GrabbieUpdate

The boys are in that phase when they’ll eat anything with the edibility of a dirt clod or higher. That’s great when I have something blah in the fridge* that I can stuff into the boys because there’s no way anyone capable of rational thought would choose to eat it. That’s not so great when I sit down to a steaming hot plate of broccoli and have to fend off three sets of hands to traverse the fork into my mouth. Sure I’m proud to have raised three children who love broccoli to the extent that they’re willing to knock their siblings to the ground for a taste, but I still scold them when they knock my plate on the floor while grabbing florets.

Abbie has it rougher than I do, though. When I don’t want to share my veggies, I can stand up beyond prying fingers, or I can hide in another room in the case of ice cream. When the boys scamper up to her booster seat at mealtime, Abbie is helpless against their approaches, except for the kicking. She can knock them onto the floor with a boot or two, though they’re that her perimeter defense is weak around the edges and are learning to take different approach angles.

Mealtime is a complicated process of feeding children in order of whininess. The boys are generally furious when mealtime approaches, so they get fed first. I encourage Abbie to find something else to do while they eat, and she’s learned to take advantage of the fact that I’m stuck in front of boys no matter how much it sounds like she’s breaking something in the living room. Sometimes she wanders into the kitchen to investigate their meal, if for no other reason than to be glad their eating the jambalaya so she doesn’t have to. Last night, though, we had spaghetti, which is one of the two main dishes** she enjoys eating. When she realized she couldn’t eat yet, she ran to her room screaming and stayed there screaming until presented with a bowl of spaghetti, completely fouling the household’s whininess hierarchy.

Generally mealtime goes smoother as Abbie eats her main dish while the boys finish their milk. When the boys’ cups run dry, I move them into the living room and give them a dish full of Tasteeos so Abbie may eat in peace. I keep them away from Abbie partially in fairness to her because no one deserves a child tugging on their plate as they eat even though she does it to me. Mostly I keep them separated for the boys’ safety since she can send them headfirst into the linoleum with a flick of her leg. Plus the boys can choke, and have done so, after snitching Abbie’s food. Goldfish seem to be particularly gag-inducing, thus ruining my theory that all children are born with the innate desire and ability to eat Goldfish. I know when their Tasteeo bowl is empty because someone will crawl into the kitchen searching for more food.

I finally get to eat when Abbie’s demands slow to one every couple minutes. I can be pretty whiny while waiting for food, but I’m too busy feeding children to moan. Abbie is usually running off to find new things to destroy while I eat, but she comes running back for dessert.

Last night I gave her gelatin. It was delicious, with fruit mixed in and a dollop of whipped topping gracing the summit. Naturally one of the boys, probably Tory, dumped her bowl on the floor before she could eat much of it. I need to remember to check their Tasteeo bowl.

* Like that jambalaya I made with too much okra and not enough, well, I don’t know if there’s anything that can save a dish containing too much okra.
** Mac and cheese is the other.

"Eenie, meenie, miney, moe." "Do you even know which button you pushed?" "Sure! Moe!"

Abbie has always loved pushing buttons.* Give her a toy with a button, and she’ll spend hours in toddler time, or approximately 39 seconds in real time, pushing the buttons, illuminating lights, making sounds, and generally driving me crazy with its chipper songs.

Give her access to a piece of consumer electronics, and she’ll find its buttons to push for toddler hours. I can whisk most electronics to beyond her clutches. Phones are easy to move where she can’t get them, or at least where she hasn’t figured out that I keep them, because we really have so few places left that she can’t access. The television remotes can be a little more problematic, not because they’re harder to hide, but because they don’t beep furiously like a phone when Abbie mashes their buttons.

Then there are the electronics that don’t move. Abbie’s first such discovery was the television with its tempting buttons jutting enticingly at toddler finger level. We used to use a shield in front of the television to protect its buttons from poking fingers. That shield gave us a few extra months of programming enjoyment without fear of her changing it to a home shopping channel, and I could run to the bathroom and not worry about her turning the television on to MTV while I was gone. She eventually figured out how to disable the shield though, first by pulling it out of place and eventually by snapping it in half so we could never reinstall it. Now we just accept the fact that she’s going to mess with the television, either by changing the menu settings, especially the language setting, or by walking away after cranking up the volume up changing the channel to the most annoying thing she could find, usually a rotation of static, Telemundo, and Fox News.

Recently she discovered a new piece of consumer electronics in the living room: The stereo. It took her a couple years to find it because it rests on top of the entertainment center.** We moved it up there after she started opening the cassette doors and using them to pull herself to standing because if she broke the cassette doors, I would have no way to listen to my Phil Collins tapes.

Now our monkey has learned to climb onto the entertainment center and operate the stereo. I keep a couple children’s music CD’s loaded for music time, and Abbie has decided that music time is all the time. She’s discovered which button opens the CD drawer, and that by opening and closing it she can play music. She’s also discovered those funny discs that pop out when she opens the drawer, and that they can be a lot of fun to play with. Unfortunately she has yet to discover that fingerprints ruin their playback, so we get to hear the occasional rendition of “Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, (wham) Your Boat.” She also hasn’t discovered that putting the discs back in the drawer the wrong way seriously fouls up daddy’s stereo, and in turn makes daddy mad. Or maybe she has discovered that it makes me mad; she does like pushing my buttons.

* I’m referring here to the kind of buttons found on electronic devices, but she loves pushing my buttons as well.
** Remember what I said about having few places left that she can’t reach?

12-Month Checkup, 90-Minute Wait

The boys are now 1-year-old. New powers come with their birthday: The power to play with toys for ages 12-months & up, the power to eat continuously more solid foods, and the power to chase the dog on foot. Of course with great power comes great responsibility, specifically the responsibility of attending their 12-month pediatric checkup.

I like to think of myself as a smart parent, and until my kids verbally contradict me, I’m going to keep thinking that. As a smart parent, my time is important to me, so I schedule their pediatric appointments for first thing in the morning. In the world of clinical medicine, that means sometime in the 9-10am range since medical clinic employees hate waking up early just as much as their sick patients.

I scheduled their appointment for 10am yesterday. That way I can get in before the doctors have a chance to fall behind because too many Lazy McCoughalots sauntered into the office after lunch without an appointment.

My first clue that the appointment wouldn’t go as expeditiously as I’d planned came when I entered the waiting room and found it packed full, much more crowded than usual. I quickly realized my mistake: Monday mornings are never a good time for an appointment because of the motivated germ-carriers who got sick Friday night and waited all weekend to see the doctor. Monday mornings after holidays are even worse because the germ-carriers are even more motivated after waiting through a five-day weekend to see the doctor.

I took a number, settled between people who didn’t look too diseased, and waited my turn. When a receptionist called my number, I rolled all three kids to her window and discovered another reason for the slow-down: The hospital had just installed a new computer system and had to re-enter everyone’s information. After declaring that Ian and Tory were here for their 12-month checkup, we went through a series of questions suitable for stealing our identity if any nearby sickies were so motivated and could overhear us between their coughing fits. I entertained Abbie on the counter as best I could, while the boys sat in their stroller growing steadily fussier in spite of my reassurances that we were almost done.

The check-in might have gone faster, but the receptionist made several key mistakes, assuming that a) Tory is a girl, b) Tory is the girl I’m entertaining on the countertop and clearly not here for a 12-month checkup, and c) I only have two children with me, which fouled up some of the personal information. I don’t know why so many people assume Tory is a girl’s name, what with Torry “Big Game” Holt still catching passes in the NFL, and Torii Hunter still playing quality baseball until the Metrodome turf ruins his knees. Those guys are clearly more popular than Tori Amos.

When we finally worked our way to the pediatrician, the appointment moved quickly. Tory is 20lbs, 1oz, and Ian is 18lbs, 7oz, or 1lb, 9oz short of being turned forward-facing in his car seat. Maybe after his 15-month checkup. Their growth curves are looking good as their weights and heights are holding steady in the lower percentile, except for Ian’s height, which is jumping percentiles all the way up to the 10th percentile. Take that 9% of his peers. Their milestone progress is acceptable though I’m holding my breath and hoping they don’t suffer the same delayed speech we’re enduring with Abbie. They’re not really walking yet but Ian, intent on continuing his pattern of hitting milestones for the first time in the doctor’s office,* walked three steps for the first time. The dog is in trouble.

The doctor told us to switch the boys to whole milk and Abbie to skim, and moved on to his next patient while we waited for shots. This being the Monday after a holiday, the shots department was behind schedule, and we wound up waiting an hour for the needles to arrive. To make matters worse, the heat was stuck in our room, making it a toasty 80 degrees the entire time. The final kick in the teeth, or jab in the thigh I could say, came when they arrived with five shots for each boy. Their thighs were sore all night.

We made it home a little late, about the time they’d normally be waking from their morning nap. I set the boys down, and wrote the time for their 15-month checkup on the calendar. While doing so, I noticed Abbie has an appointment next Monday morning. I don’t remember what for; I’m not that smart of a parent. I was smart enough to not schedule it after a holiday, though.

* He rolled over for the first time in the doctor’s office.

"That's a lame excuse for an excuse."

I put my “ignore” tactic into full effect last night. That’s the tactic mentioned in yesterday’s post where no matter how loudly my children whine in boredom, I ignore them to get some work done around the house. I only respond when someone is hurt, or when everyone has been quiet for so long I know they’re doing something they shouldn’t and someone is about to get hurt.

I was cleaning the kitchen after supper while the kids played in the living room. The boys were enjoying their approved toys like blocks and cars, while Abbie was enjoying her allowed-as-long-as-daddy-doesn’t-find-out toys like the stereo and television. Sometimes their play drifted into the kitchen, especially when the refrigerator or dishwasher was open. Those toys are strictly off-limits unless their whining is really driving daddy crazy.

