I Love You, Burp Cloth

Abbie has a set bedtime routine where we do the exact same things in the exact same order every single night. Mostly we do this for her benefit as a way of signaling to her that it’s time to wind down and prepare for sleep since she’s still too young to understand when we say, “it’s time to wind down and prepare for sleep.” Partially we do this identical infinitely repeating routine for my benefit since I’m wiped by the time we reach her bedtime, and if I don’t have a step-by-step routine I can follow without thinking I’m liable to do something dangerous like shutting the dog in Abbie’s room and Abbie in the dog’s kennel for the night, or possibly even putting her to bed without brushing her teeth.

Her routine ends with me turning off the bedroom light, singing, and wishing her goodnight before leaving the room and shutting her door behind me for hopefully the next ten hours. Usually the routine is peaceful or at least quiet as the worst she normally does instead of winding down is run about the room while I sing frantically searching for an exit, a toy, a book, or anything that would prevent her from going to sleep. The other night though, she started screaming as soon as I turned off the light, and I mean furious, wandering the room, banging her head on the floor in frustration screaming. This was unusual since she generally waits until I’ve left the room and she’s climbed onto something and can’t get down before she starts screaming. I figured it was just a reluctance to go to bed combined with aggravation that I hadn’t paid enough attention to her for the day, so I continued with the routine and sang to her because singing always calms her down.

Singing didn’t calm her down. When I finished my song and she was still screaming, I sat in silence staring at her for a couple minutes, but that didn’t calm her down either. After reassuring words failed as well, I left the room and figured she’d wear herself out eventually. I had important websites to read anyway, what with the NFL draft approaching. Before retiring to the computer, I asked Ellie, who was taking a shower, to check on her when she was done.

Abbie continued throwing a tantrum until Ellie opened her door to check on her. Within a couple minutes, the screaming stopped and Abbie was on her way to sleep. I wanted to know how Ellie calmed her, but I was only on number 12 of my research into the draft’s top 25 defensive backs, and by the time I finished Ellie was asleep for the night.

The next day I discovered that the secret to making Abbie fall asleep is burp clothes. She had no burp clothes in her room, which explained the wandering and frustration. I forgot that Abbie always brings a burp cloth to bed with her, or several burp clothes if she can find them. It’s not uncommon to find her curled up in bed with her giant stuffed puppy supporting one side, a mound of a dozen burp clothes supporting the other side, and her pillow and blanket tossed to the side or onto the floor if necessary. She’s slept with a burp cloth in her bed for every nap since she was old enough to pull those burp clothes into her crib after we left them draped over the railing to air dry them after she soaked them with spit-up.

Abbie never latched onto a favorite comfort item like favorite stuffed animal, favorite toy, or favorite dust bunny, so I didn’t even think that she needed a burp cloth to fall asleep. Now I’ve added, “check for a burp cloth” to the nightly routine. It comes right before “ensure that Abbie and the dog are on the correct sides of the door after I leave her room.”

Why I Mailed It in the Last Two Days

I spent most of Thursday preparing for the aforementioned funeral. My duties mainly revolved around creating a memorial DVD for the family to use during the service. It was a relatively simple project of slapping several video clips and pictures together without regard for artistic flow, but even a simple project requires an investment of a few hours.

The neighbor families helped me by providing childcare throughout the day. This allowed me to concentrate on the DVD that needed to be done in less than 24 hours, but it also meant Abbie was ignored by me for most of the day. By evening, her lack of attention came to a head as Abbie dug her fingernails into Ian’s forehead while I was feeding them and my hands were filled with bottles, and by “dug” I mean “dug hard enough to draw blood in a couple of spots.” He tried sucking through it at first, but once he realized how much it hurt, he stopped eating and started screaming. Usually I can bring the twins down from their screaming fits with a bottle in the mouth, but he was already too far gone to derive comfort from a simple suckle. I had to stop feeding Tory to hoist Ian on my shoulder, and the sudden lack of food sent him into a screaming fit. With a screaming baby on my shoulder and another on my foot, I scolded Abbie for hurting her brother in the first place, and the sense that she was in trouble threw her into tantrum. By this time the pain may have receded from Ian’s forehead, but any notion he had of calming down probably disappeared as he heard two other screaming children. I had three children, each screaming uncontrollably because the other two were screaming; that’s what we in the business like to call a “trifecta.”

Somehow, probably thanks to the neighbors that stopped by to help out, everyone calmed down, and I focused on the DVD, managing to finish burning a final copy minutes before her family left for the funeral in the morning. We then prepared our family for the funeral, throwing Abbie in the nicest dress she had, and the boys in matching duck outfits because those were the nicest outfits they had even though we hate dressing them identically. We managed to herd everyone out the door while making ourselves look somewhat presentable in time to arrive at the funeral minutes before the viewing ended.

We had several minutes between the viewing and the service, so Ellie staked out a row of seats for us near the doors in case we needed to make a quick escape, and I spent the time walking Abbie in the lobby to keep her entertained. When the service started, I was worried how the kids would act, but everyone behaved as well as I could ask. The twins were quiet, cute, and comforting during the service until about halfway through when they fell asleep, which I was fine with even though it was well before their scheduled nap time. Abbie was more of a handful; she sat on my lap demanding I read to her most of the time, which I obliged with whispers. We periodically took a break from reading picture books to read hymnals as she seemed to enjoy the hymns we sang.*

The service was as beautiful and difficult as you would imagine. The parents gave wonderful eulogies, including one of the most powerful funeral statements I’ve ever heard from the father. To the best of my memory, he said:

I talk to a lot of expectant parents, and the one thing they always say is they want a healthy baby. They don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl. They don’t care what color eyes she has, or what color hair, they just want a healthy baby. Well now I know that it’s okay even if she’s not.

A lot of people grabbed tissues at that point, including the beautiful woman next to me. Unfortunately the funeral ran longer than we expected, and Ellie had a doctor’s visit scheduled, so we duck out a little early, right after the parents’ eulogies. Also unfortunately, this appointment was on the opposite end of town. Also also unfortunately, the freeway that would have provided a fast and simple path to the suburban office is under heavy construction, sending us on detours for our detours until we finally found an open entrance ramp.**

Fortunately Ellie was only about ten minutes late. I needed to pick her up when she was done, so I passed the time at our friends in the exurbs. She has a one-year-old girl, and was excited to see our three kids. She was so excited that she set up two Pack ‘N Plays for naps and cooked a fabulous, homemade lunch for Abbie. Abbie thwarted her efforts by dozing off in the car right before arrival, a maneuver that would prevent her from taking a nap, and refusing to eat most of her food, even those delicious sweet potato fries.

Even without much of a nap or lunch, Abbie was pleasant for our friend. The bevy of unfamiliar toys to throw and chew on probably helped keep her interest. The children were so pleasant they volunteered to watch them for us so we could have a nice dinner, an offer that gave us peace while quadrupling the number of children in their home. They had a familiar Sesame Street video, a bouncy seat, and a baby gym, so our children remained well-behaved in our absence despite Abbie’s refusal to eat their wonderful cooking for supper either, but I still felt guilty enough for dumping our children that I bought a grocery store gift card on the way back.

We packed the children back up and returned home for the first time in nine hours. Abbie took advantage of the ride to take that nap she missed earlier in the afternoon. When we arrived at home, I prepared the twins’ bedtime bottles while Ellie improvised an Abbie supper of yogurt, cereal, and other sugary items right before bedtime.

We spent today catching up on all the chores we missed the rest of the week. Remember that laundry I said I needed to fold last weekend? I finally did it today. I also made Abbie some sweet potato fries. She refused to eat those too, until I remembered the universal child food magnet: Ketchup.

Here’s hoping next week is a little calmer.

* The service was Mormon, and my first exposure to any Mormon service. Apparently they remain seated during their hymns, which was fine with us along with our child-filled laps.

** For anyone familiar with Des Moines geography, we started on SE 14th, and had to drive all the way to MLK to enter I-235. This also happened to be the ramp closest to our home, so we might as well have just driven back the way we came.

Still Too Busy for Words, Not Too Busy for Pictures

We have a lot of Marshmallow Peeps left over from Easter.


Fortunately Abbie is willing to help us reduce our stockpile.


By the way, those are some Easter basket stickers on her face. She gets into everything.


Here’s photographic evidence of the twins being too big for one Pack ‘N Play.


This is my patented twin feeding technique, with one head on each foot supported by a Boppy.

Busy

Too busy to blog today. Thanks for the comments on yesterday's post; I'll pass them along.

Too Close to Home

Ellie came home this morning around 10am. This was unexpected because I knew her schedule for the day, and it didn’t have any holes for her to come home so early. She immediately and somewhat frantically asked for Abbie’s shoes so they could go to the park. Once again, this was unexpected if for no other reason than she’s usually more upbeat when taking Abbie to the park. I asked what was happening, and she said that her co-worker’s nine-month-old girl, who also happens to be a neighbor, had coded this morning, and they needed help watching their son in the park. Another neighbor took him in for the morning shortly after that, and Ellie returned to work. An hour later she returned home to confirm that the girl had died this morning.

Her death wasn’t entirely unexpected. She suffered from a chromosomal abnormality so rare that the medical community might name the condition after her. The doctors thought she might be lucky to live for a year, and everyone knew that she could code at any time. That doesn’t mean her death doesn’t hurt, especially since she had been acting normally the night before except for a little loss of appetite.

There’s plenty of sympathy to go around. They have two other children, a three-year-old who doesn’t quite seem to understand, and a grade-schooler who is taking it hard. The father is finishing a difficult month at work. The mother is absolutely crushed, and I can only imagine what she’s feeling. The girl never developed mentally or physically much beyond a newborn, and it must be unbelievably draining to care for a child that helpless for nine months straight. On one hand, the mother may be feeling a sense of relief that her burden is lifted, freeing her to devote more time to her older children. On the other hand, she may be horrified that she’s feeling anything other than grief right now.

