Life Of The Lorigans

Movin' Sites

2009-06-20T21:15:00.000-07:00

Well, after about a week of prep it's finally time to move to our new site. All of our posts, comments, and pictures have been moved over to our new server and Shae put together a few images for our page headers. If you bookmarked our blog or subscribe to the RSS feed (or follow us on Blogger), make sure you update your bookmark or feed with our new URL .

Our new site is at http://thelorigans.com.

Head on over and enjoy.

Slow Times

2009-06-15T19:28:00.000-07:00

Well, nothing much has changed since my last post. It's weird how the babies figure something out, make no progress for weeks, and then make another major jump. Ella basically figured out how to crawl over a week ago, but since then she's made very little progress. She can crawl well enough to get to a toy she really wants (or to get into trouble if we look away for a second), but really hasn't gotten any better since the first or second day she figured it out. Not that I'm complaining, of course. The longer we can delay the baby chasing, the better. Jack, on the other hand, seems to have everything figured out. He's not really into this crawling thing yet. Why crawl when you can sit on the floor and stare a the toy you want until Mommy gets it for you? Crawling is for suckers.

Even though she hasn't quite mastered the whole crawling thing yet, Ella's moving on. The past couple of days she's been trying to pull herself up into a standing position using whatever is available. I actually had to tell her, "You've gotta crawl before you walk, baby girl." Who would've thought I'd ever get to use that line literally?

Other than that, there really isn't a lot going on. Shae has finally decided to put her love of photography to use and is starting to line up some photo shoots with some of the other moms in her "Mom's" group, so we've been a little busy setting up a new website for that. Along the way, we got a couple of extra domains so we will probably be moving our blog and image gallery over to another server in the next few weeks. We really needed more space for our photos since we're almost out of space on our picasaweb account, and we should also be able to host extra stuff (like the March Madness site) on our new server (which will be nice since it should be more reliable than my home server). Don't worry, if/when we move we'll make sure everything is transferred over to the new site and redirect this blog to the new URL.

First Bath Together

2009-06-06T21:34:00.000-07:00

For whatever reason, Shae and I got motivated to do some work on the babies' bathroom today. Since Jack and Ella can sit up on their own now (take that Dr. who said they needed to work on sitting), we decided it would be nice if we could bathe them together in their own bathtub. So today we finally got around to replacing the shower doors with a shower curtain and rod. Of course, somehow the tub ended up covered in frogs (I'm sure Shae had nothing to do with that). After a little bit of work and a lot of caulk jokes (I put caulk in the hole, hehe), we could finally give the munchkins a bath together. They seemed to have a good time. Here are a few pics (more over here). Oh, and if you don't think you'll be seeing about 20,000 bath pics of the babies over the next couple of years you don't know me at all.

Time For Another Crib

2009-06-04T20:31:00.000-07:00

The babies have finally started to pay quite a bit of attention to one another. That would be great, except they've decided they'd rather bother each other than go to sleep at night. They've been sharing a crib, and every time we put them down to go to sleep Ella rolls over to Jack's side and starts bothering/hitting/chewing on her brother. I guess tomorrow we'll be putting together the second crib so they can get some sleep. Shae and I are both too tired to write up a real post, so instead I'm just going to post some pictures of the kiddos. Besides, I figure everyone would rather look at pics of the babies than read my babbling.

That's it for now. There are a few other pics over in our gallery.

What's The Big Deal? - Updated

2009-06-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

OK, I've given this whole baby thing about 8 months and I have to say I just don't get what all the fuss is about. Don't get me wrong, I love my babies and they let me clean food off they're mouths (awesome), but they seem overrated. Everyone makes such a fuss over every little thing they do, but I'm not impressed. I wish someone would get all excited about taking me for a damn walk.

Every little thing the babies do is such a huge event to the other humans, but I don't understand it. They're 8-months-old and everyone makes a big deal out of the girl baby learning to sit (Mom said to make sure to tell everyone that Ella is sitting now. See what I mean? I can't even write a blog post without having to plug the stupid babies). When I was 8-months I had already graduated my obedience class as Top Dog. Sitting? I was sitting by 4-months. Not just sitting, but sitting on command. Did everyone make a big deal out of me figuring out how to sit? Nope, they gave me a tiny treat and told me to do it again. Totally unfair.

Speaking of unfair, the double standard that Mommy and Daddy have between me and the babies is ridiculous. There is baby crap everywhere (and they're toys look exactly like my toys), but I never chew on any of their toys. Not even the stuffed animals, and if you know me at all you know how hard that is. (I have chewed on the occasional pacifier, but seriously they're delicious and they're everywhere.) If I ever did eat a toy I would get in lots of trouble. Then there are the babies. They eat everything, even my toys. Today the baby girl threw all of her toys to the side and started eating my rope. When Mommy took that away she started eating my Kong. Did she get yelled at, or even scolded? Nope. Hell, the babies chew on ME and no one says anything to them. I just have to lay there and take it (although I secretly love the attention). Daddy got new glasses last week and the babies are always grabbing and pulling them. Of course, no one says anything to them. I licked his glasses today and got in trouble. One lick. Total crap.

I haven't even mentioned all the stuff that the babies can't even do yet. Apparently even something as basic as Ella crawling about a foot forward is worth talking about. Really? Crawling? She's 8-months-old! I was running around before I was 1-week. Don't even get me started on the house-breaking. I never took one dump in our house (I did drop a deuce at The Learning Garden once, but it wasn't ours yet and it smelled weird), and it only took 2 weeks for me to figure out that I'm supposed to pee outside. The little humans have taken about 10,000 poops in the house and no one seems to care. I've heard rumors they even poop in stores. Imagine if I stopped and squatted in Target; I'd never hear the end of it. They just throw diapers on the babies and act like everything is fine. The worst part is no one seems to be trying to fix the problem. They don't even take them out to the lawn to teach them to "hurry". How are they ever going to learn?

There's plenty of other ways I'm way better than the babies, but Mommy and Daddy want the laptop and I still have to check on all my Twitter friends so I better go. I love my babies, but I'll love them a lot more when they can take me on a walk. Until then I'm going to go hide my toys so they stop eating them. [Update: Here are some pictures of the babies torturing me!]

The Beginning Of The End

2009-06-01T20:34:00.000-07:00

Well, crap. We all knew it was only a matter of time, but Ella finally figured out how to crawl. As we were putting the twins to bed tonight Ella started crawling forward. I'm sure by tomorrow she'll be scampering all over the place and Jack will probably be a couple of days behind. I can't wait to spend my weekend chasing them yelling "Ella! Stop! Jack!! Put that down!" Super.

Sitting Around

2009-05-30T19:08:00.000-07:00

Not that there was ever any question, but if we needed any more proof that Jackson is my son we have it. In general, Ella develops ahead of Jack. She leads the tooth race 5-0 (yup, she just got another one), smiled first, rolled over weeks ahead of her brother, and seems ready to crawl any second (while Jack is happy to just roll around). However, there's one area where Jack is kicking his sister's butt: sitting. That's right, my boy is awesome at sitting on his ass. Just like his daddy.

At the twins' last checkup, the doctor told us that they should be sitting better than they are. We hadn't really been working with them on sitting up because they were doing so great rolling around and didn't seem to want to sit still. Well, after the doctor's visit we (we being Shae) started working with the babies on their sitting.

A few weeks later, Jack is a sitting pro. We can sit him on the floor and he'll hang out for 15 minutes or so. Like I said, just like his daddy Jack is skilled at sitting around. Ella on the other hand has no interest in sitting, at least not when we want her to. When she's sitting in her bouncer she has no problem sitting up and looking around. If we sit her down on the floor, she just flops down and starts rolling all over the place. She's going to be super fun to chase when she finally figures out how to crawl. Yay.

Anyway, here's a pic of our baby boy sitting:

And just because, here's a pic of Ella (not sitting of course). There are a few new pics over in our gallery:

Feeling Ill

2009-05-28T22:39:00.000-07:00

It's been a rough couple of weeks around here, but everyone is finally feeling better. Since I had a four-day break over Memorial Day weekend (thanks to an off-Friday and the Monday holiday), of course I got sick on Thursday night. Thanks a lot babies. I can't wait until they start going to daycare and school and bring home all those super-germs. It's going to be awesome. Anyway, here's a recap of our sick weekend.

Shae's parents drove down on Friday, so we spent the day straightening up and resting. Of course, the babies were still sick so they didn't make cleaning very easy. My sore throat and body aches didn't help either. Other than that, Friday wasn't very exciting. Tom and Grace finally got into town just in time to go to bed.

Saturday was international blacksmiths day (everyone knew that, right?), so Tom and Grace spent a good portion of the day up at the tractor museum in Vista doing blacksmith stuff. I was very disappointed I had to stay home with Shae and the kiddos. Super disappointed. Shae, the babies, and myself all weren't feeling super so we just kind of rested and relaxed most of the day.

After the grandparents got back from the exciting tractor museum, we put the kids down to sleep, grabbed some dinner, and then Shae and I pawned the baby-sitting duties off and got out of the house for a bit. It's been so long since the two of us have been able to get away on a "date" that we were really excited to get away long enough to see a movie. We met up with Chris and Patty at the theater and spent a couple of hours watching Star Trek. Spaceships, explosions, and (best of all) no babies. It was great to get a few baby-free hours, and we both really liked the movie. Good times.

The plan for Sunday was to spend some time at the zoo, but something was going on at Balboa Park and the traffic was crazy so we gave up on that idea. Instead, we decided to go over to Fort Rosecrans Cemetery where Grace's parents and sister are buried. In honor of Memorial Day, there were flags setup by all of the headstones so Shae took some pictures. Shae and I were both feeling pretty crappy Sunday, so we took it easy the rest of the day.

Monday, Grace fired up the smoker and cooked several chickens and some ribs. While the meat was smoking, we took care of a few projects around the house. Tom and I (mostly Tom) finally put the doors on our hall closet (they look great), Tom setup our table saw, and Shae and I installed a new deadbolt and knob on our back door. We even found time to give Lunchbox a bath and let him play with the water for a while. Eventually, the food was ready and Chris and Patty came over to enjoy some smoked meat and some beer. It was a nice laid back Memorial Day.

The next day was not so nice. For starters, I guess I overdid it on Monday because I felt like crap when I woke up on Tuesday. Of course, there were some major issues at work to take care of so I had to go in for a few hours to take care of them. Even worse, something was very wrong with Lunchbox. Monday night he was not himself and Shae and her dad decided they probably needed to take him to the vet on Tuesday. By Tuesday morning something was definitely wrong with LB and he was clearly in pain. Normally, when the alarm goes off LB jumps around like crazy until I get up and then he sprints out to his bowl for breakfast (with lots of peeling out and slipping on the hard-wood floor along the way). Tuesday morning, however, he was really lethargic (he still made his way out his bowl and ate breakfast of course, he's still a lab). Shae and I were both really worried, and we decided LB had to go to the vet when they opened. I had to leave for work so I didn't see it myself, but apparently Lunchbox started trembling like crazy and Shae and her dad were both worried and decided he had to go see the vet ASAP. They took him in, and after examining him the vet decided it was most likely some sort of muscle injury (probably hurt when we were playing in the water). She gave the Box a painkiller shot and sent Shae home with some doggy-profen to give him for the next few days.

When I got home from work around noon, we had a house full of sickos. Shae and I were sitting on the couch feeling like crap, the babies were still sick and fussy, and LB was laying around drugged and sore. Everyone was still under the weather on Wednesday and I stayed home and rested. By Thursday the babies, the Box, and I were feeling better (Shae still wasn't super), and by Friday everyone was pretty much back to normal. The babies still have runny noses, but they don't seem to be feeling sick like they were before.

That's about it for the Memorial Day weekend recap. I'm going to try to write a few short posts a week rather than only writing about one post every couple of weeks. For some reason, the babies don't like to give me time to write out these posts. Maybe I can even convince LB to write a few more posts.

Probin'

2009-05-16T12:28:00.000-07:00

Well, last night it happened: we finally had to stick a thermometer up a baby's ass. We've been able to avoid the ram & read for the past seven months, but out luck finally ran our. When I got home from work the babies were sleeping, but when I picked up Jack after his nap he was burning up. He was red and fussy, and even after some Tylenol he was still too warm. By bedtime we had no choice; we had to go find the thermometer and get a reading.

Of course, we don't have a 10-second anal analyzer so we were going to have to keep this thing up Jack's pooper for about a minute. Yay! After a short argument over who was going to hold baby boy's feet and who had to hold the thermometer (I won), I grabbed the feet, Shae lubed up the rump reader, and Jack got an unpleasant surprise. About a minute of discomfort later (Jack was very brave) the thermometer beeped and the readout told us Jack's had a fever (100.4). Even though Shae was slightly traumatized, there wasn't much we could do last night so we put the babies to bed. A few hours later we retook Jack's temperature and his fever was gone. By this morning, Jack was back to smiling and laughing. I guess we did good work.

I think Jack was a little traumatized by the probing experience. Even though he didn't feel as warm this morning, Shae wanted to take his temp just to make sure he was doing fine. Jack disagreed. Just as Shae was about to give him another jolt, he defended himself the best way he can: he peed on his mom. That should teach her to think twice before trying that again.

A few updates:

My guess at the cause of Jack's fever was that his teeth were finally coming in. Ella already has three and he doesn't have any so I figured it was time. So it makes perfect sense that Ella has a new tooth this morning and Jack doesn't. So Ella leads the tooth race 4-0.
Speaking of 4-0, that's the current "score" in our war against the rodents. About two weeks after deploying the WMRs (Weapons of Mass Rodent-struction, AKA D-CON), Shae found three more dead mouse-warriors. Counting the one we got with the trap a couple of months back we've taken out at least four of the little bastards now. It seems to be working because we haven't heard any scurrying up in the attic lately. I'm sure they're just plotting their next attack. Of course, the mice got the last laugh. They may have died, but I was the one who had to to dispose of their maggot infested carcasses. I'd almost rather have them making a ruckus up in the attic than have to pick that crap up again. Gross.
The babies had their 7-month checkup on Tuesday. They're both doing fine. A few highlights:
- The babies growth-rate has really slowed down. Ella was 15lbs 8oz and Jack was 16lbs 5ozs. Basically, in three months they both put on about a pound-and-a-half. I guess this is pretty normal since they are both still about average according the the chart the doc showed us.
- Ella is still a very tall girl (90th percentile...she must get her height from her mom). Jack's height is still right about at the average. He would have been a lot taller if they counted the height of his faux-hawk.
- The expectations for the babies get higher every visit. Last time everyone was impressed that they drooled. This time, no one cared how good they were at drooling (Ella is a superstar drooler); the doc wanted to know about their sitting, rolling, "talking", etc. I guess it's kind of like school where not pissing on the floor is a big deal in kindergarten, but by the higher grades you have to do math and stuff (Note: this comment is based on kindergarten when I was a kid, not the crazy requirements now where kindergarten students do algebra and calculus). Actually, I think teachers at every level are happy if the students don't piss on the floor. Maybe it's not the same at all.
- Another visit, another round of shots for the babies. That part gets tougher every time because the babies are more aware of the pain as they get older. Especially Jack. He's our sensitive little boy.
Last weekend my mom came down to visit for Mother's Day. It was a short visit, but we squeezed in a trip to the zoo, some pictures at Balboa Park, and we took in the Bodies exhibit that is currently at one of the Balboa Park museums. Oh, and lots of baby time. It was a very nice visit.

I think that's about it for now. Hopefully Shae will get around to processing and uploading some new pics of the kids sometime soon.

An Update From The Box

2009-05-04T19:59:00.000-07:00

I've decided that I'm tired of letting the humans write my posts for me, so I decided to get my own account and take care of things myself. It's only fitting since I'm such a grown up dog now (2 years old!). I've got my own email address (lbthedog@gmail.com), and I'm even on Twitter (http://twitter.com/lbthedog). I'm quite the Web 2.0 puppy (I guess that makes me "Lunchbx").

This weekend was the big yard sale in my 'hood. For the humans this means lots of sunscreen and shopping. For me, it just means a super long walk. Last year was crazy. It was really hot and there were humans everywhere. Cars were parked on the median, and on every curb. There were so many crotches to sniff! Of course, Mommy still had babies inside her (the good old days as I call them) so we had to take lots of breaks. This year it was a lot cooler and there weren't as many humans.

After the humans finally got out of bed and fed me and the babies, it was time to go on our walk. I was so excited about the yard sales that I grabbed a $5 bill out of my private stash (I'll never tell where it is) and brought it to Mommy to buy me stuff. Of course, we couldn't just go walk. I threw on my pirate outfit (you never know who you might meet at the yard sale, gotta impress the bitches (I can say that, I'm a dog)) and was ready to go, but the human babies take forever to leave. They had to have cute outfits, hats, sunscreen, bottles, and everything else the humans could find. Those little things sure are a lot of work. It's bad enough when they wake me up at night, but getting in the way of my walk is completely unacceptable. Anyway, eventually all of the humans were ready and it was finally time to go out and get our walk on.

Since my human parents don't trim my toenails often enough, it's a little tough to type everything up so I'll just skip to the highlights. We walked all over the area and saw tons of humans and even some other dogs. Apparently the humans didn't find anything they liked, because they didn't buy anything but some breakfast burritos (they spent my $5 and didn't even give me any, totally not fair). I got to play a little with a Wiemariener (any idea how hard that is for a dog to spell?) at one of the houses, but we had to leave before the W and I started breaking stuff. The craziest thing I saw was two dogs being walked in strollers like the human babies. Why would the dogs agree to that? What's the point of going on a walk if you don't, you know, walk? Some dogs are lame. You won't catch me riding in a stroller. Mommy's ankle has been acting up lately, so we had to cut our stroll short (if an hour-and-a-half is short). I was so tired when we finally got home, so I pretty much napped the rest of the day. I can't wait until next year's yard sale.

The humans want to use the laptop so I guess I better wrap this up and go get some water. Typing is a lot of work. I'm exhausted. Time for a nap.

2 Years

2009-04-27T21:01:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is April 28th, which means it's been two years to the day since Lunchbox was born. There was something about a wedding on that day, too. While it's easy to see LB is only two-years-old (he seems more like six-months), it's hard to believe that a couple of years ago Shae and I weren't married. Two years ago I didn't really expect to have one kid by now, much less two. Nevertheless, here we are. Quite a couple of years.

I've been pretty swamped between work and home lately, so I hadn't noticed it has been almost three weeks since the last post. I guess that means it's time for an update on how things are going around here.

The babies are doing great. They keep growing, and their personalities keep developing like crazy. They aren't crawling yet, but Ella's close and they both roll enough to end up across the room if you take your eyes off them for a second. A couple of weeks ago Shae took the little ones with her up to Lockwood for a week, and it was hard to believe how different they were when they got back. They're on a pretty good schedule lately, and are sleeping through about half the time now (Or so I've been told. Shae quiets them down so quick I don't even hear them).

Lunchbox is doing his thing. As much as he acts annoyed by the new additions, he loves his babies and missed them when they were gone. Even though he got taken on lots of extra walks and got tons of attention (funny how that works when there are no babies around), he was a little depressed while they were gone. Every morning after breakfast he would run into the baby-room to see if they were there, go check Shae's side of the bed, look at me with a sad puppy-look, and then go plop and his bed and pout until he got put out for the day. He was VERY happy to get the rest of his family back. Almost as happy as Ella was to see him. Seriously, she might be a little too into her dog; she loves him more than she loves either of her parents.

Shae's doing fine too. She's back on one of her photography kicks, so she's been playing with our cameras and taking tons of pictures. That would be fine, except then she wants me to look at them. "That's a nice picture of a window." "Good picture of the door there." "Oooh, that's a great shot of a window and a door." Repeat. Oh, and somewhere in between taking pictures she finds time to take care of the kiddos.

As for me, I'm doing fine. Work is a little crazy lately, but everything is pretty good. I took over as the lead of our web team, so now instead of doing any real work I spend all of my time answering email and preparing PowerPoint briefs. Fun. It would be nice to be able to do some development occasionally, but overall things are going pretty well at work.

That brings us to the Great Rodent War of 2009. Since our last update, things haven't changed much. We don't have any more casualties to report, but we've deployed the weapons of mass rodent-struction (AKA D-Con) up in the attic and are just waiting on the little mice to eat themselves to death. Don't worry, we will emerge victorious.

Six Months

2009-04-07T20:56:00.000-07:00

Today is April 7th, which makes it six months since Ella and Jackson popped out of Shae. It feels like it's been much longer than six months, but it's also hard to believe that it's already been half-a-year. I'm not sure how to explain it other than it feels like the babies have been around forever, but at the same time it seems like only yesterday that Shae was pregnant. Very weird.

The babies just keep on becoming little people. Ella's bottom two teeth are all the way in, and they definitely work (Shae and Jack both have the bite marks to prove it). She bites Jack, and he pulls her hair. It's a fun game they play. It's also getting really hard to keep Ella in one spot. She rolls all over the place, and even goes after her favorite toys. Her favorite thing to go after is Lunchbox. She sees him, gets all excited, and rolls/squirms over to him.

Jack's doing great too. He's not quite as mobile as his sister, but he is a very happy baby boy. He has a great laugh, and loves to play (if by play you mean lie on his back and kick and laugh). His hair has grown back from his friar hair-style, and his reflux is almost all gone. It's great to feed him and not get puked on 20 seconds later.

Last weekend, Shae took the twins up to Escondido to visit the Wild Animal Park and Kit Carson Park. She got a few cool pictures, and the babies are even in some of them. She's uploaded a few of them, and will be uploading more as she processes them. You can view them over in our gallery.

At War

2009-04-06T22:34:00.000-07:00

March 20th, 2009:
I've been living in denial for months now, but the signs are too strong to ignore any longer. The mouse droppings in the sun room, the glimpses of a rat scampering back up into the palm tree when I go out to the patio late at night, (worst of all) the sounds of plotting coming from the attic. There really is no other explanation: the rodents are plotting to take us out. They've finally decided to put the information gathered by their mouse-spy months ago to use and launch their attack.

So far, the traps we've setup to defend against the rodents haven't netted us any prisoners, but at least the enemy seemed to respect them and stay away. now it sounds like that's all changing. It's time to stop playing defense and go on the attack. We've carefully setup some traps in their territory (the attic), and hopefully we can take out a few of their warriors.

March 24th, 2009:
Well, it's been four days since Shae and I launched our counter attack against the rodents and so far we haven't had any real success yet. The rat seems to have retreated to the palm tree (or at least he's doing a better job of hiding), but our traps in the attic have not succeeded. In fact, it seems that we are just feeding the mice peanut butter while they dodge the traps. Instead of capturing the enemy, I fear we're actually giving them the protein they need to grow strong enough to launch a full-scale attack. We have no choice but to deploy the "Rat Zapper" that we acquired from Shae's parents. I fear escalating the war, but the mice seem to be too smart for our outdated traps.

The Rat Zapper is an odd weapon. I thought we would bait it using cheese, but apparently you can't use anything "cheese-like" because it will complete the circuit and fry the bait. I would think burnt cheese would be hard for a mouse to resist (it's hard for me to resist), but I have no choice but to trust Shae since she has training on our new weapon. I guess the ideal bait for the Rat Zapper is cat food. This seems absurd to me. If you have cat food, it would stand to reason that you also have a cat. If you have a cat, why the hell do you need the Rat Zapper? Whatever, war is strange. We'll have to make do with dog food and hope the Box doesn't get his nose zapped trying to get a snack.

March 26th, 2009:
It seems we have vastly underestimated our adversary. Somehow, they found a way to disable our Rat Zapper; our new technology is no match for the rodent wits. (Either that, or the last rodent caught in the trap burned out the device. Whatever the cause, the Rat Zapper is not going to help us.)

In fact, instead of gaining a technological advantage over our enemies we seem to have upset the mice by escalating our attack. Today when I went to check on our attic trap I discovered that the trap was missing. That's right, the rodents have stolen our weapons. I wonder what their plan is. Are they planning to set the traps up where we'll set them off? Is one of the mice a mini-McGyver disassembling the traps for parts and building a super weapon? Things are not looking great for the humans in this war.

April 4th, 2009:
Our efforts seem to finally pay off. My scout (aka Shae) reported back that her morning trap-check was successful. We got one! Of course, my scout is of no use in disposing of our enemy's body so up into the attic I go.

My examination of the battleground revealed some interesting intelligence. The scariest part of the scene was the trap itself. The casualty lay next to the trap, but something had eaten all of the peanut butter from the trap. That means that another mouse finished off its meal while his comrade lay dead just inches away. These rodents are heartless. They will stop at nothing to grow stronger in preparation of the next attack. Again, I may have underestimated the enemy.

Next to the successful trap, I found something even more interesting: the previously stolen trap. What could this mean? Was the fallen mouse attempting to setup the trap to use against us when he was taken out? Could he have been defecting and bringing us our trap as a peace offering to gain our trust? Did another mouse catch on to his plan and take him out before he could defect (and then feast on peanut butter afterward)? Was the trap never stolen in the first place, but instead just got pushed out of sight where we couldn't see it until we went into the attic to clean up the carcass (that can't be it). Today was a good day for our side, but the determination of the rodents is intimidating.

April 6th, 2009:
The mice seemed to go into hiding for a day or so after the fall of their fellow warrior, but they seem to be getting back to plotting again. As I sit on the couch typing, I can hear them scurrying about overhead. I fear what their next attack will bring, but after our successful attack we are optimistic. We have set out additional traps hoping to keep our momentum going. We have drawn first blood, and we are hopeful that we can end this war quickly. I guess it's back to the battlefield. More updates as the war unfolds.

Baby time

2009-03-20T21:11:00.000-07:00

It has been awhile since we have done a real update on the babies, so I figured with all my free time I will sit down and do one.

Ella:
Ella is such a funny little girl. She comes up this these little expressions that just melt your heart. She also does this little giggle when we wash her face and hands after she eats that is just hilarious. I think I start laughing every time she does it. She is one of those babies that just lights up the room.

This last week was a pretty big deal in the life of Ella. First, I was playing with her and she does this thing where she grabs my finger and starts chewing on it. Well this time when she was chewing I thought she picked up something hard off the ground and had it in her mouth. I was wrong. It was two little teeth. Yup, that's right, Ella is teething. At almost 5 1/2 months, she has two bottom teeth pocking through and they HURT! She has been doing pretty well with it. If she didn't bite me, I would never have known they were there. The next day, Ella rolled onto her stomach. She got stuck, but at least she made it. She is very good about going from her stomach to her back so now with a little practice she will be rolling around in no time.

Ella is growing FAST. I can't believe how big she is getting. I mean wasn't she just 7 pounds not too long ago? With this whole growing thing, comes movement. She is the squirmiest little thing. When I have her on the floor she will do this little crab walk and scootch all over the living room. Just today she was laying next to Jack on the blanket and the next thing I knew, she was half way across the living room. I guess we will be child proofing soon.

She doesn't like sitting at all. I take that back, she just can't do it. She has this need to be moving all the time, so when we practice sitting, she is sooo wiggly. Now the thing she loves to do is stand. Of course she needs us to support her, but she wants to do it every chance she gets. Maybe we will just skip the whole sitting step and go strait to standing!

Overall, Ella is the sweetest squirmiest little girl ever. Oh, and cute!

Jack:
What can I say about Jack? He is one cool little boy. He also has started doing a hilarious giggle when the wash cloth gets near him. He is so sweet.

Jack wants nothing to do with rolling over. I think he watches his sister get stuck and doesn't want to go through that. I keep telling him he's gonna have to get over it. He did make it to his side the other day so I guess that is progress. Today he went from his tummy to his back for the first time. YAY! He still hates to be on his tummy and really has no desire to scootch around on the floor. He is pretty content just laying or sitting there. It is kind of nice because I only have to really keep my eye on one baby for now. When they both start moving, YIKES!

When we went home for my dad's retirement party Jack actually sat up on his own for awhile. When I say awhile, I mean he didn't immediately fall over.

