Fun Fact

Did you know that calcium antacid tablets* are one of the least toxic things in a medicine cabinet? They’re essentially a calcium supplement, which, as the manufacturer is happy to point out, your body needs anyway. Obviously you never want to exceed the products stated maximum dosage, but a healthy adult could theoretically snack on them by the handful and not suffer any adverse affects beyond a little stomachache. Even if very young children, such as a 3-year-old girl and the 19-month-old brother she’s sharing with, munch on them for a couple minutes before their negligent parent discovered what they’re doing and horrifically digs the powdered tablet remains out of their mouths, there’s probably no reason to worry. They’re a bigger choking hazard than a poison hazard at that age. That’s good because those tablets look and taste like candy, and they’re contained in a decidedly un-childproof container that most children could open with a mean facial expression.

* Compare to TUMS!

All Three Go from Two to One

How many ways can I foul up the boys’ sleep routine?

New house? Check.

New beds? Check.

Drop a nap? We’re working on it.

It’s time for the boys to drop down to one nap a day. They’re sending all the right cues. They’re the right age to drop to one nap. They’re fighting too hard to stay awake at second naptime. They’re waking up from that second nap too early, before I’m ready to end my break.

Abbie was about their age when she dropped down to one nap. I remember it being a painless transition for both of us, which probably means I’ve repressed the difficult memories. The way I remember it, after weeks of preparing by progressively shortening one nap, I took the plunge into one-nap territory by placing her new nap in the middle of her day, creating two even wake times. Abbie took to her schedule for a few days, then the boys came home from the hospital and the next several months are a blur. I know that she never dropped back into two-nap territory unless illness was involved.

If only life were that easy with the boys. We now have three times as many children. That’s three times the scheduling conflicts, three times the naptime routine, and three times the miracles needed for everyone to fall asleep at once.

When the boys dropped to a two-nap schedule, I pushed Abbie’s one nap back to coincide with the boys’ second nap. 3:30pm was the farthest back I could push her nap without suffering disastrous, ear-splitting consequences. Everyone adjusted to this new time, and I rearranged our schedule around it. I scheduled visitors to leave by 3pm so everyone could sleep peacefully, especially me. I scheduled appointments for mornings when I knew everyone would be awake. I reserved 1pm for Abbie’s twice-a-week speech therapy appointments, which was the other time I knew everyone would be awake.

Now that we’re down to one nap, our mornings are free, but that speech therapy appointment sucks up the afternoon. I’d like to change the appointments to mornings, but that’s the only time the therapist can see Abbie. I need to give the boys a consistent nap time everyday, meaning their entire sleep schedule revolves Abbie’s appointment. So instead of splitting the difference for the boys’ nap and setting them down around 1:30pm, I have to keep them awake until I can put them down after speech therapy. That means they go from 8am to 3pm without a nap. Six hours is a long time for 19-month-olds to stay awake. Sometimes I have trouble staying awake for six straight hours.

They’re adjusting to the change as well as could be expected, which means they scream a lot after lunch. We’re finding ways to cope until their bodies can adjust. I give them extra snacks to keep their energy up. Ian sneaks in a nap during the drive to the speech therapist. Tory falls asleep on the drive back home.

Upon returning home, I rush everyone to bed. The past few days, the boys have been so overtired that they fight hard to stay awake at naptime. As I listen to their struggles, I wonder why I decided it was time to drop to one nap. When they sleep for two-and-a-half hours, I remember why.

Zoo Day

We took another trip to the zoo a couple days ago. Here’s the photographic evidence.


Abbie hunting birds. She later walked up to a deep food bowl and peered inside, spurring about ten birds to fly for their lives. Abbie was equally startled.


Abbie hiding among the corals.


Abbie exploring deep underwater.


Abbie talking to the macaws. A glass barrier protects Abbie from the macaws, and vice versa.


Abbie chasing a peacock. I wish there had been glass separating these two.


Ian (in front) and Tory (in back and not really visible) trying to figure out what’s so interesting about those birds.


Ian waits patiently.


Abbie feeding the ducks, swans, and koi swarming underneath the bridge. Amazingly, all three animals eat the same pellet. Also amazingly, Abbie didn’t fall over the bridge in spite of my precarious hold on her.


Abbie feeding the sheep.


Abbie feeding the goat.


Abbie attempting to feed the rooster. Of all the cute and friendly animals they housed in the feeding/petting section, she had to choose the ornery one that you’re not supposed to approach as her favorite animal.


The boys look at the giraffes. Tory has removed his left shoe and sock at this point, and Ian has removed his right shoe and sock. So between the two of them, I have one perfectly-behaved little man.

Cow Hide and Go Seek

I’m a fussy sleeper. I have to be in the exact right environment to fall asleep. My room must be dark. I have to hear some white noise. My teeth must be brushed. I can’t have the television going in my room, or any other room, and don’t just turn the volume down, because I can still hear it even over my white noise. Such is the life of an untreated, undiagnosed obsessive compulsive.

