"I got, got, got, got no time."

There's no time to blog today. Enjoy our extensive archive section.

By the way, if anybody wants to Google mulch impacted in sinuses, this blog is the fifth site listed.

"When I drink alone, I prefer to be by myself..."

There comes a time in every child’s life when he must learn to do things for himself, to fight his own battles and not rely on his parents every time he needs help. That’s why I’m making the twins hold their bottles during feedings. That, and I can use the time I save by not being attached to the floor.

I think this is about the age when I made Abbie hold her bottles. Things were different back then as I could afford to sit with her splayed across my lap for 20 minutes each time watching her eat, making sure she wasn’t taking in air, and correcting her technique as needed. Now Abbie has mastered holding a bottle, and has moved on to holding a sippy cup, throwing it on the ground, opening the refrigerator, and grabbing something tastier to eat.* Such toddler activity is why I can no longer afford to sit motionless for 20 minutes.

Ellie was the first to realize the boys can hold a bottle. While feeding someone, possibly Tory, one night, she noticed him grabbing for the bottle. I notice them grabbing at the bottle all the time, but I assumed they’re reaching to grab my fingers in a vestigial expression of the infant grasp reflex, or possibly an early manifestation of comprehending the “pull my finger” gag. Either way, I let them clutch my finger, but Ellie had the idea to direct his digits onto his bottle, and soon he was holding his bottle like a champ in the eight-month-old and under division.

In spite of the obvious time saving implications, it took me a few days to try making them hold their bottles without Ellie home. They would have to eat while strapped in their high chairs, and I had concerns about how far they could drain their bottles while only tipped back about 45-degrees, and about how well they could really hold their bottles without a parent’s hands hovering nearby. Plus, as a schedule-oriented person/closeted obsessive compulsive, I had an elaborate mealtime routine to ensure everyone eats fully cooked foods at the optimum time that I would have to adjust.

The most elaborate routine is for supper. In our pre-self-feeding days, I would start boiling water for my rice, feed the boys solids, start cooking Abbie’s carrots, prepare the boys’ bottles, carry the boys into the living room, add my rice to the boiling water, feed the boys their bottles, burp them, start cooking Abbie’s broccoli, throw her supper in the microwave, wash her hands, sit her in her booster seat, present her with the various courses of her dinner while preparing mine, and finally sit to eat my meal including perfectly cooked rice. Throughout the routine, I would periodically break to check on a baby and investigate why he’s crying.** Oh, and I also stopped to breathe.

Now that I have free space while they self-feed, I need to move some events up. The boiling water and cooking carrots start before the solids. The parts about feeding Abbie happen while the boys self-feed. The breathing has to wait until I sit down with my meal since there’s no time between checking on the food status of three children simultaneously.

The boys do okay holding their bottles. Their grip does the job, though they insist on holding it with clenched fists instead of open palms, which leads to the bottle’s angle slipping downward with their fists. Occasionally they drop the bottle, but they seem adept at reinserting it. The biggest problem is they insist on tipping the bottle back just far enough to skim off the surface. This leads to too much air intake, too slow formula intake, and too much formula left when they decide to quit trying and just suck air. Ian does better at tipping the bottle back than Tory, as Ian tends to give up with about an ounce left, while Tory stops drinking with two or more to go. I always have to sit with them and hold their bottles at a sufficient angle to drain them, so they’re not quite ready to leave the nest yet.

* Like spaghetti (no sauce, just the noodles); that’s what I caught her snacking on last time.
** It’s usually because he fell.

Cleaning the Chinchilla, If That's What the Kids are Calling It These Days

It’s hard to believe, but there was a period in my life when I had spare time, and spare attention to devote to helpless creatures. That’s how we wound up with a home full of pets. At the height of our insanity and before Abbie’s birth, we owned as many as five chinchillas, five fish tanks, two cats, a dog, and a rabbit. We also had an ecosystem of insects and arachnids in our basement, but that was more of a matter of they owned us.

I realized we needed to thin our herd before we even knew Abbie was coming. Through well-timed give-aways on unsuspecting friends and relatives, and a few deaths that I swear were unrelated to neglect, we’ve pared our responsibilities down to two cats, one dog, one fish tank, and one chinchilla. This leaves me with a manageable amount of work between dealing with a toddler who gets into everything and her two understudies.

The cats may be the most needy pets. They require fed twice a day, their litter scooped daily, their water refilled as they splash it all over the floor, and assorted hairballs cleaned up.

The dog is also very needy, requiring food daily, bihourly trips outside, and shooing off furniture and visitors. Unlike the cats, the dog actually contributes to our household by helping to entertain the kids and cleaning up food-related messes, so her drain on my time is a wash.

By contrast, the fish are worthless except for the occasional child-distracting sparkle from the water. At least they look pretty when they’re not dying due to old age, random disease, or spite. I need only feed them daily and change their water every week or two or whenever I get around to it because the algae is growing too thick to see the fish.

The chinchilla is off in a corner, and I barely notice him. His food and water can last for days, so he doesn’t even need daily attention. We just need to periodically refill his dishes and give him the occasional bit of love, preferably in peanut form. And clean his cage.

To clean the chinchilla’s cage, I remove the floor trays, dump their contents,* wipe them down, refill them with fresh woodchips, and return them to the cage. It’s a simple process, or at least it was before we had kids, hence why we now have 80% fewer chinchillas to muck up the cage. More than any other pet maintenance activity, I have to fight the kids while moving the trays to keep them from “helping.” Those trays full of loose woodchips are bigger child magnets than Goldfish, sugary cereals, and shiny objects combined. A tray of woodchips melds the joy of playing in a sandbox, with the pleasure of plucking objects off the ground and gnawing on them.

I do my best to keep the kids out of those trays while they’re on the ground, but it’s hard when I pour in the fresh woodchips and spread them around. When they see me batting in the tray, their imitation instinct kicks in along with an innate desire to help, and they joyfully dig right in. I can keep Abbie out of it by kicking her outside while I work inside. It’s especially easy to let her sneak out the door when I take the tray outside to dump it in the compost bin. She thinks she’s doing something verboten, but she’s actually staying out of my hair while getting exercise, although she may also be playing in the neighbor’s forbidden garden.

The twins take a different mindset. I’m used to doing child-alluring activities, such as eating and emptying the dishwasher, in front of them while they sit or lay powerless to do anything but watch longingly. Now they can crawl, and they seem to have learned the skill explicitly to make beelines for prohibited objects. The last time I refilled the trays, I had to carry Tory and his fistful of woodchips across the room, and while I did, Ian snuck into the tray, grabbing his woodchips. In the time it took to empty his hand and carry him across the room, Tory was back into the tray. Eventually I sat at the tray to spread the woodchips with my back to the boys while they climbed over me and Abbie stood at the door wondering why I wasn’t around to yell at her for playing in the neighbor’s flowers.

Besides the disgusting factor, the worst part about the kids playing in the trays is they spread woodchips throughout the room. It took me 24 hours to break out the vacuum to clean the floor last time. I didn’t have any other free time between letting the dog out, feeding the pets, letting the dog in, scooping the cat litter, and letting Abbie in after she snuck out one of those times I opened the door for the dog.

* Those contents go into the compost bin, where they make excellent mulch/compost. The woodchips help garden plants retain moisture, while the chinchilla leavin’s supply the love and fertilizer plants need to grow big enough to attract nearby dogs and children.

"Will drop pants for food."

I never know what I’m going to find when I open the kids’ room in the morning. Maybe the diaper pail will be knocked over with its contents strewn about room. Maybe those pretty fragile things that I thought were on a shelf out of her reach will be shattered on the floor. Maybe Abbie will have decided to reclaim her crib, leaving Ian to fend for himself on the floor, or worse, against Tory in his crib. I imagine prison guards have the same sense of dread every time they come in contact with a prisoner.

A lot can happen in their room after I shut the door at night. Sometimes I hear plenty of thumping around before Abbie drifts to sleep, but I rarely reenter the room. I don’t want her to realize that cavorting is a good way to grab daddy’s attention at night, otherwise we’ll have a child who destroys things as a way to stay up later instead of a child who destroys things as a way to unwind at the end of the day. I’ll reenter their room when someone is in obvious distress, like when Abbie wedges herself behind the glider, or if she swipes a brother’s pacifier. Otherwise I go about my business of restoring our home to functional status while ignoring the various bumps, thumps, and kerplumps.

After a relatively uneventful night, I walked into their room yesterday morning to meet the boys, who were eager for their morning banana. Abbie was still asleep, which is a little odd since she’s usually awake and playing with the only toy left within her reach: The light switch. This flicking on and off of the lights may be why the boys are usually eager for breakfast by the time I walk into their room.

The boys woke up on their own while Abbie slept, which isn’t too far outside the norm. She was sprawled across her bed as usual when she sleeps, with a pajama top covering her top half as usual at night, and nothing on her lower half, which is not usual in any non-bath situations. Sure enough the bedding beneath her was soaked.

I shrugged and grabbed the boys to feed them as usual. The bed wasn’t going to get any wetter, and as long as Abbie stayed there sleeping, she wasn’t going to spread her mirth to other absorbable surfaces.

When Abbie emerged from her room, I hurriedly finished with the boys and herded her back to her room. I wanted to strip her bed before anything else touched it, and clothe her before she dribbled any more. After preparing the changing table, I turned to lift Abbie only to find her squatting on the floor with a puddle growing beneath her. As I dressed her, my visiting mother walked into their room to investigate the commotion, plucked a stuffed animal off the floor, and plopped it on her still-moist bed, thus completing my run of being seconds too late.

