I said bye-bye blog! Don't you listen?!?

We've moved! Please join us for the girls' third year at

http://365daysoftwins.wordpress.com/

There shan't be any more postings hereabouts. Be gone with ya'.

Bye bye, blog.

What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all around the sun
What a beautiful dream
That could flash on the screen
In a blink of an eye and be gone from me
Soft and sweet
Let me hold it close and keep it here with me

And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly
From the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see
Love to be
In the arms of all I'm keeping here with me

What a curious life
We have found here tonight
There is music that sounds from the street
There are lights in the clouds
Anna's ghost all around
Hear her voice as it's rolling and ringing through me
Soft and sweet
How the notes all bend and reach above the trees

Now, how I remember you
How I would push my fingers through your mouth
To make those muscles move
That made your voice so smooth and sweet
And now we keep where we don't know
All secrets sleep in winter clothes
With one you loved so long ago
Now he don't even know his name

What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all around the sun
And when we meet on a cloud
I'll be laughing out loud
I'll be laughing with everyone I see
Can't believe
How strange it is to be anything at all

-"In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", Neutral Milk hotel

Click here for the Matt Pond version, which I'm a fan of.

(apologies for the rather crummy video quality)


I need at least a month off. It's a lot to ask, but if you'd like to, please check back here on March 15th, and by then I'll have decided what continued form the Gels News and Herald will take.

A zillion thanks to all of you that read this, twice as many thanks to those that comment and give feedback, and infinite more to Jen, without whom none of this would be either possible or enjoyable.

False stop.

Okay, this is not going to be the last post. I had a very clear idea in my head about what the last post would be, but many circumstances have conspired against me, and rather than bash my head against the keys in futility, I'm going to defer until tomorrow. My time at the computer started with the shocking (re: out of the blue, for us) news that some friends of ours are to be divorcing...so my head was already not in a great spot. Then I was thwarted time and time again by technology in my pursuit of doing some video, and before long I came to realize that my jaw was aching because I was so tense, and that is one of the worst states of mind to be in. I'd rather not have the last post be something I cranked out while miserable. Recall the old adage: never blog angry.

In the interim, while you wait for tomorrow's post (possibly the last, but at this point who really knows?), please enjoy some leftover pictures from our time in Duluth. Just because they're leftovers doesn't mean they're not quality, though.

Day three hundred and sixty something.

She locomoted pretty well in that bulbous getup.

Wheeee!!! Lily looks miserable, but wouldn't stop asking for more. Abby looked like she was enjoying it immensely, but quickly opted to walk. Kids = no sense

Look at that sled-pulling form. Loose knees...taught buttocks...arched back...quite striking.

Birthdays for serial killers.

And with a mix of both apprehension and earnest buffoonery, our girls plunge headfirst into their third year of life.

Happy birthday, wee little munchkins! Oh what a year it has been. I indulged myself with a reread of the first few bloggity posts, and I'm amazed at what has transpired during this spin around the sun. This time last year, neither of you were walking (though Lily was seriously considering it), barely any English was crossing your lips, and there was certainly nothing resembling the spontaneously-dancing, number-reciting, song-singing, potty-searching girls that I've come to know and love these more recent months.

I almost decided to do a step-by-step comparison of you guys right now with a year ago today, but it seems rather unproductive, and misses the point of all that this blog is about. I don't want to tinker with the beautiful linearity, the common daily thread we've laid out that leads you from then to now. It's been too amazing a process to cheapen it with tricks. Suffice it to say, you guys bear almost no resemblance to yourselves of a year ago, in so many fascinating and irascible ways.

Despite the groaning and grumbling I may have injected into my posts about this accursed blog - and despite the verbal denouncements you might have been unfortunately subjected to while around my person - I consider myself lucky to have started it, for one clear and immitagable reason: every night I am forced to spend a good chunk of time concentrating on the two most ridiculous parts of my life. Surely there are worse sentences in the world.

I hate feeling that today, their actual birthday, was a bit anti-climactic, because I feel wholly responsible, and am pretty sure this will lead invariably to some serial killer tendencies later in life. But we'd made the decision a while ago that it was a busy weekend, it's only their 2nd birthday, they'll never remember it, so we just had some more cake tonight after dinner, tried to get them to say, "I'm two!" (didn't work), and that was about the extent of it. Jen let them watch a little extra Curious George during the day. When they wanted to be held upside down for a long time, we did it a lot longer than we normally would have. The small extra things. I hope they won't judge us too harshly in the years to come ("My 2nd birthday was terrible! I hate you guys!")

