wax and frosting

We celebrated birthdays for my ghost and ghoul this weekend.  My Dad is in town visiting and since his birthday is also on Halloween we made an extra-special day of it.  We rode the train at the zoo (twice) and the carousel (once).  Claire was brave.  William was jolly.  Same old, same old.  We played in the sandbox.  And, of course, we had birthday cake.

I learned a few things.  Two toddlers can knock down sand castles faster than one daddy can build them.  Claire and William dig frosting.  Cake not so much.  The only thing better than holding your children on their birthday is maybe watching someone you love hold them. 

And so it was today when Dad, William, and Claire blew out the candles on their cake. Claire and William on their grandpa’s lap, digging chubby little fingers in to whipped cream frosting.  Grandpa laughing and digging in with his own work-calloused digit.  I cherish and revere my father.  It means the world to me to see him loving my children.

the trouble with twins

The trouble with twins is that there are two of them.  Often their twoness is a joy.  Claire’s first thought and first words each morning are for her brother.  Claire and Will hugging each other first thing in the morning is pretty sweet.  They play very well together and therefore are far less needy that most toddlers.  A plus.

Other times twoness is not so cool.  At the Zoo, for example, when Will wants to climb the stairs over and over but Claire wants to see the Tiger.  Or when, in the park, William runs for traffic and Claire for the pond.  After a split second Daddy risk analysis, I ran for Will and then with the little sack of potatoes under my arm beat it for Claire.  Calculating correctly, as it turns out, that my daughter would hesitate a moment before getting her white dress with pink flowers muddy.

(WARNING: If you have a weak stomach skip next couple of paragraphs)

We can add stomach flu to this list.  There really is no great way to have two sick toddlers.  Two babies getting sick all over the carpet at the same time is not good.  On the other hand, one sick and one healthy has its problems as well.  William came down with the stomach flu Friday morning.   I would know because he got sick all over me.  And then did it again after I had him in the bathtub. 

Claire was not sick and therefore did not understand why William (a) wouldn’t play with her for the first time in her entire life and (b) why he was bogarting all the adult attention.  Her turn came at noon on Saturday.  This time I was ready and managed not to get any sick on me when she blew.   Whatever you may say about me, I am not stupid.  I had learned my lesson from Will.  Would have been nice if it was true but alas . . . William got sick after a full nights sleep so he didn’t have much in his stomach.  Claire on the other hand hand just eaten lunch.  I had not anticipated that she would have a second round in the chamber.  I have to say – this was really, really disgusting.  

The poor thing was ill about every 15 minutes until about 7 p.m.  There was nothing for me to do but hold her while her little body shuddered.  She didn’t even cry.  And when she was through she would just collapse and fall back asleep.  This was an awful experience for Claire and perhaps even worse for daddy.  Eventually, she was able to drink small amounts of pedialyte and feeling better.   I was very much relieved.

I started getting sick just before then.  This actually was a blessing because both William and Claire went to sleep just afterward.  By the time they woke in the morning, the worst had past for me, and I was able, if not quite fit, to return to daddy duty.

I am very happy to report that Daddy and twins are in good shape now.  All are eating simple solid foods.  

I expect Chris to be the next patient . . .

daddy’s groupies

I sing to the twins before bed.  Classic lullabies.  Puff the magic dragon.  That sort of stuff.  Mostly I sing acapella.  Straight up.  Sometimes I strum along on my guitar. 

I am terrible.  Really, really terrible.  I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.  My guitar is no better.  My instructor mainly teaches 8 and 9 year olds and confides that they are much better than me.  Still as long as my audience’s age is measured in months rather than years, I am fearless.  I bellow out the lyrics and bang away on the guitar.  A rockstar. 

Here’s the thing.  The twins love it.  They can’t get enough.  What I lack in talent, I make up in sincerity, funny faces, and energy.  Its really funny and endearing to see them eating up daddy’s bad tunes.  But I worry that I might be destroying their brain cells.  If playing Mozart to babies makes them smarter.  I think my version of ’all through the night’ might make them dumber. 

I am hooked now.  Even when I am frustrated at my lack of progress, I don’t consider quitting.  What would my fans say?

language adventure

Claire is an adventuress.  An intrepid climber of chairs, scaler of stairs, and a mounter of table tops.  William not so much.  Noticing the subtle ways that the William and Claire differ from one another is one of the singular joys of parenting twins.

