because she hates having her eyes covered more than an Angels fan hates umpires. I then tell her to pull her shirt on, she grabs the shirt, and pulls it right off her head. She’s a lot better at pulling it off than pulling it on, which means undressing goes smoother than dressing.

After a couple of tries that usually involve me grabbing her arms and pulling it down for her, we move the shirt completely over the head. Then I start her arms through the sleeves, and she’s very good at pushing her arms through as long as the sleeve is loose enough. Besides being able to step into her pant legs, that’s the extent of her ability to dress herself. She’s doing well, but she still has a long way to go to fully dress herself, which would be a very helpful trick to know when the twins arrive. At least I’m fairly confident that she knows enough to put pants over her legs.

Sunlight's Warm Glowing Warming Glow

October in Iowa means shorter days and cooler temperatures. This is the optimal time to enjoy cooler weather, perfect for playing football, working in the yard with a nip on your nose, and firing up the oven to bake delicious treats like banana bread. Of course I have a toddler daughter with twins on the way and don’t have time for something as frivolous as football. We also have no yard to work in. And the mercury hit 80 yesterday, or at least the LCD numbers on my thermometer hit 80, so turning on the oven was about the last thing I wanted to do, right down there with seeing the new Cameron Crowe movie (assuming I had the time to see a movie).

The days are still getting shorter though, and that necessitates a change in Abbie’s park routine. During the summer when the daytime sun was hot enough to melt our shoes as we navigated the asphalt in front of the park, we stayed out of the park during the hottest parts of the day. We spent our afternoons huddled in air conditioning or roaming the backyard where we could at least stick to the shade and completely avoid any asphalt radiating heat at a temperature suitable for baking banana bread.

After eating and cleaning up supper, the sun was at least low in the sky and asphalt temperatures had fallen to a nice level for jerky preparation. This was our park time, and Abbie enjoyed it for sometimes an hour or more. We would leave when bedtime approached, when she somehow tired of the bounty of available playground equipment, or when the mosquitoes increased to the point of threatening to carry one of us away.

As recently as six weeks ago we still enjoyed the playground right up until bedtime with waning daylight. Then September hit and I noticed that the streetlamps by the park were taking full effect a little before bedtime. Then they started taking full effect long before bedtime. Then the mosquitoes, no longer held at bay by the fading sunlight, appeared in full force, looking for blood and willing to attack ten at a time in the hopes that at least one would escape with a bloated tummy or whatever organ they store their food in. At this point I decided nighttimes in the park should end; it just didn’t feel safe being outdoors in a public place with a toddler after the sun goes down what with all those mosquitoes buzzing menacingly.

Now we spend our afternoons in the park when we can enjoy the sunlight’s, um, light. We also enjoy the sunlight’s warmth as the days cool, assuming that they indeed cool from yesterday’s sweltering 80 degrees.

The big drawback so far to the park now is that static electricity builds easier. One of Abbie’s favorite pieces of playground equipment is the slide. It’s about 8-feet long and plastic, perfect for storing and transferring static electricity as her cotton clothes slide along its surface. Static isn’t much of a problem in the summer when the air is moist since static, much like the common house cat, hates water. Now that the air has cooled and the air resembles that of a Colorado summer, dry and cool at night but without that pesky mountain fresh scent, static flies freely between the slide and the toddler. Every time I touch her after a trip down the slide, and I have to touch her after every trip down the slide because heaven forbid she climb back up without my help, we create a spark. This past week we’ve created great big sparks, the kind that makes noise, leave a mark, and emits enough light to temporarily frighten away the nearby mosquito hordes. I expect her to scream one of these times after being shocked, but apparently she’s learned and accepted the fact that being shocked is the price she pays for sliding. Considering that she’s unable to wait the five seconds required for me to assemble her sippy cup before pouring milk in it without breaking down into tears, that’s quite an accomplishment for her. When I have a toddler that devoted to the playground, I have to find a time to take her out there. As long as the temperature stays near 80, or at least above 50, we’ll be out there.

Banana Bread Bites

Abbie has been biting at the slightest provocation recently. She’s always been quick to bite whenever she wants something, usually attention, though it can be something tangible like a toy or the dog food my hand is blocking. The past few days she’s been biting very quickly, much quicker than Iowa State football’s decent back to the bottom of the Big 12.

For example, yesterday I was in the kitchen selfishly preparing a batch of banana bread. I was preparing three batches to be exact.* This preparation of a massive quantity of carbs was necessitated by the ten bananas I had lying on the counter collecting dust and brown spots. I had ten spare bananas because the grocery store sold me a bag of ripe ones cheap, and our freezer can only store so many frozen banana cubes for Abbie’s breakfast.

