The idea that there was nothing to write about after they turned three was 100% wrong

I intended to shut this blog down after my story of Christmas craziness from 2011. The kids were three, they were both more or less using the bathroom on their own (mostly "less") and sleeping regularly through the night. They increased their independence and their ability to socialize to a point where our interactions normalized to a certain degree.

So I felt like there was nothing else to complain to the world about on this blog. So my plan was to let it stand as a marker of the first three years of life with our twins. I fully intended to close the blog down and let the tales of "Twindergarten" live as a cautionary tale to other parents of twins.

What I've found, especially in the last couple of months, is that the third year of life is a buffer zone of sorts. Yes, you have the "terrible threes" (a carryover from the terrible twos) where the children have to learn their boundaries, but the overall ridiculousness of the children's lives seems to dip down between three and four. Now that the children are four, I've found out that there is a whole new set of moments that force me as a parent to stop and take stock of what the hell is going on. I'll be writing about some of those moments over the next couple weeks.

I'll also be writing about some of the moments from 2012 that just deserve mentioning. 

So welcome back Nolan and Lilly, it's been a while since I've shared your lives with the world.  I apologize in advance for when you're old enough to be embarassed by all this.

 

I got a lot of questions last year regarding the last story I wrote on this blog, the one about driving to m-fing Tyler Texas to get a pony.  As you can see by the photos below, Lilly loved her Butterscotch pony.  She fed it the silly plastic carrot and she combed its hair and she would climb on it.  It was generally a hit.  For about six weeks.  Then Butterscotch became more of a "clothes horse".  Which is to say that we'd just stack our clothing on top of Butterscotch. 

We ended up moving last year, which meant that most of our less critical property went into storage for about four months.  During that time, Butterscotch collected dust in a storage facility and was basically forgotten.  Once we got into our new place, that silly horse went into Lilly's new room.  She's still there.  With the time off, it was like getting a new Butterscotch a second time. 

But now it's basically gone back to being a clothes hanger again.

I'm getting this goddamned Butterscotch Pony for Christmas -- and other thoughts I never thought I'd have

Christmas in 2008 was easy from a gift perspective. The kids were a month old and rarely slept at the same time so what did they care about gifts or Santa or whatnot? Christmas in 2009 was easy. The grandparents took care of the "big" gift and they didn't really know what was going on anyway. Christmas in 2010 was easy, but it was obviously a turning point. Again, the grandparents took care of the heavy lifting, but they "got it". They understood that a tree and colder weather and Santa and sweaters and family meant presents.



This year is a whole new ball of string. For starters, the kids aren't toddlers anymore. They're kids. They have their own thoughts and understanding about the world. And they talk about it. A whole bunch. They also socialize with other children. Some older, some younger. But these interactions melted into their brains the concept of Christmas. The gift concept, not the whole Jesus being born thing. We're remembering the reason for the season as blatant capitalism and marketing at this point.

I leave most of the gift buying in our family to my wife. It's a shameful thing, I feel awful about my lack of participation in the process. I just don't get too involved in what we get the children at this point, except maybe to just inquire about what "we" got them.

I've never understood the parental gift surge of adrenaline that makes people crazy. I remember parents fighting over Cabbage Patch Kids when I was a child, and I thought they were all pretty stupid. Come to think of it....my sister had a Cabbage Patch Kid one Christmas. I wonder if dad ever threw a punch to get a doll.

This all changed last Sunday night. We were at a friend's parents house. They have a granddaughter younger than our kids. They had this horse-thing that the kids can ride on. Plus, it makes noises. AND it'll "eat" out of your hand. It also swishes its tail and makes little horse noises. Our kids loved this thing. It's name is Butterscotch. Well...at least that's it's commercial name. The particular horse at this party was named Buttermilk. The kids acted like it was a part of the family.

At this moment, I snapped. Something in my head went haywire. My brain decided at that point that my baby girl would have herself a Butterscotch/milk for Christmas. (Yes, the boy loved it too, but I see this as a gift for my baby girl. Don't mess with me. I'm all jacked up on gifting adrenaline).

