As Katie mentioned yesterday, last Sunday we took advantage of the buy-one-get-one free Boeing discount day and took the boys to the Seattle acquarium for the first time.  The boys didn’t know what to make of it, so I guess our weeks of preparation (watching Finding Nemo over and over again) was less than productive, but such is life.  We headed down after letting the boys run around in the morning, and they both took a quick cat nap on the way.  Nicholas of course woke up as we got on the off ramp, and Dexter awoke only when we got him out of his car seat.

Just after you walk in, there’s a huge floor-to-ceiling aquarium, and there were two divers in the tank giving it a good scrubbing.

After that, we went into a room with several displays, including the Jelly fish display.  Dexter loves PB&J sandwiches, but was horrified to learn how the jelly was made.

The boys ran from tank to tank, with all sorts of commentary (no, Nicholas – fish don’t roar like a lion – sorry, buddy)

Dexter found his favorite.  THIS ONE!

We headed outside to see the otters and seals, and then on to the next aquarium.  The next one was awesome – the whole room was surrounded by the aquarium, and the boys were glued to the glass.

And far more importantly than any enjoyable and educational experience, or family bonding, is that it let me learn what kind of pictures you can get with a good fast prime lens without flash in a dark setting.  I’m kind of impressed with it, though I wish the bloody camera would bump the ISO above 400 automatically when needed – I end up with all grainy shots, or randomly underexposed.  I guess there’s no winning.  Lots of whinning, of course, just no winning.

Katie already filled you in on the rest of the day.  Hope you liked the pictures,

-Joel

Five days have passed and no updates from the Yates clan.  You might be wondering what in the world we have been up to.  Well, let me tell you what’s going on.

Last weekend was a whirlwind of activity.  Saturday morning started out with the March of Dimes walk (which you already heard about) followed by a barbecue at our house for the walkers on our team.  Laura, I had to find someone else to man the grill.  It was a sad moment for us, especially since I knew I then had to clean it afterwards too.  ;)  You will forever be “the grill master” in my mind.

Anyway, I digress.  The walk and party afterwards through a lovely wrench into the boys schedule which resulted in no afternoon nap for Dexter.  But, we powered through the day and ended it with the most amazing dinner (which I did not have to cook) at my mom’s house.  I swear Nicholas is deliberately trying to keep me from eating.  Every time food appeared that day, so did Nicholas – to take my hand and lead me away from hot food.  Do you know how hard it is to eat a cold hamburger in one hand and a 25+ pound baby in the other?  I thwarted his evil plot at my folks’ house by plopping him into a chair next to me and handing him some french bread to eat.  By doing this, I was able to get through the manicotti while it was hot.  YUMMY

The boys crashed that evening and so did Joel and I.  Sunday morning, the boys woke up bright and early at 6am.  Isn’t that just cruel?  I had them help me make banana pancakes and then we headed down to Seattle for a morning spent at the Seattle Aquarium.  Kids under 2 are free and Boeing was sponsoring a “show your Boeing badge and get another person in free” morning.   The best time to go to the aquarium is in the morning – not as busy and we just let Nicholas and Dexter run around.  Look for a future post with pictures of this adventure.

Around 11:45am, we loaded the boys back into the van for a trip up north to Mt. Vernon for the annual Knutzen/Hansen family brunch.  This would be the boys debut.  Just like I had hoped, Nic and Dex slept all the way there.  Nicholas has this uncanny ability to sense when the van slows down and as soon as we got off the freeway, he woke up.  Dexter opened his eyes as we pulled into the parking lot at the golf course.  We were very lucky in that our table got to go first for food and that Nicholas and Dexter were very intrigued with the play-do we brought and thus, Joel was able to finish his meal before Nic and Dex got wiggly.  He took them out to the putting green to run while I finished up.

After the brunch, we headed home and that’s when the runny noses started.  This did not prevent us from going on a play date the next morning.  However, shortly after that, both boys’ cold really took off and the last two nights, Dexter has slept in his car seat and we’ve been giving him neb treatments for his cough.

As you can see, we’ve been busy.  It’s not that we don’t want to share all the fun stuff the boys are doing, it’s just that Joel and I are exhausted by the end of the evening.  That’s why I’m writing this on my lunch break at work.  Did I tell you that both Nicholas and Dexter are yelling “MaMa” when I come through the door after work?  I have waited so long to hear that word from them.  Joel is also getting “DaDa” too.

