Today’s one of those momentous days, a date we’ll always remember.  Today something happened.  Something that will change our lives.  Today was HUGE.

Today, after 3.5 months, WE FOUND THE YELLOW BALL!!!  We have searched everywhere, repeatedly.  We’ve blamed everyone we could think of.  We’ve started searching again.  What we hadn’t done was put the boys in their rain boots.  If we’d done that, for the first time since we took them to the pumpkin patch, we’d have found the yellow ball, from the heady days when we still had our shoes near the front door, and the boys liked to hide stuff in them.

On an unrelated note, we’re putting out an APB on the Green ball, which has been missing for 6 days.  If anyone has any information, please call us!

I’ve been wanting to write a post for a couple of days and not had the time.  There are tons of different stories to share but today I heard Joel talking to Nicholas.  This, of course, is a common occurrence but what struck me was they were reviewing today’s events.  And it came to me, I don’t think we’ve shared a day in our life for you so here is what happened today.

This morning started at 6:30am which is actually sleeping in for all of us.  I woke up when Joel got out of bed.  I rolled over, looked at the clock and thought “WOW – the boys slept in.  I’d better get up and get the waffles going because they will be up real soon.”  So I hopped up, got dressed and was headed out the door when Joel came out of the bathroom wondering what was going on.  Still recovering from a nasty bug he had caught, he climbed back in bed and I headed downstairs.  I actually got lucky and was able to make waffles, get them cooking, and unload the dishwasher before Joel showed up and the boys officially woke up.  I had been ignoring their little, sleepy, wake-up noises for about ten minutes.  Up the stairs we went, Joel picked up Nick and I picked up Dexter.  As soon as Nick heard my voice, he demanded a parent swap so I got to carry the heavy one down the stairs.

Minimal cuddle time was all they would allow us before diapers were changed and waffles were served.   Nicholas and Dexter were served first.  By the time Joel and my waffles were ready, I had to give one up for the still ravenous little boys.  Good thing I had made extra that morning.  It was now around 7:30am and Joel and I thought, why not throw the boys into the shower with Joel.  This time, I got to go first!  Yippee!!  By the time we finished cleaning up, it was 8:30am and we had promised Malin that one of us would take her to the DOL in order to sign up to take her driving test.  The DOL was adamant that one of us needed to be there with her (to verify her residency).  They hadn’t read their own website which clearly states her J-1 whatever form is proof of her residence with us.  Stupid DOL.  Joel was tagged to go because of his lack of energy (i.e., unable to keep up with 2 toddlers, and simultaneously less likely to get feisty with the DOL clerks).  I got to stay home with the boys.  They finally left and Nicholas, Dexter and I stared at each other.  What to do now?  We played a little and then it was time to color.

Oh, they get so excited to color.  Nicholas could have colored forever but not Dexter.  He has a short attention span.   At a loss, I decided to feed them a snack while they were still in their high chairs.  Snack time was not a successful endeavor.  Dexter ate all of Nicholas’s food.  I guess you could say it was successful for Dexter.  Time to move on to the next event.  Hmmmm.  Let’s jump on the old mattress while listening to the Wiggles (Aussie children’s group – Laura, bless her heart, left us the most annoying CD that the boys adore to dance to).  This was loads of fun for Nick but then I noticed that both of the boys were just laying down on the mattress chewing on their monkeys while I did all the hard work.  What’s up with that?  At 10am I suggested a nap and Dexter almost ran to the stairs in agreement.  They’d only been up for a little over 3 hours and they had almost slept 12 hours the night before.  Very surprising but I ran with it.  In the end, they stayed down for 1.5 hours and I got to sit and enjoy the quiet for most of it.  I then attempted to be proactive by making us all lunch.