After I cracked all the eggs but before I could peel half the bananas, Abbie wandered into the room. She was entertaining herself by rotating between books in her bedroom and toys in the living room. This is her standard morning activity while I bustle about the house completing important tasks, like baking banana bread or cleaning up the kitchen after someone makes a mess baking, but eventually she always remember that only suckers have to entertain themselves. She must have realized she was a sucker, because she saw me, determined that I was focused on something besides her, toddled over to my leg, and latched on like a leech, except that instead of blood she was trying to suck attention from me. If she could find a way to do it painlessly, sometimes I’d prefer that she go for blood, such as the times that I’m elbow deep in banana bread batter.

The standard punishment for biting is a prompt whisking into her crib. If I sense her mouth trying to latch onto my leg, I try to redirect it and say, “don’t bite,” though I doubt the efficacy of this tactic. Usually she just redoubles her efforts to latch on after I tell her not to, as if to say, “Gee, I hadn’t thought about biting, but now that you mention it, that’s a great idea.” I try to be a little rough in my whisking so she never thinks we’re playing some sort of game, though when I carry her through the air I have a hard time telling if her vocalizations are complaints or giggles.

At that point in the baking process, I didn’t want to carry her into her crib. I had banana residue covering my hands that I feared would transfer to her clothes if I touched her. Plus we had a man working in the basement to prepare the furnace for winter at the time. I knew Abbie would scream if I put her in her crib, and I don’t want people to think I’m some sort of bad parent who’d rather bake than deal with his child.

I redirected her a couple times saying “no bite” each time, and watched her grow more frenetic as she smelled the blood in the water. I quickly gave up and threw her in her crib to calm down, but I moved gently to keep her protests to a minimum. It worked; she sat in her crib calmly playing, I finished peeling bananas, and the maintenance worker finished vacuuming the furnace and, I don’t know, pumping it full of heat for the winter.

This is the sort of behavior she’s been exhibiting recently. The past month, whenever she deems that we’re spending an inadequate amount of attention on her, she bites to grab our attention. That works, but I wish she’d just grab a book to throw at us, or at least cry. I believe the increase in biting is connected to the massive teething she’s experiencing right now. I think half her teeth are currently either moving through the gum line or about to do so, and her mouth hurts. Her incisors are all through, her canines are about to do so or have barely broken through, and the molars are threatening to follow. At least that’s what I think the status of her teeth is; she bites whenever I try poking around her mouth.

I have no choice but to deal with the biting and try to correct it as best I can. Like yesterday morning with the crib, I put her in there as punishment, but when she calmed down, I pulled her out without making a big deal out of it and told her I loved her. Then she bit me again.

* Fun fact: A KitchenAid mixer can handle two batches of banana bread simultaneously with no problem, but three is really pushing it, especially after adding the optional bag of chocolate chips.

The Headless Dog

I now see another reason why garage sales are the most wonderful places on Earth to buy children’s clothes. Reason number one is and always shall be garage sales are great places to find clothes cheap, especially when the proprietors want to unload their wardrobes for whatever they can get and I want to let them.

Then I have secondary reasons for enjoying garage sales. They give me a chance to learn the residential neighborhoods around town, which will come in handy should I ever land a job in delivery or taxiing. Plus it’s useful for when I need to find a residential address, like when we’re trying to find a coworker’s house for a party, or when I’m trying to find an address for a garage sale. Garage sales give me a chance to meet interesting people, such as that mother of twins, or the two-dozen people who asked how much Abbie is selling for. Garage sales also offer one-of-a-kind clothes that come pre-stained and pre-torn for their own personality. At least that’s what I tell Ellie when I fail to notice paint stains on the pant leg and a two-inch gash in the inseam on a suspiciously inexpensive pair of pants before plunking down my quarter.

My newest reason for enjoying garage sales is I know the clothes won’t disintegrate the first time they’re worn. Garage sale clothes have already been tested by total strangers, washed multiple times and abused by unfamiliar children, sometimes multiple unfamiliar children from the same family. If they (the clothes) were going to break down to the molecular level under the abuse of the agitator, either the washing machine kind or the human kind, they would have done so long before the garage sale. These crumbling would ideally be thrown away long ago, or at least marked down to a dime at the sale.

