Halloween must be half the reason parents have children.  At least for the baby years, anyway.  Katie’s been going on about what to dress the boys up for on Halloween for at least the last 9 months.  Well the day’s here, and the suspense – well, it can wait one more day, right?  The boys will get in their costumes soon, but it’ll be a few hours before we get back, and I’m not all that confident that we’ll be able to get the pictures up tonight.  Tomorrow, though. Promise.

It was already a scary day for the boys.  I got up early and went to Mill Creek medical clinic, and was perhaps the 150th person in line waiting for the H1N1 vaccinations.  I’m tempted to rant about the idiocy of Snohomish County’s approach to these immunizations, but were I to get started we might not make it out the door on time – probably wouldn’t be done in time to make it to work on Monday.  Anyway, Katie arrived with Laura and the boys just minutes before it was time to go inside and get the shots.  The nurses recognized the boys and argued who got to give them the shots.  Dexter was pretty bored and was already yelling when she stuck him with the needle.  Nic started crying after his brother did, but Dex had stopped within a minute, and Nic was done shortly after that.  They’re turning into such troopers.  Poor Laura had to get the nasal mist version, and she’s still complaining about the nasty aftertaste.  <shudder>  I really don’t want to know what Swine flu tastes like.  Fortunately she just broke into our candy supply, and the Nerds are going a long way to erasing the terrible memories.

We’re about to put them in their costumes and head over to Katie’s parents house.  On the plus side, any candy the boys get will likely be confiscated by their “concerned” parents, so there’s that to look forward to.

Again, sorry for the lack of pictures yet.  Tomorrow, I promise.  In the meantime, if you want to be completely freaked out, you can take a look at this Halloween video clip my step-mom made.  I’d like to warn you about the contents, but I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.  Oh, and the file is huge, something like 65mb.

Halloween Mashup

Happy Halloween!

With the rains back, it’s getting harder to keep the boys sane.  They really enjoyed walks or playing out in the backyard, and when they would get really fussy sometimes getting outside would be just the trick.  Better than drugging them, anyway.  But now, even with the lovely new deck, it just isn’t as feasible to head outside for play time.  We’re trying to figure out how to keep the house stimulating enough to keep their interest, but they’re just getting too big and too old to be interested in the same old toys and rooms day after day.  Anyone have any suggestions?  How to you keep 17 month old kids entertained over the winter?  Is it time to send them to boarding school?

One thing we’re trying to do is set up a play area in the garage, which is simultaneously the best and stupidest idea we’ve had so far.  The idea would be to clear out one side of the garage, put the SuperYard there to create an enclosed play space, and then you can head out there for “outdoor” playtime.  I worked last weekend to clean the garage to get it ready.  At the end of the night, I went to pull the plastic slide into the garage.  It’d been raining all day, though, so I picked it up and shook it vigorously to get the water off, then pulled it inside and began to work feverishly to dry it off so that it wouldn’t drain water out into the garage.  I spent a good 15 minutes on this, carefully wiping each surface, and underneath, an soaking up the puddles.  Good.  Mission accomplished.  The garage remained dry.

Satisfied, I grabbed the keys, stepped out of the garage to pull the cars in out of the rain, so they wouldn’t be frosted over in the morning.  I pulled them both in, closed the garage door, walked to the entryway into the laundry room, and then realized fully how much of an idiot I was.  <sigh>  15 minutes to dry off the play toy.  Then I pulled the cars in.  Seriously, will my mind come back some day?  This is starting to get scary…

I’m endlessly fascinated by the growing complexity of our boys’ minds.  Things that they just couldn’t grasp weeks or even days ago are suddenly just second nature.  Watching them learn how to move their hands was amazing, and even more so when they suddenly realized what they were doing.  When we first gave them solid foods, and they learned bit by bit how to chew, and move food around with their tongue, and then to spit it out at us.  When they began playing with toys, the would just bat at them, and then just chew on them, then hit them on the window.  And then suddenly they’re putting things together, putting toys in jars, putting on the lids and shaking them until we can’t think a single coherent thought.