The kids have inherited my hair, my reluctance to talk, and, sadly, my sleeping quirks. They’re still young, and haven’t had time to develop too many sleeping crutches, but they’re there. Try forgetting to give Abbie her vitamin before bedtime, and her screams of protest will fill a block-radius around our sleepy suburban home. She also insists on sleeping with a collection of blankets and plush animals, a collection that’s grown large enough to limit her sleeping space on the bed.

The boys are even younger, and have even less that they need to fall asleep. Just give them a dark room, two beds in case they decide to use them, and a brother who isn’t trying to bite or sit on anyone else in the room, and they can fall asleep for the night.

The boys’ one big crutch is the cow blanket. They love their cow blankets, the soft, furry, cow-skin rug-like blankets they’ve cuddled with since I quit worrying about SIDS at a far-too-early age. The cow blankets help to calm them when they’re placed into stressful situations, such as being locked in a dark room at night with no one for company except a brother who’s trying to bite or sit on someone.

Unfortunately, this means they always carry their cow blankets around the house. The first thing I see in the morning after opening their bedroom door is two sleepy little men stumbling into the kitchen dragging cow blankets behind them. When I put them down to sleep, I usually have to find at least one cow blanket hidden somewhere in the house, oftentimes retracing their steps in their last wake time.

Such was the case a couple nights ago. I was ready to say goodnight and shut their doors when I realized they had no cow blankets. I walked into the playroom and immediately found one. I methodically entered every other room in the house searching for the second one.

Not in the living room. Not in the kitchen. Not in the bathroom. Not in Abbie’s room, although I did find the near-identical lambie blanket in her room, which the boys have already informed me is not a substitute.

I started getting more desperate, and checked the backyard. When I didn’t find it there, I went back through the rooms, looking under the myriad of childcare paraphernalia scattered throughout the house. After looking in every room and the backyard a second time, I started looking inside appliances. Not in the refrigerator. Not in the dishwasher. Not in the washing machine.

At this point, I was getting aggravated. Hearing the Cubs blow a five-run lead in the top of the ninth didn’t help my mood, either. Taking a cue from Dora, I stopped and thought: “Where did the kids go tonight? Did they go anywhere unusual? Were they climbing on the ceiling at any point?”

That’s when I remembered that they’d snuck into mommy and daddy’s bedroom that night. Usually a baby gate and a closed door protect our bedroom, but I forgot to activate our defenses before they woke from naptime, and they ran into our room while I prepared supper. I checked our room, and, after 20 minutes of searching, found the other cow blanket lying on the floor.

I ran it upstairs, herded the kids into the boys’ bedroom, and finished the bedtime routine. I just needed to sing a quick song, and everyone would be off to sleep snuggling an appropriate cow blanket. Then I noticed the first cow blanket had disappeared while I was searching for the second one. As much as they calm the boys, those blankets annoy the bejeebers out of me.

A couple minutes later, I found where they hid the blanket and put everyone to bed. I turned on the radio to hear the end of the Cub game while finishing my nightly chores. Fortunately, the sound of the radio from another room isn’t enough to keep the kids awake. Apparently, my screaming and jumping as the Cubs scored two in the bottom of the ninth to win it won’t prevent the kids from falling asleep either.

Sick Day

Stomach…churning. Must…blog…something…gah!

Driver's Ed

Abbie’s latest trick is announcing what I should do at stoplights.

When approaching a red light, I hear her announce from the backseat “stop, daddy, stop.”

When the light changes to green, she yells “go, daddy, go!”

I think she picked this up from the epic novel “Go, Dog, Go!” There’s a part in the book with pictures of dogs driving as they approach a stoplight. The accompanying text reads “The light is red. Stop, dogs, stop. The light is green now. Go, dogs, go.”

It may seem annoying to hear backseat driving tips from a 3-year-old, but I find it cute. It’s still refreshing to hear her say anything after waiting so long for her to talk. She shouts it with so much enthusiasm it’s hard not to smile. She even extends her commands to stop signs and general stops in traffic.

I’m trying to turn these exclamations into answers. I’ll ask her “what do we do at a green light?” hoping to hear the correct answer.* So far she just repeats me, and that’s okay. It’s good to know she’s got a lot to learn before getting her driver’s license.

* “Go.” I’ll also accept “speed up.”

Another Proud Milestone

Abbie had a poopy diaper the other day. That wasn’t remarkable; she gives me at least one poopy diaper to change every day, more than that on her generous days. What was remarkable was that she had dug her fingers into her diaper to make sure it was poopy, and wiped them off on her shirt. Then, just to be extra sure, she dug her fingers back in her diaper several more times, wiping them off on her legs, arms, and stomach.

As I laid her on the changing table, I panicked. I didn’t have enough hands to keep her fingers out of the mess while cleaning her contaminated areas.

“Dammit,” I slipped.

“Dammit,” Abbie responded. And then, just to give extra emphasis, she said “dammit, dammit.”

In my defense, it was a really big mess.

New Bed

When moving, it makes sense to change some things in your household. The more you throw away before the move, the less you have to move. For example, it makes sense to dump those college textbooks you’ve been holding onto since your undergraduate days just in case you need to write an essay about structural fundamentalism based on information that hasn’t been updated in ten years.

