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.