Today I realized that carrying both boys down the stairs at one time equates to carrying around 50 pounds of wiggling weight.  This time they had almost wiggled out of my grasp by the time we reached the living room.  I suggested lunch because my stomach was growling but they insisted on play.  We tried puzzles and blocks to no avail.  Finally I left them to their own devices and ate my sandwich.  Joel and Malin finally returned from the DOL around noon.  When they left home, there was a 7 minute wait.  When they arrived, the wait time had changed to 1 hour.  Fun for them.  Joel talked to a manager and Malin was able to get a driving appointment made.  Everyone wish her luck on Friday.  We hope she comes back with a license.

Joel and I played with the boys while Malin Skyped with family and friends.  Finally I forced Nicholas and Dexter to eat.  They really weren’t interested.  Sometimes the feeds get so frustrating.  Especially when they don’t want to eat what’s in front of them.  Back to the living room to play with trucks and planes followed by running around the house pushing a shopping cart.  The boys were rummaging through all of their books (this statement means they were pulling every book they owned off of the book shelf and tripping on them) in order to find the right one.  I begged Joel for a 20 minute cat nap.  He was laying on the floor at the time and actually said yes.  Off to bed I went for a power nap.  I usually don’t need one but for some reason, today I was tired.  Ahhh, I fell asleep to Malin speaking in Swedish and to shrieks below.

Bam – my alarm went off.  I sighed and headed back downstairs, refreshed and in a better mood.  Joel then asked for a power nap in return.  I have to say the boys and I weren’t as nice to Joel.   I got out the big metal bowls and let the boys bag away on them.  Oops but it was music time.  He fell asleep so I shouldn’t feel too guilty  (ear plugs).  :)  Joel returned from his nap to find us coloring again.  Fellow au pair Marte stopped by to pick up Malin for shopping and a movie.  Another snack followed the coloring session and because the boys looked so tired, we tried to put them down for a nap.  Instead of sleeping, this time Nicholas and Dexter chatted up a storm, laughed, and shook their cribs like monkeys in a zoo.  A cry announcing poop notified us that the nap was a failure and the boys joined us back downstairs.

Once again, we were faced with coming up with the next entertaining item.  Well, let’s get them in their rain gear and boots and head outside.  What’s a little rain going to do, stop us?  Seriously, these kids looked like little oompa loompas but in yellow instead of orange.  We explored the backyard and then hit the trail behind our house.  A couple of tumbles (rain boots are hard to walk in), a little basketball (Nicholas was very upset when he couldn’t make a basket – and more upset still when we couldn’t lift him up high enough for him to dunk it), and a walk brought us back home.  Dinner time shortly followed.  Whereas the first half of the day was punctuated with attempting to find something they liked to eat, dinner was the opposite.  I couldn’t keep food on their trays fast enough.  You should have seen their bellies.  Oh, Santa Claus would have been proud.  Joel and I ate in shifts.  The boys taunted us by climbing and standing on the couch over and over again.  Naked time (for the boys ONLY), reading time, and finally bed time.

I know this blog is boring, but these are our days now.  I’m tired now.  It’s 9:30pm and time for bed.  We’ll try to get the oompa loompa pictures up for you tomorrow.  Sleep well.  We’ll be up, bright and early at 6am to do it all over again.

-Katie

(Katie forget to mention the most psychologically devastating part of the day.  Joel asked Nic for a kiss.  Nic poked him in the cheek with his index finger.  Then Mommy walked over, Nicholas lifted his arms to be picked up, and then voluntarily kissed her on the cheek.  <sigh>  At least Dexter likes me…  A little bit, anyway…  Except when I tossed a pillow on his back and tried to use him for a nap.  And she didn’t mention when I yelled out to the house at large, “who fed them small black seeds?  And when???”)-Joel

Just a few quick quirks and some adorable pictures to share with you tonight.

