Rashes are lame.

Easily one of my favorite of Abby in a while.

Funny what one good picture can do. Only an hour and a half ago, I was cursing this blonde-headed monster of ours, this wee devil who not only refused the prospect of sleep, but then passed the time lunging for our forks and food as we ate dinner. "Go on, git!" I yelled at her, but she only laughed and crept back onto the coffee table, then made a play for my linguine. I was hungry. It was late. I'd just about had enough of her.

Then I upload the day's photos, and see this damn thing. Now I want to monkey-pile her into wakefullness and give her whatever she could possibly want: pasta, forks, live grenades, whatever.

What is, in truth, making me short with Abby is this confounded rash of hers that won't go away. I'm done with this rash...it's overstayed its welcome, by a grand amount of time. It looks - forgive me for not coming up with a better description here and stooping to the lowest common denominator - really, really owwie. Is that how you spell owwie? I have no clue. So yeah, her rash looks just awful; when I pull off her diaper, I get that tingling little weird sensation in my spine that I get when I see something cringe-worthy. Remember Jared Leto's arm in the end of "Requiem for a Dream"? Not that bad...but close.

We've been to the doctor a few times (we = Jen + girls) and they gladly take our $15 copay (thanks to Abby, we're getting $15 copayed straight into bankruptcy) and they tell us that rashes are hard to diagnose, and give us "something that should clear it up". Whatever they give us, it never works. This rash, at best, only pauses momentarily at the sight of whatever balm they give us. After a few applications it seems to evolve, then marches on happily spreading or getting redder or bumpier or pussier.

In the meantime, she's becoming difficult to change with two of us, and almost impossible for one. Credit Jen for being able to do that in the daytime. When her diaper is off, she becomes very irritable, extremely thrashy, and stops at nothing to scratch her rash down in the crotchety region. That was just changing, though, and it was something we could handle. Lately, the rash has become even worse and Abby will abruptly depart her good nature and start screeching, writhing on the floor, bawling and obviously in pain.

I've had it with this rash. That's an empty statement, because what am I going to do? Nothing. I'll keep changing diapers while using my legs to hold her arms down. Keep ramming benadryl into her in the hopes that it takes the edge of the itchiness. Keep hoping this latest cocktail of yeast/rash/whatever killing ointment helps.

It's terrible to see your kid in pain. It drains the very blood from you to not be able to help. I'm tired and fed up with it.

What makes it totally bearable is that she's a riot all the other times. I tend to block out the bad times when the good ones come along, and that seems to help. The rather stiff gin and tonic I just had works as well.

Day one hundred and forty six.

Lily looking out the door, working on her ballet moves already.

I got to pick outfits today, so I went with a twin theme. It says a lot about wrangling these kids to say that this is the best shot we could get of them together. All day.

And this might be one of my favorites of Lily in a long time. Lucky today I guess.

Smell-o-vision

Sometimes we all play some footsie during dinner. It is a thrilling event.

There is not much on this earth that smells quite as soul-suckingly awful as a full diaper pail. Like Satan, genocide, and country music, it's impossible to describe in a way that accurately conveys just how insidious it is. Taking a direct breath of diaper trash air makes you see things. Spirits. Intangible philosophies. Telly Savalas wearing a paisley suit. It's like a vision quest, but not the cool kind that Matthew Modine had in the 80's.

Sometimes the diaper pail gets full. Sometimes it gets so full that the little trap door doesn't close properly when a new deposit is made. If this occurs and is not noticed by us, the house becomes uninhabitable in approximately 4 minutes. After half an hour, the smell lays waste to the better part of south Powderhorn Park, and you will be watching CNN for updates on the eventual quarantining and destruction of our house. It's bad.

Changing the bag is an exercise in contamination. Have you ever seen pictures in National Geographic of those pools where they keep spent nuclear fuel rods? Changing the diaper trash is similar to being the guy who has to scrub that pool every Monday.

It's really bad.

I think I've made my point, yes?

