Three Become Two

I’ve decided that it’s time for the boys to drop a nap. They’re seven months old, and still taking three naps a day. More naps may sound like a great thing; the more naps they take the more time I have to devote to other projects around the house, like entertaining Abbie or preparing bottles.

The problem lies in the boys’ expectations of a meal after waking from every nap. That’s fine in the morning and afternoon when they go four hours between meals. It’s that evening meal when they just ate two hours ago and will eat again in another two hours that I need to eliminate. When they eat so much so close together, they tend to make room for the next meal by spitting up the previous one during their wake time. They’ve always been spitty babies just like their sister, so I’m used to coexisting with a certain amount of regurgitated milk; just wipe it off myself and call the dog over to clean the carpets. Now that they’re eating solids, they’re leaving quasi-permanent neon yellow, orange, and green spots on the carpet as reminders of their previous meal of peaches, carrots, or whatever vegetable comprised those green slurry cubes I pulled out of the freezer for supper. Broccoli, I think.

The solution to this mess is to feed them less, and therefore let them nap less. Their previous schedule has been feedings at 8:00am, 11:30am, 4:00pm, 6:30pm, and 8:30pm, with a nap preceding the middle three. That 6:30pm feeding is deadweight, so I want to axe it like Britney wants to cut loose Kevin. The obvious way to do that is to stretch out their feedings; make them go down for their nap a little later so they wake up a little later and demand sustenance a little later.

Unfortunately the boys aren’t fond of obvious solutions. I’ve been keeping them awake past their normal nap time the past few days, but they dissolve into tired blubbering messes as soon as the clock says hits nap time. My reward for intensive comforting of two screaming babies to keep them awake for an extra 15 minutes is hearing them wake promptly at their traditional feeding time, ready for a nice warm bowl of carpet staining fuel.

We’ve made a little progress. Yesterday they napped until 5:00pm, an hour later than usual. Actually they napped until about 4:40pm, but my singing was all the nourishment they needed as they contentedly listened from their cribs for about 15 minutes before melting down. I fed them at 5:00, then fed Abbie, then fed myself. The children then spent a half-hour playing amongst themselves as I cleaned the kitchen and snuck a little ice cream while Abbie wasn’t watching. It’s important that I’m a good nutritional role model for her as far as she knows.

By the time the kitchen was clean, the boys were a little grumpy, so I took everyone out to the park. The outdoors has a calming effect on everyone, plus if the boys hurl their supper, their pea-colored spit blends into the grass. We stayed in the park about 90 minutes until their final feeding. Abbie was a little bored by the time we went inside, but the important thing was the boys were content without a nap or a meal the whole time. Actually Ian fell asleep in the stroller for a while, but he didn’t demand a bottle when he woke up, so close enough.

"We were just sitting on the couch quietly chatting when we heard a creaking noise." "We leapt off just in time to see it collapse."

Abbie is a climber. When she goes outside, she finds tons of things to climb. There’s the neighbor’s trampoline, over three feet off the ground, that she can climb in and out of* using a stepstool. Or when leaving the trampoline, if that stepstool is unavailable because it’s two inches away from the spot where she’s decided she’s coming out, she’ll just climb down to a hanging position off the railing and drop the last few inches to the ground. There’re the ladders on the playground equipment, which she traverses up and down just fine, though she does insist on climbing down with her back to the ladder in a position that freaks out every nearby adult the first time they see her do it. There’re the stairs leading up to everyone’s backdoor that she uses to frighten the inhabitants when they look out their window and find a seemingly unsupervised toddler bounding up and down unannounced.

When she comes inside, the climbing continues. All furniture is fair game for her scaling adventures, as is any toy that’s large, flat, and sturdy enough to support her. When she figures out how to stand on those giant rubber balls she loves playing with, I’m not going to have a lot of fun. Unless she can parlay that skill into a job with the circus; that would be fun.

I wish I could stop her from at least climbing indoors because eventually she’s going to hurt herself on one of our rickety pieces of furniture. I pull her off when I catch her doing something dangerous, but when I have a baby on each knee all I can do is command that she get down right now and hope she listens for a change.

Yesterday morning I had one of the boys** sprawled out on the changing table with a radioactive diaper at his feet. I heard Abbie climbing into her booster seat, which is attached to one of our kitchen chairs. Our chairs are old enough to have been used by the pioneers, or at least dumped by the pioneers before they set out west because I’m sure they would have jumped at the first chance to abandon them too. They’re falling apart, and we have to pop joints back into place more often than a Packers trainer.

Abbie can climb in and out of her booster seat with no problem. One day the chair underneath will disintegrate sending her tumbling to the floor, but for now it seems sit-worthy. Unfortunately, Abbie doesn’t just sit in her booster seat; she bounces in it. She loves buckling herself in, possibly because it’s her way of communicating that I need to feed her. When I don’t immediately respond with chicken nuggets or at least Goldfish, she starts screaming and hopping, putting more stress on the chair than your average Cub fan feels while sober.

When I heard her climbing in the chair, I told her to get down and continued wiping. When I heard her bouncing in the chair, I wiped to a stopping point, and rushed out to remove her. The chair maintained its integrity, but she may have been better off if it didn’t. I walked into the kitchen just in time to see it tipping forward.

Abbie hit the ground flat on her face, and boy was she mad. After rescuing and examining her, I found a bit of a nosebleed and a small cut on her lip, but she was otherwise fine not counting psychological damage. She stopped bleeding fairly quickly, but the nosebleed was problematic since she’s still in the habit of banging her head on the floor when she’s frustrated. Whenever I denied her Goldfish throughout the rest of the day, I wound up having to dab up some blood and comfort a child who hurt herself a bit more than anticipated.

Now I’m responding quicker when I notice Abbie climbing on furniture. Hopefully I can stop her before she breaks something, whether it be a chair or a nose.

* …and in and out and in and out and in and out and in and out and in and out…
** I forget which one, but it was probably Tory, that super-pooper.

The Outback

We’ve been spending a lot of time outside recently. It’s amazing how much spare time I can find after settling into a routine. That, and the 15 hours a day of functional sunlight we’re currently experiencing help me figure out a way to squeeze in a little outdoor time.

We have two choices for slipping outside: We can go to the park several feet outside our front door, or the backyard. The park is nice with lots of playground equipment including swings, slides, and goodies that Abbie pulls out of unattended strollers. The drawback to the park is that we have to make it a grand outing to make it to the park, putting on Abbie’s shoes, packing the twins into the stroller, and fighting with Abbie to keep her moving in the proper direction as I push the stroller instead of darting off in random directions in hopes of finally catching one of those birds that finally landed.

The backyard is less formal. Abbie doesn’t need shoes or socks, the twins don’t need the stroller, and I don’t need to go outside to watch Abbie roam the yard. Our backyard is shared among about a dozen apartments. This provides a huge fenced in yard of I’d estimate 50x500 feet. It even has things to entertain her like toys left by neighbor children, the neighbor’s trampoline, back steps in varying heights and degrees of disarray. It also has our dog (and a few neighbor dogs) to entertain her. Our dog loves being outside with us, if for no other reason than she actually has room to run away when Abbie approaches with that maniacal laugh that means something is about to be pulled.

I took Abbie outside all the time during her first two summers. Two years ago, that meant carrying her around during her fussy time* to calm her by letting her look at trees.** Last year, that meant letting her stumble about the backyard and chewing on various objects she’d find.

I’d been reluctant to let the kids outside so far this year, though. That was partially because the ground just finished thawing, but a lot of that had to do with the neighbor’s dogs that recently moved away. They were super nice and friendly dogs, but they were also like 80-pound bags of hammers with four legs in that they’d beat the snot out of you without realizing they were doing it if they got near you, and they were hard to handle and move if necessary. The bags of hammers would probably listen better, though, and they would undoubtedly be smarter. When I only had to watch Abbie, I could handle them, keeping them away from her, picking up Abbie when they knocked her down, pulling them off her when they rolled onto her while asking for a tummy rub. With three children to watch, I couldn’t possibly keep all three safe, and the dogs could seriously hurt one of the boys by stepping or rolling on one of their 15-pound frames. Plus there’s the dog doo factor.

With those dogs gone, I can take everyone outside without fear. There are still other dogs, but they’re much smaller and calmer. When we have a few spare minutes, I call Abbie, open the door, watch her and the dog race each other to run outside first, and bring the twins outside. I still insist on carrying the twins one at a time whenever possible due to a fear of dropping someone, so I carry one guy outside, leave him on the grass in the shade, and go back inside to grab his brother.

Abbie spends her time running around the yard. Sometimes she’ll go where I can’t see or hear her, but that’s okay because our dog is watching her. Meanwhile, I sit in the shade while the boys lie at my side doing whatever it is babies do outside. They don’t seem to enjoy the outdoors as much as Abbie did at that age, but that may be because they on get held half as much as she did. That means they can only watch trees from a distance.

* Her “fussy time” back then was also known as her “wake time.”
** Seriously. She could be a screaming mess of a meltdown, but as soon as she saw a tree up-close and swaying in the breeze she calmed down so fast you’d swear we slipped her an illicit substance that just kicked in.

Keeping It on the PT.

Abbie’s developmental milestones:
Run? Check.
Jump? Check.
Climb up and down stairs, chairs, and bookcases? Check.
Talk? Pass.

The next thing I see on the list is potty trained. We’ve been working on this skill off and on for more than half a year. I started taking an interest in potty training Abbie when I discovered that a neighbor boy who’s a few months older than Abbie was potty trained. Our neighbors set out his potty when he was about 18-months-old, he started using it that day, and he’s been potty trained ever since. Jerks.

Inspired by their success, we purchased a potty, set it out for Abbie, and watched her sit on it that day. Not that she deposited anything in the potty; she just sat on it. We’ve been stuck at this stage ever since. We’re not really in a hurry to potty train her, just responding to larger cues from society and relatives. I know plenty of children who aren’t potty trained by three, and I think Abbie will be one of those children. She does need to be potty trained for preschool, and if I want her to experience valuable social contact in a fun and dynamic learning environment that gets her out of my hair for a few hours a week,* we have a training deadline of next September.

