Happy 8760 Hours

Nipples,

8760 hours ago you cried incessantly, had dark splotchy hair, and pooped tar. Everyone said you reminded them of me. Now you are smiley blonds who poop rainbows. Everyone says you remind them of your mother.

8761 hours ago I was afraid that my track record with fish, turtles, and frogs meant that you would die in my care. Most likely in a jar or box with no air holes. You have successfully outlived Fins, Hoppy, Pokey, and FinsII. You're hot on the trail of Snowball. Kudos.

8762 hours ago I thought bringing you home would instantly make me incredibly lame, irrelevant, and exactly like everyone else. It turns out I have always been incredibly lame and that's what makes me special.

During your first 744 hours I strongly considered joining the military and requesting immediate deployment. The recruiter said, A) that wasn't how it worked and B) your mother had already been in asking these questions. He did give me some brochures to keep handy for when you turn two. Semper fi.

4 hours ago I woke up and tried to think of things to say to and about two girls who had endured a year with me as their father. Things no one had ever said or thought to say. Things I could have told the me from those 8760 hours ago that would have prepared him for everything in between. Then I realized how stupid it was to waste precious sleeping time thinking about blog entries and dozed off.

All those hours ago my least favorite thing in the world was people with kids who talked about how it changed their lives, how it completed them, thus implying that those of us without were not yet whole. I had studies and data about how people with kids were overall less happy, poorer, and more likely to know the words to Hannah Montana songs.

The truth is I was neither unhappy nor incomplete before you got here. But a mere 8760 hours later, if you tried to leave I don't how much of me would be left. A year ago that sentence would have disgusted me. I guess that means I'm a changed person, though I'm sure those who know me would assure you I'm no better.

What I can say is that I remain an incredibly impatient person, and I yet I can't ever remember so consciously wishing I could slow time down, savor ever second and squeeze every minute. There's still plenty of occasions when I look up and wonder, how is it not bedtime yet?, but if you told me that the next 8760 hours would take forever I'd be just fine with that.

So when you read this years from now, perhaps while wrestling with decisions of your own, accept the following not as a prescription but simply a fact, and take it for what you think it's worth: I am insanely in love with both of you and will be until there stops being such a thing.

Proper English

Stacey: No. You're using that word all wrong. Doo-doo means to have a sleep.

Me: In what language?

Stacey: English! We do speak English in South Africa you know.

Me: All I'm saying is that if an American child says he wants to doo doo and you put him in BED, you will regret it.

Brief Questions And Answers

Do your children walk yet?

Yes.  They also tend to accelerate as they approach solid objects.  The soundtrack to our lives: step.... step ....step ...step.. step .step step stepstepSMASH ........... CRY

Do they have new nicknames?

Walker Texas Nipples

Can they shake their head yes and no?

Ripley can say no to anything at anytime, and does.  However, at some point she got yes confused with sneezing.  So ask if she wants more peas, get a head shake.  Ask if she wants to take a bath, she makes one giant nod followed by the word "Acoo!".

Nixon smiles and does jazz hands no matter what you ask her.

What's the most disgusting thing you've pulled out of their mouths?

Yesterday I found Nixon trying to eat a cat claw.  How she got the claw off the cat remains a mystery, although we do have exceptionally lazy cats.

Is Stacey back?

Yes, and she saw the Jonas brothers in the lobby of a building in LA, so take that Grand Canyon.

Do you think she's becoming 'Americanized'?

Consider the following exchange-

Me: Stacey, did you hear what I just said? This is important.

Stacey: Kyle, I'm pretty sure if it were important I would have been listening.

Will you promise to blog more often in the near future and then not do it?

Consider it done.

Highway Lovesong

Dear America,

We are sending you a South African, a German, and a Chineese girl. They will be in the car filled with junk food and heavily accented sing alongs. Please be nice to them. Under no circumstances should you ask them to parallel park.

