Warning, B.A.P.M. Ahead!



Here I continue our Winter Trip Log. If you have not read days 1+2 (which is likely as this was posted only a half hour later), you may want to skip down and read that first. Or read them in in reverse order and it will be as if you traveled back in time like Superman did by circling the wrong way around the Earth. By the way, I am not giving a peace sign in this photo, but merely indicating the number of times this baby baby had spit up on that shirt. I believe after the third time, the shirt was retired with honor.


Day 3:

Started a little late, but we knew we would have to operate by the girls’ schedule. We wanted to be sure they were well fed right before getting on the road, so we could go as far as possible in the initial run. So it was about 7:45 when we hit the road, but at this late time of season we were really only departing about 45 minutes after sunrise.

Immediately we noticed an odd warning light in the Jeep Laredo. It was a yellow exclamation point between two parentheses, with a weird jagged line connecting the parentheses along the bottom. My best representation is this: (!). We were stumped. The light was yellow, which generally does not denote an emergency so Candy began searching the owner’s manual as I began driving. We are at the I-15 before we finally figure out the light indicates low tire pressure (the jagged line was tire tread). As we are caravanning with my parents, we call them up on the cell phone and pull off at the next service stop. The tires all looked fine, so we kicked them, then we purchased a pressure gauge (the air pump had none for some perverse reason), before finally determining the front, driver’s side wheel is a tad bit low. Putting in a little air makes the light go away, which makes everyone content and satisfied. Back to the road!

We had literally gone maybe a mile when we encountered the B.A.P.M. To the uninitiated, a B.A.P.M. is a Big Ass Piece of Metal. I swear to God it was as if we were in a James Bond movie and the Austin Martin had dropped this to take out the rascally pursuers from SPECTRE. It was a 6-8 inch horseshoe shaped hunk of grey steel, with a large lip of thick metal that stood straight up perpendicularly from the arch portion of the U. The horseshoe was lying on the road with its arms facing away from oncoming traffic, so it was braced to offer maximum resistance to being knocked out of the way. Seriously, they could have put a WARNING: SEVERE TIRE DAMAGE sign next to it. Thanks to its camouflage colors I did not see it until it was too late to do anything except drop one mighty F-bomb.

As soon as we went over it I knew the tire was done and I made my way to the shoulder even before the excited little yellow exclamation point could light itself again with glee. The tire the BAPM took out? The same damn one we had spent 20 minutes screwing around with to get the pressure just right. While my parents worked themselves back to us, I called Dollar-Rent-A-Car, as after all it is their car. The roadside assistance people were actually very nice and directed us to the nearest Goodyear tire dealership for a replacement. We had to change the tire ourselves, which was a bit of a mess because it required expelling everything we had so carefully packed to get to the jack and spare (full sized though).


As one might expect, our tire was the one they did not have in stock and we had to wait an extra hour for it to be moved from the other store. My parents wanted to get to Wyoming today, so we let them go ahead. The girls were remarkably sanguine about the whole thing, and greatly enjoyed their feeding in the Goodyear parking lot. We finally got back on the road around 11am, a full 4 hours later than the original targeted starting time. However, I didn’t have to pay for the tire. The minimum damage waver covered it. Go figure.



After that things went remarkably smoothly. Turns out the girls travel really well, consistently being soothed by the road noise and motion. There was some awkwardness finding places to feed and change them, but between the backseat of the Jeep, some restaurants, and one stop at a Dillards we made due. The pace was not mighty, as typically we stopped for 45 minutes to an hour and then drove for 2 hours, but the miles did fly by. By the end of the day we stopped at nice motel, the Crystal Inn just north of Ogden, Utah. There we took this ultra-cute photo of them in these Pooh outfits.




Day 4:



The biggest problem with losing travel time on day 3, was that weather had moved in by day 4. It was snowing. Fortunately it was relatively light, but it still put a major slow down on the trip, especially after we got off the I-15 in Idaho Falls. For some reason we had a lot of trouble finding a decent place to change the girls in this town, with all the fast food places having nothing but tiny, filthy closets for bathrooms (and obviously no changing stations). We didn’t want to do it on in the car, as it had gotten so cold and windy outside. We finally found a nice big sink area at DADS travel stop. As per usual the woman behind the counter claimed to have been a twin. I am not certain why anyone would claim to be one if they were not, but it seems like the percentage of people we run into who claim to either have had twins or are a twin runs about 25%, which just can’t be right…



We rolled into Jackson, Wyoming around 2pm, which was already a couple of hours behind our original schedule. By the time we had a nice lunch at the Teton Steak House (family friendly… met another twin) and picked up some groceries for my parents (including a $100 beef tenderloin!) it was nearly 4 and already starting to get dark.

