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.

wabbit

Abs at the ready.

Typical result of some ill-fated art attack. (art attack...get it? It's a pun)

The anguish

15 more days of blog left to go! Let the countdown begin. Picasa has decided it would love a hand in making these last two weeks as difficult as possible, and has stopped recognizing my hard drive in its database. In theory, this change should only amount to a slightly different way to upload pictures, a non-event; instead, it makes the posts twice as annoying to format because of some idiosynchrasies of this website. Don't ask me why...just promise me to never ever start a blog on Blogger if you can help it.

When I returned home this afternoon, Jen was weary and ready for relief. It didn't take long to figure out why: the kids were little neanderthals. They weren't totally unpleasant from one moment to the next (this is a survival technique passed down by children all over the world - annoy and pester, but always do so pleasantly), but when their behavior was taken as a whole, it was rather rambunctious and trying.

As an example, Lily refused dinner. She wanted to dance instead. Fair enough, we're not quite to the point where forced dinnertimes are a standard (although that is going to be around the corner pretty soon). So she danced. When there was a pause between songs she would scream angrily at the space heater (which, adoringly, she thought to be the source of music) until the next song came on, then begin dancing again.

After a long while, she waddled over and indicated that she was hungry. She went up into the high chair and proceeded to ignore her pizza, thumb her nose at the beans, and use the cottage cheese to fingerpaint her tray a solid, nauseating white. I don't actually recall her eating anything, and would be surprised if she didn't wake us around 3 with a Chinese takeout menu in her crib.

Abby's misery came from its usual source: she has the patience of a gnat. She got really upset tonight, tantrum-level, and somewhere in between the sobs I heard her say, "Eeeaat!" "Oh, do you want to eat?" I asked her. She stopped crying, made the correct sign (good monkey), so I put her in the high chair while Jen started to get her dinner ready, where she lost it again. Another huge fit of crying and thrashing. She just cannot wait for anything.

Around the same time, she wanted my cell phone so badly her head exploded. Very gross. I couldn't even get it to her fast enough...this kid waits for nothing.

There were good times as well. Lily, in the process of throwing a stuffed otter at Jen (in play, not fury) yelled, "You take it!", a phrase absolutely impossible to not laugh at when coming from a 2 year old. Abby sat in Lily's crib and read me a story about a rabbit for almost 20 minutes. The book was truly about a rabbit, so all I heard from her was, "wuzzlle wwahhh dat dat wabbbit dug bump baaaah bunny sheeeeshgah glorp ...etc"

Day three hundred and fifty. (15 craaazy days left.)

Whatssat?

Abs providing a nice obstacle for the throngs.

Yesterday I was doing an animal puzzle with Abby. She picked up the cow piece and said, "What'ssssaaat?"

"That's a cow, little buddy. Moo!"

"Mooooooo!" she replied, putting the cow in his rightful place. Her fingers flitted over the board again and she picked up the cat.

"What'sssdat?"

I gave her a dubious sidelong look, wondering why she was asking me when she's known the word cat for many months, can practically spell the word, knows how to look up cat on Wikipedia, and has many cat friends.

"That is a cat. A kitty cat, if you will."

"Meow!"

"Yup!"

She returned to the board, this time pulling out a sheep.

Once again: "Whats daat?"

"Buddy, you know damn well that's a sheep! A sheep! This is so below you!!!"

"Baaaah!"

(sigh) "Yes, baah."

After a few minutes of thinking that our kid had taken a strange and illogical step backwards, I realized that she has learned to now quiz us on what she already knows. So the theme now is for her to point to things and ask us, "Whatsdat?" in an effort to test our knowledge.

I've decided to call her bluff and show her a picture of the DC9 hydraulic system and ask her "whatsssat?" She may surprise me.

Kids were cute today. Abby got up at 7:20, but Lily slept in until 9, so Abby and I got some quality time this morning. We had breakfast and watched Sunday Morning....quality.

Tonight we were getting ready to leave Aunt Tracey's house. I told the girls we were about to go. Lily walked by Steve and Tracey and quietly muttered, "Thaaank yooou". I can claim no credit for teaching her that.

Day three hundred and forty nine.

Lily keeping her lips warm at the art sled rally.


Bundlekin.

Oh, you saw this coming, didn't you? Fresh from our trip to Ikea and the startlingly breezy walk from the car.