First Firsts

One of the greatest things about having a newborn, besides the bombardment of free samples, is having a whole new set of milestones to achieve. With twins, we have two new sets of milestones to look for. No more sitting around waiting for Abbie’s first words when we want something new; we just have to look at the twins and chances are good that at any given time one of them is doing something for the first time.

Yesterday Tory wore clothes for the first time. This was the first time either has worn more clothing than a tiny diaper and a blanket. The bile lights that may or may not bear down on them from day to day prevent them from wearing clothing. When those lights are off, the kids are free to wear clothing, but most nurses don’t bother dressing them since clothes interfere with diaper changes and the various pokes and prods the babies must endure. The nurses have enough to do between changing IVs, figuring out why the vital sign monitors are beeping, and hearing lectures on blood gasses.

The twins’ nurse yesterday must have been exceptionally ambitious because when I arrived to hold one, I found Tory’s bile lights off and a sleeper on his body. It was an adorable outfit, tiny and decorated with even tinier farm animals. The outfit was yellow, which unfortunately matched the jaundice showing in his eyes. I was fairly certain he would be back under the bile lights soon,* but since no bile lights meant few time limits on holding him, Ellie and I held him as much as we could, enjoying his tiny features, his tiny outfit, and its color coordination with his skin. Later that day he achieved another first: Peeing through his first outfit.

Otherwise everyone is doing great. Ian’s weight is 3 lbs, 11 ozs, up four ounces from birth. He must be pigging out on the lipids they’re pumping into him. Tory’s weight is 4 lbs, down seven ounces from birth, but up a little from his low point. They’re both being tube fed 16ccs of breast milk every three hours and tolerating those feedings very well as they ratchet up. Hopefully they’ll try bottle-feeding next week. Both are completely off oxygen.

The most troubling thing is Tory has experienced a few apneatic spells, which are periods where he forgets to breathe. These spells are extremely common among preemies, and they usually snap out of it with a little stimulus like a puff of air. Tory isn’t experiencing an alarming number of these spells, but enough that the hospital has put him on a stimulant, i.e. caffeine, to keep him alert. It’s doing a great job and he hasn’t had any spells since starting the caffeine, but now the hospital is reluctant to take him off the caffeine meaning we almost certainly won’t be able to take him home before mid-December. That’s about a week later than we originally hoped, and a week later than his brother could come home if he keeps doing well, not having spells, and packing an ounce a day onto his frame.

Now we just have a waiting game, hoping everyone continues doing well, and watching for more firsts. Like this first I experienced a couple days ago:



* He was back under the bile lights today. Ian is still under the lights. Maybe both will be off again tomorrow.

Lock Smith

Abbie’s latest trick is pulling burp clothes out of her dresser, and boy does it annoy me. Not since she discovered grinding her teeth has one of her habits aggravated me so. With constant trips to and from the hospital now to visit the twins, I only have a few precious seconds to spend on laundry each week, and I’ll be darned if I have to waste those seconds folding burp clothes for the 430th time today so they’ll fit in that tiny drawer.

She discovered the burp cloth cache while grandpa was watching her and I was staying with Ellie in the hospital. I feel bad that my first reaction upon seeing Mount Burp Cloth in front of her dresser was that grandpa threw them out of the drawer looking for something, like the pajamas that I forgot to tell him which drawer they were in, and never bothered to put them back. I folded them back up, stuffed them back in the drawer, and set about conceive my revenge plot of pulling every cereal box out of his cupboards at breakfast in search of the raisin bran the next time I stay overnight at his house. A little later I noticed Mount Burp Cloth had reappeared, and grandpa was nowhere in sight. I stuffed them back in the drawer, and then caught Abbie in the act of pulling them back out. Sorry about that, grandpa.

I’m surprised it took her this long to find the burp cloth drawer. She discovered the joys of playing in the kitchen cabinets months ago, and ever since then I’ve been tripping over pans, wax paper boxes, and plastic storage containers strewn about the kitchen floor. That bothered me at first, but I quickly learned that I could easily return those items to their cabinets, and as long as I kept the lids on the plastic storage containers I wouldn’t have to worry about them collecting dirt and germs every time they hit the floor. Not that our kitchen floor is dirty; I clean it often, and by “I” I mean “the dog,” and by “clean” I mean “licks any loose food particles.” Fortunately she never bothered the dishtowel cabinet, so I decided that as long as it kept her from whining while I cooked and cleaned, I could spare a few seconds each night to return items to their proper cabinet.

The burp cloth pulling was too much, though. I could spend a couple minutes putting those away, and she could yank them back out in less time than it takes her to throw all of her green beans to the dog at supper. I took drastic measures and installed a drawer lock on her dresser. I bought a box of these drawer locks months ago when we were determined to create the safest environment possible for our toddler to explore. Then we discovered it was easier to just put the caustic chemicals out of her reach and store harmless items like towels and Benadryl* on the lower shelves, so we never even opened the box. When I finally opened the box, I discovered that installing the lock was as easy as assembling a sub-$80 glider, except I had to apply the tools. Installation required the use of a drill, which wouldn’t have been a problem except the drawer was too narrow to accommodate a drill. With creative use of angles and extensive ignoring of Abbie’s pangs of boredom, I successfully installed the lock on the drawer and the base on the dresser. Then I discovered that I improperly lined up the base and the lock and had to drill two completely new holes for the base.

After more cursing and ignoring, I properly aligned the lock. It works pretty well; slide the drawer out a little bit, push the lock down to disengage it, and slide it out all the way. The drawer doesn’t slide out very far with the lock engaged, only far enough for an adult to reach in and disengage the lock. Or just far enough for a toddler to reach her hand in and pull out a few burp clothes, so I need to keep them toward the back of the drawer. Or just far enough to trap a toddler’s wrist should she be foolish enough to reach in that far, so I need to pay attention when she whimpers uncharacteristically from her room.

It’s still better than refolding strewn burp clothes.

* Kidding!

Last Second Scrambling

I had a long list of chores to complete before the twins arrived. I needed to do things like set up the cribs, install the car seats, and obtain a helper monkey to assist with the twin duty, or at least train Abbie to the level of helper monkey. I tackled a few tasks weeks ago, like assembling one more crib in kids’ room so the twins can co-bed for the first several weeks, allowing us to simultaneously save space in their cramped room and turn our noses up to the SIDS alliance. Other tasks I meant to do, but first Ellie spent almost a week in the hospital, and then the twins arrived eight weeks early. The result was the aforementioned pileup of boxes of new baby gear waiting to be assembled and standard household chores like washing clothes and cleaning cat puke.

When I heard my wife’s family would be in town this past weekend, I immediately created a game plan for how I would spend potentially my last couple days of free childcare before the twins came home. As soon as they arrived I shoved Abbie off, picked up a few loose pieces of trash that had been annoying me since Tuesday, and started working on the children’s clothes. We received a glut of new clothes in the days before the twins arrived and more pieces continue to trickle down like so much rain washing out an itsy bitsy spider. With no time to take care of things, I had stacks of tiny clothes arranged by size and piled on Abbie-proof perches throughout the room Also, Abbie started bursting out of her 12-18 month tops before Ellie went in the hospital, necessitating the switch to the 18-24 month wardrobe. With someone else in the house to check Abbie every time she whines to verify that she’s suffering no physical harm by being denied access to the medicine cabinet, I had everything swapped and stored in under an hour.

Next I placed the car seats and our nifty new double stroller that a generous person thoughtfully gave to us into my car. This wasn’t necessary yet since the twins won’t come home for another couple weeks, but I was anxious to clear some space in the house and remove their box before it morphed into another countertop. Before ratcheting the car seats into the, um, car seat I placed a sofa slip cover between the seats and the, uh, seat. I should have done this long ago to protect the seat from marring, but never did so. Because when I go to sell my car in several years the imprint from three children’s car seats will kill my resale value, much more than the 200,000 miles on the engine or the assortment of three children’s worth of stains on the rest of the interior.

Next I assembled our glider. This was a brand new purchase made on our crazy post-Thanksgiving shopping spree, the one where Ellie was on her first full day out of the hospital and still managed to use her coupons at the mall. The glider’s upholstery is “leatherette,” which is one of the finest materials available for use on furniture that sells for under $80. The chair could carry such a low price because it came stuffed in a box containing approximately 70,200,897,470.12 chair molecules. It also contained instructions and three different tools that vaguely fit in and around the molecules to assemble them into a chair-like form. After about an hour of sweating, grunting, and uttering words that made me glad Abbie doesn’t repeat everything I say yet, we had a beautiful new leatherette clad chair that’s actually very nice except that it smells like spoiled formaldehyde.

By then I was pretty tired and I’d reached a minimal amount of preparedness for the twin’s homecoming, so I took the rest of the morning off. We could always continue with Abbie’s helper monkey lessons on Monday.

These Are the People in Our Neighborhood

The twins’ hospital is in a rough part of town. There may be some sort of law requiring all hospitals to be located in a rough part of town. Here in Des Moines, all four of our hospitals are concentrated within a few miles of each other near the center of town in neighborhoods ranging in tone from seedy to grimy. I know my hometown of Sioux City has two hospitals, both of which are in less desirable neighborhoods. Driving there through the Iowa back roads, the only hospital we pass on the way is found in a tiny farm town, and that hospital is found next to the town’s dirtier gas station, the one where all the boys who don’t play high school football hang out on Friday night. Even television hospitals are in scary neighborhoods. The “ER” hospital is the epicenter for a minor apocalypse two to three times a year. The “Grey’s Anatomy” hospital is the only exception to the rule I can find; no place where the inhabitants can be that promiscuous and enjoy such a low rate of transferring disease can be in a bad neighborhood.

