Another day of pigtails

I'm at a loss trying to come up with an appropriate caption here.

Busy day today. We dragged the kids to two birthday parties: first was our nephew Oliver's, an event that we (and this may well give you a glimpse into our grip on life) received numerous invitations to and had solidly forgotten about, until my brother called last night to gently force an RSVP from us. The second was for Ella Moore (of Chris and Emily Moore, whose blog can be found right here) who is turning one and is a gracious host who can share legos with aplomb.


Steve and Joy had the family all out to the Park Tavern for Oliver's third birthday. If you happened to look outside today and notice there were no children in Minneapolis, that's because they were all at the Park Tavern. 28 lanes, 273,402 children. That much stimulation was a bit much for the girls (black light cosmic bowling, NCAA basketball on many screens, dance music, food, drinks, anarchy), although they handled it well. Their brains did not explode. Abby even sat on the lane and pushed a bowling ball pack and forth to me, which was kind of a highlight of the day.


Later on it was off to the Moores'. Somewhere in there we took some naps and walked the dogs, but it's all a blur of madcap parenting.


It was a fun but short time at Chris and Emily's. I had to get back and take photos at the Pillsbury Theater for powderhorn 365, so we only got to be there for an hour or so. Long enough for Lily to stuff her entire hand into a bowl of Cheerios (see below). As Emily pointed out, multi-grain cheerios have a barely-perceptible coating of sugar that makes them stick quite readily to toddler paws. Hence...the picture below.

That was about it for the day. It's late...I'm sleepy. Please allow some pictures of the day to do some talking for me.


Day thirty four.

Emily and Abby hang out.

Yup, that's my kid. At least she gets a laugh from Emily's mom.

I could not understand how this one cheerio could stay attached to her face.

Lily walking up after a snooze.

Abby smiling at Mommy.

Another shot of Lily getting awoken, prematurely apparently.

The brood.

This post contains 100% of your daily dose of Kurt Russell.

Apparently the good and moral people at whatever snacking conglomerate makes Goldfish crackers thinks their package is a ripe place to give us some life lessons.

I don't get it. Neither does Jen. Yet it's geared towards children.

I'm giving us all a break of girly-girl pictures for the day; they deserve one day's peace from having their mugs splattered all over this blog. Sorry. Please refer to another day if you want a twin fix.

The day started out mired in frustration, mostly for Jen. Last night, Abby decided that she was not an anti-biotic-loving kind of chick, so when I attempted to give her a dose, it went swimmingly. I'm not sure she really got much down. We worried about whether we should try more, if she got enough, etc. Fast forward to this morning, when I come downstairs to find Jen holding a spastic Abby down trying to administer some medicine. This is one of those teeth-gritting moments of parenting. I knew when I saw Jen that she was about to snap, partly because it's hard to go toe-to-toe with a thirteen month old girl who's digging in her heels, but mostly it was the stress of having a girl with pneumonia and no way to give her medicine for it. I was downstairs for not a minute before my teeth were gritting as well.

After they were off to day care (they were feeling up to it, we swear...don't judge us!), Jen bravely took a hit from their prescription bottle. Apparently it was bad. Empathy was felt. Then she had the bright idea to add the anti-biotics to some yogurt for dinnertime. This was quickly and cheerfully swallowed, so these girls have 8 more days and a lot of yogurt left to go.

Here's a little update of where the kids are:

Abby is starting to get very good at moving from sitting to lying and other various positions, but is still glacially slow at progressing towards crawling or getting around. She's spent her fair share of time standing at the coffee table, which is apparently the most fun thing to do ever.

Lily is probably just a few weeks out from walking, but for now she melts to the ground whenever we take our hands away from her. As always, she seeks out danger wherever it may lie and no matter how well we hide it. She's an adventurer.

Day thirty three.

Daddy narcicistically giving the sign for "Daddy".

Mommy doing likewise.

Once the kids were off to bed, we relaxed in a way that only good parents can: by playing some Farkle, eating mac and cheese, and watching Tango and Cash. What can I say, they weren't broadcasting the Xavier game.

I think this screen shot captures the pure essence of this movie in all its fantasticness.

Gonzaga is in Spokane, WA, just so you know.

Abby sticking her tongue at me.

