Looky, Daddy!

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.

Would That You Were So Famous

My dad wants to know if Kathryn ever runs out of words. The answer is no.

For the past two weeks, Kathryn has been in Texas, staying with my parents, and not running out of words. My mom loves it. My dad has duct-taped two pillows together and wears them as a hat. I can't blame him; two weeks is a awfully long time to experience raw Kathryn, a creature whose energy level is only exceeded by the volume of her normal speaking voice.

Every summer since we moved to New Jersey, Kathryn has spent a week or two back in Texas with my folks. I believe this arrangement was originally suggested by my wife as a way to get her hands on our expected inheritance a few years early, figuring that one week with Kathryn could shave up to six months off the rest of my parents' lives. A good plan to be sure, but I'll never see any returns from it as my exposure to Her Royal Webkinzness means I will be dead before I finish this post. Add in the twins and I actually died during childbirth. My own.

So for two weeks my oldest daughter and all her words have been holding high court in the wilds of Waxahachie, Texas, or as my sister-in-law called it once, the Hollywood of the Strip of Land Between Dallas and Waco. For a while Waxahachie looked like it was going to have a solid career in movies, with a few filmed there each year, even a couple of Oscar winners. Most of the films were period pieces, except for one when, for a few fun weeks, my family and I sat out on our back porch in the evenings and watched David Byrne film True Stories at the house across the creek.

None of my family ever made it into any of these movies, but that is not to say we all escaped the camera's loving eye. All four of us once appeared in a particularly delightful and lighthearted commercial for an industrial herbicide. The members of my family, along with three-quarters of the rest of the town, were each paid ten dollars to march through the town's square in a mock parade, singing the theme song of a chemical developed to keep grass from growing in lettuce patches. Again and again we marched, singing what might have been the only theme song ever written for a known carcinogen, and I'm not sure any of us were troubled by it. I know that I was not. Even if you had pulled me aside and described to me in detail the specific ecological effects of this particular product, I still would have sung along, because ten dollars could buy me THREE STAR WARS ACTION FIGURES, and I would have stepped over the bodies of thousands of dead song birds for Star Wars action figures.

My brother was featured in a close-up, the camera zooming in on him as he smiled a smile that told us the eradication of unwanted broadleaf grasses from our lettuce fields was the but first step in our American battle for dominance over all things natural, a fight that continues today. For this, he earned himself an extra $10 which I feel certain he blew all at once on a box of Verbatim floppy discs.

Not too much has been filmed in Waxahachie lately, and certainly nothing was filmed there in the past two weeks, for which I am relieved. Because if Kathryn had somehow made it in front of the camera, I know how she'd have spent her ten dollars.

And it wouldn't have been to buy herself any more words.

30 Days Is Just 1,440 Back-to-Back Episodes of DragonTales

As best as I can remember, there were about five of us crowded into the small room, six if you count the guy in the hospital bed. One of the other five was me and one was The Mom, which I find almost impossible to imagine because the year was 1987 and The Mom was still a good thirteen years away from being The Mom. Further, she was four years from even being The Girlfriend. Four years from The Girlfriend, six years from The Ex-Girlfriend, eight years from The Re-Girlfriend, nine years from The On-A-Break Girlfriend, ten years from The Fiance, eleven from The Wife, and thirteen from The Mom.

The guy in the bed was still and quiet. He was awake, we knew, since he had acknowledged our group's presence with a look, but as we jostled around his bed, he neither moved nor spoke. He was a freshman in college. We were all freshmen in college. He had no skin on his back.

He had been one of many students piled into a convertible which had been driving too fast after too many drinks when the driver lost control. Most everyone was thrown from the car. Two lost their lives. Our friend lost the skin on his back when he skidded down the highway at an initial speed of 70 miles per hour.

As we shuffled around the room, one of us, a girl whose name neither The Mom nor I can recall (which makes me nervous because I don't want her pseudonym to accidentally coincide with her actual name so I'll call her Gertie because surely had her name been Gertie we would have remembered it) stubbed her toe on one of the machines that surrounded the hospital bed.

"Ow!" Gertie exclaimed, loudly.

