Ilumi-Naughty

I can only imagine the great power the ancients felt when they harnessed the magic of fire. Although penicillin and the microchip certainly rank toward the top of human achievement, I think the discovery of fire just might be the biggest. To harness the power of light. ... that is the pebble that started the landslide. I now see, what I can only imagine, is the same look of achievement on the girls faces. We've finally gotten big enough to control the light switches. So all hail the Queens! Bow before their all powerful mastery of electricity. This is why dad's go nuts with the energy meters. It starts here. I never once thought about the electric bill (except when Gina was very pregnant in August and we had the AC set to "Arctic Winter" mode). But now it's like "lights on, light's off, lights on, lights off, lights on, lights off" all the time. The last two days I had them down to nap and I still hear giggling 30 minutes later. I open the door and the light is on, the fans going, Genevieve's half naked, tickling herself and Arianna's got the fan remote from the wall pretending to talk into it like a cell phone. It's out of control. Although, it is extremely cute to see them work together. There's a switch in the hallway that's a slider (up and down) that Arianna can't quite reach. So she stands their struggling and Genevieve walks up, stands on her tippie toes and slides it up for her. Arianna laughs so Genevieve slides it down. This, of course, turns into a pattern for the next 5 minutes. Genevieve as light board operate, Arianna as thoroughly amused audience member. I, on the other hand, am out by the meter watching the hands spin frantically like a helicopter blade readying for lift off. And thus begins the "energy conserving dad mode". Engage.

Karma Update: Gina and her mom were selling at a local Family Fun Carnival this weekend, so we trekked over there on Saturday to hang out for a bit. To our disappointment all of the kiddie rides had a 3 year/ 3 feet tall requirement so they wouldn't even sell us any tickets. We were relegated to playing a few games that involved floating ducks (which is nice when you're helping one kid scoop up the ducks and the other one is busy flipping them over so you can see what prize each one is worth before you grab it). So we walked away with some nice prizes. But this meant we had to leave Karma home alone and wearing her cone of shame. We were only gone a few hours, but we got home a little late so I had to rush through baths and jammies. I left Karma in our bedroom ,where she's quarantined, so I could get babies in the tub and then focus on getting her out to go to the bathroom - which requires carrying all 55lbs of her through the house and into the yard and then back again. I open the door to see Karma standing there (on three legs), no cone and an overwhelming smell of crap. She'd managed - and I don't know how - to move the king size bed over so she could slide past the barrier, then she wiggled out of the cone while defecating all over the room. .... aaalllll over the room. The worst part is there was poop on the inside and outside of the cone so that tells me it got in the cone while it was still on her head. So after cleaning up babies and putting them down I had this lovely project to attend to. I can't really blame her, it's not like she realizes what's going on. This is all so traumatic for her, then add the fact I stick the satellite receiver on her head. So we've now got her set up in the living room using the girls old play pen - this way she's not so cut off from everything. She's got some minor internal bleeding - looks like a bruise - where the bone sutures are, but it doesn't seem like she did any real damage. And to make her feel better, Genevieve even took the initiative to read her a bed time story. I swear I've got the sweetest little girls on the planet. No artificial flavoring. No preservatives. No high fructose corn syrup. Just naturally sweet goodness.