I think I was the only person in the metro area to be rained on today

Rough day for Olly. Slept a bit. Got chased by the Gilbert girls. Slept some more.

This is going to be one of those insuffurably tedious "daily recap" entries, I can feel it. It's coming...here it goes...no stopping it now...

It's much more satisfying sleeping in on Saturdays when I can hear, wafting up from downstairs, the sounds of Grandma and Grandpa helping Jen watch the kids. It must be a strength in numbers sort of thing. But they are unboundingly selfless in their help with The Munchkins, and for that I fear won't ever be able to adequately repay them, although I have a feeling they'd let me buy them some burgers at Matt's and call it even.

So the day started with my sleeping in. We put the kids down for their nap at 10 and I scurried off to play ultimate for a bit, where I met a nice potential babysitter for the girls, threw some terrible throws, and ran myself into a fit.

I felt chumped by the weather all day today. I was cold at ultimate, then hot during the drive home. In the afternoon I decided to take the dog and kids for a walk, but it was really dark to the west, so I checked the radar (I have my own doppler radar on the roof): there was nothing. So we set out and put a couple blocks behind us when I felt the first few drops hit my face. "Fudge," I exclaimed to nobody in particular. I whipped the kids around (they loved that part, little thrill seekers) and jogged home in light rain, the western sky still frowning with darkness. We made it home, got unpacked and back inside, and within maybe 3 minutes the sun was back out and there was not a hint of rain to be seen. "Frack," I said, this time to the dog, but he didn't seem to care.

Later on, our friends Kari and Eric from San Francisco and Tracy and Bryan and kids from Hopkins (not quite as far) came by for a visit. Good times. From what I remember, we discussed mostly adult topics that had nothing to do with kids, so it was peachy. Everything in moderation.

Now I'm writing the blog, and I've officially caught up with myself. Spooky.

Day seventy six.

Abby working on her Walt Whitman sequel, Leaves of Grass II: the green stain't tooshie.

Lily walks almost exclusively now, it seems. Our little pedestrian!

Abby and me. I picked my nose moments later. Thanks Loken for the shot.

I am not hip. This much I know.

More signs of our warming days in the yard.

Abby stayed home from day care today, even though she felt springtime fresh. Rules are rules, and one of theirs is for the kids to be fever free for 24 hours. We were sunk before we even sailed, so Jen took the day while I worked.

Grandma and Grandpa rolled into town and the kids were pickled to see them. We made a hasty exit after bathtime to go socialize with Jen's MBA crowd downtown. They're good people all around, and I'm not just saying that because a bunch of them read this thing. This particular event tonight took place at a bar brimming with trendiness. To wit: as the MBA thing wound down, professional (I'm not sure what I mean by that word) dancers hopped atop strategically placed boxes around the bar and began dancing. Dancers! How can I be as lame as myself and justify living in a world that has bars like this? I can't. We had to leave so my existence would not be threatened. There is a level of hipness that makes my brain shut down.

As a result of our imbibery and social ways, it's late. I've had my ceremonial post-drinks bowl of cereal (this time with Vitamin D milk, a delicacy which deserves another entry in itself), I've watched the requisite bad tv on TBS, so it's time for bed.

Or I'll stay up and watch Clueless, easily - by a large margin - the stupidest movie that I can't ever stop watching when it's on. I have no idea why. Yet more credence to the "I'm not a hip person" argument.

Day seventy five.

Abby with a look of utter passion on her face.

More passion. Not so happy though.

The tail lights.

My kid swallows better than your kid.

"Why in the world does nobody make a camouflage onesie with a frilly waistband?" you've no doubt asked yourself many times on many lonely nights.

Rest assured: someone does.

If only we had more disposable income, this would have been snapped up in a very ironic manner.

Writing the blog is hard work, make no mistake. Churning this stuff out every day is sometimes a chore, especially when nothing spectacularly interesting happens, which is in fact true most of the time (as you've no doubt gleaned by now if you're a regular tuner-inner to this yawn-fest). So when a day trundles along that I know will be a teeth-gnasher, a little part of me down by the spleen is secretly happy to have some fodder for this insipid dreck.

The problem with our kids, they make even the really hard days pretty easy. Damn them.

