6:20am

I ended up dumping Juliette into her crib to cry it out after an hour and a half to vry it out, but luckily (for me) Quinn slept through it all... you know they are both going to be up every hour on the hour tonight to make sure mommy's really home...

6:45am: I suppose technically this is sleeping in.

I saw Lara to the door at 4am, after Quinn decided to wake up. He nursed, so perhaps this meant he would sleep in?

Kiernan, who even at 3 takes after his mother in the "let me sleep one more more minute" department, wandered into our room to announce it was time to get up at quarter to seven.

... woo...

In 12 hours, Lara will be boarding a plane to New York to attend Blogher.

At least at that time I will be awakened by one or more yelling babies. I will stumble downstairs to make coffee, turn on the computer, and begin...

The left-alone-for-three-days-with-unweaned-babies liveblog!

yayyyy...

Blessed be Rumina!

At 13 months old, both twins are still nursing.

Kiernan weaned himself at 11 months, and these extra two months obviously makes a difference.

For example, Juliette woke in the night, yelling and fussing. I stumbled in, grabbed her and brought her back to our room to lie in bed with us and feed. She was still so upset, really wanting to nurse but preventing herself by throwing a mini-tantrum.

Sleepily Lara said "Juliette! If you latch on there's fruit salad!"

It truly is neat how their mother's body will adapt to the needs of the babies.

17th month of pregnancy according to my blog...

Since my wife changed her blog header to include the twins, I suppose have no excuses anymore...

Got to work on the verb/noun differentiation

After getting home and unloaded the babies' car seats into the front hall, I remarked how hot it was in the house and removed my jacket before going back grab stuff from the van. Kiernan was jumping out from the back seat when his yelled announcement echoed through the neighbourhood:

"Daddy took off his dress!"

"Um. No. You get dressed in clothing, not in dresses. Although girls can wear dresses. Some boys do too, but those are kilts. But let's simplify: Daddy took off his clothes. Um, but don't yell that either."

More fun word misinterpretation:

Sometimes Lara has a slight bit of trouble getting up in the morning after dealing babies who decide 3am is the perfect time to be wide awake. All the kids were up and getting a bit bored/cranky/demanding, so I sent Kiernan upstairs to wake mommy up. Kiernan returned soon after saying "Mommy says two more minutes."

Soon enough, Kiernan was sent on a return expedition to let her know ten minutes had passed. He came back down and said "Mommy's not done lying yet."

The question arises: Did she lie about only needing two more minutes, or is she just lying down?

Sleep deprived climbing...

2:50am: The drama queen wakes up, she's screaming, super starving; why isn't mommy feeding her already? I plod in and reswaddle her, Lara follows and sits in the chair to nurse Juliette.

3:20am: Juliette is done, Lara is asleep in the chair. I plod back and put her into bed, help Lara to her feet and out the door, where I pause to shut it behind us. Lara hangs a left into the bathroom. Not unremarkable, except that as she enters, she turns the light off. So I stop in the doorway to see her moving the step stool from in front of the sink- no, wait, she's picking it up, she's carrying it towards me... I decide it's better to stop this sort of thing before she tries to sleep-climb, so I take the step stool away. This angers her greatly, saying "I just want to go to bed!" "Okay, go ahead!" I let her pass.

3:35am: Quinn, from the playpen at the base of our bed, practices his new habit of screeching. Is he happy? Sad? Hungry? Hungry. Lara gets up out of bed and asks "Can you hand him to me?" and as I gather him up I see she's halfway out the bedroom door. "Where are you going?" She pauses, then returns to the glider to feed Quinn.

3:50am: Quinn is done, Lara is asleep in the glider. I pick him up, put him back into bed, and help Lara to her feet. She walks straight out the door and into the bathroom. This time I'm curious - I won't let her actually climb the steps, but I'll see where she wants to bring it. Unfortunately she immediately pulls an about-face, comes back in the door and literally falls into bed.

Sleep deprived conversations continued...

Last night I woke up around one am to see Lara sitting in her glider holding a baby and exclaiming in wonderment, "How did she get so big?"
I glanced at the clock and said "Is it time to feed them?"
She ignored my question, instead deducing, one word coming out at a time, "She got bigger because she's older!"
"Juliette is younger than Quinn."
"She's grown bigger!"
I looked to my left to see Juliette still sleeping in the bassinet - Lara was holding Quinn, the bigger of the twins by at least a pound. I decided to just turn on the hall light to make our journey to the babies' room easier.

Upon my return, Lara looked up at me.
"What am I doing now?" she asked, then answered herself immediately: "Right. My dad is going to hold a baby so I can hold the strawberry."

