An awful, pedantic point-by-point list of what we did - or didn't - do today. Enjoy!

More photos of the dancing queens. Who wouldn't be compelled to dance on that floor?

Another Saturday...another day held prisoners in the house by bad luck and our own lack of fortitude. Since the morning was s'posed to be warm and all, we'd figured a stroll around the block with our criminally underexercised dog would be nice way to throw an angry fist at the grey and somber day. As it turned out, that grey and somber day held no shortage of rain, so every time we considered striking out of doors, we were turned back by the wetness.

This might be where a lack of fortitude comes in. Could we have stepped up to a higher level of parenting, equipped our kids with waterproof digs, and headed out? Maybe. Who knows. Saturday mornings do not make for fruitful forums on how to better ourselves...they're more about taking the easiest possible route from morning to naptime and getting the most laughs in the process. Rain is not on our agenda, especially when it's of the freezing variety.

So this morning we moved around the house, playing in and destroying each room as we went. Naptime was almost a total bust, thanks to an ill-timed loss of a 'fire (or "pacifier", for you newcomers) which woke up Lily, who woke up Abby, etc. After some serious negotiations - our kids make amazing arguments - we put them down to sleep at last, which barely lasted an hour. Kids are tiring.

During the afternoon we'd scheduled some random errands to run; trip to Ikea, Target, the sort of things that make me yearn for the weekend. Since the kids slept so little during their naps, they woke up at a 8.2 on the cranky scale, and we - once again administering the philosophy of Saturday - decided that it wasn't worth the headache. So inside the Gels family did remain, enjoying each other's company, for the most part.

Amazingly, unbelievably, Abby did not go down during bedtime. She was whimpering a lot, then she started shrieking. After at least 20 minutes, we decided to go up and fetch her, since she's had some strong gas pains lately and this was probably more of the same. Nope. I picked her up and brought her down, and she was a beautiful, happy little peach, hamming it up for us for the better part of an hour. Monkey. While I hate those moments because they make the mechanics of life so much harder, they are also sweet and tender and are easily the best moods that Abby is in. I also feel rather guilty because Lily rarely ever is up at inappropriate times, being the rock solid sleeper she is, so we never really get to enjoy moments like these with her. One of these days we'll just wake her up randomly and make her watch bad tv with us for the quality time of it.

Day three hundred and forty one.

She was much happier than this picture implies.

She was exactly this happy.

Okilee Dokilee

Slack jawed gawker.

It's Friday, which you may have heard already. These are interesting times...it's mid January and the temps are 35 with rain, which makes me sad for all the ice-loving pond monkeys playing at Nokomis this weekend. I still have yet to go to the pond hockey championship, and I briefly considered trying to bring the kids this year, but just couldn't imagine having them out in freezing rain watching something that, to be honest, would likely be fairly boring since I don't know anyone playing.

Also interesting times since it's Conan's last show tonight. Jen and I are planning on staying up for it. How could we miss the last day of his historic 7 month run??

Friday also means family night at the midtown global market, so the kids took us over there for some hijinks. Tonight the Okee Dokee Brothers were playing (www.okeedokee.org if you're interested), which proved to be a highly entertaining act. They sang a whole song about boogers; the adolescents were thrilled.

I find it amusing that we are absolutely in the minority - if not the sole population - of parents who sort of dance along to the music. I say "sort of" because we were sitting, which means it's a half-assed dance, but still...we bounce around, mostly to get the kids into it, but also because the music is rather catchy. I look around, and nobody is doing what we are. Maybe their kids are just older and can dance with little to no prodding or baiting. But I can't shake the feeling that our fellow parents in attendance simply think they are too cool for school.

Kids had a great time dancing. When they quietly and rather placidly led us away from the music, we knew they were done.

Off we went to the playground area for more frivolity. There were kids a-plenty; there was craziness. At some point Jen gave me a weird look. I should know this look by now, because it's a knowing, important look that a spouse should pick up on instantly, and it's very recognizable. Something was bothering her; I could tell she needed to tell me something.

"Did you hear what that kid said?"

"No," I replied. My attention had been elsewhere.

"He called Abby a monster. He said she looked weird and her eyes were too far apart."

