Looky, Daddy!

Forgive My Silence

I'm trying to write. Really I am. It's just that my dog died this weekend and when I sit down to write a post, nothing you'd want to read comes out.

Blogging protocol tells me I should start this post with an origin story, then share a few memories, add in a few jokes to lighten the mood, then tell you how much I'll miss him. But I was already missing him. He died 1500 miles away from here.

My dog had arthritis, quite severe arthritis. Despite his youth, on some winter days, he could barely stand and walk from his bed to his bowl. And those were Texas winter days. So when we moved from Austin to New Jersey, he stayed behind and moved in with my parents.

It wasn't supposed to be permanent but I guess it turned out to be.

For those who know me personally, who see me about town, just know that I haven't told Kathryn yet. The Mom is out of town and I want to wait until she comes back to break the news.

A Simple Lesson in Probability

If you flip a coin, you have a one in two chance of it landing on heads. If you flip two coins, you have a three out of four chance of at least one of them landing on heads. Think about it: Heads-heads, heads-tails, tails-heads, and tails-tails. Three out of four show heads. That's pretty good odds. Betting odds, you might say.

Now re-read that paragraph, reading the words "flip a coin" as "take a two-year-old to preschool," and the words "landing on heads" as "losing her shit."

I was not ready for that. I was not ready for the kick in the gut that comes from pulling my girls' hands apart as they wrapped around each of my legs, begging and pleading for me not to walk out of the door. I tell you it was a horrible feeling, a terrible overflow of emotion of pity and self-doubt and self-loathing, a feeling that almost lasted all the way though my first expensive espresso drink of each day.

Almost.

But now even that moment is a thing of the past. Now, the twins love school. They love it. They would gladly step over my beaten and bleeding body to get into that classroom, with its delirious mixture of toys, markers, and glue sticks. And beaten and bleeding I am by the time I get everybody there, because as much as they love school, it does not seem to occur to any of my three girls that they need to voluntarily participate in any of the daily activities that lead up to it. As nutmeg once wrote in one of the funniest one-liners I've read, the only way to ensure that all of your children can find the shoes they need when it’s time to walk out the door is to cut off their feet. So now, if I can just find a saw, my days should be completely worry free.

Ask The Dad

Dear The Dad,

I have 2 yr old twin girls and I'm having a hard time figuring out what to dress them up as for Halloween this year.  I was wondering if you had any suggestions?

Sincerely, Elvira

Dear Elvira,

I have it on high authority that the hot theme for twins this year will be buddy cop TV shows, so the Looky, Daddy! team of fashionistas have scoured the Internet for the hippest costumes for your girls this year. Here are our three favorites, modeled by Lila and Victoria.

Hope this helps,

The Dad

Got a question for The Dad? Email me.

Email The Dad

Day Three

And just like that, they're gone. Poof. And what have I done with my time? Bugger-all. I've done bugger-all with my time.

Litter box? Uncleaned.

Grocery store? Unshopped.

Dishes? Unscrubbed.

Novel? Unwritten.

Email? Unreplied.

Coffee? Okay, coffee's been drunk. Let's be serious here.

I think I have a disorder, some sort of Post Twins Stress Disorder. I pace my house, room to room, stepping over crap, wondering just where to start, and the time goes *whoop* just like that.

Imagine this: Imagine that one morning, zoo animals all awoke to find their fences gone, their cages open. What would they do? Yes, there would be those who noticed and immediately made a run for it, but I dare say that others would wake up and follow that same trail they had been walking for the past umpteen years. There would be mountain lions who would pace back and forth, padded feet falling in that same well-worn path. There would be tigers who got up, stretched, and lumbered around where the cage used to be, then went back to sleep in their old familiar place. And there would be the monkeys who continued to swing from the same sawed-off branches, following the same pattern they always followed and to whom, perhaps, the lack of cage would only become apparent when they realized they now had an unencumbered trajectory through which to hurl their poo at passersby. Guess which one I am.

While I'm pacing, though, I want to say a quick thanks to all those who have enjoyed and shared the video of the twins' first day of preschool. Your response has almost made the last two-and-a-half years with them worthwhile.

Not quite, but almost.

A New Day Dawns

T-Minus 24 Hours and Bleeeeuuuuurgh

There are a few places left where Lila has not vomited. She hasn't vomited in the basement, for example. Nor has she vomited in my closet. And by vomit, I mean gently tilting her head back and using her throat to open a direct channel to the bowels of hell. This is vomit like I've never experienced. Honestly. Given a Lila-sized water balloon and a straight pin, I would not be able to replicate what this sweet child can do with just a stomach.

I know they say the human body is 65% fluid, I just don't expect to see all of it at any given moment. Especially with so little warning.