The Internet has helpful checklists like this one to guide us in determining if she’s ready. She met most of those goals (like walking, having a regular bowel movement, and pulling pants up and down) months ago. A few items, like having words for urine and stool,** are still beyond her. Nevertheless, I was satisfied that she was ready enough, so we soldiered onward.

The first step is making sure she’s comfortable with the potty. As far as we can tell, she loves her potty, or she at least doesn’t object to it. We have two potties, one in the bathroom and one in the living room, and she’ll sit on either for a minute at a time with or without pants, and she’ll tote the living room potty about the house, sitting on it without us prompting her. She also likes playing with the waste cup, which sounds disgusting, but keep in mind that she’s never actually put any waste in the cup.

The next step is to encourage and reward good behavior. She already tolerates sitting on it, so we can move straight to encouraging her pee peeing in the cup. I found several ideas on rewarding her, such as stickers, candy, and letting her show the dog what she did.*** While the dog idea has potential, we opted for the stickers. Ellie purchased a few hundred butterfly stickers, affixed a few to a sheet of paper with the creative heading “Abbie’s Potty Stickers,” stuck the sheet to the refrigerator, and waited for her to eagerly piss the days away to fill her sheet.

A month later, the mostly untouched sheet fell on the floor, and we threw it away. Abbie never understood the pee pee-sticker connection. We still have the stickers ready for her, but we can’t encourage behavior she won’t do. Aside from the occasional dribble that’s probably an accident, she will not pee in the potty. She’ll pee pee in the bathtub while taking a bath, pee pee on the bathroom rug after standing up from the potty, and pee pee on the living room carpet while running away from us as we try to put a diaper on her, but not in the potty. No offer of songs, stickers, or dog can convince her otherwise.

A friend suggested that we use a timer to make her sit on the potty every 30 minutes. I tried this for about three hours one morning. I never got any pee pee in the cup, but I did get a few wet diapers and a pair of babies who were screamingly mad at being ignored for minutes at a time. She doesn’t give us any cues as to when she has to go, or if she does I miss them while I’m basking in my children’s love or at least working my butt off to keep complaining to a minimum.

I’ve come to the conclusion that she’s just not ready, and that’s okay. We’ll just keep encouraging her, and making her sit on the potty a couple times a day to see if she’ll do anything. The dog will be so proud when she does.

* I do.
** That one seems unfair anyway. Even if she could talk, I don’t know why she’d have words for those. It’s not like I’m standing with her over the toilet explaining “that’s pee pee. That’s poo poo. And that’s a hair that fell in the basin.” Although maybe I should…
*** Seriously.

Easy Like Sunday Morning

Early in the afternoon yesterday, we were all relaxing in the living room. I held Ian, Ellie held Tory, and Abbie was playing nicely between us. It was a briefly idyllic scene, the kind parents dream of experiencing on Sunday afternoons; the weekend’s chores were done, and our family had nothing to do but relax and gear up for another workweek on Monday. Except that I work seven days a week, Ellie was gearing up for a 12-hour shift starting in less than an hour, and we still had a pile of laundry to take care of starting with the approximately 3,510,546,068 articles of outgrown clothing sitting in our living room waiting for somebody to sort and store them in the basement. Other than that, life was perfect.

Abbie was finishing lunch. Her regular lunch is milk, yogurt, and a big pile of steamed vegetables. Lately I’ve been adding Tasteeos to the end of her lunch because she’s been acting hungry. Or possibly I’m just assuming she must be hungry after she offers most of her lunch to the dog, including handfuls of yogurt and milk straight from the sippy cup. Either way, I give her the entire box of Tasteeos and let her graze. I’d rather give her a small dish filled with Tasteeos due to the potential for box dumping, but she only eats Tasteeos that she pulls fresh from the box. Any Tasteeos given to her in a cup just wind up in the dog’s mouth, either directly from Abbie’s outstretched hand, or off the floor after she flips her dish upside-down.

After eating a few Tasteeos, she started offering cereal to us. Offering her food to others is one of her favorite activities; she’ll grasp the food in her fingers and hold it out for us to take in our mouths. When she does this to me, I’ll lean in close and pretend to eat it while making a “num num num” sound. My goal is to encourage her to eat her food by thinking it must be really tasty if daddy is so enthusiastically. Sometimes she rewards me by inserting the formerly offered food in her mouth and making an “mmm” sound. Sometimes the dog gets the formerly offered food.

After she offered Tasteeos to Ellie and me, she offered some to Tory, which Ellie let him try. I was reluctant to let them eat real cereal since they’ve only been eating solids for a couple weeks now and I’m still putting applesauce through the blender before giving it to them. Then I remembered that Abbie was about their age when she started eating Tasteeos, so I figured what’s the worst that could happen?

Not much happened with Tory’s Tasteeo. He gummed it for a minute before it worked its way out of his mouth. Abbie then inserted a Tasteeo in Ian’s mouth. I watched him closely for a few seconds before sitting him on my knee facing Ellie. I couldn’t see his face, but Ellie could, and a minute later she saw he was about to gag. She told me to remove it, and I dutifully turned him a bit to the side to get a good look at his mouth.

Suddenly half of his lunch came spewing out of his mouth and mostly onto my pants. He had eaten peaches an hour ago, and the spillage had their distinctive orange hue. I made sure to point out the Tasteeo that also emerged from his mouth as I wasn’t sure Ellie could see it through the tears in her eyes from laughing so hard.

Abbie, always willing to help, put down her cereal box, grabbed a burp cloth, and started dabbing at the orange tankage. I thanked her for her efforts, but it was too late to save my pants. Fortunately I still had laundry to do.

Art Art Bo Bart

Here in Des Moines, we have a short window for outdoor festivals. If you want good weather for your event, you have to schedule between May and September, and even that can get dicey on the fringes. Failure to cram your event into one of these dozen weekends will result in the weather seen at the Drake Relays. The Drake Relays are a major collegiate and high school track and field event held in Des Moines in late-April, a time when the weather might be hot and sunny, cold and snowy, or occasionally both on successive days. This is why the local casino books Toto for an outdoor concert only during the heart of the summer months so that their dozens of fans can enjoy a warm Iowa night.

This weekend we welcomed the Des Moines Arts Festival. This is one of the highlights of the local festival scene, along with the Iowa State Fair. The events are similar in that both offer overpriced and frighteningly unhealthy foods, although with the Arts Festival the idea is to munch on your food while perusing the art offerings, while at the state fair the idea is to munch your food while perusing the additional food offerings.

The Festival’s website boasts that “patrons can purchase artwork in a variety of styles and prices from 150 professional artists from all over the country.” Indeed, the styles range from photographs that anybody with a digital camera and a software program with a “desaturate” filter could produce, to life-size humanoid sculptures that would be impractical in my home if for no other reason than they’d really creep me out every time I saw it while stumbling to and from the bathroom at 3am. The prices range from “Graco Stroller” expensive, to “Stokke Stroller” expensive. Every year I attend, I swear I’m going to buy something for $X, and every year the cheapest interesting thing I find is an unframed, unmated print for $XR2. The website also boasts that it’s the country’s third best fine arts festival, which might sound like a strange thing to boast about, but keep in mind that nothing else non-agricultural in Iowa ranks in the top three nationally of anything.

We packed up the kids and $X yesterday morning and drove out to this exciting event. I say exciting because the roads, sidewalks, and apparently river next to the Festival were all under construction, forcing a temporary move to a slightly different spot. This meant that, after navigating the one-ways and closed streets of downtown, we had to park four blocks from the entrance and walk with three small children across busy streets, over dangerously cracked sidewalks, and past an adult bookstore. We stuffed the kids into two strollers, which helped expedite the journey, at least until we hit a pothole.

I pushed the twins in the double-stroller. They napped through most of our browsing, or at least sat quietly when awake. Ellie pushed Abbie in an umbrella stroller. I had hoped that Abbie could enjoy some of the Festival’s children’s activities, but the activities were mostly for school-age children. I’d think they could at least provide a giant finger-painting station for children who are too young to read. Or follow directions. Or talk. Instead we kept Abbie amused with the best form of toddler entertainment known: A bowlful of Goldfish crackers.

Ellie’s umbrella stroller gave her almost full mobility in the crowded artist booths as she took up no more space than some of the other patrons who looked like they annually enjoy all ten days of the Iowa State Fair, plus she was much more agile. My double-stroller, a front-and-back model, limited my browsing ability. To enter a booth, I’d have to walk the stroller in perpendicular to the sidewalk, careful not to bump the artist from his chair or any of his four-figure works of art, and then back the stroller out, careful not to bump any patrons or their two-figure meals. I quickly gave up and stayed on the sidewalk, allowing me to enjoy the art at a distance without realizing how much they cost.

We skimmed all 150 artists in a little over an hour. We could have returned to our favorites, but at that point Abbie was out of Goldfish, and both of the boys were awake and becoming curious where their milk was. We started back to the car, but took a detour to purchase one thing before leaving: A 20-ounce bottle of soda pop for $X-1.

Know Your Twin

Top 10 Differences between Ian and Tory:

10. Ian poops once a day, in the morning. Tory poops in the morning, then again early in the afternoon, and sometimes early in the evening too.
9. Tory likes bouncing more than Ian. He gets more out of the bouncing stationary entertainer. He loves watching Abbie bounce, though Ian likes it too. I’m discovering that throwing Abbie on the bed and making her jump for their entertainment is a great way to keep all three children occupied.
8. Ian falls back asleep when he wakes up too early from his nap; Tory does his best to stay awake. This is a major aggravation when it was Ian’s complaining that woke Tory in the first place.
7. Tory’s torticollis makes him tilt his head to his right when he’s not paying attention. It doesn’t seem too big of a deal, and hopefully it’ll be corrected before he starts walking in a circle.
6. Ian crosses his eyes a little when focusing on something close, like a relative hovering overhead, or a ball that Abbie just chucked in his direction.
5. Tory’s annoying spoon-feeding habit is letting the entire spoonful dribble out of his mouth. Ian’s annoying spoon-feeding habit is trying to grab the spoon on its way into his mouth.
4. Ian can briefly stand up in a bear-crawl position with his legs straight. Tory is still commando crawling across the floor, but he can move at alarming speeds.
3. When in an uncomfortable situation, Ian stays at complaining while Tory goes straight for meltdown. The exception is when I put them in high chairs so I can keep an eye on them while other family members eat; Ian is usually the one to meltdown while Tory just goes limp in hopes that it’ll be over sooner.
2. Tory spits up more. Not that Ian doesn’t spit up a lot, but Tory spits up even more. This is probably related to Tory’s insistence on eating more than Ian.
1. Ian weighs about three pounds less than Tory, and they look like there’s a three-pound difference between them.

