Just in case you thought I was being hyperbolic

Here's the event I detailed in my last post. Go to the Youtube feed (click on the movie) to see the full size. Blogger cuts off widescreen youtube video for some reason.

This young woman is a drug dealer

This is Dora. That silly monkey on her right is "Boots." Dora and Boots are crack to children. Allow me to explain.

We started out this whole parenting gig with the idea that the children wouldn't watch TV at all until they were a few years old. It's one of those things you think you'll do, like not yell, or lose 10 pounds, or maybe not drink beer. These ideas are born out of good intentions, but they're simply impractical.

Early on, when the kids were old enough to sit up, we would occasionally let them watch 10 minutes of a Baby Einstein video or something. This was usually done so one of us (usually the wife) could keep the duct tape holding the house together fresh enough to keep it all from falling apart. The kids seemed to be amused by the show, they'd at least be quiet and watch it. But the show only held their attention for a brief period and then it was back to parenting.

A few months ago, we recorded an episode of Dora the Explorer. We all sat down to watch it together. I remember the episode well (probably because I've seen it more times than Star Wars at this point). Dora and Boots were helping a baby duck, who had blown off the page of a fucking book, get back to her mother who was still in the book! I know...trippy, right?? Along the way, they managed to do all sorts of psychedelic things. Like warm up the cold baby duck by using a crayon to color the sun yellow. I've got all sorts of problems with this. But the kids...the kids were freaking hooked. They stopped chatting, stopped eating chalk, stopped crying, stopped blinking, and basically went totally catatonic. We instantly recognized that this was a BRILLIANT way to buy 22 and 1/2 minutes of uninterrupted free time to read e-mail or update Facebook. Or sweep.. but mostly Facebook. At this point we're totally doing the high five of parental victory, rejoicing at the mastery of the toddler psyche. You see where this is going, right?

We fucked it up.

What seems like the next morning, Nolan starts saying "where's Dora" and "when Dora on?" After one episode. Then Lilly starts saying "I wanna watch Dora" (except when Lilly says it, there are really long gaps between the words... I...wanna....watch....DORA). It seems that they had their first taste of children's television, and they really took to it. This is a real problem for us, as the last thing we want is to be TV parents who let their children grow up in the warm glow of whatever programming is on Nick Jr.

So we lied to our kids. And we still lie to them.

In response to their inquiry about the location of Dora the Drug Dealer, we simply told them that Dora wasn't on. Then, in an attempt to satisfy our own needs to watch at least ten minutes of the Today Show, we told them that only the "news" was on. Both lies, as the Today Show AND a good day's worth of Dora were safely saved on our DVR. But those kids don't know what a DVR is, or even how to spell it.

So now we've established a false choice. If "Dora" isn't on, then it's the "news." So the kids say "DORA" (even when the TV is off), and we say "Dora's not on right now." Then they say "just the news!" It's a real struggle, but we've established in their brains that if it's not "Dora" that's on TV, then it's the "news" -- even if it's Friday Night Lights.

I'll never forget the moment I realized I had a REAL problem, on my hands. Nolan was finishing up dinner. The wife and I predetermined that they could watch an episode of Dora before going to bed. So Nolan finishes his food and says "where'd Dora go?" And I asked him "do you wanna watch Dora?" And then it got really weird. The boy starts panting the words "yeah, yeah, I wanna watch Dora!" So I let him down out of his seat and he RUNS to the couch. The boy ran. He sits on the couch facing a dark TV and starts pumping his fists and chanting "DORA DORA DORA DOOOORRRRAAAA!" Then he starts screaming "Dooo-rrrrraaaaaa!"

Now Lilly wasn't passive in this either. Once she got wind that we were going to watch Dora, she also freaked out. We let her out of her chair and she bolted to take a seat next to Nolan on the couch. She was so excited that she couldn't talk at all. Finally I got the show started and it all went quiet. Not a sound. They were hooked.

I'm serious, there is very little difference between this and what happened to Chris Rock's character in New Jack City.

It's done now. The cat is out of the bag. The kids wake up in the morning and ask "Dora on?" Then we say "no" and they say "it news." Every day. Same shit. Except now it's not just Dora, it's also her pesky do-gooding cousin Diego as well. We had to introduce Diego to the mix after we found out they don't make pullup diapers for boys with Dora on them. So we had to try to get Nolan to make a new TV friend with Diego. Yes, I know I just ruined his life once his friends get old enough to figure out this blog is about him. At least I didn't write about getting poop on his head.

Parents might know this, but most probably don't. Every Dora episode follows the same formula. They get a target to locate (mama duck, Dora's house, the Red Mountain, etc), they ask their huminoid friend "the map" to help them, the "Map" sings them a song about how it's the MAPPPPPP, and then tells Dora and her talking monkey Boots how to get to where they need to go. Then Dora and Boots sing a song about where they're going and how they'll get there. Along the way, Dora will ask her backpack to produce some mystical item to help them, which creates another sing-along montage where an animated backpack displays upwards of a dozen items that were supposedly held in the backpack. It's truly amazing what that small bilingual girl can hold in her backpack. Tractors, shovels, coats, Magnus Samuelsson.