Amazing that words from the mouth of a child can be so absurdly powerful, strong enough to cause me actual physical pain, strong enough to deflate us so devastatingly and so quickly. Just a few syllables can paint a lifetime of hardships (possibly? who knows.) that lie in wait for Abby.

I feel like I'm able to shrug these events off now. Jen seems to always, always be the one that actually hears it, thus she gets to bear the emotional load of it, but even she seems like they are starting to bother her less. As for Abby, she kept dancing around the play area, babbling random nonsense to herself, enjoying herself unreservedly. Oh how I love that little monster.

Day three hundred and forty.

She's doing the puppet dance!

Smiles and banjo-pickin'.

Lily stomps a lot less when she dances. This is a good thing.

Random bits of lame news.

Here is an excerpt from an alphabet book that has always irked me. We see here a lion snuggling with a sleepy lamb. Fair enough. But wait...the lion is winking at us, the audience. It's a sly, knowing wink. When you think about it, what possible reason could there be for that wink, except to convey the message that the lion is absolutely going to devour that lamb in the near future? Sick.

News from the front:

While Lily is still cultivating a crazy-fanatical possessive streak, she has at least begun to be more civil about it. Today Abby took her shirt, and instead of the tried-and-true screaming of, "Mine!", she instead said, "Abby, Lily shirt" in a tone almost approaching calm and collected. How about that?!? Reason to celebrate.

Jen took the morons to the community center for freeplay time, the existence of which I think is pretty rad. Kudos to the government giving our kids a chance to run around. For the second time in a week, some little kid decided Abby was her new best friend and tried to make off with her. Something about the blonde one makes her an irresistable target for friend-making. Maybe she's approachable because she's only a foot tall. Give or take.

Tonight, while Jen was out socializin' with some school people, Abby decided to not-sleep. This was odd, since it was Lily who I heard consistently for an hour over the monitor counting quietly to ten over and over again. They'd been upstairs for an hour and a half before Abby let out some rather abrupt cries. Seemed like the kind that don't go away, and they were loud - making them possible Lily-wakers - so I bounded up and snatched her away. She was adorable, laying on my chest, giving me smiles and flirts, until Jen came home and she shared it with her, too. It was one of those wakeful times that kinda makes you not want to take her back up.

Day three hundred and thirty nine.

From the same book, here is a yak with a yo-yo. For some reason I find that blankly terrified look on his face to be strangely funny.

An oldie from way back in December.

Another oldie. Jen playing with the kids.

Jumping in the cribs

Jen chucked the kids in the car today and dragged them down to my work. yay! That's the good news...the bad is that they were a little shy. Those little monkeys are in a leg/crotch burrowing phase; new places and people send them into us like little ostriches. Which I think is fantastic, and is a piece of their playbook that I'll be borrowing for future unsavory situations. Let's see my dentist work on that cavity with my arms wrapped around his legs and my face buried in his crotch.

To nobody's surprise, the kids lightened up and turned on the charm right as they were leaving.

Tonight was hockey night, where I go out and play hockey, hence the name. Fast becoming my favorite part of hockey night is the post-hockey shower. There is a magical something about a piping hot shower after a cold-weather sport. Lovely.

Day three hundred and thirty eight.

Bounce bounce bounce!

Never steal another girl's sister.

A paparazzo shot of Abby, trying in vain to hide behind her big blue tickle monster hands.

Some highlights of the day, in non-narrative form:

- Jen took the kids to Ridgedale, where the girls totally owned the play area. The slide was no match for them. During the visit, something happened that heretofore has never ever happened: Abby used Lily's name, on her own, to get her sister's attention. Amazing! An awesome first that I feel negligent for not witnessing.

- Also during this trip, a wee stranger took a liking to Abby and tried to befriend her. At some point this befriending involved leading her by the hand to another part of the play area. It was quite innocent; however, Lily saw this happening, and BOLTED over to forcibly take Abby back. How cute is that?! Very.