When we got home, I hit the internet. Turns out that this particular toy isn't available anywhere. Toys R Us had it marked way down, but the website indicated that availability was limited. Undaunted, I drove to Toys R Us the next day during lunch to find Butterscotch! I was going to get that horse for my girl!

This brings me to my next detour on this story. Holy shit ladies, are you fucking serious? Toys R Us reminds me of a zoo. Not figuratively. It's literally a human zoo where people's worst primal actions are realized in a consumerish petri dish. From the fighting over parking spaces to the crowding out of customers in the aisles by other customers, it's just a nightmare! I was waiting for one of the alpha moms to fling poo at another alpha mom. I think somebody got bitten by another "adult". If you've never been to Toys R Us in December, just don't go. It sticks with you. Like the first time you learned what a Cleveland Steamer is. It's something you don't forget soon.

So there I was in Toys R Us, throwing elbows looking for this fucking horse that almost certainly wasn't there (short supply, remember). Finally, I found a very nice young man who helped me look this horse up. I kept calling it "Buttercup" instead of "Butterscotch", which harmed the searching process. It also hurt my man status. I mean come on folks, there's a reason men don't do most of the shopping. Here I am, 35 years old, gray hairs, professional beer belly asking another grown man about a goddamned robotic horse I'm calling "Buttercup". It's emasculating. Although the repetition of the word "Buttercup" reminded me of a happy time from my youth.

Eventually the search corrected itself. Turns out that not only were there no Butterscotches in this Toys R Us store, there was none in any Toys R Us store in Dallas. The computer system showed that there were four in Tyler.

Tyler.

From the stats I receive on this blog, I know that many of the people who read this aren't "from around here".









It's not close.

So I'm left with a Sophie's Choice of sorts. Either drive for over three hours to Tyler and back for something I'm not guaranteed will even be there, or don't get my baby girl her Butterscotch for Christmas.

You see where this is going, no?

So there I was, heading east down I-20. I tried calling the Tyler Toys R Us to confirm they had Butterscotch, but the phone network in Tyler is apparently run by squirrels, tobacco juice, homophobia, twine and tin cans. I couldn't get through to a live person to explain my plight. Nevermind the conversation that would entail. "Yeah, I need to know about a horse. Named Butterscotch." How on God's green Earth do you have that conversation with another human being and not explode from the shame? Why couldn't the horse be named "Bullet" or "Flying Death" or something awesome?

On the way I called the wife. She expressed reservation. But I was undaunted. "This is what Christmas legends are made of!" I exclaimed in my proudest Clark Griswold moment. The computer said they had FOUR of them!

I rolled into the Tyler Toys R Us as the sun was setting. I went inside and began scouring the place for Butterscotch. No luck. Eventually I asked another grown man where I could find Butterscotch. This was becoming too routine. He directed me to the rocking horse area. I wanted to kill him. I don't need a fucking rocking horse, I need Butterscotch! At this point what I really needed was 18 year old Scotch.

I detached from this salesperson and got hooked up with a younger guy. Maybe 19 or 20 years old, with one of those ear piercings that is more like a hole in your ear to hang other jewelry. Yes, I know how old this makes me sound. I think his name was Donald. I only mention that because if the manager of the Tyler Texas Toys R Us happens to read this story and he recognizes this young man with the short black hair and the hole-in-his-ear for an earring with a name sounding sorta like Donald, you should keep him around. He's a good guy.

I explained my plight to "Donald" and he was dumbfounded. I think he was either impressed that I drove from Dallas to Tyler for a horse, or he thought I had lost my shit. In any event, he helped me look for Butterscotch. Then he showed me how to search the upstock above the inventory. I looked in the upstock on one half of the store, he looked on the other half of the store. I'd see him from time to time gazing up at the boxes. It made it look like he was daydreaming, but I knew he was searching for my baby girl's butterscotch. It really meant a lot to me, especially considering how busy the store was. I also think he was scared to come back to me and tell me they didn't have it, seeing how I told him I couldn't go back to Dallas without it.