Let me take a brief moment to pay a bit of gratitude to all who might be following our little experiment here. We've received lots of positive feedback (a pack of lies!) and well-wishes (those seemed rather earnest). Writing and taking pictures every day is a chore, for both of us, so hearing back from people is quite a nice reward. Thanks to all.

Now let me punk out and say that I'm going to be short tonight, as I think I've caught either Lily's ear infection, Abby's pneumonia, or possibly a flea-born virus from one of our mongrel dogs. Achy and tired, with a golf ball for a lymph node. I'd defer to Jenner, but she did play mother to two sick kids all day, and she's mentally checked out for the night (she's relaxing to ER, and we've reached a nice, unwritten agreement where I don't push the NCAA tournament while she wordlessly flips right to it during the commercials. And she even asks questions about it. "Where is Gonzaga?" "What's the difference between a personal and team foul?" "Why won't any gophers put a damn hand in A.J. Abrams' face, for god's sake?")

Let me also issue a retraction from yesterday's blog: our kids loathe the anti-biotic we have to give them. We at the Gels house apologize for the error.

The girls did pretty well, from what Jen has told me about the day. And they've been in bed for 3 hours without any coughs bursting from the monitor, although Lily just woke up a few minutes ago and howled for a few moments before abruptly passing back out. I've got hope for a relatively smooth night.

That's it, that's all I've got. Like I said: lumpy throat, feel like poop, lame entry. I warned you.

Day thirty two.

Lily trying to couch-walk her way to me.

Hard to fathom: that hair came from that Mommy.

A rare shot of Lily drinking today. She didn't drink much today. Poor monkey.

Gelses v. Pneumonia II: Return of the Sputum

Lily practicing walking with Mommy.

Abby has once more fallen victim to our old friend pneumonia. Both girls have been less than springtime-fresh the past couple days, so Jen ended up staying home with Abby today, then took both kids to the doctor to see what was up. Lily got off easy with an ear infection, an ailment for which I have yet to see one shred of evidence; yet, according to Jen, Dr. Griffin only needed to make a passing glance into her noggin' to make a steadfast proclimation of this infection's existence. All that simply means is that we're quite fortunate, relatively, that she is such a trooper and refuses to show symptoms.

We're also counting ourselves lucky not to have a bad case of the big P with Abs; no hospitalization, her oxygen is good, her color is good, her breath is stinky, her 401k is non-existent, her bee-bo is pointy, and her taste in music is still sublime. Like her sister, she's been relatively peachy about the whole thing ("Oh, pneumonia again...whatev.") so we're hoping for a smooth, anti-biotic-chugging experience. Also!...they love the anti-biotic...another plus! I smelled it, and it did have a nutty, aromatic bouquet. I'm hoping to steal a nip after Jen goes to bed.

Last night, though not breaking any records on the misery scale, was rough. I got up with Lily right away, before either of us fell asleep. I was gone for forty minutes, gave her a bit of bottle, held her close, then went back to bed, where Jen asked me, "Did you just close the door?" She was under the impression that I'd gotten up to simply close their bedroom door (which maddeningly creeps open due to cat, dog, draft, poltergeist, what have you), a task which takes roughly 12 seconds. I said, "Umm, I've been gone for forty minutes." Then she just rolled over and went back to sleep.

These nights are reminiscent of the early days, and it makes me miss them in a way. I miss the next day's recapitulation of the night's happenings. because they were so muddled.

d: "Did I get up with Abby or did you?"
j: "Which time?"
d: "She got up twice?"
j: "No, three times."
d: "We made three bottles?"
j: "You made all of them, actually. We talked for a while about how crazy it was that she was eating so much. You even checked on the internet to see if that was normal."
d: "What day is this?"
j: "Not sure."
d: "Well, I know I fed Lily at 3, for sure."
j: "Lily slept through the night."
d: "Like hell she did. I held her for 40 minutes at 3:30"
j: "No, you woke up and held the dog for nearly an hour, after which you tried to give him a bottle. Then you fell back asleep for two hours."
d: "I don't remember sleeping 2 hours. And why are you logging my time?"
j: "I'm not. Wait, are you claiming you did more than me last night?"
d: "No. Why, are you admiting I did more? Because if so, I agree."

ad nauseum. It feels a little like the morning after being at a keg party that got busted by the fuzz; nobody really knows what the hell happened. Okay, that's not actually true, usually Jen has a pretty good grip on the events as they went. More often than not, I'm the confused one, I admit.

