Looky, Daddy!

Ask The Dad

Dear The Dad,

I am a SAHM with fraternal boy twins. Since they were born almost 2 years ago, I have been gently hinting to my husband that he should get a vasectomy. I've gotten nowhere. I can't tell if his reluctance is because he doesn't want anyone messing with his dinger, or because he still wants more kids, so yesterday I tried a different tactic. I told him that he needed to take some time off of work so I could go in and have my tubes tied. He said, and this is a direct quote, "Great. And you can have a tummy tuck at the same time."

My question is this: How should he die?

Thanks,

Soon to be Single Mother

Dear STBSM,

I can't answer this. There's just no way. Just reading it makes my head hurt. It's not the vasectomy that bothers me. In fact, I think hospitals should throw those in for free with every multiple birth. No, I can't answer this because of The Mom. The Mom and I have been together, albeit not always romantically, for 19 years now. Throughout those 19 years, I have said an amazing number of things to her, and, to hear her tell it, a goodly number of those things were colossally stupid.

The Mom remembers them all. She has the full collection of my moronic man-statements alphabetized on little note cards and filed away in the huge Rolodex of her mind. And if I so much utter a peep as to the insensitivity of your husband and his apparent insinuation that your tummy, which I am sure is quarter-bouncing flat, might be in need of a little tuckage, then The Mom will no doubt proceed to fill the Internet with her lovingly-treasured anecdotes of my own verbal blunders. Then, before I know it, there will be crowds of women with their Kenneth Cole bags stuffed with axes, kindling, lighter fluid, and matches, all surrounding my modest New Jersey home and asking me to wax poetic about, say, their pinky fingers, before they end my miserable life. And I suspect they might throw in a free vasectomy while they are at it.

So I will refrain from answering your question, STBSM. But something tells me I have plenty of readers who may want to offer you some suggestions of their own...

One-Liner Wisdom

If I come back in the next life as something repugnant, it will be because I do not interfere as my two-year-olds chase our cats around the house, wielding Windex bottles and paper towels, saying, "Cats! Cats! Clean you!"

One of the more surprising letdowns I've encountered as a father of twins is the look of disappointment on the face of my second twin after the first got such an impressive response when she pulled my finger.

The single greatest argument against homeschooling is that you lose the ability to look at your six-year-old daughter across the dining room table and ask, "Where on Earth did you learn that?"

If I could make a toddler potty that looked like the area behind my couch, I'd be a millionaire.

Panelaky

It had never occurred to me. I had walked past the building every day on my way to work and yet it had never occurred to me.

It was an old apartment building, probably ten or twelve stories tall. It sat in the midst of a dozen identical communist-era apartment buildings, panelaky the Czechs call them, in a neighborhood on the northern terrace of Usti nad Labem, a town once called the "ashtray of the Czech Republic" by a remarkably accurate guidebook series.

The neighborhood was going through a clean-up, workers on scaffolds scrubbing the sides of the panelaky, ridding them of decades of coal soot and industrial pollutants, restoring the dingy black buildings back to their original dingy gray.

David, a close friend who has become almost like a brother in the fact that I never call him or write him anymore (and whose name I have Anglicized from its original Czech, David), had also walked past the building daily. It had never occurred to him, either.

Yet there we both were, in the middle of the night, racing each other up the exterior scaffolding of that building all the way to the top.

My point is this: In a matter of seconds, two people together can come up with ideas that neither of them would have ever considered separately.

When I stayed home with Kathryn, I suspect I went to the bathroom everyday, maybe even multiple times a day. I have no proof of this, but I'm just a going-to-the-bathroom kind of guy, so I'm pretty confident. Never once did I emerge from the bathroom, drying my hands on a towel, to find Kathryn standing on top of the dining room table, hopping up and down on her little chubby toddler legs.

Guess how many times I've found the twins doing just that. Together, of course.

The Right Tool for the Job

Thank you for your emails, comments, advice, and even phone calls. You will be happy to know that the bird currently eating my liver is a good three sizes smaller that the one munching on it but a few days ago. It is now roughly the size of that muppet on Sesame Street. Just not as cheerful.

Truth be told, the whole situation has been about a tenth of the ordeal that I have been making it out to be. For one thing, The Mom has been here. She took the week off work for Kathryn's winter break and she has had us running hither and yon on so many fun-filled adventures that the babies have been all but begging to be put in their beds by the end of the day.