I bring up this reasoning because a new shirt, where “new” means that it came from a legitimate store that doesn’t have the word “thrift” in its name, fell apart the first time Abbie wore it yesterday. To be fair, the shirt didn’t fall apart, just the decorative decal adorning the front. Still, if you can’t trust brand new clothes from your local big box store to last, what can you trust?

I was so proud of this clothing too. It came from the massive batch of clearance summer clothing we bought a couple of weeks ago, the stuff we mostly bought for 75%-off the original price, and when you’re talking about 75%-off original big box store prices, that’s pretty cheap. This specific item is a red t-shirt with a Dalmatian-like dog decorating the front. Beneath the dog were the letters “USA” in small print with a star underneath each letter. I always thought the themes of “dog” and “America” were an odd combination, especially since the shirt was made in China anyway, but when a new shirt’s price hovers around the dollar mark, I don’t ask too many questions.

I washed the shirt before allowing her to wear it, as per the instructions emblazed on every piece of children’s clothing warning, “wash before wear,” presumably to wash away the strychnine that’s a common byproduct their manufacture. Then I shoved it in her dresser, and finally pulled it out for her to wear the first time yesterday.

It wore well all day until near her bedtime. That’s when I noticed the dog’s head had peeled off the shirt and was dangling listlessly forward like the pooch had tasted some of the shirt’s leftover strychnine. Disgusted, I pulled on the head and it ripped right off, as the decal was the same quality as those iron-on patches you used to find buried in the bottom of kid’s cereals before cereal makers discovered that abhorrent quantities of sugar were more cost-effective than trinkets in addicting children.

I looked at the shirt, wondering how to salvage it. It was almost too small for Abbie already, but it was unisex enough for the twins to wear in a year. If any other part of the dog had fallen off I wouldn’t have cared since a three-legged or tailless dog decorating a shirt isn’t likely to garner much attention. A toddler wearing a shirt featuring a headless dog, though, that’s just disturbing. Ellie, thinking fast about how she could save herself from hearing me whine about a $1 shirt, grabbed the remaining decal and removed the rest of the dog.

Now we have a red shirt with “USA” and some tiny stars printed on the front near the bottom with a huge blank space above it. It looks a little strange, but it keeps the kids covered, and that’s what’s important. Plus I can still probably get a quarter out of it at a garage sale.

Shelf! I need some space now. Shelf! Not just any space now. Shelf!

Yesterday was a productive day. Since we spent the weekend out of town, I had a backlog of work to do around the house. I spent Monday cleaning up around the house and addressing immediate concerns, like running to the grocery store. A lack of apples in the house created an immediate concern because I need my usual lunch apple to prevent altering my routine, which could lead to any number of consequences like difficulty napping, waking in the middle of the night, and general crankiness.

Yesterday gave me the opportunity to address some less immediate concerns around the house. Topping the list of concerns but near the bottom on the list of immediacy was installing shelves in our bedroom. With the impending 67% increase in the number of human beings living in our tiny home, our goal is to move as much stuff off the floor as possible so we can replace it with other, more important stuff. In our room, that means elevating my handsome collection of video games and movies off their floor-based storage system so we can fit a Pack ‘N Play and possibly a glider next to our bed. There’s some symbolism in there about needing to brush aside the vestigial diversions of my youth when becoming a parent, but I’m too worn from chasing Abbie all day to find it.

Our secret to elevating my many discs and cassettes is track shelves. They are composed of three or four parallel tracks screwed into the wall with brackets inserted into the tracks to support a shelf resting on top of them. They have all the class of cinder block and 2x4 shelves with the added benefit of being expensive enough to show off our bling. Plus they take up no floor space, which is why I want them.

We already have several sets of track shelves strewn about the house. We have some in the living room, kitchen, entryway, bathroom, game room, library, rumpus room, mudroom, and several other fictitious rooms I invented to make our home feel a little bigger. A bare wall is a wasted storage opportunity equivalent to wasting an 8.1 inning, 3 run pitching performance in Game 1. Our bedroom already has one set of shelves, but those are on Ellie’s side of the room, which means they’re filled with pictures and other pretty dust collectors.

I intended to erect shelves on my side three weeks ago. In fact, I’ve had three tracks installed for three weeks. The problem was I needed one more track, one more shelf, and all eight brackets. I’ve checked my vaguely local home improvement stores* twice a week for three weeks only to find empty shelves where my, uh, shelves should be.

Fortunately we live in Des Moines, a metropolis bustling enough to have duplicate versions of all the major home improvement chains. After I tired of waiting for them to replenish their stock, I drove to alternate branches of my local home improvement stores, which are even less local than my initial choices, but at least they’re located near each other in Des Moines’s south side home improvement store district.