Or, if we play it just right, we can instill in them a very important life lesson, which is this: sometimes two day old cake with your parents is going to be your best option. Learn to like it.

Day three hundred and sixty four/five (don't miss tomorrow's exciting cliffhanger!) (crap, now i have to think of an exciting cliffhanger)

ps. I can't let a really cute moment of Lily's go unmentioned. She wanted to go up to the potty tonight, so she climbed the three steps onto the landing, looked back at me and kept yelling, "Potty! Stairs! Daddy!"

"Yeah we'll go to the potty in just a second. Hold on, " I told her. Apparently she wasn't in the mood to wait. She craned her neck to peer upstairs and yelled, "Pootttty! C'mere!"

Both kids blew the candle out. They're getting the hang of this birthday thing.

Mick Jagger loves cake.


Abby eats her cake like a squirrel. That pastry is squeezed in between her paws.

The play doh must die!

The girls got some play-doh for their birthday (in the little tub she' s holding). I fashioned a little anthorpomorphic person out of it; Lily's response was to stab it repeatedly with a fork. Most people save up for kids' college; we're saving for psychotherapy.

This morning I tore into the Sunday paper, eager to do what damage I could to the NYT crossword while the girls were up taking a rare midmorning nap. I opened up to the engagements/weddings notification page, and took a moment to stare at the couple dozen toothy faces. I pondered on how I used to like perusing the nuptials page while in Duluth, since I almost always recognized somebody on there, even if it was just the hint of knowing a name, or seeing a friend of a cousin that I barely knew at all. I thought about the fact that I'm too old now, that I won't ever recognize any smiling faces from that page anymore. Of course this thought had only just taken hold of me when I recognized a guy from high school that I knew pretty well (Mitch King, for those that from DLH wracked with curiosity). Duluth never fails to surprise me.

Today we had two parties for the girls' birthdays, and since there's two of them, this technically equates to 4 birthday celebrations. There was a whole lotta "happy birthday"s sung. First was in Duluth with the Stalker side, where we had some delicious breakfasty-brunch and cupcakes. The cupcakes were a smash.

We then headed down south on I35, unscathed through some very snowy bits, to see the Gels side and sing H.B. again, and eat some cupcakes, which turned out to be a hit. Again. There is not a welcome that cupcakes can wear out, it seems.

So after many miles, hordes of family, cupcakes a-plenty, and more gifts than our house can even hope to hold, we are back home and the girls are safely tucked into bed. It was a whirlwind weekend, I would hope they sleep in tomorrow for Jenny's sake, even though deep down I know they won't.

Day three hundred and fifty three. (two days left. I should mention that I did the math a couple weeks ago and came to find that my counting is off. Tomorrow (their birthday) should technically be the last day. But since the math mistake was mine, I'll go until Tuesday, making this unofficially 366 Days of Twins)

Abs and Moms.

A crystal blue day in Duluth. Yesterday.

Kyla taught Lily how to jump off the single step at the Stalker's place. It turned out to be an hours-long activity of amazing happiness. Cousins are great like that.

Happy Birthday, Nana!

Aunts Linda and Betsy (Marj's sisters) watch on as Abby flees the scene.

Busy day. Tiring day. Here's how tiring: when we came home after dinner, I called out to Lily to see if she wanted to put on some sleepwear, and it came out, "Do you want some jammies, Phil?" It was supposed to be Lil. Instead it was Phil. What a great nickname, I hope it sticks.

This morning we braved the cold air and brought the girls out for some frivolity. Cold as it was, were you to turn your face to the sun you could easily discern the tingly warmth radiating from it. Spring is on the way, a fact impossible to ignore even when the temp is 7 degrees.

Girls had a good time, thanks mostly to the fact that we played sleddog to their musher/sledder inclinations. There was a fair bit of walking too, which is quite calm and peaceful on the winding slickness of Parson's Point Road. Very Minnesotan. I taught Lily how to kick a chunk of ice down the road as you walk (I am a veteran kicker of things while I walk, a fun yet annoying habit I employ mostly in the pursuit of scattering pine cones willy-nilly around the globe).