"Do you want to go to the other chair and feed both of them?" I asked.
"Which ones?" she replied.
"Both of them."
"Which both of them?"
"Both babies."
"Oh right, there are only two."
I don't know, maybe the strawberry was hungry?

Later on, at the following feeding around 4am I came in to check on them.
"How are they doing?"
"Guhbluhbuhmruh" Lara stated matter-of-factly.
"Pardon me?"
"Nothing- it's- nevermind-" she backpedaled, assuming I was fishing for blog post material. (Not this time - I figured all the gold had been mined at this point.)
"I just didn't hear you. Is everything okay?"
"It's snowing."
"Okay, I'll be back in fifteen."

Sleep deprived ramblings for fun and blog post material

"I find it hard to believe -" my wife stated lazily from the chair, tandem-nursing the twins at around 2 in the morning, "- that they can eat an entire firetruck."

Cards, anyone?

I ordered four decks of the previously mentioned Desjgn Cards, in Gray Moonstone, Black Opal, Green Emerald, and Orange Coral. I'm wishing I'd gone for some Purple Spinel and Brown Topaz as well, but maybe in the future... because the current six decks of plastic playing cards in the house is not enough should I ever decide to open a casino in my so-uncluttered basement.

Anyway, for the first two days of his life Kiernan had no name. This was because Lara and I couldn't decide between the names Kiernan and Quinn. Now we're pretty sure of the names of both of the upcoming twins, but Quinn fell off the list of favourites long ago isn't even an option for either the boy or the girl.

The other day Lara casually mentions "Too bad we don't like the name Quinn anymore."
"Why's that?" I asked.
"Kiernan, Quinn, and Juliette - K Q J"
Blank stare from me.
"King Queen Jack?" she offered.
"I understand that. I was just thinking how I suddenly like the name Quinn again."

Unfortunately it's apparently not an option anymore.

28 weeks

Today marks the beginning of Operation: Hold Those Babies In!*

Only 9 weeks to go... or 12 if you really want, dear! You can do it!






* also coincides with Sub-operation: please don't come out yet babies, I really need to clean the house

Maybe we need to ring a bell...

"Swallow your spit!" Lara says almost daily to Kiernan as the drool covers his shirt.

After brushing his teeth each night I say "Spit!" and he automatically swallows.

Yup, still having twins.

So Lara woke up this morning, came downstairs all groggy, and I said "So, should I meet you at the ultrasound today or at my mom's?"... she didn't fall for the attempt at "Yesterday was only a dream". She also didn't kill me, so that's a plus.

My coworker commented "Twins are just like having one baby, they just eat more!"

She's recently married.

With no kids.

Before I could blink, two women were out in the halls, a mother of two and a mother of four, screaming "Did I just hear you say...?"

Cower before the... muffin rage?

As I rushed around the house the other day getting ready for work (semi-late as usual) my wife asked "Where's the muffin that was on the counter?"

"Uh, you mean the one you told me to bring to work?" ...Icy silence... "Yesterday?"

In an exasperated and irritated tone, she explained "I didn't think you actually took it!"

"Oh, uh I can get one from the freezer for you."

"NO."

Uh oh... the base of my brain tingled in a fight-or-flight mode... so I didn't respond... but thought to myself, Hey, I should grab a muffin for my lunch, I'll just head downstairs and --

"STOP!" She yelled, running at me. "I DON'T WANT YOU TO GET ME A MUFFIN!"

"I'm getting one for myself!" I ducked-and-covered my way down the staircase. "Uh... do you want one?"

Hopefully hormonal rage won't become a regular "Weekly Wednesday" feature.

More True Tales of Pregnancy Rage

We have a narrow cupboard to the right of our stove which would logically hold spices. Now, my sister was a Victorian Epicure consultant for a while, which is sort of a tupperware salesperson for various spices and spice mixtures. So needless to say, our spice cupboard had a lot of stacked jars in it. Lara often complained about how hard it was to find spices, but really, there's not much we can do about it... or so I thought.

One day, probably around month 7 or 8 of the pregnancy, I heard an exasperated yell from the kitchen. I peeked cautiously around the corner to see all of the jars and bags of spices being pulled from the cupboard onto the counter.

A drawer flew open - tea tea towels and wash clothes were pulled frantically out and spice jars went into their place, labeled on the lids with a sharpie marker. The tea towels and oven mitts were shoved randomly into the spice cupboard. I opened my mouth to comment on the ridiculousness of this arrangement, but her unmitigated rage heightened her hearing, and the sound of my tongue leaving the roof of my mouth caused her head to swing in my direction with a glare. I'm happy to say I walked away so the focus or her anger remained on the jars now crammed tightly into the drawer.