How in the world, then, can Lily get so much happiness in walking over to the trash, lifting open the lid, pushing open the trap door, and staring down into the cylinder? She sits and stares and breathes deep, hearty breaths of the foulest smell I've ever been privvy to. How is this possible?!? When do kids develop, in an olefactory way? Where is her sense of goodness and decency??

It's maddening, because she does this almost every time we hang out in their room. She's drawn to the pail...it cannot be resisted. I don't have to be looking at her, either, to know it's open. Within probably 5 seconds - not an exaggeration - the smell hits me like a brick, and I break into a cold, deathly sweat.

Strange. I should actually look this up, find out when kids do get a sense of smell. Do they already? Do they just not know or care what they're smelling?

It's interesting, since Jen lost her sense of smell a few months ago. I am the only person in the house who can smell, not counting the dog, and he's only really got the knack for cheese and discarded curbside chicken wing bones. It's a serious logistical issue for JJ, since she can't smell poopiness during the day, and has to do lots of checks and rechecks. More hassle for her, which is totally what she needs.

Day one hundred and forty five.

Abs playing footsie

"Oh oh oh oh!"

"Mmmyum myum yum yum."

Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh

Oh how I love that little tongue, forever lolling out from betwixt those lips that I love just as much as the tongue.

In the first of what will prove to be many such events, I'll be a mouthpiece for Jen by posting about some event that went down during the workaday hours. So this story is technically hers.

We've managed to teach the girls (almost without trying) to say, "Aaaaahh!" whenever they finish a big pull off the sippy cup. "*glub blub slurp slorp....aaaahhhhh!" They can do it pretty much on command now, as well as some times when we don't command it at all. (I like the thought of us commanding the kids; it's a funny, futile choice of words, since they seem to have no proclivity for being commanded.)

This morning during the day's normal milk break, Abby decided to start aah-ing. So she took a big drink, yanked the cup out of her mouth, and let out a bellowing, "Ahhh." Normally, we do this back to her or Lily does it or there is some sort of response that justifies her theatrics. She looked at Lily, who looked back at her but continued her slurping. Abby was not deterred. The cup went back up, another drink was drunk, and she let slip another "Aaaaahh!" Looked at Lily: nothing.

That she kept looking to her bigger little sister for a response to her call would have been cute enough. What made it even more fantastic was that she then reached over and tried to pull the sippy cup out of Lily's mouth, hoping to wrangle an 'Aahh' from her no matter what.

This stuff impresses me.

In other news....:

The girls are starting to get vocal. The words are starting to come from both of them. Lily's a bit ahead (it's not a race), and now has a fairly solid grasp of the following words and their meanings:

ahmi - a made up word that means pacifier
ball
mommy
daddy
papa
more
apple
nana (banana)
Abby (kinda)
hi
bye

Abby can do a lot of the same, only will do mama and dada instead of mommy and daddy. She almost had apple tonight. She's getting pretty good at papa. And a few others, I know I'm forgetting some for both of them and Jen may chide me later for selling them short.

Day one hundred and forty four.

Yet another swing shot, but I loved this expression and couldn't leave it out. She's obviously just going through the motions of being happy.

Do I really need bearings in a car? I know what direction I'm going in.

Swinging with the goofball.

Jen, opting for the safer course of action, wasted no time to take the car in to Clyde's Auto by our house for a-diagnosin'. Our first time at Clyde's...certainly not the last. Despite a garage full of work, they took the time to test drive the car with Jen and The Ruffians inside. It sounded like the bearings, they a-figured. Just to be sure, they put it up on the lift (still with my family inside) to take the wheel off and be certain. I'm not sure what legal ramifications there might have been if that procedure had gone wrong, which is what makes it so cool that they did that. I like to imagine the girls peering out the windows, curious at the *whheeeeerrr* sounds of the air-powered toolery.

As it happens, we'll be looking forward to dropping up to $500 to get this done, and that assumes the axle wasn't damaged during the Great Cincinnati Voyage of 2009. If the axle is damaged, we'd be able to afford to fix it so long as we would immediately sell the house and move into the car. On the plus, we'd have central air.