I let my mother feed Abbie and prepped a couple loads of laundry. I washed everything touching the bed including sheets, mattress pad, pillow, and stuffed animals, even a couple that warned, “do not immerse in water,” because it’s not like they could emerge from the washing machine in a less usable state.

Everything but the pillow emerged clean and dry in time for her nap. The pillow wedged itself in the dryer drum and needed another go around before emerging as usable. That was okay because Abbie doesn’t generally sleep on the pillow, preferring instead to use it and her stuffed animals to create a bed-based obstacle course to contort her body around while sleeping. I gave it back to her that night, although I should take it away completely since she could probably find a way to get into trouble with it after I shut her door at night.

Abbie 451

There was a time when Abbie had a lot of books. She had a shelf full of books. She had so many books, that I could rotate the ones in use, putting half in the book basket and half on the shelf so Abbie could rediscover them each time I brought one into her view, like a goldfish swimming circles in its bowl.*

This time was probably before Abbie’s first birthday. We would sit in her room and repeatedly read her pristine books for stretches of several minutes. She was too young to manipulate the books, saving them wear, but was still capable of manipulating me into reading to her for stretches of several minutes by screaming every time I tried to put her down. The only way a book could suffer damage is if we read it so many times that its binding wore out. And there was that one time I spilled a glass of water on a book, which seemed like a bigger deal before Abbie learned to dump a proverbial glass of water every time she grabbed a book.

Around one year of age, she discovered the joys of bending a book backwards, turning the letter “F” into the front cover and the letter “G” into the back. This put excessive strain on the spine and often a crease in the cover, expediting the book’s demise. A couple months later she was turning the pages in creative new directions, shredding most of her original books that had survived that long. My 18 months of age, she was permanently lifting the flaps off the page, tearing them off and leaving a pile of once useful flaps in her wake.

Today she’s harder than ever on books. She has no lift-the-flap books left, or at least no flaps left to lift, though we do still pretend the flaps exist and read her denuded books like the swordfish is still hiding inside the shipwreck. To prove her malice, she found a flap book that we bought and shredded it, creating a flap pile at her feet within hours. Unfortunately that book was supposed to be a present.** I’m not dumb enough to buy her more flap books; I’m just dumb enough to leave them where she can reach them.

Of course most books don’t have flaps, but that doesn’t stop Abbie from looking. Any time she finds an edge of her book separating from its board page, she finishes the job and pulls the picture off the page. The covers are particularly vulnerable to her prying fingers as we have several books with a white hunk of cardboard where the title should be, which makes it hard to know what book we’re reading until opening it. Or there’s a similar white patch where the conclusion should be, depriving her of ever knowing what comes after “19.” Eventually the book turns white from cover to cover, and I have to throw it away unless I want to make up a story about a blizzard.

Because of her destructiveness, I can no longer rotate books. We have one basket filled with every board book she owns.*** This disappoints me partially because I have to buy new books when I want her to read something unfamiliar, but mostly because I wanted to pass her books down to her brothers. I imagined we’d have fun reading the same books her sister did while they threaten me with screaming like their sister did if I set them down. I suppose it’s just as well that the boys discover their own books. They’re already starting to chew on pristine pages anyway.

* “Hey, a plant! Hey, a castle! Hey, a plant! Hey, a castle! Hey, a plant! Hey, a castle!”
** Sorry, Patty. It was Star Wars themed too, so it could entertain both of you. Don’t worry, we didn’t pay much for it; it came from a garage sale, and it was from Episode 1, so you know it came cheap.
*** We still have a trove of books with normal paper pages tucked away because I’m at least smart enough to keep those out of her reach.

Isn't It Ironic?

The Top Ten Ironies of Childrearing

10. A leaky bottle with a plugged nipple.
9. A diaper bag that contains 1284 Goldfish spilled across the bottom, five dried out baby wipes, four toys of questionable sanitation, three outfits that were clean before they went in the diaper bag, two empty snack containers, one changing pad, and zero diapers.
8. Having three kids, but only two hands.
7. A lift-the-flap book with all of its flaps torn out.
6. A sippy cup that leaks when knocked over.
5. A shirt with a cute strawberry design that’s stained by strawberries.
4. You need a double-stroller to go anywhere, but a double-stroller is too big to go almost anywhere.
3. A bib that collects food throughout the entire meal, and then makes a giant mess when the toddler removes and throws it.
2. Already having everything you could possibly need for one baby, and discovering that you’re going to have twins.
1. Finally getting reconnected to the Internet, and not having enough time to write a quality post for your blog.

I'm Not Dead

In case you’re curious, I haven’t succumbed to a devastating sinus infection, and you’re Internet connection is working properly. In fact, my Internet connection was the one that was down. I haven’t posted for the last couple of days because construction outside my home apparently cut my phone line, leaving me unable to connect to the Internet or, worse yet, order pizza. They have since repaired my phone line.* I’ve still been writing, and I’ve posted the last two days of posts for your enjoyment. What follows is the Top Ten Things I Did Instead of Looking Something up on the Internet.

10. Looking up addresses on the phone book’s map.
9. Watching the ESPN News bottom line.
8. Imagining all of the spam I was missing.
7. Rediscovering the comics in the newspaper.
6. Googling myself in the phone book.
5. Checking the classified ads for any new listings of Star Wars action figures.
4. Waited by the radio at X:59 of every hour, anticipating the top of the hour news report.
3. Reading the computer’s manual.
2. Playing with the kids instead of waiting for pages to load.
1. Asking people I know in real life what their kids did today.

* Duh.

Abbie Gone Wild

I’ve heard that having kids opens your eyes, helps you see the world in new ways, and learn more about yourself. Right now, Abbie is helping me learn about all the little things another human can do that annoy me. Climbing on the countertops is right up there. So is destroying books, especially when she shreds the victimized pages into pieces tiny enough to strew across the floor, yet too big to vacuum. I continuously thwart her with an escalation in childproofing, forcing her to find new ways to endanger either her health or my psyche. Her latest discovery is taking off her clothes.

Abbie has never been a fan of clothing. As a newborn, she was already kicking out of her swaddling blankets on a 4-month-old’s level. We tried putting her to sleep in those sleep sacks with an elastic opening at the bottom that keeps the child warm while allowing easy diaper access for sleep-deprived parents. Every time we pulled her from her crib, though, she had kicked the opening up to around her waist, giving her a poofy shirt and exposed legs. When we took her outside in the cool autumn air, we wrapped a blanket around her for warmth, but her screaming informed us that she’d rather be cold than restrained. When winter struck, we had to experiment with several different forms of foot coverings (socks, slippers, body paint) before finding something that she couldn’t remove yet would be warm enough to prevent strangers from accosting me over her cold feet. She stopped leaving bibs around her neck months ago, and I’ve since learned to live with shirts stained with yogurt and ketchup.

Now she’s working on her shirt. Specifically she’s working on stripping her shirt off and running around the house topless all day. This skill can be helpful when used at the appropriate times. She could take her shirt off for me before changing into her pajamas at night, or she could remove her shirt right before scooping up a large handful of yogurt that’s destined to drip between her fingers before reaching her mouth. Instead she tends to remove her shirt during the day while I’m tied down feeding the boys. Sometimes she’ll use this opportunity to pull shirts out of her dresser, or any other article of clothing she thinks might look good on her upper body, and watch herself trying it on in front of the mirror, oftentimes with her head pulled through a sleeve and the rest of it dangling off her shoulders. Sometimes she just takes advantages of my immobility to run around as a free spirit for a few minutes. Either way I eventually corral her and put a shirt back on her body, preferably the right way, and preferably the original shirt lest I create even more laundry for myself.

Just as annoyingly, sometimes she’ll run around with her shirt pulled up, exposing her tummy and chest for the world to see, or at least her brothers. She’ll do this for minutes at a time, even holding the rolled up shirt under her chin if she needs her hands to do something like hold a book. I can’t figure out why she does this other than she likes the sensation. She’s certainly not imitating anybody she’s seen unless someone threw an after-hours party on Sesame Street that I missed.

The solution to my annoyances is to let her do what she wants. If she’s going to take her shirt off, let her. She’s not doing any harm, especially if she’s inside the house, and she may be doing a good thing if mealtime is near. I guess I’m a stickler for house rules, though, and one of my rules is, except for the obvious exemptions, we wear a shirt and pants at all times, especially at the dinner table. It’s my obsessive-compulsive nature. In the meantime, I’m thankful that she hasn’t figured out how to remove most of her pants, because once those come off it’s an easy leap to removing the diaper too.

Cold Case

I’m feeling better. The past couple days I’ve had a cold attacking my sinuses like John Gibbons going after his starting pitcher. It’s already starting to let up, which is a relief since I tend to get sick suddenly, and slowly improve over the next two weeks. Naturally the rest of the family has my cold, but they’re all improving as well. Except Ellie.

My nose had been running hard for the previous week, making me think it was just my allergies acting up. I’m allergic to a lot of things, including grasses, pet dander, dust mites, and basically anything inedible. I live with the pets and the mites year round, so I’m used to those, but the rest of my allergens flourish in weather like the unseasonably cool and moist August we’ve been enjoying even though it’s an obvious foreshadowing of a brutal winter.