This search lasted about half a hour. It turned up nothing. Donald agreed to go into the warehouse and look. According to him, the warehouse is nothing more than a random collection of shipping boxes. There's no organization to it at all. He stayed back there for another 20 minutes or so. I was losing my hope. Eventually, he emerged and broke the bad news. There was no Butterscotch. He walked me through the Babies R Us side to look to see if it might have been misplaced in the upstock there, but it wasn't to be. He could not have been more helpful.

But in the end, I lost. It was not to be. We were not going to have Butterscotch for Christmas.

I filled the truck up with gas and headed back to Dallas. I got home after the kids were asleep. I explained to the wife the events of the evening and settled in to feel the shame of bad parenting. The wife suggested that I look on Craigslist for Butterscotch. I already looked on eBay, saw a few (but the shipping was crazy and not guaranteed for xmas), but I neglected to check Craigslist. I was not hopeful.

Well miracle of Christmas miracles, it turns out that a nice lady in East Dallas was selling Butterscotch. I immediately e-mailed her and made arrangements to pick it up. Her price wasn't cheap, but it was reasonable and at this point I would have sold a kidney to get this stupid fucking horse.

I e-mailed her and explained my ridiculous situation. She said that she had two other potential buyers and to let her know if I changed my mind. I replied as calmly as possible that I just got back from driving to fucking Tyler for this horse and that I wasn't going to change my mind.

I met with her this afternoon. Lovely lady. She sold it because she didn't feel it was "fair" for her to have it when it was just for her granddaughter, who only occasionaly visits. She felt it belonged in a home where it'd get used every day. You don't meet people like this every day.

Did I mention she lives less than 100 miles from where I do. I should know by now that Craigslist is a savior.

So now I have a horse in the back of my truck. A robotic horse that "eats" plastic carrots. And I have my first truly proud parental "gift moment" for my kids this Christmas.



Look at this girl. Do you really think I was going to leave her without her horse for Christmas?

Why won't they just shut up?

Good things must be taken in moderation.

I remember when I first started drinking socially. It was in high school, and it was awesome! Drinking was a form of social door-opening, it introduced me to a new group of people my parents warned me about. It also taught me about the joys of tossing inhabitions to the wind.

Then I got all big-headed about it and started thinking of myself as the 17 to 18 year old division drinking champion of the world. And I ended up meeting a toilet in some Corpus Christi hotel room for the evening. Photos exist of this event. I'm not proud.

I had lessons to learn from my behavior. I learned that when drinking tequila, you don't have to drink all the tequila in order to have a good time. A keg of beer is not a "serving size" (college taught me that one -- thanks Texas A&M!). Our bodies have this defense mechanism that kicks our ass once we start pushing the boundaries. It saves us from ourselves.

Unfortunately, there is no built-in ass-kicker for toddler talking.

From the moment our kids were born, we hoped for the day when they'd talk. We analyzed every single coo and goo to decipher if the kid just said "momma" or "daddy" or "transcendentalism". Eventually that day arrived. And it was a special and beautiful thing. So special that I don't exactly recall what their first words were. I'm sure my wife wrote it down. She's good about that.

As time went by, we watched our kiddos learn to communicate. One word turns into two. This turns into phrases. Phrases turn into butchered sentences. These become responsive to questioning. Eventually, marginal subject-verb agreements started occurring. And then the questions started. And the chatter. And the random thoughts of the day. And the questions. Did I mention the questions? And then the interrupting. And the questions! Jesus fucking christ are you kidding me? Are they still fucking talking?

The arc from the sweet flower of learning to talk to please just shut the fuck up already is profoundly short. They go from their first beer of speech to hanging their heads in the toilet in no time flat. Unfortunately for us, there's no physical safeguard against this incessant chatter.

Lilly and Nolan went from calm speech to talking all.the.time over the last few months. All the time. They're always talking. With the one exception of when Dora is on TV. Other than that, if they're conscious, they're yapping. And they're not exactly reciting War and Peace, or providing insight into how to best cook low-fat food that is also delicious and nutritious. Nope. They're busy chattering about their baby jaguars, or their toy cars, or the fact that Diego has a penis, and that's what makes him a boy, or talking about how we can go to Tiki Beach, or blabbering about how they'd really like to watch the Dora episode with the robots except that theres a volcano in that episode and that's scary and we can't watch that, to talking again about Diego's anatomical setup and how that makes him different than Dora.....