They are coming to you because when Stacy asked what she should do with her vacation I insisted that a full blown American road trip was the only option. And when I say American I really mean everything west of the Rocky Mountains. I still think of the eastern time zone as 'the colonies' and mentally associate it with smoke, lard, and staying up ridicilously late to watch baseball games. The midwest is also boring unless you like cornhole or creationism. The west has all our pointiest mountains and deepest holes, not to mention football games that start at 9am, so this is the direction I pointed them in.

I've tried to insert many of my favorite things into their itenerary so that while I sit here watching one baby beat the other over the head with an empty coke can I can dream of driving past the sand dunes, canyons, rocks, and pointy green trees that I now only see on Christmas or as scented simulcra hanging from my rearview mirror.

Of course, convincing three teenage girls that they should spend more time looking into deep rocky holes and less time trying to spot Hills characters shopping on Robertson is no easy feat. And so that is why I seek your help America. Please provide these girls with our very best. Deliver them brain halting slurpees and jaw dropping sunsets, sexually explicit mudflaps and heavenly vistas. Take a picture with them and autograph their mental guestbooks. Let them remember you the way that I do after a lifetime of my own roadtrips: a blur of awesome that smells vaguely like feet and Cheetos.

What Sleepy Horses Are Listening To These Days

A few days ago I read an article about a particular kind of music listened to by kids who recreationally take horse tranquilizers.  That led me to this song, which has since infected my mind and prevented me from doing anything productive except researching how to secure horse tranquilizers (turns out you have to know some pretty shady horses).  Hence, my elaborate excuse for not blogging sooner.

And lest you think horse tranquilizer music is not enough to derail cognitive function, I've recently come to the conclusion that every toy my children own teaches three things: colors, numbers, and how to honk a horn.  For some reason we seem to have concluded that the first three skills we need as humans are the ones that qualify you to be a NY cabbie.  

So to appreciate the nature of my week, imagine the following updates playing out against the auditory wallpaper of incessant honking and dazed horses:

Stacey has decided to stay with us for another year.  This is good not only for us as a family, but as Americans.  As the most prominent face of our country to this single foreign visitor it would have been devastating to feel like we didn't represent our land well enough to make it feel like an appealing destination for a second year.  Fortunately, we will not have to suffer that indignation.  However, the parents of other au pairs who are returning home after one year should be ashamed and possibly deported.  I should also point out that Stacey made her decision before the influx of horse tranquilizer music and that there are no take backs.

Ripples has learned to shake her head 'no' and thus refuses everything just for practice.  I don't think she's eaten since she picked up this skill.  Nixie has also learned to hake her head 'no' but doesn't seem to have associated it with any particular meaning.  When you offer her something she will emphatically shake her head no while anxiously smiling and opening her mouth.  And honking something.

When I got back to the airport the other night it was about 40 degrees and raining and I had no jacket and for 30 minutes I could not find my car.  I knew it was right next to the little bench with the trashcan, but it turns out there are LOTS of little benches with trashcans.  Every time I saw another bench next to a trashcan I thought, oh thank god, that's it.  And every time I was wrong.  I may or may not have yelled at some of these benches for toying with my emotions, and may or may not have urinated between parked cars out of desperation.  Even when I travel for business it would be hard to confuse me with a business traveler.

This week, seriously, less animal narcotics and more blogging.  The honking however is probably with us for the long haul.

  

Since We Last Spoke

You may have noticed that I decided to take most of January off to do some real work. Then I took February off to nap. But I'm back. These are the things you missed:

1. Snails. The job I took revolved around snails. That makes one Beaver movie and one Snail movie. I'm not sure I like the small animal niche I'm carving out for myself. Some things we learned: having children and writing for them are different things. Kids movies are supposed to have rocket powered baseballs, not ambigious meditations on the nature of disability. Oops.

2. Vacation. We took the twins and Stacey to SLC for some snowboarding and crying in other people's houses. Lessons: If you reserve your car for the wrong month and show up at the airport it will cost you several hundred EXTRA dollars to rent the same car. This is a great way to start your trip. Also, when you put babies in 50 layers of clothes they cannot bend at the waist. They do not like this. They will find a way to get back at you. They will poop in the bathtub.