My sinuses started screaming Sunday night after playing with the kids in the park. I was hoping that something was in bloom and infuriating my immune system, and as soon as I went back inside our clamped shut home filled with mechanically cooled air, I’d feel better. When I started feeling worse after lying down on the couch yet strangely reluctant to rise back to my feet, I knew that the only allergies acting up in me were my allergies to the cold virus.

I noticed Abbie nose had filled with nasal gold at bedtime. I reached for the greatest known children’s cold medicine: Dytan. It’s a 12-hour version of Benadryl, which means it helps the child sleep all night. Whether or not it actually clears the congestion is debatable, but that’s not the point. If a child’s nose is plugged, and the child sleeps all night, does the mucus bother the child?

She spent the next day breathing through her mouth, which leads to drooling. A lot of drooling. Soaking wet shirt amount of drooling. When she was younger, I’d leave a bib on her all day to soak up the drool. Now that she’s coordinated enough to remove clothing, bibs never stay on her long, as evidenced by the yogurt stains on her shirt after every lunch. She doesn’t like bibs, and she doesn’t like wet shirts either since she kept removing her shirt throughout the day.* Eventually I let her go topless and flash her brothers the rest of the day.

I think the boys are sick, but they’re taking it well. I noticed Ian was snotty last week, but I’d hoped it was my imagination, or maybe those mythical allergies. This week Tory is snotty. Other than being a little extra cranky, I don’t notice a difference. I believe this is their first illness, so our diligence in hygiene, keeping them away from crowds, and vaccinating them for every known disease when they were younger paid off. I hope every illness they suffer passes with so little notice.

Now everyone is feeling better. I’ve stored the Dytan, preferring to use the cheaper Benadryl as needed. I don’t plan on taking any cold medicine for myself tonight, which might allow me to wake up before the children tomorrow morning. Ellie, well, I hope Ellie gets a good night’s sleep. Apparently this is a fast moving illness, so she should feel better soon.

* Except for when I let her outside to play with the neighbors and their garden hose, then she left her shirt on.

Oops

Sometimes I wish I could pay more attention to Abbie. Ever since the twins were born, Abbie ends up pushed to the side far too often, given a bowlful of crackers to keep happy as I have dishes to wash, diapers to change, and blogs to write. I don’t think she’s starved for attention since I still read several books a day to her, play with her in the park every day, and generally notice her diaper is poopy within an hour of her filling it. It’s probably best that I leave her to entertain herself so frequently so she doesn’t wind up like one of those weird, self-centered only children,* but I still wish I could carve out a little more Abbie time.

Mornings are usually not a good time for Abbie time. Between cleaning up after breakfast, keeping her brothers happy, and … actually those two activities fill the schedule between twin wake time, and twin naptime. After putting the boys down, I collapse into a child-weary heap while Abbie chases the dog around my exhausted body. I typically regain my strength in time to prepare lunch before the boys wake, restarting the process.

I enjoyed a treat the other morning. The boys must have done an outstanding job of entertaining themselves, or maybe Abbie threw fewer toddler sporks on the floor than usual leaving me fewer dishes to clean. Either way, I had a solid 15 minutes to spare before setting the boys down for their nap. I set the boys next to the basket o’ books, called Abbie over, and started some quality reading time.

When she was the boys’ age, we would spend long stretches nestled in the rocking chair, reading every book in her collection over and over again while I counted the seconds until her next naptime. Reading was one of the few activities that kept her happy at that age, with the others being eating and destroying books.

Now she has other activities to keep her entertained, and more sugary foods to eat. She doesn’t like to waste her time if we’re not actively reading. We made it through one book before I got distracted with a brother. Tory fell and bonked his nose on Abbie’s bed, drawing a little blood from one nostril. Abbie started scratching me to bring me back to her book. I warned her a couple times to stop scratching, but she continued. Finally I grabbed her hand off my leg, pulled her toward me, and told her in my most menacing voice to stop scratching. It got her attention, but as I pulled her hand toward me, I felt a pop.

Oops.

Abbie started screaming uncontrollably almost immediately. I think I bent her hand down at too forceful of an angle as I pulled her toward me. I tried to calm her with singing and rocking, but she kept screaming and clutching her hand. When I pried her good hand away for a closer look, the victimized hand dangled off the wrist like it was unable to support its own weight.

I gave Abbie some ibuprofen and loaded everybody up for a trip to the emergency room. Abbie’s wrist probably wasn’t broken, but it could have been dislocated. All three children screamed while I prepared for the journey, Abbie from the wrist injury, and the boys from their impending and delayed naptime.

Abbie started to calm down as I carried her into the hospital. My first real clue that she was okay was when tipped backward from my grasp, and grabbed my shirt tightly with both hands. She finally calmed down for good some time around the visit with the x-ray machine. The x-rays confirmed that she was fine, and since she was finally calm, they sent us home without actually doing anything to her, and just gave me the general “take it easy” advice. And I was sure someone was going to ask some pointed questions about how my daughter suffered an injury that I caused and why my infant son has a bloody nose.

Everything was fine the rest of the day. Abbie didn’t show any lingering effects of a wrist injury. The boys snuck in an adequate nap that morning. I made sure to carve out some quality time with Abbie, and everyone was as happy as usual. At least everyone was happy until we all simultaneously started coming down with colds that night.

* Like me.

Sick Day

When I got sick in 2003, I had to shrug it off. My sick/vacation days were too precious to use, so I went to work and spaced off as much as possible. Inevitably Ellie would also get sick as we spent so much of our lives in close contact.

When I got sick in 2005, I had to shrug it off. My job was now caring for Abbie, so I didn’t get sick days. I could only space off during downtime, intervening when she did something dangerous. Inevitably Abbie and Ellie would also get sick as we spent so much of our lives in close contact.

When I get sick in 2006, I don’t have time to shrug it off. My job is caring for three children, and a sick day is a light blog post. Downtime is when two of the kids are napping. Inevitably the kids will get sick since we spend so much of our lives in close contact. Fortunately I barely see Ellie anymore, so she might get out of this with her health intact.

I’m sick today. The kids are also sick. I’m taking a sick day.

Countertop High

Abbie’s favorite perch is the kitchen countertop. She’s learned to climb into a baby highchair, toddler booster seat, adult chair, or whatever else we may have haphazardly left near the counters, and scramble across to pay dirt.

One reason she climbs up there may be the illicit thrill children derive from climbing. I certainly remember the childhood high I got from being high as I climbed onto our kitchen counters more than a few times. Sometimes I even had a legitimate need to climb on the counters, like when mom would tell me to fetch a pen for her, not realizing that the best pen was hiding behind the sugar. It was fun to treat the kitchen like a playground, see the world from a new angle, and be as tall as the adults. That last one was important since adults can’t push you around if you’re as tall as they are, which is why they always hoist you up and down to the ground before punishing you.

I don’t know if Abbie thinks that way. That sort of cogitation may come later in Abbie’s childhood, kind of like speech. For now I’m pretty sure her main reason for climbing up there is to get into stuff. I hide lots of good stuff on the countertops. Those pill bottles that make a cool rattling noise when shaken are up there. So are all of her dishes, which Abbie likes playing with even when they’re not lined with food. Most importantly we keep all of our food above the countertops, especially the sugar-infused cereals that she likes.

Needless to say, I don’t want her on the counters. She could fall, hurt herself on impact, and probably not even learn a lesson from the ordeal. Even though she probably can’t defeat the child-resistant caps, I don’t want her getting into the pills, as an overdose on Tums could be catastrophic. She could cause all sorts of trouble with the dishes, from breaking them, to hiding them behind the microwave, to just getting her grubby mitts all over them. When she gets into the food, she could make a giant mess spilling them all over, not to mention ruin her appetite for that snack I was about to give her.

She still climbs on the counters, though. If I want us to use chairs while eating, I have to keep them in our tiny kitchen. With five chairs, that means at least one is always automatically within climbing distance of a countertop. I’ve learned to deal with it, ignoring it when I hear her on the counters while I’m busy with the boys and pretending that she’s not making too much of a mess.

That was my attitude yesterday morning. I heard her on the countertop, but I had important work to do. I finished up and walked into the kitchen, expecting to scold her with a hand in a cereal box, or maybe hiding a sippy cup behind the plates. Instead I found her playing with a couple cans of formula. She was engaging in imaginative play, pretending to mix a little formula. Unfortunately, she didn’t read the directions since she didn’t have any water ready. Also she ignored the one scoop per 2-fluid ounce rule as most of the contents from two cans were covering the counter and floor.

I could only stand speechless with a million thoughts racing through my head. I’d have to find a way to run to the store that much sooner to replenish my formula stockpile. Cleaning that much spilled formula is a giant pain and can make a bigger, stickier mess if you’re not careful. She just wasted $30 worth of formula.

I wanted to scold her, but I couldn’t. I wanted to discipline her somehow, send her to her room, put her in timeout, ground her for a month, or something effective, but I couldn’t move. Instead I gave her an entire bag of Goldfish, sent her to the living room, and mourned my loss of formula.

