HOLY COW!  Nicholas has been home a year now.  Wow, the time has just flown by.  Last year at this time, I was parked out on our recliner with a 8 lb baby on my chest loving every minute of it.  Now he is nearly 25 lbs and close to walking.  Incredible, isn’t it?  Last year, I was freaked out every time I fed him a bottle because he’d forget to take a breath while sucking down the formula.  This year, I’m freaked out any time I put pieces of toast in front of him because he likes to see how many he can fit in his mouth before he gags.  Seriously, that boy does not grasp the concept of pacing himself when it comes to bread.

Because the boys share a birthday, we’ve decided to celebrate their homecoming each year with an event – not a gift thing, just a celebrate them kind of thing.  This year, we were suppose to go to a picnic put on by the local multiples group in this area (SNOMOMS) but both boys caught a cold on Friday and we didn’t want to infect others (we’re so used to it being the other way around, it was an entirely novel concept when we realized that it went both ways).  So, we stayed home, invited Uncle Ryan over to join Laura and us dinner, and had cup cakes.  (We didn’t have cake on their birthday because they were technically only 9 months old at the time and barely starting purees.)

Nicholas LOVES SUGAR.  Dexter HATES CUP CAKES.  It was incredible amusing to watch.  Joel put a cup cake down in front of Nic and he grabbed it with his hand.  Pretty soon, it was all over everywhere and he was having a grand time.  Then there was Dexter.  When his hand hit the frosting, he held it out to us with this look of “get it off me, get it off me!”  When we put a piece of it in his mouth, he started to gag and looked ready to puke it on out.  What is up with this kid?  Who doesn’t like frosty goodness?  Maybe he’s just holding back until his happy homecoming day on September 17th and then he’ll go hog wild on sugar.  We’ll let you know.  (and it’s odd – Dex loves his fruits and all of the sweet foods we give him, and Nic is all for the vegetables and unflavored oatmeal – seriously I think they just flip a coin each day)

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures showcasing the boys and their cup cakes.  In the last picture, you’ll find me, cleaning up the floor, with the high-chairs disassembled for an urgent deep-clean.  Five minutes of laughter followed by 20 minutes of clean-up.

Nicholas, you’ve come a long way.  We are so proud of you and love you so very much.  We couldn’t imagine our lives without you.  You bring such joy, drama, and frustration to our lives and we love almost every minute of it.  Thank you for being strong and a survivor!

Nic, apparently, takes after his mother, and is more than a little excited by music and dancing.  I cannot condone such behavior, but then no one seems to ask me, oddly.  Every once in a while when I’m bouncing Dex on my knee, Nic will come over and start trying to bounce up and down himself, sitting on his knees and squealing.  A few weeks ago, Katie discovered a new trick after I accidently put my finger through one side of the drum.  She placed a few small plastic toys inside the drum and started bouncing them up and down.  Nic went WILD.  We appear to have hit on his mating call, which is either Techno or African Folk Music, I’m not quite sure which.  He grabs on, starts bouncing up and down and squealing with delight.  The first few times Dexter actually got scared and started to cry, which was very sad – one boy ecstatic, and the other freaked out.  Still, Dexter’s grown used to it, and Nic is still ready to perform with just a moments notice.  We managed to capture it on video the last time Heather came to visit, so here for your viewing pleasure is the debut dance album release of Nic the Bouncer.

Nic and the Drum, take 2 (3.1 mb file)

Whoever said white boys can’t jump?  Well, to be fair, ours can’t (unless you’re counting their bouncy chairs, but if you need springs can you still call it jumping?), but they certainly can reach.  Reach.  Grasp.  Pull.  Extract.  Terrify parents.  That’s pretty much the current motif in our household.