"Shhhh!" the rest of us replied.

"But it hurts," Gertie said in a voice that I now recognize to be the only voice in which a seven-year-old can speak between the hours of 3 PM and forever.

At this, our friend in the bed opened his eyes again. Then he opened his mouth. "Pain," he croaked, "is a relative concept."

I tell this story a lot, not just because it shows how witty a guy with no back can be, but because it is so undeniably true.

Eleven years later, when The Future-Mom and I got married, we did not take a honeymoon. We were too busy, you see. The Mom was knee deep in grad school, cranking out her master's thesis on Underwater Pottery Techniques of 13th Century Half-Polynesian Tradesmen Named Joe and I was doing something equally compelling by taking night classes to get a teacher's certificate in a subject that I never proceeded to teach. We were far too busy to take time out for a honeymoon.

"Busy-ness," I hear my voice of today croaking, "is a relative concept."

And it is. With each new day, I look back on moments past and think what a total dimwit I was to believe I was busy before. Except, and here's the kicker, in one month the twins start preschool. Preschool, people, are you listening to me? Puh-ree. Suh-chool. And just like that, I will instantly become the least busy I have ever been. Ever.

Oh sweet Mary and Joseph, my nipples are hard just thinking about it.

Worker

I am a stay-at-home dad of a six-year-old and two-year-old twins.

Let me say that again.

I am a stay-at-home dad of a six-year-old and two-year-old twins.

There are many of you who know instantly how my days are. Plenty of you stay home with your own kids, and an astonishing number of you have twins or more. This post is not for you.

Instead, this post is for those who, upon reading that first sentence, did not feel the cold shudder of fear, did not notice the goosebumps up their back, did not run screaming from the room, promising to their makers that they would live a wholesome life forevermore as long as they never, ever had to ponder the meaning of those words again. Because really, that's what you should do. When you read the words, "stay-at-home dad of a six-year-old and two-year-old twins," your eyes should roll back into your head, you body should writhe with convulsions, and you should flop around the floor like a fish, mouth opening and closing in a silent pantomime of screaming death.

But some of you don't. And God help you if you meet me, because I've already let one of your kind live this weekend, and I don't think the second will get off so easily.

She was a friend of a friend, a working mother of two. When I introduced myself, she asked me what I did, and when I told her, she did not react appropriately. Her knees they didn't buckle, her eyes they didn't widen, her mouth it didn't froth. No. Instead, she said, "A stay-at-home dad, huh? Well, good for you! Of course, I could never do that. I'm a worker." A worker. She said that last word with a kind of self-effacing shrug, as if to say, "Oh silly me, I just love to work. Nope, no staying at home for me, not with my kind of work ethic. Just not enough to do, raising kids, you see. Not for a worker like me."

And Sweet Mother of Jesus, my hands stayed at my sides. I didn't reach out and pinch her neck until her eyeballs rolled around on the floor before me.

Sure, I could have, but, you know, it just seemed like too much work.

On How I Follow My Own Advice

Today I almost plunked down a big ol' chunk of change on reserving a party space for Kathryn's seventh birthday. I had the money in my hand, when I had a flashback to the Time Out New York Kids article in which I was happy to be included, and while at no point in the article did I openly mock people who plunk down big ol' chunks of change on party spaces, I gladly would have if only I had been asked. (The whole article is well worth a read, by the way, if you haven't done so already.)

And so I resisted. Kathryn's seventh birthday party will be held here, in my house, a space so small we can barely host ourselves. It will be a low-key affair. Sure there will still be a theme, and we'll still give out goody bags to those who come, although I do agree wholeheartedly with Laid-Off Dad's take on goody bags. Back in the day, the only things you got in exchange for attending one of my birthday parties was a slice of cake and a chance to see me throw a fit.

The Mom will bake another of her cakes, thereby almost doubling the amount of time she will have spent in the kitchen for the entire year up to then. She bakes wondrous cakes, my wife, multi-layered carnivals that come as much from her imagination as they do from recipe cards. Only at one of Kathryn's parties will you hear children argue over who gets to eat the piece with both the shark and the drowning Teddy Graham. The stories their parents must hear when they get home.