Ok – time to get back to work.  More updates to come……. – Katie

Today was our second-annual March for Babies, in memory of the 4 long months we spent watching our boys fight for life, and the hope that contributing to the March of Dimes would help other families and babies in the same tough spot.  With the help of all of you, our friends and family, our team raised $1500!

The boys were very kind to us last night, and slept the whole night through for the first time in a week.  Either that, or I slept the whole night through despite their waking, but I prefer to think that I wasn’t terribly negligent.  We had a quick Waffle-Saturday breakfast, and prepared to go.  Katie had left me with a check list last night while she ran off to the grocery store, and we were pretty much ready to go.  We left exactly on time (Malin was ready with about 6 seconds to spare), and got to the park just after 8:30am.

We met our friends Trevor and Julie there (who joined our team this year!)  We saw Heather, and then a number of our former nurses, and Dr. Neufeld.  Dawnn arrived with her entourage, Ashlyn and ‘lil Katie.  And then Ryan showed up, despite having mistakenly supercharged his truck the day before.

We started near the front of the march this time, and while we lost a bit of ground over the 3.5 mile track, we still made good time.  Trevor helped by knocking over some strollers, which created quite the bottle neck behind us.  A short ways in we met up with Robyn and Alex, who were running a little behind but wisely staked out a spot along the route and joined us as we passed.  Nic stayed awake for the whole walk, but Dexter passed out about halfway through.

When we got back to the park, they had set up a Bouncy House.  Nic did pretty well, and we tried to get Dex in once he woke up, but he wasn’t ready for it.

Afterward we headed home, and most of our team came over for a small barbecue.  We also invited Karl and Tristine over, and our enormously pregnant friend, Trisha (I wasn’t allowed any photos of her, though, due to the inability of my camera lens to go wide enough to capture her in her entirety).

Nic passed out 2 minutes away from our house, and napped for the next hour and a half.  Dex didn’t have a nap for the rest of the day, and shared his misery with us.  They both cheered up enormously when they got to have another cookie, though Nicholas doesn’t like to be told he can only have one (I snuck him another when his Mother wasn’t looking – shhh!  don’t tell).

Thank you again for your support – the boys are our everything, and it’s really hard to think back on the terror of those four months.  We talked with another couple who were there with their child – he’d been born a twin, but his twin didn’t make it.  My god, but how incredibly lucky we were.  It was a hell of a hard road, but our boys are hale and hearty, and we couldn’t ask for anything more.

Here’re some photos of our day:

The boys have been so eager to help us cook lately that I figured, what the hell, why not make cookies?  We’ll be seeing Ashlyn and “little” Katie tomorrow, so the cookies were kind of obligatory anyway.  We had the bright idea of letting the boys help, just after we finished dinner.  Not the most brilliant thought we’ve ever had.

We started with mixing the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.  This went fairly well.  The boys held the spoons while I poured the ingredients in, and then gleefully plunged them into the bowl.  Then they started stirring, and fighting over the right to stir, and scooping up with the spoons, and refusing to use the whisk, and screaming if we tried to take the orange spoons.  Katie had to vacuum Dexter’s chair off twice.  Then Nic picked up the whole bowl and tipped it over.  <sigh> 

At this point we cut them off, moved the ingredients further away, and let them supervise.  We mixed the eggs, sugar, brown sugar, and butter in the mixer, and Nicholas squealed with delight when the mixer came on.  Then we slowly mixed in the flour, and the world seemed good again.  The oatmeal went in easily. 

Then whoops, I spilled half of the butterscotch chips out on the countertop…  Silly me – how clumsy.  Fortunately the boys were more than willing to help me put them in the bowl.  Well, Nicholas was.  Dexter *seemed* eager, but then I noticed that only about half of the chips that landed near Dexter were ending up in the bowl.  Good for him. 

I pleaded with Katie to let the boys have some dough, but she had to go all responsible-parent on me and decide that the risk of salmonella outweighed the overwhelming urgency of feeding boys raw cookie dough.  Phooey.  I got the cookies into the oven in time, though, so the boys could each have one before going to bed.  Dexter initially didn’t realize what he was missing, and tried to give the cookie back.  I think I saw Katie eat his half when he ran off…  For shame…

But he came back a few minutes later, and I set a piece on the counter, and he stuck it in his mouth almost without looking.  And then he very pointedly insisted on having his full share. I got him another, to make up for his mother’s abuse.  Nicholas moved a chair over and climbed up, just in time to *help* Dex finish his last few pieces.

