HELLO!!!

I've discovered that there is a very distinctive succession of events that lead to tears.

It usually goes like this: Thump, "Whoa!" and then screaming.

This doesn't happen just anytime, it happens when my hubby is with the boys. They love to play with daddy and daddy loves to play with them. The problem is that they get so wound up they lose the ability to control their movements and he doesn't always know when to stop.

The perfect example of this happened yesterday while I was well...shall we say, indisposed?

The master bath is located directly above the family room and the sound carries right through the floor! I could hear the boys - all three of them - giggling away then heard Thump, "Whoa!" and then screaming, followed by, "Oh my God!"

Oy Vey! OMG means blood!

Unless it's his own, hubby doesn't handle the sight of blood well. Anyone else's, especially one of the kids, and all bets are off. Composure goes out the window and panic sets in.

He began to scream for me and I foolishly tried to yell a response.

I then heard him wrestling with the gate at the bottom of the stairs while I desperately tried to finish my "business."

He yanked the bathroom door open just as I pulled my pants up and stood there, with a bleeding stuntman in his arms, looking shocked to see me by the toilet. Not sure what he thought I was doing but, "I have to go to the bathroom," usually means one of two things.

I grabbed the first aid box (not kit, we've learned that the small kits just don't cut it for us) out from under the sink and got to work.

Stuntman had bitten his tongue.

Saliva made it look like he was going to bleed to death, but as far as actual blood goes there wasn't much and it stopped bleeding very quickly.

Hubby announced that he had to go back downstairs because, in his state of panic, he'd left the Engineer on the sofa!

Seriously?!

His panicked states are pretty much the same regardless of the circumstances. His ability to think or act rationally just goes right out the window!

The other day while changing the Stuntman's diaper, the stuntman decided to poop. I had the Kitchen Aid whirling away and didn't hear him screaming for me. Suddenly there was loud banging followed by louder, "HELLO!!!"

I sprinted up the stairs to find hubby with a screaming stuntman on the table, legs up in the air as daddy desperately cleaned up the poop. The Engineer was on the floor screaming because daddy's screaming had frightened him.

Ummmm.....Yeah... really?! You were screaming because of poop?!

OMG! 

Despite his panic and gagging, there really wasn't much I could do. So I picked up the hysterical Engineer and tried to calm him while trying desperately not to yell at my hubby and upset the babies even more.

Most of the time he's a really laid back guy. Evidently, poop and blood are his kryptonite.

He's one of the handiest hubbies on the world. Need recessed lighting installed? How about hardwood floors? Sheetrock? He's the guy. He really can do anything except walk through a room without hitting a toy.

He. Never. Looks. Down.

We are 13 months into this parenting thing. He has tripped over countless toys. He has fallen down, stubbed his toes, and made things squeak in the dark and yet he has not adjusted his walk.

It's weird. I noticed early on that, while in the house, I had developed a gate that allows me to move forward, without scuffing my feet, by barely lifting my foot off the floor. This way if I do contact something I don't step on it or trip over it, I push it out of the way. Sort of along the same lines as the old trains with the cow catcher on the front.

We have a play-mat that we keep upstairs for the boys. We use the mat more as a home-base for the upstairs toys because we can move it from room to room as needed. At night we usually put it in the hallway out of the line of traffic so we don't trip over it in the dark.

Hubby decided the other night that he would leave it on the floor in the bedroom, precisely placed so as to not trip over it if he had to get one of the kids.

It didn't work.

He tripped.

And tripped.

And tripped.

The mat has these tube things that arch up and connect diagonally at the corners. Once in, it's like trying to get out of a crab trap.

The toys rattled, the one set to come on with motion began to play music and he even stepped on the praying Angel, "Now I lay me down..."

"Shit!"

Snark.

"Shut up," he said with a laugh.

Flat Surface Disease

I am referring to last week as the Week of Death.

No, really...In addition to being the anniversary of my father's passing we had a friend lose his father, another friend lose her husband and a client of mine lost his wife.

