Two (Plus Two) For the Road

No Sleep 'Till...

2011-09-01T21:23:00.000-07:00

Back in the olden days, Kathy and I used to be quite smug about how easily our girls went to sleep. It used to be a simple two-step process:

Put daughters in crib.
Leave the room.

And they would sleep. Not immediately, but eventually, after maybe 15 to 30 minutes of giggling and/or singing. Most importantly, it would happen without any additional intervention by us parental people. In other words, Mommy and daddy did not have to re-enter the room. Which was freaking awesome.

And so it was for one oh-so-glorious year, until around the time they turned two. Somewhere around that time, Riley started getting a little displeased with the whole simplicity of this process. And so, the two-step process became a five-step process:

Put daughters in crib.
Leave the room.
After about 10 minutes of giggling and/or singing, Riley screams for mommy or daddy or both.
Go back into the room and adjust Riley’s blanket to her strict specifications.
Leave the room.

Then somewhere along the way -- I’m not quite sure when – we totally lost control, and the heretofore simple process started expanding at an exponential rate. One day we turned around and found that our little two-step process had morphed into a 25-step extravaganza:

Put daughters in crib.
Make sure that each daughter has exactly the correct number of stuffed monkeys of the correct colors next to them, plus one Winnie-the-Pooh, one brown bear, and a couple miscellaneous animals (duckie or froggy or piglet). Each stuffed animal must be aligned according to child’s personal preferences, which change daily.
Tuck both girls into their blankets.
Sing “Great Big Stars”
Sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”
Girls have been jumping up and down in their cribs during the songs, so tuck both girls into their blankets again.
Try to leave the room, unsuccessfully.
Fluff Riley’s pillow.
Try to leave the room, unsuccessfully.
Bring Riley and Leah a cup of water.
Leave the room.
Listen to girls sing and giggle for 10 minutes.
Riley screams for mommy, daddy, or both.
Go back into room and adjust blanket to Riley’s strict specifications.
Leave the room.
Listen to girls sing and giggle for 10 minutes.
Riley screams for mommy, daddy, or both.
Go back into room and adjust blanket to Riley’s strict specifications. Tell Riley “this is the last time we’re coming in.”
Leave the room.
Listen to girls sing and giggle for 10 minutes.
Hear Riley screaming bloody murder like she’s being stabbed or something.
Rush into the room. Crying immediately stops. Riley, says, in a sing-songy mocking voice, “this is the LAST TIME!” then giggles.
Adjust blanket to Riley’s strict specifications.
Leave the room.
Riley alternately screams for mommy and daddy for about 15 minutes.
Girls fall asleep out of pure exhaustion, about 45 to 60 minutes after we put them to bed.

This was pretty much the situation until this summer, when we converted Riley and Leah’s crib into “big girl beds”. I had been dreading this for months and putting it off because as bad as the whole sleep situation had become with Riley, at least she was contained and was not openly inciting riots throughout the house. But then the girls started noticing that all their friends had big boy/girl beds and they didn’t, and what’s up with that? And hey, looky here, this bar that’s confining me to the crib isn’t actually all that high.

So we gave in, converted the cribs into toddler beds, and held our breaths waiting for the fallout. The first couple nights were pretty successful, and Kathy and I briefly and foolishly started breathing a sigh of relief. But then I guess it clicked in Leah and Riley’s heads (well, probably Riley’s head first) that this whole “big girl bed” thing meant that they were free to roam around the room, including to the bed of a certain twin sister. And this has added a whole new dimension to the post-bedtime play hour. And by “play hour”, I mean PLAY HOUR, with all caps and a few exclamation points thrown in for good measure. And by “hour”, I mean about two hours. Sometimes three.

I wish I were exaggerating, but I’m not. Oh, indeed, as Kathy will testify, I am not.

To give you an idea, here was the scene the other day when I checked in on them about two hours after we put them “to bed”:

Approximately 20 books off the shelves on the floor.
Blankets from their beds laid on the floor, like a picnic.
Clothes drawers open with various clothing items randomly strewn about the room.
About 30 stuffed animals gathered on top of the picnic blanket.
Riley gleefully jumping on Leah’s bed like it’s a trampoline.
Leah preparing to take a flying leap off of her bed on to the picnic blanket.

I walk in. Riley and Leah freeze. Brief sheepish looks on Riley and Leah’s faces, which melt into ear-to-ear grins. Proud grins. A little defiant.

Then on cue, Riley looks up at me and asks “Can I have a popsicle?”

And so it goes.

Pure Domination

2011-06-22T20:24:00.000-07:00

Ever since the girls were born, Kathy and I have enjoyed speculating which one was going to be the dominant one. The one that decides which games to play. The one that bosses the other one around and finishes the other one’s sentences and answers all the adult’s questions and beats the other one up when she gets weary of her antics.

Right now, the smart money’s on Leah. Here’s a scene I overheard this morning as the girls were laying in their cribs, just after waking up.

Riley: [laughs for no particular reason]
Leah: [in scolding voice] Riley, no laughing.
Riley: [pauses, then laughs again – a very fake exaggerated laugh]
Leah: [in “parental” sounding voice]: Riley, it’s not time for laughing. It’s time for talk.
Riley: [pauses and thinks]
Riley: Okay.

Not only is Leah bossy as all hell, but she loves showing off all her physical and mental superiorities. If you ask a question, Leah will makes sure that she answers before Riley does. If they’re putting together a puzzle, Leah will make sure that she puts in the final piece. If Riley does something bad, Leah will scold her, and scold her in exaggeratedly loud voice.

“Riley, don’t spill the cheerios!”
“Riley, don’t pee pee in the crib!”
“Riley, don’t put your feet there!”
“No, Riley, no. Don’t do it.”

Leah’s totally gonna be that annoying nerd in school that raises her hand and answers every question the teacher asks and narcs on all her classmates when they do something wrong, isn’t she? Oh no, she’s gonna be Rachel from Glee, isn’t she? Aw, crap.

Of course, Riley’s got to show off her superiorities when she gets the chance, too. Right now, her big advantage over Leah is that she’s a world class flirt, particularly with guys that she decides she likes. If she decides she likes you, she’ll smile coquettishly, bat her eyelashes, giggle, and basically make you her little slave. It’s a good little superpower to have in the toddler world.

But, I think the Leah’s superiority-thing is starting to get to Riley a little bit. We’ve been seeing signs of some competitiveness creeping in. Like when they go down the block on their little scoot-bikes, Riley will make this conscious effort to stay in front of Leah at all times. Leah speeds up, Riley speeds up. Leah slows down, Riley slows down. This would work fine except for the fact that Leah is, like, three times as fast as Riley. So Leah suddenly hits “turbo boost” mode, and Riley struggles for a few seconds to stay ahead, turning all red and looking all frantic. Out of pure desperation, she’ll start swerving back and forth across the sidewalk, trying to cut off Leah’s passing path. But then, inevitably, Leah will leave Riley in the dust and Riley will break into heartbroken tears. Leah then grins with the glow of a thousand suns, takes a little victory lap, and chants “USA! USA!”

It’s a sad sight to see, but whatcha gonna do. It’s a cold, cruel, competitive world out there. Even for a two-year old.

Just Play Along

2011-05-03T20:46:00.000-07:00

One thing I totally was not aware of before I had kids is that the whole toddler “playdate” thing is a total sham. It seems that the toddler playdate is a big parental fabrication created by parents out of pure desperation to talk to other adults and temporarily distract themselves from the semi-mindnumbing daily toddler routine. You sit your kids in front of some toys or bring them to the playground, and then you watch the kids totally ignore each other for a couple hours except for occasionally stealing each other toys. Meanwhile, the parents communally gossip or lament the loss of their previous lives between interruptions every 10 minutes to feed/change/scold/comfort their child. Or, um, children.

And despite the fact that they don’t actually play with their playdate friend, Riley and Leah will spend the next 48 hours talking about their friend in obsessive detail.

“Sylvie was eating blueberries!”
“Sylvie’s wearing a purple shirt!”
“Sylvie likes hamburgers!”
“Sylvie’s got two mommies!”
“Sylvie eats bunny crackers!”
“Sylvie brought cupcakes!”

Our girls get a little food obsessed sometimes.

Their friends all refer to them as “LeahnRiley”. As in “LeahnRiley, do you want some bunny crackers?” Or “LeahnRiley, it’s my turn.” If forced to refer to one of them individually, about 93 percent of the time they will get it wrong, which makes me think that Riley must look more like a “Leah” and Leah must look more like a “Riley”. I guess we named them wrong. Dang it.

Once in a long while you’ll get an inter-toddler conversation, which as far as I’m concerned is pure gold. Here’s an example from this weekend:

Leah (out of nowhere): I got a blue shirt.
Sylvie: I got a white shirt.
Leah: I’m wearing shoes.
Sylvie: I’m wearing shoes too.
Leah: I like cupcakes.
Sylvie: Yeah.
(end of conversation)

Me too, Leah. Me too.

Eight Days

2011-03-23T20:02:00.000-07:00

Riley and Leah are now undergoing potty-training boot camp, and boy oh boy, does this camp ever suck. Can I please fast forward my life ahead a couple weeks? Pretty please?

We went cold turkey on the diapers last Monday, so we’ve been doing this potty-training thing for eight loooong days. Here’s a recap:

Days 1-2:

Leah becomes the Peeing Machine. We put her on the toilet. She pees immediately. Kathy and I rejoice and tell her how proud we are of her, and Leah is beaming with pride. Five minutes later, sitting on the couch, Leah pees again. So we sit her on the toilet again. She pees. Five minutes later, sitting on the carpet, she pees. So we sit her on the toilet. She pees. The girl has an endless reservoir of pee.
Meanwhile, Riley becomes the Pee-Holding Machine. We put her on the toilet. No pee. We sit her there for a half hour, reading book after book after book to her. Still no pee. We give up and let her play for awhile, waiting for the inevitable bladder explosion, but it never comes. Two hours later, we’ve sat her on the potty six times and she’s drank two full cups of water, and still no pee. I begin to suspect that Riley’s pee is somehow magically teleporting itself into Leah’s bladder. Didn’t know that was part of the whole twin thing, but hey, there’s a lot I don’t know.

Days 3-6:

Leah and Riley both resist sitting on the potty with white-hot intensity. They pull out every trick in their book. They cry. They flail their limbs around. They ask to sit on the “big” potty, but then you bring them to the big potty, and they say they want to sit on the “little” potty. Or you announce that it’s time to sit on the potty, and they first pretend they don’t hear you, then they say “in 5 minutes!”, then they act like they want to eat a snack first.
Once you actually get them on the potty, Leah pees within milliseconds, and then jumps off triumphantly. Riley meanwhile whimpers on the toilet saying “all done” under her breath over and over until we have mercy on her and let her off the toilet. And then a couple minutes later, she pees herself.

Day 7:

Leah’s got it down. She now acts like she’s been doing this peeing thing for years. Actually, she pees disturbingly quickly. It’s like some kinda weird excretory magic trick. She sits down, then stands up a half a second later and there’s, like, a gallon of pee in the potty, and I don’t know how it got there.
Meanwhile, Riley’s going in the opposite direction. When we mention the potty, it’s like a declaration of war or something. Riley breaks out her entire arsenal of toddler tactics and just tries one after another, just hoping that she will wear us down eventually. It takes all of our parental energy just to get her to sit on the potty and keep her on the potty for five minutes. And it’s all for nothing, because She. Will. Not. Go. Riley’s excretory functions seem to have totally shut down. She holds her pee for hours – either that or she is somehow smuggling it out of her body when our backs are turned. Plus she somehow hasn’t pooped in the past six days, just out of shear willpower.

On the plus side, Riley seems genuinely proud of Leah’s accomplishments, and not the slightest bit jealous or resentful. After Leah goes to the potty, Riley beams and proudly proclaims “Leah went pee-pee in the potty!” then turns to Leah and brightly says “Good job, Leah!”

It’s cute, I guess, but trust me, it ain't cute enough to make up for the past eight days.

More Scenes From Twinhood

2011-02-23T20:30:00.001-08:00

Scene 1: A few weeks ago. We are in a huge asphalt parking lot next to playground in the Castro. It is around noon.

Riley finds a ball in the corner of the parking lot, one of those tiny super balls that bounce and bounce and bounce, forever and ever, until the end of time.
Riley rotates the ball around in her hands a few times, and is completely enamored. She gets a huge grin on her face.
Riley chucks the ball at Leah. It glances off Leah’s thigh and bounces away.
Leah is confused at first, but then starts chasing the ball as it skitters across the parking lot. She is giggling and squealing with delight. Riley follows behind her with a huge grin.
Leah is not hand-eye coordinated enough to catch a small, bouncing spherical object, so she takes like 15 wild unsuccessful swipes at the ball over the next 45 seconds before it finally slows down enough for Leah to pick it up off the ground.
Leah chucks the ball at Riley.
Riley chases the ball as it bounces across the parking lot. She is giggling like a madwoman. She clearly believes that this is the most fun game ever invented. After 20 wild swipes and about 60 seconds, Riley picks up the ball and chucks it at Leah.
The world’s slowest and giggliest game of catch of all time continues for the next 15 minutes, spanning the full extent of the parking lot, until a car suddenly barrels into the parking lot, and I am suddenly reminded that letting 2-year-old kids run wildly around a big parking lot is probably somewhat of a parental no-no.

And scene.

Scene 2: Our living room. This past Sunday.

Leah and Riley are playing with their little plastic tea-set on the floor.

Leah suddenly stands up and walks into the corner. She gets all glassy-eyed and red-faced, and all signs point to imminent pooping. She lets out a slow 20-second long fart.

Me: (with concerned voice) Leah, do you need to go the potty?

Leah: (grunting) No(grunt)oooooo.

Riley: (mimicking my concerned tone): Leah, wanna go potty?

Leah: (grunting) No(grunt)ooooo.

Riley (using parental concerned voice): Too late?

Riley (using parental concerned voice): Wanna changey diaper?

Riley (using parental concerned voice): New diaper, Leah?

Riley (using parental concerned voice): Leah, time for fresh diapey?

Leah lets out another slow 20-second long fart.

And scene.

Scene 3: A couple weeks ago. It’s around the girls’ bedtime but we are walking home from a hugely successful playdate and dinner with their friend Sylvie. Riley and Leah are super-hyped-up and slap-happy, and Kathy and I are trying to get them home, very unsuccessfully.

Riley (stopping and pointing at Leah): Hey!

Leah (pointing at Riley): Hey!

Riley (pointing at Leah and giggling): Hey!

Leah (pointing at Riley and giggling): Hey!

Riley (now making up random words and giggling): Hey Mung!

Leah (giggling): Hey Mung!

Riley (giggling): Hey Boca Mung!

Leah (giggling): Hey Boca Mung!

Me (to girls, impatiently pointing in direction of home): Let’s go, girls! We gotta get home and get ready for bed.

Riley (ignoring daddy, spinning around in a circle): Hey Boca Boca Mung!

Leah (spinning around in a circle): Hey Boca Boca Mung!

Riley (falling down on the sidewalk, giggling uncontrollably): Hey Boca Boca Mung Mung!

Leah (falling down on the sidewalk, giggling uncontrollably): Hey Boca Boca Mung Mung!

Riley and Leah continue giggling, spinning, falling down, and making up nonsense words. Kathy and I give up and watch. A couple passes by, holding two matching car seats, obviously infant twins. They dodge our spinning little girls as they walk by.

Kathy (to couple): This is your life in two years.

Couple smiles politely. They look tired.

Fade to black.

Instant Karma

2011-01-18T20:38:00.000-08:00

So in the little parental game of Survivor that has become our lives, the alliances have been pretty clear for a while now. For months, Leah has been a mommy’s girl and Riley has been a daddy’s girl. If we’re walking somewhere, Leah wants to hold mommy’s hand and Riley wants to hold my hand. If we’re going for a drive, Leah wants mommy to put her in the car seat, and Riley wants me to put her in the car seat. If they want a book read to them, Leah will hand the book to mommy, and Riley will hand the book to daddy.

Now for me personally, this used to be a pretty sweet deal. Riley has generally been the more laid-back, more independent, more happy-go-lucky girl, while Leah has been the stubborn one, the attention hog, and the one most likely to melt down if she didn’t get her way. I’d play Legos or something with Riley and she’d be happy for, like, an hour, and meanwhile Leah would be forcing Kathy to read the same book ten times in a row, and if Kathy tried to change the activity or, God forbid, try to play with Riley for a little while, Leah would let Kathy know in her own special, shrieky way that this was not acceptable parental behavior.

Yep, the daddy/Riley team rocked. I felt bad for Kathy, yes, but – well, ya know – better her than me, right?

Then at some point, I got cocky. I let stupid thoughts enter my mind – thoughts like “Riley is such a good kid because of MY amazing father-skillz”, and “Hey, this parenting thing ain’t so hard”.

So stupid. So very, very stupid.

Yes, somewhere around Christmas time, the karma gods decided that they’d had just about enough of a certain someone’s arrogant thoughts and that it was time for that certain someone's shoe to drop. And drop it did, with a resounding thud. On or about December 23, my little independent, happy-go-lucky daughter Riley suddenly decided that she didn’t want me out of her sight. On or about December 24, she decided that I had to be within a two-foot radius of her at all times. And on or about December 25, she decided that I pretty much had to be either carrying her, holding her hand, or acting as her personal seat cushion at all times, or else she would scream most unpleasantly until I was back in my appointed place.

And naturally, on December 26, we got on a plane for a 5-day vacation in Cancun with my parents, sister, and brother-in-law. This led to the following unhappy scenarios for daddy:

Kathy pushing Leah and Riley in their double stroller through customs at the Mexico City airport, with me awkwardly shuffling next to the stroller so I could hold Riley’s hand.
Me taking a constipated Riley back and forth to the bathroom four times to get her diaper changed during one meal because she wouldn’t allow mommy or anyone else to change her diaper.
Riley crying and heart-wrenchingly screaming “daddydaddydaddydaddydaddydaddydaddydaddy [inhale] daddydaddydaddy” for about 15 minutes every night when we put her to bed.

Meanwhile, Leah turned overnight into some kinda ultra-giggly-charm-o-saur 24/7. Okay, I get it, karma gods. I'm sorry! Sheesh.

Sounds bad, I know, but the trip actually turned out pretty great despite sporadic moments of exasperation and exhaustion. Leah pretty much had the time of her life, and I guess Riley did too, when she wasn’t screaming in desperation, that is. They loved swimming in the pool, hanging out on the beach and pouring sand from bucket to bucket, and just hanging out on the hotel balcony:

And then there was the resort’s awesome little “Kids Club”. Ah yes, the Kids Club, home of the gi-normous trampoline. Because if there’s anything my daughters like, it’s running, jumping, and falling down over and over again:

No Fear

2010-12-21T20:47:00.001-08:00

Around when our girls turned one, I read this book that gave advice about raising twin toddlers. It scared the living crap out of me. The book was full of stories of the two toddlers conspiring to wreak total havoc around the house - anecdotes about the author taking her eye off the twins for 30 seconds and then turning around to find them climbing on top of refrigerators and kitchen counters and televisions and into the oven and dishwasher and laundry machines. Or sprinting after their kids as they toddled into the street, in two different directions. As I read these stories, I got this pit in my stomach. This was going to be my life, and it kinda sounded like a suck-y life.

So now the girls have been toddlers for a good year or so, and none of this stuff has ever happened. No girls climbing into dangerous locations and giving Dad a heart attack. No interest whatsoever in participating in any death-defying acts of any kind. Riley and Leah would rather pretend-feed their dolls for an hour and a half. On the ground.

Our girls are little scaredy-cats. Excellent. Score one for daddy.

Last week, we brought them to the local crazy Christmas house with the crazy Christmas lights and crazy 50-foot Christmas tree encircled by dolls and model trains and jack-in-the-boxes and shiny ornaments bigger than your head. And the girls were totally entranced and enamored with the lights and the spectacle of it all. Until a joyful Santa Claus came out to hand out candy canes and sit on his little Santa Claus throne. At which point a panicked Leah ran and buried her face in Kathy's thigh. And a wide-eyed Riley froze like a statue with the exception of her slightly-trembling lower lip until I picked her up. And this was with Santa sitting about 10 feet away. So much for the whole sitting-in-Santa's lap thing.

And of course, when it comes to things that they probably should be afraid of, like say drowning, the girls are totally fearless. We've been taking Riley and Leah to the pool for "swimming lessons" for months, and as a result, they are totally comfortable in the water. Which sounds like a good thing, but trust me, "comfortable in the water" is a heckuva long way from "swimming". To Riley and Leah, swimming means flinging yourself into the water, giggling, kicking your legs for about 0.7 seconds, and then sinking like a stone until mom or dad rescue you. Then giggling again. And Riley and Leah don't yet have the common courtesy to give mommy or daddy some kind of warning before they fling themselves to their death or even check to make sure that mommy or daddy is actually watching them.

And now, over Christmas break, we're headed to Cancun with the girls to stay at resort with, like, five different pools. Sounds great, but this means Kathy and I will basically be spending our whole vacation frantically trying to keep our girls from drowning themselves.

Clearly, we need to install a little more healthy fear into these girls. You think we can get the resort to paint a giant Santa Claus on the bottom of their pools? That might work.

Have a great Christmas everyone! Here's a cute picture and video to tide you over until 2011:

Scenes from Twinhood

2010-11-22T20:28:00.000-08:00

I gotta say, it's been fun watching the dynamic between Leah and Riley over the past few months. After spending the first few 18 months of their lives viewing each other as "that person who always takes away my toys", they've started actually playing with each other and talking to each other, which has been cool to see. Although there's definitely a love/hate thing going on with those girls.

I present to you now, for your enjoyment, three scenes from this past weekend:

Scene 1: Friday Night
The Scene: Riley and Leah are in the bathtub. Leah stretches her legs across the tub, glancing Riley's arm.
Riley (wagging finger): No, Leah! No kicking!
Riley: [tries to shift away from Leah, glancingly bumps Leah leg in the process]
Leah (wagging finger): No, Riley! No hitting!
Riley (wagging finger): No pushing!
Leah (wagging finger): No kicking!
Riley: No, Leah, no!
Leah: No, Riley! No! No!
[Cut to parents, rubbing their temples. Fade out.]

Scene 2: Saturday Morning
The Scene: We are at a little mini-zoo-slash-museum in Burlingame. Riley and Leah have been ignoring the animals and have instead been giddily splashing in a gigantic puddle for the past 20 minutes.
Riley: Dada!
Riley: [starts walking toward Dada]
Riley: [trips, sprawls face-first into pavement]
Riley: [sits for two seconds in humiliated, hurt, stunned silence]
Riley (at top volume): WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Leah: [runs quickly over to Riley's side, looking concerned]
Leah (to Dada, who's now comforting Riley) Riley crying!
Leah (now grinning and gleefully shoving finger in Riley's wet-pavement-stained face): Riley cryyying!
Leah (now dancing a little jig): Riley cryyyyyyying!
[Freeze frame as Leah gets jiggy wid it.]

Scene 3: Sunday Night
The Scene: Riley and Leah's room. It is about 8:45 pm. Riley and Leah have been lying awake in bed since 7:30.
Riley: Gonk! (giggles)
Leah: Gonk! (giggles)
Riley: Gonk! (giggles)
Leah: Gonk! (giggles)
Riley: Gonk! (giggles)
Leah: Gonk! (giggles)
[both girls giggle some more]
Leah: Riley and Leah!
Riley: And Mama and Dada!
Leah: And Elsa?
Riley: And Maya?
Leah: And Jo-Jo?
Riley: And Poppy?
Leah: And Grandma?
Riley: And A-Pah?
Leah: And Aisha?
Riley: And Hailey?

[9:00 pm]
Leah: And Cammy?
Riley: And Aunti-Lissa?
Leah: And...

[9:15 pm]
Riley: [zzzzz]
Leah: And Pooh...and doggy...and Riley's baby... and Leah's baby... and Riley... and Leah... and...
[Fade to black. Roll credits.]

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Geisha Cannibals

2010-11-02T20:55:00.000-07:00

I've never been much into Halloween, but you can trust me when I say that last year's Halloween totally sucked. Last year, Kathy and I were all excited to dress up our little one-year old girls on their first real Halloween. Kathy bought these lion and chicken costumes for them that were a-DOR-able. And then we put them in the costumes and Riley hated her costume with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns. Riley started screaming bloody murder, but we took them out for a tour of the neighborhood Halloween festivities figuring that, hey, she would eventually forget about her costume and turn back into her normal happy self. But no, Riley did not forget, not even after an hour of walking through the crazy Fair Oaks Street parade of Halloween revelry, and at the end of the night, Riley was one pissed-off, over-stimulated mess of humanity. Leah meanwhile spent the entire evening sucking her thumb, staring in wide-eyed confusion at the chaos surrounding her.

So I wasn't really looking forward to this Halloween all that much. Fortunately, this Halloween was a solid improvement over last year's. I still think that our girls spent most of the night confused about what the hell was going on and why the heck all these adults were dressed up so weird, but at least they weren't screaming bloody murder at the same time. Upgrade, I say.

Although when Leah passed by the dude dressed up as a lobster in front of Whole Foods, she totally buried her head into her mommy's shoulder and made whimpery panicky noises until lobster-dude was out of sight. Apparently, our daughter's fine with witches and skeletons and demons and ghosts roaming the streets of Noe Valley but becomes terrified when confronted with a yummy crustacean. Go figure.

Our girls haven't eaten candy yet in their lives, and we weren't about to start them on it now, so really, from their standpoint, what was the point of the whole thing? I mean, honestly, when I was a kid I wouldn't have been too psyched about the whole dressing up thing if the chock-full bag of candy didn't come as part of the deal. Fortunately, Riley and Leah had no idea what they were missing, so they were happy as clams even as all the kids around them were scarfing candy like there was no tomorrow. And then somebody in front of one of the shops gave Riley a purple pencil, and man she just thought that pencil kicked ass. She spent the next hour walking around, happily clutching that purple pencil in her tiny little fist, occasionally holding it a aloft like a magic wand. Good stuff.

And now, the obligatory Halloween aren't-they-cute-costume pictures! Yee-ha!

It's My Birthday Too, Yeah

2010-09-28T20:22:00.000-07:00

So, the girls turn two years old this weekend. I think the thing I'm looking forward to most about the girls turning two is that now I can stop keeping track of how many freaking months old they are. I can stop keeping track now, right? I can just say they're two years old - I don't have to remember they're 25 or 28 or 31 months anymore, right? Score!

"Happy Birthday" is one of Riley and Leah's favorite songs, but I don't think they have the slightest idea what it means. It's just another song to them. They'll sing it over and over for no particular reason, just substituting different people, animals, or things, like:

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear blankie,
Happy birthday to you.

This past week's songs included "Happy birthday dear mommy" and "Happy birthday dear daddy", but also "Happy birthday dear sock" and its exciting sequel, 'Happy birthday dear other sock".

The two year old birthday party is also nice because it's probably the last birthday where the girls will have no idea that they're supposed to get gifts. Meaning that we can totally get away with not giving them anything! Yee-ha! Double-score!