So the show is already written in a way that would make parents think a bunch of stoners wrote this stuff. But I tuned into this one episode that sealed the deal. Dora had to go into SPACE with her monkey friend. Space. So they "found" a rocket in the woods that yelled "arriba" when it took off. This must be a remnant of the fledgling Mexican Space Program. So Dora and Boots end up in freaking space strapped to a rocketship of questionable structural integrity. Then Dora finds that her magical bottomless backpack has a goddamned space suit in it. And of course, it fits perfectly. At one point in this extra-special episode of Dora, they end up eating "magical cookies" to navigate their way through space. I'm guessing that was a direct reference to the magical brownies the show's writers polished off.

All in all, my conclusion here is that Dora is a necessary evil. In a perfect world, we'd raise our kids without fast food and television, but this is America goddammit. If we can't make our kids fat and stupid at an early age through saturated fat and drug-inspired children's programming, then what kind of a country is this?

How to Win Friends and Influence People at the Little Gym

At the beginning of this year, the wife and I decided that we should get the kids involved in some developmental classes. We figured that it'd be good for them to interact with other kids and socialize a little bit.

These classes, in case you're unaware, are a somewhat new cottage industry marketing themselves to overachieving parents who are paranoid that if you fail to get your children into the right pre-pre-preschool then your dreams of Harvard are forever dashed and your children will grow horns. I could be a real cynical cocknose here and blabber on about how these businesses only exist to take money from desperate parents by preying on their fears of failure. If I took this approach, I'd point out how just about every single soul reading these words right now turned out fine growing up in the 60s, 70s, or 80s without these classes. All we needed was a healthy dose of microwaved food, Big-Wheels, television, shag carpeting, and leaded gasoline.

But I'm not going to be a cynical cocknose. It's a different time now, and the thing to do is to get your kids into one of these classes. At least that's what you tell yourself after drinking the "Keeping up with the Joneses" Kool-Aid.

Here where we live, two of the good options for childhood development are Kindermusik and The Little Gym. Regardless of whatever critical things I've already said or will say here, both of these programs are really fun for the children. Kindermusik focuses children on being musical. They obviously don't care too much about teaching children how to spell. The Little Gym is a physical activity center for kids. They get a chance to run around and play in an environment where they literally cannot injure themselves. It's a rubber room for toddlers.

Both of these classes were at approximately the same time on Saturday mornings. The wife and I decided that we should split the kids up and spend time one-on-one with them at their respective programs. We put Nolan up with the wife at Kindermusik, and Lilly and I took on The Little Gym.

Lilly loved the Little Gym. The other parents there were very nice, although they might have been nicer to me because I appeared to be a single father without my better half. Their children took a shine to Lilly too. There were about a dozen other kids in her class. She charmed everybody during the weeks of classes at the Little Gym. Parents would ask about how she was doing, and they'd smile as their children would run around and play with Lilly. She was the idyllic model of what you'd want your child to be at a social event. She played, she laughed, she'd try out new words, and at the end of every class she'd walk out the door happy holding daddy's hand as we went to the car. It was a special time that I'll always remember with my baby girl.

The reports back from Kindermusik weren't quite the same for Nolan. Keep in mind that I wasn't there, so this is second hand. It seems that Nolan was a little hit-or-miss at Kindermusik. He enjoyed the songs and the singing, and even to this day several months later, it's clear that he still remembers some of the songs and play things that they did in his classes. But Kindermusik hit at a time for Nolan where he was entering a phase.

A "phase" -- that's what we call it to make us feel better about potentially raising an antisocial maniac. This phase involves random acts of toddler violence; specifically, pushing. Nolan got it in his head right about the time Kindermusik started that walking up to children who were perfectly happy and shoving them on their bottoms was super-awesome. He was super-wrong. But you go ahead and try to explain to a 14 month old boy that his actions are frowned upon in polite company.

So Nolan's experience at Kindermusik was mixed. Sometimes he spent a good amount of class in timeout. Other times he really enjoyed himself.

(in case you were wondering, yes, that "phase" carried on right through his second birthday. It's better now, but he still sometimes thinks it's fuckin sweet to push kids over. At least now he knows he's in trouble. He'll push his sister over and then immediately look around to see if we saw him. He's wearing an ass groove in his time-out chair. At some point we might have to confront the potential fact that Nolan could be a budding version of Biff Tannen).

Back to the story. Towards the end of the kids "semesters" at their classes, we had situations where there were no Kindermusik classes on particular Saturdays. I can't remember why that was, it just was. So we called up the folks at the Little Gym and asked them if we could bring Lilly's twin brother along for a Saturday class. Lilly, as you remember, was adored by all at the Little Gym, so of course they were happy to have her twin brother come along! After all, what could possibly go wrong with having another sweet child at the Little Gym class?

Suckers.

The class started out decently enough. This is a relative statement. The kids got through the door of the classroom without incident. But shortly after the kids got there, Nolan locked on to a young boy, went right up to him, and form tackled him. I don't think he was trying to hurt him or anything, he just felt like it was awesome to tackle him. That's how the class started. So I apologized to the mother of the child who my son just assaulted and then hovered over him while he played to help protect the general welfare of the other kids. This went on for about thirty minutes or so.