The final drive to my dad’s place (we often call it a ranch, but he doesn’t do a lot of real ranching on his 60+ acres. I think they have grown alfalfa and boarded horses.) is a little more than an hour, through the flats beneath the Grand Tetons, past the South entrance to Yellowstone and then over Togwotee pass, which crosses over to the other side of the Continental Divide. Finding the final road down to their place can be tricky, and was doubly tricky as they have recently started a road widening project which has completely altered the appearance and removed all previously used landmarks. By process of elimination we did eventually find the road and pulled up to my father’s place.

To discover the power was out. No good explanation why, as the storm was real light. It was actually quite pretty, as the entire place was lit by candle and lantern light. I leave you with a photo of that evening, obviously enhanced so you can see candles rather than curse the darkness.

Manilow, Why Dost Thou Continue To Plague Me?


This is the start of our Winter Trip Log. For many reasons it has taken me some time to get these up, so I will be posting multiple days together. This is Days 1+2. Next and published at almost the same time will be Days 3+4. Days 5 and beyond I will get to when I get to it. If you seriously need them to make it through your holiday season, seek psychological counseling. Or you could pay me. Paying me to write blogs would be cheaper than a shrink, I suppose. I charge hourly or alternatively I have a most reasonable weekly rate...

Day 1:

After approximately 24 hours of washing, organizing, and packing we finally were ready to hit the road around 11:20 am on Tuesday. Even after sending all gifts, winter clothes, and other random odds and ends with my father, the poor Mitsubishi Galant was still jam-packed. Fortunately traffic was real light, so even having to stop and feed the young-uns at a Carl’s Junior in Barstow, we got to Las Vegas in about 5 and a half hours.


Here are the girls sitting on the in-laws couch. They are being good here, but they spent about 3 hours screaming while poor gramma Carolyn was watching them.




Day 2:

We spent Wednesday trying to relax. I popped over to the airport to pick up our trip car, a Jeep Cherokee Laredo. I was a bit annoyed with myself for getting conned into taking some of their car rental insurance, as I always use a credit card which provides that as one of its perks. But they were tricky, asking if I wanted Super Gold Supreme Insurance, Basic Ok-I-Guess insurance, or the minimum. Well, of course I said to myself, the minimum. Except of course the minimum is actually not the minimum. “None, please” is the minimum. Sigh.




Highlight of the day was when we visited gramma Carolyn at her job at the Hilton, present home of Barry Manilow, who I have still not forgiven for stealing Stephen’s emmy. Candy and I both got Channukah haircuts at the local salon. Biggest danger was avoiding the crazy drunken old ladies that milled all over the casino trying to kiss babies with their crazy drunken lips. My parents had some car trouble (battery) so didn’t get into Vegas until late, so a potential multi-family dinner opportunity was lost. We did share some pastries though.

Dumb Idea or the Dumbest Idea I've Ever Had

Not much time to write, as we are in the final throws of packing for our epic Christmas trip and Bataan Death March. The plan is to drive to Las Vegas tomorrow, where we will spend a couple of days with Candy's parents. Then, and here is the part that even I continue to have trouble believing, then we rent a SUV and drive to Wyoming (where my father has a ranch).

To those of you counting, that is 12 hours of driving with two babies who just turned 2 months old. Considering they still tend to need to eat every 2-3 hours, this could be more than mildly painful. I will try and do my best to update as the trip progresses, but if I don't, you can imagine I look somewhat like this brief gallery of dead tired dads. I call the photo at the top, 'Oh God, my back hurts.'

Gentle readers will refrain from noting the not insubstantial tire this poor fellow carries around his middle.

If you don't hear from me soon, send sled dogs with a big barrel of Brandy. Hell, even if you do hear from me, send the booze.

Baby Personal Trainers


I think I have figured out what is going on. Please enjoy these further baby photos while I explain my theory.

The babies don't cry for no reason. They cry to motivate their parents toward better health. They are being "proactive" so that we can reach our personal fitness goals... whether we knew we had them or not.



Think about it. It seemed thoroughly arbitrary that every time I sat down or held still, the baby would freak out, even with gentle swaying, warm arms, and the whole shebang. The baby wants you to walk, hell the baby needs you to walk, and walk so fast that you really burn the carbs. With every scream I think I can hear a "move it along couch potato! I could hang a tire swing from those love handles!"



When do babies invariably freak out the worst? Right when you are trying to eat. They see the fried chicken or pasta and say, "Hey fattie-fatso! I would like a parent who lives to see me graduate from high school. Instead of wolfing down that next tater tot, why don't we try three laps around the house? Move it, move it!"



Now I haven't figured out how the sleep deprivation fits in but they do it in the army, so it has to play some part in getting you into shape. I think it breaks down your personal defenses, making you strongly susceptible to suggestion and behavior modification. Wait, that's not the army, I think that is Scientology. Or the Army of Scientology. Anyway, I am sure it is part of a good fitness regime.










