Updates, Memories, and things I don't want to forget

This blog was always intended to be a humorous look at parenting. Something washed free of the bubbly varnish that parents understandably assign to their children's early years. Over the course of the last two and a half years, I've tried to write about things in a manner that reflected my personal view of events at the time they were happening. From early adventures with poop disasters to learning how to sleep through the night to having the audacity to call my little brilliant angel "tarded", I've tried to make light of the process of raising children.

This post is not written to humorously recount tales of parental tragedy. Nope, this post is written to remember the things they do now that I hope to never forget.

Let's start with Nolan

Nolan says certain words wrong. He calls "olives" "owibes". He says the words "There" and "Here" with an unusually strong Texas accent. "Thay-re" and "Hay-re". I find this so damn cute that I honestly hope he never learns how to say these words the right way. He used to call his sister "Lolly". Speaking of lolly, he used to eat the sticks on his lollypops. Nolan is a curious boy who loves his puzzles like his Russian nesting dolls. If he understands something, he wants to explain it to people. He gets loud when he gets frustrated, as he doesn't understand how to express himself in those situations. If he's anything like his daddy, he won't figure that out until his mid-20s. Maybe not even then.

Nolan's memory is striking, and a little frightening. He will randomly bring up details of an event that occurred a year ago. Literally. He remembers specific details of when he was just 18 months old, and talks about them at random times when something in his brain triggers that memory. I remember memorizing the Dallas Cowboys roster from a McDonald's poster when I was 4 years old. I memorized every name, number and position, including the coaches. I don't know why I did this, I just did. I think Nolan got that. It's strange to watch on the other end of it.

Nolan is beautiful. Sometimes I'll catch a glimpse of him smiling or laughing or something and I'm just dumbfounded at how cute that kid is. I don't mean this as some sort of annoying parent-bragging thing. The boy has a happiness about him that makes me wish I could tell him how special this part of his life is. I wish we could all have some retroactive appreciation of the innocence of youth.

And Lilly

Lilly is brilliant, despite her appearance in this photo. I think she's smarter than I am now. And she's not yet three. Lilly possesses a powerful sense of empathy. She's legitimately concerned about the feelings and well being of other people. My mother has been dealing with a family issue that's been very hard for her lately. One afternoon about a month ago, we took the kids to see grandma. Lilly, knowing almost nothing of the situation went up to her grandma and held her hands out palms up and asked "Grandma, are you having a bad day"? What two year old does that?

Lilly is a chatterbox. And she's bossy as hell. But she's bossy in a really sweet way. She'll tell Nolan to "be careful" or "don't do that", but she's doing it so Nolan doesn't do something he'll regret later. And Lilly is my little angel. If she bumps her knee or gets a boo-boo and starts pouting about it, it makes me crush a little on the inside. Honestly, if she seriously asked me for a pony tomorrow, I'd probably make that happen. Lilly has a smile and a humor about her that makes others around her want to be near her. It's magnetic. The thing she does that makes me laugh like crazy is when she comments on Nolan when Nolan is acting bad. She'll say, "Nolan is being....a butt." But she'll run the words "a butt" together so it sounds like one word... "abutt". She doesn't know what it means, she just knows it makes her daddy laugh under his breath, knowing that's not the sort of thing Lilly should be saying about her brother. Lilly is the most beautiful, smart little girl I've ever seen or known. I often have to pinch myself when I have one of those moments where I think that she's my daughter. I'm a lucky person.

Honestly, I could go on for hours about the things both Lilly and Nolan do that amaze me every day. After a while, it'd just sound like proud poppa stuff. Nobody wants to read that.

The early days of raising twins is awful. I really don't have much of a memory of the details of the first 18 months or so of the kids lives. I'd hate to develop that sort of amnesia about the last 14 months. Their role in my life is something I'd never thought I'd have. Every day I learn something about them as they learn something new about their world. It's a gift. And without any sarcasm or attempt at humor, it's been the greatest thing I've ever had a chance to experience.

We probably should have turned around when they were shitting water by the time we got to Waxahachie

Next week we're heading out to the coast for our second "vacation" with the kids. Regular readers of my bi-yearly-updated blog will remember how our vacation went last year with the kids. It got me thinking about all the stories I've been filing away to write "later" on this site. Since next week will undoubtedly produce something I'll want to share with the rest of the world, I need to purge.

The title of this story comes from an adventurous trip to Austin last October for my sister's wedding. One, or both, of the kids had a raging episode of diarrhea. Frankly I don't recall if they both had it, I seem to remember that Nolan's issues were clearing up while Lilly's was getting worse. What I do remember are the diaper changes by the Grandy's in Italy, Texas. Memorable because it's just south of Dallas and it was our second diaper-poopexplosion of the trip. We were being told things by the parental gods. We just didn't care to listen.