Nicholas and Dexter are brothers.  Sometimes they love each other, like this morning when Nicholas decided he was going to feed his brother cereal.  I had been attempting to eat breakfast (after the boys of course) and both of them came to me begging.  So, I got out the Life cereal and fed them one piece by one piece in between bites of my own cereal.  This went on for a couple of minutes when Nicholas decided to put his piece of cereal in his brother’s mouth.  Dexter obliged by opening wide.  Nic would take one for himself and then one for his brother.  Then he would put a piece in his mouth, remove it like a mama bird and feed it to his brother.  Dexter did not care.  He just wanted the food.  Another example of love by Dexter.  The other morning, according to Joel, Nicholas was besides himself, crying and just not enjoying his morning, and was sitting on Joel’s lap.  Dexter saw what was going on and ran to the other room.  When he returned, he had a monkey in his mouth and another in his hand.  He ran up to Nic, took the monkey out of his mouth, thrust it to his brother, shoved the monkey that was in his hand, into his mouth, and ran off.  If that isn’t brotherly love, I don’t know what his.  Oh, and Dexter will pet his brother’s head.  He does this all the time, when Nicky is calm or upset.  It’s so cute to see.

And then there are the days in which they annoy each other, tease each other, and generally get on each other’s nerves.  Last Monday, when I was home, I was once again eating my breakfast and watching their interaction.  It’s a favorite past-time of mine.  Anyway, Nicholas was happily playing with a toy airplane, flying it through the air and making airplane noises that his his father taught him.  Dexter watched what was going on, calmly walked up to his brother, plucked the pilot out of the airplane and walked away quickly.  He turned back to see if Nicky would follow.  Nicholas looked bewildered at the plane and then at Dexter.  When Nicky didn’t chase, Dexter, (and I kid you not) held out his arm and dangled the pilot for his brother to see.  That got Nicholas’s goat and he started to walk towards Dexter.  Dexter ran to me stopped and looked innocently at his brother like “ha ha – I’m next to Mom and you can’t get me.”  Little did Dexter know that I had see the whole exchange and I plucked the pilot from him and returned it to Nicholas with the “we don’t steal toys from your brother” speech that is said at least once a day in this house.  At other times, Nicholas or Dexter will litterally sit right on & in front of the brother in order to annoy.  

 They are so fun to watch as they grow and develop.  They light up when they see each other and they are upset when the other is hurt.  Here they are being big-old cheese balls.  Enjoy!

It’s only been a couple of weeks since my Mom and stepfather visited, so it almost feels like I’m jumping the gun on posting some pictures about it.  I uploaded the photos last weekend, in a fit of absurd proactivity.  I should probably procrastinate and wait until March to publish the photos, so as not to set unreasonably high expectations.  But maybe, just this once, I’ll post them before they start to digitally decay.  It’s kind of sad when your monitor starts to smell bad from over-ripe photos that have been left in the draft folder for too long.

Laura, erstwhile Au Pair Extraordinaire, and reigning scapegoat for all that is wrong in our household for as long as I can get away with it (currently accepting the blame for missing remotes, the boys coming their hair with puree on their forks, a bed that broke a week after she left, and three missed deadlines at work), abandoned us to fend for ourselves on the 26th of December, which you may recall as the worst boxing day ever (excepting the tsunami from a few years ago – felt like a tactless moron for forgetting that when I titled the good-bye post…)  Our schedule fell apart, no one slept, and I’m still not sure we didn’t misplace a 3rd child somewhere in the mix.  Not quite sure if we started with 2 or 3, come to think of it.  Can’t wait to get some sleep, one of these nights.  Now part of the falling apart was due to everyone getting really sick, but part too was that everyone was fairly sad, and of course, angry.  Angry that Laura had the gumption to leave VEGEMITE in MY HOME! I think we can all agree that Laura is currently in quite the hotseat (especially since, according to her e-mail from last Wednesday, she is now safely returned to Australia), and we shall speak no more of her in this post.  I think.  Still not really sure where I’m going with this.  Or when I’ll stop.  Doesn’t seem like the brevity fairy is smiling on me today.