The reason I bring it up is that something interesting happened today.  Nic was having an off day.  His nap was too short, and he just wasn’t himself all afternoon.  We’d calm him down, and he’d be happy for a few minutes, but then he’d try to run down the hallway and get a little too excited, slip and fall and bump his head, and we’d spend the next 15 minutes calming him down again.  I suggested to Katie that she take off his socks, so he’d have better traction.  I was in the family room, cleaning up some of their toys, when Nic came over to me, holding his socks.  He sat down, and started poking his toes with the sock, and then looking up at me.  And then he held the sock out to me.  The little bugger asked me to put his socks on for him.  How bloody cool is that?

Okay, well, one sock.  After the first one, he looked at his other sock, which was in a kind of ball, and he lost interest, stood off, squealed, and ran off into the kitchen.  Nic.  My boy.  He wanted a sock on.

October 23rd, 2009 – the first day the boys made it into a supposedly baby-proofed drawer. Fortunately it contained only Tupperware lids, but the arms race has begun.

In 1995, Katie spent 8 months living in London and travelling Europe.  She went back to visit Italy twice before I met her.  I went to Ireland in 2000.  We went together in 2005 to England and Wales (otherwise known as the, “if I’m not sick of her after 12 days of being together 24 hours a day, I guess I better finally get around to proposing to her” test – which she passed).  The next year we were married and went to the Caribbean for 2 weeks on our Honeymoon.  The next year we spent a month in Europe, taking a Rick Steve’s tour from Amsterdam, down the Rhine, through Austria, into Italy, up to Switzerland, before ending in Paris.  In 2008, we went to Hawaii.  This year, we drove to Lake Wenatchee.  Oh, and Federal Way.

<sigh>

Just as I was starting to catch the travel bug, we got innoculated.  Twin boys.  No travel for you.  Well, maybe some travel, but for the next few years that’s just going to be camping within a couple of hours radius, or going to Michigan.  Maybe in another 4 or 5 years we’ll have the first big Disney World vacation.  It’s certainly a change of pace.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s worth it, but it is something we miss.  Someday…

In the meantime, we have friends, and we expect them to travel widely, and return and tell us, “no, it really isn’t all that much fun – I’d rather just watch TV” so we don’t feel like we’re really missing anything.  This last weekend, we finally convinced our two favorite Canadians to come down and visit us.  We met John and Linda on the Rick Steve’s tour, and enjoyed the trip getting to know them and laughing at John’s antics, and were in awe of Linda for having the strength of character to endure so many years of marriage to a MAC user.  It was getting to know them and Shae that made the trip really enjoyable.  Here they are drinking wine in Bacharach, Germany:

And here’s John being John, at a metro entrance in Paris:

We went up to visit them in Vancouver, but that was before the boys.  We’ve tried to get together a number of other times, but John travels for work a lot, so it’s hard to find weekends that work.  This weekend we lucked out, and they drove down to see us and meet the boys.  The boys flirted outrageously (Nicholas could barely be pulled away from John) and had a grand time.  We took a walk to the French bakery to remember old times, and fed the boys a croissant.

Hopefully they’ll steal away again sometime before long, and hopefully we’ll grow more confident and drag the boys Northward to visit them.  The boys are much, much to old to not have a passport.

(just in case the title is too obscure, Laura is not dead, she’s in fine health, and we hope she lives a long time)

Our current Au Pair Extraordinare, Laura, will be returning to her native spider/shark/snake infested homeland in early January.  She has a friends wedding to get back for, and ambitious plans to enter a University program in Midwifery.  She’s become quite a fixture in our home, and it will be very sad to see her go.  On the plus side, she’s already planning a return visit, presumably to coincide with July 4th so she can blow some stuff up, and further teach the boys how to be irresponsible.  Perhaps she’ll be here for their next trip to the Emergency Room?  Her fondest desire is that the boys will grow up with a life long fear of Australian accents.