Juuuust kidding. Although since our house is already overflowing with toys and books and stuff, we've told people coming to their birthday party not to bring to gifts. Again, that's probably not something we'll be able to get away with at future birthday parties: "Sorry, children! I know that we bring presents for your friends on their birthdays, but for your birthday we just told everybody that you're not interested in material possessions. That's okay, right?"

And of course, there are the perennial twin birthday dilemmas. Do we sing "Happy Birthday" twice, once for each girl, or do we just sing it once? On the one hand, the ol' Twin Handbook says that you're supposed to treat your twins like special, unique individuals rather than like some kinda two-head alien, which means one Happy Birthday song per child. But on the other hand, who the heck wants to sing that song twice? I mean, it's not that interesting a song - you kinda know where it's going after awhile. And also singing it twice means you have to choose which kid gets the first, enthusiastic rendition of the song and which kid gets the second, awkward, slightly hurried version.

And I know it's wrong to worry about this, but I've been to a couple 2-year-old birthdays now where the kids stare blankly at the cake at the end of the birthday song because they don't know that they're expected to actually blow out the candles. Is it wrong that I really, really want the girls to actually blow the candles out at their birthday party this weekend? It wouldn't be wrong for me to start training them this week to recognize the birthday candles, wait for the end of the birthday song, and then blow those candles out, would it? That wouldn't make me a crazy, overdriven parent, would it? Seriously, would it? Because I've got my practice candles ready.

Based on your silence, I take it that you approve. Girls, training starts tomorrow.

Splish Splash, Volume 2

2010-09-14T20:49:00.000-07:00

Kathy and I and the girls took a little mini-"vacation" to New York last week to visit family and friends. Aside from the whole New York family and friends thing, I have to say that our days in New York aren't a whole lot different from our days in San Francisco. Wake up, play, eat breakfast, go to museum or zoo or something, get lunch, take nap, go to playground, get dinner, give girls a bath, put girls to sleep, clean up, collapse in front of TV, sleep, repeat. The only real differences between San Francisco and New York are (a) we get to wear shorts in New York, and (b) the playgrounds in New York kick the San Francisco playgrounds' little butts. Oh also, in New York we get 30 HBO channels instead of zero. Oh also, I always seem to eat tons of bacon when I'm in New York. Not sure why.

Anyway, the girls like warm weather and they like kick-ass playgrounds, so they were as happy as little toddler-sized clams pretty much the whole time. If we could just replace the whole 6-hour plane trip thing with some sort of teleportation ray, man, we'd really be in business.

With the warm weather, New York City in the summer really brings out my girls' favorite pastime, which is playing with water. In New York, this seems to be the norm - all the playgrounds have fountains or cool creek-like water features or these collections of stone animals spitting out water, all beckoning the toddlers of New York to frolic about in the water and ruin their nice dry clothes. And frolic Riley and Leah did. And ruin their clothes they did.

Back from New York this past Saturday, we went to a birthday party for a 2-year-old here in San Francisco. We got the girls dressed up in these nice dresses and went to the party, which was a nice, civilized affair held on our friends' beautiful outdoor deck overlooking the City. Riley and Leah asked for cups of water, which we gave to them without thinking much of it. Then they started scooping ice out of the ice chests holding all the beers and sodas and stuff. Then they started scooping water out of the ice chests. Then they started pouring water from one cup to another. Then they started pouring water into other people's cups. Then they started pouring water on themselves. Ten minutes later, every other 2-year old at the party was following Riley and Leah's lead and was scooping water to and fro, here and there and on to themselves and other kids, all much to the amusement and/or shagrin of the other folks at the party. And our girls with their beautiful little party dresses now were all soaked and muddy, like they had just been hit by some gigantic tidal wave at the beach or something.

At that point, we made a quick getaway, with Leah and Riley leaving a bunch of wet but happy toddlers in their wake. As we left, I cursed myself for forgetting to take a picture so that I could have a nice set of "before and after" pictures. Ah well. I guess you can use your imagination.

Instead, some completely unrelated photos from New York! Yee-hah!

Count On It

2010-08-31T20:33:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago, Kathy came home from one of her twin mom group events with a life-changing piece of advice. The big pain in the butt with twin toddlers is that they always both want the same toy at the same exact time and will fight to the death to get it. And since we have learned the hard way that 23-month olds just stare at you blankly with zero comprehension when you suggest "sharing", as a parent you are left with the choice of (a) trying in vain to distract one of the kids with food or something shiny, (b) trying some kind of enforced sharing where you physically pry the toy in question from the clutches of one hysterically-crying twin, or (c) sitting back and watching inevitable toy tug-of-war and placing bets on who's going to win.

My money's always on Leah, by the way. That girl does not let go.

So I guess the twin mommies were commiserating about this difficult little dilemma, and one of the mommies - let's call her "Godsend" - suggested making a little "taking turns" game, where each kid gets to play with the toy for like 10 or 20 or 30 seconds and then hands the toy off to the other kid.

Kathy was telling me about this and right on cue, the girls started fighting over their favorite toy at the time, which was the rocking horse. So we decided, what the heck, let's give it a shot.

Riley was on the horse, so Kathy and I slowly counted from one to ten while she rocked back and forth on the horse. Then we sang out in an jubilant voice "Leah's turn!" Like magic, Riley obediently jumped off the horse and Leah got on. We counted from one to ten again, then sang out "Riley's turn!" Leah giggled, echoed the words "Riley's turn", and then jumped off the horse.

For reasons I do not entirely understand, Leah and Riley frickin' loved this taking turns game. They each would have these huge grins on their face as they gleefully announced the end of their own turn and voluntarily surrendered their treasured toy to their sister. In fact, the girls looked happier when they were surrendering the toy than they did when they were actually playing with the toy. After about five minutes of the game, they started counting to ten on their own and Kathy and I were just sitting back and watching. Oh yeah, that was the other advantage of this game that I forgot to mention. It taught them to count to ten. Within five minutes.

This was a glorious thing. A glorious, glorious thing.

So nowadays, pretty much every time they start to fight over a toy, we tell them to start counting. Here's Exhibit A (apologies if I've already subjected you to this):

Unfortunately, it's now been a few weeks, so the novelty of the game is starting to wear off for the girls, but I'd say the game still works like a charm about 70% of the time. As for the other 30%:

10% of the time, Leah says "1" and Riley starts screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" and runs away, taking the toy with her.

5% of the time, Leah starts counting but Riley keeps her head down and pretends not hear her, then when Leah gets to ten and tries to grab her toy, Riley reacts with exaggerated shock and outrage like a World Cup soccer player.

15% of the time, Leah gets to about "5" and an disgusted Riley chucks the toy at Leah, as if to say, "fine, take your stupid toy, I don't like it anyway."

So, okay, it's not perfect. But a 70% reduction in fighting - hey, who wouldn't take that deal? Ms. Godsend, wherever you are - thank you.

Show-Offs

2010-08-17T17:41:00.000-07:00

Riley and Leah go to bed at 7:30 pm. Or rather, 7:30 pm is when we place Riley and Leah in their cribs. At 7:30 pm, all signs appear to show that they're ready for some shuteye. Riley's rubbing her eyes. Leah's all mellow and sucking her thumb. We lay them down in their cribs, kiss them goodnight, tuck them in, all that good stuff. And then we leave the room and they're totally quiet for about two to three minutes. To the uninitiated, it seems like they've gone right to sleep.

And then at 7:33 pm, it begins. 7:33 pm is Showtime.

Leah will usually start it off, suddenly singing as loudly as her little lungs will allow:

HEL-LO!!! HEL-LO!!!
HEL-LO AND HOW ARE YOU!!!

And then at this point, Riley will join in, and they will sing in unison.

I'M FINE!!! I'M FINE!!!
AND I HOPE THAT YOU ARE TOO!!!

And then with their opening number complete, they break into enthusiastic applause, with occasional "yays" and "bra-vos" thrown in for good measure.

Their setlist varies from night to night, but typically they follow up their opening song with a song aimed at any potential Spanish speakers in the audience:

(To the approximate tune of Frere Jacques/Are You Sleeping/Where is Thumbkin, also sung at the top of their little toddler lungs)

BUE-NOS DIAS! BUE-NOS DIAS!
COMO ESTAS! COMO ESTAS!
MUY BIEN GRACIAS! MUY BIEN GRACIAS!
Y USTED! Y USTED!

(Enthusiastic yays and bravos)

Riley and Leah then proceed through their entire Greatest Hits Library, which currently includes such classics as "Itsy Bitsy Spider", "Happy Birthday to You", and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", plus occasionally they'll throw in an original song such as "Neeew Diaper!" (which basically consists of them repeating the words "new" and "diaper" over and over and over.

The show usually wraps up around 8:15, but if they're really feeling the vibe, they'll play a couple extra encores and extend their set to about 8:30.

Kathy and I read some of the local Twins Group postings, and apparently this whole routine is pretty common among twins. Bedtime becomes "extended playtime" when your best friend lies just a few feet away, and apparently some parents worry that it might make their kids develop some bad sleep habits. Some parents even go so far as to sit in the room and then lay down the law if they start talking or giggling or singing.

I dunno. I can't say I'm too concerned. Basically, as long as they're not crying or injuring themselves, it's a-okay with me. Maybe I'll take action if the neighbors start complaining or if they start tearing up the room like rock stars. In the meantime, I think I'll just enjoy the show. 'Cause I hear they're taking requests tonight.

Here They Go Again

2010-08-05T20:48:00.000-07:00

Naturally, Kathy and I love our daughters to bits, but hanging out with them sure does get repetitive sometimes. I guess routine and repetition are supposed to be good for toddlers and their brain development and all, but after day after day after day of reading the same books and playing with the same toys and going to the same places, you start going a little bonkers. You start making up tiny variations in a feeble attempt to keep your brain cells firing. Like, maybe today, we'll go to the 24th Street playground instead of the 30th Street playground! Wahoo! I'm a rebel! And this time, as I read "Barnyard Dance", I'm going to read with a slightly different intonation than the way I read it a few seconds ago! Wheeeeee!

So when you get to break up the routine by taking a little mini-vacation, well, it's kinda like an oasis in the middle of the desert. Sure, it takes hours and hours of packing and preparation and requires a long drive with cranky carsick babies in the back seat, but heck, at some point, it doesn't matter. You just gotta do it, 'cause otherwise you'll find yourself wanting to gouge your eyes out using that copy of "Barnyard Dance".

Too graphic? I went too far there, huh? Sorry.

So this past weekend, we left our reliable little routines behind and headed out to the mountains with the girls, to a cabin up in Groveland, near Yosemite for three days in the sun. Leah barfed all over our car's backseat twice, I got this weird sunburny-rash on my chest, plus I totally exhausted myself at times trying to entertain our friends' six-year old daughter while keeping Riley and Leah from injuring or drowning themselves. But it was glorious, I tell ya.

Mini-vacation summary:

Riley likes being in the water. A whole lot. Too much for her parents' comfort, actually, given that she can't swim but apparently doesn't know that yet.

When walking around, if Leah and Riley have the choice of holding hands with mommy or daddy or our 6-year-old friend Hailey, mommy and daddy don't stand a chance.

With all due respect to San Francisco, it sure feels more like summer, when, you know, you get to see the sun.

Riley and Leah liked splashing in the water and playing with their sand toys and picking questionable-looking things up off the ground on a hiking trail by Hetch Hetchy, but their favorite activity of the weekend was probably when they discovered this random little hill at the marina and then proceeded to walk up it, then run down it, over and over and over. And over. About 40 times I'd say, each time making the same "whoa-oa-oa-oa" sound as they ran down with their cheeks jiggling with each step and their eyes wide with excitement. And I know I just finished complaining about how repetitive it is watching the girls do the same things over and over again, but ya know what, sometimes repetition can be kinda cute.

Balancing the Scales

2010-07-26T20:33:00.000-07:00

I know it's a big parenting no-no to say this, because you aren't supposed to compare your kids against each other, but, right now, Riley is way more "impressive" than Leah. Am I going to parent hell for saying that? I am, aren't I?

It's not just me saying that though. When friends come over or when we go over to a friend's house, Leah leaves a decent enough impression, but Riley is usually the one who really turns on the charm. She smiles coquettishly. She flirts. She sings songs. She counts to ten. She remembers people's names. She spins around, giggling, until she falls down. I know I'm biased because I'm her dad and I'm a sucker for all her tricks, but trust me, it's hard to resist.

Meanwhile, Leah sucks her thumb or whines at Kathy to pick her up and/or give her food and/or read her a story. Sure, she can do some of the things that Riley can do, but she sure ain't gonna do it on demand, and she sure as heck ain't gonna do it in front of these perfect strangers staring at her. Who do we think she is, some kinda trained monkey?

And Riley's way ahead right now on the talking. Actually, come to think of it, Leah's ahead on the "talking" but behind on the "talking so people can understand what she's saying". Leah right now talks as if a bee stung her tongue or something and it's too big for her mouth. Riley, on the other hand, can generally repeat things right back to you. For example:

Me: Mmmm! Guacamole!
Riley: Mmmm! Guacamoyee!
Leah: Mmmm! Ca-ca-me!

So anyway, the people visiting or being visited will at some point say something like "Wow, Riley's great!" or "Wow, Riley's advanced!" Then comes a pause, while the person scrambles to figure out a suitable compliment for Leah. AWK-ward!

It's a kinda Catch-22 we're running into with having twins, where whenever you praise one of them for some new accomplishment, you feel guilty about not praising the other one, or you worry about the other one feeling left out. You hug one of them and you have to glance over at the other one to make sure they're not getting jealous.

Well, Riley's been getting heaps of praise lately, and we mustn't let it go to her head, so the rest of this post is hereby dedicated to Leah. Leah, you rock! Here are three great things about Leah:

She has this infectious way of displaying excitement, where she squeals, grins ear to ear, and kinda vibrates with joyous energy.
She's incredibly sweet when Riley's sad or not feeling well. She gets this concerned furrow in her brow and suddenly starts offering her all her toys one by one.
Best. Smile. Ever.

Duck Season

2010-07-15T17:22:00.001-07:00

The tough part about the girls right now is that they can be so dang possessive. I guess that's supposed to be normal for toddlers to define the entire world in terms of the two categories "mine" and "not mine". But having a twin sister changes things a bit -- with Riley and Leah, there is this extra category thrown into the mix called "hers". And lately, the girls have been getting more and more aware of Category #3.

Like -- first thing in the morning, we take the girls out of their cribs, and Leah will usually walk over to the chair where we've laid out the clothes for the day.

She'll grab a pair of socks. "Leah's socks!" she'll exclaim, holding the socks out for all to observe. Actually, Leah's got a bit of a Daffy Duck lisp these days, so it sounds more like "Leah'thth thockthth!"

Then she'll point to the other pair of socks sitting on the chair. "Riley'th thockth."

Then she'll pick up a shirt. "Leah'th Shut!" she'll exclaim, triumphantly holding the shirt over her head.

Then she'll point to the other shirt sitting on the chair. "Riley'th shut," she'll say parenthetically.

And so on, throughout the day. Leah'th book! (Riley'th book.) Leah'th ball! (Riley'th ball). Good thing we usually have at least two of all the toddler-coveted things in our house, or all hell would be breaking loose.

Luckily, Leah and Riley are learning to share. Kinda. Okay, it's not exactly sharing - more like "taking turns". Actually, it's more like "trading". "Trading" is still sharing, right?

Here's how it goes down.

Leah has a doll and Riley has a doll.
Leah decides she is dissatisfied with her doll and she wants Riley's (identical) doll.
Leah points to Riley's doll, and says "Leah'th!"
Riley stares at Leah, stone-faced.
Leah tries to grab Riley's doll, and says "Leah'th baby!"
Riley stares at Leah, stone-faced.
Leah starts pointing and chanting "Leah'th" with increasing urgency and with increasing protrusion of lower lip.
After about fifteen seconds of chanting, Riley gives up and hands Leah her doll, simultaneously grabbing the doll formerly known as Leah's doll.
Leah smiles and runs away excitedly. Riley gives me a look that basically says "Ya see what I gotta put up with?"
The end.

Now, picture this happening about twelve times a day but replace the word "doll" above with "book" or "ball" or "toy", or, a few minutes ago, (yuck) "toothbrush". That's basically what our life is right now.

Could be worse, I guess.

For Your Entertainment

2010-07-06T21:47:00.000-07:00

So the girls just turned 21 months old. I know the karma gods are probably going to smite me for saying this, but dang, they sure are fun right now. I mean, no offense, Leah and Riley, but you used to be pretty frickin' boring. You'd make a funny face once in awhile when you were pooping or something, but otherwise your entertainment value was pretty low. I mean, that's okay, you were concentrating on important stuff like eating and growing and barfing and drooling, but man, watching you used to be a pretty mind-numbing experience.

But the girls have been talking up a storm lately, and as a result the girls are oh-so-much more fun to watch. I mean, it's like every day is an episode of "Full House", with our very own twins saying cute things instead of the Olsen Twins! Um, except, ya know, funny:

[Open Scene]

[Leah and Riley are playing in the kitchen.]

[Leah suddenly stops playing, freezing completely in her tracks.]

Leah (eyes bulging): [grunts]

[pause]

[Leah starts playing again.]

[Riley pauses. She sniffs the air tentatively.]

Riley (frowning and fleeing the room): Stinky!

[Freeze frame on Leah's sheepish grin. Cue audience laughter. Cue wacky sitcom music.]

[End Scene]

Oh c'mon, that's comedy gold right there! No? Hm. Maybe you had to be there.

And then there are the songs. Leah and Riley are big into singing right now, and hearing their songs is one of those things that melts a parent's heart into a mushy pulp. Although musically speaking, it's pretty awful stuff - their 21-month old voices are all out of tune and their songs speed up and slow down with no attention paid to normal musical conventions like time signature and rhythm! And their enunciation! Awful!

Here's my transcription of their recent rendition of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star":

Tway-koh, Tway-koh, Luhd-uh-Stah!
How-why wunna wachoo ah!
Uppa Budda Wuh Ssss Hiyyyyyyy
Ike a Dime-Un In a Skyyyyyyyy
Tway-koh, Luh-Stah-Wunna-Whutchu-Ahhhhh!

It's got a Michael Stipe quality to it, actually. I've tried to capture this on film a few times, because it's pretty freaking awesome, but they never do it quite when I want them to do it. Here's the best we've captured so far, courtesy of Riley:

Needs some work, but hey, we'll let it slide for now.

Out of Time

2010-06-22T22:02:00.000-07:00

At our last pediatrician appointment a couple months ago, the doctor mentioned that our girls are now apparently at the age where we're supposed to start introducing the "Time Out" when our girls misbehave. I guess they're finally old enough to understand things like "rules" and "boundaries" and "not biting your twin sister's face". It didn't seem like a particularly big deal to me at the time. I mean, the "Time Out" seems pretty simple in concept. Your kid does something bad, you put them in the corner and make them stare at the wall for a minute or two. What could be simpler than that?

Concept - simple. Implementation -- not so much. For starters, Kathy and I had a heckuva time identifying an appropriate Time Out "corner". Our house has no spare corners - all our corners are filled with various toddler-related paraphernalia. Seriously, these girls have completely taken over our whole frickin' house. Anyway, after Kathy and I designed a little makeshift "corner" in our hallway and tried to put Operation Time Out into effect, we ran into a bigger problem, which I'm thinking must be pretty unique to twins. Here's how it all goes down:

Riley tries to bite Leah. Parents firmly say "No biting!" in unison and then sit Riley down on a stool in Time Out Corner.
Riley screams and squirms and struggles to get out of Time Out Corner. Parents struggle to keep a violently-flailing Riley in her stool.
Leah watches with curiosity for a few seconds. After about ten seconds, Leah decides that she misses Riley's company and that Time Out Corner looks like a fun little destination. She springs into action.
Leah grabs a stool and carries it over to Time Out Corner. She sits down on the stool with a proud grin on her face. She is very pleased with herself. She giggles.
With her parents being momentarily distracted, Riley escapes Time Out Corner but trips over a toy while making her escape and falls, face-planting into the ground in a quite-spectacular fashion. She cries hysterically. Parents puzzle over the question of what you're supposed to do when the child injures him/herself during a "Time Out". First instinct is to comfort the child, but doesn't that violate the whole concept behind the "Time Out"? Dang, need to consult our Time Out handbook - where'd we put that thing?
Meanwhile, Leah sits in Time Out Corner, sucking her thumb, staring at the wall.

So, to summarize: Riley tries to bite Leah, and 90 seconds later, we are comforting Riley while Leah takes a Time Out. I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think that's the way it's generally supposed to work.

Our girls are usually pretty well-behaved, so we've only had to resort to the Time Out about three times in the past couple months. Which is good, 'cause Kathy and I sure do suck at this discipline thing.

Guppy Guppy

2010-06-09T21:00:00.001-07:00

Once in a blue moon, Kathy and I have a day where everything just falls perfectly into place, and the whole parent-of-twins thing seems so easy, and we think to ourselves "hey, we're getting good at this!" Last Friday was one of those fall-perfectly-into-place days. We were in Monterey for a little long weekend getaway, and the girls were totally and completely enamored at the change in scenery. Everything was magical and wondrous to them:

Would you look at this remote control! Look how colorful the buttons are on this thing! And they light up when you press them! This remote is the best thing ever! And have you seen this doorknob! It's not round, it's a lever thingy! This makes the door oh so much easier to open! And now we're walking into the elevator, and jeepers, this elevator thing is all glittery and hey, it's got windows! An elevator with windows - what will they think of next! And now we're going to eat breakfast - holy bejeezus! There must be, like, fifty pancakes just sitting there waiting to be taken and eaten! This place is fantastic!

And then we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. They stared at fishes and penguins, played on the rocking-sea-horses, splashed around in the little splashy-exhibits, and basically had the time of their lives. They stayed happy there for three entire hours, and we managed to leave right at the moment where they were just starting to get cranky. Then they napped for two and a half hours in their little hotel cribs while Kathy and I watched TNT in the hotel room. The girls woke up from their nap kinda grumpy, but Kathy and I expertly handled it by rushing us all off to the hotel's indoor swimming pool, where they had a great time splashing around and squealing at the top of their lungs. And then we went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant on Cannery Row, where the girls took turns feeding each other tortilla chips while Kathy and I gorged ourselves on enchiladas, complete with a bayside view of a sea lion sunning itself on a rock.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at the beach, and the girls had a great time just sifting through the sand and picking up rocks and sticks and handing them to each other, while Kathy and I sat there watching the girls and conversing. With each other! Like adults! And then we came back to the hotel, gave the girls a bath, and watched them play in the hotel room. And they played nicely together, handing each other toys and books and taking turns saying the word "guppy" and giggling. Then we said good night and put them to bed. To top off the evening, Kathy and I watched the sun set over the Pacific Ocean from our hotel room and then watched a crappy romantic comedy on Pay-Per-View.

Maybe this doesn't sound all that great or exciting to the non-parents reading this, but to us it pretty much seemed like the best day imaginable. Um, I guess, other than the fact that I wish we had seen a movie other than "Valentine's Day". But for that one day, every parental trick worked, every potential tantrum was averted -- we almost started to wonder if this day marked a new era where everything started becoming easy.

Ah, foolish parents. Foolish, foolish parents.

As you would probably expect, the rest of the weekend didn't quite live up to that one glorious day. The other days of the trip had nice moments but also some epic meltdowns. Sure, the other days were fun, but they were not by any means "easy". Or in other words, they were your typical days in the lives of the parents of toddlers. Alas.

Still, a pretty darn successful trip! For the record, here's some photographic and video evidence:

Shoes for All

2010-06-02T21:01:00.000-07:00

So Leah and Riley have once again done their little "Survivor" trick and switched alliances on us. Yep, Leah, after being on "Team Mama" for the past ten months, woke up one day this week and decided she's on "Team Dada". And basically on the same day, Riley decided that Daddy is old news and jumped on the Mommy bandwagon. So now for the next ten months, I guess, it'll be Leah following me around the house like a loyal puppy dog and it'll be Riley screaming "nooooo- Mama!" when I try to pick her up. So long, Riley - it's been nice. Look forward to hanging out again with you in, um, March 2011.

I have to say though that Leah's going through a really nice phase right now. Up until recently, Leah was a collector. She would find a box or a bag or miscellaneous receptacle and then stuff toys or books or anything else she could find into it until it was full. We thought this was all very cute at first, but we soon discovered that (1) it wasn't very fun to fish toys and books out of the recycle bin and diaper trash can, and (2) Leah wasn't very nice about letting Riley have access to the toys from her "archives". Collecting is a good hobby when you're an adult, I guess, but when you have a twin sister who's supposed to share all your toys, collecting can lead to a lot of conflict. I mean, collecting is kinda the opposite of sharing, if you think about it.

But over the past couple weeks, Leah has made a miraculous transformation from "collector" to "distributor". She's a regular Robin Hood, I tell ya. Here's her morning ritual for the past week or so:

First thing after having her diaper changed and getting dressed, Leah runs into the living room, picks up a cup of milk, runs to wherever Riley is, smiles sweetly, and then shoves the cup of milk in Riley's face, triumphantly shouts "Mok!" and then runs off again.
After sipping from her own cup of milk for a minute or two, she runs into our bedroom.
30 seconds later, she comes running out of the bedroom carrying Kathy's shoes. She drops them at Kathy's feet and gleefully exclaims "Mama-shoo!" She then runs away, back into our bedroom.
30 seconds later, she comes running out of the bedroom holding my sneakers. She drops them at my feet and exclaims "Dada-shoo!" She then looks up at me expectantly, waiting.
I say something to Leah like "Thank you for the shoes, Leah!"
Leah points at the shoes again and look up again at me expectantly.
I say something to Leah like "Dada doesn't want to put on the shoes right now, Leah."
Leah points at the shoes again. "Dada-shoo!" she says, with a touch of sadness.
I say something to Leah like "Dada needs to go to work soon, he doesn't want to put on his sneakers."
Leah looks up at me again with crestfallen eyes. "Shoo?" she murmurs softly.
It's too much. I put on the sneakers. Leah giggles. She is pleased.
Leah walks over to Kathy and looks at her expectantly...

And so on.

I know I should probably be taking a harder line and just firmly tell Leah that I will not be putting on my shoes, but it seems wrong somehow to discourage this newfound generous spirit. Especially now that she's part of my alliance and all.

Good Intentions

2010-05-24T20:23:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-12T20:30:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-06T20:19:00.000-07:00

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.

Thanks for Asking!

2010-04-22T20:17:00.001-07:00

One of the odd little things I've noticed about parents of twins is that they really don't like to hear people talk about their kids' similarities. If you tell parents of twins that their kids look alike or act alike, they'll never agree with you, and in some cases they get kinda offended. There've been a couple times where Kathy or I have made the social faux pas of asking a twin parent whether their twins were identical when they weren't, and lemme tell ya, they don't like it one bit. One time we met these parents whose kids, I swear, looked absolutely identical - like they put the one kid in a Xerox machine and made another kid. And so we asked them if their twins were identical, and they basically said that they didn't know and they didn't care, and then they totally lost interest in talking to us. It was as if we had asked if their twins had herpes or something.

Our daughters don't look the same at all, so the only people who ever ask us if they're identical are twentysomething-year-old guys who think that all babies look the same. I find that the most common question I get asked now is something along the lines of "So, do they have different personalities?"

