I'm so scared

The wife, after over a year of caring for our young, has decided that if she doesn't get a weekend to hang out with her friends back in Raleigh that she will probably go crazy. I welcome this trip! I think it's awesome that she finally gets a break to go play and have some fun. It's no problem....you know...leaving the two children with daddy...to keep them alive....and shit...

Oh fuck I'm scared!

I'm sure this will work out fine. Hopefully nobody will need a doctor, or a policeman, or a discreet neighbor to help dig a hole in the park to hide evidence.

Wish me luck!

Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun

Raising twins is not all roses and sarcastic fun about the mental harm we might be breeding. Where having two children at the same time kinda sucks monkeynuts is when they get sick. When one gets sick, the other gets sick. That's fine when it's some benign sickness, like pneumonia, or a cold, or a fever, or SARS....or anything else that doesn't necessarily involve vomit. But when the sickness involves a free flow of semi-processed food out of both ends of two babies, that's when the handy-dandy parental color chart of fear and anger goes to Red.





It started harmlessly enough. A little coughing, some sneezing. Maybe some runnypoo. But then, three nights ago, our son barfed up a little of his dinner while he was eating. Not enough to really even qualify as barf. Sort of a teaser barf. Then, after his bathtime and after going through the alligator-wrestling session it takes to get him in his pajamas (another topic that deserves it's own analysis), my little boy decided to show everybody how much material he could hold in his stomach. It was enough. There are plenty of images on google I could use to illustrate this, but I think this one tells the story....and it's seasonal!



The picture is not to scale, in case you were wondering.

So the boy barfs on the floor while I'm holding him. Real barf. Not "normal baby barf". More like "I tried to drink a case of beer and failed" barf. In case you've never held a baby barfing real people-barf onto a hardwood floor, lemme just tell you that it's a unique-sounding event. Unique....yeah...that's a good word for it. We'll just call that shower of potato soup splattering the floor over the sounds of your semi-gagging child "unique".

So we have to go through the whole process of re-cleaning one screaming baby while trying to get the other baby to sleep. It's a strange coordinated parental dance that somehow works without really discussing things. Eventually we did get the boy cleaned up and back to sleep. It was really pathetic, he was so tired after barfing up all his food.

The story doesn't end here. The next day was uneventful, save for a continuing showing of the runnypoo. We took the boy to the children's vet and the doctor gave us one of those non-descript quasi-diagnoses that conveniently come without any medication to fix the problem. A modern day version of diagnosing the kid with "crud", or "generalized sick". The wife's grandmother calls this "bonkus of the conkus". Which just goes to show that those eight years of book learnin those doctors do aren't worth much! Basically we've got to wait this one out.

Good thing it's just one of the children, right? If you're reading this correctly, you would have just slumped your shoulders and sighed deeply at the knowledge of what's coming next.



Last night we got the children down for sleeping. The kids sleep great. In fact, one of the reasons I don't post more than I do is because the kids don't make me nearly as crazy as they used to. They're great kids at this point, and posting day after day about how awesome my kids are makes for really lame blogging. So the kids sleep great, which made it weird that the girl woke up last night at 2:30 in the morning. Freaking out! Just flat.freaking.thefuck.out. So we did what any normal parent of twins would do, we tried to wait it out so we could go back to sleep.

That didn't work.

So I got up and went in to calm the girl. When I got in there, I saw that the poor child was covered in her own sick. Just barfed her little lungs out. So we had the screaming-baby-covered-in-barf episode again, but this time with the added bonus of it being 2:30 in the morning. My poor saintly wife stayed up for another hour trying to get the girl calmed down enough to go back to sleep. So that's how that night went.

We're not done yet. And somebody tell those old geezer hecklers to shut up, I'm getting to the end!