We did not dump any textbooks in the move. That would’ve made sense. I still have all my old television production textbooks filled with information on running equipment no one has used within this millennium. I doubt I’ll ever use them again, but I’m holding onto them in case my children need to write a report on archaic television production techniques.

We did do a few things that make sense. We moved all the kids into new beds. Abbie moved into a twin bed. Ian moved into Abbie’s old toddler bed. Tory’s crib converted into a toddler bed. Ian’s old crib went back to Ellie’s parents. That’s a net gain of one lost crib, one less bulky object to store, one less heavy object to move, and a few less milligrams of ibuprofen needed to numb the pain after the move.

Giving kids the stress of a new bed combined with a new home to inhabit can be perilous. When dealing with creatures of routine, creatures who define a good day as being exactly like the one before it, creature whose main form of communicating displeasure is screaming at the exact harmonic frequency required to painfully vibrate the eardrum, altering their routine can be hazardous. The kids all seem to have taken the new beds well, though.

We were a little worried for Abbie’s safety moving her from a toddler bed to a twin bed that’s about twice as big and far off the ground. She hasn’t fallen off it yet, and she can climb into it with no problem even though the top of the mattress is level with her chest, so no problem there. She can get lost on a mattress that’s twice as long as she is, but she can fill the new space with some of those stuffed animals we’ve stockpiled and neglected to dump before we moved.

Abbie had a few problems giving up her toddler bed. I had hoped that placing the bed in a new room with new sheets would fool her, but the remaining Dora stickers on the frame gave it away. On the first couple of nights, she’d climb into her old toddler bed and pushed Ian away if he came near. After a few gentle reminders that it wasn’t her bed combined with forcibly shutting her out of the boys’ room, she adjusted to her new expansive sleeping surface.

The boys have had more difficulty adjusting to their new beds. It’s not that they miss their cribs; we were worried they would howl in drowsy confusion as they struggled to find a sleeping surface. The boys have no problem falling asleep; they just don’t sleep in their beds. After two weeks in the new house, I routinely find at least one of them asleep on the floor in the morning. I know they can climb in and out of their beds with no problem, but they apparently prefer the plush carpeting to clean sheets for sleeping. Tory even enjoys sleeping underneath his bed, possibly foreshadowing his preference for the bottom bunk bed in a few years.

My mother suggested moving the boys into bed after they fall asleep, but I let them go. They’re asleep and content, so I have no desire to mess with their routine. I keep laying them in bed for the night, and I trust that eventually they’ll realize a mattress makes a more comfortable sleeping surface. And if they don’t figure that out, we’ll have a net gain of two lost beds to store.

Redecorating

Moving to a new home can be traumatic for a child. They have to make new friends, learn a new telephone number, and adjust to sleeping in a new room. Fortunately, my kids are too young to have friends outside play dates, so that’s irrelevant. And their also too young to know phone numbers, although they all enjoy mashing buttons to see what happens.* That just leaves the sleeping part as the most likely opportunity for us to traumatize them with the move.

Abbie’s move should be less traumatic than her brothers’ move. She’s moving from our old home with one bedroom for three kids, to our new home with a separate bedroom for her.** Her sleep patterns are no longer the mercy of her brothers; the world revolves around her when she wants to sleep, which makes nap and bedtimes exactly like the rest of the day. When a brother wakes up ready to play at 6am, she can keep sleeping. When a brother screams his way through his nap, she can fall asleep. Best of all, when I close the boys’ bedroom door at night, she can use that opportunity to run through the house and delay her bedtime by a few extra minutes.

She can also decorate her room as she sees fit, without worry of how her male siblings will react to feminine surroundings. Of course, she’s still too young to choose most decorations, so mommy and I make most of those decisions. Also, I am a guy, so mommy essentially makes all the decorating decisions. We declared her room to be the pink one, which was a conclusion so obvious I could’ve made it. Then mommy added some feminine touches like sheer curtains, butterfly lights, and some other pretty things that I don’t remember off the top of my head, but I swear I’m not too oblivious to décor to overlook.

The boys’ décor is more sparse, or as I like to think of it, utilitarian. We can only do so much while moving all our stuff, and Abbie obviously gets priority as the firstborn. We gave them the room with the masculine blue-green walls. We installed a baseball themed ceiling fan complete with fan blades that will look like bats if we ever turn off the fan.

Otherwise, they’re on their own to decorate until we get the rest of the house settled. I’m sure someone will add a personal touch by putting a hole in the wall with a toy, or possibly a brother. The boys have already pried the air vent cover off the floor in their room and are using the exposed duct work as toy storage, so there’s a touch that’s personal, and a guy thing. Maybe Ellie will let me store a few of my old baseball cards behind the vent cover in our bedroom.

* Daddy gets upset.
** We could even give the boys separate bedrooms once they’re old enough to kick me out of the room I’m using as an office.

Zone Defense

As a stay-at-home father of three young children, I tend to stay at home during the day. Unless we have a doctor’s appointment, or a dangerously low stockpile of a Vital Supply, I stay home with the kids until I have adult reinforcements to help corral the kids. It’s not just a matter of needing to keep the kids in line as we stroll from store to store and aisle to aisle, it’s a simple matter of herding the kids out the door. Between finding footwear scattered about the house, shoeing the kids, changing freshly soiled diapers, re-shoeing the kids who pulled their shoes off while I was busy with a sibling, and locking everyone into their car seat, I need the better part of a wake period to move everyone out of the house. And I don’t even have to worry about coats right now.