Usually my interaction with the locals of this neighborhood is limited to cursing them under my breath from my car as they jaywalk across the street in front of the hospital against a red light. Last night though, we stayed in the NICU through suppertime, requiring us to venture into the locality for food. We visited the McDonald’s across the street, which was a bit unnecessary since the hospital’s basement also has a McDonald’s. Somehow it just felt wrong though to visit a hospital, a place where people generally stay to get healthier, and wind up packing my arteries at McDonald’s. Plus the hospital’s McDonald’s didn’t have McRibs like the one across the street.

I live right next to one of the town’s hospitals, so I know what life in a rough neighborhood can be like. Just in case I needed a clue about what kind of neighborhood I’m in, I learned all I needed in about two minutes.

I was standing in line dreaming about a McRib dancing its saucy way down my esophagus and otherwise tuning out my surroundings. I was listening to a basketball game on the radio with an indiscrete pair of headphones, the kind with buds that plunge into the ears while the crossbar runs around the back of the neck in a way that says “my ears are too good to require support from the top of my head to keep these headphones in position.”

Suddenly I awoke from my fantasies of fastbreaks to hear someone yell “Don’t tell me to shut the @#$% up!” It was the cashier yelling at a group of teenage girls, one of which apparently told her something about shutting the @#$% up. The cashier, who looked like someone of authority like maybe the assistant weekend night manager, wanted the girls out of the store, and was being very adamant about it. If you watch “South Park,” picture the school bus driver Mrs. Crabtree yelling at the kids in a way that was more alarming than amusing and you’ll have an idea of the situation. The girls left after a minute and I quickly retreated to my headphones. A middle-aged man with bloodshot eyes interrupted me as soon as I inserted the ear buds.

“What’s that?” he asked with bewilderment.
“These?” I asked holding out my unorthodox headphones. “They’re just headphones. I’m listening to the radio.”
“Oh,” he said. “I’ve been locked up for the past 18 years and just got out. I’ve never seen anything like that before. I thought it might be a cell phone.”

I nodded with a smile, mumbled something about all sorts of crazy things existing now, and withdrew back to my game. Before I had the ear buds in place I heard him mention something about being in for petty stuff. Ellie had a good laugh at that later, figuring the only pettiest thing you could do for an 18-year sentence is stealing a car with a trunk full of heroin.

On our way out of the restaurant to see the twins* again, we passed the group of exiled teenage girls standing outside the door. Ellie wondered if they were waiting for the cashier to get off work. I told her that for their sakes I hope not because I wouldn’t want to mess with that assistant weekend night manager.

* The twins are doing fine by the way. Tory may be off all oxygen in another day or two, and both could be off the bile lights for good in another day or two.

Picking up the Split

Ian was born at 4:53am. I could see the nurses working on him out of the corner of my eye, but I stayed firmly on Ellie’s side of the curtain because I knew she needed my support. Plus it looked really yucky on the other side of the curtain. Three minutes later, Tory was born. Shortly after that, I followed the staff as they wheeled Ian into the NICU. I stood next to him in awe of this tiny baby as doctors and nurses explained things to me that I had no chance of understanding. In between marveling in wonder and nodding in ignorance, I took the time to worry about Ellie in the operating room and Tory fighting for life like his brother.

A minute later, the staff wheeled in Tory. I immediately moved to his side, standing in awe of his slightly less tiny stature. Quickly I wondered, “Should I move back to Ian now? How long was I by his side? How long have I been by Tory? Shouldn’t I be splitting my time more evenly?”

And so began my lifetime of attempting to treat both twins exactly the same. When I check on them, I rotate the first checked child. First thing in the morning, I might check Ian’s vitals first. On the next trip, I’ll check Tory’s vitals first. By the next day I’ve usually forgotten whom I checked last, so I flip a coin to ensure that everything is absolutely fair. Ian is heads and Tory is tails. At least that’s the order on odd-numbered days; even numbered days mean Tory gets to be heads and Ian is tails.

I only check on them twice a day now instead of the half dozen daily checks I made while Ellie was in the hospital. This makes it easier to remember who gets to enjoy my presence at any given time, but it also puts me at the whim of their treatment regimen. I might spend the first visit holding Ian after the morning coin flip landed heads. I’ll plan to spend that night holding Tory only to find he’s surprisingly back under the bile lights,* or the staff is running more vital tests on him, or they’re jabbing yet another line into him. The result is I can either stand over Tory giving him verbal encouragement, or I can give Ian a double-dose of holding, assuming that Ian isn’t also under the lights, being tested, or getting poked as well. I split my time on the last visit, talking to Tory and setting my hand on his legs while he sunbathed, and then held Ian for the remainder of the visit. I originally thought that having twins would be a great way to ensure that Ellie and I never fight over who gets to hold the baby, but the light/test/prod routine usually means one baby is always indisposed.

I suppose it really doesn’t matter who we spend more time with now as long as both babies spend plenty of time in our company. I’ll just hold them as much as possible and not worry who see me more. I’m also not going to tell them that I spent more time with Ian in those first NICU minutes.

* By the way, Tory is surprisingly back under the bile lights, but hopefully not for very long.

How I Spent My Thanksgiving Vacation

The twins are four days old, and we’re still trying to find the proper balance between home life, hospital life, and personal life. Apparently that balance should not include Christmas shopping at the mall on the day after Thanksgiving.

I have a backlog of household chores that piled up while I spent my nights reading and playing Civilization at Ellie’s side in the hospital. I have mail piled on clothes piled on boxes piled on indeterminable objects piled on counters. Rather than having me attack the log jam and letting Ellie actually rest on her first day home from the hospital, we a little while this morning fighting crowds at the mall. The result is we’re too worn to clean the roving gangs of clutter infiltrating our home, but at least we found some new boxes to stack clothes onto.

The NICU news continues to be good. Ian is out of the warming bed and into an isolette. His brother should join him as soon as Ian loses the bile light. Tory is almost ready to move into an isolette, and they keep turning down his oxygen. Now, I need to move some boxes out of the way before I can make my way to the bed.

Homecoming #1

Ellie came home from the hospital today. She celebrated her first day home by eating more for Thanksgiving dinner than she had during her entire week in the hospital. I plan on celebrating her first day home with a decent night’s sleep in our own bed for a change.

The twins continue to do wonderful. They’re both tolerating their breast milk feedings very well. Hopefully they’ll keep ratcheting up the amount of breast milk and ratcheting down the Preemie Chow. Ian is down to one bile light, and Tory has no bile lights so we can actually see his face and not a protective eye mask. We gave them baths for the first time last night, a process similar to a sponge bath, except we used cotton pads and significantly less water. Now that they’re cleaned up, Ellie swears they both look exactly like me. Poor kids.

Regular blogging may resume tomorrow, provided I survive the post-Thanksgiving shopping.

Picture Post

Ellie is doing great. She’s up and walking now for a few minutes at a time, and looking forward to going home tomorrow. Ian continues doing well. He really started sucking on a pacifier last night, and the nurse swears he can crawl already. If nothing else, he can push himself up on all fours and scoot, which probably isn’t too hard when you weigh less than four pounds. Tory continues to improve. He’s only getting a little oxygen assistance now, and isn’t getting anything intravenously besides nourishment. He started sucking on a pacifier this morning. Hopefully they’ll have that suck-swallow-repeat reflex down and we’ll have them home in no time. Now for the main attraction, the photos.


Here I am waiting for them to take me into the OR while they prep Ellie. I’ve saved the outfit for next Halloween.


Our first picture of Ian.


Ian being whisked away to the NICU.


Our first picture of Tory.


Ian being worked on right after birth.


Ellie’s first glimpse of either baby. This one is Ian.


The first time either of us held either of them. This is mama holding Ian. We haven’t gotten to hold Tory yet, but we should today.


The closest I could come to taking a picture of both at the same time. One of my biggest disappointments is that they’re hooked up to so many wires that we can’t move them far enough to put them together. Hopefully they’ll be out of their warming beds and cohabiting a bed in the next couple days.


Extreme close-up of Ian


Tory getting a tan.


Tory and all his equipment. Yes, there’s a baby in there.

Everybody Update

Ellie is doing great. Less than 30 hours after having her stomach muscles sliced apart, she is completely off the IV and is even gingerly standing and walking on her own. I suspect she’ll spend most of tomorrow in the NICU watching her babies. Barring complications, she should go home Thursday. I may need to pick her up at the hospital and take her directly to whatever restaurant that’s serving us Thanksgiving dinner.

Ian is doing well. The NICU is giving him minimal assistance right now; some air and a few medications that flew right over my head, but nothing major. I didn’t get to see him this morning because they were inserting a central line into him while I was visiting, apparently so they can give him minimal assistance more easily. For now he’s content to be swaddled and sleep the hours away. I suspect the main barrier to bringing him home will be packing five pounds of weight onto his 3 lbs, 7 oz body.

Tory is doing less well, but good enough. I like the way Ellie stated his condition: “He’s not doing perfectly, but reasonably well.” Leave it to a doctor to find an accurate yet optimistic way of saying a patient’s condition. He’s getting more oxygen than his brother, and his blood sugar spiked last night. The NICU thinks it’s stress related. Imagine that. It came down a little this morning, but they still need to watch it. They inserted an umbilical line into him to make it easier to test him and give him medications. Otherwise he’s doing well. He’s kicking out of his swaddling right now, which is just like his sister at birth. They’re estimating that they could come home in three to four weeks, but right now that’s a guess.

