Hello there, DCFS

Children say the strangest things.  Sometimes they just conjugate poorly and sometimes they simply just use the wrong words. 

I think this says it all.

Mama took Hadley to the pediatrician a few weeks ago as she was struggling through a nasty cough and fever.  The night before, she had been coughing so hard I had to take her to the guest bedroom, prop her up on some pillows so she could breathe easier, and lie there with her so she wouldn't wake up in a strange room and be totally freaked out.

SIDEBAR:  If you've ever slept next to a toddler, you know you don't actually sleep.  When I wasn't wide awake from the fear of rolling over on her, I was being assaulted by her amazingly strong and accurate "jimmy leg" kicking.

At one point, I had her propped up length wise on the bed, with the wall serving as her support on one side to keep her from falling out of bed while I was on the other side.  Somehow, she managed to turn herself so her head was facing the support wall and the rest of her body was lying width wise across the bed.  She's 40 inches tall, so on a standard full size bed this left little room for me.  I was now trying to avoid her dangerous feet while dangling over the side of the bed.

Back to the main story.  While sitting in the pediatrician's waiting room, she not so quietly mentioned to her Mama

"I slept in bed with Papa last night and he didn't have any clothes on." 

Fortunately, there was nobody else in the room.  Can you imagine the reaction you might have had if you'd heard a three year old make that statement?  If someone had heard that, I can only imagine how long it would've taken before there was a knock on my front door from someone with a clipboard, standing next to a large police officer.


This is what comes to mind when I think about what she said.

This might be too much information, but for the record, I do not sleep in the nude.  I don't wear a shirt, but I hardly think that constitutes not having any clothes on.  Guess we'll have to spend a little more time on definitions going forward.

You know you're tired when...

1 - you wonder why your mouse isn't working, until you realize you've grabbed your cell phone and are trying to use that to manipulate your computer.

but my mouse is wireless

2 - the phone rings, you pick it up, nobody is on the other end, and it keeps ringing. Meaning, you picked up your cell phone when the office phone was ringing.

another way to fail using the phone

3 - you find yourself in a 30 minute conversation with the most annoying person in your office and you are okay with it because it keeps you from falling asleep at your desk.

Yes, Milton, I'm still listening

4 - you have to touch your eyeball to see if you did, in fact, remember to put in your contacts that morning.

bet he doesn't have this problem

5 - you try not to blink because reopening your eyes seems like too much work.

a much better solution

6 - you hang up a call rather than be put on hold because the elevator music they're playing might put you to sleep.

7 - you take two hours to realize you never turned on the light in your office.

I suppose that's enough light to work by

8 - you start eating lunch and then realize it's only 9 AM.

whatever

9 - the funniest thing you've heard all day is the guy in the office next to you repeating "hello" 35 times before deciding something is wrong with the caller's phone. Actually, it was 35 times over four different calls...I counted.

apparently not

10 - you count the number of times the guy in the office next to you says hello before hanging up.

11 - you catch yourself doing the sleeping head bob, while in the restroom.

at least he's not on the toilet

12 - you find yourself mentally measuring the space under your desk and wondering if you could nap there without anyone finding out.

sadly, the answer is no

13 - you've managed to finish a Mountain Dew before anyone else is even in the office.

I can't wait for the sugar high to wear off, maybe then I'll sleep

All of this happened to me the other morning so I thought I'd share it - and because I haven't had a good list post in quite some time. 

Go ahead, laugh at me.  I'm not sure I'll even know what's going on if this keeps up.

Professor Papa - Part 3

This is another instance of taking a good thing, and using it in the wrong fashion.

On vacation we had a bit of extra time to kill between bath and bed time.  Mama was tending to Brynne, so Hadley and I were playing in their room.  We were on the bed reading one of their sign language books.  I turned the page to the next sign, which was jump.

She then jumped.  Okay, so she didn't jump like this, but she clearly made the attempt.  With the extra spring in her step provided by the bed she was able to put some air between her feet and the bed. 

It caught me off guard.  I know that she knows the signs for the words in the books, but I didn't realize she knew what the words meant.  Granted, I was helping show her how to jump (as best I could from a kneeling position), but she took right to it.

She was laughing and smiling - obviously as proud of herself as I was. 

Brynne came in (attracted by the squealing of Hadley), climbed on the bed, and proceeded to do exactly the same thing.

