My Super Hero

You know that feeling when you find out that you did something right, despite the odds? That A you received on a history test you felt certain you bombed. That time you took an unlikely route to work and just happened to bypass an accident that had the rest of the world in gridlock for an hour. That one time you put your change from lunch into a slot machine and it gave you $100 back. Forget all the times you did the same move and your convictions proved true, I mean the one in a hundred time it worked. That's how I feel about my wife. Granted my choice to marry her wasn't a hard one or even one I felt iffy about. I knew she was the right one for me from the very first time she opened her mouth and made it clear that she was the boss and I'd never have to worry about being in charge of anything ever again. ... ever. But I get that same satisfied feeling every now and again when she does something that just amazes me. That little reminder that the stars aligned for me and that choice that I made was money. Absolute money. Last night was a perfect storm for trouble. It was unbearably (over dramatizing here) hot and stuffy in the house. Girls stayed up a little too late because we went to sushi for dinner. Bedtime was rushed because we were up too late. Nobody nursed well because we were tired from being up too late. ... just a mess waiting to happen. And sure enough, about 11:30 things started getting rough. It wasn't nearly a disaster like we've had in the past, just a constant back and forth of one is up, now the other and just as we get them down and to sleep they wake up again. But my wife, my superhero in the flesh. ... she just kept slugging it out. She'd return bruised and battered, lay down exhausted only to rise moments later and jump right back in the ring. Around 3am she even told me to go back to sleep so I could get up for work, and she had to have been up for about an hour after that because finally at 4 she asked me to get some Tylenol for the girls. She got back up again around 4:30 and once more at 5:15 when I got up for work. It was like an old German Cuckoo clock. The minute hand drops into place, the little person rises, crosses the room, does an activity, returns lies down only to repeat the process the next time the minute hand drops. And who knows what she was doing in between, because while I was sleeping I'm more than certain she was not. And the amazing part, the part that truly makes me love her more and more, is that this morning she'll call me - probably in another hour or so - and I will be able to literally hear her smile through the phone. She does that. She has an audible smile. She'll be peppy and optimistic and full of her usual "go get 'em" to the point where you can't help but smile as well. I don't know how she does that. I think she should actually start a business delivering bad news for people. It would be great. "Your girlfriend is dumping you today!" "Awesome!" "Those test results came back positive!" "Terrific!" "You're being let go!" "Spectacular!" If I had a night like hers I would go to Starbucks, ask for the IV drip to be installed in my left forearm, get to work, close my door, lay my head on my desk and god help any poor soul who disturbed me. But that's why I didn't marry me. That and because I think you can only legally do that in Vermont.

Finally, a round of applause

Parenting is truly a thankless job. You get accolades and pats on the back from those around you who have been down that road or those who are fearful of winding up on that road someday, but from the children you raise you rarely get a "thank you" or "job well done". ... at least not until they're parents of their own and fully grasp the chore you undertook. Granted, we are paid in smiles, and giggles, and accomplishments, but for once it would be nice if Arianna turned to me and said "great job feeding me the pureed spinach and beans dad. I especially appreciate your failed attempts at keeping me from repainting the kitchen with it. A+ for effort dad, you're the man!" Or have Genevieve whisper in my ear as I try to rock her to sleep at 2am "Way to rock like a champ dad! I'm definitely not going to sleep for another hour and a half, but that doesn't mean you're not a spectacular snuggler." I know. ... I know. ... dreaming right? I think not!!! I am proud to gloat that I got my first standing "o" during dinner last night. Well, it was a sitting "o" but little Miss Genevieve has mastered the clap. ... that doesn't sound right. Anyway, she figured this thing out - and we have no idea how. During yesterdays afternoon nap I got home from work and instead of sleeping she was just lying there focusing on putting right hand to left hand, separating and repeating. Neither of us have worked with her on it (like sitting or standing), she just kind of stumbled on to it herself. Then at dinner, while Gina was teaching a class, in between mouthfuls of pasta and chicken she started clapping again. I mean, I know I was a decent dinner feeder, but I had no idea I would inspire a John Hughes 1980's teen film slow clap. Takes me back to my days in theater. You can make an audience laugh or cry, but if they don't clap for you then it was all in vein. Well, I can feed her and change her, cloth her and keep her warm, but now I know. ... she likes me! She really, really likes me!