No teeth yet for Jack. Part of me wishes he would get his first teeth right now too, so they can both do it together and we only have to deal with the first teeth thing once, but on the other hand, He is just too sweet to teeth already.

Jack is strong. He has an awesome grip and can pull hair like a pro. His legs are also strong. He doesn't like to stand up, but he can sure kick. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and he is kicking Ella in the head. Ahhh, it starts already. I think he will be the future kicker for the Chargers!

I think Jack is such a cool little boy!

I have added a few new albums to our photos. Go check them out!

For the Love of Peas

2009-03-11T17:05:00.000-07:00

Jack and Ella recently turned five months old. Do you know what five months means in the world of babies? Time for food! I cheated a little and started the cereal a few days early. They don't really like it unless it is mixed with juice. As for the other foods, they have been doing pretty good. They love bananas and applesauce. Ella is a pretty good eater. For the most part, she will open her mouth for us to stick the spoon in and she only spits out a little bit. Jack is an awesome eater. He doesn't spit any of it out... Until today. We are supposed to introduce one new food each day so we can check for allergies. Today was the day we introduced peas.

I LOVE peas! I get this trait from my dad. My mom does not share this same love. When you grow up in a house where the main cook hates peas there were not very many meals that included them. Pat also hates peas. Now, if I had known about this before we got married... Just kidding. I am still able to sneak them into meals from time to time. Today was the test to see who the twins take after, me or Pat.

The twins definitely take after Pat! As soon as I started feeding Jack, he got this horrible look on his face. It was such a pleading look. You could almost see him begging me not to feed him any more. It was so funny I had to start laughing. As soon as I laughed, he started laughing. This was the perfect opportunity to sneak some more peas in his mouth. We did this for a few minutes and then he started spitting. No, it was more like spraying. I swear it was like a scene out of The Exorcist. So, Jack does not like peas.

Ella was a little better with the peas, but she still spit everything out. Between the two of them, I really don't know how much they actually got down. So, now I have a bunch of canned peas and mashed peas in the pantry and no one who will eat them. It is a sad day in the Lorigan pantry.

Traveling Fool

2009-03-10T21:00:00.000-07:00

Well, Shae and I made it back from our trip up to King City/Lockwood. Overall it was a pretty good trip. Shae's dad's retirement party was lots of fun. Good food, a few beers, and lots of funny game warden stories. My dad and Dorothy made a trip down for the party so Jack and Ella had lots of grandparents to play with. As a bonus, it was my mom's birthday on Sunday so it was nice to be able to spend some time with her on her b-day. Like I said, it was a good trip and a fun weekend.

I could probably recap the party and grandparent visits more, but I'd rather bitch about my travels. Since Shae drove up with the little ones a week before I headed North, I caught a flight up to Monterey to meet up with them. There aren't a lot of flights from San Diego to Monterey so I had little choice but to hitch a ride on a tiny plane from SD to LAX and then another puddle jumper up to Monterey. I've had the pleasure of flying in the tiny American Eagle planes in the past so I wasn't exactly expecting first class accomidations or anything. In fact, my first flight was cramped but nothing too bad. The SkyMall magazine was in rare form this trip. From a replica Capt. Kirk seat to $70 dog nail trimmers there was tons of great stuff. It was once I got to LAX that my trip soured.

When we landed at LAX, our flight attendant read off the gates of connecting American Eagle flights and I was happy to learn that my flight to Monterey was only three gates down from the gate I was arriving at. I would soon learn that was because the crappy terminal we landed at consisted of about six gates. There must have been a whole thirty people waiting at the terminal. Talk about life in the big city. Anyway, after hanging out at the hub of LAX for a bit (and typing up a blog on my phone), I realized I should probably make a quick stop at the restroom before boarding my next flight. After about 30 seconds of exploring the entire terminal, I finally found the one men's bathroom in the terminal and of course it was closed. Seriously, if you only have one freakin' restroom in a terminal maybe you should clean it sometime other than the middle of the day. Perhaps try cleaning one of the 50 other terminals that have been graced with multiple crappers during the day and hit up the solo terminal when the place is empty (well...emptier...at full capacity the puddle jumper terminal is pretty close to empty). Just an idea.

About an hour or so after my arrival at LAX it was time to board my next flight. Once again, I folded myself into my tiny seat and got ready to get airborne. Here's the part about my entire airplane experience that really got to me. My flight was pretty full, but it wasn't packed (I saw about 10 empty seats when I glanced around). However, as we were waiting to leave the gate a representative from the airline got on board and told us that the plane was too heavy and one passenger would have to get off ("This plane will not leave this gate until someone gets of."). I understand that the airlines are hurting and need to sell every ticket possible, but if the plane can't fly with a full load of passengers then why the hell don't they take out a row or two and give everyone more leg room?!? How does it make sense to make seats smaller to get more on the plane if you can't even fly if the plane is full? If it was one or two empty seats I would think maybe the luggage was heavier than normal but there were at least 10 open seats, and I've heard from several other people that this has happened on their flights too. It cost American a $200 travel voucher to get a passenger to wait an hour for another flight, which is more than double what the full-fare LAX-Monterey ticket costs. That's some good business there.

Anyway, once the plane got airborne the flight was actually pretty nice (even if I could really have used the extra leg room that removing a row or two would have provided...go read the rant in the previous paragraph again while I calm down...OK, I'm good now). The flight from LAX to Monterey goes right up the coast for a while and then over some coastal hills that were beautiful. We landed right on time (although I would like to know how a "50 minute" flight can take off 20 minutes late and land on time...shouldn't they just schedule it as a 30 minute flight and list the real departure time?), and was met at the airport by Shae, her dad, and the twins. After a week apart, it was actually pretty great to see Jack and Ella again.

A few other random notes on my travel experience:

As usual, I checked in online and printed out my boarding passes. The difference this time, however, was that American placed ads for hotels and tourist attractions on the boarding pass screen. I was able to find a "Print without attractions" link so the ads weren't on my actual boarding passes, but still...wow. The airlines have resorted to selling advertisements on boarding passes now. I wonder what's next.
This is not the first time I've been on a plane since they started selling peanuts and almonds, but it's the first time I actually caught the price. $3.00 for almonds? What the hell?!? Beer/liquor bottles are $6.00, but a little bag of nuts cost 3 bucks. Out in the "real" world a can of Heineken or whatever costs what, a buck-fifty? That would put the markup at around 400% which is a lot, but nothing near charging $3 for a $0.25 bag of nuts (1200%). Does anyone actually pay three dollars for the almonds? I'd like to meet that person and ask them how long they had to starve themselves before they were willing to pay that much money for half of a snack.
I got to the San Diego airport around 10:30 (for an 11:30 flight), and got off the plane in Monterey at 2:50. So it took me almost 4.5 hours to get from SD to Monterey, of which all of about 60 minutes was spent in the air. Factor in the hour to drive back down to King City and it actually took the same amount of time to fly as it would have to just drive (pre-baby). Of course, if I'd driven I wouldn't have gotten to learn about the replica Capt. Kirk chair and the $70 dog nail clippers. Thanks SkyMall.

Well, that's about it for my travelling rant. The drive home was much better than our last trip. Shae was able to squeeze in between the car seats so we didn't have to stop for 30 minutes every time Jack and Ella had to eat, and we actually made pretty decent time. The trip still took longer than it used to before Shae and babies, but it wasn't the 10 hour ordeal of our last drive from King City to SD. Overall it was a pretty nice weekend and it's good to have Shae and the babies home, even if I do miss being able to sleep. Shae took something like 350 photos (seriously, for once I'm not exagerating) so hopefully we'll have some new pics over in our gallery sometime soon.

One last thing: if you haven't checked out Shae's "Daily Photo" blog (not really daily, but I'm giving up on that battle), she's actually been updating it lately and has some cool photos (and edits).

The Bachelor

2009-03-05T12:58:00.001-08:00

Shae and the babies headed up to Lockwood last Thursday, so I've had a full week of "vacation" where all I had to worry about was work and Lunchbox. I did miss Shae and the kiddos, but it was definitely nice to be able to relax and get some rest. I'm sitting in LAX waiting for my flight to Monterey so I figure it's time to recap my week as a bachelor.

Thursday:
After helping Shae get the car and the babies all loaded up and on the road, I just kind of sat on the couch and soaked in the silence. It was great to relax and watch some tv. After watching some of my non-Shae shows (24, Lost, etc.), it was off to bed.

Friday:
Wow. I had forgotten what eight hours of sleep was like. Except for a quick interruption to feed the Box I got to sleep until 10. Awesome. I love having every-other-Friday off, especially if I don't have to get up and take care of the munchkins

Anyway, after finally getting out of bed I put all my rest to work watching some more TV. Of course, Lunchbox decided he should be getting some attention so I got off my ass and we went on a little stroll around the neighborhood. Once we finished exploring the streets, I finally figured it was time to put some of my free time to use and clean the kitchen. It's kind of nice to clean up and know that it's going to stay clean for a while. That's one of the benefits to not using the kitchen much.

Other than a call from Chris to set up a man-date for Saturday that was about it for Friday. It was great to do almost nothing all day. Awesome.

Saturday:
Another baby-free day, another eight hours of sleep. Still super. I think Lunchbox enjoyed the baby-break too because he let me sleep in way later than be used to. Good boy Mr. Box.

Around noon, Chris came over to get some help setting up a home-theater PC. I'll spare everyone the details, but pretty much everything that could have gone wrong did. 14 hours, two cheeseburgers, and three movies later things were finally working well enough to call it a night. A task I thought would take us about three hours took until 2am. Fun.

Sunday:
Since I didn't have babies keeping me at home I was able to get out and play a round of golf. There are a lot of great things about living in San Diego, but playing golf in 80 degree weather on March 1st is towards the top of the list. Nate and I met up at the course and about ten minutes later we were on the first tee. Awesome.

I'd like to say the golf was as good as the weather, but that would be a huge lie. I played pretty much the worst round of gold I've played in about 10 years. Of as terrible. Oh well, it was still a great day and I had a great time even with the golf "performance".

After golf, I decided to head over to Nate's apartment for some dinner. Since LB hadn't been getting as much attention as he would like I loaded him up on the backseat of my car and took him with me. Nate has a five-month-old puppy so she and Lunchbox spent the evening running all over the apartment. When we finally got home the Box was exhausted. He was a happy boy.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday:
Not a ton happened during the week. Basically, I got up, went to work, came home, watched TV, folded laundry, and went to bed. Not exciting, but I got plenty of rest and Lunchbox got lots of attention. Hopefully neither one of us got too used to it.

Thursday:
Well, it's finally time to head up North and get back together with the family. I went into work for a few hours this morning and then hitched a ride to the airport. Shae, her dad and the babies are picking me up in Monterey and then it's down to King City for the weekend.

I've definitely enjoyed my week off, but I'm looking forward to seeing Jack and Ella again. I haven't gone more than 10 hours without seeing them since they were born so it's been kind of weird. I'm sure they've changed a lot in the week they've been gone. Hopefully they remember me.

Boxing Babies

2009-02-24T21:01:00.001-08:00

I don't know what Shae does all day around the house with the babies,
but today I came home from work and it looked like they had been in a
brawl. Jack has a scratch and little red mark under his eye and Ella's
cheek was all scratched up. I guess while they were laying in their
crib "talking" to each other they got bored and decided to start
hitting each other. Fun.

Kissing Siblings

2009-02-23T21:55:00.000-08:00

Well it's been a while since our last update so here it goes. As usual, I'm too lazy and tired to write up a coherent post so it's time for another list.

Thursday, Shae and the babies are heading up to King City/Lockwood to help prep for Shae's dad's retirement party. I'll be flying up next Thursday, so that means for a week it's just going to be me and Mr. Box down here. I'm sure I'll miss Shae and the munchkins, but it's going to be nice to have some quiet and relaxation around here. I'm not even sure what I'll do with all that extra sleep.
The babies are doing great but have taken a step backwards in a few areas, most importantly in their sleeping habits. For a while, things were pretty good. We put them down around 7 or 8 and Jack slept through the night and Ella woke up once (at most) to eat. Let's just say that's not the case anymore. Both babies are up at least once, and usually twice every night. Several nights recently Shae has spent half the night sitting in our glider in the baby room.
They also seem to have forgotten how to drink out of their faster speed nipples. We moved them from the slow nipples to the "variable" nipples because they were taking so long to eat (and because the variable speed nipples don't spill if the babies fall asleep with them in their mouths). They did just fine with the new nipples for about a week, and then apparently forgot how to drink out of them and just started making a mess. We had to go back to the slow nipples for a while and now we're back to trying to get them on the faster ones again. We'll see how it goes.
This is a little awkward, and I'm not sure I would have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but Jack and Ella french kissed this morning. They were laying next to Shae in our bed facing each other and all of a sudden they were kissing. Seriously, Jack's tongue went into his sister's mouth. Gross. If you don't think I'm telling this story to every single date either one of them brings home you obviously don't know me very well.
Ella is doing great, and is growing up pretty fast. She has so many expressions and loves to smile. Unfortunately, she keeps losing her hair. Between her cradle cap and Jack pulling her hair out she's getting pretty thin up top. Looking back at her newborn photos it's hard to believe how much hair she had then.
Ella may not look as much like a mini-Pat like her brother does, but there can't be any doubt about whose daughter she is. The other day she was laying on the couch laughing at her own farts. Fart, laugh. Fart, laugh. Yup, that's my daughter.
Jack is doing great too. His reflux is getting much better, and he doesn't puke after every meal anymore. It's nice to be able to feed him and not have half of it come right back up all over us. We still have to be careful not to feed him too much, but it's way better than a week or two ago.
Both Jack and Ella have started to get into an oral phase. After not having much interest in pacifiers, a couple of days ago Jack became obsessed with them. Now whenever he gets fussy we just shove a pacifier in his mouth and he's happy as can be. On one hand, we really don't want a baby who's addicted to pacifiers, but on the other it is really convenient to just shove a pacifier in his mouth and shut him up. Ella kind of likes pacifiers too, but she is happy with her thumb, my hand, Shae's neck, or pretty much anything else she can find. The other day she almost left a hickey on Shae's arm.
The babies really love Lunchbox, especially our baby girl. She stares at him and smiles, and loves it when he gives her kisses. It's hilarious to watch, and Lunchbox enjoys it too.
You can already kind of see which kid is going to doing to do certain things first. Ella is going to roll over, crawl, and walk WAY before Jack. She's already about to roll over, and I wouldn't be surprised if she starts flipping onto her stomach while she's up North. I think Jack's going to talk first, but Shae disagrees. Ella makes a lot of noise, but Jack seems to already be trying to talk. He just lays there and babbles to us all day.

That's about it for now. If you haven't checked out our gallery lately, take a look because we add pictures all the time. I'm sure there will be plenty of pictures from Shae's trip North. Also, Shae has been playing around with some images lately, and her pics blog has some cool new images.

Holy crap, I won!

2009-02-20T23:52:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I read a lot of blogs. One of the blogs I have been following since it's beginning is Prop Insanity. It is just a great place to get ideas for photos and stuff like that. Well, every Monday they do a giveaway and I actually won this weeks giveaway! I never win these sorts of things. I get to pick an outfit of my choice from K Bella Bambino Designs. All of her items are handmade and absolutely adorable! I can't wait until Ella is big enough to fit into her pretty new dress.

Excitement

2009-02-16T23:00:00.001-08:00

For some people, excitement is jumping out of an airplane or driving a
race car. For others, it's the opening of spring training. Then
there's me. Nowadays, my life pretty much has two forms of excitement.

The first happens almost every time I change a diaper. For just a
moment after I rip the diaper open there's a split second where
anything can happen. It's like a game of diaper roulette (unless I can
already smell the danger, in which case I've already lost). Most of
the time it's an innocent enough wet diaper, but every so often one of
the babies has a stinky surprise for me. I don't know how they can
keep something that foul a secret, bit they find a way.

The second source of excitement occurs more often and is a lot more
dangerous. Every couple of nights we give the munchkins baths. One of
us gets in the tub to bathe them while the other takes care of getting
the little ones ready and bringing them into the bathroom. That's the
exciting job. It's about 15 steps from the changing table to the bath.
Normally this isn't a big deal, but when you're carrying a naked baby
chanting "Don't pee. Don't pee. Don't pee!" it seems more like 15
miles. So far we've both made it without either baby making a mess,
but it's been close a few times and it's only a matter of time before
one of us isn't so lucky. Sure, we could just carry the babies into
the bathroom and then take off their diapers, but what's the fun in
that? Then we'd have to jump out of an airplane to get our excitement
fix.

I'm That Guy

2009-02-16T17:30:00.000-08:00

It started innocently enough with a couple of pictures on my desk. Shae gave me two frames for Christmas (one for each kid), and I picked out my favorite pic of each and took them into work. A few days later I finally gave in and changed my computer desktop to pics of the kids (again, one baby on each monitor). So far, things weren't too bad. Sure I had a couple of pics on my desk and my background, but the frames were small and most of the time my desktops were covered up by applications.

I think I can blame everything that happened next on Shae. The problem is that she has taken tons of great pics of the babies and I couldn't figure out which ones I wanted as my background. The only solution I could come up with was to pick a bunch of the pictures and then just set my desktop to randomly change images every 15 minutes or so. Of course, I still rarely saw my desktop because it was always hidden behind my applications. So I did the only thing I could: I changed my screen saver to use all of the baby pictures.

I'm not sure exactly how I got here, but now I'm that guy. If you walk into my office you'll see a couple of pictures sitting on my desk, a screen saver that covers two monitors with images of the babies, more pics of the kids covering my desktop, and my "Exhausted! (Father Of Twins)" mug full of coffee. My phone background is Ella and LB, and my Facebook profile pic is me and Jack. I thought I was bad with Lunchbox, but a couple of snapshots on my phone don't compare to this. I knew this would happen eventually, but I didn't know it would only take four months. Well, I gotta go. I think I just found another picture that would look great as my screen saver. Or on my phone.

Checking Up

2009-02-14T20:02:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday, the babies had their four-month checkup. According to the doc, both babies are doing fine. Ella is quite the tall baby girl. She's 25.5" long and weighs 14 pounds, which puts her in the 90th percentile for height and right on average for weight. Jackson is 24" and 15 pounds, which puts him right about average in both.

The only issue with the babies is with Jack's head. He somehow ends up facing to his left whenever he sleeps, and his head is starting to get flat on one side. The doctor told us we need to prop him up so he sleeps facing to the right so that it evens out. If we can't get him to stop sleeping on that side of his head he might have to start wearing a special "helmet" to help his head develop properly. Needless to say we're doing everything we can to keep our boy out of a helmet. Of course, that's easier said than done. For whatever reason Jack really wants to face to his left. We've gone into check on him in the middle of the night and found him propped facing to his right and somehow still looking the other way. I makes my neck hurt just looking at him. He's getting better about not always facing left, so we're hopeful we can avoid something like this (thanks to Shae for her awesome photoshop skills):

One thing we learned from our visit is that drooling is a developmental step. The doc was asking things like "are they tracking you with their eyes?" (yes), "do they go cross-eyed anymore?" (no), "are they drooling?" (yes...wait, what?). Apparently huge strings of spit coming out of the babies' mouths is a good thing. Smiling, rolling over, crawling, etc. are the things I considered developmental steps. But drooling? Who knew? I guess instead of yelling "GROSS!!!" and passing the kids off to Shae I should have been giving them gold stars. It's a little late now, but great work kids! Way to get spit everywhere. You're really growing up fast. Yay.

That's about it for our visit to the doc (other than another round of vaccinations which are no fun at all to watch), but of course a day after the kiddos visited the doctor they both came down with colds. They are not happy babies. They have sniffles and coughs and are crying a lot. They're starting to get a little bit better, but it's still frustrating that there's nothing we can really do other than wipe their nose.

One last note on the babies: they've reached a stage in life where they actually want attention now. It used to be as long as we fed them and occasionally played with them they were fine. Now they have hissyfits if they get bored laying on the couch. Great. Now in addition to feeding, changing, and bathing them I have to actually pay attention to them too? This whole baby thing is turning out to be a lot of work.

Since Shae's "People" has shattered our previous record of 3 comments, I thought I'd add a couple of questions/comments that somehow got left off of her list.

I actually mentioned this one in the comments to Shae's post, but I can't believe Shae forgot to mention people who argue with us when we tell them our babies aren't identical. They're a boy and a girl, and they don't even look much like each other at all. One of these days I'm going to pull down some diapers and show one of these people just how un-identical my kids are. Even if we had two boys or two girls, why would you argue with a parent about whether their kids are identical twins?
Right after people ask the standard "are they twins?" and "a boy and a girl?" (or the similar "boys? girls?"), if they don't follow up with "are they identical" they almost always go "Oh! That's perfect! How lucky!". This one always bothers me. What if we had two boys? Would these people just give a polite fake-smile and say something like "Oh...great" while secretly feeling sorry for us? This actually got a little awkward at the doctor's office after our appointment on Wednesday. There was another couple there with a set of twin boys. Another mom was kind of talking to them and then saw us and did the "You have twins too? A boy and a girl? That's perfect..." and trailing off when she remembered the other twin parents had two boys. I almost expected her to follow up with "But two boys is great too", but instead she just kind of stopped talking and started paying attention to her kid.

Buy Handmade

2009-02-10T11:02:00.000-08:00

So, I am a huge fan of handmade items. As most of you know, I tend to make a lot of things for our house and as gifts. Someday I will try and sell my tables, but until then, I like shopping for those one of a kind, handmade items. I guess my goal with this blog post is to make people aware of all the amazing items out there. I have included a list of some my favorites. Since I have the little ones, many of the items are for babies or kids, but I have tried to include some adult items too.

Knotty Baby Wear. These are a must have if you have babies or toddlers, or need a baby shower gift. These are perfect for keeping little legs warm and protecting crawling knees. I have a couple pairs of the commercial brand ones, and I think the Knotty ones are far superior. They have much better colors, and are wayyyy cheaper. If I ever start doing children's photography, these will make an appearance in my photos.

Kelly Rae Roberts. She is an amazing artist. Her work is fun and whimsical. The pieces she sells are small enough that they can fit into any room. They are also very well priced. As a new mom, price is a big deal.

Jim Jenkins Designs. If you knew me while I was growing up, you would know that I won Best of Show every year for my woodworking. One of my favorite items that actually won a Best of Show and a Best of Class at the state fair was my jewelry box. It still sits on my dresser. I like looking for interesting boxes and I came across these. They are too expensive for me to buy, but I can really appreciate the beauty and all the hard work he puts into each box. Some day I would love to buy one for Ella.

Larissa's Treasures. This shop actually belongs to a girl I grew up with. She make beautiful jewelry that is well priced.

Tiny Art... This person makes some really cute jewelery. She also makes other things, but I like the necklaces. They remind me of being in the classroom.

Cite Fuzz. I LOVE her monkey hats. I wish they were a little less expensive since I have two munchkins that would like them. I think they may get them for their first birthday. She also makes other cute hats, but the monkey ones are my favorites.

Mad About Colour. More wonderful hats for newborns. At this point, I don't really have a need for these, but I think they are adorable. If you know anyone having a baby, this would be a great shower gift. They look great in photos too.

Hannah's Tutus. LOVE these. Ella will be getting one for her first birthday outfit. I think they make little girls look so sweet. I also like that they can grow with the girl. I have so many outfits that Ella only wore once before growing out of. These tutus will last awhile.

I hope you like my selections. I think it is important to support peoples passions. When I come across other great items, I will post them here.

People

2009-02-03T22:23:00.001-08:00

I have a question for all of you who had just one baby at a time, or have ever been shopping with someone who has just one baby in a stroller. Do you (or they) get stopped by every single old lady so they can make comments about you or your baby? I have been to the store before and seen women with single strollers and everyone just walks right by. This is not the case with twins and my two double strollers. It seems like I get stopped by everyone so they can put in their own two cents. I have decided to share with you some of the comments I have received from these women.

The most common comment I get is, "Wow you must have your hands full." So, of course I say yes, but what if I just say no?

I get this one a lot too, "Are they both boys?" Ummm, One is wearing a pink dress with a bow in her hair. So, yes they are both boys and I am just trying to turn one into a tranny.

I was taken aback by this one, "Those aren't twins. Twins can only be the same sex." Huh, I think they need to go back to high school health class.

Here is another one I get a lot, "Oh a boy and a girl, now you can stop." What if we really wanted to have more kids. I am thinking of telling the next old lady that says that that I want to have 7 more and see what she says. I even heard someone say something about overpopulating the planet under her breath.

Here is my favorite, "Oh, they are feisty! You won't have any trouble losing that baby weight." Ummm... I weigh the exact same now as I did the day I got prego.

Another question along those same lines that I have gotten is, "How fat did you get?" I told her I didn't get fat, I got pregnant.

Now don't get me wrong, I also get a ton of oooohs and aaaahs, and people saying how beautiful they are and stuff like that, but it is the rude ones that really stick in my mind and make me wonder if singletons get the same type of comments.

Pretty Slow

2009-02-03T20:36:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of updates, but there hasn't been much excitement to report. Basically, everyone is doing fine. We've kind of settled into a routine, and even though it's exhausting everything is going pretty smoothly. I get up bright and early and go to work, Shae deals with babies all day, and then we get a few hours of shared baby time before going to bed and then starting the whole thing over again. We've actually been able to put the babies to bed between 8 and 9 most nights lately so we even get an hour or two of rest, which really helps.

The babies are doing the whole eat, cry, and poop thing. They are still growing, and their personalities keep developing every day. It's great coming home from work and having both of them look at me and smile. They are very into what's going on, and love staring at the TV (especially Jack). They're even starting to interact with each other a little bit, and pretty soon I think they'll be having their own little "conversations" constantly. They'll be 4 months old on Saturday, but it's still hard to fully believe that I have two kids. The little ones have a doctor's appointment on the 11th so we should have another update on how they're doing after that. All I know is that if Jack is still below average weight then I don't know how heavy baby boys are supposed to be. He's quite the little porker.

Other than the babies, there really isn't much else going on. Lunchbox is doing fine, but I'm sure he'd disagree and argue that he needs more attention and walks. He was able to fit in two walks, a trip to OB, and some play time at the dog park over the weekend, so things could be worse for the Box. The babies seem about due to poop on someone, so I'm sure there will be some fun to report one of these days.

Silly Humans (From The Desk Of Lunchbox Lorigan)

2009-01-21T21:58:00.000-08:00

OK so my human parents finally gave be permission to write my own blog post. This past weekend they threw me in the back of the car and we all headed off to Mission Trails park. Ever since the human babies were born, my parents have not had as much time to go hiking and exploring with me. Well, on Saturday they decided it was too nice of a day to stay inside. It was 80 degrees in the middle of January. This is my favorite temperature because I love dragging my bed into the sun and soakin' up the rays. Anyway, back to my story. Since I was coming along and I tend to be a little demanding, there was no room for the stroller in the back of their car. The humans had to strap that thing to the roof of the car. It looked pretty silly. After they put the stroller on the roof, my human daddy had to lift me into the back of the car because I am a demanding dog and I don't like doing things myself. Off to the park we went.

Once we got the the park and the humans unloaded the stroller and got the babies strapped in, Erica showed up. I got sooo excited! My tail was wagging so much. While they were getting things loaded into that monster stroller, the little human girl started screaming. I tried to sniff her to see if it was her diaper, but that wasn't it. I then licked her face to see if she had recently eaten, but there were no milk leftovers so I had to go tell the human she was hungry and they need to stick a bottle in her mouth so she would stop barking. After she got her bottle, we headed to the trail.

Now, I just have to say, my human dad got mom an accessory kit for her new camera lens for an early birthday present, so do you know what she did the entire hike? Yeah, she kept taking pictures. I swear, we would walk about 10 feet and then we had to stop so she could take a picture of a leaf or a rock or some other annoying thing that made me stop. She also had this need to take a million pictures of me with me feet up on stuff. She says I need to pose for a book she is working on, but all I heard was, "blah, blah, blah, Paws Up." At least I got lots of treats every time I did it. Anyway, the walk was pretty mellow after that. The highlight of the walk was when the humans let me off my leash and I ran around all crazy. I made the humans chase me around to try and catch me. I finally let them catch me because I didn't want them to get in trouble by a ranger. After more photos and a stroller on the roof, we headed home for the day.