Abbie is clueless. She’s too young to understand that she’s a big sister now. She can’t even see the babies since she’s too young to enter the NICU, plus the room has no windows except for the door. Her cold also prevents her from entering the NICU. She’s also very good at giving that cold to her caregivers, so our parents have barely seen the twins. We have a doll all wrapped up to give her when she comes home to help her adjust.

The dog is frightened that I’m never coming home every time I leave for the night. She’s also ecstatic when I do return every morning, and threatens to knock Abbie over with her exuberance.

The cats are puking more than normal. That’s probably a side effect of being fed at unusual times now. Otherwise, they don’t care as long as someone fills their food bowls twice a day and scoops their litter boxes once a day.

I’m not sure how Matt is doing. I haven’t had enough time to check.

Thank you to everyone who’s left comments. Your support and well wishes are much appreciated. Ellie should be very surprised when she comes home. Special thanks to Matthew at Childs Play x2 for sending his enviable traffic numbers my way.

Finally, I received an e-mail today from one of the many baby-related mailing lists I subscribed to. Its subject line: “Your baby is due in 7 weeks!”

Here We Are

The chair in Ellie’s hospital room is horrible for sleeping. It folds out into something resembling not so much a bed, but a series of three cushions strategically designed to apply maximum pressure to a body’s stress points. I had such a hard time falling asleep on it last night that I actually turned myself around, resting my feet at the head cushion and my head on the feet cushion. Besides smelling less than desirable, it was actually more comfortable.

I finally drifted off to sleep around 12:30, but woke up to every bump and sound in the room, of which there were many. Around 3:30 I heard Ellie stumble her way onto the commode. Then I heard her call her nurse. Then I heard her tell her nurse that her water broke. Then I woke up and realized Ellie wouldn’t be coming home today.

An ultrasound revealed that the kids were transverse,* and they immediately prepped Ellie for a cesarean. Shortly before 5am, we welcomed Ian Matthew and Tory Allyn into the world. They’re a day past 32 weeks, which is a lot better than the 31 weeks and change they were when Ellie entered the hospital, but not old enough to avoid the NICU. Now we get to navigate the joys of preemies.

Ian was born first at 3lbs, 7ozs. He’s doing great; even the doctor said he was surprised at how little care he needed. Tory was born second at 4lbs, 5ozs. He’s doing well, but could be doing better. Apparently he spent his time in the womb chunking up instead of developing his lungs because he still has some crud in there to work out. He’s on a ventilator for a couple days. He did poop already though.

I can’t do much with the kids yet. I can take vitals and change diapers, but otherwise they have to lay in their warmers attached to numerous monitors. It’s more laid back than I envisioned my first day with twins. I’ll post more details and pictures as soon as my head clears from lack of sleep and overload of responsibility. I’m assuming that will be sometime in April.

* Translation: They were really in the wrong position for a traditional delivery.

Hospital Update 11/20

Last night, Ellie asked me to pack up a few things in her hospital room. She wanted to get a jump on leaving the hospital as soon as her doctor releases her in the morning. I didn’t want to pack just yet because it wasn’t for sure that we’d be leaving in the morning. Plus I didn’t want to jinx it. Plus we had too much football to watch.

This morning with no football to watch, I packed a few things waiting for her doctor to round. Nothing big, just a few books, some loose trash, and those toiletries the hospital gave us for free as long as you don’t count the fact that we’re paying probably $1000 per day just for the hospital room. There wasn’t any football on yet anyway, so I figured I might as well make myself useful.

Sadly my work was enough to jinx us. When the doctor finally showed up for her morning rounds about 12:30, she informed us that she wanted to watch Ellie for one more day. On the plus side, she did take Ellie completely off the IV, so she’s free to roam the hospital as long as she stays horizontal in bed.

With any luck, tonight will be my last night trying to sleep in that fold out chair, at least for a couple weeks. It might not be so bad since I just found the “galley” room with the fountain pop machine and occasional cookie. It’s all free too, as long as you don’t count the $1000 daily hospital room bill.

Hospital Update 11/19

The moment I’d been dreading finally happened this morning. Every time I leave my car to walk into the hospital, I take a mental snapshot so I can always remember things they way they were. Last night, my mental photography did me no good as when I left the hospital, I forgot where I parked.

I found the car after a minute of searching. I’m surprised I don’t lose my car more considering I’m horribly drowsy from trying to sleep at night on a fold-out chair in a hospital room equipped with approximately 11,230,498,084 flashing lights and strange noises and frequent nighttime visits from staff checking to see how we’re doing and inquiring why we don’t seem to be sleeping better. Also I have to find several different parking spots everyday as I make several trips to and from the hospital everyday.

I’m settling into something resembling a normal routine. I wake up at the hospital and ask Ellie if anything has changed since the last time I asked her,* which was when I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. We spend quality time together until just before lunch, at which time I go home to switch places with her father. That way I get to feed Abbie her lunch and he gets to spend quality time with his daughter.

I stay home cleaning, cooking, and doing other things to unwind until late afternoon when I take Abbie to visit her mother. Abbie spends her 30-minutes-per-day-visits wandering around the room, generally ignoring her mother, and whining that we won’t let her play with the two things that interest her: The IV pole, and the commode.

I take Abbie home, feed us supper, clean some more, then switch places with my father-in-law again. He takes care of the Abbie’s bedtime, and I get to make another trip to the hospital. I settle on my chair next to her, ask if anything has changed since the last time I asked her,*** and we enjoy more quality time together.**** The next morning we start all over again, except her father left this morning, and my mother will take his place for a few days.

Everyone in the hospital is doing fine. They’ve stopped giving her magnesium through the IV, and the contractions have slowed to a non-alarming rate. If the contractions stay dormant, they’ll send her home (hopefully) Sunday for an exciting (hopefully) several week long vacation of bed rest. That’s assuming I can find my car when it’s time to drive her home.

P.S. Thanks to everybody leaving their support in the comments. Hopefully we won’t need much support for several more weeks.

* It hasn’t.
** I read, she plays solitaire.
*** It hasn’t.
**** I read, she plays Snood.

Update 11/18

Our family still only has three members. Everyone is in great health, except for Ellie’s whole early labor thing, and me being really tired from trying to sleep on a chair in a hospital for two straight nights. They’re slowing turning down the dose of magnesium on Ellie and seeing what happens. Hopefully nothing happens and she’ll get to come home on Tuesday or Wednesday. If something happens, then I guess we’ll see what happens.

Update 11/17

As of 2:41pm, Ellie is still pregnant. The magnesium kicked in last night and virtually stopped the contractions. Now she’s in the hospital while they ease off the magnesium and see what happens. Hopefully the contractions won’t start again and she’ll get to spend a couple more weeks at home on bedrest. If not, here come the twins a little early. Either way, we should see some conclusion this weekend.

Here We Go

I spent most of today at Ellie’s side in the hospital. She went in early this morning with contractions. They’ve pumped her full of medications to ease the contractions. Her contractions haven’t slowed down, but at least they’re not moving closer together or really doing anything more. I have no idea when the twins will come, it sounds like the doctors are just trying to keep the twins in the womb for a couple days longer. I’ll post more when I know more. Otherwise, try to go about your normal lives. I wish I could.

Of Zucchini, Onions, and Colds

Last week, in a moment of weakness, I bought zucchini. Not that buying zucchini is always a mistake in our house; I can usually find a use for it, whether it's in bread or some sort of pan-fried concoction. My mistake was buying a lot of zucchini, three zucchini to be exact. These weren’t ordinary-sized zucchini that could be easily mistaken for wimpy cucumbers. Rather, these were gigantic, enormous, even ginormous zucchini that could double as a club for defense should I encounter any hostility in the parking lot, possibly from roving gangs of the elderly intent on stealing my cart and returning it for the quarter deposit.

The three were wrapped together and selling for an outstanding price, slightly more than the cost of a single mortal zucchini. I brought them home figuring that I could use them in a couple recipes and be done. I started with a batch of zucchini bread, and was shocked to discover that one provided all the shreddings needed instead of the two to three called for in the recipe. With one down, I whipped out the second one for dinner last night. I was afraid that if I didn’t do something soon they’d spoil. Plus they were starting to attract lighter objects in the refrigerator like the relish and processed cheese slices with their gravitational pull.

I didn’t know what I wanted to make with it, so I let my imagination run wild, throwing it in a skillet with chicken and garlic and frying it with some Italian dressing. It needed a little something extra for flavor, so I threw in some onion that I bought that morning.

To my surprise, I didn’t buy just any onion; I bought The World’s Strongest Onion. It was a yellow onion, which is usually a wussier variety than the more common white onions. They’re sometimes referred to as “sweet” by people with a better imagination than I. They still taste and reek like onions to me, just not as concentrated, and I know what white onions reek like having chopped more than my share for footlongs in my fast food days.

I discovered the pugnacity of The World’s Strongest Onion soon after cutting it. My nose started burning, my eyes started watering, and just in case I missed those signs, Ellie was standing a few feet away letting me know that the stench in her uber-pregnant state made her want to retch. To save us from the rank I moved quickly, as quickly as the Philadelphia Eagles season going down the drain. I turned on the drag out fan, finished chopping, and stepped outside to let my sinuses recover.