Ian spent much of the time complaining about something. Sometimes the sources of his complaints were obvious like when I took away his favorite toy by closing the dishwasher door. Other times his crying was a mystery as I’d check on him and find him sitting on the ground in full tears and surrounded by toys, stuffed animals, and all the other best symbols of love money can buy. I’d hoist him to my side, distract him with another toy, return to my business in the kitchen, and repeat a couple minutes later when he starts screaming again. I hope he’s going through teething pain, because if this is a new attitude for him he needs to learn how to help me clean.

Eventually Tory started screaming the “I’m in horrible agony” scream. That one requires me to check on him no matter how close I am to scraping that last little bit of food off the plate. I entered the living room and found him standing at the back screen door. A quick check of extremities found nothing being pinched, and he calmed down as soon as I looked at him, so I returned to my kitchen. A minute later he started screaming again. When I rechecked him, he was in the same position, so I moved for a closer look. All extremities were still free, and I didn’t see any signs of physical harm like the dog had knocked him over or his foot was stuck on a pointy block. Puzzled I rose to walk away, and saw the neighbor’s young kids staring at us through the back door. They were in the backyard, and were checking out Tory through the back door. Apparently the strange kids were freaking out Tory. Honestly, seeing them staring at me through the dark freaked me out a bit too. I shut the inside door, and Tory returned to playing happily.

A few minutes later, it was Abbie’s turn to scream the insufferable scream. I saw her holding a car in her hand next to her head. Then I realized her hair was caught in the car, wrapped around the motorized wheel as it continued spinning around like an office worker’s tie caught in the paper shredder.

I sprang into action, tugging and pulling, gently trying to free her hair. Then I realized I might have more success with the car’s power turned “off.” I fiddled with it for a minute, freeing one strand at a time while comforting a hysterical little girl. Eventually I could free no more hair, so I calmly walked her to the scissors to snip her loose.

Seconds later her hair was liberated, and she bounced into the living room to probably return to fiddling with the stereo, which has yet to trap her hair. I set the car on the kitchen counter out of her reach. I needed to keep cleaning, and I couldn’t risk it catching anyone else’s hair.

That's How I Do It

While visiting over the holiday, I heard the same question repeatedly. I heard it more than any other question. More than “What does he have in his mouth?” More than “You’re going to pay to replace that, aren’t you?” More than “How much pumpkin pie did you eat?”

Everyone kept asking me “How do you do it?” or at least made the varying comment “I don’t know how you do it.” “It” here refers to “dealing with three young children who spend all day screaming except for those times when they have something valuable and/or dangerous in their mouths.” The implication is that family members love spending time with my kids, but they love handing them back to me when they get cranky even more. My family members got plenty of experience dealing with my cranky kids over the holiday because I was usually nowhere nearby when they started screaming. My absence was occasionally because I was too busy rescuing a different child from something dangerous or vice versa, and occasionally because I was doing my best to stay far away from my screaming children and enjoy my impromptu free babysitting.

I heard the question so many times, I even prepared a stock answer: “I ignore them most of the time.” I thought that was a great answer because it’s a humble, semi-amusing remark that’s 100% true. Plus it’s quick and usually ends the conversation, which is important when I’ve got a screaming child or a cooling meal to attend to.

The holiday probably made my kids more irritable than usual. They were way off their routine, sleeping less, eating strange foods, and lacking cats to chase. Also, the boys’ stranger anxiety is in full gear as they scream in terror whenever any stranger* pays attention to them.

With the boys howling because some weird guy looked at them while they should have been napping, it probably sounded like I never have a moment of quiet at home. That’s true, but at least at home I can move to a different room while someone melts down.

I don’t like ignoring unhappy children. I’d rather meet my children’s every need, anticipating their desires and fulfilling them with blissful parental interaction. That’s what I did with Abbie when she was an only child. Of course, that may explain a few things about her attitude now. Trying to keep everyone happy would ensure that I’d never leave the house, and if I spent all my time entertaining children instead of doing chores like picking up that bowlful of grapes Abbie dumped on the carpet, I would desperately need to leave our pigsty.

I’ve learned to handle different noises in different ways. Silence means I check on the kids periodically to remove any forbidden objects from their clutches. I do the same with happy noises. I ignore screams of boredom until I hit a stopping point in whatever chore I’m doing. Maybe I finish wiping the counters, folding a shirt, or vacuuming the living room. Even when I do pay attention to the bored child, it’s to dangle a toy within reach. If that grabs attention, great; if the child keeps screaming, it’s a good thing a vacuum cleaner is loud. Screams of pain always warrant immediate attention, though sometimes I even have to prioritize that. The child who slams fingers in a door will have to self-soothe for a minute if a sibling has a poopy diaper.

It’s not like I ignore the kids all day. They get plenty of attention. We read together three times a day. I feed everyone three times a day. Everyone gets their diapers changed at least that often. Most frequently, everyone enjoys close personal attention several times each day as I discern what they just shoved in their mouths.

* Specifically “stranger” means “strange males.” Even more specifically, “stranger” means “their grandfathers.”
** That’s especially true since I can’t even slip shoes on a child without eliciting screams.

How I Spent My Thanksgiving Vacation

Thanksgiving may be my favorite holiday. All I have to do is eat, and as you can tell from yesterday’s post, I’m quite good at it. Takeru Kobayashi may be able to eat 53-3/4 hot dogs in 12 minutes, but I’d like to see him down the equivalent of half a pumpkin pie on top of a quarter-bushel of sweet potatoes. I’m fortunate enough to still have enough grandmothers in my life that I don’t have to do anything for preparation. That’s good, because if I had to prepare Thanksgiving dinner in between caring for children, I’d be carving the holiday bratwurst to accompany our bounty of blue box mac and cheese.

In order to reach grandmothers’ houses, we had to drive three hours. There no longer is a good time to travel since the kids don’t sleep long in the car and everyone gets fidgety before finishing DVD #2. We headed out the door Wednesday afternoon, hoping to catch the kids in their afternoon nap. Everyone fell asleep before finishing DVD #1. That took us farther down the road than usual since we had to make a pit stop to purchase forgotten toiletries at the last stop of far metro Des Moines, giving me the chance to restart the DVD while still calling it DVD #1.

I enjoyed about 90 minutes of silence as the kids enjoyed their flickering images before falling asleep. Then they woke up. At first they were content, convinced daddy would stop and whisk them into their beds at any moment for a suitable nap. Then they started squawking, just in case I’d forgotten about them. Then they started screaming, just in case the squawking wasn’t carrying into the front seat. I spent most of the last half-hour listening to a combination of road noise, engine hum, radio, DVD player, and of course between one and three children screaming simultaneously.

I arrived at grandma’s house in desperate need of a nap. Sadly the kids had other ideas. I like staying with grandparents because their homes are immaculately kept and more childproof than the homes of the non-retired. I discovered on this trip, though, that grandparents tend to have a lot of pretty fragile things within children’s reach. I spent most of the night bouncing between children, pulling things out of their hands and mouths, trying to fix what they just broke, and figuring out how to childproof something else before I had tend to another grabby child. I remember screaming in terror with a mouthful of water as I watched Ian pull a piece of china out of a kitchen cabinet.

The next day, Thanksgiving, was easier, and not just because I left the kids with Ellie for a few hours while we did split Thanksgiving dinners. Food surrounded us all day, and whenever a child complained, I could shove something in the mouth, schedule be damned. The boys are at a fun age, still willing to eat anything we put in their mouths. We missed that with Abbie since at 6-months-old she was too young for most solids at her first Thanksgiving, but old enough to realize we were trying to poison her at her second Thanksgiving.

The boys were in full garbage disposal mode throughout the day, eating turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing, various vegetable-free salads, a little pie, and anything else they could swipe off of plates left dangling to low. Abbie was more challenging, but we still found enough crackers and Snicker salad to keep her occupied.

Friday we drove home, but only after one last family get together that was so informal they served sloppy joes. That was a great lunch for the boys, but the since the meat wasn’t processed into nugget or frankfurter form, Abbie wouldn’t touch it. Fortunately my family was ready to help, quick to give Abbie a potato chip, fruit snack, or drink of soda pop whenever she looked hungry. Or bored. Or sleepy.

After chocking Abbie full of salt and sugar, we packed up everyone and drove home. Perhaps buoyed by the carbs, everyone stayed awake longer on this trip, waiting until DVD #1 finished before falling asleep. When everyone awoke I started DVD #2. It must have felt like DVD #1 because no one complained for the rest of the trip, and since I set it to “repeat play,” I didn’t have to worry about switching to another DVD. When we arrived home, we unloaded, changed diapers, and gave the kids dinner of mac and cheese.

The Perils of Too Much Family Living Too Close Together

What I ate for Thanksgiving:

Breakfast
1. Grandma’s bacon and ham quiche, to give my gut a loading dose of lead
2. Orange juice

Thanksgiving Dinner #1
1. Turkey
2. Mashed potatoes and gravy
3. Cranberry salad
4. Baked sweet potatoes with fruit
5. Pumpkin bread
6. Snicker salad
7. Almost forgot a roll
8. A little more Snicker salad
9. One more slice of pumpkin bread
10. Just a couple baked sweet potatoes while I’m waiting around

Desserts were pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and key lime pie, but I skipped dessert at Thanksgiving Dinner #1 so I could arrive in time for dessert at Thanksgiving Dinner #2. Instead I arrived in time for the main meal.
1. Ham
2. Sweet potato casserole
3. Fruit salad, which was a lot heavier than you might think
4. Raw broccoli
5. Cream puff
6. A small piece of pumpkin pie, shunning the pecan pie
7. A little Cherry dessert (that was its name)

At Thanksgiving Dinner #3, I didn’t want to eat anything more for fear of explosion, so I grabbed a couple things for Abbie, including
1. Cranberry salad, which she wouldn’t touch so I ate
2. A pickle, which she wouldn’t touch so I ate
3. Pecan pie, which she ate, but I ate part of it since I couldn’t let her eat the whole thing
4. Pumpkin bar. They also had pumpkin pie, but I couldn’t stand seeing the same two types of pie at my third dinner of the day, so I opted for a little dessert in bar form.