When we arrived in Austin, things went downhill in a hurry. The first evening we were there was the night of the rehearsal dinner. It was a lovely affair. My sister, the bride, hadn't seen the kids in a long time and was thrilled to get to spend time with them. Lilly, feeling a little bit drained from her.....well......draining, just wanted to be held. My sister was more than willing to accommodate. Lilly then thanked my sister by barfing on her. All.over.the.bride. There's one most of you didn't get to experience at your rehearsal dinner! The sis took it in stride, but Lilly, Nolan and momma had to cut short their party before the food even arrived. Me? I stayed, of course! Somebody had to represent the family.

Later that night, Lilly threw up some sort of vile milk product all over her bed and pajamas. If you haven't had the pleasure of experience curdled toddler-milkvomit, then you've missed something in life. I really can't explain it to you. This occurred while my dad was visiting with me at the house we rented. Keep in mind that this is one of those familial times in life that often involves the consumption of wine, beer, and other such goodly things. So I was in the middle of indulgence when we had to go fight through milkpuke. Not fun.

The next day started with a wild hangover. Not a good start to wedding day. I should take this time to mention to anyone who will listen that Dogfish Head Brewing's 90 Minute Imperial IPA is a crushing 9.0% ABV, something you should know before drinking three of them in an hour after a rehearsal dinner. But I had no other choice but to fight through it. I had to. After all, we had to meet my out-of-town family for a nice brunch at a local Austin restaurant. Meeting your family for a hangover brunch is often a welcome relief. However, meeting them with a milkvomit-stained daughter and a son who was shitting liquid poo not 24 hours earlier makes for a more interesting challenge. Lilly was clearly not feeling well. Her mood was what you'd expect of a child who had a rough night. But both her and her brother were sucking down apple juice at brunch. Apple juice...that's good, right? I mean, it's got "apple" right there in the title. And apples are good. Right? This will hydrate their poor bodies!

More on this later.

About halfway through lunch, Lilly had a poopie that needed attention. So momma took her outside to change her diaper in the back of our car. After about 20 minutes went by, even my hungover brain began to realize something might not be right. So I braved the bright sun and walked outside. Keep in mind that at this point, the sun to me is vampire-esque. I'm not a fan. So I get to the car conveniently at the time where the diaper is going back onto our daughter. But Lilly still seemed sad or something. It was about this point that I noticed some reddish booger in my daughter's nose. The only reason I noticed it at all was because of the way she was laying down with her head back. So I went digging. Started pulling... and pulling... and started feeling like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall.

Her nose literally started expanding to the point that I thought we were going to split it open. And out popped an enormous bloody booger. Or at least what I thought was a bloody booger. Upon further review, it wasn't a booger at all. It was a raisin. All swollen up like it would be if you left a raisin in a bowl of water overnight. Immediately we started thinking about the last time the girl had raisins. Sadly, we concluded it was on the drive down from Dallas almost 24 hours earlier. Parents.Of.The.Year. Anyway, after de-shitting and de-boogering the girl, she and her brother finished brunch without incident.

Then we got home.

Something happened at the house. Something awful. Something that even 9 months later still makes me clench a little bit. Lilly "let go" of something holding her insides on the inside. The noise and subsequent smell let us know something was going on. Momma took Lilly to the back room to take care of the problem. But then I heard my darling wife call for help. My wife doesn't call for help. Seriously. This woman blew out her MCL in a swimming pool holding one of our children during their first 4th of July in 2009 and didn't tell anybody for days. So hearing her yell for me to help her was not a sign that things are going swimmingly.

So I come into the bedroom. Hungover. Into a room still reeking of milkvomit. And I see a pool of some brownish-yellow something. The word "pool" gets overused in reference to children's BM's. This was a fucking pool. Like the one you have in your backyard. If Michael Phelps were there, he could have swum laps in it faster than anyone else in the world. A pool. So we put the diaper that was already stressed beyond its operational safety factor back onto the girl and carefully carry her to the bathroom to "drain". This is when the dry heaving started. Mine, not hers. Remember....9% ABV. This was, without question, the most disgusting moment of our parenting careers.

After a half a box of wipes and some deep breathing outside, a phone call to the pediatrician revealed that pedialyte is good for this. Apple juice, which the kids were drinking like 9% ABV Imperial IPA earlier in the day, turns out to be a powerful laxative. Who knew? So now the quest in life is to locate a pharmacy in Austin open on a Sunday afternoon. That was a whole other story.

