Your Looks are Laughable, Unphotographable...

Happy belated Valentine's Day to all. I am glad you all avoided being beaten by clubs and then beheaded, which is what happened to the original St. Valentine when he messed with Emperor Claudius the Cruel and the Roman Empire. There is some confusion over what exactly Valentine did to earn his wrath, although it was almost certainly just refusing to deny Christianity and not, as commonly repeated nowadays, the marrying of Christian couples during a Roman ban on all marriage. His big miracles (every Saint has to have one) were restoring sight and hearing to his jailer's daughter before his execution.

If the marriage thing is hooey, why the love connection? One legend is that the Christians were looking for a day to replace the Roman holiday of Lupercalia (Feb 15), an ancient fertility festival. However, no mention of a love or romance are connected to St. Valentine's day until the 14th century when Rome and its festivals had long crumbled into dust. It seems more likely that its romantic connections started with Geoffrey Chaucer who in 1382 wrote:

For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make [mate].

If you can parse the olde English, Chaucer was claiming that every bird chooses its mate on Valentine's day, a concept which
became common lore (birds choose their mates in mid-February). Whether or not Chaucer was himself personally responsible for starting all this silliness, it certainly makes sense that the idea came to being in this time period when the concept of romantic love was first truly developed (sorry, Antony and Cleopatra).

Modern Valentine's day was developed in the 19th century by, you guessed it, the stationary industry. This fledgling industry soon rapidly grew into the modern gift card/Hallmark monstrosity that it is today. Before that people just exchanged pleasantries that did not have a funny picture or saccharine sentiment on the cover.



To belabor the obvious, today's pics are Valentine's day related. Up top is me early morning on the 14th wearing my We Heart Daddy T-shirt and uncombed hair. I know it can be difficult to distinguish between my combed and uncombed hair sometimes, but you will have to take my word for it. Next is an adorable Rylie in a swing with her new soft, bunny rattle. These bunny rattles (we also have a matching yellowish one) are really the very first things the girls started grabbing and shaking. Now they grab all sorts of things. I hope to have some incriminating footage of Kayla and her stuffed monkey up soon. She does unspeakable things to that monkey.

OK, not unspeakable. She grabs it, hugs it and puts it in her mouth. It just looks bad.

Finally we have Candy and her two honorary Palentines (Tm) wearing Valentine's Day outfits my mom got for them. One thing has become increasing apparent to me this month. One, Black History really needs more gift cards and maybe a poem by Chaucer and Two, Valentine's Day is a huge day for the womenfolk... and my house has an increasingly heavy mix of womenfolk. Combined with my (on a good day) apathy for the holiday and there could be a future massacre in the works. Or at least a beheading.

Damn you Esther Howland!

What, do I have to do all your research for you? Google it yourself.

Two Things At Once






Howdy folks. Sorry for the long break, but I did warn you. I have gotten past the most intense time of the year, job-wise, with sanity and babies generally intact. Woohoo! Today I bring you two babies in a play gym. This will be followed by a rant. Feel free to skip it, but then you might not learn something today...

The play gym is a Baby Einstein product given to us by the fine Deacon household. Let us hear a shout out. The Baby Einstein business plan is to take shakey child development theory, extrapolate it far beyond even that weak scientific foundation, market a product based on this wild extrapolation as a tool that will make your child smarter and more well-adjusted, and then charge too much for it. The real Baby Einstein is the CEO who every night rolls around in a bed covered in money that has been dredged directly from the dreams of well meaning parents.

As of 2001 the company was purchased by Disney, making its evil nature official. That all being said, I am sure I will continue to buy their products, because hey, I want a genius baby as much as the next guy.


The Gym, as you can see is basically a colorful, padded mat with criss-crossing bars that go overhead. The bars come with handy places from which one can hang roughly one zillion things, reducing the baby to complete sensory overload. These items include rattles, mirrors, animal pictures with text (both photos and cartoon representations), squeaking birds, and the centerpiece of the whole aparatus: A star that plays music and lights up the tips of its star in rhythm with the music. I can't quite place the tune, but it is not a lullaby. Imagine high energy gypsy music. The philosphy is clearly the more stimulus the smarter your baby will be. Next I am going to get one of those freak-out chairs from Clockwork Orange (or LOST) and pin their eyes open.