One of the odd phases is occurring now – with the knowledge that Laura is returning to Australia, we began making plans in August for finding a new Au Pair to take the baton from Laura in January.  It’s so strange, looking at a new Au Pair while Laura is still watching the boys, but there’s no way around it.  We finished our re-application in August, and began the matching process.  We were initially matched with another Australian.  She seemed like a really nice girl, and that she’d do a great job keeping up with the boys, but then we learned she was from near Brisbane, and Laura warned us that anybody from the Gold Coast could not be trusted, especially during Rugby season, so we had to move on (okay, that’s not the real reason, but Laura’s our Australian Au Pair, and that’s the way we wanted it to stay).  That same day we say the application for Malin Persson, from Anderslöv, Sweden.   We spent the next week and a half taking to her through e-mail and Skype, before asking her to join us in January.  And her being from Sweden explains the sudden hits on our blog from that area of the world:

Here’s a photo of her from her application (holding Anton, a boy she babysits, and who is just a few weeks younger than our boys):

Katie really like Malin from the start.  She was excited to see that Malin likes to cook (we’ve been spoiled by Laura’s taking over of our grill – we’ll miss that…), she love camping, and she has the same allergies as Katie!

Oddly enough, Malin had already planned a vacation to visit a friend in San Diego for 12 days in early October.  She asked if it would be okay to come up and visit us, so we had the unique opportunity to meet her in person and introduce her to the boys and our home.  She flew up Sunday morning, October 4th, and stayed for two days, before heading back to San Diego for the next week.  When she came to visit, she brought two wooden-block puzzles for the boys (Dexter was sleeping at the time, and had to open his later):

The first day we took her over to Katie’s parents for the typical (i.e., exquisite) Marilyn dinner.  Notice the lack of a table-cloth – the reign of terror has extended even to Grandpa and Grandma French’s home.  Laura came along as well, I’m sure watching Malin carefully to make sure that Malin would do a good enough job of taking care of her boys.  Fortunately, Laura has told us that we’re allowed to choose Malin, I think after hearing that Malin eats a spread even more disgusting than Vegemite – something about fish eggs…  <shudder>

Afterward, she and Laura were drafted by Carter and taken on a road trip to Lake Wenatchee.  I tried to warn them what they were in for, but no one listens to poor Joel (quite the Cassandra, really).  So off they went, not returning until somewhere around 9pm.

The next day I went off to work, but Malin got to play with the boys and see what a normal day’s routine is like.  We had tried to get Marte (a Norwegian Au Pair who lives 5 minutes away) to bring her twin wards up for a play date, but our boys had a cold.  Fortunately, Laura took Malin over to visit Marte instead, so Malin got to meet another Au Pair who will still be here when she arrives, which will hopefully make the transition a little easier than it was for Laura (we just didn’t know any other Au Pairs at the time, and the first Au Pair event was a hockey game – not exactly a sociable occasion for getting to know one another).

You may have seen a couple of comments by Malin, and her mother, Helen, and her Mother’s boyfriend, Peter.  Her mom and sister, Petra, are hoping to come and visit in the April/May time frame.  We’re excited for Malin to come and join us, even as we’re glad that Laura is here with us for a little while longer and will be here for Christmas with the boys.

I’m thinking about renting an apartment.  Not only would I finally be able to get a good night’s sleep, but I’d have a place to put something without fear of imminent discovery, investigation, and destruction.  I’m getting forgetful about the gates.  I tend to forget to firmly close the one to the new den most often.  Here’s the result, discovered after feeling suddenly relaxed in another room, as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders – and then realizing that the reason why was the sudden quiet, and upon investigation:

A couple days ago, I failed to firmly close the stairway gate.  That gate will *usually* close itself if you let it slam closed behind you.  But then it gets slightly out of alignment, and just bounces back open.  Katie again was relieved to hear a sudden lack of destruction, and when she went to investigate, the boys had just about made it to the first landing.  We let them crawl the rest of the way up with supervision. (Then there was the time Dexter found the stairway gate open or pulled it open – I’m not sure - and made a run for it on his own.  This time his balance was a bit off and whack – there is another bruise on his head.  I swear he is attempting to collect as many as possible.  Luckily, the bruise was all he received from his climbing foray.)

