I think I'm a grandparent.

"How do you think they will like their first try at swinging, Jen?"

"Anyone's guess, Dave."

Solved.

I'm writing this early today, because I'm hoping to god that all that is worth documenting has already passed into history. If not...it'll be an exciting night.

Lazy morning, it being Sunday and all. Nothing too exciting went down until the afternoon.

Jen spent two days arguing her case for bringing the girls to some swings and swinging them for their first-ever swing. This was odd, since I agreed on the event from the first moment she brought it up. When Jen is passionate about an activity, she will argue its case no matter how fervently I agree...it's one of my favorite things about her. In the future I will hate it, but for now it's darling.

We swung by the park on the way to CostCo. I love CostCo, and I was furious at having to waste time outside instead of being embraced by its enormous, flabby arms of consumerism. Begrudgingly, I went to the swings. It was a pretty short little visit; despite the playground having southern exposure, little in the way of tree coverage, and being on top of a hill, it was absurdly icy, snowy and watery. It was sloppy but awesome. The girls love swings. I think the pictures speak for themselves. Hooray! I hadn't felt this way since Abby first began overtly enjoying her soccer ball over other toys.

CostCo was crowded beyond belief. I'm not sure how I feel about the checkout process, since members and carts are required to part ways at the conveyor belt, and because our kids are ensconced in the cart. I feel a little sad when Abs and Lils wheel over to the other side.

After CostCo, walked the dogs/kids. Again: sloppy.

We put the kids down for their afternoon nap, and Jen ran to the store (because CostCo may have rice by the metric ton but they do not sell whole milk) while I flailed helplessly against the Sunday crossword. After a few minutes, Lily whimpered a bit. Within no time, that crescendoed into a full-on wail. The Pain Cry. I ran up and, not really knowing what might be wrong, brought her some milk. There was no doubt that was not what she wanted.

Let me interject here that this is not a story for the squeamish. If you have blood pressure issues or are eating, say, a roast beef sandwich right now, I might reconsider reading the remainder of this. I'm totally serious, this is bad, but I feel it needs to be published.

So Lily eighty-sixed the milk. I considered teething, but reconsidered because she was crying far too hard. I weighed the options. Then I remembered that Lily had a poop so hard and large the night before that Jen had to help pull it out a bit. Unbelievable that it didn't cross my mind earlier.

I whisked her over to the changing table, ripped off the clothes and shoes and diaper, and saw that she was "dialated" (is that a proper word for that part of the body?) about 2 centimeters. In between her wailing, I could see a large poop oscilating between way far in (I didn't do any measuring, sorry) to almost out while she pushed. This was a close second to childbirth in absolute horror shock factor. When she pushed hard, it was up against her anus and it was brutally clear to me that this thing was not going to pass on its own.

I had no clue what action to take, so I tried to coach her through the pushes, which I honestly couldn't help but laugh at because of the absurdity of it. "Good job buddy, keep pushing! You're doing great!" 13 months earlier to the day I'd been saying the same exact things to her Mom. I tried to add some levity to this disaster by telling Lily that her poop looked just like her when she was born. She did not find it amusing.

When she was pushing, I seriously thought there was going to be a burst or a tear or a hernia or a supernova or something...I think I started to hallucinate for a bit. Either way, it wasn't going to get any better even with my stellar coaching. Action was needed.

First I poked the poop. It was hard. Not granite or anything, but when I touched it I could feel a shooting sympathy pain ricochet in my own colon. I considered trying to break it up with a thermometer or something (other alternatives that crossed my mind included a turkey baster or a q-tip. Then I spent a good 30 seconds trying to remember where our turkey baster is and the last time I used it).

I did try - foolishly maybe? I'm not a doctor - to push her stomach down a bit during the pushes, thinking this magical poop would burst out like a spitwad from a bic pen. Was that a stupid plan? Yeah, it didn't seem to accomplish much, except that Lily looked at me, bawling, as if to wonder why I was choosing to add stomach blows to her list of problems.

Of course, the screams during this time were pretty awful. It was like a civil war triage tent. Fearing the consequence of waking Abby up, I turned to check on her and saw that she was sleeping soundly with a wry little smile on her face. Lovely.

Eventually I decided to gather some courage and try to get that thing out manually. When the next big push came, I worked my finger in there - somehow; not sure how, my eyes were closed - and popped it out. It actually took a couple tries, and it wasn't very easy.

Is there something wrong with me that I found it amazingly satisfying to get that thing out? It was a new kind of excitement in my life. For you sick, sick people out there that are interested - the ones that are still reading - the size was somewhere just shy of a golf ball. As Shaggy would say....zoikes.

As soon as it was over, Lily looked like she was going to pass out. I held her, and she buried herself into my shoulder. After a few minutes, she went down for what must have been a deep and bewildering slumber.

These kids, when they cry, you run down the list of possible issues. Is it, "Hey. I'm teething. Do something"? Back when they were newborns, it was food or sleep and that's it. The list gets longer the older they get, the diagnoses we can come up with. "Hey. I bumped my head. Hug me" gets used a lot lately. At no point did I expect a cry to ever mean, "Hey. I'm trying to pass a head of cabbage out my anus. A little help would be nice." Life is fun like that.

When Lily was down, I washed my hands and had one of the more well-deserved beers ever. After that I had some fruit juice.

Day twenty eight.

Lily a la Kate Winslet in Titanic.

This is another one of those pictures that makes me want to tear upstairs, wake them up, and play with them.

Ice. Snow. Pacimafiers.