Abbie Buffet

When Ellie came home for the day just before noon yesterday, my first thought was we were going out for lunch. Oh, and it’s good to see her; that one definitely came before the food thing.

Now that I’ve gotten over my fear of dealing with the twins in a restaurant, we regularly go out to eat; we almost have to plan our outings with a meal in the middle if we’re to have enough time to accomplish anything. If we try feeding the kids and then running to more than a couple stores on an expedition, inevitably someone starts screaming from hunger around the time we hit the “beyond” section in Bed, Bath, & Beyond. With a meal in the middle of an outing, we can pick up some Vital Supplies, eat, and still have time to browse the entire “noble” section after perusing the “barnes” aisles.

A weekday lunch outing is different. Usually when we stop to eat on an outing, it’s something quick. On a weekday, we can stop at a sit-down restaurant and enjoy their mid-week lunch specials used to entice businesspeople looking to escape the chaos of their offices. Suckers.

As I’ve mentioned far too many times, I like visiting buffets because they combine the benefits of a sit-down meal with the speed of fast food. Plus all of our children are still in that magical age group where they eat free, which is far better than blowing $3.49 on a kid’s meal and watching Abbie throw half her chicken nuggets on the floor.

We went to our favorite Chinese buffet, the one with over 100 entrees on the buffet of mostly Asian origin, but also including some American foods, a fruit and salad bar, and a stir-fried dish called “jalapeno chicken” that I’m not really sure what to categorize it as. Asican? As is our strategy, I filled a plate for Abbie and me while Ellie prepped the children for the meal. Her work involved sitting Abbie in her high chair and putting the twins in position to fall asleep, or at least contentedly watch us.

On my first trip through the line, I picked up all manner of stir-fried foods. I sent Ellie off to the buffet while I tried various foods on Abbie to see what she liked. She liked none of it; not the Crispy Pork, or the Pineapple Chicken, or even the General Tso’s Chicken. I had hoped that her affinity for fried chicken in nugget form would lead her to enjoy stir-fried chicken coated in various Asian sauces, but nope. Fortunately I was able to tide her over with broccoli chunks from my Broccoli Chicken until Ellie returned and I could fetch her a suitable plate.

I returned with a plate loaded with fruit, gelatin, pudding, and something from the American side called Honey Chicken that was bits of simmered chicken in a sweet red sauce, possibly containing honey. I felt a little silly when I returned and remembered earlier buffet attempts to keep her happy with fruit, only to see her refuse to eat three-quarters of her plate. To my surprise, she cleaned her plate, downing the grapes, mandarin oranges, pudding, and the entire helping of Honey Chicken. She even ate the fruits she doesn’t normally touch like bananas and pineapple, along with the 2-inch gelatin cube in one bite. She ate so well, I grabbed another plate full of fruit, and that plate she left three-quarters untouched.

The boys were not pleasant during this time. I guess that it’s a positive sign of their mental development that they no longer fall asleep every time we leave the house, but this is going to make meals difficult until we can start bribing them with food. Ellie wound up holding Ian for most of the meal to keep him happy. Eventually she reached for his pacifier to calm him, but quickly realized we forgot to bring it. So she gave him a green bean to suck. It worked well as a pacifier, at least until he managed to suck out a bean.

For dessert, I grabbed Abbie an ice cream cone. I appreciate being able to make an Abbie sized cone, which is one filled with as little ice cream as possible. That means less ice cream to smear on her face, less ice cream to drip down her arms, and less ice cream to splatter on the carpet when she throws her cone.

On our way out the door, I recapped what I’d learned. Chunks of meat still aren’t Abbie’s favorite things to eat. I should give her more fruit as a snack. Never leave home without the twins’ pacifiers, or at least grabbed some well-cooked green beans.

Housekeeping

Amy’s blog post about hiring a housekeeper inspired me to do something about the squalor we live in. Specifically, it inspired me to clean our bathroom. Not that the filth inside was on the verge of forming a semi-autonomous nation; I can still clearly remember the last time I cleaned the bathroom,* so it hasn’t been that long. It was still pretty dirty though, and to the point where I wasn’t sure if hands would emerge any cleaner after being washed in the sink.

I put the boys down for their morning nap, dug out my favorite corrosive chemicals,** and started work wiping down everything in sight. I left the bathroom door open partly so I wouldn’t die when I accidentally spilled ammonia in my bleach water, but mostly so I could keep a halfway-competent eye on Abbie. The instant she does something in another room that’s dangerous enough to make her scream in agony, I’ll know about it.

Abbie does not usually choose to be in another room, though. Abbie wants to be at my side, exploring, and helping me work. Of course my idea of work is filling a bucket full of bleach water, while her idea of work is finding out water happens when she tips over a bucket full of bleach water,*** so our work ethics aren’t always compatible. I try to humor her as best I can and let her explore as long as she’s not on the verge of doing something destructive or dangerous.

Unfortunately our bathroom is tiny, and when daddy is cleaning, almost anything she could touch is destructive or dangerous. First she tried climbing in the bathtub filled with scalding hot bleach water, which, in her defense, closely resembles a bathtub filled with bathwater. After realizing that daddy wasn’t going to let her take a bath, she started chewing on soap bottles, trying to flip the caps open with her teeth. When she chews on bath soap bottles, that’s annoying, but not necessarily dangerous unless she downs a whole bottle, and neither of us is ignorant enough to let that happen. When she chews on cleaning soap bottles, like she did after I put all the bath soap bottles out of reach, that’s dangerous. The first time she popped the lid off the bottle of wipes, I kicked her out of the bathroom, shutting the door behind me.

I was almost finished, but hurried to the end. With her out of view, I had no idea what she was up to. The fact that I couldn’t hear her could only mean she was doing something naughty.

Finished, I opened the door, took one step into the kitchen, and immediately saw what Abbie had gotten into. She had climbed onto a dining chair, across the top of the dishwasher, onto the countertop, pulled a box of Fruit Rings off the top shelf, and was happily munching her way into a sugar buzz. She knows she’s not supposed to climb on things or grab food without permission; doing so makes daddy turn red. She knew just how to work her way out of trouble, though; upon seeing me, she immediately thrust out her hand and offered me a purple Fruit Ring. If it works to keep the dog happy and by her side, it should work with daddy.

Declining the Fruit Ring, I pulled her off the counter, put the box back on the shelf, and turned around before she could see me laughing. Then I set about wiping the nuclear-hued sugar dust off her hands. Fortunately we had a nice clean sink in which to wash her hands.

* It was definitely last cleaned sometime within the past month. We’re still in June, right?
** Bleach. Lots of bleach. And a few lemon-scented wipes.
*** Daddy turns red.

How did I Get Here?

In the wake of Father’s Day, it occurred to me that I’ve never really explained how I became a father. Well, it should be obvious how I became a father, but how did I become a stay-at-home father?

In case you missed society’s omnipresent expectations of gender roles in the family, women generally take care of the kids while the men provide for the family by working long hours and schmoozing on the golf course. Even mothers who work outside the home generally do the heavy lifting in taking care of children while dads step in occasionally to share knowledge on things like riding a bike and why the Yankees suck. There’s no real reason for these gender roles, besides tradition, and the more extensive support network already existing for stay-at-home moms. Oh, and functioning boobs. So why did our family reverse these gender roles?

It’s not because I grew up caring for other children. I’m an only child. The first child I spent any time in a caretaker relationship is Abbie. Plus, I wasn’t a popular kid, so before Abbie I never spent much time around other kids period. Ellie grew up in a similar situation on a farm and having to rely on parental transportation to see other children. She does have one sister who’s 11 years younger, so she has some prior experience with small children. What this means, besides the fact that our kids will grow up in an environment devoid of cousins, uncles, and aunts, is that neither of us was comfortable around small children when Abbie was born. No, the reason I became a stay-at-home dad was simple economics

When Ellie and I graduated from college together as an engaged couple in 2000, we had vastly different career paths ahead of us. I had a degree in journalism, which meant I faced a lifetime of being underappreciated and underpaid in crummy jobs unless I hit the employment lottery, which seemed a lot more plausible six years ago. Ellie had a degree in biology, effectively pre-med, giving her another four years of school followed by three years of residency before she could be referred to as, and paid like, a doctor.

While Ellie prepared for yet more school, I entered the workforce literally the day after I graduated. I had a good job, as defined by the fact that it was in my field of study and it wasn’t in television news. It had its drawbacks, though, since it was an entry-level job at a small company where my only hope for advancement was if my boss died. Still, I used my meager pay to support our two-person family while Ellie went to school, or rather I supported myself; Ellie had student loans to support herself.

About a year from graduation, Ellie started thinking about kids. Our answer to the “do you want any?” question has always been “maybe later.” With residency approaching, she realized that “later” had arrived. We decided, “Why not have kids? How much could they disrupt our lives?” Nine months before graduation, without putting any thought into who or how we would care for a child, Ellie became pregnant with Abbie.

As the due date approached, we started looking at our childcare options. Ellie couldn’t be a full-time parent since she had to work to afford the amortization on her student loan debt that was fast rivaling the national debt of Namibia. Plus her job paid about a third more than mine even though I had four years of tenure at my company, and residents are worked and paid like dogs. I could have kept working, but after doing some math we discovered that, after paying for childcare and transportation for my 72.4-mile daily commute, my job would essentially be a hobby. Also my job required that I travel about a week every month, meaning we’d have to frequently find childcare while Ellie worked irregular shifts that could last as long as 36-hours.