Now, I don't find this question particularly offensive, but it is kind of a funny question. Does any parent out there think that all their kids have the same personalities? It would be like saying "my children are not unique or special in any way!" or "my children are little zombie-clones that react the same way in every situation!"

So, for the record, yes, they do have different personalities. Riley, who's the older sister by 24 minutes, does in fact act like the older sister - more reasonable and more independent - while Leah does in fact act like the younger sister - more emotional (in a good way and a bad way), more affectionate, and more scared of new things. In personality shorthand, basically Riley is more me, and Leah is more Kathy. And since I'm an older sibling and Kathy's a younger sibling, it all fits, nice and symmetrical-like.

It all makes me wonder about that whole debate about nature versus nurture. Do Kathy and I subconsciously treat Riley like an older sibling, thereby causing her to act like one? Or does her DNA just happen to include personality traits that are more "older sibling"-ish? Is the fact that I spend more time with Riley and Kathy spends more time with Leah causing Riley to come out more like me and Leah to come out more like Kathy? Or is it their inherent personality traits that attracts them more to a particular parent?

I don't really have any answers, but I find it fun to ask the questions. That's what our life has become - one big high-school-science-fair genetics project. Just without the poster board. Plus I didn't put much effort into my science fair projects.

Um, anyway...

Playing the Card

2010-04-14T20:29:00.000-07:00

One of the hidden little perks of having twins is that, for a couple years at least, you have a handy, ready-made excuse that pretty much can cover every little mistake or oversight in your life. Forget a friend's birthday? Sorry - I've got twins! Front yard has been neglected for the past 18 months and looks like crap? Well, twins! Forget an important anniversary? (cough) (Kathy!) (cough) Er, well - y'know - twins!

Last week, Kathy and I walked all the way to our Music Together class before Kathy discovered that she was wearing two different shoes. And for the record, it wasn't two similar shoes, like two slightly-different-colored work shoes or something - it was one sneaker and one work shoe. I'm actually not quite sure how you could possibly leave the house without noticing that you were wearing one sneaker and one work shoe, but somehow Kathy managed to do it. Now, while in a normal person this would be the sign of oncoming dementia or supreme stupidity, fortunately for Kathy, people kinda expect these kind of things out of the mother of twin toddlers. Kathy didn't even have to say the excuse out loud -- you could just see it in people's faces as they looked at Kathy and her mismatched shoes. Oh. Must be the twins. Poor woman.

It's one heckuva trump card. Along with being an excellent excuse, the twins card can also be used to inspire other things, like sympathy or awe. Sympathy is particularly handy if you're at a hotel and trying to ask for a special favor. You'd be amazed at how much more motivated hotel front desk people to allow you to check in early when you're carrying two babies who are totally losing it. But the awe factor is the big perk, one that helps you feel like it's all worthwhile. It doesn't happen that often, but once in awhile, I'm with the girls at the playground by myself and they're in a good mood and being really easy and super-cute and basically charming the pants off all the moms at the playground. And I'm playing with them, and for a few moments, I'm making the whole parenting thing look really easy. And then one of the moms will say something to me like "I don't know how you do it with twins - I have trouble with just one!"

It's a nice moment, I gotta say. I'll usually just smile and say something like "Oh, it's really not that hard". Which is a lie, of course. It is that hard. In fact, in just a few minutes, the girls will be biting each other and/or slapping each other's face or something and I'll have to figure out how to simultaneously scold Leah for slapping and Riley for biting. But until that happens, I just preserve the awe as long as I can. It's one of the perks.

New York State of Mind

2010-04-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

So, we're back from our little New York "vacation". People have been asking us "how was your vacation?" and it's hard to know how to answer. It certainly didn't feel much like vacation. It was pretty damn exhausting, actually. Every night when we finally put the girls to bed, Kathy and I would be drop-dead exhausted. The kind of exhausted where you can't talk and you just collapse on to the couch and stare blankly into space. Or stare at whatever movie was showing on the FX channel. I know it's a cliche for parents to say that they need a vacation to recover from vacation, but seriously, when we got back to San Francisco, Kathy and I needed, like, a sabbatical. Or at least a few stiff drinks.

As a couple days have now passed and we've gotten a little distance, we're starting to see that our trip wasn't all bad. It was actually a varied collection of highs and lows:

HIGH -- The Airport: Leah and Riley apparently love airports with intensity of a thousand suns. And it's not because they like watching planes taking off, or because they like metal detectors or luggage or crabby security people. For no apparent reason, these girls just like being in an airport. As we rolled our stroller into SFO, Leah and Riley were bouncing up and down in their stroller seats in eager anticipation, like they were on the beginning of a Disneyland ride or something. They would say "wheee!" or "yay!", not because we were pushing the stroller fast or anything, but just out of the pure joy of being in such a wondrous place as the San Francisco International Airport Jetblue Terminal. And then when we got to the gate, we took them out of the stroller, and, man, the fun really started. With their faces lit up with glee, Leah and Riley ran around the gate for a full half hour, yelling and giggling like schoolgirls, stopping occasionally to render a heartwarming smile at one or more of the strangers waiting to board. They basically charmed the pants off all the travelers on our flight, which was a good thing a few hours later, when our daughters started turning to the Dark Side. Which brings us to...

LOW -- The Airplane: So, I usually don't give advice in this blog, but in this case I have to make an exception. Kathy and I decided that it would be a good idea to save money and buy just two seats on our flights and just keep our daughters in our lap for the whole flight. To anyone out there considering doing this with your toddlers, I say, for the love of God, don't do it. Seriously, do not, under any circumstances, do it. I cannot emphasize this enough.

You don't realize how squirmy and uncooperative your children can be until you try to keep them on your lap for six hours. And then if you're lucky, your child finally falls asleep in your lap, and you think for a moment that everything's great, until you realize that - uh oh - your left arm's asleep. And - uh oh - your right leg and right butt-cheek are asleep. And somehow, remarkably, half of your crotch is asleep. And - uh oh - if you make any attempt to restore circulation to your dead limbs, you will wake up your daughter and the sleeping angel in you lap will turn back into squirmy serpent-beast.

Just don't do it. This concludes this public service announcement.

HIGH -- The Sidewalk: Boy, our girls sure did like the sidewalks of New York. They didn't particularly notice or care about the tall buildings or the taxis whizzing by or the millions of people walking around, but they sure did like the sidewalks. Not sure why the sidewalks of New York were so much more appealing the sidewalks of San Francisco, but really -- they liked walking on the sidewalk almost as much as walking in the airport. They would run down the block, squealing and giggling, then stop occasionally to touch a fire hydrant or standpipe or parking meter, gaze back at mommy or daddy with a look that said "ohmigod - this thing is SO cool", then take off again down the block toward the next hydrant/standpipe/meter. If it hadn't been raining so much while we were in New York, the girls would've been totally happy spending the whole vacation just walking around on the sidewalk.

LOW -- The Restaurants: Since this was New York, we ate out pretty much every meal, and the girls decided to rebel by seeing which one could create the biggest mess. Leah was usually the big winner, as she became obsessed with dunking things in water that shouldn't be dunked in water (e.g., pancakes, french fries, toast) and/or pouring water on things that shouldn't have water on them (e.g., menus, the floor, her high chair, daddy's pants). Whenever we tried to separate Leah from water, she responding by emitting this extremely high-pitched squeal that bored like a drill into the brains of all the surrounding restaurant patrons. Meaning that Leah and her water would swiftly be reunited.

Anyway, you get the picture -- it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. We really enjoyed seeing all our New York friends and showing off our charming but kinda gross daughters. But we would like to apologize profusely to the restaurant cleaning staffs and restaurant patrons in the diners of the Upper West Side. We are truly, truly sorry.

And now here's a nice little moment from Kathy's parents apartment in New York:

And an obligatory picture (thanks Patricia) of Leah and Riley walking the New York sidewalks in their puffy pink marshmallow jackets, with Leah apparently trying to hail a cab:

Up in the Air

2010-03-19T16:44:00.000-07:00

So, the big story in our lives right now is that next week we're going on our very first plane trip with the girls. And no wimpy little 1-hour flight to LA or Reno or Las Vegas for us, we're going all in -- that's right, 6-hours, SFO to JFK, baby! Awwww yeah!

Kathy and I are -- how shall I put it -- petrified. We're talking nightmare-inducing fear. I know, we're capable adults here -- the thought of sitting in a chair with our beautiful daughters in our laps for six hours should not strike fear and dread into our hearts. And yet.

The secret to flying with your toddlers, I believe, is to not give a rat's ass about the fact that your screaming children are disturbing the poor unfortunate person sitting next to you. I mean, if you don't care about disturbing people, you're pretty much home free, right? I mean, if I had to be trapped at home on the couch with the girls for 6 hours for some reason and there was no one else around, it would be kinda unpleasant and all, but it would hardly be the stuff of nightmares.

My problem is that I do give a rat's ass about the person next to me. I wish I didn't, but I do. When we're at a restaurant and my daughters are playing "Let's See Who Can Bang Their Spoon on the Table the Loudest" and the people at the table next to us look annoyed, I give a rat's ass. When the girls throw their toys and they end up under those people's table and one of them hands them back to me with an icy smile, I, unfortunately, give a rat's ass.

If there were a not-giving-a-rat's-ass pill I could take right before the flight, I would take it. Actually, come to think of it, there are lots of not-giving-a-rat's-ass pills out there, but they're probably not very conducive to, ya know, watching over your children.

Besides the whole screaming baby disturbing everyone on the plane issue, I also find myself very worried about the little logistical things. Like, Kathy's going to have Leah on her lap and I'm going to have Riley on my lap, and we're going to be seated across the aisle from each other. So what do I do when I have to pee? Do I have to take Riley into that tiny bathroom with me? Do I leave her in the seat and let her fend for herself for awhile? Do I put her in Leah's lap? On Kathy's shoulders? And how do I grab something from your bag under the seat when I've got a baby in my lap? Am I going to be accidentally bonking Riley's head against the seat in front of us over and over and over? The dilemmas are endless.

We'll survive, I suppose. Nobody ever spontaneously burst into flames because their children disturbed a bunch of people on a plane. At least I've never heard of that happening.

And as my girls scream their heads off while 30,000 feet in the air, I'll have the comfort of knowing that at least I get to write about this later in my blog.

Wicked Game

2010-03-10T20:31:00.000-08:00

When you have infant twins, one of the things you have to remind yourself over and over is that this is all supposed to get easier once the girls get a little older. When the girls get older, they start playing together, and when they start playing together, they can entertain themselves, and when they entertain themselves, mommy and daddy can just relax and watch their daughters adoringly from the couch while they sip a cup of tea, eat bon bons, and read the Sunday paper. Or that's my vision anyway. Go with me here.

We haven't quite achieved the dream, but we do see some early signs of our daughters actually playing together. In fact, they have started developing their own games:

Game #1: Ready, Set, Guk!

Riley drinks from her green cup for 15 seconds. Leah drinks from her pink cup for 15 seconds.
Riley stops drinking, points to Leah's pink cup and says "Guk!"
Riley grabs Leah's pink cup with one hand and holds out her green cup in front of Leah with the other hand.
Leah smiles and grabs the green cup.
They drink for 15 seconds.
Riley stops drinking, points to Leah's green cup and says "Guk!"
Repeat until bored.

Two of the games result from the fact that Leah likes to put things into their containers, while Riley likes nothing better than taking things out of their containers:

Game #2: Circle o' Blocks

Riley takes block out of canister and throws it on the ground.
Leah picks block up off the ground and puts it in the canister.
Riley takes block out of canister and throws it on the ground.
Repeat until bored.

Game #3: Baby or No Baby

Leah puts a baby doll in her toy stroller.
Leah gets ready to push her stroller around the room, but meanwhile Riley walks over to Leah's stroller, grabs the baby, and throws it on the ground.
Repeat until Leah manages to push the stroller before Riley takes out the baby, or until a fight breaks out, or until Leah gets distracted by something bouncy or shiny or loud.

And then of course, there is Game 4, which is a bathtime game:

Game 4: Mwah!

Leah leans her head toward Riley, opens her mouth and says "Ahhhhhh" for a couple seconds
Riley gets the hint and leans her head toward Leah, and one of the following things happen:

They plant a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss on each other, and then say "mwah!"
They miss each other entirely but say "mwah!" while almost face-planting into the water.
They bonk heads.

Here's some video footage of the Mwah game, for the few people in the world that my wife has not yet sent it to:

Okay, so the games aren't exactly "Settlers of Cataan" in their level of sophistication, but, hey, the entertainment level is fairly high. And their games teach values like sharing, persistence, and cooperation, unlike the games that Leah invented this weekend called "Let's Stick Our Finger in Daddy's Eye Over and Over" and "It's Fun to Slap Daddy Across the Face".

Caught Off-Balance

2010-03-05T13:05:00.000-08:00

One of the things Kathy and I are always struggling with is trying to balance our attentions between the two girls. After all, parents are supposed to love their kids exactly equally and therefore Kathy and I should each be spending exactly 50.00% of our attention on Leah and exactly 50.00% of our attention on Riley. If we don’t, well that’s just bad parenting.

By this scale, Kathy and I are pretty crappy parents. I would estimate that Kathy spends, say, 72% of her attention on Leah and I spend about 72% of my attention on Riley. I’m not quite sure how or when this started, but this is where we find ourselves now.

There are a bunch of reasons for the imbalance. The first and most important is that, basically, I’m just better at entertaining Riley, and Kathy’s just better at entertaining Leah. Riley’s a pretty fun-loving adventurous girl who likes to be tossed into the air, swung around wildly by her arms, held upside down – and it just so happens that these things happen to be daddy’s bread and butter. Mommy - not so much. Unfortunately for me, Leah’s a big ol’ scaredy cat right now. She kinda likes observing Riley being tossed into the air, but if daddy tries to toss Leah into the air, she starts making this weird, nervous sound that wavers between a laugh and a cry for a few seconds and then, if daddy doesn’t stop, dissolves into full-blown cry.

What Leah does like is the cuddle, and while daddy is fully willing to cuddle with her, his cuddling credentials are no match for mommy, who is an Olympic-caliber cuddler, at least in Leah’s eyes. Leah wants to cuddle with mommy when she wakes up, before she goes to sleep, whenever she hurts herself, whenever Riley takes away her toy, whenever she’s tired, whenever she’s sick, whenever she’s bored – you get the picture. And in these situations, daddy’s pretty darn useless to her --- meaning that daddy’s pretty darn useless to her most of the time.

It’s kind of a self-perpetuating cycle. Leah demands most of Kathy’s attention, so Kathy spends less time with Riley, which means that Riley prefers to spend time with me, which means I pay less attention to Leah, which reinforces Leah’s mommy preference. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

So, how to get back into balance? Maybe daddy should wear extra-soft and squishy clothes to enhance his cuddle appeal?

Or maybe balance is overrated. Every kid’s got a favorite parent, right? Maybe we’re just lucky that both kids don’t have the same favorite parent, because, boy, it can be pretty hard to toss both kids in the air at the same time. I mean, I can juggle tennis balls and bean bags and all, but I haven’t tried juggling 17 month-old girls before. And I’m pretty sure Kathy wouldn’t be too keen on me trying it.

Unclear on the Concept

2010-02-22T17:12:00.000-08:00

The first basic rule of toddler-hood is that if Toddler sees somebody having fun playing with a toy, Toddler wants that toy, and dammit, Toddler is going to grab that toy, no matter what. Kathy and I see this phenomenon all the time when we take Leah and Riley to these "toddler activity rooms" at the local children's museums, where "toddler activity room" is really just a fancy term for "room with a bunch of cool toys in it." I personally enjoy watching all the parents at these places nervously hovering over their toddlers trying to prevent them from stealing other kids' toys. Inevitably, the parents will get briefly distracted and then turn back to their toddler just in time to watch little Aidan (or Liam or whoever) knocking over little Emma (or Ella or whomever) and stealing her choo-choo train (or fire engine or whatever). And then Aidan's embarrassed parents will turn to Emma's parents, smile apologetically, and say something like "Ohmigod. I'm so sorry. Aidan doesn't really get the concept of sharing yet."

It's definitely true that 16-month olds don't get the concept of sharing, but fortunately most 16-month olds have a bunch of toys of their very own waiting for them at home that they can play with to their heart's delight -- no sharing required. This is unfortunately not the case with Leah and Riley, because if they ever try to play with a toy to their heart's delight, their twin sister will come over and pry that delight right of their little fingers.

Yep, Leah and Riley fight over toys. Con-stant-ly. Basically, Kathy and I spend about 95% of our parental energy trying to prevent or break up toy fights. Right now, we have three techniques that we use to prevent Leah and Riley from fighting:

Distract. (As in "Hey Riley, look at this bottle of Tylenol! Isn't it WAY more interesting than Leah's monkey doll?")
Buffer. (As in "Daddy's going to sit right here between Riley and Leah so that they can't bite each other. Isn't that nice?")
Separate (As in "Hey, Leah! You know what's a really fun place to visit? The guest room! Come with me and experience the wonder!")

The most obvious strategy to prevent toy fights would be to have two of every toy, but we've found this strategy to be a big loser. When we give one toy to Leah and one identical toy to Riley, this just means that Leah will soon decide that it sure would be great to have both toys. Like, we have two fluffy pink dogs, but let's say we give one dog to Leah and one dog to Riley, and then close our eyes and count to five. By the time we get to five, Leah will be sitting there hugging both fluffy pink dogs with a big grin on her face, while Riley will be looking on, plotting which part of Leah's body she should bite first.

While the girls haven't learned to share, sometimes instead of fighting they'll negotiate a trade. Leah will trade one of her fluffy pink dogs for Riley's baby doll -- everybody wins, everybody's happy. Another parental triumph! Peace reigns in twin-sister land!

Of course, ten seconds later, Riley yells out in protest because Leah has taken back her fluffy pink dog. We watch as Leah bear-hugs both fluffy pink dogs plus the baby doll.

Peace is a very fleeting thing around here.

La La La La

2010-02-16T21:38:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, back in our pre-child days, Kathy and I used to listen to this thing called "music". And when a band got mentioned on the radio or in a magazine or something, I used to actually know who the heck they were talking about. In fact, I used to spend hours on iTunes downloading music and burning stuff on to mix CDs which I would listen to in my copious amounts of this odd thing called "free time".

I guess you could say that we still listen to music, if by "music" you mean exclusively the CD from the Music Together class that we take Leah and Riley to on Saturdays. Yep, those girls sure do like that CD, and who could blame them? It's chock full of timeless gems like "My Ball is Big and Round" and "Whoever Takes Care of You Comes Back (Because They Do Love You)", sung by some very perky-sounding folks. The girls like it so much that it's become the go-to CD for those situations when one of the girls inexplicably goes into a snit and we want to snap them out of it. Which means that we play it one or two times a day, every day. Every. Single. Day.

Even when the CD is not actually playing on our stereo, it's playing in my head on endless repeat, over and over and over. Right now for example, the CD in my head is playing Track 3, which is "Clap, Clap, Clap Your Hands". That's one of the good ones, actually. Don't get me started on Track 5, which is "She Sells Seashells (By the Seashore)". Trust me, you don't want to hear about it. I hear that song in my nightmares.

And if that sounds bad, believe me, it gets worse. I don't know if you've ever had a two-second song snippet from a kid's toy stuck in your head, but it's, um, not very fun. Yesterday, the words "Spin, spin, a letter!" repeated in my head about 493 times over the course of about three hours. I'd better stop talking about it now or else it's going to become wedged in my head again, and I just don't know if I can go through that again.

The good side of all this is that Leah and Riley are becoming more and more musical, which is cool to see. They'll now actually clap in pretty good time to the music, or bounce around in a way that bears a passing resemblance to dancing. Or at least as much a resemblance as what mommy and daddy call dancing.

And then on Sunday, we were in the car driving home and out of nowhere, Riley started singing a spontaneously made-up musical composition. It wasn't bad, actually. The melody was kind of a cross between Frere Jacques and the Jeopardy theme song. The lyrics went a little something like this:

Ah wah DEE Tah
Ah wah DEE Tah
Ah wah DEE Tah
(repeat about 15 more times)

So maybe it was a little repetitive, but I think she was going for a radio-friendly kinda vibe. I found it pretty darn catchy myself, especially when compared to that She Sells Seashells song.

And when we got home, Leah picked up the kazoo and had a good ol' time playing it for about 15 minutes. Or I should say, she had a good ol' time until Riley started trying to grab her kazoo, at which time Leah started whining and crying. This normally would be a bummer, but in this particular case she was whining and crying with the kazoo still in her mouth, which as it turns out sounds pretty freaking funny. Sorry Leah, it's hard to take any sound seriously when you hear it through a kazoo.

Time After Time

2010-02-08T12:37:00.000-08:00

It's one of those parental cliches that time goes by so quickly once you have kids. You know the conversation -- you'd better enjoy each moment you have, because before you know it, your daughters are are (off to school) (off to college) (embarrassed to be seen with you). I have that conversation all the time -- I say "time is going by so fast!" or "I can't believe they're 16 months old already!" or "where the heck is the time going?" And it's true -- a lot of the time, I'm amazed that I'm the parent of a couple of 16-month olds. How'd that happen?

The truth is, though, that in a lot of ways, time often seems like it's going incredibly slowly. Like right now, Leah and Riley have colds. They've had this cold for about a week, going on a week and a half, but let me tell ya, it feels like they've been sick for about a billion years. If I search deeply back in my memory, I can remember a time when they didn't drip snot all over the house and my clothing. Ah yes. Those were the days.

In San Francisco here, it's been raining off and on for about three or four weeks. Three or four weeks of winter weather never seemed like a big deal before we had kids. But three or four weeks when you're trying to keep a couple of girls who recently discovered walking happy while confining them to about 100 square feet of open floor space, that's a whole different ballgame. And Punxsutatawney Phil says 6 more weeks of winter!? I'm going to kick the crap out of that frickin' groundhog.

Seriously -- when you've got a cranky, sick girl that you're trying to keep happy, and it's pouring outside, and you look at the clock and it's two hours until her next nap, trust me -- time ain't flyin'.

And recently, I've been looking at some of the pictures and video footage I have from the past year or so, and I swear -- even the videos that are from just a few months ago seem like ancient history to me. Wow -- Leah and Riley used to just lay there on the ground all day!? Really!?! We just put them on the ground and they just stayed there? And why did we think that was difficult again? I can't remember.

Anyway, speaking of video footage, I thought I'd share this. To those that don't want to watch a couple of twins being cute for two and a half minutes, for Godsakes don't click below.

Talk This Way

2010-01-28T21:35:00.000-08:00

Riley and Leah have started talking and now have a good 10 to 15 words in their arsenal, but I find that most of their words aren't necessarily the most practical in terms of communicating their wishes. Yes, it's very cool that they can now say "car" and "tree" and "flower" and "light" and stuff, but when Riley points to a tree and exuberantly says "Teeee!", pretty much all you can say back is "Yes, Riley, that is a tree." It's a pretty short conversation. And not exactly a very mentally stimulating one.

Leah currently likes to walk up to people, smile broadly, and say "Hi." It's very cute and charming, so even total strangers at the park will usually smile back and say "Hi". Then Leah, thinking this "Hi" thing is just about the coolest thing in the world, will smile back at the stranger and say "Hi". And of course, the stranger, not wanting to be rude to a baby, says "Hi" back. And then it ends up being this infinite Leah-says-hi-stranger-says-hi loop, which ends only when the stranger loses interest and walks away, leaving poor Leah with no recipient for her heartfelt greetings and good tidings.

For most things they want to communicate, Leah and Riley don't yet know the words, but they've been figuring out ways around that little problem. Let's say Riley is hungry and wants a snack:

First, she'll try to get her parents' attention by clearing her throat and pointing to her mouth.
If Option 1 fails, she'll start saying "Ahhhh" while repeatedly pointing to her mouth using a jabbing motion.
If mommy and daddy still aren't getting the hint, she'll increase the volume on the "Ahhhh" and will stick her finger inside her mouth like a hook in a fish's mouth.
If the message is somehow still not getting across, she'll sigh, get up, walk to the kitchen, and stare forlornly at the refrigerator until somebody gives her some frickin' food.

Riley's methods are quite effective.

Leah has an interesting noise that she makes when she really wants something that's either out of her reach or in Riley's possession. It's hard to convey what the noise is in writing, but okay, if I had to write it out, I would spell it like this:

"bidlde-bidlde-bidlde-BIDLDE-BIDLDE-BIDLDE"

Kathy disagrees with my spelling on that, but hey, it's the best I can come up with.

It's basically the sound you would make if you were talking and you suddenly lost control of your tongue and it suddenly just started bouncing around randomly in your mouth. When Leah does it, it starts out low and then gradually crescendos with increasing desperation, until it finally morphs into a full-blown cry.

Unfortunately for Miss Leah, her expression of desperation and longing sounds pretty darn hilarious. It's actually hard to keep from busting out laughing when she does it, which is probably not the reaction she's looking for. And often we'll spend a little too much time laughing and suddenly we have a crying Leah on our hands. But, hey, I suppose the whole thing's more entertaining than talking to Riley about trees again. Sorry, Riley.

End of an Era

2010-01-23T13:25:00.000-08:00

The twins are now 15 months old, and they're now in this interesting stage where it's no longer inherently obvious to all outside observers that they're, in fact, twins. In the first few months of their lives, when we had two newborns in the stroller, we might as well have had a neon sign on our stroller reading "See Twins Here!" or "Look at these crrr-azy twins!" or "Twins: Don't forget to ask if they're identical or if twins run in our family!" Every time we took them out in the stroller for a walk, we would get stopped every couple blocks by somebody wanting to look at the twins and then tell us something like how we must be exhausted. Because when somebody's exhausted, everyone knows that it always helps if you inform them that they must be exhausted.

Over the ensuing months, the Twin Reactions calmed down a bit but stayed in effect, with all the parents pointing out our daughters to their child and saying "look honey, twins!" Or the women stopping us to tell us that their aunt or their next-door neighbor or their mailman was a twin or has twins or wishes they had a twin, and boy oh boy, our hands must be full! You get used to it, though. You actually start taking it for granted, to the point where if you go out and nobody notices your twins, you get a little offended. Hey! Isn't anybody going to compliment me on my twins? You there! Ask me an intrusive twin question, stat!

But now that they're over a year old, we don't really get stopped on the street at all anymore, and we don't get the same looks of awe and admiration that we used to. The more common reaction now is a few moments of confusion, as in - "hmmm, those two girls look kinda like sisters but jeez, they look really close in age, so I guess they can't be sisters, but wait, they both seem to belong to that guy there, so, huh, maybe the big-cheeked girl is a tiny 2-year old and the pigtailed-girl is a gi-normous 9-month old? Or maybe it's some sort of weird Brady Bunch-y thing?"

And then, if they're daring, people will hesitantly ask us, with a puzzled look on their face, "uh, how far are they apart?" And they will react with relief when we tell them that THEY'RE 15 months old, and yes, THEY'RE twins. Ah yes, they think, that would explain it.

When twin parents get together or post messages on twin parent e-mail lists, they like to complain to each other about constantly being stopped on the street or about being asked intrusive and/or stupid twin questions (like "Are they Siamese?", or, after they're told that one twin's a boy and one's a girl, "Are they identical?"). But the truth is, I never minded the questions all that much, and now I find myself sort of missing the looks of awe and/or wonder and/or horror that we used to get just for having twins. Now, we just look like regular ol' parents! Oh dear, how very boring and mundane!

