Uuuhhhgggrrrr!

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Abbie is an actual, thinking person capable of soaking in the world and spitting it back out in her own way. Usually she just sits passively when she’s not playing with something, and I forget she’s around me. Like when we were at the basketball game the other night, and when a player took yet another ill-advised shot I muttered “aww, hell.” A woman a couple rows ahead of us flashed me a puzzled/dirty look to verify that it was the father of that sweet little girl mumble profanity. I remembered who was with me, went back to watching my mouth, and suddenly found a silver lining to Abbie not being able to talk yet.

Nevertheless, she’s still watching and soaking up her parents’ actions. A couple nights ago, Ellie was checking on Abbie after hearing her banging around her room long after bedtime. She directed her back to bed, laid her down, and asked for a goodnight kiss. Whenever I ask Abbie for a kiss, I make sure to stick out my cheek to give her a wide target, otherwise who knows what body part she’ll slime. Without the benefit of experience that comes from spending every waking moment with her, Ellie simply brought her face down to toddler-mouth level, and trusted her to plant one in the proper spot. Abbie responded by giving her mother a soaking wet kiss on the mouth, just like mommy and daddy do. Ellie didn’t know whether to be horrified that she just received an open-mouth kiss sans tongue from her daughter, or gratified to know that she’s at least paying attention to us.

She doesn’t seem to pay much attention to the television, which is why we’re surprised when she reacts to it without our prompting. I’ve seen her clap her hands along to Dora counting, or maybe sign when she recognizes an object like that butterfly from the Lunesta commercial, but not much else. With this in mind, Ellie was pleased when she tried watching her Muppet DVDs with her, and found her reacting to a host of objects. She’d laugh when mommy laughed, sing when a Muppet sang, and waved her hands back and forth to sign “fish” when she saw a fish. Abbie was really getting into this signing thing, when she saw a creature she didn’t quite recognize. It was large, brown, and hairy, as opposed to the puppets that were smaller, fuzzy, and colored with primary and secondary hues. Abbie took her best guess as to what it was, and panted to sign “dog.” Ellie looked at the screen, saw no dogs, and tried to figure out what looked like a dog. It turns out that while they were watching the Muppet episode featuring the cast of “Star Wars,” Chewbacca* had wandered on the screen, and Abbie thought he looked like a canine. After she stopped laughing, Ellie regained her composure and told me about Abbie’s misidentification.

“Aww, hell, that girl has a lot left to learn.”

* Chewbacca, by the way, is in Microsoft Word’s spell-check for some reason.

The Dog Post

I try not to say much about our dog, Chloe; if there’s one thing more boring than reading about somebody’s kids, it’s reading about somebody’s dog. Nevertheless, I’ve actually heard requests from people who want to know more about Chloe. These requests mostly come from Ellie’s coworkers who read this blog when she’s trying to show off her family. This blog is a good way to impress family, friends, and the rest of the world with our family’s exploits, without having to invite them into our home where they’d immediately be pounced upon by our dog and too distracted by her ploys for attention to comprehend any of our adventures. So by popular demand, I give you Chloe.



Chloe is an American Eskimo. As you can see, her fur is pure white, except for the everyday grime that accumulates from many trips to the backyard, and the occasional food particle, in this case barbecue sauce above her left eye, she collects while hovering under our feet at mealtime. She stands about knee high, weighs about 25 pounds, and looks like she’s about 40 pounds of canine thanks to a deceptively fluffy fur coat. She’s about seven years old, but we’ve only had her for about five. We got her as a rescue dog; a group of dedicated dog lovers from a rescue league teamed up to drive her in 100 to 200 miles stretches all the way from North Carolina to Iowa over one weekend.

Chloe’s original family gave her up because they were having a baby. I’m not sure if they surrendered her because they wouldn’t have enough time or resources to care for a dog and a baby, something I could relate to, or if they were afraid to have a dog around a young child, something I don’t quite understand. Obviously you don’t want to have an aggressive animal around a young child, or around your house period in my opinion, but banishing all pets for fear they might hurt your child is shortsighted; babies can’t do much to provoke an animal until they’re mobile, and most animals are too scared of children to let them get close anyway. I’m off my soapbox now.

Whatever reason her original family had for giving her up, I’m glad they did. Chloe is a pretty good dog around children. She’s not quite to the point where she’ll let tots hang off her fur, but with a little more training she might get there for the twins. She mostly tries to avoid the children, but when Abbie corners her and tries to touch her with potentially fur-pulling fingers, she takes it in stride, especially since she learned to distract Abbie by licking her hands. When Abbie was learning to walk, I used Chloe’s child-aversion to our advantage by letting Abbie chase her around the house. Chloe will occasionally approach Abbie, especially if she has food or a toy in hand, although the toy doesn’t always work well since Chloe doesn’t realize how adept she is at knocking over small children.

By far the dog’s biggest asset is her cleaning ability. Whenever Abbie drops food, Chloe is right there to pick it up, although Abbie occasionally needs a little help to “drop” something. The only time I ever have to pick up a Tasteeo is when we’re visiting someone’s house. Abbie understands the dog’s hunger, and sometimes aids her by giving her the nasty food we just gave her to eat, things like carrots, or pizza.

Of course she has her drawbacks. If Abbie pushes her too hard, she’ll growl, especially if she’s not feeling good. We have full faith that the dog would never intentionally hurt her, but we’d rather not test that faith. Chloe also barks at every organic creature, real or imagined, that comes near our home. This can make naptimes difficult. She also jumps on people that are nice enough to come into our home, but at least that gives visitors something else to focus on when we bore them with stories about our kids.

The Hunt for Chinese

Ellie is sick, and has been sick for about a week now. She doesn’t have anything major, “major” defined as “bad enough to keep her home from work,” just a bug that’s constantly attacking her sinuses and sapping her will to live. Her rejuvenator of choice when her throat hurts is a steaming cup of Chinese tea. Last night, she declared that she wanted a cup of hot tea. Since we were already out collecting Vital Supplies, I planned to stop for take-out on the way home, returning just in time to feed Abbie our bounty of tempura tasties.

The biggest problem was finding an appropriate place to stop on the way home. The China Bowl is too expense, The Mandarin is too fancy and probably doesn’t offer take-out anyway, and A Dong* is too far out of the way. Eventually I settled on China Place, which could be on our way home with a little creative driving. China Place is one of our favorite restaurants from college, located next to the campus. Our favorite Chinese restaurant from college is #1 Chinese, but it closed a couple years ago and was replaced with … another Chinese restaurant, but with worse food.

As we approached China Place, I noticed the interior was dark. In spite of the fact that it was a hole in the wall college restaurant, this was much darker than I remember it being. As we drove past, we saw a sign revealing that they had closed, and were in the process of moving to a new location a few blocks away. We shrugged and decided to try the inferior replacement to #1 Chinese, which was right down the street. We parked in front of their building, pulled the kids out of the car, walked up to the door, and discovered that they too had closed. They were going to be replaced with … China Place! Opening next week!

Desperate for hot tea and needing to find something to eat before Abbie has a hunger-induced meltdown and/or the twins wake up starving, we drove straight to our favorite nearby Chinese buffet. It was more food than I wanted for more money than I wanted to pay, but they offered immediate food and a free meal for Abbie. I suppose the twins could have eaten for free too, but Alimentum wasn’t on the Buffet.

It was a new experience for us to eat at a buffet with the twins; we had to take turns visiting the line and filling our plate. I went first, filling one plate with fried foods for me and another plate with fruit for Abbie. Abbie ate her fruit readily; she also ate my crispy pork, General Tso’s chicken, and the ice cream I got for dessert. The twins remained amazingly placated for the meal, which is a good thing since we didn’t bring any food for them.

In the end, everything worked out okay. Ellie got her hot tea, Abbie got to gorge herself, I got out of a night of dishes, the twins stayed calm while we ate, and our server gave us five fortune cookies so we didn’t even need that formula for the twins after all.

* Yes, A Dong is really its name. It’s actually a very good Vietnamese restaurant.

Three Month Self-Checkup

The twins just turned three months old. They no longer look like delicate preemies, but instead look like grotesquely obese infants. To be fair, Ian looks rather svelte, tipping the scales at 9-lbs, 8-ozs. Tory on the other hand would look at home in the Hutt family, as he currently weighs an eye-popping* 11-lbs, 3-ozs. In three months, he’s almost tripled in size from his birth weight of 4-lbs, 5ozs. If he keeps growing at that rate, I figure he’ll be around 300-lbs by his first birthday. He’d better be an early walker, because I’m not carrying that.