I Know, I Know, I Know

For three days I have been wracking my brain, plying it with alcohol, chanting upon mountaintops, and eating peyote buttons to come up with something really funny to say about this picture, something that will make it appear as if I'm posting it for a reason other than that it's the cutest friggin' picture you'll ever see.

God, I'm getting soft.

The End of Act II

There was supposed to be a window, but there wasn't. She was supposed to be behind it, but she wasn't.

I had seen this in hundreds of movies and there was always a window. My wife and I were supposed to be looking through it, arm in arm, me standing a good four or five inches taller than her, broad shouldered, wearing a wide grin, maybe even doing a little manly wave, pointing through the window with the mouthpiece of my tobacco pipe. My wife should have been wearing something simple but tasteful, a floral-print dress, perhaps, with pearls. She should have looked through the window, then up at me, then back through the window again, her look reflecting her awareness of how lucky she was to be both standing next to me and looking though the window at our new baby, sleeping quietly a good three feet from us.

But there was no window.

My wife? She was in a hospital bed, sleeping, drugged on painkillers, wearing a floral gown to be sure, but one that did not meet in the back, recovering from the abdominal surgery we so casually call a C-section. And I was pacing up and down the hallway of the maternity ward, disheveled, shoeless, unshaven, shrunk back to my normal 5 feet 8 inches, looking like I could protect no one from even the smallest of threats. And our baby was in my arms. Screaming to wake the dead.

It was 3 AM and I was in my sixth hour of learning that I didn't know shit.

Kathryn had been born mid-morning the day before and, after the doctors and nurses stopped torturing her, she had slept almost the entire day away. Grandparents, aunts, and uncles had passed her around all day, each hoping to be the one holding her when she finally opened her eyes. And when she did open them, they crept up with an agonizing slowness, each glimpse of blue eye underneath so much more amazing than anything seen before on earth. Pilgrims should have lined the block to see them.

But nobody was seeing those eyes at 3 AM, her eyelids clenched so tight a crowbar could not have found purchase there. Her angelic face had shrunk to a mere fraction of its former size, all to make room for her open mouth and its screams. The screams had begun at 9 PM. To be sure, they probably weren't screams to everyone. To the nursing staff, I imagine they hardly raised an eyebrow, but to me, they were unbelievable.

Probably the best information I could give a new parent, and something I wish I had known at the time, is that it is millions upon millions of years of successful evolution that allows your newborn to cry at just the right pitch and volume to compel you into action.

But I was all out of actions. Had been for hours. I only knew two lullabies and they weren't working. The first time I had ever held or rocked a baby had been with this very child not but half a day ago. Plus, I was afraid of the nurses. That fear had been drilled into me by the militant breast-feeding commandos who taught the lactation class we had attended months earlier. "Beware the nurses," they told us. "They'll have a bottle in that baby's mouth before you can say 'Lower IQ'! Then your baby will be RUINED FOREVER! She'll be STUPID and UNNATURAL and you'll NEVER LOVE HER like you would a breast-fed baby." Everytime I passed the nurses' station with my little bundle of wails, I hunched over a little more, worried that one of them might try to squeeze a bottle past me. (Of course, I also knew if they were to try, all I had to do was call out "La Leche League! I need you!" and flash my boob-shaped emergency distress signal and the League would appear instantly. They have superpowers. "La Leche League powers, activate! Form of a nipple! Form of a proper latch!")

So there was just me. Me and Kathryn. Back and forth, up and down that hallway, trying to let my wife get some sleep.

Kathryn finally stopped screaming around 5 o'clock in the morning. I had tried everything I knew and nothing had worked. I was beat, crushed, a broken man. My fortitude had been tested and found wanting. That morning, around 8 o'clock, when my parents, knowing only the show-baby Kathryn of the day before, came by the hospital room to announce that they were going to head back home, I lost it. I broke down right there in the hallway, crying in front of my parents like a child lost in a supermarket.