So after she-who-must-not-be-mentioned-again-in-this-post abandoned us, we stayed home with the boys for a week.  On the 4th, we had to go back to work, and Malin, our new scapegoat, er, Au Pair, wasn’t to arrive until the 8th.  She *should* have been here on the 4th – but you know Swedish girls.  She gets to the U.S., and then immediately spends 4 days living it up in New York.  Bloody irresponsible if you ask me.  I mean, are we really supposed to believe that she was at a 3-day Au Pair training program?  Seriously?

So with our lack of available outsourcing opportunities for child care, we called up Grandma Crick and Grandpa Don, and asked if they wouldn’t be willing to come out and babysit.  They obliged us, and flew out on January 1st, staying through the 7th.  We had kept our Christmas decorations up until they arrived, and *most* of the presents that they had mailed to us were left wrapped under the tree.  So on the morning of the the 2nd, we had Chrismass version 2, much to the boys delight.

The boys each received a wooden puzzle of their name.  This is the MOST FRUSTRATING GIFT EVER, as the boys know how it is supposed to work, but don’t have the dexterity yet to get the letters back into the grooves.  Nonetheless, they’re stubborn (with Katie and I as parents, it’s a miracle they weren’t born as mules), and insist on playing with their puzzles.  The become instantly frustrated, and start whining and furiously signing ‘please’.  I think another 6-8 weeks and they’ll be on top of it.  And once they get beyond the face of enjoying these puzzles, I’m thinking we’ll glue the letters to their bedroom door.

That said, for the first week, they had an eager sucker firmly wrapped around their finger, eager to help them with their name-puzzles whenever they wanted.

Mom bought a combo-pack of flashlights – one large one, and two smaller ones (for Papa and his two boys).  The boys had fun with them, and when the flash on my camera failed to fire, you could see why.

And of course, aside from the presents, the boys found ample opportunity to make my life difficult.  As I carefully work to get a photo of Nicholas, suddenly it’s Mnt. Joel time, and Dexter has summit fever.

And when I set the camera down for a moment to run after Nicholas, Dexter goes to investigate.  My mother, ever helpful, snapped a photo.  I *might* have preferred her to pick up the camera, or the boy, but she was going to provide free baby sitting, and the camera wasn’t damaged, so I suppose I ought not to complain.

But all good things must come to and end, and Nicholas was getting very, very tired.

From there, the week went on.  We took the Christmas decorations down during the boys nap.  It was kind of sad, but it was January, we have to take any opportunity we can to clean up when the boys are preoccupied, so down they came.  Katie even managed to get the ornaments off the Chandelier, only breaking one light bulb in the process.

Remember the chairs the boys got for Christmas?  For some reason, I found Don sitting in them regularly throughout the week.  He had excuses – “Nic was here when I came to sit next to him, but then he ran off”, but really I think he was just secretly happy to find a chair in which his feet touched the ground.  It’s the exact inverse experience to going out to eat with Katie.  She loves to find the tall chairs at places like Quiznos, because then her feet don’t touch the ground and she gets to feel like a bit less of a giant.

Lest you fear Don spent the entire time sitting in their chair, he also sat in our chair.  In this case, he was teaching Dexter about football, while the Spartans made their surprisingly competitive bowl game challenge.  I allowed this trash to be on our television, but the carefully cleaned the cable box and television afterward to make sure they weren’t tainted.

And of course, Don found our couch as well.

To be fair, the boys are kind of energetic, and their grandparents aren’t getting any younger.  On the plus side, at least the boys have 3 sets of grandparents, giving them all a little bit more time to rest.

Rest assured, Mom was there, too.  But most of these pictures were taken with her new camera, necessitating her absence from the photo.

Later in the week, 2 days after I tried to kill Dexter, they took the boys out for a walk.

This last photo from the walk is important – it’s the last shot we have of Dexter before he was viciously mauled by a root, splitting his lip and cutting his nose.