So I decided for the simpler life of a stay-at-home dad. I imagined I could play Playstation during the day while the baby napped, then I’d feed the baby when she woke, and afterwards she could watch me play more Playstation.

When Abbie was born literally the day after Ellie’s graduation, I was as ready as I could be, which is to say not even remotely ready. Two years, two more kids, and a whole lot of on-the-job training later, I can’t imagine a different life. I’d go insane trying to juggle childcare and a full-time job. Ellie, who works long and difficult hours to put a roof over our heads and an occasional Gymboree outfit on our children’s backs, has said the only way she can spend so much time away from home is the knowledge that the kids are in my hands.

A year from now, our lives will change. Ellie will graduate from resident to full-fledged doctor. Abbie will start preschool, assuming she starts talking. The twins will be getting into everything. We’ll move to a different home, one that had better have more than two bedrooms and one bathroom. I’ll still be at home, wherever that home is, and I’ll still be a stay-at-home father. I’ll probably start working again in some capacity someday, probably when the twins head off to school, but until then my full-time job is drill our values into our children and make sure they head off into the world hating the Yankees.

A Typical Morning

I clean the kitchen every morning after breakfast. This is a daily chore that’s less impressive than it sounds. I unload the clean dishes from the dishwasher, load the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, hand wash a few things, wipe down the counters, and, for an extra dose of sanitation, ensure there are no bits of food lying on the floor by calling the dog into the kitchen. The process takes about ten minutes if the kids put no demands on me while I’m working.

In the real world, the chore takes me about a half-hour. Abbie usually bounces around the house while I work, chasing the dog, spewing toys throughout the living room, and inventing new ways to insert and remove dishes from the dishwasher. I try to leave her alone as long as she’s not in imminent danger or about to destroy something, which means I have to remove my rubber gloves and rescue her or some fragile object every 47 seconds on average. The twins I strap into their high chairs and give them toys for entertainment so I can keep an eye on them while I work.

This arrangement lasts for about 141 seconds, or just long enough for Abbie to pull a can of formula off the counter. After that the twins become screaming little balls, furious at the indignity of being restrained in the sitting position. At this point I usually haul them into the living room and plunk them into their stationary entertainers so they can be restrained in the standing position, yet retain the freedom to rotate 360-degrees. Then, in blatant violation of the explicit warnings on the entertainers, I leave them unattended and return to the kitchen. They’re out of my line of sight, but it’s not like I’m leaving them unsupervised in the guesthouse; they’re about 15 feet away from me, separated by a wall, and I can hear their every bounce, jiggle, and spit-up. This arrangement isn’t perfect, but I do what I have to do in our tiny home to keep them happy, or at least limit their complaining to a dull whine instead of irate wailing. I try to concentrate on my work and leave them alone as long as the screaming isn’t too furious.

Ian’s screaming turned furious yesterday morning, as in “I’m in serious pain.” I rushed out to see what was wrong, and found fingernail marks on the top of his head. Abbie was apparently playing with one of the toys on his entertainer, became frustrated when it didn’t work like she wanted it to, and took out her frustrations on his head. Abbie has been doing better with her scratching and pinching, but she’s still prone to moments of weakness. I feel bad for Ian; he seems to be the one on the receiving end of most physical blows. Ian suffered the most egregious dropping incident. Abbie usually picks on him on the rare occasions when she pinches or scratches a brother. His crib is easier for Abbie to climb into, so she occasionally falls on him on her way into the cribs. Tory is the one who fell forward flat on his face a couple weeks ago, so it’s not like he’s unacquainted with pain.

I picked up Ian and comforted him back down. He calmed surprisingly quickly considering the set of red marks running through his head. After a minute, I set him back in the entertainer and returned to the kitchen. I finished as fast as possible, and spent the rest of the morning singing, reading, and playing with the kids until the boys’ naptime.

That night, I needed to do some gardening. While the boys played in their entertainers, I pulled a shovel and bucket from the basement. I left the shovel standing in the bucket in the living room while I rounded up a few other things. The shovel tipped over as soon as I turned my back. Of course the handle thwacked Ian on the head on its way down. Poor kid.

Cheap Motif

We recently moved Abbie into a toddler bed. She’d been in a toddler bed for a few months now, but this is a completely different toddler bed. After having slept in a toddler bed, a crib, a Pack ‘N Play, and two different hospital cribs, plus the occasional nap in an infant carrier, a car seat, mommy and daddy’s bed, and the floor, we figured that moving her into another toddler bed shouldn’t be too traumatic.

We borrowed her old bed from one of Ellie’s coworkers, and now she wants it back. Her bed is a beautiful piece of wooden furniture that converts from a crib, to a toddler bed, to a daybed, to a dismantled dust-collector in the basement because no one really wants a daybed. The owner was moving to a new house with her post-toddler aged children and, possibly realizing the worthlessness of a daybed, offered it for our family’s use if we’d move it for her. Plus I think Ellie effectively played the sympathy card with our then-impending twins.

Now we’ve adjusted to life with the twins, thereby losing our sympathy, and the owner has a use for her bed again and wants it back. Our first step in ending our freeloading ways was to buy a toddler bed. We took Abbie to our favorite discount baby supplier, by which I mean they supply cheap goods for babies, not that they supply bargain basement priced babies, and let her pick out a toddler bed. They had racecar beds, fire truck beds, princess beds, and more, but what caught her eye were the swings in the adjacent aisle, so we made the decision for her.

The aforementioned novelty beds were large in size and price, which didn’t fit our home or our budget, so those were immediately ruled out. They had smaller wooden beds, which were nice but pricey. Our final candidates were a cheap plastic bed emblazoned with Dora,* and a super-cheap metal bed emblazoned with white paint. We went with the super-cheap bed, making up for our niggardliness by buying her a Dora bed set and Dora stickers to decorate it. Plus the girlish Dora bed would be harder than the plain white one to hand down to one of the boys, probably Ian since Tory already has a convertible crib-toddler bed in that same super-cheap white motif.

Next we had to dissemble the borrowed bed. This proved to be a challenge since I’d lost the bag that contained the instructions and spare hardware. Feeling like a heel for failing to care for someone’s borrowed property, I tore the house apart trying to find it. After much stomping and grumbling and fearing that we might actually have to do some cleaning in the basement to uncover it, we found the bag and started work swapping the beds about an hour before her naptime.

Dissembling went quickly since we didn’t have to worry about which screw goes in which hole. Assembling the new bed was fast as well since it was cheap and had few pieces. We finished the switch a few minutes past her naptime, and I cleaned up while Ellie helped her affix stickers to the frame. At least Ellie thought she was helping; Abbie had to repeatedly correct her by moving them to show that stickers only go on the main frame, not the smaller crossbars.

With the bed decorated, we finished the naptime routine, shut the door, and hoped for the best. I was afraid that she might be reluctant to accept a new bed, or that she might spend the entire naptime peeling off stickers and finding new spots on the frame and her shirt to stick them. Fortunately she fell asleep after an only slightly longer than usual session of bouncing around the room. It’s been a few days since the switch, and she never showed any misgivings about moving to a different bed. I hope she keeps that mindset because she’s going to have to switch at least one more time before we ship her off to college.

* For the uninitiated, Dora is from “Dora the Explorer,” which is Abbie’s favorite TV show, by which I mean it’s the only thing I let her watch.

Is It Tomorrow Yet?

Today is Father’s Day. It’s the day when we traditionally celebrate the paternal parent with a round of golf, a mug of beer, a thick steak, and other things I don’t like. That makes sense since I’m not exactly a traditional father.

My three children were excited to help celebrate my day, which is impressive since they have a combined 38 months of maturity. They were so anxious to celebrate, that they woke up early to get a jump on the festivities. By “early,” I mean “12:30am.” And “3:30am.” And “again at 6am.”

They’ve been doing well sleeping through the night recently. Abbie has reliably slept through the night since she was about 9-months-old, and the twins have been mostly sleeping through the night for about a month. I can’t remember the last time I fed the twins over night. One of the twins will still wake up complaining a couple nights a week, but that’s easily remedied with a pacifier. Abbie also occasionally wakes up vocalizing at a level anywhere between mumbling and screaming, but the mumbling requires no action on my part, and the screaming is more rare than a Cub winning streak. Otherwise, I get to stay in bed for the entire night. I’ve been sleeping so well recently that I’ve almost stopped waking up between 4 and 6am unable to fall back asleep until I’ve fed something. That’s good since our chinchilla was growing huge.

When I stumbled into bed last night, I forgot to turn on the monitor. I also forgot to turn on the dryer after loading it with wet clothes before going to bed, so I apparently had a problem operating machinery last night. When I woke up to hear Tory’s muffled screaming through two closed doors, he might have just started, or he might have been going for 15 minutes. I leapt out of bed, hoping to calm him before he could wake either of his roommates.

Too late. Ian was already complaining loudly, and Abbie was also awake and grumbling at all the noise, and earning my deepest sympathies in the process. Tory seemed to be in intense pain, whether that pain was from teething, gas, or reliving the Cubs’ latest slide into last place. I reached for his pacifier, but it wasn’t next to him in the crib. I fumbled around the edges thinking he’d knocked it between the railings, but couldn’t find it there either. I moved on to Ian’s crib, but his pacifier was missing as well. Suddenly I had a lot less sympathy for Abbie since I knew she’d climbed into their cribs and swiped their pacifiers before she fell asleep.

I called Ellie to help calm them, and rushed into the kitchen to find new pacifiers. Their brand is Soothies, but all I could find were non-Soothie pacifiers. I grabbed as many different types as I could find, and hurried back into their room. Ian accepted one of the poor substitutes and eventually drifted back to sleep, but Tory wanted none of it. I feared he might need a feeding to slide back to sleep, but mama had the magic touch, rocking him back to sleep on the couch. Abbie eventually realized she was the only still complaining and also feel back to sleep.