I found all missing components at these alternate stores, giving me a jovial attitude until I discovered that one of the stores offered only self-checkout lanes. These lanes help stores cut labor costs by converting the one cashier working one checkout lane ratio to one cashier supervising four self-checkout lanes. Of course since everyone hates/fears these lanes, there’s never more than one lane in use at a time, and that person invariably requires assistance from the supervising cashier to look up an item that doesn’t appear in the computer, or to explain to the computer why I’m not putting my 40-pound bag of dog food in the “bagging station,” so the labor savings are negligible. Normally I suck it up and cope with these lanes because they tend to move faster, but on this trip I had a 48x10-inch shelf in one hand and a squirming toddler in the other. I looked hard for another lane manned by an actual employee, found none, and sucked it up. Somehow I managed to fling my shelf’s UPC over the scanner without hitting anything, though I surely looked funny doing it. I’m sure that the lane supervisor found me amusing while she stood at her station watching me. I still managed to complete the entire transaction while keeping one hand on Abbie at all times, which I think deserves a medal or at least 5% off my purchase.

The important thing is I collected all the needed pieces for my shelves. I finished installing them that night. They’re now perched on the wall above my head, holding important movies, games, and other expensive dust collectors.

* Of course I had to visit two different chains to find the proper components.

This is the song ... I Keep Hearing!

Traveling with Abbie used to be so easy. All I had to do was load the car, wake her, feed her, finish loading the car, feed her again after taking too long loading the car, buckle her into the car, throw a few more things in the car, and hit the road. She would stay awake for a little while, listening to music and playing with a toy, before drifting off to sleep. She’d usually scream herself to sleep, but after that she’d stay asleep for the entire 2+ hours remaining in the drive to her grandparents. I was free to listen to whatever I wanted for the rest of the drive, which was usually NPR’s quality weekend programming, or stone-cold silence in case “A Prairie Home Companion” was currently playing. I timed my departures to avoid that show when possible though.

This weekend, I discovered that traveling with Abbie is now as easy as sitting through an entire 18-inning ball game with no scoring between the 10th and 17th innings. Abbie’s nap duration continues to decline in the car, from 2+ hours a year ago to 45 minutes this weekend. 45 minutes isn’t even long enough to listen to a whole episode of “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” Even if you discount the time used for news at the beginning and theme music at the end, that’s still more than five minutes of missed show.

I could keep listening to the radio after she awakens, but that violates Rule #1 of riding with Abbie: The Sesame Street CD must be audible at all times. I’ve tried ignoring her when those eyes pop open and continue listening to whatever non-puppet related entertainment I was enjoying while she slept. She’ll stay silent for about one minute, or the duration of one “underwriter” break. After that, she realizes that she’s in the car and suffering the violation of Rule #1. The result is screaming, and not the good kind of screaming she does right before drifting to sleep for another blissful three-quarters of an hour. This is angry screaming that suggests we’re inflicting severe psychological damage, the kind of damage that will prevent her from attending a prestigious post-secondary institution upon turning 18, or even an out of town school so she’ll move out of the house. Turn on the Sesame Street CD, and she quickly calms down, content to watch the pastures fly by to the soothing accompaniment of Oscar the Grouch. When the CD ends, hit repeat because she wants to hear it again. When you tire of listening to goofy-voiced puppeteers, too bad. When your body convulses as a defense mechanism to the exuberant repetitions, at that point you should pull over.

Only the Sesame Street CD will suffice. Big person music inflicts the same psychological scars. This is doubtlessly the first of many judgments she will make about our choice of music and other forms of entertainment. After deciding I couldn’t stomach another round of Elmo and his damned song, I popped in a Muppet CD. I figured the Muppets are practically the same thing: They’re both puppets, they have many of the same voices, and both albums even have a version of “It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green.” Abbie cared naught for the similarities, reacting with the same disdain she’d show if I put something really boring on the radio, like a local talk show or “The Splendid Table.” I flipped it back to Sesame Street, and all was calm for the next many minutes.

In the interest of maintaining my sanity, I have a box set of generic children’s music that I’m trying to work into her traveling rotation. My secret is to burn the best tracks onto a disc with her Sesame Street favorites, then hit the “random” button. That way we hear music owned by Jim Henson’s heirs, the Children’s Television Workshop, and public domain mixed together, giving her a chance to process a new song between two favorites. That way she learns new music, and maybe it becomes acceptable entertainment on car trips instead of the same CD three or four times in one ride. This box set can be just as annoying as the Sesame Street CD, but at least it adds a little variety. Plus it’s still better than “A Prairie Home Companion.”