Friday’s food
1. Small bowl of cereal for breakfast
2. Sloppy joe for lunch
3. Boca Burger for supper
4. Stairclimber for dessert

Out for Thanksgiving Lunch

I'm out for Thanksgiving. I should be back in a few days several pounds heavier.

"Why, I could wallop you all day with this surgical two-by-four without ever knocking you down."

I’m used to the boys hurting them selves. With a pair of wobbly feet to stand on, and a sadistic sister who enjoys bowling for brothers, they hit the ground a lot. They fall, they scream in agony, maybe a few brain cells die in the impact, and life goes on. Sometimes they show wounds after falling, but they fall so many times every day, I lose track of which contusion corresponds to which collision.

That makes Ian’s forehead shiner a little disturbing. If you scroll down to yesterday’s post, you’ll see a picture of him enjoying cake in spite of the wound festering on his forehead. It’s the type of bruise that will make Ian wonder why the authorities let such a negligent parent keep custody of his children when he flips through his baby pictures 20 years from now. I honestly have no idea where it came from.

I believe he developed it sometime Wednesday, at least that’s the first time I remember someone asking about it. Ellie noticed it when she came home that night and quizzed me about its origins. She wanted to hear about a dangerous hard blunt object laying about the house that could be easily removed so it never harmed another child, or at the very least a vaguely amusing anecdote about Abbie knocking him over on her way to the kitchen for lunch. Instead the best I could do was give her a vague answer about falling that probably wouldn’t satisfy the child welfare workers either.

I remember he took a nasty tumble while taking a bath. That would explain the bruise, but not the abrasion on top of the bruise. Our bathtub’s Modus Operandi is more about blunt injury resulting in contusions or worse, not scrapes. It looked like Ian fell and whacked his head on carpet, or possibly the children have been watching too much professional wrestling.

I shrugged it off, confident it would disappear in a day or two like every other blow the boys have taken over the past year. It didn’t disappear, though. In fact, it looked worse as the days passed. More people asked me about the bruise, hoping to hear a tragic story about a young man helplessly hitting the ground. I had to give the “I don’t know” answer to all of them.

A couple days ago I discovered at least part of the problem. I entered their room to pull Ian from his crib after naptime, and found him scooting around the crib, butt in the air, forehead dragging on the mattress scab-side down. I picked him up, and found the wound rubbed freshly raw.

Shortly after I stuck a bandage to his forehead. I don’t like putting bandages on babies because they could pose a choking hazard if the baby removes it. I especially don’t like using bandages in on our children because Abbie will pick at it. I decided it was worth trying, and was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that Ian lacks the dexterity to remove it. Even better was seeing Abbie poke it a few times and leave it alone. She’ll point to it, and point to her forehead, convinced that she must have one on her head too. I’ll tell her it’s an “owie,” and she’ll point back and forth between foreheads trying to find another one. I think she likes the bandages. Hopefully she doesn’t figure out that she only needs to keep pushing her brothers over to ensure that they continuously appear.

"Oooooh, eight carousels! We're in for a real treat!"

We celebrated the boys’ birthday yesterday. They’re one year old, or at least 353 days old as of the party. The party was in the afternoon right after the boys ate lunch, which seemed a little silly in retrospect considering the lunch spread we served. Anyway, I snapped several pictures of the festivities, and here are the best ones. You’ll have to imagine what the worst ones looked like.


Here are their cakes. Those three are all homemade. In case the boys ever need proof that their mother loves them, they can just look at the birthday cakes that she spent hours decorating, or at least about an hour.


Here’s the lunch spread. We served chips, fruit salad, cake, and taverns for 50 with buns for 80. We have a lot of buns left in the freezer. What’s a tavern? It’s a loose meat sandwich similar to a sloppy joe that’s suitable for serving at parties when we want to impress people with a dish native to northwest Iowa.


We didn’t bring any toys, so the boys amused themselves by grabbing the bag of ice and slamming the cooler lid on each other’s fingers. Ian is having a whee of a time here, possibly because he just slammed his brother’s fingers in the lid, forcing us to weight it down with the bag of ice.


Abbie amused herself by snitching food from inattentive people’s plates. Note that the plate is on its way to the floor, pushing my father into action to save the rest of his Cheetos. By the way, the Cheetos were not my idea. I know better than to give a toddler the means for spreading orange powder throughout the room and onto people’s clothes.


The boys are starting on their cake. I think Tory was hoping to shove the whole thing in his mouth.


The boys are starting to get the idea of eating cake.


The boys definitely have the idea here. This was a pleasant experience after Abbie’s cake aversion at her first birthday. We set the cake in front of her, poked it for a second, and stared at us. We had to feed it to the princess with a fork. The boys had no such aversion. In case you’re wondering, I have no idea where Ian got that scrape on his head.


Ian is maybe showing a little remorse after eating so much cake.


Tory is showing no such remorse. Considering the neon blue spit-up he produced later in the afternoon, perhaps we should have stopped him earlier.


The boys are reigning over their carnage.

So Sleepy

I went to bed late last night. My college basketball team was playing in a tournament game in Alaska that tipped off close to midnight my time, and I stayed up way too long listening to the radio, waiting for them to cut into that 20-point deficit at any minute. The lack of sleep is no problem for me; I used to do it all the time in college while writing papers/watching movies.

Unfortunately I’m not a college student anymore; I’m a parent who’s had all of his minimal sleep tolerance sapped by raising three children through the midnight-feeding phase. I may not replenish my sleep reserves until all three children hit the make-their-own-breakfast-so-daddy-can-sleep-in phase. Still, I went to sleep early enough that I should be functional in the morning as long as I could have a good night’s sleep highlighted by the children sleeping all night long as they always do.

Any parent reading this should know what happened overnight. Children never do what you need them to do when you need them to do it, no matter how adept they’ve proven to be. Need your child to watch her favorite video while you throw something together for that potluck in three hours you forgot about? She’ll immediately declare the oven to be the Most Fascinating Object in the Universe. Want your chatterbox child to show off his new words at Thanksgiving for Aunt Frieda who swears you don’t know what you’re doing with him? He’ll silently stare at the ground until Auntie leaves. Need to run into the store quick? Hello tantrum.

Abbie woke up screaming at 1:45am. This wasn’t the “I’m mad I’m awake” scream, but the “I’m in horrible agony” scream. I rolled from bed as quickly as my deep slumber would allow, and walked into her room. She was standing next to her bed, naked from the waist down, and still screaming. She had removed her pants and diaper at some point, though she must have run around the room extensively before doing so because the diaper was still plenty wet. She then fell asleep in bed, of course soaked the bed in the night, and woke up cold, damp, and naked. She’s done this before and had the decency to sleep until morning anyway, so I don’t know why last night was different, but there I was with a screaming child to dress and wet bedding to change while hopefully keeping her roommate brothers asleep.

Ian was awake and staring at me over his crib railing before I could attach both of Abbie’s diaper straps. In a minute he was bouncing in his crib and screaming at me to pick him up. I ignored him while fumbling in the dark for new Abbie pajamas. She’d done an extraordinary job of emptying her dresser onto the floor before going to sleep, and I couldn’t find her one clean pair of pajamas through the mounds of clothes strewn about the floor. When I realized Tory was also asleep and screaming to be picked up, I gave up and turned on the light.

I finished dressing Abbie and started changing her bedding. By this time the boys weren’t screaming at me, but screaming at each other for entertainment. They thought our late night jam session was hilarious.

As soon as her bed was made, Abbie crawled in and curled up, essentially dismissing me along with my services. The boys seemed pretty wound up, but I left them to hopefully squawk themselves to sleep. I listened for a minute to make sure they wouldn’t need intervention from me, and checked the outcome of my game while waiting. They only lost by 18!

"Then we figured out we could park them in front of the TV. That's how I was raised, and I turned out TV."

I used to be so protective of Abbie and the television. When she was younger I would never turn the television on in her presence unless I wanted to watch a sporting event with national championship implications or at least upper division finish implications.

Now I’m a little more forgiving of TV time. I still protect them, ushering them from the room when Ellie wants to watch her doctor show “House,” her other doctor show “Grey’s Anatomy,” her guilty pleasure doctor show “Nip/Tuck,” or anything else featuring adult situations that I feel I’m not old enough to watch yet. I never watch reality programming in their presence because it’s beneath their intellect. I keep the sound off while watching sporting events so they don’t pick up any misogynistic messages from the beer and pharmaceutical commercials, just the objectifying imagery.

I now encourage Abbie to watch some age-appropriate programming. She watches a tape of “Dora the Explorer” almost every day. She doesn’t watch too much, just one episode a day. Sometimes she gets to watch that one episode several times a day, but it’s still just one episode. I turn it on for her while the boys nap, and I get a break. I know I should watch it with her, help her understand the images she’s seeing, quiz her to ensure she understands the plot, and make sure “Nip/Tuck” doesn’t inadvertently pop up halfway through the episode. By the time the boys hit naptime, though, I need a break, and the newspaper needs read.