There’s little we can do to help them, but we’re doing what we can. Ellie bought their groceries this afternoon, and, in accordance with Iowa tradition, is cooking a meal and sweets for them. I’m dusting off my computer and college education to throw together a memorial video for the family, which somehow seems a lot more fulfilling than the instructional videos that sold for $39.95 that I used to throw together. Ian and Tory helped out by being cute and cooing a lot for the family when we visited them this afternoon. Abbie helped by keeping the neighbor’s dogs entertained while they were visiting too.

Otherwise, there’s not much more we can do other than keeping them in our thoughts and prayers while going about our lives. And of course, we’re hugging our kids a little tighter.

Sleepers in the Night

The boys are sleeping better at night. During the day? Not so much. At night though, they keep moving closer to sleeping all the way until morning. I set them down at 9pm, and they consistently go past 3am before screaming for formula. That gives them six hours of uninterrupted sleep, which is the official standard of “sleeping through the night.” I’m waiting until they sleep until 7:30am, the time I intend for them to wake up, before formally declaring them “sleeping through the night.”

Usually they wake sometime between 3:30am and 4am. Sometimes they go a little past 4am. This morning they waited until 5am before waking, giving them a record eight straight hours of sleep, or at least giving me eight straight hours that I didn’t have to tend to them. That would let me catch a full night’s sleep if I were talented enough to go to bed as soon as I set the twins down, which I’m not. Nighttime is the best time for internet time. Plus, who wakes up at 5am? Besides people who actually contribute to the GDP of course.

We still put them in a Pack ‘N Play in the living room for the night. I’d like to set up separate Pack ‘N Plays for them, but we’d need to clear some space first. The most expendable object in the living room is the television though, and without it we couldn’t mock Kellie Pickler every Tuesday and Wednesday night. Eventually the boys will sleep in Abbie’s room at night, but I’m waiting until they’re consistently sleeping through the night before trying that so the boys don’t wake Abbie at 4am as well. I’m sure we’ll have enough problems with Abbie waking the boys while prowling the room before falling asleep herself.

If the boys are like Abbie, they may be in the living room for several more months. I think Abbie was about ten-months-old before she consistently slept through the night. She started sleeping all night around three months, but started waking again for food around six months. I kept her nighttime gravy train flowing for about three months before introducing her to diminished milk quantities and the “cry it out method.” She’s slept all night ever since except for the occasional nightmare, vomit episode, or fall from bed.

We tried making all three sleep in the same room Sunday night. We had company requiring the use of the living room that night, and figured we’d see what would happen. It took more teamwork and coordination than the Cubs usually show, but Ellie and I managed to prepare all three children for bed simultaneously, and set them all down at almost the same time. We shut the door and waited for the worst. Maybe one of the boys would scream from the terror of spending the night in a different place. Maybe Abbie would crawl into one of their cribs. Maybe she’d spend a few minutes poking someone through the bars just to see what would happen.

Instead everyone fell asleep without so much as a complaint. Everyone stayed asleep until 4am too, at which point Tory decided it was formula time. I promptly removed him, and the other two stayed asleep while I prepared bottles. After feeding the two of them, I returned them to their room even though I could have laid them back in the living room just to see what would happen. The boys fell back asleep quickly, and Abbie never woke up.

I thought we had a new arrangement; that I could take down the Pack ‘N Play, reclaim the living room floor, and have everyone sleep in the same room. Then Tory took the unusual step of fussing at 6am when he usually sleeps until at least 7:30am after his feeding. I stuck his pacifier in to calm him back down to sleep before anyone else woke up. Then he woke again at 7am. When Ellie went in to calm him down, Abbie tore out of the room laughing. I could have gotten up with everybody at that point, but I had another half-hour of sleep coming to me. Plus, who wakes up at 7am?

Baby's Got a Brand New Crib

The twins are growing. They’re now 27 combined pounds of formula-sucking-and-spitting machinery. I’m glad they’re growing well; it gives me concrete evidence to supply to relatives that I’m performing at least some of my parenting duties correctly.

Growing up means they need new equipment though, large new equipment. Like the two high chairs we’ll have to cram into a kitchen that already barely has enough free floor space for the dog to run full-bore at the door every time we have a visitor. Or the two stationary entertainers we’ll have to stuff into a living room that’s already so full that Abbie has to stack her toys when she empties her toy box.

By far the biggest pain is the second crib. We’ve resisted so far by putting both boys in the same crib to sleep. Not only does this halve the number of cribs we need to provide, but they’re combined presence helps soothe each other, turning hard crying into gentle whimpering that we can easily ignore while preparing bottles for another feeding.

This weekend we decided that it’s time to put the boys in separate cribs. I came to this conclusion when, after a particularly fitful night where they didn’t so much soothe each other as they whacked each other in the face with sleepless arm flailings, I found the boys having scooted into awkward positions. Ian had turned himself diagonally with his head in a corner and his feet in Tory’s thigh. Tory had scooted forward several inches despite only having about an inch of headroom, resulting in him sleeping with his head tilted at a side angle that gave me a kink looking at it.

That morning I pulled our spare crib out of storage. We bought the crib used at a garage sale last summer when we knew the twins were coming but hadn’t figured out how we would afford everything. It’s not exactly a crib, but a 4-in-1 Sleep System that can form everything from a crib suitable for housing a newborn, to a day bed suitable for giving away when we find something better because this thing looks hideous and some of the paint is disturbingly peeling off.

We bought the crib without looking at it because it came sealed in a box small enough to imply “some assembly and possibly smelting required.” After opening the box, I had a mini-heart attack as I feared we were missing the assembly instructions for our highly complicated sleep system with approximately 1,835,213,687 loose parts. Fortunately but I found them tucked into a space between the railings that seemed to have been specially created to store them by engineers who realized someone would have a heart attack if they tried assembling this thing without instructions.

With much groaning and a little cursing, I had the crib assembled in time for their last nap of the day. We set them down and hoped for the best. Tory seemed to fall asleep without noticing his brother’s absence. Ian fussed at first, but celebrated his new space by rolling over in his sleep for the first time, resulting in possibly his best nap ever. Never again will the boys sleep in the same crib. They will however continue to sleep in the same Pack ‘N Play in the living room when Abbie is sleeping in the kids’ room since we’re still not ready to try letting all three sleep in the same room simultaneously, and there’s no way our living room has enough free space to set up two Pack ‘N Plays. Two Pack ‘N Plays is just crazy.

Best Laid Plans

Chores we wanted to complete this weekend:
- Fold Friday’s laundry.
- Wash a couple more loads of laundry.
- Balance the bank accounts.
- Plant flowers and top with mulch.
- Buy groceries.
- General Cleaning.

Chores we actually accomplished this weekend:
- Put away some of the clothes Abbie pulled out of her dresser.
- Planted flowers.
- Bought groceries, including subsequent trips for the things I overlooked the first time.
- Bought gifts for a shower on Saturday that we forgot about.
- Made waffles.
- Cleaned the waffle mess.

Chores I desperately need to finish on Monday:
- Fold Friday’s laundry.
- Wash underwear.
- Balance the bank accounts to determine which medical provider(s) still need money.
- Mulch before the weeds overrun the flowers.
- Finish putting away this weekend’s groceries.
- Read Saturday and Sunday’s newspapers.

"Catch you on the flip side, dudemeisters."

I remember paying special attention to Abbie’s ability to roll over when she was an infant. Rolling over is a special milestone in that it signifies the beginning of a child’s mobility; when you turn your back on a mobile infant, she may be in a completely different position when you turn around, like under the couch. Plus rolling over is one of the most definitive milestones. When your baby learns to roll over, you know it; no answering with “sorta” at your baby’s check-up for this one like you would when the nurse asks if she’s doing other milestones like holding her head up or recognizing faces.

I was so infatuated with Abbie learning to roll over that I spent time trying to teach her. I set her on a blanket, and gently pulled up one side until she rolled from her back to her tummy, and again back onto her back. Then I pulled the other side up until she rolled in the opposite direction back to her original position. I have no idea if the experience taught her how to roll over, but I think it did teach her how to scream in terror.

My philosophy with the twins is completely different. I’ve experienced the joy of achieving milestones, now I want the joy of babies who cause of minimum amount of trouble. The longer it takes the twins to learn to roll over, the longer I can leave them on the floor while I briefly turn my back to accomplish various tasks, like pick up the room, fold laundry, or pull lord knows what out of Abbie’s mouth.

Alas, time marches forward and the boys learn to roll over no matter how hard I try to keep it a secret. I’ll lay them in their gym, turn my back to grab a cup of water from Abbie’s hands before she dumps it on the floor, and turn back around to see both boys flipped onto their tummies.

Actually Tory doesn’t roll over often despite his rotund shape that would seem conducive to rolling. I know he can roll over because I’ve seen him do it, or at least I’ve found him in a completely different position than he was before I turned my back. He just seems to prefer staying on his back and conserving his energy for digestion and eating.

Ian on the other hand loves rolling. When he gets in the mood, I can’t keep him on his back as he’ll kick his legs over the instant his back touches the floor. Fortunately the sides of the gym block his progress and prevent him from rolling too far away and under furniture where he could be threatened by monstrous hordes of dust bunnies.

Even though they can’t roll into the next room yet, rolling still creates problems. The biggest one is they tend to stay on their tummies. I strongly encourage tummy time for my flat-headed little men, but they don’t share my convictions. They usually only tolerate a couple minutes on their tummies before howling in frustration, and a couple minutes usually isn’t even enough time to identify the substance I just removed from Abbie’s mouth. I’ll flip them back over, which tends to calm them down, at least until Ian wonders what it’s like to roll over (this usually takes about two seconds), flips back onto his tummy, and immediately becomes enraged that he’s stuck in tummy position again.