Guess it's about time to mount that neon "See Twins Here" sign on the stroller.

Walk This Way

2010-01-14T20:39:00.001-08:00

So, the big new development of 2010 is that Leah and Riley are now full-on walking. Leah started walking on January 1, and Riley, not wanting to be left out, starting walking on January 2. And of course the day after each of them started walking, each of them came down with the mother of all stomach flus. The stomach flu rendered poor Leah and Riley too weak to do anything but lie limply in mommy's arms and once in a while barf all over her. So walking was put on a short-term hiatus, but it quickly came back with a vengeance once the girls got their strength back up. Now, they're both pretty much walking machines, although for some reason Leah walks with her arms up in front of her, like Frankenstein or a sleepwalking guy in a cartoon or one of those chubby kids who's too fat to lower his arms to his sides:

Meanwhile Riley's gotten so prolific with the walking that she's moved on to playing soccer:

Anyway, we basically jumped almost overnight from having a couple babies crawling around to suddenly having two toddlers walking about. It's quite a transition. Nowadays when I'm reading a book to Leah and Riley and they start to lose interest, instead of gazing longingly around the room for something more interesting like they used to, now they'll just get up and walk out of the room like unsatisfied patrons at the movies. And then I'm left sitting there like an idiot reading "The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog" aloud to myself. Those girls can be tough critics.

The real challenge is being at the playground when there's just one of me and two of them, and they seem to want to walk as far away from each other as humanly possible. I've done this a couple times in the past week, and I found that I'm constantly prioritizing - okay, should I keep Leah from stealing that kid's toy or should I keep Riley from eating that cracker she just found on the ground? Should I keep Leah from trying to climb that fence or should I keep Riley from stepping on that baby's head? Because unless I can turn into Plastic Man here, I can't do both things at the same time.

And even the act of just keeping an eye on both babies becomes a major strategic challenge. I try to stand somewhere that's (a) about the same distance from each daughter so I can intervene if something horrible's about to happen to either one of them, and (b) a spot where I have an unobstructed view of both girls at the same time so that I can actually know if something horrible's about to happen to either one of them. It's like some kind of weird ninth grade geometry homework problem, except it's a homework problem that you've got to do over and over again every three seconds because apparently these girls don't stay in the same place for more than three seconds.

And then I glance at all the other parents with their kids. They hover right next to their child! And sometimes there are even two parents hovering next to just one child! What a strange and novel concept, I think to myself as I try to play Triangle Prevent Defense about 15 feet from each child. And then suddenly I'm off and running toward Leah to keep her from stealing that kid's dump truck.

And meanwhile Riley contentedly munches on that cracker she just found on the ground. Because crackers are yummy and daddy had to prioritize.

Mixed Emotions

2010-01-07T21:25:00.000-08:00

Kathy and I and the twins were down in LA and San Diego with our families during the holidays, and it was of course nice watching Leah and Riley bond with their two sets of grandparents and uncle, but the whole "unfamiliar territory" thing definitely threw the girls a little off of their game. Riley, for one, was way more clingy to me than usual. She basically just wanted to spend all day holding on to my finger and walking around the room in a circle. Before we left for LA, she had been showing signs of starting to walk on her own, but once we got there, she didn't want to walk anywhere without holding on to daddy's finger. It's definitely flattering at first to have your daughter not want to let go of you -- until about the 8th circle when it gets kinda old, or the 15th circle when it gets really old, or the 29th circle when you'd rather go change a diarrhea-filled diaper than walk in one more cotton-pickin' circle.

Still, at least Riley was a happy clinger. Leah, on the other hand, was a hysterical clinger, which we found out is a whole different ballgame. Leah's a mommy's girl, so Kathy was her object of clinginess. And thank God Almighty and the heavens above for that, because whenever Kathy left Leah's immediate vicinity for any reason - say to go to the bathroom or to grab a kleenex - Leah would instantly start crying the most pitiful, longing, desperate cry that you ever heard.

Kathy and I have over the months built up some emotional resistance to Leah's cries, but I've got to hand it to Leah because she really kicked it up another notch -- I tell ya this cry was heartwrenching. Even though we knew nothing was wrong and Leah just had a case of mommy-itis, the desperation level in the cry was high enough that Kathy would start running back to Leah. Then in mid-run, she would remember, oh wait, I REALLY do need to go to the bathroom here. And so mommy would zip into the bathroom and Leah would go into a full blown tantrum that not even the combined efforts of daddy, grandma, grandpa, "Moo Baa La La La", daddy's keys, and a cup of cheerios could quell.

As a dad, this caused a bunch of complex and conflicting emotions that included (a) concern about Leah's well-being, (b) embarrassment that Leah was acting this way in front of her grandparents, (c) disappointment that Leah's reached the stage where she's trying to manipulate her parents, (d) pride that Leah's now smart enough to try to manipulate her parents, and, I've got to say, (e) relief that I'm not Kathy and can therefore travel freely to and from the bathroom and/or kleenex box as I please.

And then there was the slightest twinge of (f) jealousy that I can't now and never will evoke that strong and visceral of a response from the girls. I find I get this weird jealousy whenever Leah or Riley goes to mommy for comfort instead of me. Hey girls, daddy's here too! Daddy's 50% of your DNA too! Hello? Bueller?

Kathy tells me that it's a rule of nature that when babies are sad or scared, they want their mommy, and I should just learn to accept that. But I say those babies are just discriminating on the basis of gender, and that's just plain wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

On the other hand, if it's a choice between having sexist babies and me not getting to go to the bathroom when I need to because both babies won't let me leave their side, I'm going to have to go with sexist babies.

Kathy, your babies are crying for you.

In the end, the babies got happier and less clingy, and the vacation turned out pretty well with lots of happy times. Observe:

'Tis the Season

2009-12-21T21:28:00.001-08:00

2009's been a great year for us and all, but there sure have been a lot of times this year that fall under the heading of "experiences that will probably be a lot more fun for us when our daughters are a bit older". We had their birthdays, then we had Halloween, and now we've got Christmas 2009.

Christmas kinda snuck up on us this year, and last weekend Kathy and I were feeling a little bummed that it didn't feel very Christmas-y this year. Since we're going to be down in LA for the holidays, Kathy and I haven't decorated our house with lights or a tree (or a menorah or a Hanukkah bush). And then there's the fact that with a couple of one-year-olds around, we're not going to get to do a lot of the Christmas-y things that we usually do as a couple, like ice skating in downtown San Francisco or skiing and drinking hot cocoa in Tahoe.

So, last weekend, in a fit of deluded holiday spirit (and desperation for a rainy-day activity), we decided to take the girls to the mall to see all the holiday decorations and maybe even hang out with Santa Claus. But things didn't turn out quite like we hoped. Upon arriving at the packed-to-the-gills Stonestown Mall, we walked over to the majestic Christmas tree in all its lit-up splendor and Santa Claus sitting in front of it on a big golden throne, and we waited to see Leah and Riley's reactions.

Riley's reaction: Stricken by terror and sensory overload, Riley started screaming as if the Christmas tree had just poured acid on her or something. After a few chaotic minutes where we periodically had to bring Riley outside to stare at the shrubberies in the mall parking lot, we eventually succeeded in temporarily calming her down, but it was a very shaky and tenuous peace that was easily shattered by events as innocent as a friendly old lady passing by or a chocolate shop worker trying to smile at her. (Note to friendly old lady and the chocolate shop worker: we hope you were not offended by the fact that your smiling faces made our daughter cry. Please accept our sincere apologies, and, hey, don't take it personally.)

Leah's reaction: Leah did not give a rat's ass about the tree, or the Santa, or the lights, or the decorations, or the elves, or the friendly old lady. I'm not actually sure that Leah ever even looked at the tree. I do know, however, that Leah looked at the floor. The shiny marble floor. Leah fell madly, head over heels in love with that shiny marble floor. She saw this floor and a huge smile spread across her face and her eyes got all big and googley, like a little girl seeing Disneyland for the first time. She would gaze down at the floor, see her reflection, then she would giggle for a few seconds, then look up at Kathy or me with a look that said "did ya see this floor?!", then she would get down on her hands and knees to get a real close look at the floor, giggle again, then look up again at us as if to say, "no really -- did ya SEE this floor?!" This floor may have been the highlight of Leah's Christmas, if not her entire 2009 life experience.

Due to Riley's hysterics, we were quickly forced to abort Mission Christmas, flee the mall, and drive home. And then we got home and it turned out Riley had a 102 degree fever, which at least explained why Riley got so freaked out by her Stonestown Christmas. Santa Claus must've seemed like some kinda weird psychadelic fever dream to poor Riley. Must've felt like when I was once home sick with the flu and decided to watch Pink Floyd's "The Wall". Yikes.

On thaaaaat note, Leah and Riley would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Social Handicap

2009-12-13T12:09:00.001-08:00

I'm really bad at focusing on two things at once. Really, really bad. We're talking astronomically bad. I was never one of those people who could do their homework and watch TV at the same time. My brain could focus on doing my homework, or it could focus on watching TV, but if I tried to do both, I would either finish my homework and have no idea what the hell was on TV for the past two hours, or I would watch TV for two hours and then realize I only got halfway through problem #1. It's a blessing and a curse, this whole overly-focused-brain thing. My lovely wife would probably say it's mostly a big ol' curse, especially when her spouse starts writing in a certain blog and suddenly becomes incapable of responding to her voice.

By definition, though, having twins kinda means that you sometimes have to focus on two things at once, with those two "things" being, um, your daughters. If you're reading to one daughter and the other daughter suddenly starts doing something like grabbing a pair of scissors and running with them, you're kinda supposed to notice that sort of thing. It's generally considered bad form if you're so absorbed in entertaining one daughter that you don't notice that your other daughter is about to poke her eye out.

So by nature, my brain ain't very well suited for being a twin parent. But when the potential end result of being Mr. Overly Focused is a daughter with an eye patch, your brain learns to adjust pretty fast, just out of pure necessity. So I've now gotten reasonably good at splitting my focus between Leah and Riley, although I've gotta say, it sure is exhausting if I have to do it for too long at any one time.

When I really get in trouble though is when I have to try to carry on an adult conversation at the same time as I'm watching my daughters, like when I'm at the park or some social event watching over my daughters and somebody tries to engage me in a conversation. When I'm watching my daughters, even the most basic conversational question can become quite the stumper to me.

For example, let's say that I'm playing with my daughters at the local playground sandbox and some mom there asks me a question like "how old are your daughters?"

There's a 21% chance that I will answer like somebody with half a brain and say "they're about 14 months".
There's a 34% chance that I will not hear the question because I'm absorbed in trying to make sure that Leah doesn't do something like sit on Riley's head. The mom of course will think I'm ignoring her and that I'm some kind of rude jerk.
There's a 41% chance that I will start to answer "Oh, they're about..." and then I will get distracted by Leah trying to sit on Riley's head, and then I will forget that the question was asked in the first place. This will make the mom think I'm a total moron.
There's a 4% chance that my brain will short-circuit and I will accidentally fall into my baby-talk voice. Something like "how old are my liddle sweety-pies? Oh they're becoming big girls -- yessh they are!"

So, in any one conversation with multiple questions, I have a very good chance of coming off as either a jerk, a moron, or in that last case, a condescending ass. Luckily, the highest probability is that I just come out looking like a moron, which I can live with. Spending hour after with a pair of 1-year olds has definitely taken down my IQ by at least a few points I'm sure, so at least it's the most accurate of the possible impressions.

No offense, girls.

The Double-Edged Sword

2009-11-30T20:53:00.000-08:00

For months and months, Kathy and I eagerly awaited the time when Riley and Leah could communicate their needs and wishes. The whole trial and error parenting of trying to figure out whether your infant daughters are hungry or thirsty or sleepy or poopy or bored or overstimulated or sick or annoyed at daddy gets kinda old after awhile, and you fantasize about that wonderful time when your daughters will be able to look you in the eye and say "daddy, you're annoying".

Well, over Thanksgiving week, Leah and Riley made some sudden leaps and bounds with their communication skills, and while it's wonderful and all to see their little personalities developing, part of me wishes that their little personalities were, I dunno, maybe a little less stubborn?

We spent the holiday weekend at my parents' house. Upon our arrival at my parents house, Riley decided that she was completely obsessed by the little decorative Japanese figurines that my parents have scattered around their house. So obsessed that Riley basically showed no interest in her toys or books for the entire weekend. All that she was interested in was having her daddy or auntie or uncle shuttle her back and forth between the six or seven Japanese figurines in the house:

"Dah!" Riley would command, pointing her finger across the room at the nearest figurine.

"Doll! Very good, Riley!" I would say encouragingly, lifting her up and carrying her over so that she could see the figurine.

Riley would gaze admiringly at the doll for about 1.5 seconds, then she would turn and point up the stairs at the figurine located near the top of the stairs.

"Dah!"

"Okay," I would say, "let's go look at that other doll," and then I carried her up the stairs so she could see that figurine.

Again, Riley would gaze at that doll for 1.5 seconds, then would point and turn back down at the first figurine at the bottom of the stairs.

"Dah!"

"Um, okay, let's go at that doll again," I would say.

And repeat. And repeat. And... repeat. The only thing that would break the cycle was (a) auntie or uncle stepping in to rescue daddy, (b) a trip to the nearest playground, or (c) food. If daddy tried to prematurely break the cycle by ignoring Riley's calls for "dah", the dahs would get louder and more insistent and screechier until either they could not be ignored any longer or they started upsetting her sister. At which point, the tour of the Japanese figurines would resume. On the good side, it was an excellent low-impact cardio workout for daddy to burn off all the pie he ate during the week. Mmm. Pie.

This same week, Leah decided that she liked to have mommy read the same book read to her over and over. Specifically, the timeless classic "Moo, Baa, La La La". Kathy would read the book to her, and then Leah would take it back, flip through the pages for a few seconds, then hand it back to her mommy. Then she would exclaim "Gbdlegok!" and look up at her expectantly until Kathy started reading again. This would happen about five or six times, with Kathy reading the book each time slightly faster and with less intonation and interest than the previous time. By the sixth time, she sounded like that guy who reads the disclaimers at the end of pharmaceutical commercials. After the sixth time, she would usually hand the book off to me. Now I love me some "Moo, Baa, La La La" as much as the next guy, but after about four readings, you start losing your sanity a little bit. It's almost enough to make you want to go stare at some Japanese figurines for a half hour.

Oh well. Sanity's overrated anyway.

Now, a couple typical scenes from the week, featuring Uncle and Auntie:

Parents Not Invited

2009-11-12T19:55:00.000-08:00

We generally put Leah and Riley to bed sometime around 7:15 at night. Generally at this point of the night, they're grumpy, they're rubbing their eyes, Leah's sucking her thumb, Riley's whining - all signs point to the fact that, dammit, it's time for bed. So at 7:15, we put Leah and Riley in their cribs and close the door. But usually, that's not the end of the story. If you sat outside the door for the next half hour and just listened, here's what you would typically hear:

7:15 pm -- Leah cries for 20 seconds.

7:15:20-7:25 pm - (Silence)

7:25 pm - Riley giggles.

7:25-7:30 pm - (Silence)

7:30 pm - Leah giggles.

7:30-7:32 pm - (Silence)

7:32-7:35 pm - Riley does a three-minute stream-of-consciousness monologue, in a sing-songy, nursery-rhymey voice.

7:35 pm - Leah giggles.

7:35-7:38 pm - Leah does her own three-minute stream-of-consciousness monologue.

7:38 pm - Riley giggles.

7:38-7:45 pm - Riley and Leah talk and laugh like the best of friends, like gossiping suburban housewives chatting by the white picket fence, making fun of their husbands. Occasional squeals of delight and amusement emanate from the room.

7:45 pm - Room goes silent. Girls, apparently pooped out from their little 7-minute party, are asleep.

I know, it sounds like the most boring episode of "24" ever.

Anyway, basically there's this very exclusive 7-minute party every night that mommy and daddy aren't invited to. We can't even watch it, because if we dare open the door and poke our heads inside, the spell will instantly be broken, and Leah will start crying for mommy to pick her up.

And of course, Leah and Riley never get along this well in the light of day, because during the day, they're always stepping on each other, crawling over each other, running each other over with their walkers, or stealing each other's toys or books or food or milk or pacifiers. Or biting each other. Or pulling each other's hair. Should I go on? Anyway, the point is, these 7 minutes are special times indeed.

So, on the one hand, it's exciting to know that the much-anticipated twin bonding thing is actually happening, but on the other hand, it's only happening for seven minutes a day, and it happens in the dark, and we don't get to actually witness it happening.

Meh.

I've said it before and I guess I'll say it again -- we take whatever we can get.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

2009-11-04T20:33:00.000-08:00

Example #483 of how Leah and Riley have totally different personalities: their reactions to their first real Halloween. Leah and Riley are 13 months old, so this was technically their second Halloween, but for their first Halloween they were pretty much oblivious to anything but mommy's boob and their poopy diapers, and they mostly spent the day lying on the ground and looking at the toys we were waving above their heads, so I'm gonna say that one didn't count. Although they did get to wear some awesome socks with pumpkins on them.

Anyway, suffice it to say that Halloween 2009 was not a big hit with Riley. I think it all stemmed from the fact that Riley hated her costume. Not just hated, but really HA-TED. Hated with the heat of a thousand white-hot suns. I kinda thought she might dislike the costume at first, but that eventually she would forget that she was wearing the costume, and then she would go back to being her normal happy-go-lucky self, like a dog that eventually forgets that it's been forced to wear a hideous Christmas sweater.

But oh no, Riley would not forget. Every moment that she was wearing that costume, Riley was letting out cries of pure unadulterated anguish -- pleading, desperate cries with extra woe sprinkled on top, and these cries would not let up until the costume was removed from her body.

Here, let me show you some photographic proof:

This is just a small sample of the many, many Halloween pictures that show Riley crying in her costume. We do have one or two pictures where Riley does not appear to be crying, but trust me, these are purely photographic mirages resulting from split-second moments in between sobs where Riley paused to take in a quick breath before letting out yet another mighty yowl of protest.

Leah, on the other hand, was completely indifferent about her costume. The fact that she was dressed up as a chicken was of absolutely no concern or interest to her. It was just another outfit for her, like a somewhat bulkier set of footsie pajamas. She just did not care.

It was the same when we went for a little evening walk down to the mini-Halloween-block party down the road. I watched Leah's face as she watched all the San Franciscans parade by, dressed up in various cute, bizarre, ironic, and/or topical costumes, and I saw absolutely no reaction. No fear, no confusion, no laughter, nothing. Riley, on the other hand, found the whole spectacle completely and utterly terrifying, to the point where mommy had no choice but to take her out of the double-stroller and carry her home.

Unfortunately for Riley, mommy and daddy's reactions to her cries all day were a little less urgent than usual, because, let's face it: while Normal-Clothes-Wearing Riley crying can be alarming and/or annoying, Dressed-as-a-Lion Riley crying is a-DOR-a-ble. Awwww - lion is cranky! Look-y at the poor lion, she's letting out her roar! Awwww- We'll get you out of your suit soon, Miss Lion -- right after mommy takes a few more pictures!

Lost in Translation

2009-10-28T19:42:00.000-07:00

I had always thought that my baby's first word would be this big dramatic event like Maggie Simpson's first word, and I would videotape it and broadcast it to my friends and family and CNN and celebrate it with a parade down 24th Street, but apparently the reality is nothing like that at all. I don't have the slightest clue when Leah and Riley said their first word, only the vague sense that whenever the heck it did happen, I definitely missed it.

First, there's the problem of judging what counts as a word. For a few weeks now, whenever Leah drops something or knocks something off a table, she solemnly says "Uh oh". Is "Uh oh" a word? Isn't that two words, actually? "Uh" and "oh" are both in the dictionary, right? Who cares if it doesn't mean anything? Two points for Gryffindor, I say.

Leah and Riley have been saying "mamamama" and "dadadadada" for weeks too, but to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, I don't think those words mean what you think they mean, girls. It's not like they point to Kathy and say "mama" or point to me and say "dada". Basically, when the girls cry, they scream "mamamama!" and when they're happy they chant "dadadada!" So, roughly translated, in Le-Ril language:

"mamamama" = Life sucks!
"dadadadada" = Life is good!

Read into it what you will, folks.

Of course, when they cry "mamamama", that does make mommy come running, and when they say "dadadada", that does make daddy play with them more. Which is what they want anyway, so maybe they do know what they're saying after all.

The basic problem is that because most of what comes out of their mouths sounds like random babbling, you're not really sure they're actually saying a word until after they say it a hundred times. Like this morning, I think Riley might have said "pebble doth moo", but I think I'll see if she says it again before I jump to any conclusions, like my daughter's on LSD.

Leah has been using one word pretty consistently at meal times: "abwa". As in "agua". As in water. Leah saying "abwa" is pretty easy to miss, since abwa sounds a heckuva lot like random babbling. At first I thought she just liked the sound of the word -- I mean, I can see the appeal, it's a damn fine sounding pair of syllables. Still, when she said "abwa", we would give her water, and she would usually smile and be happy. But nowadays, in the middle of every meal, she'll abruptly stop eating, look one of us square in the eyes, and say "abwa", and dammit, she will not eat another bite until you give her that cup of abwa. That girl knows what she's saying, and she knows that we know what she's saying, and she will not allow her word to go unheeded.

Leah saying "abwa" doesn't necessarily mean she's thirsty, mind you. One out of four times, we'll give her the water bottle and she'll gleefully and ceremoniously throw it to the floor. And of course, you know what she says then: "uh oh".

My thoughts exactly, Leah. Uh oh, indeed.

Sophie's Choice

2009-10-20T21:16:00.001-07:00

Leah's crawling pretty well now, which means that we finally have two mobile babies in the house. I had been kinda dreading this situation a little bit, mainly because I had this recurring vision in my head of Leah and Riley swiftly crawling away from me in opposite directions, one crawling toward a pile of broken glass and the other simultaneously crawling toward a nest of poisonous spiders. And there's not enough time to save both girls, so I've got to decide which one to save, and time is running out! What to do?

I'm not quite sure why I'm not allowed to save one and then the other, nor am I sure why there are random piles of broken glass and spider nests in my house in this vision, but hey, nobody said my visions made any sense.

Anyway, this vision has not come to fruition because so far the girls never seem to go in opposite directions - they're pretty much always going in the same direction. Or more specifically, Leah's always going in Riley's direction. If Riley's "reading" a book off in a corner, Leah will crawl over to where Riley is and either (a) try to take her book away, (b) try to use Riley as a prop to lift herself up to standing position, or (c) sit obtrusively right in Riley's personal space, effectively boxing Riley into the corner like a trapped rat.

Leah and Riley have also become quite fond of climbing on mommy and daddy, which would be awesomely cute if one baby was climbing on mommy and one baby was climbing on daddy. Unfortunately, this never happens. Leah and Riley always want to climb the SAME parent at the SAME time, usually mommy. And of course while they're always climbing on mommy at the same time, they don't really like to share mommy's attention, so as they start climbing, they're giving each other the stink-eye and making this screechy, complainey whining noise that sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard.

It's quite a sight - Kathy sitting there helplessly trying to manage to these screeching babies crawling all over her with arms and legs flying everywhere. She has to try to sit sorta still so that she doesn't accidentally knock the girls off of her, but she also has to keep the girls from biting or hitting each other while also being ready to catch the girls if one of them falls. And meanwhile I sit there, feeling like I should be trying to help somehow, but if daddy tries to reach in and grab one of the babies and separate her from mommy, the screechy whiny noise volume goes up to eleven.

And so I usually just sit there and enjoy the show. Sorry, mommy. Look at the bright side, though -- it's better than having to protect your daughters from broken glass and poisonous spiders.

Mmm. Pie.

2009-10-13T20:16:00.001-07:00

The good thing about growing up with a twin sister is that there's always someone there with you, sharing all your experiences. The bad thing about growing up with a twin sister is that your sister's ALWAYS there with you, sharing ALL your experiences. Twins don't really get much "me" time, I guess. Over their entire twelve-month lives, I don't think that Leah and Riley have been separated for more than maybe 3 hours at a time, and even that's pretty rare -- most days they're probably in the same room for about 23.9 out of 24 hours. It's got to get a little monotonous for them. You wake up in the morning, your sister's there. You go to bed at night, your sister's there. You're eating, your sister's there. All your clothes, your toys, your books - they don't really belong to you, they belong to you AND your sister. It's kinda like how your marriage or relationship would be if you worked in the same room, ate every meal together, and spent every moment of your free time together. Oh, and shared all your clothes. Once in awhile, no matter how great your relationship, you'd probably get sick of having that other person around. Or at the very least, you'd get tired of wearing clothes that look really funny on you.

Riley definitely seems to be getting a little weary of having Leah in her face all the time. Riley will be playing quietly with her toy, and Leah will bother her by trying to take her toy, or shrieking in her face, or "patting" (aka, slapping) her on the top of the head, or just generally getting in Riley's personal space. Riley will then whine and shoot mommy and daddy a pleading look that says "can you PLEASE get this girl to leave me the hell ALONE?" And then she'll frown and rotate her body away from Leah so that she won't take her toy.

Or, Kathy and I sometimes play this "peek-a-boo" type game with Leah and Riley, where Kathy walks Riley down the hall while I hide with Leah around the corner. And then Leah and I suddenly pop out from around the corner and start "running" toward Riley and Kathy. I love watching the contrasting reactions. Leah will be smiling ear to ear, shrieking and laughing, and opening her mouth in preparation for planting a sloppy wet kiss on Riley. Riley, on the other hand, will just sigh with this resigned, semi-exasperated look on her face like a teenage girl whose little brother won't leave her alone, and you can see the cartoon thought-bubble over her head that says "Here comes that crazy, shrieky, slobbery girl again. Oh Lord, will I never get any peace?"

So, in the pie chart of Leah and Riley's twin-sister relationship:

25% of the time, Leah and Riley are totally ignoring each other.

25% of the time, Leah and Riley are slightly annoyed at each other, but grudgingly tolerant.

25% of the time, Leah and Riley are fighting to the death over something, usually either a toy or mommy's attention.

23.8% of the time, Leah is enchanted by Riley, but Riley just wants her to go away.

But about 1.2% of the time, the moon shifts, the tides turn, and the planets of Leah and Riley align in the heavens. And then behold -- the wondrous sight of Leah and Riley enjoying each other's company! They'll exchange this look, and then suddenly they'll be going back and forth making funny noises and giggling like schoolgirls. Or they'll have a huge giggly water-splash fight in the bathtub. Or they'll gleefully roll around next to each other on the bed or the couch, basking in the glow of having this built-in best friend. And suddenly all is well with the world for mommy and daddy. Ah yes, life is pretty freaking sweet for us twin parents. About 1.2% of the time, that is.

Eh, the other 98.8% of the time ain't all that bad either.

Both Sides Now

2009-10-07T20:13:00.000-07:00

In the past couple weeks, with Leah and Riley's birthday party and various other social engagements, it has become clear to me that Leah and Riley each have two separate personalities: one for when other adults are around, and one for when they're just sitting at home with mom and dad.