I chose “Dora the Explorer” because it encourages interaction. It’s not one of those shows where the viewer sits passively and watch bright colors move in seemingly random directions that may have been choreographed with the aid of a powerful hallucinogen. The characters ask/demand that the viewer “help” them. I love watching and hear Abbie plays along. When the characters dance, she dances. When the characters clap, she claps. When the characters ask you to say a word, she utters something unintelligible.

The boys nap for about an hour, and anyone who’s ever watched an episode knows that an episode of “Dora the Explorer” lasts for about 23 minutes and 19 seconds. Sometimes I make up the difference by rewinding the tape and letting her watch the episode again, but that requires me to look up from my paper. I always record an episode of “Sesame Street” after “Dora the Explorer,” and I encourage her to watch that. She usually watches it long enough to determine that Dora won’t appear, and finds something else to do. That something else often involves changing the channel to find Dora again. After failing to find her, she’ll leave the television channel wherever it was, generally something like Telemundo, and find something else to do, such as coloring on the television screen.

The boys’ naptime is the only time she gets to watch television. Sometimes she’ll turn the television on without my knowledge, but that doesn’t count as TV time since I didn’t turn it on. If I’m busy I’ll let her watch TV for a little while before turning it off. Abbie has gotten good at flipping through the channels until she finds a suitable kids show. Usually she finds cartoons like “The Backyardigans.” Sometimes she finds something live-action like “Barney.” Sometimes she finds “South Park.” At that point I put down my newspaper and unplug the television.

Oh boy, oh boy!

The Ten Best Things About Having Twin Babies

10. The chance to warm-up my parenting with one child before going for the real thing with the other.
9. Baby races.
8. Buying in bulk.
7. One television show will entertain both kids.
6. Both parents get to pick a name when they’re born.
5. We only have to make one trip to the doctor for check-ups.
4. Tasteeo battles.
3. Sometimes they interact, and on rare occasions their interactions don’t involve stealing something from the other.
2. They’re an instant conversation starter with any woman over age 40 (assuming that you want to talk to every strange woman over 40 that you meet).
1. Two screaming children are no more infuriating than one.

Mine

Our toys come from many different sources. We have toys that we spent way too much money to buy new. We have toys that a grandparent spent way too much money to buy as a gift. We have toys that came with our meal at the local clown-based restaurant.

Then we have toys that came from a garage sale. These are usually cheap things, well worn, a little dirty, and maybe even a little pestilent. Sometimes these become the kids’ favorite toys; I know they at least liked them enough to play with them at the garage sale. Other times whatever novelty they had at the sale wears off by the time we return home with bags of clothes, and the toy winds up forgotten in the bottom of the toy box with the rest of the toys someone spent too much money to buy.

We have a play phone that falls more into the latter category. Abbie enjoyed it to a degree once, but it’s spent most of the past year in the bottom of the toy box with several other toys that someone bought for much more than $.50. It’s a large plastic phone about the size and shape of a cordless phone circa 1990, or slightly smaller than the cordless phone in our bedroom. It’s mostly red and complimented by splotches of retina-scarring combinations of other primary and secondary colors. It has a dial that clicks, a button that squeaks, a slider that clicks, a multi-hued cylinder that spins, and an antenna that clicks in a completely different way than the dial and slider.

Those options entertained Abbie for a while, but once she discovered the joys of playing with and eventually destroying a real phone, she rarely went back to the toy version. Such a toy could encourage imagination and verbiage, but she’d have to have an imagination and verbiage to take advantage of its potential. The boys never thought much of it, and it became another thing for Abbie to have to dig through to find the thing she really wants.

Until last night. For some reason the toy phone was on the floor, possibly because it was blocking a buried Weeble. The boys, perhaps remembering that babies are supposed to be attracted to the color red, crawled over to it and started playing with it. One would chew on the antenna while the other turned the dial. Then both decided they needed a better playing angle and tugged on the toy to free it from whatever was holding it in place. Eventually one would win, sending the loser into a horrible, phone-deprived fit.*

The screaming caught Abbie’s attention. She quickly realized that something worth crying over was bound to be good, and that she’s still big enough to commandeer anything she wants from them. She walked over and started grabbing at the phone while the losing boy regained his composure and fighting ability.

The kids spent the next few minutes fighting over this toy that had been ignored for most of its life in our home. One child would grab it, click something a couple times, and another child would grab it. This pattern repeated several times, punctuated by crying as the toy disappeared from a child’s grasp forever, followed by silence except for the clicking as soon as the child discovered the phone was only inches away and well within grabbing distance.

The phone has been on the floor ever since that night, ignored by all. Whatever novelty it held, it’s gone now. I wonder which toy they’ll decide to fight over next. I hope it’s that Little People set at the bottom of the toy box that we bought for Abbie’s last birthday for about $20.

* Sorry about the vagaries with the names. I’m sure the boys traded roles a few times, with both acting as the victor and the crier on multiple occasions.

We'll Be Back in February

I changed the oil in my car yesterday. This is a vital and complicated piece of automobile maintenance that involves driving to an oil change place, giving them the keys, and reclaiming the keys several minutes later after giving them several dollars. At least that’s how I change my car’s oil.

This was a remarkable event because I ventured outside the house with all three children and no adult assistance. Generally I only leave home with the four of us when there’s a meeting with someone with a doctorate-level education involved, and even the chances of making that meeting are iffy unless the doctorate is in medicine. Lawyers can wait.

We made the trip because my car’s oil needed changed. I know this because the last time they changed the oil, they left a sticker reminding me to return in three months or 3000 miles. That way when the service comes due, I’ll start looking at my schedule to find a time to cram it in before the engine suffers any serious damage. I made it back in five months and 4000 miles, so I consider that a success. The upcoming Thanksgiving holiday spurred me into action, so that when relatives I see once a year question my parenting techniques, at least I can be confident that I’m transporting my children in a vehicle with fresh engine oil.

I’d been waiting for Ellie to be home during the day so she could help watch the kids during the oil change. It turns out that this is a rare event, though, and we never felt like wasting it by sitting around waiting for an oil change. Instead we always opted for sitting around a restaurant waiting for food to arrive, and then hoping we could finish our food before Abbie grew too bored to sit.

I drove to a quick lube place. My plan was to walk the kids to a nearby clown-based restaurant for lunch while they finished my car, so the quick element was probably unnecessary. A leisurely lube would have sufficed, but such a place doesn’t exist, so I opted for the full-price quick lube.

A helpful attendant approached my car when I arrived to start the service. I opted for the basic oil change instead of the premium-for-suckers-only oil change, gave him my keys, and warned the guy it would take me a minute to unload the car. Circus music probably rolled through his head as he watched me pry child after child after child from the back seat.

Several minutes later we were on our way to the restaurant. It’s down the street a half-block, which looks like an easy walk while you’re driving by. When you’re actually walking the sidewalk inches from a busy street with a double-stroller in one hand and a toddler prone to darting in random directions, it’s a little harder.

I ordered Abbie a kid’s meal at the restaurant and a sandwich for myself. The boys snacked from a bowl full of Tasteeos since they ate before we left. We sat in the playground section, a two-story enclosure that lets children run and scream without bothering the childless patrons who simply want to eat their clown-based meal in peace.

Abbie ate two chicken nuggets before running to the equipment. This was our first trip here, and I wanted to see what she thought of the playground. It turns out she didn’t think much of it since it’s designed for ages 3 and up, not all the way down to two-and-a-half and up.

The main feature of the playground is an enclosed spiral staircase leading to a netted-in upper level. Up top, children can interact with several imaginative toys like bullhorns and steering wheels, or they can slip down the giant tornado tube slide.

Abbie immediately found the staircase and ascended to the upper-level. Unfortunately she has no imagination and fears tornado slides. While I finished my sandwich and replenished the boys’ Tasteeo supply, Abbie stood at the net, stared at me, screamed, and wildly signed, “help.” I had to retrieve her by climbing the enclosed spiral staircase while hunched over to the size of a three-year-old.

That experience properly scarred her as she finished her meal without wandering. I packed up everyone and returned to the oil change place where my car was waiting with fresh oil. I paid to get my keys out of hock, loaded the kids back up, and made note of the fresh sticker, reminding me to return in three months, 3000 miles, or whenever my engine starts making a grinding noise. Whichever comes first.

Requiem for a Hinge

It’s hard to believe, but there was a time when I didn’t have a baby gate across the basement doorway. I only had one child at the time, I think it was Abbie, and always knew her whereabouts. Usually those whereabouts involved being carried in my arms since she refused to risk being left to entertain herself for any extended period.

Even when her mobility increased and she agreed to be set down long enough to find trouble, she avoided the stairs to the basement. She might crawl up to the precipice, but that was as far as she’d venture. Instead she’d use Weebles as scouts, throwing them into the abyss, and waiting for them to report back to her.

Of course she eventually started trying to go down the basement stairs, and that’s when I knew we’d need that baby gate I’d been putting off. I tried closing the basement door when I thought she might scurry down the stairs while my back was turned, but I started closing the door more and more often as she moved faster and faster. I couldn’t leave the door closed all day because the cats needed basement access to do cat things, like eat cat food, use the litter box, and puke cat food.

We found a highest quality and lowest priced baby gate that attached to the wall, but could swivel open for adult access. Our model has a difficult-to-use handle, suitable for locking in place to confound the kids when we want to keep them upstairs, or confounding the building maintenance workers when we want to keep them downstairs.

Our baby gate served us well for over a year until last night when it broke. Specifically one of the hinges that attaches to the wall and lets the gate swing open snapped in half. Apparently I’d been leaning on it too heavily while pulling down rolls of paper towels that we leave perched above the steps. This broken part is consistent with the way that all children’s equipment breaks; it still mostly works, but one tiny part broke rendering the apparatus unusable. I see the same thing with sippy cups and leaky valves, electronic toys and one unresponsive button, and cats and grumpy dispositions.