This is a good time to check the development wheel, which has developmental milestones from age 3 months to 5 years. Even though they’re bound to be a little behind since they were born eight weeks early, it’s good to keep an eye on their development and make sure they’re progressing well; if they’re falling behind, I can get a jumpstart on fretting over their latest missed milestone. Plus, this should be a really easy post.

Lift head and chest when laying on their stomachs.
They can absolutely lift their heads, probably beyond a 45-degree angle. I work on this everyday by forcing them to sit upright for minutes at a time. The sooner they gain head control, the sooner I can start working on arm and hand control, the sooner they can hold their bottles during feeding, the sooner I can get something done around the house while they eat. They maybe lift their chests a little, but not much if at all. We don’t work on tummy time much. They tend to fall asleep pretty quickly, or degenerate into balls of infant fury that are too angry to lift themselves.

Follow a moving object or person with their eyes
Yep. I like to play a game where I slowly bring my hand in to tap them on the nose. It helps to build coordination and a sense of awareness, two important attributes if they’re going to put themselves through college on athletic scholarships.

Grasp a rattle or finger.
They’ll grasp my finger if I force it into a fist, but no inorganic objects. I keep trying to make them hold a plastic ring with little luck. If it does stay attached to their hands, it’s usually just caught on a finger.

Wiggle and kick their legs.
Yes, and they’re getting dangerously close to my crotch during feeding times.

Smile back at people.
Yup. Ellie can get a smile out of them if she’s been gone all day by walking into their room as they wake from a nap. It’s the highlight of her day, especially if we’re out of Italian sausage for the spaghetti sauce.

Make cooing or babbling sounds.
Yeah, and they coo a little more every day. Sometimes I wonder if they’ll talk before Abbie.

Cry in different ways to tell you what we need.
Affirmative. They have their normal cry to say they want something, and they have their refusing to inhale cry to tell us they’re ticked off and we’re the worst parents in the world. Tory will probably be really mad when I put him on a diet the second his pediatrician okays it.

* And onesie-popping.

Am Misbehavin'

Abbie’s behavior is improving. I think she knows some things that she is and isn’t supposed to do. Some days, she minds well and follows the path that leads to songs and candy. Other days, she opts for scoldings instead of songs, and the only candy in the house is the sweet taste of timeouts. Today was one of those latter days.

It started this morning while I was washing dishes. Abbie played contentedly in the living room next to me. She was out of sight but within earshot, so as long as I could hear electronic toys blaring and the occasional thud of a thrown toy, I knew everything was fine. Suddenly I heard her screaming. Generally this means that she sees something she wants but can’t reach, or possibly she wedged herself under the end table again. I went to investigate, and found her screaming under the chinchilla cage. My first guess was that she stuck her finger in the cage and got it bit, but on closer inspection I realized that she had just stuffed her mouth full of chinchilla cage detritus*, and must have discovered it tastes really bad. I sat down to clean her mouth out with my finger, and Abbie responded like a chinchilla with a finger in its cage; she bit me, hard, hard enough to leave a mark, hard enough to draw a little blood.

After gingerly scraping the rest of her mouth out, I drug her into the kitchen with me, gave her a sippy cup of water in the hopes that she’d rinse her mouth out, and kept her in the kitchen where I could see her for crying out loud. Abbie entertained herself by tossing her sippy cup, shoes, and everything she could find over the baby gate that protects her from falling downstairs. At least she didn’t put anything else in her mouth.

After finishing the dishes, I drug her back to the living room so I could clean the cage detritus. Abbie saw the chinchilla’s food was disappearing from the floor, noticed the dog’s food sat unguarded, and proceeded to stuff dog food pellets in her mouth. Never mind that she hadn’t tried eating dog food in months. As soon as I noticed, I bounded in front of her and pulled three moist pellets out of her mouth. I scolded her and dumped the pellets back in the dog’s dish. Abbie took this opening to stuff her mouth with more dog food kibble, this time from the floor. As quickly as I could wrest kibble from her, she had another piece in hand. We quickly moved all dog food out of her reach, a move that couldn’t have made the dog happy, but she’s starting to chunk up anyway.

By this time it was time to feed the twins. As soon as I sat with bottles in hand, Abbie was on top of us trying to grab the bottles and stick her fingers in the twins’ mouths. She’d been doing better about behaving while I feed the twins, but apparently wanted a timeout refresher today.

I set the twins in their gym after feeding them in peace, freed Abbie from her room, and returned to cleaning the cage detritus. With my back turned, Abbie grabbed the still mostly full glass of water that I’d been drinking from while feeding the twins, and took a sip. She quickly realized that it was water and not something tasty like Diet Coke, and dumped the glass onto the floor, soaking the twins in the process. I cursed my idiocy and started changing the twins’ clothes, which was the first time either baby had soaking wet clothes for a non-diaper related reason.

Satisfied that her work in the living room was done, Abbie returned to the kitchen. There she found the pan of Lucky Charm Treats** I made. These were on the stove and out of her reach, or at least were out of her reach if she were stuck on the floor. Abbie climbed into her high chair that I carelessly left next to the stove, from which she could easily access the entire pan. I discovered her shenanigans when she toddled around the corner, treat in hand. At first I was simply pleased that she decided to eat my cooking and dismissed the rest as my negligence, but then the dog snatched the treat from her carelessly outstretched hand.

Fortunately, Ellie came home for lunch a little later. I left her to watch the twins while I took Abbie to the park. Try as she might, there’s absolutely nothing naughty she could out in the park. Except of course for stuffing woodchips in her mouth, which to her credit she did not do. She must have forgotten she could do that.

* Cage detritus is comprised of tossed chinchilla food pellets, and other things I’d rather not think about.
** Did you know that you can make Lucky Charm Treats just like you’d make Rice Krispie Treats? You can. Did you also know that they won’t be nearly as good if you use a generic version with a name like “Magic Stars” or “Fluky Trinkets?” They’ll be even worse if somebody selectively snacks on them, decreasing the already perilously low marshmallow-to-oat pieces ratio.

Daddy-Daughter Game

I went to a basketball game last night. This was a game involving my alma mater, Drake, which is traditionally a downtrodden program. The season started off well as they rushed to an uncharacteristic 11-8 record, but followed that with a characteristic run of losing eight of their next nine, including their last three by a combined six points. Nevertheless, last night was their final home game of the year, and my final chance to personally endure another loss for about nine months.

There was no way I was getting out of the house alone and leaving Ellie with three children, so I took Abbie with me. I didn’t want to bring the twins into a crowded arena during cold, flu, and Death Virus season, so they stayed home with Ellie. The twins are too young to watch the game anyway, and could spend two hours napping and staring the lights just as well at home. While Abbie and I watched a men’s basketball game together, Ellie and the twins watched American Idol together, thus completing our shredding of traditional gender-based activities.*

I wanted to buy season tickets at one time, and that time is defined as “before I knew about the twins.” Therefore I had no ticket, and needed to buy one at the game. Some of you who follow popular programs may wonder what kind of seat I could get buying a ticket minutes before tip-off, but don’t forget I described the team with the word “downtrodden” and the phrase “losing eight of … nine.” As I approached the ticket window, another fan asked if I needed a ticket. I said yes, and he handed me a spare season ticket, a generous offer that allowed me to save money to buy formula after the game, and a Sprite during the game.

Once we passed the crazed ticket-taker who told me Abbie’s ticket would cost $4 and didn’t flash me a “just kidding” smile until I walked past him, we found our seats. I ignored the seat assigned to my ticket and opted for the mostly empty bench seats that allow Abbie to roam freely without disturbing others. I threw our coat and diaper bag in an empty can clean spot, sat down, and encouraged Abbie to do the same. Abbie opted to stand instead, showing a remarkable amount of spirit for daddy’s team. She stood and shivered for the first several minutes; I don’t know if she was cold or frightened by the aural assault that is a college basketball game, but she eventually calmed down. By halftime she was sitting, albeit in the walkway between the designated seating area, but I didn’t see any spilled substances, so I assumed it was okay.

I don’t know if she got anything out of the game. She seemed to stare at the action most of the time, but never really reacted to the game.* She’d clap when I asked her to, but otherwise looked blank like she was struggling to understand why people were screaming, why people were chasing that ball, and why that guy kept shooting threes when he obviously wasn’t making many of them. I think we bonded a little bit sharing the experience of watching a game together, and that’s what was most important about last night. And when I say that I of course mean that my team lost, this time by two on a tip-in with 3.1 seconds left.