Also, we have found the right tool. As a guy, I'm a big believer in tools and I firmly believe that the proper device can make almost any situation manageable. For a while, I could not figure out which apparatus rusting away on my neglected basement workbench would help keep these girls in bed. I went through the usual suspects, duct tape, toggle bolts, bungee cords, hook and eye clasps, but all of them either left marks or created what I was told was a "non-nurturing environment." Whatever.

But stay-at-home dads have other tools, too. Tools that aren't made of steel, iron, or shiny silvery tape. Tools that are plush, cute, and snuggle-able. Tools that look like this:

These tools are very sensitive. They get lonely. They need company. They must be held and kept in bed. They can't handle loud noises or jumping. If anything happens that disturbs these highly-specialized tools, then they ask to come sleep with Mom and Dad.

You wouldn't want that, would you? Of course not. Now go to bed, little ones. Go to bed.

One Giant Leap...

Author's note: I'm done. I'm tapped. If exhaustion were a tangible object, something you could point to and say, "Look, there's my tiredness," mine would have it's own orbit. It would glow red in the night sky and be feared by villagers and prophets alike. Virgins, no doubt, would be sacrified to it. Still, in my sleepless hours, I happened across this post I wrote a week or so ago, cleaned it up a bit, and I'll offer it to you now. Be nice.

The Three-Martini Playdate went on the road. We hit the city. New York City. All three of us, Jennifer, Camilo's dad, and I, driving the seemingly insurmountable 13 miles to the center of the universe. It was not pretty.

Our town is only 13 miles from New York City, but that's not where we live. We live in isolation. We live on the moon. Three adults, five children two-and-under, we have about as much chance of seeing the skyscrapers of New York as we do the Sydney Opera House.

But not this time. This time we made it. The Three-Martini Playdate went partying.

There were hollers and hoots. There was table standing. We annoyed, we were beligerent, we were not cool. Everyone knew we had kids, everyone knew we stayed home with them. We were pitied and feared. Everyone knew that crossing us was to take their life into their hands.

There were offers. The ladies knew I was the go-to guy if they wanted twins. They knew Camilo's dad had mystical powers. They knew Jennifer was thirsty and dangerously on edge.

The concert was horrible. The sound man was a monkey. We didn't care. We were out. We left early. We prowled the streets. We were immune to the cold.

We would not go home. There was fun to be had, noise to be made, hoots to be hollered. Drinks to be drunk.

We were uneasy. We had forgotten something. We looked around, then we remembered. We relaxed. We laughed.

We went out. The Three-Martini Playdate went out.

Just in time, I think.

Prometheus Bound

If I had known it would be this easy, I would have done it a long time ago. Right after driving over my own skull with a mini-van.

The cribs are gone. The twins are in beds now.

Four years ago, we transitioned Kathryn from a crib to a bed. We did it on her second birthday. It was the kind of smooth, easy change that made The Mom and I think that we were the greatest parents ever and that we should write a book called How to Be Great Like Us (First chapter title: You Can't!). Truth be told, though, it was all Kathryn. To Kathryn, a bed was the same as a crib, just with a better selection of sheets. Kathryn believed she was no more able to get out of her new bed by herself than she could attempt a climb up Mt. Everest's south face. Unless, of course, she had a team of Sherpas and a sheet of Hello Kitty stickers. Hello Kitty makes the impossible fun!

The twins are under no such delusions.

Ever since I chose to stay home with my girls, I've felt more-or-less like Prometheus, who, after performing one incredibly selfless deed for all humanity, has been chained to a rock and had his liver eaten by birds every day since. For me, the only difference each new day brings is the size of the bird. Most days it's a small bird, a hummingbird. It almost tickles. I've even been known to laugh.

This no-crib thing is a big-assed bird.

So, I'm writing this as a kind of preemptive apology. I write when the twins nap. If they don't nap, I don't write. And they're not napping. Oh no. Not when there's paint to peel off the door frame and extension cords to fish out from behind the changing table. So forgive me if, for a while, the occasional few days or more slip by without a post. I'm doing my best. And keep your eyes to the sky for a big-assed bird holding a little bitty, vodka-soaked liver. It's mine.

Weekend Weblink

This week's weblink was sent in by alert reader Crystal in Houston, who writes:

Found these short films last night while cruising YouTube......thought they were HILARIOUS  and right up your "humor alley".

Well, Crystal, I did enjoy the videos, plus ever since The Mom read your email, too, she has been delighting the whole family with non-stop references to my "humor alley". Thanks a bundle!