During the course of a normal Little Gym class, the instructor will bring out various bells, balls, inflatable toys or bubbles to keep the kids entertained. One of the gold standard winners for the Little Gym is a large rectangular bouncing thingy. It inflates to a height of about two or three feet and had raised sides so the kids don't fall off of it. Running down the middle of this rectangle are raised "bumps" that extend to sitting height for a toddler above the main "floor" level of the rectangle. All the kids climb on board the deflated rectangle and then the instructor inflates it. The kids flippin love this thing. So when the bouncy thing is inflated, the kids will jump and bounce and play and laugh! Sometimes they fall down, but that's because they lose their balance or accidentally bump into another kid.

The downside of this bouncy thingy is that the parents can't necessarily get to the middle of it to snatch their kids up if they get out of line. I think Nolan realized this early on. After realizing that this bouncy thing was an open invitation to be wild, he pushed over another kid. Given the circumstances, this probably wasn't the worst thing in the world. It was a bouncy surface and the kid wasn't hurt. I saw the child's parents and they were laughing. So it was all fun.

The boy Nolan tackled at the beginning of class saw this happen too. He didn't think it was funny. This boy, who was smaller than Nolan, ran around one of the raised "squares" on the bouncy thingy and launched himself into Nolan's midsection! I shit you not, this kid speared my son Bill Goldberg style. He landed right on top of Nolan and pinned him to the mat of the bouncy thing as if he was there to enforce order for the rest of the Little Gym class against the tyranny this newbie was bringing to his town. This boy, again, who was smaller than Nolan, wasn't havin' it and he let Nolan know in no uncertain terms that my son would not behave like a hooligan in their peaceful community.

At this point, I'm laughing my ass off. So are most of the parents around. The impact crater caused from these two boys landing on the bouncy caused other kids in their wake to also fall down. It was a mass of humanity. A Royal Rumble for the Little Gym. We were on the verge of queuing up the Benny Hill theme song for a truly entertaining toddler wrestling extravaganza when Nolan began kicking the boy who was on top of him. Well...let's just say that was the point where we had to step in and break it all up. It was an epic fail. But it was also about the funniest thing we have seen with the kiddos up to that point. The wife and I did everything we could to contain our laughter as we slunk out of the Little Gym early to prevent any future dustups.

In response to this, I mashed up some video cuts of Nolan into his first professional wrestling intro video sequence.

This story has been in my blog queue for a long time. It's painfully outdated, as these events took place during the spring of this year. I should clarify that Nolan isn't a holy terror. He's actually very sweet and caring. He's moodier than his sister, and when he's cranky he can be a handful. But for the most part, he's pretty damn awesome.

Boys and Girls are not the same! And it's not just their parts!

The kids will be two in just a couple short months. It's strange, it seems like there's no way that they could possibly be almost two. That means this blog is also almost two, but with the infrequency I've been posting it's probably really only a few months old in blog years.

So before they were born, and even into the first year or so of their lives, the wife and I often wondered about how they might be different. You know -- because one of them is a boy and the other is a girl. We had a unique opportunity to exercise all of our hippie tree-hugging intellectual curiosity about nature/nurture gender issues in a self-contained little social petri dish known as our house.

And we followed through on that. About everything is gender neutral. The room, the toys, if there's a doll, then there's also a ball. We don't push gender toys on them -- if Nolan wants the doll and Lilly wants the football, then big deal! We don't really care.

What we learned is that all that eggheaded garbage about gender differences being taught through upbringing is total fucking trash written by a bunch of 43 year old virgins who haven't earned a paycheck that didn't come with the logo of some northeastern university printed on it since they were born.

It's bullshit. Boys and girls are different. And I'm not just talking about the plumbing.

Tonight was a perfect case-in-point. I got home from work, and I was tired from whatever it is that I do at work. Momma was tired from running all over with the two rugrats. Nolan and Lilly had their dinner and had about an hour to kill before baths and bedtime. So momma and I took our respective positions on the couch to just be lazy bumps for a little while. We could hear Lilly and Nolan play in the other room.

They were playing with an old computer keyboard (you call it lazy parenting, I call it electronics recycling -- fuck off!). This is what we heard:

"Nolan! NOLAN!!! PUSH KEYS! Nolan do it! Push Keys NOLAN! No, Nolan! NO! STOP IT Nolan!"

On and on and on... She was nagging him. Wife and I soon realized that Nolan was facing his first male experience of being nagged to death by a woman he lives with! He wasn't saying a word, but she continued:

"NO, Nolan! Do push! Push Keys Nolan!"

For about five minutes, we heard this prattle continue. She followed him from room to room to instruct the boy how to properly play with his toys. As if he couldn't figure it out on his own. Shit, he has it figured out -- it's PLAY!

Eventually we heard Lilly say "No push! No Push Lilly!" We knew what happened. Nolan got fed up and gave his sister a shove. Nolan's had a bad case of the pushies for about a year now, and we've been pretty agressive in getting on his ass about doing it, but in this particular moment, the wife and I broke up laughing (keep in mind that the kids are in another room and can't see us). We had this mental image of Nolan pulling one of these:

Not that we'd condone that. But she was being very bossy!