I thought my good luck ended when we got home, but I was wrong. We got to go back to the park on Monday since it was apparently a holiday, what ever that is. OK, so we go through the whole loading the car spectacle again, and again I have to laugh at the stroller on the roof. We got to the park and Erica was there again. I was soooo excited. I got to see her so much last weekend!

Usually when we go to the park, the humans take me on a trail that makes a nice loop. It is pretty easy and only has one little hill. The trail is almost like a dirt road. Nice and wide. The humans say it is perfect for the monster stroller. This time we did the loop backwards so my human mom didn't have to push the stroller up the hill. This is where the real adventure started.

The hike started off like a normal little hike. We should have known something was up when we saw the orange plastic fence. Well, I think it was orange since I can't exactly see colors. The fence was blocking our normal path. The path that we were rerouted on was a narrow single track path. At this point, I would think that most humans who have great big strollers that don't fit on single track paths would turn around. Nope, not my humans. They just made sure the sun shades were down so the branches didn't hit the small ones. I hung back with Erica and kind of laughed at the scene that was before me. I thought it was going to be the funniest thing, but I was wrong. The funniest thing came next.

We got to a point on this narrow little path that started going down hill. This was not the normal down hill that we are used to. This was STEEP! Not just steep, but rocky and steep. Now again, most people would have turned around. Not my humans. Mom thought this would be a good time to switch lenses on her camera. she was right. Like always. This monster stroller does not have a hand brake on it so when the humans started down this narrow, steep, rocky path, it was HILARIOUS! The first thing mom asked was if the babies were strapped in good. Dad went down the hill first with the camera and to catch the stroller if mom lost control. OK, so we all started down the hill and things were going pretty good. Good thing it was really rocky because the front wheel kept getting stuck and slowed the monster down. At one point human mom stopped in a very awkward position and yelled down at human dad that she might need some help. He was like, "Lets just trade places, I can push it down just fine." Mom gave a little chuckle and then put the brake on and they traded places. At this point Mom ran down the hill with the camera. Dad let off the brake and tried going down the hill. He yelled down to Mom that he too might need some help. I was totally laughing at this. Mom had to run back up the hill and grab the front of the stroller and put her weight against it and they got it down the hill. The little humans were jostled but they made it. I thought I smelled something funny when we got down the hill and it turns out that the ride literally scared the shit out of the human boy. We all laughed. At the bottom of the hill Mom took a picture of the two paths and the detour sign so you can see the two paths next to each other.

The rest of the walk was pretty easy. They kept stopping to take more annoying pictures of me, but I at least got to climb a tree and that was pretty fun. It was like I was a cat. I like cats. They poop and I like to eat it. It makes the humans mad, but I can't help myself. Sorry! Puppy-ADD, or PADD, took over. Back to the story. More pictures of leaves, and dirt. At the end of the hike we had a choice of two trails. The one on the left went up to the pavement and the one on the right went by more stupid leaves and dirt. We picked the leaves and dirt. Guess what this path had? Stairs. The stairs where made of railroad ties and logs so things were not exactly evenly spaced. The humans made it down the first set pretty easily. When they had to go up the last set the spacing was just wrong and they ended up having to carry it. I was torn on what to think. Part of me was happy because it was so funny, but I knew this was the end of the trail and we would have to go home. I have to say, it was better then a walk around the block. I guess the humans are glad they had a 4-wheel drive stroller, or I should say 3-wheel drive.

The humans posted photos from our trips over in their gallery.

Turning 30

2009-01-19T21:42:00.000-08:00

I turned 30 on Thursday, which I guess means it's time to look back on the last decade. I spent the first night of my 20's in a dorm room bed as sick as I ever remember being, puking my brains out. I spent the last night of my 20's sitting on my couch holding Ella while Jack puked all over the place. Somewhere between those two nights of puke I graduated from college, got a job, moved to San Diego, got married, bought a house, got a dog, bought a business (and closed it), and had a couple of kids. Two-thirds of those events happened in the past two years, so I guess I sort of crammed everything in right at the end. I have a feeling almost all of my accomplishments in the next decade will start with either "Ella did this" or "Jack did that". Call it a hunch.

Thursday (my actual b-day) was pretty quiet. Shae made me my now-traditional birthday tacos for dinner, and a two-crust lemon pie for dessert. After that, it was just a quiet night of movie watching at home. The real fun happened on Friday.

Thanks to Chris' sister Kat, we had a babysitter for the night and could actually go out on a date. Shae and I dropped off the babies and headed off to dinner. Now, when I say "dropped off the babies" what I really mean is carried in babies (and all their stuff), setup the Pack-N-Play, and spent about 15 minutes going over every possible baby scenario with Kat. After we were done with baby boot camp, we headed down to Seaport Village for a quiet dinner for two. It was very nice for the two of us to get out for a nice dinner and not have to deal with the twins. I love my babies, but it is definitely nice to get a break every so often.

After dinner, it was off to the Comedy Palace to have a few laughs. We met up with Chris, Patty, and Erica at the "Palace", ordered a few drinks (2-drink-minimum), and enjoyed the show. Most of the comics were the same as the last time we went (a couple of months ago), but the majority had new material this time. I had a great time, and I think everyone else did too.

After the show was over, it was off to pick up the munchkins. We got to Chris' house and found the babies bathed, changed, and asleep in their pajamas. Nice. We should do this babysitting thing more often. After driving home and putting the babies down it was time to head to bed and call it a birthday. Now it's time to see what the next decade has to offer. So far, it's had a lot of poop.

Rockabye Baby

2009-01-19T20:14:00.000-08:00

Well, there's been a lot going on lately so I thought I'd give a couple of quick updates. Shae already wrote up an update on the babies, so I thought I'd give an update on the rest of the household. Shae and I are tired (especially Shae), but we're doing fine. Now that The Learning Garden is closed, Shae is home full time with the kids and is definitely staying busy.

My dad and Dorothy came down to San Diego last weekend for a visit. It was a pretty laid back weekend, but there was lots of baby holding and some good visiting. My dad and I were able to sneak out to Rocky's for a burger on Sunday morning, so that was nice. I was starting to think I wouldn't be able to have another Rocky's burger until the babies were 21. Other than that, not a lot to report. Like I said, lots of baby holding and lots of visiting. Oh, and yet another visit without anyone hurting themselves climbing up or down the guest room stairs.

Everyone always talks about how things change once you have kids, but I didn't truly understand how much until recently. It really hit me when I found myself writing an email to iTunes customer support about a week ago. The reason for my email: three of the tracks from"Rockabye Baby: AC/DC" didn't download properly. That's right, my lullaby renditions of "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", "Highway To Hell", and "You Shook Me All Night Long" wouldn't play. How can my babies get to sleep without AC/DC lullabies? I'm not sure how the support person kept a straight face long enough to reply to me, but sure enough the next day I had new copies of the songs and the babies could rock out to the full album.

That's about it for the update. I also found time to turn 30 and take a couple of hikes in the last week, but those will get their own posts.

Update

2009-01-18T10:30:00.000-08:00

I figured it was time for a baby update.

At just over three months old, Ella already has a HUGE personality. Most mornings she will wake up with a huge smile and a cute little laugh. Now I say most mornings. On the other mornings she wakes up screaming her head off. I guess you could say she is a typical woman. She is also doing the squealing thing. She will lay there for hours just squealing. We had a sales person come to the door the other day and she asked me if I had a baby because she could hear her all the way across the street. Ella is also doing a lot of kicking. I have a feeling she will be crawling before we know it. She has yet to roll over, but she tries. I haven't had her on her stomach as much as I should so I think that is partly my fault. Our little girl also loves to "talk" now. She thinks she is having a conversation with us, but I still have no idea what she is saying. Her favorite person to talk to is Lunchbox. When she sees him in the morning, she gets so excited. Now for the not so good stuff. The evenings can be rough for her. She will get in a crying cycle. I think she gets a little gas bubble, then starts crying and makes it worse. It will get to the point where no amount of comforting will help her and she won't eat. The only thing I have found that helps is Gripe Water. Give her a little bit of that and it calms her right down. The other not so good thing with Ella is that she is losing her beautiful hair. She has bald spots on the back of her head and some on the top. The ones on the back are from sleeping and the ones on the top are from her cradle cap. Yup, she has cradle cap. It is this gross scaly stuff on top of her head. I guess the dry skin does not fall off and just builds up. It can sometimes make babies hair fall out. Our poor little girl is turning into an old man. I guess that is it on Ella. She is a happy beautiful girl.

Jack is just awesome. He wakes up with a big smile and a cute little laugh/grunt thing. He vary rarely cries. If he does cry, we know there is something wrong. Usually he is hungry or trying to poop. I keep telling him that if it makes him cry then it probably isn't ready to come out yet. He doesn't seem to believe me. Jack is also HUGE. He has to be at least 2 pounds heavier then Ella. He looks like he is turning into a little bruiser. Jack went through a phase where he lost all his hair on te top of his head but it has all grown back now. Jack is also not rolling over yet and hates to be on his tummy. He has reflux so it really bothers him to lay that way. Just like Ella he is kicking up a storm. Jack tries to talk, but isn't as good at it as his sister. In a couple more weeks I have a feeling the two of them will be having full conversations with each other. Now for the not so good stuff. Like I said before, Jack has reflux. If you are not familiar with it, then that is a good thing. Basically a muscle that keeps his food down is not developed enough and he throws up a lot. We can't just feed him. We have to try and burp him after every ounce of food he eats. It can be a pain. We have had to stock up on burp rags to clean up all his puke. He also projectile pukes. We now have a nice big stain on our couch and he has been able to hit his sister in her bassinet from his. He can really get some distance.

Both babies are still not consistently sleeping through the night. They take turns and it is really annoying. I think they have both slept through the night twice since they have been in their own room. I know they are both capable of it, they just don't want me to get any sleep at night. I guess that is it for a baby update. They will have a 4 month check up at the beginning of February so I will have more then.

Visiting The DMV

2009-01-04T17:04:00.000-08:00

Pretty much every teenager dreams of turning 16 so they can get their driver's license. Of course, these days I think you have to be almost 52 before the state of California will let you actually drive a car without some restriction or another. Luckily for me, the only problem I had getting my license was that I turned 16 during wrestling season. It's hard to get down to the DMV when you have practice after school every weekday and tournaments every Saturday. Well, the first Monday after the end of wrestling season (sometime in April, three months after my birthday), I got myself and my '85 LeBaron down to the King City DMV right after school, took my driving test, and got my license. I was so happy to have my license that I didn't even notice that they somehow turned "green" into "brown" for my eye color. I get those words confused a lot too. Very similar.

Unlike some people I know (and am married to), I haven't "misplaced" my license 4 or 5 times over the past 14 years and since I haven't had any tickets that affect my driving record I've been able to renew online whenever my license expired. So for 14 years my license has featured my 16-year-old face on it, along with my wrestling season weight and the wrong eye color. I'm not sure how I ever got into a bar with that license. What is the point of checking IDs if you're going to let 225 pound guy with green eyes in using a license that says he weighs 135 and has brown eyes? I guess they figured if I were going to get a fake ID it would look more like me than the pic on my license so I never had any issues other than a few raised eyebrows.

In fact, until last Friday I hadn't set foot inside a DMV office since that April afternoon in 1995. I guess the state of California has decided that 14 years is the most you can go without going back in for an eye test and a new picture because I finally had to pay the DMV another visit. I want to know who the genius was that decided you can go from 16 to 30 without ever getting a new picture or an eye test. I'm not complaining about avoiding trips to the DMV, but it seems kind of ridiculous that I've been using the same ID since 1995.

Since appointments were booked at all of the local offices until the end of January (after my license would expire) there I was at 7:45 AM Friday morning standing at the end of the line in the cold (well, cold for San Diego). It was definitely an odd mix of people in line, but my favorite group was the mom, daughter, and son/daughter's boyfriend standing about three places in front of me in line. They were there to get the daughter her license and both mom and daughter must have been nervous because they were smoking like crazy. Something about the mom and 16-year-old daughter smoking together before the daughter's driving test just seemed funny to me. I wonder if the daughter smoked in the car during the test.

Anyway, eventually the line started moving and I got inside and took a number for the CA DMV lottery. After a short (by DMV standards) 30-minute wait, the system finally called out "G024" (BINGO!) and I headed off in search of window 24. I'm not sure who numbered this office, but windows 1-20 were in an order that kind of made sense and "windows" 21-25 were random rooms all over the place. I finally found window 24 and sat down to renew my license. I get by without glasses, but my eyes are definitely not what they used to be so I was a little nervous about the eye test. Luckily for me the vision standard is somewhere just above "totally blind" because I passed without any problems and headed over to the camera window to get my new license picture taken. I guess in a couple of weeks I'll get a license that actually looks like me, but I'm going to miss the reaction to my 16-year-old mug shot every time I get asked for my license. Oh well, hopefully I'm good for another 14 years. Say goodbye to my old license:

Closing Down The Garden

2009-01-04T13:10:00.000-08:00

The end of 2008 was also the end of The Learning Garden. Between the babies taking up all of Shae's time and the crappy economy taking all of our customers we decided it was time to close up shop. We spent most of the week between Christmas and New Year's eve trying to get everything cleared out of the office by the end of the month. We sold everything we could, brought home tons of stuff we couldn't sell, and threw away about a dumpster worth of old crap. It was a ton of work, but the babies helped and we got everything done just in time.

When Shae and I bought The Learning Garden a year ago, we had all kinds of ideas on how to get the business back on track. Shae did a great job, and for the first couple of months things were pretty good and she brought in quite a few new students. Then Shae found out she was pregnant and her focus shifted more towards growing babies than TLG. She still taught and put in tons of work running everything, but after a few months of baby-carrying she just didn't have the energy to get up early every morning and go in to do all the extra work/marketing that was needed to stir up more business. Of course, then the gas prices skyrocketed and all of the longtime customers who had to drive down from North County stopped coming. As the economy has taken a giant dump parents have decided they just don't have the extra money to spend on tutoring, and over the past few months business has trickled to almost nothing. We finally decided that it was time to just throw in the towel.

My feelings about closing down TLG are mixed. Part of me is sad to see it shut down. A year ago Shae and I were very excited about running our own business and were very optimistic we were going to be successful. It's disappointing that it didn't work. However, a larger part of me is OK with everything. Shae is happy she gets to spend more time with the babies without worrying about how we're going to pay The Learning Garden's rent the next month, and she'll probably do some tutoring out of the house for some of her students. It would have been nice to have a wildly successful business, but I guess we'll just be happy with two babies.

The Babies' First Christmas

2009-01-02T20:30:00.000-08:00

Well, the babies made it through their first Christmas with flying colors (and Shae and I somehow survived too). It's been kind of crazy around here lately with grandparents, Christmas, the New Year, trips to the zoo (more on that in another post), and other stuff (more on that in another post too), but I finally have a few minutes to try and recap Jackson and Ella's first Christmas. We posted some pics from Christmas over in our gallery.

Monday (the 22nd) my Mom and Shae's parents got into town. I'm sure there's all kinds of stuff I should say about how great it is to get together with our families for the holidays and all that, but really I was just happy we had three new people to hand the munchkins off to. So with all these people to watch the babies you know what happened the first morning everyone was here? Shae and her dad went Xmas shopping and the grandmas went shopping and I ended up alone with both babies for half the day. How does that happen?

Tuesday night as we were preparing for bed Shae just blurted out "I think the babies are going to sleep through the night tonight." The fact that Ella had slept through the night about three times ever and Jack hadn't even really come close didn't seem to change her feeling. After I pointed these facts out to her and mocked her for thinking there was any chance we would get a full night's sleep we turned off the lights and drifted off. Sure enough, both babies slept through until Lunchbox woke us up at 6 the next morning.

Fresh off a full night's rest it was time for Christmas Eve. After a pretty laid back day we headed over to John and Leah's (Grace's aunt) for their Christmas Eve party. The babies were a big hit (and I found even more people to pawn them off on), and I got to meet a few more members of Shae's family. After the party, it was home to get everything ready for Santa and get Jack and Ella to bed. Everything went pretty smoothly, and although the twins didn't both sleep through the night (they haven't repeated that trick yet) they were pretty good.

Jack must have known it was Christmas morning because he started the day off with a nice present for me: a nice morning dump. Jack must be a big fan of Christmas (or he felt really good after his poop and puke) because he busted out his first real smile for us. He'd given us little grins before, but on Christmas morning he let loose with a great big smile and kept smiling at us for about 10 minutes. Ella has been smiling for a while so she wasn't very impressed, but the rest of us were very excited.

After Jack was done smiling, it was time for the really good stuff: opening presents. Instead of recapping everyone's presents I'll just say that everyone got lots of good stuff (especially me). Thanks everyone. The babies got lots of goodies, but since they got so much stuff at their showers Shae and I got to reap the benefits. I think this will probably be the last year we get much for ourselves, but it was a great Christmas.

That's about it for the recap. I'm sure I forgot to mention tons of stuff, but the babies are crying and need some attention. It's a week late, but Merry Christmas everyone!

Choppin' Wood

2008-12-15T19:30:00.000-08:00

Last year was our first year in our house, so of course Shae and I decided we needed to get a real Christmas tree. A fake tree was good enough for our little apartment the year before, but we couldn't have a plastic tree our first year in our house. So the first weekend in December, the plastic tree stayed up in the attic and Shae and I went out to find the perfect tree for our first Christmas.

Of course nothing is ever as easy as it should be, and getting our tree was no exception. The weather decided not to cooperate with us, and it was raining as we drove around looking for our tree. We found a Home Depot that had some trees, but after fighting the rain for about 45 minutes and not finding the right tree (too dry, too small, too expensive, or just too crappy) we decided to look elsewhere. Shae had done some searching online and found a couple of tree lots so we decided to try and find them (the Garmin Nuvi we got for Christmas last year would have been useful). We couldn't find the lot we were looking for, but we found a few other lots and checked them out. Unfortunately, all of the trees were really expensive and not very nice. We were just about to give up and go back to Home Depot when we saw a sign for the lot we had been looking for. We took the next exit, took a few lucky turns, and finally found the lot.

We checked out the pre-cut trees and there were quite a few nice ones, but they were still pretty expensive and we hadn't found "the one" so we decide to check the cut-your-own lot and see what we found. It was a good decision. We grabbed a saw and checked out the trees. There were good trees everywhere, and eventually we found the one we wanted. I climbed down in the mud and went to work on the tree, and after about 30 seconds we had our tree chopped down. They shook out the needles and netted the tree for us, and we loaded the tree into our car and headed home. We were drenched and tired, but we had our tree.

This year, things weren't much easier. We knew where we were going, but of course we had two little extra degrees of difficulty. We tried to go out Friday night after work, but even though the lot is open until 9p.m., apparently the cut-your-own lot closed at dark. So Saturday we headed back over to the lot, only now it was raining (well, drizzling). I guess we just go Christmas tree shopping in the rain; that's how we roll. We strapped on our Baby Bjorns and started searching the lot for the babies' first tree. It took a bit of searching, but eventually we found our tree. Ella and I grabbed the saw and cut down our tree. After I carried the tree from the back of the lot all the way up to the front we had the tree shaken and netted, and then it was time to carry it out to the car and strap it to the roof.

Somehow we got home without the tree flying off the roof of the car, got it inside, and got it all setup in our stand. We popped in Elf, and after a light catastrophe (or, more accurately, a light patastrophe) and a trip by Shae to Target for a new strand of lights we got to work getting the tree all decorated. Of course the babies gave us some help. Our tree looks great and we are very happy with it. Now it's time to get some presents around it.

Here are some more pics of our trip to the farm and of our tree.

A Day With The Babies

2008-12-12T22:32:00.000-08:00

I decided to write this blog in response to the number one question I get asked: Is it hard?

I have no idea how to answer this question, so I will tell you what a typical day is like and you can decide.

I guess my morning begins around 3:30am. This is about the time when my sleep is interrupted by what sounds like a howler monkey. Most of the times its just Jack telling me to get up and make him a bottle NOW! Sometime it really is a howler monkey. This tends to wake Ella up and she comes to the realization that she too would like to be fed. I have a system where I can feed them both. Did you know that there are 4 episodes of Fresh Prince starting at 3am. There have been morning where I have actually watched all 4 episodes. If I don't turn on the TV, I tend to fall back asleep with two babies in the bed. After they eat they are pretty easy to get back to sleep. At around 6 I like to see what happens first. Does Pat's alarm go off, do the babies wake up, or does Lunchbox want to eat? The babies usually win. I guess this is the point where I tell you that they are pretty close to being on the same eating schedule so this makes it much easier. Most of the times they get fed about a half hour before Pat gets up so I get up and make two bottles, lay the babies next to me and Pat and stick some bottles in their mouths. Keep in mind I just watched a couple episode of Fresh Prince so I am pretty tired. Before we start, I change both babies. If I do it during the earlier feeding, they don't go back to sleep. Anyways, this feeding is pretty interesting, for one, I tend to fall asleep and drop the bottles, When this happens, they let me know. Very loudly. They also feel the need to be wide awake and then putting them down again becomes a chore. I can usually get them back to sleep until about 9 and then we get up for the day. This is where the fun part begins.

I guess you could say this is where the hard part comes in. I have to divide my time between the two babies. I always feel bad when I am playing with one and ignoring the other. While we are in the living room, I used to just lay them on one of the couch cushions, but now that they are very squirmy, I am afraid they will throw themselves off the couch. We don't want that. So, they hang out in their car seats, bouncers, or the floor. The rest of the day we have tummy time, feedings changing, snuggling, reading them stories, talking to them, taking pictures of them, and just trying to have fun.

If we decide to leave the house for the day, I have to give myself an extra hour to get ready. If we leave the house and the babies have not been fed, they will tell you about it in the middle of the store. It seems to be OK if we are in Babies R' Us, but nowhere else. They are kind of past that point where they sleep through the stroller rides. Now they just sit there wide awake. Besides being fed, they need to be changed, I need to make sure the diaper bag is packed, make sure the stroller is in the car, and then carry everything out to the car. The one good thing about all this crap I have to carry around is that it really makes me think twice about those quick Starbucks trips. I can't just run in and get a latte anymore. Now if I stop, I have to get the stroller out and set it up, snap Jack's seat in, roll around to the other side of the car and snap Ella's seat in, grab the diaper bad and hook it onto the stroller and hope there is someone around who can get the door for me. After I make my stop, I have to get the babies back in the car, take off the diaper bag, break down the stroller, put it in the back of my car and then we can finally take off. I swear a 5 minute trip to Starbucks now takes 30, but sometimes, you really, really, really need an eggnog latte.

Going to a store becomes a chore. Most normal parents have these nice little strollers. Do you know what does not fit in those little strollers? Two babies. We have two strollers. The one I take with me to the stores I like to call the limo. It is very long because both car seats snap into it. The limo is very hard to steer and maneuver around all the store displays. Since I have to use both hands and all my mommy strength to push this monster stroller around, I don't have any hands to carry things with. This past week I finally found somewhat of a solution. I got a Mommy Hook. It is a HUGE carabiner that hooks to the stroller handle. I can hook a tote bag to it and put things into the bag. I get weird looks but at least I can carry more then a few tiny items. This works most of the times, but grocery shopping is still way to hard. I just wait for Pat to get home and then go.

Back on the home front, I try and feed the babies at or just before 5pm. I like having them fed and changed when Pat gets home. The last things he needs after a long day at work is to come home and fight with a screaming baby. If I can have them fed and changed, then we can spend the next hour or so just playing and loving them. This is my favorite time. We each get to hold a baby and I don't feel guilty for leaving one in their seat. The rest of the evening is pretty mellow, we play and talk with the babies, I try and make dinner (sometimes we have to eat in shifts). We try to head to the bedroom around 10:30 or 11. We get all snuggled into bed with the babies for a feeding. Jack is pretty easy to get to sleep so Pat puts him down and drifts off. Ella is a different story! After she eats, she is just wide awake. I have to rock her for awhile before she finally gets drowsy. I put her down around 11:30 and they are both up an hour later for food. Before I know it, it is 3am again and my day starts over.

So I really don't know if my day is hard or just time consuming.

Growing Babies

2008-12-10T21:40:00.000-08:00

Today was Jack and Ella's two month checkup. We don't have an easy/accurate way to weigh them so we had kind of been looking forward to the appointment so we could find out exactly how much they have grown in the past couple of months. The Cliff's Notes version: everything is fine. For those with a little more time, here's the recap.

We got to the doctor's office right on time and proceeded to wait for our turn to head to one of the exam rooms. I think they decided that because we had twins we should wait twice as long, but eventually we got the call. As the nurse guided us to the exam room we realized that we were heading to the same room where Jack got his junk snipped. I was hoping this visit wouldn't be quite as bad for him, but then again it would be kind of hard to be much worse.

After another round of waiting, a nurse finally came in and took the babies' measurements. Ella weighed 11 lbs. and was 23" tall. I guess this puts her right about average for weight and above average for height. Apparently my little girl is a tall one. I don't think she gets her height from her mother. At the rate Ella's going, she should pass Shae up somewhere around 3 years old.

Once the nurse was all done with Ella it was Jack's turn. Jack weighed in at a solid 11. lbs 6 oz. and was 22.5" tall. I guess he made up for being 7 oz. lighter at birth. Of course Jack cheated a little bit by eating over 10 ounces of formula before the appointment, but he was still the winner of the weigh-off. Even though Jack was 6 ounces heavier, he is a little below average because boys are usually a little bigger. All I know is he has almost doubled in size in the past two months so he's doing just fine.

The nurse left and the doctor eventually came in and took a look at the twins. Now we are very happy with the babies' doctor, but there was a kind of odd exchange today. He came in and looked at the babies for a second, pointed to Ella and said "That's the girl, right? I'm not sure what it is, but something in their faces helps you tell boys and girls apart." You know what else helps? The girl is wrapped up in a pink blanket and the boy is wrapped up in a blue one. That might be a clue too. After taking a look at the babies and their measurements he told us everything was fine and went over the vaccinations the Jack and Ella would be getting.

After our longest wait yet, a nurse finally came in with a handful of needles. This was the hard part. Each of the babies got three shots and an oral vaccination. They were not happy to get their shots. It was not fun to watch them get jabbed. Poor little Jack, last time he went to the doctor he got snipped and this time he got jabbed. He's not even old enough for a lollipop yet so he doesn't even have that going for him.

Two Months

2008-12-07T19:21:00.000-08:00

Today makes it two months since the little ones got pulled into the world and I figured it was time for another baby update. The babies don't give me a lot of time to sit down and type, so I'm going with yet another lazy-list.

I know everyone always talks about how fast the babies change, but you don't really realize exactly how fast until you hang out with the little guys every day. They change literally overnight. (And I mean in the real form of the word "literally", not in the "my head literally exploded" way that really means the exact opposite. It really annoys me when people use "literally" and mean "figuratively".) Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Ella woke up one morning smiling like crazy when the night before she hadn't even cracked a smile once. It's pretty cool to watch their entire personalities develop and change from day-to-day.
Speaking of smiling, they're doing a lot of that lately. Ella smiles like crazy (when she isn't crying of course), and Jack has been doing more lately too. They're a lot more fun to interact with now. Instead of just watching them sleep, now we can actually tickle Ella's chin and watch her smile. They're almost like little people.
Babies fart all the time, and it's really loud. You know what else it is? Hilarious. I don't care how old I get, farts are always funny. I laugh almost every time one of the twins rips a really loud fart when we're sitting out on the couch. Every so often Shae and I look at each other accusingly because it's hard to believe these little babies can make those noises.
Ella popped out a minute earlier, and she seems to be trying to maintain her status as the oldest. She's still bigger (just a little), smiled first (by about a week), and she's starting to laugh/squeal first. I'm sure Jack will catch up. Besides, he peed in his mouth first and I don't think Ella's going to catch him on that one.
The babies are in the middle of another growth spurt and are eating like crazy. They eat all night and all day. The other night they actually ate from the time we went to bed until we got up to feed LB at 6am. I hope they get threw this spurt pretty quick because Costco only carries so much formula.

