Bathrooms.

I don't think more bathrooms would make much of a difference with how I feel. Yes I'd love to have a master bath and to never have to jockey for bathroom time again. But I would still be dealing with toilets not flushed and children spending hours doing god know what in the bathroom. Those things would still drive me mad!

Juggling.

The CEO is in the shower and I've got the little guy in my arms, he doesn't like to sleep alone so putting him down is not easy. The Z is still up, it's 10:15pm and she's hungry. I'm trying to negotiate with her quietly so as not to wake the guy in my arms or the one sleeping in the room across the hall from her. We finally agree that she can have some cheese. I manage to open the fridge, the drawer containing the cheese, the zip lock bag with the block o' cheese and cut three wedges of cheese for her, all with a baby dangling happily from my other arm. I get her the cheese and she's happy. Now the big guy is starting to stir, at this point I have to alert the CEO who has just come out of the shower. I manage to put the little guy down (big victory) and I go in and comfort his brother. The CEO arrives with the precious milk and all is well. Now I just have to fold my laundry, take the dog out and get ready for bed. It's shaping up to be a typical night and looking like another 11:30+ bedtime.

PS: Don't forget to vote (upper right--->)

When one of us gets sick we all suffer.

The CEO is deathly ill with strep throat (OUCH!) and I'm taking time off from work to manage the gang. This is hard work. I knew it was hard being home with the kids but this was a good reminder. It is no wonder that by the time the late after noon rolls around she has no interest in making dinner. The only thing I felt like doing by then is either sleeping or shooting myself in the head.

7:45PM and everyone is sleeping. The CEO is in bed with "The Little Guy" and "The Big Guy" is sleeping in the much overused swing. The kitchen is a mess and I want to clean it up but I'm sure any clanking sound will wake someone. It has been a wild 7 weeks and I'm pretty....damn it here comes someone...The Kid is restless, I don't think she's going to stay in bed. Anyhow, it has been a wild ride with the brood of kids we now have and I'm thinking that this wild ride is going to continue for perhaps the rest of my life. I'm looking forward to it but I haven't quite adjusted. I spoke with someone in work who had six kids and he said it never gets easy but you just end up letting a lot of stuff slide. Sounds about right.

Hi....

Last time I wrote I was part of a family of four. Now we are a family of six! Yikes. It's been fun, exciting and even scary at times. Right now I'm hoping that we are about 25% through the initial sleepless haze. Four hours that's the big goal, when these boys can sleep for four hours straight then we start to get some of our sanity back.
I'm so tired, I've noticed that my misspelling rate is sky high and that my short term memory is gone and that's pretty amazing considering how bad both of those things were prior to the boys.

Good night......

We are +30 weeks into the pregnancy and each day I think how could it be possible that she's going to get bigger. I don't think we would have done anything differently had we known more about birthing multiples before implantation but I think someone should have warned us or prepared us better.

We've got a real problem with photo-storage. I think Kodak has a pay service maybe $25 for the whole year and you can have access to downloading and uploading any number of photos onto their service. Maybe it's worth the price. Right now we have three computers all with photos on them. I know I could get an external hard drive but that just seems like another piece of equipment to worry about and for the cost of one of those I could probably buy a couple years of the Kodak service. Any thoughts?

I've got a cold.

I can't believe it has been so long since my last post. Since last time we've had one guest leave (sad to see you go Sis) and another set arrive and depart (sad to see you go M&D) and I've contracted a nasty cough that I'm hoping to get rid of real soon. We've also reached the 30 week mark in the pregnancy of the twins. The end is near. I can't imagine what it's going to be like. It almost feels like it's not going to be real until these guys are in the house.

It's too late for me to be doing this and I'm too sick.

Good night.

My three girls.

It is 8:02 PM on Friday and all three of my girls are sleeping, well the smallest of the three is still awake mumbling and rustling about but she's in bed and probably will not be coming out until morning. I wish I had a video camera in her room, I'm pretty sure she gets out of bed and walks around. When we first moved her into her own room we soon realized that locking the door was a necessity. So in typical fashion we jammed clothing between the door and the door frame, this lasted for many many months. However this seemed to have about a 80% success rate (not high enough) of keeping the door locked. Finally the CEO got fed up enough that she put a hook latch on the door. I know none of this sounds like great parenting but it works. Lately we been unlatching the door when we go to bed and she hasn't been getting out and bothering us. All we want is sleep and at this point even six hours of uninterrupted sleep seems like a miracle.

Two is better than one.

So it is finally out there, so it's official and I can talk about it on the Blog. The CEO is having twins! I mean the CEO and I are having twins. Yikes!!! It's gonna get really crazy around here come mid-March. These two little buggers were a long time in the making and we finally did it. In the process I've become an expert at sticking needles in to the CEO's bottom. This time around the shots were no big deal. Anyhow, I just wanted to get this out there. More to come soon.

Visitors Like Screens.

My In-Laws are in town, they are following a recent visit from my parents, who followed the CEO's cousin, who followed her sister. Every time a new visitor comes the kid has to give up her mattress and sleep on the air mattress. This time she even had to give up her bed frame. She's not happy about this and is complaining that she like to sleep high not low on the floor. The poor kid has probably spent six weeks on an air mattress.

It seems that a consistent complaint from all the visitors is that we have no screens on our windows. It bothers the CEO something awful. Perhaps the screens are suffering from the same fate that my former long hair suffered from. The more my family nagged me about it the more stubborn I was about keeping it long.