Saturday Night's Alright for Eating

We’re back from another exciting trip to see the grandparents. I learn so much about Abbie when we spend time away from home and bend her routine far out of shape. Not that I let it bend too far; I’m terrified that she’ll suddenly become horribly confused and refuse to nap because she ate portable applesauce for breakfast instead of her not-so-portable standard bananas.

Sometimes I have to be flexible with her routine and pray that it doesn’t result in excessive crankiness. Her recent Saturday night is a good example of breaking the routine. At home, she starts eating precisely at 5:45pm as I spoon feed her a chicken and vegetable mix, I eat my supper while she finishes feeding herself, and then I clean the kitchen while she whines with boredom at my feet. Finally I spend the rest of the night intending to read to her the entire time, but instead take frequent breaks to finish random chores around the house while she whines under my feet until I return to reading to her. She could become wildly unpredictable without her important evening whining cues telling her bedtime is drawing nigh.

The Saturday night plan was to eat out with my parents after helping them around the house, and return to Ellie’s grandmother in time to pick up Abbie’s bedtime routine. We arrived at my parents at 4:45 to help them set up their new guest bed, which was actually the same bed that had spent the previous 15 months in our bedroom and the last three weeks in our living room. We would have arrived sooner, but the roads around Sioux City are a little torn up. When I say “a little” I mean “a lot;” I’m using “a little” in the same way that I might say the Pacific Ocean is a little wet, or the Bears are a little sucky.

Instead of Ellie and my mother sitting on the couch watching TV while my dad and I lifted bulky bed components, they made a trip to the store for Vital Supplies. This was intended to save time for supper by completing two necessary tasks simultaneously, but instead it saved time for me to watch football while I waited for their return around 5:45.* I whisked everyone out the door as soon as they returned, fearful that Abbie would be panicking with hunger at any second in spite of the green beans I gave her while watching football.

We drove to the mall to eat. Since we were already late, I wanted to arrive as quickly as possible. I fought traffic to the mall’s rear entrance as that was the closest entrance to the target restaurant, saw that road was closed due to construction, fought traffic back to the main entrance, drove around the mall again, passed the road where we turned around in the first place, and parked cursing the additional ten minutes we lost. We were already 30 minutes late feeding Abbie, and the whining was bound to begin shortly.

Inside we found throngs of teenagers. No surprise as this was a mall on a Saturday night, but these teens were dressed in shiny formal wear, leading me to believe they were out for a pre-homecoming dance meal and would be battling us for precious restaurant space. Instead of everyone waiting for a table, I waited at the restaurant while everyone else picked up a Vital Supply from a nearby store. This was also intended to save time for our departure by multi-tasking, but instead it saved time for me to watch football while I waited ten minutes at our table for their return.**
We finally began eating around 7:00, and I feared the worst. Supper though proceeded fairly uneventfully except for Abbie consuming an alarming amount of food. We ordered her a kid’s size pasta, which she ate half of, an amount that easily surpassed the total that I ordinarily feed her for supper. Then everybody kept slipping her parts of their meals to see if she’d eat it, which she always did. Fearing she would burst, Abbie and I walked from the restaurant and everyone’s leftovers to walk off supper while they waited for the check. This is an effective technique for avoiding a check by the way, not that I would ever stoop to such a low. Ellie had her credit card anyway.

We finally returned to our overnight stop, Ellie’s grandmother’s house, at 8:30. This was a full 30 minutes past the beginning of her normal bedtime routine. I rushed everything in an attempt to slide back onto her normal schedule to the minute,*** but just couldn’t make it. I ended up putting her to bed at 9:30, 15 minutes later than normal.

In spite of her schedule being thrown out of whack, bedtime went smoothly. She was angrier than normal when I put her to sleep, but she still drifted off without too much extra complaint. She slept well too, except for waking up in the middle of the night crying, an unusual event for her. This could have any number of causes. She may have been upset from her uncharacteristic schedule. She may have been disturbed by waking in an unfamiliar place. She may have been distraught by the atypical applesauce she had for breakfast. Regardless, we’re home and everything turned out fine.

* Iowa discovered that maybe they can salvage this season after all.
** Nebraska discovered that Texas Tech is better than Iowa State.
*** 8:55 – Change into pajamas. 8:59 – Brush teeth. 9:01 – Rinse and spit.

Nuthin' to See Here

I'm out of town this weekend, so no new updates until, oh, Monday.