That's about it for now. The babies go in for their two month checkup on Wednesday so we should have an update on their weights, health etc. after that. We're all doing fine, although Shae and I could definitely use a little more rest.

Road Trip

2008-12-06T23:10:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure how, but we survived our first road trip with the babies. Shae, the babies, Lunchbox, and I all piled into the little Mazda Tribute and headed North to King City/Lockwood for "Baby Shower North" and Thanksgiving. Eight days, 800 miles, and 8,000 diapers later we finally got back home. The trip was a lot of fun, but travel is definitely a lot more work than it used to be.

If you just want to look at pictures of our trip, here you go.

Northward Bound
The first few years I lived in San Diego, trips up to King City were pretty easy. I took off after work on Thursday night, made at most one stop (at Starbucks if they were still open and it was early enough), and generally arrived about six hours after I left. I could usually make the return trip in about 5.5 hours (less LA traffic and no stops) which wasn't too bad. Then Shae moved down and slowed me down. She had to stop for coffee and food each way, and she usually drove part of the trip (a little slower than I drove). The trip was now about 6-6.5 hours. Once Lunchbox started tagging along, the trips took even longer. Now we had to drive the Tribute instead of the TL so we had to stop for gas in addition to the food and coffee stops, and we also had to give LB time to do his business. Now we were up to about 6.5-7 hours each way, or a full hour more than it took me without the extra baggage.

This trip, however, was a different story. For starters, there was no way I was going to try to drive home Thursday night after working all day. I'm not that crazy, so Friday morning we woke up and got to work getting loaded up and on the road. I should have known what kind of day I was in for when it took us from 6-10 just to get the car loaded up. Let's just say that 2 adults, 2 babies, 1 dog, 2 suitcases, a "Pack N Play", 2 diaper bags, dog food, a laptop bag, a camera bag, and all sorts of miscellaneous other stuff is a Tribute load. There wasn't any room for the monster stroller so it got strapped to the roof rack. Luckily we had a plan for the return trip, as you'll see in an awesome photo below.

Anyway, after 4 hours of packing/feeding/changing we finally got on the road around 10:30. Three feeding stops and 8 hours later we finally got into King City. Not only do we have to stop more often with the babies, but it takes forever to feed them at each stop. I never thought I'd long for the days when the trip took "only" 7 hours, but by the time we finally made it I was spent.

After we eventually got to King City and got all of our crap out of (and off of) the car we got to relax for a couple of minutes before it was time for the babies to meet some grandparents. My dad and Dorothy drove down to get some extra baby time before the shower and got to see the twins for the first time Friday night. Jack was so excited he pooped. So to recap, we had 5 people (my mom, myself, Shae, my dad, and Dorothy), 2 babies, 2 dogs, and a cat all staying under the same roof. Fun times.

Baby Shower North
After getting some rest Friday night (or as much as two hungry babies who slept all day would let us), Saturday we headed out to Lockwood for "Baby Shower North". The last baby shower I had to survive involved a house full of ladies playing baby games while I tried to hide out in the office with LB. This shower involved BBQ, beer, bows (and arrows), and of course LB. The babies made an appearance too.

The 3 B's were great, but my favorite part of the day was all the people who wanted to hold/feed/change the babies. After almost 7 weeks with the babies we were more than happy to let everyone else take care of the babies all day while we enjoyed some time off.

The other highlight: the gifts. Holy Crap! We got tons of stuff. Clothes, books, toys, diapers, and all kinds of other goodies. Quite a haul for the babies. Thanks to everyone for the presents; I'm sure the babies love them.

Escaping From The Babies
Shae and I haven't been able to go to the movies for quite a while. For the last month or two of her pregnancy Shae didn't want to do anything that involved leaving the house, much less anything that didn't involve bathroom breaks every 20 minutes or so. Obviously, it's not any easier to get to the movies now (or maybe not so obviously based on the number of people who think it's OK to take babies to movies...but that's not us).Well , Sunday we were able to exploit my mom's love of her grandchildren to pawn them off on her and get out of the house long enough to catch a movie. Shae loves teen movies and vampires so "we" decided to go see a vampire love story aimed at 13-year-old girls: Twilight. It doesn't matter what the movie was, it was just nice to get out of the house and throw down some popcorn.

Turkey Day:
After a few days in KC and Lockwood, it was Thanksgiving day. As has become our tradition, we spent turkey day at the Fosters'. My mom, my dad, and Dorothy joined Shae, myself, the babies, and Shae's parents out in Lockwood for Thanksgiving. We also had plenty of dogs: Lunchbox, Ty (Shae's parents' dog), Kuge, and Bertha & Brandy (my dad and Dorothy's boxers). Quite a crew.

Every year we try to get a picture of the Thanksgiving crew (including the dogs) after dinner. Last year we ate late and by the time we got around to trying to take the picture it was getting dark. Mr. Box (seven-months-old at the time) didn't help matters by running all over the place throwing up dust and getting Kuge and Ty all riled up. Here's what we ended up with. This year we decided it might be best to take the picture before dinner while there was still plenty of light. Lunchbox may be a year older, but he still wasn't very cooperative at picture time. We finally got him to stop playing in the dirt long enough to get our picture, so it was time for some turkey.

As always, the food was great. We stuffed ourselves full of turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and everything else. The babies skipped the turkey and had some formula. They didn't get any pie either, but everyone else got plenty.

After dinner, it was time for our annual Thanksgiving evening walk. This is where the giant stroller really came in handy. It may be huge, heavy, and a pain to strap to the roof, but it sure is nice when you need to do some off-road walking after dinner. The thing took everything we threw at it: dirt, rocks, big piles of sticks, etc., and the babies just napped through the whole thing.

That's about it for the babies' first Thanksgiving. It was a good time, and they were very well behaved. They even watched a few episodes of the Thanksgiving weekend "Cool Tools" marathon on DIY (the Do-It-Yourself network) with Grandpa Foster. I think Jack wants a new wheelbarrow for Christmas and Ella wants a new screwdriver.

Cruising In Style

Saturday we loaded up the car to head back home, but of course there was a twist. We could barely fit all of our stuff in the car for the trip North, there was no way we were going to fit our gifts in the car for the trip home without a little help. That's right, it was time to strap the top carrier to the roof of the Mazda. As a kid, I always hated cruising in the back seat of my dad's station wagon with the dogs in the back and the top carrier strapped to the roof. So of course there I was with two kids in the backseat, Lunchbox in the back, and the top carrier looking super cool on the roof. Good thing my dad had an extra one to help us out.

I thought the trip up was long, but the trip home was even worse. Apparently everyone else thought it was a good idea to head home on Saturday to beat the rush too. The babies fall asleep instantly as soon as the car is moving, but they don't do so well in stop-and-go traffic. So there we were stuck in LA traffic with both babies screaming for two hours. That was fun. Nine hours and two eardrums after we left Lockwood we eventually made it home, got the car unloaded and finally relaxed for a few minutes before bed. The baby shower and Thanksgiving were great, but it's always nice to be home.

Six Weeks

2008-11-18T19:53:00.000-08:00

Today makes it six weeks since the little Lorigans got pulled out of Shae and stole our sleep and free time. Not a lot is new, so I figured it was time for another list.

The first couple of days we had the twins I thought the black tar meconium poop was really gross, but at least they only went once or twice a day. Then they got through the tar-poop phase and started destroying 5-8 diapers a day and spraying poop all over the walls. I missed the meconium days and longed for the days of 1-2 dumps a day (*2 of course). Now the babies have moved on again and are back to 1-2 a day but let's just say the size and smell makes me nostaligic for the 8-a-day period. I can't wait until they start exploding out of their diapers. Babies are fun!
These little things eat constantly. I seriously don't know where it all goes. Jack isn't that big; I have no idea where he hides the 1.5-2 lbs of milk/formula he eats a day. His poops are huge, but not that huge.
We'll be heading up to King City on Friday. a 380 mile drive with two starving babies and a restless dog. This is going to be super awesome!
If you haven't checked our image gallery lately, there's some new pics of Jack.
A while back I wrote about the local strip club's efforts to attract business. Well they've repainted again (this time it's gray and pink), they still have the balloons, and now they've added a new attention grabber. Today when I got off the freeway I was greeted by a guy enthusiastically spinning a "Little Darlings" sandwich board sign. I guess they're hoping the same guy who sees one of those signs and decides he needs a sandwich or a condo will make a detour on the way home from work. I was also wondering if the sign guy can take his payment in lap dances.
Shae has been playing with image editing software lately and updated her "Daily Photo" blog again (still not anywhere near daily, but at least it's updated). They're kind of cool, so if you have a few minutes take a look. Here's a sample:

Working Babies

2008-11-15T19:15:00.000-08:00

Not much new has happened in the past week. The babies still eat, poop, and sleep and that's about it. They're awake a little more during the day and they're sleeping OK at night (but they still wake up two or three times to eat). Oh, and Jack has perfected the art of peeing all over Shae, the wall, and himself (I've been able to dodge him but it's close).

The babies are definitely growing too. The day we brought them home, their outfits were huge on them. Yesterday they wore the same outfits and barely fit into them. They don't really look that much bigger, but it's pretty easy to tell they've grown when Jack's pants stop at his ankles and Ella's dress is way too short (a problem I'm sure I'll have to address again in several years).

I figured the kids had gotten a free ride for long enough so yesterday they spent the afternoon at work with me (Shae tagged along too). My co-workers had been asking about the babies for a while and I didn't feel much like working on a Friday afternoon so I decided it was a good day to bring my babies in for show and tell. Of course they were a huge hit, and in a minor upset neither one of them pooped in my office. The highlight (at least to me) was that I had to get visitor badges for the babies. I'm sure that 5.5 week old babies are a serious threat.

In case anyone hasn't been told, we'll be having "Baby Shower North" next Saturday (11/22) up in Lockwood (starting at 11:00). We'll be having a BBQ and (of course) the babies will be in attendance (Lunchbox too). If you're in the area and want to see some babies and have some food, bring a dish and a chair. Oh, and we're registered at Babies R Us and Target.

One Month

2008-11-08T16:53:00.000-08:00

On Friday, the twins turned one month old. To celebrate, they ate, slept, and crapped. It was lots of fun. There really isn't much else to report. Like Shae said in her post, they both have colds (Jack's is worse) so they aren't as happy as they could be but they're still doing OK. The whole sucking snot out of their nose thing is gross. You'd think someone would have come up with a better method to clean out their nose by now, but I guess not.

I started back at work full time this week, so I'm a little tired. It's a little harder to get plenty of sleep when I can't stay in bed until 10 or 11. I'm still working from home Tuesday and Thursday, so Shae isn't totally alone with the kids all week. Lunchbox likes Tuesdays and Thursdays because he gets to go to work with me.

If anyone is wondering the difference between boys and girls, here's my take. Girls cry and fuss a lot and boys pee in their mouth. I'm sure there are other differences, but those are the ones that stand out.

Long Days

2008-11-06T21:17:00.000-08:00

There hasn't been an update in awhile so I think it's time to fill you in on the happenings in the Lorigan home. As I am typing this, I am holding a sick little boy. At only 4 weeks old, both Ella and Jack have come down with colds. Jack is much worse then Ella. They are both very congested and Jack has a cough. My babies are so sweet and kind that they decided to share their colds with me. I don't know if they actually gave me a cold or if it was the lack of sleep, but a couple days after we noticed the twins were sick, I was sick.

As an adult when I get sick I tend to whine a lot and make sure everyone knows how bad I feel. Now imagine two sick babies. They really let us know how they feel. Unfortunately, they let us know when it is time for bed or right as we are falling asleep. I at least make sure people are fully awake and are giving me their full attention before I start my complaining. These kids have a lot to learn.

My days have definitely gotten harder. I wake up between 5 and 6, depending on when Ella decides she needs her food NOW. We spend about a half an hour feeding and changing them and then I put them back in their bassinets with the hope of getting a little more sleep. Some days this works really well and other days I can kiss my sleep goodbye. The rest of my day consists of feeding and changing them over and over again. It seems like I feed them until they can't eat anymore, go to change them and by the time the new diaper is on, they are crying for more food. I can't figure out where all this food is going. I mean they are so tiny. When I finally get them to fall asleep for a few hours I am usually too tired to get all the important stuff done.

Night time is when it gets fun. Usually we head to the bedroom around 10 or 11. We feed and change the munchkins and try to put them down to sleep. They usually fuss and cry until around 2 or 3 and then it is time to feed them again. During this feeding both Pat and I almost always fall asleep and drop the bottle. This kind of pisses them off. During the night I have been averaging 4 hours of solid sleep. Pat tends to get more because he does not wake up at every little sound. Lucky. Last night we were all so tired that we headed to bed at 8. I was hoping our bedtime game would end early. No such luck. Once again they fussed and cried until about 2. So no matter what time we go to bed, I am not going to get to sleep until after 2.

On the plus side, I get to watch a lot of great infomercials. My favorite is for the Jawhorse. It is a $200 sawhorse with a vice. Who would pay that much for a sawhorse? Oh, and I like the ExtenZe one too. I won't go into much detail, but I will say it is a product for men and endorsed by Ron Jeremy. Anyways, to make a long story short, My day is extremely busy for not doing anything.

Snip Snip

2008-10-28T20:14:00.000-07:00

Today was the big day. The day Shae and I have been (somewhat) dreading for about two weeks. That's right, today was the day Jack got circumcised. We were hoping to get this taken care of while we were in the hospital, but the doctor wanted to wait until Jack was over 6 lbs before giving him the snip.

The appointment was today, so at 11:30 Shae and I were sitting in the lobby of the doctor's office waiting to head back to the little exam room. As we were waiting, another set of new parents commented on the twins and made the "wow...I can't even imagine two" comment (we get that a lot). They were there for their first exam with their 6-day-old baby. I've only had kids for 3 weeks and I was already thinking, "I remember those days." Well, that and "Please don't wake up babies. Please don't wake up."

Eventually they called Jack's name and we went on back to our exam room. We stripped down Jackson, got him weighed (6 lbs, 11 oz) and then did some more waiting until the doctor showed. up. Without going into too much detail, they threw some disinfectant on his "region", gave him a painkiller shot (Lidocaine), and then trimmed his junk. Shae and I didn't really watch, but we did glance over from time to time to see how things were going. The highlight was when the doctor was putting on the little ring thing after the snipping and we heard, "That doesn't fit. We better get a bigger one. Yeah, that's better." Just saying.

After a bit of crying, Jack is doing OK. He still isn't very happy whenever we change his diaper, but he's going to be fine. However, tonight during bath time we discovered a serious consequence of Jack's junk-cut: his range has drastically increased. Before diaper changes were exciting, but the most damage he normally did was to pee all over his outfit (to the extent where yesterday Shae took away his clothing privileges and left him in a diaper the rest of the day because she got sick and tired of changing his outfit every time she changed a diaper), but tonight as he was sitting in the bathtub on the dining room table he let loose and managed to fire a shot that landed just short of our couch (about 10 feet away). A little squirt hit right next to Lunchbox and startled him. I think it's pretty safe to assume that things are about to get a lot wetter around the house.

Clusterfeed

2008-10-26T20:57:00.000-07:00

A long time ago (like 2 weeks), the lactation consultant at the hospital told us to expect a growth spurt from the babies when they were about 10 days old. She warned us that they would be hungry all the time and not to worry, just keep feeding them. At about 10 days, we noticed they both had started eating a lot more and thought they had hit the growth spurt. We were wrong. At about 2.5 weeks (or a couple of days ago) Ella hit the "real" growth spurt and last night Jack did the same.

This is ridiculous. Pretty much every second they're awake both of them are crying for food (well, Ella cries, Jake squeaks for a while before giving up and letting us know he's serious). We feed them, they're quiet for about 10 minutes and then it starts up again. I feel sorry for Shae's boobs, and I'm starting to worry about the motor in our pump. There was a span of about five hours this afternoon where both of them were wide awake and hungry. Then they slept for about four hours and then woke up screaming for food again. According to Shae's Internet research this whole eat for hours, sleep for hours thing is called "Cluster feeding". All I know is it's super fun.

Of course, this giant increase in the babies' appetites comes with a bonus: a matching jump in their diaper usage. I thought these little things were crapping a lot before, but this is crazy. On Friday we bought a new 92-pack of diapers. In under 36 hours they went through about 50 of them. Holy crap! Seriously...that's a crapload of poop. Costco doesn't carry newborn diapers, and it seems like they don't make the jumbo packs of them (or at least they don't have them at Costco or Babies "R" Us). I guess the logic is that people don't stock up on them because the babies grow out of them so fast. Obviously they need to talk to more twin parents.

In other fun, we took a little family field trip yesterday. Shae and I, Lunchbox, and the twins all piled into the car and headed over to the dog park to get LB some exercise. Shae sat outside at a picnic table and fed the babies (seriously, they are eating constantly) while I took Mr. Box into the park to have some fun. I'm sure everyone will be happy to hear that he didn't hump any of the other dogs and got nice and dirty.

Oh, Jack's diaper rash is gone. I guess Butt Paste is more than just a funny name. That's about it to report right now. I just heard Ella go through diaper 51 so I guess I better go change her.

Daddy and his Babies

2008-10-25T15:42:00.000-07:00

Yup, more photos today. This time I wanted to get some pictures of Pat with the munchkins. The full album can be seen here. The ones below are a few of my favorites.

Jack's Red Butt

2008-10-21T19:57:00.000-07:00

So, little Jackson has diaper rash. Know what that means? It's Butt Paste time! I'm way too excited to pop open the tube of Butt Paste.

Babies in Blankets

2008-10-21T14:03:00.001-07:00

Today our babies had their first professional photo shoot. I actually found a photographer on Craigslist who does awesome newborn photos and she was looking for twins for her portfolio. There was no sitting fee and we get a free 8x10. In anticipation for this shoot I figured I should get the babies used to the camera so I broke out my good camera and started doing some photos. Grandma Allen knitted some wonderful blankets for the babies that I used for the backdrop. Both Jack and Ella were a little too awake when I did this, but I still got some pretty good shots. I will try again when they are both sleepy so I can get them both in the same picture. Here are a few of my favorites. The rest can be seen here.

One Week Home

2008-10-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday marked one full week since we brought the babies home from the hospital. It's been an eventful week, but we're finally getting into some sort of routine. My mom and Shae's parents were here through Thursday, so the last couple of days we've been trying to figure out how to do everything on our own. We're actually getting quite a bit more sleep than I thought we would, even if our kids have their day and night confused (as Shae detailed in her post). The first few nights were rough, but the last few we've been able to sleep most of the night (with the obvious breaks for feeding and changing). We had their first doctor's appointment (well, first one outside of the hospital) and they are both doing great.

I think the most interesting part of the week is how different our kids are. I've never been a fan of babies, especially newborns. They just seem to eat, sleep, and crap. Everyone told me that I'd feel differently about my own kids (and I do), but I still figured it would take a while before we'd get a feel for their different personalities. Boy was I wrong.

Just looking at the twins it's obvious they're very different. Ella is covered in her dark hair and darker complexion, while Jack has about as much hair as I do (and his skin color is about the same too). However, it's their personalities that are completely opposite.

Jackson is the sweetest little thing. He lays next to us on the couch (or in his bouncer, bassinet, crib, car seat, whatever) and makes the cutest little squeaks. The few hours a day he's awake and alert he has some great little expressions and faces, including one that looks like Zoolander's "Blue Steel". Of course, I never have a camera handy when he's making his faces so all the pics we have of him are when he's asleep. With the exception of the first night home when he didn't have enough blankets Jack has yet to let out more than a one or two second cry, just enough to let us know he needs a little attention. Then it's back to laying there and looking cute.

Then there's Ella. I love my daughter, but she is not quite as quiet as my little boy. She is quite the crier. If she's unhappy she lets everyone know about it. She's a little colicky and it seems to hit her worst as soon as we go to bed. We feel so bad for her because we can tell she's in pain and her stomach hurts. We've been using some anti-gas drops that seem to help quite a bit, but she still has her bouts and there isn't much we can do except try our best to help her feel a little better. On the bright side, when she sleeps she's really cute and has some funny little snores.

That's about it for now. It's time for bed so I'm looking forward to the next round of Ella's crying. Tomorrow is football day, so I better go get some rest. I'm sure tomorrow will hold more fun with diapers and bottles.

Night and Day

2008-10-18T20:43:00.000-07:00

Time for an update from mommy. There are things people seem to leave out while describing what it's like to enter the adventure of parenthood. We learned at our classes that babies will be changed on average 8 times a day. What they don't tell you is that each changing can take up to 4 diapers. I always figured you take off the diaper, wipe things clean and then put on a new one. Nope. I was wrong. It's more like take off the diaper, wipe things clean, try and put on a new diaper only to have the baby pee or poop all over the place ruining the new diaper and their outfit. So then you have to start the process all over again and then once the new diaper is on they decide to poop all over it again. Start the process over and go through another couple diapers before things are finally nice and clean. On this same subject, people don't tell you about the projectile pooping. Our little girl managed to spray the wall 3 feet from the changing table. Our precious baby boy decided to spray my arm, but at least he missed his diaper. Our diaper genie seems to get filled up way too fast.

Another thing people tell you is that babies need to be fed. Well yeah, everyone knows that. But why does it have to take an hour to feed them. You have to get the bottle filled, heat it up and start feeding them. Jack does OK with the whole eating thing even though it takes a while. Ella on the other hand seems to forget how to eat. she will suck on the bottle for about 10 minutes and then I will check it it only to find out she had not sucked out a single drop. It can take her an hour to eat 2 ounces of food. Do you know what that does to my TV watching time?

Night and day. I know newborns keep parents up at night, but I think ours have their nights and days all mixed up. during the day all they do is sleep. We have to force them awake just to eat and even then they never fully wake up. Right before we go to bed they seem to know what time it is because they decide to wake up needing attention. Do you know how hard it is to get them back to sleep after having slept all day long. Very.

I guess other then that things are going well. I am recovering pretty fast so I can actually get up when my babies need me. I am sure Pat will be givin his perspective on things soon.

Mr. Box's Babies

2008-10-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

One of the things we were kind of worried about while Shae was pregnant was how Lunchbox would handle the babies. We know labs are great with kids and he has always loved being around kids, but we were still a little anxious about how he would handle having his world rocked. Until last week, LB was pretty much the center of our world. He was our little puppy and didn't have any competition for our attention. Obviously that's not the case anymore.

It turns out we didn't need to worry about Lunchbox. He was a little hesitant about the babies at first, but within a few minutes he got over that and moved on to being a protective older brother. It's really funny/sweet to watch. The other day a door slammed and startled the Box. He jumped up and immediately ran over to the couch (where the babies were sleeping) to make sure Jack and Ella were OK. Whenever one of the babies (Ella) has one of their (her) screaming fits Lunchbox goes to check things out. At night, he camps out in front of their bassinet to make sure no one hurts his babies. Well, he starts out there; eventually he heads over to his bed. He might have babies to watch, but that doesn't mean he has to sleep on the floor. Lunchbox may not be an only child anymore, but he's still our spoiled little puppy.

Also, we uploaded some more pics of the kids so check the gallery.

First Night Home

2008-10-11T06:59:00.000-07:00

Last night was our first night home with the twins, and I can't believe I'm saying this but I kind of miss the hospital. Don't get me wrong, we're very happy to be home. The food's better, the bed's more comfortable (mine at least, Shae misses her adjustable hospital bed), the TV's a lot bigger, and the Internet access isn't restricted to Gmail and CNN (in other words, I can access my fantasy football teams). Still, it was kind of nice to have nurses around to help with the babies and take care of Shae. Also, last night we really could have used the 2-hour break when the nurse would take the babies out to run tests on them.

I don't know if it was because we had both babies back together, or that it was a little cold in our room last night, or some other reason, but last night was not what I would call super. Jackson is usually pretty mellow, but last night he was a very unhappy baby boy. Combined with Ella's standard fussiness the babies were screaming most of the night. Shae was in quite a bit of pain, which didn't make things any easier. Eventually the babies settled down for a couple of hours of sleep and we survived, but it was the longest night yet (out of a whole four).

Of course, the night wasn't all bad. It started of with a chain of events that was just ridiculous at the time but probably should have foreshadowed the night ahead.

We set up the twins' bassinet in our bedroom about a week ago and had it all ready. It's not the easiest thing to get the mattress set up, but we had it all made up with new sheets just waiting for the babies. Of course, the second we put Ella down in her bassinet we heard the all-to-familiar explosive sound of my daughter ruining a diaper.

Going into this whole baby thing I was under the assumption that Jackson would be the baby to pee all over the place. Boy was I wrong. Jack does his part, but Ella seems to find a way to pee on everything around her every time her diaper comes off. This time was no exception as she found a way to soak her new diaper, her sleeper, the pad we put down to keep the sheets and mattress dry, and she somehow managed to make a mess of the sheets too. After going through the entire process of changing the sheet on the bassinet (which is a lot more work than I expected), it was time to try again to put the babies to bed.

Now it was Jack's turn. As soon as I put the babies down on their fresh sheets Jack started fussing. A quick look verified that sure enough he had made quite a mess down there. Not to be outdone by his older sister, just when I was almost done changing him Jack followed Ella's lead and peed all over his sleeper and new diaper. After another change of sleeper and diaper, Jack took things to the next level by exploding all over yet another diaper. Now, I'm not sure where he stores all the urine in his little tiny body, but somehow he manged to pee all over yet another sleeper during the third change.

At this point, Shae and I were pretty much on the ground laughing. Of course, Shae's still recovering from her surgery so every time she laughs it hurts. You know how Ella responded to our laughing? I'll give you a hint: it rhymes with "schmit her schmipers". Basically, every time we touched one of our kids they pissed or crapped all over themselves. By the time this whole thing was over, we had a pile of filthy diapers, a bigger pile of pee covered clothes, and a wife in need of some percocet. Good times.

Jaundiced Jack

2008-10-10T10:29:00.000-07:00

Well, apparently Jackson's bilirubin levels (thank you Google) were too high on his jaundice test so he had to go camp out in a blue tanning booth for a while. They tested him a 4 a.m. yesterday, and then re-tested him around 11 and his levels were still a little high so they took him upstairs to the pediatric hospital around 4 p.m.. I know this is pretty common (both Shae and I cooked under the lights for a while when we were babies), but it still isn't fun to have him in a different part of the hospital and it's still kind of sad to look over at his empty little bassinet.

I spent most of last night feeding/changing Ella, then heading upstairs to feed Jack. He's definitely got a nice little setup upstairs, and he's pretty cute in his eye covers. He looks like he's just lying in a tanning booth (except for the fact that it's blue). The nice part about the whole thing is that they take a plate of food to his room each meal so I get some of the awesome hospital food that Shae has been enjoying for the past few days.

It's about 10:30 on Friday morning right now, and Shae and Ella both have discharge papers (for whatever that's worth), so they should be able to leave soon. I've already packed up all the extra diapers, wipes, burp rags, blankets, etc. (they're lucky I left the towels) so we're just waiting for the OK and then we'll be gone. By "be gone" I mean that we'll head upstairs and camp out in Jack's room for a bit. The doctor is supposedly stopping by sometime around noon to take another look at Jackson (he checked in on him earlier this morning) and hopefully he can be discharged shortly after.

So we should be heading home sometime this afternoon, and then the fun begins. There will be some more pictures uploaded once I get home.

Here's a pic of my little boy in his blue tanning booth:

Day 2

2008-10-08T21:37:00.000-07:00

Well, the babies are 36 hours old and seem to be doing just fine. A few "highlights" from the past day and a half.

