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!

How are we supposed to raise healthy kids when all they want to do is find creative ways to kill themselves?

The kids are thirteen months old now. I don't know if they're going through a phase of triskaidekaphobia or what, but as of the last two months or so they've been going out of their way to find new and novel ways to kill themselves. They're really good at this. "Child proof" electrical covers? Yeah, Lilly figured those out about a month ago. She laughs at us when she takes the covers off. Literally looks at us and laughs. Nolan drinks bathwater. He plunges his face into the bathwater and drinks it like a dog. He ends up with a soapfaced Santa look when he's done. And don't get me started with the way they're both fascinated with loading themselves up in the dishwasher.

But today was the cake. The cake with icing on the top. We bought our Christmas tree yesterday, we didn't have one last year. Being the diligent sort that we are, we secured the area with a baby gate so the kids couldn't reach the tree. So far, so good. However, we may have brought a critter in with the tree all Clark W. Griswold style. Oh the things that you don't plan for.

We live in a somewhat wooded area of Dallas. This is relative, of course, but there's a creek in front of our house with trees and tall grass. We also have two cats. Two very proud cats. They've brought us snakes and mice in the past, including one very entertaining moment when we shooed the cat out the front door with a marginally alive mouse in its mouth only to have that same cat with the same marginally living mouse appear at the dog door out back.

It's possible we brought the mouse at the heart of this story in with the tree. It's also possible that one of the cats brought it in last night. Either way...there was a mouse with the Christmas tree.

This morning started well. The kids got up around 7:15. We watched them run around, and kept them from killing themselves. Then they ate aroun 8:15. About 8:45 I excused myself to go read in the bathroom. And poop. Reading and poop. Anyway, I get all settled in, got everything set up how I want it, and I'm all ready to spend the next few minutes of my life undisturbed in the bathroom when I hear it.

I hear my wife screaming bloody murder. The kind of screaming you hear and you instantly think "oh shit, I'm down to one kid now" without really knowing what else might be going on. So I yell out, "What's going on?" Hearing no response, but more screaming, I did what any responsible father would do. I came out of the bathroom to check it out. I'm not even going to tell you how. Anyway, I open the bedroom door and my wife is there and she breathlessly tells me that Lilly was holding a mouse. I ask, "dead"? She says yes. So I return to the bathroom. This isn't an emergency anymore, right? Go throw the dead mouse away and clean the girl's hands....right?

So I get situated again to complete the job I set out to do (I'm a finisher!). Not 90 seconds later I hear MORE SCREAMING! Knowing that the kids hadn't stabbed themselves, and that this was likely just mouse-fallout, I was nonplussed.

When I returned to the kitchen, my white-faced wife was frantically scrubbing both of the kids in the sink saying, "He had it in his mouth!"

I asked for clarification, "Nolan had the dead mouse in his mouth?"

"YES!"

Again, nonplussed. I go examine this mouse, which is located right in the middle of the living room floor.

The mouse was dead. Those cats are cold blooded killers. The mouse had a surgical-precision tooth puncture in its throat. I don't think mousey suffered much.

Apparently, Nolan reacted to momma's total freakout about the dead fuzzy mouse by picking the mouse up, then putting it in his mouth and carrying it in his mouth across half the room. There's a part of me that is really proud of that boy. There's another part of me that wants to call poison control.

The mouse was wrapped lovingly in a paper towel and buried respectfully in a trash can full of food scraps and coffee grounds. His mouse family did not attend. Yes, I did one "he's still alive!" move just to see if I could get my wife to pee in her pants. Close, but not quite.

This story ends with a question mark. Will our children develop the hantavirus? This is the season for that after all, Hanta ryhmes with Santa! Will our children turn into part mouse-part people superheros? The big question has to do with how else the children will attempt to kill themselves. So far they've tried electrocution, intentional drowning, falls, bludgeoning themselves, human dishwashing and now an attempt to poison themselves with dead rodentia. It almost makes me miss that period of time where they couldn't move on their own. Almost.

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.