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.

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.

Not Just A Mom

When I was younger the only thing I could ever picture myself being was a mom.

Friends and family members would ask what I wanted to be when I grew up and I'm sure I gave the usual responses for girls like a nurse, a teacher, and at one point I even thought I wanted to be a physical therapist. Honestly though, the only thing I ever really saw myself "being" was a mom.

I had almost given up on this dream. In fact, for many years that's all it felt like: a dream. My marriage dissolved and I really thought that it just wasn't going to happen...ever. 

Then along came this wonderful, patient, sweet, loving guy who was not the least bit concerned that I had been married before - more than once - and, although I saw myself as such, did not see me as damaged goods. 

Before I knew it my resolve to "never get married again" had melted away and I found myself professing my love and devotion to him until death do we part surrounded by our families on a blustery January morning in 2010.

One friend still calls me a liar to this day, because I got married again.

It's ok...He's worth the teasing.

Since we knew that we both wanted to be parents, we began trying right away.

The odds were against us.

Forty might be the new thirty but my eggs had no idea about the rule change. Women are not supposed to be having babies in their forties.

Nearly a year of disappointment went by before we decided that it was time to look into medical intervention.

This is where it gets really interesting...

We opted to do IVF.  IVF stands for In Vitro Fertilization which is a process where an egg is fertilized outside the body. The clinic we went to had a "Shared Risk" program that gives you your money back if you don't have a baby after six tries. What an incredible opportunity!

There was a catch.

We had to use donor eggs to qualify for the program because I am old...reproductively speaking of course.

Cool!!!

Most women would be a little bummed about this but let me tell you that I was not in the least upset about stopping my genetic line.

At the time, I had just buried my father, the latest in a long line of male cancer victims in my family,  (someone with my genetic history would have been excluded from the donor program had I been younger) and if we used my eggs there was a five percent chance of success with an 80%+ chance of birth defect!

Bring on the donor eggs baby!

We signed up, signed our lives away financially and got busy reading bios of egg donors.

Not only did we get to see baby pictures of the donors but we even got to see teenager and adult pics as well. The donors fill out medical history forms and write an essay about why they are making the donation. It was a very cool experience...the first time.

I'll cut to the chase here. The twins were the result of our fourth round of IVF.

IVF is not just swirling the eggs and sperm around in a test tube it is a huge science that involves timing, injections, restrictions on what I could and couldn't eat and even whether or not I could wear deodorant the day of the transfer!

Cycles one and three resulted in nothing. Try number two started out as a pregnancy and ended in a miscarriage.

A devastating experience I would not even wish on my greatest enemy.

I'd waited my entire life to be a mom and there I was six weeks into my first pregnancy and it was over. To make it even worse I bled so badly that I required surgery and nearly needed a transfusion.

People don't talk about miscarriage.

To this day I will always wonder who that baby would have become. Despite the love for my two beautiful boys, I will always mourn the loss. It was devastating in ways that I could never describe. If you've been through it you know how horrifying it is. If not, you'll never fully comprehend the immeasurable sadness that accompanies the loss.

It literally took weeks for me to bounce back emotionally.

Once I was ready we began to look at bios again and prep for round number three. Despite all the stars aligning and everything being perfect, it didn't work.

To make matters worse, it seemed that everywhere I went there was an entire army of pregnant women. One of my friends, who hadn't wanted children, called to say that she was pregnant.

Well...now...how unfair could life possibly get!

Don't get me wrong here, I was and am insanely happy for her, but I was jealous as hell!

Heading into round four everything went wrong! There was one donor but three recipients for the eggs. One of the recipients didn't like the birth control pills that she was supposed to be taking so she didn't take them and postponed all of us for a month.

I swear to you that if that woman had been standing in front of me at the time, I would have punched her in the head. I was livid!

Then the donor got pregnant! Seriously?! WTF!! Could things get any worse?

Back to the bio database we go. Lo and behold there was a donor that already had two recipients signed up. We were the third and all systems were go. Things moved so fast from that point on that it is nearly a blur - or it could be that the children have destroyed that much of my memory - I can't be sure. Before I knew it we had eggs being fertilized and a transfer date was set.

I distinctly remember the doctor saying to me, "Since you've had such a difficult time, I think we should transfer two embryos and see if one sticks." Ha! We agreed, signed the necessary paperwork and I assumed the position on the table.

They tell you not to do home pregnancy tests but I don't know anyone that can resist that temptation...I still have all of mine. Needless to say, that when I went in for the blood pregnancy test I was not surprised that it came back positive but I was surprised at the number.

Whether you pee on a stick or you have a pregnancy test by blood draw the hormone that they look for is HCG (Human Chorionic Gandotropin - which is made up of cells that form the placenta). The HCG hormone is measured in milli-international units per milliliter or mlU/ml. In a blood test anything above 25mlU/ml is considered positive for pregnancy.

My nurse called me the afternoon of my blood test to say that it was positive and that my number was over 3000!!!! My response was, "Oh my God, they both took!"

Three days later I went back for my second and this time my number was over 10K. My nurse giggled as she suggested that maybe one of them split and I was carrying twins. Yeah, um...not funny!

Everything was confirmed with an ultrasound and we could see two little heartbeats at 14 days after conception.

Because of the previous miscarriage, we were cautiously optimistic and told no one what we were doing! Should this pregnancy fail too, I didn't want to have to tell everyone like I did the other time. The thought alone was painful.

Six weeks in I started to bleed.

The trip to the local emergency room is 8 minutes but it felt like an eternity!

I told the intake counselor what was going on, they triaged me immediately and put me in an exam room. The doctor came in so quickly I wasn't even finished changing into my gown!

After I was examined he declared that all was fine but was sending me down to ultrasound just to double check. The ultrasound showed no abnormalities and we were sent home.

I remember thinking that I wanted my mom. She had no idea that we had even begun another round of IVF. I wasn't about to call her from the ER and tell her but I knew that the conversation was going to happen very soon.

Six and a half weeks later I started bleeding again.

This time they didn't even triage me. They just brought me right to an exam room and the doctor was waiting for me. After a full exam and ultrasound I was once again declared fine and sent home to rest.

The good news was that that was the end of the ER visits.

The IVF process doesn't end with the transfer of the embyo(s). I endured shots of Progesterone for three months and shots of Estrogen for two. Prior to the transfer there were other shots. The easy ones were the belly shots which use insulin needles, are very, very tiny and barely pinch. The others hurt like hell. The progesterone comes suspended in an oil. The progesterone gets absorbed right away but it takes longer for the oil to get absorbed in the skin. In the meantime, I had oil lumps on my butt. Every night before the shot, I would have to find a location without a lump that my hubby could stick the needle.

Pretty much nothing made this any easier or less painful. It is what it is and if IVF was the only option for having a child then this was what I had to endure. Besides it will be a great guilt trip when the kids are older.

In all, pregnancy sucked.

The only thing good about pregnancy was the end result: our boys.

Would I do it again? Hell yes!

We have just celebrated the boys' first birthday. The house was packed with friends and family and the cake smash was epic. I look back the pictures from this past year and can't believe that these two beautiful baby boys are mine.

I have dreamt my entire life what it would like to be a mommy. My dream has come true. I've been a mommy for a year now and reality doesn't disappoint.

Yes it's tough sometimes, especially the teething. I mean seriously, teething has been a nightmare but I'm sure it's no picnic for the boys either.

That they are not my DNA doesn't matter. I carried them. I felt them wiggle in my belly. They are mine. I am not just a mom, I am their mommy.