So Lilly came walking into the room we were in, doing her best acting job to look crestfallen. She comes up to momma and says "Nolan hurt feelings." Not only is this undeniably adorable to the point of exploding, but it's also hillarious. Her feelings were hurt because Nolan finally told her to put a sock in it with all the nagging! Now, were his actions appropriate? Of course not, he's only 22 months old for christssakes, he's not going to have a whole lot of in depth analysis of gender based feelings at this point. His attention span tops out at 20 minutes of Dora, he's nowhere near ready to soak in some Oprah-level learnin!

When Nolan came back into the room, we asked him if he'd like to have another sister. I swear to god his response was this: He held up one finger and said "ONE!"

At the end of it we learned that we have a little boy and a little girl. And they act like it.

(not the best picture of Nolan, but it matches the other one)

As a totally random aside, at the end of the night I taught them how to sing "Rico.....Suave" -- you know -- just for fun.

I either need professional help or an award for being awesome

Last night before the kids went to bed, I poured myself a beer into a glass. I like beer, have for a long time. Anyway, I set my beer down on the table to chase after a child or something. When I got back, Lilly had her face into my beer. Not "in" the beer, but right down over it. The wife noticed the evil glint in my eye and said right out, "that child can not have a sip of your beer." She knows me too well.

I thought I'd break the child of her curiosity and put some beer on my finger for her to taste. After all, no child likes the taste of beer. Certainly after she tasted a wet finger of beer, she'd realize that it's not for her, right? So I did. I dipped a finger into my beer and let her taste it.

Damn, I think I awoke the angry drunken dragon, because right after, Lilly's eyes lit up and she started saying "more more more more more!" It was as if I flipped her crazy switch to ludicrous speed. Then she upped the ante and started saying "more daddy's beer! More beer! MORE BEER!" My 20 month old baby girl was demanding that we give her more beer. I've either miserably failed at this parenting thing, or my girl has a taste for good Mexican beer. The teenage years are already shaping up to be a mess.

The First Family “Vacation” – Day Two

The second day of our mini family vacation to the coast started out with a bang. I woke up to the sounds of children chattering in their tented off baby jail cells. I heard Lilly saying "Nolan" and Nolan saying something or other. I honestly wasn't paying that much attention, as I was just waking up and it was still way too damn early in the morning to do anything other than sleep.

But then it happened. I heard something that immediately sent shivers down my spine.

"Poop." "Lilly poop."

At first this isn't that scary. Lilly is quite conscious of her bathroom issues, which I think means she's going to start breaking away from diapers soon. That's fine with me. So it's not uncommon at all for Lilly to announce when she's pooping. So at first, we're all good here.

Then the rest of it happened...

"Lilly poop....bed." "Bed....Lilly poop....bed."

This was bad. I had a bad idea about what I would find on the other side of the bedsheet separating me from certain awfulness. I pulled the curtain back and found my sweet flower of a baby girl with her hands down the backside of her diaper which had already stained the bedsheet. Before I could come up with something clever to say, she pulls her hands out and looks at her poo-covered little hands and says again, with a little more fear in her voice, "Lilly poop bed!"

I did what any responsible father would do in this moment. I woke up the wife. "Honey, you've got to help here." I don't even know why I bothered to say "help." I knew all along I was basically just waking my wife up to have her scrape shit off my baby girl at 6:30 in the morning. Fortunately for me, the negotiating power was all mine, as the child had poop on her hands and was about to go all Jackson Pollock on us, right there at the Sandollar Motel and RV Park.

The wife reported back later on (I, of course, stayed in bed and played with the boy who had not crapped all over creation) that the first attempt was to put the girl in the sink. That didn't work. Then the girl went in the bathtub. My wife commented to me that there was a point in all of this where she felt like calling whoever the "real mommie" is in this circumstance who would know what to do. That wife of mine, she's great.

So the day started off fairly potently. The rest of the day was actually fairly nice. We went back to Alice Fayes for breakfast (the door on the right, not the drinking and fighting door on the left), and then I had to go to the Rockport Public Library to study for the bar exam. While that part sorta sucked, it was at least a new experience.

All of this built up to the whole reason we came to Rockport in the first place. Our cousin was getting married. So in the evening, the wife and I along with grandma and grandpa loaded up the kids for the big evening out! They were so cute, I didn't bring my camera, so I can't upload pictures now, but trust me -- they were awesomely cute. You'd never know that Lilly had crapped her bed just 12 hours earlier! Unfortunately for us, the cuteness didn't match their attentiveness at the outdoor wedding ceremony. The wife and I spent our time chasing after the kids as one or the other, or both, ran after birds and seagulls or generally tried to drown themselves in the water fountains.

We did get pictures of the kids during day two -- here are the highlights:

They tried to make the reception happen, but it was a bit of a fail. It was past their bedtime, and Nolan had a bad case of the pushies. For those who might not know, the pushies are when Nolan walks up to other kids and shoves them on their behinds. It's not cool. He thinks it's awesome, but he's wrong.