Looking back on it now, I realize two things. The first is that sometimes a person needs to be stripped down to his bare essence before he can be rebuilt anew. Like a bad Hollywood drama, my life had just entered the end of Act II, where the hero's plans are crushed, his dreams foiled, and his enemy is on the move, nevermind that my enemy only weighed seven pounds and drooled. Most really bad evil villains drool. Really.

The second thing I realize looking back on that night six and a half long years ago, is that we should really bring back the window.

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.

Ink-Stained Shirt

Author's note: With the events of the past week, I felt the need to take a step back from the day-to-day snarkiness and take a little time to celebrate life. The snark-fest, I'm sure, will return come Monday.

All stories have a beginning. Mine starts with a shirt.

Kathryn was born in late July of the year 2000. Our house was clean that day. In fact, our house had been clean for a week. Our house had been clean ever since the morning a week earlier when we returned from the hospital after almost having Kathryn, which, coincidentally, was the morning after we had had over 100 of our closest friends over to mourn celebrate our imminent journey into familyhood. 100 closest friends and their beers, the latter of which were strewn about the house in various states of consumption while we were at the hospital arguing with our obstetrician.

Never before had I argued with a medical professional, much less one whose job description makes my eyes roll back into my head until I can actually see the pain, but there I was, saying "I just don't think inducing labor right now is a good idea," while thinking, "If my mother-in-law sees my house right now, she'll take away our baby before we've even changed diaper one."

But a week later, the house into which Kathryn was born was clean. Steam-cleaned even, which was nice since it was to be the last time any of the carpets were even remotely white. When we sold our house four years later, our realtor looked at our carpets and asked, "How many kids did you say you had?" "Five," we lied.

But none of this is about the shirt. It's not even a shirt, really. More of a smock. A disposable, ink-stained smock.

When Kathryn was born, nurses descended upon her like an Indy 500 pit crew. No, strike that. If anything, they resembled the crew of workers, spray bottles and washcloths in hand, that swarm a car just after it comes out of a touch-free car wash. I half expected to see a little box marked "Tips" next to the exit. One of those nurses, the same one who I swear had just been buffing my new daughter with Turtle Wax, did the most amazing thing. She beckoned me over to Kathryn, who was apparently attempting to turn herself red enough to burst into flames. Another member of the pit crew was smearing black ink over the soles of Kathryn's impossibly small feet, then lifting each one and pressing it against a white sheet of cardboard. The nurse who had called me over told me to get closer. Even closer, she said. Even closer, until I was almost on top of this new, wild, fragile creature. Then she reached around me, grabbed each of Kathryn's skinny legs, and pressed the soles of Kathryn's still blackened feet against my hospital smock.

I was marked. I was marked from that day. This baby. This squirming, screaming, fist-clenching, redder-than-red child, this child was mine.

The shirt is wrinkled now, and faded, which is only appropriate, but I still have it. Even if I didn't, it is not beyond my now dulled abilities of observation to realize that those marks went straight through.

State of the Blog Address

TypePad, my blogging service, offers a thirty-day free trial period and, as of today, my free trial is up. So I think I should pause for a moment and take stock in what I've learned over this past month.

I've learned what my mom thinks is funny and what she thinks is NOT funny.

I've learned that it is not three college tuitions but three car insurance payments I should be worried about (thanks, Kate).

I've learned that there are colleges that offer twin discounts, but I don't want my girls to attend any of them (thanks, Rachel).

I've learned that photoshopped pictures of your kids, like this one:

or this one:

are a laugh riot for only a very selective audience, and that none of that audience is represented in my immediate family.

I've learned (and been very traumatised by, and even considered turing off comments because of) the fact that a college student is closer in age to my first grader than to me (thanks, Katie).

I've learned that an accidental mention in the New York Times can bring over 500 hits a day, but that Baristanet can catapult you over a thousand.

I've learned that posting something funny when your day has been anything but can be a challenge.

I've learned that, while I certainly did not begin this blog simply to hear from you, gentle reader, it only takes one comment on a post to make my day.

I've learned that every parent has a poopfest story. And some parents even took pictures.

and

I've learned that it apparently takes longer than 30 days to strike a 6-figure book deal, so I guess I'll keep blogging.