The politest of cranks

She's enormous!

We never should have even gotten the kids out of bed today. I love them very much, but they might very well have been happier simply languishing in their cribs, left to their own devices, passing the time with various leisures such as books, blankets, and not us.

Everything we did was an uphill battle today, it seemed like, with the kids kicking and screaming from one activity to the next. Maybe the day wasn't that bad, and it's taking on a luster of negativity as I'm distancing myself from it. What's amazing - and amazing at how awesome we are, as parents - is that it didn't dissuade us from having, in the end, a pretty good day. But the kids...wow, they were just on edge all day. I think Lily had her first time out about 5 minutes after they'd been up in the morning. Abby refused to use any words to express her needs, choosing instead to whine and cry nearly constantly.

In absolute fairness, although the kids cornered the market on unhappiness for the day, they were strangely polite all day. Through tears and yelling, we would catch the ocassional, "please" or, "more please" or even a, "sorry", which makes us feel like jerks for being annoyed at their annoyances. At least we appear to be raising them with a modicum of genteelness.

Despite their miseries, and despite Lily's insistence that she not get dressed, put on hats, put on mittens, don her coat, leave the house, allow herself to be carried, get in the car, have us singing, have us not singing, be looked at or talked to or in any way be approached or acknowledged, we trekked out to St. Paul and visited the Como Conservatory. I love the conservatory. Despite the fact that we now have a MN zoo pass and will use it generously, I just can't get over how cool it is at Como, where mice run all over the place, the ant colony is awesome, the python is enormous, and even the sloth moves pretty quick.

I would certainly recommend going to the Como Conservatory before going to Hockey Giant.

On the way home around 12:20, Abby started to nod off. We were so close to home, so we screamed at her for the last mile and brought her in for some lunch and nap. We brought her up at 1pm...she didn't go down until 2:30. She's getting to be a much more finickey napper these days.

While she was up there, though, she provided an amusing moment. Jen checked the blog from yesterday, and was playing the video at what we both thought was a normal, reasonable level. It should be noted that we have a noise machine in the kids' room. She got to the part in the video where Lily counts from one to nine, and right then, clear as a bell, we heard Abby say, "Ten!" over the monitor. I cannot believe that she heard the video from all the way downstairs on Jen's crappy laptop speakers...but then, she said it, it did happen. Crazy.

Day two thousand and a jillion.

Full speed!

Abs in the conservatory. She refused to cross that grate for a while, until I came over and held her hand. Cute.

The kids by the sloth tree.

Video time.

Tonight, we're going with a video post. Enjoy a few minutes of random weekend action with the Gels clan.

A little pre-explanation: when we ask Abby "What does the giraffe say?", her answer is, "Hey shorty". Thanks Aunt Christy for that one.

Enjoy.

Day two hundred and thirty six.

Yah.

Thanks to Jen (not my Jen; co-student Jen) for both cooking us dinner AND grabbing a nice shot of Lils.

In the car, on the way home from daycare:

Me: "Lily, are you in the car?"
Lily: "Yah."
M: "Is Abby in the car?"
L: "Yah."
M: "Is Mommy in the car?"
L: "Yah."
M: "No, Mommy is at home."
L: "Mommy?"
M: "Yes, Mommy is at home. Is Olly in the car?"
L: "Yah!"
M: "No he isn't. Is Mommy in the car?"
L: "Yeah!"
M: "Can you say anything but 'yeah'?"
L: "Yah."
M: "Raymond, does a candy bar cost about a hundred dollars?"
L: "Yah."
M: "Do you want to see Mommy at home?"
L: "Yah."
M: "Do you want to eat poop for dinner?"
L: Yah."
M: "Are you just giving me material for the blog tonight?"
L: "Yah."

Her positivity lasts only so long as she agrees with whatever is transpiring. When pushed or pressed, her "yah"s will switch to "NO!"s faster than you can say "diaper change".

I'm amazed that we were successful putting the girls down tonight. Lily shrieked her way up the stairs because she wanted more milk - she'd already had two sippy cups worth, which is excessive in itself - and Abby seemed about as hyper as ever. Despite a racketous put down, they stayed up there, even though I didn't stick around to witness the fallout.

