My Daughter, The One Who Finds My Weak Points

I'm not usually one to write lists, but I think that it is important to discuss one of my least favorite things about being a parent and, I feel, the clearest way to do so, is in list form.  So, without further ado:

Four Reasons Why Diaper Rash Cream Is Worse Than Human Feces

In no particular order

1)  It smells worse than poop
  I may have written a post or two about the horrendous alchemy that occurs in the intestines of a child, converting innocent things like blueberries and apples into something that Satan himself must have concocted.  My daughters give off odors from their posterior ends that would cause those who work with raw sewage to weep for their mothers.  During the diaper changing process, I attempt to bring some light to the awkward situation of wiping the anus of another human being, by saying things like "Ew stinky!  Let's get a fresh diaper and we'll be aaaaaaaaall clean!"  I know, someone nominate me for creative dad of the year.  What is usually said, however, sounds more like "Ew stink...BLECH!!  DEAR GOD GIRL!  What did you eat?!?!?"

With this said, I use baby powder when the girls have rashes because the smell of the diaper rash cream is worse than the worst diaper I have yet to change.  It smells of depressing retirement homes where the relatives never visit and the nurses would rather watch One Life To Live than find out why Mrs. Elderson is moaning.  It smells of people who have been living at the hospital because they don't have the strength to leave and besides, where would they go?  There's no one waiting for them at home.

2)  Harper will not eat her own poop
  I type this while knocking on wood.  So far, she has shown no interest in writing her name on the wall in poop, as is shown in every comedy that has toddlers.  She has actually demonstrated an aversion to her own waste, wanting to get the diaper off and away from her as soon as possible.  She is clearly my daughter in this respect as, once I soil myself, I too need those clothes as far away from me as I can get them.  The diaper rash cream, however, seems to hold some strange fascination for her.  She loves to pry the lid open and squeeze 15-20 butts-worth of cream onto her fingers, most of which goes into her mouth.  Once there, she realizes that this was a terrible idea, but for reasons I will lay out in number 3, it's too late.  This does not, however, stop her from doing it again the next time she gets her hands on a tube.

3) Poop is not grease-based...
  ...at least until they start eating more buffalo wings and faire-food.  Parents who are reading this will know that, in the course of parenting, occasionally, you get poop on your hands.  It happens.  In my case, there is lots of crying involved, but once I settle down, I wash my hands and I'm alright.  Soap and water remove all traces of texture and odor of whatever the girls had for breakfast.

Diaper rash cream is made with a mixture of skunk vomit, super glue, and sun screen.  In this particular case, it is the latter that concerns me.  What this means for me is that even the slightest trace of the stuff on my skin and my pores open up, as though they have stumbled upon an oasis after wandering in the desert for weeks, drinking in as much as possible, pulling it deep into the dermis.

Now, we watch Sesame Street fairly often, as I did when I was a child.  The only segment of Ernie and Bert that I remember from my childhood was one in which Bert painted his hand purple.  The paint wouldn't wash off and he had to wait for it to wear off on its own.  The cream is the same way.  No amount of hot water, soap, steel wool, borax, hydrochloric acid, etc. will remove the goo and therefore the smell.  I feel as though for the good of humanity, I should lock myself in quarantine.

"Why can't you come to work? Are you sick?   ...   DIAPER RASH CREAM?!?  Jesus Christ, son!  We'll be praying for you.  Take as much time as you need.  We don't need that spreading through the office."

4) Harper gets it EVERYWHERE
  As though my previous items were not conclusive enough, my biggest issue is when Harper manages to combine all three into one super-happy-fun time.  She puts it on everything.  This evening, after getting a liberal dose from Sara, Harper managed to get a hold of the tube.  By the time I found her (read: 3 seconds later) she was using it to finger paint on her sister.  When I grabbed the tube from her hand, she flung herself away from me, leaving a diaper rash hand print on the couch and a line of cream along the carpet.  Since it is grease-based, as previously mentioned, it will be there, smelling and being unsightly, forever.  In hurling the tube out of her grasp, the cap came off, leaving more drops on the wall and floor.  While I was trying to clean up those spots as best I could, she somehow managed to find another tube, opened it with her teeth and started giving herself tribal tattoos.  When I went to clean her, she ran away and buried her (cream-covered) face in the upholstery of a chair.  If you're wondering how long it will remain there, please allow Squints to tell you.