I’ve since decided that we don’t need five chairs in the kitchen. The boys’ highchairs are the space-saving kind* that strap to a regular chair. I unstrapped the highchairs, stored their dining chairs downstairs, and now I sit on the floor with their not-so-highchair while feeding, otherwise storing their chairs on the countertop where Abbie can’t reach them. I moved Abbie’s booster seat into the hallway by the kitchen. I folded up the cheap folding chairs the adults use. Now there’s nothing for Abbie to climb on in the kitchen, and hopefully no way for her to climb onto the countertops. As a bonus, it opens up the free space in our tiny kitchen well. In fact, there’s so much free space, Abbie has no trouble opening the refrigerator door now.

* A.k.a. the “cheap” kind.

After the Rain

Here in Iowa, much of the local news revolves around its effect on agriculture. This despite the fact that we have fewer farms than ever, and most of those are managed in absentia by politicians who are trying to pass themselves off as family farmers, despite working other more lucrative occupations. When the fair arrives, the media swoons over its bovine aspects, like the big steer contest, the hot beef sundaes, and the butter cow, a life-size cow sculpted entirely out of butter.* When gasoline prices rise, the media uncovers their affect on ethanol. When Lance Armstrong bikes across the state, the media discovers what kind of pie he bought from which farmwife.

Nowhere is this agricultural angle to the local news more evident than in the weather. That makes sense since the weather always has an effect on the crops, usually detrimental. Thanks to the public radio station I keep tuned all day long to preserve my sanity, I know the weather’s affect on the crops, along with the current SOI.

I bring this up because the weather has a similar effect on agriculture and my kids. When the temperature is too cold for anything to grow, it’s too cold for the kids to play outside. When the temperature turns hot, the crops need extra water and so do my kids after playing outside. When rain soaks the land, crops don’t like being in standing water, and I don’t like my kids being in standing water.** When the weather is nice, plenty of warm sunshine, daytime temperatures in the mid-80’s, and nighttime temperatures in the mid-60’s, that’s when the crops grow best,*** and that’s when I love taking the kids outside to play.

The one weather type that crops and kids don’t equally enjoy is a gentle rain, which has been our weather for the past week. This is the kind of rain that begins early in the day, say right about the time the kids wake up, and continues off and on throughout the day until around bedtime. Every time I see the rain begin to fall again, I can hear rejoicing from the fields as the drink their fill, recovering from the damage of our brutal July weather, while replenishing the ground water for next year’s crops. At least I probably could hear such rejoicing if my children weren’t screaming.

A little rain can make the grass wet for hours. This isn’t a problem for Abbie the biped whose shoes or bare feet will dry quickly. It is however a problem for the twins who tend to move on the knees of their outfits when they crawl, especially Tory who doesn’t so much crawl as he does the butterfly stroke through the grass. The result can be soaking wet outfits even though their diapers are still holding.

A little more rain creates mud for several hours. Now the boys pick up muck along with the water on their outfits. Mud also creates problems for Abbie when she inevitably falls and cakes mud on her clothes. That much water also ruins the park experience as the woodchips meant to cushion falls around the playground equipment start congealing into a mud-like substance. If Abbie falls near the swings, she’ll rise with woodchip detritus on her pants. That much water also creates friction, rendering the slide unslidable, and leaves standing water on horizontal equipment like the merry-go-round, and that tunnel that Abbie never notices unless it contains standing water.

Worst of all, the rain results in mushrooms all over our backyard. These things leave a nasty stain when a boy drags his outfit through one. They also look dangerous to me, and tasty to the boys. Whether or not they’re poisonous, I die a little inside each time I turn around to find a fungus hanging out of a boy’s mouth. I hate those things, but I should expect them when everything else grows in this weather.

* I am, sadly, not making up any of those.
** They like being in standing water, but that’s not the point.
*** That also means everyone else’s crops will produce a higher yield, driving down the price, but that has no correlation to parenting.

"A soy-based snack will calm me down."

Abbie has somehow turned into a snacker. Like an athlete faced with a positive drug test, I don’t know how this happened. When I put her on The Schedule as a baby, her only food came at mealtime, and mealtimes were fixed. I never dared to feed her early because that could lead to her expecting the next meal early, which would throw off her nap schedule, which would seriously cut into my Internet time.

Later I read that toddlers don’t work like adults who can spend an entire day at the mall nourished by nothing more than a Cinnabon. Toddlers have tiny stomachs, and do best with small meals, and smaller snacks spaced between those meals. I always want what’s best for my children, an attitude that explains why you can’t walk across the living room without setting off at least three toys that sing the ABC song, so I added a snack to her schedule. She didn’t ask for one, but she ate it up when offered as readily as a cable news network faced with fresh news on a 10-year-old murder story. Soon after, she started expecting a snack, and I started collecting a stable of snack offerings.

Her first snacks were cereals like Tasteeos, Rice Squares, and Crispy Hexagons. These cereals are nutritious, cheap, and never spoil, making them ideal to feed Abbie, and the dog when she dumps them on the floor. Unfortunately, cereals tend to either be healthy or sweet, and these cereals had far too many nutrient molecules crowding out the sugar molecules. Once Abbie discovered that Tasteeos aren’t the apogee of culinary delights, she tended to throw more than she ate. Once the floor-to-mouth ratio hit about 3-to-1, I looked for other snack options.

Next we moved to fruit. Canned fruits work well because they’re pre-sliced, saving me valuable seconds and sanity when Abbie starts screaming for a snack. Even when I grab a larger hunk of fruit, like peaches or papayas or pluots, the canning process softens them to the point where I can slice them into Abbie-sized pieces with a fork. This saves dishes since I have a fork ready for Abbie to navigate the fruit without soaking her fingers in canned fruit syrup, at least until she throws the fork on the floor and shovels the rest of the fruit into her mouth with her fingers.

We use a lot of fresh fruit too. Blueberries, strawberries, grapes, and the occasional nectarine that Abbie jabs a thumb into while in the store all work well. Sometimes Abbie randomly decides she doesn’t want her fruit, but that’s remedied by mixing it with whipped topping. I remember eating whipped topping from the container by the spoonful as a child, so it’s good to know tastes are genetic.

Goldfish entered her regular snack rotation at some point. It was probably when I had a screaming baby brother to deal with, and discovered it was easier to grab a handful of crackers than open the refrigerator and find the fruit. While that 4% of the daily recommended amount of calcium per serving is impressive, I try to stay away from Goldfish since they’re nutritionally devoid, unless your child has a fat, carbohydrate, or sodium deficiency.

Sometimes Abbie starts screaming though, and the only way I can calm her is with a few handfuls of Goldfish. I tried diluting them with a handful of cereal, but she inevitably picked out the good stuff, eating the Goldfish and leaving the cereal for the dog who’s always hovering nearby for some reason.

Eventually I discovered that she’d eat cereal during her screaming fits as long as she could pull it directly from the box. Far too often today, I will give Abbie the whole box and let her go to town while I tend to something more important, like the baby who fell and hit his head while I was trying to comfort his brother after he fell and hit his head. I don’t like doing that since she’s solving her boredom by gorging on cereal, but at least it buys me some time. Then Abbie dumps the box out on the floor and I have to hope the boys are self-sufficient long enough for me to vacuum cereal dust out of the carpet. Not even the dog can eat an entire box of cereal by herself.

Can't Wait to Get off the Road Again

We’re back home after a short trip to see my parents. Actually staying with my parents was the short part; it was the drive there and back that lasted longer than an 18-inning Cubs game.

The traveling party the three children and me. Ellie had to work and missed the journey.* I used to frequently drive the 200 miles to see my parents without Ellie before the twins arrived. When Abbie was a newborn, I strapped her in her car seat, let her sleep, and remembered to stop for her regularly scheduled feeding because nothing short of a bathroom break would wake her from a car ride. Then I started planning her departure to coincide with naptime so that she would wake once we reached the destination. Then I developed the flexibility to reach back and hand her toys and food while driving to keep her content because her car ride nap times kept decreasing.

Today she apparently doesn’t sleep in the car, unless we’re taking a five-minute ride from the store to home, at which point she’ll fall asleep as I pull into the driveway and count that as her daily nap. To compensate, we equipped my car with a DVD player to keep her entertained. It’s an aftermarket player, the kind that plugs into a car cigarette lighter outlet and straps to the headrest before falling out of place while turning onto the interstate and making the immobile child scream in fury that Elmo suddenly disappeared. The DVDs keep her happy for a little while, but after the same one repeats for the third time of the trip, she gets a little antsy.

The boys skipped most of Abbie’s sleep-in-the-car phase and have progressed right to her demand-entertainment phase. Unfortunately for them, I can’t just reach back and fling entertainment into their car seat. That was a difficult reach with Abbie right behind me; it’s impossible with a boy hidden behind the passenger seat. So I listen to someone scream. A lot.

On the ride down, I was under major time-constraints after forgetting the primary rule of leaving the house with children: It always takes longer than you think it will. Unable to stop, I listened to one of the boys scream for most of the second half of the ride. I’m not sure if it was the same boy, or if they traded off to save their voices. Abbie joined in periodically when she couldn’t hear Dora. I felt bad about letting them scream, but I knew they weren’t hungry or in any (physical) pain, they were just bored. And angry.

On the ride back, I left a wide chunk of time for travel. I planned to stop for breaks when the children became too cranky. Our first stop was for lunch at a rest stop about halfway through the journey. Actually this was our second stop, the first was to pick up lunch a few minutes earlier, but thanks to the magic of the drive-thru, we never left the car.

