Happiness is Having Someone Help Hold Your Baby



Today's theme is clearly baby holding. That is my mom at Christmas (actually a week before X-mas, the earliest I have ever celebrated it), Vicki on my epic Winter road trip, and Eric on the night we went to see the Pick of Destiny (check out the November archive... yeah I have had this picture floating around for a while.) Don't get me wrong. I love holding my children. Having both babies asleep on top of you is indescribably wonderful, but sometimes it is nice to be able to go to the bathroom without having to mobilize the entire 3rd Army. Presently I am in no danger of baby-underexposure.

As I mentioned previously (Monday, I think), Candy returns to work next Tuesday. I am thrilled as this has already had an immediate benefit: It got me out of Jury duty.

I called the Court and told them how with my wife working, I was the sole care-giver during the mornings. Bing-Bang-Boom, Jury excuse accepted. Now if OJ walks again you can blame me.



The other immediate advantage will be a balancing of the familial scales of justice. Candy spent over 4 months on bed rest followed by almost 4 additional months of staying at home with the children. I took off roughly two months for child bonding/child care, but that still puts me way behind in terms of self-sacrifice. It is hard work for one person to juggle two babies. Thanks to Darcy we have managed to minimize the effect, but the baby juggle has been a significant percentage of Candy's day.

Digression:

The Baby Juggle. Optimally one of the two babies is asleep or at least sleepy. This baby will be put down somewhere, usually the swing where she can be swung into a near-coma of torpidity (look it up). If the second baby is asleep, no problem, but then that is not a juggle. No, usually the second baby is fussing, wanting to be rocked, bounced, walked and soothed. It may want music. It may want something sparkly to look at. Whatever it is you will move heaven and earth to figure it out. If the first baby is not completely asleep, you need to stay in sight, preferably with the proper amount of cooing, bobbing and generally getting some attention. If you leave the room, it will scream. Now if you are fortunate, the second baby will drift off thanks to your hard work... which if you time it right happens just as the first baby has gotten fed up with its present situation. Swap babies, repeat. If you are unlucky, both freak out and you are relegated to some combination of walking with two babies, rocking with two babies, or singing louder than they can scream to the tune of Proud Mary. At some point the babies usually collapse (this can be hours) but it is highly unlikely that you will be in a position to move. I hope you set yourself near the remote and do not have to pee...

I am not the sort of husband to come home and demand that dinner be ready, but sometimes in a relationship you have personal demands. They may be selfish, but there they are. Pre-babies, either one of us could make unreasonable demands of the other (clean this, fix that, cook that, etc) and as part of the general ebb and flow of relationships we would give in to each other. Probably this is a symptom of co-dependency, but that is a whole different kettle of fish. Post-babies I have to be very, very cautious (I will say right now I sometimes fail in this) to not make any large demands of my spouse. I mean, seriously, she has dedicated 2/3 of a year of her life to gestating and raising my children. Asking anything more kind of makes me an ass.

Not that I plan on immediately bitching and moaning and carrying on, but when she goes back to work things will be a bit more even. Yes, she is still not full-time and yes, she still has a longer commute and yes, she still has to deal with breast feeding and all that entails...

Crap.

At least I got off that Jury Duty.

Why Don't They Ever Call it Leakfast? Wait...I think I just answered my own question.



A week ago Candy and I hosted our first social event since the Baby Explosion (tm): A Sunday brunch to celebrate the lovely bride's 35th birthday. This event had a lot to live up to, as the last major celebration had been the (Annual?) Turkey Fry Extravaganza, complete with immolation danger. We set the event to start at 11:30am, because, well any later and it would be lunch, wouldn't it? Turns out we probably could have used a 3pm start.

As I have probably mentioned before, getting anything done with two babies is difficult. If the babies refuse to be put down, as they are occasionally inclined, then there is a limited set of tasks one can perform. Things involving boiling, frying, whacking, heavy lifting, or scouring are just not do-able. Even more mundane or limited tasks, like organizing piles of paper, are greatly slowed by the presence of a baby tucked under the arm. With two adults, one can be assigned to baby duty, but not only does this cut man power in half, but a full baby freak-out (the odds of which seem to increase the more babies one is forced to juggle) will rapidly reduce either adult to a puddle of broken dreams.