* The men competed on Idol last night, so it wasn’t a total reversal.
** She did, however, react to the Sprite.

The First Legal High

Singing is a good way to keep Abbie entertained, especially when I have my hands full of squirming babies. I have several songs I can sing off the top of my head: “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,” “The Alphabet Song.” My favorite song to sing to her, though, is “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” That’s the song that goes “If you’re happy and you know it (insert action here),” followed by everyone involved performing (insert action here). The (insert action here) generally starts with clapping, and can then progress to all sorts of stuff from stomping feet, to shouting hooray, to dusting the living room.

What I like about the song is the actions keep Abbie occupied. For example, if she’s trying to commandeer a twin’s bottle, I can start singing and she’ll immediately bolt upright and start clapping at the appropriate spot. Unfortunately the song moves quickly, and I only have about a dozen commands she recognizes. When I cycle through all of them and my instruction “touch your shoulders” is met with a blank stare, Abbie returns to grabbing a bottle, chewing on a remote, taunting the dog, or whatever naughty activity she was doing when I distracted her.

I’m always looking for new ways for her to show me she’s happy, which is why I was pleased to see her spinning in place. Now I can prod her to demonstrate her happiness by marching in place, dancing in place, or spinning in place. Best of all, by the time I convince her to spin in place a few times, she needs a minute to regain her balance. After finding her orientation, she usually forgets what she was doing before we started singing. I feel a little guilty going to this big gun because I don’t think she likes the sensation of being dizzy; if she falls, she usually lays on the floor whimpering until she can stand again. Still, I believe that being temporarily dizzy is better for her long-term emotional well being than being scolded, and the result can be a happiness that she can show by (insert action here).

"I want something that says people can have a nice relaxing time." "Madman Moe's Pressure Cooker?"

We needed to pick up some Vital Supplies last night. We decided that as long as we were out, we might as well get something to eat. Before we Abbie came, we ate out frequently, probably at least twice a week. We ate at fancy places too, often with the word “Bistro” in the name, or maybe they were named after an ambiguous friendly sounding person, like “Dave’s,” “Joe’s,” or “O’Sarsgaard’s,” names meant to mask the indifferent corporate owners.

When Abbie arrived, we stopped going to the fancy restaurants. We had a few reasons, starting with our fancy restaurant money morphing into diaper money. Just as importantly, we discovered that entering a sit-down environment where a meal can take upwards of an hour is a bad idea with an infant. I learned to spend half that time feeding her, but the other half we spent taking turns walking with her around the restaurant’s exterior to keep her entertained and the restaurant staff from serving our meals in to-go boxes. Once she could eat table food, life became slightly easier, but not by much since asking a pre-preschooler to sit still for an hour is like asking Brad and Jen to reunite: It just isn’t going to happen. Eventually we discovered fast food, which has the advantages of being faster,* cheaper, and more child-friendly than fancy restaurants.

When the twins came, just getting out of the house was a challenge; trying to eat out could be impossible. Just do the math. If they start screaming, I can entertain one child, and Ellie can entertain another child. That leaves one child, probably Abbie, left to fend for herself, and she usually gets pretty ticked off after she’s thrown her sippy cup on the floor.

Nevertheless, I felt confident that I could coordinate a meal for all five of us last night. The twins are on a good schedule, so they’ll sleep while we eat at 5:30, Abbie’s normal mealtime. We’ll buy our supplies, and stop for ice cream on the way home at 7pm, the twins’ normal mealtime. The plan was perfect; we just needed a restaurant.

Ellie wanted a sub from Quizno’s, which sounded good to me. The problem is Quizno’s serves nothing but sandwiches, which are beyond Abbie’s current eating abilities. She’s still on the “mush” or “small, easily chewed chunk” foods. McDonald’s is perfect for these foods, but there’s nothing we want to eat at McDonald’s. Our solution was to drive to a McDonald’s, buy Abbie’s food at the drive-thru, drive to the Quizno’s next door, and eat our subs in there while Abbie eats her foreign food.

The plan worked surprisingly well. I was worried that we wouldn’t have room for the twins with Quizno’s notoriously small tables, but we managed to fit without placing anyone on the floor. We moved quickly, bought our supplies, and made it to ice cream just as the twins were waking up and demanding their milk very vociferously. Ellie and I ordered ice cream, we shared our excess frozen goodness with Abbie, while we set up the Podees to feed the twins.** Another patron stopped me in the restaurant to comment on how cute we looked with the parents on the outside, and three children being fed on the middle. I thanked her, and realized that maybe we could eat out occasionally with a little luck and a lot of planning. I just don’t think I’ll attempt to enter any bistros anytime soon.

* Duh.
* Thanks, Cindy.

Curious Abbie

Several months ago, Ellie told me about a parenting discussion she had at work. Her coworkers were talking about their kids getting into trouble, and how they knew they were in big trouble when the parents used their middle name. Her contribution to the conversation was that we never used Abbie’s middle to grab her attention because she never did anything that bad. Ellie and I thought about why this was; maybe we’re extremely patient parents, or maybe we just have a saintly daughter. In the end, we concluded that we’re just great parents.

Fast forward to today, and I’m using Abbie’s full first and middle name* in approximately 90% of the time I address her; the other 10% of the time I just blurt out “Abbie” in the hopes of grabbing her attention before she does something dangerous, like run with those scissors that I could’ve sworn were placed beyond her reach.

Gone is our angelic Abbie; in her place is a grabby Abbie determined to get into everything. Her bedroom no longer has visible carpeting, just a layer of clothes that she’s pulled out of her drawers. Our bedroom is in a similar state as we now have piles of freshly pulled clothes covering the floor instead of the piles of dirty clothes we’re used to tolerating until someone gets around to laundry.

There’s not much I can do to secure our wardrobes, but I can block her access to our DVDs. We amassed a tower full of DVDs in our pre-children days. We never have time to watch them now, but it’s important to me that I protect them so that in a few years when our children are older they can laugh at the primitive way we used to watch movies. Abbie discovered our DVD collection a couple weeks ago, and has since taken up the task of strewing every case within reach across the living room. She loves opening the cases, snatching the enclosed literature, and ripping the discs out of the holder. Don’t even think she holds the discs only by the edges either.

I eventually tired of doing important work in another room like washing the dishes or checking the internet and returning to the living room to find it decorated in a movie bootlegger motif. Looking at the tower’s location this morning, I realized that the living room might not be the best spot to leave it, especially since it was right next to her toy box. With this in mind, I moved our DVD collection out of the living room and into our bedroom where we could at least limit her access to it. I figured that since I was out of bon bons and watching the third repeat of SportsCenter gives me a headache anyway, why not devote a good chunk of my morning to otherwise needless redecorating?

Now the DVDs are in our room, and when she does sneak in to pull them out they at least tend to stay in one spot. The mounds of clothes she pulled out of our drawers earlier create levees that contain the plastic flood. Ellie says it’s good that she’s curious, I just wish she’d be more curious about putting stuff away than taking stuff out.

* Abigail Leigh

Coo Coo Cachoo

The twins recently hit a new milestone. This is a real milestone too, not one of those quasi-milestones like “slept four hours overnight,” “slept four and a quarter hours overnight,” or “blew out a diaper.” Their new milestone is cooing, and they’re both doing it. Before their sole form of non-crying communication was grunting, like they were a couple of feral babies we plucked out of the woods. Most of their communication is still in grunt form, but when they’re relaxed they occasionally make soft cooing sounds and appear to be the sweetest babies in the world. Then they spit up.

Cooing is an important communication milestone. Cooing leads to babbling, which leads to word-like sounds, which lead to actual words, which lead to multi-word sentences, which lead to talking back, which leads to silence as the child ignores the hopelessly out of touch parent, thus completing the cycle. I’m especially focused on the communication milestones with the twins since Abbie is still stuck on the word-like sounds phase.

I probably had nothing to do with her delay in speech as children start talking, and any other milestone for that matter, when they’re good and ready. Still, I can’t help but feel that if I had done things differently when she was their age, like encouraging her babbling more or possibly even dropping her fewer times, maybe she’d be using actual words by now, or even talking back already.