It didn't take long for Jackson to pee on both Shae and me. He got me yesterday the second time I changed him and got Shae this evening the first time she took his diaper off. Glad we got that out of the way.
The lactation consultant stopped by today. This was another time I wasn't booted out of the room but wished I had been. It was pretty awkward watching the consultant analyze and comment on my wife's nipples. Awk. Ward.
Last night around 3am our nurse took the babies to the nursery to do some tests on them. Our nurse recently informed us that she's going to need to take them in a little bit to get tested for jaundice. She told us that we're free to go with the babies and watch if we want. Now I love my babies, but if someone wants to take them away for an hour or so I'm not going to waste the opportunity to grab some sleep. Somehow they sleep all day but manage to wake up the second I climb into "bed" (a chair/bed monstrosity that I think is causing me long-term back problems. it's awesome).
Shae is doing much better today (that could have something to do with the large amounts of percocet and ibuprofen she's on). She's not nauseous anymore and is moving around OK. They pulled out her catheter, IV, compression cuffs, etc so she's no longer tethered to the bed. Now she can get up and move over to my chair/bed thing. Super.
Everyone that comes in asks if Shae has farted and seems to be really excited that she had a little toot earlier. I'm not sure they'd be so excited if they had ever been around her after banana smoothies.

That's about it for now. Shae's parents and my mom get into town tomorrow so the babies get to meet some grandparents. We will probably be heading home Friday morning so that will be nice. Hopefully we'll have some more updates and pictures soon.

Baby Day

2008-10-07T21:44:00.001-07:00

So, today was the day we finally got to meet Jackson and Ella. The twins were born at 7:52 am (Ella) and 7:53 am (Jackson), both 19 inches. Ella weighed in at 6lbs, 6.4oz and Jackson was 5lbs 14.8oz. So far everything is great and Shae is doing OK although she's still feeling the after effects of the anesthesia. I have uploaded some pictures of the babies and more will be uploaded as we take them. (For whatever reason, the hospital's WiFi access doesn't allow me to go access the site where I store my photos so I have to go home to upload any new ones which means they won't be updated as much as I would like). If that's not enough for you, here's a little recap of the day.

4:15 a.m.
Alarm goes off. Lunchbox decides that since the alarm has gone off it's time for his breakfast even though it's almost two hours early. When we don't feed him he's really disappointed. If only he knew what he was in for.

5:30 a.m.
Somehow we arrive at the hospital on time. When I hand in the paperwork for our monthly parking pass to the attendant, she recognizes Shae's name and wishes her good luck with the twins (I had already dropped Shae off at the hospital entrance). I think it's safe to say Shae has been coming here a lot.

After parking and hiking back up to the entrance, we check in with the guard. When we inform him that Shae's here for her C-Section he tells her to head over to the admittance desk. When I try to follow her, I'm told I have to sign in and get a visitor's badge. After Shae fills out all of her paperwork, they take her back to a birthing room to prep her for surgery. This time when I try to follow I'm told to have a seat in one of the lobby chairs and that a nurse will come to get me in about 15 minutes. I'm starting to think this day isn't all about me.

6:00 a.m.
After about 20 minutes of sitting in the lobby, the lady at the admittance desk yells over to me that I can head in to Shae's birthing room and I head in. While I was staring at the fire sprinklers in the lobby Shae had changed into a gown and started her prep. I guess they kept me in the lobby so I didn't see Shae change. Based on the reason we're here, I think it's a safe assumption that I've seen her naked. Anyway, the nurse hands me a bag with an awesome paper jump suit, booties, a hair net, and a mask. I feel like a surgeon with all my gear.

What they should have done while I was in the lobby was put in Shae's IV. Apparently she has really small veins and it was not fun watching the nurses try to put in her IV. They got it in eventually, but that was a few minutes I would have rather been watching the guard try to stay awake. After the IV was in, Shae's doctor came by to check in and then the anesthesiologist popped in to tell her about all the fun stuff he was going to give her.

7:30 a.m.
It's finally time for the surgery, so Shae heads off to the OR and I get sent to a new room. At least this one had magazines, even if they are several months old (Sports Illustrated thinks Michael Phelps has a pretty good chance to win 8 gold medals...we'll see). The 15 minutes I'm supposed to wait turns into more like 30 (I later found out that they were having trouble giving Shae her anesthesia and it took longer than normal), but eventually a nurse comes in and leads me to the OR.

7:52 a.m.
About a minute after I walk into the room, Ella comes out followed closely by Jackson. I'm officially a dad. After the nurses do some cleanup on the babies, I get to go take a look at them and take a few pictures. My favorite is the one where Ella is flipping Jackson off (I'd provide a link, but since I can't get to the site right now, you'll just have to go to the gallery and look at all of the pictures).

After another minute or two, the nurses brought the twins over to Shae so she could see them. After about 30 seconds (just enough time for the anesthesiologist to take a couple of pics), the babies and I were whisked out of the OR and into the NICU (I carried Ella).

8:00 a.m.
The next 2.5 hours were pretty weird. I hung around the NICU for a little bit, but I was pretty much just in the way and I could only stand there and watch them do tests for so long before I decided to go make phone calls. After one of the nurses tracked down Shae's purse (which had my phone) I made my calls. Once that was done, it was back to watching the babies get poked for a while, but after a few minutes of that I decided I should go find our stuff. I found our bags at the nurses' station and they told me where Shae's recovery room was going to be so I grabbed everything and took it downstairs to our new room.

So now I have all of our stuff in our new room downstairs, but the babies are still upstairs in the NICU and I don't know where Shae is or when she'll be brought down. I made a few trips back and forth to the NICU, but I was still in the way and now all of our stuff was sitting in an empty room downstairs so I didn't really want to leave it unattended too long. So basically, I spent a couple of hours alternating between sitting in an empty room downstairs and trying to stay out of nurses' ways upstairs. Fun.

10:30 a.m.
Finally, Shae got wheeled into the room. Of course, the first thing the nurses did when they brought her in was boot me out of the room so they could move her to the bed. At this point, I'm almost positve this day is not about me. Oh well, at least I'll see my babies soon.

1:00 p.m.
The babies finally get wheeled into our room. Five hours after Shae had the babies she finally got to hold them and get a good look at them. It may just be the fact that they're my kids, but I have to say the twins are pretty damn cute. I usually think babies are pretty funny looking, but mine are just cute.

The rest of the day was pretty much just hanging out in the room taking care of the twins. Shae was really naseous from the anesthesia and couldn't even sit up very well. I somehow ended up taking care of all the diapers and using a dropper to feed the babies formula. I snuck away for a little bit to get some non-hospital food and play with Lunchbox. In the afternoon/evening we got vists from Erica, Chris, Sharon, and Katheryn and phone calls, texts, etc from just about everyone. Eventually things quieted down and we even found a few minutes to get some sleep between baby feeding and changing.

That's about it for now. Hopefully I'll have time to post some updates in the next day or two, but I think the babies are going to keep me busy.

39 Weeks

2008-10-06T21:37:00.000-07:00

Less than 12 hours to babies. Here's a picture of Shae at 39 weeks:

One More Day

2008-10-05T22:26:00.000-07:00

Well, it's just about that day. Friday was my last day at work so now there's nothing for us to do except sit around and wait for Tuesday morning. We had a pretty laid back weekend, but I did manage to get over to the La Mesa Oktoberfest. Erica and I hopped on the trolley, grabbed some bratwurst, sauerkraut, and German potato salad and then brought home a bratwurst for Shae.

We've got a few last things to take care of tomorrow (putting in car seats, making sure everything is charged, some cleanup, etc), but mostly we're just trying to relax a little while we still can. Then Tuesday morning it's off to meet some babies.

It's kind of weird knowing that in less than 36 hours we're going to have two kids. I thought I would be really nervous or excited, but I'm just kind of anxious. At this point I'm just ready for the kids to be here. For the past month we've just been waiting for the twins to decide they were ready to come out. I'm sure I'll get nervous and excited tomorrow night or Tuesday morning, but right now I'm just tired of waiting and am ready to meet my kids already.

Stickers and Babies

2008-10-01T13:12:00.000-07:00

Since I refuse to drive a mini-van, I needed a place to put my mini-van sticker so here it is.

In other news, we finally have our official c-section date. We will be going in on October 7th at 7:30 am. We actually have to be there at 5:30 to check in and get prepped and all that fun stuff. Pat and I decided that we wont be getting any sleep Monday night. Of course I can always go into labor early! I hope not though. I don't want to deal with any of the pain. We will keep you posted.

Still Chugging Along

2008-09-28T19:51:00.000-07:00

There still isn't a lot going on, but that isn't enough to stop me from making another list. Just an update on a few things.

Shae is still chugging along with the baby-growing. She'll be 38 weeks tomorrow, which is already about two more than we ever thought she'd go. Every day the babies stay in there is a good thing, but Shae is over this whole pregnancy thing. I wouldn't be surprised if she talks them into popping out sometime this week. We'll see.
We had another rodent sighting. We have confirmed it's a mouse (and not nearly as big and scary as Shae led me to believe after her last experience with them), and I'm pretty sure it's a single little mouse that's stalking Shae. This time Lunchbox saw the little guy and chased him out of the house. We were so proud. Then Shae set a trap and LB almost got his tail caught in it. Quite the hunter.

That's about it right now. Like I said, there just isn't much going on. We're just trying to enjoy our last few days of quiet before the babies change everything. Shae has another round of appointments on Tuesday so maybe we'll have another update then.

What do you mean 2 more weeks?!?!

2008-09-24T10:33:00.000-07:00

I had yet another NST and OB appointment yesterday. I feel like I am there almost every day. I guess it is a good thing I was able to buy a monthly parking pass. Anyways, the actual appointments were not all that eventful. Both babies did well on the NST after I woke them up with some ice. During the NST I get my fluid levels checked to make sure there are no leaks. They do this with an ultrasound machine. While she was looking around, the nurse came across Jack's package and said, "Wow, his boy parts are sure getting big. I hope the rest of him is growing too." That's my boy!

After the test I headed across the street to see Dr. Castillo. As soon as I walked into the office the receptionist looked at me and said, "Still? How can you possibly still be pregnant?" I was wondering that same thing. I finally got to go into the room where the AC was cranked up so high that I was actually cold. I have not felt cold in a very long time. It was kind of a weird feeling. Anyways, the ultrasound machine came out and I guess Jack decided he wanted to talk to his sister because they are both head down now. I have a feeling Jack is going to be a handful! My doctor told me that at this point I have a choice of what I want to do with my delivery. We can let things take their natural course and wait for the whole labor thing, or she can go in and take them out. I told her I just wanted them out! We decided to schedule a date for a c-section. It was not the date I wanted. Apparently we were unable to go back in time and deliver last week. Instead, we are going to be scheduled for either the 6th or 7th of October. It just depends when there is an open room. Do you know how far off that is? 2 weeks! How am I supposed to deal with these things inside of me for another 2 weeks?!? I have a feeling it may be sooner. I have been having some false labor at night while I try to sleep. The only remedy I have found is to sleep in the corner of our sectional. If I am somewhat upright I don't seem to notice anything. My doctor was not too concerned and just told me to watch out for the other signs. I guess other than that, nothing much is going on. For the next 2 weeks, we will be sitting and waiting.

No Babies Yet

2008-09-22T19:30:00.001-07:00

Looks like they're going to let me watch the Chargers game. I think I'm gonna like these kids.

The Michelin Woman

2008-09-18T20:54:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday Shae had yet another doctor appointment. Actually, she had a non-stress test and a doctor's appointment. A few people have asked what the hell a non-stress test (or a "nst" for the cool people) is. Basically, Shae sits in a chair with three monitors strapped to her belly (one for each baby and one to monitor contractions) and drinks apple juice while listening to the babies' heart beats. Every so often the babies kick the monitors and it sounds like someone is smacking a microphone. This goes on for about 45 minutes or so. Very exciting. On the bright side, I got to read "The War Of The Wizards" (don't worry, the wizards worked it all out in the end) and a Scooby Doo story (don't worry, Scooby and Shaggy got to the bottom of the mystery) while I waited.

Anyway, back to Tuesday's doctor's appointment. After the excitement of last Wednesday we thought we might be scheduling a C-section at the appointment so I tagged along again. After dealing with several crazy old guys trying to run me down in the parking lot I finally made it up to the office. Eventually we got into the little exam room and the nurse took Shae's blood pressure and then told Shae to drop trou and put a sheet on. A while later the doctor came in and we got our normal look at the kids (not nearly as cool as it seemed before we started going to the specialist with the good ultrasound). So far, so good.

Then things got awkward. In a scene reminiscent of a bad trip through customs, the doctor threw on some rubber gloves and went under the sheet. Shae's responses indicated this was not a gentle exam. After about 30 seconds of Shae wincing, the doctor's head popped back out from under the sheet and she said, "Oh yeah, he's not head down so you're having a C-section. I guess we don't really need to do that." We did learn that Shae is about 1.5 cm dilated, which I guess doesn't really mean much at all other than the babies could be coming anytime from soon to a few weeks. We could have figured that out without violating my wife.

After the gloves were taken off we got into how Shae's doing. She's swollen, having headaches (occasionally, not all the time), and basically is getting pretty tired of being pregnant. I guess her blood pressure was higher than normal because they made her lie down and then came back about 15 minutes later and took it again. It must have been OK on the second take because the doctor didn't seem all that concerned. As she was finishing up, she just gave us some general instructions: "Continue bedrest and call us and come right in if she experiences headaches or blurry vision, gets a pain in her right side, or she starts looking like the Michelin woman." The doctor put it all in the computer, told us to make an appointment for next week, and said her goodbyes.

After she left, Shae and I just kind of looked at each other. Our first reaction was the same: "You're/I'm on bedrest?!?" I'm not sure how Shae missed the memo (I'm blaming her since I've been avoiding most of the appoinments lately), but somehow we weren't aware Shae was supposed to be on bedrest. Of course, her version of "active" is pretty much couch-rest so I think we're OK. It also occurred to us we might have trouble spotting the other symptoms as well since she has headaches all the time (pregnant or not) and the pain in her right side is named Ella. As far as the "Michelin woman", all we could come up with for that is the doctor meant to be worried if she woke up white and puffy. Shae and I both agreed that white and puffy pretty much describes her right now so I'm not sure how we'll tell.

So right now we're kind of in a holding pattern. The babies will be 37 weeks on Monday, which according to Shae is "fully baked" so we're hoping to hold out until then. I'm hoping they make it until at least Tuesday because the Chargers play Monday night and I don't want to watch the game on the little hospital room TV.

Here's a pic of Shae at 36.5 weeks. Still looking great. We also uploaded some new pics of the baby room over in the baby stuff gallery.

Home Invasion

2008-09-15T16:20:00.000-07:00

I had every intention of sitting down today and writing up one last post about my pregnancy woes, but something happened the other night that changed all that. We had a home invasion. Before you get all worried let me explain. At 4am I had finally fallen back asleep after a trip to the bathroom when I was awakened by something scratching at our window screen. I was a little freaked out so I turned on the lamp next to my bed. This of course woke Pat up. The next thing I knew, something jumped off our window sill, ran across our floor and took sanctuary under the recliner. I told Pat I thought I just saw a mouse on our window sill. He was groggy and a little upset from being woken up and he told me to just go back to sleep.

A few minutes later I actually saw the mouse run up the air conditioner cord and onto the window sill. He stood up on his hind legs and started scratching at the screen again. At this point, I realized two things. 1. This was either a HUGE mouse with super human strength, or a rat. 2. I needed to close the window or else there was going to be a hole in the screen pretty soon. Pat thought it would be a good idea to take the screen off, wait for super mouse to crawl back up and then he would just go out the window. I thought this was a great idea. Pat spent about 10 minutes trying to get the stupid thing off the window before giving up. During this whole mouse/rat ordeal guess what my awesome watch dog was doing. Absolutely nothing! This dog wakes up to every little sound, but as soon as there is something at our window, he sleeps through it. I do have to give him a little credit. He cleaned up after the monster mouse by eating all its dropping off the carpet. This was definitely not a pregnant mouse because there was a lot of droppings.

Anyways, after Pat got back into bed it was about 4:30 and I was wide awake. There was no way I was going to fall asleep with this stupid rat making a ruckus. I knew both Pat and I needed to get some sleep, so I moved into the living where I thought it would be quiet. Boy was I wrong. First of all, our house has an open foundation with hardwood floors and we are not sure the walls are actually insulated. You can hear every little noise! Our bedroom on the other had was added on much later and is very quiet. It makes me very thankful for our bedroom. Ok, by the time I get situated on the couch it is about 4:45. Do you know what happens at our house at 5am? The sprinklers come on. I never realized how loud they really are. We have 3 stations that are sprinklers go through. The whole thing takes about 20 minutes. At 5:20 the sprinklers finally turn off and I feel like I may be able to finally get some sleep. Nope.

Guess what I saw: another super human strength mouse. It ran across the living room floor and behind the curtains that are right next to the couch. How am I supposed to sleep knowing this mouse man is right next to me. I guess it ended up climbing onto the window sill because it dropped down onto the arm of the couch where my head was. After a few choice words for this evil demon, I decided it was just a mouse and it wouldn't kill me. As I lay there thinking I really need to get some sleep, I realized it had been an hour since I last went pee, so up I got and headed for the bathroom. I finished my business and went back to the couch. I looked at the clock and saw that it was 5:50ish. Shit. in 10 minutes round 2 of the sprinklers would be kicking off. I said @#$% it and turned on the tv. I figured Pat would be up soon anyways since the dog never lets us sleep past 6 because thats what time he eats breakfast. Once again I was wrong. Apparently, he lets Pat sleep in until 7. What the hell is wrong with my dog?! During that hour I think I may have actually fallen asleep for about 30 minutes. Don't worry, I was finally able to get some sleep later because it was football day.

I have a doctor appointment tomorrow so we will probably have something to post on the pregnancy front tomorrow.

Checking The Levels

2008-09-13T20:59:00.000-07:00

I've always been a procrastinator. In elementary school, I put off reports and projects as long as possible and then got everything done at the last minute. Things didn't get any better in college, I just had to work a little harder at the last minute. At work it's the same thing. Every task gets put off as long as possible until I end up working on about 10 things at once killing myself to get everything done. Shae's a bit of a procrastinator herself. In fact, sometimes she makes it seem like I'm just an amateur compared to her. She puts off doing every little task around the house until everything is a huge job.

Of course everything is completely different with the babies. Shae and I have had everything ready for their arrival for weeks. The nursery is ready, the car seats are installed, and the whole house is clean and ready. Or not. To say we aren't quite ready would be an understatement. Of course, we still have lots of time to get everything set up. Or not.

On Monday night, Shae went in for one of her non-stress tests. I guess something didn't look right because on Tuesday we got a call from the doctor's office saying we needed to go in for an ultrasound. Shae had an appointment with her doctor on Wednesday morning and the ultrasound was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. We figured there wasn't much to worry about, but just in case I tagged along to the appointments.

There wasn't much unusual about the doctor's appointment at first. The doc asked if everything was OK and took a quick look to see what position they were in (Ella is head down, Jackson's not as cooperative and is all over the place). The fun part came when we asked if there was anything we should tell them to look for in the ultrasound that afternoon. She told us that the babies' AFI (basically, the amniotic fluid level) was low and that it might be time to get the kids out. I guess the levels were low for a "normal" pregnancy, but she wanted the high-risk pregnancy specialist that does the ultrasounds to take a look. At this point, we were starting to think there was a chance we could be parents by bedtime. When the doctor said goodbye and added "Maybe I'll be seeing you guys in a few hours" and told us not to worry about scheduling an appointment for next week since we may not need it, we really went into panic mode.

At this point all Shae and I could think about was all the crap we had been putting off that we had to do in the next five hours. I ran into work and tied up a few loose ends, talked to my supervisor, and basically tried to get everything setup in case I was going to be gone. Shae made a run to Babies R Us to pick up some stuff we needed and packed up the hospital bags we would need if we went right from the appointment to the hospital. Basically, we both spent the time before our appointment in a daze of excitement crossed with what I would call "Oh-crap!-ness". It was an interesting day, to say the least.

So at 3:00 Shae and I were sitting in the ultrasound room thinking of all the crap we didn't get done and trying to figure out how we were going to get ready while the tech was looking at the babies. When she got to the part where they check the fluid levels we both got interested and paid close attention. Since the main reason we were there was that the fluid had been low on Monday night, the tech measured a few extra times. I'm not sure what happened on Monday, but the AFI was right where it was supposed to be on Wednesday afternoon (actually, the fluid levels were pretty high which I guess is good) and we didn't have to go to the hospital for a C-section. So after all of our running around and panicking we were right back where we were on Monday morning: waiting for the kids.

We don't know when the babies are going to get here, but we do know it's going to be soon. Shae has another appointment on Tuesday and we'll probably schedule a C-section for sometime in the next couple of weeks (with Jackson not cooperating with his positioning Shae pretty much has to get a C-section). At least now we have time to do all of the things we have been putting off. On second thought, we still have a week or two, what's on TV?

"I want these little $*@&ers out of me!"
--Shizzle (I think she's ready to meet her babies)

Nesting, Leaking, and Peeing

2008-09-09T18:25:00.000-07:00

There hasn't been much new happening on the baby front, but I figured I should go ahead and give an update anyway.

Shae hit 35 weeks pregnant yesterday, so it's getting close. The doctor has always said that she'd like Shae to get to 37 weeks, 36 weeks would be nice, and she wouldn't stop them at 35. I don't know exactly what that means except that 35 weeks is way too soon. Between non-stress tests, weekly checkups, ultrasounds, and whatever else I may have forgotten it seems like Shae visits a doctor's office or hospital almost every day. At any one of these they could decide it's time for the kids to come out, so I'm starting to get the impression I'm actually going to have kids. Soon. Shae has a trip to the doc and an ultrasound scheduled for tomorrow so there should be some updated news.

An update on the prego:

She pees something like 6000 times a day. I've given up ever getting through a TV show without pausing for a pee-break. A movie is completely out of the question. She says it has something to do with two babies taking turns squeezing her bladder.
About a week ago, Shae informed me that her boobs were leaking. Uhh...gross. That's all I've got on that topic.
Shae tells me that when we started dating her measurements were something like 36-27-36. Just for fun, she took her measurements a few days back. The results: 40-47-40. Shae thought I should share that.
The other night it almost happened. I almost had to get up and sleep on the couch. I know I snore a bit, but I can't come close to competing with pregnant Shae snoring. At one point I had Shae snoring on my left and Lunchbox barking in his sleep on my right. I kept waiting for them to wake each other up. Never happened. Snore, bark, snore, bark, snore, bark...
Yesterday I came home from work to find the laundry hamper almost empty, the bed covered in clean, folded laundry, and missing buttons replaced on about five of my shirts. I think this is what they call nesting. I've been trying to get Shae to do some laundry and fix my shirts for almost two years. So, all I have to do to get my shirts fixed is put up with constant peeing, leaking boobs, and eardrum shattering snoring. Oh, and spend the next 20-something years of my life taking care of kids. Totally worth it; I was getting really low on shirts.

That's all for now. Hopefully we'll have some more info soon.

"*SNIFF* My cleavage smells like mac and cheese. *SNIFF* No hot dogs though." --Shizzle

Report Cards For Mr. Box

2008-08-25T19:33:00.000-07:00

When I was in 9th grade I brought home a progress report that had a few "U"s in the behavior category. Somehow I was able to convince my mom that U stood for "Unbelievable" rather than "Unsatisfactory". Since she's a teacher I'm not sure how I pulled it off, but for a day or two I got away with it. Of course, eventually she talked to my teachers and the whole scheme fell apart. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

I bring this up because I recently realized that I never posted about any of Lunchbox's report cards. For a few months he went to Supplemental Obedience and Socialization (SOS) class once a week and brought home a progress report each time. He's been on summer vacation the last month or so (more accurately, our trainer hasn't been sending her kids in for tutoring so we haven't been able to do a trade for SOS class), but here are some of his report card highlights. Let's just say that if I had brought home reports like this it would have been a lot harder to convince my mom I was doing unbelievable.

5/27: This is from his first day of class. Shae said dropping him off was like dropping off a kid the first day of school. He cried, Shae tried not to, and the teacher threw him in a crate. Well, maybe not exactly like the first day of school but close.

He/she did good on: Most obed.
He/she needs to work on: Calling out of play. Pulling.
Notes: Lunchbox was a bit of a wild man today! He should be tired!

He was tired alright. He came home and slept all afternoon and evening. Of course he woke up around midnight full of energy and ready to play. That was fun.

6/3: A few weeks later. Lunchbox did much better, but as you can tell he still had a few issues.

He/she did good on: Good stay
He/she needs to work more on: Don't hump!
Notes: He had a great day!

If I ever brought home a report card that contained the phrase "Don't hump!" I'm pretty sure I would not get to have a great day.

7/1: One of the last sessions he went to. Doing great, but still not what I would call a perfect report card.

He/she did good on: All obed
He/she needs to work more on:
Notes: Lunchbox had a great day! He listened, he came out of play when he was called, he didn't hump (much). All in all, an excellent dog!

Again, if my report card said "he didn't hump (much)" it wouldn't be followed up by anything close to "excellent".

See mom, it could have been a lot worse than unbelievable.

In other Lunchbox news, we took him to the dog park yesterday. There were quite a few dogs there, but the highlight was a full-grown Great Dane. LB had no idea what to do with that giant thing. He gave Shae and me a look that said, "You guys see that thing, right? It's freakin' huge! What the hell am I supposed to do with that thing?" Mr. Box's day at the park can be pretty well described in one sentence: "Needs to work more on: Not humping."

Baby Math

2008-08-16T15:05:00.000-07:00

Over the past few weeks Shae and I have attended a couple of baby-related classes (which I've already written about), and they've thrown out a few facts and figures. I thought I'd do the math on some of these and share.

According to our Baby Care Basics class, newborn babies go through about 10-12 diapers a day. Since these kids are mine it's probably safe to assume they're going to be closer to 12 a day. So, with two kids that means these little things are going to use 24 diapers a day. You know how many that is a week? 168! A month (we'll use 30 days)? 720! What the hell?!?! 720 diapers a month? Crap. Literally.
Towards the end of the Childbirth Prep class we were informed that babies should be fed 8-12 times a day. Because it makes math easier, we'll feed our kids 10 times a day. Each. So 20 times a day a baby is going to be latched onto wifey's boob(s). Wow.
Also at the Childbirth Prep class we learned that the average baby sleeps 13 - 17 hours a day. I'm all for more sleeping so this isn't one of the scary facts. I'm assuming my kids are going to sleep 17 hours a day because it makes me feel better.
Something doesn't add up here. If babies sleep 17 hours a day, how the hell can they eat 10 times a day and still have time to mess up 12 diapers? Even assuming they multi-task and take care of the diapers while sleeping and eating they still seem to have a pretty busy day. No wonder kids these days are over scheduled, they're overbooked the day they pop out.

We haven't posted a picture of pregnant Shae lately, so we took another one yesterday. I think she's gotten a little bigger since last time we posted a pic. Let's just say Shae + (2 babies * ~32 weeks) =

As you can see in the second pic, Shae's shirt (thanks Mom!) has two very true messages. There are twins in Shae's belly, and her twins are moving south.

Finally, it seems like everyone nests differently. Some clean, some get the baby room ready, and some make new mirrors for the master bathroom. You can guess where Shae falls.

Prepping for Chidbirth

2008-08-10T16:45:00.000-07:00

It was a tough two days, but Shae and I survived our "Childbirth Prep" class. Since I'm such an expert (we have a certificate and everything) I thought I'd share what I learned. Basically, it all comes down to one thing: this whole process is gross. If that's not enough for you, I'll recap the highlights from the class.