I'd really like it if they'd just shut the fuck up for a bit. Just a couple hours. Please. Just shut the fuck up already!

We spent this weekend at my mother's house. My sister, through some cosmic joke, had twin boys in February of this year. She and her husband were spending their first childless time out of town together since their twins were born. Having survived this myself, I was all too happy to help out with the childcare.

But we had to take our kids with us. And they never shut the fuck up!

The car ride from my house to my mother's house is about 10-15 minutes. It's only 15 miles away. We're not talking about the kind of trip we need to pack a lunch for. As soon as we hit the road, Nolan began asking about the "cop car". "Mommy, did you see that cop car?" "Hey Daddy, is that a cop car?" Over and over and over again. Nevermind the fact that there was no fucking cop car anywhere around. Where the boy got this line from is unknown to me. As is his other current favorite, "hey, it's the police!" I don't know where this is coming from, but I'm beginning to wonder about what happens at the house while I'm gone.

OK, so this "cop car" bit started about a sidewalk crack after we got past the end of our alley. It didn't stop. I want you to think of the "cop car" bit as the bass line to this opus of speech. It's the pulse. The opening bars to Gustav Holst's "Mars" if you will.

Of course, the greatness of Holst is that there are a ton of other parts going on over the droning "cop car" bass line. Mixed in with this was Lilly asking a series of random questions. Inquiring about the location of her Witch doll, for example. So now it's "did you see the cop car?" with "hey mommy, where did my witch doll go?" Over and over. Occasionally, we'd get lucky and they'd change it up with "Hey, I dropped my drink" or something similarly charming. Of course, while this is happening, the wife and I are trying to have a conversation about actual events that need to be discussed.

That last part was a big mistake.

We've noticed that we can't actually talk to each other in the car anymore, because the children will get jealous and start talking over us. Jesus, this is aggravating. Think about driving the drunk guy home after a long night. Eventually he'll just randomly string a sentence together just to interrupt the conversation and keep people talking to him? Yeah, my daughter does that. Probably shouldn't have given her that beer.

So in the midst of "did you see that cop car" and "where's my witch" and "Hey, get my drink" we're now met with Lilly's "Ideas". Lilly started doing this about two months ago. She'll say "Hey (mommy/daddy), I have an idea!" We'll respond "what's your idea, honey" and she'll say (literally), "Hmmm, why don't we alldalala and then speckalala, and then Tiki Beach, but we can't go to Tiki Beach because we falffalalala, and plaaa, but then we could sllalalda and then maybe we could aligasha." She couches a series of gibberish as her "idea". Sometimes there will be random words mixed into it to make it interesting. It's just a sham so we'll pay attention to her. Unfortunately, it's also fucking adorable, which is why we tolerated it for so long. It's not adorable anymore.

"Hey, did you see that cop car"
"where's my witch"
"get my drink!"
"what are we doing for dinner tonight?"
"Hey, I have an idea"
"What's you're idea"
"Hmmm, flalafa and beach and allgasholyppiads and Julio Franco was a butcher at second base"

Spin, Rinse, Repeat.

By the time we were about two miles from my mother's house, I realized that our once quiet Honda had become a chattering box of noise. I couldn't talk because my ears were trying to process the sounds of at least three other voices, one of which very well could have been mine. Nothing was making sense. It was just noise! Like the sounds movie actor extras make during large crowd dinner scenes to create an authentic environment. It was at this point that I became my father.

"ENOUGH!" I said. Not quite yelling, not quite not yelling. Enough to get some attention. Suddenly, the car was quiet. "Daddy is going to talk to mommy for a little bit, and you're going to be quiet!" Shit hell if this didn't work! I think I scared them. For the next thirty seconds, I didn't hear anything about a cop car, any witches, ideas, Dora, or Diego's penis. I thought I won. I ignored the fact that I just did the classic dad move of complaining about "those kids" and "all that damn noise". I started feeling a twinge of pride. Then I heard

"Hey Daddy, did you see that cop car?"

and I'm right back to regretting the day they learned to speak.

God, can't they just shut the fuck up?

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!