Au-au-au Auto-oooooo. Parts Store.

Abbie and I went to the auto parts store yesterday. My dad loves automobiles, and when I was a child took me to a fair number of auto parts stores, auto parts shows, junkyards, and other places where auto parts and the people who love them congregate. These were important bonding experiences, times when my dad would share one of his great loves with me, and I, looking upon mounds of twisted metal and grease, would wonder if I was really related to this person.

As a child, there was no place I could think of more boring than an auto parts extravaganza. Of course I thought big machines were awesome back then, with all their destructive power and the outside chance that maybe if I was really good I’d have a chance to operate one of them. The parts that make up those machines though, those are more boring than a Padres-Cardinals playoff series. Everything is an identical steel gray color coated with varying amounts of oil, each part indistinguishable from the next, not that I knew enough about the parts to distinguish any of them anyway. These places might be where I learned my passive-aggressive coping technique of being so miserable about something someone else loves that they’ll hurry and leave just to escape my black cloud. At least I managed to cajole a candy bar or two out of him at these places.

Today I own a car, giving me a passing familiarity with many of the parts on display. I’m not one of those people with no knowledge of their vehicles workings who has to run to the mechanic every time something goes wrong. When something breaks that I know I can fix, I head straight to an auto parts store after the prerequisite waiting period passes to see if the problem goes away on its own. Yesterday I was looking for replacement wiper blades. In the past, I’ve found replacement light bulbs, another dial to control the interior fan, and a new set of fuzzy dice to hang from the rearview mirror. Anything more complicated than that I head straight to the mechanic, once the waiting period passes of course.

This was actually my second trip to the auto parts store in the past couple weeks, or at least my second productive trip. I knew my wiper blades were on their way to the dumpster back during the last rain when I was reluctant to use them for fear that they’d smear the water and make it harder to see. The store only had one blade of the right size the first time I checked. I bought it figuring I really only need a clear windshield on the driver’s side, and stopped back every few days to see if my passenger would be able to see when it rains yet.

Finally they had another correctly sized blade in stock yesterday. They may have had the correct size earlier, but when I can only check the sizes of two or three blades before Abbie runs around the corner and out of sight, I don’t have optimal conditions for a thorough search of their stock.

I brought the blade to the counter, swiped my credit card, and listened to the banter between the clerks and another customer. Yesterday was the coldest day of the season in Des Moines, and they were talking about the cold when I heard one of the clerks was in town from New Orleans after the hurricane. Intrigued I stood and eavesdropped until one of the clerks asked if I needed something.

“No,” I said, “I’m just listening to you talk.”

“Well come on over and join us,” he said.

I listened for another minute, heard the clerk from New Orleans say that yesterday, with a low of about 35 degrees, was about as cold as it ever got in New Orleans. I told him the story about the time Ellie and I went to New Orleans over New Year’s, and about the one day the temperature never broke 40 and it rained all day. He said he remembered that day, so it’s good to know our trip was memorable for something.

I took my wiper blade and left. I was glad to have an opportunity to connect with a hurricane evacuee for a minute, giving him a true taste of Iowa, specifically a conversation about the weather. Despite my childhood hatred of all parts mechanical, I knew I’d be back because the people were so friendly and I would always need another car part. Plus I left my credit card on the counter, so I’d have to come back to retrieve it.

The Twin Terrors (Maybe)

The arrival date for the twins is fast approaching. Every sunset moves us one day closer to January 15th, their medical due date of 40 weeks. Every time Ellie comes home, her targeted delivery date moves up. Soon after learning about the twins, she hoped to last until Christmas. When she learned that her OB would deliver them via c-section anytime she wanted after 36 weeks, December 18th started looking pretty good. Now that the twins are chunking up and starting to beat up each other, and mommy, 34 weeks doesn’t sound too bad because that’s when most preemies escape the NICU, and really just keeping them out of the NICU has been her goal all along. Soon I expect her to rationalize a November delivery.* Shortly afterwards she’ll start declaring that yesterday would have been the perfect day to deliver.

Of course she has every right in the world to want the twins out of her body. She’s undergoing an incredible burden with the nausea, the heartburn, the perpetual exhaustion, and the less than fully sympathetic husband. Personally, if Ellie’s physical well-being and mental sanity weren’t a factor, I’d want the twins to gestate as long as possible. The magic number for a fetus to be considered fully developed is 36 weeks; I remember hearing that 99.9% of fetuses (feti?) are fully developed by that time. I’d still feel more comfortable waiting until 40 weeks if possible to bring the twins into the world. I’d hate to think that one of the twins fell into the .1% group and needed those extra four weeks to do something essential like grow a finger.