So I got to get going. I think my babies have scheduled me for some Pilates at 7pm, followed by a Spin class at 3am. In the meantime, please enjoy this picture of Two Babies and A Cat. While the cat is not presently wearing a hat, I was considering giving it one when the picture was taken...

OK! OK! I once again give you Baby Pictures!


I have been back at work for two weeks now. So far the results have been mixed. The sleep deprivation leaves me fuzzy a lot of the time. Staring blankly at the screen is not uncommon. It doesn't help I got a brand new computer at work just as I got back, which is a real easy time sink. (Setting up each new, little thing can eat an hour, easy). Even getting in to work is tough, as there is almost always something going on with babies which will just take up a few more minutes...




We definitely have needed some help. So far we have a night nurse (or doula) who comes once a week, allowing us full night sleeps. Quite pricey, but worth it for the sanity it maintains. We also have a friend we are paying to help babysit with Candy on weekdays while I am at work. Even so Candice is alone a couple of days a week, which is tough. Come January we are going to have to find a more permanent Babysitter/Nanny solution.






These guys grow so fast. As tiny as they still are, it is truly amazing how far they have grown. They are just now transitioning from Newborn diapers to the 1st level of baby diaper. Take this picture of Rylie and those tiny little chicken legs. She has put on so much weight we now have trouble separting her from Kayla. For a while Rylie had a little scratch on her nose we used as a cheat, but it healed so now we are back at square one. I suggested another scratch, but apparently that constitutes some sort of child abuse. Candy thinks we could paint one of her toenails instead. I say lets get a Tyson-style face tattoo and leave it at that.




The past week or so has actually been quite exciting, as the level of alertness of the girls has taken a definite upswing. They are looking at everything that comes in close and have even given us some smiles and what looked like a little giggle from Kayla. We broke out the Einstein Play Gym, which comes with everything from rattles to a little mirror. The girls are alternatively fascinated and horrified. I guess something with so many doodads can be a bit overwhelming.



Just dealing with the needs of the babies is enough work. Between feeding, diapering, burping, and soothing there is not a lot of extra time. Now that they are doing new things we have a whole new time sink: Staring at the babies. We spent close to an hour this week watching Rylie whap a stuffed star that was dangling from the Gym. We had planned on doing other things... but the baby was just working so hard to hit that floating star. It can be a serious danger. It brings joy, but the stress one feels at not having accomplished something basic, like washing the dirty baby clothes, brings the exact opposite of joy.



Managing the stress is a major issue. Candice has developed some hives, what look like a allergic reaction, but as far as our doctor can tell it appears what she is allergic to is the stress and lack of sleep. Probably some major hormone changes can be thrown in there as well. Now she is scratching all the time, which does not help either of our moods.



On the whole things are good. Every time we meet another mother of multiples they tell us we just have to get through the first X # of months and then things get so much better. So we are putting our heads down and pushing on through. Not even the Dark Ages lasted forever.





Some of our favorite things to do are to buy cute things to put the babies in. Yes, even I with my high testosterone level am vulnerable to the ultra-cute baby outfit. I feel just a bit less manly...but then I recall I just fathered twins and my stud quotient perks right back up. Here, for instance, are these cute towels with animal heads we bought. The green one is an alligator, the tan one a lion. If you are thinking they look a little big, you are right. We bought toddler sized towels by accident. Oh well, who doesn't like a really big towel?

Alternatively, you can dress your baby up like a hard rocker. Nothing says bad ass baby like the Ramones or the Beastie Boys. This allows the parent the illusion of not being an old person with a baby, by starting the process of living vicariously at the earliest age possible.













Once again, thanks to everyone who has given or made clothes. If you still haven't seen your outfit, stay tuned. We will get through all of them eventually. Now, let me finish with an honorable mention to Patricia, who made these adorable little sweaters.



Is that enough pictures to feed your appetities for Babies? No? Get some help people.
Or get a baby...just not mine. Although a rental is a definite possibility...

I Promise Next Time Will Be Pictures Of The Girls...



In the meantime I am still using the time I would previously have used for procrastination (or writing blog entries) to cleaning out my e-mail, a task which one might describe as Herculean, akin to cleaning out those Augean stables of myth. If I was more willing to toss everything it would go much quicker. But if I tossed everything, how would I ever find gems like this one:

Correspondence of Two English Gentlemen

This is an actual series of e-mail correspondences that started, oddly enough with some confusion over whether the baseball player Kirby Puckett was forced into retirement by being beaned with a baseball badly enough to break his jaw. The first gentlemen writes:

"On September 28, [1995] however, Puckett was struck in the face by a Dennis Martinez pitch. The blow left Puckett with a shattered jaw. He attempted to make his comeback in 1996 and hit .360 in spring training. Then, on March 30, he awoke to find he couldn't see out of his right eye."