After a brief nap that was either truncated or non-existent, depending on how you interpret 45 minutes of mostly silence punctuated with a sharp and diabolical laugh from Lily, we got the girls gussied up and brought them into Duluth proper for Nana's 90th birthday bash. I would hope I get half as many people out for my birthday if I'm lucky enough to see 9 decades; it was a good showing. Nana was in fine form, cane slung from her hip and a tasty beverage in her hand.

We did a quick trip back to the house for a "real" nap, then piled back into the car for dinner at Blackwoods. Somewhere on Rice Lake Road we turned to the south, and Lily said, "Wooooowww!" very loudly. We looked, and she was obviously taking in the sunset to the west, a sunset that was certainly not unpleasant, but was nothing remarkable. "Is it pretty?" we asked. "Yeah! Pretty!" This is a strange milestone, her remarking on something that is almost subjective in it's observation. What makes a sunset such that a kid would notice and verbalize their excitement about it? It drives one to ponder questions like this, questions about how kids visualize their world and what they think of it. So much is taken for granted (I've spoken about this on numerous occasions, I know) about the world they live in; the fact that we're rocketing down a road at 60 miles an hour in an object that has no visible source of locomotion does not appear to ignite any curiosity or awe in them. Which makes the acknowledgement of a sunset that much nicer, I suppose.

Day three hundred and sixty two. (3 days! I would certainly hope you've found another blog to follow by now...)

Jen looks 7 feet tall here. The girls were ambivalent to our foray into the out-of-doors, but the day was quickly salvaged with the timely use of the sled. As happens so often, the cure was worse than the disease, as they (Lily especially) wanted that sled to be pulled forever. Our lungs could only take so much.

Now Abby looks really tall! Is something wrong with my camera? I feel like it's the credits reel of bad 80's movies, when the aspect ratio would suddenly be completely strange.

Grandpa was showing Lily some nifty movies on the computer, when I turned the light on for a better picture. Thus, the distraction.

Slackers and stats

I hate to make one of the last posts a subpar effort, yet here I am, about to sling a few lines of crap into the great ether and hope nobody sends any hate mail. This is all the fault of the olympics, who made me watch their opening ceremonies, and now I'm tired.

We're in Duluth, up here to celebrate Jen's grandma's 90th birthday. It was a whirlwind day for both of us: I for a work day that started a little after 6am followed by the drive up here right after, and Jen for a day of crazy kids and their 2nd year doctor appointment.

Uneventful drive, the girls were good and I am ashamed to admit that it is due in large part to the playing and enjoyment of two DVDs. We barely heard a peep from them, except when the Wiggles finally ended a mere 3 minutes from Grandma and Grandpa's house. Of course I had to fill that 3 minutes with random singing and showmanship, because god forbid they could simply look out the windows for a spell.

Jen, intrepid and thoughtful person that she is, took statistical notes at the doctor's for the explicit purpose of publishing here on the bloggity blog. So for your consideration:

Abby

Weight: 19 pounds 3 oz. (0.03%) She has still not - and may never, if she has her way - broken the 20 pound mark.
Height: 29 1/2 inches (0.11%) (shorty!)
Head Circ.: 47 cm (37%) (shoddy, compared to her Dad's healthy 1,047 cm noggin)

Lily

Weight: 28 pounds 6 oz. (73%) She's getting up there...
Height: 34 3/4 inch (77%) Despite these stats, she will never be tall, the genetics are just not in her favor.
Head Circ.: 49 cm (87%) Amazing that the 2 cm difference between the two equates to a 50% difference on the scale. Small bell curve.

More tomorrow, with pictures and extra love.

Day three hundred and sixty one (4 days! I like the number 4. There should have been 4 pillars of fire during the torch lighting ceremony tonight, but there were only 3. I'm sad for Canada.)

Insert your title here.

Abby monkey!

Once in a while I like to play a fun mental game where I imagine that I have just time travelled to the current day from a couple years ago, and I'm meeting my kids for the very first time. I'm going to hazard a guess and say that I'm not the only person who plays that game. It's probably an amusing ruse because it makes you try and see someone (or 2 someones) in a new way, with a blank slate.