The next day we worked on jumping off the ground.  Without the bed springs to supply some much needed lift they were only able to "jump" to their tip toes.  Since then they have been able to get a little lift, so I'm calling that success. 

In my opinion, even if you can barely put a sheet of paper between their feet and the ground it is still a jump.   Once we get a little basketball hoop for them we'll work on layups and dunking, but for now we'll stick with increasing their vertical.

I guess I am partly (or fully) to blame for their jumping on the wrong things.  I am the one who introduced them to jumping on the bed.  They, however, did start jumping on couches, chairs, and in cribs.

It's gotten to the point where if they are on the couch (where they know they are not to stand up) they will stand, jump, and then land/fall on their butts - laughing madly the whole time.

My two concerns are: 

1 - jumping over the back of the couch or off the sides/front

2 - landing on their butts from a jump on a hard surface.

The first one is higher on the danger scale than the second as they don't have as far to go, but it is still a concern.



Obviously it will be a long time before they do something which puts them way up on the danger scale, but even these small falls can do damage.



I'll just have to deal with it, though. Can't keep my girls in a bubble.

What is that sound?

I've discovered another trait the girls picked up from me - large feet.

Sure, they have their mother's coup de-toe, but they seem to have my length.  They also have the ability to outgrow shoes quickly.

Several weeks before our vacation Julia ordered them new shoes as their little toes were becoming scrunched in their current pairs. 

Several weeks went by and we still had not received said shoes.

The night before we left we decided they were not coming, so we headed to a local shoe store.  By local, I mean the only store that carried the brand we (and by we I mean Julia as she does the shoe research) wanted was 30 miles away.  We called them and confirmed they carried the shoes and had the ones we wanted.  Off we went.

The store did, in fact, have one pair of the shoes we wanted.  They had nothing else in the style we wanted in the girls size.  We contemplated buying a different type, but they didn't have the features and support Julia was looking for. 

Then it happened.

The salesman brought out a pair of Squeakers. 

We slipped them on and the girls took off.  Fortunately, we were the only ones in the store at the time.

Do you hear that funny, squeaky sound?

Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak.

With every step they took a squeaking sound was produced by their shoes.

NO.  NO WAY.  TAKE THEM OFF WE ARE NOT GETTING THEM.

That was my initial reaction. 

I mashed their feet back into their old shoes and prepared to leave. 

Brynne started to take her shoes off.  Only then did I notice how the velcro strap appeared to be cutting off her circulation. 

MacGyver might have just cut the end of the shoe off and created space for her toes, but that wouldn't have allowed the blood to flow to those toes freely.

We tried on several different sizes of other shoes, but none fit quite as nicely as the Squeakers.

The salesman assured me the squeak-making piece of the shoe could be easily removed, so we went ahead and purchased the shoes.

I had every intention of removing the squeaky thing, but I didn't. There are a few reasons for that:

1 - the squeaky sound is very easy to identify and lets me know exactly where they are.  If for some reason they escaped my grasp and took off I could follow the squeak better than a GPS tracker.

2 - they love to hear the squeaky sound.  Both of them have done their fair share of toe walking, but this was encouraging them to walk properly.

3 - one of the squeakers did fall out on its own on vacation, and this caused a little distress for Hadley.  She went from "squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak" to "squeak, (silence), squeak, (silence)".  She then stopped and just started stomping her squeak-less foot in an effort to get the squeak back - this is how I realized the squeaker was gone.  No sound was being produced and she didn't want to move until it did.

At this point we went back to the hotel for bed time, searched for a local store that had the Squeakers, and found one the only one in a  60 mile radius just happened to be right close to our next morning destination - so we stopped in and got a replacement squeaker.

So, I 've gone from vehemently opposing the squeak, to actually seeking out a replacement squeak.

All was once again right with the world. 

As with anything you constantly hear, the squeaking is now hardly noticeable to us.  People are constantly commenting on them and we have yet to hear a negative remark.

Yes, I did use some form of squeak 28 times in this post.  I dare you to outdo me.

Got Milk?

Let's do some math.  There are 64 ounces of milk in a half gallon.  If I drink an eight ounce glass with breakfast and Julia has about the same amount in her coffee, how much milk must each of the girls drink to go through the entire half gallon each and every day?

Stop looking for a calculator - it's 24 ounces each.

If you got your calculator, just to double check my math, you should find that I'm correct.  While sign language may not be my strong suit, numbers are.