The boys love to attempt to escape.  Fortunately, we have the baby proof door handle thing-ies on the Front door and the door to the Garage.  Unfortunately, the doors to the Laundry room and to the downstairs bathroom are the lever-style, and Nicholas has (surprise surprise) figured out how to open them.  Worse – the bathroom one can be locked from the inside, but I’m not sure how to unlock it from the outside (don’t see an external opening, but there is a ridge off to one side that I’m planning on investigating, eventually), so I’m either going to have to replace the door handles or go buy a Saws-All just to be on the safe side.

They can pull most of the contents of the kitchen drawers out through the small crack at the front.  I’ve had to baby proof the downstairs and master bathrooms, and I know that the guest bathroom is coming soon.  Plus, the toilet lid downstairs needs to be installed, and I still don’t have a clue what to do about the toilet paper.  All plants have disappeared, and I just gave up and zip-tied shut the crystal cupboard.  Soon the living room will be re-arranged, because as soon as they learn to climb onto couch they’ll be at the television.  But once we move that couch, I’ll have to figure out how to protect the open-faced entertainment center.  My god – I was never so much an engineer as I am now – it’s all I can do to stay only 3 or 4 steps behind these guys.

So here’s the question – how long do I have until they can get out of their cribs???

Before the boys were born Katie and I were still trying to figure out what we’d do about daycare.  Katie was a bit ambivalent, some days thinking she’d want to stay home, and other days thinking that she’d go crazy and ought to work.  We put in an application for the Boeing Daycare Center, which by all accounts is excellent (with a price tag to match), but mostly this was because there was nearly a year long waiting list and we were still undecided.  When the boys decided to force the issue, suddenly the typical daycare center wasn’t an option.  We had to either stay home with the boys, or get someone to come to our home to watch them.  I’d mentioned the Au Pair route to Katie months before, but the idea hadn’t gone anywhere.

Once we realized that it was stay at home or hire an Au Pair, Katie became suddenly very interested in the idea.  On the one hand, it offered a great arrangement for us – no early morning fight to get the boys ready, no screaming children fighting being dragged into the daycare center, no worries about what horrible diseases or naughty words the boys would become infected with (well, lots of worries about the latter, but now Katie would know EXACTLY who to blame, and it wouldn’t be Laura).  Instead, the boys may or may not be up when we leave in the morning.  If they are, they might yell at us for leaving, but they’re happy just a couple minutes later, and we can rest assured that they are being well taken care of.  And on top of that, we get to learn about a culture we haven’t visited, nor are we likely to able to do so for quite a few years.  We can’t really travel anymore, so we import the experience.

Laura’s been watching the boys for the last 9 months.  She watches them 4 days a week, from 6:30am until 4:30pm, and then on Mondays usually works another 3-5 hours while Katie runs a few errands.  She keeps the boys happy, entertained, and fed.  She sings to them and corrupts them with Aussie culture, but only occasionally threatens them with consuming Vegemite.  The thing about this that’s really amazing to me is that when I leave in the morning, I do so without any worries at all.  I trust Laura completely – the boys will be as safe as they would be if Katie were home watching them, and far safer than if I were on duty.

Last Tuesday, Laura watched the boys as normal.  When I got home, I saw an enormous bruise in the center of Dexter’s forehead.  This picture doesn’t do it justice, because the flash washed the colors out and especially since it was only taken 3 or 4 days later.

Still, the bruise was a doozy.  Laura had been helping Dexter walk through the kitchen, holding his hand, when he stepped on a bib that some careless person (and by person, I mean toddler – I have one or two suspects) had tossed out of the only non-baby proofed drawer and onto the floor.  He toppled over forward, out of Laura’s hand, and smacked his forehead, HARD, onto the hard-wood floor.  Apparently that’s when the screaming started.