Then there’s the prospect of caring for the twins. I’d love to claim that I’m one of those super parents who cherishes every second spent bonding with their children, but I’m not. I’ve already decided that my mantra for surviving the first few months and beyond is “I’m never going to have to do this again.” The way I see it, the sooner they pop out, the sooner I have to start waking up at 1am, 3am, 5am, and 7am to feed them. In this sense, I’d like them to gestate for as long as possible, like until Memorial Day (the fifth trimester), at which time they should be sleeping through the night.

The prospect for caring for twins frightens me. If they’re like Abbie, who was (is) a very demanding baby, we’re in trouble. Some babies love their swing; some babies love their bouncing chair; some babies love their pacifier; some babies love lying in their crib watching their mobile spin. Abbie tolerated none of those things. At birth, she had two preferred activities: Eating (as much and as often as possible), and sleeping (as little as possible**). If she wasn’t doing one of those two activities, she was crying. After a few days she accepted being carried as an activity. From that point forward, woe is you if you tried breaking physical contact with her while she was awake.

She never did accept her swing, bouncer, or pacifier as appropriate substitutes for seeing the world from daddy’s arms. I wonder how I’m going to cope if we have two infants who demand to be carried at all times plus an 18-month-old who enjoys a frequent carrying and is willing to bite to get it. My only hope is that Abbie enjoys entertaining a newborn, building a block tower for him, playing peek-a-boo with him, showing him where the dog food is. That way they keep each other occupied so I can concentrate on preventing twin #2 from crying. Until Abbie discovers that she can get my undivided attention by sitting on twin #1 until he cries. Then she’ll get carried very quickly, right into her crib for a time-out. I can’t wait.

* “I’m so tired and sick that the NICU can take better care of them than my womb can.”
** That’s not fair, she actually slept an average amount for a newborn. When a newborn spends every waking second eating or crying, you sure wish she’d sleep more though.

Alarm. Alarm. Alarm.

Ellie woke me up this morning at 1:15. Nothing good ever follows when you’re woken up at 1:15am. My mind buzzed with every undesirable event that was important enough to wake me from my slumber: Abbie is awake, Ellie feels sick (more so than the past few days), the dog is whining, the kitchen is on fire, the dog is on fire.

Instead I hear, “the radio is on in Abbie’s room.” I rose to figure out how in the world that happened because I know her alarm clock radio wasn’t on when I went to sleep, and I know Abbie can’t climb out of her crib yet and God help us all if she can.

I opened the door expecting to see a very awake and annoyed toddler since the radio was playing at a volume loud enough to wake the Boston Red Sox offense. Instead she was still horizontal in bed and just as out of it as the Chicago Cubs. I immediately turned the volume dial to low, and spent the next minute poking it trying to figure out how to turn it off, and to figure out how it turned on in the first place. Eventually I found the off switch, and determined that the Abbie must have set the alarm to go off.

The alarm clock in her room has become one of her favorite toys. It does so many things for her. If she pushes one button (the sleep button) the radio turns on. If she pushes another button (the snooze button), it turns off. She can go back and forth between these two buttons for a toddler eternity (2.741 earth minutes), and when she tires of the game, she can throw it on the ground and watch it bounce. I believe that during one of her bouncing sessions, she inadvertently flipped the alarm switch to “on” on its way to the floor.

Even though she may be smart enough to turn on the alarm, she still isn’t smart enough to set the alarm’s time. The alarm was still set to its factory preset of 12:00am, meaning it had been playing music* for 75 minutes when I intervened, and amazingly Abbie slept through the entire ordeal (as far as I know).

Now I feel a little stupid for tiptoeing around the house while Abbie sleeps. If she can sleep through static and British accents reading news for more than an hour straight without waking to complain (I know I couldn’t) surely she can sleep through the little noises I make around the house during her naps.

For example, I shower in the dark while she naps. We have one switch in our bathroom that controls the drag out fan and the lights. Once a long time ago, Abbie woke up from her nap amazingly early while I showered. The next day I showered with the lights and fan off, and she napped right through it. Logic told me that it must be the sound of the drag out fan waking her up, which made sense because her room is adjacent to the bathroom. Never mind the question of why the sound of water running through the shower also didn’t wake her up, the drag out fan theory made sense to my sleep deprived, 3am feeding mind.