I never did figure out why Tory woke up screaming, but at least he went back to sleep and stayed asleep. Ian was the one who woke up complaining a few hours later, and again a couple hours after that. Both times he needed a pacifier and a lot of soothing before going back to sleep. I woke up that morning tired but determined to enjoy my day. For supper, I grilled a brat, a traditional indulgence of fathers, because I am a father.

Mall Walking

Last night was another night off work for Ellie. We considered several ways to commemorate her second night of freedom within a week, such as taking the kids to the park and cherishing every moment of their childhoods, but settled on spending another night collecting Vital Supplies. This was a continuation of our last outing, but we squandered this evening at the mall doing everything that we didn’t have time to accomplish during the last excursion.

I dropped Ellie off at one end of the mall, and then parked at the opposite end. This was meant to be a timesaving maneuver as we had business in the mall’s separate nether reaches. She was to drop off her watch for repair at a jeweler, and then trek past boutiques and kiosks to the big-box store where I’d be shopping. Theoretically, her dump and hike adventure would allow her to walk into the store at the same time I entered, letting us quickly find each other. This made sense since I had to park the car, single-handedly unload the stroller and three children, and walk into the store at a toddler’s pace, which is about 200 feet per minute, assuming nothing distracts her along the way, and with those giant red balls of concrete barriers / corporate art positioned in front of the doors, it’s a good bet something will distract her.

After much cajoling of Abbie to walk faster and in the proper direction, I entered the store, but didn’t see Ellie. Apparently helping a customer with a $15 repair job on a $30 watch isn’t a big priority for jewelers, so I had to kill some time. No problem, I could start shopping without her. This would be a good opportunity to practice entering society without having another adult present to help corral the children.

The first item on my list was a vegetable steamer, as in one of those metal things with leaves that fold and drops into a saucepan. Our broke after only five years of almost daily usage, twice daily since Abbie started eating vegetables, cheap piece of junk. After a couple minutes of cycling between watching the merchandise to see if I’m in the right area, watching the walkway to see if I’m about to ram something with the stroller, and watching Abbie to see if I can still see her, I found my steamer. I slipped it under the stroller, feeling vaguely like a shoplifter as I did, but without a shopping cart I didn’t have any other storage options. Even if I did attract security, maybe I could con that person into helping me carrying stuff.

Ellie still hadn’t arrived after I found my one item, and everything else was too big to fit under the stroller, so I had little choice but to wait by the gate for her entrance. I passed the time by shuffling back and forth between the twins, shaking rattles in their faces to keep them placated. Abbie passed the time by ducking in between racks of clothes that are the perfect size for her to disappear into. Eventually she uncovered a giant rubber ball, which she immediately started throwing and chasing. At first I let her play since the store wasn’t crowded and the boys were keeping me busy with their fussing, but I quickly realized a few breakable objects were resting near her path. I figured we’d be in trouble if she broke anything, even though it would clearly be the store’s fault for storing bouncy balls and fragile merchandise so close to each other, and took the ball away before she hurt something, specifically my wallet. This proved difficult since she could pull it off most shelves that I tried dumping it. Eventually I found a tall end cap to dump it on top of, and quickly pulled her away before she could mourn her loss too audibly.

Soon after, Ellie returned. I grabbed a cart, and we hurried through our shopping as the boys, specifically Tory, were growing increasingly fussy. By the time we hit the checkout lane, he was practically screaming, so Ellie sent me to the car with the children while she checked out. I finished loading everyone just as Ellie walked out of the store, which was well timed since Tory was in full meltdown mode. We couldn’t leave yet, though; I had to run into the store to pay for that vegetable steamer I forgot to remove from the stroller.

Learning to Crawl

Crawling is a major milestone for the boys. It marks the point where they transition from newborns to babies, from totally helpless to mostly helpless. They’ll be able to grab toys and other objects that I haphazardly left strewn about the floor, assuming Abbie doesn’t snatch them away in a jealous fit. Plus I won’t be able to blindly turn my back on them to rush into the kitchen and determine what implement will best clean up whatever Abbie just knocked on the floor.

Ian is close to crawling, much closer than your average Cubs starting pitcher is to playing a full injury-free season. He can assume the crawling position, pushing up on all fours with his head craned up looking for objects of interest like toys or pets careening through the house. He just hasn’t quite figured out how to move his limbs from that position. He’ll rock back and forth and maybe poke one appendage forward a tad for a minute before he gets bored, tired, or both and collapses back to the floor too often into a puddle of spit up he emitted while working so hard. If I squint my eyes, tilt my head, and use my imagination, I can see him move an arm and leg on opposite sides in correct succession, but it’s nothing I’m ready to write down as a First in this baby book known as a blog.

Tory on the other hand is about as close to crawling as the Cubs are to a pennant. He can assume the crawling position, but not well or for long. With about 20% more body weight than his brother, his muscles have to work a lot hard to get off the ground. Plus even when he develops the coordination to correctly move his limbs, he’ll have to deal with that milk gut dragging on the ground.

While Ian is busy trying to figure out how to crawl, Tory is content to commando crawl to whatever interests him. He’s adept at progressively kicking his legs while flailing his arms to scoot across the carpet, grasping whatever interests him as he drags and probably ruins the tummy of his outfit. Ian will commando crawl too, but Tory seems to realize that he’ll have to limit his weight gain or exercise more to lift his body for crawling, so why bother trying to learn? They already possess a disturbing amount of mobility through the commando crawl, something I discovered after setting them down, checking on Abbie, and returning to find them facing a completely different direction with an expression that says “now what do I do?”

As they scoot about the room, I’m learning about their likes and dislikes based on what they grab. For example, they dislike anything I give them to play with that cost money or is safe to chew on. They like paper, specifically the newspapers I leave on the ground after desperately trying to finish reading them before they dump a new one at my door. I’ll occasionally find one of them rolling on the ground with a newspaper wrapped around him and a mirror image of Garfield transferred onto his face. They like other kinds of paper too, like that phonebook I found Ian sucking on the other day.

They also like grabbing people. Sometimes that means clutching Abbie’s foot while she’s innocently sitting and trying to con me into reading to her; sometimes it means munching on whatever brother’s body part happens to be closest. I’ve found them chewing on the other’s foot or hand. Occasionally they’ll latch onto the other’s face, which really ticks off the gropee. Ian had a meltdown yesterday after Tory inserted his hand in his brother’s mouth and raked. At least that’s what I think set him off since that’s the position they were in when I rushed in from the kitchen after sweeping up the formula powder Abbie knocked on the floor.

"These should give you the grounding you'll need in thermodynamics, hypermathematics, and of course microcalifragilistics."

Our family schedule calls for lunch at 11:30am. At least, lunch starts at 11:30, what time everybody actually eats is more fluid than the Congressional ethics blotter. I have a good system that lets everyone, occasionally even including myself, finish their meals within an hour. The process starts with me waking the boys, strapping them into their high chairs, feeding them solids, moving everyone to the living room, finishing their meal from bottles, cooking Abbie’s vegetables, cleaning the boys’ mess, washing Abbie’s hands, strapping Abbie into her booster seat with a bowlful of yogurt, letting Abbie feed herself and usually the dog while I move the boys back into the kitchen where I can watch them, cleaning the horrible yogurt mess, giving Abbie her water, milk, and vegetables, and, finally make and eat my lunch, assuming I still have the energy.

A knock on the door surprised me yesterday as we sat down to step 2. It was an old (childless) friend from college who happened to be in the neighborhood during his lunch break and wanted to know if we wanted to go to lunch. I sat back down to feed the boys while mentally tallying an equation far more complex than anything I encountered in college:

((A + T + M) * L) / G = H
Where A is the amount of baby food, measured in cents, that will go to waste if I abandon it to go out to eat, T is the time in minutes that it will take me to pack everyone and walk out the door, M is how much money in dollars it will cost to eat, L is the likelihood that the schedule disruption will ruin someone’s nap, G is the “getting out of the house” factor measuring how much benefit I’ll derive by escaping the house, and H is the final hassle factor to determine whether or not it’s worth it.

A is about 25 as the boys had a mostly uneaten peach-cereal-formula mixture that would have to be thrown out if we were to leave soon. T is about 15, 20 if someone pooped, 25 if someones pooped. M is only 7 since my friend wanted to eat at the cheap burger place two blocks from home. At least I think it would only be 7; in two years we have yet to eat there. I pegged L at 75% (.75) since I knew we’d return too late to put them down at their regular naptime, meaning Abbie would take all the nap she’d need during the two-block car ride from the restaurant to our home. G would be pretty high, say around 10fc*, if I didn’t have to watch the kids while eating and could concentrate on semi-meaningful conversation. Unfortunately I needed to keep the twins happy while feeding Abbie and trying to work some food into my mouth, which drops the quotient down to .1fc.

After determining the hassle quotient would be in the astronomical range at over 350, I decided not to go out. I did however have him pick up a sandwich for me, and he brought everything back so we could eat together at our home. He returned just as I moved the boys to the living room for their bottle-feeding. I took my sandwich, carefully set it to the side, and finished feeding the boys. My friend chilled with Abbie and watched “Dora the Explorer” while she bummed off his fries. After the boys drained their bottles, I moved Abbie to the kitchen so she could eat her parent-approved lunch.

Eventually, my friend had to return to work. We made sure to exchange at least a couple meaningful words so we could say we talked over lunch. Oh, and I took a couple bites from my sandwich so I could say we had lunch.

* One FC is the amount of happiness I derive from one cone of frozen custard.

Shopping 'Till We're Dropping.

I used to run errands all the time during weekdays. If I needed groceries, I’d hit the grocery store, pick up some frozen custard, and head back home. If I needed some sort of Vital Supply, I’d stop at the appropriate big box store, swing by the frozen custard store, and return home. If I needed out of the house to stay sane, I’d make up something to shop for, grabbing frozen custard on the way home.