We set up the baby perimeter to encompass the kitchen, kitchenette, family room, and playroom.  There are gates at either end to prevent unauthorized egress (and the laundry door is now legally required to be closed at all times – attempting to pass through the door is a technical violation of household rules, and requires prior authorization in writing, punishable by having to empty the diaper pail), with the assumption that our baby proofing can be broadly confined to these areas.  The areas outside the pale are deathtraps, filled with unattended computers, filing cabinets, plants, CDs, broken glass, rusty nails, unexploded land mines, and more than a few poisonous spiders and snakes imported specially by Laura (God really hates Australia, doesn’t he?  7 of the 10 most poisonous species of snakes,  sharks, spiders, wild fires, droughts, and most scary of all, drunken Australians…)

None of that matters – the boys are supposed to stay INSIDE the gates.  This is just like Jurassic park.  As long as the animals stay inside their cages, no one gets eaten.  Mauled, maybe – but not eaten.  We spared no expense.  Perfectly safe.  Except, life finds a way…

But the bloody little buggers keep moving the goal on us.  First they pretty much just lay there and didn’t do anything.  This was easy to accommodate – the laptop was on an arm attached to a cart in the family room.  Puke mats were placed on the floor to collect, well, explosively expelled partially digested baby formula.  When the boys started rolling, we moved the furniture around a bit, put the laptop on a table in the kitchenette, removed a couple of little end tables with sharp corners, erected a pillow barrier, and all was well.

When they started crawling, we set up the gates.  When they started sitting up, we moved things higher.  When they started standing, we experienced a Malcolm effect (is it obvious that I’ve been re-reading Jurassic Park this week?), and things started to fail quickly.  The laptop was banished to the dining room (thus the posting pretty well stopped in the evenings), the table tops were cleared of anything dangerous (or useful, for that matter).  Suddenly our mail is stacked on the dining room table, because it’s the only safe place left.  Next to the laptop.  And our magazines.  And pretty well everything else we might want to use, but can now only look at longingly from inside our cage.  I mean their cage.  Damn.

The tentative standing has given way to cruising, and the boys can stand up without hand hold (just something to lean against), and walk along from one piece of furniture to another.  And then comes the grasping, and the pulling, and the opening of drawers…  I’d baby-proofed the important ones about 2 months ago, or so I thought.  The knives were secured, and the junk drawer.  Well, one of the junk drawers, anyway – but I totally planned on doing the other one.  Last Friday I watched the boys working on the Tupperware lids drawer – they were pulling it open, casting the lids about, and merilly playing away.  Then they opened the drawer above it, containing the towels.  Then the cupboard next to it, containing the Tupperware, and some ceramic bowls.  And then I knew I’d procrastinated too long.  Katie came home and told me that Saturday afternoon we really had to – oh, I don’t know, probably go grocery shopping or make food for the boys or something like that.  I, with my new found insight, refused.  No.  Tomorrow I babyproof.  She relented.

So Saturday I baby proofed.  Only it didn’t work so well.  None of the bloody things fit.  And when they did, they wouldn’t work reliably – they opened too often, too easily.  I spent an hour an 20 minutes working on the first one.  Then I realized I was an idiot (I know, I know – you’d think I would remember from the last time I had that realization – but if I was able to remember such a hard-learned lesson, wouldn’t that mean I wasn’t an idiot?  Exactly – hadn’t thought of that, had you?)  I had been putting the catch on the wrong part of the cabinets.  My God, but it was so much easier after that.  I got 7 more done in the next 30 minutes.  I got *most* of the cupboards done – the pots and pans, the corning ware, the ceramic and Tupperware, the garbage and dishwasher detergent – and the drawer where we stored the saran wrap/aluminum foil / etc.  I knew I wasn’t quite done, but I had the most dangerous ones sealed, and everything that was left was either too high to be a problem (they were only opening from a sitting position), or too hard to open.  Plus, I left the Tupperware lids unsealed, because that was supposed to be the *one* drawer that they’re allowed to access.  I was faintly proud of myself.  I hadn’t sworn much at all.  Or cut myself.  Or broken anything.  I had a beer.

Well, a cider.  I know.  Girly drinks.  Whatever.  Get over it already.