After frying, everything tasted good enough, outstanding if you consider that I don’t know what I’m doing in the kitchen, but my sinuses still burned. A short while later I developed a bit of a postnasal drip. I thought I must have inhaled too much onion concentrate. Then the headache set in. Then I tried going to sleep but my sinuses started screaming at me for daring to ask them to operate in the horizontal position.

This morning I awoke late with a throat full of phlegm and a toddler in her crib screaming in anticipation of the day. Instead of overdosing on eau d’onion, I’ve caught a cold. This cold hit quickly like a ton of ginormous zucchini, though infuriating my sinuses with onion essence probably helped its development. Now I get to fight my way through the day with a cold and a toddler who won’t nap as long as she should or as long daddy needs her to do. She hasn’t napped more than two hours a day for more than a week, which is a stunning change from the three to four hour naps she was giving me. Her nap has been about an hour long the past two days. Maybe I’ll write about that tomorrow, if my cold lets me wake up in time.

The Family That Has It Harder Than Us

1997 was an exciting year. “Titanic” taught us all to drop the “the” from the boat’s name. People spouting catchphrases from “Seinfeld” were still hip and cool. The birth of Michael Jackson’s son gave us all hope that he was back on the road to normalcy and good music.* And on November 19th, a central Iowa family with the last name McCaughey gave birth to seven babies, a number high enough to warrant the invention of the term “septuplets.”

In 1997, I really didn’t care about the septuplets. I have vague memories of seeing rows of satellite television news trucks lined up outside the hospital anxiously awaiting their arrival, but that’s about it. I was in college at the time, and had bigger things to worry about like remembering when I had to arrive to marching band on Saturday, and determining which pizza places were cheap, delivered to the dorms late at night, and weren’t Home Team Pizza. My sole opinion on the matter was disdain for the family for accepting so much media attention at the time of this life-altering event. I think it’s awful that someone would parade his child across the media for the world to see in a blatantly desperate attempt to draw attention to himself.

The national interest in the septuplets has died substantially, but since they still live just outside of Des Moines, we receive regular local media updates, usually around their birthdays. I ignored these updates until Abbie came. Suddenly hearing stories about other people’s children, their development, their struggles, and their secrets for removing died spit up from the carpet became a lot more interesting.

Now that we have twins coming, any story about multiple births catches my attention. When I saw their birthday report in the local newspaper yesterday (link) I read it from front to back. I thought I might find some useful lessons or at least interesting information nuggets buried inside, especially since they have a daughter who’s two years older than their multiples. Never mind that the parents of septuplets would rightly laugh at our toils and refer to us as “slackers.”

Instead I found some nuggets that violated my parenting sense, things that I would never do as a parent of twins, lessons I learned from several hours, at least two or three, spent reading one book about parenting multiples. First, one of the boys is named after the father, Kenny Jr. That seems like a horrible way to ensure that the other children will always see that one child as the favorite. I would think that every time that boy gets some privilege, maybe the biggest piece of cake or the first chance to wreck the family car, favoritism would arise. I have a hard enough time carrying our family tradition of giving one of the twins my first name as a middle name. Hopefully our plot to give the other twin the middle name “Allyn,” which is a combination of Ellie’s middle name and her father and grandfather’s names, will blunt that fury.

Second, the newspaper insists on labeling the children. There’s the “athletic” one, the “tomboy,” the “academic” one, the “stinky” one. That book I read was very clear on this; do not label your twins. Labels tend to pigeonhole the children into roles. What if the athletic one wants to try an art class, or the academic one wants to try basketball, or the stinky one wants to bathe? Plus labels tend to influence your parenting. If you label one baby as the “fussy” one, that child may get unwarranted extra attention to preempt the fussiness, cheating the other of attention. The book did not explain what to do if one child is genuinely fussier than the other. Perhaps we’ll call him the non-fussy one to avoid labels. Hopefully the parents don’t use the same labels as the media elites.

Third, there’s the fact that the kids are all in separate classrooms. The book I read was very clear, multiples should always be in the same classroom in school unless there’s a good reason to separate them. Multiples tend to be calmer and more focused near each other, especially when starting a life-changing event like school. Of course, the mother goes on to explain, "When they're all in the same place, it's kind of like the group mentality kicks in. "They're conniving together and get into more mischief. If it's just one, they're the best-behaved kids on the planet.”

So maybe the mother knows what she’s doing and I should just shut up with my one book of experience. Good luck to their family. And good luck keeping seven children in separate classrooms when they start middle school in a small town.

* He wasn’t.

All Childed Down and Nowhere to Go

We handed Abbie to a babysitter last night. One of Ellie’s friends offered to watch Abbie for us for a few hours as a birthday present. The fact that her birthday was five weeks ago should be a potent enough sign that we need to get out more.

The gift was meant for Ellie, but her friend had her own motives for watching Abbie. Her friend is one of those wonderful people who believes that every moment spent caring for a child is a blessing from heaven, as opposed to people like myself who just hope that the oldest sibling is really good at caring for young children so I can finally get some work done around this house.

Her friend has three children, a four-year-old girl, two-year-old boy, and infant boy. Her daughter loves spending time with Abbie, which I find a little strange for a couple reasons. First, Abbie doesn’t interact with other children unless stealing their toys and food qualifies as interaction. Few children her age have learned how to play with others, but Abbie seems exceptionally independent. She won’t even play with us most of the time, preferring to play near us requesting our help only when switches need turned on or balls need retrieved from crevasses. Second, when I was growing up, age differences greater than one grade were unbreachable chasms. Younger children were pests meant to be shunned, or at least mocked when parents forced you to let them tagalong. Associating with older children was a privilege on par with being first in line when the swimming pool opens or commandeering the good pit in dirt clod fights, privileges that were enacted only with the older child’s permission. Maybe this child truism doesn’t kick in until grade school because this girl of more than twice Abbie’s age was giddy with the prospect of a play date with Abbie. Her mother couldn’t have backed out on caring for Abbie even if she wanted to. A child was going to whine in their house last night, and it was either going to be Abbie whining because we were nowhere around or her daughter whining because Abbie was nowhere around. She might as well watch Abbie and let someone enjoy the evening.

We dropped her off around 4pm, agreed to pick her back up by 7pm, and returned to the car to enact our plan for a wild night on the town. First, we returned home. I started some laundry. Ellie watched some football. Then we both watched some football in the hopes that something wild would smack us upside the head like so many thrown Weebles. Within an hour we realized that not only was nothing exciting going to happen to us, but we were sorely out of practice in planning wild nights on the town. We fell back on our old standby, namely going out to eat, because this could be our last chance to eat in a restaurant that doesn’t prominently feature clowns for the next dozen years.

We made the most of our temporary childless status by eating at a bar, specifically the “High Life Lounge.” Not only would it have been developmentally harmful to bring Abbie to a bar at her age with all the smoking and drinking surrounding her, it would have been physically impossible since they didn’t have high chairs either.

Ellie had wanted to eat at this bar for months, ever since they opened and we heard they were the first in Des Moines to offer broasted chicken. Broasted chicken, which is basically chicken pieces fried in a pressure cooker, is a delicacy in small-town Iowa regions like the one where she originates, but no one else near here wants to sell it, possibly because the bevy of employment opportunities in the big city makes it impossible to find someone desperate enough to want a job operating the broaster.

The bar was an honest attempt to lift a bar from 1970 rural Iowa and plop it between the new brownstone apartments and old warehouses in downtown Des Moines. Old beer signs lined the walls, a Kelvinator hummed near the kitchen, and a scary guy with tattoos manned the bar. The look would have been complete if they could have dirtied up the place better, maybe stuck some duct tape to the vinyl seats and pulled up some tiles in the too-clean bathrooms. The food was the reason we came, though, and I enjoyed my Frito pie (Fritos, chili, and cheese) as much as she enjoyed her broasted chicken.

Stuffed and smelling vaguely of smoke, we returned to pick up Abbie at 6:30pm. Everyone had a good time, though Abbie threw her share of fits. Her friend offered to watch Abbie for us again in a few weeks. We may take her up on it again if the twins haven’t arrived yet, and hopefully we’ll have a plan to enjoy the night for a change.

Shave & a Haircut, 5-Cents. Just a haircut, free.

There are two different kinds of first involved in raising a child. There’s the kind of first where she accomplishes something, like taking her first steps or saying her first words. Parents are very proud when their children achieve these milestones, or at least that’s what I’ve heard. Then there’s the kind of first where the parents do something with/to their child for the first time, like first trip to the zoo or first time out. Yesterday we experienced one of the latter kinds of firsts: First haircut.

Ever since the ultrasound technician pointed out Abbie’s hair flapping in the uterusian breeze that is amniotic fluid, Abbie has always sported a full head of hair. While other infants dropped their hair like a pre-toddler George Costanza, Abbie’s hair kept growing. So looked so adorable that I never wanted to cut it, preferring to let it grow and tie it back with braids or pins when the need arose. The result could be something like Cousin It, but much cuter.

For her first several months of life, Abbie’s hair grew at the perfect pace, precisely the same rate as her head, giving her a proportionally perfect head of hair. Shortly after her first birthday though, something changed. Her bangs started growing over her eyes because her hair started growing faster or her head started growing slower. I’m betting on the former because I have a hard time believing her head can afford to slow down and still house that ego. In less than six months, her bangs have grown from this:



To this:



And that picture is a month old. If we waited another month, she might not be able to feed herself with her bangs in the way. I’d clip her hair back like I originally hoped, but those dreams were shattered at birth when I discovered that her hair was too fine to hold a clip. We’re still waiting for her hair to thicken. Perhaps some mousse-like product would help.