Before I start the recap, I have a couple of general thoughts about the weekend:

First, it's become apparent to me that humans are not made to sit in any sort of class all day. I don't know how kids do it. No matter how old you are, or what the class is, eventually everyone starts to drift off, watch the clock, and hope for the class to be over. It doesn't matter if it's elementary school, college, work-related training, or (apparently) childbirth prep. You might think that a two day class that you sign up for voluntarily (well...Shae volunteered for both of us) and pay for might be different, but you'd be wrong. By the end of the first day both Shae and I were completely exhausted. We came home and immediately took a two-hour nap. We found out Sunday that pretty much everyone else did the same thing, including the teacher. The women have an excuse (growing babies and all), but the guys don't (unless you count putting up with pregnant women, which is exhausting but doesn't get the same sympathy as actually being pregnant).
I don't think anyone in the class was mature enough to have kids. Obviously everyone there has had sex at least once, but that didn't seem to make the conversations any less awkward. The entire weekend was full of giggles, "that's what got us into this in the first place" comments, and basically the maturity level of a sixth grade sex ed lecture. Shae and I fit right in.
This isn't related to the class at all, but I don't think NBC knows what "Live" means. Last night after our long day of class Shae and I were relaxing while watching some of the Olympics. I had seen the outcome of the events hours earlier online, yet there was "Live" up in the right corner of the screen. At one point (9pm to be exact) they decided they'd prove they were live by showing the time in Beijing and the time in the US. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure 8pm central is not equivalent to 9pm pacific. Then it got worse: as I sat there and watched I had to listen to the anchors brag about how NBC was doing us a huge favor to bring us these events live. I have a whole rant on tape-delayed events in the age of the Internet, but that's not what this post is about so let's just move on.

OK, on with the weekend recap.

Shae and I got to class bright and early and were the first students there. We got our little visitor sticker badges, found the conference room, signed in, and grabbed copies of all the goodies provided for us. We got a diaper, a book, and a ton of useful information that will probably sit on a table unread until after we need it. Since we were the first couple there we had our pick of the seats. Obviously we chose pretty much the worst seats in the room. We rule. My chair was the squeakiest in the room so for the rest of the weekend every time I switched positions the whole class got to hear about it.

Eventually the other couples (and one single) showed up and we got the party started. The teacher seemed to understand her audience (pregnant women and men who had been dragged to class) and she was really good. We learned a lot of good stuff, but rather than go over all of it here are a few highlights (that's right, another list; I might rename this blog "Lists Of The Lorigans").

We started with the standard introductions where all the parents-to-be share their due dates (once again our date was a month after everyone else's and yet Shae looked the most pregnant), baby names, baby sexes, doctor, etc. In response to one of the doctors, the teacher asked her what she thought of him. "Uhhh...he's okay. Ehh...he was kinda creepy at first, but..." Not the biggest vote of confidence. I didn't take it as the best sign when our teacher figured she should remind us that we can change doctors right up until the babies pop out if we want. I'm glad we like our doc. I've just about forgiven her for finding that extra baby.
To help explain why women have so much discomfort during pregnancy, we were shown pictures of the female anatomy before and during pregnancy. Stomach pushed up (in Shae's case, just under her boobs), bladder squished, and everything else shoved out of the way. The picture showed one kid, but I'm sure that there's not much difference with two in there.
We learned some tricks to help when the kids (especially Ella) are kicking the same spot over and over. Apparently the flashlight trick that Shae read about a few months back annoys them and they'll move to get away from it. Also, you can ice the area where her foot is kicking and she'll move to get away from the cold. I'm all for new ways to annoy my kids before I even get to see them.
We were talking about when the babies "drop" and someone asked how she'd be able to tell when it happened. They went over a whole bunch of ways I didn't really pay attention to. I'll be able to tell when our babies drop because Shae's boobs will stop resting on her stomach. Then Shae's boobs growled at me. It must have been getting close to lunch time.
They used to teach kegle exercises in the class, but the guys got...umm...excited (the teacher's word) so they don't do that anymore. I think I'm happy that part got dropped from the curriculum.
One of the signs of impending labor is Shae will start nesting. Apparently she's going to randomly start cleaning everything up in the middle of the night to get ready for the babies. I'm hoping that phase lasts a long time and the house gets vacuumed.
About 11% of the time a woman's water breaks to indicate the start of labor. In my vast experience (TV and movies), it's closer to 100%. I'm sure the teacher must have been wrong because Hollywood wouldn't lie to me.
We learned a few positions that are supposed to help Shae get through labor. For a few, there were cards with pictures that were given to a couple to act out and then the rest of the class tried it. Here's the transcript of an exchange between the teacher and one of the dads over the position they were supposed to demo (well, just his questions, the teacher answered yes to all of them):
You want us to do this?
With the pillow?
Do we put one on the ground for her knees?
I snapped a picture of the card with my phone to share with you guys. If you remember my earlier remark about the maturity level of the class you'll be able to get a decent idea of the reaction to this position.
After being shown the vacuum that is sometimes used to help pull the baby out, I had a question: If you have good insurance do they use a Dyson vacuum?
We spent quite a bit of time the second day on breast feeding. There are way too many jokes about boobs to make about this section of the class so I'm not going to make them all here. Rest assured I made plenty during class.
The teacher showed us a few ways to hold our babies, one of which is the "football cradle". One of the other dads informed her she was doing it wrong because she wasn't covering the baby with her off hand. I bet she fumbles a lot.

That's about it for the recap. Throughout the class I wrote down some or the more interesting events/quotes so I wouldn't forget them later. I can only imagine what the girl next to me must have thought when I grabbed the notebook and wrote furiously at what must have seemed like random times.

"They shove pills and balloons up there? What am I, a drug mule?" --Shizzle (after watching a video on methods of inducing labor)

Videos and Vacuums

2008-08-07T19:34:00.000-07:00

A couple of additions to yesterday's post:

Shae and I are enrolled in a "birthing class" this weekend. It's 9 - 3 Saturday and Sunday. Seriously? 12 hours of info on birthing? I'm pretty sure we're going to be watching at least one of those horrible videos they made us watch in health class. I think it's a little late to scare us out of starting down the pregnancy path. I'm terrified of this weekend. I think by noon on Saturday I'm going to be sitting there in shock, and by 3 o'clock Sunday afternoon I'll probably be catatonic. Yay!
As Shae and I were laying in bed last night, a commercial for the "Pos-T-Vac" vacuum therapy system came on. I couldn't find the actual commercial from last night, but I did find this video on YouTube. I don't want to ruin it, but it's a vacuum for your...ummm...package that supposedly is for people who don't want to use the little blue pill. Oh, and apparently it's covered by medicare. I'd love to see that receipt. In my search for the commercial I also came across this page (scroll about halfway down). If I were looking for reviews on shop vacs, I'm not sure a junk vac would be very useful. At least a carrying case is included.

Strippers, Babies, and Ponies

2008-08-06T21:50:00.000-07:00

Just a few random thoughts and stories from the past week or so. I'm too lazy to worry about transition sentences, so we're going with a list.

A couple of blocks up the road from my house there's a "Gentlemen's Club" with the classy name "Little Darlings". "Little Darlings" is the only building on either side of the road for a block or so. It's painted orange with turquoise trim (until recently it was pink). Most days there is a sign out front on the sidewalk advertising the current event/special: "Free lunch 12-4pm. No cover until 4pm!", "Thursday night: Bridget the Midget", "Wednesday: Pudding night", etc. Seriously, I didn't make any of those up; they're all actual ads that have been on the board at least once in the past year. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the place doesn't exactly blend in. I'm pretty sure the blind guys at the convalescent home down the block can see it. So imagine my surprise when a few weeks ago they started putting up tons of bright balloons on the sidewalk every day. Is there really anyone driving by who somehow missed the orange/turquoise building, free lunch, and Bridget the Midget who sees some balloons and says to himself "Ooohh! Balloons! Wait...is that a strip club? I have to stop right now!"? On second thought, I like balloons...I'll be right back.
Ella and Jackson are still growing like crazy (that's why you get a list...I'm not even going to attempt to transition from "Little Darlings" to my little darlings). Shae tells me that in the past couple of days they have grown much faster than her belly. Right now Jackson is sticking out the lower-right side of Shae's belly and Ella's jutting out the upper-left. You can actually push them into each other and then feel them kick each other. I'm sure they love that.
Staying with the babies, my daughter kicked me in the face the other day. I've heard of this happening to others, but it's still a little upsetting when your kid kicks you in the mouth. I was explaining to Ella that if she didn't stop kicking her mother in the ribs she wasn't going to be the favorite when she came out. Apparently she didn't like that so she responded with a kick to my mouth. Having a daughter is going to be super.
On Saturday, we (we being me, Chris, Patty, Lamb, and Wendy) went up to the Del Mar Fair and caught some horse races. Nothing quite like putting down a huge $2 on the 2-horse and having the ticket guy frown at you. "$2 on Number 3. Anything else? No? Really? Huh." I'm sure everyone will be shocked, but I didn't win a single bet. That's right, I squandered away a whole $10. I even managed to lose despite betting on 3 horses in a 4 horse race. Yet another thing I'm awesome at.
They had a chili cookoff at the racetrack so we got to wander around with a little plastic cup and spoon and taste a bunch of chili. After trying most of the contenders I had consumed almost enough chili to consider it a free lunch. I think everyone was scared of being too spicy for the horse racing crowd because none of the chili was the least bit spicy. I turned in my ballot with #109 at the top and felt pretty confident in my vote. Then my buddy Lamb came over and asked if I had tried the one that tasted exactly like Stagg chili. Sure enough, when I thought about it #109 tasted like it came right out of the can. I have outstanding taste.
If you want to end this post on a happy note, you should probably skip right down to the quote(s) from Shizzle. If you're still reading you probably stayed one race too long, just like us. Jumping back to early in the day, we were waiting to pay for parking and Chris tried to sound like he knew something about horse racing by throwing out "I'm putting my money on the 5 horse in the 7th race." Nevermind the fact none of us knew if there were even 7 races (there were 10 actually), it was an impressive show of racing lingo. After a day of chili and racing the 7th race finally came around and Chris put down his big money ($2 of course) on "Crazy Cash". There's no way this could go bad, right? Wrong. After shooting out to an early lead, Crazy Cash proceeded to fall to the back of the pack. By the time we turned around to watch the horses finish (the screen and the track were on opposite sides of us so we watched most of the race on the screen and then the finish "live"), Crazy Cash was nowhere to be seen. Finally, CC came into view. Just as I was making a comment to Chris about his awesome skill at picking winners, I noticed that CC was missing a jockey and seemed to be limping. Somewhere towards the end of the race (after we had turned around) CC had fallen and broken a leg. It got pretty quiet pretty quick. They brought out a little screen to block the view from the grandstand (not a good sign) and a trailer from a local horse sanctuary (a better sign). As we left the track we weren't sure what happend to Crazy Cash, but the next day I found a a recap on the day's races that included the information that CC had been euthanized on the track. RIP Crazy Cash. Definitely a downer end to an otherwise great day.

"Our babies are going to lose their fur this week! Awesome!" --Shizzle

"When I lay down, my boobs are bigger than my stomach...maybe."
--Shizzle (Bonus quote because she threw that one out while I was typing)

How Do We Live Without Them!

2008-08-05T12:32:00.000-07:00

The other day I was sitting at work trying to figure out how to wipe the dripping sweat from my cleavage without my students noticing. It got me thinking that someone really needs to make a boob deodorant for pregnant women. After my students left I went to the trusty internet to do some research. I was unable to find any magical boob sweat remover, but I did find a bunch of other interesting products for pregnant women.

The first product I came across was something called Mommy Sox. These little socks are supposed to relieve all the foot pain that comes with pregnancy. Wanna know what I think? I don't think a little piece of cotton is going to fix the problem of having 30 extra pounds trying to flatten out your arches. Besides, what pregnant woman can actually put socks on? I don't even remember the last time I could fit by big swollen feet into a pair of shoes that actually required socks, let alone tie the damn things.

Next up is a product called Mamma Spanx. These are footless pantyhose for pregos. Again, how is a prego supposed to actually put these horribly unfashionable items on? And why are they footless? I guess it's so we can wear them with our mamma sox and start a whole new trend. I love the pictures of all the women wearing really high heels in the photos. I have yet to see a pregnant woman wear anything but flip flops.

This next one I came across is just ridiculous. It is the Baby Chime. Basically they are bells that come on a long necklace and they sit on your stomach. So now you have all the annoyances of babies kicking you and they have to go and add a bell. Remember back in days when everyone wore bells on their shoes at Christmas time? Think of having 9 months of bells. I guess it is supposed to calm the baby down both in the womb and then again outside. If I was a baby listening to a bell for 9 months and then my mother shook the thing around after I was born, I think I would lose it.

I can actually see a use for this one. Well, only if I walked around public places with my shirt pulled up. Touch My Tummy Tattoos. These are temporary tattoos that you put on your stomach to tell people either were to touch, or to keep their hands off. I don't know how many times I have gone into the grocery store and have had random women walk up to me and rub my belly while asking if I was pregnant.

I just have to laugh at something called a Belly Up. They are like little suspenders that connect your pants to your bra. I guess they are supposed to combat the horribleness of ass crack. If you have ever been pregnant then you know how tight and thick the bands of maternity pants are, so why would you need suspenders? And another thing, Do we really need something that is pulling our boobs down even further?

I think this one has to be my favorite product. It is the V2 Supporter. Yes ladies, they now make jock straps just for us. Apparently it is supposed to prevent excessive swelling in the vulva area. Ummm, can we say gross? How big does your vag have to get to warrant the use of this contraption?

The Miss Oops Popper Stoppers seem like a really stupid idea. They are like little band aids for you popped out belly button. Everyone knows that part of being pregnant is waiting for your belly button to pop. Maybe they think that if people cant see their turkey timer, then they wont know they are pregnant. They must not be having twins.

I have decided to group these next products together. I can't believe how many products are available just for nipples! Breast Shells are little plastic discs that cover the nipple and "encourage" them to stick out further. I think sticking your chest in the freezer for a few seconds will do the same thing. Apparently you use these before breast feeding. During the feeding you can use Nipple Shields. These things look like the nipples that are on regular bottles but you stick them to yourself and the baby sucks your nipple into it like a vacuum. No wonder men act like Hoovers. Lets not forget about all the different creams, lotions and gels that are out there to sooth yourself after feeding. I equate these to Udder Cream for cows. I found a product called the Booby Tube but I have no idea what it is for. I just like the name. There is also a Shower Hug. You wrap this around your chest during a shower to protect sensitive nipples. How are you supposed to clean yourself if you have a big band wrapped around you. I guess these women never get sweaty breasts. Lucky. My favorite are Breast Pads. These are just maxi pads for your boobs.

So I just have to wonder what life was like before all of these products. I mean, how did women survive. Obviously we are not supposed to breastfeed without a ton of nipple products and our stomachs will fall off if we don't use all the support garments out there. I guess no one ever got pregnant before we had all of these miracle products. I better go out and do some shopping so my stomach doesn't fall off and God forbid if people see my belly button.

"Babies, stop kicking your mother. I want her to be nice to me tonight." --Pat

More Pics Of The Kids

2008-07-24T21:28:00.000-07:00

Shae and I had yet another ultrasound yesterday. You can find the pics over in the twins gallery. Ella was very cooperative this time and we actually got couple of semi-3D views of her face. Jackson on the other hand, not so much. He spent the entire appointment hiding from the camera and the pics of him are what I would expect an ultrasound of Picasso's kid to look like. His face is kind of visible if you look hard enough, but his images from the last ultrasound are much better. About the only thing we got a good look at was Jack's junk (I like that one enough I'm going to use it again). Even then I got his leg and his dangler confused. I don't know if that says more about my boy's package or how difficult it was to get a good look at him yesterday. Obviously, I'm going with Option A.

In other baby news, for the past couple of weeks whenever I get home from work Ella starts kicking at the sound of my voice. At first I thought it was just random timing due to Shae moving around when I got home, but then I realized she actually moves around at the sound of my voice. It was such a special moment. Then we were eating dinner with some friends, one of whom was a guy, and she started jumping around at the sound of his voice. So in the span of about 10 seconds I went from feeling so special that my daughter knew my voice to the realization that my daughter just loves boys. All boys. Great. Just shoot me now.

"I must be hungry, my boobs are growling." --Shizzle
(For anyone not aware, the babies kind of push everything out of their way as they grow. Shae's stomach has migrated north and now resides somewhere around her knockers.)

A Weekend In Arizona

2008-07-24T20:57:00.000-07:00

Last weekend Shae and I hit the road and headed to Sedona to spend the weekend with my mom. We figured the best time to head over to Arizona would be July. Nice and cool in the desert in July. Actually, it wasn't even that hot over there last weekend. The thermometer in my car only read '---' (meaning over the ~110 degree max that my car will register) once or twice on the trip, and it was in the mid 90's or so in Sedona. Downright frigid! I wish I had packed a coat.

The trip out of San Diego was pretty uneventful, but it got exciting in Yuma. You know what they had in Yuma? Gas prices that started with a 3 -- $3.99 (for regular, it cost me $4.22 for premium). I really hate that I was surprised to see gas under $4. That was pretty much the highlight of driving in Arizona. Phoenix/Glendale were not quite as friendly. Some big car fire forced the closure of the freeway we were on. I understand this stuff happens from time to time, and normally it would be a big deal. What made it a pain in the ass was that they forced everyone off the freeway, closed all the on-ramps, and didn't provide any signs to let drivers know where we were supposed to go. In California, we have these brand new technological marvels called detour signs. Hopefully someone in Arizona will cross the border and steal our idea. Seriously, how the hell can you close a freeway for over an hour (the accident was over an hour old by the time we got there) and not put up any signs notifying drivers how they're supposed to get back on the freeway.

Luckily my car's navigation system was made in a state that knows about these new "detours" so we were able to find our way back to the road. Good thing too, because if we hadn't we never would have gone by "Surprise Stadium". Until about four months ago I don't think I would have appreciated the name of the stadium as much as I do now. You know what the surprise is (at least as far as I can tell)? There are two stadiums. I had a surprise like that once. I'm naming them Ella and Jackson.

Apparently they have way too much money to spend on construction over in our neighbor to the East because every freeway we touched was under construction of some sort. However, nothing comes close to the work being done in and around Sedona. Someone has decided that traffic lights are too easy to understand so they're getting rid of the lights and putting in roundabouts. I think it has something to do with the environmental impact of idling at lights or something like that. I'm sure the roundabouts are a huge step forward, but my only experience with roundabouts in a semi-high traffic area was at a big shopping center in Fresno (ahh...beautiful Fresno). Every time Shae and I went to see a movie I witnessed at least one near-accident on the roundabouts and to this day I have no idea how I avoided ever being hit in those damn things. I'm sure there won't be any problems with the 10,000 of the things they're putting in Sedona though.

Once we actually got off the freeways of Arizona our trip was great. As I mentioned earlier, the weather was much cooler than we expected and we had a great time. Some time at the pool, several good meals (thanks Mom!), an interesting trolley ride (driven by a cowboy pun-master), and a massage for me and the pregnant wifey. A very relaxing time, and a nice break before the impending chaos that'll be arriving all too soon (I'm looking at you twins).

Speaking of massages, let's get to the age-old question of massages: guy or girl? I personally don't care as long as I get a good massage. I mean, is it really any more awkward to get rubbed down by a guy than a woman? Someone's rubbing oil all over and pretending the sheet over your dangle actually covers your stuff up. I don't think breasts make that any less uncomfortable than a set of franks and beans. I ended up getting the messy rub-down from a masseuse named Mark (one guess if that's a guy or a girl) and Shae got a special maternity massage from Alicia (again, I leave it up to you to guess the sex). We both were extremely happy with our massages and were nice and relaxed for the rest of the night.

The ride home wasn't nearly as eventful as our previous trip. There was no roadwork, no traffic, and we didn't get stripped searched at any of the Border Patrol checkpoints. The guy asking us if we had any fruit took a longer look in our car than any of the Border Patrol guys. So, to recap, almost 1000 miles of driving with a pregnant wife, 1 oily rubdown by a man, and an overall nice weekend.

Baby Shower (South)

2008-07-20T22:55:00.000-07:00

One day after dealing with changing a doll's diaper I had to deal with something really scary: Shae's baby shower (South). I somehow managed to get roped into attending the shower. The excuse used by Shae was that I needed to be around to take care of the dog. I think she just wanted to make me deal with 20 baby-crazy women.

The day started off bright and early with Erica (the shower hostess) and me making a 7am trip down to Vons to get some balloons. Of course the balloon counter was closed, so we got the 15-year-old working the customer service desk to help us out. I'm not sure he had ever worked the balloon counter before, but after about 30 minutes we finally got our balloons inflated. About this time it occurred to us that maybe my car wasn't the one to take to pick up balloons. Too late to do anything now so Erica and I got to deal with balloons smacking us in the back of the head on the drive back home. This day is off to a great start.

After we got back home we took care of a few final setup things (put up some banners, put the soda on ice, etc) and got ready for the "fun". At around 10:00 the guests started showing up (right on time). At around 10:01 I popped open my first beer, put the dog on his leash, and set up camp in the office. Since most of the shower attendees were seeing our house for the first time I ended up giving a few tours of the house. So far my attempts to hide from the women are not working out so well.

Somehow the ladies ended up hanging out in the living room instead of out on the patio. This wouldn't have been an issue except that the food was in the dining room and it was impossible for me to sneak out and grab food without being seen by the party goers. Luckily I had Lunchbox with me so if I needed to run back to the office and hide out I could just "accidentally" drop his leash (oops!). After about 10 seconds of my well-trained dog sniffing everyone's crotch they were all thankful to have me escort him out of the room. Good boy Lunchbox!

Anyway, the shower seemed like a lot of fun for the ladies. Lots of games, some good food, and at the end lots of good gifts. There are some photos over here.

To anyone not in the San Diego area, there will be a co-ed shower up in Lockwood shortly after the twins are born. We were trying to schedule it in August, but couldn't find a date that worked for everyone. It's looking like October sometime, but we'll have more info closer to the date. BBQ, babies, and beer, or something like that.

A Walking Pharmacy

2008-07-20T21:49:00.000-07:00

So on Friday, July 11th Shae and I attended our first baby class: "Baby Care Basics". I've been busy for the past week, but I finally had time to share our experience, so here you go.

We walked into the classroom and saw three tables in a "U" with about seven dolls spread over them. There was one couple already there, so Shae found the cutest available doll and we took our seat. I started messing around with the doll and the teacher came back into the room and told us that we would be treating the dolls like they were real babies. Of course, as she said this I was holding ours upside down by one leg. Good thing they don't give us grades. I thought I was going to get off easy and have Shae do all the work until we mentioned we were the ones having twins and the teacher gave us another baby. There goes that plan.

Rather than recap the whole class, here are some highlights:

All but one of the other couples due dates' were in August, most of them in the first half of the month. The other couple was due in November (another set of twins). Shae's baby-belly was as big or bigger than all the other moms-to-be. I can't even imagine what she's going to be like in another month or two. She is not going to be a happy prego.
The guy next to us dropped his baby. He tried to play it off, and I don't know if anyone else noticed, but he dropped his little boy while changing his diaper. At least I didn't drop my doll.
Our teacher was a Certified Lactation Expert (or something like that). Let's just say that she was...umm...built for the job.
Shae is about to turn into a walking pharmacy. Apparently breast milk is some sort of super-drug. We were told that her breast milk will cure all kinds of problems not just on our babies, but on us too. Cuts, zits, eye infections, etc. Just a squirt of boob-juice will fix them right up. That may be true, but if I get an eye infection I'll get some drops rather than let my wife squirt the super-juice in my eye. Yuck.
Newborns go through about 10-12 diapers a day. That's 24 diapers a day, or 168 a week. Holy crap! I need to go buy some stock in Pampers. This is going to suck.
A quote from the "coursebook":
Breasts: Both male and female babies can have swollen breasts. They may even leak milk from their nipples. This is due to maternal hormones that have filtered through to the baby in utero. Do not try to express milk from your baby's nipples. The swelling will disappear withing a week or two.

To recap what I learned: babies are gross. They're hairy, they pee all over the place, they crap out some sort of tar for the first couple of days, and they come out of the hoo-ha with coneheads. Tar crapping, pee spraying, hairy coneheads. This is going to be awesome.

"I wonder if the babies fart in their amniotic fluid. Do you think it bubbles?" --Shizzle

So...When Are You Due?

2008-07-02T18:59:00.000-07:00

I haven't spent a lot of time around pregnant women (it's one of the keys to my survival) so I don't really have a solid frame of reference to compare Shae to. That being said, she watches a lot of those damn baby/pregnancy shows and even though she's "only" 6 months pregnant she's almost as big as most of the 8 and 9 monthers on those shows.

Tonight Shae and I went out to dinner and as we were waiting for a table we ended up sitting on a bench next to an older couple. After a few minutes the lady finally leaned over and asked Shae when she was due (I think she was trying to make sure Shae was actually pregnant before she asked). Shae quickly replied that she was due in October, and the look on the woman's face was priceless. It was a cross between shock and pity and we could tell she was trying to figure out how many months away October is. Shae played it perfectly, and just when the woman's head exploded Shae followed up with "We're having twins." You could almost feel the relief pass over the woman.

My beautiful wife at 6 months:

I think I'm going to try to close my pregnancy-related blogs with a quote from Shizzle, so here you go:

"My babies know as the woman who yells at the dog a lot. Their first words are probably going to be 'LEAVE IT!'. Or maybe 'Lunchbox NO!'"

One Big Ass Stroller

2008-07-01T18:20:00.000-07:00

As promised (and requested), I posted some pics of the giant stroller.

You can find them in the baby stuff gallery.

Just to illustrate how damn big this thing is, here it is running over our poor puppy:

That's right, my dog fits underneath my stroller. He didn't even move.

Because I don't think there have been enough pics of pregnant Shae on my blog:

Just so I get a little face time, here's me practicing my baby-driving:

One other thing I noticed in these pics is that the reflectors are ridiculous (just like the rest of the stroller). It seriously looks like the thing has headlights in the pictures with the flash.

To give everyone an update on wifey, she's doing fine except her back and her ass are killing her. Her quote, "I swear to God one of them is sitting on my ass nerve!"

Some More Pics

2008-06-30T21:46:00.000-07:00

Not a lot going on right now, and they've actually been making me do stuff at work lately so I haven't had much time to update. I might have to complain to my supervisor if they're actually going to make me work. I didn't sign up for that. (Since I already gave my work-related rant for the year, I won't get into my phone issue except to say that my phone line got swapped with someone else's on June 28th and I was told to send everything to voicemail until the issue is fixed -- on July 15th. It's not like I need a phone line to do my job or anything. OK, moving on.)

That being said, we had another ultrasound last week so we have some more pictures. Ella decided she didn't like the tech bothering her so she kept kicking back every time the tech pushed down to get a better view. This is what we got:

We also got a decent shot of Jackson's profile. Shae says he has my nose and chin:

You can view the rest of pics over in the twins gallery.

Hopefully we'll have some pics of the stroller up in the next couple of days.

Humping Poohs (And Other Reasons I'm Not Mature Enough For Babies)

2008-06-22T13:20:00.000-07:00

This weekend was hot. Shae and I basically spent the whole weekend just trying to stay cool and do as little as possible. Somehow we still managed to do enough to give me something to write about.

Friday:
In preparation for the scorching weekend we decided this might be a good time to buy the single-room portable A/C unit a co-worker was selling (he decided to put in real A/C). On the way home, we swung by and picked up our stroller at REI. After the now-standard Shae pee stop, I knew we might be in trouble when the guy at the customer service desk grabbed the biggest box and brought it out to us. He asked if we needed help carrying it out or setting it up, but I was too proud to accept so I wrestled the giant box out to the car and loaded it next to the A/C.