As I had broken my stick at last night's hockey game, and was scheduled to play again tomorrow during lunch, I needed to get a stick. I really didn't feel like heading out in the sloppy cold of Minneapolis, but I'm not going to let lunchtime hockey pass me by, either. I was considering going to Play it Again or Hockey Giant, but I only had time for one since they both closed at 8. Opting for Hockey Giant - thinking their selection would be, ahem, "giant" - I sped and fishtailed my way down a mushy I35. I got there in time to find out that this store - a superstore with just under a million square feet of retail space - does not stock wooden sticks, or for that matter any stick under the $65 mark. The people working were pretty much total d-bags, as well, and did their best to make me feel like I was the jerk for even asking. If you are looking for hockey gear, feel free to avoid this place.

Back to the kids for a moment...I'm skipping around a lot...

We couldn't seem to feed the girls enough tonight. They were little black holes of hunger. Lily is especially infuriating, as she succumbs frequently to passing whims of being, in her words, "ALL DONE!" There is a 'cry wolf' effect taking place now, and we both know better to not really react when she says she's all done. Usually by the time I get to her, she's happily cramming more yogurt (or "gogurt") in her piehole, despite her all-done-edness from mere seconds ago.

Abby throws no feints. She simply gets cranky and annoyed when we don't feed her more, becoming increasingly whiny until we finally feed her the line: "Do you want more?" She stops crying on a dime, looks at us with moist eyes, and says, "More?" while doing the sign.

Anyway, the kids ate an NFL linebacker's dinner tonight. It was mostly in yogurt, though. The kids love yogurt.

Day three hundred and twenty five.

Squeaky clean monkey for sale.

Jen and the Moores at the snow monkey habitat.

Monkeys looking at monkeys...crazy.

Things not to do with water.

Niece Grace about to set off into the Gulf of Mexico to catch a living.

Tonight was hockey night, and hockey night leads to going out for a beer afterwards night, and now it's late. I'd like to leave you, then, with just one event from the day.

Out kids' have completely different trajectories in their enjoyment of water. It's not water in general, I guess, but water during bathtime - water in a lake or ocean seems to be a different animal altogether. But when they were little, Abby hated it and Lily was a little tadpole. As the time is passing, Abby is enjoying it much more, while Lily considers it liquid death. Baths are starting to become difficult with her; she likes it when she sits in it and it's mostly inert, but if you try and clean her face or get her hair wet, she gets rapidly agitated. A few passes of the washcloth are enough to send her scurrying to the far side of the tub for cover. She just hates it, and no more so than when we lay her down to rinse her hair off. It's bloody murder.

It was business as usual for tonight's splash-a-thon, and Lily was in no mood for any of it. I decided to try and show her that water was really no big deal - and was actually quite a hoot to play with - so I leaned my head over the tub, scooped a scoop of water and poured it over my head.

The reaction was swift and deafening. Lily screamed in utter fear and horror, as if I'd peeled back my face to reveal the head of a velociraptor. She was terrified. Abby's reaction was pretty much the same, but sometimes it's really hard to interpret whether she's really upset or just reacting to Lily, which is pretty common.

I quickly leaned in and gave Lily a big hug to show her I was okay - we werelaughing hysterically the whole time, of course - and gave her some soapy kisses. She was truly pretty shaken up by it, and took a few minutes to calm them both down.

This marks the end of my trying to make things better. Ever. They backfire on me.

Day three hundred and twenty four.

Okay, last day to recycle FL pictures...

Brother Steve.

Goofy Jen.

The smile of the crocodile. (okay, it's an alligator...whatever)

The singing and the bumping.

Every year, I think, "We won't do a Christmas card. Who would want to get a Christmas card?"

And then we get the first Christmas card, and I'm all like, "Sweet! A Christmas card!"

This makes me a hypocrite.

I think of this every time I walk past our buffet. If you sent us one of these...I'm sorry for not reciprocating!

I tried to put my arm around Jen in the car again tonight. Lily said no. We're still on chaperone lock-down.

Tonight we had dinner with Jen and Scott, Jen being a Carlsonian matriculate with Jen. They made awesome food and Lily and Abby got their very first taste of foie gras. And polenta, which is actually bad of me that I haven't made them polenta yet. After the now-ubiquitous 15 minute warm up time where the kids don't want to let go of our legs, they were social and mischievous.