He got the beaning of all beans. I will admit that it probably didn't exacerbate his glaucoma, as it hit him on the left and his right eye went blind, but the timing is a little suspicious. Let me hit you in the head hard enough to break your jaw and lets see how the rest of your head likes it. Remember he eventually died of a stroke, another head-related item.

Even so, I conceed the point.

To which the second gentleman, a man of most ill-repute responds:

I concede the beaning.

Aren't we polite today!

These tepid beginnings rapidly escalate out of control, leading to this entire exchange, starting with the dignified hero:

Do you mock me, sir?

Swlap! Swlap! [Glove strikes each cheek]

Pistols at dawn. You may choose the location. My second will be Sir Harold of Teplitam, a most upstanding chap. If we both survive I suggest tea in the Buearegard Gardens afterwards, with a spot of crumpet.

Good day, sir.

I said good day!

Then the loathesome roustabout:

I accept! I demand satisfaction!

As my previous second, Lord Skiffington, was unfortunately shot in the head due to an unfortunate wayward shot during my last duel, I am forced to rely on the services of Edward, the piss-boy.

Do not fret, Edward! You shall make a grand second. Do you know what is required of a second? No? It's fantastically easy; you will be fine. You do know how to fire a pistol, yes? Good boy. Please instruct the stable-master to bring my horses around. What's that you're suggesing, Edward? Why would I be leaving town? Oh, the impertinence of you, Edward -- no, my boy, I merely feel like, er, a ride. Yes. A ride.

Some time passes, where assumedly both gentlemen prepare for their tense and well thought out duel... Then another correspondence from our tale's villain:

Despite my initial cowardice, I decided to be true to my word and show my manhood -- er, manliness. I was there for our duel.

Where, sir, where you?

In your cowardly absence, Sir Harold took up your pistol. Apparently, Sir Harold informed you neither of his extreme nearsightedness nor his fear of spectacles.

As I fired into the air -- after all, I bear no malice toward Sir Harold -- he fired wildly and shot poor Edward the Piss-Boy dead.

This being my second second to die in a duel, I fear that no one will second me in the future. My dueling future is doomed!

Outraged, our hero replies immediately:

Apparently you informed good Sir Harold of the locale, but failed to send me the same missive. Now while Harold is a true blue-blood, a gentleman, and a crack shot, he is not, sadly, capable of speech, having lost his tongue in an unfortunate croquet incident during the Boer Wars. He moaned something at me this morn, to be certain, but I assumed it was his usual good-natured jests and high feelings.

It was I that figured you for a coward, having never heard back as to the location, which I believe you will recall I left up to you. I figured you had scurried back to Normandy or Gibralter or wherever such neer-do-wells such as yourself call home. Perhaps Sussex.

But now Sir Harold has appeared with a detailed diagram done in pastels (or is it oils?) of him firing at a cowering second while a bewildered nobleman looks on. You should see the subtle gradations of reds. A tour de force. Anyway, clearly this is a misunderstanding resulting in the death of a peasant.

So no harm done.

I expect you to bring your third and appear before the gates of Lorkanmanshirebergexx at dawn tomorrow. No make that 10, I am having my car detailed.

Sir Harold can then kill him and we can have that spot of tea I was so looking forward to. The Buearegard gardens do have the loveliest honeyed tea cakes...

The bootblack is properly chastised:

Very well. Lorkanmanshirebergexx at 10 it shall be. I will bring my third -- a toad, which my 11-year-old niece has cleverly named Mister Toad. Although Mister Toad is quite unable to hold a pistol -- in fact, the pistol is quite a bit larger than Mister Toad himself -- I do find that he provides a most unexpected level of emotional support. Oh, Mister Toad! You comfort me in ways I have never before known.

Speaking of hopping creatures, please inform Sir Harold that indeed, I do have his false leg in my possession after all. I am not quite certain how it ended up with my irons and woods, but here it is. I do owe him an apology: the bad is mine.

Someday, I hope to hear from Sir Harold -- well, not so much from Sir Harold as from anyone else -- the story of the dangerous leech that took his limb.

Should Sir Harold be unable to fire his weapon at such a small creature with acceptable aim, I do believe he will find that Mister Toad can be crushed under his good foot without undue effort.

Very much looking forward to tea in the Buearegard Gardens. I wonder, sir: I am very familiar with the Beauregards -- and initially, I thought that it was this fine family that named the gardens. Ah, but twice now, you have informed me that the proper spelling of the name is Buearegard -- clearly a different family. I know no Buearegards -- perhaps you could arrange an introduction?

To which the dashing young gent can only express his delight at the opportunity to assist another in social advancement:

Oh, the Buearegards! A very old family. They predate the written word, don't you know.

They live in caves and smash the skulls of passerbys for food. Could not be more ancient. Their youngest, little Lord Chaka, has just grown his first full body beard and is most dashing.

And by dashing, once again I am refering to how he will crush your skull and then eat you.

But the gardens are lovely.

10 it is. Smashing.