So we packed the kids up and headed back to put them down. Then we pawned them off with grandma and grandpa and went back to the reception! A good time was had by all.

While the wife and I were standing by the water later that night, she made the comment to me, "you know, this is the first time I've been able to look out at the water and not have to worry about keeping a child from killing themselves in it." It was romantic.

The next morning we packed up and headed out. As I was packing up, I realized that we basically made bird cages for our children. We draped a sheet over their sleeping space so they wouldn't be distracted. Just like you do with a bird. Whatever, don't judge -- just write it down as the next reason why we won't be winning any parenting awards this year.

Nothing eventful on the trip back, it was essentially just the drive down in reverse. Except that we got caught in the Sunday afternoon northbound I-35 traffic between Austin and Waco. I think it says something that people who don't live in Austin come to Austin for their weekends, and nobody ever seems to be returning to Austin after the weekends are over. Gee -- I wonder why that is?

Some closing thoughts about Alice Fayes. We didn't go through "the left door" on this trip. But we've gone there before. The first time we went to Alice Fayes was four years ago for my 30th birthday. We just finished the Texas bar exam (there's a theme here with Rockport and bar exams, apparently). We just sat down in the outside waterfront bar area -- I mean we had just sat down, and we saw a woman wearing a "Playgirl" t-shirt barge through the double doors leading from the entrance, grab another woman who was on the dance floor by her hair, and throw her onto the floor by her hair. This was 100% Jerry Springer fan-tastic. It was at this point that the wife and I knew that Alice Fayes was A-OK with us. We took a picture of this woman and her boyfriend. Then we bought them a round of drinks. I tell this story not to make fun (well, not entirely), but to point out what a great place Alice Fayes is for good wholesome drinking and fighting fun. Probably not the best place for the children, but I don't think they pretend like it is.

The First Family “Vacation” – Day One

The twins are a year and a half now, and they’re doing all sorts of things that I desperately need to write about. In fact, many of the things from April and May are quickly draining from my memory as the new stuff from June and July begin to take their place. As a reminder to myself, and a promise to the four people who actually read my blog, I promise to follow up on these things. However, that’s not what this post is about.

We’re on our first family vacation. Well…not technically our first vacation, but it’s our first vacation that requires a long drive. We’re in Rockport, Texas. Rockport is a small fishing town about 30 miles north of Corpus Christi. It’s about a seven to eight hour drive from Dallas if you go straight through. If you know where Port Aransas is, then you’re within spitting distance of Rockport. Anyway, one of our cousins is getting married and they’re doing it up proper down here at the coast. So months and months ago, the wife and I penned it on the calendar that we’d spend a few days with the kids down here. We were looking forward to it. Right up until I realized that the Florida bar exam I volunteered to take for work fell the week after this weekend. There’s nothing like the specter of a stomach-cramp-inducing mental fuck of an exam to throw a wet blanket over your vacation. But I digress…

The word vacation brings up all sorts of images in the minds of those who hear the word. Beaches, laughter, fine dining, nice hotels, etc. That’s not what this is. I’m going to call this a “vacation”. If I was talking to you in person, I’d do the word vacation in those annoying air quotes that would make you want to punch me in the ballbag.

Before I go much farther, I need to do some clarifying. I’m going to say things about where we’re on vacation that might not sound like I love this place. I’m going to say things about where we’re staying that would make you think it’s a roach motel. Neither thought would be true. I love coming to Rockport. It’s one of my favorite places on earth. I love staying at the Sandollar motel and trailer park. I love it. Yes this place is a bit redneckish, and yes it’s not the Four Seasons, but that’s part of why I love it here. It’s more like the One Seasons. And that one season is balls hot and coastal humid with a chance of mosquitoes that look like birds, but that’s part of the charm.

So here we go. Wife and I got the car packed up the night before we left (Wednesday night). Thursday morning we scrambled to get everything in order so we could be on the road by 8:30. Unfortunately, we hit a snag in the drop off for the dog at the dog impound yard. So we really didn’t get on the road until about 9:15. So be it, I can make up a 45 minute delay over a long road trip, no problem!

At this point, the children are dyno-mite! Jimmy Walker style. They’re cooperating, sleeping as planned in the car, and in general being awesome. Everything is going swimmingly. The plan is that we’ll meet my sister and her fiancée in Austin around noon, have lunch, let the kids run like crazy, and then continue the trip to the coast. Given our delay, our plan to meet at noon is now a plan to meet at one. No bother, we’re still on pace to get to the coast in the early evening. The road trip is punctuated by the sheer joy of having my wife quiz me on the grounds for which you may obtain a divorce in the State of Florida for my upcoming test. By the way, a Florida Court will grant a divorce if the marriage is irretrievably broken, but might order counseling or grant a continuance if it appears from the facts or the parties that there might be a chance of reconciliation. That won’t be on the test. It won’t be on the test because I know it now, and that’s the way it works. They’ll ask me about the grounds to execute a hostile takeover of a closely held corporation that’s insolvent and incorporated in Nebraska. You just watch. Fuck I hate bar exams. I’m totally getting off track.