We survived.  It was too manic to manage any photos or video clips, though.  Maybe next time, when Mommy’s away, and the boys are wearing smocks, and I’ve spread out a tarp, and I can give them the raw dough – maybe then it’ll work out a little better.

Okay, so here’s another post that probably ought to have gone up 4 months ago, but somehow sat at the bottom of a pile of dirty posts, waiting for some spring cleaning.  Shortly after Laura abandoned us to our fate, my Mom and stepfather came out to watch the boys for a few days, before Malin arrived.  One afternoon, I’d just gotten home from work, and we were sitting out in the living room playing with the boys, when Carter and Marilyn stopped by.

Carter was about to park in the wrong spot, so I leaned out the front door to ask him to move to another spot, and then turned back inside.

5 seconds later, my Mom and I heard a muffled screaming – we had no idea where it was coming from, until I glimpsed Nicholas out of the corner of my eye, out on our sidewalk.  I’d leaned out the front door, with one hand on the door handle the whole time, and he’d perfectly timed his escape, slipping behind me before I noticed, closing the door behind him.  He saw Grandma and Grandpa French, and walked straight toward them, oblivious of the concrete steps.  He fell.  He had a nasty bump on his forehead, a scratch on his cheek, and another on his chest.  :(

I hate being a Dad some days, especially when the bumps, bruises, abrasions, punctures, contusions, concussions, incisions, and amputations are entirely my fault…

I’m thinking about buying them body armor for their birthday.  Sound like a good idea?

One of the cook things about the boys growing up is that they can *almost* be helpful now.  *almost*.  They’ll take their clothes and put them in the dirty clothes bin (and then Dexter will bring the clothes back to you, then his brothers clothes, then the bin), stuff clean diapers into the diaper pail, put away their books after reading time, feed themselves certain foods (and coincidentally will also stylize their own hair with their patented organic hair gel), wash windows, and most recently, yard work.  Just look how helpful they were a few days ago when the yard was in desperate need of mowing?

They only have one little-man sized lawn mower, but I get tired of mowing sometimes, so the boys help push.

And have I ever mentioned just how devious my darling beloved wife is?  She actually has a note from the doctor, excusing her from mowing the yard.  And in fact, instructing that I must strip upon re-entering the home, and immediately proceed to the shower, which is bloody awkward when we have company, but you have to listen to your doctor, right?

Oops – another one of those “ought to have published back in January when we first wrote the thing” kind of posts.  Sorry about that – completely forgot about it…

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With our schedule in ruins, so, too, have the boys relapsed a bit in some of their behavior.  We all fought valiantly for nearly a month to help teach Dex to go to sleep without screaming at us, and then he goes and gets sick, and starts screaming, and choking on his Phlegm, and probably some Phloem, too, so we go pick him up and rock him to sleep.  Bugger.  And so we set the pattern.  In order for Dex to sleep, we have to hang out with him.  Sometimes just sitting in his room while he goes to sleep, sometimes rocking him.  In this case, we laid down together on our bed, until he went to sleep.  Once he finally did, I could just-barely extract and arm and stand up, and here’s what I left behind.

I promise we didn’t leave him there.  We were back up stairs before the second bounce…

During our many examples of spousal abandonment, Katie leaves me alone with the boys, trusting them to be alive when she returns.  She should’t worry so much.  They almost never die.  Sure, we occasionally camp out and watch movies, or make misogynistic comments about women, or get the flame thrower out for some much-needed weeding, but through it all we haven’t lost a child.  Some hair, assuredly, but none have yet slipped loose the mortal coil.  And when it gets a bit difficult to contain them, such as when I’m making dinner for them, I just put them in a box until I’m ready to talk to them again.  Remarkably convenient, no?

Last Sunday we went native, gave into the allure of Northern Europe, and immersed ourselves in Swedish culture for a few hours. Of course this meant that we went to IKEA. We’re struggling to configure our home in such a way that accommodates the boys without leading to an excess of fractured skulls. Anything more than two trips to the emergency shift in any one 10-hours shift just smacks of half-hearted parenting. Specifically, after our Swedish friends endowed our children with a ball pit, we had the slight problem that there was no longer quite enough room to walk around our living room. Sadly, this means that it’s time for the pool table to go.

