Super Troopers

When Gina and I first got pregnant - ok when Gina got pregnant and I stood to her side like a proud 5 year old with thumbs pointing strongly towards my puffed out chest declaring "and IIIII helped!" - we decided that we were going to take an approach of implementing the child into our lives as opposed to the approach of rearranging our lives around the child. Some people have a problem with that mentality but our thought was that the child was coming into our world and, eventually, would need to adapt. The best course of action would be to do this from the beginning rather than wait until you've got a five year old who's never sat through dinner at a restaurant and expect them to behave accordingly. When we discovered there were two coming we wavered slightly in our thoughts but quickly reaffirmed our decision that this was the best course of action. We felt that shutting ourselves in for the next few years would drive us insane and would hinder the girls so we decided to jump head first and go for it, and so far it's worked out quite well. We've gone just about everywhere and done just about everything and the girls have not only handled things well, I really think that they've benefited from it. They are great in new situations and around new people, they handle change very well and, for the most part, just go with the flow. But I have to remind myself constantly what a tremendous weight that puts on the girls and how grateful I am for what they put up with. This weekend alone the girls went to the mall on Friday, then to lunch at Red Robin, the Cystic Fibrosis walk on Saturday morning, a going away BBQ for our HOA president at 1pm, an open house for one of Gina's fitness clubs at 3, to Gina's uncles house from 4-7:30 so we could see Iron Man, and then home to bed. Then on Sunday they went to Grandma's for a swim and then directly out to Rancho Cucamonga so we could have dinner with my cousin's family finally getting home well after bedtime. And, although it was rough, the girls put up with all of this. They nap in the car or at someones house or in their own crib all depending on what is asked of them. Then they wake up, they smile and laugh and permeate the air with their happiness as if they were all to thrilled to accommodate such busy schedules. I am so grateful to them. They make parenting so easy - not to say that it's easy being a parent, but all things considered we have it very easy. Then again, maybe our strategy worked. Maybe we can proudly stand to the side of them, once again, our thumbs pointed inward declaring "and weeeeee helped!". Maybe. Then again, maybe we just got very, very lucky. In fact, add a couple more "very's" in there. Like seven.