This stop lasted more than an hour, and went smoothly considering that I was immobile while feeding the twins and could only hope Abbie didn’t try to run away. It was a weekday on the interstate, so the rest stop was sparse; just us four, a few retirees, a few truckers, and the creepy-looking janitor, all of whom commented on how I have my hands full. The stop would have been perfect except the restaurant forgot the milk I ordered for Abbie, put mayo on my sandwich like I explicitly did not order, and included another lame car-like toy in her kid’s meal.

With food and probably a few blades of grass in everyone’s tummies, I packed everyone back up and we drove home. I had hoped they’d stay happy until we reached home, but that hope died when Tory started screaming a half-hour down the road. I again pulled over at a rest stop, but only stayed about ten minutes this time, or less time than it takes Brad Lidge to blow a save. As soon as I loaded everyone back into the car, Tory started screaming again. I shrugged and just kept driving. We were only 45 minutes from home at that point, and letting him scream that long in the car won’t hurt him. I know from experience.

* To put it another way, Ellie had the good fortune to be at work and missed the car ride.

The Light May Be on, But Nobody's Home

I'm going to be out of town for a couple of days, so no new updates until Thursday.

Easy as 1, 3, 4

We’ve taught Abbie several signs so far. She knows “milk” (hands in fists, held together, shaken up and down), “help” (hands in fists, held together, shaken up and down), and “martini, shaken not stirred” (hands in fists, held together, shaken up and down). These signs are useful to us in determining what she wants, such as help with her milk, but they have a limited useful lifetime. As soon as she starts talking, she can verbally request things instead of forcing us to play a game of hot and cold with every word that looks the sign she just displayed. When she goes verbal, we can end this game and she’ll drop the signs faster than a cycling sponsor drops their star after a positive drug test.

We’ve been teaching her a more permanent set of signs recently: Numbers, as in holding up one finger for “one,” two fingers for “two,” etc. We’re going up to five for now, but once she masters five it should be easy to add the second hand to take her counting all the way up to ten. That way she can request up to ten more crackers at a time instead of being limited to five each time she asks.

Ellie’s original impetus for teaching her numbers was to let her show others how old she is. She had dreams of a smiling toddler, too shy to speak even if she could, holding up the correct number of fingers when a stranger asks, “How old are you?” These signs will have other value when she can speak, such as helping her do older activities like first-grade math, ordering two beers, and signaling fourth down.

She’s learning, but the basketball game’s official scorer will still have a hard time telling the difference between a foul on #3 and #5. She does a good job signing “one.” That involves holding up the index finger, which is the same motion she’s been using for months now to point out ducks, balls, and other important items seen in books. Her problems start with “two,” as she doesn’t want to tuck in her thumb. This makes her “two” look like a Euro-style “three.” In the same way, it makes her “three” look like a “four,” “four” look like a “five,” and her “five” … actually her five looks pretty good. She’ll be in good shape to answer the age question in three years.

Our primary time to practice number signs is while reading. The obvious targets are books with names like “Happy Baby 123,” “My Little 123 Book,” and “Beyond 123: A Resource for the Gifted Baby.” She points to a number, I announce its name, and she holds up the proper number of fingers as long as I don’t count the thumb. I then encourage her efforts, remind her to tuck in that thumb, and move on to the three rockets, even though she would rather count those three tiny stars hidden behind the rockets.

Other books offer counting opportunities. “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” has a section where you can count how many pieces of fruit the caterpillar maliciously destroys. She has a book about shapes and colors, creatively titled “Shapes and Colors,” that asks you to count how many circles, squares, dodecahedrons, or whatever you see on each page.

Even non-counting situations allow Abbie to show off her number prowess. When Dora announces in a book that she has plenty of fruit for everyone, Abbie holds up an index finger to show she heard “one,” then cheers for Dora’s fruit collecting abilities. When she hears that it’s Tuesday, she might hold up two fingers to show her knack for creative spelling. When I tell her she can read one last book before bedtime, she signs “one” and smiles to show that she understands how many more books she can read. That and she wants me to delay her bedtime by acknowledging her sign. Just because she can’t talk doesn’t mean she isn’t smart.

Look Who's Not Coming to Eat Dinner

The great thing about spoon-feeding twins is that if one child doesn’t want his food, there’s always another one to feed it to. When my spoon meets baby lips that are sealed tighter than my limits on Abbie’s countertop cavorting adventures, I move the spoon to his brother and usually find an open mouth.

Their roles have recently flipped. When we started the spoon-feeding adventures, Ian was reluctant to try new things, while Tory was appreciative of anything we put in his mouth. Now Ian has decided that nothing on a spoon could be bad, while Tory has realized that there are better things to shove in his mouth than broccoli, such as newspapers, sticks, and whatever that ground up substance is under the tire swing.

Usually I just have to give Ian a few bites of Tory’s food, and he’ll open his mouth again for at least a few more bites. Perhaps he realizes that even eating peas is better than nothing, or maybe he’s already hit the mentality of “no fair, I get whatever he/she/the dog gets.” Regardless of the reason, I shovel it in while he’s still willing to accept it, moving faster than Mark Prior to the DL.

Sometimes I need to take more drastic measures to coax his mouth open. When Abbie was their age, whenever I needed to coax her into accepting something supposedly edible, I’d smile at her, open my mouth wide, and say “ahh.” It could take her a few seconds, but she’d soon smile and open wide too, possibly not realizing that her reward for playing the game was a mouthful of spinach.

I tried the same tactic with Tory yesterday, looking him straight in the eye and announcing “ahh.” His lips stayed sealed, though, and instead of hearing the magic word in front of me, I heard it through a satellite speaker. Ian was playing along with our game. I turned my head to see Ian with a big grin, an open mouth, and a vocalization passing through his lips. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but I gave him Tory’s spoonful and cheered Ian’s participation, hoping that someone else was paying attention and would join in the mimicry game.

Sure enough, someone was paying attention. Abbie cheered with me, clapping and raising her hands in celebration of Ian’s spot-on daddy impression. Tory was still giving me a stiff lower lip, though. I shrugged and deposited the spoon in Ian’s open maw. I readied another spoonful, announced its presence for Tory, and watched him continue sucking his upper lip in tight. After another deposit into Ian’s mouth, Tory decided to accept the next spoonful. He opened wide and rediscovered the glorious symphony of taste and texture that is pureed spinach and slow-simmered chicken thinned out with a touch of chilled formula.

By the next spoonful, Tory remembered why he didn’t want to eat. He saved room for the dessert that is a bottle of formula and kept his mouth shut for a few more spoonfuls. That was okay since Ian still wanted more, especially with Abbie cheering him on.

Awakenings

Abbie’s willingness to accept sleep moves in cycles. Sometimes I just need to point her toward the bed, and she’ll quickly drift off to sleep, or at least stay put until she falls asleep with a minimum of complaint. Other times she wants to sleep less than Lindsay Lohan while shooting a movie, running around her room, flinging things across the floor, and generally running a race to see if she can wake her brothers or force us to intervene first.

Right now she’s in one of those fighting sleep moods. The first sign came two nights ago when I put her through the bedtime routine, lovingly kissed her and wished her goodnight, and spent the next hour listening to her bouncing around the room on the baby monitor. Her bouncing was gentle though, and seemed to mostly comprise singing to herself. Her brothers didn’t complain that she was keeping them awake or even that she didn’t know any of the words, so I let her go until she drifted to sleep with visions of La La-ers singing in her head.

When she started bouncing around the room again last night, I paid her little attention. When her singing started sounding more like Linkin Park than MacArthur Park, I tried to ignore her, especially since her brothers weren’t complaining. They were certainly awake, but they were quiet, possibly because they were enjoying the show or maybe just captivated by the preview of all the things they could do once they learned how to fall out of their crib like their sister.

Ellie had no such patience, and was concerned that Abbie had wedged herself between furniture or otherwise needed assistance before going to sleep. She doesn’t have the advantage I do of listening to the kids scream all day to differentiate between a scream that requires adult intervention, and a scream that will work itself out. The “I’m bored” scream will work itself out, for example, as will the “I fell and hit my head mildly hard” scream.

Against my advice, Ellie entered her room, and found that Abbie needed assistance. Not that she needed assistance moving a heavy piece of furniture; she needed assistance dealing with the society’s norms and our house rules. She was naked, and by “naked” I mean “no pajamas or diaper.” She had successfully removed both, peed on the floor for good measure, and was now standing in Tory’s crib. Ellie, who was simultaneously grateful and regretful that she took the initiative to check on her, started working to clean the mess and clothe the child, but not necessarily in that order.

After that, Abbie bounced around her room for several more minutes, but eventually relented and fell asleep. We breathed a sigh of relief as the boys stayed silent throughout the ordeal. Plus Abbie had a big day at the state fair in the morning, and would need a full night’s sleep to enjoy it. Abbie stayed asleep all the way until morning, 4 in the morning to be exact. It was my turn to check on her before the boys woke. Of course her diaper was on the floor when I opened her door. I hope she sleeps better tonight.

"There's a world where I can go and tell my secrets to..."

I trust Abbie to stay out of trouble when she’s in her room unsupervised. I have to trust her if I want her to sleep. If I left her room door open to keep an eye on her, she wouldn’t fall asleep until collapsing on the kitchen floor shortly before sunrise after a wild night of chasing pets and gorging on sugar-sweetened fluorescent-colored cereal. Then she’d wake up a couple hours later still tired, cranky, and in desperate need of more Fruit Rings for an energy boost.