Their visit coincided with the boys being diagnosed with their first ear infection.  The boys spent the week cranky and off schedule, and yet somehow their grandparents didn’t seem to mind.  The boys were *so * close to talking, but not quite there yet.  Maybe next week.

In the meantime, one last photo, just in case anyone doubts that Nicholas is my son:

Were you to make the mistake of giving me the opportunity to provide you with a list of all of my complaints about my job (a dreadful mistake, but one you’d only make once), the one at the top of my list would be the commute.  I HATE driving.  Always have.  It hurts my hip.  It hurts my back.  And I fall asleep, which kind of sucks.  I have to get up far too early to beat the Seattle traffic, and then I get home too bloody late.  On a work day, I get barely 2 hours of time at home while the boys are awake, and nearly half of that is taken up with eating dinner and doing the dishes.  Yes, I’m whinning.  And you’re surprised, then you must be new to reading this…  It’s kind of a core-competency of mine, if you will.  You have to do what you’re good at, and I’m really, really good at complaining.  Perhaps I should be a consultant?  Or a pundit?

The only thing that keeps me awake on my drive (hence, alive) are audio books.  I listen to lots and lots of them, and my iPod is the third-best purchase I’ve ever made.  It’s hard to find the books I’d most like to read in audiobook form, but I’ve found some.  It leads to some embarassing moments, like when a manager casually asks what I’m listening to, and I have to somehow explain that I’m listening to a history of the Byzantine Empire without coming across as an utter freak.  Still, small price to pay for continued living.

And then when I get home, there’re the boys.  Katie as well, to be sure, but she has a terrible habit of speaking to me in English, and asking me things.  The boys are much more polite.  They just shreak.  Or cry.  Sometimes Dexter even runs up to me and gives me a hug.  Well, sort of.  He spreads his arms and charges, so you can decide whether he’s giving a hug, or trying to tackle me.  Either way, I don’t mind.  Sometimes Nicholas will smile at me.  Sometimes he’ll ignore me altogether.  Usually he’ll ignore me for a minute or so, and then come and look at me, and run off, and then come back around the corner again, and then run off.  They only start yelling at me once I try and run upstairs to change.  It’s really quite rude of me, I know.  I’ve never claimed to be a good father, though, so change my pants I will.

When the boys were at their sickest over the Holidays, I came home and found them sitting on Katie’s lap in the Family Room, watching television whilst chewing away on Ducky and Froggy.

Cute kids, but I’m biased.  I call every son of mine I meet adorable, so who could possibly accept my lack of bias?  Just a nice moment.  And predictably, I responded by taking a picture, and then going to change my pants, and probably complaining about my job.  I don’t recall specifically, but it’s altogether possible I listened to a few more minutes of a book in the meantime.  Seems likely.

As I’m sure all of our blog posts are carefully perused, studies, re-read, analyzed, memorized, and then recited, I’m sure you’ll recall mention of the giant inflatable beer stein that Uncle Ryan gave to 1st-cousin once-removed Greg at Christmas time.  By the time it was opened and inflated I’d run out of energy to take any more pictures, and the camera was sitting neglected on the mantle.  Fortunately Great Uncle Dick was still clicking away, so that you have the opportunity to see our little boozers-in-the-making.

It really is amazing.  We have so many toys, but then the boys will get a hold of an empty formula container and its their new favorite toy.  Or you can give them a potato masher.  Or a cordless drill.  And they’ll be pleased as clams.  Also dead, or soon would be, but usually their power-tool use is at least loosely supervised.  The only conclusion I can draw is that toymakers are really, really bad at their jobs, if they cannot purposefully design something more entertaining than a roll of toilet paper.  And yet, try as I might, I can’t predict what toy might capture their attention beforehand.

Oh well, so I won’t make my millions as a toymaker.  Easy come, easy go.