Riley is an extremely charming girl when she's sitting at home. She'll be just sitting there and suddenly start laughing for no apparent reason. And then anything mommy or daddy does becomes hi-LAR-ious to her, causing her to laugh until her face is red and tears are streaming down her face. Daddy drops a toy on the floor: BWAA- HAAA- HAAA! Mommy turns around suddenly: BWAA-HAAA-HAAA! Daddy scratches his head: BWAA-HAAA-HAAA! Stop it, Daddy, you're killin' me!

Riley's also queen of the mouth noises. Her current specialty is that motorboat-like sound that you can make if you sorta vibrate your finger between your upper and lower lip. Boy, does Riley love that sound. If she hasn't made that sound in awhile, Riley will say to herself "Hey, I haven't made that motorboat sound since five minutes ago, have I? Well, here we go then! Bbbbbabbbbbbba! Ah, much better."

Or at least that's how I think you spell the motorboat sound. Blogger spell-check apparently disagrees with me on that one, though.

The problem is that Riley will never duplicate these charming antics when there are adults around that she doesn't know. As soon as there are other adults around, she'll retreat into her shell like the WB frog that dances and sings Michigan Rag all night when nobody's watching. Whenever we want to show off how cute Riley is, like at her birthday party, she will just sit there silently with a sour look on her face. Ribbit.

Leah, on the other hand, is a total freaking ham. She could charm the pants off even the most baby-hating adult. You put her in front of an adult, any adult, and she'll smile this huge broad smile that could melt the polar ice caps, and then either start applauding, or make funny faces, or she'll start "conversing" with the person in very expressive sounding baby-language. Or if you a put a book in her hands, she'll read the book to you, although the "reading" is in some unknown language that only Leah understands:

Sounds vaguely Croatian to me.

So Leah's this total charmer in public, but recently at home, it's been a different story. She can be plenty charming at home too, but over the past few weeks we've noticed that she's been more and more frequently crossing over to the Dark Side. Yes, Leah has recently discovered the T-word. As in T-A-N-T-R-U-M. As in the awesome new way to get what Leah wants, anytime she wants.

Riley has a toy Leah wants. Leah tries to take it. Riley takes it back. Leah throws a tantrum.

We try to brush Leah's teeth. Leah wants to hold the toothbrush. Mommy and Daddy let Leah hold the toothbrush. After Leah spends 25 minutes chewing on the toothbrush, Mommy and Daddy try to take the toothbrush away from her. Leah throws a tantrum.

Lately, in the blog of our lives, more and more paragraphs are ending with the phrase "Leah throws a tantrum". But it pretty much only happens when we're at home - never in public. I mean if we could just combine the "At-Home Riley" and the "In-Public Leah", now THAT would be one crazy-happy baby.

Ah well, I guess we can live with both sides of our daughters. I mean, if the Force didn't have a Dark Side, then it wouldn't be the Force, would it?

Happy Birthday to You and You

2009-09-29T20:20:00.001-07:00

Leah and Riley turn one this Friday and we've got their birthday party coming up on Saturday. I've been to a few 1-year-old birthday parties now and I find them to be fascinating little curiosities. Are there any other times in life when the guest of honor at a party has absolutely no idea that they're the guest of honor and no idea what the hell is being celebrated? Okay, besides a funeral?

It all must seem very random to the 1-year old who has no idea that he/she has done anything worth celebrating. I enjoy watching the face of the 1-year-old as he or she sits in front of the cake during the Happy Birthday song. Total blankness and non-comprehension. It would make one heckuva poker face. I like to think about what's going through the 1-year-old's head during the Happy Birthday song. Hm - there are a bunch of people gathered around me that I don't recognize, and, um, they are all smiling at me and singing some song I've never heard, and, um, somebody has now shoved a block-shaped thing in front of me that has a picture of Mickey Mouse on it, and um, the block appears to be on fire, but nobody seems to be very concerned about the fire, and, okay, now they're done singing, and now they're clapping and they're looking at me like they're expecting for me to do something. Um--Line?

Babies never really seem to "enjoy" their first birthday parties, and yet parents always insist on throwing them. I never understood why before, but now that my daughters are turning one, I totally get it. 1-year-old birthday parties are not really for the kids -- 1-year-olds don't give a damn about cake or presents or birthday songs or picture-taking strangers. No, the purpose of the 1-year-old birthday party is to celebrate the fact that the parents made it through the year without breaking down or causing injury to themselves or their children.

And I think the importance of this celebration is even greater when there are twins involved. Not to toot our own horn or anything, but getting Leah and Riley to age 1 was pretty darn hard. Not impossible, and not hard all the time, and there were periods where it was actually kinda easy, but overall, it was a pretty difficult and tiring year. A great year, an incredibly rewarding year, but a tiring year nonetheless. I think we've earned some sort of celebration. Heck, Kathy went through twin pregnancy and twin labor and twin non-Ceasarian delivery on top of it, so I'd say she's earned a ticker-tape parade down Market Street, but hey, I think she's willing to settle for some Mitchell's ice cream cake.

I'm fresh out of ticker-tape, but I'm hoping that Leah and Riley will join me on Friday in saying a few words of congratulations to their mom for doing such a great job over the past year. Or as they'll probably put it,: "Dah! Pbbbbthhhh! Meh! Bibibibidibibidibi. Doi-doi-doi. [Clapping.] Dah!"

We made it, Kathy. Now all we have to do is, um, survive the toddler years. How hard could that possibly be?

Wait, don't answer that.

Do I Have to Separate You Two?

2009-09-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

Raising twin infant daughters is hard work and all, but supposedly the upside is that once the girls get to a certain age, everything gets SO much easier because they can entertain each other and you need to spend as much energy making sure they don't get bored. I'm not really sure when this "certain age" is supposed to hit, but lemme tell ya, it ain't gonna hit any time soon.

So far, I'd say things are moving in the wrong direction. Here's an approximate timeline on how Leah and Riley interactions have progressed over the past months:

Phase 1 (Months 0 through 5): Leah and Riley ignore each other.
Phase 2 (Months 6 through 9): Leah and Riley ignore each other, unless Sister A is holding the toy that Sister B covets at that time, in which case Sister B yanks the toy from Sister A and makes Sister A cry.
Phase 3 (Months 10 and 11): Whatever toy that Sister A is holding now automatically becomes the toy that Sister B will covet, no matter how undesirable that toy was to Sister B ten seconds ago when it was just sitting there in front of her. It doesn't matter if Leah is holding a blue rectangular block and Riley is also holding a blue rectangular block of exactly the same dimensions - Riley will discard her blue block, crawl over to Leah, and unceremoniously yank Leah's highly superior blue block out of her hands.
Phase 4 (Month 12): See Phase 3, but as an added bonus, Leah will now occasionally go into "affectionate twin sister" mode, which sounds great in theory but, trust me, it ain't all that. This is because Leah typically displays affection in one of three ways:

Leah yanks Riley's head into her lap, rubs her head against Riley's, and giggles. This, I know, sounds incredibly cute -- and it was mighty cute the first couple times she did it. But babies aren't very coordinated, so if you think about it, this maneuver basically amounts to Leah grabbing Riley's head and head-butting it, then giggling. Riley liked it the first two times, then grudgingly tolerated it the next few times, and then yesterday let out a yowl of protest and gave Leah a look that roughly translated to "get your big ol' noggin away from me, ya freak!"
Leah coos and gently holds Riley's face with one hand... and then pokes her finger into Riley's eye with the other hand. Riley's starting to get wise to that maneuver too.
Leah coos and sticks her hand into Riley's mouth, then Mommy and Daddy scramble to pull Leah's hand out of Riley's mouth before Riley decides to use her hand as a teething toy.

So Kathy and I currently spend a lot of our time trying to decide whether we should intervene and keep Leah and Riley from inflicting injury upon each other, or just stand back and let whatever's going to happen happen, in the hopes that over time our girls will learn valuable lessons such as the value of sharing and compromise. And um, ya know, don't stick your hand into Riley's mouth, for Pete's sake. Girl's got some jaws on her.

So far, our lessons have been going out the window, 'cause we're always breaking down and intervening. So, if some kindergartener ends up biting Leah's hand off and Leah grows up with a stump where her hand should be and everybody in school calls her "Stumpy", we'll only have ourselves to blame.

Poor Coyote

2009-09-15T20:02:00.001-07:00

I've been trying to avoid posting about baby milestones, but the truth is that Kathy and I are totally obsessed with them. It's pretty much all we think about or talk about. Of course, everybody says that all babies progress at their own rate, that you shouldn't worry if you're baby is "behind" on certain things, just love your babies and everything will be all right, fa-la-la-la-la. And I like the concept, I really do. But it's a little hard to follow through on that advice when you're sitting at another baby's birthday party watching seven other babies that are almost exactly the same age as your girls. You can almost see the little mental scorecards floating above the parents' heads. Okay, Bald-Girl and Red-Suspender Boy can crawl, but Nervous-Looking-Boy can't yet, but Nervous-Looking Boy can cruise pretty well, and Bald-Girl can walk but can't lift herself up yet, and Red-Suspender Boy can cruise but his confidence is lacking. Overall, I'd say No-Eyebrows-Girl is the one to beat.

And having twins presents an extra little dilemma. There have been a whole bunch of milestones lately for Riley - pulling up to standing, short-distance crawling, sitting up from a lying-down position, etc. - and with each milestone that Riley reaches, you can see Leah's frustration building up and the angry black cloud over her head growing. Not being able to do things that your twin sister can do has got to be a blow to the ol' self esteem. With each new Riley milestone, Leah finds herself at a bigger and bigger disadvantage. Those cute little tug-of-war matches for toys used to be fun to watch because they were pretty evenly matched, but now when Riley takes a toy from Leah and then gleefully crawls just out of her reach, leaving Leah bawling in frustration, it all seems a little less cute. Nowadays, when Riley reaches a new milestone, it's hard to feel good for her without at the same time feeling kinda bad for Leah.

And let me tell ya, Riley is not a gracious winner. Like sometimes she'll wave her stolen toy just outside of Leah's reach with this smug grin on her face - a grin that says "yes, I'm pretty impressive, aren't I?" It reminds me of that grin that's always on Road Runner's face as she taunts Wile E. Coyote, right before she says "meep meep" and disappears in a puff of smoke.

Or, wait. Is Road Runner a "he"?

Anyway, I'm convinced that in the end, it will be Riley's air of smugness that finally motivates Leah to start crawling and pulling up. Having grown up with a very competitive brother, I know that there are few things in life that provide better motivation than trying to get even with a sibling who just rubbed their victory in your face.

And once Leah defeats Riley, I think she'll probably set her sights on taking down No-Eyebrows-Girl. She seemed a little full of herself too.

Spontaneous Combustion Averted

2009-09-09T20:43:00.000-07:00

It was 7:35 pm on Sunday night, and Kathy and I were in parental hell.

Parental hell can take many forms, I suppose, but in this case, our hell was sitting in stopped traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge with a tired, hungry, bored, thirsty baby Riley in the backseat screaming her lungs out. We were driving back home from an afternoon barbecue in Richmond -- a drive that normally would take about 30 minutes or so -- but with the Bay Bridge closed and some art festival thing happening in Sausalito, we had been in the car for 1 hour and 45 minutes and counting. Leah and Riley were pretty wiped out and had so far slept most of the way, but Riley woke up just as the Golden Gate Bridge was coming into view, and lemme tell ya, she was PISSED OFF to find out that she was still in the freaking car.

Parents know that their babies have different levels of crying, ranging from impatient whining to mild complaining to indignant exasperation, all the way up the line. Usually, Leah or Riley will start off with a little mild-complainey cry, and gradually work themselves upward on the scale. On this occasion, however, Riley dispensed with the usual protocol and went straight to DefCon 1, the "Riley-Special" cry of agony and anguish, the one that roughly sounds as if we had just left her in a cage with some hungry wolves, and she was screaming "WHY-OH-WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS TO ME, MOMMY AND DADDY?"

The worst thing was that there was absolutely nothing we could do about it. We were stopped in wall-to-wall traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge, a bridge that has no shoulders to pull off on to. Plus the babies' car seats face backward and take up basically the entire back seat of our little Honda Civic, so there was no way to comfort Riley other than to awkwardly try to pat her shin bone and say pointless things like "we're sorry, Riley!" and "everything's going to be okay, Riley!"

And that's just about when Leah started waking up. Yep, we were now totally screwed, and we knew it. Riley's crying was going to scare the crap out of Leah, and then Leah was going to start crying, and then Leah's crying was going to upset Riley even more, which was going to upset Leah more, and on and on and on until the chain reaction caused our Civic to spontaneously burst into flames. I started formulating desperate plans to escape the bridge. Maybe I could jump over the curb and onto the pedestrian walkway! It works sometimes in the movies, doesn't it? There weren't all that many pedestrians on the bridge! Or I could veer into oncoming traffic and dodge cars like in Frogger! I used to be pretty good at that game!

Instead we just waited for the onslaught, because really there was nothing else to do. We just braced ourselves and waited.

Except the onslaught didn't seem to be coming. I listened closer, and through Riley's desperate screams, I could hear Leah quietly babbling in this low soothing voice, like the voice Kathy and I use when we tell bedtime stories. Kind of a calming sing-songy voice, the kind Mr. Rogers used when he was trying to calm down that jittery Mr. McFeeley guy. Leah babbled on and on like this for a solid minute or two, and as she did the most miraculous thing happened. Riley's crying got quieter, then got replaced by those post-crying-sobby-hiccup-things, and then just as we reached the toll plaza, the crying stopped altogether. Silence.

Leah had just talked Riley down. Like a policeman talking down the suicidal man from the ledge.

It was a Labor Day's Eve miracle.

Hey, whaddaya know, sometimes that whole having a twin sister thing pays off.

Leah vs. Riley

2009-08-31T20:33:00.000-07:00

According to all the books, one of the things you're supposed to avoid when raising twins is comparing them to each other. Comparing twins to each other creates competition between the twins, and competition is baaaaad. Because competition breeds resentment, and anger, and animosity, and anguish, and all those other "a" words that you're not supposed to subject your children to.

So, sure -- don't compare your twins to each other. Makes total sense. Except for the fact that one day the twins are actually born and you realize that pretty much all you do is compare the twins to each other. All day, every day. You can't help yourself. They're sitting there, right next to each other - how can you not compare them? That's just human nature, right? You put two things next to each other in front of us, dammit, we're gonna compare them - it's what we do. Even back in preschool, we were comparing -- comparing squares to circles, comparing Goofus to Galant, comparing Ernie to Bert, comparing, um, Jan to Marcia.

Come to think of it, about 95 percent of this blog is me comparing the twins to each other. Oops - Twin parenting FAIL.

As a parent, I just can't help noticing that Leah's a better eater, and Riley's better at moving around, and Leah sleeps better, and Riley cries less, and Leah smiles more, and Riley poops more easily, and on and on and on. If I didn't notice, that would just mean I'm not paying any attention. I guess Kathy and I could try to avoid comparing Leah and Riley, but I'm pretty sure we'd have to stop talking altogether. Or talk only about Michael Jackson and Jon and Kate Gosselin and American Idol, I guess.

Since it seems impossible to avoid comparing them and inciting unhealthy sibling rivalry, I've decided I might as well embrace the competition. I say compete, compete, compete, children! First one walking gets daddy's love!

Okay, maybe not. But is fun to devise little mini-competitions and see who comes out ahead. Both girls started "cruising" this past week (or, for the non-parents out there, "walking while holding on to the couch"), and they're both starting to build up some confidence with it, so this weekend I thought it would be cool to start Leah on one end of the couch and Riley on the other end of the couch, then put one of their favorite toys in the middle of the couch (otherwise known as "the TV remote"), and watch them each scramble to be the first to grab the toy.

As we began the first official Leah/Riley Race, both girls took off pretty quickly toward the center of the couch. Leah, in particular, took off like a shot. It was at this point that I realized that I hadn't thought through this race thing very well and that the girls were probably gonna just crash head-on into each other and that Leah was going to trample poor Riley and anything else that stood in the way of her precious remote control. Fortunately for us, Riley's an easily distracted girl. On the way to the remote control, she noticed a burp cloth lying on the floor and turned to stare at it for awhile. Then she kinda forgot what she was doing, so she started just bouncing in place and shouting "Eh! Eh! Eh!" Then she started staring out the window at a parked car. Meanwhile, Leah stood there triumphantly with her spiffy new remote control.

I guess we'll let Riley live in her non-competitive dream world for just a little bit longer. But next weekend, it's Leah vs. Riley, Round 2: This Time It's Personal.

They Pity the Fool

2009-08-26T20:44:00.000-07:00

One weird thing that I’ve noticed since we had the twins is that people around the neighborhood suddenly know who we are. We are “the couple with the twins”. Or since our neighborhood seems to be sprouting twins everywhere like weeds, we are now “the interracial couple with the twins”, or maybe “the interracial couple with the twins where one of them has disproportionately large cheeks”. The twins are sorta like an unusual tattoo or birthmark or a mohawk or something, an easily distinguishable characteristic of ours that makes us easy to remember later.

Yes. Apparently I’m comparing my daughters, the loves of my life, to a hairstyle worn by 1980’s icon, Mr. T. Sorry, girls. Go with me on this.

Anyway, I sometimes find it a little unnerving that people know who I am when I have no clue who the heck they are. We take the girls to the park and I get all these looks of recognition from people, and I think – Uh oh, should I know these people? Have I met them and forgotten their names? Or are they just staring because they're watching the most breathtakingly beautiful babies in the world? (Does that make up for the Mr. T comparison, girls?)

I’m pretty bad with names and faces on adults, so I’m pretty much hopeless matching baby faces and names. When I see a baby in the park that I’ve met before, I usually don’t remember their name, but sometimes I'll remember some factoid about them, like – there’s that genius baby who learned to walk when he was like 8 months old, or there’s that baby that Riley has a baby-crush on, or there’s that baby who got body-slammed by that other baby in the park. These labels are helpful because later I can ask Kathy “who is that baby that got body-slammed again?" and she can tell me “it’s Mr. Peepers”, and I can go, oh yeah, of course, I knew that.

So as a public service for people who know Leah and Riley but have trouble connecting the name to the baby, here are some helpful labels:

Leah:
"The baby whose cheeks are way too big for her face."
"The baby who claps all the time."
"The baby who grunts really loud for five minutes when she poops."

Riley:
"The baby who splashes around like a maniac when she is exposed to water."
"The baby who bounces. Constantly."
"The baby who looks calm and benign but will bite or knock over other babies if they dare threaten her toys."

Mr. Peepers:
"The fictional name I made for a certain baby I know because I'm not sure if his parents read this blog and/or would be okay with me using their son as an example."

Mr. T:
"The coolest guy ever."

Um, I could go on here, but I'd better put this blog post out of its misery.

Twin Language

2009-08-20T20:03:00.000-07:00

One of the things that always sounded cool to me about being a twin was the whole “twin language” thing. I think I first heard about it when I was a little kid on some science-y show like “3-2-1 Contact” or “Mr. Wizard” or something. It just seemed so freaking cool, the idea that some twin babies invent their own language that nobody but they can understand. I would imagine ways that my non-existent twin sibling and I could use our twin language to conspire against our parents or our teachers or our enemies. It all seemed pretty high on the stuff-that-would-be-cool scale, right up there with “being able to read people’s minds” or “being invisible” or "having the car from Knight Rider".

When I learned we were having twins, the idea of our girls speaking some secret twin language suddenly didn't seem quite so cool. Because if my girls are going be talking, I want to know what the heck they're saying. I want to hear them say "Hi Daddy!", not "Blork Bleep Blorp!" And I definitely don't want Leah and Riley conspiring against Bleep Blorp behind his back. That would suck.

Well, as of right now, if Leah and Riley have a secret twin language, it certainly is an odd one. Here's one fairly typical exchange that they had this morning.

Leah [sticking her tongue out at Riley and spitting]: Pbththththth!
Riley: Hee hee! [spitting back at Leah] Pbthththththth!
Leah: Hee hee! Pbthththththth!
Riley: Hee hee! Pbthth!

Yep, whatever this "pbthth" is, it seems to be the main topic of most of Leah and Riley's conversations. When Leah and Riley are talking to themselves, they're very expressive, using different intonations, making expressive hand gestures, making up these long multi-syllable words like "bazeebaguy" -- but when they're talking to each other, it seems to be all about the "pbthth".

So maybe twin language is some urban myth perpetuated by "3-2-1 Contact". Or maybe it's too early and twin language doesn't really develop until later in life. Or maybe Leah and Riley just happen to be one of those sets of twin sisters who won't need to have their own language. Either way, I guess it'll be okay with Bleep Blorp.

Fight the Power

2009-08-17T20:27:00.000-07:00

I’m going to admit to something here that’s probably a big parenting “no-no”, but boy, it sure is fun watching Leah and Riley fight. Aren’t parents supposed to hate it when their children fight? I’m pretty sure that my parents didn’t burst out laughing whenever I used to fight with my brother. And I’m almost positive they didn’t cheer or yell out things like “OH! SNAP! You go, Riley! Leah, you got SERVED!"

(Okay, so we don’t actually say “SNAP”. Was that even proper usage of “SNAP”? Where’s my urban dictionary?)

The twins’ fighting is a pretty recent phenomenon. Up until a month or two ago, Leah would just snatch toys out of Riley’s hands over and over and over, and Riley would generally act kinda bummed about it, but would never fight back or try to snatch her toy back. I have to say, this had us a little worried. I envisioned a long and painful adolescence for Riley, with bullies constantly taking her milk money or hanging her inside her locker or whatever it is that real bullies that aren’t in ‘80s teen movies actually do. I also envisioned Leah turning into this Biff-in-Back-to-the-Future-like bully, feeling like she could just get everything she wanted in life by just being a brute and grabbing it.

But just like Marty McFly eventually worked up the courage to punch Biff at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, one day, Riley decided that she had endured this bullying for long enough. Here's the play-by-play on how it went down:

Leah grabs a toy from Riley.
Riley grabs the toy back.
Leah grabs the toy back.
Riley grabs the toy back.
Leah tries to grab the toy from Riley but after ten seconds of pulling is unable to free it from Riley's vice-like clutches.
Leah starts crying.
Riley grins.

As Leah sat there crying, Kathy and I cheered. I know this probably makes us sound like horrible parents, but trust me, after months of watching Leah bully Riley around, you would've cheered too.

Since that day, Riley has become more and more assertive, to the point where Riley's almost becoming the bully and Leah is becoming the bullied. Now, Leah and Riley seem to fight at least once a day, and, while Leah's still trying to show Riley her proper place, Riley always seems to hold her own. And then last week at the playground, our nanny tells us that some 2-year old boy grabbed one of Riley's toys and Riley responded by knocking this 2-year-old down to ground and grabbing her toy back. And then, while the boy lay on the ground crying, Riley grinned.

Oh snap.

...And the Fusilli's Not Bad Either

2009-08-11T12:35:00.000-07:00

For a long time, Kathy and I were totally afraid to go out to a restaurant with the girls. Our early attempts to eat out with them didn't work out so hot. But in a valiant attempt to keep from being confined to our house for the next five years, we started forcing ourselves to go out to a restaurant at least once a week, just to get the girls used to being somewhere other than our house and the playground.

It's actually been surprisingly painless. I've learned that the secret to enjoying eating out with your twin infants is to come to terms with a few basic things:

Mommy and daddy do not get to savor their food. Mommy and daddy's dinner experience will consist of shoveling food into their mouths as fast as their throat and esophagus will allow.

The babies are going to make a total and complete mess. At the end of the meal, there will be bits of food in places around the restaurant that you would think would be physically impossible for the babies to reach. But, oh yes, they will reach them.

Approximately 238 times during the meal, mommy or daddy will have to stop whatever they're doing and pick up the toy that their daughter just threw to the ground.

Still, once you've adjusted your expectations a little, a meal out with the girls can actually be quite enjoyable.

On the way back from our "bacation" a couple weeks ago, we randomly stopped for lunch at this chain pasta restaurant in Pleasanton called Fuzio. As we stepped into the air-conditioned confines of Fuzio, the girls, who had been tired and hot and bored from being in the car for two hours suddenly came alive and lit up with joy and excitement. They looked around in awe at all the activity and food and waitresses and they were just enraptured by the whole thing. Our daughters fell in love with our waitress and would watch with big excited smiles on their faces as she walked around the restaurant, brought drinks to people, took orders, and typed in orders on that computer terminal thing. Our waitress, in turn, completely fell in love with the girls, making googly eyes at them and stopping by our table at every possible opportunity. (Would I like a fifth refill on my Diet Coke? Why, yes! Don't mind if I do! Thank you so much!)

The whole thing went so swimmingly that when we were coming back from our second bacation this past weekend (Yosemite), we made it a special point to once again stop at good ol Fuzio, even though it would've been far more convenient to have lunch somewhere earlier on the trip. Once again, it was like Disneyland to the girls. These girls who had been so cranky just a couple hours before once again turned into these smiling bundles bursting with joy. And when I say bursting with joy, I mean that they literally could not contain themselves. Their little bodies vibrated with excitement, their arms pinwheeled and flapped about exuberantly, their skin actually appeared to light up with the warm glow of happiness. We were seated at the same exact table, and were waited on by the same waitress. Again she came by about every ninety seconds to remind the girls of how adorable they were, and again the girls were totally enraptured, and again I got enough refills on my Diet Coke to make my bladder regret it in the car about 45 minutes later.

When the waitress brought our check, she complimented Kathy and me by telling us what a "great team" we were. Which was just the icing on the already delicious cake. A note to any waitresses reading this blog -- if you ever want to secure yourself a humungous tip, complimenting the dad's fathering skills in front of the mom is not a bad way to go.

A couple pictures from our little Yosemite hike, which Leah enjoyed a little more than Riley:

Baby Sudoku

2009-08-04T20:11:00.000-07:00

Leah and Riley turned 10 months old this week, and I think they’re already reaching the point in their lives where they think their parents are complete idiots. Back in the old days (with the “old days” meaning, like, six months ago), it used to be so easy to figure out what the girls wanted. When they cried, we knew that they either wanted: (a) milk, (b) a diaper change, (c) a nap, or (d) to release some gaseous emissions. Oh, and there was possibility that (e) they wanted you to stop playing with your freaking Ipod Touch and pay attention to them. If we were watching the signs, it was usually pretty easy to figure out which remedy was going to work. For example, crying plus eye-rubbing equals (c): nap time. Crying plus stinky smell in the air means (b): time to change that diaper. And so on.

The problem is that now we’re at a stage where if Leah and Riley want something, there are so many things that they MIGHT be asking for, and not enough ways for them to signal for exactly what they want. Right now, the thing that Riley’s doing all the time is looking urgently into my eyes, grabbing my forearm, and saying “meh!” I have not yet figured out what the heck this is supposed to mean. The first time Riley did this, I thought she wanted to use my arm to pull herself to a standing position. So of course, I held my arm rigid so she could stand up, but this is not what she wanted at all. Riley just looked at me impatiently again, gripped my arm again and said “MEH!” Then I guessed that she wanted to be picked up, so I picked her up. Riley then made a deeply frustrated groan as if she just got off the phone with a clueless customer service agent, then squeezed my forearm and shook it around and said “MEEEEEEEHHHHH!” If there was a cartoon thought bubble over her head, it would've said "You, sir, are an idiot. Can I speak to your supervisor?" (And we all know who daddy's supervisor is.)