Then I came home on Tuesday.  Dear God – I have never seen the house so messy.  I think every single lid was out.  Towels were out.  Every single toy they owned was spaced equidistantly around the family room.  It was absolute chaos.  Laura was trying to feed two very uncooperative (but oddly self satisfied and seemingly proud) little boys.  Dexter had fruit in his hair.  Nic had a pea in his ear.  And when she was done feeding them, they got on the floor, and went to the lids  drawer.  Then the towels.  That should have been the warning sign – the towels were in the second drawer up.  They were opening drawers while standing.

Then they tried the saran wrap drawer, but I’d fixed that earlier.  Then they went for the other drawers, the ones with the utensils, and cheese graters, and apple corers, and electric skillet controls, and skewering sticks.  <shudder>  I was in a panic, and Laura was laughing at me.  I drafted her, ran for the garage, came back with duct tape and taped all of the cupboards and drawers shut.  She laughed at me more.  She’d thought of it at 9am that morning,  but figured we’d look at her askew if we came home to find everything duct-taped.  She’d just erected a chair barricade across the kitchen, and ran toward them whenever one of them headed in that direction.  The boys started pulling at the tape.

Then the boys went to the one cupboard I’d left un-taped – the one we’d removed the shelf in and stored all of our cooking sheets.  I figured, everything’s wedged in there so tightly we’re safe.  So they pulled out the flexible plastic ones, which slide easily and helped make it easier to get to everything else.  Then a small wood one.  And someone started to cry.  Me, I think.  Then a metal one fell out, with a loud bang.  Then Dexter started to cry.  I taped that door shut.

I tried to put away some dishes, but I couldn’t – everything was taped.  The boys went around the corner – ahhh, finally the danger had passed.  Then Laura started forward quickly, “no, not that one either.”  Are you kidding me?  I’d forgotten about the other cupboard, the one on the outside of the cabinets, in the kitchenette.  More duct tape – and finally things calmed down.  I went and boiled some potatos.

After the boys went to bed, I baby-proofed.  I sealed all the cupboards, and all the drawers except four on the top row – I had run our of safety latches – and one that used to hold the lids, but now holds bibs and extra, unused baby bottles – i.e., the one drawer they’re allowed to open, and which won’t be a problem if they rummage through the contents.  And at 10:30pm, I finally slunk off to bed.  I awoke several times in the night, sure I could hear the steak-knife drawer being opened.  Finally, at 5:20am, I just gave up, got up, took a shower, got dressed, and went to work, where all the drawers have nice, safe locks, and where no one expects me to pick up lids off the floor.

<sigh>

So, pictures.

The refrigerator.  Nic loves hitting it, and grabbing at the pictures, and yanking as hard as he can on the handle.  It’s about to come off.  All of the small magnets have been removed, now…  We tried to put a magnetic toy on the front of it, but Dexter chewed the paint off one of the pieces inside of 5 minutes.  So much for that.

He looks so calm, doesn’t he?  Carefully reading our notes (the current goals – where we’re supposed to write down what we’re working on with the boys – which should say something like “teach boys to stop pulling lids out of the drawer”, but in reality hasn’t been updated in 4 months.)  It’s deceiving.  He’s planning his next move.

And then Dexter joins in.  He seems so innocent…  A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

And they CONSPIRE!  I can hear them, all the time, with their talking and plotting, planning horrible things…  Plus, you can see the green ball on the other side of the gate.  How do you think it got there?  They put it there.  Why? I dunno.  But it makes them mad to see it there, where they can’t reach it.  So they sit and yell, until one of us goes and gets it for them.  Don’t you understand?  We’re just pets to them – they’re teaching us to play fetch.

But on the other hand, just look how cute Nic is? So innocent seeming.  So tall.  Playing, for a brief moment, with an actual toy.  Sure, we had to attach the toy to a re-purposed puke mat by drilling holes through the legs and mat and zip-tying it together, and then anchoring one end under the cabinet – but hey, it’s their toy, and that’s what it’s there for.  And besides, Nic’s cute.  Have I mentioned that?