Even when they calmly lay on their tummies, it’s not an ideal situation. As countless magazines, health care workers, and diapers have reminded me, leaving a baby on his tummy increases his risk of SIDS if he falls asleep, which they certainly will if they’re on their tummies and calm. Of course also increasing the risk of SIDS is placing inside the crib soft bedding, a stuffed animal, or a twin sibling, and we’ve violated every one of those rules at one time. Obviously we need to stop pressing our luck.

Then there’s the risk of spit-up. A baby on his tummy who spits up will eventually set his face in the mess if left long enough. In addition to being disgusting, this really ticks the boys off when it happens. When they’re on their tummies, I need to keep a burp cloth ready until they achieve the milestone of “can roll out of the way of their own spit up.”

MoM's Sale

My life would be very different without the twins. I wouldn’t have as much to blog about for starters. Or maybe I’d have more to blog about because I could actually leave the house during the day without them. Either way, this blog is unquestionably different because of the twins, if for no other reason than because the title is longer.

One of the biggest changes to my life is a sharp reduction in the number of garage sales I attend. Last year I was a garage sale connoisseur, a regular, a whore if you will. This year I generally don’t leave the house without adult help unless a medical visit is involved, and even then it has to entail the prevention or eradication of a highly infectious disease. Garage sales don’t involve diseases, although some could involve the transmission of them, so I don’t plan on ever leaving the house to attend one by myself. This will usually limit my attendance to weekend sales when Ellie is available to help watch the kids, and we need to leave the house early to prevent all those whores from snapping up the good stuff.

Today was an exception. It was the first day of the area’s Mother’s of Multiples garage sale, an event big enough to require the use of a church to supply a room large enough for the sale, and a parking lot large enough for the crowds. I conned Ellie into being tardy for work* so she could help watch the kids while I, er, we shopped. This meant we had to be out of the house early so she could be as minimally tardy as possible.

I set my alarm for the twins’ schedule wake time, 7:15am, and actually woke up with it instead of sleeping for an extra half-hour like normal. I stuffed the twins full of milk, Ellie changed and fed Abbie, and we rushed everyone out the door as the sale opened its doors.

Ellie drove separately so she could leave early, and arrived at the sale a few minutes before us due to the fact that she drives really fast, and I drive like I’ve got three kids in the backseat. She met me in the parking lot. When I expressed surprise that she wasn’t inside looking around, she said she already looked around, but it was “a little crazy.” Amateur.

I pushed the twins in their stroller into the building and sidled up to the tables. At first I felt guilty about sucking up so much space at the table with the double-stroller, but when I realized the stroller was preventing others from looking at large chunks of used clothes before I could rifle through them, my guilt eased. I assumed this would be my big garage sale expedition of the year, so I piled clothes high on the stroller’s handlebars, accumulating what would turn into three shopping bags stuffed with clothes with a total cost equivalent to almost ten gallons of gasoline.

Ellie left after I hit two tables, giving me no choice but to pay and leave. The checkout line was long of course, leaving me plenty of time to watch the surroundings, interact with other shoppers, and smell Abbie’s poopy diaper. Being at a Mother’s of Multiples function is a little surreal; generally having twins makes us a novelty, but twins were everywhere this morning. One apprehensive future mother of twins, who looked to be barely far enough along to have had her first ultrasound, asked my advice on strollers and if I liked our stroller. I told her I did, and gave her a synopsis of front-and-back double strollers vs. side-to-side. Another mother went into a mini-crisis mode after her baby spit-up. She frantically searched for a wipe or tissue to clean the mess; fortunately I saved her day with a napkin from the bottom of my stroller. This brought the first of many comments I heard about what a great dad I was for taking all the kids to a garage sale that was “a little crazy.” And I thought I was just being frugal by filling out the kids’ wardrobe with used clothes before mom could fill it with retail clothes.

I paid and whisked everyone back to the car, ready to return home to store the loot and change a diaper. On the way out I ran into the apprehensive future mother again, this time waiting at the door for a set of triplet babies to come in. They were in a side-by-side-by-side stroller, and were struggling to fit through the double-doors. I told the future mother that’s what I didn’t like about the side-by-side variety.

* She only had a conference to attend today anyway. Pfftt.
** I didn’t have a clean diaper or wipes for Abbie, but I did have a napkin for a stranger.

"I just want attention."

Abbie’s Top Ten Ways to Get Attention

10. Throwing a book, or whatever happens to be in her hands.
9. Furiously exaggerated signing.
8. Sitting in a lap.
7. Pulling on our clothing, preferably a shirt, hopefully not drawstring pants.
6. Banging her head on the floor.
5. Scratching one of us, especially one of her brothers.
4. Beating on a door.
3. Pinching someone.
2. Screaming, repeatedly if necessary.
1. Staying absolutely quiet. That always makes me look in on her to see what she’s gotten into.

Stroller Back, Girl

We’ve been spending a lot of time in the park recently. It’s easier to entertain Abbie outside than inside, plus I can ignore the squalor we live in yet never have time to clean when I’m outside the house.

Abbie is lucky her brothers tolerate the stroller more than she did, otherwise we’d never go outside. Abbie hated her stroller as much as she hated her swing, bouncy chair, crib, playpen, or any other baby containment device that didn’t involve direct contact. It wasn’t until she was about a year old that she tolerated a stroller, and that’s only because she could feed herself while we left her strapped into it. Abbie hated her stroller so much that I briefly advocated saving money and not buying a stroller thinking the boys would hate it too, and we could use another more practical method to transport the twins, like sherpas or some sort of spell of levitation. Today I’m glad we let Adam buy us the stroller because the only non-disposable, non-furniture baby equipment we use more are the bottles. And burp clothes. Dear lord we use a lot of burp clothes.

On the other hand, maybe it’s too bad for her that her brothers like the stroller, otherwise I’d let her and the dog run around the backyard unsupervised while I keep the boys entertained, and open the door to let them back in the house when one of them bangs on the door. Either way, we generally head to the park as a four-person unit, with Abbie roaming the playground, the twins chilling in the stroller, and me bouncing between the stroller and Abbie making sure everybody is still breathing. If mommy is home and not trying to wind down from or gear up for her crushing job duties, I’ll occasionally recruit her to take Abbie outside while I sit on the floor watching the twins and trying to wind down from my crushing Abbie supervision duties. Mommy, though, spends a lot of time working so we can afford luxuries like a home near a good park and name brand premium diapers for overnight, so it’s usually just me hauling the three kids.

Prepping everybody by myself can be a challenge, especially on a day like today when the weather was chilly enough to require jackets. This afternoon I set the boys in their gym, rounded up everybody’s jackets, found Abbie’s shoes and socks, rolled Ian onto his back after he rolled onto his tummy and got pretty ticked about his new position, located the pants Abbie removed while she should have been napping, slipped a jacket on Tory, rolled Ian back over, changed Tory’s diaper after realizing he pooped, picked a screaming Ian off his tummy so I could slip a jacket on him, started putting Abbie’s pants on before I had to quit and address Ian’s screaming, strapped Ian into the stroller outside so he could roll over anymore, strapped Tory into the stroller to give Ian company, dressed Abbie, and took her outside to the stroller, making sure nothing happened with the boys in the five minutes I left them outside unsupervised to dress Abbie. Then we were ready to walk the half-block to the park.

We have a good stroller that’s lightweight and easy to push. Still, when you load a double stroller with 25-and-increasing-pounds of baby, it can get hard to move. That’s why I appreciate Abbie’s newest trick: Pushing the stroller. If I let her, and usually even if I don’t, she’ll step behind the stroller, put both hands straight out in front of her onto a crossbar, and push. She really puts her back into it, and genuinely moves it at close to my walking speed. She can’t steer, so I have to make sure she doesn’t hit something like a fence post or another two-year-old. She loves pushing it so much that I have to lock the wheels in the desired location so she’ll play with the playground equipment instead of the stroller. I’m glad to see that she’s finally enjoying our stroller, even if she still won’t tolerate sitting in it.

CSI: Des Moines

A few days ago, Ian suddenly started eating less. Almost overnight, he went from consistently eating close to six ounces at each feeding, to occasionally stopping around two. Tory was still packing in the ounces, so figured something had clicked in Ian telling him that formula wasn’t worth eating, like pizza crusts or anything with coconut.

I tried everything I could think of to find what suddenly changed to make him eat less. My first thought was I had just switched them from Alimentum to Nutramigen. They’re both nasty as far as I can tell, but maybe he finds the Nutramigen markedly more objectionable than the Alimentum. I figured the next time I procure formula, I’ll buy Alimentum again, but for now we have a stockpile of Nutramigen to use, and there’s no way I’m mixing two different types of formula without a major medical reason unless it means I can take one of them off of that horrid, expensive, uber-hypoallergenic formula.

My next thought was I’d recently tried mixing giant batches of formula to pour throughout the day. I hoped this might make preparing bottles a little easier (it didn’t), but my main goal was to give the powder more time to dissolve so it wouldn’t form giant, nipple-plugging globs in the bottles. Leaving the prepared formula in the refrigerator for a few hours gave those globs time to settle on the bottom, so my plan sort of worked as long as I poured carefully without shaking the container, but I gladly abandoned my scheme thinking Ian hates formula after it sits in the fridge for half the day. I lovingly mixed his next bottle just before feeding, and found him still rejecting it after a couple ounces.

After more brainstorming, I noticed he was spitting up prune juice throughout the day, even though I was only feeding it to him twice a day. Maybe the juice I was using to keep his gut a well-lubed machine was lodging itself as an undigested mass in his stomach, making him feel fuller than he was, or at least should be. I figured the prune juice was more to make me feel better than him because surely he has to be uncomfortable pooping only twice a week, and cut it from his diet. Then I waited for his gut to clear.