We've had similar issues with Leah, except I'm starting to realize that Leah pretty much just wants to "walk" 24 hours a day. So squeezing daddy's arm and saying "meh!" means "I want to walk". Waving her arms up and down like she's trying to fly means "I want to walk". Heck, you can safely assume that even the stinky gaseous emissions means "I want to walk". Girl likes to walk. But once in awhile, Leah doesn't want to walk and she gives us some weird coded signal and waits impatiently as mommy and daddy try to figure out what the heck it means.

Mommy and daddy are college-educated people with Masters degrees but we have yet to break the baby code. It's like a fricking Sudoku, I tell ya. And not that "Easy" level kind where most of the numbers are already filled in -- I'm talking the hard kind. You know, the kind that frustrates you until you give up and say "meh."

Splish Splash, Version 2.0

2009-07-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, we went on our first official trip away from home with the girls -- to a little cabin in Pioneer, California. Which is a town that you haven't heard of unless maybe you accidentally drove through it at some point when you were lost, but it's kind of in the Sierra Foothills, in Gold Country. In this case, the exact destination wasn't particularly important -- the important thing was that we were going to stay in a place that wasn't our house, which is something we had yet to do during Leah and Riley's lifetime. And something that we were pretty much scared to death about.

In the end, the trip went okay. Let's give it a solid B-plus. We have to subtract some points because Riley got carsick and puked mightily all over herself, the backseat, her carseat, and poor defenseless Jacque the Peacock as we drove to the lake for an afternoon swim. A nice little pungent bright-red tomato and carrot puke, causing mommy and daddy to have to try to frantically change and wipe their daughter clean while she lay screaming on a mat on the shoulder of Highway 88 in 98-degree heat with Leah simultaneously crying in her carseat just to register her own indignation that nobody was paying attention to her.

I'm sure if you're a parent you already know this, but wow, going on vacation with babies sure isn't the same as going on vacation with just your significant other. There should be a different word for it, other than "vacation", because that doesn't really seem like the appropriate word. Um, bacation?

It's not that I didn't enjoy our bacation, because I definitely did. But I didn't exactly come back from bacation refreshed and rejuvenated, like I would after a typical vacation. After this trip, I was pretty much a worn-out, sleepy, sore, exhausted mess. I needed a vacation to recover from my bacation.

But it was worth it, because somehow all that seemed to really matter is whether the babies were having a good time, and they most definitely were, at least most of the time. It was damn hot in Gold Country and our cabin wasn't air conditioned, but that just gave us an excuse to sit with the girls in the outdoor jacuzzi for hours, as they joyfully splashed and splashed and splashed away until bedtime. (You know it's hot out when a jacuzzi feels refreshingly cool.) Plus there was an undeniable sense of accomplishment at the end of our bacation, like we had finally faced up to this thing that had once seemed so scary and found that it wasn't quite as scary as we had thought it would be. Exhausting and barfy, maybe, but not all that worthy of fear.

And for the record, good times were had at the lake once we finally wiped off all that tomatoey barf.

Splish Splash

2009-07-21T19:45:00.000-07:00

Leah and Riley are starting to get a little too big for their infant bathtub, so Kathy has recently been pushing for us to start giving them baths in our bathtub. She got the bright idea that we should put them both in the bathtub at the same time so that they could play together while we give them a bath. This didn’t seem like a very good plan to me. I mean, giving one baby a bath is fairly challenging, because they squirm and splash and slip around. The thought of giving two squirmy, splashy, and slippery babies a bath at the same time in a big ol’ bathtub scared the bejeebers out of me. I had this nightmare scenario in my head where both babies simultaneously slip and they bonk their heads together and then fall face down in the water and I’ve got to reach down and grab these slippery babies out of the water before they both drown. I mean, I have a hard enough time keeping hold of the soap during my morning shower – I certainly can’t be expected to snatch a 20-pound awkwardly-shaped bar of soap with each hand on a moment’s notice, can I?

But Kathy is impressively stubborn about certain things, so in the end she won out. She convinced me it would be fine if we were both there, each washing and keeping an eye on a single baby. So despite being filled with dread, I reluctantly agreed to try this double-bath idea on a trial basis, and this Saturday night was our first trial. It was quite the experience.

Immediately after they touched down in the water for the first time, Leah and Riley started giggling and splashing. And when I say they were giggling, I mean they were giggling non-stop. And when I say giggling non-stop, I mean that they were giggling continuously without even pausing to breathe, except for the occasional mid-laugh croak-y gasping-for-air thing. And when I say they were splashing, I mean they were basically twin Energizer Bunnies, except instead of beating that drum over and over, they were joyfully flapping their arms up and down, triumphantly slapping the water over and over and over and over. The giggling and splashing was occasionally punctuated by these high-pitched, piercing squeals of delight – the kind that sounds like a pack of ten-year-old girls riding a roller coaster while simultaneously watching a Hannah Montana concert.

A couple times, the girls did actually slide and fall awkwardly into the water. We snatched them up quickly and waited expectantly for them to start crying, but in both cases, they just resumed giggling and splashing right where they left off. The giggling and splashing didn’t let up for a good ten minutes. During that time, mommy and daddy intermittently tried to actually wash their babies, with very little success.

So, in the end, the bath was a complete and utter failure under the "getting babies clean" criterion, but a resounding success under the "soaking parents clothes", "splitting parents eardrums" and "making our babies blissfully happy" criteria. And of course, you can probably guess which criterion wins out in that little competition.

Slow Blog Day

2009-07-19T16:57:00.000-07:00

My sister’s always trying to get me post more home movies on this blog, but I’ve generally been resisting it. I think the main reason is because I think that most home movies are boring as all hell. Not just everybody else's home movies, but my home movies too. Since the girls were born, I’ve taken hours and hours of footage, most of which I can't even get myself to sit down and watch. When I do end up watching it, I find it usually consists of one or both of the girls staring at the camera with a kinda puzzled look on their face that says “Why is daddy holding that thing with the blinky red light in front of his face?"

It's as if the video camera seems to have some sort of magical power over the babies that suddenly makes them boring. It doesn't matter if the girls are singing showtunes and doing backflips -- as soon as I take out the video camera and point it at them, they suddenly go silent and motionless, as if the camera were some sort of weirdly-shaped baby-paralyzer gun. Basically, my girls are that frog on the WB cartoons.

So if I'm the girls' father and I can't stand to sit through the videos for more than a couple minutes, I can’t in good conscience subject anybody else to it. That would just be cruel and unusual punishment.

But I'm gonna do it anyway. My apologies.

In my defense: (1) these two videos are really short, (2) they're really the cream of the crop -- I hereby certify that these are the least boring videos in our collection, and (3) I'm coming up dry today on blog topics. The first video is from a couple weeks ago and shows Leah and Riley cracking each other up from across the room, and the second video is from this weekend and shows Riley discovering that she can scoot herself backwards.

Enjoy. Or, more appropriately, I'm sorry.

Bad is Bad

2009-07-14T20:07:00.000-07:00

Recently, Kathy and I have been in a nice little parenting groove. For the past couple months, Leah and Riley have been pretty darn happy campers -- sleeping well, eating well, pooping well, playing well. I wouldn’t say it’s gotten “easy” exactly, but we’ve gotten to the point where we sorta feel like we almost know what we’re doing. And of course you know what happens when you start to think you know what you’re doing…

Yep, this weekend, the other shoe dropped. And man, was it a big shoe. A big, Shaquille O’Neal sized shoe. A big, Shaquille O’Neal sized shoe filled with diarrhea and vomit. There's a nice image for you. Sorry about that.

Anyway, Leah and Riley both came down with some sort of stomach virus this weekend, and the results were most unpleasant. Unpleasant as in I got vomited on three times this weekend and got poop on me more times than I care to count. This weekend marks the first time in my life I’ve had to clean vomit out of my hair and from behind my ears. And for the record, I don’t recommend it.

This weekend reminded me of sitting through a really horrible movie, like, say, Grease 2. At first, the movie is bad, and it’s physically painful to sit through. But then the movie gets so bad that it becomes funny, and you find yourself laughing at all the horribleness. But eventually the horribleness reaches a point where it’s just, well, horrible, and that’s when it really gets painful. You sit there with your Adrian-Zmed-induced headache getting worse and worse until you finally decide to end the pain by either running screaming out of the theater or hurling your DVD player out the window.

This weekend was just like that. When Leah first vomited on me, it was, let’s face it, gross. Then things started spiraling more and more out of control. We’d just finish cleaning up after Leah, and immediately Riley would make a mess, so we’d clean up that mess, and immediately Leah would make a mess again, and so we’d have to clean up that. And so on and so on in an infinite loop. By the time Leah vomited on me the second time, I wasn’t really grossed out anymore, and the whole situation had become so off-the-chart ridiculous that it just became funny.

What made it funnier to me is that Leah and Riley weren’t the least bit unhappy about the whole thing. They weren’t actually acting sick at all. They would be smiling and babbling, then they’d pause for a few seconds to vomit all over the room like the Exorcist girl, then they’d grin sheepishly and go back to smiling and babbling. It was all quite adorable, if you don't count the whole vomiting and explosive diarrhea thing.

Even with the whole cuteness thing factored in, cleaning up vomit and poo gets old very fast, and by the time I got barfed on for the third time, I felt thoroughly and completely defeated. I wanted to just climb into bed and pull the covers over my head and wait for it all to go away. Except I couldn’t because I would've gotten baby-vomit all over the bed.

But then, finally, mercifully, the weekend came to an end. Like all bad movies do, even the one whose name we shall not mention.

Point, Da-Da

2009-07-09T20:07:00.000-07:00

Kathy is always accusing me of being too competitive. In our pre-baby days, we would play board games against each other some nights, and Kathy would usually lose because I grew up playing these board games all the time. And in the aftermath of another loss, as I tried to keep myself from gloating, Kathy would glare at me and say “You’re so freaking competitive”. Although sometimes she would use a different word for “freaking”.

I have to admit that I’m fairly competitive, but I always thought that Kathy calling me competitive was like the Pot turning to the Kettle and saying “You’re so freaking black”. After you’ve known Kathy awhile, you realize that she is actually very competitive about things that she decides to be competitive about. The babies, it turns out, are one of those things.

The girls are now 9 months old, and although the books say that many babies start crawling around 8 to 9 months, Leah and Riley are not yet crawling. This is driving Kathy bonkers. Never mind that the books also say that some perfectly healthy babies don’t learn to crawl until 10 to 12 months and that some babies actually never learn to crawl. Never mind, also, that our lives are going to get a heckuva lot more difficult when the babies do actually learn to crawl and that all the parents of crawling babies tell us to enjoy this time while we can. Mommy sees all the other babies crawling, so she wants her babies to crawl because dammit, we’re getting left behind here, girls.

When we meet parents at the playground or through other friends, the first thing Kathy will do is find out (a) how old their baby is, and (b) if he/she is crawling yet. Whenever the mother says that her baby is older than Leah and Riley and is NOT crawling yet, I find it fun to watch Kathy try to keep a straight face when I know that her gleeful heart is saying "Yessssss!". And the other day, when we were listening to a mother talk about how her babies had started crawling at 6 months, you could almost see the dark cloud of bitterness and envy raining down over Kathy’s head, complete with little lightning bolts.

I have to admit, though, that my competitive side was pretty pumped last week when I won the ever-so-prestigious "ma-ma" versus "da-da" competition. That's right, folks. Leah and Riley have both started saying "da-da" on a consistent basis, and much to Kathy's dismay, we've yet to hear from "ma-ma". I realize on some level that the fact the girls said "da-da" before "ma-ma" doesn't mean anything except that they happen to like the way the letter"D" sounds better than the way the letter "M" sounds. But I'd be lying if I said that part of me isn't secretly gloating, saying "in your face, ma-ma!" and doing a little touchdown-style dance of joy. "Secretly" being the key word, because I wouldn't want Kathy to think I'm competitive or anything.

And For My Next Trick...

2009-07-06T20:06:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that taking care of infants can get a little mind-numbing sometimes, but I’ve found that one way to keep things entertaining is to teach the babies little “tricks”, and then watch them perform those tricks again and again even though they have no idea what they mean.

My first triumph was teaching Leah to clap. One day, I just applauded at everything Leah and Riley did, and then, presto, the next day, Leah was suddenly applauding at everything she saw. The cat walks in the room: Leah applauds and says “aaay!” Daddy spills food on the floor: Leah applauds and says “aaay!” Daddy opens Leah’s diaper and finds a foul-smelling surprise: Leah applauds and says “aaay!” Of course, Leah has no idea what applause means, so she doesn’t always applaud at the appropriate times, but who cares -- you cannot deny its cuteness, and as a party trick, it never fails to get a room full of people to applaud and say “aaay!" So it's a win-win.

Next was waving. Waving didn’t work quite as well. I did the same thing and pretty much waved at Leah and Riley all the time for a couple days. Leah has kinda started to wave now, but she doesn’t have the motion quite right yet, so she has the weird, two-handed wave that basically looks like she’s trying to do jazz hands. Plus I think I overdid the waving thing a little, so she doesn’t quite understand at all that you’re only supposed to wave when you’re greeting people or saying goodbye. So basically, Leah now does jazz hands at one minute intervals, all day, every day.

The nice thing about having twins is that you only have to teach the trick to one of the girls, because you know that the other girl is gonna pick it up from her sister, just by baby-osmosis. Sure enough, two days after Leah learned to clap at everything, Riley started to clap. So now, we have two girls who applaud everything their parents do. Which is an undeniably nice little ego boost, for some reason. It's nice to get applauded, even by babies who don't know what the hell they're doing.

Unfortunately this also means that I now have two girls that do jazz hands all the time instead of waving. If this keeps up, it might turn into somewhat of a social impediment, but hey, I gotta think there’s a possible future out there for a 1920s-style jazz dancing twin duo, don’t you?

Something to Talk About

2009-06-30T12:21:00.000-07:00

Leah and Riley have been babbling for months now, but the babbling has recently gotten a heckuva lot more intense. Here's a snippet of what our household has sounded like over the past few days:

Leah: Doy-doy-doy-doy-doy-doy-doy-doy-doy-doy-doy-doy!
Me: Really? That's interesting, Leah.
Riley: Gggggggggggpthaaaaaaaaaagggggg! [Spit flying everywhere]
Me: [wiping spit from face] Really? That's interesting, Riley.
Leah and Riley: aaaa--AAAAAAA-aaaa!
Me: You don't say!

I have definitely got to work on my baby conversational skills. I think some mothers are naturally gifted and can effortlessly carry on long conversations/monologues with their babies even though the babies (a) cannot speak, and (b) cannot understand speech. Which would normally be considered major obstacles to good conversation. But mothers always seem to be undeterred by this. When I see mothers pushing their babies in their strollers, they're always leisurely talking to their babies -- they're asking them how their day is going, they're updating them on where they're going and how the rest of the day is going to go, they're regaling them with fascinating tales about days of yore. When I see fathers pushing their babies in their strollers, they're usually just trying to go where they need to go as fast as they can, before the babies start crying.

When I do have a "conversation" with the girls, it generally falls into one of three categories:

Category 1: Girls babble and daddy pretends that they're saying something (see "doy-doy" example).
Category 2: Daddy narrates everything he's doing. For some reason, I usually do this in song. Some of daddy's greatest hits include "Daddy Put Leah's Onesie on Backwards" and "Daddy's Trying to Wash Riley's Legs (But Riley Won't Stop Splashing Him)". I don't know why it has to be in song -- maybe it's so that the music disguises the boringness of what I'm actually saying.
Category 3: Daddy tells the girls how cute they are. As in "Who's the cutie? RILEY'S the cutie!"

Of course, the thing about having twins is that as soon as you tell one of them how cute they are, you instantly feel guilty unless you immediately follow up by telling the other one that, of course, they are equally as cute. You end up catching yourself and saying things like "Who's the sweetest girl in the world? Leah is! Um, except for Riley! Who is exactly as sweet as Leah! They score exactly the same on the sweetness scale! Uh, yeah!"

Oh well. So maybe I'm not a great baby conversationalist. I guess it's not like I'm a great adult conversationalist either. Actually, the next time I have an awkward conversation pause, I'm going to follow the wise words of my daughter Leah, and just say "doy-doy-doy-doy".

...Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

2009-06-25T20:35:00.000-07:00

I've always liked hearing those stories about identical twins getting separated at birth and living totally different lives with different parents. And then they get reunited when they're like 40 years old and they find out that they have all these weird, quirky things in common. Like, say, they both put ketchup on their eggs, or they both always sleep on their stomachs, or they both get creeped out by the animation in the Toy Story movies. The general upshot of those stories is that it's all about genetics. When it comes to identical twins, genetics apparently kicks "environment's" butt. Shared DNA seems to trump those other pesky little details like, you know, their parents' emotional, intellectual, and financial support.

Now, I know that Leah and Riley aren't identical twins, but given that they have similar DNA and are being brought up by the same parents in the same parenting style, I was thinking that they would grow up to be at least somewhat similar. Or at least have at least one or two similar personality traits.

But here we are as the girls approach 9 months old and they really couldn't be more different:

Riley: serene. Leah: spazz.
Riley: stingy with smiles. Leah: always smiling unless she's crying.
Riley: likes other babies. Leah: either ignores other babies or makes them cry.
Riley: patient. Leah: totally incapable of waiting for anything.
Riley: shy around adults. Leah: total adult-charmer.
Riley: potato. Leah: po-tah-to.

And the list goes on and on. As far as I can tell, they don't share a single personality trait. Plus, they don't even look like sisters, at least to me. Basically, it's like Leah is from Mars and Riley is from, like, Krypton.

Kathy's explanation for this is that she had a little fling with the mailman about 18 months ago, and that one of the twins has a different daddy. I am pretty sure that she's joking.

She's joking about that, right?

Just Because It's Father's Day

2009-06-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

The thing about writing a blog about your kids is that while parents always think that everything that their kids do is a-DOR-able, that adorableness doesn't necessarily translate into scintillating reading for all the non-biologically related folks out there. The girls do tons of cute things every day, but most of them are of the ya-kinda-had-to-be-there variety, and I'm pretty sure you all don't want to hear about every time Leah or Riley makes a cute noise, or every time they make a funny face, or every time they make a grunty-poopy sound at an inappropriate time. Or maybe you think you do, but trust me, you don't. 'Cause, for starters, they sure do make a lot of grunty-poopy sounds.

But it's Father's Day, so in the spirit of Father's Day, here's a little fatherly gushing. Because if there's ever a day when it's okay to gush, it's gotta be Father's Day, right? I apologize in advance. Sorry everybody, it'll be over soon.

As I've mentioned in the past, Leah likes her toys. If you give her a toy, she'll immediately do the following three things, usually in this order.

Put toy in mouth. See what toy tastes like.
Shake toy. See what noise toy makes.
Put toy in mouth again.

She'll do this even with toys that make absolutely no noise, like a teddy bear. Heck, she'll do this with things that aren't even toys. Burp cloths, hats, bottles, it doesn't seem to matter -- Leah will wave it around with this goofy grin on her face. My favorite is when we give her a finger food or a biscuit or something and she puts it in her mouth, takes it out to give it a good shake, then puts it back in her mouth.

As for Miss Riley, her favorite pastime is bouncing. If she didn't have to eat and sleep and poop, she would perfectly happy in her Jumperoo, bouncing all day and all night, from now until she turns eighteen. She's really not all that interested in doing anything else. She'll play half-heartedly with her toys, but we all know that she's really just biding her time until her next bouncing opportunity.

The bouncing is cute as hell of course, but it becomes a bit of an impediment now that we're trying to get her to learn to stand up and walk. We'll hold her up in a standing position or try to get her "walk" across the room, but instead of standing or walking, she'll rhythmically bounce up and down, like she's dancing to some music in her head. She usually has her lips pursed together in a Billy Idol-like sneer when she does this. With the face that she makes and the fact that she's doing these little bouncy pelvic thrusts, she kinda looks like what I imagine Elvis would look like if he were kinda uncoordinated. And about two feet tall. And um, a girl.

I'd better stop now, because I know you can tell that I could go on and on, and it could get very ugly. I did want to post the video below, which shows how the girls reacted when Kathy got the hiccups on Saturday.

Hey Jealousy

2009-06-15T19:50:00.001-07:00

It's been pretty amazing watching Leah and Riley become more and more aware of each other, but the flip side is that we're starting to see what looks like the early stages of twin jealousy seeping in. You can see it when Kathy comes home from work -- both the girls' faces instantly light up, and both Leah and Riley eagerly hold their arms out toward mommy, impatiently waiting for mommy to pick them up. And because mommy has not yet mastered the art of simultaneously picking up two babies without bonking their heads together, she will generally pick up one baby while daddy swoops in to distract the other baby so that she doesn't realize that she is getting the oh-so-short end of the parent stick.

For the record, this swooping never works. Leah and Riley may be just eight months old, but they sure as hell know the difference between mommy picking them up and hugging them and daddy swooping in and making raspberry sounds and chanting "mmm-bah". Um, Daddy, I've known mommy a long time... mommy is a friend of mine. Daddy, you're no mommy.

So, despite daddy's efforts, the "other" girl will stare longingly at her sister being hugged by mommy, and you can almost see the little cartoon thought-cloud over her head saying "Hey! That's MY mommy! Get away from MY mommy!"

In general, Leah's the jealous one. She's the one always reaching to the other side of the double stroller to steal Riley's toys. In one instance, Leah reached over and grabbed Riley's pacifier right out of her mouth and triumphantly inserted it into her own mouth. This happened even though Leah doesn't actually like pacifiers, and never has. No matter -- Leah saw Riley enjoying her pacifier and had to put a stop to it. Gotta show Riley who's boss, ya know.

Speaking of jealousy -- why the heck does mommy get the dramatic, heartfelt hug greeting when she gets home and daddy just gets a smile and maybe a giggle if he's lucky? What is daddy, parental chopped liver?

As it turns out, kinda, yes. I guess that's what we get for not having things like breasts and birth canals.

The Wave

2009-06-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

Over the past week or so, we've had a couple of bad days with the girls where they haven't been their usual chipper selves for some reason. Leah's had a bit of a cold lately and has occasionally been waking up from naps crying as if someone were trying to kill her. Which of course freaks Riley out just a bit and so we end up with a not-so-great start to the afternoon. This is what happened to us yesterday afternoon as I was at home with the girls covering for our nanny who had the day off. After this inauspicious start, the girls just generally didn't feel like cooperating with daddy, so everything that afternoon -- bottle-feeding, food-feeding, getting them into the stroller, whatever -- was just a little more difficult than it usually is. And so as the afternoon dragged on and I waited desperately for Kathy to get home, I was feeling more and more frustrated and defeated.

I think the girls can somehow sense when daddy's almost at the end of his rope, because at times like these, one of the girls will usually throw daddy a bone. I had Riley on the floor on her tummy and was holding her favorite plastic fish in front of her trying to get her to reach for it. I do this occasionally to try to encourage her to crawl, but neither of our girls has shown much interest in learning how to crawl yet. But in this instance, for some reason, Riley desperately wanted to grab this fish, and she started trying everything she could think of to try to get closer to that fish. First she started doing this weird breaststroke-like swimming motion. When that didn't work, she lifted her butt up and pulled herself into this crouching-tiger position. Then with a mighty "gggggggga" sound, she lunged after the fish, but she got the motion wrong so she ended up propelling herself backward, and face-planting into the ground.

It was pretty much the cutest thing you ever saw in your life. It's one of those moments where the cuteness totally bowls you over and knocks you down, like a wave at the beach that comes out of nowhere. This was a cuteness tsunami, basically.

Raising twins is frequently exhausting, but one of the best things about it is that we get twice as many moments like this as we would with one baby. We get a whole bunch of these moments, although most of them would sound mundane or stupid if I tried to describe them in this blog, but trust me, they're fricking cute. But dammit, we NEED twice the number of these moments, because these moments are what sustain us. They're like food to our famished souls, or like water to our parched souls, or like -- um, something else to our something souls. Ran out of analogies there, but you get the idea. We need 'em.

Here's to getting knocked over again...

The Golden Age

2009-06-04T12:33:00.000-07:00

Leah and Riley are now eight months old, and the general consensus among parents that we talk to is that this is supposedly one of the easiest and most fun ages for children. Eight months is old enough for the kids to play and laugh and smile and to generally be adorably cute, but it's still too young for them to be able to get into much trouble or injure themselves or others too badly.

So far I've got to agree with the parent consensus. Kathy and I have been realizing lately that this past week that we're kinda living in the Leah-and-Riley Golden Age right now. The girls are generally sleeping 11 hours through the night, they're eagerly eating the food we're feeding them, they're taking two solid long naps most days, and the inexplicable periods of fussiness are fewer and farther between.

And when I've had to take care of the girls by myself recently, of course it's still tiring, but it's no longer the life-draining, painstaking ordeal that it used to be. It no longer leaves me a sad, lifeless, defeated lump at the end of the night. I'm not quite sure if that it means that I'm getting better at this twin parent thing or if they're getting easier. My money says they're getting easier.

But there are definitely a few lessons I've learned in the past few months about how to take care of twins when you're by yourself:

When bottle-feeding both babies at the same time, you need to switch your focus back and forth between babies every few seconds. Otherwise, the baby you're not watching will move her head and the bottle nipple will go astray, and you'll eventually find out that you've been holding the bottle over the bridge of Riley's nose for the past 45 seconds and there's a big pool of milk on her forehead. Not that that's ever happened to me. No.
Any activity that can simultaneously entertain both babies is a winner. Even if it makes daddy look like an idiot. Because the only people who know that daddy's making an ass of himself again are eight months old, and they have no social standards yet. (I mean, they still grunt loudly when they're taking a poop in public -- daddy stopped doing that decades ago.)
Conserve energy. I used to jump, hop, and leap around the room to try to keep the girls smiling and entertained. That usually worked for about five minutes, after which the girls would get totally bored with daddy's antics, and daddy himself would be totally wiped out and in need of oxygen - with no energy and still another long hour to go before the babies' next nap. I've realized that in the long run it's much smarter to just say - hey Leah, you chew on this burp-cloth for five minutes while daddy eats this granola bar. Leah finds it just as entertaining and daddy gets an energy-boosting snack!
When all else fails, just kill time by putting the girls in a stroller and going for a walk.

The bad thing about living in the Golden Age is that you realize that it can't last forever. Pretty soon, Leah and Riley will be crawling in different directions and I'll be frantically running after them to keep them from causing property damage or personal injury. And I will think back to when they were eight months old, and I'll think -- ah, those were the days.

Down with Progress

2009-06-01T12:52:00.000-07:00

Leah and Riley turn eight months old tomorrow, and of course every month brings a whole bunch of new milestones and changes in behavior. Now I love a good baby milestone as much as the next guy, but I’m discovering that with every cool milestone there seems to come a bunch of hidden drawbacks that I hadn’t considered.