This trust requires planning on my part since Abbie tends to get into everything within her reach, and almost everything lower than ceiling light fixture is within her reach. I have to remove anything dangerous in her room, and I believe I’ve done that, at least until she figures out how to remove the safety covers on the electrical sockets, which at the rate she defeats “childproof” devices, could be sometime next Tuesday. The only way left for her to hurt herself is by falling off furniture, but her floor is carpeted, so hopefully she wouldn’t suffer anything worse than rug burn. She could theoretically tip the changing table onto herself, but she’d have to bounce on the open drawers to supply enough force to tip it. Fortunately our changing table has built-in safety feature in that the drawers are too cheap to support her weight, a fact she uncovered by standing in and breaking one of the drawers.

Safety is the most important consideration, but I also have to watch out for the annoyance factor. Abbie still has a myriad of items within her reach that she can strew about the room if I’m not around to stop her. I’ve developed a system of elevating temptations to thwart her before shutting her door. Her basket of books goes on the changing table. She can still reach them on the changing table, but it at least discourages her from throwing them around the room and removing pages in my absence. The diaper pail also goes on the changing table, and I tip it to horizontal so she can’t stuff anything in there. Even with these steps, I have to inspect each trash bag carefully for burp clothes and stuffed animals that took an unfortunate journey to an unpleasant place.

I can’t move everything beyond her reach, though. The floor in front of her dresser is littered with theoretically clean clothes that she pulled from the dresser. She likes to look at her clothes, try putting them on, and throwing them down in frustration after failing to pull a shirtsleeve over her head.

The wipe warmer on top of the changing table is another favorite target. When I put a new package of wipes in the warmer, they’re in a beautifully folded pattern ensuring that a new one pops up each time I pull a new one out. This schematic stays intact for an average of about 15 hours before Abbie finds the warmer and dumps its contents on the floor. The result is I have to constantly stuff cold wipes back in the warmer while wondering why those clothes in front of her dresser are wet.

She also loves playing with diapers.* After tossing the wipe warmer, she moves into the diaper stackers, opening each diaper, discovering it’s empty, and tossing them on the floor on top of the clothes and wipes. I tolerated this for a while even though it made finding the correct diaper for the correct child difficult because there’s nowhere else in the room to put the diapers and still have easy access to them while various orifices are uncovered. I moved them across the room and out of her reach when I tried picking them up one morning, and found five diapers with the tabs ripped off. She pulled them off the biggest, most expensive overnight diapers, too. Those things are expensive enough that I considered taping, or possibly pinning the tabs back on before giving up and tossing their unused innards. Those lightweight dry diapers make it really tough to spot the mistakenly tossed burp clothes, too.

* Here I’m referring to the stockpile in the diaper stackers, although she is learning the joys of playing with the diaper she’s wearing.

"Serenity now!"

I like to think of myself as a patient father, regardless of what Abbie will tell her therapist in 30 years. I know Abbie will make mistakes, misbehave, do the opposite of what I tell her, and generally dump a full box of proverbial Tasteeos over the kitchen floor of house rules. I need to take it in stride, accept her imperfections, speak at her level, correct behavior immediately, be firm not rough, and never let her see me cry.

I lose it too often though, and occasionally find myself yelling at her most of the day. These days usually start bad, progress through defiance, and go downhill from there. Yesterday was one of those days, at least in the morning.

It began when Abbie walked out of her room a half-hour before her scheduled wake time. The night before, she discovered how to defeat the “childproof” doorknob cover that keeps her locked in her room while she fights bedtime. She still can’t turn the knob when the cover is installed, but she can pull the cover until it pops off, giving her easy access to the spoils hidden throughout the house. I heard her escape from her room, but I stayed in bed for a few minutes, flirting with falling back to sleep while wondering how much trouble she could get into.

When I realized the answer was “a lot,” I stumbled out of our room to find her in the kitchen. She had climbed on the countertop and was playing in the medicines we supposedly keep hidden up there.

Abbie had engaged in two behaviors guaranteed to infuriate me before I could even roll out of bed. For starters she foiled my morning routine. I’m a routine oriented person. Some, specifically my wife, would say “obsessive compulsive.” If you change my plans, I get frustrated. That’s especially true in the morning while my brain is still too groggy to process change; I can get irritated because someone’s trying to talk to me while I read my newspaper over breakfast. I’ve grown more tolerant since the kids made reading a newspaper with today’s date a luxury, but those first few minutes of my morning are still a bad time to throw me a curve ball, even if it’s a Chicago Cubs caliber curve ball. Abbie breaking out of her room a half-hour early constitutes a major curve ball.

She made things worse by climbing on the countertop. Abbie loves climbing on the kitchen counters because that’s where we keep exciting things like formula cans, boxes of food, and dishes. I hate it when she climbs on the kitchen counters because it generally means I have to clean up spilled things like formula, food, and dish shards. It’s also unsafe as she could get into dangerous items like medicines or knives. She could also fall, and while I would feel horrible if she injured herself, sometimes I think a nice wound-free fall might teach her a lesson. I’ve warned her to stay off the counters approximately 864,521,087 times, but it hasn’t sunk in yet. I used to gently remind her to stay on the floor, but now I usually start with stern warnings. Yesterday I went right to screaming.

I pulled her to the floor and warned her for the 864,521,088th time about climbing on the counters. I screamed at her about a dozen more times that morning for trying to climb on the counters, including a few occasions where she just looked upward longingly. It’s not my proudest morning, but I was exasperated. I didn’t know how to ingrain the rule in her mind. I was still tired. My routine had been disrupted, and it was about to change a lot more because her brothers, having seen the open bedroom door, were awake and expecting food already.

Got Milk-Based Formula?

A couple weeks after we brought the boys home from the NICU, they showed signs of a dairy allergy. Specifically they showed colitis in response to the dairy in their diet, with “colitis” being one of those words that if you don’t know what it means, you don’t want to. In response, we immediately stopped enriching their breast milk with formula like the NICU directed us. Ellie also removed all dairy from her diet so the offending protein wouldn’t contaminate the breast milk.

Ellie successfully avoided dairy for about three days before succumbing to the allure of cheese. At that point Ellie slowly added dairy back into her life as we determined if the dairy protein really would transfer into breast milk, or if the hospital was just pulling a prank on us. Nothing bad happened to the boys as Ellie’s butter intake increased, so she resumed her normal diet, and the boys continued eating with no sign of colitis or anything else that would freak us out.

When the boys needed formula because Ellie, as wonderful as she is, is only one woman, their pediatrician instructed them to eat a special, hypoallergenic formula like Alimentum or Nutramigen. These formulas lack not only the dairy protein, but also a pleasing odor or (I presume) taste. The boys showed some reluctance switching from the sweet taste of mother’s milk to the cabbage-soaked-in-rotten-egg taste of Nutramigen, but eventually realized that, as awful as the stuff is, eating Nutramigen is (barely) more pleasant than starving. Their pediatrician instructed us to leave them on Nutramigen for several months, though we could try the milk-based formula again when they’re older to see if they’ve outgrown the dairy allergy.

They’re now several months older, and we’re trying the milk-based formula again. We have several reasons for doing so. The milk-based formula has to taste better, though the boys don’t seem to notice, possibly because its water-heavily-fortified-with-iron odor indicates that it still doesn’t taste good. Nutramigen tends to congeal into nipple-clogging clumps, while ordinary formula dissolves better and just tends to bubble into a lot of head in the bottle. Ordinary formula scoops easier than Nutramigen, which usually leaks large clusters onto the counter from the container to the bottle. Ordinary formula is easier to find than Nutramigen, as most grocery stores have more shelves filled with milk-based formula* than cans of Nutramigen in stock.**

Most importantly, Nutramigen is too expensive. A can of Nutramigen is less than two-thirds the size of a milk-based counterpart. Plus no one makes a generic hypoallergenic formula. That means feeding the twins costs more than I had expected to pay until the boys were at least old enough to demand a pizza party.

We’re reintroducing dairy to the boys slowly. The first step was some mashed potatoes a couple weeks ago, the Grandma’s Special kind made with real butter and cream. No colitis with that one, so we started giving them milk-based formula for one of their four daily bottles. We’ve been doing that for a couple days now, and everything looks normal. Tory is crankier than usual, but Tory is also cutting more teeth than usual, so I’m hoping it’s coincidence. If everything continues to go well, I’ll keep increasing their milk-based formula intake until our stockpile of Nutramigen is exhausted, and they’re eating all milk-based formula. I need to be careful during the switch, watching carefully for rashes or apparent abdominal pain from an allergic reaction. I’ll also need to keep a large supply of diaper paraphernalia handy and clean outfits, just in case.

* Three is the average number.
** Zero seems to be the number I usually find.

"Moo, Baa, La La La"

Abbie’s Top Ten Sounds That Are Meant to Be Words or phrases:

10. “Anh” means “I want that.”
9. “Mbuh” means “Repeat what you said.”
8. “Muh” means “milk.”
7. “Buh” means “ball.”
6. “Nee” means “neigh (horse sound).”
5. “Buh” means “baa (sheep sound).” You have to use context.
4. “Eee eee” means “cheap cheap (bird sound).”
3. “(inhaled squeak)” means “arf (dog sound)”
2. “(inhaled squeak) oh” means “uh oh.”
1. “(panting)” means, well, panting. As in a dog panting. Guess what her favorite animal is.