A funny thing happened while I waited though; Tory started eating less, and it didn’t seem to matter if they were eating formula or breast milk. I knew something bigger than the formula was happening, and I set about trying to uncover it like a television investigation show, only without the music cues, spiffy special effects, and quick resolution. My clues are all the funny things that they’ve done recently: Eating less, random irritability, increased drooling and desire to chew … aww hell.

Now my theory is they’re teething. I think Abbie started teething around this age and stopped about a week ago. I can feel bumps on their gum lines that I think are teeth, but I suppose they could just be normal gum bumps; I don’t have a lot of experience feeling toothless gums. As if they were trying to confirm my theory, they spent much of today complaining, waking from naps extraordinarily angry, wailing no matter how I hold them or where I put them, and generally being crankier than usual.

Their eating rebounded a bit today, but they’re still not eating as much as they did a couple weeks ago. Plus the amount they eat is highly erratic, ranging from as little as four combined ounces to as much as twelve. This combined with all their squirming makes feeding a pain, but at least I’m not dealing with the prune juice or giant vats of premixed formula anymore.

Thoughts from the Playground

We visited the playground today. This wasn’t our normal playground; this was a special playground where the temperature is always 72, the equipment is never wet, and a guy with a “badge” kicks you out if you won’t remove your shoes.

Our stop at the mall playground was unscheduled. I had planned to move directly from the mall-based big box store to our restaurant, but we spent less time at the mall than I had intended. The clearanced Easter merchandise was already thin, as evidenced by the absence of chocolate filled Cadbury eggs. They only had a few Easter-themed children’s clothes as well, and as cute as that limited selection of t-shirts and skirts would be next year, this is still Iowa where the opportunities to wear short sleeves and short pants before Easter are limited in a warm year.

Since it was still half-an-hour before the scheduled suppertime and nobody was hungry, not even Tory who’s always hungry for an ounce or six, we stopped at the playground to kill time and hopefully work up an appetite in Abbie. Before the twins came*, I frequently took Abbie to this playground, maybe once a week or more. It was a good way to expose Abbie to other children without having to worry about the weather or the remains of dogs that seem to enjoy our regular playground too much. We don’t leave the house nearly as much these days, meaning our excursions to all manner of locations have drastically declined, whether they be shopping for Vital Supplies, playing at faraway playgrounds, or procuring frozen custard.

I think this was Abbie’s second visit to the mall playground since the twins came home. The last visit was when the twins were much younger and still slept almost the entire time they left the house. Now they just sleep in the car and sit quietly without the vibrating chair that is their car seat. Soon they’ll hit the next phase of whining for things they want in the store, but for now we’re enjoying their serenity.

While Ellie loaded our purchases into the car, I sat the boys in their carriers on the floor next to my bench and watched Abbie run around the playground, working up an appetite. She climbed the slide, jumped on the decorative floor fish, and smiled at the other parents resting on benches. Abbie was having fun on her own and I felt bad for the twins staring blankly at the ceiling from their carriers, so I pulled Ian out to give him a better view of the fun he cannot comprehend. Abbie, sensing my hands were full, took the opportunity to bolt from the playground. I leapt to my feet with Ian over my shoulder and caught her at the sign decreeing the playground rules. I led her back to the slide and reassumed my position on the bench. The instant my butt met vinyl, she turned tail and ran back out the entrance. She made it to the mall’s central plaza before I caught her this time. I returned her to the playground while hoping that nobody, especially Tory, minded that I left him unattended 100 yards away from me while I corralled my oldest.

By this time Ellie had returned, and elected to spend her time keeping Abbie entertained and running on the playground’s carpet. I sat and watched with Ian still in my hands. I thought about how this mostly stationary mass of baby could start wandering this playground in a few months. I thought about how much fun he would have crawling up and down the ramp, and investigating those decorative fish. I thought about how big those older kids who were just learning to walk seemed. I thought about trying to keep three children in the playground simultaneously.

Suddenly I was ready to leave. We packed the twins back up, slipped on Abbie’s sandals, and walked to the car. Someday Abbie will enjoy playing on the playground with her brothers, but for today she’s more intent on enjoying her McNuggets.

* “Before the twins came” may be the most common way for me to start a sentence over the last five months.

Easter Morning

Today was Easter. Celebrating the holiday is a lot easier when Ellie is on call and we have no pressure to visit our families, both of whom live about three hours from us and a half-hour from each other. As much as we love our families, visiting them over a holiday requires a level of planning and coordination that would make a major military excursion look like a visit to grandma’s house; we have to time meals with both families to ensure one side gets to enjoy the children while we gorge ourselves on dinner, and then the other side gets to enjoy an equal amount of time with the children while we gorge ourselves on dessert.

We can’t go anywhere with Ellie on call though, so our families come to us, preferably taking turns because with a copy of every toddler toy manufactured in China over the last two years littering our living room floor, we don’t have much space for entertaining. Ellie’s father has the honor of visiting on the actual holiday this time with my mother visiting next weekend. It’s an effective rotation that spaces out our celebratory duties while stretching every holiday over two weekends and helping them bleed into each other. The visits for Cinco de Mayo begin the weekend after my mother’s Easter visit.

I rolled over in bed this morning about an hour later than I intended to sleep and asked Ellie when her dad would arrive. She said in about 45 minutes, and I knew that once again I’d underestimated the grandparent’s desire to see the grandchildren. I leapt out of bed, or at least I moved as fast as I can move these days immediately after waking from my dangerously minimized sleep, and went to work. We had a lot to do before company arrived, like dress everybody, feed everybody, and shovel floor-bound toys into the toy box. Most of all we wanted to give the children their Easter baskets with just the five of us present.

Yes, we threw together Easter baskets for three children who are too young to grasp the concept of Easter baskets, and for two children who are too young to interact with anything in an Easter basket. Children are only this young once, and Easter is our only chance of the year to shower them with candy and presents, not counting Christmas, birthdays, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, and the day we get our tax refund. The boys simply shared a small basket anyway, filled only with a couple of Pooh dolls that squeak when shaken. They don’t even notice them, though Abbie thinks they’re great. Abbie had a little more in her basket, including a holiday Dora the Explorer DVD so she can learn about Easter year round, and a flower toy that spins and lights up. At least it used to light up; Abbie threw it to the ground a few too many times and broke it before noon. We did not give her candy for Easter. It’s not that we forbid sugar, but rather the candy will go on sale tomorrow, and she’ll never know if it’s a day late.

We crammed in a leisurely Easter morning before her father arrived, and spent the rest of the morning enjoying a typical Easter. Then we mostly improvised an Easter dinner of grilled steaks and ribs, rolls, green bean casserole*, Snicker’s salad**, and a homemade blueberry pie from great-grandma. Ellie’s father enjoyed the meal. Ellie enjoyed the meal. Abbie only enjoyed the Snickers salad and the pie after much prodding to try it. The twins enjoyed falling asleep while watching us from their bouncy chairs, though not before Ian pooped through his diaper. I enjoyed the meal, and the fact that we didn’t have to rush to another meal.

* Green bean casserole is legally required at holiday dinners in Iowa.
** We needed something fruit-based, even though we went a little heavier on the Snickers than the apples.

Tagged

As per my tagging from Becky, here are six weird things most people don’t know about me:

1. I’ll watch just about any game of pro hockey, pro and college football, pro and college basketball, and pro baseball, but I have few favorite teams in any of those sports. My only favorite teams are the Chicago Cubs in baseball, and the Drake Bulldogs in college basketball.
2. I quit Tae Kwon Do right before I could have tested for my black belt.
3. I’m borderline obsessive compulsive (so says Ellie).
4. I don’t like steak.
5. My family never named our pets while I was growing up, hence my cherished childhood pets are Mr. Dog and Ms. Cat.
6. I’m where chains like this go to die.

Party Time

We went to a one-year-old’s birthday party today. “We” here refers to “me and the three kids.” Ellie had to work, though she did manage to escape long enough to enjoy some cake before returning to the grind. This meant I had to single-handedly load, unload, and haul all three children, which is a chore I hate, but at least I’m doing it enough that I should be getting pretty good at it.

This party started at 10am, which coincidentally happens to be the start of the twins’ naptime. My plan was to arrive at the party and indiscriminately set the twins in their carriers down in a corner so they could catch the rest they need to be their cheeriest. The other party guests had different ideas.

“What are you doing taking babies to a birthday party if you want them to sleep?” one asked.
“The authorities generally frown on me leaving them home alone,” I responded.

The twins stayed in their carriers for about 148 seconds, at which point some guests announced that they didn’t want to sleep, and started passing them around to make sure they stayed awake. I shrugged, figured I could wrest them away for a rest in a little while, and took advantage of the free childcare to watch Abbie perform one death-defying move after another.

This party was for the family’s third child, all of whom are under the age of five, which means their home was a literal toddler playground. They had numerous toddler toys scattered about their yard, like a ball pit, a toddler-sized plastic house, and several riding vehicles. Abbie had never seen any of these toys, giving her a chance to enjoy one novelty after another until she grew bored with all of them, which took about a half-hour. At that point she invented her fun by climbing their deck. She repeatedly scaled the two feet between the ground and the lowest gap in the deck railing, emerging between peoples’ legs and generally scaring the birthday cake out of them. The family’s father marveled at her climbing prowess/eagerness, saying that his two-and-a-half-year-old accomplished climber of a son doesn’t even do that. I regaled him with stories of Abbie climbing up the changing table by pulling out the middle drawer, or her climbing out of her crib at around age 19-months, and realized she’s still my demanding child.