Like the girls are eating all kinds of solid foods now, which is fun and cool and cute and everything, but the whole dietary shift has Leah’s digestive system a little befuddled so that she is now experiencing near-daily bouts with painful constipation. Or the girls have recently become great sitter-uppers, which is awesome because they can now play with all their toys more easily, but once in awhile when they're sitting they become so entranced by the toy they’re holding that their sitting-up muscles kinda forget what they’re supposed to be doing, and we watch helplessly as they tip over in slow motion like the last bowling pin and unceremoniously bonk their head on the floor.

And I suppose this isn’t exactly a “milestone”, but for the past five nights in a row, Leah and Riley have both slept through the night from about 7:15 pm to 6:15 am without any intervention from mommy and daddy. The girls have actually been pretty good sleepers for awhile, but typically Riley would start complaining once or twice or three times a night and somebody would have to briefly wake up to put the pacifier back in her mouth. That “somebody” would usually be the lighter sleeping parent, aka (ahem) Daddy.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. It sounds like a drag to wake up twice in the middle of the night, stumble over to the nursery, find Riley’s pacifier in the dark, and stick it back into her mouth, but I really didn’t mind at all. Actually, upon hearing Riley start to complain, I would eagerly leap out of bed before Kathy ever had a chance to wake up. Why? Because Riley is actually at her peak of cuteness when she’s awake in the middle of the night. When I walk in there, Riley’s face lights up with the light of a thousand suns and a huge grin spreads across her face and she does this little ecstatic dance of joy within the confines of her sleep sack. I put the pacifier in her mouth, and she looks up at me with this grateful, content, peaceful expression that I almost never see in the light of day. It’s frickin' awesome, I tell you.

Because Riley has not woken us up in the past five nights, my best guess is that Riley has figured out how to find her own pacifier and put it back in her mouth. Which is awesome, because mommy and daddy have gotten to sleep uninterrupted through the night (bladder permitting) for the past few days. At the same time, part of me is crushed that my nightly moment watching Riley’s dance of joy might be going away. Totally crushed.

Progress: It’s awesome, but it kinda sucks.

Of course, now that I've blogged about it, karma will now cause Riley to wake me up eleven times tonight. Just you watch.

And here's another fleetingly precious moment from a couple weeks ago:

Kathy and Dave U Plus Two

2009-05-27T12:25:00.000-07:00

So I get back the other day from my little weekend getaway in Hawaii and log into my little blog site tracker. For some reason, I get a little thrill out of knowing that people other than Kathy and my sister and my parents are reading about our little adventures.

Blog site-tracker thingy informs me that my blog received 36 visits in about a 24 hour period starting on Memorial Day afternoon. Which, I probably don't need to tell you, is a lot more than usual. I know there are people out there who read my blog from time to time, but I'm not egotistical enough to think that masses of people were breaking away from their Memorial Day barbecues because they just HAD to check in on our latest wacky baby adventures.

I look a little closer and notice that 32 of the 36 visits came from people searching Google for "divorce rates for parents of twins", which is a topic I mentioned briefly in a post I made about the effect that having twins has had on our marriage. That's weird, I think to myself. Why in the world would there be this sudden nationwide interest in the divorce rates of parents of twins?

I'm stumped, so I shut down my laptop and glance at the trashy magazine on my bedside table, which has a cover article on Jon & Kate Plus Eight's recent marital problems. A smart person might have made a connection between the flood of visitors to my little website and the fact that a famous couple with twins is having marital problems. Apparently, I'm not a smart person.

So it seems that on Memorial Day, the TLC channel ran the first episode of the new season of Jon & Kate Plus Eight, which, for the uninitated, is a reality show where they follow the adventures of this family that has one set of twins and one set of sextuplets (meaning, um, "plus eight" kids - get it?). The kids on the show are cute and all, but if you've watched the show, you know that the real fun is watching the parents, Jon & Kate, fighting. "Fighting" is kind of a generous term, because mostly it's just Kate scolding her husband in exasperation while he stands there looking like a dejected puppy.

In a shocking (shocking!) development, Jon and Kate have recently run into marital problems which have made them the subject of trashy tabloid magazine articles everywhere. You've probably seen them on magazine covers at your local supermarket checkstand, even if you've never heard of the show. This magazine cover I have right here is headlined "Jon and Kate: A Marriage in Crisis!" Um, not that I read those magazines or anything. Um, yeah.

Anyway, on the first episode, Jon and Kate finally came out and addressed all the recent issues and problems in their marriage, and Kate apparently at some point mentioned how the divorce rate among twin parents is so high, but that she used to think that they were going to be the exception to the statistic. Apparently the mention was prominent enough to send at least 32 nervous twin parents running to their computers to Google "divorce rate for parents of twins".

On the one hand, I feel vaguely protective of my fellow twin parents and think that the sudden joy that the world seems to be taking from their misery is a little sad, especially since I also like to think that Kathy and I are going to be an exception to the scary statistics. On the other hand, clearly I'm a freaking hypocrite, because I have the episode sitting on my Tivo, and the truth is I can't wait to watch it and gawk at the wreckage that is their marriage. Which, who knows, could be just part of the big plan. Part of me thinks that maybe we're all suckers and Jon and Kate are out there somewhere counting their money and having a good laugh together.

Leah and Riley appear to be amused by the whole thing:

Don't Get Around Much Anymore

2009-05-18T19:39:00.000-07:00

Back in our pre-baby days, Kathy and I were always taking trips. Day trips, weekend trips, plane trips, long road trips, we pretty much did it all. People would refer to us as the "trip couple" (and Kathy as "Kokomo Kathy"). Traveling was, like, our couple super-power. When people saw us, they would always ask us what our next trip was, and they knew that we would always have an answer lined up.

That all came to a screeching halt about seven months ago with the new additions to our family. In the past seven months, we have stayed entirely within a 45-minute radius of our house. For the first few months, we pretty much only got into the car if we needed to go to the doctor's office or the grocery store. Nowadays if we're feeling particularly adventurous we'll brave crossing the Bay to visit some friends in Alameda, but when we go much beyond that, we start to get kinda nervous and itchy.

For some reason, even though Leah and Riley are pretty well-behaved in general, Kathy and I can't shake this uneasy feeling that if we breach the borders of our protective San Francisco bubble, something's going to go horribly wrong and the babies will start screaming their heads off, and we won't be able to stop it because the only thing that will magically calm them down will be something that we left sitting in their toy box at home. And so they'll keep crying louder and louder and louder until their heads eventually explode. And we will stare at the smoking remains of our children, and we will think to ourselves wistfully, if only we had stayed at home -- our babies would still have their heads.

We're trying to get out a little more, just so the babies become aware that there's a great big world out there. This weekend, we went to the zoo. It was nice to get out, but truthfully, the babies didn't really give a damn about the animals. They are way more interested in Sophie the rubber giraffe than they are in a real, live 30-foot tall giraffe walking around right in front of them. For one thing, Sophie's a heckuva lot more squeaky. And then after an hour, they both melted down, which wasn't unbearable, but still, it wasn't the most fun thing in the world to be running around with a screaming 20-pound baby strapped to you on the hottest day of the year as you try to find where the heck that darn zoo exit was.

Anyway, this weekend, my college roommate is getting married in Hawaii. Kathy and I briefly flirted with the idea of a Hawaii trip with the whole family, but we eventually got freaked about by the complicated logistics and chickened out. So now it's just me going to Hawaii this weekend, while Kathy and my parents spend the weekend in San Francisco with the babies.

I guess Kathy and I continue to be imprisoned by our own fear. People I've talked to about this think we're being silly, I can tell. But most of those people don't have twins. Let me tell you, the image of two babies sitting in our laps crying their lungs out for six hours straight is a pretty big deterrent. I mean, all you parents of single babies out there, picture the volume of your own baby screaming as loud as he/she possibly can. Now multiply that by two. That's loud. Is it worth going through that just to spend a weekend making sure your babies stay out of the sun and don't ingest too much of that Waikiki sand? No, we didn't think so either.

But the good news is Dave gets to go to Hawaii! Sorry, Leah and Riley! (And more importantly, sorry, Kathy!)

A Moment Like This

2009-05-13T12:17:00.000-07:00

Here's a scene that has played itself out in our living room the past three mornings, exactly the same way each time:

With the babies' morning feed just finished, mommy and daddy sit Leah and Riley facing each other on the couch, within easy reach of each other.

Leah starts to grab Riley's bib and pull it toward her mouth. Mommy pulls Leah's arm away so that she doesn't choke her sister to death. Riley looks amused.

Leah and Riley stare at each other in wonderment for about 20 seconds, apparently fascinated by what they each must think is the most life-like and sophisticated toy ever.

Leah starts trying to grab Riley's face and pull it toward her mouth. Mommy pulls Leah's arm away so that she doesn't take a bite out of her sister's face. Riley looks amused.

Leah and Riley stare at each other in wonderment for another 20 seconds.

Leah, with a big goofy smile on her face, stares right into Riley's eyes and makes this long birdcall-like noise, that sounds roughly like this: "aaheeeaaaaawwwweeeeeaaaaaah!" (Hope I got the spelling right there.)

While Leah's making this noise, Riley smiles broadly and stares at her with rapt attention, as if she is telling the most fascinating story ever.

Something in the air changes and the spell is abruptly broken. Leah puts her thumb in her mouth and looks away. Riley looks away and appears to be intensely bored all of sudden.

Maybe that description doesn't sound all that exciting, but it's actually something we've been looking forward to for like months: the moment where the twins actually interact with each other as sisters rather than just being that-thing-that-wakes-me-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-takes-away-my-toys. It is nirvana for us new twin parents. It is the new-twin-parent equivalent of heroin. As soon as the moment is over, dammit, you want to see it again. Now. Now-now-NOW.

Unfortunately, Leah and Riley have sensed their parents' desperation and have therefore decided that they will only do one performance a day. Other than that two-minute period each morning, you can put them right in front of each other face-to-face and they will avoid eye contact at all costs, suddenly looking up at ceiling, staring down at their feet like shy teenagers.

So now I sit here, at 8:30 pm at night, looking forward to my next fix tomorrow morning. Ten and half hours to go.

The girls have me right where they want me now. I'm a goner.

Share Alike

2009-05-08T09:23:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest advantages of twins, I'm told, is that they can play together, meaning that they will socialize at an early age and therefore learn concepts like sharing and entertaining themselves. I say "I'm told" because I've yet to see this in action with our girls, and I don't envision it happening any time soon.

So here's what usually happens when we try to make the girls "play together". Typically, we'll sit them on the floor facing each other, putting ten toys or so between them. Then we sit and watch the action unfold, like so:

Leah eagerly grabs a toy and immediately puts it in her mouth and starts chewing
Riley tentatively picks up a toy.
Leah sees Riley picking up a toy and decides that Riley's toy is infinitely better than the one that she's currently chewing on. She yanks Riley's toy out of her hand and starts chewing on it.
Riley sits staring at Leah with a mildly miffed expression. She watches Leah chewing on her new toy for about thirty seconds.
Riley tentatively picks up another toy.
Leah sees Riley picking up the toy, and even though she's holding a great toy and there are eight other wonderful toys on the ground to choose from, yanks Riley's toy out of her hand and starts chewing.
Go to Step 4 and repeat ad infinitum.

Here's an illustration of Step 4 for ya.

It doesn't really go on "ad infinitum", I guess. In reality, Riley starts getting a little bored after five or so cycles and resigns herself to just watching Leah play. But she never seems to get particularly upset about Leah's bullying tactics. She seems to have accepted that "my sister is going to steal my toys" and chalked it up to it being one of those mildly annoying facts of life, like taxes, or like how time goes so slow when you're standing next to the kettle waiting for water to boil but so fast when the babies are napping and you're trying to get eight things done before they wake up. (To pick a random example.)

Riley seems to have reacted to this situation by deciding that she doesn't really like toys all that much. Even if Leah's not around and you put some toys in front of her, Riley doesn't look all that thrilled. Sure, she'll grab a rattle and shake it a couple of times and listen to the noise it makes, but there's no joy in it like there is with Leah. It's Riley's little defense mechanism -- better not get too attached to a toy because you know Leah's just going to take it away as soon as she sees it.

This may be why the only toys that Riley gets really excited about are things like the Jumperoo and the Exersaucer -- toys that you actually sit in, meaning that nobody can take them away from you when you're playing with them. When Riley's playing in the Jumperoo, Leah can watch jealously but she can't actually take the Jumperoo away from her sister. At least not until she's strong enough to physically lift the Jumperoo over her head and turn it upside down, dumping Riley on to the floor. But I guess that if Leah's ever strong enough to do that, we'll have much bigger problems to deal with.

The Parent Trap

2009-05-04T19:58:00.000-07:00

Kathy and I have recently come to the realization that at some point during the past two months, Leah and Riley got together and swapped personalities.

I've talked a little bit about how Riley suddenly went being the fussy, "challenging" one to being a happy-go-lucky angel, and how Leah has taken over Riley's role as the fussy one. But it goes beyond that.

At exactly the same time the babies started switching temperments, they also switched their mommy/daddy alliances. Basically, Leah went from being a mommy's girl to being a daddy's girl, and vice versa for Riley. All of a sudden, those daddy games that Riley used to think were so hi-LAR-ious were now met with cold, detached gazes, while Leah became the one who couldn't get enough of daddy. They switched at exactly the same time -- there was no period where both the babies liked mommy or both liked daddy. The babies just woke up one day and switched alliances as if it were one of those plot twists on "Survivor".

And then yesterday, without warning, both babies switched alliances again. I got home and walked over to Riley, leaned over and said "Ba-ba!", and Riley started laughing her ass off. I'm talking 90 seconds of uninterrupted, rolling-around-on-the-ground, tears-coming-out-her-eyes, gasping-for-breath laughter. I walked over to Leah and tried the same thing and got a confused look of disdain, followed by a glance over at the still-laughing Riley that seemed to say "what the hell's wrong with HER?"

Then Kathy came in and tried repeatedly to duplicate the Riley laughter. For several minutes, Kathy was dancing around, singing, twirling around, jumping, chanting "Ba-ba", using rattles like maracas, making raspberry sounds -- pretty much doing everything she could think of short of standing on her head. I thought it was pretty freaking funny myself, but Riley just sat there with a Bruce Willisey half-smirk on her face. Leah, however, was enchanted. The babies had switched alliances yet again.

It felt like one of those sitcoms or movies like the Parent Trap where the identical twins keep switching places without telling the parents. And then the clueless parents wonder what's gotten into those twins, but they never catch on that the twins are just changing their hairstyles back and forth, and the one who used to wear her hair in pigtails is now wearing it in a ponytail and the one who used to wear it in a ponytail is now wearing it in pigtails.

Leah and Riley aren't identical twins and don't even look remotely alike, so I haven't quite figured out how they're managing to make these little switcheroos. But I'm telling you, something fishy is goin' on here, I just know it.

...You Can Only Hope to Contain Them

2009-04-29T12:29:00.000-07:00

As far as Kathy and I can tell, neither of the twins is all that close to crawling, but both Leah and Riley have recently been working on alternative methods of transportation. We started noticing something was up a few weeks ago. When we went to get the babies from their cribs every morning, we would find Leah had scooted herself down so that her feet were against the "foot" of the crib, and that Riley had scooted herself up so that her head was against the "head" of the crib. And then we would notice that when we left them on the floor and took our eyes off them for a minute, we would then find them in a slightly different spot or oriented at a 45 degree angle from where we had left them. Until about a week ago, we had never really witnessed how they were pulling off this little magic trick.

We've discovered now that they actually use completely opposite methods. Leah swings her legs up suddenly and then lets the momentum rotate her around, like break-dancers do when they do that cool spinning-on-their-back move. Except that instead of making ten or twelve rotations like the break-dancers do, Leah does like one-tenth of a rotation or something. She does this four or five times in a row, and suddenly she's moved over a foot or so and is lying at a 90 degree angle from where you left her, lying there with a big grin on her face that says "look what I did!"

Riley's method is kinda hard to explain, but Kathy and I call it the "crab walk". Basically she arches her back off the ground so that she's basically supported by her head and her feet, sort of an "upward-facing dog" kinda yoga position. Then she pushes off with her feet so that she basically ends up scooting about one inch up toward her heard. It's kind of like how an inchworm would move, if the inchworm were upside down or dyslexic or something.

So in other words, Leah scoots herself by making herself into a letter "U", and Riley scoots herself by making herself into an upside-down letter "U". Or a lower case "n", I guess. The twins are apparently trying so hard to have their own identities that they are twisting themselves into opposite letters of the alphabet.

Anyway, watching these little maneuvers, you can't help wondering whether it's actually worth all that trouble for poor Leah and Riley just to move six inches in one direction. It all seems like a lot of work for not much gain. The view from six inches away can't be that different, can it? I mean, really, why bother? Is lying at the center of the crib really all that distasteful?

My second reaction to watching the babies scooting is, basically, "oh crap." One of our only saving graces as parents of twins has been that we can put one of the babies somewhere and they'll basically stay there in that spot while we tend to the other baby. If you take that away from us, things could get really difficult real fast. We think taking care of two babies is tough now - just wait until we have one parent trying to keep an eye on two babies as they scoot away in two different directions. Life will become a hopeless game of whack-a-mole, except they're, um, babies instead of moles, and um, we won't actually be hitting our babies with a large rubber mallet. But you get the idea. I think. Okay, bad metaphor.

How to Clear Out a Restaurant

2009-04-26T20:46:00.000-07:00

This weekend, Kathy and I took the babies out to brunch with some friends of ours that also have twin babies. Kathy and I used to love eating out in San Francisco and we went out to restaurants all the time before we had kids, but we really haven't eaten out with Leah and Riley much since about three months ago when they stopped sleeping through everything. I was a little apprehensive but sort of curious about how it would go.

It went....poorly.

We went to the worst brunch restaurant in our neighborhood. I'm not saying that out of bitterness because we had a bad meal there this weekend. I mean to say that we consciously decided to go to the worst brunch restaurant in our neighborhood because we knew that there wouldn't be very many people there, meaning that (a) we would definitely be able to get a table for "eight", and (b) there would be fewer people giving us dirty looks when the babies inevitably started crying.

It's a little weird going out with lots of babies, because you can't just ask for a table for four -- you have to be ultra-specific: we are four adults, plus we have two babies who need high chairs, plus we have two babies who are going to sit in their stroller so we need to have space next to the table. Usually when we walk into a restaurant with the twins, there's some initial cooing over the babies by the hostess or the waitress or something, but the restaurant people were clearly having a bad day, because they were having none of that. Perhaps sensing the hostile atmosphere, Leah started whining almost immediately, pretty much right as we got handed the menus.

It was pretty much downhill from there. Leah started crying. Riley started crying. We tried to feed them. We tried to soothe them, we passed them back and forth, we held them, we bounced them on our knee, we lifted them over our head, we did whatever the heck we could think of to calm them down. Each thing we tried would work for about 45 seconds, after which they would start crying again. So that meant that each conversation topic would get cut off after 45 seconds, which led to a whole lot of incomplete conversations. Plus, I discovered that it's hard for my brain to keep a conversation going while I'm simultaneously lifting a baby over my head and making googly-eyed faces.

About two-thirds through the meal, I looked around, and the restaurant that had been about half full when we entered was, and I'm not exaggerating here, completely empty except for us. I mean, everyone was gone. On the one hand, I felt embarrassed that our babies had apparently been so obnoxious that they had driven all the customers away. On the other hand, I felt an undeniable sense of relief that we didn't have to worry about disturbing anybody anymore.

A few minutes later, I found out that the reason why the restaurant was empty is that they had closed the kitchen due to some sort of odd kitchen mishap where the cook cut his finger off or something. I am, of course, glad that our babies had not actually driven away the customers with their screaming, but I'm hoping that the cook's injury didn't have anything to do with Leah's high-pitched screech as the cook was slicing my chicken apple sausage.

So, to summarize. Terrible meal, horrible service, 45-second conversations with crying spells in between, and as a bonus we may have caused a cook to lose a finger and a restaurant to lose a day's worth of business. All in a day's work. Ta-da!

Split Personalities

2009-04-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

As parents of twins, life isn't always easy, but we do get one major advantage over single-baby parents in that we get to watch the progression of two little personalities as they simultaneously develop. People we talk to usually want us to compare their personalities, talking about how they're the same and how they're different.

I always have trouble answering that one. I mean, what does "personality" mean for a baby, anyway? Especially in the first three months or so, people would ask me that, and I would struggle to make up an interesting answer. Um, well, Leah likes to eat and um, Riley drools a lot. Are "hungry" and "drool-y" personality traits? And um, what about "poopy"? 'Cause those babies sure can poop with the best of 'em.

Even now, the babies each have individual traits, but I sometimes wonder if we sometimes just project personalities on them that aren't really there. Like, Leah has this high-pitched squeal that sounds like an 11-year old girl on a roller-coaster or at a Jonas Brothers concert or something. People hear this sound and say - aw, that Leah is absolutely adorable. They think, that Leah sure is a fun-loving, excitable, free-spirited personality. Except Kathy and I know from experience that Leah makes this squeal not only when she's happy but also when she's super-exhausted or extremely grumpy. When she's tired, she'll squeal over and over in earsplitting fashion, and the squeal turns darker and more sinister, until it finally starts to sound like something out of horror movie. And suddenly, Leah doesn't seem quite so fun-loving and free-sprited anymore.

Longtime readers of the blog know that Riley has always been the more "challenging" of the two babies. I've talked at great lengths about how Riley freaks out easily and how she goes from happy to frantic without warning and how she's impossible to calm down. Kathy and I had gotten so used to thinking that Riley was the more difficult baby that it took us a month or so to realize that it's not really true anymore. For weeks and weeks now, Riley has been a happy, calm little angel, and Leah has actually become the more difficult baby to put to bed, the more difficult baby to calm down, and recently even the more difficult baby to feed. But because we had this image of Leah being such a carefree soul, we didn't really notice that the babies have now switched places and that Leah is now the "challenging" one.

So now part of that whole vision I had in my mind of my daughters personalities is shot to hell. Next, you'll be telling me that Riley's not actually drool-y.

Nah. There are some things in life that just don't change.

Stupid Consonants

2009-04-19T21:06:00.000-07:00

Lately, Kathy and I have developed a somewhat unhealthy obsession with baby milestones. I think it started at the babies' six-month checkup, when they gave us a long checklist of things that a six-month-old should be able to do. The first twenty or so things on the list were things Leah and Riley have been doing for awhile, so we were feeling pretty good. But then we hit Number 21.

21. Can baby pass items from one hand to the other?

Huh? Passing things from one hand to the other is a milestone? If I had known that I probably would've been paying closer attention. I dunno - do they pass things from one hand to the other? They're babies. Why would they want to pass something from one hand to the other? Do they need to pay for something at a drive-thru window or something? What about if they have something in both hands and they take away one of their hands -- does that count? Actually, pretty much everything that Leah and Riley pick up these days goes from their hand directly to their mouth. Does it count if they something goes from their hand to their mouth and then to their other hand? Because I'm pretty sure that happens all the time.

And then we got to Number 24:

24. Can baby say consonant-vowel combinations like "ba-ba" or "ga-ga"?

Leah and Riley have made all kinds of consonant sounds, but it usually only happens when they're trying to make a vowel sound but they have their hand or something in their mouth so it comes out like a consonant. Do hand-assisted consonant sounds qualify? Does a raspberry sound count as a consonant? How about a tongue-clicking sound -- I'm pretty sure that's considered a consonant sound in some African cultures. How about barfing? I think Leah makes an "bleeeh" sound when she spits up -- that's two consonants right there.

So anyway, Kathy and I have now become obsessed with getting Leah and Riley to check these two milestones off their list, lest they fall woefully behind their peers. Watching more closely, we saw that they actually pass things from hand to hand all the time. Who knew? Item 21 - check.

So that leaves the "ba-ba" item. For the past couple weeks, I've been repeating "ba-ba-ba-ba-ba" over and over and over again in the hope that they'll get the hint. They don't say "ba-ba" back, but they do think Daddy saying it is fricking hilarious. Nowadays, the quickest way to get the twins to smile is for Daddy to say "Bah!" over and over like an idiot. So we may be no closer now to checking that milestone off our list, but at least we now have a handy way to make Leah or Riley smile. But I'm okay with that for now -- I've learned you've gotta take your victories where you can get 'em.

Twin Sync

2009-04-15T12:22:00.000-07:00

Like most sleep-deprived parents of newborns, Kathy and I bought all those books about how to train your baby to sleep longer at night. Of course, we immediately turned to the chapter about the first three months, because that's all we cared about at the time. Imagine our disappointment when we found that the advice in all the books basically amounted to: "put your babies to sleep when they're tired, and feed them when they cry -- there's nothing you can do to make them sleep longer because they're too young". Yeah, thanks a lot, we could've figured that out without forking over thirty bucks to Amazon.com.

Then after three months, the gods smiled upon us, and the twins suddenly transformed into darn good nighttime sleepers. After four months, they were pretty much sleeping 11 or 12 hours through the night without much intervention from mommy and daddy. The books sat mostly unread on our coffee table. Amazon, you're welcome.

One other obvious thing I remember seeing in the books somewhere was the old adage "never wake a sleeping baby". I always thought that seemed like pretty obvious and easy-to-follow advice, but that was before I had twins. During the early months, we were constantly waking up our sleeping babies. Basically, whenever one baby woke up from a nap, we would wake the other one up so that Leah and Riley would stay on the same schedule. Otherwise, they would be on alternating schedules, meaning that at least one of them would always be awake, meaning that the parents would get no rest. Because it's generally considered bad form for parents to go to sleep and let the wakeful baby fend for herself. Alas.

Nowadays, we don't usually wake the babies because they do the job for us. Or Riley does the job for us. After every nap, Riley wakes up and starts babbling in an elevated voice that she knows is just loud enough to wake her sister from her slumber. So Leah wakes up, and just like that, Leah and Riley start babbling in unison in a song that says "Come and pay attention to us, mommy and daddy, or we'll start screaming, and you'll be sorry". Or at least that's what I think they're saying. Gotta check my Baby-to-English dictionary.

So generally, Leah and Riley are pretty much on the same schedule. Except for this past weekend, when Leah was a little out of sorts and somehow ended up an hour off-schedule from Riley. For the rest of the day, Leah and Riley were on alternating schedules. It was sort of like having only one baby, except it was one crazy insomniac baby who never sleeps. I had been kind of curious how it would be, having only one child up at a time, and I have to say, I did not like it one bit. It was actually kinda creepy to have only one baby there when you're used to having two. I spent the afternoon with the nagging feeling that somebody was missing. Part of my brain was in a constant state of thinking "oh my God, where's the other baby, we've lost the other baby!"

Part of my brain is sorta stupid.

Plus it was totally exhausting to not have a break all afternoon, to constantly have to be "on" for hours upon hours. Oh well, at least now I sorta know what it would be like to have only one baby - if that baby was some sort of cyborg, non-sleeping, Energizer-bunny baby.

And now, a picture of Leah and Riley in a circle of 6-month olds at the neighborhood easter egg hunt. Please note how nobody else in the circle has cheeks that can hold a candle to Leah and Riley's. All hail the cheeks!