Ellie is home a lot more now. She has a few weeks off after graduating from residency, which gives me the help I need to leave the house for less than essential errands. With the two of us working in unison, we can move the kids out the door significantly faster than I could alone usually due to having a spare adult ensure the shoes stay on the feet. The kids still thwart us by pooping on our way out the door, but at least one parent can change a diaper while the other straps the as yet unpoopy kids into their car seats.

Ellie wanted to run a couple non-essential errands this morning, highlighted by my need for a haircut. Ordinarily I wait until I have Ellie around to help watch the kids before getting a haircut. I like to think I’ve mastered the father voice, but even the sternest threats won’t keep my kids under control if I’m pinned under a barber’s sheet. So I stay home growing my hair out through the long phase, the unkempt phase, and the unmanageable phase. I’d waited so long since my last haircut that this time I was approaching the dangerously curly phase, giving my ordinarily straight hair a borderline Afro look. When Ellie offered to take us all out so I could return my hair to its short phase, I took the opportunity, determined to get the kids out of the house.

The kids did their best to stop us, though. Abbie hit us hard by throwing up as I searched for shoes. I thought her appetite was smaller than usual this morning, but when she routinely leaves half her cereal in the bowl, it’s hard to notice when the ratio jumps to three-fourths. I cleaned the floor while Ellie changed her clothes, giving us another opportunity to show off that parental teamwork. Abbie’s outfit was thoroughly muckified, as were the floors. I opened the Mr. Clean bottle and set about disinfecting the bejeebers out of our laminate floor.

When I was convinced that nothing was still alive on the floor, I checked on Ellie and Abbie. Abbie was dressed, but we didn’t know if we should still leave the house. We didn’t want Abbie throwing up while my hair was being cut, but she was acting fine. She was running about the house, grabbing toys, pushing her brothers, and doing all her normal activities. We guessed that she was overheated for the morning and not sick, and continued with our plans.

When we went to sweep up the kids, we found Ian sitting on the hardwood floor, playing with the bottle of Mr. Clean that I left open. He’d poured a puddle in front of him, and while I was furious at him, I had to admire the skill required to pour out only a few ounces onto the floor before returning the bottle to its upright position. He may or may not have been playing in the puddle; that was indeterminable in the time between the moment we discovered him and the moment we swooped him into the bathroom in horror.

We were certain he didn’t drink any or splash it in his eyes, but Ellie spent a solid five minutes rinsing his skin and eyes to be safe. Ellie changed his outfit while I soaked up the spilled disinfectant in another stunning display of parental teamwork.

With two-thirds of our children sporting fresh outfits, one child who was possibly ill, and a child who was exposed to most likely a less-than-hazardous quantity of a household cleanser, we packed the kids into the car. I can now happily say that I’m typing this with a shorn head of hair, Ian is still alive, and Abbie only threw up one more time today. Of course, she threw up while I was getting my hair cut.

Where does the time go?

When a baby is born, sleep deprivation is inevitable. A baby is so demanding, and the work around the house multiplies so quickly, that time for sleep has to diminish to make time for everything else that needs attention. Slowly, as the child ages, the parent’s time for sleep returns to normal range. With three children in my house, I’m hoping this time to return to normal sleeping time will occur sometime within the next ten years, because I have quite the sleep deficit to catch up on before I die.

I finished my chores last night after the kids went to bed. Bedtime used to be 9:30. Now I’m lucky if the lights are off and no one is screaming at 10:00. There’s a half-hour less that I get to sleep before I can even muster the courage to tackle the night’s chores instead of leaving them for tomorrow.

Last night’s chores involved washing the dishes. I had to run the dishwasher before morning, or else the kids would be eating breakfast from dirty dishes, and if they didn’t enjoy beanie weenie when it was fresh, I doubt they’d like after it dried onto their trays.

By 10:30, the dishwasher was whirring the dishes clean, and my feet were telling me the next chore. Earlier that night, the kids drug a not-quite-empty carton of frozen lemonade concentrate from the trash, spilling drops of naturally and artificially flavored lemon water supersaturated with various sugars throughout the floor. The insulin-tastic levels of sugar in the drops left the floor with that movie theater feel. While it was exciting not knowing if I could pull my shoe off the floor after my next step, I grabbed the mop and bucket to clean the floors to a satisfactory level of grime. I could’ve spot-cleaned the floors, mopping up just the sticky parts and leaving the filthy parts, but as long as I had the bucket out and filled with its semi-annual dose of hot mop water, I went ahead and cleaned the entire room.

By 11:15, I was at the computer, blogging and doing serious research on various sports-related issues, like whether the Rangers are worse than the Cubs.* I worked as fast as my fading short-term memory allowed, and by 12:15 I was ready to fall asleep for hopefully seven solid hours.

On the way to bed, I found one final, little chore. I’d been meaning to plug the lights on our bedroom aquarium into a timer for a couple weeks. That would turn the lights on and off automatically, giving my brain one less chore to track. I noticed the timer sitting on the counter, and figured I’d tackle it before the kids hid it.