The week was bookended with funerals and had a wake in the middle. It was terrible. Not as bad for me as it was for the families but just such an unhappy week all the way around.

As if the "week of death" wasn't enough to contend with, our little stuntman botched a backward dismount off the sofa and split his head open on the foot of the coffee table!

We're making him practice that dismount until he can stick it!

Ugh!

And as if taking your one year old son to the ER for stitches isn't stressful enough, I called my mom and ended up hearing, "It's not to late to put those bumper things on the coffee table."

Yeah, um...thanks!

Here's the kicker...He hit the foot of the coffee table, not the top. No one, not a single well-meaning, over-protective friend or family member has been concerned about the feet on anything...until now.

Even so, we couldn't put those bumpers on them, the kids would peel them off in about five minutes or we'd be yelling "Aah, aah, aah!" at them to leave them alone.

C'mon!

I already say "NO" enough. I just don't need to add a temptation for them or anymore stress for me!

As soon as the kids began crawling we bought a used center armoire entertainment unit so the kids couldn't play with the electronics. It works great until we open the doors to watch TV!

They are like moths to a flame!

They can be across the house and the moment the doors are open they come as fast as they can. We now have the doors open all the time and an indoor fence around the entertainment center to keep them away from it. This is the fence I was going to use to put around the Christmas tree.

Thank God for friends with slightly older children!

We borrowed another indoor fence and now have the tree enclosed in it.

The stuntman hasn't been interested in the tree since the day it went up - wait until he figures out that trees can be climbed! The engineer likes to pet the branches. We purposely hung the unbreakable stuff where they could reach it in case they tried. They haven't gone for the ornaments just like to touch the actual branches.

We cut down our own tree this year. It was a pretty Norman Rockwell-esque experience with the boys in the double-wide stroller walking thru the tree farm until we found just the right one! Hubby hit his knees and cut it down while I ran around snapping pictures from every direction. I had hubby stand next to the stroller with the tree while I took pictures and the children looked at him like, "Why the heck is dad holding that big green thing?!" (They don't really know what trees are yet.)

It was all fun and games until it was time to head back and pay for the tree...hubby had to drag the thing all the way back. It was quite a distance. Of course, the tree we found was about as far from the car as we could get...hubby is very picky when it comes to the Christmas tree.

We really do have a beautiful tree - minus the fence of course.

Neither one of us is a "ball" person.

What I mean by this is that we don't use ball ornaments to decorate the tree. We have themes for our ornaments: fishing and sailing (hubby), cows and angels (me) and baby's first Christmas - from last year. At roughly six weeks old they had no idea that there was anything more than feeding and sleep  but we have the ornaments to prove it!

Hubby usually leaves decorating the tree up to me - he's picky about the tree, I'm picky about the lights and ornaments. This year that was not the case. As with many tasks these days, we knocked it out in two hours because the boys were napping. There just wasn't time to be picky!

What one can accomplish in that two-hour timeframe is nothing short of amazing.

This was the case on Thanksgiving.

While I cooked hubby cleaned the entire house, including bathrooms, in two hours!

Although we have our usual chores hubby does trash, car washing, lawn mowing, guys things etc. and I do most household things like laundry and cooking, the cleaning usually falls into the "whoever has the time" category.

I am not OCD about the way things are cleaned. I just care that they are clean. I don't keep a spotless household - my kids have great immune systems - but it's neat and somewhat tidy.

I used to get all freaked out by the idea of my parents coming to visit and would spend days and days cleaning. I don't know why. Growing up we had a magnet on the refrigerator that said, "Dust: The protective covering of fine furniture!"

Needless to say, my mom is not a neat freak. Things are clean but she suffers from "Flat Surface Disease" and an unfortunate affinity for catalogs.

If there is a flat surface in her house, you will find a pile of catalogs, some of which are years old.

It seems I inherited the FSD gene and have to stay ever vigilant to keep things from piling up. The worst part is that the hubby has FSD too. Right now treatment comes in the form of the "office." We try to keep the piles contained and once a quarter I go in and file everything that needs to be and discard the rest.

