Day 18-- Small Victories

Edgar and I shared a room last night-- him in the playpen and me in the bed.  At 6ish, Edgar woke up. To me, it felt like 3 or 4ish, and was definitely not light outside. Both clock radios in the room were unplugged, so I had no real idea what time it was. He was quite angry that I was not his mother, and willing to yell at me for quite a while because of this. After dealing with that abuse for what felt like half an hour, trying to calm him down, sing to him, offer him a bottle, etc., I fled the room looking for the bathroom. I ran into Jen in the hallway, and she informed me that she was awake, that it was morning time, and that if I would fetch a bottle she would kindly take Edgar in exchange for Sabrina. While this was no doubt a magnanimous offer on my wife's part, at I-thought-it-was-3-AM, it didn't feel too kindly. Also not so kindly-seeming was the notification at 8:30 that her shift was done and that it was my turn to wake up and take Edgar potty. It's funny how sleep deprivation colors your thoughts. Thinking back on it, she was being a good wife and very nice to me, but at the time, I couldn't believe that she'd not come to my rescue in the morning when she was clearly awake, and that she would have the nerve to wake me up after that to take care of HER son. Yeah, sorry for being grumpy, Jen.

Despite the grumpiness, my not-quite-awake potty session with Edgar yielded his first real poop on the potty. We were ecstatic. It's kind of sad that our lives focus on (and celebrate) poop right now, but hey-- it's a big deal. And, for the record, it was a lot easier to clean up than a stinky diaper.

In celebration, we were supposed to give Edgar the agreed-upon Sucker for potty-pooping. However, due to our spontaneous and unforeseen stay at Grandma and Grandpa's, we were plum out. This occasioned a Daddy-and-Edgar shopping run for suckers. We picked up some valentine-themed lollipops, and a package of conversation hearts for me (one of my favorites-- nearly pure sugar!), we were home again.

Our day's adventures continued with a trip with Jen, Edgar, Sabrina, and I to the fish hatchery. The visit was fun-- sort of a repeat of the last adventures, but we were able to show Jen around. It certainly was worth a return trip, even so soon.

To give my frazzled mother a break, we went in search of lunch out. We found a neat place in Vancouver called Cafe Sip 'n' Play. We stumbled inside not knowing really what to expect, and found a cafe-type setting attached to a play area geared to 1-to-5-year-olds. Perfect!

First, to wash the smell of fish food off our hands, we piled into the Family Bathroom, which had a kid-size potty, full diaper facilities, and a kids' sink. Edgar, handwashing-obsessed as he is, couldn't be torn away from the sink. To make the sink even more irresistible, they had a faucet that shines a blue LED into the water when it's on. The result is washing your hands in translucent, glowing blue water-- which is of course the best way to wash your hands when you're any age.

We were starving upon arrival. They had a pretty typical deli menu. My pizza was delicious, Jen's sandwich was okay, neither was really filling enough, but the facilities were the real draw.

They had a really large kids' play area, with lots of things to do. There was one enfant terrible 4-year-old who insisted that a large section of the play area filled with pads and pillows was his and that everyone had to help him make a choo-choo train. No other kids were allowed to play there, and he was wrestling (and hurting) anyone who even considered playing there. As the agent of chaos that I am, I announced loudly to Edgar that he should take the pads and build a castle and several other kids picked up on the idea. This, of course, angered our single-minded friend.

It was at this point that I realized that I was the only parent left in the kids' play area, and that perhaps the world was better off without my intervention. It took a shift in mindset, but I left Edgar to the Lord of the Flies situation there. He wasn't the smallest or the youngest kid there, so I just had to let it go. I was, to be honest, a little disappointed to be sitting on the grown-up side of the play area, but I guess it was for the best.

We had a lot of fun over the course of our time there. Edgar was too excited to eat much, but we made up for him. He even went in the little-kid toilet and was rewarded with a blue cookie that he had his eye on.

Home to Grandma's, where everyone in the house participated in a large afternoon nap. I LOVE naps!

Since everyone napped so long, we missed the 3:30, 4:30, and 6 PM showings of the movie we wanted to see. We made it out for the 7:30 showing, but that was pushing the kids' bedtimes by more than a little.

It was SO nice to have my parents around to watch our kids. We're in a weird, in-between place with my parents. Many couples that I know have one or two sets of in-town grandparents and get babysitting ALL THE TIME. I'm so jealous. My parents have braved the hour-and-fifteen-minutes between Vancouver and Salem probably less than 10 times in the 8 years we've lived here. Nevertheless, I can't really complain, because we can at least drive the kids and drop them off occasionally.  On the far side of the spectrum are the far-off parents, like Jen's (16 hour drive away) who only visit occasionally. [speaking of which, they're coming this week] We're sure lucky to have one set of sorta-close parents, but we're really jealous of couples with closer parents.