Today was encouraging. The kids ate just fine. They were a little fussy, but nothing special. They went to sleep without issue. But then those little barf ninjas ganged up on us! Baby girl barfed her guts out in her crib around 8:15, and baby boy followed suit by painting the inside of his crib an hour later. So now we're out of clean sheets and we're running so thin on pajamas that my son is proudly rocking the pink PJs! They at least had the good sense to do this at a reasonable hour! There really is nothing sadder than a baby who is done barfing their guts out. Everybody knows how terrible you feel after a really good hurl. The head-in-the-toilet / I'm-going-to-die-and-that-sounds-good kinds of hurling. The kind of hurling where you've got leftover hurl on the side of your face, and you're a little sweaty and you might have some tears in your eyes. Olympic-level hurling. You feel awful. So you can imagine how sad it is to see a little baby who doesn't have the ability to comprehend how terrible they feel. It's not a fun thing. The bright spot is that I think they might be getting better (I hope)!

This is the end of this tale. The cat made some sort of hacking noise when the wife left for bed. Seriously, the next animal that barfs in this house is going to live on the farm!

The End

but wait, it gets even awesomer

After writing all of this (which was last night), my wife was gently rocking the baby girl back to sleep she gurgled up some barf again. Seriously. She barfed again! So that was fun. So to recap last night it went:

7:00 -- bed
8:15 -- Girl Barf
8:45 -- Boy Barf
10:30 -- Girl Barf, part deux
oh and don't let me forget to tell y'all that my son thought it'd be awesome to wake up this morning at 5:45.

After the second girl barf of last night, we might have wiped the barf off the sheets instead of changing them because we were out of clean sheets. We might have done that. I mean, we wouldn't, because that would make us awful people and parents. I'm just saying that it might have happened.

Our Babies Do Chores Around the House!

How blessed are we? Not only do we have two children who are healthy and smart with all their fingers and toes (STILL!), but we have the added benefit of having children with a built-in desire to help around the house. I don't know where they get it, but they've got it!

Lilly Doing Dishes

The other day we looked up and saw our daughter "doing" the dishes. That was sweet of her. Our first reaction upon seeing our baby girl literally standing inside the dishwasher was QUICK, GET THE CAMERA! What can I say? I make bad judgments when it comes down to particularly dangerous situations which also appear undeniably cute. The point/counterpoint goes like this: "Well, I could take that knife out of her hand, but really, what's the chance she'll cut off something that really matters in the twenty seconds it'll take to get these pictures?" Add it all to the list that I'll have to answer for in therapy.

The thought process here was, "is twenty pounds of baby enough to break a dishwasher door?" I figured it was close enough to make it worth it if the baby girl happened to destroy our dishwasher.

Here she is -- "Helping"

At one point, she looked like she might actually know she shouldn't be doing this.

And then, of course, her older brother Nolan got into the mix. It was about this time that we had to shut it down. That was enough dish helping for one day!

Nolan Helping with the DoggieCare

We have two dogs. I believe they've posted on this blog a couple times. Those dogs are crafty, and they demand attention. Fortunately, Nolan is around to assist with the dog. Once again, my parent-brain had to decide if I was going to allow our germ-ridden 100 pound dog to lick all over my son in the middle of flu season and potentially eat his face, or if it was worth the risk for a couple good pictures. I chose wisely!

Lastly, and certainly least -- Lilly helping with the groceries

How do I even editorialize this. Here's Lilly putting groceries away. She's a super-helper, as you can tell, What might not be totally captured here is her awesome ability to take things that are already put away, and throw them on the floor.

She's a little mischievous.

So there it is. The kids are moving at warp speed and getting into everything. Nolan is a little more subdued than Lilly, but I think that'll change as time goes on. Lilly is walking (wait for the video on that one). Nolan is just crawling at light speed. It's been almost a year since the twins were born, and it seems fairly obvious that this shit ain't gonna get any easier!

Our kids are on youtube now.

Real life marital conversation last night

Wife:

Did you really take a picture of our son chewing on an electrical
cord?

Me:

What? It was unplugged.

Holy shit, they're moving!

Every parent in the world warned us of this. A mere warning shouldn't be surprising, every parent warns every other parent of everything that faces them in the future. "Just wait until they poop solid" or "just wait until they cut teeth" or " just wait until they won't go down for a nap" or "just wait until they get sick for the first time". All of these comments are born out of good intentions, but you get warning overload after a while. But there was always one warning out there that kinda made me pee a little out of fear.