I suppose I must mention that in all likelihood I will be completely invisible, for tomorrow is a Friday and I am afraid my religious proclivities insist on transparency on that holiest of days. Be assured I will be there. Feel free to tell the toad to shoot wildly at any disturbance or shimmering in the air. Harold, of course, will shoot your amphibian or barring that, smash it and then eat it (he's of French descent don't you know).

Then Marmalade. I am atitter!

But sadly, like much in life, it ends with a wimper:

French? I am afraid I must cancel. I am allergic to the French.

I was wondering about the cause of today's hives.

I am still available for tea, if you would like.

I do not believe the tea issue has ever been satisfactorly resolved.

S.

P.S. Kudos to the villain Todd who ably assisted me in going so off the rails.

Now I Am Freaking Myself Out




I was cleaning up a mass of refuse from my old e-mails when I came across this chilling prediction:

"Okay, dudes, what the hell was the Terry Schiavo business all about?"
-Amy Lo

As part of a dark ritual 15 years ago, Karl Rove, Tom Delay and Dick Cheney withdrew all of the Democrat/Liberal mojo from America and placed it within the body of young Floridian woman. As you might imagine, the human mind was not designed to absorb that much Progressivism, and poor Ms. Schiavo's brain melted like a Dairy Queen Blizzard on a hot tarmac.

If Ms. Schiavo were to die, the Mojo would be re-released into the atmosphere, revitalizing the American Left. To protect their carefully choreographed plans, the Republican Cabal made sure Terry was put on life support, hopefully indefinitely.

Things went along quite swimmingly, until George Bush announced his run for presidency and got the backing of the Republican establishment. At this point, the Unholy Prince of Lies and Lord of Chaos realized he had let things go too far, and that some things went beyond a good practical joke on the Maker. Releasing Terry's husband from his dark slumber, the Devil tried to right the situation immediately, but it turns out there really is a lot of red tape that even the Father of All Whores has to go through.

Anyway, eventually his succubi and imps got all the i's dotted and t's crossed, allowing poor Miss Schiavo to finally pass on to her final reward, and consequently releasing the bottled up Liberal mojo.

And what happened in the first election after her death? I tell you, I have chills running up and down my spine in both directions. Lo, the Beast walks among us and is heavily involved in Florida politics. Be ye afraid and run henceforth to the Keys for Buffet Margarita Tuesdays.

Oh, and I saw the new Tenacious D movie. Eh, unless you are a die hard freak I would probably skip it. There are moments of greatness, particularly the opening sequence and the battle with the Devil. They should have made the whole movie a Rock Opera (like those scenes were), but they wussed out. Or their financial backers did. Either way, I would just buy the CD (or download it, whatever the kids DO nowadays) but skip the middle 4 tracks, which blow. If you have never heard of the D, I strongly encourage you to check them out despite the weakosity of their latest product:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenacious_D

Warning, these guys swear like crazy and mock-praise the devil. If you don't think that is funny, I might look elsewhere for my entertainment.

If any of you baby addicts are still with me, I promise the next post will be filled with cuteness. I just had to cleanse the palate.

Important Life Lessons



I have been thinking about collecting a list of important life lessons to pass on to my girls. If anybody has any they would like to add, please feel free to add it in the comments.

Lesson #1:
The close door button on the elevator doesn't really do anything except maybe.. MAYBE cancel a recent open door button push. It is basically a giant placebo, made to give anxious elevator travelers something to do if they can't wait the 3 seconds for the doors to close on their own. I have run tests, so I know this to be true. Any feeling you have to the contrary is just an effect of the intermittent reinforcement caused by occasionally hitting the button at the same time as the door was going to close anyway. Bottom line: The close door button is for suckers.

Been a little over a week since I last posted. This is mostly because I have not been up to anything really different. Feel free to re-read the Shut-In entry to see how most of my days are going.

We are ramping up for me to go back to work. This should be some fun. On the plus side we are going to try a Night Nurse/Doula to see how that affects our sanity. The negative is that they are not cheap, so even in the best case scenario I doubt we will use one more than a couple of times a week. We are also scheduling sitters/help to come and get Candy through the next 3 weeks. So far we got two days a week covered. We will need more. I think I am coming to terms with the idea of spending a fair amount of change on Baby Care assistance.

Turns out babies cruelly go through cycles of growth spurts and behavior change. It usually takes at least a week to develop a good routine where you feel comfortable feeding and getting the baby to sleep. Unfortunately something like every 2 weeks the baby's needs/patterns/general fussiness changes and you are back to square 1. Well, maybe square 1.5. It is my understanding that this cycle slows (i.e. a change every 1 week stretches to 2 weeks to 4 weeks to 3 months, etc). Good Lord I hope so.



