Gag!

I can't get over how fast time flies now that we have kids! It seems like just yesterday I was bawling my eyes out over another failed IVF attempt and here we are with 14 month old twins who are using sign language, trying to talk and putting things that are not trash in the trash can.

Not only can they put things in that shouldn't be thrown away but they take things out that should.

The kitchen trashcan has a lock on it that, when we remember to use it, keeps them from opening it. The diaper pails do not and the cans in the bathrooms are just open ones.

There are telltale signs that the children have been in the bathrooms: the toilet lids are down, toilet paper is on the counter or window sill and the trash cans are on the counter. They love to pull things out of the trash cans and hand them to me like their presenting me with the Crown Jewels!

The looks on their faces say, "Look mommy! I got you a used snot rag. Isn't it great?!"

Until recently we didn't worry about them getting into the diaper pails. I mean really, who opens those things if they don't have to. I guess ones nose needs to be higher than the lid to get the full effect of the odor but still...Gag!

About a week ago I was headed downstairs when I noticed the Engineer on the floor next to the diaper pail with a dirty diaper in his lap...a poopie diaper to be exact! He had one hand on the diaper and one in the poop and was looking a little concerned about what he was going to do about it.

Even he knew that this was not something that should go in his mouth.

I came close to screaming but bit my tongue so I wouldn't scare him into crawling away leaving a trail of poopie handprints on the one area of the first floor that has carpeting.

I picked him up, deposited the diaper back in the trashcan and headed into the bathroom to try to wash the hand of a 14 month old while holding him at the same time. I did manage but neither of us was happy when we it was over.

The other night I did that oatmeal in the crockpot overnight recipe - it was delicious by the way. I peeled and sliced the apples, put the apple peels, seeds, cores, etc. in the trash, turned on the crockpot and went to bed. The following morning when we came downstairs the oatmeal smelled heavenly. I helped myself to two (yes two) large bowls which I shared with the boys while they also had their morning banana and clementines.

About 20 minutes after finishing breakfast and cleaning up I was exercising my OCD by separating the kids' blocks, chew toys and stuffies when the Engineer rounded the corner munching on something and waving what appeared to be a slice of bacon. Mmmmm BACON!

Wait...where did he get bacon?!

Upon further inspection I discovered that it was, in fact, not bacon but rather apple peels that he pulled out of the kitchen trashcan...that I had forgotten to lock...again.

I made two New Year's resolutions this year. 1. Clean the office AKA the Abyss (See Flat Surface Disease). 2. Keep said office clean.

In an effort to keep this year's resolutions I tied a rope around my waist the other day and ventured into the Abyss while the boys were napping. I actually made really good progress and had to empty the round-file twice.

The first time I dumped the office trash into the large can in the garage I heard, "Do you need a tow truck, call me, I'm on the way."

Huh?

"Beep, Beep!"

Wait, what?!

I pushed on the top of the trash, "My name's Tommy and this is my Tow Truck."

Crap! That's where that toy ended up!

I began removing the stuff I had just dumped in, and looked into the bottom of the can to see a light blinking behind the white plastic of the bag from the DIAPER PAIL!

Eeeeeeeew! No no no no nooooooo not that...Anything but that!!!

I began to bargain...

I considered putting the lid on and pretending that I heard and seen nothing. But my conscience just wouldn't let me do it so, I tore a hole in the end of the bag and removed Tommy and his Tow Truck. Evidently it had been in the very bottom corner of the bag and had not contacted any of the poopie-ness that potentially comes with being in the diaper pail bag.

I refilled the trashcan, carried the toy truck into the house, promptly hosed it down with antibacterial cleaner, scrubbed it off with paper towels and then scrubbed myself off.

Poop doesn't particularly scare me. I mean it's just poop and it stinks but it's not like it's going to leap up out of the diaper and smear itself on me. Trash picking the diaper pail bag skeeves me out more than a poopie diaper does.