I finally managed to set the twins down for a nap around 10:30. This was a half-hour later than usual, but they compensated by waking up at their normal time for a feeding. Several people missed them during their 30-minute nap, and were eager to help me feed. I gave a bottle and a baby to one grandmother, kept the others, and sat down to feed while yelling at Abbie to get off the deck. The grandmother told me a story about a friend of hers who was a nanny to twin babies whose mother decreed that when one baby is held, both babies must be held. I found this an odd demand since I insist that people only hold one baby at a time so that, much like catching a pop fly, they can use both hands; I’ve come too close to dropping the little squirmers while holding someone one-handed. I theorized that the mother did this to ensure that both babies enjoy the same experiences at the same time, though the twins may have just been two demanding babies who both insisted on being held as much as possible.

Speaking of demanding, Abbie was climbing up the deck and onto the top of the ironically named guard railing. With the twins fed, I knew it was time to leave. I recruited two guests to help me carry everyone, thanked the family for the wonderful time, and headed to my car. I had a tiring morning, but at least I knew everyone would take a good afternoon nap with Abbie wearing herself out climbing and the twins being sleep-deprived.

The Mystery Scream

When the twins cry, I usually know the reason and how to calm them. Not that I’m some sort of baby whisperer specially attuned to my children’s needs; I just know that they’re young enough to have a limited list of things that make them cry, and I can usually find the correct answer by looking at context. If someone cries after being awake for a while, he’s probably tired and wants to sleep. If someone cries after waking from a nap, he’s probably hungry and wants to eat. If someone cries while Abbie is nearby, he’s probably hurting after Abbie just scratched him and she needs sent to her room. Today though, both of the twins went into wild screaming fits that left me screaming in frustration trying to figure out why.

Ian went first, going into a screaming fit around 2pm. 2pm is supposed to be in the middle of one of their naps. Not just any nap either, but their best nap of the day; the two-and-a-half hour nap that lets me nap, exercise, shower, and otherwise act like I’m a college student with a break between my noon poly sci class and my 3pm hacky sack game. 2pm is the time when I transition from the bed to the stairclimber, and someone will often wake up to complain at this time. It’s almost my alarm clock, which sends me into fits when I wake from my nap at 2:15, threatening to send my entire day off schedule. Sometimes Abbie helps me by banging around her room instead of taking her afternoon nap, and sends something (hopefully not her body) crashing to the floor at 2pm to wake me.

When someone wakes at 2pm, I ignore him at first, and he usually goes back to sleep quickly. If the complaining persists, I give him a pacifier and go exercise. On rare occasions I’ll have to pause the stairclimber to reinsert the pacifier once or twice, but they always resume sleeping within a few minutes. Except today. Ian stayed awake through several pacifier reinsertions for ten, 20, and even 30 minutes. After that Ellie, who was home and trying to nap after a rough night, swooped him into our bed hoping at least one of them would get some sleep. Ian stayed awake for an hour until I stepped out of the shower for their 3pm feeding. The pacifier kept him calm, but he constantly threatened to spit it out, forcing Ellie to stay vigilant and, unfortunately, awake.

I have no idea what got into him. He’s had similar spells at this time before, but not for several weeks. My best guess is he was hungry early, possibly spurred on by his refusal to eat more than three ounces at last two feedings.* Tory, always trying to one-up his brother, took mystery screaming to a new level a few hours later.

We spent tonight at a pizza party from Ellie’s employer. It was held in the park near our home, and had several of Ellie’s coworkers who rarely get to see the twins. The boys spent most of the night being passed from woman to woman, from coworker to coworker’s wife. They all marveled at the boys, how cute they were, how calm they were, how spitty they were. Suddenly Tory snapped in the arms of a coworker’s wife; she was holding him, gently swaying him back and forth when he abruptly tensed his every muscle, including the ones that control breathing. He turned several shades of red, each more furious than the last, before inhaling again. He followed that with the most irate screaming fit I’ve ever heard him unleash, worse than any fit related to a visit to the pediatrician’s office. It was close to the bedtime routine at that point, so we all went home. I gave Abbie her scheduled bath and readied everyone’s bedtime feeding while Ellie kept Tory calm for about 20 minutes. The pacifier again mostly worked, though he immediately suffered a meltdown the instant he lost suction. It wasn’t until a couple ounces of milk filled his belly that he endured his existence without screaming.

Once again, I have no idea what set him off. My best guess is he was overstimulated after being passed like a hacky sack for an hour, but it was still odd that he instantly changed from calm to a 14-pound ball of fury. I can’t wait until they’re old enough to tell me what upset them. I’m still waiting for Abbie to reach this point. At least I know I can always calm her with Goldfish.

* For comparison, Ian usually takes at least four ounces per feeding, and Tory engorges himself on close to six.

"Son look at all the people in this restaurant..."

One of the world’s greatest concepts, next to free childcare, is the all you can eat pizza buffet. It’s a scientifically documented fact that no two people can agree on the optimum pizza; somebody is going to want a different set of toppings, or a different crust, or a completely different pizza place because yours treats grease as a mandatory topping. The only solutions from a traditional pizza place are to buy two pizzas, which inevitably leads to sedentary layers of leftover pizza slices buried beneath bags of breast milk deep within our freezer, or I could “order whatever you want,” which generally means I’m about to order the wrong thing.

At an all you can eat pizza buffet though, there’s no haggling over what kind of pizza to order; simply slide up to the warming table and load up a plate with an assortment of doughy, cheesy, and preferably sausagey slices. Plus there’s no waiting at a buffet for someone to take your order, assemble your pizza, throw it in the oven, and then explain to you that it’s going to be a few more minutes because the oven’s heat blew the pepperoni off your first pizza.* Speed is always a virtue when you have to care for twin babies who won’t nap forever, and a toddler who thinks the time it takes to carry food from the microwave to the kitchen table is too long to wait for a meal.

I knew of a couple of good pizza buffets in my hometown of Sioux City, but hadn’t found one yet in Des Moines. Imagine my pleasure when Ellie reported to me that a co-worker had taken her to a previously unknown pizza buffet for lunch this past weekend. She said it was pretty good pizza, and cheap enough that our whole family could eat there for about the price of one ordinary pizza, plus we wouldn’t have to deal with any leftovers that someone will theoretically eat someday. When she called me this morning to say that she would be free for lunch today, I knew exactly where I wanted to eat.

We loaded the kids into the car around noon and embarked on my second daytrip in as many days. The restaurant was a few miles away, but it was a good day for a nice little drive with the family as the skies were sunny and the air was warm, probably warm enough for the kids to demand the car’s AC if only they were old enough to demand such things.

We arrived at the restaurant, paid an eye-popping $3.99 for each adult and nothing for the kids, and let the gorging begin. Feeding Abbie at a pizza buffet can be tricky since she won’t eat pizza, but fortunately they had pasta with choice of red or white sauce for her. The twins slept while we ate, which was outside of their scheduled naptime, but at least it let me concentrate on the pizza.

The pizza was as good as I could expect from a place that charges $3.99 for all you can eat: Minimal grease, a nice variety of traditional pizzas, some less traditional pizzas like ham and pineapple, some wacky pizzas like macaroni & cheese,** and dessert pizza. My only complaints are the slices were small, and each slice only had sauce and toppings covering half of the top, making for some comically large crust. Fortunately I could compensate for this by not eating the crust, and eating more pizza since it was all I could eat; they never said I had to eat the crusts too.

Ellie and I filled up quickly on pizza, while Abbie ate her pasta and refused all pizza, even the dessert pizza. I made sure to leave a generous tip since Abbie left a marinara masterpiece on the table, while I left a pile of crusts. We loaded everyone back into the car, and returned home in time for afternoon naps. No doubt we’ll be back some day. When the boys are eating a quarter of their body weight in junk food every day in a few years, that $3.99 lunch buffet will sound pretty tempting.

* This was an actual reason given to us once for why our pizza was taking so long. Presumably no one was hurt in the explosion.
** Seriously, they had pizza dough topped with macaroni and a cheese sauce. It was okay as a change of pace, but I don’t think I could have eaten more than a slice of it.

Off We Go

I left the house this morning. Before the twins came, leaving the house during the day was no big deal. Abbie and I would leave the house during the day several times each week to pick up Vital Supplies, not-so-Vital Supplies, and of course frozen custard. It was my plan to keep my sanity by experiencing the excitement of the outside world instead of the soul-crushing repetitiveness that comes from being trapped inside the house day after day with a little person whose primary form of communication is screaming backed up by biting.

Now that I have to carry three children simultaneously when I leave the house, the soul-crushing repetitiveness of staying home is how I keep my sanity. I never even try to leave the house with all three children and no assistance unless a doctor’s office is the destination, and even then I try to guilt Ellie into taking off work to help haul children.

I broke with tradition today because I had a couple things I desperately needed to pick up: stamps because a couple health providers are desperate to get our money after they waited four months to send us a bill, and propane because the weather is nice darned if I’m going to waste another optimum grilling day. Normally I’d wait until Ellie came home and buy these things while she was available to watch the twins or at least listen to them nap, but she has a busy week; she’s working nights or is otherwise occupied at night all week until Sunday, which is Easter Sunday, and no way can I accomplish anything on Easter Sunday. I knew I could find both of my Ultra Vital Supplies with two miles of home, so I sucked it up, waited for the twins’ naptime, packed up the kids, and drove off without back up.

The first stop was the grocery store for stamps. I pulled into a parking space, turned off the engine but left the keys in the ignition to keep the CD playing, pulled out the double stroller, plopped Ian in his spot, plopped Tory in his spot, watched a car pull into the space next to me while praying that he didn’t hit the door I never bothered to close, retrieved my car keys, unbuckled Abbie, confirmed for a stranger that yes those are twins, and traversed the parking lot carrying Abbie in one hand and pushing the stroller with the other. The clerk at the service desk apparently didn’t have enough to do as he spent much time fawning over the twins before calling over three cashiers who also didn’t have enough to do to help him fawn. I answered a couple standard twin questions and quickly demanded stamps before he could utter another one. I hate being rude, but I had less than an hour before the twins woke up hungry, and it takes me half-an-hour to do simple tasks like go to the bathroom these days let alone make an entire additional stop.