We got home, unloaded the car, hooked up the A/C unit, and tried to cool off. After about an hour or so, we decided it would be more fun to go play in the sprinklers than sitting on the couch (Shae said the dog would have fun, I think she just wanted to try out her new maternity swimsuit). Watching Shae "run" through the sprinklers (I'm not nearly ballsy enough to try to describe Shae's run, so I'll just let you guys picture her jumping through the sprinklers pregnant while the dog chased her) I couldn't help but think about the picture of her as a two-year-old running through the sprinklers that was part of our wedding center pieces. She hasn't changed a bit, right? Right?!? (Just nod...she's standing right next to me):

After we cooled off, we headed back inside and decided it was time to put the stroller together. I don't think there's any way I can properly describe the experience, but I'll try. Shae had a full-on temper tantrum trying to open the box so I had to take over the assembly, which went pretty quickly (of course the "assembly" was putting three wheels on, but I'm still taking credit). The first thing about the stroller is that it's huge. It finally hit me that we're going to have two babies. Holy crap! This stroller fits through a doorway but it's close. However, it doesn't fit through the mini-doorway to our hallway so once we get it in our door we're stuck in the entryway. The stroller has seat pockets and cupholders (for the kids). Know what else the stroller has? Quick release tires and suspension. This thing is somewhere between a nice bike and a cheap car. What the hell is this world coming to? Did I mention the thing is huge, yet? Because it is.

Saturday:
Today Shae finally dragged me out to Babies "R" Us to register for baby stuff (the need to get into an air conditioned building had nothing to do with it). Upon entering the store Shae had a decision to make: go the registry desk (right by the door), or use the bathroom (all the way in the back)? I think everyone can guess which one she chose, but eventually we got back to the registry desk. After witnessing a pregnant woman yell at a manager for a while because of some problem with her registry (pregnant women scare me...note to self: be nice to Shae), we got our gun and started off to register.

About 10 minutes into the registering two things became very clear to me:

There is a ton of baby stuff you need, and I have no idea how you are supposed to know what to choose. I mean, what is the difference between a $50 breast pump and a $350 breast pump? There are like 10,000 different toys. Which ones do you choose? It's easy for the dog, he destroys them all in like five minutes so you just pick the cheapest ones.
I am nowhere near mature enough for babies. I might not know the difference between a $50 and a $350 breast pump, but I do know I laugh at the term "breast pump" regardless of the price tag (although I laugh harder at the $350 one because I figure it must be 7 times funnier). I also pointed the scanner at Shae's butt and boobs and made the "beep" noise every chance I got. Of course, then I saw that someone had positioned two Pooh bears in an...umm...interesting position (we'll call them Humping Poohs because I'm feeling so mature today) and I knew I wasn't the only one who might not be quite ready for kids. Either that or someone brought their kids with them to the store.

I also came across some disturbing information you guys may not be aware of: babies are expensive. I know, it came as quite a shock to me too but it's true. Car seats, clothes, bottles, breast pumps (still makes me giggle a little), etc. I'm beginning to think these things may not be the money makers I was hoping for, even with the tax deduction.

When we turned the registry gun back in, we got a little gift packet. It was mostly advertisements and coupons, but there were two interesting items. The first was a little book of baby names and meanings. Ella means "sprightly", and Jackson means "son of Jack" (never would have guessed that one). When we looked up Jack we got "Form of John", and when we looked up John we got...nothing. How can you define a name as "Form of John" and then not have John in your book? Who writes these things?

The second item of interest was a diaper for a newborn. I didn't think all that much of it, but Shae couldn't get over how tiny the diaper was. "Their butts are going to be that small?!?" She put the diaper in the giant stroller and forced me to look at how small the diaper was. "I'm not ready to be a mom. I'm going to break my babies. There is no way they are going to be that small." Somehow the tiny diaper had the same effect on Shae that the giant stroller had on me: "Holy crap! We're having babies and we are nowhere near ready."

Sunday:
Lunchbox "LB" Lorigan, C.G.C.

Our little boy is all grown up. That's right, he gets letters after his name now because today Lunchbox passed his Canine Good Citizenship (CGC) test. I'm not going to say LB aced his test, but at least he passed. Between the time (8am, right in the middle of his waking-up time), the distractions (bugs, birds, other dogs), and his overall mood (let's call it crappy) I can't imagine LB could have done any worse on the test, but he still passed. Once we send in the paperwork, we'll get a certificate that will certify that our dog is a C.G.C. It's like he graduated from medical school or something. Of course, he's probably taken more classes than most M.D.s. On that note, I'm going to go play in the sprinklers with Good Citizen Box and try to stay cool.

One last note before I sign off for the weekend. We have some photos posted of the work we did in the baby room last weekend (in the House album). If anyone wants to see Shae (and me) nesting, take a look at the pics here.

My Office Space

2008-06-18T19:27:00.000-07:00

I've generally tried not to bitch about work here on my blog, but my world is becoming way too close to something right out of Office Space so you guys get to deal with my whining. If you'd rather just read about baby stuff you can give Shae's pregnancy post a read if you haven't already.

Let me start off my bitch fest by pointing out that in general I'm happy with my job. I get tons of time off (including every other Friday and almost every holiday you can imagine, including Columbus Day), I like the people I work with, I have great job security (I think it would take longer to fire me than it would to just wait for me to retire. In fact, I think that might be the plan with some of my co-workers.), and I get to work on basically whatever I feel like on a given day. OK, now that I got that out of the way let's get on with the bitching (and plenty of moaning too).

When I started my job, I couldn't believe that my building was right on the ocean. I actually park my car right in a lot that looks right out onto the ocean. Of course, as soon as I leave my car I walk up the hill to my office and into a prison-looking concrete monstrosity built sometime in the 40's or 50's and not really improved since (Shae says it looks like a prison with antennas instead of guard towers). I'm amazed every day that the elevators still work (sort of). In the five years I've been in my office the heater has worked exactly one day, and it was over 70 degrees outside that day.

Anyone who's ever tried to call me during the day is probably aware of this, but we have no cell phone reception at work. It doesn't matter who your provider is, you aren't getting a signal in my office (or anyone else's in my building for that matter). I've heard rumors that if you stand six steps outside the back door, hop on one foot and hold your phone above your head you can get one bar. Of course it's kind of hard to make a call from that position and even if you got a signal you'd lose it before the call went through, but it's a start.

While my work environment is frustrating, I've learned to deal with these issues; they aren't what prompted this post. Over the past few months I've noticed that my work life is getting closer and closer to something out of Office Space. If you haven't watched the movie recently, go watch it and then finish reading this when you're done.

You know what I have to do by the 5th of every month? I have to submit TPS reports. I'm not making that up, I get an email on the 1st reminding me to submit my TPS reports. Guess what happens if I don't? Yup, three different "bosses" come by and remind me. The worst part is only one of them gets my monthly joke about the cover sheet; I guess the other two didn't get the memo. Of course, the three people who ask me for my TPS reports aren't even what I would call my "real bosses". I have two of those, so that makes five different bosses. It's not eight bosses yet, but give me another year or so and I bet I'll get there.

Now we get to the final straw that made me sit down and vent. Today I had to print something and when I went to the printer I got the all-too-familiar "Load Letter Tray 2" message on the printer (I guess it's replaced "PC Load Letter"). When I asked the guy in charge of the printer where I could find some paper I was informed that there is no paper. "We don't have any, and I don't have any money in the budget to buy any more. It's bring-your-own-paper now." Now I'm sure some teachers that may be reading this won't have any sympathy for me, but you have to remember that I have to deal with government purchasing to get paper. If I put in an order for paper today(assuming I could find the funding somewhere, which I doubt), I might be able to print sometime before the kids turn two. Maybe.

OK, if you're still reading I guess I'll share the REAL reason for bitch-fest-08. The paper issue got me all fired up, but I wasn't motivated enough to sit down and type until I tried to use the restroom (and no I wasn't trying to print up reading material for my trip when I found out there was no paper, but I would understand if that was your first thought). Without going too far down the path of more-than-anyone-ever-needed-to-know-about-Pat, let me just say that I hate dropping a deuce at work. The bathrooms stink and the toilet paper is a step down from what you'd find at a National Park in the middle of cutbacks. If I'm making a run for the crapper at work, it's probably a literal run for the crapper. Having said all that, I hope everyone can understand my frustration at trying to enter the bathroom and finding it closed for cleaning. I ran to a different floor, and it was being cleaned too. I finally found an open stall on my third try. Why does the cleaning crew clean the restrooms in the middle of the day? Why can't this be done after everyone goes home like everywhere else I've worked (this goes for the monthly vacuuming, annual dusting, annual window cleaning, and all the other cleaning functions)? Every day our bathrooms are closed for about 30 minutes or so for cleaning (based on cleanliness, I can't believe it takes more than 5 minutes), and that 30 minutes always seems go be whenever I need to go.

Whew...OK...this time I'm really done venting. I could spend another couple of hours whining about work (don't even get me going about the pathetic excuse for a cafeteria we have), but I'm sure everyone's heard enough. Besides, like I said at the top of this post, overall I'm happy. Just don't get in my way when I need to drop the kids off at the pool. (Oh, and for anyone who actually read my first post on this blog, I did write that eventually this could turn into stories about my adventures using the restroom at work; you were warned.)

My Turn

2008-06-18T12:07:00.000-07:00

I guess it is about time I write something. I just can't let Pat have all the fun. This entry is dedicated to all those women out there who have told me how wonderful being pregnant is and how much they loved it. My question for you is what were you on because the whole pregnancy thing SUCKS! Ok, well, physically it sucks. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the fact that Ella and Jackson will be here soon, but why must women go through hell for it. Let me start at the top and work my way down.

Do you remember when you were about 13 and puberty started to kick in? I do. Wanna know what I remember most about it? The zits! Guess what, they're back. It's like I went to sleep one night and the hormones all kicked in and decided it would be funny to make me relive a miserable time in my life. Why don't the books tell you about zits!!! I am not glowing, I am zitting.

If you work your way down what do you think comes next? Yup, boobs. My chest has always been on the larger side for as long as I can remember. They have never been too big, despite what my parents say. Now they are. They are heavy, in the way, and I can't button my shirts anymore. I used to like going bra shopping and picking out all the cute ones, but apparently they don't make cute ones in a size 38 OMG. I went to the maternity store for a bathing suit for an upcoming trip and I even had trouble fitting them into a maternity suit. The woman behind the counter informed me that they carry a "sleeping bra" for night time support. I didn't understand the point of it until last night when I was laying in bed and I rolled over. You know what they did? They clapped. That's right. I rolled over and my boobs clapped. I guess I could use a little night time support. For now they are just going to have to be happy resting on my stomach. There is one other thing that you are not informed of when you get pregnant. Your boobs change colors. I'm not going to go into detail here, but I will say two words: burnt pancakes.

Ok, here comes the fun part, my stomach. You know when a snake swallows a tennis ball and it gets stuck and it just looks ridiculous. Well I look like I swallowed a huge watermelon and it got stuck. I am only 23 weeks so I am supposed to have a cute little bump. I am not supposed to look like I'm about to explode yet. Damn twins. I do have to say I have been fortunate enough not to get any of the dreaded stretch marks yet. Not only is my stomach a boob holder, it is also a punching bag. Sure it's cute when the babies kick every once in awhile, but when you are trying to sleep or get some work done, they decide it would be fun to start kicking each other and me. Actually I think only one is kicking because the other one is squeezing my bladder and I know they can't multi task yet.

That brings us to the bladder. So when I used to sit on the couch in the evenings and I had the urge to go to the bathroom it was no big deal. I would wait till a break and then make my way to the throne. Now when I am sitting or laying down and I have to go, I better get my ass to the bathroom pronto! When I sit up, the weight of the babies all go to the bladder. Imagine having to pee really bad and then having someone put a watermelon right on top of your bladder. It can be a little uncomfortable.

Moving a little further south we encounter an area I can no longer see. When we go to the doctors office they always make me pee in a cup. Well today, I could no longer see the cup so I had to do it by sound. Do you understand how hard it is to blindly pee into a little tiny Dixie cup? HARD. Good thing they have a lot of soap there.

Now for my feet. Yes my feet. I have always had wide feet so I have to wear wide shoes. Most often these are shoes that lace up. Well, if I can't pee into a cup, what makes you think I can bend over and tie my shoes? Not so much. I now have to wear my narrow slip on shoes with swollen feet, unless Pat wants to practice the shoe tying song.

Overall, all the changes your body goes through to get two beautiful babies, really sucks. I can no longer bend over. I need help getting off the couch, and rolling over has become a chore. So to all you women out there who loved being pregnant, I hope you at least went through hell during labor.

Aroma De Pat

2008-06-11T20:05:00.000-07:00

Maybe I won't stop Shae from looking up baby facts. I've complained enough about it that today she actually went out looking for new ones. Along the way, she found this great tidbit:

A Swiss study found that a majority of women unconsciously choose mates with a body odor that differs from their own natural scents, which, as a result, ensures better immune protection for their children. "Longevity" magazine reported that the genes that battle disease-provoking substances also influence body odor.

If that's true, there is a good chance that Shae chose me as her mate based on the way I smell. So my marriage (and the twins) can be attributed to my gas. Who knew?

Is This A Joke?

2008-06-10T22:04:00.000-07:00

Tonight Shae informed me that the babies have started producing their own hormones (that's right, I still haven't blocked her Internet access to the pregnancy websites). Super. If I made a list of things Shae needs right now, do you know what would be at the top? Me neither, but I know what would be at the bottom: more hormones. Thanks a lot kids. I have a feeling a lot more work is going to magically appear that will keep me at the office late. Weird how that works.

King City On TV

2008-06-02T19:14:00.000-07:00

Everyone has probably seen this already (especially the KC folks), but since I don't watch commercials I just saw it for the first time last weekend. I caught it again just now and this time I was on the computer so I decided to find it online. I wonder how many people watch this commercial and say, "I got a ticket in King City."

It's A ...

2008-05-29T20:25:00.000-07:00

Today Shae and I finally went in for our first "real" ultrasound. We've gotten a look at the babies on our trips to see the doc, but today we went to see a specialist and got to take a look using a much better ultrasound machine. That means we were able to tell the sex(es) of the babies today. If you want to find out too, you'll have to put up with my recap first.

Thanks to awesome scheduling, our appointment was at 1:45, so I got to take half a day off of work (Shae does all the "work" and I get time off...go me). While Shae filled out the insurance paperwork, I looked for a magazine to read. All I had to choose from were pregnancy magazines and US Weekly (I guess there aren't too many men visiting this office), so I got to learn that famous people are "Just Like Us!" (they drink coffee, jog, and buy food...who knew?).

Eventually we got into the exam room and Shae jumped up on the table. The technician spread some gel all over my wife's stomach and we took a look at our babies. The quality of the ultrasound was way better than the little one our doc had used, and it was pretty cool to see the kids so much more clearly. We thought we were in for a quick look at the kids and then we'd find out the sex(es). Not so much. The technician took measurements and pictures of pretty much every body part you can imagine: arms, legs, heart (one of each side), head, brain, skeleton, kidneys, bloodflow (with pretty colors...oohh...ahhh), genitalia, and probably some I can't remember right now. After seeing pretty much every view of Baby A we could imagine, we finally got the one we wanted. If you can't tell from the pic, Baby A is a girl.

After we were done looking at Baby A, we went through the whole thing again with Baby B. Everything was pretty much the same, except for a pretty substantial difference (I'll give you a hint: it rhymes with "schmenis"):

So, to recap, Shae got ultrasound gel in every crack and crevice imaginable, I got half a day off work, and we found out we're having a boy and a girl. We were (not so) secretly hoping for one of each so we're really excited. Lunchbox gets a brother to play with him and a sister to dress him up; he's really excited (or it could have just been excitement over dinner, it's hard to tell). We didn't get sent home with all of the pics (they got sent to our doctor), but we got quite a few. You can take a look at them here.

Poops & Pickles

2008-05-16T21:00:00.001-07:00

I guess my last post was a day too early. Today's words of wisdom from the prego:

(Jabbing her stomach) "Our babies can hear us now if we talk directly to them. Babies! Wake up! I'm going to keep them awake so when they're born they'll sleep a lot."
(At dinner) "Did you know if you drink a bunch of carrot juice in the morning your babies will like carrots? Our babies are going to like chicken noodle soup and mac & cheese. And chai tea frappuccinos. Ooohh...that mac and cheese looks good!" (The kid at the table across from us had a plate of macaroni and cheese.)
(Still at dinner) "Our babies can hear my bowel movements now. And they can recognize mine." (At this point I tried to figure out what other bowel movements they could hear, but decided not to go there.) "Oh, and they can smell things too." (I don't know if those statements are related or not, but they came out back-to-back so I'm assuming they are.)
"They need to make chocolate covered pickles. Ooh! With peanut butter! Yeah...chocolate covered pickles filled with peanut butter. They have to be Bubbies pickles though."

Odds & Ends

2008-05-15T21:26:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been another quiet week so there's not a lot to update. That being said, if I don't write something I have to hear about it from my mother so here are a few tidbits from the last few days.

My mom came into town last weekend for Mother's Day. That's right, while some children travel to see their mom on Mother's Day I make my mom fly down to San Diego. We had a good time, and it was a nice relaxing weekend. Happy Mother's day mom!
Lunchbox was a superstar at CGC class on Sunday. If the test had been last week he would have passed it no problem. Of course he probably wasted his good day three weeks early, but at least he was back to his top dog ways at least for one class.
Shae is starting to show. A lot. In the last week or so the twins have definitely started to grow a lot faster (or at least Shae's stomach has started to grow a lot faster). I think she's finally passed the awkward "pregnant or fat" stage. Congratulations Shae. Hopefully I'll get a good prego-Shae pic to post one of these days.
If you've been to our house you've probably noticed the unmaintained median, complete with palm trees that look like they haven't been trimmed in 20 years or so. So today Shae called at work me all excited because there were city workers out trimming the palm trees. Apparently they got bored pretty quick because they trimmed one tree and called it a day.

That's about it for now. Sorry there's nothing more exciting to share. Blame Shae for not giving me more deep thoughts to share.

Pillow Talk

2008-05-07T09:27:00.000-07:00

As I was drifting off to sleep last night around 11, the little voice in my bed decided it was time to share more fun facts and thoughts:

"Did you know that our babies can't open their eyes? They can see through their eyelids because their skin is really thin. Does that mean that their skin is growing in and that before this they didn't have any skin at all? Gross."

"I have my seat really far forward in my car (to reach the pedals) and I'm really close to the steering wheel. My stomach is already almost touching the wheel. What am I going to do when I get really pregnant? If I move the seat back I can't reach the pedals. Am I going to need blocks on the pedals so I can reach them? Maybe I'll just recline my seat and drive gansta' style. What should my gansta' name be? Baby Momma? Shizzle?"

Stay tuned for more deep thoughts from Shizzle.

Flashing

2008-05-04T21:35:00.000-07:00

I think it really might be time to take away Shae's access to the Internet; this is getting ridiculous. I was doing my standard pacing while talking on the phone and Shae asked me to get her a flashlight. I didn't think anything of it at that moment, but why in the hell does someone sitting on the couch watching TV need a flashlight? So I grabbed the flashlight, gave it to Shae, and went back to my pacing. When I finished up my phone call and got back to the couch, there was my wife shining the flashlight on her belly. Apparently she read that the babies can sense light now and if you shine a flashlight you can make them swim around. It's not enough for Shae to wake me up when I'm trying to sleep, now she feels the need to annoy the babies to. I guess she actually did feel them move around a little. She said she could feel them "kind of flutter", whatever that means.

Fuzzy Babies

2008-05-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

I think it's pretty obvious that the Internet has a lot of uses. I personally waste more time that I would like to admit surfing the web, and it's hard to imagine life before you could answer almost any question that came up with a 30 second search. So yeah, the Internet is super.

That being said, I don't think Shae should be allowed to go online anymore. It seems like all she ever does anymore is search the web for baby info. This wouldn't be a problem, except she seems to feel the need to share the grossest tidbits with me when I'm trying to go to sleep. Here's some of the "highlights" from last night's sharing session:

Apparently, the babies are covered in fur (aka "downy hair"). Between Shae and I these kids are destined to be hairy, but I guess right now they're like tiny hairy monkeys.
You know what they do with that hair? They shed it into the amniotic fluid they're swimming in. Then they drink the fur-fluid and poop/pee it back out into their sac.
So, to clarify that, the kids poop/pee into their own sac and then swim around in it (and also drink it I guess).

Who knows, maybe without the Internet Shae would be buying all the books with this info and waking me up with her gross facts anyway. I do know that the web makes it a lot easier for her to load up on info while watching TV on the couch. There are actually a lot more fun facts Shae has shared over the last few months, but I can't remember them right now.

On a Lunchbox related note, I don't think he knows about the Internet yet. On Thursday he found a roll of stamps and ate about 15. To follow that up, he ate one of our checkbooks on Friday. I think he's trying to place an order from a mail-order magazine. I'm just waiting for him to crap out a filled out order form in an addressed envelope (with full postage of course).

And finally, this weekend is our neighborhood's big yard sale. Apparently they do this every year, and there are tons of people selling stuff all over the neighborhood. We took the LB out for a nice walk and browsed most of the yard sales, but most of the good stuff was gone (if there was any good stuff to start with). Shae found some stuff for The Learning Garden, but that was about it. We were hoping to find some good baby stuff, but we hit up about 30 yard sales and found nothing. Oh well.

Other than that, there isn't much going on. Work is fine (for both of us), Lunchbox is fine (and retaking his Canine Good Citizenship class), the babies seem to be doing great, and Shae is starting her nesting (she's currently making some picture frames for their bedroom).

One Year

2008-04-28T21:38:00.000-07:00

Yup. It's been one whole year since Shae and I got hitched. To say it's been a busy year would be an understatement. In the last 12 months we got married, bought a house, got a dog, bought a business, and somehow found the time to knock Shae up (times two). I need a break. (Call it a hunch, but I don't think that's gonna happen.)

For our anniversary, Shae got me Mario Kart and a shirt. I got her some maternity clothes. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the first anniversary is the maternity clothes anniversary; the matern-iversary. Of course, I also let Shae win at Mario Kart as an extra anniversary present. I'm way too nice sometimes.

I should also point out that in addition to being our anniversary it's also Lunchbox's first birthday. He got a $2 toy. I hope my kids are that cheap. (Another hunch, I don't think they will be. I really don't like my hunches sometimes.)

Goofing Off In The Doc's Office

2008-04-23T21:16:00.000-07:00

Shae and I had our third visit to the doc today and everything is still good. There are still two and apparently they're doing fine. Now that we got that out of the way, here's a recap of our visit.

Just for the hell of it, we actually got to the doctor's office early for our appointment this time. The first thing we noticed when we got to the office was that our nemesis couple was there. Not only has this couple had the appointment before us every time we've seen the doc, but they're having twins too. Since they finish their appointment right before us, they always seem to get the slot right before us for the next visit. It's a vicious cycle. We hate them. Maybe one of these visits we'll actually talk to them and become best friends, but I doubt it.

Thanks to our favorite couple getting in to see the doctor before us, Shae and I had about a 45 minute wait in our little exam room. All I can say about our wait is that there is no way Shae and I are anywhere near mature enough for this whole kid thing. Our wait included laughing hysterically at my farts, analyzing posters of the female reproductive system, and whispering like we were in a library. We aren't even mature enough to handle a poster with the term "hypogonadism" on it. Every time it sounded like our door was opening we both jumped and got really guilty looks on our faces like we just got caught with our hands in the cookie jar. It was like we were in detention or something and we were scared the teacher was going to walk back into the room and catch us talking. Also, we discovered that apparently they make a chewable birth control pill now. That information might have been useful several months ago. I'm thinking they might want to move that advertisement out to the lobby. Basically, now you can go straight from Flintstones vitamins to the pill ("We're the Flintstones kids. Ten million strong...And growing!").

Eventually the doc got to us and it was time to take a look at the kids, but first we got to listen to the heartbeat(s). When I tell this story to my children I'm sure hearing their heartbeats will be a huge life-changing event, but for now it just sounded like a fast heartbeat. After we were done listening we got to see the twins again. If you look at the pics, you can actually see Baby A pretty well (head at the left, knees up). Our doctor drew her own diagram below the pic to help you guys out. Baby B wasn't quite as cooperative (no surprise there, according to Shae "B" is the one who's always flipping me off) and is supposedly sitting cross-legged. I'll take the docs word on that, but she drew another picture to help out.

Finally, Lunchbox made his first sacrifice for the babies this weekend. We were at Petco picking up a few things on Saturday and the Humane Society was there with their "Adopt Me" pets. You know what they had? A baby yellow lab puppy. If not for the two little weights sitting on Shae's bladder I think there's about a 99% chance that LB would have gotten a new playmate. Oh well, I think he'll live.

Pretty Slow Around Here

2008-04-16T23:07:00.000-07:00

I wish I had more stories to share about pregnant Shae, but not a lot is going on. Just to keep everyone updated, here's pretty much everything that's happening:

We have another doctor appointment next week but until then it's pretty much just life with Shae and all of her personalities.
According to the doc we will be able to tell the sex(es) at around 18 weeks which means we won't know until the appointment after this one at the soonest (probably another month or so).
Lately Shae's had a craving for pickles which if I'm not mistaken is what got us into this pickle in the first place (everyone see what I did there?). Some might say that was too easy but with as slow as things have been around here, I'm using it anyway.
Shae has headaches, back-aches, lots of pee-breaks, and a lot of other 'akes' I can't think of right now.

Since there's not much new on the pregnancy front, guess what I get to write about...that's right, more Lunchbox. Apparently, our dog has gone from top dog to having to repeat his canine-good-citizenship (CGC) class. Actually, it's not LB, it's the entire class that has been advised to repeat. We think our pup would pass his test OK, but CGC class is fun so if we can retake it at a discount (which we can) we have no problem with that. Besides, right now CGC is the most exciting thing we have going on.

Last weekend our class was at Chollas Lake Park. This class was by far the closest to home so of course we were the last ones to show up (although we still got there right on time). It was in the mid 90's on Sunday, and the dogs were definitely distracted by the heat. When we walked out on dock the dogs (especially LB) had problems walking on the hot surface and we had to cut our time on the dock short. I guess we should have taken Lunchbox's booties with us to class.

After about 40 more minutes of working with the dogs we finally gave up (the dogs were having a really hard time dealing with the heat) and were in the middle of discussing issues we're having with our dogs (not us of course, LB is perfect) when a cop pulled up and told us we had to leave because the park was closing. It was a little early but we didn't think too much of it and started wandering up to our cars. I started to sense something was up when he went up to everyone else in the park and told them it was time to leave because they were closing the park. "Closing the park" sounded a little more ominous than the park closing, but maybe it's just me. As we were loading up (AKA helping our pathetic dog into the car) another cop pulled up and announced over the loud speaker that park was closed and everyone had to leave. Shae made a comment along the lines of "did they find a dead body or something?" and sure enough the lady getting into the car next to us informed us that, in fact, they did.

This week we're taking the dogs to an Italian restaurant for dinner, which I'm sure will be plenty exciting too. I just hope there are no dead bodies involved.

Somebody Likes The Water (Hint: It's LB)

2008-04-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

Back in 1996 a friend of mine suggested I should join him on a youth group trip down to the Mexicali Valley. I didn't have anything else to do over spring break so I decided to tag along. Somewhere along the line I realized that one of the girls in the youth group was interested in me. She had big...ummm...personality...so I decided I could do worse and 11 years later we got married (talk about moving fast). The lesson: be careful when a friend asks you to go to Mexico, you could end up catching something that stays with you for life.

Last weekend, the youth group celebrated their 20th year going to Mexicali and had a reunion to celebrate. Shae and I figured that since we have the youth group to thank/blame for our relationship we should head up to King City for the weekend. The reunion was fun, and it was great to catch up with people I haven't seen since high school. I also thought showing up with a twin-carrying wife might be a warning to the youngsters about what can happen if you marry your high school girlfriend after 11 years of dating (I'd say "high school sweetheart" but Shae's not always all that sweet, especially when the twins make her cranky).