I especially feel like I didn’t talk to her enough when she was an infant. I’d feed her while reading the newspaper or watching an especially pivotal sporting event, and remain silent the entire time. I’ve resolved to talk to the twins more than I did with Abbie. The catch is, I had my reason for not talking more to Abbie, specifically I don’t know what to say. If they could talk back, that would give me some ideas, but it’s like talking to a dog without the feedback of a wagging tail or even a cocked head; to put it in simpler terms, talking to a newborn is like talking to a cat. I say whatever pops into my head, but I quickly run out of things to say. I also end up saying the same things day after day; I can only ask if they had a good nap* or if they like their milk** so many times.

I’m trying to talk more though, and I think I’m doing it. It may not make any difference; they could be the opposite of Abbie and say their first words at 10 months and take their first steps at 30 months. No matter when they decide to talk, it all starts with some cooing.

* Probably not.
** Considering what mama had to do to make that milk, they’d better like it.

Cleaning off the Camera

Ian is on the left, Tory is on the right.


The flash took Tory by surprise this time.


They’re showing off their tummy time powers. This photo was taken soon after I placed them on their tummies. After a minute of tummy time, they tire, leave their heads on the floor, and fall asleep. Or sometimes they just spit up. Either way, they don’t lift their heads again until after a nap.


Ellie is spending time with Tory during her precious time off of work. Tory is obliging by staying awake.


They were screaming just seconds later.


I know our dog is getting old because she now tolerates me laying on her and having a baby near her.


By popular demand, here’s a picture of Abbie. She’s looking contemplatively, possibly trying to figure out a way to play with those mobiles dangling enticingly above the twins.


Tory is passing us an early smile. Ian appears to be passing something else.

"Let us celebrate our agreement with the adding of chocolate to milk."

Abbie has been in her toddler bed for a couple of months now, and is learning that she has a lot of new freedom. Specifically she has the freedom to do whatever she wants instead of sleeping since she can freely climb in and out of her bed, while she could only fall out of her crib once a night. Her old crib is still in her room, except it belongs to the twins now. We don’t let all three sleep simultaneously in the same room though since each child would probably take turns waking the other two.

We’re coming to an understanding when it’s time for her to sleep; I remove as many distractions as possible from her reach, and she falls asleep in a timely manner. Before I shut her door, we pick all of her books off the ground and any loose toys, and set them up beyond her grasp. I also lift her diaper pail out of her range so she can’t play with it and send her precious lambie out with the poopy diapers.* She still has a few large objects to play with, like the dresser drawers and the clothes inside or the stationary entertainer tucked under the twins’ crib, which she dutifully plays with for up to 30 minutes before climbing into bed for the night/nap.

At least, that’s the way it usually goes. Last night she discovered the mobiles hanging over the twins’ crib, and decided they were more interesting than sleep. When Ellie heard her squawking in her room beyond the customary 30 minutes, she opened the door to find her atop the twins’ carseats. We keep them stored next to the crib, and Abbie apparently climbed them in an attempt to reach the mobiles but couldn’t climb back down. Ellie thought it cute that she had trapped herself, helped Abbie back to bed, and shut the door so she could fall right to sleep.

A few minutes later the squawking resumed. Ellie opened the door and found Abbie trapped on the carseats again, although “trapped” probably isn’t the best word. “Trapped” implies that she was stuck there against her will; even if she could climb back down, she’d still be on the carseats trying to reach the mobile. I can relate as I try to look away from the Cubs’ annual collapse, but that train wreck is just too fascinating to ignore. Ellie thought it less cute that she trapped herself again, helped her back to bed, shut the door, and by God she’d better go right to sleep.

More squawking emanated a few minutes later. Ellie opened the door, lifted Abbie off the carseats and into bed, and lay in bed with her as a human railing. For 15 minutes she stayed in place while Abbie desperately tried to find a way back to the mobiles. She tried going around and going over; she tried whining, wailing, and even whimpering to no avail. To her credit she did not try biting, which was a welcome change from several months ago when she’d bite every time we impeded her. Eventually, Abbie wore out, and when she was too tired to move, Ellie left her to whimper off to sleep shortly before 11pm. The next day I added carseats to the list of things for me to lift off the floor before leaving her to sleep. We have a new agreement, and she goes to sleep eventually.

* She successfully dumped her lambie into the diaper pail recently. The smarter they get, the more dangerous they get.

Nap Rules

The Routine commands that I feed the twins, keep them awake for a while, set them down for a nap, and repeat. My main interaction with the twins still involves trying to make them sleep when I want them to sleep, and stay awake when I want them to stay awake. I don’t remember this phase taking so long with Abbie, possibly because I’ve blocked it out of my mind. I thought that at this point with Abbie, my only challenge was getting her to sleep when I wanted her to sleep; convincing her to stay awake at that age was like convincing the vice president to discharge his firearm – done and done.

Keeping the twins awake can involve a little more work, but they’re better than a couple weeks ago. No longer do I spend their wake time torturing them with foot tickles and sternum rubs to keep them awake; just holding them upright is enough to keep them awake now. They still don’t have good head control, but they can hold their heads straight if they concentrate, and to concentrate they have to stay awake. Otherwise their heads flop uncomfortably if they try to sleep, which saves me the trouble of having to torture them.

Sometimes they’re content to sleep and let their heads flop heedlessly in the breeze created as Abbie bounds between forbidden objects in a limit-testing spree. At this point, my newest weapon to keep them awake is to throw them. I just bounce them up and down a little more forcefully than gentle, always keeping my hands on their bodies for support in case they suddenly go Plushenko on me and attempt a quadruple toe loop. This always spurts the eyes wide open by the second bounce as they try to discern why their world is rapidly moving.

After wildly stimulating them, I set them down for their nap. They’re still on an identical nap schedule, which is a blessing. Not that they sleep for their entire nap. I still have to spend a lot off time inserting pacifiers to calm them during when they should be sleeping, but it’s a lot better than it was a couple weeks ago. Ian has a habit of waking 45 minutes early from his nap, and fussing for about 15 minutes before going back to sleep. Tory, sensing the fussing void, then starts fussing 30 minutes early from his nap before falling back asleep 15 minutes later. It’s like they’re both awake and fussing for half-an-hour, when they’re really just ganging up on me by taking turns. Maybe the fact that there’s only one of Abbie is why I don’t remember this phase taking so long with her.

A Coat of Pink

What better time of year to shop for next season’s winter coat than February?* Not only are the coats clearanced as the stores make way for more seasonally appropriate items like swimwear, but the Valentine’s merchandise is also clearanced as the stores make room for St Patrick’s Day merchandise like Guinness, giant lighted shamrocks, and Kilkenny.

With this in mind, we set out as a family to our nearby mall-based big box store to feast on the wonders of clearance sales. First we checked the Valentine’s merchandise, and found a cornucopia of reds, whites, and every hue in between. We loaded up on Valentine’s candy because Ellie is still pumping and needs the extra caloric intake, and I exercise a lot so I deserve it. We bought conversation hearts, heart-shaped peanut butter cups, and pink-wrappered Snickers that cause heart disease. My proudest find was a bag of clearanced M&Ms purchased with a coupon. Using a coupon on already cheap candy is one of my prouder accomplishments, right up there with the time I slammed the phone on the rude tech support guy.

After stocking up on candy, Ellie checked the clearanced Valentine’s children’s clothes. She found lots of pink jeans, and shirts with hearts, and pink jackets with hearts, the kind of stuff a toddler girl can wear year round without anyone realizing that it’s seasonally inappropriate. You can’t do that with, for example, Halloween clothing since we only acknowledge pumpkins and ghosts once a year, but love is celebrated year-round unless the playoffs are somehow involved. Sadly it’s difficult to make a pink outfit replete with hearts that doesn’t scream “feminine,” so we couldn’t find any clearanced clothes for the boys.

I stopped to check the coats on the way out, but discovered that they were already gone; the swimwear was already in their place. Discouraged, I proceeded to the check out. As the cashier rung up my purchases, I noticed the previous customer had left her debit card in the lane. I gave it to the cashier who smiled and nodded in what I thought was a callous way to acknowledge that some had just lost their link to their bank account. The cashier then started to swipe the card with my purchases, thinking the card was mine. Fortunately, I stopped her just in time. This anecdote has no relation to the rest of the story, other than to say I inadvertently came thisclose to committing bank fraud and having to stop blogging, unless of course the prison I’d land in had internet access.

I still wanted a cheap coat, and I knew we were in a mall; someone somewhere had to have a cheap coat they wanted to dump. We found some in a mall department store. They were cute snow suits decorated with adorable yet masculine animals, which appealed to Ellie, and they were marked down to $15 from $70, which appealed to me. We couldn’t find a coat big enough to fit Abbie in eight months, though, so we’ll have to keep looking. If only someone made Valentine’s Day coats.