Sometimes this game forces itself on me, uninvited. This turns into an impromptu game of, "Oh crap, I forgot I have kids. When did this happen?" Nothing particularly sets this off - not tonight at least - except for the general spectacle of both kids running around like neanderthals, pants off, bouncing in the cribs, swinging from the chandeliers, dunking things in the toilet, and then my head gets fuzzy and I have a very sharp realization of self. It's fun. And it makes me dizzy. There's really no point to this anecdote.

News from the day, courtesy of Jen who is on the couch having herself a sharp realization of self:


Today the girls had juice, and it was good. Lily ran out of juice, and this turned very very bad when Jen informed her that there was to be no more juice. A little tantrum was begun, and things went south. At this moment Abby wandered over, tapped Lily on the shoulder, and handed her the rest of her juice.

(when Jen told me this I spontaneously threw up in my mouth out of pure love for my kids)

Jen went to the rec center today for open playtime with Chris and Ella. One of the highpoints was Lily learning to kick. I've seen her kinda run at things and kinda kick stuff, and it works out hunky dory and she enjoys it, but Jen said today's feats were of a different ilk. She has worked out the skill of standing still, raising her leg, and letting it fall through the right arc for kickery. This is good news. I've notified the appropriate D-1 colleges that field quality women's soccer teams. Lily was all too cogniscent of her achievements, and the room would echo with random, "Mommy loookit!"s every few seconds.

Day three hundred and sixty. (5 days! Or as they say in aviation lingo: fife.)

Quality time. Just ask Elmo.

Stylin'

Splashdown!

Lily loves water (unless it gets on her face chest neck or head; then it is the liquid essence of Satan hisself)
Laughter is very good. We practice it when able.

Our philosophy on toilet training is that we have no philosophy yet. We need to get a philosophy. If you have a philosophy to sell/rent/barter, please let us know. I imagine it will involve some sort of schedule and stickers and a chart for progress-keeping and reward-giving, but we still have yet to hammer out the details. For the time being, it is a scattershot approach of generally saying positive things about the potty ("Daddy loves every minute of being on the potty!"), encouraging them to sit on the potty when the spirit moves them, and gently stroking the potty to show that it is indeed a friendly beast.

Tonight Lily and I were in the bathroom. I asked if she wanted to go potty, and she said yes. So I took off her pants ("Pantss!") and her diaper ("Poooopy!") and plopped her on the crazy seat. She was on for a couple minutes - we made some idle chit chat - when out of nowhere she actually peed. First. Time. Ever. How sweet it was to hear that tinkle. We praised her appropriately, and she seemed to understand that this was indeed a happy occassion. So, I think that's it, right? Should we buy some underwear and call it good? Or is there more to it?

On the Abby front, her teacher came over today and it was decided that she's doing awesome enough (my words) that she is going to be done with her individual education plan. She's meeting all her developmental goals and milestones like a champ, and so now they just do observations every so often instead of class once a week. That's fantastically cool news, and it's nice to have outside objective opinions on her progression.

Now to get her into some music and vocal lessons.

Day three hundred and fifty nine. (6 days. 6 days is very short. I hope you've found other blogs to follow by now....)

Notice they are wearing matching coats. Notice it!!! These come courtesy of Grandma and Grandpa, always looking for an opportunity to spoil the kids (they're grandparents, it's what they do)

Nadia! Pablo!

The real purpose here was to illustrate what Abby has done with her peanut butter and jelly. Both she and Lily waste no time in peeling the bread layers apart, but Abby alone prefers to then poke holes in the bread before craming it in her tiny mouth. Amazing!

Jen met Nadia and Pablo, both friends from school, for lunch today. While I'm terrified these days of bringing the kids to restaurants even with the both of us, Jen has no qualms about braving a city draped in snow to go have lunch with the kids as a solo parent. She's a rock star.

According to our daily post-day recapitulation, the kids behaved quite well. For their part, I know they enjoyed themselves, because all night long, at totally random moments, we could catch them quietly saying, "Naaajia. Paaaablo." It was really funny, because it was usually totally unprompted. And both of them can say 'Pablo' remarkably well, leading us to the inevitable conclusion that we might have to consider it if/when we have a third Gels.

Day three hundred and fifty eight. (seven days...essentially a week, really. Half a fortnight.)