And then there’s Dexter.  He’s cute too.  He just doesn’t quite think things through all the time.  You have to look very carefully before you slide your chair back – you just never know where they might be.  <sigh>

Well, that’s our life in a nutshell.  I’m tired.  And it’s starting to take a really long time to put dishes away.

Catch you on the flipside,

-Joel

My dad mentioned that he couldn’t find some of the older video files we’ve posted, and asked I could send him the files.  I’ve added links to all of the video files to a new page (look for the “Videos” tab up at the top-right corner of the page).  Hopefully I remember to keep it up-to-date, and it’ll be an easy way to find videos later.  I’m still working on finding a better way to get videos online.  We just bought Adobe Premiere Elements, so maybe we’ll be able to streamline the process a bit.  Anyway, though all a bit old, at least now it’s easier to find the videos if you happen to have a hankering.

I’ve been meaning to write about our time in the pool on the first camping trip, but rather predictably it’s been nearly a month and still no post.  Someday we’ll get back on top of it, but in the meantime, I’ll settle for uploading photos to a web album and hoping for the best.  We got the camera, a Pentax Optio WPI, before our honeymoon in 2006.  It’s waterproof up to 6ft down – fine for snorkeling and swimming with infants.  For everything else it’s pretty much useless, as it takes pictures slower than a daguerreotype (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype), and focuses worse than I do after two bottles of wine.  Still, the underwater shots are kind of fun to capture, when they work.

The boys had a really good time in the pool in their little chairs, especially Dexter.  The day was hot, so the water felt great.  Nic was very unimpressed, though he got the hang of it the second time around (and did really well in swim lessons, though that’s another <delinquent> post).

Anyway, just thought you might like to see the boys in their very unnatural element.

Swimming

Well, we survived.  I suppose the fact that I’m writing this nearly a week after we got back is an indication of the recovery time needed, though.  It was bloody exhausting, for everyone involved.  I’m glad we tried this trip after the cabin camping trip, though – we had a much better idea of what to bring, though still needed two cars and an Au Pair.

This trip wasn’t supposed to happen until Mid-September, but I predictably dropped the ball, and the camping trip weekend was the weekend that my Dad and Step Mom were planning to fly into town.  A couple of weeks ago we found a few open sites at the venerable Dash Point State Park, and made the reservation.  Half of the planned contingent couldn’t accommodate the date change, sadly.  Especially sad was Heather’s absence, as another set of un-encumbered hands eager to pick up a baby would’ve been heaven sent.  <sigh>

Katie made the checklist this time, but in a testament to our new-found confidence, we didn’t even start packing until Thursday.  I packed up Mary (my Ford Escape) on Thursday night, and Katie drove her down to work in Renton for a half day.  I started the day working from home, and then tossed the boys in the van (Laura kindly moved herself into the passenger seat, without so much as a single toss by me).  I carefully wrote out the directions, and promptly left them at home.  Ironically, the biggest mistake I made was in the I-405 to I-5 interchange, and ended up heading Northbound on I-5.  Figures.  Once down to Federal Way I took the scenic way.  Laura asked, “on a scale of 1 to 10, how buggered are we?  1 being, ‘she’ll be a’right’, and 10 being, ‘we’ll probably have to resort to canibalism’?” (I may be paraphrasing *slightly*).  I said, “oh, probably a 2.  ish.”  Still, only 1 wrong turn in Federal Way, and we arrived just as Katie was setting up the tent.

We brought pretty nearly our entire home.  We set up the Superyard XT to make a play pen for the boys.  We had brought their Pack’n'plays, but those turned out to be pretty useless.  We had a brand-new tent, a Christmas present to Katie from her family, and Laura used our old 2-man tent.  The boys loved the play pen, and Nic ate as much dirt as he could stuff in his mouth before we noticed and stopped him.  We brought their high-chairs just to make our lives easier, and that was a life saver for feeding them.