When Edgar was a baby, my parents (in their 70s) began insisting that they were too old to take care of kids, and that they would rather not babysit at all. This was a pretty sad moment, but completely understandable. With the birth of an easier baby, and 2 days of enforced babysitting when the baby arrived, my parents have now fallen in love with both Sabrina and Edgar. I'm glad. With parents in their 70s, it's probable that my parents won't see Edgar and Sabrina's kids, so I hope that Edgar and Sabrina get enough of their grandparents to be able to tell stories to their kids someday.

As the youngest child, I got to watch firsthand as my parents got to be grandparents to a whole generation of kids. I saw the joy in their eyes when the grandkids walked in the door. I saw the exhaustion and the relief when grandkids left. And I saw times when watching the grandkids was a joy, and times when it was a chore. With that observation, I can see that watching Edgar and Sabrina is (mostly) a joy to my parents, and they're glad to see them go, and only kinda glad to see them leave. As such, I don't feel too bad about abusing their hospitality over the last few days.

Anyway, Jen and I escaped to Narnia for two hours. The new Chronic- les of Narnia movies do a really good job at creating a world that I want to live in. Watching the movie was like going home. I can see how the movies aren't for everyone-- overt christian images, fantastic creatures, special effects and battles-- but they're right up my alley. Sure, I had a few qualms about differences between the book and film, questionable timelines (WWII was HOW long?), and cheesy special effects, but the movie was good. Oh, and it had a moment where Jen and I looked at each other and said: "Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man". A quick google search reveals that we weren't the only ones to catch that. Anyway, why the movie critique? It was a wonderful, cleansing, 2 hour escape from screaming kids.

After the movie, we collected our up-too-late kids and made our way home to Salem. I'm up late, so let's see how we do it all again tomorrow.

Day 14-- Two weeks down

Sabrina is 14 days old today. She had a rough night last night, acting colicky like Edgar did. Fussing and crying for hours. It still wasn't as bad as Edgar was, but it was trying. I caught a little sleep on the couch, and then took Sabrina and she slept on me in the rocking chair. Jen was generous enough to take Edgar first thing this morning. 

Honestly, I'm getting really sick of the sleep deprivation. Intellectually, I realize that we have very little to complain about. We have a relatively easy baby, a toddler who is potty training himself (!), and two parents, staying at home full time with two kids. This should be easy, right?

Then why is it so hard?

I stole Edgar this morning, and ran some errands. With a new Wii, and a leftover birthday gift card, we went video game shopping. We bought a strange assortment of games for SNES, N64, and Game Cube as well as Wii. I even picked out a few classic NES games, but put them back on the shelf when I saw how much I'd picked out.  Edgar played in the store while I looked. We got a little plastic Mario figurine with our purchase that he loves.

After naptime, we had kiddy-chaos at our place for an hour or so. I dearly love our next-door neighbors, but 7 kids in our apartment at once makes me crazy. Fighting a fussy baby and a contrary Edgar all night, I was on the verge of losing it all evening. This is reminding me of the darkest days of having Edgar as a baby. Over-tired, achy-headed, nerve-frazzled, and ready to give into despair at the slightest setback. I can't take much more of this.

Edgar was contrary all night-- doing just about the opposite of what anyone asked, menacing his little sister, but never being bad enough to get in trouble.

He spent HOURS today potty training. Sitting there, getting up, changing position, sitting, peeing, being excited, washing his hands for 15 minutes at a time, refusing to get his diaper back on, asking to get back on the potty, etc. Jen informed me that many guides to potty training say to ask your kid if they need to go potty every 10 minutes! That's 160 times in a typical day! I'm not ready for this. Edgar did manage to extrude the tiniest turd I've ever seen into the toilet, so there was the requisite celebration.

Our neighbor suggests that Edgar is potty training himself to get the one-on-one parental attention that he craves. It's working, he gets our attention, praise, love, etc. time and again all day. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I guess that's a really good way to get the attention he craves, and it certainly could be worse. I'm just so tired from everything else that I don't want to be as patient with him as he needs. blah.

I bought the classic old-school Donkey Kong Country for the SNES today, as well as the new Donkey Kong Country for the Wii (I've heard it's way hard), so I spent a few minutes this evening unwinding over the super nintendo. It was a moment of peace in an otherwise hectic day.