Anyway...the kids are sick. Which is rotten luck because it's Jen's spring break, and yet it's good luck because it's over her spring break. She'll be staying home with them tomorrow, and it will be a long day for her. I'd feel bad for her, but all my sympathy is reserved for the tiny, heartbreaking little coughs that we hear over the monitor every couple minutes. Poor little monkeys.

Day thirty one.

ps. big praise to Jen, thanks for taking the bloggity-blog duty last night; I think it needs to be a more frequent event.

Lily is starting a phase of giving. She tries to feed us, which is cute even as she stabs me in the gums with her cracker. Today she learned, for the very first time, that she can feed the beagle. Lucky us, we have a dog that loves cheerios. And peas. What dog likes peas?

Abby wonders why I gave her pumonia. Why, Daddy, why? She's a good sport. I actually got a laugh from her within a minute of being home, so there's reason to be happy.

This was right before Mommy got fed some cheerios. You can see Olly patiently waiting in the cheerio queue.

Mom's Perspective: Edition 1

Abs, looking sweet as always.

Tonight's post to 365 Days of Twins is brought to you by Jen (the mommy) as it has been decided (mostly by me) that Dave stays up too late writing in this blog and needs some sleep. I am aware that upon reading this there are some of you out there in the blog-0-sphere who just experienced simultaneous disappointment and fear. Disappointment because you now have to wait until tomorrow's post to get a fresh fix of Dave-isms. Fear because you have no idea whether or not he married a woman who can entertain you as effectively as Dave can. I won't make you wait until the end of this blog to figure that out, I'll tell you up front--I am no Dave. I'm aware of this shortcoming and don't need you to confirm it via your comments. I'm very fragile and will take all criticisms with no grains of salt and will probably cry. So bite your tongue and deal with the fact that Dave needs a break once in awhile. Not that he admits or is even aware of this fact, which is why I'm here to point it out for him.

I will take this opportunity to explain the meaning behind a part of the title of last Saturday night's post "Wetness! Nodding! Signing!, etc". The nodding and signing were explained by Dave, here's the deal about the wetness:

Both girls woke up early and hungry on Saturday morning. Both tired and groggy, Dave fed Abs while I fed Lily. Sitting in the chair in their room, holding Lilypad in my arms, looking at her sweet face, I kept thinking what a nice, warm moment. No wait, it's not so much a warm moment as a wet one. Lily had leaked out of her diaper. We went over to the changing table, Lils still clutching her bottle while I took off her wet pjs and cleaned her up. All I could think about was how Lily's ability to hold her own bottle has been the catalyst to my amazing mombility to multitask. Freshly cleaned up, nice and dry in new pajamas, Lily finished her bottle and returned to a happy, "dry" slumber. She even thanked me for being the best mommy ever by sleeping in until 8 AM. (She might have slept longer but I chose to wake her before she and Abby ended up on completely opposite schedules--for the record, sleeping in for Abby is 7:15, an occurrence that did not happen on this particular day).

You are probably wondering what is so interesting about a baby soaking through her diaper, and you are right to wonder, it is not that exciting. What made this interesting is that Lily was even wetter when I got her up at 8. I could not understand how Pampers could let me down so harshly and began to seriously consider the need to switch her to the same brand of diaper as her sister (Abs is a Huggies gal). I recanted that thought, however, when I unzipped Lily's pjs and discovered that she was sans diaper. It seems that in the midst of my pre-dawn pat on the back for rocking this mommy-gig, I forgot to replace Lily's diaper.

The point of this long-winded story? 1. Any one who knows me will attest to this: every story I tell is long-winded. I'm aware and have no control over it. 2. I think you have a pretty good idea now about what a "great" mommy I am. That's right, I'm apparently walking around in a daze and can't do the simplist of parental duties. Dave holds this whole parenting show together. 3. I just proved my original point, which was that I am no Dave. But really, I don't know many people with his flair for storytelling, do you?

Hopefully, Dave enjoyed his night off and will go to bed early. And hopefully I didn't put you to sleep. Either way, he'll be back tomorrow, so please come back. And (shameless plug by someone who wants her husband showered with love) become a follower if you haven't already--it's so exciting to see new followers and know that people are reading this thing.

Lily in a rare solemn moment.

Abby has food in her eyes after almost every meal.

She's thinking about splashing you.

The enemy wears size 5 diapers.

I cannot explain my obsession with taking pictures of Lily at the gate.