My little Amelia Earhart is also the great talker of the two and today demonstrated that she has a solid grasp of one of life’s key lessons.   Gravity.  “Up.  Fall.  Hurt.”  She declared.  She wasn’t crying and hadn’t fallen recently.  Given her monkey nature, she might have been recounting one of her many misadventures.  But I think she finally just figured it out.  Hey – when I climb things and fall down it hurts.  Having reached this conclusion, she decided to share it with me in case I hadn’t already figured it out.  I am pretty sure that she thinks I am an idiot.

William often lets Claire do his talking.  One day he will make a fine husband.  The arrangement works better than you might think.  Claire learned “brother” weeks ago — though it sounds more like “bruhger”.  So she says, “bruhger milk” when she thinks William might be thirsty.  Not sure how she knows but I am beginning to think they can read each other’s minds.  This morning, she was criticizing my sunscreening of William and made me do it again.  I am not exaggerating.  “Bruhger, Brugher, Brugher”  Pointing a leg that was thoroughly sunscreened.  Still it was easy enough to slather a little more.  And who knows, maybe I did miss a spot.  William doesn’t have a word for sister, so she is on her own.

William has decided to work on reading and has learned to recognize several letters of the alphabet, adding more each day.  He’s found the “H” on bathtub faucet and found an “S” on a manhole cover at the zoo.  He does “W”, “A”, “I”, and “O” pretty reliably.  They have these magnetic letters.  You can ask William to bring you a “W” and 8 times out of 10 he will do it.  Claire has no interest in letters.  Ask Claire to bring you an “C”, and she just sends William to fetch it.  I guess he will do the reading for both of them.

Man, I need a twin.

roadtrip

I just completed a cross-country trip with Chris.  Roadtrips are great for talking.  There is something about all that open road that promotes honest conversaton. 

We listened to Keith Urban, Jack Johnson, and something called country rap.  Yep, I said country rap.  Replace guns and the hood with pickup trucks and whisky, add in a southern accent, and bam you have a new genre of music. 

We drove route 66.  Stopped at the Grand Canyon.  Took in the scene.  Ate some scary food.  And drove, and drove, and drove.  It was great.

Despite developing a taste for “sweet tea” and country music, Chris is still Chris.  It is great to have him home again.

art of being

Toddlers are masters of the art of being.  William and Claire, and I think every toddler that ever was, are absolutely comfortable in their perfect, chubby toddler skins.  It is as it should be because they are exquisite.

They are perfectly present in every moment.  When it is time to play with trains, as it was earlier today, trains receive rapt attention.  Toddlers do not play trains absent-mindedly while worrying about the impact of the global financial crisis on ones future economic stability.  The only stability that concerns Claire is whether she can stand on one leg.  She can.  Mostly.

For a toddler, ‘just being’ is easier than tying shoes.  All of us begin life as masters of this elusive skill, somehow inexplicably lose it, and then spend the rest of our lives trying to regain what we have lost.  I do not know why I have lost the art of being or why I cannot seem to find it again but think that maybe regret and striving played a role. Regret that the past is as it was.  Striving to control what will be.

not quite ready to be brave

William and Claire are beginning to come to terms with the fact that they have the power of self-determination.  This is a gradual process but has recently manifested itself in a characteristic toddler obstinacy when it comes to getting dressed.  On most Tuesday evenings, I have dinner with the twins, dress them in pajamas, and then return to them to Elisabeth.  The twins frequently insist on dressing themselves with predictably comic results and sometimes fits of toddler pique when daddy disapproves of the “two legs in one pant leg” style of wearing pjs.  The twins, especially William, think this is a valid form of self-expression.  I tend to disagree.  When time is short, a power struggle can result.

In order to avoid a struggle, I invented the “tickle, tickle” game.  The game involves me tossing twins into a huge mound of down comforter and down pillows in the center of my bed.  I tickle them mercilessly.  They try to flee.  I catch them and flip them up into the air and down into mounded pillows and comforter.  I raspberry their bellies.  There is much laughter.  A good time for all.  “Tickle, tickle” is the twins’ reward for getting dressed (either themselves or allowing me to do it for them).  It works like a charm.  Win-Win.  Problem solved. 

“Tickle, tickle” is a daddy’s game.  It is physical.  Twins fly in every direction, flipping this way and that.  Lots of toddler giggling but occasionally, one of my kiddos throws down a zig when a zag would have served better.  And so it happened tonight that William, in his mad-capped desire to evade the tickle monster zigged right off the edge of the bed and on to the carpet.  Thump.  He wasn’t hurt, just startled.  Part of being an adult is understanding that life can bite you in the ass at any moment but William still naively trusted gravity to be reasonable and was a bit broken hearted to learn otherwise.