Enter today. Abby had a swallow study scheduled for 10. Swallow study. I love that phrase. The reason for doing this: two rounds with pneumonia is a reason to start ruling out reasons. One possible cause is improper eating technique, leading to tiny little pieces of mac and cheese (or, god forbid, pasta pickups) field tripping down her windpipe, pitching tents in her lungs, and throwing a pneumonia bonfire party.

I didn't expect this thing to be easy; I knew there would be x-rays, which are never easy with kids. That Abby woke up hotter than the sun cemented my expectations. I opted not to take her to day care for the morning, which was the best decision I've made in a long time. We snuggled. She napped. I did the crossword. She woke up exactly when I needed her to get up for the appointment.

The drive and walk and check in were peachy, despite her feeling sickly. She's such a trooper when she's sick, which is really super because it is often.

The study was interesting. There were no less than six people - two of whom were doctors - working like gerbils trying to get our kid to eat something. Parts of the visit were unpleasant, lots of crying (the worst came when two people were holding her down, a few were working the x-ray, Abby was bawling, and she kept eye contact with me the whole time. Her eyes told me everything: she will blame me for this later). By comparison, though, we've done lots worse; I put it at a 3.4 out of 10 on the horribleness scale.

Her temp wasn't too bad, so she got herself dropped off at daycare. I was at work for two minutes when Jen called and relayed that day care said Abby's fever was at 102, so back to daycare I went.

Picked her up, went back home. More snuggling. She went down for another long, tylenol-induced nap. Snore.

After I picked Lily up, we all went to a rummage sale at the church across the street. I use the term 'rummage sale' quite loosely. If you gathered up all the finest items you might have enough for half of a semi-decent garage sale. Pretty paltry, and very stuffy, nothing of even the remotest kitchy value at all. But, Lily did a great job walking all around the place by herself or clutching my finger. And she performed that pinnacle of kid cuteness: she started walking her stroller down the street. So cute.

I am not sure what this post has become, other than a rambling narrative of our day, and an uninteresting one at that. The point I wanted to (poorly) make was that, sometimes even our busy, crappy, random days are pretty pleasant.

Day seventy four.

Lily strolling the aisles of the worst rummage sale in Minneapolis. Just, really really crappy, seriously bad. Okay, I'm over it.

Lily on her beat.




A little bonus video for ya! I asked the speech pathologist if I could get a video of the x-ray they did for her appointment today. Not sure if that burned dvd will show up on my insurance or not.

This is kinda wicked, actually. Abby is swallowing a spoonful of pudding three times in this. The pudding is the black stuff that shoots down her throat like a slug. I slowed it down a bit for clarity. The two black circle things are the snaps on the shoulder of her onesie, fyi.

If you're eating pudding right now...this may not increase its platability.

I need a casting agent! Or Spielberg's number.

Lately, I've begun to notice some similarities between Las Ninas and certain fictional hollywood creatures.

There has been a sharp increase in the past few weeks of interaction between the two of them. While in the high chairs destroying whatever item we made for dinner, this back-and-forth is even more pronounced. Each yahoo is checking what the other yahoo is doing, and vice versa. There is babbling. At times this babbling has flirted dangerously with becoming something resembling a conversation of jibberish.

There was something eerily familiar about this, something I couldn't quite place, until one day. "Mogwai! Of course!" My kids have now achieved a mogwai state of consciousness.

The similarity is astounding, is it not?

Their sounds are evolving, as well, sometimes so rapidly I can't keep track of it all. Sadly, Abby does not laugh much like a cricket anymore (although I still call her Cricket from time to time. Lately it's been Blondie or The Blonde One or Tiny).

Abby has adopted a new sound that, from what I can surmise, she likes to make when she is hungry-tired-excited-funny-squirmy-exasperated. I knew the sound instantly, but couldn't place it for quite some time. It bothered me. It bored into my brain...where have I heard that sound before? Until finally the answer came upon me like a dream:

Yes, Abby makes sounds that are a spot-on match for a tauntaun from Empire Strikes Back.

Not to be outdone, Lily has crafted her own surrealistic impression of a pop-culture science fiction icon. She performs this little show every time she decides that she needs to crawl across the house as quickly as possible.

I hear her drop to the floor with a thud. I look at my water glass as she unleashes the full brunt of her crawling speed, and clearly see concentric ripples echoing across the surface. Boom. Boom....bom bom bom obm bboooomm..."scrreeeeeeeaaachhh!" (that's her when she sees me). The resemblance is obvious.