Another day of ECFE, another day of barely seeing my kids. Today's pictures are therefore recycled retreads of previous days' photos. I've been quite good about having the current day's pictures up on here, so I darn well deserve a respite. And as long as I'm fessing up about photographic ethics, let me proclaim quite proudly that I do not photoshop any of my photos, with the rare exception of an overall brightness adjustment. This is something I feel important to clarify, because I'm currently grappling with my own opinions on whether I think large-scale photo adjustments are forthright, honest actions to take. My internal jury is still out (12 angry men in my pancreas) on how I feel about photoshop. There is a chance that I'm a purist, but certainly not by choice; I'm lazy by nature, and any tool that starts with the word "auto" is flagrantly lying temptation at my feet. Then again, my purism is pragmatic, too, as I have scant time to devote to letting Adobe get its paws on my pictures. I can barely upload the day, pick four, then write an entry before the sun is almost up again.

Anyway, yeah. My conscience is clean. And to answer my Dad: I did not pose Lily in that kleenex shot earlier. She found the box and went to town on it. My journalistic integrity is intact.

Now allow me to settle into a more macabre, dastardly subject: my kids are preparing to kill me. I was unsure at first of their motives, but it's becoming more clear to me now. I will likely not last the month, as my impending demise at the hands of Lily the ninja is quite certain.

My reasons for these suspicions are many. First, they are practicing a sneak attack on me. Here is how this goes down: on the weekends, Abby will usually be the one to wake first from the afternoon nap. She cries for a bit, it gets worse - she's obviously ready to be rousted - so I go up to get her. I push the door open, and from where I stand I can see Lily's crib. Invariably, she will be lying face down with her upper torso and head obscured by a crib bumper. Abby will be bouncing on her tummy like a jumping bean.

I creep into the room, carefully trying to not wake Lily, who is like a rock. When I hit a certain spot on the floor, it happens: Lily springs up like a maniac, babbling threats. This happens almost without fail every time I get them up. I'm not certain, but I think they're just practicing for the day they make their play, when the bloody coup occurs.

In addition to this, Lily almost broke my eyeball recently. I was lying on the floor, she was playing with a wooden car near me. I swear I was looking right at her - I could see the mental faculties churning - when she realized that she could pound this car on my face. So she raised it high and brought it down with an impressive force. I barely got my hand there in time, averting what would have been at least a black eye, if not outright skull fracture and - had she had her way - certain death.

They seem to have found a taste for injury. There has been no shortage of pinchings, slaps, hits, and nostril invasions from these kids; I'm now convinced they are out to cause pain. I live in constant fear. I cannot wait until they enter junior high and it will all become easier.

Day twenty nine.

Abbifer in the tails.

Lilyfer waits patiently for something delicious, pureed to perfection.

Happy Abs! I like that sweater on her.

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.

Wetness! Nodding! Signing! ...plus a side of Billy Zane.

Pigtail day!

Okay, it's almost 1 am. I'm pretty exhausted. Which is a shame, because I did have a lot I wanted to jot down here tonight, and that's just not going to happen.

Good day today. Lovely weather, so we took the kids and dogs on a walkity walk around the neighborhood. Of course, with all that sunshine streaming down upon us, so did we have torrents of meltwater streaming around our ankles. It was a bit sloppy; socks were moistened to the point of unwearability. Still, spring seems to have sprung, so it's a beautiful time to be in existence.

I'd like to mention briefly and for the record a couple firsts for las ninas. One each, actually, which I like, very symmetrical. Lily seems to have mastered the nodding and shaking for yes and no. She doesn't have the slightest grasp as to the message she is conveying, but she can do it very well on command, and it's maddeningly cute when she does it on her own. I saw her do it, I think it was at the dog or something, and it was awesome. In Abby's corner: she figured out the sign for "more". She'd done it on a few occassions in the past weeks, but only when we would do it for her, then she would mimic it (always after she would first clap her hands, then pause - confusion written deep into her face - and only then purse the fingers together for the proper sign). Today she made the sign on her own just when I said, "more?" I'm so proud.

That's it. Off to bed. Oh wait...Zoolander's on. Maybe I can stay up a bit.

Day twenty seven.

I loved the pigtails. They didn't seem to mind them either.

This is hair after pigtails. Amazingly, it's almost cuter than with pigtails.

Lest you think our lives are without fault.