My first instinct was to throw the whole thing away. I do that regularly with books that Abbie has defiled. Then I remembered the gate cost a lot more than a book, and hopped on the Internet to look for a replacement part. After a little searching, I found the company’s service phone number alongside several complaints about how bad their phone service was. Goodie.

I made the call, and found their customer service surprisingly competent. In fact, considering that I didn’t know a) the gate model number, b) when I bought it, c) where I bought it, and d) could only give a rough description of the piece that broke, my customer service representative did a good job helping me through the process.

I now have a new hinge on the way to my mailbox. Two hinges, actually, since they’re sold in sets of two; that way I’ll have the replacement ready when the new one breaks. It only cost $3.95 with shipping; that made me happy since it was about one-tenth the cost of a new gate. At least it’ll make me happy until I discover I ordered the wrong part.

I’m still using the gate as-is until the part arrives. Friction keeps the gate in place; I just can’t let multiple children simultaneously lean on the gate until we get it fixed. Until then I need to watch the kids closely, close the door if needed, and make sure the only things tumbling down the steps are Weebles. Or shoes; Abbie likes throwing shoes down the steps too.

Changing Diapers

We use Sam’s Club brand diapers in our house. I decided upon this brand after trying many different brands, and settling upon the one that best fulfilled my primary objective, namely being cheap.

The Sam’s Club brand diapers have a couple other strong points. Like everything else sold in a warehouse club, they come in a comically large box suitable for storing outgrown clothes, toys, and the complete works of Dr. Seuss until all children pass the book destroying phase. Plus they hold their contents fairly well, keeping the child’s clothes dry for upwards of nine hours, not that I’ve ever pushed it that far.

When Abbie was born, we used the name brand diapers. I was terrified of what might happen with generics. They’d probably have the holding power of sandstone and be just as comfortable, at least if the diaper conglomerate commercials are to be believed. I’d probably need two diapers to contain one mess, plus my child would be uncomfortable and cranky all the time, leading to a lifetime of despising her parents and eventually deviant behavior such as scratching. I thought the same thing about generic formula, thinking the name brand formulas contain magically expensive ingredients, thus justifying their 200% markup.

When the boys came, I realized that formula is just fortified dry milk, and a diaper is a diaper. Now everyone gets the cheapest thing possible: Generic formula, generic diapers, and books with misspelled words and grammar that are bad. I take the savings and use it to buy more important things, like the ever-growing haul of birthday and Christmas presents we have stored in our basement.

Then Sam’s Club had to go and screw things up. The last time I bought diapers I noticed the box design was completely different. I wondered if the diapers had changed. Someone else apparently wondered the same thing since one of the boxes was split open with its innards strewn about. The diapers looked identical, so I chalked it up to corporate neurosis trying to keep things looking fresh. Plus the boxes were bigger for the same price; what could go wrong?

After breaking into a box, I realized they were a little different. They stopped printing the size on the diaper. That’s a problem when you use two different sized diapers. Heaven help the too small diaper that inadvertently goes on Abbie.

A few days later, I noticed the diapers were leaking more frequently. It sunk in about the time all three children were wet simultaneously.

Now I need to decide on my brand of diaper. We’re going to have three children in diapers until someone decides they want to potty train, so I need something good. I can live with diapers that lack size-markings. Diapers that leak are not good, though. If I have to do twice as much laundry from changing clothes so frequently, it’s going to come right out of my Internet time.

For now I’m seeing how the latest boxes work. I’m changing everyone more frequently, trying to stay ahead of the dam burst. These are still the cheapest diapers I can find, and if I can make them work I will. Plus I need to collect a lot more boxes for all the outgrown clothes piled in our basement.

I Scratch

Abbie is scratching. Abbie has been scratching me ever since she acquired the motor skills needed to dig her fingernails into my skin and rake. I believe that milestone is listed under the 9-month development stage. There’s a good chance she’s scratching me as you read this. She’s not scratching me as I write this since I’m a responsible parent who only writes while my children are safely tucked in bed or at least planted in front of the television.

I’m at my wit’s end with Abbie sometimes. She’ll walk up to me and randomly start scratching several times a day. She’ll scratch if I don’t pay attention to her. She’ll scratch if I don’t pay enough attention to her. She’ll scratch if I pay attention to her, but don’t immediately grab those Goldfish she wants.

As frustrating as it is for me, it’s probably worse for her. I think scratching is her way of communicating. Without words, all she can do is a crude attention-grabber that will likely make daddy mad before she gets what she wants. She may even feel a deep sense of remorse every time she scratches, knowing it causes pain to others, but having no other means of communicating. Then again she’s a toddler with no sense of empathy, so she probably enjoys getting a rise out of me, a thrill that she’ll likely enjoy all the way through her hiking across Europe with her live-in boyfriend phase.

I’m working on new ways to make her stop that don’t involve physical restraints. I know she usually scratches during diaper changes, so I keep her mind distracted by singing. I’ve been singing to her off and on during diaper changes for months. The problem is that a song will only entertain her for so long, maybe a few days, or maybe a few months. After that, it fails to entertain her, and she’ll scratch through my singing. The appearance of drug-resistant bacteria functions in the same way, except Abbie’s scratching is more painful than a stomach bug.

Abbie’s current musical amoxicillin is “I’m a Little Teapot.” I use it during most diaper changes and even while tying her shoes to keep her brain too occupied to send scratch signals to her fingers. It works for now, though soon I may have to move onto other, less safe songs. Changing her diaper while singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” complete with finger motions could be absolutely hazardous.

I’m also having success screaming when she pinches me. I don’t mean I scream obscenities and berate her for misbehaving; that doesn’t work. I mean I yelp in pain whether she drew blood or just harvested a few skin cells, and then inform her “that hurt.” Usually she feels so bad for causing pain that she’ll immediately give me a kiss lest I turn too angry to give her what she wants. Then we go about our business, which is usually her begging for Goldfish, and me trying to figure out what stinks.

The screaming tactic works well at home, but not in public. I can’t scream with the needed volume to guilt her without alarming passersby that my toddler may be beating me up. So I just make vague threats like “stop pinching,” “you’d better stop pinching,” and “you don’t want to know what’s going to happen if you pinch me again.” Then I take my mind off the searing pinch pain by dreaming about naptime, the one time of day when she doesn’t pinch me. That, and TV time.

Bare Trap

Abbie is getting harder to put down at night. She’s never been easy to put down. Unlike the boys who are usually happy to nap as long as they’ve got their cow blanket and a sweet forbidden pacifier, Abbie has always complained loudly whenever she was supposed to sleep. She has no comfort items to help her sleep; she only has sanity items that keep her from screaming hysterically. Making her sleep has always been a leave the room, turn off the monitor, and check back in a few minutes process. The difference is now she has the mobility to destroy things when the light goes out.

I had a feeling last night would be difficult when she took an extra long nap that afternoon. She first showed me her reluctance to sleep by refusing to finish her bedtime routine. We always put her books away before turning off the lights. Sometimes she goes right to work at my command picking up books; sometimes she reads one more book while I repeatedly pester her to put her books away. Last night she ran for the door when I told her to put books away. After nagging her a few times to come back, I gave up and put the books away myself. I used the boys’ hands to put the books away so hopefully they’ll catch the importance of cleaning up without realizing that if they ignore daddy long enough he’ll do the chore himself.

Ellie was in the room and helped me put everyone in the appropriate bed. We then had to remove everything that Abbie could possibly play with. The laundry hamper had to go in the hallway lest she strew dirty clothes across the floor, mixing them with the relatively clean clothes she keeps permanently strewn across the floor. The diaper pail went in the hallway to prevent her from treating her stuffed animals like dirty diapers. The wipe warmer goes out of her reach because she knows too many creative things to do with wet wipes.

With the room relatively toddler-proof, Ellie left and I sang her goodnight song. Instead of sitting in my lap, she stood by the door like the dog does when she wants out, only more insistent. After the song, I carried her to bed, gave her a goodnight kiss, and walked to the door. I then had to return her to bed and scramble out the door because she’s quick enough to roll out of bed and out the door as I’m leaving.

The screaming started almost immediately. I expected some hesitance to sleep, and was ready to let her scream for a while. I know that the worst thing you can do when a toddler throws a fit at bedtime is to constantly check on her; that teaches her that whenever she wants our attention she just needs to throw a fit.

Instead Abbie has learned that the best way to grab our attention is to remove her diaper. Ellie checked on her after a few minutes and found the diaper intact and all necessary sanity items in her bed. She scrambled out the door before Abbie could catch her, and the screaming continued.

I checked on her after a few more minutes of hysterical screaming, and this time found her naked from the waist down. I reattached her diaper, slipped her pants back over her legs, and calmed her down from hysteria. Then I scrambled back out the door hoping someone would finally fall asleep, but the screaming resumed.

A couple minutes later Ellie was convinced something was wrong. I told her she’s fine. She’s not hurt, and all necessary sanity items are in her bed. She has her burp clothes, her blanket, her stuffed dog, her other blanket, and even her stuffed cat. Ellie still left to check on her, and a couple minutes later walked out of a quiet room. Ellie discovered the stuffed bear that Abbie usually ignores was trapped under the chair. It was wet like she’d been crying on it, trying to console it until help arrived. Ellie rescued the bear, gave it to Abbie, and everyone was happy.

Several minutes later she fell asleep with no more complaints. The next morning her room was intact. Everything was where we left it the night before. The books were on the shelf. The clean clothes were on the floor. The diaper was on the child.

Abbies (and Ians) Bounce

Abbie loves to bounce. I’ve known that since at least last summer when I let her jump around the backyard trampoline in a display of child endangerment.