"just wait until they start crawling"

Of course, that day would never come. I don't need to worry about that crap, because my kids will be permanently the same as they are right now. Crawling? Shit, have you seen my kids? With my genetic poisioning, they're lucky they're coordinated enough to make it through each day! They're never going to crawl!

Well fuck me, cause they're crawling now. They're pretty good at it too. This started out slowly. Lilly started getting up on all fours and muttering about things out of her reach. Cute, right? Then she started trying to pull on things in a feeble attempt to stand. Adorable, right? Then she started to actually move a little and actually pull up on things to a semi-standing position. And then she started moving on all fours. Just a little at first. Enough to give us plausible deniability. "Oh, she's not crawling, she's farting or something".

She was crawling. Of course, in true Lilly fashion, she does it all tarded like. She humps her right leg behind her while she crawls. It looks like a crab. We laugh at it. The baby vet says it's normal. Sometimes she crawls normal, but most the time it's tarded crab crawl city for our Lilly!

Then she just started standing up on her own. Like "tah dah, I'm standing now guys"! I say "standing" but she was kinda wobbly, like dad in college on a Tuesday night.

So then there's Nolan, who basically just sat around watching his sister do these things. Well, he also got into the act. But his crawling, for whatever reason, was met with more faceplants than Lilly's.

Speaking of faceplants, when a baby does a faceplant, it's fucking serious! It's a legitimate "bam!" right on the face! No bracing, nothing. Just a "lah lah lah, I'm a baby and *wham* shit, now I'm on my face". If this ever happened to me with the kind of force it happens to babies, I'd probably go to the hospital. For some reason, the babies don't seem to mind that much. Seriously, they just sorta shake it off. It's strange.

But I digress. So there's Nolan and he's putzing around trying to crawl. Again, this is ridiculous, right? They're not EVER going to crawl! They're just little tiny babies!

Fast forward two weeks. They crawl now. They crawl really fast, and never in the same direction! It makes it very hard for me, as a parent, to sit and surf the internet and drink my coffee and otherwise be uninvolved when they're crawling around looking for dogs, or electrical cords, or knives.

Yes. Electrical cords. For some reason or another, the sweet smell of rubber-coated copper alive with 120 volts of death draws in children faster than meth smoke makes Amy Winehouse appear. It's a constant challenge keeping the kids from lighting themselves up.

So it's a challenge. Every day they get into more stuff.

Here's video of Lilly doing her tarded crab-crawl to the doggie door. She doesn't actually figure out how to get outside, but it's really close.

The day after this video was shot, we got this picture of Nolan AND Lilly checking out the doggie door issue.

Lastly, I have this example of the shit I'm dealing with. Electrical cords AND a doggie door. It's like the trinity of things that will maim our kids. Except it's only two things. Stupid failure!

I is a Nolan, and I has new trix!

Hallow. I is a Nolen. I am a boye. I alsos has a seester. She iz a lillie -- she is not boy becuz she broke her boyepart off.

I is all babye. I eet like baybe, and i talk like baybe. One time waye bak like 2 dayz agos i used to slep like baybe.

I stoped dooing that. Hahahahahaha!

Herez whats i dos nows... I goes to sleeps after mah bottlez. thats tha wahe I alawyz dids it beforee toos. But nows, at least for the past twoe dazy, I cry at 8:30 and then barf a lot so mah momma and dadda come in and change mah sheets and play withe mee agains! Is soofunne! I laufffs! And barfes!

I dunt think i is sicks or nothings. I just barfes at nights and cryes. Daddie goes outs of townes tomorrowes for a week. Maybes i will keeps barfings and torture mommies.


i is a funnie boe! hehahhahaha

Happy Birthday America and Freedom....now with babies!

We had the best fourth of July EVAH!

It started out on the morning of the 4th. Our neighborhood had a parade. Complete with Sousa march music and all the young parents and the old residents. We even had a 1928 Chevy pulling up the rear honking the slow pokes to move it. The kind of thing that pre-parenthood I would have thought was totally dumb. But now it's pretty cool.


As you can see, we brought the dog. Maggie had a great time. The kids mostly slept, but we got pictures to remind them how much fun they had.