With stamps in hand, I reversed the process to reload the car, and drove to the nearest gas station that sold propane. Inside I encountered another cashier who also liked to ask questions and call over her coworkers, but her only coworker was a middle-aged guy who was more interested in smoking than looking at babies. He stayed on the other end of the store pretending not to hear, which was a good arrangement for both of us.

I loaded the propane container into my trunk and checked my watch; I still had plenty of time before the twins’ scheduled feeding. As long as I was at a gas station, I filled up my car with about 15 bucks worth of gas, which was selling for $20.10 this morning. Now that I had acquired everything I set out to buy and more, we went home. Not too soon either because the twins were awake early. I blame the nosy cashiers.

Saturday in the Park. And Sunday. And Monday...

I remember hearing a news report about a cold snap this past winter, or possibly a wet stretch. This report came from a place like San Francisco, where the weather is almost always perfect, which must be of great consolation to its residents when they’re trapped in a multi-hour traffic jam with 1,421,026 other motorists, most of whom probably live there because of the weather. The part of the report I specifically remember is an interview with a local daycare worker, who complained that the kids were going stir-crazy because they hadn’t been able to play outside in almost a week because of the weather. Poor things.

Here in Iowa, where the weather might not be perfect but at least the traffic generally moves at a decent pace, Abbie has been unable to play outside for most of the past four months because of the weather. We’ve snuck outside occasionally, but the air was still too cold, or the grass still hid pools of standing water from snow melt and spring showers. We always came back inside after a few minutes with numb fingers, windswept hair, and wet stains on the knees.

We’re finally enjoying consecutive days of warm temperatures here though, and I’ve celebrated by taking the kids to the playground for the past several days. I’d forgotten how wonderful the outdoors can be for entertaining children. While shut inside, I have a constant struggle to keep the boys awake and pleasant, and to find ways to keep Abbie entertained that don’t involve forbidden objects, like remote controls or the entire bag of Goldfish that I could have swore was beyond her grasp but obviously wasn’t because she’s now fighting off the dog for the right to pick the hundreds of spilled crackers off the floor and into her mouth. All I have to do is take everyone to the playground, park the boys in the stroller, and let Abbie entertain herself for long stretches without me having to pull one forbidden object from her hands, unless there’s dog poop in the park, which there usually is.

It’s fascinating to see how Abbie has changed over the winter. Last fall I was helping Abbie down the slide, pushing her in the swing, and guessing what she wanted every time she screamed. I still do all of that this spring, but at least now she can give me a sign to help me guess what she wants. Plus she’s found new ways to play outside. I can throw a ball for her, and she’ll spend the next several minutes chasing it, kicking it, and throwing it before losing interest in it in the farthest corner of the park, forcing me to retrieve it while she runs for the playground equipment. She likes climbing the ladder up to the slide instead of the nice gently sloping steps. It frightened me to see her climbing a ladder for the first few times, but I realized that if she can fall a few feet from the crib to the carpet without sustaining major injury, she can more or less safely fall a few feet from the ladder to woodchips.

She loves the merry-go-round most of all this spring, a point she likes to reinforce by screaming every time I stop pushing her. She spent 20 minutes straight on the merry-go-round the past couple of days, with me pushing her the whole time. This was easy to do at first as long as I didn’t make the mistake of running alongside it while spinning until the vertigo dropped me into the potentially wet woodchips below. Eventually though, every toddler in a two-block radius realized a dad was trapped into spinning it, and hopped on to take full advantage. I wear out quickly trying to spin a couple hundred pounds of toddler and need to take frequent breaks, but Abbie’s love and occasional screeching compels me to promptly resume pushing.

The twins sit in their stroller during all of this. They entertain themselves by watching, squirming, and spitting up. They’ve sat quietly for an hour or more without me doing any more than looking at them. They’ll probably be crankier when the weather heats up, but for now we’re just going to keep enjoying the great outdoors. We only have a couple months of decent weather you know.

Egging Her on

We took Abbie to an Easter egg hunt this weekend. This was the first hunt I’d attended since I was a participant about 20 years ago. I think we arrived late that day, so I had to search hard to find anything. I found one egg, and it definitely did not contain a voucher for a new bike, or any of the extra-cool prizes that were promised. I believe it contained a sticker. Cheapskates.

Not wanting to repeat the mistakes from my childhood, I made sure we arrived early enough to stake out a good spot in front of the crowd. “We” here refers to our entire five-unit family. We left so early that we had time to stop by a couple early season garage sales. I didn’t get anything except confirmation that I will not be attending garage sales with all three kids in tow and no other adults to help keep them in line.

It was a beautiful spring morning, with the sun shining down from a cloudless blue sky. Funny thing though, it was really cold for a sunny early spring morning. I’m guessing the temperature was somewhere in the upper 30’s. Of course, I’m making that guess after having gone outside. When we dressed Abbie that morning, we looked at the bright sunshine, guessed that the weather was bound to be nice, or at least warming up quickly, and took her outside in only a jogging suit.

Oops. We only arrived about ten minutes before the hunt began, but Abbie was shivering before the starting tape lowered. I wrapped her in my jacket, but it didn’t seem to help; she just kept shaking.

About the time she threw up though, I started thinking she was more nervous than cold. She may have been on the verge of hypothermia too, but being so close to so many strangers probably triggered a fear response similar to what the Paltrow/Martin kids will feel when they realize their names are Apple and Moses.

It didn’t even help that she was surrounded by her own age group. This hunt smartly separated kids into age groups, putting Abbie into the 3 & under crowd. That way, instead of her being knocked over by overzealous children whose ages approached double-digits, she only had to contend with being knocked over by other overzealous parents.

Ellie took her around to pick up eggs. These eggs were “hidden” in the same sense that the Cubs “play baseball,” which is to say not very well.* Ellie led her to some of the brightly colored eggs resting on the ground, and she picked up two, depositing them in her basket. Ellie coaxed her into putting two more eggs into her basket, but after that she ran off the playground. I tried pulling her back onto the playground, especially since she was still six eggs short of the stated per child maximum, but she screamed and crumpled to the ground. I took the hint, and we headed back to the car, stopping in the nearby pet fish store to warm and cheer up Abbie. I believe we were the first family to leave. We also didn’t win that new bicycle.

Here are some pictures of the event:


Abbie and Ellie are off to the hunt. Notice the other kids are dressed much warmer than her.


Abbie is putting an egg in her basket. She may or may not be screaming at the moment.


Abbie is showing us what she thinks of the egg hunt.


I’m checking her eggs. It’s another sucker. I hate suckers.


This has nothing to do with the hunt, but I wanted to post it anyway. I haven’t posted enough pictures of Abbie, and this is about as cute as she gets.

* The Cubs are 4-1 right now! If they keep this up (they won’t), I won’t be able to make any more jokes like that for a while.

"Got your nose!" "Got your wallet!"

Abbie’s Ten Favorite Non-Toy Playthings

10. Clickable pens
9. Keys
8. The bathroom scale
7. Cats, real and preferably not hissing
6. Mom’s pager
5. The valves from her sippy cups
4. The oven, including the burner dials and the oven door, especially when hot
3. Fans
2. Remote controls
1. Telephones, including wireless, cordless, and cordless bases, particularly if the base has a handset locator button

Sleep Questions

When I put Abbie down for her nap, I shut her door and leave it shut for about two hours. I spend that time taking a nap, exercising, taking a shower, and otherwise briefly connecting with my non-parent self. What she does during that time is up to her. Usually she bangs around her room for a few minutes, determines if her dresser drawers still make that same loud noise when she slams them, and goes to sleep until I open the door. Sometimes she’ll wake up a little early, in which case she’ll bang around some more until I open the door. She usually spends most of the time in her room sleeping, but on very rare occasions she stays awake for a long time. She had one of those occasions a few days ago. After stepping out of the shower, I opened her door and asked myself several questions, such as:

Did she even fall asleep?

If she fell asleep, was it in her bed or the twins’ crib?

Is it possible she fell asleep in the laundry basket?

Where did the wipe warmer end up?

Didn’t the diaper stacker have more diapers than this?

Which clothes on the floor are dirty ones pulled from the laundry basket, and which are clean ones pulled from her dresser?

What is all over the front of her shirt?

How did she get that bottle of skin lotion?

Is skin lotion harmful when swallowed?

Where did she find that pacifier?

Did someone give her all those stuffed animals, or are they procreating?

A Story of Violence

Abbie was the victim of playground violence the other day. Not that anyone suffered any sort of injury. I believe this was Abbie’s first experience on the receiving end of hostility. Such is the sheltered life of the oldest sibling who’s never spent a second in daycare.

We were on the playground near our home enjoying the nicest late afternoon weather since last fall. The twins were parked in their stroller next to me while Abbie scampered about the playground. This was a nice change in her behavior from last fall when I had to stick by Abbie’s side to help her with various tasks like going down the slide, climbing on the merry-go-round, and learning not to eat woodchips. On this day, she was happy to slide down by herself, spin the merry-go-round, and hop through the puddles left by the torrential rains from a couple days earlier.

The gorgeous weather pulled almost all of the neighborhood children onto the playground like downtown office workers lured to the first afternoon baseball game of the season. This is one of Abbie’s few opportunities to interact with people near her intellect as the twins are just starting to show signs of cerebral activity while I possess the thought processes of a boy more than twice her age.