A question for parents – how normal is it to find yourself debating whether or not your child is somehow mentally challenged, and trying to reconcile yourself to it?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not terribly concerned about either of our boys.  They’re both learning and making progress, are very social, happy, and still alive.  That pretty much satisfies the core parenting requirements I’ve identified.  Still, there are only so many times you can watch your son put a bucket on his head and run into a wall before you start thinking to yourself, “it’s okay, his brother will watch out for him, and there’s lots of opportunties now for mentally challenged people – at least he’s healthy, happy, and alive…”  Funny, now that I think about it, most of the specific incidents I can think of are primarily due to one boy or the other repeatedly ramming their head into something – a wall, the floor, a window, a toy, their brother, you get the idea.

And then there’s the milestones, lest we forget the urgent need to plot our sons progress and develop a report card before they can talk.  Oh wait, they can’t talk yet?  Hmm…  That’ll cost ‘em a point.  They can sign a few things, especially Nicholas.  He learned 3-4 signs in a week or so, but then nothing more since then.  Dexter stopped at 2.  Still, “please” and “eat” are pretty useful, right?

They both seemed like they were on the verge of talking when Grandma and Grandpa Roberts were here a couple of weeks ago.  So much vocalization, babbling, careful enunciation.  Then they left, and suddenly I’m wondering if our boys aren’t turning into birds.  Lots of squawks.  And squeals.  And shreaks.  And lest we leave Nicholas out, we cannot neglect the growling.  On the plus side, they haven’t started eating worms.  Then again, with Dexter’s penchant for putting anything he can find into his mouth, it’s purely a matter of opportunity, so I shouldn’t feel too relieved.

<sigh>

I know we’ve mentioned going to Everett’s children’s museum but I’m not sure how much I’ve shared or if we’ve shared pictures yet.  I could go back through our old posts and see, but right now, the boys are on the edge of waking up and I need to write quickly.

So, in December, the boys were going STIR CRAZY.  In desperation, Joel and I thought – let’s go to the mall to walk around.  As we headed out, I thought about all the Christmas shopping that was occurring and traffic nightmare that we were about to walk into and at the last minute asked Joel to head north and go to the museum.  He was game and the boys really didn’t care.  They were just happy to be out of the house.  (By the way, Nicholas becomes quite the little non-word talker in the car).

Anyway, we arrived and started to explore.  That day we visited three rooms – the “ball” room, the foam fire engine slide room, and the water room.  On our next visit we added the money room and construction zone to our rotation.  As soon as Nicholas and Dexter spotted that they could play with ping pong balls and shoot them through an air compressed hose, they were hooked.  Dexter also discovered that he could fit a whole ping pong ball in his mouth and run like a madman which would get his mom to chase him down and pop the ball out of his mouth.  This scenario would be repeated over and over again until I finally got tired of it and moved us into the foam fire truck room.

This room has an under 5 age limit and contains a big foam fire truck complete with two slides.  The boys went wild.  Ok, Dexter went crazy wild and Nic was just super happy.  This is where I discovered that Dexter is an adrenaline junky and Nicholas is totally cautious.  Case in point.  Dexter tried to run down the slide, slipped, whacked his head and came up laughing at the bottom.  He then ran to do it all over again.  We could send him down on his stomach or butt and it wouldn’t matter – he’d go fast and furious down that slide.  He also would have walked straight off the steps had we not been there to catch him. 

Nicholas, on the other hand, always sat down at the top, scooted forward, and went down on his butt, using his feet to slow his rate of speed.  The one time I sent him down face first, he flipped himself over, slowed down and finished the ride on his bottom.

We also splashed up a storm in the water room and build and destroyed block towers in the construction zone room.  Once Joel taught Nicholas how to topple over a floor to ceiling tower that Joel had built, Nicholas attempted to take down other kids towers and succeeded once before I could stop him.

We managed to get Laura to the museum before she left and Malin has joined us too.  Both had a blast chasing boys. 