They grow real fast. Kayla just measured in at 7.5 pounds, 2 punds more than when she was born. For those of you keeping score that is a 40% jump in body mass in a single month. While it may sometime seem like I can gain weight that fast, I really can't. It would be like gaining 80 pounds in a month. Of course, if I ate my full every 3 hours it would help. Rylie is also gaining quickly, although we do not have an official rate (because of Kayla's stay in the NICU and Rylie's tiny birth weight they got on different doctor visit schedules), but I can tell you it is much harder telling them apart with a single glance. Rylie has a smaller mouth and a rounder head, but at an angle with their mouth covered... definitely getting tricky.

Our longest trip was an ill-advised foray down to the ocean. Basically we were having a really bad day, with not much sleep and the girls acting real fussy. I was depressed even before we talked to our architects, who delayed our house renovations AT LEAST another month and half. Apparently this is because, and I shit you not, the structural engineer has run off to be with his wife in Budapest. Yeah, that's in Hungary. We felt powerless and very unhappy. But we were bound and determined to do this beach trip because we had been putting it off and were feeling shut-in and wanted to at least accomplish this one damn thing.

Yeah, maybe not the best attitude for starting a mini-road trip. Another reason this was dumb is that it took us so long to get going that we didn't leave the house until 2pm on a Friday. If you are familiar with LA traffic you may be thinking to yourself, hmm, I bet the drive back might be unpleasant. More on that in a sec.




We ended up taking Topanga Canyon down to Malibu and stopping for food and view at Gladstone's. When we arrived at the restaurant we were surly, grumpy folks (at least I was) but an hour of sun and surf with coconut shrimp and a beer and I felt relaxed and human again. I was starting to think this trip was a good idea... and then we tried to get home at 4:30 on a Friday. There is really no way to avoid significant traffic and we didn't. And we also discovered, while road noise and motion sooth the babies, being stuck in traffic does not. It kind of is like Speed, keep the car above 55 mph or the babies explode. When your baby cries for an hour 3 feet from your head... you will develop a headache.

Fortunately, most days and most outings are not like that. Like take this trip to see Gramps (my father). That was much more pleasant.

The New Parent Shut-In


It took me nearly three weeks to get down all the birth, hospital, and getting home excitement. Fortunately, that has not left me that far behind, as it turns out I don't really do much any more. As far as I can tell babies are God's way of saying, congratulations, you are now a hermit.

Interspersed are the beginnings of our Baby Fashion show, showing off all the outfits people made or purchased for us. If you don't see yours the most likely reason is that it is still too big. The second most likely reason is the baby spit up or crapped on it before we could get a picture. Be patient, they can't stay incontinent forever. Also, most pictures in this round feature Rylie, as I am going in chronological order and she was home a week before Kayla (one is Kayla.. can YOU tell which one?).



A typical day starts around 2-3am. Usually only one of the two little beasties starts crying. What we do at this point depnds how much sleep we have gotten so far. On an "optimal" night Candy has gotten to sleep around 10-11, while I stayed up later, say midnight-ish to adminster a final bottle feeding to both in an attempt to get them to sleep nice and hard. On these rare occasions that Candy has managed 3+ hours of sleep she will get up and feed both, with my drowsy assistance. If our luck is running really good we can get them fed and back to sleep in their crib in around 45 minutes.


As one might imagine, most nights don't go nearly so well. It seems as though the number of times both will simply feed and then crash into a deep sleep has been decreasing. We keep explaining this hyper-hungry behavior as growth spurts, although I am starting to suspect the babies are just taunting me. This thought crosses my mind most often in the early am hours. Anyway, it seems that on a more typical night Candy has been unable to sleep until 11-12-ish and I am just trying to get to sleep closer to 1-2am when all baby hell breaks loose. Exhausted, we tend to perform baby triage, grabbing only one baby at a time, feeding them in bed and trying to get them to fall asleep right there for just one precious hour for the love of God! This inefficient system is without-a-doubt extremely dumb, as it just leads to babies waking us up in shifts all night. However, when running on under an hour of sleep you do whatever it takes to get 10 more minutes right now. I would kill your grandmother for five. Don't test me.


Whether it was a good night or a bad one, we tend to right our ship by daylight and get back to dual feeding and babies that appear to remember how to sleep again. While still interrupted every 3 hours, I tend to get more sleep as Candy is awake a lot of this time, taking some of the extra burden I tried to take around midnight. Most days I "sleep" in to 11am, giving me a solid 6-8 hours of non-contiguous sleep. Funny how important that contiguous part is. At this point we get up, do the 11am feeding, and then worry about our own lunch. If we are going out we shower first. If not, then the shower, for me, is a bit more optional.



Hey, two of my roommates live in regularly soiled diapers, so I think I can skip an occasional shower when I haven't even seen the outdoors for days at a stretch. Don't judge. If you are visting, I probably showered just for you. Be polite.