By and large, the boys did really well.  They were playful and happy.  Dawnn and Jim’s girls, Katie and Ashlyn, did a wonderful job of entertaining them, which made our lives manageable.  The first night we tried sleeping them between us on a large foam pad with some thick blankets, and the boys dressed in borrowed snow suits.  Not *particularly* successful.  For one thing, Nic was constantly in squawking motion, rolling, flailing, and grumbling.  Dex slept like a 20-year old boy after a frat party, arms spread wide, mouth hanging open, dead to the world.

The next night we brought in one of the contoured changing pads to see if we could keep Nic in one place.  I had wanted, from the start, to have both boys on the pads, with the straps fastened, so that they’d essentially stay in on place.  I was vetoed.  The second night, Nic started on the pad, unstrapped, but quickly rolled off.  At 2am, I finally realized why I kept feeling like someone was kicking my feet, and noticed that Nic was trying to sleep on them, while Dexter was trying to sleep on my head.  Next time Katie refuses the straps, SHE can sleep on the down-hill side of the tent.  <grunt>  Anyway, we then backed Nic up to the changing pad, and he slept much better pressed up against it.

Every time we put them in the tent, they went wild.  They loved rolling all over it, trying to stand against the walls, falling into the sleeping bags, squealing and laughing.  It was all the more amusing when they were in their snowsuits – kind of like the younger brother in The Christmas Story.

Also, on Saturday, we tossed them in the stroller and went down to the beach.  Nic LOVED it, and both boys had a grand timing kicking their feet in the sand, and letting it run through their fingers, and watching the other kids build sand castles.  And eating it, of course, which turns out to be quite the constipator.  Who knew?

When we got back, Katie and the boys passed out in the tent for a couple of hours.  I went to take a shower, and was accosted by an excessively friendly elderly gentleman from Georgia, who chatted as I walked by him outside the facilities, followed me in, then waited until I came back out.  Man, he could talk.  When his story finally go to the part where he was getting frisked in the same shorts and shirt he was wearing right then, without any underwear on, for the 6th time by the Canadian customs agents after trying to get into Victoria with prescription pills, apricots, dog food, a Smith & Wesson, and $68 in cash – I finally ran for it.  I was kind of creeped out, and wished our tent had a dead bolt.

In the meantime, I had apparently missed an attack on our campsite by a murder of crows (which woke Katie and Nicholas up).  We didn’t realize until later that they’d targeted the, “Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?” book.  It was, appropriately, open to the, “BIRD stole the cookie from the cookie jar” page.  They pooped on the book before Katie scared them off, and it’s still sitting out in the garage, as I try to figure out whether it can be decontaminated or not.

Sunday morning we packed up, and left just after the boys had lunch.  We got home by around 2pm, and spent the next 7 hours unpacking and doing laundry (I did laundry for another 6 hours the next day too).  I know we must have brought more than we needed, but we used nearly everything we bought.  If we had just one kid, we’d have been much more tempted to leave the toys and play pens at home and plan on more supervised play on the ground – but with 2 it was just too overwhelming.  Next year, the boys will be running around, and no attempts at confinement could possibly hope to succeed and we’ll all be doomed anyway.  For this year, I’m just glad that camping season is done, and no more weekend trips are in the offing, and I can relax.  Except that Nic just pooped, but that was a given.  So while I go and wipe a baby but, here are some pictures for your enjoyment:

Hoover Memorial Camping Trip – Dash Point, August 2009

We just got back from our first tent camping experience with the boys this weekend (which one of us will regale you with at a later date). It was fun and exhausting.

Anyway, do you know how some men don’t like going #2 (the big BM) in toilets that are not in their own home? I think I may be raising two boys with that same issue. You see, both boys did admirably at holding onto their waste during the camping trip. As soon as we got home, Dexter had 4 poopy diapers and Nic had 3. (Nic had already gone twice that morning while we were packing things up.)

Yesterday, I stayed home with the boys. Between 7am – noon, Dexter had kicked out 5 poopies and Nic 3. By 4pm, the score was 6 to 6. Both had red butts and screamed bloody murder during subsequent diaper changes. It was horrific for all involved. A person in the other room might have thought I was killing my kids. I prayed each diaper change – please no poopies. I didn’t know that this much waste was possible from boys that size.