Married... with Twins

2009-04-09T12:12:00.000-07:00

One of the things that all the twin parenting books warn you about is that having twins supposedly causes some major strain on your marriage. I read somewhere that the divorce rate among parents of twins is twice as high as the divorce rate among other couples with children. There are actually entire books written about the subject, including this one. I love some of the chapter titles:

My Husband Says He Feels Like He's in Prison!
My Son Likes to Play Dress-Up as a Girl and My Husband is Freaking Out About It!
I Kicked Out My Angry Husband!
Cell Mates or Soul Mates? Five Steps to Get the Love Back

You gotta love chapter titles that have exclamation points. Makes you feel like you're watching Jerry Springer.

Considering we're exhausted all the time, Kathy and I aren't doing too bad so far, or at least I think we're still soul mates and not cell mates. But we do have the occasional fights, most of which fall into one of two categories:

Fight #1 -- Dave doesn't know how to put the babies' clothes on: About 50% of our fights will start when Kathy discovers that I've committed some kind of twin clothing infraction, such as (a) putting a baby's clothing on backwards or inside out, or (b) putting one of the twins to bed with her bib still on, or (c) [and I have to preface this by saying this ONLY happened ONCE] putting on a baby's pajamas but forgetting to put on her diaper underneath the pajamas. In Kathy's world, the clothing infraction falls into the category of crimes against humanity. All evil that later befalls the twins throughout the day is a direct result of the clothing infraction. Is Leah acting fussy? Clearly it's because her daddy put on her socks too loosely. Riley crying in her stroller? Obviously, she's upset because daddy put her hat on sideways.

I have to admit that I am severely clothing-putting-on impaired. It takes me forever to put the babies outfits on in the morning, and no matter how hard I try, I usually manage to do at least one thing wrong. But in fairness, I do the same thing with my own clothing. I head out the door all the time with my shirt untucked or sweater on inside-out or backwards. The part of my brain that notices clothing is just plain missing. I couldn't for the life of me tell you what outfits our babies wore today, but that doesn't mean I don't care about my daughters. Without looking, I can't even tell you what I'm wearing right now. Hey, what do you know, sweatpants!

Fight #2 -- Dave didn't hear what Kathy said the first time: Kathy's a New Yorker and by nature talks pretty fast. And of course, having twins makes every spare moment of the day all the more precious, so nowadays, Kathy talks even more super-rapid-fire than usual, like one of the Gilmore Girls. So, my poor laid-back California ears miss stuff. Unfortunately, when mommy's panicked because the babies are waking up and she needs daddy to help her by doing something QUICKLY, asking her to repeat something once or twice doesn't go over too well. Here's how the exchange usually goes:

Kathy (from across the house): Dave, can you [wah-WAAH-wah-WAH-WAH-WAAAH]

Dave (shifting brain out of internet-surfing haze): What?

K: I need you to [wah-WAH-wah-WAH]

D: (pausing as his brain furiously tries to catch up to Kathy's brain)

D: (pausing further as his brain tries to go through the various possibilities of what Kathy MIGHT have just asked for)

D: (pausing further as he realizes it's a lost cause)

D (nervously): Ummmmm. What?

K: (defeated sigh) Never mind, I'll do it myself.

I guess these fights aren't too bad, all things considered. In the end, all the strain really ends up being outweighed by that weird bonding that comes from the shared exhaustion mixed with satisfaction we feel at the end of each day. And anyway, any prison that features these three women can't be all that bad.

Who's the Favorite?

2009-04-06T19:52:00.000-07:00

As the father of two daughters, I constantly find myself trying to avoid favoring one over the other, but it's so dang hard not to have a favorite, when the babies themselves show such obvious favoritism. Leah is a mommy's girl all the way, and has been since birth (I think that for Leah, the whole mommy-equals-food association was pretty much the game-clincher). But right now, Riley only has eyes for daddy.

Somehow, whatever I do right now, Riley seems to think it's pretty freaking hilarious. I say the word "Ba!" -- Riley giggles. I say the word "Mmmm-Ba!" - Riley laughs heartily. I say the word "Mmmm-Ba!" while simultaneously scrunching my eyes up and shaking my head from side to side -- Riley laughs uncontrollably, gasping for breath. What a great audience! Thanks, Riley, and don't forget to tip your wait-staff on the way out.

Riley is also a humungoid Peek-a-Boo fan. I should track down the person who invented Peek-a-Boo and send him or her a fruitcake or a bottle of wine or something, because that game truly has some sort of voodoo power over Riley. Even if she was just crying her eyes out three minutes ago, I can start playing Peek-a-Boo with her and she'll suddenly get all glowy-eyed and giggly. She actually vibrates (literally vibrates!) with anticipation when she senses a Peek-a-Boo game coming on. It's like Riley's version of crack. And since Kathy doesn't have the patience to play Peek-a-Boo for the twenty minutes straight that it takes to satisfy Riley, that means that I am the official designated Peek-a-Booer, and that in itself is enough to make Riley the head of the daddy fan-club.

Leah, I can tell, doesn't quite see what all the fuss is about. She likes daddy and Peek-a-Boo well enough and all, but the thing that makes her eyes glowy is when mommy walks into the room. So unfair. I've got to play Peek-a-Boo and make faces and hop around the room like an idiot all day for Riley's affection, but Kathy gets Leah's undying adulation by just walking into the room. Oh, I guess she did do that nine months of carrying them around thing. And that whole labor thing. And that breastfeeding thing. And...

Okay, Kathy wins. I can't compete with that.

The Chain-Reaction

2009-03-31T12:13:00.000-07:00

The twins turn six months old this week, and we've noticed recently that they're becoming a bit more aware of each other. It's pretty subtle -- it's not like they're suddenly playing patty-cake or singing "Ebony and Ivory" together or anything. But now when we sit them in front of each other, they'll actually look at each other curiously for a while. Then Riley will pat Leah's head or something. And then Leah will usually take Riley's bib and shove it into her mouth. This looks cute, but actually amounts to a semi-choke hold as the bib tightens around Riley's neck. So it usually means we have to separate them and that twin discovery time is over before it fully began.

Kathy and I have been excited to watch the babies become more aware of each other, but this development definitely has some major drawbacks. The biggest drawback is the phenomenon I'll call the Chain Reaction. The Chain Reaction starts when one baby gets upset for some reason and starts crying. Then the second baby hears the first baby and gets scared and starts crying. Then the first baby hears the second baby and gets even more upset and starts crying louder. Then the... well, I think you get the idea -- each baby cries louder and louder until both babies are hysterically yowling at maximum volume.

Aw yeah, good times.

Now, Leah and Riley are generally pretty happy babies so we don't get the Chain Reaction happening that much. When it does start happening, we'll usually take the originally offending baby (usually Riley) to another room, cutting off the chain before it gets too far. But once in a while, when we're trapped in one place for some reason, the full-blown Chain Reaction can rear its ugly head.

The Chain Reaction was in full effect yesterday at the doctor's office, where we went for their six-month checkup. Leah had fallen asleep in the car and didn't wake up until we were sitting in the doctor's office. Riley was awake and pretty calm. From that point, the situation went a little something like this:

Leah: [What the -- Where the hell am I? This isn't my house! Why is the light so weird and fluorescenty here!? What's that weird smell!? Why is that guy in the white coat here?!] Waaah!

Riley: [Somebody's screaming! Something doesn't seem quite right here. Who is that guy in the white coat? Why do mommy and daddy look so nervous?] Waaaaah!

Leah: [Somebody else is screaming! I knew something was wrong! And that guy in that white coat is poking at me!] WAAAAAAH!

Riley: [Leah's screaming! She must know something's up! Why aren't mommy and daddy saving us from this white-coated man? Maybe I need to scream louder.] WAAAAAAAAH!!

Leah: [Oh no! Mommy's paying attention to Riley instead of me! Maybe I need to scream a little louder to really get their attention!] WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

Riley: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!

Leah: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!

Yes, good times indeed. It was actually kinda funny watching the doctor trying to do a real examination under these conditions. I mean, can you really hear anything through the stethoscope when there are two babies simultaneously screaming in your face at the top of their lungs? The doctor gave Leah and Riley a clean bill of health, but I dunno, I'm pretty sure he was just trying to get rid of us.

Thoughts from the Sick Bed

2009-03-23T10:06:00.000-07:00

The cold that Leah had a couple weeks ago has slowly worked it's way through our family, traveling to Riley, then to Kathy, and now, naturally, to me. At least I think it's the same cold. Or more accurately, I hope it's the same cold, because otherwise that means somebody's brought a whole new cold into this house and there's gonna be hell to pay.

Lying in bed with a cold and a laptop (and the nanny playing with the babies) means that you've got some time to look at your photo collection. As I look back at the newborn and first month pictures of Leah and Riley, I am struck with two thoughts. The first thought is "oh my god, they look totally different now." The second thought is "gosh, they used to be kinda funny looking".

Is that a bad thing for a parent to think, that his daughters used to be funny looking? I mean, look, Leah used to have this middle-aged man hairline, and Riley used to be really skinny but with this big pot belly:

Now, of course, Leah's hair has come in, Riley's cheeks and body have filled out, and I personally think that they're two incredibly cute and precious 5-month old babies. But, hey, how come I didn't notice that my babies looked sorta like funny-looking old men? Was it some sort of parental blindness that made us think our babies were breathtakingly adorable? And how come nobody told us the truth? Everybody told us our babies were beautiful!

I guess it's sort of a social requirement that when you see newborn babies, you have to tell the parents that their babies are beautiful. I guess maybe I wouldn't have reacted all that favorably if someone had said "holy crap, your babies sure are weird-looking". But how's a parent supposed to know if his kids really are beautiful or if everybody's just saying they're beautiful to fulfill their social obligation?

Actually, a few people have now told us something like "I know everybody always says that babies are beautiful, but YOUR babies REALLY are beautiful". It's nice to hear things like that, but I feel like in the near future, people will be saying that so much that it will become the new basic obligatory compliment, and just telling someone their baby is beautiful will actually become a social faux pas, like an insult. And to really compliment a baby, you'll have to take it to the next level and say "I know everybody always says 'babies are beautiful, but your babies really are beautiful', but YOUR babies REALLY are REALLY beautiful -- REALLY!"

Or maybe that's just my cold-fuzzy brain talking. Anyway, I now present a current picture of our beautiful babies. At least, I think they're beautiful.

Return of the Truck

2009-03-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

When the twins were about a month or two old, Kathy and I started seeing some of our friends for the first time after having the babies. Typically, after the initial cooing over the babies, they would look at us with a surprised expression and say something like "You look well!" or "You look rested!" or "You guys actually look like you're surviving okay!"

This reaction was always amusing to Kathy and me. It was as if people were expecting that we would look like we got run over by a truck with, like, tire tread marks on our bodies and black and swollen eyes and little cartoon birds chirping and flying in circles over our heads.

But now I remember back to that first month and I think -- jeez, most of the time, I actually did feel like I got run over by a truck. And I look back at pictures of me and Kathy from those first few weeks, and I think -- yep, we actually did kinda look like we got run over by a truck. Minus the cartoon birds and the tire marks, but still.

The reason I mention this is that at about 8:00 pm this past Sunday night, Kathy and I sat exhausted on our couch, experiencing once again that feeling of having been hit by a truck. This weekend, Riley had a cold and Leah had the remnants of a cold plus a painful bout of constipation. All of our old dependable tricks for comforting Leah and Riley were no match for these illnesses, and so we pretty much had to watch helplessly while our babies, particularly Leah, cried out in pain and frustration. Over and over. It was a weekend full of desperate looks from our daughters that basically said "Mommy and daddy, why are you letting this happen to us?"

Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.

When Leah and Riley finally went to sleep on Sunday night, for awhile, Kathy and I sat there exhausted on the couch, blankly staring at nothing -- too tired to talk, too tired to think, too tired to even walk over to the bed and collapse on to it. It was probably the first time Kathy and I have been glad that a weekend was over and that we would be going back to work the next day. We were not a pretty picture.

Fortunately, unlike real truck collisions, the Leah and Riley truck doesn't cause much lasting damage. The next morning, Leah and Riley were their normal happy selves, and Kathy and I were fully recovered and back driving the Leah and Riley truck instead of getting run over by it. Okay, I'd better end this post -- I've officially stretched this truck metaphor as far as it will go.

Here's where I would normally post some pictures, but my DSL is down. Once again, I say - -Damn you, Earthlink!

The Battle of Sick vs. Happy

2009-03-11T20:16:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, Leah fell victim to her very first cold. She seems to be past the worst of it, and it hasn't been much more than a cough and a case of the sniffles. Still, watching Leah, our happy-go-lucky daughter, go through a cold has been a sad, sad thing to watch. Because through it all, you could see that she was trying desperately to stay happy. Leah would be sitting there, with snot pouring out of her nose, hacking like a chain-smoker, eyes watering -- but with this big grin on her face. It's as if she thought that maybe, if she smiled wide enough, she could convince those little virus cells to leave her alone and maybe travel over to her sister.

She does this around naptime too. You can always tell when Leah's first starting to get tired because her smile starts looking a little forced. You can almost see the "tired" side of her brain and the "happy" side of her brain battling it out inside her head. Leah keeps trying to let out her normal happy coos and squeals, but they gradually start sounding more and more edgy and desperate. And then suddenly, the smile's still there, but the joy is completely gone from her face, and you just know that Tired Side has emerged victorious. The smile fades and the lower lip starts protruding farther and farther out. And then, meltdown.

Riley's a lot more black and white. When she's happy, you know it, and when's she's not, you know it. And there's no "tired vs. happy" battle going on in her head. If Riley's tired, you ain't gonna be able to make her happy, and she sure as hell is going to try to pretend to be happy just for mommy and daddy's sake. As if.

And so, now that Riley is starting to show signs of catching Leah's cold, Kathy and I are mentally bracing for the storm. It ain't gonna be fun, folks.

Although by the time Riley's at her peak sick level, Leah should be just about back to her full yeeeeahh strength. I guess that is one of the nice things about having twins -- usually one of the two is in a good mood and can offer you some respite from the crabby-pants one. Or I guess you can look at in the glass-half-empty way and complain that one of the two is always grumpy and bringing you down from the joy of the happy one.

What the heck. For today, I choose to look be a glass-half-full person. Although, that's subject to change -- check in with me after a day of two of dealing with sick Riley.

Tough Crowd (Part 2)

2009-03-08T20:50:00.000-07:00

On with our story...

So, I'm sitting on the couch feeding Leah and Riley, thinking that maybe the worst is over. Suddenly, without warning, Riley starts screaming her head off again after only eating about an ounce of her bottle. And once again, she screams loud enough to startle our scaredy-cat Leah, so now both babies are crying their eyes out again. I frantically cycle Riley through various forms of prospective entertainment in an attempt to appease her. Playmat -- doesn't work. Exersaucer -- doesn't work. Bouncy chair with pacifier in her mouth -- that doesn't work. Lying her on the ground while waving the little bird toy over her head -- the freaking piece de resistance of my Riley bag of tricks -- guess what, it doesn't work.

I place Riley on the floor on her belly, which is sometimes known to calm her down. I watch as Riley immediately executes a beautiful roll on to her back. I try to congratulate Riley, but she's not in the mood to hear it. Actually, the fact that she abruptly finds herself on her back instead of her tummy seems to have disoriented her, and now all of a sudden, she's more panicked than ever. Meanwhile, Leah realizes that her daddy has been completely ignoring her for the past few minutes, and so she let's out a mighty yawp of protest just to remind me that I have more than one daughter.

I look at the clock. It's been eight minutes since the babies woke up. What the hell? Has time frozen or something?

The final thing left to try is the Jumperoo. Our Jumperoo is in the kitchen, at the other end of the house, so using it involves grabbing Leah, sprinting to the other end of the house, putting Leah in the Jumperoo, then sprinting back to the other end of the house, picking up Riley, sprinting to the other end of the house again, and putting Riley in a high chair. I am now getting a serious workout. In her high chair, Riley continues crying until I start leaping up and down in front of her. If I stop leaping for a second, Riley starts crying again. So, of course, I keep on leaping like an idiot for the next ten minutes. Sweat starts to bead on my forehead and my legs begin to burn, but dammit, it's worth it, because the babies aren't crying anymore.

Actually, the babies are kinda diggin' it. Leah's jumping around and squealing. Riley is laughing her ass off, probably amused at what a doofus her dad is. I actually haven't seen them simultaneously this happy in a long, long time. Life is good.

Just as I start thinking that this parenting thing isn't so hard, Leah suddenly stops jumping around and gets a very serious look on her face. And I know what that means. I think all the parents reading this know what that means. Leah is about to poop.

As Leah grunts away, I start to weigh my options. I could go change Leah in the other room, but that means leaving Riley in the kitchen, where she will almost certainly start bawling again. Or I could leave Leah in the Jumperoo stewing in her own poo until Riley goes to bed and hope that Leah doesn't start crying again. It's kind of a no-win situation. It's like Sophie's Choice.

The thought of Leah stewing in her poo is too much for me, so I change her and leave Riley in the kitchen. I set a personal speed record for diaper changing, and when I get back, Riley is miraculously not crying. However, all the joy has now drained from her face. She basically looks like a bored high school student sitting in detention.

I try to revive the pre-poop joy, but it is not to be. I struggle through the next half hour, holding and feeding one of the babies while the other one fusses, and then switching to the other one, and then back to the first one, and then back to the second one. And then back to the first one.

But I somehow make it through. At 7:30 pm, both babies are sleeping, and I am still standing, dammit. They did not break me.

The end. Roll credits.

Sorry for the long story. I have no idea if that was the least bit interesting to you all, but it at least gives you some idea of what it's like to be one person taking care of two five-month-old twins. I don't know if there are any pearls of wisdom that readers can take away from that story, but I can tell you that the next time I take care of the twins at night by myself, I'm sure as hell going to make sure I know where their pajamas are before they wake up.

And now, some pictures of Leah and Riley's first adventures with solid food, from this weekend. That didn't go so well, either, but that's another story.

Tough Crowd (Part 1)

2009-03-05T21:17:00.000-08:00

Well, that didn't go very well.

I got home about 5:30 pm today, ready for my evening alone with the babies. The nanny had just put them down for their last nap. This timing was actually the best-case scenario I had been hoping for. With this timing, Leah and Riley would wake up around 6:15 or so, which is early enough that Riley wouldn't be in her evening grump mode yet, so she would eat peacefully and happily, and the babies would then play for about 45 minutes before going to bed at their ideal bedtime of 7:30. And the angels above would sing joyfully, and all would be well with universe. Theoretically.

At 6:15 on the dot, Leah wakes up. I smile at her. She smiles back. I talk to her a little, and she answers back in her little Leah language. Things are good. Riley wakes up. I smile at her, and she smiles back. I can hear the angels singing already. Tonight is going to go well.

Kathy had coached me on what to do if they woke up at the same time. You turn on Leah's mobile to keep her occupied, and then you change Riley's diaper and put her in her pajamas. Then you put Riley back in her crib, turn on her mobile, and change Leah. Then you take them to the living room one at a time and feed them. Easy as pie.

Following Kathy's instructions, I turn on Leah's mobile. As I start to pick up Riley, I realize that the pajamas that Kathy left in the room in the morning aren't there anymore. Oh well, I figure, the nanny must've moved them -- so I leave the babies in their cribs to go find the pajamas. It takes me about 90 seconds to determine the whereabouts of the pajamas (bedroom laundry). Unfortunately, in that minute, Riley transforms from angelic baby to she-devil. By the time I get back to the room, Riley, none too happy about me starting to pick her up and then abandoning her, is screaming at the top of her lungs. It's that kind of panicky screaming where she barely has time to take in breaths between the individual screams -- so basically she's panicked and oxygen-deprived.

I start changing Riley as quickly as I can, but Leah, who's currently going through somewhat of an "easily startled" phase, has now been snapped out of her happy mode, and starts crying in chorus with Riley, matching her decibel for decibel. I now have two babies crying at volume 11, and my evening is only about two-and-a-half minutes old. It was almost funny, in a way. Actually, on second thought, no, it wasn't the slightest bit funny at all.

I change Riley in record time, put her back in the crib, turn on the mobile, and get ready to change Leah. I get about as far as the third snap on Leah's shirt, but Leah and Riley are now both screaming loud enough to rattle the windows, so I say screw it. I hurriedly carry the babies down to the living room to feed them, Riley first with her face purple and tears streaming down her cheeks, and then Leah panicking with her lower lip trembling and her shirt half open and flapping in the wind like Tom Selick's in Magnum, P.I.

I look at the clock. 6:20 on the dot. 5 minutes down. Just have to make it through the next hour and ten minutes. How hard could that be? Things couldn't get any worse, could they?

Uh, could they?

To be continued.

Famous Last Words

2009-03-04T20:20:00.000-08:00

Before the babies were born, Kathy bought me one of those "Father's Guide to Having a Baby" type books. To be honest, I didn't really read very much of it, but one of the things I remember is that it warned prospective dads that with mommy doing all the breastfeeding and having such a close bond with the baby, dads might feel a bit "left out" of the parenting process since there wasn't really much for them to do at first.

Tee hee. Not much for them to do. [Insert maniacal laughter here.]

Well folks, if you want to avoid the problem of the daddy feeling left out, let me highly recommend having twins. As the dad of twins, you can be involved to your heart's content. Because while mommy is awesome and can do a remarkable number of things for the babies, there's only one of her and there's not quite enough of her to go around. Because we have twins, I've gotten to be intimately involved in pretty much all aspects of parenting. Feeding, bathing, changing, dressing, burping, calming, you name it, I get to do about one baby's worth of it.

Uh, except for breastfeeding. I'm pretty sure I can't do that.

And trimming fingernails. Those fingernails are too freaking tiny. How the heck am I supposed to trim those things?!

Tomorrow, I get to check one other thing off the list that I haven't done yet, which is to take care of them completely on my own during the night. Kathy's got a work meeting tomorrow night, which means that it's just me, Leah, and Riley from 5:45 pm until they go to bed. And while Leah is usually pretty okay during that period, it's kind of a crapshoot with Riley. On about half the nights, Riley will eat her bedtime meal and then go to bed with maybe a little fussing, but no big deal. On the other half of the nights, getting Riley to eat her bedtime meal requires an elaborately awkward ritual where I feed her while standing up and bouncing around, in a dark room, with white noise playing in the background, while I simultaneously sing either "Hey Jude" or "Edelweiss" to her. And while that ritual is usually fine and dandy, it's gonna be hard to do that while feeding Leah at the same time unless I can figure out how to hold a bottle with my foot or something.

And yet, when Kathy suggested that we try to get our nanny or somebody to come over and help me tomorrow night, I stubbornly refused. No way. I got this one. I can do this. No problem.

So why did I do this to myself? Because I'm a guy, probably. It's like that whole no-asking-for-directions thing.

But more than anything, I'm just kinda curious to see if I can do it. If tomorrow night goes well, it'll be a huge triumph, and as a dad, you've got to take your triumphs where you can get them. Plus I'll be able to say that I've done something that not even Kathy has done yet. I'm actually sort of perversely excited about it.

And if it ends up being a total disaster? Well, at least it should make a good story for the blog.

I Don't Like Where This Is Going

2009-03-01T21:15:00.000-08:00

Since the birth of the twins, our cat Chloe has been seriously getting the short end of the attention stick. In a few short months, she has gone from being the spoiled queen of the household to being something we sometimes accidentally trip on while running to tend to the babies. At first, she seemed to be taking this whole baby thing in stride, but the honeymoon is definitely over.

It's been kind of a slow progression.

During the first month, I think Chloe actually thought the babies were pretty cool. The babies kept Kathy and me up at all hours of the night, which meant much more night-time entertainment for her. She would climb on the bed at night as we fed the babies and sniff their heads. She would follow us up and down the hall as we prepared and washed bottles. She would get special middle-of-the-night feedings, too. I think she was thinking this whole baby thing might not be so bad.

During months 2 and 3, you could tell the novelty was wearing off for Chloe. These babies were definitely stealing attention from her. There were these creatures always lying or sitting on the laps that previously had been her domain. Chloe was definitely miffed at this turn of events, but didn't really protest too much, other than the occasional plaintive meow for attention.

During month 4, Chloe started getting pissed. She would pace angrily back and forth on the couch while we fed the babies, trying in vain to lure attention away from those small humans. When that didn't work, she finally resorted to throwing up or pooping in random areas around the house, figuring that these protest poops and barfs would be the way back into our hearts. Somehow, that didn't work so well either.

During month 5, Chloe kicked it up a notch to Homeland Security Level Orange. Since throwing up and pooping around the house was clearly not working, Chloe has recently decided to be a bit more targeted in her attacks. She started throwing up and pooping in baby-specific locations like under their cribs and on their favorite hangouts like their playmats. She still paces back and forth on the couch, but now we actually have to keep an eye on her so that she doesn't actually step on the babies, which she actually has done about three times now. (Although the babies don't even notice when she does it because Chloe weighs nothing.)

We are now about to begin month 6, and I have to say, I'm kinda worried, because as I see it, the natural next step after pooping and barfing on the babies' things would be pooping and barfing on the babies themselves. And that wouldn't be very good. Trust me, as one of the primary poopy diaper changers of the household, I can attest that Leah and Riley get enough barf and poop on themselves without any help from anyone else.

I wanted to end this with a picture of Chloe with the babies, but apparently we haven't taken any pictures of Chloe over the past five months. Sorry, Chloe. Instead, more baby pictures!

I'm writing this on Kathy's last night before going back to work. If anyone has any words of wisdom or pep talks for Kathy as she returns to work after six long months away, feel free to comment!

Mommy and Daddy Aren't Very Funny

2009-02-26T19:35:00.000-08:00

Everything's about to change.

Kathy's going back to work on Monday, and we're all kinda freaking out about it. Well, Leah and Riley aren't exactly freaking out about it. But mommy and daddy are pretty much basket-cases right now.

We have a nanny named Elsa all lined up to start working full-time next week. She's been working part-time the past three weeks helping Kathy take care of the babies. The babies love her. Actually, let me rephrase that. The babies looooooooove her.

I didn't really get a full sense of this until yesterday. I don't usually get to see Elsa in action because I leave for work before she gets here and she's gone by the time I get home. But yesterday, I took a vacation day from work so I could spend one last day with Kathy before she went back to work. Kathy and I went out for lunch and had a nice walk around the City, and then returned home to find Elsa playing with the babies, who were both laughing. And not just laughing. They were laughing like we had never heard them laugh before. They were laughing like it was 1999.

Kathy and I can easily make Leah and Riley smile. On occasion, we can make one of them giggle. Very briefly -- a like "tee hee hee". But we have never even made them both giggle at the same time. This was both of them laughing. And this was no "tee hee hee". This was an extended guffaw that went on and on. It was like one of the laughs you have as an adult that make your sides hurt and tears stream down your cheeks. If Leah and Riley had been drinking milk, it would have shot out their nose.

Kathy and I have been sort of shell-shocked by the whole experience. You want your babies to love their nanny, but you don't really want them to love their nanny more than they love you, especially when they're not even with her full-time yet. So ever since then, Kathy and I have been a little off our game, trying over and over to duplicate what Elsa was doing to make them laugh, and failing miserably. Instead of making them laugh, we actually seem to be frightening them. And lately, we haven't been even getting the tee-hees.

Come on, Leah and Riley, throw your mommy and daddy a bone here. You could at least fake some laughter. Is that too much to ask? We promise to stop taking embarrassing pictures of you...