Here's Nolan loving on his doggie.. He loves his doggie. Maggie, she's not so sure yet.




After the parade, we went to a pool party out in McKinney. Yahhh! Pool! The kids hadn't ever been in a big swimming pool before. Lilly got a nice, calm introduction into pool life. I think overprotective parents like us have really nice thoughts about how to introduce children into the water. Quick dips, reassuring holding, laughing, all that stuff. Not my honeybunny! She thought it'd be awesome to take a misstep in the pool and fall into the water with Lilly. Lilly loved it. Thought it was great. She's definitely our wild child. The wife, on the other hand, thought she might have scarred the child for good. Turns out it wasn't the child she scarred, but rather the inside of her foot, which she cut on the pool. She wrenched her knee too. (EDIT -- it turns out that the wife actually tore her MCL in the fall. Opps!). But the kiddo is just fine. Lilly loved the pool!



Here she is doing her Lilly dance! She's our dancing queen.




Lilly's dancing might be more proof of her tardedness





Nolan also had a great time in the pool, although his experience was less dangerous. He rocked the fauxhawk, because he's that awesome.

Here he is in his pool boat. That face he's making is part of his new routine where he sucks on his cheeks and makes a "fish face". He's just now discovering his lips or something. Whatever it is, it's just cute.

Our first fourth of July with the kids was awesome!

Follow up on all that touchy-feeley stuff

Lilly pooped a turd this morning. A real honest-to-goodness turd. Yahhhh!


Edit on the turd. The wife tells me that this changed later in the day. Apparently the turd was just plugging up the lake behind it.

Oh and Happy Birthday to our twins' friends who are also twins Willa and Dovie.

"It changes everything"

*Disclaimer* -- this is being written after twelve days of sick children. My previous post about how great the kids were was before their snotty noses and congested chests kept them from sleeping through the night. We've been sucking snot and boogers out of their heads with a medieval torture suction device for almost two weeks. And we're sick too. And I've been barfed on three times in the last two days. Without request or consent. So if you read this at any time and think, "fuck, this guy is bitter", consider the circumstances.


*End Disclaimer*

We had my father-in-law's 60th birthday party on Saturday night. It was a really fun time, many of his friends and family came out. The wife and I (read my wife) put together a nice collage of pictures of my father-in-law's youth; from the time he was a baby to high school and beyond.

My father-in-law's mother was also there. She's in her late 70s. During the party, my wife and I quizzed her about the pictures of my father-in-law. We recorded this on video. While I was filming this, I thought about how damn cool it is that my kids get to see their great grandmother tell stories and explain pictures of their grandfather from when he was just a baby. What an amazing thing to be able to share with them! Putting myself in their perspective, I can't imagine how neat it would be to see video of my great grandparents (who I never knew) explain what kind of children my grandparents (who I barely knew) were.

It was one of those "neat" things. One of those things that makes you feel awesome inside.

When we were expecting children, I was annoyed at how many people would pat me on the shoulder and simply tell me that having children "changes everything". There were variations on this, of course. "Nothing will be the same", "you'll never view things the same", the perpetually aggravating "get your sleep now", and the ever-so-nice "advice" I got from a defense lawyer in Florida, "you won't get a full night's sleep for about....oh.....eight years".

I took this advice with a smile. Inside I was thinking, "Thanks a lot, asshole". What the shit kind of advice or guidance is it for an expectant parent to hear how much stuff is going to change? How does that help? What the fuck does that even mean? "Everything is going to change", shit these people made it sound like I was living in some pre-apocalyptic utopia where everything was nice and nothing was going to hurt you. The pre-judgment day from the original Terminator movie, only to be met by a future plagued with sub-par special effects of death machines flying through the sky to kill me.

Turns out, it was probably the best advice anyone could offer.

How do you explain being a parent? How do you tell somebody else how to expect to be a parent? Everything about this experience is new. All of it. The clearest thing about all of this is that it has, in fact, changed everything. Our life pre-baby is done. Over. It simply doesn't exist. Who I was pre-baby is done. This is an amazing job, and you really have to take it all. You have no other choice.