I’ve been threatening to cut her hair for few weeks. Abbie stops me every time by wildly fidgeting whenever I bring the scissors close enough to do some damage. Call me a wuss, but I don’t have the courage to close two sharp blades together next to her face while she thrashes about. I’m afraid I might poke an eye out and in the process lose the potential to threaten, “you’re going to poke your eye out” when she does something dangerous in the future. On the other hand, I would gain the ability to more effectively threaten the twins when they do something hazardous.*

Yesterday I finally snapped watching Abbie brush her hair aside to spot the Tasteeos on her tray. I wised up and grabbed a comb to protect her face, grabbed the scissors, and went to work. After a couple snips, Ellie walked into the kitchen with an expression reflecting relief that someone was finally cutting her hair, and horror that I was that someone.

Ellie held Abbie’s head still while I cut, allowing me to clip her bangs in a pattern resembling a straight line. I had already trimmed a couple hairs too close to the scalp, but that’s okay because it just gives her hairline the irregular look that’s so popular with the kids these days. At least that’s what Ellie told me.

I didn’t do much to cut her hair, just shortened the bangs to a little above eye level. We didn’t even have enough loose hair to sweep up afterwards, it just melded with the omnipresent pet hair floating about the kitchen to form slightly larger hairballs. Ellie still grabbed a lock of the loose hair with tape to fasten into her baby book, because we have to remember all the firsts.

* “Do you want to lose an eye just like your sister? That’s how she lost her eye, swinging sticks like that.”

Learning to Express

When I flip the month on the calendar, I know it’s time to do two things: Pay the credit card bill and fret about Abbie’s speech. She’s at 17 months, and still not much meaningful speech. She says “more” (“mo”) when I’m feeding her, “book” (“buh”) when I ask if she wants to read, “mbuh” constantly in every other situation, and that’s it. She doesn’t voluntarily say anything meaningful. She doesn’t say, or really even seem to recognize, “mama” or “dada” like she should have done six months ago. She doesn’t babble a dizzying array of syllables like she should have done eight months ago. She doesn’t complain about the spinach I keep feeding her like any child should.

At the month’s beginning, I started poking around the internet and my bevy of parenting magazines with gender-confused addresses looking for information about talking. I found lots of information about how children develop at this age, about how they should constantly be learning new words and maybe even forming simple sentences, but not to worry if your child is behind because all children develop at their own pace. However if you do feel like worrying, every publication was happy to list critical warning signs that your child might be dangerously far behind in communication. These signs include: Says less than five meaningful words by 18 months (“yes, she’s not 18 months yet, but I’m not holding my breath”), doesn’t respond to her name (“no, she knows her name”), says the same word such as “dah” in all situations (yes, she only says “mbuh”), and shows limited ability for imaginative play such as unable to pretend feed a doll (yes, and OH MY GOD I’D NEVER EVEN THOUGHT OF THAT!!!!”).

Convinced that Abbie was mired in a communicative quagmire from which she would never recover, I took her to her pediatrician last week. I raised concerns about her communication at her 12-month and 15-month checkups, and both times he told me not to worry, that she’d catch up. In fact, any day now the floodgates would open and she’d unleash a flurry of words that would make “Ulysses” look like “My Little Opposites Book.” Sometime in the past couple months I stopped believing him and started believing that the only way to help her speak was to diagnose exactly what was holding her back. That way I could fret more efficiently. Plus if we need to do intensive speech lessons with her we need to do them soon because once the twins arrive, we won’t have much time to micromanage her life. I figure that we’ll be happy with anything she does as long as she doesn’t scream, or at least keeps her screaming at a volume low enough to let the twins sleep.

The pediatrician listened to our concerns, agreed that she was behind, and agreed to refer us to a speech therapist to assist her. Or possibly he just wanted us to quit bugging him about it. Either way, I took her to a speech therapist this week for an evaluation. This involved the therapist playing with her, asking her to point to things or carry out simple tasks while I sat quietly in the corner unless spoken to. It was difficult to sit idly watching her flounder as she thoroughly destroyed my dream of raising the World’s Smartest Child Ever, but I knew something wasn’t mentally clicking. If asking her to take blocks out of the box was the way to help her, then so be it.

After completing the test and depleting Abbie’s reserves of patience, the therapist showed us the results. There, in black and white, was proof that Abbie had failed her first test. It's strange that none of the baby books leave a space to commemorate that first. It showed her comprehension was a little behind, which isn’t surprising since most interactions with her tend to still be one-sided. It also showed that her “expression” was way behind, and by “way behind,” I mean that in one measurement she was in the bottom 1-percentile of her peers. Apparently she has to be able to express herself in some way before she registers on that scale.

Now we’re in a holding pattern, waiting for our insurance company to approve treatment.* The therapist is framing the request in terms of ear infections hindering her ability to hear. This sounds like a bit of a stretch to me since she didn’t suffer an inordinate number of ear infections, but it’s no more of a stretch than an insurance company refusing to pay for speech therapy for a toddler in the bottom 1-percentile of her peers.

Hopefully my worrying is all for nothing. Hopefully the floodgates do open and words come spilling out of her mouth before our insurance even has a chance to deny us. Hopefully she’s been so focused on learning to walk and discovering new ways to fall and injure herself that she just forgot to learn to talk. Right now, I’d be ecstatic hearing anything meaningful coming from her mouth, even complaints about the spinach she’s having for supper.

* I hate the insurance industry, even if they are Des Moines’s major employer.

All We Need is Just a Little Patience. Ooh, oh, yeah.

Abbie and I went to the store yesterday. This is a common occurrence in our house as I regularly visit three different stores just for groceries. I visit the cheap grocery store that keeps prices low by cutting corners like charging customers for grocery bags,* requiring a deposit to take a cart,** and not refrigerating the produce.*** Their food is uniformly low quality, and you know it’s bad stuff when person saying that is the same person who routinely fails to notice mold on his cheese before consuming it. I also visit the regular grocery store, which generally has the otherwise lowest prices in town on tolerable goods. Then I visit the grocery store that gives wacky coupons.

Yesterday I had a wacky coupon.**** On the way from the car to the store, I set Abbie on the ground and held her hand as we traversed the parking lot. She still walks pretty slowly with her stubby legs and easily distractibility. Still, I let her walk whenever I’m not in a hurry to return home for some reason like to start dinner or to change a suspiciously stinky diaper. I held her hand and kept her mind off particularly alluring rocks or shiny lights with a constant dose of encouraging phrases like “c’mon Abbie” and “let’s go Abbie” and “great job Abbie.” I plan to continue offering similar encouragement until the day she tells me, “even I can tell you’re trying too hard dad.”

After making our way inside, a grandmotherly woman stopped to talk to us. She complimented me on my patience with her. She said too many parents drag their children behind them while walking regardless of whether or not they can keep up. While I have to admit the drag technique does have a certain allure, I’m fonder of carrying her when I’m in a hurry. If I’m not in a hurry, I let her move at her own pace. The way I see it, I have to do something to entertain her. She’s still at an age where walking through a grocery store parking lot is exotic entertainment, and if we move quickly enough to deprive her of that pleasure, I simply have to make up the entertainment time at home by reading the same book over and over and over until I just want to kill Clifford and his stupid Christmas presents.

I thanked her for her compliment, agreed that we have to have patience, and moved on my way. Internally though, I thought it strange that strangers see my patience. The past couple days I’ve felt my patience wearing thin with her. After napping beautifully for a couple weeks straight, usually until at least 3:30 and sometimes well past 4:00, she has woken up early two days in a row now. Yesterday she woke shortly after 2:00, before I could even step in the shower. Today she woke shortly after 2:30, giving me time to shower but not make my lunch. This cut right into my “me” time, i.e. internet time. Instead of spending time relaxing and blogging, I spent more time than planned watching her. Sure I love Abbie, but I also love googling my name, and the key to a happy life is balance. This must be how Terrell Owens feels to have his plans for the future radically changed through absolutely no fault of his own.

So while I feel like I’m being short with her sometimes, it’s good to know strangers still think I’m applying proper amounts of patience. I’m just running seriously short on blogging time. If you feel cheated with sub par posts, let me know how to force a 17-month-old to sleep as much as she should, and I’ll get these posts back up to snuff. Otherwise, I should probably just get used to severe time limits because once the twins come, I’ll have less free time than Terrell Owens’s public relations agent.

* Seriously.
** Really.
*** Not really, I think.
**** A dozen eggs for 9-cents.

Our Day in Haiku

Started a great post
Abbie’s nap ended way early
Went shopping instead

The End is Sometime in the Next Eight Weeks

Ellie’s pregnancy hit 30 weeks this weekend. This is an important milestone. Ellie is certain to deliver within the next eight weeks, meaning that her current gestation and final gestation time when measured in weeks both begin with “3.” This makes them almost the same number, and signals the end is near.

The fetuses are still in the stage where every additional day in the womb is a priceless gift, the perfect location to develop physically, avoid the NICU, and tag team on a game of “kick the bladder.” Their development is still progressing at a staggering pace, constantly sprouting new pieces, but soon they’ll slow their development to maybe a couple new hairs per day. At 32 weeks, most fetuses have fully developed lungs. At 34 weeks, virtually all fetuses have fully developed lungs. At 36 weeks, fetuses are generally considered fully developed and are using their remaining time in vitro to bulk up. At 36 weeks plus one minute, I expect Ellie to enter the hospital demanding they perform that c-section they offered and end the excruciating misery of carrying twin fetuses plus all their baggage because, of course, she can’t wait to bond with her new babies.