Her love of bouncing has only grown since then. While walking from car door to front door, if she encounters a ledge or some other object offering vertical disparity, she’ll perch atop it, steady herself before kneeling down, and hop down to the ground in a triumphant show of toddler prowess. Our front step is a favorite leaping point of hers, as is the drain spout in front of our home, although if our building manager asks, I have no idea how those dents appeared in the corrugated metal.

She doesn’t even need a ledge to bounce off of. While walking through the house, sometimes she’ll stop cold, steady herself, and bounce the rest of the way to her destination giggling the entire way. I don’t know what this game is, but I’m proud of her for inventing something fun that doesn’t involve hurting a brother, although reclaiming a toy a brother possesses is occasionally her destination.

She’ll also hop while watching television if she sees reason to do so. The most likely cause for this is the Sesame Street song “Hop,” though she’ll also hop along to random scenes from Dora the Explorer, as well as the weather map from The Weather Channel. Sometimes I’ll leave the television on for her while I work downstairs for a few minutes, and I’ll swear that she’s destroying the living room with all the banging and crashing coming through the floorboards. When I return upstairs a few, well, several minutes later, I’m relieved to see that she was mostly hopping and didn’t get into anything except for a couple picture frames, a few CD cases, and that basket of papers that was on top of the entertainment center.

She loves reading books with parts about jumping. She’ll point to a picture of a child jumping, and then go bounding into the next room, leaving me to put the book away. When we read the book about the bunny going for a hop, she’ll hop around the room. When we read the book showcasing actions, she’ll point to the child jumping and jump in place. When we read the book about the dog that wishes he was allowed to jump on his bed, she’ll jump on her bed.

I’ve recently harnessed her willingness to jump by hoisting her off the changing table. After changing her diaper, I’ll start counting, and at three I’ll lift her high in the air. When I set her back down she always has a smile on her face, and will usually go running or hopping out of her room. This is a great way to teach her counting and anticipation, and it puts a happy end to our scratching and screaming scrums while changing her diaper.

Now Ian is getting into hopping. This is a little surprising since when I simultaneously put all three children on the backyard trampoline in a stunning display of child endangerment, Tory enjoyed crawling around while Abbie jumped, but Ian tended to sit in one place until I rescued him. Tory still sticks to traditional locomotion, while Ian often pogos as best he can with his 11-month-old legs.

When we save Ian from his crib in the morning, he’s so excited he bounces in our arms. If we don’t grab him immediately, he’ll bop up and down in his crib while holding onto the railing. Set him down to crawl, and he’ll rock back and forth, squealing with delight despite the possible disappointment that he has a 0-inch vertical. When he’s really lucky we’ll set him in his crib and gently bounce him for a minute, lifting his feet off the ground. He giggles wildly, partly from the thrill of bouncing, and partly from the exhilaration of doing something that some dogs are forbidden to do.

"My baby beat me up ... No, it is not the worst excuse I ever thought up."

Abbie uses a clear sign* when she’s done eating: she throws it. I’m trying to break her of this habit through a strict regimen of telling her to not throw things the first time she does it, and repeating myself after every subsequent toss. My goal is to eventually teach her non-throwing methods to tell me she’s done, ideally with the words “I’m done,” although for now I’ll also accept screaming or just sitting there looking sullen.

She doesn’t throw everything at once, just each course as she finishes. When she finishes her yogurt, the bowl goes on the floor. The spoon follows onto the floor shortly thereafter, and finally the dog hits the floor to clean up the mess.

I was doing the dinner dance yesterday, that’s the maneuver where I scramble about the kitchen cleaning up the boys after eating, keeping Abbie’s plate full, and, when I’m really lucky, spending time preparing my dinner. Abbie threw her juice cup as I two-stepped past her chair. I stooped down to catch it on the first bounce, missed, but corralled it on the second bounce. I then triumphantly stood up, and thwacked my head on the corner of an open cabinet door. It hurt. A lot. I crumpled on the floor writhing in pain, but preserved my dignity by not screaming any foul language, instead I muttered unintelligible grunts.

As I lay there feeling a little blood and possibly brain matter oozing out, I realized this must be how the boys feel. They conk their heads several times every day. Such are the hazards of life when you’re top heavy, lack the muscular system to balance properly, and have a sadistic sister. Sometimes their tumbles have nothing to do with Abbie, like when their walk-behind gets a little ahead of their feet. Far too often, though, Abbie is standing near them as they scream with a grin on her face.

Their ordeals rarely leave a mark, but right now Ian is sporting two wounds on his head, but Abbie-related. Usually she shoves them to the ground when they have something she wants, like a toy or her parents’ attention, but his current wounds were inadvertent.

First is an inch-long gash on the top of his head that he collected several days ago. He got that while innocently playing by the entertainment center. Abbie was climbing on top of the center in direct violation of our house rules. Apparently she felt raiding the sucker stash was worth risking a stern warning about climbing on the entertainment center. As she slinked along the top she knocked a basket off the edge. The basket landed edge first on his head, drawing a little blood, and demanding my comfort while Abbie gleefully enjoyed her suckers.

The second wound came in the bathtub. Abbie likes to keep moving in the tub to make it harder for the soap to catch her. As she rose to stride from one end to the other, she stuck her hands out to help stand. One hand caught the edge of the tub and supported her weight; the other caught Ian’s head, which didn’t support her weight, at least not until his forehead collided with the side of the tub. Again he needed comfort, and Abbie obliviously picked up her targeted bath toy.

Now Ian has a large bruise on his forehead to go with the gash on top of his head. I’m guessing that gash matches the one on top of my head, not that I can see the top of my head. It still hurts today, but it’s healing.

As I lay on the floor, bleeding from a low-level head trauma, Abbie did the only thing she knew how to do: She laughed at that silly daddy curled up on the floor. Then she threw her sippy cup full of milk in my direction, which fortunately missed me. I need to teach her a better way of signaling that she’s done before she develops a better throwing arm.

* I inadvertently typed “sin” at first. Typo, or Freudian slip?

I Voted. And Ate Chinese.

We don’t have a lot of traditions in our family. We lack the kind of events that repeat regularly time and again so that years from now our children can look back to their formative years, and pinpoint with ease the things we did to drive them into therapy. For Halloween, we go to the zoo. For Abbie’s birthday, we grill too much food for the neighbors. For the major feast-based holidays, we visit our parents, with at least one child festively screaming the entire drive.

Last night was election night,* and while voting I realized that we have a voting tradition; we go out after work, vote, and discuss the elections over dinner at a restaurant, preferably Chinese. This tradition started back in 2000, when we voted at a nearby church that night. After completing the anti-climatic act of drawing lines on a paper and feeding it into a machine, we completed the evening by walking to the nearest restaurant for dinner, a Chinese place we visited about once a week back when we had the disposable income and time to go out to eat that often. We enjoyed the aftermath of the 2000 presidential elections so much that we repeated our ritual on the first Tuesday of November of odd-numbered years. We vote in primaries too, but those aren’t special enough to warrant dinner afterwards.

As soon as the boys woke from their afternoon nap, we fed them, packed everyone for travel, and drove to vote. Our current polling place is a YMCA, which offers many more distractions for a child than a church. That’s especially true since a church is usually otherwise deserted on a Tuesday night save for the occasional bible study group, but a YMCA is teeming with activity every night as people attend their weekly jazzerswim class.

We followed the usual travel protocol with the boys in the stroller and Abbie roaming free. Ellie took the twins and the responsibility of pushing them, and I took Abbie and the responsibility of keeping her by my side and out of the weight room, especially without a spotter.

I’ve never had a long wait to vote, and last night was no exception. Unlike other parts of the country that are more crooked, er, crowded, Iowa speeds people through the process. That’s much appreciated when I’m toting children; a 20 minute wait is enough time for a toddler to clean the diaper bag of Goldfish and Fruit Rings.

I entertained Abbie with a rattle while I filled out my ballot. A rattle is a little juvenile for her, but at least I could hear where she was wandering. I cruised through the first page of the ballot since I already knew who I was going to vote for in the major races: Governor, US representative, Iowa representative in the race where the incumbent has no challenger. Then I flipped the page and found the dregs of the races: Judge retention and random boards. I consider myself an informed voter, but I knew nothing about the people running for the county soil conservation board. Ellie works at a hospital, and even she knew nothing about the county hospital board. I did my civic duty and started randomly filling in dots, and quickly realized that I’d voted yes and no on retention of one judge.

Back through the process I went with a fresh ballot. Abbie was growing board at this point, wandering the room, throwing her rattle, and otherwise doing her best to tamper with strangers’ ballots. I finished my ballot quickly since I had familiarity this time, fed it into the machine that should count my ballot but may actually just shred it, and we left for Chinese. Our old favorite Chinese restaurant is gone, so we visited our new favorite Chinese buffet where the boys dined on green beans, and Abbie discovered that sweet and sour chicken is just like chicken nuggets. When we move next year, hopefully there will be another Chinese restaurant near our new polling place. A family tradition depends on it.

* If your candidate won, congratulations. If you candidate was Republican, I’m sorry.

Bye Bye Pacifiers

EDIT: I added the missing footnotes. My bad.

The boys are on their way to mastering sippy cups. It’s been a couple days since I’ve had to resort to bottles, and they’re drinking entirely from hard spouted sippy cups.* Now that they don’t scream as much during mealtime, I’m ready to remove another crutch that will make them scream: Pacifiers.