All outings are 3 hours or less, as this is the nominal feeding period. On very rare occasions where breast feeding can be arranged "on-the-go" we can be out longer, but this has been very rare indeed. I should also note that 80% of our trips out of the house involve medical care of some variety, so the whooping it up has been minimal. Because of the extreme young age of our cohorts, our doctor has instructed us to keep their public exposure to a minimum. Don't want them to pick up a cold, or God forbid, the flu. With their tiny lungs and under-developed immune systems it could be life threatening. I believe twice now we have eaten outside, doing some patio dining: once at Sharkey's and again at Maria's.


Most days we have no specific outing planned and that works out well for the girls, as one or the other is a little extra fussy. There is almost no freak out so major that it is a big deal to handle in daylight hours, but it takes time. Time to feed. Time to change diapers or clothes. Then there is laundry (those new clothes got to come from somewhere) and dish washing (the bottles got to come from somewhere, too). Getting them to sleep again. Usually hours go by and the day is over before you know it. And you are tired from the lack of sleep, so this is just fine with you.



This leads to the new parent shut-in syndrome. I can easily go a day or two without leaving the house. Hell, without putting on pants... although I usually do just so I don't scare the kids. Or the mailman. Or my dog, really. Stuff I was hoping this time off would allow me to do has not come easily. Simple things like reading, writing, even computer stuff. If you always have a baby in your hands the only thing you can easily do is watch TV. Thank God for Tivo.



To finish the day: we usualy worry about dinner around 7pm. Most days we cook something, of various levels of complication. It could be frozen food someone else gave us (thanks everyone), a traditional store bought frozen meal, or something requiring at least a little bit of prep (Taco night!). By the time we get fed and the kids get fed and the dog gets fed and everything is cleaned up we are back to 9pm and about to start the whole cycle again.

I do recognize the irony. Candy was stuck on bed rest for 4 months. I am merely under house arrest. I go out of my way to allow her out of the house, as she really deserves to finally streatch those gams of hers. Yes, I have switched to 30s hardboiled detective vernacular. You don't like it I'll give you a belly full of lead from my twin heaters. Now, quit your malarkey or you'll be seeing cats pajamas in your poolside cabana, if you get my meaning.

I am quite certain you won't. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Sleep deprivation does strange things to a mind. I find myself dancing to Candy's IPOD at 3am. Funky, funky dances. No, you will see no pictures of this.

We now take a break from my all-consuming experiment in new fatherhood to slip, momentarily, into a highly partisan fit of gloating:



WooHoo! Eat it Repubs! House and Senate -- A Ha Ha Ha!

We now return you to our previously scheduled non-partisan and sweet new child blogging.

The N.I.C.U. Queen



We chose our OB-GYN for two reasons. One, we were misled into believing we could switch HMO medical groups after Candy was pregnant to get a doctor we wanted. Turns out not so much: pregnancy is a pre-existing condition so we had to stay with the doctor in our medical group. It is possible to get around this with a permission letter from your new medical group saying they accept the new patient despite their obvious flaws, but this was obviously going to be a huge pain in the ass. We decided against exploring this option as Two: our OB-GYN would deliver us at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center, which has arguably one of the best Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) in all of Southern California.

With modern technology doctors can deliver babies that will survive as early as 22-24 weeks. This is just over 5 months. These pound and a half babies are a mess, with nothing properly developed yet, from skin to heart to lungs to eyes to liver, etc. Going into this we hoped we would not need to deliver that early and would therefore not need this great NICU. We felt very fortunate to make it all the way to 36 weeks before our babies were delivered, placing us right around the median delivery age for twins. Twins still tend to be born a bit small, but 3-4 weeks earlier than the traditional “singleton” baby is just fine in most cases. So we assumed we were in the clear. Well, you know what they say about what “assume” makes of you and me…

The hospital has no middle ground between babies being allowed upstairs to be with their mothers and the NICU. So when they finally determined that “Baby B” was not going to be able to rapidly clear her lungs, they reserved a cradle for her in the NICU, Bed 11 to be exact. Dazed and Confused (my new ring tone by the way), her mother and I settled down in our tiny hospital room complete with fold out husband-bed, dealing with our brand new baby as best we could and hoping for better news in the morning.




The NICU is a secure, sterile space. To enter you hit a button outside two imposing doors and then stare into a HAL-9000 looking security eye. Someone might answer right away, or you may have to hit the button repeatedly. Eventually you state your name and that you are a parent of a NICU baby and they unlock the door. This gets you into the foyer where there is a check-in desk and a hand-washing station. This is where you need to scrub your hands up to the elbow for a full three minutes, like you were a doctor about to go into surgery. The first time you do it you feel as though your hands have never been cleaner. By the 20th time you feel a bit like an overworked dish washer.