Before the twins can come, we need to finish preparing our home for their arrival. The furniture is mostly ready for them. In the children’s bedroom, we have two dressers to hold everyone’s clothes. We’ll need a third dresser eventually when the twin’s clothes grow too big to hold in one, but I figure it’s easiest to save money now even though that means I’ll have to navigate the residue of three children to put a dresser in place. We have one crib for Abbie and one crib for the twins in the hopes that they’ll be able to share sleeping quarters for a few months instead of keeping each other awake sharing germs. Not that they’ll sleep in that crib before they’ve established good sleeping patterns, a process that could take several weeks. That way they only wake Abbie once a night for feedings, and when they do Abbie will be old enough to threaten if she doesn’t go back to sleep.*

Our bedroom is prepared for the twin’s arrival. We’ve moved enough of our crud off the floor to free enough space to fill the floor with baby crud. We have a Pack ‘N Play set up next to our bed so when they cry at night, mommy and daddy can care for them while Abbie continues sleeping blissfully in her room, allowing her to wake up refreshed and better able to concentrate on inventing new ways to grab her parents’ attention. We still need something to hold the twin’s clothes in our room, but fixing that is as simple as dragging some white shelves up from the basement, setting them up in our bedroom, hearing Ellie tell me that I grabbed the wrong white shelves from the basement, and swapping out the proper white shelves.

The biggest thing left for furniture is we still want a rocking glider for our bedroom. Or is it a gliding rocker? Either way, we want one next to our bed for late night feedings. We already have a rocking chair, but we’d like a glider to replace it because with a toddler and multiple pets running around the house, it seems unsafe to have a piece of furniture that involves two large wooden planks constantly rocking up and down on the floor with a couple hundred pounds of pressure. Plus it’s uncomfortable sitting in our rocking chair, a Spine-gulator 1500 model. Money and space is tight though, and if need be, I can survive a few weeks in the chair, or “Ol’ Shooting Lower Back Pain” as I like to call it.

With furniture mostly ready, we’re free to concentrate on little things. With a clear mind, I now see only one last thing we need. Thanks to this added concentration though, I find a new one last thing every day. One day we needed a car seat, and so we bought it. The next day we needed more bottle nipples, and so we bought some. The next thing on the list is a stroller. After that, I might make enough frozen custard to last until we can go out in public again (12 years) the next item. Because the end is near.

* “Abigail Leigh, if you don’t climb back into bed right now I’m going to feed the twins again in three hours, and they’ll really scream then.”

"It's like you're showering her with gifts..."

We had our shower for the twins this weekend. (Note to Adam: Your present is late.) This will be our only shower for the twins. Sometimes I feel a little guilty about begging people for baby paraphernalia when this is our second child, but then I remember that our third child will be coming at the same time and we’ll need twice the stuff.

Ellie was our family’s only representative. I stayed home with Abbie since her naptime coincided with the shower. That meant she had to stay home with someone, and hiring a babysitter to listen to her nap would have canceled some of the financial incentive for having a shower. Plus I hate showers. From my limited experience, showers are organized by women for women to eat, talk, and play silly games. I enjoy the eating part, especially when they have those little butter mints or anything that could be described as a “truffle.” The talking part bugs me though, since it tends to be small talk focusing on the same themes that I ignored before Abbie was born,* or gossip. I abhor gossip, unless it’s sport related gossip, then it’s fair game to gab on about what Terrell Owens said or who he may or may not have punched and what the Eagles should do with him. I mean, can you believe he’s suspended for the season? But these are showers, and the closest they ever come to sports is unveiling a onesie adorned with a football.

Ellie hates showers too for the same reasons, though her main complaint is the games. Usually these are pretty inane games like a word search for baby-related words** or guess the contents of the diaper.*** Some of the games are borderline cruel, like guess the circumference of the pregnant woman.**** Many women are already overly sensitive to how big they’ve grown, and considering that Ellie is measuring about three months ahead of where a woman with one fetus would measure, the last thing she needs is another reminder that she’s as big as a modest-sized suburban housing development.

Fortunately they played no games at the shower. It was just lots of girl talk, which is good since she’s a girl, and plenty of food, which is a tease since she has nowhere left in her body to store it. The presents we received were all beautiful and useful gifts that many people opened their hearts for and spent considerable sums of time and money to purchase for us, which is why I feel guilty about taking some of it back.

We’re keeping most of the things we received. People gave us lots of diapers, which are always welcome. We’ve stockpiled 250 newborn diapers so far, which should be just enough to last until we return from the hospital assuming a standard length stay and I can supplement our supply with a few hospital diapers. We received tons of clothes, and while I’m thankful that the twins will never be naked for their first three months, or at least if they are naked it won’t be because of a lack of clothes, but they have more 0-3 month clothes than they can possibly wear in three months. Most thoughtfully of all, we received thank you notes, and those going to come in handy as soon as I find time to write thank you notes, preferably some time before the twins arrive.

The things we’re taking back are things we already have. For example, we received a pair of infant car seat head supports, which are great, but we already have some. We also received an infant car seat that we might return so we can buy the seat that matches the stroller we might buy. Then there’s the older infant’s car seat that we may return because I can buy it cheaper elsewhere. It’s only ten bucks cheaper, but that’s enough to buy 80 newborn diapers, which will keep the twins dry for several hours.

* “Are you ready for a baby?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You’d better get your sleep now.”
“Why? It’s not like I can save it up for a month from now.”
“True, but a month from now you won’t have time to sleep. Or bathe.”
“Great. Hey, truffles.”
** “Bottle.” “Crib.” “Whiskey.”
*** Actually the game I played was guess the contents of the baby food jar, which is basically the same thing.
**** This is an actual game I played. I almost won it.

Falling Down

Abbie has been walking now for about seven months. That’s almost half of her life. You’d think that after doing anything for your life, you’d be pretty good at it. Abbie keeps falling and otherwise having accidents. For comparison, I’ve been driving for about as proportionally long in my life, and I don’t crash on a daily basis. In fact, I’ve never been in an accident. That was may fault. And was turned into insurance.

It’s not like she’s the 17-month-old equivalent of a fall-down stumbling drunk. Abbie does fairly well in her walking; she just crashes occasionally. I think toddlers are only allowed to be frighteningly far behind developmentally in one area before their parents take drastic action, like calling in a therapist or finding medieval-looking correctional devices to fit around her legs, and Abbie has already decided that talking is her one area.

Sometimes the crashes are intentional. If I’m holding her hand while we walk through a store, and I try to lead her someplace she doesn’t want to go,* she will suddenly go limp. This is an impressive skill that involves turning every bone in her body into some sort of soft, gelatin-like substance, like Cool Whip or a mousse with extra hold. She then assaults my arm, attempting to yank it out of its socket with all 27-pounds of her existence as she collapses into a nondescript wad of toddler and occasionally whines for added effect. If she’s lucky I let and go and she roams free like a majestic eagle, a flightless stumbling giggling eagle. For example, we spent this morning shopping for Baby Vital Supplies. It was approaching lunch, she was tired and cranky, and decided she had enough of being led by the hand. I, also tired and cranky, decided following her would be easier than holding her up by one hand, and left her to scurry with the currents of pedestrian traffic.

Sometimes the crashes are accidents. When she gets excited, like when she realizes that daddy just gave up trying to hold her hand, she starts walking faster. She takes two successful steps, thinks she can go faster, takes two quicker steps, thinks she can go faster, and repeats the process until she hits speeds that would have been purely theoretical to her a month ago. Once she hits Toddler Warp Speed 1, she quickly finds something to trip over like a fallen branch or irregularly placed carpet fiber, and topples forward. Usually she lands on her hands or forearms or at least on an ancillary body part like her forehead. For example, when she darted away this morning, I usually let her take several steps before rushing after her because I figured I could save my energy for swooping her off the ground and tickling her mercilessly after she fell. Sadly, sometimes her mouth breaks her fall though, and I have the red-stained burp clothes to prove it.

Then there are the falls that are a combination of the two, when she accidentally falls harder or more awkwardly than she intended. Usually this happens when I sense her about to fall, and I loosen my grip on her so that she goes down less gently than she expected. This sounds harsh, but after she yanks my arm out of socket a dozen times it starts to go a little numb; I’m not sure I have the hand strength left to support her for a full baker’s dozen. For example, this morning we walked about the store while mommy shopped for bedding. I felt her knees buckle and let her slide to the floor on her bottom. Abbie was already in gelatinous mode though, and fell back onto her head with enough force to possibly dent a marshmallow, assuming we’re talking about a fresh marshmallow and not a Lucky Charms marshmallow. Blinded by pain, the physical kind from conking her head and the emotional kind from not being able to yank daddy’s arm, she started screaming.

I carried her over to mommy to signal that she was done shopping. I think she still had some shopping to do, but she wasn’t entirely disappointed because I gave a blanket approval to almost everything in her cart, everything but the unnecessary (to me) wall mural. She wasn’t screaming that hard.

* A “place she doesn’t want to go” is usually defined as the “place I want to go.” If that means I need to find the aisle with the dishwashing detergent, she wants to go back outside. If I need to buy my dishwashing detergent, she wants to go back outside. If I want to go back outside with my dishwashing detergent, that can throw her for a loop. Sometimes she’ll confusedly head for the dishwashing detergent aisle.

"How have you been?" "Well, I've been living in a cardboard box, sleeping on grates, eating out of dumpsters. You?" "Hmm, can't complain."