See the PB+J has been pulled apart? Classic toddler strategy.

She looks so old here.


She looks so choking here.

Hop. In.

Easily one of my favorite lines from the Simpsons is from the casino episode in season 5. In the episode, Mr. Burns descends into a Howard Hughes-esque madness, during which he designs the Spruce Moose, an absurdly small aircraft that he believes is able to carry 200 people. In the end he orders Smithers to get in; when Smithers predictably hesitates, he pulls a gun and says, "I said, 'Hop. In.'"

It's absurdly funny, partly from the delivery of the line and partly due to the fantastic juxtaposition of being told at gunpoint to do something that is physically impossible.

This is relevant. I swear.

Lily is starting the phase where she's making us do things. Not really making in a bad way, but in pretty much a bad way. For example: the other day she brought me her baby and one of Abby's diapers and told me, "Diaper. Change."

The diaper is easily as big as the doll, if not a bit bigger. Still, I make do. "Okay, buddy," I tell her, and start to fashion a way to lash the thing to the baby. I've done this before and it's always been accepted by her.

"Nooo!" she tells me.

"...what?"

She pulls at the doll's onesie. "Off!"

"Oookay." Off comes the onesie, which is pretty tight and hard to get off. After a minute of wrangling under the extraordinarily close and frankly quite uncomfortably scrutinous gaze of my daughter, the baby is finally naked. I then wrap the comically large diaper around the doll, wrapping and sticking and taping where possible, until I'm holding a large wad of mangled diaper with a doll's head sticking out the top.

"Here you go. One baby with a fresh, non-poopy diaper."

"On! On!"

She's thrusting the doll's onesie in my face. There's no possible way I or anyone operating within the bounds of conventional physics could get that onesie back on.

"Sorry Lils, but that's not going back on."

"[whine], [grunt] Ooooooooon!"

"Lily, I can't do it. I can't!"

"Daddy!.....OOOONNNNN!" (she's almost still smiling here, but is starting to get really upset with me)

"Lily!!!!! Gaah! I CAN'T DO IT! (that comes out as Scotty from star trek in a weak attempt at getting a laugh, but it only enrages her more)"

"AAAAaaaaaaarrgghghhhhh!!! ON!"

"HOLY CRAP, LOOK THERE'S ELMO!"



...


...


..


"...Elmo?"

"Yup, right there in the toy box."

"Elmo!" (laughs and runs over to get him)

Disaster averted.

Day three hundred and fifty seven (8 days. The ocho!)

Playing with the water. Loves the water.

A good time with the light toy. According to Abby, touching it to our faces is a healing thing.

More water.

I like this one.

O'er the land of the free, and the home from sea to shining sea

Look what we got in the mail!! I haven't told Jen yet, but I let the kids color it. Yay! Totally worth the $80k so they could enjoy it for 29 seconds.

Tonight was excitement aplenty, what with the Super Bowl being telemavized. The Dockters and the Moores came over, which ran the kid census up to 6. Our wee house was bursting with lunacy.

Being incredibly smart (see picture above for proof), we decided to remove the dining room table and make that area a large play spot. Genius. So while there was a whirling mass of boys and girls running around and creating havoc, we were able to keep it mostly localized. Plus, it's always fun to change the house layout around a bit to shake things up.

I'm sad to say that I don't think I watched one commercial. How unAmerican. I managed to watch Queen Latifah (good) and Carrie Underwood (hooooorible) sing the anthems (we have two now?), and I think I saw some actual football too. Abby LOVED The Who. Seriously, loved it. She was entranced. I know I'm projecting my own ambitions here, but she does seem really intrigued by the drums...who knows, she may someday become a queen of rockdom.

So today is the official start of winter by the yardstick of "when I finally bring my air conditioners downstairs". We have two window units for the bedrooms, and today was the day - I may be premature here, we might still have a warm snap - I finally brought them downstairs. I was hoping to push it and try to make it all year, but Jen might have killed me. She still might kill me, but probably for something totally unrelated.

Day three hundred and fifty six. (9 days! Did you know that if you multiply 9 by any number, then add the digits of the answer, it will always come out to 9. True stuff! If you add it up and the result is double digits, add the digits again, fyi.)

It's always a good idea to wash your fruit. Especially when the cat jumps on the dining room table and yaks all over it. Mmmmmm.