So we arrive in Austin around one, have lunch, meet with my sister and future brother in steplaw or whatever he’ll be, and let the kids run around this park for about an hour. Totally fun! Then we packed it all back up and hit the road for the coast. Kids are zonked; we’re not quite out of Austin before they’re down for the count again.

We rolled into the greater Fulton/Rockport area around 6. On any normal day, the routine is that the kids eat dinner around 5:30 and they’re usually asleep by 7:15. The time they go to sleep has been one of the great blessings of our children at this point. The kids are almost always sound asleep before 8 and they usually sleep until sometime between 6 and 7 o’clock in the morning.

Needless to say, this wasn’t a normal day. After being crammed into their car seats for 7+ hours, they weren’t even sorta interested in sleeping. So they played and ran around the room and giggled until almost 9. Eventually we had to put them down for the night.

This is where the comedy really starts. About three months ago, when the wife and I were planning our trip, we thought “oh hey, we can put the kids in the same room with us if we just put up a screen or divider between them and us”. We thought wrong. Terribly wrong. As I was setting up the kids cribs and creatively “engineering” the system of screening the kids from the rest of the room, I started to realize what a massive fail I was getting into.

So the kids spent about an hour figuring out how to pull the sheets down. This was helpful to me because I could out child proof the kids once I knew their strategy. Yes, I’m gloating about out strategizing a pair of 20 month old toddlers. You’re damn right I’m gloating about it.

Eventually they did go to sleep. Of course, that left the wife and I talking very quietly and watching the TV on closed captioning out of nail-biting fear that we might wake the animals in their cages. Not quite the best way to start a “vacation”. The good news is that if the kids went to sleep around 10, and they usually go to sleep around 7, then certainly they’d sleep until like…..9….10 in order to make up for it, right?

Parenting tip: Your children will wake up whenever they damn well feel like it, and it’s inversely related to when they went to sleep.

Friday morning came early. As you can see in the earlier picture, there’s a bed right next to the crib jail. That’s where I was sleeping. About way-too-fucking-early-thirty in the morning I hear the following occurring on the other side of the sheet.

“Nolan? Nolan?” followed by “hi”.

I peeled my sleep-crusted eyes open enough to see Lilly pull back her sheet and poke her head out at me. She looked right at me and said “Hi”. She might as well have yelled “Get out of bed, it’s freaking GO TIME!” When I uncurled enough to check what time it was, I saw it was 6:15 in the morning. “Vacation” is not starting out like a vacation. Remember – think air quotes.

Due to a severe case of laziness, we didn’t manage to get the children dressed and ready to go to breakfast until 8:30 or so. Before breakfast, we decided that we should let the kids go out on the balcony to enjoy the view of the ocean. We didn't realize that the balcony rail was the launching pad of death. Look at this unassuming railing. Then notice that the bottom rail is perfect infant standing height. Now consider that the whole thing isn't that high. The kids were constantly leaning over the edge, which I thought was funny. Wife wasn't as amused. Maybe I was just delirious from the lack of sleep because as I write this I'm sorta thinking this was a big deal.





In any event, we hung out outside until Lilly decided to throw her milk sippy over the edge. Leaning over the railing in anticipation of certain death -- OK! Throwing a 3 dollar sippy cup over the edge -- grounds for the end of "fun time".


We had a great big breakfast at a local dive bar/restaurant called Alice Fayes. It’s in the picture; it's the large red barn looking building. It's a doublewide with a really well engineering roofing system that makes it look fancy. It’s a good place to go at night if you’re looking for a fight or a rash that won’t wash off. But it’s also the best greasy spoon in the greater Fulton/Rockport area for breakfast. It has two doors – drinkin and fightin is on the left, good wholesome family food is on the right.

By the time we got back, momma and daddy were whipped…badly. And it was only about 9:45. At this time we were ready to sell the children for a nap. We had to figure out how to wear the kids out. We had to beat them. Not physically beat them, but win the challenge for familial superiority. So we hit the pool.

I’ll save you the play-by-play on the pool. Needless to say, it was a huge win! Somewhere between the adventure of something new and the learning experience of discovering that you can’t breathe water, the children wore down like a too-old sneaker. We got them out of the pool, back to the room, and then found out that “swim diapers” are only true in the “swim” part of it as we watched Lilly pee on the floor while wearing her supposed “diaper.” (sorry Sandollar Motel and Trailer Park, but my kid peed on your floor). Then we got them fed and down for a nap. After about an hour of doing the sheet game keeping their view properly obstructed, they slept. Then daddy slept. Check that -- daddy slept after he studied about what qualifies under the homestead exemption from forced sale under the Florida State Constitution. It's a half acre in incorporated areas or up to 160 acres in unincorporated areas, but if you own 180 acres of Florida swamp then those last 20 acres is all that won't be subject to the exemption assuming you don't abandon your homestead which is subject to a whole host of factual considerations. "Vacation” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The afternoon turned this bleak day of exhaustion and misery into something really fun. Like I mentioned before, we were here for a cousin’s wedding. Her pre-marriage party was in the afternoon on the beach. The kids haven’t ever been to the beach before, so this was a treat! The kids woke up happy, daddy woke up less grumpy than before nap, and we hit the road for the short drive to the Rockport Beach area. It’s a bay protected beach, so the waves aren’t

tremendous, so this place is perfect for the kids.
