Months later at a gathering in our house, a highly organized (read: neat freak) friend of ours asked where she could find a towel to dry a glass. Even over the general buzz of party conversation you could hear the gasp throughout the house as she opened the cupboard.

Eventually I cobbled together a magnetic spice rack on our wall and transferred enough spices over that I was finally able to put things back to normal. This was a year and a half later, of course, after I was sure the rage levels were low.

True Tales of Pregnancy RAAAAAGE!!!!!!!

If you don't read my wife's blog (and if so, why not?) then you don't know that Kiernan is expecting a baby brother or baby sister come June 2009. But really, he is hoping for a baby blue monkey.

Now, when Lara was pregnant with Kiernan, she had "morning" sickness. Morning is in quotation marks because the nausea lasted most of the day, and continued throughout the entire pregnancy. She was on medication which kept her slightly less sick in exchange for a constant state of fatigue, giving me plenty of time to play video games (ask me how many video games I've played since!).

We were told that sometimes pregnancies differ, but not so much this time so far, although the nausea is a little less. One thing I'm hoping will change with this pregnancy is a tiny little bit of hormones that affected Lara occasionally (read: a lot) giving her a major case of Pregnancy Rage.

This was an anger that would simmer below the surface, mostly caused by her dissatisfaction at work, bubbling forward at random moments. I have two stories, the better of which I will save for another post.

I was working from home when a message blipped on my MSN - It was Lara. She was responsible for the content of a web page where she worked, and she began telling me about a photo that the management wanted on the front page. The picture infuriated her. She told them she HATED the photo but her arguments fell on deaf ears. I'm assuming she then slammed her way into her office, knocking pictures askew on the wall as she went.

"Look at how terrible this photo looks!" she typed as she directed me to the altered front page.

I looked, and typed back "It's all blurry... what's up with the weird photoshopped effects? I agree, that's totally a crappy picture." There. Good job. Offer support, keep anger directed away from yourself.

There was a pause, then "That's NOT the photo I'm talking about."

Shit. "Uh... ohhh! You mean the picture across the banner... right, right, totally a stupid photo."

My computer speakers nearly developed a frosty rime from the silence that followed.

Toys have come a long way since the Viewmaster I guess...

"Augh!" I hear as I'm coming down the stairs.

"Aaah!" as I turn the corner and see Lara with a toy pressed to her face, super-bright light leaking from around the edge of the lens against her face.

She pulls it away with a third exasperated grimace. "This thing is awful!"

I take the toy, bring it close to my face, then stop, reading the label...

"Movie Theater... Projector?" I say as I turn it to the wall and the picture springs into view...

She jinxed it

http://mommyhoodforlara.blogspot.com/2008/05/not-going-to-jinx-it.html

Two hours straight with three awakenings + insomnia + coffee = a tentative shaky balance between wakefulness and a keyboard-print on my face.

I just need to find the perfect time this afternoon to drink my ambrosia so the high will last until after I get home.

Blogger versus skunk: CONCLUSION

So, the radio blared talk radio at the skunks for about a week, and still I hadn't found a source of free fill to shove under the shed. But common sense (aka Lara concerned about the electricity that the super powerful $18 Funysonic radio was draining) prevailed and I shut it off.

I found a bag of potting soil inside the shed, but it was not enough. I found some old pot plants full of soil, shoved it under, but it was not enough.

It was then that I realized that we have had a compost bin that for two years, and we have two or three garden plots which have become overrun by grass, weeds, and extra-tenacious perennials which are likely never to need the extra-rich soil. So under it went. Still, it was not enough.

After three or so more weeks passing, the shed seems uninhabited, which is good. I'm thinking it's not getting any new residents because the news spread throughout the local animal populace about the infamy of Stuart McLean... if only the sound waves caused by his voice countered the (slightly faded) skunky smells... or maybe it did, but Lara made me turn it off.

I guess that's good to know...

2:33am.

My wife shoots up to a sitting position in bed.

"What's wrong?" I ask groggily.

She replies with a series of words that are either random syllables or words I'm still not awake enough to process.

"What?" I ask.

Five more syllables, I think I heard "beer beaches" or "barbie shoes" in there, then she pats me somberly on the leg and says "I thought you should know."

Then she flops back down onto her pillow.

"What?" I think. Was the first thing she said the key to the cryptic second part? Was her Delphic wisdom was lost to me forever?

Suddenly she's up again, this time only halfway to sitting. I listen eagerly to her followup.

She hits the snooze button on her clock radio and falls back to sleep.