This is not the case for the hubby. He tends to freak out a bit about poop and I think I've figured out why.

When I change a poopie diaper I don't inspect or analyze the contents. I open it, scrape the poop off their butt, clean with additional wipes, wrap them in the dirty diaper and put it in the pail.

Hubby analyzes.

No wonder he is prone to gagging!

I try to feed the kids balanced meals and most of the time, to my surprise, I actually achieve this goal.

The kids will eat just about anything but hubby won't eat broccoli. He does eat peas, green beans, spinach and Brussels sprouts. Nights we don't do green we do carrots or corn - I know more of a starch than a veggie but I'm trying.

Recently we had a couple of nights of baked chicken with sweet potato fries and green beans. Well rounded meals complete with cookies for dessert. Unless we have fresh pears then they want nothing to do with cookies. But I digress...

Sometime during that week hubby was changing the stuntman's diaper when I heard, "The green stuff is not processing."

"Hmmm," I thought to myself, "that's interesting."

No sooner did I finish this thought did I hear, "DID YOU HEAR ME??? THE GREEN STUFF IS NOT PROCESSING!"

I replied that I did indeed hear him but that there was nothing I could do about it. I did, however, thank him for his observation.

Once he had finished the diaper change and washed his hands he remarked that it was really disgusting. I pointed out that if he spent less time analyzing it, he might not gag.  "After all," I said, "you're just changing a diaper, not trying to recover a pair of ingested diamond earrings."

He gagged.

No Big Deal Right?

I am blessed with a mother that is one of my best friends in the whole-wide-world.

She is smart, funny, sensitive and the one you want on your side in an argument - she should have been a litigator - and is the ultimate "momma bear" if someone she loves is in danger.

If you are in need of an advocate for medical services she will go to any length to help including calling the governor's office if need be. Most medical practitioners have never had a patient or advocate that arms herself with information the way she does. She has knowledge of obscure facts  and laws that most people have never heard of, never mind remember, and can recall details of a phone conversation from 1972.

Her math skills suck unless you want to know how much 25% off the sale price of an item is but her command of the English language is above par. She is one of the few people left in the world who can actually diagram a sentence or explain what a dangling participle is but ask her to plug in a printer and things will go to hell in the blink of an eye!

There is no such thing as a quick trip to my mom's house.

Knowing this, when I arranged to "stop" in last weekend, to return the wood splitting equipment that we had borrowed, I expected to find a list of things that needed to be done. The first of which was to tighten the faucet on the kitchen sink. Upon attempting to do so, we discovered that there was a leak in the drain pipe from the small (right) sink.

No big deal right?

Wrong!

I tightened it up. Fixed! Yay!

Or so I thought...

I crawled the rest of the way under the sink and tightened the faucet down. Whew that was easy. Mom turned on the water to make sure that the thing wasn't wiggling around anymore and next thing I knew I had dirty drain water spewing onto my face!

AAAAAACK! Shut it off, shut it off, SHUT IT OFF!!!!

Ugh! Now I have to call the king of all things water, AKA Hubby, and see if he can tell me what the issue is.

I got hubby, who was giving the boys their post nap snack, on the phone and told him what was happening, followed his instructions to a T and reassembled everything.

It didn't work.

I took pictures and sent them off to him so he could see exactly where the problem was and waited for the return call with further instructions.

So picture me sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the kitchen sink, phone pressed between my left shoulder and ear trying to follow his directions while he plays referee with the boys.

In the meantime, my mother, who has always hated the pendent lights that hang over the island located behind me, turns them off leaving me virtually in the dark. As if that weren't bad enough, she either makes a comment or askes me questions ever time I make a comment to hubby.

Not only can I not see but I can't hear the guy who knows what he's talking about!

I had to point out to my mom that I WAS ON THE PHONE!!!

I seem to have followed his directions pretty well and got the problem fixed but we left the bucket there just in case!

Then I hear, "You know what I should have you do while you're here?"

Here it comes...