They marched right on down to the water. Lilly was shy about the waves at first, but warmed to the whole scene pretty quickly.






Nolan got distracted by the birds and kept chasing after them. It was a lovely afternoon. The kids got doted on by their more distant family that they don’t really ever see, and daddy got to drink free beer. In case you don’t know, free beer is the best beer available today on the market at any price.

Nighttime came late for the kids, but it wasn’t nearly as traumatic as the night before. Day one of our “vacation” started out a little rocky, but straightened itself out fairly well. Day two is still ongoing, but it starts with a bang! Story is in process, will post later!

My home must resemble the jungles of Africa, because this shit happened again!

I'm about to tell you another story about wildlife in the home. This blog was at one time a happy place where I told all sorts of diverse stories about my children. Now it just seems like all I do is talk about the critters that come through the doggie door of reptilian death.

Sigh.

Let me set the stage, at least as I understand it to be. Wednesday I get a frantic call from the wife shortly after I got to work. She was panicky, I was not, there may have been children screaming in the background. I've done the best I could to piece together what happened. Because I wasn't there to witness this first hand, I've commissioned a well-known Dallas artist to storyboard the events of Wednesday last. (This isn't bullshit, he's a real artist).


The day started like most days start. Kids up at 6:30 or 7. Like most days, the wife got up with them (thanks wife). I get up around 30 minutes before I have to leave. Get ready for work, play with kids, then head on out to cruise in my sweet-ass 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix. I'd tell you what color the car is, but I'm not sure what you call whatever color that is on my Pontiac.

I'm getting sidetracked. Around 8:20 or so, I'm out the door.














As I leave, the wife and kids say their bye-byes, or "bah?" or "dadda!" or "BALL!" or whatever it is that the collective three of them said when I left last Wednesday.



Everything occurring after this point is pieced together from the best available evidence.






The wife, realizing that she was about to embark on another day of chatting with toddlers reading children's books she's read four hundred times already, and changing poopie diapers, settles in with a cup of coffee.








The children, knowing that they now have another day of holding momma hostage to their book reading demands and requests for attention, conspire together to plan their attack. At this point, the boy says "guh" to the girl.



Shortly after the children conspire, they venture out to collect the necessary implements to execute their plan.










Time passes.

Nolan asks for his mother's attention.

The wife responds.

Nolan presents his mother with a snake. Yes, a snake. No, I'm not making this shit up.
The key difference between this snake and the snake the baby girl was carrying around in her mouth is that this particular snake is still alive. Nolan is just carrying a live snake around the house.

The events of the prior 6 and a half seconds process in the wife's head.

Nolan and his new snake friend continue to stare at momma waiting for her doting approval of baby boy's new friend.

Momma does not approve.

Momma's lack of approval bothers the boy, and apparently the snake too.

At this point, I get the aforementioned phone call from the wife explaining the events of the day.

I don't exactly know what's going on in my yard or with my cats that drives this Wild Kingdom experiment. What I do know is that this shit better stop soon, or I'm going to have a totally neurotic family problem going on at home.

I feel like I've gone to the well one too many times on this whole "my kids are playing with critters" theme. I'm sort of tired of writing about it. But it keeps happening, and every time it creates a sit-com-esque level of slapstick comedy gold that simply must be shared.

Oh -- my wife reminded me that my first comment to her on the phone following this event wasn't "is everything OK" or "are you/son OK". It was "did you get a picture?"

I'm always thinking about the reading audience.

Different child, same malfunction

Last December, I told you guys about an incident where the boy ended up with a dead mouse in his mouth. Today, as I'm "watching" the children while the wife gets ready to take them to mother's day out, I turn around to see my sweet baby girl holding a string in her mouth. This string looked odd. Long. A little rubbery.

Oh -- that's right. Now I remember. The "string" looked funny because it wasn't a string. My sweet baby girl was holding a dead snake in her mouth. I really must thank our lovely cats for bringing us these presents. The other day one of them (the one we rescued for certain starvation no less) brought in a dead bird! I don't really mind the snakes and the mice, but birds are disease ridden skyrats!

I'm getting off track here.

So I see this snake in my baby girl's mouth and I calmly ask her to take it out of her mouth. Fortunately, she obliges. Now she's getting the sense that she's done something wrong, so I try to reassure her that it's all OK and this is daddy's hangup.

Story ends here, right? I mean -- dad throws the snake away and we all go about our days happy as can be.....right?

Yeah no.

I have to show this to momma. I'll admit, I wasn't just motivated by an altruistic desire to educate my wife as to the details of this snake's cat-bite related death. So I knock on the door to the room where my wife is. I tell her the story while holding the girl. And then I show her the evidence.

It wasn't pretty.

This blog was never about censorship. I've been asked by some to reduce the language or the truthiness of this online dumping ground. I've always told them no. This is my blog and it involves my thoughts and experiences. So my position has always been that if you don't care for it, don't read it.