I tip toed into the bedroom where my wife was sleeping angelically, and walked to the aquarium. Everything was plugged into a power strip, and I needed to rearrange the plugs to make room for the timer. I unplugged the filter and heater, and plugged everything back in to optimize space.

The filter started buzzing. It wasn’t horribly loud, but maybe loud enough to disturb my sleep. I played with it for a few minutes to reduce the noise with no luck, so I unplugged it for a quick clean.

When I plugged the filter back in, it started grinding and buzzing loud enough to alarm the dog in the next room, who had dozed off about the time I had hoped to make it to bed. I frantically played with it to quiet it, but nothing could soften the grinding that led my wife to angelically turn the light on so I could see what I was doing. The noise finally abated, although at that point the filter had quit working completely.

I spent the next several minutes working on it, cleaning it, playing with it, cussing at it, hoping to limp it through until morning. Nothing worked, and I finally collapsed into bed with the fish at the mercy of whatever bacteria were living in the water. I was afraid to look at the clock; I knew the first digit would be a one, but I hoped the next character would be a two. When I glanced at the clock, I saw a colon following the one. I dozed off for the night hoping for six solid hours of sleep.

When I heard Abbie banging around her room and saw daylight streaming through the windows, I looked at the clock. It said 6:00. Maybe I’ll be able to nap during the day when the boys start preschool in another two years.

* Last night? Yes. Tonight? Not so much.

Potty Problems

We’ve ignored potty training Abbie for too long. We’ve seen the signs that she’s ready for months now: She can remove her pants, she has words for the potty, and relatives are nagging us. She just hasn’t seemed ready, though.

While her skills in areas such as climbing and breaking into locked rooms are far beyond her peers, she’s far behind her peers in other areas, specifically anything involving social talent. She doesn’t speak well, she doesn’t play much with others, and she doesn’t understand what a potty is used for beyond standing on it to grab the toothpaste tube I left beyond her reach.

Still, it’s time to try to train her. Our neighbor says three-years is the perfect age to train a child; it’s the time when they’re old enough to control things physically and understand concepts mentally. Our neighbor should know about these things since she has eight kids and inexplicably wants more.

The peer pressure is starting to hit me, too. I certainly notice who is and isn’t potty trained when we visit library story time. I don’t care that she’s the oldest child who refuses to sit still for the story, but the fact that she’s the oldest child still in diapers screams “bad parent.” Plus, her preschool demands that she be potty trained when she starts in the fall, and I’m certainly not going to taunt them by sending her on the bus with a diaper.

After breakfast yesterday, we finally gave up hope that she’d magically train herself, and hit the potty. We took off her diaper, slipped on some underwear, and laid out the ground rules. When she has to pee, she has to use the potty. When she uses the potty, she can have chocolate chips as a reward. If she pees while off the potty, she’ll get her Dora underwear wet, and that would make Dora very sad.

Knowing how much better toddler life goes when it’s on a routine, we used a timer to keep everything on a schedule. She’d spend five minutes on the potty, and 15 minutes off. If she doesn’t pee while on the potty, that’s okay, but she has to stay seated.

I gave her a cup of apple juice to prime the pump, and sent her on her way. After 15 minutes, we went to find her, discovered the puddle on the floor, and chalked up our first accident of the day.

Accident #2 came before her second potty session. With two floor puddles, two wet pairs of Dora panties, and zero successes, we went au natural with Abbie. She ran around the house naked, which didn’t deter the puddles, but at least it kept her underwear dry and neatly folded in the dresser drawer. I kept giving her juice to keep things flowing, and kept persevering.

She had three more accidents in the next four potty cycles, and still zero successes. The puddles were starting to become more annoying too, appearing on furniture and rugs, or popping up in the path of her brothers’ feet and their cow blankets.

The problem wasn’t getting her to sit on the potty. She’d happily sit there, possibly because it’s the only non-pre-nap time that I would sit and read with her. She just refused to do anything while seated except demand another book.

We gave in a little at this point. We put her in pull-ups. We wanted to keep her away from anything too similar to a diaper, but we were tired of cleaning accidents and the ensuing messes they created. Plus Abbie was getting tired of being forced to sit and all that juice we kept cramming down her throat, so it seemed time to let up a little. We slipped on the pull-ups and told her to keep them dry or the stars will disappear.

Within minutes, the stars were gone. The girl absolutely refuses to pee in the potty. We’re ready to reward her with the greatest treats in the toddler universe when she goes correctly, but she can’t make the leap to proper peeing.

After a tough morning, everyone was cranky. We completely gave up, put a diaper on her, and promised we’d go back to work tomorrow. Or maybe the next day.

A Rash Decision

Before my sabbatical, I mentioned that Abbie was obsessed with Butt Paste. She went through where she insisted on a glob of diaper rash cream smeared on her nether regions during every diaper change this cute little phase. Even though her habit was a little unpleasant, unnecessary, and uneconomical, I indulged her; I fight her with everything else throughout the day, I can give in to this little thing. Plus, it’s only temporary.