Our kids were never addicted to pacifiers like those kids you see who have to remove their pacifiers to talk. In fact, Abbie quit using pacifiers several months before she started talking, which is the best possible spin I can put on her linguistic skills. She would occasionally take a pacifier when unhappy as a baby, but she’d usually spit it out and continue screaming until I inserted something better in her mouth, preferably a bottle though my finger worked as well. Today she likes pacifiers more than ever now that she’s learned to tear things apart with her teeth.

Abbie’s propensity for chewing on any pacifiers she sees is part of the reason we never encouraged the boys to take a pacifier. Another reason is the potential harm a pacifier can do to developing teeth and mouth muscles. Most importantly, the boys were usually happy so I never felt the need to try pacifiers because I would gladly pay for braces in 12 years in exchange for a little less screaming now. The only time we encouraged the boys to take pacifiers was during sleep times because the pacifier helps calm them to sleep. It reinforced our habit when we heard that pacifiers at sleep time could reduce the risk of SIDS; we figured the pacifiers would cancel out the blankets we’ve been giving them since four months of age, also because they helped them sleep.

As we approached the first birthday point when all pacifiers are supposed to go to the great garage sale in the sky, I noticed that taking them away could be tricky. Specifically I noticed that whenever a boy would scream before falling asleep, it was likely because he had dropped his pacifier on the floor.

A couple days ago I decided it was time to end the pacifiers, that the boys were old enough to learn to fall asleep on their own, and the transition would only get harder the longer I waited. Plus I couldn’t find where Tory’s pacifier rolled to after it fell out of his crib and we’re out of spares.**

The first nap went okay. They complained for several minutes, but it was more of the “why me?” complaining instead of the “I hate you all” complaining. Eventually they fell asleep and I celebrated the first step of our multi-step process, though they didn’t sleep as long as usual.

The next nap was tougher, partly because Abbie needed to take a nap in the same room at the same time, and partly because the boys were extra cranky from having not napped as long as usual that morning. I set the boys and Abbie down for their nap and left the room. Almost immediately the screaming began, and this was the “why have you forsaken me?” screaming. I ignored it, promising myself that I’d give it ten minutes.

Slowly the screaming subsided until, after ten minutes, I could hear nothing from their room except Abbie complaining. I figured Abbie was old enough to deal with the trauma of naptime, and went about my business, which at the time was taking a nap too.

A couple minutes later, Abbie’s complaining accelerated into screaming, and this time Ian joined her. I walked into their room to find Abbie naked and in Ian’s bed.*** Ian was angry about having been woken up, and Tory was starting to stir from the commotion.

I gave up at that point, clothed Abbie, fetched pacifiers, and left the room again. Ian took a couple minutes to calm back down even with pacifier access, and Abbie was still wound up from her naked adventures. Eventually Ian drifted to sleep and Abbie realized I meant business, and I heard nothing from their room again until Abbie woke up. After everyone woke up I confiscated the pacifiers, washed them, and put them into storage. Hopefully I’ll never see the pacifiers again until the boys are old enough to climb on the counters and swipe them from storage.

* Amy: Thanks for the recommendation, but we already have some of those sippy cups with the silicone spouts. I stopped using them because one of them leaked around the spout and soaked Tory. Apparently I need to do my shopping in Louisiana because the stores around here sell them for $1.74, not the $.99 you bought them for.
** I still don’t know where his pacifier is. When we move, we’re going to find enough pacifiers to entertain octuplets, plus a few left over for their older sister to destroy.
*** And I thought I had a few more years before I’d have to worry about Ian having a naked girl in his bed.

Changing the Water

Our pets and children mostly live in a symbiotic relationship, each relying on the other. The dog relies on Abbie for table scraps. The cats and dog rely on the children chasing them for exercise. The boys rely on the dog to keep her food accessible so they can keep eating after they run out of Tasteeos.

Then there’s the house’s biggest piece of pet paraphernalia turned child entertainment device: The pet water dish. Everybody takes turns knocking water out of it. The cats bat at it. The dog slurps water all over the kitchen. The kids splash in it.

Abbie never really played in the pet water. Occasionally she’d splash the water, and sometimes drop a toy in the pet water in a potential experiment to determine how many germs can coat a ball, but she quickly lost interest and moved onto more exciting activities, like climbing on top of the television. The boys love playing with the pet water, though, possibly because they lack the aptitude to climb on furniture. They’ll bat at the water, use the reservoir container as a standing aid, tip the reservoir container over, and generally make a mess of things.

Their propensity to play in the water creates several problems. They knock water all over the kitchen floor, which makes the linoleum dangerously slippery and soaks the random pieces of paper that fall off our kitchen table and we never bother to pick up. They drench their outfits. This was acceptable in the summer when a wet onesie would help cool them off, but now that winter is approaching and frost regularly encrusts my windshield in the morning, a cold wet outfit just makes them mad. Worst of all, they’ll drain the dish dry, depriving the pets of the water they need for an healthy lifestyle until their begging* drives me to finally refill it. Oh, and the fact that a young child can drown in as little as two-inches of water making a pet water dish a potential death-trap; that’s a problem too.

I used to have a similar problem with the children digging into the pet food. I remedied things by keeping the pet food out of reach, with the cat food downstairs where children never tread, and the dog food locked inside her kennel while the kids are awake. This deprives the dog of food for most of the day, but she gets through by pigging out when the door is open, and Abbie helps by slipping her cereal and vegetables off her tray. The only way a child can play in the pet food is when I forget to shut the kennel door, or when Abbie climbs up to the pet food, which only happens two or three times a day.

Pet water is different. I can’t deprive the pets access to water for hours at a time. I can’t sleep through the night without waking for a drink, and I’m not doing anything more strenuous than drooling; there’s no way the pets could go that long without a drink either. Unfortunately there’s nowhere for me to leave water where the pets could drink from it but the kids couldn’t reach it.

Finally, spurred by the boys’ ever-increasing mobility and ever-stagnant listening skills, I grew fed up with the wet floors and soaked outfits, and changed the pet water. I put an old whipped topping container full of water downstairs where the cats can reach it but not the dog. I don’t know if they’re drinking from it, but I do know they’re cleaning they’re paws in it after using the litter box, so it’s at least accomplishing something. I then dumped the main pet water dish and let the dog fend for herself.

After realizing the dog was not going to learn osmosis, I set the main water dish back on the ground, but without the reservoir. That way when the kids get that “oh boy!” look in their eyes, I can easily dump the water dish and leave it out of reach until they forget about it and the dog starts begging for water again. Even if they do splash in it without me noticing, they can only spill enough water to dampen their sleeves.

We’ve been on this arrangement for a couple days, and things are going smoothly. There’s less water on the floor, less water on the children, and I suppose less water in the dog. Most importantly, there’s less aggravation for me, as I no longer have to scold children with the listening skills of a cat.

There’s another one; the boys rely on the cats to teach them how to ignore me.

* The pets’ begging, not the boys’.

Tagged! Again!

Becky tagged me. That’s good. I can play along with chains. It gives me an easy topic for a night when I’ve worked too hard to think of an original one.

Except this chain is about books. Like most people who graduated with a degree in journalism with a focus on English, I hate books.* I like to read. I read everyday, and I’m not just counting board books. I read things like newspapers, magazines, and blogs; things I can pick up, read in short chunks, and put back down when someone starts playing in the pet water two minutes later. I don’t know where other parents find the time to read books. Between caring for three young children, not cleaning the bathroom, and not cleaning the kitchen, I barely have time to read the newspaper from front to back everyday.

Nevertheless I have read plenty of books in the past, often under threat of a failing grade. I’ll give the chain a shot, but my choices may seem a little outdated, and/or lame.

1) One book that changed my life. This list starts out easy. How about the Bible, the more or less basis for all of society's norms and morals? Too easy? I’ll say “On Becoming Baby Wise” by Gary Ezzo. That was the book that introduced me to the concept of scheduling children when Abbie was a newborn. It helped me transition from a new parent drowning in the responsibilities of childcare to a vaguely seasoned parent barely keeping his head above water.

2) One book I read more than once. I don’t usually read books more than once. I consulted “On Becoming Baby Wise” multiple times while establishing Abbie’s schedule. I’m pretty sure I’ve read “The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Collection” more than once in my life.

3) One book I’d want on a deserted island. I read the “06-07 Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook” every time I go to the bathroom. That’s kind of like being on a deserted island. Of course I’d need a working television, preferably with a good satellite package, to follow college basketball to make that book worthwhile. Otherwise I’ll say the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien because I could read those books a million times and still discover something new, possibly because by the time I finish “Return of the King,” I’ve forgotten what happened in “Fellowship of the Ring.”

4) One book that made me laugh. Anything by Dave Barry. The Xanth series by Piers Anthony made me laugh in high school, but when I read one a couple years ago, the humor seemed a little, well, sophomoric.

5) One book that made me cry. I’m a guy. We don’t cry. Maybe the closest I came was reading “A Day No Pigs Would Die” by Robert Newton Peck back in eighth grade. I think those were tears of fury though at being forced to read a melodramatic tearjerker that teaches kids to never love anything because you may one day be forced to butcher it for your families consumption. Good memories.

6) One book I wish I’d written. “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown. I never read it, but that book made a ton of money. Otherwise just about any book I’ve liked I’d wish I’d written. I’d like to write a book like “Empire Falls” by Richard Russo some day assuming I ever get a chance to write for chunks longer than two-minutes.


7) One book I wish had never been written. Anything by Ann Coulter. Too easy? “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. My tenth grade English class complained so vociferously about having to trudge through that collection of Romantic ramblings that the teacher never made another class read it.

8) One book I’m reading now. “America (The Book)” from the gang at “The Daily Show.” A friend gave it to me last Christmas, and I’ve been slowly piecing my way through it ever since. Remember I don’t read books much.