"Give a Hoot...Read a Book"

There was a time well before the twins’ arrival when I would sit and read to Abbie for most of her wake time. I had books with all of their covers and flaps intact piled next to me. With Abbie in my lap, she’d flip through the pages, and I’d read the words and point to the important parts like the page’s featured number or that glop of dried spit-up that she found so fascinating. When each book was done, I’d carefully set it to the side to preserve it for future readings, and pluck the next book off the pile. These sessions provided many benefits: It was a daddy-daughter bonding session, visual stimulation, and a foundation in language that I swear is going to pay off any day now. Mostly I read to her a lot to keep her quiet because reading was one of the few activities she deemed acceptable entertainment, especially once the weather cooled too much to go outside and stare at trees.

Today I still read to Abbie often, as most of our indoor, non-food interactions involve a book. The difference is I don’t interact with her nearly as much since she can thankfully entertain herself to a degree. Usually I take care of other things and people around the house, and as long as she’s not destroying anything and neither she nor the pets are screaming, I let her do her thing without interfering. Usually our reading sessions occur when I’m trapped on the floor feeding or playing with the boys, or during the special pre-sleep time that I still reserve for books.

When the twins were born, I thought we’d spend our days chained to the book basket, reading an endless stream of books to keep everyone content while I internally screamed for a respite from reading about the red fox. I assumed all babies were like Abbie in that reading was by far their favorite non-eating activity.

Now that the twins are here, I rarely read to them. I formally hold one of them in my lap and read a book exclusively to him only once per day. The rest of the time they read by osmosis as Abbie controls the book, I describe the pages, and the boys do their own thing that generally involves chewing on something while they may or may not pay attention to us.

It’s not that the twins dislike reading; they’re just indifferent to it. Ian especially doesn’t seem to understand what the big deal is. During our formal reading sessions, he’s usually looking around the room, watching the activity around him, and occasionally turning his attention to the book when a page dangles close enough for him to stuff in his mouth. Tory seems to get a little more when we read as he’ll smack the pictures and occasionally vocalize, possibly wondering why that frog didn’t do anything when he hit it. Plus he seems to have a rudimentary grasp on the concept of turning pages.*

Since the boys are usually as happy playing on the floor as they are being read to, I don’t think to read to them much. Mostly I just hold them or find a toy to dangle within grasping range. That’s just fine with Abbie since she usually just peels their hands off the pages when a brother tries touching her books anyway.

* That and his tooth give him two things he can do before his brother.

Stand by Your Man

I was excited when Ian and Tory started pulling themselves to standing unassisted. It meant they were developing properly, even early. Not just any 8-month-old, 8-week-early baby can pull himself to standing unassisted. I wouldn’t have to fret about when they would start standing, and can instead focus my attention on fretting about other milestones such as crawling and talking. Plus being able to stand opens up a new world of entertainment options for them. They can pull books out of the book basket. They can play with the top of the IncrediBlock. They can pull newspapers, phones, and other forbidden objects off the sofas. I can now line up the remotes for the TV, VCR, DVD player, and stereo across the loveseat, and enjoy unbroken minutes of peace as they grope along the top of the cushions.

After observing them stand for a couple weeks now, I’m less excited about their newfound mobility. Just because they can stand up on something doesn’t mean they can sit back down. Far too many times, I’ve been doing something critically important like washing dishes or searching for valuable coupons, and had to stop when I heard a little man scream. Not the ordinary whining I often hear and ignore, but the full-blown, purple-faced, refusing-to-inhale screaming that tells me they’re furious, in pain, and/or suffering permanent psychological damage. I’ll remove my rubber dish gloves or set down the advertisements, and find a mini-man not in danger, but having scaled a wall and not knowing how to get back down.

At this point the climber is too upset to tolerate being laid back down, so I have temporarily abandon my housekeeping and do some actual parenting. If my former job was only mildly critical, say I’m washing dishes but still have enough bottles for the next feeding, I can sit down and entertain everyone for a few minutes before returning to my work that’s only indirectly related to the children. If my job was desperately critical, say because a turkey baster is the closest thing we have to a clean bottle, I need to carry him with me for my chores until he calms down. This requires me to invent new ways to work with only one free arm. Sometimes I use one arm to hold a baby and a flier while I clip the coupon from it with my free hand. Sometimes I use my teeth to sort ads into pitch and keep piles. Mostly I just work half as fast with my one good hand while I lose all sensation in my other arm.

When my work is done and I can sit and entertain them, they still get stuck while climbing. The difference is instead of climbing on the entertainment center, they climb on me. They’ll grab my shirt, arm hair, exposed skin, or whatever else provides traction, and pull themselves up. Sometimes they fall back down as my shirt slips or I recoil in pain after losing a few hairs by their roots. If they do fall, they climb right back up to my side until they get what they want.

Sometimes they want held, which isn’t a problem as long as I don’t already have a brother on my knee and a sister with a book splayed across my remaining lap. Sometimes they want, well, I don’t know what they want. I’ll pick up one, and he immediately starts squirming and grabbing at the floor. I’ll set him back down, and he immediately tries climbing back up my arm. We’ll repeat this cycle a few times until I give up and bring out the surefire entertainment: Remote controls.

A Sweet Tooth

I feel kind of sorry for Tory. Ian has been the first one of them to do almost every single thing literally since birth when he was the first one born. Once in the NICU, Ian was the first one to breath on his own, the first one to start gaining weight, and the first one to wear real clothes. Once they came home, Ian continued to do firsts first, being the first one to roll over, the first one to pull himself up to standing, and the first one to crawl. Actually he’s still the only one to crawl, as Tory is still content to drag himself within a five-foot radius of his initial drop point.

It’s not like Tory is late doing anything. All his milestones are still well within the norms. Ian just beats him to them, and Tory follows in a couple days, except for that crawling thing. I can’t think of any milestones Tory hit first, unless “first one to finish his bottle” or “first one to demand 12-ounces in a feeding” count as milestones. Oh, and of course “first one to weigh (insert number here) pounds.”

That all changed yesterday. At 8-plus months old, Tory now is the first of our boys to have a tooth. His bottom front left tooth cut through the gum yesterday afternoon. At least I think it appeared yesterday afternoon. It could have happened earlier, but he chews on me enough that I think I’d know if a tooth erupted sooner.

Getting teeth is a big step. It symbolizes their preparedness for solid food, for Tasteeos straight from the box. It also means they no longer get to chew on me. When Abbie was their age, the only thing she would take as a pacifier was my finger, which I gave to her frequently when she fussed. That stopped real quick after her teeth appeared and she could leave dents in my fingers.

I remember Abbie’s teeth came in pairs. When one appeared, another would soon follow, keeping symmetry within her mouth. I stopped checking for new teeth sometime after her tenth tooth popped in since she always bit me when I tried opening her mouth, and she now had enough teeth to do major damage.

As of right now, Ian still has the toothless old man look, but I expect his gums to match soon. In fact, I’m preparing to panic if a tooth doesn’t erupt through his gums by next weekend. I know it’s not a competition between the two of them, and I shouldn’t compare them, but each makes a good predictor of what the other will soon be doing. When Ian first laughs, Tory will soon start laughing. When Ian first sits up, Tory will soon start sitting up. When Ian first crawls, Tory will start crawling just as soon as he drops a few ounces and can lift his frame.

"Things to Do: Threaten Bart, Do Laundry, Buy Corn Holders"

Doing laundry can be a harrowing experience with a toddler. While Abbie contentedly plays with her brothers’ stationary entertainers, I need to run downstairs and accomplish all of the standard laundry tasks, like sorting dirty clothes into piles of “light,” “dark,” “pretreat,” and “soak in straight bleach because that’s your only hope of ever getting that out.” Once the machine is spinning, I rush upstairs before Abbie finds a way to get into trouble, such as dismantling her brothers’ stationary entertainers. I now see the wisdom of homes that offer first floor laundry rooms, though I still question how useful they’d be when all the bedrooms are on the second floor.

Yesterday I was trying to run a couple loads of laundry. Abbie was out of clean shorts thanks to her habit of poking in her dirty diapers and smearing its contents on her pants, plus the boys needed bibs without food stains, or at least without fresh food stains. Those bright orange carrot stains are impossible to remove.

Suddenly the phone rang. If I’d been thinking ahead, I’d have brought the handset with to do laundry, but these days I reserve my thinking ahead efforts to moving dangerous and/or fragile objects out of reach before they wind up in little mouths. I rushed upstairs to the kitchen and answered the phone. My heart almost stopped when, right after saying “hello,” I noticed Abbie:


My first thought was “she’s got a dirty diaper and dear lord what is she putting in her mouth?” Then I remembered that I’d made peanut butter krispie treats right before starting laundry, and had sprinkled a few chocolate chips on top. As you can see in the top right of the picture, I left them to cool on the stove while the chocolate chips melted on top. Abbie can now apparently reach into a pan on top of the stove while standing on the floor. How do I know this?


She was snacking by sticking her fingers in the congealing chocolate. Being a toddler, she wasn’t having 100% accuracy in inserting her chocolately fingers into her mouth. Notice that the chocolate is only covering a small part of the treats. That’s because Ellie doesn’t care for chocolate. This may sound weird, but I’m used to it growing up with a friend who didn’t care for chocolate either. Of course he could use the “I’m deathly allergic to chocolate” excuse for not eating it.