Thump goes William.  Daddy picks him up.  William starts to cry – big shoulder shuddering sobs.  Daddy snuggles him close and pats his back.  His chubby little arms cling.  Chubby legs wrap around daddy’s torso.  Alligator tears wet Daddy’s t-shirt.  Gradually, sobs become sighs.  But the arms and legs still cling.

In  these moments, I am exactly what this little man needs.  Everything that he needs.  I am safety.  I am love.  I am comfort.  My heart beats out a rhythm of reassurance that he need not fear the dark infinite.

I am never so completely needed or so completely able to satisfy.  In those tragic seconds, t-shirt damp with tears of a boy not quite ready to be brave, I think – isn’t this precisely what I want?  To love and be loved in just this way.  It is a terrific feeling and a true tragedy that such moments must come to an end.

my prodigal son

My prodigal son is returning from a year-long sojourn in distant if not quite foreign lands.  He has been the biggest constant in my life and this past year is the longest time that I have had without him since he came to live with me nearly 13 years ago.  I understand why he needed to explore the world a little bit, and even encouraged him to do so, but I am nevertheless happy that he has decided to return home.  My world has been out of whack while he was gone. 

The decision to father Chris was formative in my life in part, I think, because it emerged from a rare deliberative moment in which the consequences of both action and inaction were clear.  It could have been otherwise but it was not.  It was also formative because it was an act of authorship.  I cannot think of another single moment in which I was able to rewrite the life of another as when I decided to bring my nephew to live with me.  Of course, I rewrote my own life as well.  Fathering Chris and by extension fatherhood in general has become central to my self-concept.  I am more than a father.  It is important to me that this be so.  But fatherhood is a pure, uncomplicated good.  It is the one part of my narrative about which I am always proud.

I rejoice at the return of my prodigal and am grateful for him.

my hill to die on

Daddies should choose their battles carefully.  One false move and you’ve committed your troops to a quagmire in the middle east leaving Russia free to start world war III.

About a month ago, I decided to teach some table manners to the twins.  At 20 months, they still eat with their hands half the time so proper forking technique is beyond them.   I settled on enforcing two common sense rules: (1) we keep our food on our plates (as opposed to dumping the plates on the floor); (2) we don’t bang our sippy cups on the table.

The plate rule was a strong daddy move and I stand by it.  I  have carpet underneath the table, which means that puddles of apple sauce do not clean up readily.  A time saver for dad.  The rule also plays well in restaurants.  Even the most indulgent waiter appreciates not having to mop the floor after each guest.  Also it saves money.  I don’t feel compelled to leave 35% tips when the food stays on the table.  No problem.  When I started, the plate dump to meal ratio was about 50%.  Now, we’ve improved to about 20% dumpage.  A big improvement.  Go team!

Rule number two has not been a success story.  Claire was pounding her sippy cup on the table and having a great time.  Mindful of the dangers of the critical parent, I gently let Claire know that sippy cups are for drinking not pounding.  Claire stopped for a moment to take in what I was saying.  Her own speech is limited to single words or two / three word proto-sentences usually without verbs.  But she understands everything.  After a second, she smiles the wicked smile she uses for tormenting Daddy and William and then starts banging with renewed vigor.  Game on, she would say if she knew what it meant. 

William, who up to this point had not shared his sister’s banging fetish, immediately started banging his cup also.

I tried reasoning with them.  I pointed out that there are toys for banging but sippy cups are for drinking.  I pointed out that banging isn’t good for the table.  No help.  Eventually, we had to give the sippy cup a time out.  She doesn’t mind.  As soon as the sippy cup returns from impound — bang, bang, bang.

I know my basic supernanny philosophy.  Daddy cannot let his little toddler/extortionist win.  But truthfully, I am not just losing the war, I haven’t won a single battle.  She’s figured out that I am not going to deprive her of food for long so she knows that she will always get the sippy cup back.  The routine now is as follows.  Claire drinks enough milk to take the edge off, then pounds the cup on the table once.  Just once to get my attention.  I say, Claire the sippy cup will have to go for a time out if you pound it, at which point she gives me her wicked little smile, cries out “nooo, nooo, nooo” in the cutest of little voices, and the pounds like a drummer at burning man.  Claire 1.  Daddy 0. 

I take the cup away but she doesn’t seem to care all that much.  Claire is a little slip of girl.  A waif in comparison to her fatted calf of a brother.  She has figured out that Daddy is very concerned that she is not getting enough nutrition.  “Milk. Milk.” she says plaintively.  She is obviously on the edge of starvation.  She looks at her daddy, the same daddy that would take down a wildebeest with his bare hands if that was what it took to keep her fed.  Checkmate.  Milk is good for the bones, right?

