Good Intentions

So, this past weekend Kathy and I went through that first-time-parent rite of passage where your kid wakes up screaming at 2:30 am and you check her temperature and the thermometer reads 105.1 degrees. Crap! I didn't even know human temperatures went that high! Is Riley's brain frying like that egg in those "Just Say No to Drugs" commercials? Whaddo-I-do!? Crap! Crap!

And then the Kaiser advice nurse calmly tells you that as long as she's breathing okay and is staying hydrated and blah blah blah, she's actually fine, and you should just keep an eye on her, and furthermore the fever is just a sign that she's fighting off infection, and that it's not a bad thing. Which might be true, but when your daughter is shivering and sweating and looking up at you with scared, sad, helpless eyes, in my mind this qualifies as a "bad thing".

So Riley's been a feverish mess for the past couple days. It's been funny watching Leah during this time, as she tries to figure out what the heck's wrong with Riley. Here's a scene from this morning:

• Riley is sitting on the floor, screaming.
• Leah toddles out of room.
• Leah toddles back into room, holding a comb above her head. "Cowm!" she triumphantly announces.
• Leah, apparently thinking that Riley is upset about her hairstyle, tries to comb Riley's hair.
  
• Riley, not appreciating Leah's gesture, screams louder.
• Leah toddles out of room.
• Leah toddles back into room, holding a cup of milk. "Mok!" she triumphantly announces, holding the milk aloft.
  
• Leah shoves a cup of milk into Riley's face, poking Riley in the eyebrow with the straw.
• Riley screams louder.
• Leah toddles out of room.
• Leah toddles back into room, holding a book. "Buk!" she triumphantly announces.
• Leah shoves a book into Riley's face.
• Riley screams louder.
• Leah smiles and does a little dance in front of Riley, apparently thinking she just needs a little comic relief.
• Riley screams louder.
  

So, although Leah's intentions are very sweet and good-natured, in the interests of keeping the sisterly peace, our parenting strategy right now is to keep Leah and Riley separated. So for the past couple days, Kathy and I have each become the single parent of one kid. And I've got to say, I don't particularly like being the single parent of one kid. Nope, not one bit.

So get well soon, Riley. Of course, as soon as Riley gets well, Leah will get sick, but hey, for now, let's not go there.

Quijbo

The tough thing about writing in a blog about my kids is that I'm always super-self-conscious about being too "gushy". Like most parents, I secretly think that my daughters are obviously the funniest, smartest, most beautiful, most-everything-else girls in the whole wide universe, but I'm not really sure I really want to be obnoxious and say that to the world. Although I guess I just did.

I'm not really a braggy person by nature, so I've never felt all that comfortable with bragging as a concept. But having a couple of toddlers kinda throws that all out of whack, because I find that when you have two toddlers you generally have three possible topics of conversation: (a) the cute and/or incredible thing that one of your toddlers did that morning, (b) the awful and/or incredibly embarrassing or gross thing that your toddler did that morning, or (c) how incredibly fricking tired you are. And if you eliminate Option (a) from the mix, you pretty much just sound like a big-ol' whiner all the time.

But it all gets a little sensitive when you're hanging out with other parents with toddlers, because when you say something like "Riley and Leah started singing along with the Music Together CD today!", there's a 50% chance that the other parents will gleefully respond with "Liam does that too!", but there's a 50% chance that the parents will say something like "That's great!" and then there will be an awkward silence which you know means that Liam doesn't do that yet. And then Liam's parents will go home and stress out about whether the fact that Liam doesn't sing along with the CD means that Liam has a hearing problem or his brain isn't developing right or he's going to become a serial killer.

I know this is true because, of course, we've been on both sides. The girls were way behind on the whole crawling thing, and sure, we pretended we were fine with whatever pace our daughters wanted to learn to crawl, but secretly it killed us that all our friends' kids were crawling little baby-sized circles around our daughters.

So it is with some trepidation that I share the following:



So far, Leah and Riley have kinda sorta learned the following letters: B, D, K, L, M, O, Q, T, X, and Y. In other words, almost all of the really non-useful letters of the alphabet. Worst Boggle Board ever. Can't really spell much of anything with those letters, girls. But hey, you're only 19 months old -- you get a pass for now.

Sorry, Liam.

The Proclamation

Mother's Day has kinda snuck up on me this year. Kathy's birthday was last week, so I was all focused on that, and yesterday I look at the calendar, and kapow! Wha -- Mother's Day, already? Aw crap - and I already blew my gift-giving-idea wad. Stupid calendar...

Anyway, since it's just about Mother's Day and I also need to make up for poking fun at Kathy on the blog a little bit lately, here it is - the First Official Kathy Appreciation Post.

Whereas:

• Kathy has a superhuman ability to find and/or correct her husband's mistakes, including but not necessarily limited to: (a) putting on their daughter's pajamas while forgetting to put on a diaper, (b) putting on their daughters clothes on backwards approximately once every three days, and most recently (c) somehow leaving a baby-wipe, soiled with poop, inside their daughter's pajamas;
• Kathy fearlessly takes on all the baby-care things that her husband is afraid of doing because he thinks he might inadvertently injure or maim their daughters (e.g., nail trimming, taking those little rubber bands and barrettes out of the girls' hair, cooking);
• Kathy, for reasons her husband cannot fathom, somehow, after 8 hours of work, 1 hour of walking to and from the BART station, and several hours of trying to keep up with two 19-month olds running around the house, has the energy and will to conjure up and cook meals for her daughters, shop for them, then spend a half an hour searching under every piece of furniture in the house looking for whatever toy that Leah has lost that day, because she knows that at some point, Leah's going to want that toy and is going to be darn pissed if she can't find it (And she knows that her husband wouldn't be able to find the toy even if it the fate of the world depended on it);
• Kathy is beloved so much by her daughters that her mere presence in the room causes her daughters to jealously compete over which one of them can garner the greater percentage of her attentions;
• Kathy loves her daughters so much that on nights like tonight where she has to work late and won't get to put her daughters to bed, she gets totally and profoundly sad, and when she gets home she can't resist going into their room and watching them sleep in the dark for a couple minutes;
  

...Therefore I do hereby ordain that, um, Kathy rocks. Happy mother's day, baby. You are a stupendous mom. Leah and Riley are incredibly and profoundly lucky to have you. Seriously.

And for people reading this who are not Kathy, I'm really sorry for subjecting you to this mush. I promise that in my next post, I will go back to my usual wife-mocking self. Aw yeah.