Lily's always up for showing off some dance moves.

Abby. Always trying to reach something.

This post not approved for use on your spleen.

Beat the cold this February...hold an Abigail to your face! It works!

As it's creeping in on midnight, I'm going to relinquish any ambition I have for a pulitzer prize winning post and simply devolve into a summation of our day.

Jen went to the mall this morning to go shopping with Grandma, but the girls and I managed to get ready and stowaway with them so we could spend some time at the Ridgedale play area. Being the weekend, it was jam packed with the sticky fingered youth of Minnetonka. I pointed out to Lily that another girl was wearing the same shirt she was, but in a different color. Lily said, "Shirt!" and poked the girl, who looked at both of us like we were morons and walked away without a word.

I knew it was time to leave when Abby ran straight out of the play area and I ran to get her, and Lily said, "Walk!" which is code for that she wants to go take a stroll. So walk around the mall we did. I spent at least 10 minutes trying to mentally put together a civil suit against Abercrombe and Fitch for being so absurdly, ostentatiously offensive in the olefactory sense. I actually get a little light headed just walking by the place, and I'm not sure if it's the smell or just the overtly douchebaggy vibe that seeps out of it. How do people bear to shop inside?

In the afternoon, we went on a wee walk around the block. Lily slipped on ice and bonked her head a bit, but otherwise it was uneventful. A hat would have softened the blow but, of course, she steadfastly refuses one at every offering and insistence.

I'm going to end there, since Abby is now crying, and that's not good. Not at 12:06.

Day three hundred and fifty five. (Ten days! Pele's number was 10. 10 is an exciting number.)

Walking!

Still....walking.


...and this one hurts my spleen to even look at.

ouchie

Thanks to some head-scratching strangeness on the part of our computer, this post will be photo free, and you have my apologies for being stranded alone with my sub-par prose. At least my sub-par prose and sub-par photography made a smashing marriage of mediocrity.

Tonight something awesome happened that hasn't ever happened before. We were all playing in the girls room post-bath-time - Abby bouncing around Lily's crib, Lily running around like a lunatic. I'd actually been annoying Lily, because I kept crawling in her direction to tickle her, and she kept telling me, "Nooo..ooooo!" Fair enough.

While rolling away from her, I rolled over one of their toys, which dug into my back and smarted a lot. "Oww!" I said. Lily ran over and said, "Ouchie? Ouchie??" She leaned in, face painted in utter concern, and laid her head on me, totally snuggled, gave me a few kisses. It was really interesting and very protractive; it lasted a long time, she just kept laying on me and trying to drive her head into my chest.

It's fascinating that we've known these kids for a couple years, and we are only now starting to see displays of emotion, where they show that they seem to actually care about us. Tonight's episode was a really sudden and touching show of something, I can't say what. It was a singularly defining moment for me, really one of those things that make me astoundingly happy to be a dad.

I must make an effort to hurt myself again.

Day three hundred and fifty four. (11 days left. 11! 11 is a palindrome. Crazy!)

Peeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccchh!!

Dancing! This is the dancing area. This is where the dancing takes place. Dancing outside said area will be met with stiff resistance by management. Management can be seen in this photo.

Lily has a new favorite book (thanks, Reicherts!) called "Each Peach Pear Plum". It's a fun book filled with fun things to spot, and Lily does not seem to tire of it. In a relatively short time, we've gone from her enjoying it casually (it's a casual read) to not being able to go down for a nap or night-night without it (which means if I ever have to get her down without it in my possession and it goes badly, I will curse the Reichert family severely). We always plan ahead; it's usually in the crib from the get go. But it's now certain that Lily will, halfway up the stairs, take out her pacifier and scrunch up her face really tight and say, "Peeeeaaach Pluummm?" with all the emotion of a gut-shot policeman. I can't really do her voice justice on the page, maybe I'll try to capture a video of it, but she sounds mortally wounded, and she just keeps saying it over and over again, "Peeeeeeeaaaaaachhhh? Pluuuuumm?"

I need to take a moment to toss out some accolades to the kids for some notable achievements lately.