In the meantime, we keep the door closed.

We call it the "office" because it has office furniture and the printers in it but it's really become the catch-all for things we're not sure what to do with but know that they don't go in the basement - a name that is really too long so "office" it is.

Sometimes, I wish that my parents had been a little more strict when it came to keeping a tidier house but then I think that in the end it really doesn't matter. No one really cares unless it's really disgusting to the point of being life-threatening and I know that having my parents at sporting events and concerts was much more important than whether or not the dining room had been dusted!

His Legacy

Three years ago this morning I sat with my hand on my father's shoulder as he took his last raspy breath of life. My mother said it was fitting that I was the last one with him as he was the first one to touch me when I came into this word.

My dad was my buddy and not a day goes by that I don't miss him.

We talked about everything and he was the first person that I would call for anything but especially when had a new joke. Sometimes I would tell him the same ones just because his memory for jokes really sucked! He would laugh the same each time.

I miss his laugh.

He had a great sense of humor and was as quick with a laugh as he was with his temper.

Man, did dad have a temper.

He mellowed in his older years but he was fierce when we were younger.

He could yell louder than any other human on the face of the earth and could get whatever attention was needed, when it was needed. Sometimes you didn't want the attention but when you pissed him off you knew it and sometimes, unfortunately, the entire neighborhood knew it too!

We were raised during the "corporal punishment is ok years." Although we are not an enormously religious family "spare the rod, spoil the child" was certainly a philosophy that was practiced in our house. Dad used to use his fraternity paddle to spank us.

As if being hit with a piece of wood wasn't bad enough, the guilty party would be dispatched to retrieve the "the paddle," an act, I always felt, was akin to sharpening the blade on the guillotine before your own execution!

One morning my brother and I were rough-housing and we broke something - I don't remember exactly what it was - but I was sent to get "the paddle." I crocodile-teared all the way up the stairs into my room where I pulled on every pair of underpants and shorts I owned under my nightgown before proceeding to my dad's closet the get "the paddle" and return downstairs.

When dad hit me it sounded (and felt) like he hit a pillow!

I could cry at the drop of a hat - a skill I developed solely to get my brother in trouble - so I let the tears flow freely while desperately trying not to smile because it didn't hurt AT ALL!!!

I really thought I was "one up" and that the old man was a dunce.

I was 19 before he told me that he knew what I had done but didn't want to say anything! He told me that I was the only one of us three kids that had the guts to even try to get away with such a thing and he wasn't going to take that away from me!

He was a strict disciplinarian but he was also a dedicated husband and father who did whatever it took to provide for his family and be involved in our lives. He was a soccer coach, hockey coach and timer at the swim meets. He knew nothing of soccer and hockey but read every book he could find on the topic to be a good coach - he was that dedicated.

He was at every game we played and every meet we competed in and he had a whistle you could hear over the rest of the crowd and through a bathing cap in the water.

Looking back at my childhood I remember him always being there; didn't matter if it was a school concert or a swim meet my parents were always there.

One of my favorite memories of my elementary years is the Annual Girl Scout Father Daughter Square Dance. I looked forward to that event every year. Dad was my date! We'd get all dressed up and spend the night following the calls to "do-si-do" and "swing your partner." It was heaven! Being on his arm made me feel like the most beautiful girl in the world!

Oh to have that feeling today.

In the past three years, I have had moments where memories come flooding back to me. There are so many things that we did with my dad. When we were very young, summers revolved around swimming lessons at the lake and vacations in Maryland at my grandparent's farm. As we got older, we sailed.

Dad was a sailor at heart.

He loved to be on the water and loved sailing but what he loved the most, was racing. So much so that he founded the Sailing Team at his alma mater Colgate University.

When he wasn't sailing he was fixing. He had an amazing skill with wood and there was always a boat in some stage of repair in our garage.

At some point fixing turned into building.

I don't remember the details but, somehow a guy in Michigan got a hold of my dad, sent him some blueprints for a boat he had designed and next thing I know dad was building the thing.