Now I have twin boys, and I’m too busy fulfilling the every whim of three children to worry about my sanity. I’m also stuck at home most days out of necessity. Taking three mostly to entirely helpless children out of the house without adult assistance is more trouble than it’s worth. By the time I wake the twins, feed them, pack them into their carriers, pack the diaper bag, give Abbie a handful of Goldfish because she’s screaming for them after seeing me pack them in the diaper bag, change everyone’s diapers including the twins since I forgot to change them before packing them up, strap on Abbie’s shoes, and lock everyone in the car, it’s once again time to feed the twins, who fell asleep in their carriers long ago and are now awake, fully refreshed, and hungry.

Even when I desperately need something during the day like milk or, God help us, diapers, I’m still reluctant to leave the house because it’s too difficult to herd three small children in public without walls or a greedy dog who’s always on the lookout for dropped food to help. Abbie has matured to the point where if I really need something that’s small enough to fit in the stroller’s storage compartment, I can trust her to walk with us while the twins ride in the stroller. If I need anything that requires a shopping cart, forget it; transporting a stroller filled with twins and a shopping cart filled with Abbie single-handedly is nigh impossible until someone invents a harness system to attach the stroller to my body for hands-free haulage.

Making life more difficult is Ellie’s schedule, which is the typical resident schedule. Of the total 168 hours in a week, I estimate the Ellie works an average of at least 167.7835 of those hours. At least, she’s outside the house that much each week; I assume that part of those hours is spent engaging in witty banter like on “Scrubs.”

Ellie enjoyed a rare night off last night, so we celebrated by cramming as many errands into the evening as the twins’ nap feeding allowed. We spent literally 20 minutes the night before planning our outing, dividing items into categories of “need,” “desperately need,” and “Matt will crumple into a whimpering ball if we don’t acquire tomorrow.” Then we listed all the stores we needed to visit, setting the patronization order while saving others for our next outing, remembering that we’d need to stop for supper early in the expedition, and ensuring that the last store would leave my frozen custard supplier on the way home.

Naturally we left that list at home. No matter; we’d spent enough time poring over it that I’d memorized it. Working from memory, we made an efficient nine stops at places of business in just over three hours. We bought pet supplies, groceries, and frozen custard, returning home in time to wake the twins and feed them before putting them down for the night.

Then the adults collapsed from exhaustion. Our current system is still easier than trying to take all three children out by myself, but I miss the days when I could space out my errands over several days, taking Abbie to one or two stops at a time. Life was less strenuous then, plus I got more frozen custard that way.

"We'll get higher and higher, straight up we'll climb."

We live in a tiny home. It’s not tiny in the sense that all of the furniture is miniaturized a la that car insurance commercial, which is too bad in some ways since such a dinette set would give us enough room to navigate the kitchen. Our home is tiny in the sense that we have little floor space. It’s like we’re living in a Manhattan apartment without all those pesky crowds or culture getting in the way.

This limited space forces us to live vertically, covering virtually every inch of baseboard with a piece of furniture, and attaching shelves to the wall above most of the furniture. For example, we have side-by-side dressers in our bedroom with shelves above them for holding pictures and books, and an entertainment center in the living room with shelves above it for holding large heavy objects capable of damaging electronic equipment when the shelves fall off the wall.

Our system worked well when we installed it in our home after moving into it about two years ago. At the time, Abbie was still a newborn, and the only motion she was capable of was moving her limbs in random directions and of course spitting up. When Abbie started crawling, she taught us about childproofing, and what furniture does and doesn’t work. For example, a six-foot tall stick-design floor lamp doesn’t work. Eventually she started pulling fragile objects like remote controls and valuable coupons off of low shelves, and I started moving things higher. Then she started climbing on furniture, and I moved things a little higher.

Now she’s mastered climbing on furniture, and I’m running out of places to store things. I now realize that our side-by-side furniture layout provides a handy bridge system for her to climb across. She can climb onto a dining chair, crawl across the dining table, onto the adjacent portable dishwasher, over to the bordering kitchen counter next to it, and stand up to reach the pantry and its treasure of sugar-sweetened foods that daddy normally rations out.

It took me a few boxes of dumped Fruit Rings, but I eventually learned to pull the chair away from the table when I’m done to protect the pantry. More problematic is the array of storage devices in the kids’ room. There’s one specific spot where Abbie can reach in front of her and find some cheap plastic drawers we use for clothes, reach to her right and find Ian’s crib, and reach to her left and find the changing table. She has learned to scale this obstacle by placing her hands and feet on various vertical surfaces at 90- and 180- degree angles in a synchronicity that would awe most mountain climbers. Doing so gives her access to Ian’s crib and the pacifier I often leave in there, or the top of the changing table. From the top of the changing table, she can reach all sorts of goodies, like the wipe warmer filled with a seemingly limitless number of wipes to stew about the floor, or the shelves above the changing table that are filled with objects that I intentionally stored up there because I didn’t want her to grab them, like the pacifier that I occasionally remember to move from Ian’s crib or the few lift-the-flap books that survived Abbie’s flap-tearing clutches.

When I entered her room one day and found wipes and dismembered flaps littering the floor, I knew exactly what to do; I moved all the surviving fragile books to the cabinets above their closets. Those cabinets are so high I need a stepstool to reach them.

Breast Milk & Formula & Solids Update

From the day the twins were born until late March, Ellie pumped breast milk. In a testament to the devoting power of a mother’s love and the sucking power of a Medela, she managed to pump enough milk to feed two hungry boys with enough leftover to freeze. We filled our chest freezer with an estimated 200 bags of breast milk in six-ounce increments.

Ellie’s pumping goal was to supply the boys with enough milk until they were six-months-old and their immune systems could take quasi-full effect. My goal was to make it last as long as possible to delay enduring the full cost and hassle of their Nutramigen formula. I paced them by feeding them breast milk twice a day, with formula for the day’s other two to four feedings. This system might not provide them with the full benefits of breast milk, but it does save me from opening a $25 can of formula every other day.

The boys are now six-months-old, and I can declare victory; we made it. Barely, but we made it. The breast milk ran out a couple days ago, and while I appreciate not having to spend ten minutes rearranging the freezer’s contents to make room every time I return from the bread thrift store, I miss the milk. It was so much easier to use than the formula; just warm it in hot water. With Nutramigen I have to measure the water, pack and scoop the powder, shake well, wipe up the spilled powder that has now semi-coagulated into a sticky mess, shake well to try to dissolve the formula-bergs that refuse to dissipate, unplug the nipple over the howls of a mad baby, unplug the other nipple over the howls of two mad babies, and shake well. Plus there’s that part about opening another $25 can every other day.

Then there’s the worry about what the babies might be missing without the breast milk. I know that literally millions of babies have grown up over the years on formula and turned fine, but there has to be a reason that every advertisement and package of formula includes some highlighted variant on the phrase “breast milk is best.” Specifically, I worry about the immune system boost the twins are missing without breast milk. Abbie also went off breast milk at about six-months-old, and she started getting sick more often after crossing to the all-formula diet. Of course, Abbie also turned six-months-old at the start of flu and cold season, so that may have contributed to our sleepless nights.

Fortunately I’m also adding solids to their diets, and those pack the tummies and lessen the need for formula. After a good dose of solids, the boys tend to eat four to six ounces of formula instead of six to eight ounces during a straight bottle meal. Solids cost much less than Nutramigen, especially since those boxes of infant cereal seem to last for months. Plus I make all their baby food, which helps pinch a few more pennies, as evidenced by the 1-ounce jar of baby applesauce for $.50 versus the 50-ounce jar of regular applesauce for $1.49 if I can find it on sale. So far I’ve fed the boys apples, peaches, squash, peas, and our latest adventure, broccoli. Making baby food, though, means I need to stock up on the raw materials though, specifically things like canned fruits and frozen vegetables. Fortunately I’ve got plenty of room in the freezer again.

"Can we get rid of this Ayatollah T-shirt? Khomeini died years ago."

I’ve been to a lot of garage sales over the past couple of years. A good percentage* of the kids’ clothes came second-, third-, or more-hand from garage sales. Recently we gave back to the rummagers with our own garage sale. Well, not really “gave,” but our prices were so low it was like we were giving it away.

My sudden call to action was spurred on by our neighborhood garage sale. A few of our neighbors are moving and wanted to minimize the number of boxes they have to pack, move, and store in their new home basement until their kids are old enough to clean out the basement as punishment.

Our basement is fast approaching the tipping point of containing too much crud to navigate, and I’d like to sell some of it. But I can’t sell my old video game systems that may or may not work anymore because they hold too many happy childhood memories, where “childhood” is defined as “the time in my life up to about two years ago.” The same excuse applies to my comic books. Those old college textbooks I should save in case I ever need to look up something about using Excel 5. That leaves old baby stuff as the only things I can sell.

We’re comfortable selling old baby items because we’re done having children, as in “snip, snip, tie, tie” done. Unless God has a sense of humor about this things, which (s)he probably does. We can sell the bouncy seats since the boys now have too much mobility to stay in them. We can sell a rocking chair since it was just a fantasy all along that we could sit and rock a baby without the other baby screaming or the toddler climbing into our laps. We can sell that awful high chair that I bought cheap at a rummage sale under the assumption that any high chair will work. Most of all, we can sell clothes.

The old baby clothes have overtaken one corner of our basement. We have six sizes worth of old girl’s clothes (seven sizes if you count 2T and 24-months as separate sizes even though they’re really not), and two sizes worth of old boy’s clothes, unisex clothes, and girl’s clothes that I just think can be unisex. We also have old preemie and newborn size clothes, but I doubt those would sell at a garage sale; no one really buys super-small clothes ahead of time in expectation of a preemie, and anyone with a baby that small probably isn’t rummaging anyway.

My job was to price the clothes. Ellie suggested dumping everything into bins with one price, but I know that clothes have to be spread out because no one bothers to rummage through large bins of uni-priced clothing except for the rare cheapskate shopper with too much free time who’s looking for ridiculously undervalued clothes like that cute outfit Abbie wore a couple days ago that I found in some bin. I picked up 900 price tags, and spent a couple weeks individually pricing every item in the two-dozen shopping bags littering our basement. My philosophy was to price everything at the highest amount I’d be willing to pay, operating under the assumption that if a skinflint like me would buy it, a normal person would find it an irresistible deal.