First, Jen noticed today that Abby, when doing one of her puzzles, is correctly identifying the circle, oval, rectangle, and triangle. I think she noticed her saying, "Oval" repeatedly (but poorly...the blonde one is way-bad at enunciating) before she figured it out. So we quizzed her later, and she got them almost all right. A budding mathlete, maybe.

In addition to her obvious Euclidean predispositions, the kid is getting really good at singing along to songs. Scary good. I wish I could accurately quantify how many songs she can pretty much sing along to...maybe 10 at least? It's ridiculously cute to watch her climb the steps while singing "Twinkle Twinkle" on the way to bed time (we sing that song every time we bring them to bed. We don't have many traditions, but that is one). She loves to sing. Which is fine, as her sister seems to have gotten the dancing gene. Our kids do nothing if not dovetail nicely, vis a vis their abilities. If they ever form a band, Abby could sing lead and Lily could be the designated dancer, just like Paul Rutherford in Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

As for the brown one, she is ever braving the murky waters of English sentence construction. She is in the nascent beginnings of the stage in which any number of strange word combinations can come out of her. Here are some examples:

Jen: "Abby, do you want a cookie?"
Lily: "Cookie!?! Abby, come here!"

"Mommy, take that please."

"Thank you, Daddy." (that one hurts so good)

"More fruit, please."

"Olly, watch this." (she said this while trying to show the dog a mechanical swimming butterfly. He was not impressed, but we found it hi-lar-i-ous)

Now, I know it might seem as if I'm painting a Flanders-like image of my daughter, like she's some measure of saint. Trust me, this is not the case. But when she's calm and happy, she makes better sentences. When she's really angry, there's rarely more than a grunt or, if we're lucky, and actual English word.

Lily is also getting fantastic at answering the phone, a fact that our families are becoming exhaustively familiar with. When the phone rings, she shrieks and runs to get it. Of course, we oblige every time; it doesn't matter if it's a friend, family member, or telemarketer. Honestly, I have given many telemarketers to her, which I find a delicious bit of schedenfraude. I'm clueless to the reaction she gets though, since the line is always dead when I finally get the phone.

If I get a bill saying that I donated any money to UND, I will be furious.

Day three hundred and fifty three (on the 12th day of blogmas, my morons said to me...)

Every day I resist the urge to leap into bed with these two.

"Peeeeaaaach!"

Welcome to purgatory. Here's your pillow.

Not pictured: two "very special" sensors

It's weird that I can sleep all day and still want nothing more at 10:30 than to forsake this cursed blog and dive into the sheets. You think I would be well rested. The fact remains, I'm tired, and this post will be a bit rough.

Last night and all of today I subjected myself to a sleep study, the primary reason being that I'm under suspicion of having sleep apnea (a felony in MN). Being in a sleep study is not unlike being in a zoo: I have a very finite space and a seemingly infinite amount of time, people who I can't see stare at me, and if I'm a good boy they bring me jello.

Last night I checked in around 10 and had myself wired up by a jovial guy named Max, a former pro indoor soccer player for the Milwaulkee Wave. We bonded over the fact that I was a Cleveland Force fan back in my youth, and over the fact that soccer players score all the cute chicks. It takes about 30 minutes to completely wire me up (see photo above...sorry about the orientation, I'm too tired to care to figure out why it's not righting itself), so we covered Brett Favre, the super bowl, international politics, the grammies, papparazi, and just about most every other topic.

Then they leave you alone and tell you to go to sleep, which is the perfect way to ensure I will not sleep. Many other factors conspire to thwart my slumber - the wires, the pillows, the strange hospitally bangs and bumps in the night (I try not to think of Jamie Lee Curtis in 'Halloween') - but none moreso than the fact that I KNOW THEY'RE WATCHING ME! I can't see it because it's dark, but up by the ceiling is a night vision camera with an unblinking lens pointed right at me, and there's a control room where a former pro soccer player with huge thighs is drumming his fingers on a desk, wondering when I will finally just sleep already. It's stressing stuff.

I must have succeeded at some point, sleep had to have happened, because the thigh man is suddenly waking me up. Then begins the next phase of the study: nappy time.

The nap study is five consecutive cycles of an hour and a half awake followed by a 30 minute nap. I'm not a napper by nature, so I was really worried about being able to nap on command. What if I couldn't come through for them?