I preface with all this info to let you know that even though we had a full week to plan, clean, and prep it should not come as any sort of surprise that virtually nothing was ready come Sunday morning. Some things we managed to scramble and address (garbage/table setting/cooler set-up), others were triaged away (backyard doggie-present clean-up/dresser remained solidly in the middle of the living room/extra table set-up). Some things just got dropped in the midst of the swirl people arriving, like all the cheeses were put out, but the giant box of crackers never left the cupboard. One nice thing was that everyone was more than willing to help out with the babies, so Candy and I were able to concentrate on our more party-ly duties.




Despite all the pre-game madness, the party appeared to be a rousing success. We had bagels, cheese, fruit, pastries, quiche, and waffles for roughly 25 people. Candy made something apparently called a "strata" that looks suspiciously like a giant omelette bake (heavy on cheese and egg). One thing I know for sure: People Love Bacon. I cooked up three pounds of the stuff on my stove's griddle (may it rest in peace), and it never seemed to last long enough to go from one side of the room to another. I cooked so much bacon that I over-flowed the stove's grease trap, which led to a more than mildly disgusting adventure in internal stove cleaning.





With all our running around, we did not get a camera out until rather late in the party, so you will notice a general lack of photos of the actual food. Scattered throughout this post are the shots we did get, which I like to call variously: Soft Focus of Caer and Child, Millie Angering a Baby, Kelly Takes Liberties With Our Bear, What Are Amy and Steve Looking At?, and Tim "James Dean" Powers.

I don't think we got any photos of ourselves, which was probably also for the best. I was running around so much that morning I never even got around to combing my hair, not to mention taking a shower. Luckily I generally sport a "ruggedly unkempt" look. That is the best way possible of saying I am kinda a slob.

It my cross to bare.

The Latest Skinny



I presently sit in the calm between Space Telescope proposal storms, so finally I have some time to catch up on my blog-o-vation. I mean seriously, the last real post was a late posting about Christmas. So sad.

I hereby pledge that to make up for the serious let down I will post to this blog EVERY DAY this week. That is my solemn promise to you. If I fail to meet this goal you may punish me by tossing wet baby seals at my windows. I can not, however, be held responsible for any violations of the Endangered Species Act.

Today's picture theme is sleepy babies, although I throw a curve ball at the end.



So since we last met out here in the internets the girls have turned 3 months, a full financial quarter. You will be happy to know they exceeded expectations and they have been raised from a Hold to a Strong Buy. They are very much aware of their world around them now. They can make eye contact across a room or, more importantly, be entertained by a mobile or blinking lights for a good half an hour allowing us to put them down for a blessed second. They laugh and make noises, as if they were trying to talk back to us. Also very nice, they are getting better and better at going to sleep (12-6am the babies know is sleepy time) and, more importantly, STAYING asleep. We had our first full 6 hours of sleep.

Heaven.



I am back at work for reals this time. The first time (back in early December) was a half-assed affair, tucked as it was between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It really was just to keep me in the loop, rather than a chance to accomplish anything. We are just about fully adjusted to my working regularly, so therefore it is time to knock everything higgly-piggly again and send Candy back to work. She is due to return in early February (just around the corner) so chaos should continue to rule.


We continue to make baby steps (ha ha!) toward starting construction on the house, which I believe may be completed before man walks on Mars. Maybe. The actual "predicted" start date is now April. I will believe it when I see it. In the meantime, though, everybody wants more money. So that's cool.



Freaky-est thing to happen? The ignition in Candy's car jammed... with the car still running. She could take the key out and everything, but we had no way to turn the engine off. Eventually I had to start pulling fuses at random until I got to one that made the engine die. On the plus side, we are now AAA members. You can, in fact, join AAA and then immediately call for a free tow. With tows costing ~$60 (if you find someone not out to screw you), the $70 initial membership fees seem fairly reasonable. Not so helpful, perhaps, if your car stalls on the side of the highway in Death Gulch, New Mexico, but it worked fine with our car dead in our driveway.

Candy is also back performing her improv magic. The girls are very supportive, as you can see by the pictures below. And they haven't even seen a show yet! That is a serious fan base.




OK, there is Monday. I will see you all back here tomorrow...

Or a Baby Harp Seal will die.

S.

Nothing to see here...