My wife and I left the kids with the grandparents for a little while today so we could go shopping for groceries and stuff without them. We were gone for about two hours. We talked about how much things have changed. There's the things that we miss. The obvious things are easy, things like sleep, naps, dates, stuff like that -- that's easy. But there's the other stuff. We miss not having to have our lives revolve around the feeding schedules of these two small lives. We miss being free to head out at night to meet with friends. Even the simple act of lounging is gone. That 30 minutes to an hour in the mornings on the weekend when all you non-parent people hang out and do nothing while you figure out your day -- that doesn't exist. Finally, we miss the financial freedom that comes from not having to spend hundreds of dollars a week on things that will be consumed either in food or in clothing to catch the food once its processed.

Our entire lives revolve around their lives. All of it. Planning, my work schedule, sleeping, cooking meals, making bottles, going to the store, even the most simplest of tasks, like having a moment to take a nice half-a-magazine dump or a shower has to be scheduled around their needs.



And it never ends.

We will always be their parents. We will always be responsible for keeping them alive and helping them grow into peoples their communities can count on. We can't "walk away" from any of this. There's no left-handed relief pitcher warming in the bullpen to bail us out. It's just us.

But that's the way it is. That's what being a parent is. And that's what all those assholes were trying to tell me when they told me that this experience would "change everything".

The reward for this is paid out in small, but valuable, pieces. A smile. A laugh when you walk in the room. A baby that stops crying when you pick it up, because you're it's daddy and they love you. The look on a baby's face when you go in the morning to get them and they look up and say "hey, you came back for me"! Seeing how your baby really is yours as it gets older and bigger and makes it clear that it really is a part of you. These brief and fleeting moments overwhelm any despair that even a more cynical father than myself might harbor. It really does fill up the old emotional bank account. So much so that events like when my boy barfed on me twice today become "cute".

The strangest thing about all of this is that it's all worth it. The crying, the sleeplessness, the stress that comes from having newborn twins, it does all pay off. Sometimes in big pieces, sometimes in small ones, but for every moment where something makes me think "gahhh", there's a more valuable moment where I'm flat out floored by this whole experience. In a good way. I'm sure this continues. I'm sure I'll bitch to no end when I find out that my kids were lippy to their teacher in class, but I know they'll pay it back to me somehow. They better.

Everything really has changed. The idea that being barfed on twice in a day would be "cute" just goes to show that what was the way it was a year ago is gone. How in the world could anybody have possibly told me any of this in a level of detail sufficient enough for me to understand what they meant?

Cutting back to the start, while I was recording my grandmother-in-law talking about her son, my father-in-law, I realized that this is truly a universal experience. We're fortunate to be able to share that moment of family history with the kids, long after their great grandmother and their grandfather are both no more for this Earth. I have a feeling that while granny was telling the story about her son, she was also feeling some great sense of how much everything paid off for her too.

So if you're having a child, and you happen to ask me anything about what's in store, please don't think less of me if I grab your shoulder and just tell you that everything is about to change.

Damnit damnit damnit!!!

Every single freaking time I say something good.....GAHHHH!


Do y'all remember this crap?

Lilly even un-fucked herself enough to stop waking up at 5 A.M.
Yahhh!

Posted on flippin SATURDAY???


Guess who decided it'd be just super-awesome fun to whine-cry (not real crying -- that'd be rude) from 3:30am to 5:30 am? Just guess? That little girl with the wookie growl.

Parents -- don't ever say good things about your kids. They'll just go and fuck you on it.

I guess the good news is that she did eventually work out her issues and go back to sleep. Lilly honey, if you're reading this, that's not a complement -- so don't decide to stop doing this just cause daddy said nice things about your self-soother.

Updates are in order!

I believe that all parents find that six or seven months into things, you begin to get the hang of how the situation works. What was novel and new at the beginning is now commonplace. So when Nolan barfs up dinner and his bottle right before he goes to sleep -- thats an event that would have been blogworthy five months ago, but is now just another Wednesday. Likewise, the wife and I used to comment "oh -- I was holding Lilly up over my head and she spit up in my mouth". Now we just say "good morning". Our lives have changed. Things are much different for us, but gradually they're turning back towards some degree of normalcy.