- Tonight the girls wanted to climb the stairs, so we did. This led us upstairs, where we then were. It was only natural for them to take the first left into the bathroom, which is what happened. Once we were all there, they proceeded to play like giggling idiots in the shower curtain for about 20 minutes. See the pictures below to get an idea of all of this. They were laughing so, so hard in that curtain, it makes me wish we'd installed one in the family room months ago.

Day three hundred and thirty seven.

Climb every mountain...


Lily through the bars.



Curtain call.

Soooo so so tired.

We were awoken last night around 1am to a very upset Abigail. No good cause for this was ever given by her or deduced by us, but it was a rather unusual episode. Jen got up with her, changed her diaper, gave her some milk, sat with her, until she started to doze again. Jen brought her back over to the crib, and she jolted awake and clung to Jen for dear life.

Around this time I came in to see what I could do. Abby was steadfastly not going to fall asleep; in fact, she would bawl whenever Jen stopped touching her. Strange. Jen began to postulate that she might have had a bad dream, which remains our only and best guess at what made this all happen. After a while of us standing there stroking her, we decided to bring her back to bed with us.

Lying between us with the dog at our feet only seemed to energize her more. Funny, we still have not yet really slept with the girls, which seems odd since it seems like so many other parents do it. Ours just get too excited at the different scenery.

We gave in, and I brought her down to the family room, where she played quite rambunctiously while I watched old Cosby Show reruns. I should state for the record: I never realized it as a kid, but the Cosby Show is a hunk of crap. In the episode I saw, Dr. Huxtable (aka Heathcliffe) was taking the family to Washington DC, but Vanessa didn't want to because the most important party of the year was that same weekend. It was made abundantly clear that this party was amazingly important to her. She pleaded her case, but the Coz was hilariously unmoved. Some tension arose between the two. I was excited to see how Cosby would deal with the situation, thinking I could glean some valuable parenting techniques. Instead, Vanessa happily bounds into the kitchen a couple scenes later, smilingly proclaims that her dad is right and she will go to DC and have a great time, and I think she might have even thanked her dad. Are you @#$%!!ing me? I feel like a worse parent for having witnessed it.

But that's okay, because in my disgust I changed the channel and found Die Hard 2, a laughably bad and infinitely watchable flick. I'm amazed at the bounty on tv at 2 in the am with only the most basic of cable packages.

Jen came down a bit later and we sat with the blondie munchkin before deciding to bring her back up around 3ish. She showed zero signs of fatigue. She was bouncing off the walls. But there was nothing else for us to do, so we brought her up, and she whined a tiny bit and was quiet.

I think I got a total of about 4.5 restless hours of sleep. I'm tired tonight. Plus I played hockey, so that's a killer. I thought I'd go to bed early, but it's almost 11 and here I am, typing away. Damn this blog.

Day three hundred and thirty six.

These might be repeat pictures, I have no idea. This one is of Lily and me. We seem happy. We seem not tired.

Wasabi makes for good chili

Scenes from a birthday.

Lazy Sunday today, at least for the first part. I got up with the kids and poured two bowls of cereal and watched Abby eat both of them while Lily turned her nose up at food in general. We watched Sunday Morning on tv until Mommy came down a short while later, then kept doing the same. That's the lovely part about Sundays...they're pretty formless.

Before complete apathy was able to settle in, though, we packed up and headed to Chaska, where Mark and Tracey were hosting a slight shindig for little Lucy's first birthday. We coached the kids on how to say, 'Happy birthday' on the drive out; they didn't say it once in the car, and I didn't hear them say it once in the house. Funny how they manage to parrot everything we say back to us, only not when we care. Maybe birthday wishes are just not their forte.

My contribution for the day included a pot of chili, and I have to say: I think I'm starting to really like my chili recipe. It's got a bit of wasabi paste in it, and it does make it a bit spicy, but it's not too bad and it goes away almost instantly, quite unlike the cumulative hell of jalapeno spicy (although there was a couple of those in there, too).

I have to apologize to my niece Grace; I told her I'd get a picture of her today and put it on the blog, but I was really spotty about using my camera today. Sorry buddy! I'll make it up to you.

Day three hundred and thirty five.

"Think it's gonna be a long long time."

Cousin Lucy and her cousin (on the Reicherty side of things) Katie

Happiness is a warm pacifier