"I can have you hook up my printer," she says.

Oy vey!

She told me a few months ago that she needed a printer. The old one wouldn't work. So I researched printers and, because of the cost of ink cartridges, suggested that she go with a decent laser printer this time, sent her a link for a Brother color laser printer.

It's been in the box since it arrived at her house for at least two months.

So we begin the process of removing the old one, cleaning the dust bunnies out from under the desk and plugging in the new, wireless printer. There is a problem...her router is so old that it will not communicate with her new printer. She is going to have to call Verizon to get them to install a current wireless router for her DSL.

She then says, well the new one will still scan and copy right?

Scan? Copy? No! You told me you needed a printer...

So, I asked her what was wrong with the old printer anyway - something that as a result of hindsight I should have done months ago - and was told that she couldn't use it because it was plugged into my dad's old computer.

Wait, what?

I should have known...

This is the same woman that thought she could only access her gmail account on one computer.

Sooooooo....

I plugged in the old computer, connected the USB cable to mom's laptop, installed the drivers and voila, fixed!

Yep, it was that easy!

I'm reasonably certain that she has yet to call Verizon to get the router switched out. There are other work arounds for it but I'm not about to go there with her...ever!

Sleepless No More...I Hope!

The past couple of months have been wracked with difficult nights. Not only has the stuntman not wanted to go to sleep but he's been waking up once or twice a night. We'd go a full week without incident, and then just as the pattern was getting established he'd start all over again.

To say it was frustrating would be an understatement. 

I'm a pretty high energy person and can usually get by on a couple of hours of sleep without a problem. I've been known to do this for days or even weeks on end but usually with a purpose like a trade show or something that would keep me so busy that I wouldn't notice the exhaustion. 

At the end of whatever the event was, I'd crash for a day and get the sleep I needed. If you've known me for any period of time, you'll know that this was my standard means of existence. 

This is no longer the case...

With a child that was only sleeping for 3-4 hours at a time - intermittently, I was unable to ever feel like I was rested. The worst part was that we had no idea when his bad nights would strike. 

The final straw came about a week ago when he had a particularly horrid night and was up at 11:00,       1:00 am, 3:30 am, 6:30 am and finally at 8. He would not lie down in his crib and spent most of the night on my chest in the recliner. By the time that night was over I felt like I'd been dragged through a knothole and didn't look much better either! 

Many of my friends and my mom, insisted that I call the doctor, which I did. 

The nurse called me back to discuss what was going on and said that he really should see a doctor, since he'd had a cold lately, they were concerned about his ears. Ok that makes sense but that wouldn't account for the previous months of turmoil. Anyway...

I threw myself together - even managed a shower - changed the kids into regular clothes and headed out. 

Our regular pediatrician wasn't in that day so he was seen by another doctor who after checking his ears, eyes, nose and throat declared him to be in perfect health. While this is a great and wonderful thing for which I am eternally grateful, this declaration will not garner sleep for any of us. 

She did say that if he is teething that I should use ibuprofen instead of Tylenol because it will help with the swelling that accompanies teething. She then went on to say that when he has his episodes, we could give him a teaspoon of Maalox and see if he settles down. If that works then they could prescribe Zantac for him. 

I called hubby on the way home and gave him the report and asked that he pick up the Maalox on his ride home from work. He couldn't find it but did arrive with a bottle of liquid Rolaids. We gave him both the liquid Rolaids and ibuprofen that night and every night since.

We have had six consecutive full nights of sleep! 

Our routine now involves putting the bottles of milk in the microwave to warm them and giving the stuntman his bedtime cocktail of ibuprofen and liquid Rolaids. Hubby heads to the sofa with the engineer and I take the stuntman up to the rocking recliner in the bedroom. 

We do this because the stuntman is too easily distracted by any form of stimulation. Doesn't matter if it's the television, the cat walking across the room or his brother breathing, anything will take his attention away from the task of falling asleep. 