We've lost touch with some friends, but we've also gained new friends through this experience. Our priorities are totally different, which makes heading out for an 8:00 PM drink with buddies a zero percentage possibility. On the other hand, the value of things I considered pussy olympics five years ago -- things like "play dates" -- is now tremendously increased.

This whole experience has also made me feel closer to my parents in a weird "paging Dr. Freud" kind of way. I feel like I've somehow validated the trouble I gave them for most of my 33 years by giving them these two bundles of adorable goodness. Maybe I'm reading too much into that. Then again, the thought that either Lilly or Nolan would treat me like I treated my parents makes me cringe a little inside. They better not! Filthy bastards.....

The kids are doing all sorts of cute things. Lilly dances in her exersaucer. Freaking dances. It's the cutest thing ever. And Nolan -- that little kiddo just loves his daddy. It's great, he laughs his head off when I "attack" him. They're healthy happy little children. So yeah, they still poop nuclear shit that I believe is the base material Saddam cooked into the chemical weapons he used on the Kurds, but they make up for it.

Lilly even un-fucked herself enough to stop waking up at 5 A.M. Yahhh!

We had our six-month photos.. Here's a taste

Site change

The web url for this blog is now twindergarten.blogspot.com -- just a small change. Something a little too non-anonymous about the last site. Not that this one disguises who we are all that well.

Six Months Down!

Can you believe it? The kids are six months old now. They're starting to act like little people instead of little buckets of cry and poop. We're also discovering that they need attention. All.The.Time. One of them needs to be held or talked to and the other one needs to cry while the "good" one is being carried or rocked or spoken to. It's fairly high maintenance, and once again I find myself quietly cursing those parents who only had one at a time.

I make this sound like I'm the one doing the day-to-day work with the kids. Not so! Not at all! The wife has taken on the full-time role of taking care of babies. Honestly, I feel for her. I'd go crazy if the only conversation I had was with two babies and two needy dogs. I'm like the low-cost cell phone provider of fathers... Nights and weekends.

The kids have little personalities now, allow me to share.

Lilly

Lilly is clearly our chatterbox. She's always making noises, shrieking, playfully wailing, laughing. She even growls. No shit, she'll sit there and make these long draw-out growling noises. GAarrrgalllllalllggrrrralllllGRRRALLLLl. The wife and I call her our Wookie baby, even though my wife doesn't know Empire Strikes Back from Empire of the Sun.

Lilly also said her first word. At least we're counting it as her first word. She says "da-da". She's probably just throwing consonants and vowels together, but we're counting it. If I ever get the time, I'll throw video up on this shizz.

Lilly still thinks it's a-ok to wake up at 4:30 or 5 every morning. We've tried telling her to stop that shit, but she doesn't seem to understand. Other than the extraordinarily early rising, she's been a good little sleeper.

Lilly is a big baby. Both babies are actually pretty big. She's between 15 and 20 pounds, and we're almost certain that Nolan is over 20 pounds. He's a chunky monkey. She's come a long way from her bird legs she had when we took her home.

Nolan

Have you ever seen a cuter baby? Just go ahead and say no, because you haven't. Nobody has! This little pudger is about as adorable as it gets. Taken in with his sister, who's also a darling piece of pie, and it's like cute overload. Like Trainspotting, except with babycute instead of heroin.

Nolan is our "calmer" baby, but that's not saying much. He'll still throw a king-sized tantrum and he's still high maintenance. But he sleeps much longer. Nolan is a happy boy, no question. He's always smiling or laughing, and he'll find the oddest things hilarious. His daddy for example. For some reason, I'm the funniest thing he's ever seen. Ohhh, I can take that one in a hundred different directions, none of them good.

As you can see, Nolan hasn't missed too many meals. They're both so big, just big ol chunker babies.

Over the last couple months, there's been a number of really great parenting experiences. The wife and I are going to try to share some of them. Some of the long-time followers might be wondering where the sarcastic and cynical author of the earlier posts has gone. It turns out that when you get more than 3 hours of sleep at a time, you find yourself less twisted with black humor.