I can complain about a lot of things with Abbie. Her insistence on playing with anything with buttons is a good example, as is her boycott of all words except “mbuh.” One thing I can’t complain about is her sleeping habits. Not that that’s the only thing about her that I can’t complain about. For instance, she’s cute. And she generally smells non-offensive, except for when she has a load in her diaper, but that’s not her fault.

But the good sleeping thing is her forte.* The only other quality that comes close is her desire to eat everything, from the edible (chocolate) to the semi-edible (spinach). I place her ravenousness second because it also lead her to try consuming things not generally intended for human consumption like rocks or dog food or peas that disappeared between the cracks in her high chair days ago that she’s just now discovering.

Ever since we implemented The Schedule around 10 weeks of life, Abbie has been a super sleeper. At least compared to other kids, she’s a doozy of dozer. I’ve heard some kids refuse to nap past a certain age like 9-months, but at 17-months she still naps everyday for at least 90 minutes, usually at least two hours, sometimes more than three hours. Some parents have nightly battles with their children to get them to sleep, or endure daily predawn wakeup times, but Abbie continues to go to bed with minimal fussing every night and sleeps until I wake her up, or at least plays contentedly in her crib until I rescue her, every morning.

Not that I’m trying to brag, but my general message here is my kid’s sleeping habits could beat up most kids’ sleeping habits. That’s why yesterday was so disturbing. It started in the morning when I rolled out of bed 45 minutes before her wake time and could have swore I heard a solitary wail, then nothing from her until I woke her up. Maybe my groggy head was playing tricks on me. Maybe Abbie had a toddler nightmare that dissipated with one scream, and then fell back to sleep. Maybe Abbie warning me of what would happen if I tried to make her sleep again that day. Regardless of the answer, I continued my morning routine of intending to write while wasting my time on the internet until wake time.

The rest of the morning proceeded normally with me trying to do chores around the house and Abbie trying to grab my attention be playing in dog food. Even the pre-nap routine progressed normally with eating flowing into reading, which flowed into diaper changing, which flowed into singing, which flowed into squirming and stalling, which flowed into setting her in the crib, which flowed into the usual pre-nap fusses, which should have flowed into hours of sleep.

Shortly after I set her down, Ellie came home. I don’t know if Abbie heard the door and decided she needed to see mommy before falling asleep, if her teeth started bothering her, or if she suddenly remembered where she left that dog food kibble she wanted to eat before her nap, but she started screaming, and not the usual fighting off sleep screams. These were full bore pissed off at the world screams.

Being a firm believer in the “let her scream it out” theory, I let her scream for a couple minutes because she needs to learn to calm herself down. Plus I was trying to take a nap. It was quickly clear that she was not tiring herself out, and Ellie entered her room to clam her. After a little rocking and singing, she settled down, but as soon as Ellie left she started screaming again.

After a few more minutes of screaming, I needed to wake up and exercise or Daddy’s Schedule would be off for the rest of the day. Before hitting the stairclimber, I entered her room to sing to her for a few minutes in her crib in a last ditch pacification effort. She relented, though she didn’t look happy about it. As soon as I left the room she started screaming again, but before I could enter the program in the stairclimber (“manual”) she was asleep.

Once she fell asleep, she stayed asleep, waking up just in time to eat her afternoon snack before I started heating her supper. At bedtime, the angry screams returned, but this time they subsided after a few minutes and she fell asleep. Today her sleeping habits have returned to her normal quite a bit above average status, which is good because I don’t need to be able to complain about those on a daily basis.

* “Forte” is a French word meaning “an American’s least obnoxious quality.”

...If You Don't, I Don't Care, I'll Pull Down Your Underwear

We have a glut of Halloween candy in the house. I filled the candy dish in the living room, but we still have a grocery bag full of the stuff. The stores aren’t helping us either with their deep discounts on remaining candy. At 75%-off, it’s almost more expensive to not buy more candy. The antioxidants in the chocolate will pay for themselves in increased heart health now and decreased medical bills years from now.

Nevertheless, we have too much candy in the house for just Ellie and I to eat, especially since she won’t eat the chocolate (nobody’s perfect). To reduce our stockpile, we’re now giving Abbie plenty of candy, experimenting to discover exactly what kinds of candy a 17-month-old can and can’t eat. This is a stunning display of generosity and effective parenting on our part.

We know that you can’t just give anything to a 17-month-old and expect her to eat it. You have to watch out for choking hazards like nuts or alarmingly resilient nougats. I think the first candy we gave her was a sucker a few months ago. I use the term “we” loosely because it was offered by a store clerk who also strongly encouraged its consumption. Everyone loves giving children candy because they look so doggone cute shoving the whole thing in their mouth. Strangers especially love giving children candy because they don’t have to clean up the mess when they (the children) drool sticky candy particles down their shirts, onto their hands, and all over mommy and daddy’s clothes and furniture. Abbie enjoyed her sucker, but not the hosing down she received afterwards.

Armed with the knowledge that she likes suckers, Ellie gave her one to placate her while Trick or Treating. She took her Trick or Treating a little after 5:30 because that’s when all the other neighborhood children were out even though the universally accepted start time for Trick or Treat isn’t until 6:00. This meant that the children’s actions could be legally defined at the time as “panhandling.” It also meant that Abbie had to go Trick or Treating during her regularly scheduled suppertime, making her irritable as she missed her green beany goodness. Ellie reached into her treat bag and pulled out the first sucker she found, a Tootsie Pop. Tootsie Pops are large suckers, too big for Abbie to wrap her mouth around. Without her lips closed, sticky drool flowed freely from her mouth, down the stick, and onto the front of her costume. Abbie insisted on chewing on it despite the Tootsie people’s advertising efforts to encourage people to lick them instead. This meant the sucker spent little time in her mouth, saving the costume a few layers of fructose, but she still effectively gooified it for her brother.

Once we realized we had too much candy to eat ourselves, we started sharing with Abbie. First we tried Nerds, which are like suckers in that they’re hard sugar, but they’re also tiny enough for Abbie to wrap her mouth around without being a choking hazard. Abbie loved them, but don’t forget that she also loves squash and dog food. I loved them too because they’re small enough for her to eat without making a mess.

Emboldened by our success at finding clean candy for her to eat and realizing that practically everything else in our hoard was chocolate, we progressed to potentially messier foods. First Ellie gave her a Kit Kat stick. This was a “fun size” stick about half the size of a normal “really fun size” stick, which should be the perfect size for her to take a bite of and feel it melt in her mouth as she gums it to a pulp. Abbie took the stick from her mother and did what any young child would do when presented with a piece of candy; she offered it to the nearby dog. Ellie’s quick intervention saved the stick, and Abbie realized that she could eat it as well. She put it in her mouth and determined that it was too long to fit the whole thing at once. A normal human when faced with a similar situation might simply bite off an appropriately sized piece, chew, swallow, and continue in this manner until the food is consumed, but Abbie is not one of those normal, easily discouraged humans. She jammed the stick in as far as it would go, bit it in half, and jammed in the remaining half regardless of whether or not she had room in her mouth for both. The result was chocolately saliva flowed from her mouth coating her face and front.

We now have a rule when giving Abbie candy: Always make sure she wears a bib. We also have another rule: Break it in half if possible. I’ve had good luck with this rule giving her Hershey’s bars. I take one of the scored pieces, snap it in half, and give her a perfectly sized piece while holding the other piece for her until her mouth is clear. When that piece starts to melt in my hand, I transfer it to my other hand. When it starts to melt in that hand, I place it on my knee, which is usually within her grasp. At that point she shoves it in her mouth, but at least she has a head start on the previous piece.

Smell My Feet, Give Me Something Good to Eat

This was Abbie’s second Halloween. Last year we dressed her in a jaguar costume filled with enough pink to ensure that her brothers will never wear it, and paraded her around the neighbors’ and the nearest mall for Trick or Treat.

She collected tons of candy, which Ellie and I enjoyed for several days. It’s not like we hogged everything for ourselves; we still have the stickers she collected last year, and they’re hers as soon as she’s old enough to play with them.

This year we dressed her in something a little different: A tiger, but this one was in realistic colors, not the nature-violating color scheme of last year’s jaguar outfit.

We didn’t originally want to dress her as a cat in consecutive years. After spending hours or at least many minutes searching for the perfect costume, we bought an adorable pumpkin costume for Abbie. It met our two main costume criteria, specifically it was the right size and it was unisex enough for a brother could wear it eventually. As soon as we brought it home I took it off the hanger and clipped off the tags so she could try it on and we could see how achingly cute she looked. Sadly, I quickly discovered that costumes use a different sizing scheme and run much smaller than normal clothes. While most clothes use the child’s birthday to measure sizes,* costumes apparently use the conception date. Therefore the pumpkin costume that claimed to be for ages 1-2 is actually suitable for 3 to 15-month-olds, which will be perfect for a brother next year because without the tags that I just cut off there’s no way I could return it.