Did I mention that my sister was getting married?

So the whole purpose of this trip was to be a part of my sister's blessed nuptials. The kids had a starring role in the whole affair, they were responsible for bringing the rings up to the bride and groom. Seeing how they were not yet two when this happened, this was a moment to remember and cherish. Our hopes were slight that this was going to happen at all. Not after all the barfing and pooping and raisins over the previous 48 hours.

However, we were surprised that not three hours after Lilly's watery event, the children made a mighty comeback. They did great at their aunt's wedding. They carried rings, and danced the night away with their mom and dad. Later that night, they had a vomit-free evening and we had a nice drive back to Dallas the next morning. The first road trip weekend started fairly awful, but ended up rebounding strong. Lessons were learned, and prices were paid. Shouldn't all weekends be like that?

Our little babies turned into little people

Somewhere over the last 10 months or so, our little babies grew into little people. This is really strange. Sure, there are still a ton of similarities. They still poop and whine and do entirely irrational things. But they're not helpless dependent sacks of crying and pooping. Now they're only marginally helpless still-dependent walking, running, jumping, talking little people set on destroying our house.

OK, the last comment really applies more to Nolan than Lilly, although she has her moments too.

It's difficult to do a day-to-day update of the new and terrible things your children do when they're not infants anymore. When they're really little, everything is worth writing about. Oh, your kids crapped goo up their backs for the fourth time in three days? Write about it. Your kids took four steps in a row? Write about it. Your kid(s) slept for six consecutive hours? Write about it. Your kid put a dead rodent in his mouth? Write about it.

You get the idea.

But as they get older, they absolutely get easier. Not less challenging, mind you, but easier. The challenges aren't so much like a twisted Lord of the Flies reality show where you're starved of sleep and sanity to the point of maniacal laughter. No, that only accounts for about the first 18 months of twins' lives. As the children learn to sleep, nap, eat and poop on semi-regular schedules, they get easier in the sense that you're no longer one of the zombie people. You do get to return to a little bit of normalcy as the kids stop torturing you. Plus, as they learn to talk they become an absolute riot to be around.

The challenges as they get older are much more parental. For example, the other day we were having dinner at my mother's house. Some food dropped off the table onto the floor. Nolan, doing what he learned through some poor role model, exclaimed, "God........DAMNIT!" And I won't even mention how many times a child reflexively said "shit" when something fell out of the fridge....as if they heard it before....somewhere.....

This was a learning experience for us. When they're infants, you can basically carry on with whatever foul language you're accustomed to. Why the fuck not? It's not like the infants are going to repeat it. That is....until they do.

So the challenges now are more along the lines of teaching them now to be social creatures. Teaching them that there are ways to behave and ways not to and that there are consequences for behaving badly. One of our children seem to get this. The other one does not. Wanna guess which is which? Let's just say that if any bookworm academic ever tries to tell me that boys act like boys and girls act like girls because of their social cues alone, I believe I'll be justified in performing some fairly violent acts on that person.

We started to notice major distinctions in their budding personalities late last year. Sure they had brief moments of "personality" before this, but it wasn't until closer to their second birthday that we started seeing what they really had in the bag for us. For Lilly, it was a touch of bossiness. This "touch" of bossiness only comes in every now and again. Most of the time, she's super-compassionate and caring. A giver of the highest order. She's a lot like her momma in that sense. Come to think of it, the bossiness is also sorta like her momma, but don't tell her I said that.

I really noticed this one afternoon while we were walking our dog Maggie. Maggie is a big sack of lazy. A 120 pound brown mutt with a sweet disposition, but no drive to do anything but sit in her chair, look out the window and bark at people.

This is Maggie

We took Maggie for a walk last September with the kids, and were fairly surprised to see Lilly bossing the 120 pound dog around as if that dog couldn't snap that kid's neck if she so chose.

She'd pull the dog around a little and then yell at her, "Come on Maggie, get on the sidewalk Maggie!" It was freaking hilarious. I recorded it on my iphone -- here's the video. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to get my video software to display this right, so look at it sideways
Maggie, of course, could not give two craps that Lilly was bossing her around. That didn't stop our Lilly! She had a head full of determination, and she was going to tell that dog what was what! Right up until the point she discovered an acorn on the ground. Then her interests were diverted!

All bossiness aside, Lilly is sweet. I don't mean that in the all-children-are-sweet way. I mean there's something really abnormally sweet about her. If Nolan is upset, she will go hug him. If you ask her how she's feeling, she'll ask you how you're feeling. She is an emotional bank with an unlimited balance. She'll give and give and rarely express any need for emotional support for herself. It's quite odd for such a young child.