Rule number two may turn out to be my Iraq.  A daddy blunder that will change toddler / parent diplomacy for months if not years to come.  I am not sure why I choose the pounding thing as my parental hill to die on.  Truth is toddler noise and toddler mess doesn’t bother me much.  Kids pound on the table and I think — cool display of gross motor skills.  If the rhythm happens to be good, I think — cool beat.  I am aware that others probably do not share my appreciation for my toddlers noise so this rule seemed to have particular application at restaurants and other public places.  But I think I may have miscalculated.

william, blueberries, roomba

According to the Blueberry Council the health benefits of blueberries cannot be underestimated.  Blueberries make you smarter and reverse the effects of aging.  Check it out, its true.  I am not saying that this is why William likes blueberries so much but he does have very good skin so he may be on to something.  The Blueberry Council does not mention that blueberries, when consumed in sufficient quantities, have other well known effects on toddler diapers but then the Council is an advocacy group so we can’t expect it to be fair and balanced like Fox News.  William doesn’t give much thought to said effects and consumed a large quantity in relation to his chubby little toddler belly throughout the day.  Dad may have played a small role in this part but he is writing the story and isn’t Fox News either. 

My first hint that something was amiss came in the bathtub.  William, always the little helper, had helped dad out by removing his own diaper.  Life was easier before he learned how to do this little trick.  With Claire and William both in the tub, I set to soaping and scrubbing, which was when I noticed the smallest of bluish patches on the outside of William’s leg.  Being nobody’s fool, I think dirty diaper right away and check the heir to my domain’s chubby little behind.  Its clean.  False alarm. 

After bath time my forest sprites like to run around the house refusing to put on diapers.  This is great fun for babies and excellent excerise for dad.  While chasing William in the living room, I hear Claire declare matter of factly: “Yuck poop.  Yuck.  Yuck.”  You think you see where this is going but you’re not quite there yet.  Trust me. 

Claire has learned that certain words get attention.  Recently, she has grown quite fond of both “yuck” and “poop”.  Yuck can mean anything or nothing at all when you are a toddler.   Still it is a cause for concern.  On the other hand, she has the meaning of “poop” down with precision and when she says that magic word and points to her Australia, she expects immediate action. 

Yuck and Poop together in the same sentence is not a good sign.  The meaning of the proto-sentence, though not absolutely clear, effectively conveys a sense of urgency with a hint of danger.  I abandon the chase with William and investigate the kitchen.  Lets just say that Claire has found what William has left behind (we will leave it vague to protect the squeamish).  She is a sensible girl and therefore stands at the outer edge of the superfund site, toes close but still on the right side of line.  I don’t trust her though.  She is an impulsive little devil.  So I scoop her up and sprint her out of harm’s way.

The problem with twins is that there are two of them.  William returns to the scene of the crime while I am occupied with Claire.  You probably still don’t quite get it even though you think you do.  I didn’t.  I mean.  I see him.  I understand my future but am unafraid.  How bad can it be anyway?  He’s already naked.  Hardly dry from his bath.  I am already planning how to get him back in the tub with minimum collateral damage.  It’ll be easy.  Disgusting.  But easy.

That’s when the other shoe drops.  I am not sure if William did his business by the Roomba or whether he moved the Roomba to the mess after the fact – either way they were in close proximity at the critical moment.  William likes to make things go.  He’s good at figuring out power switches, remote controls, etc and has been able to work the Roomba for about 10 months.  He torments it.  It will run a while and, proud of itself and no doubt a little tired,  it will turn off, making this happy little beeping noise like one of the seven dwarfs finally at rest after a long day.  William will pounce on it – literally pounce - and send it back to the mines.  He hasn’t managed to break it yet and actually does a pretty thorough job keeping the floors clean so I don’t mind.

I can’t fault William.  The Roomba is for cleaning up yucky messes and this was a yucky mess.  No argument there.  He was using his head.  Smart boy.  Maybe even taking responsibility by cleaning up his own mess.  A boy scout.  Of course, he turned it on and it marched right into the trenches.  The Roomba is an ingenious device.   It is a robotic vacuum that employs an impressive array of spinning brushes to pick up dirt.  It really does a great job on my floor.  But all of the spinning brushes are designed for drier dustier yuck than the particular yuck at issue.  Wet yuck just gets thrown around the entire kitchen, efficiently coating toddlers, dads, and kitchen cabinets in a surprisingly short time.    

Yuck.