As I've said before, Harper does not like to play with her poop.  If, however, she decided tomorrow that she wanted to finger-paint the walls with her own excrement, it would be easier to clean up and would smell better than the current medium of choice.

I feel like my house may reach a tipping point.  Sometime soon, there may be so much diaper rash cream spread of various surfaces that I will cease to attempt to clean it.  I will simply let it pile up until, in an effort to escape the smell of itself, the house opens a portal to hell and sucks itself in.

I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate diaper rash cream.

I can't wait to grow up and find other things you hate!

My Daughter, The Tester of My Psyche

It has always been my goal to keep this blog positive.  Even when I get frustrated about things, I try to put a happy spin on them to make it entertaining for everyone.

It is precisely because of this that I have avoided writing any posts lately.

I have been frustrated and have been unable to see a way to spin it for entertainment value.  So what have I done?  I've decided that I need to just get my thoughts out of my head so that I can make room for funny
anecdotes again.

Harper has been making me insane as of late.

Let me back up.  I don't know where my left post ended and I'm WAY too lazy to go and check, so as a quick rehash, let me say that once school let out, I've been home with the girls.  I've been keeping Brynn with me almost every day, unless she's being taken care of by her aunt or grandmother.  Harper, I have been sending to day care twice a week in order to get some things done around the house and to keep her socialized with other kids.

When Harper is home, I have been trying to take them out as much as possible.  Errands and road trips are a bit ungainly as Harper likes to scream and cry every time I put her in a car seat.  Instead, we go for walks.  I found a coffee/breakfast sandwich place that's about a mile and a half from the house over the hills of the town so I'll put them in the stroller and we'll go there and back.

There have also been a few times when I strapped Harper into the backpack carrier and pushed Brynn in the stroller and we walked on the trail.

When Harper is at day care or with a relative, I can do pretty much whatever I want/need to do.  Brynn is still at the stage where she's content to sit in the car seat and watch what's going on.  With her alone, I've been able to go to lunch with friends, work on the wall, run errands or just waste the day watching movies or playing video games.

I think it is because she's so easy to take care of that my frustration level with Harper has increased drastically.

I've spoken before about she doesn't really want to play with her toys, but only wants the power tools.  She only wants to destroy things that we need, like my car registration.  She'll stand in the kitchen and point to something and make a sound like a wounded animal.  When we point to things that she might be wanting and say "Do you want this?" she screams and throws tantrums, regardless of whether or not that was the thing she wanted.  The other alternative is that she'll ask for something clearly, agree that's what she wants and then, as soon as it comes into her hands, she freaks out and throws it away.

Last night, while I was on the phone with Verizon Customer "Service" she stood at my feet and screamed.  When I went to another room, she followed me and screamed.  When I went to pick her up, she thrashed until I put her back down.


I understand that there is a level of frustration on her side as well.  She knows what she wants to be doing and simply does not have the vocabulary to communicate the way she wants.  There is a huge gap between what she wants to be telling us and what we want to be communicating to her.  For the most part, she understands us.  We can tell her to put her clothes in her hamper, and she will.  We can tell her to go find her shoes, or a diaper, and she will.

Last week, after telling her that she cannot hit her sister, I told her to go and say sorry and she did.  It just about broke out hearts, but she knew she had done something wrong, said sorry and walked into her room to go to bed.  I rocked her to sleep and told her how much I loved her and how proud I was that she said sorry and how I know she loves her sister, she just can't play as rough.

As I said before, I've been trying to keep this light and positive, but these are things that I need to get off of my chest.  I also feel very bad that I don't talk about Brynn much.  I don't want her to get second child syndrome and I spend a large quantity of time with her, but at this point, it comes down to one simple thing.  She just isn't doing much.  She's unbearably cute and has a very good-nature.  She sleeps pretty well, eats pretty well and is easy to take care of.