By the morning of the sale, I had priced four bags. They were mostly clothes that the kids had just outgrown and I hadn’t stored yet, so I didn’t really clear any space in the basement with my efforts, but I didn’t clutter it up anymore either. I took what I had priced to the sale, and hoped for the best.

Unfortunately, Des Moines experienced its first rain in two weeks on the morning of our garage sale. That, combined with the near-record low high temperatures** that morning kept most shoppers away. I took the clothes that didn’t sell back to my basement and left the larger items for charity to take away, though I don’t know how charitable it is to stick someone with that old highchair. I ended up selling $3.50 worth of stuff, which isn’t much, but it did cover the cost of almost two-thirds of my price tags.

* A “good percentage” is defined as “more than Ellie would like to admit.”
** That makes sense, right?

New Doctor Doctor

We’ve had fortunately few medical visits so far. Aside from my panicked journey to the pediatrician over Abbie’s First Stomach Virus, most of our children’s trips to the doctor have been for regularly scheduled checkups.* Plus our pediatrician is in the hospital within walking distance of our home, meaning that I don’t have to repeatedly load and unload children, strollers, snacks, toys, diaper paraphernalia, and any clothing they removed on the ride over; I just have to do it once when leaving the house.

Sadly my easy life at home is leaving me even faster than my sanity. With a 2-year-old girl who should be doing things that she’s not, and two 6-month-old boys who were born eight weeks early with all of the developmental concerns that go with it, I’m becoming one of those parents who has to have a calendar to track which kid sees which doctor on which day. I’m going to be in trouble when the kids are old enough to participate in sports, dance lessons, art class, volunteer work, or whatever other extracurricular activity I vicariously force them into.

The first new doctor we saw was a developmental pediatrician to diagnose why Abbie isn’t talking. We left the twins with a neighbor, and drove the five or so miles to a completely different hospital. That might not sound like much, but it’s like 50 times farther than we have to travel for our regular pediatrician.

The doctor and her nurse ran several analyses on Abbie. They did a full Denver developmental examination, a test named after its inventor Bob Denver. After fully testing her abilities and believing our claims that she really can kick and throw a ball one-handed, they concluded that she is developmentally at or above every age-appropriate milestone that doesn’t involve saying anything. They measured her head to determine that everything is in the proportional location that it should be for maximum intellect and cuteness. I assume they watched our interactions with her to ensure that we weren’t doing anything detrimental to her speech development like grunting and pinching a lot to grab her attention.

After a solid morning of analysis, the doctor gave us a definitive “I don’t know.” She could rule out plenty of things that would keep her from talking. For example, it’s not a pervasive development delay since her developmental delay is isolated to speech and not, um, pervasive. She eliminated the worst disorders as best she could for such a young girl, gave us a couple things to work on, and told us to keep an eye on her. She also offered to refer us to another specialist at the University of Iowa hospital two hours away who could potentially tell us dozens of other maladies that Abbie doesn’t have. We’re going to wait on that trip.

Coming up on the calendar, we have trips to an eye doctor in the western suburbs and a hearing specialist in the northern suburbs. Hopefully they can definitively tell us that all of our children are healthy, or can at least specifically tell us what’s wrong and how to fix it. If I have to go to the trouble of taking the car, I want results.

* Those four months of home care visits for the twins don’t count since we didn’t have to leave the house for the nurse to prick them on a monthly basis. I also have to ignore the twins’ NICU time to keep this distinction, but once again it’s not like I had to take them anywhere to see the NICU doctors. Oh, and the dentist doesn’t count because, well, you know.

Going Duo

Every time we hire a babysitter, leave the kids at home, and go out as a couple, I wonder why we don’t do this more often. Every time we come home and pay a babysitter for watching our three young children for the evening, I remember why.

Abbie Appleseed

Abbie’s latest trick is eating apples. This may not seem like a big deal considering that kids eat apples all the time, as evidenced by the McDonalds menu item Apple Dippers, which have caramel sauce accompanying apple-flavored wedges of Styrofoam. When I say she eats apples, I mean she eats apples from the core. In fact, I’m not sure what she’d do with slices of apples; probably refuse to touch them until I produce some caramel dipping sauce.

Abbie used to love eating apples in sauce form. Applesauce is one of the first “solid” foods I gave her, as it’s one of the few baby foods I can dispense guilt-free from a giant jar that cost under $2. Eventually she’d even eat chunks of apple that I’d chisel off the core I was eating. This lasted until about 18 months, during her stage when she’d eat anything offered, up to and including spoonfuls of pico de gallo. After that she realized that there are better foods to be eaten, generally from the fried and/or in nugget families, and she refused all apples in hopes of receiving some of those golden beauties.

Recently, we realized that she’d eat the applesauce that comes with various kid’s meals. Then we discovered that she’d eat apples from a core when we were eating. Actually Ellie discovered this with one of her apples; daddy doesn’t like sharing his food with her because so much of it ends up in the dog’s mouth either by picking tossed food off the floor or plucking it from Abbie’s outstretched fingers.

To our surprise, Abbie took a bite right off the core with Ellie holding it. Ellie took another bite, and offered Abbie the apple again. She took it in her fingers, and gnawed off an appropriately sized chunk before offering it back to Ellie. This is encouraging behavior since Abbie has always been reluctant to take small bites off larger pieces of food, instead opting to shove the whole thing in her mouth or nothing at all. She may well be on her way to enjoying sandwiches and pizza. Then she took a bite of the core, stem and all; that was a little less encouraging.

Now when I eat an apple for lunch, I save some fruit on the core and offer it to Abbie. Not that I need to leave much fruit on the core; she can find meat on an apple when all I see is stem and seeds. I have to keep a close eye on her, though. Today I gave her my remaining apple, turned around for a minute, and haven’t seen the apple core since. I’m not sure which possibility disturbs me more, Abbie having eaten an entire apple core in the span of a minute, or an uneaten apple core hiding somewhere in our house. I suppose the dog might have eaten it too.

Tick Tock

Life’s busy, so I’m just going to throw up this picture of Abbie with her Flavor Flav necklace.

The Lunchtime Grind

As with all things related to childcare, I have a routine for feeding Abbie lunch. Whenever I need to concentrate on one child, I need a routine to place the neglected children in situations that normally entertain them to reduce screaming. They still scream a lot, but at least I can feel like I’ve done my part by strapping a baby into a high chair and giving him a toy that he normally loves. If that’s not enough to keep him happy, he has no one to blame but himself.

The lunchtime routine starts with strapping Abbie into her booster seat with a bowl of yogurt and a spoon. I know it’s a bad idea to feed your child the same thing every day, I give her different flavors of yogurt almost daily, so it’s like she’s eating a variety of foods. Next I retrieve her brothers who are hopefully playing nicely in the living room and not rolling around the floor in search of newspapers to chew on that daddy haphazardly left lying on the floor. I strap them into high chairs and give them toys so I can keep an eye on them and know when they start screaming that it’s just out of boredom instead of assuming they’re bored when I hear the screaming from the other room.

At this point Abbie has usually abandoned the spoon in her ongoing quest to convince me that yogurt is a finger-food. I’ll sit in front of her and help her neatly finish her yogurt, spooning it out of the bowl myself if necessary. With the yogurt gone, I fill her tray with the next course of water, milk, and Tasteeos while tending to her vegetables on the stove. By the time I have her fully steamed vegetables cooled to a palatable temperature, everything from her tray is usually on the floor, but that just leaves more room for the veggies.

Unlike every other real or imagined child I’ve ever seen or heard about, Abbie likes her vegetables. I give her a mix of things, and I can tell her preferences by the order she eats things. The first things gone are either the carrots or the lima beans. The carrots I understand her liking; they’re kind of sweet, and I like things that are sweet. Her fondness for lima beans mystifies me, though. I hate lima beans. As a child, I devised a strategy for eating lima beans that I still use today that involves swallowing the bean whole like a pill without puncturing the skin and exposing the nasty innards to my taste buds. Abbie, who still won’t eat pizza, sucks them right down and asks for more.

With the beans and carrots gone, she goes after the peas while generally trying to avoid the corn I put on her tray because I have a big bag of it that I’m trying to get rid of. Once again, the closest thing most children will come to eating a vegetable that doesn’t have the word “fry” or a derivation in its name is corn; Abbie doesn’t seem to care for it.

Not that I’m watching Abbie eat the whole time. I’m too busy checking on the boys, singing to them, shaking rattles for them, and generally seeing if there’s anything I can do to make them tolerate being ignored for a couple more minutes.* Plus I need to make my lunch.

* There isn’t.

Sometimes That Girl Frosts Me

I had a lot of work to do yesterday. Picking up the living room, laundry, finding a babysitter for next weekend, and picking up the living room again after Abbie pulled everything off the shelves while I was loading the washing machine and talking on the telephone were all high priority items. When I set the twins down for their nap, I tackled my highest priority: Baking cupcakes.

We still had frosting leftover from Abbie’s birthday party. Ellie bought frosting for her cake in a container size normally used for holding obscene amounts of gas station soda pop. Between her practice sessions and the genuine birthday cake, she managed to use two-thirds of the frosting bucket, but that still left enough frosting to keep me buzzed until Independence Day.

I made a batch of cupcakes last week, but despite a few cupcakes that doubled their weight after frosting, I still had enough to coat another batch. After procuring the correct variety of cake mix (cherry chip) on Saturday, I mixed them up and popped them in the oven, pulling them out just as the boys woke up screaming. I left them on top of the oven to cool, and set about feeding the boys.

After the boys had sucked down a couple ounces each, I noticed that something was missing: Abbie. Normally she’s in the room when I feed the boys plopping books on my lap, or at least in her room noisily bouncing between several toys. I didn’t see her this time, nor could I hear her. This could only mean one thing: Abbie is quietly entertaining herself. Quiet entertainment may sound like a good thing, but previous experience has taught me that the only things that keep Abbie happy without making noise are forbidden activities like playing in the bathtub or discovering which objects will fit in the VCR.