Not sure what has happened today. I’m afraid to call and ask.

I mentioned a few weeks ago, more than a little defensively, that one of the reasons the posting had slowed down was because it was harder to get to the computer.  The reason the computer was removed from the kitchen was that the boys were now able to get things off of the tops of most of our tables.  Where previously the laptop, or cameras, or books, or beverages were mostly safe, they are now at risk, and we daren’t leave them exposed lest the boys begin to feel a little bit expansionist in their ambitions.  This leaves us with the problem that currently there’s no place to put any adult-things downstairs, except on the kitchen countertops or the dining room table (and thus they are both burried).  In a few weeks were planning on re-arranging again – baby proofing the dining and living rooms, adding a gate at the stairs, moving the den downstairs and into their current playroom, and letting them have the run of the open areas downstairs.  In the meantime, we deal.  You can’t set anything down.  Most of the time, you can’t even really hold anything.  Here’s a picture of me *trying* to drink a glass of iced tea.  Can you see the difficulty?

Apparently I got older.  I might have suspected as much when I started struggling with hip pain, or my hair started falling out, or when my eyeglass prescription stepped up another notch.  I also had a pretty decent clue when I came home a few weeks ago, and some of my favorite people were there.

Seriously, my wife rocks.  For my 29th birthday, she got me women.  Best wife ever (and not purposefuly excluded – she’s taking the picture).

In the back row, the boys’ dearest nurse Heather, Julie Brightwell (fellow Michigan refugee), Dawnn Cheng (absurdly cool mother-of-two, keeper-of-Jim, seller of kitchen ware, etc. etc.), and Trisha Boledovich (for another 8 days, anyway – also a Michigan refugee).

On the bottom row, there’s Dawnn’s daughter Ashlyn on the left, and Katie on the right.  You should probably recognize the three lucky guys in the middle.

Anyway, it was a fairly quiet night, but a few hours of very-missed socialization with some very good friends, and to top it off, Katie had found some Strongbow (my favorite cider), so I had a midweek drink with 5 beautiful women.  Katie and Ashlyn, while undeniably beautiful, were disallowed from the booze, for some unspecified reason.  All too brief, and WAY TOO INFREQUENT, but maybe someday we’ll get to be kinda-sorta normal again, and spend our time doing something other than holding, changing, or feeding babies.  In the meantime, at least they’re cuddly.

I meant the boys – not the women.  Seriously, people…

As the boys have become increasingly mobile, and more and more comfortable pulling themselves up to stand, they lost all interest in their jumpers and inside-swings.  A month or two ago we bought them a little Leapfrog LeapStart Learning Table, which they enjoyed immensely, right up until they pulled on it to stand up, and it fell on top of them.  To add insult to injury, whenever Nic did this, Dex would laugh.  He’s really a very sweet boy, but honestly, after all the times Nic has crawled all over him, or stolen his toys, I think maybe there’s a little bit of schadenfreude going on.  Regardless, this wasn’t exactly the ideal situation for helping the boys practice their standing, so we improvised.  We took one of the floor mats we’d previously used as a prophylactic to protect the carpets from baby-emissions, cut it into a strip, drilled a few holes in it, and zip tied the table to it.  Then we put the long end under the edge of the couch, and voila, stability.  It doesn’t stop the boys from cruising around it in opposite directions and knocking each other over that way, but we can’t work miracles.

Laura also made the suggestion that we convert one of their jumper toys into a play table, so that’s what we did.  Remember the jumper that both boys loved so much when they were but wee-little things?

Well, I removed the frame and bungee cords, added four legs (a closet rod cut to length), put a board underneath it, borrowed a drill bit from our neighbor, Walt, and once again we had a viable toy.

Of course, as they’re packing on the pounds, they’re also getting closer and closer to pulling this table over on top of them as well, which will smart more than a little.  Perhaps I’ll attach it to the floor next time…