In case you missed the baptism

A recap:

The Importance of Teaching Children "911"

Well we're back from vacation so I it's time to for me to get back on the blogging horse again. We had a really nice time out in Palm Springs, girls did very well in the pool. We had some rough nights with Genevieve - don't know if it was the strangeness of a new place, the schedule being thrown out the window or the smallness of the cribs provided by the hotel, but something irked her pretty bad. Spent the first night up from 12 - 4am just screaming her head off. Other two nights were much better, but we called on an old friend named Tylenol to help us out. Other than that there wasn't much adventure, all went smoothly. But I did learn a valuable parenting lesson. It's very important to teach your kids 911 in an emergency. Even if they can't dial yet, the simple act of screaming it can do the trick. Let me set the story for you: Gina and I are doing a charity "mud run" next weekend so I've been working hard to make sure I'm up to the challenge. Even on vacation I felt the need to keep my workouts going so I don't lose my momentum. The Westin resort we were staying at has two sides, a time share side and a hotel side. We were on the time share side and the gym that I like (from a past stay) is on the hotel side. So I would run the 1/2 mile or so through the parking lot to the hotel gym (the furthest point possible from our room), work out and then run back through the complex (there are pathways that run through a park and across some streams that divide the complex, each unit having a back door that opens to the area). So I left the back slider to our room unlocked so I could come back this route. July in Palm Springs is a tough time to be running outdoors, so I was shirtless and drenched in sweat when I returned to our room. I tried the slider to find it locked. A little miffed that Gina locked me out I went to the living room door and opened it. As I entered the room two things struck me 1) Gina had moved the girls cribs and 2) the 2 year old boy sitting on the sofa watching TV was not mine. He had a similar thought and with eyes wide as dinner plates launched into a scream "Mommy 911! 9-1-1!!! Mommy! 911!!!!!". Thoughts of a mom with a kitchen knife and father with a 9 iron flashed into my head and I ran like one of the blurred faces on "Cops" out the door, stumbling over patio furniture, down the path, over the stream and back to our room. ... which was a good two buildings a way still. Aside from recreating an afternoon school special or a commercial for ADT I learned a valuable lesson about making sure my kids know this numerical sequence so well that it instinctively flies from their mouth any time a sweaty, half naked man wanders into the living room with a dazed look in his eyes while their watching Spongebob. I then spent the rest of the trip keeping an eye out for the little boy (didn't need to be ID'd while at the pool) and marking our room with a strategically placed towel or shirt on the patio furniture. Ahh vacations.

Stealing to Share

Genevieve has recently become quite the binky hog. It's not an addiction where she needs it all the time, we really only use them for bed time and in extreme meltdown situations that can't be resolved by other means, but when a binky is present Genevieve zero's in on it like a hawk on a rodent and with a locked gaze moves right towards it (by the way she started crawling last night - makes me feel super stupid for being concerned - so "moving" is actually taking place) with only one objective in mind: get binky in mouth. We keep a horde of binkies in the girls cribs so that if there are any problems in the night either they can get one on their own or we can easily find it in the dark when we come in. Lately, when you lay Genevieve down, the first thing she does is gather all the binkies in her crib up into her clutches, and she falls asleep like Scrooge McDuck on a pile of gold coins. If she's hanging out in the living room and some how a binky materializes she finds a way to make sure it ends up in her possession. This morning, we were all playing on our bed, each girl had come in with the nights binky in their mouth. Suddenly, Genevieve realized her sister had a binky. Keep in mind, she still had her own safely gripped between her teeth. ... tooth. But still, her hands slowly extend out toward her sisters face and - yoink! "That's my binky." She did this time and time again, Gina and I taking it back each time and returning it to Arianna who sat with a perplexed look on her face like one who has just had their purse snatched from them. Finally she did it again and we were either to exhausted from repeating the same monotonous task over and over again or curious to see how Arianna would respond given the time to contemplate so we left the situation alone. Genevieve studied the binky in her hand for few moments, tried to shove it in to her mouth with the other one still in it, looked at her sisters empty mouth and then returned to binky. She tried to actually put in Arianna's mouth for her, but the coordination was not quite there, so Arianna just took it and did the task on her own. But the thought was there - she actually looked at her sisters empty mouth and shared her excess of binkies. ... granted her first instinct was to steal the binky and add it to her own collection, but hey, can't be picky here. At least her 2nd thought was a good moral decision. Isn't that what second chances are all about?