Now this would be an amazing feat for just about anyone, never mind the guy who had a full-time job, three young kids with crazy sports schedules and a wife at home.

He built a 24' wood and epoxy boat in the garage from blueprints!

I remember watching him pace out the garage to see if it would fit and watched him literally jump with excitement when he realized that it would.

In order to build this thing, it had to be constructed upside down. Once the hull was ready it had to be flipped over so he could build the deck. I can still see the scene in my mind today of all of the mattresses in the driveway and a huge number of people helping to roll this thing over. There might have been a keg involved but I'm not sure.

Our friends and neighbors must have thought we were insane.

In the middle of construction dad was transferred from north Jersey to south Jersey. In addition to moving us and the contents of the house, we had to move the boat! Next thing I know dad was modifying a trailer to tow this thing south.

I know that for a while he rented space in some sort of business complex but eventually moved the boat to my grandmother's carriage house. Once it was finished he launched the boat in Island Heights, NJ and christened it GARDYLOO.

The '80s were spent on the water in Island Heights, New Jersey. Some of my greatest memories are from those summers. He wasn't just my dad, he took on a fatherly role with everyone younger than he was. He didn't do this consciously, it was his nature. He was wise if you were willing to listen - I was a teenager in the '80s so I often argued more than I listened - but he was always willing to offer some tidbit of wisdom.

A few weeks before he passed away he told me that one thing he would really like to do was to go sailing again. I knew that I had to find a way to make this wish come true.

I called a friend and found out that his brother's boat was still in the water and that they'd be more than happy to make this happen. Before I knew it we had assembled the old crew from Island Heights, including one of the guys that was now a surgeon living in Florida, and headed for a sail.

Unfortunately a key crew member was unable to make it: my brother was stuck at a conference in California and couldn't get back. We arranged for my dad to talk to him on the phone while we were sailing. It certainly wasn't the same but at least they got to talk. We also had two additions to the crew that day. My husband, my dad introduced the two of us, and his oldest grandson who my dad had also taught to sail and was dad's right arm at the Sailing School.

The fact that we were able to assemble everyone on such short notice was nothing shy of a miracle but the day itself was truly touched by God.

It was mid November in Maryland and it was nearly 70 degrees. The sun was shining and there was a light wind blowing. An hour north in Philadelphia that same day and same time, there was sleet and snow!

It took some maneuvering but we finally managed to get dad loaded onto the boat and headed out from the dock. When it was time to set the sails each of the crew members jumped to action as if no time at all had passed since we last crewed together despite the fact that it had been more than 20 years!

It was magical.

Dad was settled in the cockpit and we took turns sitting next to him to keep him from falling over each time we were on starboard tack. We also took turns imitating him and spouting his Chuck-isms. He no longer had the strength or desire to yell at us but he certainly got a kick out of our impersonations.

We sailed for a little more than an hour before dad said that he was tired.

It was time to turn around.

The return trip might have been sunny, but my mood was beginning to cloud over. I stayed by my dad's side as much as possible as I knew that this would be the last time I would sail with him and I didn't want it to end.

In the years since my dad has passed I do not look at, or think about, a sailboat without missing him.

All I have to do is be near the water with wind in my hair and my dad comes to life.

He loved sailing so much that when he retired he joined a yacht club and started the Rock Hall Yacht Club Sailing School that thrives today. Two of his grandchildren as well as a few of the kids from his inaugural class have become sailing instructors.

His legacy lives on. The children who were once students, will one day teach our boys.

We just celebrated the twins' first birthday. I have thought of my dad countless times this past year and am saddened by the fact that they will never know him. They will however, learn to sail and when the wind blows through their hair and the sun kisses their cheeks, they will feel his touch and know his love.

Aah, Aah, Aah!

They are only a year old and I am already sick of saying, "No."

They like to play with the fireplace screen. I can't tell them it's hot when it's not or the word "hot" will mean nothing. When we do have a fire in the fireplace, they don't go anywhere near it. We don't even need to tell them it's hot.