So, to recap the trip. Driving, about which I've already pontificated, was a slog, but an uneventful slog. We saw some nice windfarms. Illinois is just as dull as I'd imagined it would be while peering down at it from the cockpit of an Embraer 120 during countless trips to Springfield. I did appreciate the humor of passing from Illinois (land of Lincoln, where the man was born) into Indiana, whose signs proclaimed quite clearly that it was their state in which Abe spent the majority of his youth. F-you, Illinois! I bet New Jersey and New York engage in a similar desperate tug-of-war when trying to lay claim to Grover Cleveland's legacy. Doesn't St. Paul do the same thing with Charles Schultz?

Sunday: we started off in church, which lasted a good 3 minutes before Jen and I relegated ourselves and the girls to the back entryway, where Lily flirted with the old usher for the remainder of mass. Afterwards, our Ohioan family graciously gave in to our constant request for Skyline Chili. I ate the crap out of that chili. It's so bad and yet so good. Not quite as guilty as White Castle, but still...my mind and body could have supped there every day, but I only got the one fix. Drat.

Later, we did some time at a park close to the hotel (pictures herein tell some of the tale). Then off to Cathy (my cousin) and Dave's (her husband) house for a lovely dinner with the family. The girls were kinda on the edge, but turned on the charm when it came down to it. Lily is non-stop motion these days, we can barely keep pace. She was running circles around their house.

Monday: Spent the entire day at King's Island, the local amusement park. There's not much to report about a day at an amusement park, except to say that it was fun and kinda nostalgiac, as I'd been there a few times as a kid. I found myself as a passenger on some frightful rides and managed to not vomit; a real accomplishment these days, as I think I might be slowly inheiriting my Dad's vertigo.

Tuesday: Vrooom! Drove all day.

That's it. Girls, when you read this later in life, now you can know how you spent your second 4th of July. And you can know this: my Aunt Betty and Uncle Jerry and cousins Dennis, Cathy, and Emily and their assorted families all seemed to be tripping over themselves to make googley faces at you guys and laugh at your every silly babble or gesticulation. That's good family.

Day one hundred and forty three.

The girls were thrilled with the swinging.

Lily and I laughingly discuss the importance of hats, even on cloudy days. She won...it stayed off.

From tonight. A nice moment of mother and daughter sharing the bonds of a goldfish cracker.

I've been driving for 12 hours. I'm starting to hallucinate in two lanes.

Cincinnati to Minneapolis in 14 hours with two 16 month olds. I dare you to try it. It wasn't actually as bad as it could have been; I think we dodged a bullet, and the girls were mostly compliant the whole way through. Unfortunately we did have to beware of trolls just north of Indianapolis. Then we circumnavigated Chicago due to a severe Kraken alert on Lake Michigan (their tentacly tentacles can reach for many miles inland, as many a tale does tell). And most disastrously, forecasters were tracking a major Jonas Brothers system pushing up through Eau Claire right around the time we were heading through.

Amazingly, we lived to tell the tale.

I'll recap the entire trip tomorrow when I'll have since showered the 3 millimeters of fast food and general travelling grime and muck off my sweaty self.

Here are some stats from both drives combined:

Crosswords finished - 3
Games of I Spy played - 21
Number of games of I Spy that did not have an answer of "cow" - 4
Atlases purchased - 1
Rounds of "She'll be coming 'round the mountain" sung - 8 or 9
Degree of shock experienced by Jen and I when we found that one of the verses of that song is "We will kill that old red rooster when she comes" - 12 out of 12 (what the hell does an old red rooster have to do with that chick coming round the mountain? Poor rooster.)
Number of non-kid songs played - 0 (we forgot the ipod, and had no cd's in the car)
Chances Mark gave us of making it home after he drove our car in Cincinnati and diagnosed it with a severe case of bad bearings - next to none
Backup plans we had in case those bearings gave out on the way - 0
Number of minutes Lily slept in the car - 192
Number of minutes Abby slept in the car - 1.92

The numbers do not lie.

I apologize both for missing yesterday, and not having more tonight. Tomorrow I'll get back in the groove.

Day one hundred and forty two.

Why did nobody tell us this before?

Vacationing with 16 month olds is extraordinarily hard.

Day one hundred and thirty nine.