However, the worst part about going is that the boys always come back with a cold (or never ending ear infections).  I try to weigh the risks (getting sick) to the benefits (happy boys) and so far, the benefits have out weighed the risks with the exception of one time.  I think it was December 31st when Joel and I aborted our visit within 4 minutes of entering.  The place was overwhelmingly full but it wasn’t until I saw a girl leaning over a garbage can puking that I snatched up Nicholas and told Joel we were leaving.  The boys got to play at Grandma and Grandpa French’s house and terrorize Rylie (the dog) instead.  I think they were cool with that.

Anyway, enjoy the pictures of our visits!

Katie is off at a SNOMOMs meeting.  She didn’t quite leave me alone – Malin’s here, so if one of the boys had developed an interest in Drano I’d have had backup, but fortunately I didn’t have to call on her.  Tomorrow night they’re both leaving me in the lurch, though.  Katie’s off to play volleyball, while Malin’s going to her first Spanish class.  <sigh>  I hope they count how many boys are alive before they leave, because I make no promises.

The ear infections are back.  Well, I guess they haven’t gone away, so they’re at least 2 weeks into them, and more like 3.  Now they’re on a new antibiotic, a purple one, and purple is clearly superior to white (the color of the last medicine), so I’ve no doubt it’ll work wonders.  Nonetheless, I had to rock Dexter to sleep tonight, even after some IBUprofen.

Actually, that’s an interesting thing about Dex.  He fights going to sleep so badly, but really he only fights you leaving him alone in his crib.  As long as you stay nearby, he’s fine.  Or as long as you hold him.  Tonight he screamed for 10 minutes, but I caved because he started choking on the phloem, and the more he screamed the worse it was getting.  I picked him up, went over to the chair, sat down, and rocked gently with him sitting on my lap, leaning back against me.  He didn’t move or make a sound.  His eyes were wide open for about 20 minutes.  Then for the next 10 minutes they started blinking longer and longer, and then he started to snore softly, and that was it.  They’re nice moments, to be sure.  I mean, my to-do list is usually several volumes long, with an appendix or twenty tacked on, so once they’re out I’m supposed to get moving, but when he forces you to sit there, and if you can just run with it, it’s really nice.  He’s a very, very good snuggler. 

Which makes me feel all the worse for trying so hard to kill him over the last few weeks.  First we downplay the raging ear infections, and try to wait it out.  Then I cut him while trying to remove a bandage.  I’ve probably tried to sit on him once or twice as well, and I’m sure I’ve done some joint-damage during some of the more actively protested diaper changes. 

Nicholas hasn’t had it all that easy the last few weeks either, though.  The same infections, predictably enough, and non-stop neediness.  Then, two days after I stabbed Dexter and was just kind of sort of starting to not feel like the worst father ever to walk the Earth, I open the front door to yell to Carter and Marilyn about where to park, and turn to the right as I go back inside, while apparently Nicholas went around the left.  I didn’t even notice.  I went back inside, and a few seconds later, I heard screaming.  Very faint screaming.  Where was it coming from???  And then I saw a hint of movement out the window, and saw Nicholas laying at the base of our steps, screaming in pain.  He’d walked straight off our porch, smacked his head horribly, rolled, cut open his cheek, an scratched his chest. 

This is him 5 minutes later – he didn’t much like the ice I held to his forehead, but he was pretty calm about it.

And here you can see his battlescars starting to form in earnest:

I think I had just about enough guilt last week.  I DON’T LIKE this part of parenting.  I can handle the rules, and the poop, and the puking, and feeds, and the work, and the poverty – but I can’t handle screwing up and hurting them.

And in case you’re interested, Malin has a blog of her own (Malin’s blog).  It’s written in some strange language, but Google has placed a helpful translation tool right at the top to put it into the King’s English.  We’ve set up an account on our blog in case Malin can be conned into writing a post in English, but as of yet we’re simply not leaving her enough time!