* October.

"Who can take this diaper?" "I don't mind at all."

While the twins were staring at light bulbs, Abbie found her new favorite toy: the Diaper Champ. Sometimes I wonder why we bother spending any money on new toys when a couple trashcans and a strand of chasing Christmas lights should be enough to entertain them until preschool, and then it’ll be their responsibility to entertain them.

For the uninitiated, a Diaper Champ is a diaper disposal system meant to hold dirty diapers and control their odor until the time you open the container to change the enclosed trash bag and all of those stored odors infiltrate the room with the fury of 1000 hunks of forgotten gorgonzola. Slide a diaper into the top hole, rotate the handle 180-degrees, and a weight pushes the diaper into the trash bag with a thunk. It’s an amazing engineering feat that’s at least on par with anti-lock breaks.

I’m sure Abbie discovered the Diaper Champ while I disposed of a boy’s diaper; she saw her hero daddy use it, heard that enticing “thunk” after rotating the handle, and decided she wanted a piece of the glamorous world of diaper disposal systems. Now she loves to twist the handle back and forth and hear the thunk repeatedly. As a bonus, it’s top heavy, which makes it fun to tip and watch it wobble back to balance; it’s like a Weeble, except bigger, stinkier, and it will fall down.

While I need the Diaper Champ on the floor where I can easily dispose of toxic substances, I don’t like her playing with it. For starters, she can catch her fingers in the diaper hole as the mechanism rotates into stench purgatory, pinching them in the process. Abbie is at the stage where any pain causes her to collapse into a howling ball of agony, shrieking to deaden the pain until she’s absolutely, positively, completely certain that the hurt has totally vanished. It’s not fun to listen to her cry, but the bigger danger is when she sneaks into the room while the twins are sleeping, pinches her fingers, and screams oblivious to the fury she’s about to awaken.

Just as troubling is the danger that she’ll throw away something valuable while playing. I can’t see the pail’s contents without opening it, which is great when it’s filled with toxicity, but not so great when there’s a burp cloth I want back sitting on top of the pile. She hasn’t figured out to throw burp clothes into the pail,* but she has discovered one of her treasured stuffed animals almost fits. More than once I’ve found Abbie giggling and rotating the handle while her lambie is stuffed into the diaper hole with only the head sticking out guillotine-style.

Fortunately her lambie won’t quite fall into the pail, but today I discovered one of her sippy cups will. I’m glad I know exactly how many sippy cups are out of the cupboard at any one time. On a whim, I checked the pail for the missing sippy cup, and there it was sitting on top. I quickly fished it out and slammed the pail back shut. Luckily the trash bag was fairly new the stench wasn’t too overpowering, more like the rank of 500 stale slices of Gouda.

* Yet.

"(Eggs) require the gentle warmth and tender love that only a mother can provide. Or better yet, a seventy-five watt bulb."

Nothing in this world is as fulfilling as looking down at your newborn cuddled across your lap, and seeing him looking back at you; not just looking, but staring at you, watching you, studying every detail of your face with an expression of complete love and dependence. Then nothing destroys this illusion faster than moving your head to the side, and discovering that he’s fixated not on your face, but on the light bulb above your head.

The boys’ current favorite thing in the whole world is a light bulb. More than once, I’ve noticed them staring at me in the manner described above, only to realize that they’re staring at the lamp in the living room. I know that babies are essentially blobs with at this age, except that blobs have better eyesight. Their only voluntary movements, besides limb flailings that don’t accomplish anything, are to suck-swallow milk, pee as soon as their diapers are removed, and turn their heads to look at interesting objects. Right now their eyesight is so bad they can’t see the Pooh hanging two inches above their face from their gym, but that bright lamp draws their attention like flies to a honey-covered bug-zapper.

We have a chest full of toys left over from Abbie’s infancy for them to play with. We have rattles, teethers, and plush animals to go along with two baby gyms, but they don’t acknowledge any of it. I imagine part of the reason for their ambivalence is the fact that they can’t see any of it, and the other part is they haven’t yet grasped the concept of, um, grasping.

Thinking back to Abbie, this makes sense since she didn’t do much with her toys for the first several months of life; she’s just now starting to play with one of her baby toys that features several twisting dials that click when turned and a comical age recommendation of birth & up. Even though we expect this ambivalence, it must be annoying to people that give them gifts of rattles and such expecting to see their faces light up when shaken,* only to see them continue to blankly stare at the light bulb. My mother was a victim of this attitude this weekend when the twins ignored their new rattles from her, although she did get to see Abbie enjoy playing with their new toys.

I worry about their eyes. It can’t be good for a baby to stare at an illuminated light bulb for minutes at a time. When I catch them staring at the light I try to position my hand so it blocks the bulb from their eyes. Or if I’m feeling ambitious, I’ll move my head to block the bulb and pretend the look in their eyes is one of admiration.

* When the rattle is shaken, not the baby.

Pizza Party

We ate pizza for supper the other night. This is actually a rare event in our house that happens about once a month. Just one pizza is too much for us to eat, and we usually order multiple pizzas since the best deals seem to come in bulk. I imagine that once the boys are old enough to help us finish the leftovers by eating one whole pizza each, we’ll order it more often. For now though, I wrap up the uneaten pizza and throw it in the freezer where it usually remains forgotten until the next time we order pizza and I need to make room for new leftovers. Our freezer is an archeologist’s dream of layered leftover pizza, each slice representing a month from our lives. I’m pretty sure that we have pizza in our freezer that’s older than our marriage, and of the dozens of hyperbolic statements I make, that sadly isn’t one of them.

I have been making Abbie her own meal of things like pasta or hot dogs, but now I’m trying to feed Abbie the same thing I eat. All of the parenting resources I’ve seen recommend doing sharing identical meals so the child doesn’t start expecting to eat a unique meal for supper. Since I usually end up making Ellie her own entrée, that would mean I’d have to make three entrees for every meal. Besides being a colossal drain on my time, I don’t think our refrigerator could hold all those leftovers with so much pizza in the way.

With sharing in mind, I removed the smallest piece from the circle, placed it on a plate, and lovingly cut it into toddler-sized pieces. Abbie hasn’t grasped the concept of biting smaller pieces off a larger hunk of food like pizza or carrot sticks, instead opting to stick the whole thing in her mouth or nothing at all. While I do enjoy watching Abbie unhinge her jaw in an attempt to consume a pretzel whole, Ellie usually scolds me when I let her do it saying something about choking hazards. I guess if a pretzel could almost take down the most powerful man in the world, it should have no trouble with a toddler.

I took the plate of pizza bits, and dumped them on Abbie’s high chair tray. She looked at the pizza with its gooey cheese and sausage chunks too large to stay on the tiny pieces, looked back at the Tasteeos also populating her tray, and immediately moved to sweep the less desirable food onto the floor. Much to the dog’s delight, this meant she was trying to dispose of her pizza.

This wasn’t a big surprise to me. Despite starting her life on solids with the willingness of a baby bird to eat just about anything we offer, she’s starting to become pickier. I already knew that she doesn’t like cheese unless it forms some sort of sauce a la macaroni and cheese. It had been a few months since I last tried giving her pizza, and I hoped she’d learned to accept it like every other child on Earth, but no luck. I tired making it a game, tried showing her that I wanted to eat it, and tried forcing her to try some thinking she’d like it if she got a taste, but she refused to take it. Discouraged, I offered her a food that I knew she’d eat: Broccoli. Even if Abbie isn’t the only child on Earth who refuses to eat pizza, she has to be the only one who refuses pizza and loves broccoli.

She greedily snapped up the broccoli like I expected. I left the pizza on her tray in the hope that she might come back to it after the broccoli, or possibly slip a piece in her mouth by accident in her gluttony, but no luck there either. I finally removed the pizza from her tray and set it on my plate for my consumption. I might have saved it for her to try again at a later meal, but our refrigerator is out of space.

How Did I Get Here?

Yesterday afternoon, after stocking up on Vital Supplies in ridiculous warehouse club quantities, the twins were still asleep. After risking our sanity walking around a store, we decided to really live dangerously and go out to eat. We didn’t just visit a fast food restaurant either; stopped at an actual sit-down restaurant with actual wait staff that come to our table to take our order, bring our food, and ask us to leave if we can’t keep those kids quiet. This was our visit trip to any restaurant as a five-unit family. I’ve always been terrified of the scenario where I’m trying to feed a baby while keeping Abbie placated and hoping the occasional food molecule somehow finds its way into my mouth. As long as the twins kept dozing, we were willing to press our luck.