After a week of her throwing a fit every time I tried to slip her shorts over her non-creamed diaper, I decided it was time to break the habit. It wasn’t the bruises on my forearms from her flailing legs that changed my mind. It wasn’t the mounting expense of ointment tubes that changed my mind. It wasn’t even the look of revulsion on the babysitter’s face when I told her Abbie had to have a shot of salve with every fresh diaper that changed my mind.

The event that changed my mind happened Saturday. I left Abbie unsupervised for a few minutes, which is always a bad idea. I know I shouldn’t, but sometimes I just have to tend to other things around the house, such as emergencies involving the two other children roaming the halls. I left an episode of Dora running anyway, which is usually just as good as leaving her supervised. When I returned from whatever task that seems insignificant in retrospect, I found Abbie sitting in front of the television watching Dora. That part was normal, but the part about her being naked accept for the layer of diaper rash cream coating most of her body was not. Abbie had taken advantage of my inattentiveness to sneak up to the changing table, pull the tube from the top drawer, and go cream crazy. The sight of zinc oxide smeared on the furniture and rug combined with the sudden realization that Abbie had been removing her diaper for the thrill of another dose of diaper rash cream led to my decision to break her habit.

Breaking the habits of a three-year-old, a creature that thrives on routine, that has the coping skills of a howler monkey* can be tricky. If she devolves into an uncontrollable screaming pile of toddler for hours if I forget to give her a vitamin before bedtime, how will she react to withdrawal from her favorite drug?

I tried going cold turkey with her yesterday morning. When I changed her overnight diaper, I told her we had no more diaper rash cream, which wasn’t a complete lie considering her cream capades the previous day. I held the drawer shut so she couldn’t see the spare tubes I still need for the boys. I told her she was too big for diaper rash cream.

When she threw a fit anyway, I sang to her on the changing table. Eventually her legs calmed to the point where I could slip her shorts over her feet. When she stood up, with pants in position and still singing with me, I knew we’d made progress.

We’ve changed several diapers now, and she still wants her diaper rash cream. I’m continuing to tell her no, hide the cream from her, and sing when she approaches meltdown stage. She still gets mad, but hopefully she’s had her last dose of diaper rash cream, at least until she sneaks into the drawer again.

* Up to and possibly including the flinging of poo.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

How was your week? Uh huh. Yeah. Oh, I hate that.

My week? Busy.

Most of my work revolved around Ellie’s graduation from residency.* This was one of the biggest moments of her XY years, the culmination of a lifetime of graduation ceremonies: Middle school graduation, high school graduation, undergraduate graduation, medical school graduation, and internship year of residency graduation. Fortunately, we grew up in a time before the adult world honored every juvenile accomplishment with a ceremony, or else we’d have to add a preschool, kindergarten, and grade school graduation to the list. I think the most ceremonious event I participated in at the end of my kindergarten year was the ritual Pointing Out of the First Grade Classrooms.

How did this impact me, you may wonder. She had to do all the work; I just had to dress nice and show up for the ceremony, and getting dressed can’t be very hard when I only own two dress shirts and one pair of dress shoes.

In a previous life, I created videos that people paid money to watch, usually from a corporate expense account. Give me a camera, a computer, and some talent, and I can slap together a video worthy of a C-grade in the highest levels of a semi-competitive undergraduate media program. All it takes is a few, short, 8-hour workdays.

This is relevant because her program traditionally creates videos to show after the ceremony. These are light-hearted fare, filled with inside jokes borderline humor that would deeply embarrass the entire institution if the public ever saw them.

As the only person related to the program with access to video editing software that’s fancier than the free stuff that comes with computers these days, it was my charge to create these videos. Two years ago, when I only had to watch Abbie, I found plenty of free time to work. Last year, when the boys still slept twelve hours a day, I adequate work time tucked between feedings. This year, with a daughter determined to open every food package in the house and twin boys refusing to nap more than their sister, finding free time was trickier. Mostly it came during that sweet time between the kids falling asleep for the night, and me regretting staying up so late. Besides interfering with my REM, this also cut into my blogging time, so I gave it up for the week.

I think I spent the time well. The videos were well received, drew plenty of laughter, and elicited many hearty thanks. At least that’s the way I remember it in my sleep-deprived state. I’m still catching up on sleep thanks to several computer crashes, finishing our months-long moving process, and the little parenting I did.

* A quick note on my amazing wife: I didn’t appreciate this until her residency program director pointed it out during the ceremony, but within a ten week span, she graduated from medical school, gave birth to our first child, spent a week in the hospital culminating with surgery after a post-partum complication, moved to a new home, started her residency, began an excruciating six-month-long house-selling process, and said goodbye to her mother. The rest of her residency was easier, except for that part about carrying and giving birth to twins. I’m proud of you and all the hardships you overcame. And I’m sorry my newfound child-rearing responsibilities left me too dazed to help more.

Taking a Break From All My Blogging

I have an amazingly busy week coming up, so I think I'm going to let the blog slide for a few days. My blogging nook is fast becoming my days' only free time, and I'll need to use that time elsewhere. I might post a picture or two, but otherwise this blog will be quiet as I struggle to keep my head above water elsewhere. Maybe literally if I can get into my pool.