In practice it is a nice alternative to the Mobile for something to engage their attention and reduce parental strain. As they get older the two of them will probaby interact with it more and it will go from Baby TV (passive) to full-fledged interactive toy (Baby XBOX). Also note they hold hands in most of these pictures. That is some cute-ass stuff, right there.

The weak connecting thread of this blog is the question of whether the typical person can hold two ideas in their head at once. Up top is a toy based largely on information overload. Does that prepare us for the world, or simply begin the bombardment at a younger age. A common symptom of info-overload is the inability to absorb useful information at all. Like the explorer who tries to hold too many items (lantern, mail, a grue) , he may just end up dropping them all.

Case in point and my present pet peeve: Global Warming and Ozone Depletion. Despite what appears to be the majority public opinion, these are not the same issue. There are TWO significant things human activity is doing to our atmosphere. Sadly, the average American seems unable to keep the two ideas in their head at the same time. Partly this is because they never really understand the problem, and partly because of info-overload. The details (like there are two separate atmosphere problems) get lost along the way.

Quick Primer:

The Ozone Layer is a section of triply connected oxygen (normal oxygen is doubly bonded) that lies roughly at the top of our atmosphere. It is valuable because it absorbs

a large percentage of the harmful ultraviolet rays that hit the Earth from the Sun. Without the ozone you would sunburn in a fraction of the time you presently do. Certain chemicals we make, most famously chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), float up to the top of the atmosphere and destroy ozone. One rascally CFC molecule can break apart a huge number of ozone molecules, making them doubly pernicious. Huge holes in the ozone have opened up over the poles (north and south), which scientists believe are related to this release of CFCs. CFCs are being phased out in the United States, but are still wildly used around the world as a cheap way to run air conditioners and produce foam products (like a seat cushion). At one time they were used as propellant in aerosol cans, which is the image a lot of people connect to it... and to global warming for some perverse reason.

Global Warming is the steady increase in the average temperature around the world because more and more greenhouse gases are being sent into the atmosphere. This occurs for basically for the same reason your car warms up hotter than the air around it on a sunny day. Light comes in through the window (atmosphere) gets absorbed by the seat (ground) and then is re-emitted as infrared heat which can't escape the window (atmosphere). Carbon dioxide is called a greenhouse gas because it does not let the infrared heat out, warming the planet. There are many ways to make CO2, but the easiest is to burn something. Like oil. Or natural gas. Or trees.
Burning trees is a double whammy, as it also destroys plants that take CO2 out of the air. By the way, freakishly cold winter days are not evidence against global warming. Increases in temperature cause increases in volatility. That is a fancy term saying things will go up and down more. So while the average day gets hotter, you will actual have more freakish days -- both super hot and super cold.

There is a bit of confusion because CFCs are also greenhouse gases (they absorb heat), but they make up a tiny percentage of the problem compared to CO2.

What has set me off is an article in the New York Times. The original article title was: "As Asia Keeps Cool, Scientists Worry About Global Warming". It was about the huge rise in the use of air conditioning in India and China, which all use CFCs because they are so much cheaper. So the clever title was misleading. In fact, if you read the article is makes no mention of global warming at all. At some point someone besides me must have thrown a brick at the Science Editors head, because now the title says they "...Worry About The Ozone Layer". Not as clever, but not as misleading. And this was the N.Y. Times. Supposedly some of the best print journalists around.

Now before anyone has a conniption, yes, air conditioning tends to be one of the largest power hogs around. Power takes electricity. Electricity is more often than not generated by burning things. So it is an issue for Global Warming as well, but the article was about the ozone issue. A DIFFERENT issue.

But modern mankind can't seem to keep two ideas in its head.

My Preshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhious...



These are the sort of dangerous photographs a child risks when their father is a big ole geek. I plan on putting these into the "Oh, you are dating my daughter? Wait a moment, I have something to show you" slide show, along with diaper changes, bath time photos, and potty training.