As it turns out, you don't really have to nap if you can't; you just lie there with your eyes closed, which is what I did the majority of the time. Since there's not much to do in such a situation, my mind lazily began to wonder what exactly all those sensors on my head were reading. How sensitive were they? Can they know what I'm thinking right now?? I was suddenly pretty sure that they were reading my thoughts. Just to test it, I decided to think really hard about something bad and see if they came in to arrest me. Nothing terrible. I opt for a bank robbery. I spend the next 5 minutes concentrating on robbing a bank, trying to visualize me in the lobby with a ski mask on, telling people to lie down, the whole cliched procedure.

After I wait a while, my door does not open and they do not arrest me.

Still, those things have to sense something, right? I'm not dismayed. This time I decide to think about sex once a minute for the entire duration of the nap. This is not a stretch for me or any guy. My logic is that there has to be some sort of strange blip on a graph that occurs if I think of something naughty, and I could blow their minds by making it happen at precisely regular intervals. Brilliant!

I'm not sure if I got past 2 times. Counting to 60 is hard to do three times in a row, so I lost track and got bored and just laid there, thinking about neither sex nor bank robberies.

In my wakeful times, I could do pretty much whatever, including roam the hospital. I tried this early on, but was amazed at a) how busy the hospital was, b) how many cute doctors work there, c) how ridiculous I looked with all that crap pasted to my head (people were literally staring at me. I guess I would too if I saw something like that picture above), and d) how boring a hospital is when you've got no agenda other than just wandering.

So leisurely constitutionals around the halls were effectively out, meaning I was confined to my quarters. I read a bit. I watched the news 4 times. The night before, I had searched the house in vain for any viable reading material that I could bring with me, and came up empty. Jen called around midday to tell me that two National Geographics AND a Discover magazine had come today. Super timing.

Having done one, I can't say that I'd recommend a sleep study. Maybe you need one, and in that case I say it's up to you. But be warned, they're not a lot of fun; certainly less fun than robbing banks.

Day three hundred and fifty two. (13....13 days, aaaahh ah ah ah ahhhhh) (that was The Count)

Random girly girl shots

Dispatches from us

Abby was on the couch. Then she started to try for even greater heights. I couldn't help but let her try, and dammit if I wasn't very proud of her when she made it. Yay! Now get off there, monkey, before you hurt yourself.

Jen abandoned me for a bit of the night to pay a visit to friends Jess and Miles who had twin boys recently. Twins! They're crazy. That left me home alone with these two, who are also twins, yet differ in height by almost 8 inches.

Some highlights from the day include:

- According to Jen, she was changing Lily when Abby walked by, lost her footing (or toeing, since she primarily walks on her toes like an ungulate) and fell flat across Lily's midsection. Lily's response? "You okay Abby?"

How insane is that!?

- After an absurdly pleasant night with the girls, they were dressed and ready for bed. Abby was playing in their "kitchen" and babbling quietly, while I was in the other room, around the corner. "Okay girls, two minutes until night-night," I bellowed. Abby fell dead silent; her talking ceased and the clatter of dishes was muted. Then I heard, "Pat pat pat pat pat pat pat pat..." and saw her tear around the corner, beeline straight into my crotch, look up at me and say, "Night night?" I bent down, gave her a big hug, and asked, "Are you ready for night night?"

"Yah!" she said.

Cuteness to the brink of insanity.

When I brought them up, everything was kosher, until Lily became suddenly agitated. "Peach plum? Peach plum?? Peach plummm!?!?" she kept repeating.

Her current favorite book is called, 'Each Peach Pear Plum'. Luckily it was in her crib, and I gave it to her, and she said, "Peeaaach plummmmmm..." in this luxurious 'Aahhhh' type of voice.

Earlier (I'm all chronologically akimbo) I asked if the girls wanted to get in their jammies. Lily started screaming, "Jammies!? Jammies!" I said, "Yup, that's right. The moon is up, it's getting late, let's get ready to celebrate, it's pajama time!", which every parent knows is the first line to 'Pajama Time'. In the time it took me to then walk the 13 feet to the living room, Abby had sprinted to the book basket and procured our copy of said book, and ran it over to me. "Jamma time!" she said.

Monkeys.

Day three hundred and fifty one (14 more! 14 bloggity nights!)

Jen showing off her stuff.

Lily dancing like a fool.


Squeaky kid.