These Dreams

I saw this video of comedian Tim Hawkins where he talked about his wife being mad at him for something he did in her dreams.

She dreamed she was being eaten by a bear, and he did NOTHING to save her. And, as she said, that was just the kind of thing he WOULD do!

Click here to view the video (image from timhawkins.net)

It was really funny, although of course I never do irrational things like that myself.

Well, maybe ONCE.

I actually do remember waking up angry at my husband for something he did in a dream I had. I knew it was ridiculous, but I was mad at him for like an hour after I got up.

The other night Baby Girl had the same problem.

I woke up in the middle of the night hearing her screaming, "No! It's MINE!"

When my husband went in there to check on her, she was crying and saying her brother took something of hers.

Said brother was of course fast asleep in his own bed and had done no such thing.

But she was still mad about it. She drifted back to sleep muttering, "Mine. It's mine..."

She knew stealing her stuff was just the kind of thing he WOULD do!

I Hate Potty Training

I just walked into the living room and slipped in a puddle of pee.

Literally. Slipped and almost FELL DOWN in a puddle of urine.

I came up mad. Especially when I saw that Baby Boy had his pants off. Which means that he just peed on the floor ON PURPOSE!

ARRGGHH!!!!

So I start with the positive self-talk.

Take deep breath. Count to ten. Try to look on the bright side. Remember it could be worse.

1. We have linoleum floors through this whole house, so no need to get out the rug cleaner.

2. He peed on the floor, not the area rug, so ditto.

3. Maybe he was on his way to the potty, so it really was an accident.

4. He did take off his pants, so they’re dry.

5.…..

These positive things I’m trying to think of are getting lamer. I’m stuck on #5 here.

Can I point out that he had two other accidents this morning? I only have nine pairs of big-boy underwear in stock here, kid!

Of course, he’s doing better than his twin sister, who refuses to even SIT on the potty.

There’s nothing like potty training to drive a mother up the wall.

I remember how horrible it was with my older kids, too.

There was the one who kept having accidents while we were out, forcing me to tell store clerks about the puddle we’d left in aisle three. Embarrassing!

There was the one who habitually peed on the floor NEXT TO the toilet. Frustrating!

There was the one who kept peeing in a bucket in the yard so she wouldn’t have to come inside and use the bathroom. Disgusting!

News flash, little girl: It’s only acceptable for BOYS to pee outside. It’s not fair, I know it. Take it up with Gloria Steinem.

I remind myself that all three of these kids are now old enough to use the potty all the time, unsupervised by me.

It DOES get better.

Of course, then they have OTHER problems, but we’ll cross that bridge later….

Twins: They're a Pair of Individuals

Wednesday night I came back from a class and the twins ambushed me at the door.

Baby Boy wanted me to give him and his toy horsies a bath, and Baby Girl just seemed to want to me to hold her.

So I started getting them ready for a bath, and then Baby Girl had a total meltdown. Apparently she was too tired for a bath and wanted to go straight to bed. Which was weird, because usually she loves taking a bath.

So I had a momentary struggle with myself. Could I really give Baby Boy a bath by HIMSELF? And put Baby Girl to bed by HERSELF? It required a major shift in my regular thought processes to do this.

This probably sounds like a stupid dilemma, but there it is. Because I'm so used to treating the twins as a unit, it's hard when they want to do two different things. I guess I have trouble remembering they are individuals.

We had this same problem at the mall earlier this week when Baby Boy wanted to ride the new ice-age-themed dinosaur train, and Baby Girl refused because it was too scary.

To be fair to Baby Girl, it was pretty freaking scary. They had life-sized realistic-looking anamatronic dinosaurs waving their fangs and tusks about. There was actually a saber-toothed tiger tearing the neck out of a giant sloth. I'm totally serious about this.

Anyhow, I wasn't going to let Baby Boy ride because Baby Girl didn't want to, but my husband was like, "That's mental! Why shouldn't he get to ride? He's not scared!"

I was thinking, "Maybe he should be scared! Did you SEE that saber-tooth?"