We chose a small Mexican restaurant, and demanded their biggest available table so we could set two carriers at the end. I felt a little bad about hogging their large table, but we did have five of us. So what if three of them weren’t ordering an entrée?

As I sat at our table, I looked back by the door and saw my college advisor sitting at a table with friends. That brought back a flood of memories from my previous life, not just as a college student, but also as a productive member of society contributing to our GDP. Thanks to my degree in television and radio production, I held an honest job where a sat around all day, ran errands for my employer, and listened to people scream a lot. It was similar to my current position, except I got paid for it and the hours were shorter.

Ellie’s favorite memory about my advisor came from my final days in college half a dozen years ago. As he was dispensing advice in class like most good advisors do, one of his last nuggets of wisdom was “don’t get married right away. Spend some time working on your career, and then settle down once you’re established.” I heard his advice soon after getting engaged, a fact that my advisor didn’t know but my friends were all too eager to bludgeon him with after class.

Looking back on it, he was right; if you want a career in the media, you cannot settle down until you’ve found a job you want to do for a couple decades. If I wanted success, I needed to move to where the jobs are,* and bounce from employer to employer, slowing climbing the ladder and building my resume. Only after several years of advancement could I claim the things that all ambitious people strive for: Money and power, and the corresponding divorce and ulcers.

Poor foolish me, I had already tied myself down. I took a nearby job in my field that thankfully had nothing to do with local television, and toiled for a few years while Ellie finished school. When Abbie arrived the day after Ellie graduated, I left the career path I’d spent several years and thousands of dollars preparing for, and entered into a life of raising children. Childcare is a job so simple any idiot could do it, a fact demonstrated by the legions of idiots raising children out there.

Now my career, the paying career, is on hold for a few years while I raise three children to a level of self-sufficiency defined as being able to tie their own shoes. Maybe someday I’ll reenter the workforce. Maybe someday I’ll spend my 12 hours a day on World of Warcraft. Either way, I’m fortunate to have a wife who can support our family financially while I can do just about everything else.

My advisor came to our table before he left. He complimented us on our beautiful children and told us to enjoy the kids because time moves fast. He never stops giving advice.

* “Where the jobs are” is also known as “California,” or possibly “New York.”

In the Club

Ellie is enjoying an easy rotation this week. When I say “easy” I mean I can do it, despite the fact that I have only slightly more medical training than any of our children individually, though combined they could have more than me. She goes in early in the morning, engages herself in the morning meeting for a solid hour, goes to the radiology department, answers a few questions, and goes home. The only part of that I couldn’t do is answer the questions, although the morning meeting can be brutal from what I’ve heard. She works harder in the afternoons and evenings, but this week her mornings are mostly free. We took advantage of this free time this morning to journey to our nearby warehouse club for great bargains on large packages of diapers and 64-ounce bottles of barbecue sauce.

We left as a family, something I’m growing more comfortable about doing. A few weeks ago, I would have left the twins at home at all times, terrified that strangers would inflict horrifying germs on the twins, and horrified that the twins would inflict terrifying screams on strangers. Now that we’ve got them on something approaching a predictable schedule, I’m more confident that we can keep them calm outside the house. As for the germs, they may still catch something, but since they’re under the influence of multiple vaccines and shots, anything they catch will probably only threaten my sanity.

Once we reached the store, I threw Abbie in the cart while Ellie trailed pushing the twins in their double stroller, which was a great gift by the way. As we trekked about the store, I quickly realized how complicated my life has become. In a normal store, I can look for laundry detergent while Ellie looks for fabric softener, and look behind me to know that Ellie is still right with me. In the warehouse store, the two related items are separated by half-a-football-field worth of wide empty aisles and palettes of garlic powder packaged by the pound stacked to the ceiling, meaning we have to stare across a mighty chasm to spot the other. If only one of us had a child, the free one could run ahead, pick out the proper softener, and lug it back to the cart before it could wander too far. With children, we run nowhere and move deliberately everywhere, which means there is no running ahead, and I’d better make darn sure that Ellie is right behind me before I move because there’s no way I’m redirecting my cart’s momentum unnecessarily after it’s been weighed down by six pounds of body wash.

The children behaved remarkably well in the store. Despite having removed every interesting toy from her diaper bag before we left without my knowledge, Abbie was calm most of the time in the cart, and the store thoughtfully supplied us with food samples when she began fussing. No toy can calm a fussy toddler as well as a sample of double-chocolate cheesecake, and those little cups make a perfect toddler serving size. The twins slept the entire time, which not only made traversing the store a quieter chore, it also discouraged interested onlookers from touching the twins because most people have enough sense to not wake a sleeping baby. Not that I’m forbidding people from touching our twins, but I do want to limit germ transference and keep my sanity.

Dog Difficulties

Naturally, as soon as I start bragging about how the twins dropped their 5:30am fussing, they started doing it again. This is after they gave me the gift of sleeping until 4am before their feeding.

I tried to give them a few minutes before rising from bed; usually they tire themselves out with their complaining and fall back asleep without my intervention. Several minutes later, they were still complaining. I finally rolled out of bed when Ian hit the scream-so-hard-I-forget-to-inhale stage. By the time I reached their crib, they’d tired themselves out with their complaining and fell back asleep without my intervention. I hate being right sometimes.

By this time it was about 6am. I kicked the cat off the couch and settled back down to sleep, ready to jump back up when as soon as someone screamed. They stayed silent though, and I drifted back to sleep until 6:50 when the neighbor’s dog’s barking woke me back up. To be fair to the dog, I’m not sure if his barking woke me up, or if my cat, who had settled back on the sofa’s top cushion, woke me up while fleeing across my blanket.

Our sofa is positioned in front of the living room window, which overlook the backyard. This position offers many benefits, such as maximizing the living room floor space, allowing us to enjoy natural lighting from the sofa, and giving the pets a perch to watch the backyard. For the cats, this gives them the opportunity to look down upon the birds, dogs, children, and other inferior creatures roaming our shared backyard. For the dog, this perch allows her to bark menacingly at the neighbor dogs from the safety of our living room. The neighbor’s dog knows this, and periodically barks outside our window to goad our dog into barking. The neighbor dog thinks this is great fun. I think this is a pain in the butt, especially before 7am when I’m trying to keep twin newborns asleep while myself sleeping a little longer. I think this is a major nuisance when our dog breaks the window barking at the neighbor dogs, like she did about a week ago. Fortunately the broken glass didn't hurt anybody; no dogs were hurt either, which could be fortunate or unfortunate depending on how you look at it.

We just replaced the window a couple days ago, and already the neighbor dog is trying to break it again. Our dog was still locked up for the night though, so the neighbor dog gave up eventually, and the twins and I drifted back to sleep. I woke up again at 7:15, 15 minutes after I wanted the twins up, but I felt I deserved to sleep in after spending part of my night on the couch.

Sleep Evolution

I’m amazed that even with the twins being almost three months old, I still spend most of my time with them trying to change their sleep status. When they’re asleep, I want them awake; when they’re awake, I want them asleep. For example, right now I’m typing with an Ian in my lap, a boy who should be asleep in his crib, but he’d rather be in my lap, and he knows how to get there. I don’t remember Abbie sleeping like a newborn this long after being born, of course I also don’t remember Abbie being born eight weeks early.

The great thing about their sleep patterns at this age though, is if I don’t like them, just wait a couple days and they’ll change. They may not change for the better, but they’ll at least be different.

In their overnight pattern, the boys went through a phase for about a week where they would wake up shortly after 2am for a feeding, go back to sleep, and then start fussing almost exactly at 5:30 every morning. As the week progressed, they woke later and later past 2am, eventually waking at almost 3am, but no matter how late they took their overnight feeding, they still woke at 5:30 every morning. Maybe their immature brains are still wiring their sleeping patterns and adjusting to their wakeup time of 7am, or maybe they just wanted to get a headstart on their 8am nap. Either way, I camped out on the couch when I heard them start fussing, ready to pop a pacifier in them when they woke until I wanted them awake at 7am. This may sound cruel to limp them along for 90 minutes when they obviously sound hungry, but they never really woke up. Although they sound angry, they’re still mostly asleep, and I need to be judicious with the pacifier insertion lest I wake them trying to make them suck and really tick them off.