That's a great story, but what does any of this have to do with Lunchbox? I'm glad you asked. While we were visiting the parents, we decided to take LB out to Lake San Antonio to let him play in the water. We had taken him once before and he was a little hesitant at first (he got over it in about five minutes). We didn't have any such issues this time.

Actually, our problem was getting him out of the water. It could have been because I sounded like a 12-year-old when I was calling him, but in my defense Shae started recording after I'd been trying to get him out of the lake for a while. I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: top dog my ass.

Back-To-Back

2008-04-07T21:41:00.000-07:00

So, Shae did it again. For the second year in a row she beat me and everyone else in our March Madness pool. I guess I'm happy that I don't have to ship the trophy to anyone else but I was really hoping to avoid another year of gloating about what a awesome bracket-filler-outer she is.

Being the college basketball expert she is, Shae thought she should share her thoughts as she filled out her bracket. Here are a few of the highlights:

On why she had NC in the Final Four: "My aunt lives in North Carolina, so they have to go far."

On picking Memphis to win it all (lucky for her she clinched when Kansas and Memphis won in the semi-finals): "Country music is from Memphis so they'll win."

Sienna: "It's the name of a minivan and we have twins coming, but I don't want a minivan so they only get one win."

San Diego: C'mon, this one's obvious.

UNLV: "I want to go to Vegas."

I know that this is nothing new. The people who win these pools every year use reasons like this to make their picks, but it's still frustrating to hear Shae give me her bracket advice as she gloats about her victory. I hate her so much right now. Of course, the fact that I have yet to finish in the top-5 despite filling out two brackets each of the last four years could have something to do with it. I might have to rethink my method of watching one game a year, reading a couple of articles, and picking winners based on how good the teams were five years ago when I actually followed college basketball. Oh well, congrats wifey.

Surviving The Desert

2008-03-29T21:16:00.000-07:00

I survived a weekend in Death Valley. More impressively, I survived a weekend sharing a car/tent with my twin-carrying wife and my shit-eating dog. Here's a recap of the trip from the only point of view that matters (that would be mine). If you don't care what I have to say and just want to see some pics, here you go.

Thursday:
Surprisingly, we got the car loaded up and left just about on time. We decided to "split" the driving: I would drive to Ridgecrest, and then Shae would drive the rest of the way. Let's just say I now know that Ridgecrest is way past the halfway point of the trip. At least I got to enjoy the beautiful city of Trona as a passenger. Yay.

This seems like the right place to mention that Lunchbox might be the best car-dog ever. I'll have to check with the people at Guinness to see if he's tops in the world, but he's definitely the best I've seen. He didn't make a single sound the entire trip. He spent the trip silently sitting/laying on his bed in his little space in the car and enjoyed the ride. No crying, no whining, no pacing. OK, the Lunchbox bragging section of the blog (well, at least for this paragraph) is over.

Our first stop in Death Valley was at Stovepipe Wells to get some ice cream. Apparently this is a tradition of some sort, but I think it's just an excuse to eat ice cream. Either way I got a treat. It'll probably get mentioned below, but I just thought I'd get on record with the obvious: Death Valley is beautiful. (Also, there are very few dead people laying on the side of the road.)

Once we finished our ice cream it was time to go setup our campsite. Actually, we had to find it first. Shae's description of the road to our site: "It's just after an elevation sign." Somehow we found the little indentation on the rocks that doubles as the road to our campsite. (We would later discover that the "road" actually shows up on our Garmin navigation unit...gotta love technology). After driving about 4 miles down the road, we got to "Hole in the Wall" which is where we setup camp. I just want to point out that "Hole in the Wall" isn't a hole. It's a gap, or a break, or whatever but it's not a hole. Anyway, when we got to Gap in the Wall we found that the campsite we wanted was actually available and setup camp. As we finished setting up camp we realized we had somehow forgotten the pillows despite putting them right in front of the door. Oh well, I guess we'll be using spare blankets for pillows.

After setting up camp and eating dinner Shae took me to see Devil's Golf Course. It's cool and all, but my first reaction upon seeing Devil's Golf Course was, "this looks nothing like a golf course." Shae explained that it's called Devil's Golf Course because it would be torture to have to play golf on it. That makes more sense, so now I guess it's just cool.

And now, the fun part of our first day. One of the things about making your own campsite 4 miles away from the main road is that there aren't exactly restrooms around. Apparently, you are supposed to dig a hole, do your business, and bury it. That sounds fine until you show up with a dog who decides that this is the week his sense of smell is going to start working. About a minute after we let LB off his leash (in violation of the park regs...I hope a ranger doesn't pick tonight to drive all the way out here looking for dogs off leash) he starts digging up and eating crap (literally). Lunchbox is usually relatively obedient, but once he catches the smell of shit he couldn't care less what we want. All he wants is to dig up poop. Top dog my ass; I'm taking back his award. Guess our boy isn't going to be getting much freedom around camp.

A few games of Uno and Ziggity and it's time for bed. I learned my lesson from my last dog (hi Kuge): lab puppies sleeping on the bed are cute and fun, but full grow labs sleeping on the bed are not. Having learned from the past, Lunchbox has never been allowed up on the bed (he sleeps on his own bed on the ground next to our bed). Apparently this restriction does not apply to air mattresses. After about 10 seconds on his bed LB realized that there was no good reason he couldn't fit on the air mattress. So to recap our sleeping arrangements: we're using blankets for pillows and sharing an air mattress with a poop-eating lab. Super.

Friday:
After a night of being pushed off the bed by Lunchbox, Friday started with a bang (actually, more of a plop). One thing I failed to mention about Thursday was that LB had problems adjusting to the rocky terrain of our campsite. More specifically, he couldn't get comfortable enough to do his business. Well, on Friday morning he finally took his first dump since we left San Diego. It was freakin' huge. We were so proud. I had Shae clean it up while I congratulated the dog.

After the excitement of Lunchbox's load, we had some cereal for breakfast and headed out for the day. Our first stop was Inyo Mine. After a bit of a drive to the mine, we put LB's little shoes on and went out to explore the camp below the mine. Shae took pictures of the deserted buildings (lots of windows and doors) while I wandered around with the dog as he bounced around in his booties. Once we were done with the pictures it was time to hike up to the mine. The hike up to the mine wasn't very long but it was pretty steep. Shae's "condition" (aka her two parasites) made the hike tough for her but eventually we made it up to the mine entrance. We took a quick look inside the mine (we couldn't go too far because there was a section of the tunnel that was LB couldn't climb over) and then headed back down to the car and had some sandwiches.

After our mining expedition, we headed to Badwater so I could say I've been to the lowest point in North America. LB wasn't allowed to go out on the boardwalk, so we made the Badwater stop short. We stayed just long enough for Shae to snap a picture of me and then we headed out to Stovepipe Wells to meet the bulk of our group. We stopped at Furnace Creek on the way and picked up LB a Death Valley bandanna with a map of the park on it. We thought about putting a red X at our campsite and writing "We Are Here" so he could find his way home if he got lost, but then decided he'd probably just follow the scent of crap back to camp.

While we waited at Stovepipe Wells for Shae's parents (and everyone else) to arrive, we ended up talking to a few dog lovers who were hanging out by the store. They all seemed to love LB's shoes. One couple had recently gotten a lab puppy from the pound, and watching Lunchbox lie calmly in front of us they convinced themselves their dog would calm down as he got older. I didn't have the heart to tell them that their dog was actually a couple of months older than LB, or that the reason he was being so calm was that he had spent the whole morning running around the mine. I'll let them figure that out for themselves.

Eventually the group showed up (Tom, Grace, Cindy, Thomas, Erin, Brielle, Bob, Theresa, and James...take notes, there will be a test later) and off to camp we went. Shae decided to let me look like a man and drive. Little did I know that she would somehow avoid sitting in the driver's seat for the rest of the trip. Well played wifey. Well played.

Once we got back to camp everyone setup their tents, etc. and got settled in. I think it's safe to say that the quality of camping life changed a bit with everyone's arrival. Shae's parents brought along a toilet-tent so now instead of digging a hole to crap in we have a toilet to use, complete with chemical bags that eat our poop (like LB). For dinner, we had hash and eggs (with our leftover corned beef). Things are a little different than last night. Oh, and LB took another monster dump (a double-bagger). Lucky for you, LB has gotten over his problem crapping on rocks so this should be the last Lunchbox poop update (no guarantees though).

Saturday:
After another night spent being shoved off the air mattress by our dog, it was time to go do some more sight seeing. Today's agenda: Scotty's Castle and Ubehebe Crater. We loaded up the cars and our caravan headed to Scotty's Castle. Shae and I left the puppy with the grandparents and went on a tour of the castle. The tour was great and apparently we got a really good tour guide (I don't have a comparison, but I learned a lot about Death Valley and the "castle"). The main thing I learned? Scotty's Castle wasn't owned by Scotty. What the hell is it with these names? "Hole in the Wall" isn't a hole, "Devil's Golf Course" doesn't look like a golf course, and now "Scotty's Castle" isn't' actually Scotty's castle...I give up. Don't get me wrong, Scotty's Castle was great, and our tour guide did explain how the name came to be, but I'm still waiting to see dead people in Death Valley. None of these names make any sense.

At the start of our tour, the guide asked everyone where I was from. When I said "San Diego" she got all huffy and acted upset. I guess she's a UConn fan and USD beat them last night. Apparently it was also a pretty exciting game. I wouldn't know, we don't get CBS in the tent. Even if we did get CBS in the tent, it probably wouldn't be in HD so I wouldn't watch it anyway. You know where I could watch the games in HD? That's right, from my couch.

Our next stop was Ubehebe Crater. Somehow, this name actually makes sense. You know what it is? That's right, a big hole in the ground...a crater. In what I guess is an annual tradition, Tom and Thomas jumped out of the car and ran down to the bottom the crater and then hiked back up. For some reason, the trip back up took a lot longer than the trip down, especially for Tom. Oddly, he couldn't run back up the crater as fast as a 13 year old. Go figure.

And now, the big Death Valley event of the day: that's right, a fantasy baseball draft. My plan was for Shae and I to run out to the Visitor's Center (they have free wi-fi access), do the draft and then grab dinner at Furnace Creek or something. Somehow everyone in the group ended up getting at the Visitor's Center and sitting out in the parking lot while I drafted a fantasy baseball team. It didn't seem like anyone was too annoyed to be dragged along, so I guess it worked out.

After I finished my draft, we went to Furnace Creek to meet the last few members of our group (John, Brianna, and Ruben) and have some pizza. That's right, we're out here roughing it in Death Valley eating pizza for dinner. It's tough out here, but I think I'm strong enough to hold out for another day or two.

Sunday:
Well, LB decided it was time to kick Shae off the mattress for once, so I actually got a good night's sleep. Good thing, because I apparently have a lot of driving to do today. The agenda for the day was to head over to Rhyolite and Titus Canyon, but with Tom involved we made a few detours. The first detour was to go see "Chinese Camp" (at least that's what Tom called it, I haven't found it on a map anywhere). The road up to the camp actually made use of the 4-wheel drive in our Tribute. Looking at the road, Shae and Grace both voiced doubts our little SUV could make it up the road (I had my doubts too, but I'm a man and I was driving so I had to act like I thought it was no issue), but Tom said the car would make it so up we went. While the other drivers waited at the bottom in their trucks (probably with the same doubts that were voiced in our car), the Tribute went right up the road (I'm sure it was my excellent driving).

Thanks to my expert driving, we got to the old camp and got out to explore. This is where LB's little booties really paid off. I think he was actually exited when we put his shoes on. We let the puppy off his leash and he pretty much sprinted all over the camp as excited as I've seen him in a while. While we wandered around and Shae took some pictures, LB took turns running up to everyone in the group and generally having a super time. It was great seeing him have so much fun after being restricted to a leash and car the last few days.

After we left the camp, we continued on our trip over to Rhyolite. The trip over there is a decent drive, but apparently it needed some extra stops. Out came the GPS's. That's right...it's geocaching time! Here's my recap of the drive: drive, Shae says "stop in 1/4 mile", pull over, everyone out, find the cache, repeat. Eventually, the prego riding shotgun got hungry and cranky, so the geocaching got put on hold so we could feed her before she ate one of us.

To take care of hungry Shae (and to get some gas) we stopped at a gas station in Armagosa Valley. Let's just say that the stop was memorable (and it was obvious we were in Nevada at this point). There is no possible way I can do this stop justice, but I'm going to try. The first thing I noticed was that the mini-mart was bright pink. The second thing I noticed? An "Adult Entertainment" sign with an arrow pointing to a building next to the pink mini-mart ("Madame Butterfly's"). A strip club/brothel attached to the mini-mart was weird enough, but this one was complete with red lights and a gate you needed to be buzzed through (Mastercard accepted). I'm still trying to figure out what the light is for. Is it turned on when the ladies are busy? Available? In trouble? Pregnant? I don't think I'll ever know. Several of the light posts in the parking lot were crooked where they had been run into, probably by truckers, and I couldn't help but wonder if the truckers had been running away from the girls of Madame Butterfly's.

Once we were done at Madame Butterfly's we headed off to Rhyolite. Our first stop was at the Bottle House (a house made of bottles...another name that makes sense...crazy), but we were 15 minutes too late and they wouldn't let us in to look around. Oh well, there were a bunch of other buildings to look at. We wandered around and Shae took some pictures, but then an all-too-familiar feeling hit me and it was time to hit up the outhouse. If anyone's wondering, the outhouses in Rhyolite are actually quite clean. However, I just want to say that I can't think of many feelings more disturbing than a draft hitting your ass in an outhouse. I don't care how clean the outhouse is, that draft is coming from places I don't like to think about. I finished my business and got out of there as quick as I could.

After Shae was done taking pictures of windows and doors we left Rhyolite and headed for Titus Canyon. I don't want to gloss over Titus Canyon because it was beautiful, but there's not a lot else to say. We drove a while, stopped in Leadfield so Shae could take more pictures of windows and doors, drove some more, did some oooh-ing and aaah-ing, and we were done. Again, it was a really cool drive, but with no stories about Lunchbox, pregnant Shae, or pooping I don't have a whole lot to say.

After we finished with Titus Canyon, it was back to camp. Tonight's treat: margaritas. Thanks to Bob and Theresa's battery operated blender we sat around camp and enjoyed our strawberry margaritas. Again, life at camp is tough.

Monday:
Not a lot to say about Monday. We drove home. Lunchbox slept most of the way, and when we got home he could hardly wait to get out of the car and into the house. I guess he missed home.

Overall, the trip was really fun. Lunchbox had a great time, but he's definitely glad to be home where he gets to walk on carpet and grass instead of walking on rocks at the campsite. I hope he doesn't miss his shoes too much.

Dancing Peanuts

2008-03-27T18:37:00.000-07:00

I'm working on Death Valley recap, but until that's posted I thought I'd go ahead and give everyone an update on the babies.

Shae had another doctor's appointment on Tuesday and everything was fine. Well, almost everything. For the last few months, every time the mood strikes her (usually in the car) Shae breaks into a ridiculous "dance." Every time I give her the "Really? Stop. You're embarrassing yourself and everyone who's ever known you." look she plays the damn "The babies made me do it" card. (Also, the babies make her flip me off a lot and say a lot of mean things to their father.) Guess what those damn little sea monkeys were doing when doc fired up the ultrasound? Yup, they were dancing. Actually, the dance they were doing looked about the same as the spasms Shae has been blaming on them. Great, now I'm never going to hear the end of this. On the bright side, the doc didn't find anymore babies so I'm gonna call the appointment a good one.

Not Much Going On

2008-03-19T18:29:00.000-07:00

Well, there isn't a lot to share since last week. Outside of the daily terror that is living with a hormonal Shae, things are pretty quiet here in the Lorigan household.

Sarah came down to San Diego last weekend to get her dose of Pat, Shae, and the Box. We took it pretty easy but we found time to take the dog out on a hike (shortened by the rain) and watch a few movies. Oh, and in anticipation of our trip to Death Valley this weekend, we got Lunchbox some booties. Shae swears he needs them because of the harsh terrain in the desert. I think she just wanted to watch this:

Shae and I are off to Death Valley until Monday. Somehow I agreed to this without realizing I was going to miss out on the opening weekend of March Madness. So instead of watching non-stop basketball action and watching my brackets fall apart I get to share a tent with a pregnant wife and a gassy dog. Actually, we're really looking forward to the weekend and hopefully Shae will have some pictures to post on her Daily Photo blog (I'm not sure she knows the meaning of the word daily).

Happy Easter to everyone, and good luck to everyone with their March Madness brackets.

Now You Have A Topic For Your Blog

2008-03-10T20:27:00.000-07:00

Note: Waiting to publish this for a few weeks, but the posts below are being written on the dates indicated. If you get bored halfway through, you probably want to jump down to the end and read the last post before heading elsewhere on the world wide web.

2/13/2008:
"Now you have a topic for your blog. Happy Valentine's Day!"

That's what Shae said as she pulled out what looked like a thermometer from her purse. I couldn't figure out why she would be giving me a Valentine's Day present a day early, much less why she would give me a thermometer. Then she turned it over, and I saw "E.P.T" printed on the other side. I felt like I was in an after school special, except instead of being a 14 year old boy sleeping with his teacher I'm 29, married, with a house and a dog. Other than that, it's exactly the same. Shae's going to take another test tomorrow, but we all know how this is ending. I think I'll call him Lil' Pat.

2/14/2008:
Just to be sure, Shae peed on another stick. We got another plus sign. Time to call the parents. They're excited, I think Shae's dad just started building a crib. Seriously, I think he's in the shop right now

2/17/2008:
(2:00 pm) Today we finally got to the store to pick up some prenatal vitamins for Mrs. Prego. After hunting all over the CVS vitamin aisle, we finally found two brands of prenatal multi-vitamins. Of course, we had no way of deciding which one we needed. After reading the back of the packages we were still undecided, so we decided to ask the pharmacist for help. As Shae and I hung around waiting for the pharmacist to become available, I couldn't help feeling like a confused teenage kid again. Here we are, two almost-30-year-olds, and we are standing around waiting for the pharmacist so we can ask her which multi-vitamin is better. Screw it, we chose one and headed for the register. On the way, Shae stopped to grab some Cadbury Mini-Eggs from the Easter candy selection. I guess she's done with her diet.

(10:00 pm) We just watched "Knocked Up" because it seemed fitting. Last time I watched the movie it seemed funny. Now...not so much. A hormonal woman screaming at the man who got her pregnant isn't funny anymore. Comedy my ass; this movie just got moved over to the horror section of my DVD collection.

2/20/2008:
Today Shae found out that the smell of chocolate makes her nauseas. Great. So now I get to deal with a hormonal woman who can't eat chocolate (of course, she's supposedly avoiding caffeine anyway, but I almost lost my head two days ago when I pointed out that chocolate has caffeine). Oh, and she's really gassy. I get to sit on the couch with Shae farting next to me and Lunchbox farting at me feet. Super. These next 8 months are going to be awesome. I can't wait.

2/27/2008:
Normally on Wednesday nights Shae makes me watch "Supernanny" right after it records (not live of course, that would just be crazy). Tonight, she decided she'd rather watch something else because she wasn't in the mood for a "scary show". I guess there's a bright side to scary-hormonal-Shae after all.

2/28/2008:
That bright side of scary-hormonal-Shae didn't last very long. It was my morning to feed the dog, but due to our painting adventures I didn't have access to my robe (not to mention I'm getting over being sick) so I asked Shae if she could take care of LB today. It's incredible I didn't lose a hand or an arm. "YOUR ROBE IS IN THE GUEST ROOM!!! JUST GO PUT IT ON!!! I'M NOT WEARING PANTS EITHER!!!" (Somehow Shae overlooked the fact that she has worn pajama bottoms to bed pretty much every night since we get married.) Then she got up, stormed out of the room, threw open the back door and fed the dog. She proceeded to be generally pissed at me until I left for work. Of course, when I stopped by The Learning Garden after work Shae was all hugs and kisses. Apparently she also broke down and cried during an episode of some baby show this morning. I love my wives...well, most of them.

3/1/2008:
We finally went to see Juno today. Like everyone else says, it was a good movie. I just have a few comments. According to Shae, they nailed the expression on the Arrested Development/Superbad kid's face when Juno tells him she's pregnant ("That's the exact look you had on your face"). Also, in the scene where Juno tells her parents she's pregnant and complains she hasn't shit "since Wednesday" Shae leaned over and whispered, "I haven't shit since Wednesday either." Shae's shitting success is becoming a much bigger part of my daily life than I could ever have imagined.

3/3/2008:
Shae finally took a dump today. Apparently this is a big deal. She's really excited. Oh yeah, and we made our first appointment with the doctor for next Monday.

3/7/2008:
Shae's starting to show already. You know what that means? That's right...maternity pants! I'm pretty sure that's the only part of this whole pregnancy thing I'm going to be jealous of. I want to wear pants with an elastic waistband. I think we're going to have to start telling people pretty soon, it's starting to get obvious.

3/10/2008:
We finally saw the doctor today, and I think it's pretty safe to say things were a lot different at 10:00 than when I woke up. For starters, I think I'm going to like our doc. When discussing Shae's boobs (one of my favorite subjects), she put my feelings perfectly (no need to quote here, but let's just say there something wrong with making boobs bigger but then making them hurt so bad that the hubby can't even look at them without getting in trouble). Shae peed in a cup, and I guess the rabbit died because out came the ultrasound machine. This is where it got fun.

Pointing at one blob on the screen doc said "There's your baby." Then, pointing to another spot on the screen "And what's that over there?" (I thought she was the doctor, why the hell is she asking us questions?) You know what that was? ANOTHER FREAKIN' BABY!! That's right, there are two little nuts growing inside Shae; she has two sacks. (Sorry, but I just can't pass up any opportunity to talk about nuts and sacks, even in a blog post about babies.)

I just stood there feeling like I did when Shae first told me she was pregnant. Apparently, I also had exactly the same look. You know what's not funny anymore? All of the "twins run in my family" comments Shae made over the past month or so. I hope she's happy.

Eventually I snapped out of my daze and staggered out of the office. After the nurse gave us directions to the office to get Shae's blood work done I asked her if there was a stop along the way where I could get my boys snipped. There wasn't so I guess I have something to do tomorrow on my lunch break.

Right now, I'd have to say I'm still in shock but I'm slowly coming around and starting to get excited. I had just gotten used to the idea of one kid and now I have to get used to the idea of having two. Shae's excited, but a little scared about how big she's going to get. Her quote: "Now we have a pee-stick for each kid." Glad to see we're focusing on the important stuff.

Shae decided it's time to start telling people and posted the ultrasound pic on her Myspace page so I guess it's time to publish this. Enjoy (or don't, too late now you already read it).

Here's a pic of the peanuts:

Humps & Cruises (Mom's Weekend in SD)

2008-03-10T18:37:00.000-07:00

A quick recap of Mom's birthday weekend visit to San Diego.

Friday:
The weekend started off with some fireworks on the way home from the airport. Not everyone would setup a fireworks show over the bay to celebrate their mom's arrival in town, but that's how we roll Either that, or she just happened to fly in at the right moment. I'm sticking with the version that gives me credit. (Actually, the weekend started off with me and Shae hurrying to get the guest room cleaned up from our painting adventures in time for my mom's arrival, but we're starting this story from when the plane touched down.)

Saturday:
And now time for the humps and cruises. My mom wanted to see some of Lunchbox's dog park fun so we loaded up the pup and headed to the park. Of course, the one day we were hoping for lots of dogs the park was almost deserted. The only dogs there that showed any interest in Lunchbox were a pit bull and a black lab. The lab growled and barked at LB, and the pit bull...wow. The entire time we were there the pit bull kept trying to hump our puppy. Heads or tails, it didn't matter...the pit humped Lunchbox any way he could catch him. The pit bull's owners made a few half hearted attempts at pushing their dog off and LB kept trying to get the pit to run around and play, but eventually it just turned into Shae and I taking turns pushing the pit bull off of our dog. After about 20 minutes of that we got tired of dealing with the other dog and left. I swear, usually the park's a lot more fun and entertaining. At least no one stepped in crap.

After a trip home and a quick nap, we headed out for the main attraction: a dinner cruise around the bay. Since we got downtown early (the cruise boarded at 7:30), we headed over to Seaport Village to kill some time. Walk, store, walk, store, walk, cookie, store walk. That pretty much sums up Seaport Village (from my POV; Shaes's take: "Boats, birds, sunsets, kites, pretty."). Eventually it was time for the cruise. Not a lot to say, except the food was good, so was the view, and overall it was a great time. Happy birthday Mom!

Sunday:
Pretty relaxed day. With the time change and our relaxed pace, our day was basically breakfast and a trip to the airport. No fireworks this time, but we did have the puppy with us to say goodbye.

All Paint and No Play Makes Pat a Sore Boy

2008-02-25T20:01:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if it was the horrible tangerine color of our bedroom, or just because Shae loves to make me do shit, but somehow I got roped into painting our master bedroom/bathroom this weekend. Basically, the bedroom's not finished, I'm sleeping on the couch, and the people who painted our house last should never be allowed to touch a paint brush again. Ever.

I should have known we were in trouble on Friday when I got home from work and Shae hadn't started work on the room yet (my favorite part of the plan was the part where she did stuff while I was at work). After a few passive aggressive remarks to wifey, we got to work taking apart the bathroom. Of course, since it was evening, things got a little more interesting once we took down the light fixture. You don't need light to paint, right? Eventually we go the bathroom taken apart and primed, and called it a night.

After a freezing night (well, freezing for SD...we had to leave our windows open to ventilate the room), we got up and went to work on the bedroom. Everything from the bedroom and the closet went into the only room in the house with space to hold it all--the guest room. I just want to take a second to suggest to anyone reading this that if you're painting your bedroom and the only other bed in your house is in the guest room, you might want to find somewhere else to keep all of your crap. If you have to keep your crap in the guest room, at least keep the bed cleared. If you ignore those two suggestions, at least make sure that both of your air mattresses aren't stored in a closet in the guest room that you can't get to after filling the room up with all of your crap. Or, ignore my advice and just sleep on the couch. Shae and I chose the last option. We are super-smart sometimes.

Anyway, after we got all of our shit out of the room we went to work cleaning and prepping the bedroom. At this point, I have to ask: how hard is it to take off the outlet and switch covers? We've painted 3 rooms in this house and in every single room the previous painter(s) have been too lazy to take any of the covers off. Every switch and outlet cover has paint on the edges because apparently it's too much effort to take 20 seconds and remove the damn covers. The master bedroom, though, set a new standard in painting laziness. There was an alarm keypad on one of the bedroom walls that had some LEDs on it (this has now been removed). To block the lights at night, someone had taken a plastic card with the keypad instructions and folded it over the panel. When we took the instructions off sure enough there was paint on the sheet. Who the hell is too damn lazy to take a 3x5 laminated piece of plastic off the wall when they're painting? It took 1 second...it wasn't even taped to the keypad.

In contrast to this, the painters took the time and effort to paint (almost) the entire closet interior (including the built in shelves) to match the horrid orange. The one part that they left unpainted (of course one random wall wasn't painted, what else would we expect?) showed that before being painted orange the closet was white. It took about an hour to prime and another hour to paint the closet (and is a large part of the reason we didn't finish painting yesterday). Who the hell would spend (at least) an hour or two painting a perfectly fine closet a horrible shade of orange, but not take the five minutes (or less) it would take to remove all of the outlet and switch covers in the room?

Anyway, that's enough venting about the previous painters, back to our story. There's not a whole lot else to tell except it's Monday evening now and it's about 50/50 that Shae and I will get to sleep in our bed tonight. On the bright side, we "watched" about 10 movies (as background noise, mostly chick flicks) and I got to witness Erica and Shae taking turns shampooing the bedroom carpet. Even unfinished the room looks about 100 times better than the awfulness that was the tangerine, and hopefully we'll finish up the baseboards and touch-up in the next night or two and get moved back in. Pics will be uploaded to our photo album once we're done.