The Shark

The Kid and her friend (blog name: The Gardener) have been talking about a shark that lives in the back yard. Toys will come and go and it will be the sharks doing, holes will be dug in places they shouldn't be because the shark needs them there. Tonight the CEO probed about the existence of such as shark. "Tell me this, how can a shark live in the back yard without water," she asked? "Well, scientists are trying to figure that out," the kid replied.

Excellent.

The CEO just put The Kid to sleep. Moments late I hear footsteps coming down the stairs. The Kid arrives at the bottom of the steps looks at her Mom and says "I'd really like to go to Nebraska." What can you say to that except "OK, now go to bed." So I take her back up to here room and kiss her good night. Then right before I leave she asks me "Da-Da? Which state has the most robbers?" I tell her it's probably California. "Do they have a lot of police cars there," she asks? "Yes, they do, there is nothing to worry about, now go to sleep," I say.

My name Apple.

For the last few days when we ask The Z what her name is she says "My name Apple." It goes something like this:
"Hi I'm Daddy, what's your name?" I say.
"How are you, my name Apple," she says.
The she smiles really big.

This strangely seemed to coincide with The Kid deciding that she wanted to have an apple theme birthday party. She'd like to have bobbing for apples, pin the apple on the branch and apple decorating. Where does she come up with these things? Apples are not even her favorite fruit.

Freedom.

Kites are like magic.

The Kid had been waiting a long time to fly a kite and our trip to the coast last weekend provided the perfect opportunity. Flying a kite is one of those magical things that brings you back to your youth. We were lucky enough to have two kites flying and to be able to tether the strings under rocks and let them soar on their own. Then one of the strings snapped and in a flash a kite was gone seemingly lost forever. But like magic the kite appeared in the air 200 yards away. The CEO went to investigate and found a Father and daughter flying the kite in hopes that it's rightful owners would come and get it.

Crazy cat lady?

I've just been thinking that my youngest sister may have the potential to one day be a crazy cat lady. She's never had more than three cats at once, if you have more than three that's kind of crossing the line. She always seems to get them out of the goodness of her heart. But isn't that how it always starts? At least it seems to start that way on the evening news. If my brother in-law gets this job he's interviewing for then they'll be seperated on weekdays, my sister will be without someone to control her animal rescue impulses. This job could prove to be disasterous.

Mr. Mom

The CEO had strep throat all week. Ouch. I barely made it in to work as I played Mr. Mom most of the week. From Tue. through Thur. she mostly spoke to me by writing things down on paper. I've collected some of the best of the notes and thought you all may enjoy them:
-You can't miss every day of work in your life.
-I cannot talk. My vocal cords are injured. Must sing by Friday. Why do you keep asking me questions in my face.
-The Capital Grille on Beacon Hill had a turkey and swiss that was to die for...$4.95 So Fresh.
-Plenty of people parent drunk.
-I can eat the carrots and potatoes! Very Soft!
-She doesn't eat cooked carrots. Wasted.
-You either read lips or not.

Tired yet again.

Yes it has happened again....
My laundry has built up to an unconquerable mountain. I've stayed up too late doing work too many nights in a row. I've put off paying the bills 'till the last moment.
Why oh why does this have to keep happening over and over and over? It seems to hard to stick to or perhaps even develop a working system. I don't want to make it like my life is crazy but I think that there are just to many variables and this life when looked at from a engineers viewpoint all these variable have created an unstable system that can not be predicted.

The CEO Rules

The CEO was just awarded an grant from the Oregon Literary-Arts Fellowship program for her writing. Last spring and fall she worked her ass off to have a piece to submit and all her hard work paid off.

Look for the CEO name to be posted in the 2006 spot of this list and see the company she keeps:
http://www.literary-arts.org/fellowships/past_women_writers.php

A million congratulations to the CEO!!!!
We were all so excited and proud of her.

Three moments live as one.

I was trying to book plane tickets to go to get back to my grandmothers wake when a package of "struffoli" arrive from my sister as a Christmas gift and my 2 year old daughter started calling out Daddy from the bathroom because she had s#*t in the tub. I would have liked all three of these moments to occupy their own space in the time continuum yet instead they all mashed together to form a bizarre moment that I could only later laugh about.'

(Struffoli picture to be instered at a later date)

Wardrobe

So shirts started arriving in the mail recently and at first that seemed OK. I started to question where they were coming from. Was it my parents, sisters or in-laws? No one was cracking, everyone had a good poker face. The first shirt was a nice pullover light sweater/sweatshirt thing. Just my style. Then the button down collard pattern numbers started coming. Not my style. What is my style you ask. We'll for years now it's been Timberland T-Shirts and Jeans. Every Christmas I get a box full of long and short sleeve Timberland T-Shirts from The CEO's Godmother. Sounds kind of strange doesn't it. Anyhow, I love it. Who wouldn't. I will admit that I was due for a wardrobe update but when Timberland Tees and Jeans puts you in the "dressed better than most people" category at work what's the rush in upgrading. I'm looking pretty good at my workplace. I gotta guess that it's been at least four years that my family has been hoping I'd upgrade and the more they hoped and teased the less I wanted to do about it. It's not the clothes that make the man. However, the time had really finally arrived that I needed to make some improvements and one stop to Old Navy and three shirts later I'm upgraded, done, complete, improved. I'm sure the family is torn, I'm guessing they are happy to hear that I've picked up some new clothes, yet sad to know that it is only three shirts and all from Old Navy. Hey, what are you gonna do. That's me. I mean who really wants to shop for clothes. I hate it. Shopping is like golf, the fun to time ratio is way out of balance.

Oh yeah and of course it was my parents who were sending the shirts.