Sorry I Asked

Abbie is good at many things. She can scream for minutes without taking a break. She can climb like a hyperactive Sherpa being chased by a disgruntled mountain goat. She can identify the most fragile object in a room within seconds of entering.

Abbie still needs to work on many things, though, especially if she’s going to have the skills by age 18 needed to live on her own like I want her to want to do. For example, Abbie is not good at answering questions. Ask her a yes-no question, and the best you might get is a smile. Ask her a multiple-choice question, and she’ll repeat the last choice, followed quickly by every other choice you mentioned. Ask her an open-ended question, and she’ll just go back to finding things to break.

I ask her questions anyway. They’re mostly rhetorical, the same way I might ask the dog what she’s eating, or the hanging plant if it can forgive me for not watering it for the past week. I don’t expect an answer, especially from the plant since it probably died a couple days ago, but talking through things can help me think.

So, it was with much surprise that Abbie answered one of my questions yesterday. I was in her room yesterday morning, rounding up the cow blankets that strayed from the boys’ room. Abbie was lying on her bed, and when I leaned over to see what she was doing, I felt that her quilt was wet.

“Why is your quilt wet?” I asked.

“Orange juice,” she replied. An empty cup at the foot of the bed confirmed her account of the morning’s events.

We’ve been experimenting with non-sippy cups recently. When Abbie demands her morning orange juice, I pour it into a regular cup for her.* In an ideal world, I’d make her drink it in the kitchen until she finishes it to be sure she doesn’t spill. In the real world, someone’s screaming usually distracts me while I’m pouring the juice, and Abbie has to pull the cup off the counter herself because I’m in another room refereeing a fight.

Abbie does well with regular cups as long as she’s motivated to drink their contents. She’ll dump the contents onto the floor if she doesn’t like them, which is why I can’t train her with water; even though water doesn’t stain, I know she’ll spill a cup of it instead of the realistic chance that she’ll finish a cup of juice.

I’m not sure what happened to her quilt, but I’m betting a brother was involved. Someone noticed sister had something tasty to drink, shoving and pulling ensued, and Abbie dump the cup to make sure that if she couldn’t drink it, no one could.

I pulled the quilt off the bed to wash it, and thanked Abbie for her cooperation. It’s nice that she can now answer what stains need be removed, but I need to teach her to wash her own laundry.

* As opposed to her demands for a brunch orange juice, a lunch orange juice, a snack time orange juice, etc, which I simply ignore.

Marks

I have a new way to tell the boys apart. No longer do I have to rely on flimsy criteria like weight or personality to tell who’s who. Now I can simply look at their faces, and distinguish them by their alarming facial injuries.

Ian currently has a nasty bruise under his right eye. It’s a slender inch-long mark in the same shade of purple used in sippy cups. It looks like a blunt object smacked him in the cheekbone. I believe that blunt object is a swing.

One of the joys of our new house is I can leave the back door open, and let the kids run in and out as they please, along with the dog, our one brave cat, and a host of insects. Meanwhile, I stay inside working on household chores and checking on them whenever I hear someone scream, or whenever I realize that it’s been too long since I heard someone scream.

I couldn’t let the kids out back willy-nilly at our old home because we had a shared backyard. The lack of fencing left too much of our neighbors’ property, such as innocent plants, vulnerable to my marauders. Plus I couldn’t let them run outside unsupervised because then our neighbors would know that I’m the kind of parent who would let his very young children run outside unsupervised. Now that we own the backyard, I have no such qualms. I won’t be able to leave the door wide open when the temperatures plunge into the range of mechanical heating and cooling, but I doubt the kids will be as excited about running outside when the temperatures hit the instant sweat/shiver stage, either.

A couple days ago, I rounded the corner to check on the kids as I hadn’t heard them complain in several minutes, which usually means they’re were having too much fun. The boys were standing at the swing set, hovering around a swing. They were standing on opposite sides, each one probably trying to figure out how he could climb onto it and con his brother into swinging it. Tory grabbed the seat, pulled it back, and let go in hopes something good would happen. The seat smacked Ian in the face on its way back up the other side. I’ve no idea if Tory considered that good.

That made Ian scream, breaking the fun streak. I walked out to comfort him, and noticed the welt forming under his eye. By the next day, it had formed into the bright, distinctive mark I and everyone around us has noticed ever since.

Tory’s distinguishing mark is a set of horizontal scratches on the bridge of his nose. I believe he also took a swing to the face, but that was just softening things up for the big blow.

Yesterday, I looked outside to see what could be so much fun it would keep the kids from complaining. Tory was on top of a patio chair, holding the back with his hands, and marching his feet. He had a giant grin on his face as he danced back and forth, though that quickly changed when he knocked the chair over and fell face-first on the stone patio below.

That made Tory scream. I walked out to the comfort him, and noticed the scratches on his nose. Those marks haven’t improved since then, possibly because Ian is poking at them. Earlier today he scratched his brother’s nose when Tory tried taking his milk, drawing blood in the process. I’ve no idea if Ian considered that good, either.

Same to You

Abbie is currently obsessed with Butt Paste. I capitalized the product because that’s its trademarked name. It comes from Louisiana, where folks are apparently a little off-kilter.