But I realized I should really let the poor kid ride. And he LOVED it! And oddly enough, his sister loved just watching him and waving he went by.

So tonight I let them split up for bedtime, which has never happened before. And it wasn't long before I found out why Baby Girl wanted to go straight to bed.

She threw up on me.

I guess she was waiting for Mommy to come home before she vomited.

Maybe I should feel flattered?

Probably a good thing they don't do EVERYTHING together....

A Father's Day Story, or Learning Bad Things From Daddy

I was throwing out a couple of long cardboard tubes from gift wrap when they were fished out of the trash.

By the kids? you ask.

NO! BY my HUSBAND!

Yep. He put on a Darth Vader mask from the dress-up box, handed a tube to Baby Boy and said to me, "Look at this! Take my picture!"

The he proceeded to make light-saber noises and yell things like, "Luke, I am your father!" and "I'll never rule the universe with you!"

By "he" I mean my husband, NOT Baby Boy, by the way. Who was making the sound effects and yelling random Star-Wars quotes.

The twins thought this whole thing was great. Especially the cardboard tubes.

You probably can guess what happened next.

Daddy went to take a nap, and Baby Boy and Baby Girl climbed on the coffee table and practiced stopping the celing fan with the cardboard tubes.

Then much crying ensued when the tubes were confiscated.

Thanks, Daddy! Happy Father's Day!

Visiting the New Parents

Saturday night I went to a birthday party for one of my husband’s colleagues. Most of his colleagues are younger than he is, which is what comes from starting a new career at 35, but that’s another story.
This was a birthday party for a guy who’s turning 30.

Whereas I’ll be turning 40 this year. Ugh.

This guy and his wife just had their first baby a few months ago.

Whereas we had our first baby almost FIFTEEN YEARS AGO! Amazing.

It’s like looking at a strange version of our younger selves. They have all that wonderful parenting ahead of them.

It makes me want to say, “Good luck, suckers!”

Anyways I spent the whole time in a state of terror that my three-year old twins would wreck something.

Their house was just so CLEAN! They’re still in that stage where the kid clutter is manageable. Since the baby is pretty much immobile.

They had two small baskets of baby toys, which the twins discovered immediately and had strewn about in three seconds. I was trying to rescue toys as fast as the twins could secret them under furniture or twist them into unusable forms.

Plus there was a cat who should have hidden at the sight of us, quite honestly. Enough said about THAT poor animal.

Then the twins spent a good half-hour running in circles and screaming. I know that the young parents were thinking about how THEIR child will NEVER act like this.

Again I say, “Good luck, suckers!”

The final culmination of all this was when the twins nearly body-slammed the person carrying the birthday cake to the table.

Or maybe it was when Baby Boy started choking on his cake and threw up in their (sparkling-clean) kitchen sink.

In any case, I know when it’s time to go.

We left about twenty minutes after THAT time had passed, however.

Happy parenthood, you two.

And good luck, suckers!

A Romantic Beach Wedding Depends on Your Perspective

I've taken the twins to the beach a couple of times recently. Since we live in Hawaii, it's a fairly easy thing to do.

Well, as easy as taking a pair of semi-potty-trained twin three-year olds anywhere is.

Which is to say, not all that easy, but not really worse than being at home with them all day either.

Anyways, while at the beach I observed no fewer than THREE wedding couples being photographed in all their finery. Right in the middle of all the swim-diaper wearing toddlers, boogie-boarding kids, and skirt-swimsuited moms.

I have to wonder: Do they just photo-shop all the extra people out? Do they shoot the picture super-close so that you can't see the woman in the bikini thong? Don't they feel... well...WEIRD standing there in full wedding regalia while a tatooed guy in a speedo dunks his shrieking kids in the surf?

I'm not the only one who's noticed this, by the way.

Check out the following from oyster.com:

First.... a hotel brochure photo from Riu Palace Punta Cana



...and a real photo taken by oyster.com



Now THAT'S romantic.

Unaccompanied Minors

Baby Boy says, "Bye-bye, airplane!"