Well, in order for that to happen, we need to replace it with some form of table. You know, kind of like the one in our kitchen. But in order to do that, we need a new, larger kitchen table – preferably one that can seat more than 4 people. And in order to do that, we need to go to a furniture store. And since the last table came from IKEA, well, off we went.

We started the day by going to the MS Walk in support of the ever-lovely Dawnn (we’ll write that post shortly, and get the pictures up – just have to download them first).  The boys were very good about it all, though not so keen on walking themselves, the lazy buggers.  We fit in a lunch at the picnic table, and then drove off.  We had intended to go home, but Katie said, "what the hell, why not go to IKEA?"  I was a little worried about the boys nap, and said that if they’re still awake by the time we get to our exit, we’ll just go home – but if they fall asleep, we’ll head on to IKEA.  The boys passed out about 2 minutes before our exit, and slept the whole way. In fact, traffic was so light that we got there after only 45 minutes, so we kept driving down to the super mall, before looping back up and giving them both an hour and 20 minutes to sleep. Nicholas has magical abilities, though. Every time our speed fell below 45 mph, his eyes popped open. It really made me anxious, trying to keep my driving seamless enough so he’d stay unconscious.

When we got to IKEA, it rocked. Katie and I had planned on finding a cart, heading to the dining room tables, leaving quickly, and perhaps finding a park for the boys to run around in and burn off some energy. Then it dawned on us – we were in an enormous playground. All the furniture we normally yell at the boys for climbing on – suddenly they could be set free. And so we spent the next 2 and a half hours chasing them from bedding, through living rooms, kitchens, bathrooms, childrens furniture, lighting, until we were ready for a nap ourselves.

The boys kept looking back at us, like, "are you sure you’re not going to yell at me for climbing onto this chair???"  We had a great time, until Dexter fell out of a chair in the dining room section, and all our nerves gave way in the ensuing bout of tears.  We stopped for Swedish meatballs (the boys weren’t a fan – maybe if Malin makes them some REAL meatballs???), and headed home.  I didn’t have a *real* camera with me, just my old crappy cell phone, and here are the three hardly-recognizable pictures I got:

This last one is the hardest to see, but it’s also one of the cutest.  Nicholas is turning into quite the big brother.  Dexter really doesn’t listen very well – he ignores us when we call to him, and runs off wherever he likes.  While we were eating, he tried to run off, and after calling him 3 times, Nic went after him, grabbed him by the hand and towed him back to our table.  Nic rocks.  Dexter seemed surprised and bemused, kind of like he was thinking, "seriously, this chum is going to drag me back to Mom and Dad?  Seriously?"

So here I am again, finally writing..

One week ago I drove my mum and sister to the airport. They arrived the 25th of Marsh and stayed until the 4th of April..

They both fell (pretty hard) in love with the boys, DexSTAR and NicNAC as Laura always says.. My sister didn’t wanna go back home to Sweden. She has told me now that she has never loved and missed anyone as much as she does now (missing me, nic and dex).. Mum wanted to take both Nic and Dex with her home.. But unfornunately she didn’t have tha power to to that..

During their stay we visited the tulipfestival with the whole Yates Family, then we continued our little trip (without the Yates then though) to Whidby Island, Deception pass, Fort Casey and back to Mukilteo..

We took the boys shoppin’, to the childrens museum, played outside, to Mukilteo Beach and we had a blast!

It was nice to have them to assist with the boys. I planned everything and they helpt out during feeding and it’s very nice to have another two set of arms! The possibilities increases! I had the best 10 days ever and I think the boys had a great time too.. Dexter as we all know likes girls! So he flirted up a storm with my sister Petra. And Nic is very charming and he made us all laugh many times!

Then Mum, Sis and I went to Seattle the last weekend they where here (or well Thursday-Saturday). We came back to Everett on Saturday for dinner at Katie and Joels with Marilyn and Carter.. Mum and Sis wanted to spend more time with the boys and meet Marilyn and Carter too.. So we had a wonderful dinner and they got some more time with my lovely boys..

Here’s some pictures, I have 500 pictures, but I’m not going to share them all with you.. Not because I don’t want to, because it would take me several hours to make it hehe.. I have more pictures on my on blog if you want to see more.. http://minusa.blogg.se ..

Here’s some though..