I set the boys down much to their dismay, and went to find Abbie. Fortunately our small house means I need only turn the corner to find her. Around that corner, I saw this:





You can’t really tell, but in that first picture, she has a cupcake in each hand. By the third picture, she’d dropped the second cupcake, possibly to appease the dog. Feeding the dog has been a favorite activity of hers since she discovered the dog would hang out with her if she just shared her Goldfish.

I walked back to the kitchen and realized I’d left her booster seat too close to the cooling cupcakes. She climbed into her chair, found the delicious cakes, decided she felt like having two, and scampered around the corner just in case daddy wanted to do something to stop her. Since she’d already gooified those two cupcakes, I let her (and the dog) keep them. That leaves more frosting for the remaining cupcakes anyway.

Mallrats

We had to go to the mall yesterday. We had an upscale need, so we couldn’t just go to the mall that’s a couple miles down the road from our home; we had to go to the swanky new mall that’s a couple dozen miles down the road from our home, except the “road” here is an interstate. This place is so ritzy, it’s literally in the next county; it’s so chic, it’s a “town center” instead of a mall.

Also, it’s so hip, it has an Apple Store, which is the entire reason we made the gas-guzzling journey, although its classier Gymboree store didn’t dissuade Ellie. We’re trying to watch and record television programs on my Macintosh, which is so intricate that we had to talk to a live salesperson with extensive knowledge of Mac products to discover that it’s too expensive and complicated to try.*

Our system while shopping is the parent who’s actively shopping pushes the twins in their stroller, while the parent who just needs to occasionally check price tags to know that the other one is spending way too much concentrates on running interference on Abbie. Since this purchase is supposed to be a Father’s Day gift, I kept Abbie happy, or at least content enough to not scream. This being a hip store, it was easy to keep her happy with computers everywhere. Not that the computers initially kept her happy, but she thought their chairs were awesome. The chairs are 2-foot high plush balls with the bottom couple inches sliced off for stability. When she realized they were too heavy and sure-footed to roll them though, then she noticed the computers sitting in front of them.

They had four computers loaded with games that were educational in the sense that they educate children about licensed characters like Nemo and Dora. They were far too complicated for her to play, but that didn’t stop her from enjoying them when somebody else played them, like that little boy who she kept trying to shove out of the way to point out the fishes. Eventually I found an open computer and sat down to play it for her, although since they were children’s games, I couldn’t figure out how they worked.

When Ellie received her “how much ya got?” answer, she drifted into the Gymboree conveniently located on the way to the mall, er, town center’s exit. I entered with her, saw the shelves filled with matching tops, pants, shoes, socks, hats, purses, jewelry, and MAKE IT STOP!

Overwhelmed, I let Ellie shop in piece while I took Abbie to the convenient nearby playground. After finding a bench next to other orphaned fathers, I removed Abbie’s shoes and let her go. We’d never visited this playground before, and Abbie took advantage of its freshness by going up and down the half-dozen slides scattered throughout regardless of any other children who may be near or on the slide at the time.

That kept her busy for about three minutes. After that, she found my bench and spent the rest of the time playing with her all-time favorite toy: Dad. She bounced on my lap, which I found a little annoying in that she ignored the thousands of dollars in never-before-seen playground equipment, but at least it was a great way to tone my arms.

After several minutes of bouncing and a little flipping off my lap, Ellie emerged with the twins and a full shopping bag. We walked back to the car and planned some additional stops. After driving so far, we might as well visit a few places that are on the way home. Of course this far from home, just about everything is “on the way home.”

* This person was hiding behind several tables filled with iPods and parents who are far too middle-aged to be so visibly rocking out to Coldplay.

No Sleep for Abbie & Ian & Tory

I woke up yesterday around 6am. I didn’t have anything to do or anyone to pacify, I was just feeling some remnants of my wake in the middle of the night mentality. I laid in bed for a long time trying to convince myself that I didn’t need to tend to anything. Eventually I started thinking I might as well roll out of bed so I could accomplish something constructive like reading the newspaper in peace.

The next thing I knew it was 8:20. This is a good half-hour later than I want to wake up. Someone is supposed to wake me up when I oversleep like that, but the kids were all happy to lie awake in their beds, patiently waiting for the food-giver to open their door.

That was the last time all day everyone was quiet when they were supposed to be asleep. The boys are still on three naps per day and Abbie on one, and they took turns blowing right past their sleep time.

The first nap is at 10:30 am. I considered pushing it back since they woke up late, but they looked sleepier than the Cub offense, so I set them down on time. Ian kicked, and grunted, and fussed long enough for me to reenter their room and reinsert the pacifier more times than the Cubs’ average LOB number. He finally dozed off after about 20 minutes, which allowed me to relax and concentrate on Abbie’s needs for all of about five minutes before Tory woke up.

When the 1:30 pm nap rolled around, I reached for the acetaminophen. The vaccines they received two days ago could still be bothering them and keeping them awake. They’re not acting cranky during wake time so I don’t know if they’re feeling pain, but the half-dozen poopy diapers Tory produced yesterday proves that he’s at least feeling some effects. If nothing else, their relentless attempts to shove my fingers in their mouths indicate there’s some teething pain.

Abbie stomped around her room for a bit longer than usual, but otherwise the afternoon nap started well. Then around 2:45, more than an hour before the nap is supposed to end, Tory woke up screaming. I reinserted his pacifier, and he drifted back to sleep without further reinsertations. This surprised me; his recent wont has been to whimper for many minutes before falling back into his afternoon nap. All was quiet until 3:30 when both boys woke up screaming with a pain that no pacifier could quench. I fed them a half-hour early while Abbie suspiciously cooperated by sleeping until 4:40, much later than her usual 4pm wake time.

The 5:30 nap is when I feed Abbie, myself, and then prepare the boys’ next feeding before they wake. Ian thwarted this plan by refusing to fall asleep, screaming for his pacifier while Abbie screamed for her beanie weenie. I made several pacifier trips by stuffing Abbie’s face with enough weenies to keep her occupied until I returned. When he finally fell asleep, I quickly finished helping Abbie eat and prepared a plate for myself, managing to sit down just as Tory started screaming. I spent the rest of the meal holding Tory with one hand and shoveling broccoli with the other.

When bedtime arrived, I was ready to set everyone down and enjoy a relaxing digital soak in the internet. The boys were cranky all night from how little they slept, or possibly they were feeling vaccination/teething pain. Either way they kept me busy to calm them down while fending off Abbie’s persistent pinching. The boys fell right to sleep when I set them in their cribs, I kissed Abbie goodnight, and set about vegging out in front of the computer.

Abbie, invigorated by that extended afternoon nap, was in no mood to sleep, and stomped around her room for many many minutes. I had to reenter her room several times, not to reinsert pacifiers, but to return her to her bed before she woke her brothers. I did still have to mess with pacifiers by returning the ones she swiped to their cribs. It took her about an hour to give up and fall asleep. Maybe that means she’ll sleep in the next morning. Then again, maybe that’s how I landed in this mess.

Quality Time

When I woke up Wednesday morning, Ellie was already at work. I think she went in sometime around 7am, but I’m not sure since I didn’t wake up until 7:45. That’s the advantage of being a stay-at-home parent: I can wake up for my job whenever I want. Of course I also have to deal with three demanding clients who can call at any hour, so it’s not perfect.

I saw Ellie a short time later for the children’s pediatric appointment, but after that she didn’t come home until about 8pm. Not that she was home for the night; she was on-call for the night with plenty of work left to do. She just popped in for about an hour to say goodnight to her children. Oh, and me; of course she came home to see me too.

Her next trip home was 17 hours later, right before naptime. Having spent almost no time with her children in the past 40 hours, I knew she missed her babies, so I kept everyone awake as long as possible. I wanted her to enjoy some quality time, but we could only fend off the sandman for so long before sleep took over. The kids seemed pretty sleepy too, so I woke Ellie up, made her get off the couch and go to bed, and set our little minors in their appropriate sleeping quarters.

I knew Ellie needed a good long nap to recover from a hectic “day” of work. Unfortunately the twins, who take their afternoon nap in our bedroom, didn’t know that mommy needed her rest and spent most of their “nap” complaining in spite of the acetaminophen I loaded into them in the aftermath of their vaccinations. She eventually brought Ian into bed and snuggled him to sleep despite our firm stance against co-sleeping for fear of the increased risk of SIDS or the chance that we’ll raise a child who insists on sleeping in our bed.

When I pulled the twins out of the bedroom for feeding, I tried to keep everyone quiet so mommy could catch at least a couple hours of unbroken sleep. Abbie has been in a screeching mood recently, and I’m not sure if a few feet and a closed door made enough of a buffer to let stay asleep.

She emerged from the bedroom for good shortly after suppertime. She had to wake up from her nap so she could fall asleep in a couple hours. Plus she had a couple errands to run, not the least of which was grabbing something eat besides leftovers from Abbie’s birthday party. I figured she could use some one-on-one time with her daughter, and talked her into taking Abbie shopping with her. It was a great situation for everyone: Ellie and Abbie get to enjoy time together, and I get to enjoy watching the boys play in their stationary entertainers while actually getting some things done around the house.

The girls came home an hour later. Ellie immediately gave her a vitamin, one of her favorite treats, to calm her down. Abbie was horrible on their excursion,; Abbie bit, pinched, and screamed when Ellie held her, and ran away when mommy let her go. This behavior continued for the rest of the night with Abbie randomly walking up to Elle and pinching, until Ellie started pushing her away and threatening to send her to her room every time she toddled near. I spent the night keeping the two separate when I wasn’t busy trying to figure out how to calm a baby down from his vaccinations.

I have no idea what got into Abbie. She may have been punishing mommy for spending too much time away from home. Or she could have been trying to tell her something innocent with the only communication tools she has: Pinching, biting, and screaming. No matter what it was, I now know that working away from home for most of 40 consecutive hours isn’t entirely without its disadvantages.