And then comes the part that reaffirms why we trust Laura so much, and why she’s been such a great Au Pair for us this past year.  Laura told us that Dexter was screaming and crying, and she started crying, and then Nicholas starts crying.  Laura got some ice and held it to his head for 30 minutes, which Dexter didn’t like one little bit, but she persisted.  And she was so worried that he’d hit the floor hard enough that maybe he had a concussion, so she made him even madder by keeping him awake for several hours just to be safe.  By the time we got home it was all a distant memory, except that Laura looked like she could have used a very stiff drink, and Dexter looked like he had some smeared make-up, and didn’t perk up to his normal chipper self until he had a dose of tylenol.  He was acting fairly happy as soon as Laura took the ice off his head, and later took a nice nap.  He was fine, if with yet another battle wound that causes his many female callers to swoon.

So basically, Laura rocks.  And Katie and I can go off to work in the morning, slightly sad that someone else gets to play with the boys, but utterly confident that if anything goes wrong, Laura will be just the person to take care of it and keep our boys safe.

Thank you, Laura. (Yes Laura, thank you!  You are an Amazing person and we are so glad you spent the first year with us, helping raise the boys. You’ve also helped Joel and I stay on track as parents.   We appreciate you. – Katie)

It seems like however much progress babies make, people are mostly interested in the big milestones.  Are they sleeping through the night?  Are they eating solids?  Do they have teeth?  Have they had an enema?  Are they talking?  And of course, are they walking?  Usually the answers are, “yes, yes, yes, <cough>, no, no.”  However, as of last Sunday, we can officially revise this now-obsolete list and say, “yes, yes, yes, please stop asking, no, and YES.”

We expected that Dexter would go first, because he had pulled himself upright long before Nicholas, and was much better at crusing around the furniture.  We figured that this was primarily due to the size difference.  Nic, for all of his many strengths and adorable virtues, is not dainty.  Also, Dex had been doing really well at the “walk to Mommy” game, where we held him between us and tried to get him to walk back and forth.  Mostly, we tried twice before Nic would charge into the center of our catwalk and we’d have a wrestling match.  Nicholas would get really excited, forget to pick up his toes, and instead play, “Dive to mommy!”  He was very good at that game.  Dexter seemed to plateau, though.  Maybe it was because he started sprouting so many new teeth, or maybe his balance was off because of his colds.  Nic started standing a couple of weeks after Dex, and crusing a week or so later as well.  We knew that walking was eminent, but it was really hard to guess when it would happen.  I kept assuming it would be Thursday.  Predictably, I was wrong.

On October 3rd, Nicholas let go of the couch, and walked out into the room.  I say, “walked”, but it was more like, “strutted”.  He seemed to stick his stomach forward, using it for balance, like a tail.  Nicholas apparently has a prehensile belly.  He pulled his shoulders back and lifted his head high (his mother is very proud of his excellent posture), and just, walked.  Laura had been watching him all day, and while he’d cruised, and was willing to take a couple of faltering steps, there was no real walking.  But that evening, he just started, and hasn’t stopped.  The bruises are back, just as when they started crawling, but they’re well-earned, and the boys are good at shrugging them off.

On Thursday, October 8th, Dexter got tired of watching his brother have all the fun, and began his march.  Unlike his brother, Dexter doesn’t stick his belly out.  Instead, he bobs his head, kind of like a bird.  It’s like he’s moving his head to balance his body.  Whatever the style, it’s working for him, and yesterday they even managed to walk in shoes.

Here’s a few video clips of the action.

Brothers Walking (12.8 mb, 3:30)

As milestones gone, this is a big one.  I know it’s inevitable and all kids reach this point, some sooner, some later – but still, it’s hard not to be more than a little proud right now.  It’s just amazing to see these boys growing and learning and getting so smart, and figuring out things that just a few weeks ago they couldn’t comprehend.

And now the big question is, which one will talk first???

-Joel

Lunchtime. I make the boys a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and cut up fresh pear. They down the pear, and eat *some* of the PB&J. Then I get a tub of pureed peas. They down the tub, while refusing any more PB&J.

“Please, Daddy – more Puree’d peas – please don’t make us eat any more of this peanut butter and jelly sandwich…”

Seriously, what’s wrong with these kids? Where did we go wrong?