A couple days ago though, they magically started sleeping until at least 3am, and after I put them back down, they stayed asleep until 7am. This is an obviously better sleeping pattern, giving me longer stretches of uninterrupted sleep unless I have to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom which I usually do since I’m still used to waking up around 2am. It’s thrown me for a loop though as I adjust to their new pattern. Letting me sleep until 3am lets me drift into a deeper sleep, which I’m having trouble waking from. I’m suddenly much groggier for their overnight feeding. I’ve kept everything straight so far, giving both their correct bottles and putting them back to sleep in their proper left-right position, but if I don’t wake up better soon, I’m sure that one morning I’ll come out to wake them at 7am only to find Tory sleeping on the left side of the crib, and Ian sleeping on the couch, or possibly in the dog’s kennel. The other quirk is I’d come to rely on them waking me at 5:30, and then keeping me semi-conscious until their waketime. If they don’t wake me up though, I don’t wake up no matter how badly I want to keep them on a strict schedule. This morning I slept until almost 7:30; not that I didn’t need the extra sleep, especially if Ian insists on staying in my lap while I want us both to sleep.

Let There Be Light

We’re about a month and a half past Christmas. That means Abbie has officially had enough time to grow tired of all of her Christmas toys. She still hasn’t done anything with the PopOnz playset we bought for her, even though the box clearly says it’s for ages 18-months and up. She still likes her Fridge Farm, and as much as I hate LeapFrog toys, I have to admit that one was worth the money. She also likes the pirate ship bath toy we gave her, but we heavily ration that one’s appearance to bath time every other night, so it always seems new. She’s thoroughly bored of the rest of her toys, and needs to uncover new forms of entertainment.

Enter light switches. They may be the perfect toddler toy as they combine the clicking of a button, cause and effect lessons as the light goes on and off, and the omnipotent godlike sensation all toddlers enjoy as she casts the rooms into light or shadow depending on her whim.

I noticed that she liked light switches weeks ago while in a hospital waiting room. After being stuck there for several minutes, Abbie was going stir-crazy. These waiting rooms offer precious little for her to play with, the diaper bag contains only toys she’s chewed on a million times before, and a toddler can only eat so many generic Froot Loops. I let her roam the room hoping she’d find something within reach to play with that wasn’t expensive, sharp, or a biohazard. After a few more minutes of wandering and whining, she noticed the light switch. Most light switches are several feet off the ground at arm level where an average adult can easily reach out to flip the switch on to determine what toy he just lodged in his foot while on his way to warm milk for the 3am feeding. These switches were considerably lower, at about waist level, in anticipation of the needs of the wheelchair bound and possibly antsy toddlers. Abbie stretched as high as her tippy-toes would allow, and after much rumbling and reaching, pulled the switch down. Her face lit with joy when she discovered her new power, or at least I imagine it did; we were in a windowless room that was now pitch black. I fumbled my way to where I remembered the switch being, flipped it back on, and watched Abbie take about .81 seconds to flip it back off. We spent the rest of our time alone in the room playing this game.

At home, most of the switches are also too high for her to reach. She needs a large immobile object to climb on in order to reach any of them. Enter the toilet. She’s discovered that after climbing onto the toilet seat and no doubt collecting millions of germs, she can reach the light switch and flick it on and off to her hearts content. Of course we keep the lid closed as a safety measure to keep her from falling in the bowl, but it looks like we just enabled her to injure herself by falling from the seat and onto the tile below, possibly cracking her head open on the porcelain sink on her way down. I try to keep the bathroom door shut to keep her out of there, but the door still winds up being left open an awful lot. I blame bathroom gnomes.

When I hear the familiar click followed by the drag-out fan alternating between on and off, I immediately storm into the bathroom, assuming I don’t have a baby or two in my lap, or sternly scold her for climbing to such perilous heights. I then make her climb down, and find something safe for her to play with, like her Fridge Farm. It still holds a little interest for her.

I Scream, You Scream, Abbie Screams

My life is a monotony of childcare. I sit on the floor feeding twins for 20 minutes, and then spend the next 40 minutes trying to keep both of them awake without being spit up on too much and hoping Abbie doesn’t throw anything at her brothers, or at least nothing too dangerous. Then I change the twins, set them down for their nap, and try to accomplish a few things around the house assuming Abbie doesn’t mind being ignored. Two hours later, after bouncing between cleaning, entertaining Abbie, and reinserting pacifiers, I repeat the process. Sometimes I need to do something to break out of the rut; sometimes I need to go get frozen custard.

Frozen custard is my vice. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s basically triple-delicious ice cream. I believe it’s made with egg yolks so none of those pesky cholesterol-free egg whites interfere with the flavor. I hadn’t had any in several* days, so when I saw today’s Flavor of the Day was chocolate peanut crunch, a medley of three of my favorite ingredients, I loaded the kids and goaded the wife into the car after supper for some sweet frozen indulgence; never mind that it was 30 degrees outside and the nearest restaurant was ten miles from our house.

I rarely take all three kids out of the house simultaneously if I can help it. I believe this is the first time we’ve chosen to take all three kids into a restaurant. We took everybody into a McDonald’s while traveling to and from the grandparents, but when you eat at a McDonald’s on successive days it’s pretty obvious that you’re eating there not from choice, but because you’ve got a car full of hungry pre-verbal children.

I figured frozen custard made a good introduction to restaurant life with the threesome; we pop in, eat a few quick bites, and leave before anyone gets too cranky. Even if someone does get too cranky, chances are we’ll be surrounded by parents also trying to appease their cranky children, so no one will have room to complain. As extra insurance, I timed the trip so we’d feed the twins while eating ice cream. There’s no way a baby could complain through a feeding, unless they choke on their own spittle, which they almost always do, but at least they don’t yet have the lung capacity to complain loudly.

Ellie ordered a sundae, and I ordered a cone. Our plan was to lay the twins across our laps and feed them while shoveling custard into Abbie’s mouth and, if we had time, our own mouths. In hindsight I should have also ordered something in a cup that would have allowed me to set my treat down when I needed a free hand. With one hand permanently attached to Tory’s bottle, I had to lay my cone on a napkin every time Abbie was ready for another spoonful, which was approximately once every .0896 seconds.

The twins tolerated the excursion well. They ate without much complaint or spit-up. Abbie took the stop less well, complaining at first when we took too long to feed her custard, and then complaining when she had to sit still too long while we finished feeding her brothers. I didn’t feel bad about bothering other patrons since three of the four families in the dining area also had small children; the fourth family had my sympathies. I tried appeasing her with the leftover custard, but she insisted on leaving her high chair and shoved it to the side in disgust. She’ll learn to like custard more as she grows. At least, she’s going to have plenty of exposure to it if she accompanies her daddy, so she’d better learn to like it more.

* Four

I Am Sufficiently Prepared for Some Football

A long time ago, like back in college, Super Bowl Sunday used to mean getting together with many friends, making snide comments about the game and the commercials, and pigging out on junk food for hours on end. Now that I have multiple children who are too young to appreciate the difference between a chop block and a cut block, Super Bowl Sunday means inviting a handful of our bravest friends over to our home to watch the television while listening to wailing infants and countless toys playing annoying arrangements of music from the public domain. At least we could still pig out on junk food for several consecutive hours.

We started planning our party with the most important part: The food. We had a perfectly balanced spread from all of the major food groups. Fats and sweets came from the cupcakes I baked a few days ago for some reason, possibly because Valentine’s Day is approaching, and doesn’t everyone have cupcakes with pink sprinkles for Valentine’s Day? Grains came from the giant batch of Chex Mix Ellie prepared, which could be her favorite food since it combines two of her preferred ingredients: Salt and Worcestershire sauce. Meats came from the Little Smokies and chicken wings. Dairy came from the queso dip a friend brought. Vegetables came from the carrots and celery that accompanied the wings, and from the tomatoes and onions in the queso dip. Since we had two separate sources of veggies, we could pig out guilt free.

This spread provided us with supper, which meant Abbie had to pick a meal out of it too. While some parents provide only the finest organic foods to their children, we encouraged Abbie to form a meal out of Little Smokies, which are not only non-organic, they may not even be a carbon-based food. She liked pieces of the Chex Mix, especially the Kix that Ellie always adds in full violation of the Chex Mix Laws. Just to make sure she had a healthy meal, we gave her a full serving of milk, and then we refilled her sippy cup with root beer.