I’ve just banished my older three children --Excuse me, I mean I sent them to visit their grandparents in Alabama.


They flew all the way from Honolulu to Atlanta by themselves. (My mom picked them up in Atlanta, which is only about three hours’ drive from home.)

Needless to say, I was a little worried about this trip.

I’d decided almost a year ago to do this. After last year’s visit, I felt that taking that plane trip with the twins was going to be out of the question for a while.

I hate flying anyways, but when you mix an overseas flight with twin toddlers… it’s bad. It’s really bad.

(See previous post, “Enjoy Your Flight? As if!”)

But I knew the kids really looked forward to visiting with their grandparents, aunts and cousins every year.

It seemed like a good solution to send them on their own. After all, ET is 14, and old enough to watch her 11 and 8 year old sisters. Plus it’s a nonstop flight, and I knew that, as unaccompanied minors, I could take them all the way to the gate and have them picked up at the gate. There was no way they could get lost.

But as the time approached for the kids to actually leave, I got more and more concerned about the whole thing.

I wasn’t really worried about the plane crashing, although that does always cross your mind whenever you get on an airplane. But after all, according to planecrashinfo.com, your chances of being killed in a plane crash are 1 in 9.2 million.

(See how I can insert factual information and lend credibility to my blog?)

Mostly I was worried about how they would act while they were unsupervised on the flight, to be honest.

I mean, I know how they act when I’m WITH them!

I could imagine turning on the TV and hearing: “Our top story tonight: Fighting children cause a major disruption on trans-Pacific flight, causing the pilot to turn the aircraft around and inconveniencing thousands of people. Stay tuned to hear the shocked reactions of passengers and crew. WHAT was their mom thinking?!”

Nightmares like that kept me awake for several days before they left.

But the truth is, they arrived safely, if a little grumpily, right on time in Atlanta.

And since the plane DIDN’T have to be diverted, I guess they must have behaved all right.

At least, I hope so…

A Sad Story Featuring Broccoli

My son doesn’t eat enough food.

Weird, huh? I don’t know where he got THAT from!

When he had his last check-up, we discovered he was underweight, and pretty far behind his twin, who is the height and weight of an average three-year-old.

Over the past month and a half since then I’ve been working on ways to get him to eat more.

The problem is, he’s just not that interested in food.

Again, I don’t know WHERE he got that from!

We’ve been back and forth to the doctor so they can watch his weight gain and we’ll be seeing a dietitian later this month.

He has been doing better and gaining a little, especially since he started taking an appetite stimulant.

Yep. I said "appetite stimulant." Can you believe that?

I'm thinking, can you just prescribe me the OPPOSITE of that? Please?!

But I digress.

I’ve been keeping a chart of everything he’s eating and how much so I can show the dietitian. It looks pretty sparse, and it’s mostly noodles, rice and bread.

Also Ensure, to try to increase his caloric intake.

(Words I never thought I’d need to use together, by the way: “increase” and “caloric intake!”)

So tonight I was really excited when he suddenly started eating the broccoli I put on his plate.

I’ve been putting things like vegetables on his plate for decoration I suppose, since he’s never done anything with them.

First he nibbled on it. Then he ate the whole floret and reached for another one. He pronounced it “good.”

My husband and I were so excited.

He ate his whole serving and asked for more.

Ecstatic, we heaped more broccoli on his plate.

He took another floret and put the whole thing in his mouth.

He smiled and chewed and swallowed.

My husband and I beamed at each other. I anticipated writing down how many broccoli florets he’d eaten on his food chart. I imagined telling the dietitian that my son LOVED broccoli.

Then he threw up.

He threw up the broccoli, and all the Ensure, and the noodles he’d had for lunch.

A whole day’s painstakingly charted caloric intake was now spread all over the table and wasted.

It was awful.

He started saying, "I sick!" and "Yuck! Broccoli!" I tried to point out that the broccoli probably wasn't to blame, but I think it was futile.

There goes my dream of impressing the dietitian.

Sigh.