Okay, well that's it for today. Garrett has invited Edgar and I over tomorrow, and I'm ready for the distraction. Bring on the night.

Day 12 -- Little Adventures

Our sweet little daughter curled up next to her mother and only woke up once during the night.

Our sweet little son stretched out in his crib and woke up four times.

Something's wrong here.

Edgar at night is mostly Daddy's job. I say mostly because Jen was sweet and handled one of the four incidents last night. I wish I knew what the matter was. Heaven knows, Edgar is communicative enough, but when I ask him why he's waking up at night, he can't or won't answer. Is he sick? no. Is he scared? maybe. Is he sad? Yeah. What does he want? Mommy.

Okay. After a night like that, I was in no mood to deal with the kids, but regardless, I really needed to get out of the house. Playgroup got cancelled at the last minute, so we improvised. Jen fed Edgar breakfast while I slept in the rocking chair with Sabrina on my chest. Then, Edgar and I went exploring.

We hit not one, but TWO guitar stores here in Salem. Edgar was fascinated. So was I, but I'm at the point where the next guitar that I want to buy is so expensive that I just have to dream and hope.

The guitar stores were on the way to the Salem Carousel. I had a couple of spare tokens from my last attempt to take Edgar to the carousel, which didn't go too well. This time, he had a blast. "Horsie! Up-and-down!" He rode a horse and a zebra (!), and after two rides, was still so blissful and surprised that he didn't begrudge us leaving while it was still magical. In typical Alex-fashion, I didn't bother taking the camera with us, so we have no photo-documentation of our adventures to share. We were too busy having fun.

From there, we went to Lancaster Mall, ostensibly to go to the "ski store". Edgar played on the little-kid playground while I got some reading in. Check these pictures out:

...Now, compare this picture to this one, taken of Edgar at about 5 or 6 months old in the same spot (he was just standing up on his own)  :

He's even got the same expression on his face!

We wandered down the mall aimlessly, terrorizing all the weird power-walkers that are typically there on a weekday. The random old people walking the mall loved him.

We got a Strawberry Julius (an indulgence for me), and picked up my skis from the shop. Next, we had a father-son lunch at Wendy's. Poor kid-- that's where his mom always takes him. He didn't mind. I bought him fries and chicken nuggets and he ate only ketchup and ranch dressing. He made friends with all the people in the restaurant. We also had two people stop us today and ask us how old my daughter was. He was wearing blue. It's the hair...

...speaking of which, Jen had a conversation with Edgar the other day. It went something like this:

J: "Edgar, it's getting about time to cut your hair. Would you like a haircut?"

E: "No."

J: "We'd cut your hair and you'd look like Dylan and Max and Sam" (all kids from church with short hair)

E: "No! Long like Daddy!"

Well... I can't say that I haven't influenced him. I wouldn't mind him cutting his hair, though. The Prince Adam / Page Boy cut is looking a little weird. If it were me, I'd cut the hair over his ears and turn it into a mullet. Yeah, Jen won't have any part of that.

Had a rad nap at home. (thanks, Jen!), then, I stole the baby.

I took Sabrina to work with me. I let all the ladies (with their strong perfume) pass her around. I had to retrieve an encrytped file from a secure server (sounds like something off of 24, right?), so I needed to spend about 5 minutes in the office. Sabrina was so good that I ended up showing her around the whole place. She was a sweetie and stared at everyone and wiggled, and was generally an angel.

I like taking my kids into work. I like to think that it buys me a bit of forgiveness if I'm flaky or blow a deadline occasionally... "It's okay-- you have the most adorable daughter in the world. I'm sure you were up all night with her instead of making sales projections..."

I came home this evening, and finally fixed the table that I put off from a few days ago. Edgar was fascinated with the electric drill. Jen's a bit disappointed that I fixed the table. She was hoping to replace it.

At dinner, Edgar managed to smear spaghetti all over himself and fill his diaper with (uneaten) noodles and sauce. Jen was gracious enough to shower with Edgar after dinner.

So, back on the potty-training thing, Edgar had 3 different potty-sessions today, including a marathon hour-long one this evening. Edgar couldn't coax any #2 to happen, but he peed multiple times. I'm sure this is wonderful stuff you all want to hear...

We still aren't sure where to go with this potty-training thing. I think we both appreciate the commitment it takes to potty-train a kid, especially a boy, and one so young as Edgar. So, on one hand, we're not really ready for it. On the other hand, Edgar's doing it all on his own. It'd be a shame to discourage him.