For those of you who are not intimately familiar with Tolkien, the text on the front of the onesy is a play on the poem from the Lord of the Rings... which I believe may have been made into a movie. I will have to check into that. Anyway, the original text is:

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Begin at "One Ring to rule them all" and swap the word Twin for Ring, and you have what is written on Rylie. It is, in fact, a lot of words so the text has to scroll all the way around to the "back section".



The fellow she is having a staring contest with is of course, Gollum, the poor tortured soul who was once a simple fellow named Smeagle, until possession of the One Ring for centuries twisted him into the misbegotten creature you now see before you. And then, of course, he was made into a collectible porcelain figurine. There is no end to his indignities.

Why are they both sitting on a sleeping pad with cute, western-themed decoration, like cowboys and wild desert flowers? Because that is what Sauron was into. Seriously, Barad-dur was covered in horseshoes, ten gallon hats, and saddle-shaped reading lamps. The original War of the Ring was fought over whether or not Isildur would take back what he said about John Wayne actually having a girl's name. Could not find a bigger Country Western fan. Or malevolent force for evil. It is sad Tolkien concentrated so much on the latter and not so much on the former. I mean, each Nazgul had a personalized bullwhip signed by Gene Autry. No one ever writes about that...



Well that is it. Five blogs in five days. I have blown completely through all my pictures and have nothing of any interest (or even mild disinterest) left to talk about. The next two weeks are going to be proposal madness, so I may slack off a bit. Keep on checking, but if you need time to catch up on your reading of Daily Kos or Penny Arcade, this could be the time.

S.

That's Show Biz...



The little woman is a member of the local Mothers of Multiples club. This joins her other memberships, like being a charter member of Women in Animation, an ASIFA member (another animation society which vote for the coveted "Annie" awards), KCRW, and World's Greatest Mom (her mug award is still forth-coming). The MoM club has a web site bulletin board where you can find out about nannies, free baby stuff, etc. Occasionally it will post requests from casting agencies that are looking for twins.

If you are not in "the know", Hollywood desperately needs multiples to cast all their baby and child parts, because the laws concerning child actors are so strict. For babies under 6 months they are so restrictive it is hard to see how any baby ever shows up on camera. Seriously, I think a baby is allowed to be under the lights for 20 minutes a day. Total. There are also restrictions on total time, including travel to and from the shoot on the order of a couple of hours. A total nightmare if you have ever seen film-making in action, which is often barely controlled chaos. Imagine spending all day setting up a shot, paying all your actors and crew members, only for some sort of fifteen minute delay to scrap your whole day... UNLESS you have a second baby that looks almost exactly like the first. The most famous example of acting twins nowadays would be the Olson twins of Full House fame. They are in fact fraternal twins (not identical). They just look a lot alike.

So back to our message board. A couple of months ago we had seen an ad for the Sopranos. We were real bummed, because our children would have had a chance to be involved in a whacking, but the filming for that is all out in New York so we couldn't apply. Then a few weeks ago, another ad came up. Someone needed newborn twins for a Suave commercial. Not actual newborns, as you do not want to know how hard it is to shoot babies under a month (I think they require a full medical team and a written afidavit from the Governor), but young babies. Our girls seemed perfect, so Candy said what the hell and sent in a photo, which I believe is the one topping this entry (or one so close it doesn't matter).



We got a response the very next day. They told us, and I kid you not, that sorry, they were looking for someone a little younger. They might have been interested, but they also weighed too much. Man, Hollywood is absolutely brutal. There is a saying that you can never be too young or too thin. Apparently this still holds at 3 months and 9 pounds.

So our dreams of being abusive Hollywood parents who exploit our own children for wealth and vicarious fame are temporarily smashed. Did you know you can take as much of 85% of your children's income? Rules require 15% be saved in trust for the child actor so they are not completely screwed, but the rest is under control of the Guardian. Poor Gary Coleman.

The final two pictures are just about as saccharine sweet as can possibly be imagined. How can you say these faces don't belong in the pictures?

Miss Rylie and Kayla, you used to be big!

We are big. It was the shampoo commercials that got small.

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!

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...