Lily was showing off her dance moves later on, and managed to loser her step and crack the back of her head on a table. Ouchie. It was very wince-inducing, and she actually cut her scalp (barely) and bled (a lot; she's a world class bleeder). Poor monkey. She cried for a few minutes and was dancing again in five; nothing can keep that kid from the dance floor.

That's about it for the day. Business as usual.

As for what the girls can do lately, it's all about the music. They are now able to sing along to the "Wheels on the Bus" refrains on cue.

Me: "The horn on the bus goes..."
Them: "Beep beep beep!"

It's a hoot; they can do almost all the verses. Abby seems a little more adept at picking up the tunes, as she usually sings along to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" with increasing accuracy. She gets pretty much the whole melody, and you can hear her getting sporadic words correct. Our favorite, though, is "Shoo Fly". When we get to this part, "....I feel like the morning star," she yells out "Sooooooo!", which is the lead in to the next verse. It's something that is probably much cuter in person and I'm describing it really poorly.

Please just take away the fact that my kids are starting to sing along with us and it's so cute it would make you puke. How's that? Succinct!

Day three hundred and twenty three.

Still cleaning out FL pictures....

Jen and some guy.

Me explaining to Abby that certain death awaits her in the surf.

Soggy bottom girl.

No Touching! (37 blog points for whoever gets that TV reference)

There is a temperature differential of nearly 30 degrees between the first and second stories of our house. It's quite possible that the first floor is comprised of primarily porous wall structures; since this is where the thermostat is, our furnace is working 24/7 to try and keep up with heating the southern quadrant of Powderhorn Park. The upstairs seems to be tighter than a drum, so walking up feels like taking a magical carpet ride to the deepest and hottest parts of Saharan Africa. I've tried tweaking the radiator controls on the upper units, but since that hasn't been tried since the Nixon administration, they are steadfastly reluctant to budge. I coaxed the bathroom register into moving clockwise, but that only seemed to make it hotter.

There's no scientific reason for a major stationary front not to exist on my staircase.

I had wanted to write a little more about the Count last night, but it slipped my mind, hasty as I was to try and procure cribby sleeping arrangements for Lily...thanks Kayt for stepping up, we appreciate it! Anyway: I have found myself becoming deeply envious of the Count. His whole existence, the very fiber of his being and the source of his blissful happiness, is the simple act of counting. What great simplicity are his motives. This is a man whose job/hobby/reason for living are all one in the same: he just wants to count. If you've seen any segments with the Count, you know that nothing gives him greater pleasure than this. In one recent bit, he was counting the grains of sand on the beach, and he was GIDDY with the thrill of it. For most people of sound mind, this would equate to some sort of private hell; to the Count, it is an average Tuesday in an average week during his life of living his greatest fantasy. Counting. You have to admire his singularity of purpose. Would we trade spots with the Count if we could, knowing eternal happiness is only a string of integers away?

I only bring this up because I, for whatever reason, always had a hard time keeping count of bags when I loaded them onto airplanes. There were certainly a few times when this would lead to me making an educated guess to give to the flight crew, from which they derived the weight and balance for the aircraft. Gives you a warm/fuzzy feeling about flying, huh?

Okay, I'm also bringing it up to point out that Sesame Street has an unabashed member of the occult on their payroll. Does this seem okay? Why does he do it?...he doesn't need the money, he lives in a castle for the love of pete.

In case you didn't notice yet, it's going to be one of THOSE blog posts. Tangential. Derivative. Wandering.

---

Here's an interesting development in the development of our kids: Jen and I are not allowed to touch one another anymore. I haven't noticed that Abby cares too much, but Lily screams like an 8th grade dance chaperone when I even approach Jen. This was first noticed a few nights ago while we danced in front of the girls. She started urging us, "No..no ...noooo...NO...NOO!" when I put my hand around Jen's waist. We parted, then repeated it a few more times just to make sure that was it. It was. A couple days later, I put my arm around Jen's shoulder in the car, and from the backseat came a chorus of disapproval.

This is very reminiscent of when Jen and I were first dating, and her family had two long-haired dachshunds that would stare at us when we were close to one another (mostly in the kitchen). I can still picture those guys, long noses and black eyes peering up at us, silent and still. As soon as I laid a finger on Jen, they would bark bloody murder.

So our kids have officially reached the intelligence level of dachshunds. Sweet.

Day three hundred and twenty two. (34 days and counting...)

ps. I'm clearing out all the unposted photos from Florida. It's not this warm in MN.