Francis Stokes Dot Com on YouTube (movies with sound)

Snow Day

We live in a small house. Actually, we live in a medium house, but our family only gets half of it. The small half. And yesterday it was the smallest it had ever been. Yesterday was a snow day.

In our small house, the door to Kathryn's room doesn't hang correctly. If you are over four feet tall, you can lift the door by the handle and operate it almost soundlessly. If you are under four feet, you must put your shoulder into it and push, opening the door with a sound reminiscent of the cry a soul must make as it is dragged down to hell. Yesterday, at least five pairs of souls were eternally damned before 6 AM as Kathryn kept peeking out to see if any of us were awake and making the hot chocolate yet. With marshmallows on the side, if you please.

The day was an ugly day. There was hardly enough snow on the ground to make a decent snowball, and the hail, sleet, and freezing rain kept us from going out and trying anyway. And so Kathryn was a tornado, an indoor catastrophe of kinetic energy and frantic boredom. She approached the whole day of doing nothing with the intensity of a Wall Street floor trader on methamphetamine.

The twins spent the day occupied with their favorite hobby: crying for mommy. This time, however, it was different. This time MOMMY WAS IN THE HOUSE. She was here, upstairs, working. Meeting deadlines and making conference calls. And she never once, not once, came downstairs to mingle with her fans and graciously receive their gifts of snot and tears. No. Instead, her only interaction with the family was through a shower of tersely written notes that she threw down the stairs at odd intervals. "Coffee!" "Bagel!" "Nooner?"

The problem, as any well-bred Southern family with an idiot-child could tell you, was that it's completely impossible to hide an entire person in a house this small. There was always some noise, a cough, a laugh, a rattling chain, that drifted down to the twins' ears, spurring them on to new rounds of sobbing while I wove ever more complicated webs of deception. It was the wind, I said, or a radio, or the phone, and once I even said it was a TV which only shows how stupid I am because they love TV even more than their mother. But eventually the girls always calmed down and ended their vigil at the baby-gated stairs, going back to their normal daytime position of standing at the front door, waiting for their mother to come home, but this time with one eye on the downstairs TV just in case it happened to laugh like the one upstairs just did.

And let me just say here, in conclusion, that hearing The Mom laugh on the phone with her colleagues makes me even more secure in my knowledge that her job is one giant mai-tai holding, joke-cracking, conga-dancing luau, while the closest thing to highbrow humor that I see each day are the expressions on Lila's face as she systematically tastes each of the furry objects she finds under the couch.

Which is pretty funny.

That's More Than I've Learned All Week

Two things I have learned within the past three hours:

1) Never tell your wife that you turned down a paying freelance job because you thought it would cut into your blogging time, and

2) never tell your wife that you need computer time on Valentine's Night because you have nothing to post for the next day.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have some amends to make.

Two-Ness

The two-ness is rampant, it is out of control.

The babies are running and grabbing, all hands and feet. And if hands and feet are forbidden, they are all forehead. Like Victoria and the radiator. She knew that hands weren't okay, but what about her head? She had never tried that before. Maybe that would be fine. So she leaned in, keeping her hands safely behind her back, and before I had time to react, she pressed her forehead against the steaming radiator. Her thrill at her uncommon brilliance and "out-of-the-box" thinking was dwarfed immediately by the size of the burn mark. Tomorrow she'll think of something new. Elbows?

Lila has mastered the apology and now creates her own opportunities to use it. At playdates, she saunters up to friends, looking friendly, eyes to the sky, all but doing a little shuffle step and whistling, then pounce! she steals their sippy cup, or their teddy bear, or securely-fastened hair barrette, and waits. When the tears come, Lila reaches out a little hand, gives her victim a soothing pat or two and coos sympathetically, "It's okay, I sorry," and returns the object. Then she runs away, alert, looking for someone else who may be in need of one of her apologies.

At night, not content with removing every blanket, stuffed animal, and crib sheet out of her crib, Victoria has taken to removing herself as well. I'm not sure about the whole routine, but I'm fairly certain, given the sickening thud we hear at the closure, the Russian judge is deducting points for the dismount.

Potties are fun, potties are exciting, potties are most definitely not for peeing. Potties are the obligatory prix-fixe dinner before the pee-pee theater. My girls sit, delighted to be there, happy to listen to the stories, sing the songs, catch-up on old times, but after a while they get a little impatient, wondering when they can finally get up and pee already. They use diversionary tactics. One will stand up, "All done!" and while I look in her potty, the other will make a break for it, peeing gleefully past me on her way to our new couch.

Two-ness is everywhere. That and pee.