3. Marriage. My current project is marrying off our au pair, Stacey, so that she will become an American citizen. I don't know that she actually desires this, I'm just trying to keep busy. I'm also motivated by her frequent comments about the crime in South Africa. If something is outside, like maybe a half inflated volleyball, she will say, 'How can they leave that outside? It would just get stolen in South Africa.' Or, when asking about the relative safety of some innocous activity, 'It's okay to go there? We won't get stabbed in the face?' I've been keeping an eye out for suitable candidates and am preparing to hit the dating websites without her knowledge or consent. She may already be trying to sabotage my efforts. She recently applied self tanner in what can only be described as 'stripes'. At the moment she appears more focused on attracting tigers than husbands.

4. Mars. I realized that I'm more in love with the name than the idea of being outnumbered by angry little ones. No one is saying never, but for the time being it feels like blinking causes you to miss fifteen fantastic new things that the twins do. I'd like to suck all that up until such time as they become boring and repetetive and then we'll order a new one.

You are now more or less up to speed. I promise to nap less and write more in March.

Lollipop

Hello 2009.

I'm writing you from my new office which my wife got me for Christmas.  As I may have mentioned, my old office was a desk at the foot of our bed approximately six inches from the place where our children train for futures as shot putting opera singers.  At least I assume that's what all the screaming and block throwing is about and precisely why I haven't stopped it.  I don't want to stunt their growth.

My NEW office is still a desk at the foot of the bed inches from Twin Town, but it comes with Noise Cancelling Headphones.  Unfortunately, there's not a pair of noise cancelling headphones on the market that can handle twins, so to actually drown them out I have to plug into a white noise channel and turn it up.  Way, way up.  My new office sounds as if it's located in a Class 5 hurricane that spins directly around my head.  The upshot?  Turns out you can't hear twins in a hurricane.

Anyway, 2009, I really wanted to sum up 2008 for you, reflect on all the awesomness, tell you about the twins first Christmas, etc., but I feel like what we really need to talk about, 2009, is the horrible sickness and diarrhea you've brought me.  It's actually erased my memory of everything good that came before it.  I go to the bathroom and I have to check my wallet to remember who I am.  It is unpleasant.

To save us from repeating the word diarrhea over and over, I will from now on replace it with the word lollipop.  Unfortunately, at first, I didn't know I had lollipop.  I would be sitting around and think, 'oh, I have some gas, I should clear that out'.  And then I would think, 'uh-oh.'  If there's anything more embarrassing than crapping your pants as an adult I really, really, really hope never to find out what it is.  It's times like this that I'm thankful I work out of a small hurricane located only feet from the bathroom.  You know that you're ill when you're packing for a two day trip and you find yourself thinking, 'how many pairs of underwear should I bring? 4? 10?  You know what, I better just bring them all'.

UPDATE:  My dad took me out for a chili-dog once I thought lollipop was behind me.  Let me just say that if you've had days of lollipop, and you're walking around the world with all of your underwear in a bag that you never let beyond arm's reach, chili-dog is not the right answer to any question. That's like trying to find out if your swim lessons have been effective by jumping off a bridge with a Volkswagen around your neck.  For the next 30 minutes it pretty much looked and sounded like there was a live animal trying to eat its way out of me.

The irony of all this is that I've traveled away from the safety of my hurricane simply because someone offered me a free meal, and when I RSVP'd I just naturally assumed I would be able to digest it.  My understanding is that the restaurant is a tough ticket, the kind of place where you can't turn around with whacking a celebrity with your bag of underwear.  If Russell Crowe asks why I keep running to the bathroom, please tell him I'm training for a marathon.

UPDATE:  Its now my birthday and, as a present, I seem to have retained last night's dinner.  This is shaping up to be the best birthday ever!