Her first interaction was to play ball with a neighbor boy about nine months older than her. By “play ball” I mean Abbie chased the ball while he threw it, collected it, and threw it again in that selfish manner that only toddlers can do and get away with. I might have intervened to convince the boy to share, but I want Abbie to work through these interactions on her own, and maybe learn some empathy for those who are never shared with. Plus the boy was happy to play with the ball around Abbie, albeit a little frustrated that this little girl kept trying to grab it, while she never showed signs of frustration at not being able to grab the ball, just exuberance that it kept moving.

Eventually Abbie lost interest in the ball, and moved onto more interesting things, like an Elmo lawnmower push-toy. This toy also had the interest of a neighbor girl about seven months older than Abbie. I kept an eye on those two in between checking the boys to make sure they were comfortable in their stroller, but not so comfortable that they fell asleep early. I looked up in time to see the neighbor girl shove Abbie to the ground and walk away with the toy. I let it go because I want her to work through these situations by herself, plus she didn’t seem too upset. Then I saw the neighbor girl walk up to her, shove her to the ground, and walk away for no reason. Then she did it again. Then she walked up behind Abbie and thwacked her on the back of the head.

I was on my way to help Abbie before the first tear rolled out of her eye. I passed the neighbor girl understandably running the other way and told her she was being very naughty. This probably bent if not broke the cardinal rule of “never parent other people’s children,” but I didn’t care; my little girl was in tears. The girl’s mother, unaware of the whole episode, sprang up apologetically as soon as she heard me. I explained to her the situation (“she thwacked Abbie in the back of the head”), she apologized, and the girl promptly disappeared from the playground.

We stayed outside for several more minutes, and Abbie, always the trooper, showed remarkably little mental damage from the attack. On our way back to the house, we passed the girl and her mom heading back to the park. The mom apologized again, and explained that her girl had been acting more aggressively recently, possibly because she was learning to defend herself from her brother. Fortunately the girl’s brother is about 18-months older, while Abbie’s brothers are about 18-months younger so I’ll probably never have to worry about Abbie showing similar aggressive tendencies.* I told the mom don’t worry about it, that kids do what they’re going to do.

The girl also apologized to Abbie, which I appreciated even if it was under heavy pressure from mom. She then stepped in to hug Abbie. As soon as she wrapped her arms around my girl, Abbie shoved her away. So it’s good to see Abbie’s learning how to handle herself in social situations.

* Sarcasm alert.

Tipping the Bottle

Accompanying the Great Diet Shift of yesterday’s post is the Great Bottle Shift. While the twins ate mostly breast milk, we fed them from the same bottles that Ellie pumped into. This system worked well because the NICU sent us home with several “disposable” nipples that fit Ellie’s pumping bottles; we just unscrewed the lid, popped on a nipple, and had a system that allowed me to cut down on dishes while feeling like a responsible parent. As a bonus, Abbie wasn’t as drawn to these pumping bottles as she was to the special bottles that we used with her and planned to use with the boys.

Of course these pumping bottles couldn’t be as good as our special bottles, the Playtex VentAire Natural-Shape Suckle ‘N Learntertainer 3000. These bottles promise that their unique shape and revolutionary airflow design minimize the amount of air a baby ingests while eating, thus minimizing spit-up, gas, and crankiness, which allows the happy child to play and learn in optimal conditions, and you want to optimize your child’s learning environment, don’t you? Plus the bottles cost about $5 each and they break down into five separate pieces, six if you count the cap, and anything that’s that big of a pain in the butt has to be worth it.

When Ellie stopped pumping into those cheap bottles, I figured it was time to switch to the special bottles; no sense in hindering the twins’ development any more. The first task was to assign bottle colors to each child. The bottles come in green, blue, purple, and a very light shade of red that should in no way be confused with the color pink. I think I left that bottle in the sun in the sun once, causing it to fade from a manlier shade of red. Ian gets the green bottles because “Ian” almost rhymes with “green.” Tory takes the blue bottles because I’ve always assigned the color blue to him, same thing with Ian and that red bottle. The purple bottles belong to Tory because Ian already has two colors.

Next I had to choose a nipple type, slow-flow or fast-flow. The nipples the NICU sent with us seemed to be exactly between the two in speed, so I could have chosen either type. I started with the fast-flow nipples because I figured if they could handle the mid-flow nipples at 36-weeks gestational age, they should be able to handle the fast-flow at 50-weeks gestational age. They took the fast-flow well and seemed to enjoy the lessened need to suck for their nutrition while I enjoyed packing them full of food in 20 minutes or less. After a few days of watching rivers of overflow formula escape the sides of their mouths, I wondered if the fast-flow was a bit too much for them. Plus I could be depriving them of much needed sucking exercise. I tried the slow-flow nipples a couple times, but after seeing how little they ate in five minutes, I stopped wondering if the fast-flow was too much for them, and started wondering how I managed to sit still for 30 minutes for every time I fed Abbie.

Oh yeah, I didn’t have to keep a toddler entertained while I fed her. Fortunately Abbie has mellowed in her quest to commandeer the bottles. She doesn’t try to steal the bottles from their mouths anymore; she just tries grabbing my hands in an attempt to grab my attention. She’s learning to entertain herself though, and I’m learning hands-free ways to entertain her. She needs to wait until I’m done feeding the boys before I can give her my full attention. Also I need to burp the boys after feeding them because those bottles don’t eliminate gas any more than the cheap bottles. Perhaps it would help if the manufacturer added a couple more pieces to the bottle to assemble and clean.

The Formula Diet

For four months, Ellie pumped breast milk. I encouraged her to pump as much as possible so we could create a stockpile of frozen excess in six-ounce plastic bags for future use. When the twins were newborns, they ate little and Ellie had nothing to do but recover from pregnancy and pump, so I could freeze three or four bags every day. As the twins ate more, I could only freeze a couple bags a day. When Ellie returned to work, it dropped to a bag a day. When Ellie started getting sick of pumping, it fell to a bag every other day. When we ran out of freezer space, I encouraged her to slow down. The end result is a chest freezer filled with about 200 six-ounce bags of breast milk, and not much else.

For the past couple weeks, we’ve been holding steady with Ellie pumping exactly how much the twins ate every day. A few days ago, everything changed as Ellie stopped pumping. This occasion came several days after Ellie said she would stop pumping, but she continued pumping “one last time.” Apparently accumulating a pound of breast milk in your boobs is a painful sensation that can only be relieved by pumping. This makes pumping a difficult habit to break, like heroin except heroin addicts at least have Methadone to help ease the transition.

Ellie is officially done pumping now though, which means I need to break into my frozen hoard. To make it last as long as possible, I’m only feeding them breast milk for two of their six daily feedings. I use formula for their other four daily feedings. They have to eat the special* hypoallergenic formula known as Nutramigen or Alimentum depending on the manufacturer due to their sensitivity to cow’s milk. The twins like this stuff much less than the breast milk, possibly due to its unique “moldy cabbage” odor. They eat their formula slower than the breast milk, but I compensate for their reduced sucking by using the fast flow nipples with holes big enough to pass a pacifier if need be; the formula dribbles into their mouths regardless of if they suck, and they’d better start swallowing if they want clear breathing passages.

We should have enough milk frozen to stay on this breast milk-formula-formula pattern for the next couple of months. At that time they’ll be a couple months less fragile and better prepared to deal with the inevitable colds that will come knocking without breast milk’s immune system boost. They’ll also be starting solids by then, so they’ll still be drawing nutrition from sources besides formula. Of course the solids I plan on feeding include spinach and broccoli, which will make an all-formula diet seem mighty tasty. We’ll be out of breast milk at that point, so they won’t have much choice in what they eat. It could make feedings more challenging, but at least I’ll be able to dig a pound of hamburger out of the bottom of our freezer again.

* When I say “special” I mean “expensive.”

Premium Examination

We took the twins to a check-up today. This wasn’t one of their normal pediatrician check-ups where an array of nurses, assistants, and possibly members of the cleaning crew check their vitals, run down their developmental milestones, and then furrow their brows with concern when someone doesn’t grab a toy like a full-term four-month-old should. This was a special preemie check-up back at the NICU where a preemie developmental specialist closely examined both boys to ensure they’re hitting their milestones as adjusted for their early arrival, and that they’re avoiding any problems specific to preemies. Or maybe the examiner was a member of the cleaning crew; she never really identified herself to me. The point is, she knew preemies.

Determining a preemie’s development is a bit of an art form. Preemies start life behind full-term babies as they arrived before achieving full development in the womb. Therefore, it’s not accurate to compare our eight-weeks early four-month-olds to full-term four-month-olds. It’s also not quite accurate to lop eight weeks off their ages when determining developmental status since they’ve been out of the womb and developing for four-months, same as any other four-month-old. In fact, the shadowy group of experts that decides such things decided that a preemie should be developmentally equal to a full-term child by age 24-months, so sooner or later he’s going to catch up.

Regardless, the examiner simply lopped eight weeks off their ages when determining developmental status, which made us feel great that they’re way ahead of their adjusted peer age group. Tory went first, and performed exactly as I see him perform every day at home. He smiled, he cooed, he brought his arms to midline, which very few two-and-a-half-month olds can do.

Ian finally went before the examiner at about his scheduled naptime. He’d been squirming in my arms while waiting, so I warned the examiner that he’s tired and might be uncooperative for her. Ian responded by smiling, cooing, and bringing his arms to midline. Then he rolled from his back to his tummy for the first time ever. Then he rolled from his tummy to his back for the first time ever. Finally, just to show off, he intentionally grabbed a rattle from the examiner’s hand. The examiner was pleased with the wonderful parenting that was obviously happening in our home.