The next day I went to a different store and grabbed the first unisex costume I found suitable for a child 26 months past conception, which happened to be the tiger outfit. It’s size 2T, which is two whole sizes beyond every other article of clothing that currently fits her. The pants and sleeves are a little long, but she’s practically bursting out of the body (note that the costume is unzipped). Perhaps the costume industry uses foreign children as their size models, unaware that here in America, everything is bigger, from houses to burgers to Snickers to Kit Kats to Peanut Butter Cups to White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups to those Inside Out Peanut Butter Cups with the peanut butter on the outside and chocolate on the inside. Mmm…

Oh glorious Halloween candy. I bought ours a few weeks ago because I found a good deal on the stuff. Obviously their plot was to hook people on the stuff in early October, and jack up the prices in late October when people have to restock since a lot of people can’t. I outsmarted the stores by freezing my candy as soon as I brought it home, because who would want to eat a Peanut Butter Cup when it’s frozen solid, even though the rock hard exterior simply prevents the chocolate from melting until it hits your tongue, then the ice surrenders to your warmth, spilling its creamy goodness throughout your mouth until you think Heaven can’t possibly taste this chocolately, and that’s when the peanut butter starts to make presence known, combining its velvety decadence with the previously presiding chocolate to create a taste that… ahem.

We went Trick or Treating at the zoo on Sunday. This was the day before Halloween, which is Beggar’s Night, or the official night for Trick or Treating in Des Moines. Long ago the Powers That Be in Des Moines decided to hold Trick or Treating on the night before Halloween to reduce the pranks and general unruliness that occurs on Halloween. Plus, the Powers That Be in Des Moines are stupid. Trick or Treating at the zoo, “Night Eyes” as it’s called, was something of a disappointment. Everybody cost the same rate to enter. Fortunately they didn’t catch the two viable fetuses Ellie is carrying, but they still made us pay the full rate for Abbie who’s still young enough to only remember potentially scarring events when her therapist asks about them in a few years. Inside, the animals, who are kind of the whole purpose for a zoo’s existence, had been mostly replace by advertisers giving out treats ranging from good (Butterfingers, but far too few of them) to bad (cans of Mountain Dew Pitch Black? The people handing out Tootsie Rolls probably spent more on treats than those clearance aisle scroungers).

Realizing that Beggar’s Night is stupid, our neighborhood declared Trick or Treating would be on Halloween. This gave us a chance to empty our thawed stock of Halloween candy while disposing of the crummiest candy collected at Night Eyes (i.e. Almond Joys). I had planned to give away most of our candy that night, but all of our neighbors planned the same thing. Abbie came home with a bag full of candy at least equivalent to the volume we gave away. Combine her bagful with our leftover Halloween candy and the extra bags we had to buy the day after Halloween because it was clearanced, and we’re sitting on a pile of tooth-rotting stomachaches. We have Hershey Bars and M&M’s and Skittles and Nerds and Runts and many flavors of suckers. Somehow we’ll just have to cope.

No, wait. We’re out of Runts.

*Abbie is currently 17-months-old, putting her in the 12-18 month size and almost ready to burst into the 18-24 month size.

Daylight Sanity Time

Once upon a time, I loved the day when Daylight Saving Time ends. Long after I stopped waking up pre-dawn to open Christmas presents, I felt the day when we set our clocks back was the most magical day of the year; how could toys possibly compete with an extra hour of sleep? I can remember some Sundays when I could take it slow and relax all day long, and still fell asleep well before my bedtime that night. Not since football’s opening weekend had I enjoyed so much free time on a Sunday.

Now that I have a 17-month-old on a schedule, I hate the day we fall back. No more extra hour of sleep for me, I have to convince Abbie that every internal time cue she has is spontaneously ahead by one hour. How I long for the days when Abbie can take care of herself, and the twins, in the morning so I can sleep in again.

Abbie shifted her schedule surprisingly smoothly when Daylight Saving Time ended last year. I set her down a half-hour late the night before, woke her up at the new wake time that morning, and Abbie accepted the whole schedule change as easily as the USC football team accepted a Pete Carroll practical joke. No whining, no super early mornings, just lots of giggles and lollipops as I smiled my way through the joys of parenting a 5-month-old. At least that’s how I remember it; the Abbieupdate archives don’t go back that.

I tried the same strategy this year. Saturday night I kept her awake a half-hour past her bedtime. She tries to weasel a few extra minutes out of me every night, so she thought this late bedtime was pretty cool. She enjoyed staying up so much that she forgot her stranger anxiety and let my dad read to her for several minutes (that’s when the picture from yesterday’s post was taken). She fell asleep with minimal fussing, validating my strategy to wear her out. That night, I spent my extra 30 minutes in the only way I still know how: Poking around the internet.

The next morning she woke up promptly at 7am, which gave her the usual amount of sleep, but was a half-hour earlier than I wanted her awake. Figuring the best way to readjust her schedule was to rescue her at the proper time, I listened to her on the monitor while otherwise ignoring her. For more than 20 minutes, I listened to her coo cutely in bed. Then I heard her coo confusedly. When I heard her coo angrily, I figured close enough and started her day.

I worried that naptime would be difficult that first day with her waking up early in the morning and her internal clock still set on Daylight Saving Time. It’s not like she’s some easily controlled shrinking violet like Katie Holmes. She fell asleep that afternoon with extra fussing, but nothing excessive, and woke up a little early from her nap, but not deeply enough to cut into my internet time. She went down that night with minimal fussing again, and I thought I was in the clear.

The next morning, though, she woke up at 6:45am, and blew right past cute cooing straight to furious that I would let her sleep in so late and deprive her of cat hunting time. I quickly gave up ignoring her, and entered her room to start her day much too early. We spent the next half-hour slowly moving through her morning routine in an attempt to at least feed her at the correct time. Did you know choosing the perfect bib for the day can take upwards of ten minutes if you try hard enough?

That was the worst bump we’ve had in our quest to adjust her schedule. Sleep times since have been marked with a little extra fussiness, and wake times have been a little early, but I can still cram all my favorite websites into the day with enough time leftover to write adequate blog posts with minimle spelling errers.

Grandparents Day

My parents visited us this weekend. By “us,” I mean “myself, especially Abbie, and not so much Ellie.” Not that they were trying to avoid Ellie, but she was mired in the last horrible night of call of her pregnancy, and spent most of their visit in the hospital tending to patients in the ICU, ED, and QT. Not that they were weren’t excited to see me, but compared to seeing their only grandchild at 17-months-old, I can hardly compete, especially when I haven’t reached any new developmental milestones since our last visit.

My parents arrived in town during Abbie’s naptime, and thoughtfully stayed out of the house until she woke. Generally our dog goes nuts when unusual people such as my parents or Ellie enter our home, and all the barking is likely to wake Abbie early. She can be difficult when fully rested; add tired and cranky to the mix, and she becomes harder to manage than a Vikings pleasure cruise. They wouldn’t be able to do much with her while she napped anyway besides imagine what she looked like behind the bedroom door and listen to her sleeping grunts on the monitor.

When my parents did stop by our home, Abbie gave them her typical grandparent greeting: She screamed. She screamed her head off, and the crying didn’t stop until we left the house several hours later for frozen custard.* My mother’s presence upset her a little bit, but it was my dad who really set her off. After a few minutes, Abbie calmed to the point where she would tearlessly scream around my mother, but the tears returned as soon as she saw my father. Understandably, it hurt his feelings to see his only grandchild scream in terror when he enters the room. The fact that we used to tease him when she started crying around him, asking, “what did you do to her?” probably didn’t help.

After many unsuccessful bonding attempts, my mother and I fed Abbie supper with my father separated by a wall. It was a drastic measure, but Abbie had to eat if we had if we were to have any hope of bringing her back to Earth. Plus my dad had college football on TV to entertain him.

My mother loved watching Abbie eat, but was concerned about my nonchalance over her throwing food. Every day I give Abbie a big handful of Tasteeos and vegetables, and every day half of those Tasteeos wind up on the floor. I’ve come to accept this as a fact of life, and the dog has come to rely on stray Abbie food for sustenance. I’m usually too busy dancing around the kitchen preparing someone’s next course to concern myself about what ends up on the floor anyway. My mother feels that I assert myself now to end bad behaviors.

“How do I do that to a 17-month-old?”
“Tell her no when she throws her food.”
“What do I do when she keeps throwing her food?”
“Tell her no more forcefully.”
“What do I do when she keeps throwing her food?”
“Smack her hand when she throws her food.”
“What do I do when she keeps throwing her food?”
“Just keep doing it. She’ll learn.”
“Yeah…”

I deal with her screaming most of the rest of the day, if her throwing food is the price I pay for a peaceful meal, so be it. Until she’s old enough to threaten with punishment, I’ll just keep reminding her not to do it when I catch her. I need to pick my battles, and my mother, picking a battle, decided to drop the issue about my wacky permissive parenting.

After supper, we went out for a little shopping. Abbie calmed down almost immediately upon hearing her Sesame Street CD, proving that, while I may have succeeded in preventing a television addiction, the CTW still found a way to get their hooks in her. We picked up a desperately needed second Pack N Play for the twins (thanks, mom), and stopped for frozen custard. At least my mother and I ordered frozen custard; my father, who wasn’t hungry for supper, ordered a burger and fries. After ordering, I collected my cone, my mother collected her dish, and my father collected a number for them to bring him his food when it was ready. The inherent problem with this system is it takes less time to eat a cone than it does to cook a burger and fries, especially when a 17-month-old is pilfering off the cone. After disposing our wrappers and spoons, I started wondering how we were going to placate Abbie while my dad ate his meal right in front of her. The restaurant answered our dilemma by bringing with his food … a second cone and dish! We might as well take it, they told us, because otherwise they’d just have to throw it away. So my dad had dessert, my mom and Abbie split another cone, and I wondered how anybody could eat that much frozen custard in one sitting when the flavor wasn’t Peanut Butter Perfection.

We came home, and Abbie stayed relatively calm for her bedtime routine. She even calmed down enough to interact with my dad a little bit. Want proof?



* Frozen custard makes everything better.