 Math IS fun, so let's do some more. 

Each day, the girls have on average six wet diapers.  The diaper I change first thing in the morning usually holds about 12 ounces of urine.  Their clothing holds another four ounces.  The sleep sack catches two more.  That's 18 ounces of urine in the first change. 

Put the calculator away, please?

This leaves six ounces of milk unaccounted for, but with five other diaper changes yet to be considered.  This is where the math stops adding up.  Yes, I did just put a horrible pun in here.

Each of those five diapers has more than one ounce in them.  Where does this come from?

The obvious answer is other items they consume that have liquids.  On some days they get orange juice or water, so that makes up some of the shortage.  Fruits, vegetables, and BBQ sauce (sometimes the only way they'll eat an item is when it is doused with Bone Suckin Sauce) make up some more of it.

There are still fluids unaccounted for!!  Are they losing water weight each and every day??  Their skin looks healthy, so I can cross that fear off my list.

The truth is, they subsidize their intake with water from their pool or the tub.

There is nothing more beautiful in life than watching both of your girls "make water" in the tub (aka pee), grab something that holds liquids, and then re-ingest some of their homemade "water". 

Often, the new concoction contains water, urine, and soap.  YUMMY!!!

I'm not a chemist, but I am pretty sure the following equation is true, so I'm not too disgusted.

                                Soap + Urine = Clean Water 

I think it's great that they're learning how to use a cup on their own AND we don't have a huge mess to clean up.  I think it is NOT great when they are drinking their own filth. 

 In a third world country there may be no other option but to drink your own (and often anyone or any animal that happens to be upstream from you) urine, but here at home, thankfully, there is.

So how do we stop this despicable practice?  Simple.  Remove anything from the tub or pool that can be used as a drinking utensil.  The only thing we couldn't remove was the wash cloth, which counts as a drinking utensil.  Since the primary function of the cloth is more important than the other uses, we decided to leave it in the tub.  We do, however, have a protocol for usage:

1. It goes into the tub only when we are ready to use it.
2. If it is confiscated by toddlers, we try to take it away (using other toys as distractions) or at least wring it out before it can be used inappropriately.
3. We remove it from the tub as soon as the washing stage is complete. 

By following these simple steps, you too can live a life free of botulism, cholera, dysentery, and typhoid fever. 

Maybe that is a little over-dramatic, but at least you can stop watching your children drink their own pee.

What's wrong with you???

I am a Seinfeld fan.  There's an episode where Kramer's phone number is close to the movie theater's phone number and so, he just starts answering as if he were the theater's automated recording.  When someone would key in their zip code, he couldn't tell what it was, so he would just ask them to tell him where they wanted to see the movie, in his best automated recording voice. 

I feel like Kramer quite often now.

Sidebar -

I loathe those automated operators.  Use your snobbiest voice and say, IIIIIII'm sorry.  I didn't understand your reply.  Please try again. 

Do that to your significant other about nine times in a row and see how much fun it is for them. 

I usually end up just yelling, Operator! into the phone until it gets me to a person.  The voice tends to sound a little dejected by the end of it, so score a moral victory for me! 

Auto-op realized it was unable to help me and truly feels bad - maybe it will get a bad review at the end of the year for poor customer service. 

Back to the main story. 

Julia (my wife, for those of you that don't know me) stays home with the girls.  All day long they eat bon-bons and work on their sign language.  It's gotten to the point where they know over 40 signs. 

I know four of those. 

My mind is like a steel trap with a lot of things, but it is more like a steel colander when it comes to sign language. 

When I get home from work I typically feed the girls dinner.  They will be eating just fine, until they decide they want something else.  At this point, one of them will start convulsing and the other will either be laughing, or making wild gestures of her own. 

If they want something other than milk, water, bananas, or grapes I simply cannot help them - those are my four signs. 

I yell for Julia (for her and not at her) to tell me if I need to do some sort of medical(ish) treatment on them, or perhaps perform an exorcism.  After she reassures me they are not actually convulsing, and that they merely want blueberries or strawberries, I can relax. I get them the food and they are good - until we run out of said food and they, again, appear possessed. 

There are only two solutions to this communication problem that I see: I learn sign language, or they learn to speak. 

I'm convinced they will use words more in their life than I will use sign language, so I'm going with the second option.  I will continue to yell for Julia when the girls have fits.  I'm sure this won't go the way I want it to, so I'll probably be a master in signing soon.