So, I guess we'll see where the next day or so takes us with this potty training thing. First order of business is to buy one of the rad toilet seats that we bought for our upstairs neighbors for christmas. They love it and gave a unilateral recommendation to anyone with a toddler.

Okay, well, I have stayed up way too late writing this. See you next time

Day 10-- Surprise potty

Day 10--

So I just turned to Jen, and said, "What on earth did I do today?"

Jen: "Well, you cleaned up a bit."

Me: "Yeah. That feels like all I did."

Jen: "And you got a good nap in."

Me: "Yeah. Cleaned up and napped. That's about all I did."

Jen: "And I got some practice at being a mother of two."

Nice way to put a positive spin on it, Jen. So, basically today, I didn't help out at all.

Well, we had our typical morning for the last few days: slept in, woke up with Edgar and watched some TV. Cleaned up some. I took a warm shower, and found the shower so relaxing, I snuck off to our bed to see if anyone would notice if I continued the relaxation.

Jen brought Sabrina in and laid her down in the crook of my arm. Sabrina likes sleeping in my armpit. Basically, she snuggles down between my arm and body as I lay on my back. It was pretty cute, and we snuggled and slept for about 2 hours today. I'll have to get some pictures sometime of Sabrina sleeping in my armpit. We didn't get any today (thankfully).

I woke up to find that Jen and Edgar had broken the leg off our living room coffee-table / dining table / central furniture piece in our apartment. Edgar helped me gather tools to fix it. He was so excited to get tools that it took me a couple of trips to the garage, because I'd find a hammer, and he'd take it from me and sprint back inside because he was ready for me to fix the table.

In the process, I discovered that I had put my cordless drill away for the winter and the battery had gone dead, so that derailed that project. We still have a coffee table in the middle of our living room looking like a dead insect with its legs in the air. The battery's all charged, but I'll wait until tomorrow to fix it when I have an audience.

I'll take any chance I get for Edgar to see his dad use tools. I'm not the most mechanically inclined person out there, but, presented with a problem, I can solve it most of the time. Just don't ask me to proactively remodel anything. I prefer to work on things that are already broken. For example, the coffee table was a $10 garage sale find, so I wouldn't be too disappointed if I somehow messed it up and we had to replace it.

Since I had to accomplish something, I rearranged my Alex-corner of our apartment. In this corner, we have all our media: hundreds and hundreds of CDs, hundreds of records, several DVDs and videos, and a bunch of video game systems. Re-doing this corner appeals to the collector-geek within me, and I was able to get the records that I listen to most often closer to our record player so that we can actually use them, and I made space for our new Wii to have a permanent home.

I'm being a little more trusting with Edgar and removing the large trunk that was blocking him (and us) from gaining access to all the good stuff in the corner. Let's see how he handles the temptation.

For the last few years, we have been more and more listening to vinyl primarily. It's been a fun trip. Part of it is the proliferation of vinyl-with-free-digital-download packages, which is the main way we buy music now. Part of it is the fun of listening to vinyl, and part of it is the audio geek in me saying that I can just tell-- vinyl generally sounds better in many ways than CDs and MP3s. I know that Edgar by far prefers listening to records-- he can see them going around and around as he listens to them-- there's something real and physical about the sound.

We even managed to sneak in a couple of rounds of Super Mario Wii while Edgar was distracted and Sabrina was sleeping. I even got to the point where I could hold Sabrina and play a level of Mario while holding her. She was generally looking for places on me to nurse: not the most productive activity.

Then, this evening provided the surprise of the day: Edgar asked his mommy if he could sit on the potty.

We haven't really introduced Edgar to potty training, although he's been exposed a bunch by having the upstairs neighbor kid, and Edgar's upstairs daycare friend and next door neighbor all going through potty training. So, Edgar knows all about it, but we haven't really offered it to him.

I'll skip the gory details of the potty training session -- (Jen: this is something you are free to blog about-- I know you're all about these kind of stories) -- suffice it to say that it was successful and surprising. It's not in our plans to potty train Edgar with a 1-week-old baby in the house (Too stressful and unnecessary. Besides, he's acting up enough already), but I guess we'll see where this leads.

After some celebration ("There's a potty going on right here / a celebration to last throughout the year / so bring your good times and your laughter too / we're gonna celebrate your potty with you")

putting Edgar down for the night, we snuggled up with more 24 and Mario Wii.

So, this is a lot of writing about a really boring day. Sorry for all the boring details. I promise that we will get outside of the house tomorrow and do something.