Caption!

A little beach on a little island we visited.

Me vs. The Sea. I totally won.

Putting pants on before 3 pm is for suckers and chumps.

You bastard!

I can do a passable impression of the Count from Sesame Street, and have been known to brandish it from time to time. I would not say that my usage of it has been frivolous or reckless. Despite this fact, the kids cannot, at this point, do any bit of counting without ending it with: "Aaah, aah ahhhhh."

It makes no difference what number they count to - could be three, ten, seben, whatever. Abby has been especially consistent with it, and in her cuter moments she actually will make herself laugh when she does it; maybe when she is fond of that particular rendition of the Count?

This is a non-exaggeration of our drive home tonight from Ridgedale Mall:

"woooone.. twoooo ... freeee .... aaah ahh ahhhhhh.....woooone.. twoooo ... freeee .... aaah ahh ahhhhhh.....woooone.. twoooo ... freeee .... aaah ahh ahhhhhh.....woooone.. twoooo ... freeee .... aaah ahh ahhhhhh.....woooone.. twoooo ... freeee .... aaah ahh ahhhhhh.....woooone.. twoooo ... freeee .... aaah ahh ahhhhhh.....woooone.. twoooo ... freeee .... aaah ahh ahhhhhh.....woooone.. twoooo ... freeee .... aaah ahh ahhhhhh.....woooone.. twoooo ... freeee .... aaah ahh ahhhhhh.....woooone.. twoooo ... freeee .... aaah ahh ahhhhhh.....woooone.. twoooo ... freeee .... aaah ahh ahhhhhh.....woooone.. twoooo ... freeee .... aaah ahh ahhhhhh.....woooone.. twoooo ... freeee .... aaah ahh ahhhhhh.....woooone.. twoooo ... freeee .... aaah ahh ahhhhhh.....woooone.. twoooo ... freeee .... aaah ahh ahhhhhh....."

You get the idea. We've heard Abby doing this over the monitor in the wee moments before she gives up the ghost and slips into sleep. She does it over and OVER again.

---

Before I forget, I have to ask our readers for a question/favor: does anyone out there have a crib that we can borrow for a bit? One of ours is on loan - both, actually, are on loan - but one is needed back at its rightful place since its owner is prepping for twins. Twins! If they were only having one kid, we would refuse to return it, but since it's twins...well, we're suckers for multiples. We're just a wee bit shy of going to toddler beds, so we'll need another crib for a bit. Anyone have something not on recall collecting dust in the attic? We'd love to clean it for you.

---

This morning we cozied in for a day of laziness and frivolity, and ended up with one of those mellifluous, spontaneous days of doing the kind of nothing that feels like something. Played. Danced. Sang. Watched the Vikings game.

We assuaged our sense of apathy in the afternoon with a trek out to Ridgedale Mall, for the sole purpose of their public play area just outside the Sears. I grew worried when we got close and saw no less than 392 kids frolicking in the playground, which is roughly the size of 1992 Dodge Dynasty. And in an elegant display of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, not one kid ever stopped moving, giving the illusion of just an amorphous electron cloud of youth.

I want desperately to not be one of those overprotective parents, but it is hard to let my kids run free into play areas of utter chaos. In my defense, our kids were some of the youngest and smallest there, and my GOD Abby is the tiniest kid. She would wander out into the fray - kids sprinting everywhere - and become like a little dandelion spore on the winds. Of course she loved it all, and would come running back laughing and smiling and latch onto our legs before doing it all again. Lily, in a very out-of-character move for her, was being quite shy and reserved. She still had a good time playing, but held back whenever there was other people around.

At one point, though, I was playing with Lily, swinging her around. I put her down; she said, "More, More!" quite insistently. I replied, "No, you go out and play." She said, "Okay," and toddled off into the crowds of kids. I was pretty amazed at that one, actually.

---

I mentioned a long, long time ago about how we would sometimes mine YouTube for cheesy 80's music to play for the girls during dinnertime. A couple nights ago we revisited this tradition, and I thought I would include our playlist here. I can't say why we chose these songs, it just sort of happens organically with no real thought put into it. But please feel free to enjoy.

Day three hundred and twenty one.

A hockey-related bruise that is way more vivid and impressive in person.

The future's so bright.

Good shot by Mommy.