I was literally speechless on the phone. I wanted to cry, but then I realized it wasn’t nearly as bad as my initial fear. Then I wanted to laugh. Fortunately Ellie was on the other end of the line, so I didn’t have to do much explaining about why I was unable to talk. I just had to take some pictures for later viewing.


Note that the dog knows who to hang around. After assuring Ellie that everything was okay, I hung up the phone and started work cleaning up. The mess was restricted to Abbie and her clothes, so at least I didn’t have to wash any walls. Or dog fur. I simply removed Abbie’s clothes and wiped the chocolate off her skin. Then I moved the krispie treats into the refrigerator, and ran back downstairs to throw her clothes into that “pretreat” pile I’d started.

Outdoor Fun

I’m settling into a nice routine getting the kids outside. Everyone eats lunch, I clean up the mess, and then we go outside for a while until naptime. We can spend anywhere between 15 and 60 minutes outside depending on how much the kids enjoy the fresh air, and how much yogurt Abbie that spewed about the kitchen I have to clean before we can go outside in the first place.

We don’t do anything special outside. I sit in the grass with the twins under a shade tree while Abbie runs around the yard. I take advantage of this quiet time to read the newspaper. The children take advantage of my inattentiveness to get into trouble.

Fortunately the twins are still too young to get into much trouble. Until recently, the worst they could do is crawl out of the shade and into the direct sunlight. This is a no-no because Ellie and I both have families with a history of fair skin, and by “fair” I mean “pasty white.” We burn easily, so it’s important to limit our sunlight exposure and stay in the shade. By gradually increase our daily time in the sun, we can build our tolerance up to a familial maximum of about 30 minutes without burning, a personal milestone typically reached sometime around age 100. Slathering them in sunscreen would help their tolerances, but it’s been too hot recently to be in the direct sun anyway.

The twins recently discovered a new outdoor activity: Shoving stuff in their mouths. No longer are they limited to the objects we hand them; they can pick things off the ground and chew on them. I’m not sure why it took them so long to figure this out, but I wish it had taken a little longer. They started by picking grass and chewing on it, but have progressed to sticks, rocks, sand, and anything else that makes it hard for me to scour the weekend’s garage sale ads. The one thing they haven’t tried eating are those toadstools in the grass with us under the tree, and that’s a good thing because they look nasty.

While I pull blades of grass from toothless mouths, Abbie likes to wander to the neighbor’s back door for a couple novel activities. First, she likes trying to break into their tool shed. I don’t know what they keep in their shed, but if it’s anything like ours, it’s filled with all manner of objects with extreme potential to poke an eye out.

The shed is just a diversion to her main goal of examining their flowers. They keep a couple large pots filled with beautiful flowers; the kind we’d keep if we had the time, money, and thumbs that weren’t grim-reaper-black. Abbie loves sniffing these beautiful blooms that she otherwise only sees in books. Then she loves grabbing and pulling them.

She hasn’t pulled any flowers off the stems yet to my knowledge, but that may only because she doesn’t realize she can pick flowers. Or maybe I just haven’t watched her close enough to see her ruin any blossoms. Either way, when I see her playing in the neighbor’s flowers, I put down my newspaper and hustle to their door. I then carefully extract any petals from her fingers, and lead her back to our backdoor. Once Abbie resumes running around, I return to my newspaper, but only after verifying that no woodchips are about to enter any little mouths.

Toddler Down

Abbie is heavily scarred right now. I don’t mean she’s feeling deep emotional pain from the trauma of losing her place as the family’s only child and center of attention, though that may be true as well. I mean she’s taken multiple tumbles recently. It’s nothing serious, just the standard toddler trip ups. Still, I feel compelled to document her wounds just in case I need practice should protective services come calling.

First there’s the gash across her thigh. She picked up that one falling off of her changing table when she was supposed to be napping. You can scroll back a couple days to discover why she was on the changing table, or you can stay with this post, avoid being grossed out, and just assume she was up there to pull forbidden objects off her highest shelf like usual. She fell off the table while reaching for something a little too far over the edge, and scraped her thigh on the corner on her way down, resulting in a cut several inches long. When I entered her room to determine exactly why she was upset, I assumed she was sore from falling off the furniture, or maybe just saddened that she disappointed us by failing to meet our expectations that she take a nap. Turns out it was the thigh abrasion that made her unhappy.

Then there’s the cut across her neck, again several inches long. That one looks really bad, but when I explain that she got it falling off of a toy while trying to climb on the entertainment center when we weren’t paying attention … well, I guess that still sounds bad, but hear me out. The top of the entertainment center is one of the few horizontal surfaces in our home high enough to keep forbidden objects out of her hands, so it tends to accumulate Abbie magnets. If she wants candy, or crayons, or a fascinating toy that she’s broken into several pieces that are about the size of a toddler’s airway, she knows where to get it. We kept her play kitchen next to the entertainment center for months before either of us realized that she could climb on it. Suddenly Abbie discovered that it’s scalable, and next thing we know she’s crashing it to the ground. Somehow she scraped her neck on the entertainment center’s corner on the way down. I suppose any child smart enough to figure out how to climb on a narrow piece of flimsy plastic is smart enough to put an inches long wound on her neck without suffering further damage.

Finally there are the skinned knees. Both of them. She did that running down a very steep driveway. We were visiting a house on a hill steep enough to make Sisyphus cringe. I pulled Abbie out of the car first, stood her by my side, and reached in to pull out one of the boys. While I had my back turned, she took off down the driveway. Normally she’s pretty good about staying near me when I let her out of the car, or at least not running away at full speed, but this time she saw a local walking a dog. She ran to the street to pet the puppy, and all I could do with a baby carrier in my hands was yell at her to stop. Suddenly she lost her balance, possibly because she was trying to comply with my command, and flopped forward onto the concrete. I scrambled to find a location flat enough to set down the carrier without having it go flopping down the driveway too, and ran after her. I found her with skinned knees and probably sore palms, but otherwise in good shape except for the screaming. The man with the dog felt horrible after witnessing a sweet little girl injure herself. Not horrible enough to stop and see if we needed any help or even to say anything, but still pretty bad. I hauled her back up the hill to the house, singing soothing sounds the whole way.

And that’s why Abbie looks like she fell out of a tree, getting hit repeatedly by every branch on the way down. I’m not negligent in a criminal way, just in a “parent of three children ages 2 and under” way.

Poop Poop Poop Poop Poop

I don’t ask for a lot of free time in the morning. I just want enough scream-free time to eat my breakfast at a quasi-leisurely pace. Then I want to do the dishes. I can’t forget to water the plants. Maybe fold that basket of laundry that’s been growing ever more crinkled in the bedroom for the past three days. A little time with the newspaper would be nice…

I can’t get anything done if the kids don’t give me some peace. Usually Abbie plays nicely after breakfast, requiring my intervention only when she lodges herself behind a piece of furniture or starts drawing on the wall. The twins do pretty well for 8-month-olds, but they still have the independent play skills of 8-month-olds. They do okay with an activity for several minutes, and then I have to move them to a different activity when they start complaining. Eventually I have to grab Ian who’s climbing over his brother in an attempt to reach another activity, and severely infuriating him in the process.

I could work quicker if everyone let me concentrate on my chores instead of forcing me to bounce around the house herding them toward suitable entertainment, giving us more time to play outside. I think they have to grasp object permanence, though, before understanding an abstract concept like “be quiet, let daddy work, and we’ll be outside and eating grass sooner.”

Usually their complaining requires minor work on my part to redirect someone, but yesterday they found a new way to keep me busy for longer stretches: Pooping. It started soon after everyone woke at 8am. I was feeding the boys when Abbie wandered up to me with a poopy diaper. If this had happened a couple months ago, I would have let Abbie sit in her mess for a few minutes while I finished feeding the boys because few things irritate a baby more than an interrupted meal. I remember when Abbie was their age, if she were in a high chair, you’d better be actively feeding her because otherwise she will meltdown.

As you would have learned from yesterday’s post if you had the stomach to finish it, Abbie no longer sits in a poopy diaper. If she thinks she’s dirty, she will poke her fingers around the contents just to be sure, and then desperately start looking for surfaces to wipe her fingers. So I changed her immediately. The boys, perhaps still a bit groggy, took the break well, waiting silently until I changed Abbie’s diaper. And pants.

I finished feeding the boys, gave Abbie her cereal, and returned to change the boys. Tory was poopy; no big deal since I was changing them anyway. I just had to spend a little extra time cleaning.

With the boys smelling like an unscented wipe again, I returned to Abbie, gave her her milk, and sat down to my breakfast around 9am. I had to redirect the boys a couple times before slurping the last of my milk. As I set down the bowl, Abbie wandered up to me with poop in hand. And also on her, well, use your imagination. I took another break from my morning routine to clean and change her. After letting her return to chasing the dog, I checked the boys, and this time Ian was poopy. I took care of him, washed my hands, and started work on the dishes.

I spent the next 45 minutes bouncing around the house, loading a dish here and moving an unhappy child there, until finishing in the kitchen around 10am. I joyously hoisted my babies into the air, ready to take everyone outside. Then I noticed Tory was poopy. That gave the children a combined five poops in two hours, and only once did anyone have the decency to coordinate a poop with a sibling. I cleaned Tory, washed my hands for the fourth diaper-related reason that morning, and hauled everyone outside. I took my newspaper with me because I deserved a little treat after dealing with that much poop.