They love to play with the fireplace tools. Both the hubby and I make this, "Aah, aah, aah" sound followed by the word "No." If they are looking at us we shake our heads when we say no. They now shake their heads no...and then do whatever we told them "no" about in the first place.

It's really hard not to giggle when they do that.

They love to be on the sofa and crawl from one end to the other but it's a constant battle to keep them from playing with things on the end tables. Especially the brass lamps. They are heavy and could hurt one of the kids if they fell over and hit them.

"Aah, aah, ash," is a frequent noise in the house!

Aah, aah, aah...no, fireplace tools.

Aah, aah, aah...no, fireplace screen.

Aah, aah, aah...no, end tables.

Aah, aah, aah...no, television.

Etc, etc. etc. And that's only the first floor!

Until recently, they have not been able to climb up onto the sofa by themselves but they are bigger and stronger now and, the smart little buggers, have figured out that if they pile up the pillows can climb onto the sofa without parental assistance. They've gotten really good at going up and down so we don't really need to worry about them falling off and getting hurt...the battle is really about the stuff on the end tables.

Some things just have to be learned the hard way.

The other day, while I was in the kitchen, processing 400 lbs of home-grown pumpkins, (not really 400 but it certainly felt that way) one of the boys was sitting on the sofa and I heard him start to whine. I looked up and discovered that he had pulled the lamp off the table and onto his head.

Yeah, it left a mark.

I put the lamp back on the table, kissed his boo-boo, put him on the floor and said, "That's why we said no." - the mom equivalent of I told you so!

The lesson seems to have stuck. He has not tried to play with the lamp since. Everything else on the table yes, but not the lamp.

I'm beginning to believe that the fireplace tools are a lost cause!

Previously, I have written about the differences in the boys (see Mornings, Midnights and Mayhem). At the time I deemed them the Engineer and the Head of Marketing. Well Mr. Marketing had decided to change careers and become a stuntman.

Seriously, this kid has no fear.

The Engineer, on the other hand, is much more methodical about his endeavors. Just like the fable The Tortoise and the Hare, slow and steady wins the race, he is consistent in all that he does.

Our Stuntman likes to climb up the stairs and when he reaches the top, stays on his stomach, straightens his legs and slides all the way back down to the bottom! The only time he stays at the top is when the water is running in the bathtub.

They LOVE the bath.

I know some people use baths as a means of calming their children...not us.

Remember these kids took swimming lessons at six-months of age.

They love the pool, the tub, water in general. We want them too. We want them capable of falling in the water and not freaking out. We want them to swim and most importantly we want them safe.

Part of being safe is teaching them to understand the word No.

Ugh! Here we are again.

"Aah, aah, aah! No, don't put that in your mouth. Aah, aah, aah! No, don't put your fingers in your brother's nose. Aah, aah, aah! No, don't play with the power cords. Aaaaaaaaaaah! No, don't bite my toes!"

The Engineer has a thing for my big toes.

I truly hope this is not a sign of a budding foot fetish.

I was on the phone with my mother one day, discussing the importance of tempered glass, when all of a sudden I got this searing pain shooting up my leg from my foot. I look down to find The Engineer latched onto my big toe with his newly sprouted teeth.

O! M! G! It hurt like hell!

You can believe he heard the word NO on that one. However, he has bitten my big toes three times now. Once barefoot, another time was through a sock and the last time I had my slipper on...Thank God! Even with the slipper it still hurt. I consider myself lucky as he has not drawn blood.

Hubby was not so lucky.

While sitting on the floor, The Engineer crawled into his lap, snuggled into his shoulder and promptly bit it. The scream brought the bite to an end but he did break the skin. It's hard not to take something like that personally; I did have to remind hubby that it was nothing done out of malice.

They are teething...they bite everything.

No is said A LOT!

I was very relieved that, despite the frequent utterance of the word "No" around here, The Engineer's first word was, "cracker." Funny that the first word was food-related as he is four pounds heavier than his twin!

I know that the word "No" will be a staple of my vocabulary for years to come. I just wish it didn't start so soon.