Abbie must have Butt Paste on every diaper change. When she went through that little bout of diarrhea a few days ago, this made sense as her nether regions were bright red as daddy didn’t realize it was possible to poop three times in an hour.

Now that her gut is functioning mostly normally and her skin is back to the normal pasty-white indicative of our clan, Butt Paste is unnecessary. That doesn’t stop her from demanding it every time she gets a fresh diaper. She’ll ask for it by name, and throw a fit if I try to pants her without a little zinc oxide spread across her diaper line.

When Abbie says its name, it comes out as “Butt Ace,” which creates a couple problems. First, if she’s understood correctly, Butt Paste is a crude thing for a dainty little girl to ask for. She should be asking for toddler appropriate things like flowers, puppies, or Goldfish, not a trademarked name that could double as a playground taunt.

Second, if she’s misunderstood, and considering how poorly she enunciates this is too likely, it sounds like she’s saying “butt face.” I know she’s saying Butt Paste, although she could theoretically be calling me a nasty name for repeatedly trying to diaper her unprotected bottom. That may be another of nature’s signs that it’s time to potty train my 3-year-old. That way I wouldn’t have to spend time changing a child’s poopy diapers three times an hour.

Today's Discovery

We had spaghetti for supper tonight. This broke a days-long streak of highly processed meat for the kids’ supper, be it in weiner or nugget form. Those, along with macaroni and cheese, are my fall back suppers, the foods I serve when I don’t want to deal with thrown food and whiny children. At least I don’t have to deal with whiny children until after the meal when I inform Abbie that two platefuls are plenty for anyone, even daddy.

Spaghetti is what I serve when I don’t want to deal with the guilt over serving my children highly processed meat every night. Those things are filled with fat, salt, and preservatives. Even though Spaghetti is filled with starch, salt, and preservatives, at least it also contains vegetables, albeit highly processed ones.

The problem with spaghetti is Abbie doesn’t like it. She used to love it, but she recently changed her mind when she realized she could eat highly processed meat every night instead by refusing to eat. Fortunately the boys lack the memory needed to realize there are more delicious suppers out there. This may partially explain why Lunchables will never enter my house; they can’t want them if they don’t know they exist.

I stopped serving spaghetti for a couple weeks, but the guilt, and the smell from the leftover, noodles grew too powerful for me to ignore. I opened up another jar of sauce and prepared for the worst.

Around the time I started dreading Abbie waking from her nap, I got a bright idea. I turned Abbie’s chair to face the television, readied a Dora DVD, and waited for her to run into the room screaming in fury.

When I heard the wail, I prepared her for supper as normal, except I deposited her in front of the television. She was transfixed, staring at the television like she hadn’t already watched that episode a half-dozen times in the last week. I served her a plate with a steaming pile of spaghetti resting on it, and watched her start happily munching away.

This may be the key to making her try new foods. My old technique was to serve a small portion of the new food surrounded by old favorites, but she thwarted that by eating everything but the new food. Now I might be able to slide new foods into her with a palette-cleansing dose of Dora to put her in a good mood. That should work, at least until I feel too much guilt about letting her watch television over supper.

Abbie's Other Birthday Party, Better Late Than Never

Here are the pictures from Abbie’s big birthday party:


This is the birthday girl after she got into the frosted cookies. Notice how eerily similar her face looks to the pictures we took during the family birthday party.


Here’s the grass half of our yard. Special thanks to my father-in-law for grilling.


Here’s the pool half of our yard. It warms my heart to see so many children enjoying the labors of my vacuuming and chemical dumping. The water was about 75-degrees, and the air was about 70-degrees, so it was a little chilly that night. I eventually took Abbie into the pool, joining one other dad as the only adults brave enough to jump in the water. The two of us complained bitterly about the cold. None of the children mentioned it, at least not until they stepped out of the water.


This is what separates the sides, and keeps our li’l sinkers on the grass side. The fence is six-feet tall with a self-closing, self-locking gate, which means the kids shouldn’t be able to climb into the pool area for at least a few more weeks.


Ellie presents the cake to Abbie. The Hello Kitty cake is store bought. Ellie decided on this cake instead of making one for her because (1) Abbie likes cats, and most importantly (2) she didn’t have time to make a cake with the 721,018,632 other things to do to prepare for a party, such as finding matching Hello Kitty plates for the cake.


Abbie is hearing “Happy Birthday,” and is apparently startled to hear it simultaneously sung by so many children. Earlier in the day, I’d tell her “happy birthday,” and she’d sing back “happy birthday to me,” so I know she understands the concept.


Abbie is eating her cake, by which I mean she’s skimming the frosting off the top.


Ian liked the cake as well. He ate an estimated 2.5 pieces. An estimated 1.75 pieces stayed down. Notice that my mother has to force-feed cake to Tory in the background.


I told Ellie that Cheetos and Doritos were bad ideas for the party. If we ever need to blackmail our children with pictures of them with food smeared all over their faces, we’re in good shape.

Too Busy to Blog

It's Abbie's birthday party eve, and I've got too much to do to blog tonight. Pictures will come tomorrow.