The main room of the NICU is row upon row of baby incubators, plastic boxes with little doors on the side, as if instead of babies one were handling toxic or radioactive materials. Every incubator is hooked up to a series of monitors. Every baby has its heart, temperature, oxygen, and respiratory rate monitored. Alarms are a regular occurance in the NICU, with one going off somewhere every 5-10 minutes. The majority are reading errors or tiny temporary spikes, but the nurses are always running this way and that, punching buttons, adjusting monitor leads, and calling for help. Despite all that there is a definitely sense of tranquility. These babies are quite sick and weak and most are likely to stay that way for a long time, so you can’t sustain a sense of desperate urgency.





The NICU is set up in rows of three, with about 18 total beds, nearly all filled. Our baby is in the middle incubator in one of these rows. On either side of her are seriously premature babies, little 1-2 pounders, so undeveloped and so small they don’t really look like babies at all but some other poor, sick mammal. Each has so many machines hooked up to it you can hardly see the child. Air oscillators pumping air into their lungs, blood transfusing, intravenous drugs pumped into their hands, bright UV lights helping their livers break down their body waste products. These really tiny babies basically have their own 1-on-1 nurse assigned to them, showing how constant monitoring is required to keep them alive.

Our daughter was born at 5 pounds, 6 ounces, truly a giant among this teeny, tiny population. While initially given an IV and some oxygen, in just a day or two she has both those removed, leaving only a NG (nasogastric) tube for putting food directly into her stomach through her nose. This is required as her breathing rate is much too high for normal feeding, spiking as high as 140 breaths a minute, a hyperventilating pant that she is doing to counter the decreased oxygen she is receiving because of the fluid in her lungs. Watching her, you can see her breathing ease and slow, then something catches (assumedly the fluid) and the breathing rate skyrockets again. Even so, she is clearly in a whole different class of health than her surrounding incubator-mates. A real Queen of the NICU.





Candy first got to see her second born (by a minute) in the late afternoon of the next day. Still literally stapled together, she had to be wheeled down to the NICU and propped up to wash her hands. She would be able to leave the hospital in 3 more days. Kayla, who we were finally able to name once Candy had seen her, would be there almost 2 weeks.

The hardest part of visiting Kayla in the NICU was definitely leaving her. Especially if you arrived before feeding so you were allowed to hold her for a while. Putting your child back in the plastic cube to have fluid pumped into her stomach… that is tough. Throw in some exhaustion and sleep deprivation and it was not hard to tear up a little bit. Sometimes I had to literally flee the ward to keep myself together.




The second hardest part was getting realistic information out of the NICU staff. The nurses are completely geared to ease fears and settle nerves, so they always had very encouraging but highly vague tidbits to give out. -- She is a little better. She was good last night. She should not be here too long. -- This is not entirely their fault, as the final say on child health really belongs to the doctors. If a nurse says something to get a parents hopes up or makes them upset and it turns out to be different than what the doctor would say… well, they would get a lot of crap. NICU babies appear to not be assigned a particular doctor, necessarily, but are assigned to the staff. This makes it more difficult to find the person who can really answer your question. Particularly the critical question: Realisitically, how long will my child be here? If I had one complaint with our stay at St. Joe’s, it would be that there should be some more systematic way to get information on our NICU children without having to ask whatever random nurse is on duty. It really led to a lot of unnecessary frustration with an already difficult situation.

After seven days Kayla’s breathing finally cleared. Candy, Rylie, and I had been home for 3 days at that point getting the nursery prepped and adjusting our lives to fit this new significant responsibility. It was sort of like we had a starter baby, to get ourselves adjusted to this new crazy parent-thing. Except that we had to go to the hospital every day, usually carting along our tiny little companion.

We wanted to take Kayla home right then, but what we had not been told before was that even when her breathing cleared, it would take days to wean her off her stomach feeding tube. Until it could be demonstrated that she could gain weight from regular feeding they would not release her. It was at this point I became very frustrated and bitched incessantly to anyone foolish enough to engage me on the subject. I am sure my increased irritability from lack of sleep did not help.

To complicate matters further, Kayla took to breast feeding right away, but had some initial trouble with the bottle. As we wanted to get her home as soon as possible, this meant we had to try and be at every non-lavage (lavage is medi-speak for stomach tube) feeding. At first this was not so bad when the non-lavage was only once a day. However she did very well and it ramped up quickly, so we soon found ourselves traveling to the hospital over and over at all times of night, including a mildly scary midnight feeding where we had to enter the hospital through the emergency room and travel through the whole empty hospital. Have you seen a hospital-based horror movie? Yeah, it was like that.



Finally we managed an all day hospital stay where they gave us a special room, so we didn’t have to go back and forth from our home. Rylie and Kayla met for the first time since their birth ten days before. This was an astounding success and Kayla finally got her nose tube out and was sent home on Sunday, October 29, at the tender age of 11 days. We could finally celebrate, which we did with a nice Belgian lambic. Of course, now the work has really begun.






This ends this little series, but I assure you there will be much more of these little rascals to come…