And this is really not a good time for this. Her first day of preschool is tomorrow.

How long does a child need to be vomit-free before they can attend school? Two days? One? Twenty minutes?

She didn't vomit at all yesterday, which gives me some hope. Of course, when she didn't vomit on Friday, it gave me hope then. Hope enough to go grocery shopping.

Clean-up on aisle six.

Updated on Sept. 11: First let me say that it is with no great surprise that almost all of you endorsed sending the kids no matter how much puke Lila was spewing. And I'm glad my kids don't go to school with yours is all I'm going to say.

Still, it has been 48 hours since Lila last "called Australia" (It's a phrase from my Czech friend David. For a while, he was on a campaign to make everyone admit that the name "Melbourne" sounding like someone vomiting. I'm not sure if it ever caught on over there. In his early twenties, David had as many euphemisms for puking as the Inuit have for snow.) So off to school she goes. Huzzah! Stay tuned later today for my first child-free post since this blog  began.

The Fun Continues

So, when you find yourself standing in front of your oldest daughter's elementary school, covered in a mixture of oatmeal and cheerios and bile, holding a child who is equally covered, with some of the mixture even pooled between your shirt and your child, do you walk back to your car as you are, or do you strip down and head back al fresco?

It's amazing how you can spend over six hours at a beach, never once self-conscious about your lack of shirt, shoes, or service, but a half-minute streak to your car in suburban New Jersey can make you completely rethink your whole life.

Perhaps I should have kept the clothes on.

My Laptop Has a Virus

It's 5:15 as I write this. Victoria is in my lap, her capacity for sleep robbed by fever. This is day four of this fever, which means her fourth day without food or rest. I could place a small to mid-sized car in the bags under her eyes. As I type, she mostly sits here, glassy-eyed, head tucked under my chin, wetting it with her sweat. The rest of the time she swipes at the keyboard, hoping that one of the keys she presses just might play the Kitty Cat Dance. This is the first fever Victoria has had in almost a year but she's skillfully hidden any nervousness or uncertainty about it behind a brave curtain of crying.

It is now 6:15. It took the two of us an hour to write that last paragraph. I'll give up now and let Victoria finish out the post. Then we'll dance dance dance and we'll dance dance dance. j,g.fh,lj;oiufdgn  mbjhkik,ddddfddddfdddddddcd mh8i7i7yvn cfxxvxx

Yon. And Hither.

This summer has been a terrible time for posting; there was way to much yon and not nearly enough hither. And the hither that did come was far too hot and sticky to be spent in any way other than drowning out the sounds of my kids with the whir of my blender as it introduced ice to tequila in its peculiar and violent way.

For her part, The Mom has been absent, working the kind of hours that most people only work when their jobs come with expense accounts at places named "Happy Endings." The twins are aware of her absence and enjoy passing the time hypothesizing about her whereabouts. Most of the time they agree that she lives at the train station, although sometimes they'll just point to a random house and declare that to be where their mom now resides. Through careful questioning, I have ascertained that their mom lives in these new places because our house is too small and it smells like feet.

One day last week, when Victoria awoke early enough to spy The Mom as she walked out the door, Victoria turned to me and exclaimed, "Look, Daddy, look! It's Mama!" Then her little toddler hand twisted the knife in her mother's heart when she ran out on the front porch and bawled, "Mama, will you visit us again soon?"

That morning The Mom left a trail of deep red blood all the way from our house to hers.

So Friday, The Mom took us all to the shore. And by that I mean she sat down that morning at my computer and said, "Come get me when everyone is sunscreened and in the car. And don't forget coffee."

The shore was brilliant. As any long time reader of this site knows, I'm not adept at writing about actual good times with my kids, but a good time this was. For a whole day we attacked that beach, running and swimming and building and destroying. The sea was surprisingly choppy, and Kathryn stood out in it for hours as wave after wave battered her tiny frame. "That was nothing!" she'd roar out to sea after each one crested over her. "A big bottle of nothing!" Then she'd get pounded off her feet by the next wave and resurface ten feet away, sputtering and coughing up sea water, but that's just because she's seven and hasn't yet learned to stop talking while underwater.

As much as Kathryn couldn't be pulled away from the water, the twins couldn't be pulled from their mother. Not that I tried, mind you. And thus I was free to spend my time doing what I wanted. Like digging a big ol' hole in the sand and then finding a seven-year-old that fit into it perfectly.

We stayed on the beach for almost seven hours, until Kathryn could barely stand and the twins were seconds away from losing their minds with the fun of it all. It was Lila who finally called the whole thing to a halt by gently whimpering the word "home" and then adhering her face to my wife's shoulder using her patented mixture of tears and snot. So home we went, where for the rest of the Labor Day weekend, The Mom stayed put. Even if it smelled like feet.