For some reason when I try to put the engineer down, he wakes up. I seem to have better luck with the stuntman and hubby has better luck with the engineer. Once their bottles are finished or they are out, whichever comes first, we put them down for the night in their cribs. 

I can always tell when hubby is bringing the engineer up to bed by the sounds of the toys he collides with on his way to the stairs. One particularly distinctive sound is that of the Leap Frog Turtle who has these gears on his shell. Each gear has a different number of bugs on it. If you push on the gear it talks. 

The other night I hear, "Three bees buzzing. Bzzz, Bzzz, Bzzz" as he kicked the turtle. 

Oh good, hubby's on his way upstairs. 

Not realizing that the poor little thing was still in front of him he hit it again this time making it sing, "My friends are traveling on my back..."

Oh. My. Gawd!!! I can't laugh, I can't laugh, I can't laugh! I'm going to wake the stuntman! 

The kid is a champion power-napper! He can be asleep for five minutes and if woken up, will be awake for another three hours. Each night when we climb into the chair I boot up Lullaby World's Lullabies For Babies To Go To Sleep on You Tube. Not only is it visually interesting it is mind numbing and helps the stuntman achieve the perfect level of trance that lets him pass out in obtain a very deep sleep. 

Thank goodness too because the combination of noise from downstairs and my giggling would certainly wake him up. 

Hubby reads my blog so he knows that I pick on him about his clumsiness. He can't deny it and will even make comments about whether or not what he's done will end up on the world wide web. Some of what I post actually seems to impact him albeit not always in a good way.

Back in August, I wrote about his 18-inch disease. (See Shiny) Right after that post I caught him standing in front of the sink, coffee mug in hand trying to decide if he was going to put it in the sink or actually open the dishwasher.

I laughed.

His mug ended up in the sink.

His 18-inch disease improved for a little while but honestly not very long.

Last weekend, after he finished his coffee, headed over to the sink to put his coffee cup in it. I had cooked breakfast, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher but there was still a bunch of stuff in the sink that needed to be hand-washed.

I heard this loud, aggravated sigh come from the direction of the sink and when I asked what was wrong he said that there was so much stuff in the sink that there was no room for his mug. I replied that he could put it in the dishwasher, which is where it belonged anyway.

"I can't," he replied with a wicked gleam in his eye. "I have that disease." 

Just

There is no "just" when you have kids.

Before children, which has only been 14 months, if we wanted to go out for dinner all we had to do was grab our coats and head out the door. Every aspect of our lives has changed since we had kids. Not only can we not "just go out for dinner" but we can no longer "just run to the store," "just take a nap," or even "just run upstairs for a quickie!"

I have learned to tolerate soggy cereal and I have even stopped eating oatmeal for breakfast as I can't stand it when it's cold!

I was relatively prepared for the change in lifestyle, and since having children was such a long endeavor, I welcomed the changes...I thought.

I would no longer be jetting around the country for work or spend my evenings line dancing.

I was going to be a mother and had every misconception about that experience running through my head that you can imagine. My days would be full of fun times with happy-go-lucky children, who were brilliant and charming...I thought.

That still may come; for now however, my days are filled with dirty diapers, barf, drool and whining.

A. Noise. I. Despise!

I can't stand whining when it comes from any kid, and maybe because it's coming from mine, I really hate it. I mean really, it's sooooo annoying. I called my bestie the other day to ask if I should feel guilty for wanting to lock my kids in the house and go for a long drive because the stuntman was driving me crazy.

No one in their right mind romanticizes the idea of snuggling with a whiner! So I was largely unprepared to deal with a child who does. Hence the desire to take a long slow drive around the block...alone!

If you say that you've never been irritated by your child I'm just going to call BS now!

Don't get me wrong here. I love my boys. They are beautiful, adorable and extremely cute. Most of the time they are really happy and I love spending time with them and learning to see the world all over again through their eyes. However, they can also drive me nuts.

The whining is enough to put me over the edge.