We recently had some work done in the back yard of our house. Maggie turned our backyard into her personal toilet shortly after we moved into the house. With newborn twins and everything else, we basically didn't do a thing to keep the yard from turning into a dead grass zone. You hear about old World War I battlefields that are still uninhabitable because of the gas used during the war. That's the way we felt about our backyard. So we changed some fencing, giving Maggie her own toilet area (which is now totally dead, two weeks later), and re-sodded the yard. It's great. Maggie is segregated by a fence, which drives her nuts, but she's a dog.

I mention this because Lilly seems to be the only one in the family concerned about Maggie's desire to come back out into the yard. The other day, she walked over to the gate holding Maggie back, unlocked it, and said "come on, Maggie!" She was trying to spring that dog loose in the yard because she knew Maggie felt bad. Maggie was, of course, too lazy to get off her ass to take Lilly up on the offer, but it was sweet nonetheless. It's emblematic of the kind of caring, sensitive person Lilly is becoming.

Today when she went down for her nap, she managed to get her hairbands holding her pigtails wrapped around her wrists. When her momma went to wake her, she complained that her wrists hurt. My wife tells me that her hands were purple, like your finger would get if you left a rubber band on it (she's fine, which is why I feel OK telling this story). When my wife took the bands off her wrists, Lilly apologized to her. "I'm sorry, momma". The innocence and the sweet is almost too much to bear. Seriously, I'm not a sap. I don't think of myself as some big softie, but that little girl just melts my heart away. I think I'm gonna get in front of the game and just buy her a pony now. Maybe a Porsche too.

Nolan, on the other hand, has developed quite an ornery personality. He likes to get in trouble. More accurately, he likes to get away with things and he likes you to know he got away with things. He's also nice when he wants to be, but for the most part, he just likes to break stuff.

Today, for example, I got a report from my wife that Nolan -- our dear baby boy -- decided it'd be simply awesome to climb up on our buffet table and draw on it.

Some details are missing here.

This buffet table is an antique. We purchased it for a song a couple years ago when we barely had two nickles to rub together. It's an art deco buffet table that needs some restoration, but is in really good shape. We were very proud to have purchased it and given it a good home where it could stay in the family for years. It broke my heart when I had to drill tiny holes into the doors to secure the child safety latches.

Yeah, Nolan thought it'd be super fuckin sweet to take a marker to it.

The phone call I received at work today can only be described as "interesting". From what I could gather, my wife retired herself to the garage so as to not murder a child (this is all figurative, put the phone down, do-gooders!). Frustrated and angry are two words that come to mind for how she was feeling, but I don't believe either of those words are adequate to convey how a little troublemaker can make you feel. I don't think those words exist.

But don't get me wrong. Nolan is an ornery kid, but he's not a bad kid. In fact, he's really social. And funny. My god that kid makes me laugh! When I come home from work, it's Nolan that will come RUNNING from wherever he is, and it's always the same routine...
"DADDDDYYYYYY!!!!!!"
"Daddy's home!"
"Hi Daddy!"
"Hey....Daddy"
"Yes" I'll reply
"I have an idea"
"What's your idea, Nolan?"
"Let's watch Dora!"

Every single time. It's funny as hell. There are slight variations, but for the most part, that's it.

The other day we were at a park and there was a dog. Nolan went up to the dog and patted the dog on the head and then said (in all seriousness), "Hi Dog. What's up? What's up, dog?" It hurts my face from smiling just thinking about it.

The boy loves to laugh and wrestle and basically roughhouse. He's a boy. He's developed this awesome legdrop maneuver where we'll wrestle and he'll smile and line you up and then drop a total Hulk Hogan Atomic Legdrop finishing move on you. It's funny for now. Put a few dozen pounds on him and it'll just hurt. But for now, it's pretty awesome.

They're both doing things I think are advanced. They say their ABC's, count in english and spanish (thanks, Dora), and Lilly puts her own shoes on. Often with her right shoe on the left foot, but her daddy still does that too.

The issues we're facing now with our children are totally opposite from the issues we faced when I first started this blog. I know it should be obvious, but it still baffles me how far we've come and how far we have to go. I say that as if there is a stopping point. It's a wild journey.

My sister recently had twins of her own. The wife and I went down to Austin to visit and to take the night shift for a night to give her a break. Holy fucking hell, I totally forgot what twins are like at that age. It's not pretty. One night and I was ready to send those kids back to the stork they came from. One...night. I have no idea in retrospect how we managed with our kids. Those days seem a million years ago.

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.