Furlough Fridays

So the 6% pay decrease in exchange for every Friday off at noon is actually much more worth it than it looks on paper. Life is priceless, so they say, therefore half of a day extra to play with my girls is infinitely more valuable than 6% of my paycheck. Yes, we are blessed that we are not scrounging pennies for survival and such a loss can be absorbed (thanks to yoga money), but even if we were I think in the back of my mind there would still be a warmness and gratitude for the blessing in disguise. Because our jobs consume so much of our time, so much of our life is missed. It's nice to be forced to experience a little more of it than the past would have allowed. Today was the first beach day for the girls and I had the opportunity to be there. ... it was a missed opportunity however because after driving 45 minutes from my office to the beach there was not a single parking spot available (keep in mind said 6% decrees means I enjoy life, but am also a cheap bastard who won't pay $15 to park at Bolsa Chica for an hour). So I drove around for another 30 minutes or so (and "drive" means I sat in one spot way in the back of the queued cars waiting for a spot) before I decided to just pack it in. At least I had the opportunity to join my girls at the beach. ... that's more than most people had today, right? Plus I got to see pictures. So it was like I WAS there, with out the sunburn.

An Apple and An Orange

I know we're not supposed to compare twins. It's like the Cardinal Rule of multiples - you can't compare two different children despite their exposure to the exact same environment. They are, after all, still two different people. ... but man is that hard! How are you not supposed to do that? It's like when you're mother taught you not to stare at people, but then a 400lb Elvis impersonator in his 80's walks by. Or how they tell you don't look at the accident on the side of the road, just keep driving. But have you ever passed a ball of twisted metal with a 30 foot flame and not turned your head like the "we are legion" girl from The Exorcist? So how now (brown cow) can I not compare two girls who have been exposed to the same exact conditions for the past 8 months? If one gets sick and the other doesn't how can I not pause and wonder why?! They wore the same cloths in the same temperatures to the same place where they saw the same people. How is it one reacted one way and the other reacted totally different? The latest problem I have is with the crawling. Arianna is like a pinball, bouncing from one object to the next at breakneck speeds. As soon as she arrives at her destination, she plots a new course and is of in a blur of arms and legs. Genevieve, my sweet Genevieve, goes pretty much no where. At all. Ever. She's grasped the concept. She knows that movement requires her to be on her belly, and she's figured out that the arms and the legs play a key role, so she gets on her knees, rocks a little bit and then just kind of melts back in to the floor where she flops around a few times before crying. And my problem is not that she can't do it. I know that all kids develop differently, some kids take longer to crawl, some don't do it at all. My problem is I feel so bad for her because I think she really wants to. She watches her sister zoom around and she acts like she wants to go to. Or her sister comes and steals a toy from her and takes off with it and there's nothing that Geneveive can do but watch. So rather than think I have any disappointment I want to make it clear that I don't - I just feel bad for her and I want her to be able to do the things she wants. But when I try and work with her (get her on her knees, move her hands and legs, ect.) she only shows interest in standing up and trying to walk. Part of me thinks that she's come to the conclusion "why settle for matching my sister when I can just best her. If I can walk first while she's still crawling, then I'll have the upper hand." Maybe that's the subtext - we'll never know for sure. I'm just having a really tough time accepting that they are different people who will do things differently, and that's OK. It's almost like I just want them to be even, that way no one is left out or feeling better/worse about life. But that's the human condition, isn't it. If not for those feelings the idea of greatness would not exist. Can you imagine Neil Armstrong landing on the moon and planting 180+ flags for all the other countries who could not figure out how to get there? That would kind of take the fun out of things. It's easier to do when your kids are not at the same level, side by side in life. You can separate them easier when there's a one year, two year, ten year gap. But this is my problem, not there's. As far as they are concerned - life is going great, whether you're crawling like mad or just sitting and enjoying the scenery.