Teething has truly sucked beyond words but they won't be teething forever. However, I'm a little nervous however, that they will whine forever.

The stuntman's primary form of communication seems to come in the form of whining. He does it when he has something that he wants me to open, he does it when his brother refuses to let him steal the toy he was playing with and he does it when something is wrong.

The volume seems to be the only way to tell the severity of his need.

He's sort of a sky is falling type of kid. He whines all the time so it's pretty hard to know when there is something serious.

The good news is that he has learned the word "ball." Well, we think it's ball. Bottle, bear and ball all come out as "bah." You have to look at what he's pointing at to decipher his intention.

Last night for about two straight hours he walked around the first floor of the house saying, "bah." As irritating as it might have been, he wasn't whining!!!

Thank God for small favors!

Lately, the boys have been into sharing their food with us. They fight over toys but are more than willing to give daddy or me a bite of their grilled cheese, PB&J sandwiches, crackers, etc.

This morning, while I was cutting up their oranges, the engineer had finished is banana and Cheerios. By happenstance their highchairs were close enough that they could reach each others hands. I looked up from the cutting board just in time to see the stuntman reach out with a handful of banana and Cheerios to the engineer who took it and put it in his mouth.

They were sharing with each other!!!

Not only was this ADORABLE but for children who often whine and hit each other over the head with toys when they don't want to share, this was nothing less than amazing.

Think I'll just go say a prayer of thanks.

Skeeved Out

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The boys got us all colds for the holidays.

What began as a tingling in my nose quickly developed into a sore throat followed by a full blown head cold!

This is only the second cold the boys have ever had. But this one was a champion mucus producer!

I had no idea that this much snot could come out of someone so small!

One year olds don't know how to blow their noses.

They do it once in a while, usually without a tissue in front of them and produce phenomenal snot bubbles, but rarely can you get them to blow into the tissue. Typically they just want to rip it to shreds and/or chew on it.

Colds aside, Christmas was fantastic!

Christmas eve was wonderful. My sister and her family, plus a few friends, came for lunch. They got to spend time spoiling the boys and exchanging gifts. I love spending time with family and now that we have the boys, it's becoming more and more important to me. My niece and her friends even helped me decorate the sugar cookies that we would be bringing with us to the in-laws house on Christmas day.

For my entire life Christmas day has always been the same: Wake up, do stockings, eat breakfast and then open gifts. This Christmas was the first one I can remember not doing breakfast in between stockings and gifts. In order to keep the kids entertained we went right into gifts from stockings and then enjoyed a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon.

Mmmmmm bacon! Best. Food. Ever!

The rest of the morning was pretty laid back. My mom, who had spent the night, headed home to get ready for Christmas dinner - and catch a nap- can you say jealous?! We played with the kids' new toys, showered and headed to my in-laws house.

I love my in-laws. I know, I know, I'm supposed to have some level of dislike for the in-laws and call them out-laws or something but that's just not the case.

They are wonderful people who are fun to be with.

My mother-in-law is a great cook and meals are always delicious. Also, she never lets me help with anything aside from clearing the table so it's like a little vacation when we are there!

Even though their colds were full-blown the boys were good for the evening. Of course a little dimetapp to control the congestion and an additional dozen or so people to entertain them didn't hurt either!

The ride home was mostly uneventful except for this sudden, gag-inducing odor that emanated from the backseat!

Ugh! It was so disgusting!!!

We pulled into the first gas station we could find (which was closed because of the holiday) emptied out the back of the Explorer to make room to change a diaper and unloaded the engineer expecting a blow-out of epic proportions. We pulled him from the carseat, laid him on the deck, unzipped his pajamas only to discover that he was clean and mostly dry.

Hubby got busy unbuckling the stuntman as I reassembled the, now screaming and seriously pissed off engineer and got him buckled back in. I rushed back to the stuntman unzipped his pajamas and discovered the same thing. Clean and mostly dry.

O! M! G! Do you know what that means?!

That was one serious fart!