Now I don’t know if it’s okay for me to shower with the lights on again. I would sure enjoy seeing the soap bottle again. Maybe I just need to set the alarm to go off at my shower time, ensuring strains of NPR drown out the fan noise.

* When I say “music,” I mean “The BBC World Service” because I leave almost every radio in the house, including her alarm clock, tuned to NPR at all times. That way I don’t have to waste precious Daniel Schorr commentary time searching for the proper frequency. My alarm clock however is tuned to commercial music because nothing gets me out of bed in the morning quicker than hearing Kajagoogoo.

The Regular-Huge Announcement

It’s time for an announcement, the biggest announcement of the year. Well, it certainly isn’t bigger than the one about Ellie being pregnant with twins. It won’t be bigger than the announcement that the twins were born. It’s our third biggest announcement of the year? In the grand scheme of things, it’s still a pretty big announcement, right up there with the revelation that a congressional leader has been indicted. Twice.

We’ve decided on names for the twins. The first one born will be Ian Matthew, the second one Tory Sean, and dang was it tough to settle on those names. We heard from people who said things like, “You’re so lucky it’s twins, you get to name two babies.” I thought finding suitable names for two unborn children was one of the more difficult things I’ve ever done. Of course I’ve never actually given birth to a child, but finding names was still pretty hard. We wanted to find names that were unique yet conventional, distinctive yet common, abnormal yet normal. Obviously we had a difficult time finding suitable names.

We started with one middle name already determined, that of Matthew. My family assigns the father’s first name as the firstborn son’s middle name in a tradition going back generations; my middle name is my father’s first name, my father’s middle name is my grandfather’s first name, my grandfather I have no idea about, so we’ll make the tradition at least three generations old. It’s not like friends of ours who name the firstborn son “Wesley” in a tradition dating back centuries (their son is Wesley the tenth), but it’s more tradition than just giving your son a wacky name like Kal-El.

As we bounced names off each other, Tory was the first name we agreed upon. I can’t speak for Ellie, but I liked the way it ended in an “e” sound. My original dream was spell it with an “ie” at the end creating a running theme through all of our children’s’ names, but Ellie informed me that that would make it a girl’s name. I’m not sure she would have let me spell it with an “ie” anyway; she said it sounds like I’m trying too hard about many of the “-ie” names I bounced off her.

According to our baby names book, it’s an Americanized version of the Japanese word for “bird.” According to our baby names book, it’s also a girl’s name. While in the grocery store once I heard a mother yell for her little Tory (or Tori, or Torrie) to hurry up, and was very disheartened to see a four-year-old girl come running up to her. There’s a fairly popular baseball player named Tory (Torii to be exact) though, so I’m declaring it to be a boy name. It’s popular enough to show up near the bottom of Social Security’s 1000 most popular boy’s names in some of the past few years.

Ellie decreed that “Tory” and “Matthew” don’t work together as a first and middle name, so we were halfway to naming both boys. Ellie said her preferred name for the other boy was “Sean,” which never appealed very strongly to me (no “e” sound at the end). I pored through our baby book and bounced every “-ie” name I found off Ellie. Dustie. Kerrie. Mickie. She didn’t like any of them. She had good reason not to like them too.

While bouncing names I kept coming back to “Ian.” It was a little different, but not so different it would doom him to a lifetime of mispronunciations and misspellings from teachers and telemarketers. Ellie found the name acceptable. It didn’t end in an “e” sound, but it began with one, and I realized that was probably as close as I would get.

I liked “Ian,” Ellie liked “Sean.” We were both accepting but not excited about the other’s choice. Ellie, in danger of devoting so many brain cells to the name issue that it would start to push out important medical information, declared that she named Abbie by herself, so I need to name our last child by myself. “Do what you want” is what she said, which I interpret as wifespeak for “do what I want or face the consequences.” Consequences could range anywhere between refusal to yield the remote, to coming home one day to find a new bedroom set.

Faced with a choice between a name that I’m lukewarm about and a name that will be a lifetime reminder that I chose wrong name, I consulted the baby name book. Perhaps the names’ origins will give me a clue. It turns out, both names mean the same thing (God is good); they just have completely different geographic origins (Irish and Scottish).

Once I discovered they’re essentially the same name, I said the heck with it and tried a compromise; Ian would be one’s first name, Sean would be the other’s middle name. Ellie agreed without a hint that I would have to pay for it with stolen covers for the rest of my life. Now I have to get used to saying “these are our children: Abbie, Ian, and Tory.” And I have to pick a new name for the blog. At least I don’t have to worry about how we’re going to afford a new bedroom set.