I caught as much of the game as I could. I spent much of my time running around, cleaning up, preparing food, and feeding somebody other than me. I devised an effective strategy of working in the kitchen or the kids’ room within earshot of the television, and whenever I heard someone exclaim something exciting like “wow,” “what a play,” or “is the bone sticking out?” I would rush into the living room to catch the replay. I also ran to the television for commercial breaks, but I returned to my work as soon as I realized I was watching a serious commercial, or a commercial involving Jay Mohr. Of course I made sure the kids were safe if I was watching them before leaving the room, because my children’s safety is my number one concern unless a very pivotal play is occurring, which never really happened in this game.

My rushing in and out of rooms strategy worked, although it slowed my work. I finished washing the dishes much later than usual. I put the twins down for their nap a little later than usual. I ate my supper a little later than usual, though to be fair supper and lunch kind of ran together today. I’ll pay for that tomorrow, but it was nice to act like I was in college again for one night, even if I had to act in spurts between childcare.

"On a completely unrelated topic, I'm having a very, very important dinner party tonight."

Ellie had a social event to attend for work last night. It was a dinner party, and attendance was optional; she could go, or she could spend the next week explaining to everyone where she was Friday. She chose to go. Seeing as this was my best shot at a Valentine’s Day dinner, I went with her. Children were strongly discouraged from attending, though the organizers made an exception for ones small enough to remain in their carriers. This meant the twins came with us, but Abbie would need a babysitter.

Our first choice to watch Abbie was the neighbor’s 15-year-old son. He doesn’t fit the traditional mold of a babysitter in the sense that he’s a he, but he is the oldest of seven children, and therefore more experienced and better qualified to care for Abbie than I am. We lined him up to watch her for the night, but then Ellie’s father informed us that afternoon that he’d be visiting for the weekend and would be happy to watch Abbie for us. We told the neighbor’s boy that we suddenly didn’t need him for the night; I couldn’t tell if he was happy to have the night free on short notice, disappointed that he wouldn’t be paid tonight, or just an apathetic 15-year-old boy.

With Abbie cared for, we packed up the twins and left for the dinner. When we arrived, we picked the nearest table, planted the twins in their carriers on it, and settled in. Normally I hate these events since I’m surrounded by medical professionals discussing medical topics, leaving me nothing to do but graze off the food and drinks, and since I don’t drink alcohol, even this has limited appeal. However, this would be the first chance for many of Ellie’s co-workers to see the twins, or at least their first chance since the Christmas party. This gave me an easy way to make small talk for the entire night between bites off my dinner plate by answering the standard twin questions* for everyone in attendance individually.

I actually enjoyed something approaching a night off of parenting, as everyone was only too happy to hold and feed the twins while I ate. The night’s biggest excitement came when Ellie went to change a poopy diaper that was quickly approaching blowout status, and discovered that I forgot to pack diapers; I packed the milk, a changing pad, two changes of clothes, but no diapers. Fortunately the twins have been running me so ragged that I never took the time to remove the new box of diapers we bought Monday from the car. I ran out to the car, pulled out six of the box’s 168 diapers, and ran back to Ellie before the poop spread, all the while marveling at how my laziness had paid off.

We returned home just in time to plop Abbie in bed. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been cooperative for grandpa, and he let her spend much of the night bouncing between the TV and her loud electronic toys to keep her happy. This meant that she was wound up and not ready for sleep. We read a little extra to her, gave her a little extra bedtime milk, and let her enjoy a little extra quiet free time before making her go to sleep. When we decided the banging emanating from her room meant she was still too wound up, we repeated the process. The result was her regular 9:15 bedtime turned into a 10:50 bedtime. I feel bad for letting her stay up so late, but I don’t know how to wind her down any faster. Maybe I should have asked the neighbor’s boy for some advice.

* “Are they identical?”
“Which one’s the good one?”
“Are they sleeping okay?”
“How are you still functional after getting that much sleep?”

How I Know I'm Getting Old

Me (upon hearing that Ben Folds will be giving a concert in Des Moines): “Feh, it’s too much trouble to get out of the house now.”

[Later]

Me (upon hearing that David Sedaris will be speaking in Des Moines): “Ooh, time to find a babysitter.”

A Memorable First

I imagine one of the best parts about having twins, next to buying everything in bulk, is watching them meet milestones at almost the exact same time. Seeing them both learn to roll over, crawl, and eventually walk within hours of each other will be exciting. Plus knowing one is suddenly more mobile will give me a warning not to leave the other one dangling on the edge of the bed. The latest milestone they hit almost simultaneously is pooping right through their diapers. Whatever parenting lacks in glamour, it makes up with excitement.

Ian was first to blow out his diaper. I picked him off the floor last night, and noticed he left an odd substance on his floor blanket. I’m so used to seeing milk flow out of their mouths, I forgot that things could come out of the other end as well. While inspecting the strange stain, it never occurred to me that sitting him on my knee for a minute would be a phenomenally bad idea. When I realized my mistake, poop was gushing out of the leg hole around his diaper and onto my jeans. That’s the price I pay for buying cheap diapers. Fortunately jeans come clean, though when Ellie found us she had to ask why I was pants-less while changing our child. Many wipes later, Ian wore a fresh diaper and a clean outfit, and I found some clean pants to wear, or at least an old pair with a less offensive stain.

The next morning, I noticed a similar mess coming from Tory. My experience with Ian told me exactly what to do; I immediately lifted him onto the changing table without pausing to inspect the substance or allowing him to touch any more fabric. Fortunately he was still wearing his premium nighttime diaper with strong elastic around the thighs that prevented anything from pouring out the bottom. Unfortunately, all that poop had to go somewhere, and that somewhere was up his back. Many many wipes later, Tory wore a fresh diaper and a clean outfit, and our changing table sported an unspoiled changing pad.

I’m guessing their simultaneous mega-messes are linked to the few ounce of formula I’ve started giving them every day. In case you’re a non-parent who trudged through so much poop for some reason, the breast milk they had been exclusively eating kept them regular to the tune of about five poops every day. Of all their accomplishments so far, their colon-related ones may be what I’m most proud of. Formula slows the gut though, and they’d cut back to one poop a day. Apparently the poop had built up until the quantity was more than the diaper could hold. The result was a first moment I’ll never forget, even though I’ve never seen a baby book with a space for “first blow-out.”

Sleep, or Lack Thereof

If I were the subject of some cruel scientific study on sleep deprivation, someone would have stopped the study by now. I can just see the head of research coming down hard on a sadistic underling for even trying to discover what happens when a human being survives on limited sleep for this long. Even if he didn’t, some radical animal rights group would have surely sprung me by now.

Sadly I’m not in a scientific experiment, and no one from the Earth Liberation Front is coming to set me loose in the wild, though if any activists wanted to take an overnight shift I’d probably let them. I’m caring for twin newborns who don’t seem to sleep nearly as much as they should, and a toddler who limits my nap possibilities.

I think the lack of sleep is starting to build. I’m having trouble remembering things. My throat is sore. I’m having trouble remembering things. I’m blinking a lot. Last night was a little worse than usual, but not too atypical.

After feeding the twins and shutting down the house for the night, I stumbled into bed shortly after 11pm. Much like a toddler who skipped his nap though, I was too tired to fall asleep at first before finally drifting off around midnight. Shortly after 1am, I woke to hear Ian complaining furiously. I shuffled to their crib, gave him his pacifier, waited a minute for him to fall back asleep, and returned to my bed. An hour later, I awoke to hear both crying. I fed them, burped them, changed them, and set them back down before returning to bed around 3am.

By 5:30 they were awake again. 5:30 is a no man’s land of feeding; their wake time of 7am is too close to feed them, but it’s too far away to let them go. I gave them their pacifiers and camped out on the couch by their crib. If they were going to wake up angry, I’d feed them; if I could limp them along for 90 minutes, I would.

I managed to coax them into waiting. They spent most of the 90 minutes complaining in their half-asleep state, but they made it with me rising from the couch half-a-dozen times to return somebody’s pacifier.

So that means I slept for five-ish hours last night. Throw in an hour nap in the afternoon, and I’m doing passably as long as you don’t consider that I’m not sleeping longer than three hours at a time anymore. It doesn’t seem so bad until I think about. Sometimes when I catch the dog napping, I’ll poke her just to wake her up; if I can’t sleep, she can’t either. Maybe I’ll draw the ire of an animal rights activist. Maybe they’ll watch the kids for me for a little while so I can sleep.