I've been forced into making an exception here. I was sworn to a promise that I would not tell you about how my wife freaked out, which in turn freaked out the baby girl who was now almost certain that she did something really wrong (even though she didn't). I certainly promised not to tell you about how this dominoed into making the boy upset thinking something was really REALLY wrong with his momma. I'm not going to write about this.

Because I promised. And I'm a promise keeper.

Lilly and Nolan "cleaning"

This is what they do!

Nolan's First Haircut

The boy got his haircut for the first time. I wasn't expecting this to be something I really thought was neat, but I did. We took him to a barber that I used to go to when I was a teenager. Same barbers and everything. They didn't remember me. I've at least doubled the level of cool I had from the late 80s/early 90s, so I forgive them.

Anyway, Nolan was a shaggy hippie mess of hair. We were worried about how he'd do. Would he cry? Have a tantrum? Squirm around?

Turns out, none of the above. They put him up on the chair, gave him a sucker and paid attention to him. Turns out, all he needs to be good is to be the center of attention all the time. I'm sure this isn't a bad omen. Anyway, here's the pictures from the event:








It was pretty amazing how different he looked!

The babies aren't babies anymore, but they're not really people either

It's been about four months since I posted anything about the kids, so let me first put your minds at ease. No, they're not injured or otherwise incapacitated in any way that would make it distasteful for me to joke about their ongoing development. In fact, they're developing so fast and doing so many new things every day that it's difficult for me to remember to write about them. I'll think of something that they did two weeks ago and think to write about it, and then the kids will do something new that totally makes me forget about the "new" thing I was going to write about previously. There's been a lot of "fuck it" going on. As in, "fuck it, I forgot what was so cute on January 29th that I'm not going to write about it now."

Here's the status -- they're not freaking babies anymore. I don't exactly know when this happened, but it happened. They sleep every night through the night, they communicate in their own way, they certainly walk and run, and they find creative ways to get in trouble. It's a long LONG way from the screaming burritos that made me want to run the car in a closed garage.

The other side of that is that they're not people either. They're still learning things that we all take for granted. For example, one of the things that they learned during the last four months of not writing was how to ask to hold your hand when they need help with a walking obstacle. This is ridiculously cute. One of them, it doesn't matter -- they're equally cute on the whole, will stop at a step or a steep hill and hold up their hand. It's their way of saying "hold my hand, jackleg, or I'll bust my head". It's super cute and I think it means they'll go to Harvard.

The fun part is telling the story from before they learned to do this. That was fun. Fun in a "looking back on it" kind of way. Because at the time it was terrifying. It went like this -- walking, walking, walking (approaching step), walking, walking (getting closer to step), walking (at step), fall on head and scream for two hours and then let the neighbors wonder how you got that huge gash on your head. It happened like this more than once. Probably three times. Every one of them was my fault. It just was. Don't ask.

They also talk now. Lilly has more words than Nolan, but Nolan does just fine. They know the dogs' names, although they still call "Maggie" "Mawwie". They know the names for their ears, hands, eyes, mouth, nose, feet, and belly button. And they know how to ask for "more". Oh hell, do they know how to ask for "more". Why did we teach them how to ask for "more"? What the hell is wrong with us? "MORE MORE MORE MORE". It doesn't matter what it is. I do this thing with both kids where I swing them upside down. They love it, but I'm almost certain I'm brain damaging them. I get nervous after about the fourth uncontrolled violent swing upside down. But the kiddo (doesn't matter which) always arrives right side up with their little face a little red from the blood rush and their eyes a little off kilter from the swinging screaming "moorrree mooreee moorrrrreeee" with a little giggle going on. What's a father to do? Seriously, if this screws them up, I'm blaming it on the lead in the water.

Here's the kids with "Mawwie"

Speaking of belly buttons, they've learned to look for daddy's belly button when I ask "where's daddy's belly button". I'd tell you about the collection of lint, but I'd rather keep this blog PG-13. Or R. Whatever. In any event, it's cute if you can deal with linty beer bellied belly buttons.

Nighttime is the biggest change over the last 17 months. Seriously, go back and read the stuff I used to write about nighttime. It's scary. I honestly don't remember most of 2009 up until about July. But the kids now basically put themselves to bed. It's adorable. I'm not one for mushy, but the way the kids act when it's time for them to go to bed should be packaged and sold as sweetener.

If flying solo (which the wife does far more than me) -- it goes like this. You literally just ask the kids to go to bed. You have to say something stupid, like "beddy" or "sleepey" -- but they get the point. They walk down the hall to their bedroom and THEY get out their pillow to rest on while they have their night bottle. Then you give them their bottle and they drink it. When they're done with their bottle, they will crawl on you and hug on you. Then you ask them if they want to go to sleep. Again -- you have to say "sleepey" or they don't get it. They will walk to their own respective cribs and essentially ask you to put them in them. When you do, they lie down and sleep. I don't know what I did to deserve this, but I did it.

So that's the last four months. You've got the update. I'll try to be more diligent in the future.

Just in case you didn't see this video on Facebook

The kiddos seen here playing on their slide they got from their grandma and grandpa for Christmas!