Sorry about the blog delay. Crazy week with Hubble Space Telescope proposal deadlines and the birth of my new little neice, Claire Huxtable. Or was it Claire Madeleine Colbert? Anyway, throw in the general difficulty of no spare time where twins are involved and you get no blog.

I apologize. Please tune in next week for fresh blog action and many cute baby pics.

JB4

The Plague Years



Sorry for the long delay in finishing the exciting, non-stop action tale that is Winter Trip ’06. Sometimes there are other things in life besides blogging. No it’s true! Sure, I could have tossed off an update but you don’t want a half-ass blog. You people deserve the full ass that is my blog.

So when we last left our band of merry gentlefolk they had recently arrived at their final destination deep in the wilds of Wyoming. With no electric power, it seemed our protagonists were going to have to revert to barbarism, striking at each other with clubs and eating the flesh of the weakest man-child. Normally one likes to wait a week or two before resorting to such desperate measures, but I have always been a bit of a go-getter and felt that I should probably get a jump on this one. One never wants to be the last to revert to barbarism. Sadly we will never know what man-child I was going to eat first, as the power resumed before I could even select a properly blunt object for my club.

It turns out that perhaps I should have gone through with my hastily put together plan for cannibalism, as something I ate turned out to be tainted with Bubonic plague… or Ebola… or Mad Beaver disease. OK, I don’t know what it was, but I know what the results were: vomiting and lots of it. Chills and fever were bosom companions the first night, followed by diarrhea the likes of which I hate to describe to a reader with sensibilities as delicate as yourself. Let us just say I could have sworn I had eaten solid food in the past 48 hours, but my exertions showed no signs of it. Uncontrolled vomiting at the same time (that first night was a pip) was not conducive to the reliable maintenance of hygienic undergarments. There, that is certainly more than you hoped to read. Hope I did not catch you over a morning Danish.




While the vomiting lasted a mere 6-8 hours, the accompanying symptoms were roughly 2 days in duration and then some substantial recovery weakness for another day or so. To make matters worse, one by one everyone in the house succumbed to the dread malady. First my step mom, then my father. I was really concerned about Candy and the babies, but they avoided the scourge. Still, it was not a Merry Xmas, as by the 25th three of the four adults were in various stages of illness and poor Candy was taking care of two babies and us at the same time.



The cause of the pestilence is still unknown. My step mother was quite certain it was some sort of virus I contracted in Idaho or Utah. My belief is that some sort of food stuff we all partook from was corrupted. Food poisonings of all sorts are dramatically under-reported in this country. The speed that it went through the house and the fact that the people I interacted the most with, my wife and children, did not get sick leads me to believe bad food was the culprit. The opposing theory is the magical powers of breast feeding which apparently produces an impenetrable force field of goodness around all involved. Personally, my money was on the chunky peanut butter.



We had a nice time the rest of the trip, but we took things real slow. No skiing, no sledding, not much in the way of movement at all. We did take the girls out into the snowy wonderland, but I am not sure they got as much out of it as we did. Did get a nice action shot of Dad's pooch Bridger.




We left Wyoming on the 30th and did a single day run all the way back to Las Vegas. For those of you who like numbers, that is 12 hours driving, 6 hours of stopping to feed, 18 hours total that felt like 30 hours as the last 5 hours the girls spent a lot of time screaming. Do not try to drive that far in one shot with infants. Make a note. Keep it somewhere you won’t forget.

To finish the tale I will mention that we once again visited Gramma Carolyn at her jewelry store at the Las Vegas Hilton. Sadly I forgot my camera, as we had lunch at Quark’s Bar where I had a prime opportunity to get a picture of the girls with a female Klingon: K’Plah!



On the plus side, the girls have become really interactive and aware of their environment. Here is a great photo of them in Las Vegas, where Kayla has become intensely interested in the sleeping Rylie. She is actually poking her repeatedly with her fist to try and get her to move. Rylie did eventually wake up, but she was not as amused.

Then we left for home, stopping once again in beautiful and deserted (on the night of the 31st) Barstow. I had something at Quigley’s Bar and Grill which claimed to be ribs. I don’t know what animal they came from, but it could not have been a pig or cow. It might have been man-child. Mmmm, the sweetest of meats. We were home by 10:30pm and asleep before the New Year. Yes, we are now officially old. Happy 2007, y’all!

May all your dreams be dreams of Rock!