How something so small could produce and odor like that is beyond me. I need to figure out what I fed him that would cause that odor and never feed it to him again!

We reassembled baby number two, got him buckled in and the car repacked and continued down the road. It took about two miles before they both settled down, stopped screaming and passed out.

Hubby took the next couple of days off from work. It was great having him here...sort of.

I love spending time with him but sometimes - and this was one of them - his presence more of a burden than any sort of help at all.

Hubby is so overwhelmed by the amount of clutter - translation: toys - that he has decided that building the playroom in the basement can't wait. As a result, he spent the bulk of the weekend working on wiring and sub-flooring.

He keeps his tools in our garage. He tried to grab everything he needed so that he could just stay downstairs and work but there were times that he needed additional tools.

As long as daddy was out of sight, the kids were fine.

Every time he would emerge from the basement they would toddle over to him exclaiming, "Da da da da!" They were so excited that the 'fun guy" was home!

He'd play with them for a minute then head into the garage to find whatever tool brought him up from the basement in the first place and the kids would begin screaming because he had left them. Like puppies with no concept of time, they would get all excited when he came back in from the garage greeting him with another chorus of, "Da da da da!"

He'd play with them again - not like he had any choice, they were on his legs like velcro - and then head into the basement to get back to work leaving me with two screaming toddlers.

Each time he came up for air, I had to stop what I was doing and distract the kids long enough to forget that the "fun guy" was behind that door!

When not consoling distraught 13-month olds, I kept myself busy by making more cookies to take to a party and steam cleaning the kitchen floor.

I'm pretty far from being a neat-nick but I do try to keep things relatively clean especially since the kids like to eat things that they find on the floor. In fact, I'm reasonably sure that the stuntman throws his Cheerios on the floor just so he can eat them later.

After I was finished with the steam cleaner I emptied the fresh water tank and asked hubby to take it to the basement for me.

He carried it down the steps and put it on "my side" of the basement, (You know? The side with the washer and dryer :), came upstairs to get something and when he had returned discovered that the cleaner had begun to leak on the cement floor.

He completely freaked out.

Evidently I had not seated the tank properly and the cleaning solution was leaking out onto the CEMENT floor.

The most amazing part of this whole scenario is that he works with pools and high tech pool equipment for a living! You'd think, based on his reaction, that he'd never seen water before.

I grabbed a couple of dirty towels off the floor of "my side," dried up the mess and reseated the tank. Problem solved - I'm a hero! Ha.

I will never understand his instinct to panic. I guess each person is different that way.

I might panic over things like...oh a spider for instance, but have something catastrophic happen in front of me and I'm calm as a cucumber.

I hate spiders!

For Christmas the boys' cousins gave them two packs of these really cool small square foam pieces that have letters and numbers in the middle of them and dovetail sides so that they can be connected to make blocks or a mat for the floor.  Trying to contain the clutter, I grabbed an empty bin from the basement (that hubby couldn't seem to find) to put them in when the boys are not playing with them.

After bringing the bin upstairs and putting the foam pieces into it, I was sitting on the floor of the playroom with the boys when a huge spider ran across the rug in an attempt to escape. Evidently I had transported him upstairs with the bin.

Lovely!

I can't even begin to verbalize the noise that emanated from my throat but it brought both my mom and the hubby into the room. I managed to squish the spider but knocked the stuntman onto his butt in the process. He was nonplussed but I was completely skeeved out and had an overwhelming urge to change my clothes less any other arachnids had ventured onto my clothing.

I can deal with most bugs. I may not like them but they don't skeeve me out like spiders do. I've gotten better over the years and have even been known to kill a spider barehanded but the big ones just send me over the edge!

The playroom is coming along nicely! The wiring is completed, lights are installed and dividing wall between the playroom and man-cave are finished. There is now a huge stack of drywall on the floor and hubby is chomping at the bit to get back to it.

For now though, he is at work, the boys are napping and I have my peace and quiet back.