Then she pointed out how we were failing them. Most of our failings revolved around leaving them on their backs too much. Both boys have flat heads, and Tory’s is flat at an angle suggesting that he’s always looking to his right. Both have full range of motion turning their heads side to side, but they’re very tight doing so since they spend too much time on their backs looking straight up, or off to the right a bit. Abbie never had this problem; of course, Abbie never let me leave her on the floor for an hour at a time either. We need to pick them off the floor more often, or at least flip them onto their tummies, forcing them to move their heads and stretch those neck muscles. Also their skin is really dry and we need to use lotion more often.

Otherwise they look good. Both are growing well with Ian approaching the normal range of growth for full-term babies, and Tory threatening to eat his way past that same range as his weight nears 50th percentile. The examiner gave Abbie a sticker, gave us a book to read to our children, and sent us home with reassurances that our boys are developing normally. She also gave us some neck stretches to do on the boys several times a day, and a bottle of skin lotion.

Pruning the Digestive Process

Ian is now eating solids, sort of. I’ve been giving him prune juice the past few days, which is at least something other than milk or formula even if it isn’t firm enough to qualify as a solid. I’m using the prune juice as a laxative. It’s actually the second most powerful baby laxative I’ve found, but Ellie won’t let me give chili to a baby. Again.

We recently gave the twins a dramatic increase in the amount of formula in their diet, which increases the likelihood of constipation. Constipation is the body’s defense mechanism; they hate the formula so much going down that they hold onto it for as long as possible to keep their digestive systems full, minimizing the amount of formula needed to consume in order to achieve fullness.

Ian’s digestive tract entered shutdown mode shortly after the increase. After giving them their bedtime bottles a couple of nights ago, I set Ian into his blanket for bedtime swaddling. He was peaceful as I lowered him, like he could fall asleep as soon he hit his crib and not wake until the sun rose, provided that dawn would come at 3am because that’s the time he’s programmed to wake overnight now. As soon as I set him down though, he started screaming like a UCLA basketball fan after last night’s title game. I checked for obvious problems like me rolling onto his foot, a painful object beneath him, or his team being drubbed on national TV. A couple seconds later, he tooted. And tooted. And tooted some more, eventually sounding like a locomotive trying to alert a cow sleeping on the tracks. Nothing but air came out in spite of the gut movements, and he continued screaming. I knew he hadn’t pooped in a couple of days, and figured painful constipation had set in.

Even when Ian was on all breast milk, he was never a super pooper. That title belongs to his brother, who even after the increase in formula still poops more by 9am than most people do all day. I knew it was time to break open the prune juice I bought a month ago as a preventative measure, but Ellie wouldn’t let me use while the twins were still pooping twice a day. I poured about a quarter-ounce in his next bottle of milk, and hoped for the burst, er, best. I wanted to try adding the juice to milk first because the last time I added something to the formula, namely breast milk, both babies rejected it like America rejected Basic Instinct 2. Abbie drank prune juice in this way for several months of her first year, and it kept her regular. Of course, Abbie was always a pretty good pooper so the prune juice may have been unnecessary, a point Ellie eventually made by dumping out half a bottle of perfectly good prune juice so I’d stop forcing our daughter to poop two to three times a day.

Happily Ian took the milk-juice concoction, and filled his diaper a few hours later. My guess is he filled it with acetone because what emerged smelled too vile to be baby poop. I held my nose and remembered the important thing is he was moving again, though it was too soon to attribute the movement to the juice. In the couple days since, Ian has pooped a little, but is likely still holding a little back. I’ll watch him closely for a week, and may end up increasing the amount of prune juice he drinks. Or I could just give him some chili.

Daylight Sucking Time

I hate this day of the year. The day that Daylight Savings Time begins is my least favorite day of the year, just ahead of the day that Daylight Savings Time ends and the day before my anniversary when I still don’t know what to get Ellie.

I haven’t liked this day since I was old enough to realize the clocks were cheating me out of an hour of my weekend. 15 years ago, that hour came right out of my video game time, threatening to cut to single-digits the number of hours I’d spend in front of the television over the weekend. Ten years ago, I had to deal with the crushing responsibilities of high school, and that hour usually came from my sleeping time so I could have enough time to finish my homework while preserving my double-digit hours playing video games. Five years ago, I was in the work force, so losing an hour of sleep on the weekend was no big deal since I could make it up by dozing off at the office on Monday.

Today, the day Daylight Savings Time begins of 2006, I’m a full-time parent, and I’m the fourth most important person in the house when it comes to my priorities of making people sleep. I need all three children to sleep the recommended number of hours* everyday to ensure that I have enough time to accomplish everything I need to do everyday, like blog, sleep, and reminisce about the days when I had enough spare time to play video games.

To get the children to sleep, I’ve established a strict schedule where all three kids sleep and eat at the same time everyday. For example, even at their young age the twins know that they go down for a nap at 9:30am, that they wake up at 10:30am, and that I stop ignoring their complaining and get them up to feed them at 11:00am. When the clocks spring forward, or, heaven help us, fall back, I have to hope the children realize the clocks are different and nobody tries falling asleep, waking up, or expecting a meal an hour earlier or later than they should.

The twins made the adjustment well today. I fed them their bedtime bottles 30 minutes earlier than usual last night, they woke up 30 minutes earlier than usual overnight, and they woke up for the day at 8:30am this morning, and they woke up right on time this morning. When I say “right on time,” I mean they let me sleep in an hour, but that’s okay because they had been letting me sleep in by half-an-hour every morning. For the rest of the day they did everything right on schedule, so I’m confident that they’ll be back to letting me sleep in 30 minutes again tomorrow morning.

I feared Abbie would be tougher to shift since she’s older and more set in her ways, like Billy Packer and his love for the ACC except she screams less. We put Abbie to bed at the normal time last night, and obliged by waking up at the normal time this morning, which sounds great except that the hour shift means she slept an hour less than normal last night. She added to her deficit by taking half her normal afternoon nap. This meant she spent tonight acting crankier than a baseball fan forced to sit through a rain delay on opening night, so by the time her newly adjusted bedtime rolled around she was willing to fall asleep whenever we told her to. Fortunately the time change moved her bedtime up by an hour, lessening the amount of time we had to deal with her crankiness. There’s one advantage to the day Daylight Savings Time begins.

* That number is “as many as possible.”

Response to Amy's Comments

Because I'm too lazy to write comments for even my own blog...

Don't laugh, but there may be something to the idea that boys make easier babies than girls. That's been my experience so far, and my neighbors, the ones with eight children, say that all of their five boys were easier as babies than any of their three girls. Of course now those boys are old enough to get into trouble.

I can relate to your grocery problems. There's no way I'm leaving the house with all three kids, so I need Ellie home to watch at least one, preferably two children. Ellie works her share of Saturdays though, and my preferred grocery store is closed on Sunday, so I have to cram in the occasional weeknight grocery trip. When every night is somebody's bath night, that takes some planning to get all my shopping done in the allotted time.

Fools Rush In

Children are amazing creatures. Abbie went 22 full months without saying a word, but the floodgates finally opened. She said her first word tonight, her first honest to goodness, unprompted word. It happened while we were watching the Final Four game tonight, specifically George Mason versus Florida. It’s good to know that those countless hours I spent watching sports over the past two years instead of playing with Abbie didn’t go to waste.

If you saw the game, then you know Florida hit a lot of three-pointer shots, 12 of them to be exact. Once Florida pulled away in the second half, I started paying more attention to Abbie, and tried drawing her into the game. Every time someone, usually Florida, hit a three, I would throw my arms in the air and yell “three!” The first couple times I did this, Abbie just smiled at me. Eventually she joined in, throwing her arms in the air and shouting “eee!”

“Eee” doesn’t count as a word. She’s been able to say word fragments like that for months now, like “muh” for “more,” or “buh” for “book.” Plus she only said it to copy me. I want her to speak spontaneously, without repeating what I just said, so that she may one day come up to me and say “fish” when she wants Goldfish instead of me just going for the bag every time she whines.

After a few more call and response sessions, she added a “th” sound to utter “theee.” That counts as a word. I gave her the biggest celebration she’s ever seen, dwarfing her first birthday party with expenses well into three-figures. We laughed, we kissed, and we yelled “theee” some more. Abbie laughed, and turned back to the TV, this time constantly yelling “theee.” I corrected her, saying that we only yell “three” when somebody makes a three-pointer. I felt a little silly correcting her when she’s obviously too young to tell when someone hits a three, but she seemed to understand, waiting until someone shot to yell “theee.” Of course she shouted it on every shot, three-pointers, two-pointers, and free throws whether they were good or not. I corrected her again, explaining that we only yell when somebody makes a shot from behind that line. She laughed again, and I thought I’d be hearing “theee” for the rest of the night.

Amazingly, she turned to watch the game, and waited until someone hit a three to yell. I thought it was a coincidence, but she waited until the next made three to yell again. Then she started calling shots, yelling “theee” while a good three-pointer was in the air, but staying silent when a missed three-pointer was in the air. This had to be a fluke, that a shiny object caught her attention during the bad three-pointer shots, but she proved me wrong on one of Florida’s last possessions. They had about a two-minute possession near the end of the game where they kept missing shots, but grabbing the offensive rebound. Abbie intently watched the entire possession in silence, not once turning to watch a pet bound through the living room or even my dangling wedding ring. As soon as Florida took the three-point shot that ended the possession though, her hands were in the air and she was yelling “theee!”

I could only sit astonished. I asked if she liked the Gators, and she smiled while snapping her hands in the alligator sign. I figured I’d push my luck and asked if she thought the next winner would be the Tigers, or the Bruins. I knew she couldn’t say either of these, but she scratched her hands across her chest to make the bear sign. She had to go to bed before the game tipped off, so I figured I’d get her pick for the final right then and there. I asked if she thought the national champion would be the Gators (snap snap) or the Bruins (scratch scratch). She scratched her chest for the Bruins. Since she was right on the semi-final game, we’ll have to watch the final game together, even if it does go past her bedtime. I hope it has a lot of made three-pointers.