9) One book I’ve been meaning to read. Any book I’ve received in the last two years. “America (The Book)” is one. My dad gave me “Stealing Christmas” by John Grisham a while ago, and he swears it’s better than the movie it inspired. I really wanted to read “On Becoming Toddlerwise” by Gary Ezzo before Abbie became a toddler. Maybe I’ll read it before the boys become toddlers.

10) Tag, you’re it. Becky already tagged most of the blogs I keep up with, and I’m too busy to find any more.

* One of my favorite college classroom stories involves me in a music class. The professor knew I was a journalism major, and asked me if a word she wrote on the chalkboard was spelled correctly. I told her I didn’t know, that I was a television major where we didn’t have to worry about spelling. She didn’t like my answer.

The Tory (and Ian) Cup

Our babies need to give up some things when they turn one in a couple weeks. The title of “baby” is one thing; they’ll be toddlers as far as I’m concerned regardless of their continuing status of “crawlers.” The highly pureed foods will stop coming, as they’ll need to chew finely chopped foods instead. They need to surrender their pacifiers, though we all need some convincing of that. They only use their pacifiers at night to help them sleep, and I like having them sleep too much to fight them.

Something I am willing to fight over is their transition to sippy cups. I remember I never had to fight Abbie to make her use sippy cups. Unlike her current pasta-centric world, Abbie was a super eater at 12-months. If I could impale it on a fork, she was willing to ingest it. That open-mindedness extended to sippy cups. If a beverage container held milk, she’d find a way to extract that sweet dairy goodness.

I heard so many stories about children neurotically holding on to their bottles that I insisted on easing Abbie into her sippy cups. I started her off with one of the big-handled variety a day. After I was convinced that she’d mastered that, I introduced two sippy cups a day, then three, and finally the non-handled sippy cup. Sometime shortly after her first birthday, I realized that I was the neurotic one and didn’t care about her milk delivery apparatus. I put the bottles into storage and she never missed them, although she did remember they were hers when they returned for the twins’ usage.

The boys have been the opposite. They enjoy the feel of pliable latex in their mouths, and they’re willing to scream to get it. I started introducing one sippy cup a day to them. They screamed, they whined, and they took 20 minutes, but they finished them. I took the “they’ll get hungry eventually” tactic.

Ellie was not impressed with my approach, and insisted on trying a different type of sippy cup. Abbie’s sippy cups were made by Gerber, and they feature a hard plastic spout and no handles. I decided on the Gerber brand after comparing all of my options, and settling on the first brand that I found four of at a garage sale. The Gerber brand worked well for Abbie, but Ellie thought the boys might need something with a latex spout to ease them into the transition. I don’t like using latex spouts on sippy cups since I’ve seen Abbie chew them up like that brutal Northwestern defense chewed up the Hawkeyes today, but I went with her idea since the boys have eight teeth combined and can barely bite me hard enough to draw blood. Plus the sippy cups she found were really cheap, so even after Abbie gets a hold of one and chews it to pieces, we won’t be out much money.

The latex spouted sippy cups worked well. The boys took them with minimal fuss. I still gave them the hard spouted sippy cups twice a day because I wanted them to learn to drink from those as well for when their bites are strong enough to rip a hunk from my shoulder. Unfortunately the different spouts created confusion, as the boys went from reluctantly drinking from a hard spouted cup, to refusing to drink from a hard spouted cup. One night they literally would not drink from the hard spouted sippy cup when offered. I swore I would make them try for ten minutes, and after listening to them scream for ten minutes straight, I poured the contents into bottles and enjoyed a quiet remainder of the night. The next morning when the latex spouted sippy cup leaked all over Tory like the half-price sippy cup it is, I swore I would never use them again.

We’ve gone cold turkey with the hard spouted sippy cups, and things have gone better recently. They’re taking sippy cups for all four feedings with varying degrees of acceptance. Sometimes I have to keep encouraging them to drink, but they finish them. The biggest problem I’ve had since then is once Tory bit his lip while trying to chew on the spout, drawing enough blood to appear that he just experienced (and lost) his first drag-out fight with his sister. I gave him the rest of his meal in a bottle that time, but we’re moving on to complete sippy cups now. Hopefully we’ll wait a little while before moving onto to drag-out fights with each other.

"You've Got Your Hands Full."

When I go out with the three kids and no adult help, I have a set system for coping. The boys are in the double-stroller so I can easily transport them without worry of them doing anything more aggravating than uttering the occasional complaint. Abbie is more problematic since she must walk and has the mobility to cause plenty of aggravation. I usually encourage her to push the stroller with me, or I’ll let her walk at my side at her pace if there’s room for her meanderings. If she wanders in front of too many people or seems more interested in counting the tiles under her feet than walking, I’ll grab her hand or even pick her up and walk with her.

Without fail, if we’re in a public place, someone upon seeing our menagerie will say to me, “you’ve got your hands full.” Sometimes they’ll add “looks like” to the beginning, or change “your hands full” to “a handful,” but the theme remains the same. My hands are full, and strangers feel the need to comment on it.

I don’t understand this near universal reaction. It’s like there’s a nationwide memo that I missed regarding the proper response to seeing a father single-handedly toting about his three young children. Maybe the e-mail landed in my spam folder.

Before the twins came, I’d heard enough stories to know that strangers love talking to people with twins. I expected questions about how old they are, if they’re identical, and which one is the good one. I didn’t expect to hear the same quip about my hands being full more than any other question combined.

I wish I had a snappier retort than, “yeah, I do.” I’d think that somewhere around the 189th time I heard someone say that, something original would pop in my head. It should be something memorable, something that leaves the impression “there’s a father who knows what he’s doing and would never let his children eat dog food.” Instead strangers get a stock response to a stock comment.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s a deeper meaning to their observation. If I were simply pushing a stroller full of children without Abbie running about as my wingman ready to intercept any puppies or Goldfish crackers that enter our perimeter, would people still comment? Do people want to offer some modicum of support to my Sisyphean task, and a light-hearted quip seems the easiest way to do it? Is the sight of a father running errands with three small children combined with the novelty of twins so exhilarating, so rare that people have to interact with me to verify that I’m real and not some magic gnome playing tricks with their mind?

Whatever their reason, I always say, “yeah, I do,” and hurry on my way. With three young children I’m always in a hurry. I have my hands full, you know.

Half-Price Sugar Sugar

Halloween is a holiday for the entire family. Little kids go trick-or-treating, big kids go to parties, and parents buy cheap merchandise after the holiday. November 1st is the day I look forward to like a little kid lying awake at night, unable to sleep, hoping to catch the Great Pumpkin in the act. What other day of the year can you buy Peanut Butter Cups for half price?

In years past, I went nuts at the post-holiday sales. Our family is still young, so we need everything, from yard decorations to costumes to 2-foot tall candy bowls with life-size goblin feet that scream when someone reaches in for candy. Plus my body is still young enough to tolerate the consumption of a dozen fun size Snickers bars in a 24-hour period, so I need to take advantage of that while it lasts.

I think I hit my limit this year, though. Thanks to our earlier efforts, we already have more junk than we have the space or time to put out. I was disappointed that I never had the chance to set up my glowing corpse in the front yard, as were our neighbors I’m sure. The last thing we need is to waste money on more decorations that we’ll just have to move in a few months and we might never use anyway. As far as the candy goes, we now have three children worth of treats to eat, and my metabolism must be slowing down, so the thought of acquiring more candy made me sick. I didn’t want one more high-sugar, high-fat, crinkly-wrappered treat to enter our home unless it had the words “peanut butter cup” on the wrapper.

Nevertheless, I packed up the kids and went to the local big box store yesterday afternoon. The kids still needed costumes for next year, and Ellie had a couple specific decorations she wanted. I could deal with a couple specific decorations; it’s the aimless wandering of aisles buying bulky impulse items I wanted to avoid. Plus, I felt a compulsive need to explore the half-off merchandise.

To my disappointment, most of the merchandise was gone by the time I arrived that afternoon. All the other vulturous stay-at-home parents must have picked it clean before I had a chance to. They were out of Ellie’s requested decoration, a lighted pumpkin formed of twigs. Instead she had to settle for a lighted squash made of twigs.

My main objective, though, was to find costumes for the kids for next year. Abbie’s current costume, a fairy princess, will fit next year, but after wearing it four times for a total of approximately six hours, it’s falling apart. The skirt is torn in three places, and while it still looks okay, large chunks are threatening to disembark from the costume and form green glittering icebergs on the sidewalk.

They had plenty of little girl costumes, but they were all kind of, well, slutty. They had a skin-tight cat suit with choke collar, a genie costume with exposed midriff, and a witch’s outfit with a miniskirt hemmed well above the knees. No daughter of mine is going trick-or-treating dressed like that; she’ll freeze with so little skin covered. After searching for the warmest costume, I found a glitter fairy. It’s pretty much exactly the same as this year’s costume except blue, so I’ll probably have to replace it next year too.

Next I needed costumes for the boys. We have a tiger costume left over from Abbie last year that should fit, so I just need one more. Most boy costumes are of the superhero variety, and most superheroes have the sense to cover up when it’s cold. Plus the sculpted muscles on the costumes leave adequate room for extra insulation if needed. Unfortunately, every costume I found fit boys ages 4 and up, and not even my incompetent laundry skills could shrink an outfit that much. Finally I found a Frankenstein costume that fit my criteria of a) fitting and b) covering most exposed skin.

With costumes in the cart, I wandered the aisles for other good deals. I picked up a few Halloween-themed shirts for the kids next year that seemed cheap until I realized that they’d only be able to wear them during the month of October. Otherwise, I bought nothing else. I proceeded to checkout with only the things I intended to buy, namely the costumes. Oh, and a bag of Peanut Butter Cups.