I wanted so badly to photoshop a pacimafier in that mouth, but I just got lazy. Imagine it...laugh a bit...there you go.

Day seventy three.

A short one tonight.

A brief respite on a bridge over Minnehaha Creek.

Busy day. Kids grew a bit. We aged a touch. My houseplants got taller. My vegetable seedlings crept closer to certain doom.

I actually need to work a bit tonight, and this was complicated by Lily staying up - in a very out of character manner - until 9:12 or so. So I'm opting out. Enjoy the daily dose of photos.

Day seventy two.

Another from our walk today. Happy little family.

Ray Charles lives on in the body of a tiny blond midwestern toddler.

Take my word for it: that is an entire Nilla wafer in that pie hole.

Here she comes, walking down the baby-safe-non-street-area

Hanging on. Hanging on for dear life.

Lily came to the conclusion today that she'd had enough of the pseudo-walking life. Upon turning the corner at day care (where I couldn't figure out why she wasn't crawling towards me like she usually does) I found her standing wobblingly and without aid. "Yay!" I told her, dropped to my knees a good five feet away, and watched as she lurched all the way to bury herself in my chest. Her moments of bipedalism have up until now been limited to a few stultified steps, but no more. She's a little walker now. Like all the most deeply satisfying kid transitions, this one was instantaneous. At ECFE we set her loose a good ten times in her newly erect pose, and she thought it was a gas.

I'm trying to come up with a non-cliched response to this, but it's not happening. I'm just so excited and proud, although pride doesn't really fit; maybe it's just the thrilling relief of seeing your kid "get" something. I spend many a day with them where they don't get stuff for hours. The climactic awesomeness of when it happens is huge.

ECFE today, that's my excuse for not having video of her, and having old pictures.

Day seventy one.

Naked but for the pacifier.

How terrible am I to think that she kinda looks like a stripper without a pole here?

Snugglebum.

I have no time to title this because the kids are now up from their nap...

My patient vegetables peer into the rainy day, wondering when I'll let them outside for good.

Midday blog post! Unheard of. I'm feeling proactivey. Anti-procrastinatory. Dis-ennui-ed. The Morons are down for an as-of-lately-much-less-frequent afternoon nap, so I decided to take the blog by the horns, as the saying goes.

I'm quite taken with rainy days, and today definitely qualifies. Drizzle...pour..slight thundering..repeat. During one of the more torrential moments of the day I took Lily out the back door under the eaves to witness the proverbial cats and dogs. This is the kind of thing I get excited about sharing with the girls, the simple enjoyment to be had in common weather phenomena. She was interested and unafraid of the thunder, which was a fine response. Then she tried desperately to squirm her way out of my grasp and, from what I could ascertain from her body language, get out into the rain. Hmm.. Not sure if that's a good thing or not. She is the adventurous one.

On the whole, the weekend was pleasant. Jen was busy with school yesterday, so Lily and Abby and I were off to the park for a Powderhorn Park parents group play date. I had a good time and met some lovely fellow P'hornian parent types, while Abs and Lils sat and gawked at the other kids' supreme playground skills, which were indeed something to behold. That Lily managed to sit in the sand and not eat any of it is a big accomplishment, but I strongly suspect that Abby may have ingested a couple very small gravelly pebbles. I'm sure there's iron to be had in gravelly pebbles. Thanks to Charmaine for setting up the whole gig, and props to Sara for starting the group in the first place.

Today's activity included a trip to Sovereign Grounds, the coffee shop Jen elucidated on a few days ago. I'm definitely a fan. The coffee and pastries, while maybe not top notch, are a solid 4 out of 5. The woman that runs the place is charming. And this time around there were a few kids and parents in the play area, making the best of the wet day. So the girls got to mix it up, and we made nice with local peeps, two of whom are friends of the very same Sara that I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Small universe.

I can't help but point out that both these social events would have been next-to-unthinkable without kids. They make fantastic ice breakers. It'd be hard to imagine a group of people meeting at the rec center to sit around and talk without children in tow. Or a small gathering of strangers who randomly converse at a coffee shop. Kids are so convenient!

Day seventy.

Olly on the receiving end of some love.

Welcome to my reality.

Naked time.