Here are some pictures with a few clever captions.

 Neon Swing X-Perience owes me endorsement money

 "Why-I-Otta...!"

Go to my happy place... 

"Noooo, Mr. Bond!  I expect you to die!!" 

Having to deal with me, my ladies need a nap.

My Daughters, The Fashionistas

I have seen the end of my marriage.  It will end in tears, hair-pulling and misery.  There will be "other women" although they won't be my girlfriends.  There will be clothes and personal belongings thrown into the street, although again, they won't be mine.  I do, however, have a secret that I have been keeping from you, dear readers.

I hate the dressers in my daughters' room.  I hate them not for the color of their finish, but for the content of their drawers.

"Sometimes, daddy likes us to match!"

I have previously admitted that I am not the most clean or organized person in the world.  There are almost no symptoms of OCD that you could claim I have.  The current state of the interior of my car can attest to this fact, as would the pile of clean clothes that I keep moving back and forth from the bed during the day to the empty hamper at night.

One of the few things that I do keep at least semi-organized is my dresser.  I do this not out of some sort of need for universal order.  "In a world gone mad, wracked by chaos, one man has the courage to fold his underwear and put them where they belong!" (I hope you read that in a movie announcer voice.)  I do it, I think, mostly because during the school year, I get up much earlier than Sara and I don't want to wake her by hunting for my clothes in the dark.

Sure, we'll go with that because it makes me seem nice...

The point is, I know where my clothes are.  My current dresser has three drawers and is organized in the following way:

Top Drawer: Black/gray/white t-shirts, underwear, socks
Middle Drawer: Pants, sweaters/sweater vests
Bottom Drawer: Shorts, t-shirts with designs, pajamas, workout clothes

I also have a closet for the shirts that I hang and two drawers under my bed for random other clothes that I wear infrequently, like hoodies and sweatshirts.


I think there is an order to the dressers in the girls' room, but I can't tell what it is and last week, I am ashamed to admit, I had a full-blown OCD meltdown.

Since I ranted at my poor wife, who is, as always will remain, my hero, for much longer than was fair, I will only saw one thing in my own defense:  As a stay-at-home-dad for the summer, I find it overly-frustrating that I am unable to discern any order from the dresser drawers and therefore must spend 20 minutes searching through onesies, pants and tops just to find a matching, weather-appropriate outfit.

 "But, your honor, these drawers...they don't make sense!"

"Agreed.  I hereby dissolve this marriage on the grounds of incompatible drawer organization styles."

Post-hissy-fit, when we were organizing the drawers, as per the orders of the marriage counselor, Sara gave semi-explanations as to why the clothes were where they were.  Now, having calmed down, I can admit that there was a logic to it.

But I am not a reasonable person.  We haven't done Harper's drawers yet, but I think I will need some serious sedatives before we tackle those.  I don't want to say things that I will regret.


I will simply end by saying this: Thank you so much to everyone who bought adorable outfits for the girls.  They are incredibly cute (or they are in storage) and we are greatly appreciative to everyone.  For now on, however, in lieu of clothing, donations can be made to the girls' college funds as those do not take up room in the dresser.

My Daughter, The Serial Killer

Last night's dinner consisted on bar-b-qued beef, asparagus and sweet potatoes.  Harper got her plate of sweet potatoes and, after being told they were hot, proceeded to blow on them to cool them off.

In her version of blowing on her food, her hair blows up in the middle of her forehead and the food stays hot.

Once the succulent sweetness was cool enough she gripped it lightly in her fist and proceeded to squeeze the ever-loving crap out of it!  As the gooey orange stickiness oozed from between her fingers, she got the sudden idea that her sister was hungry and may enjoy of a bite of sweet potato garnished with toddler fingers.  We were able to put a stop to that, but not before a trail of potato was left between the table and the bouncer.

For my in depth feelings on this particular situation, see my post about textures.

After dinner, I took my lovely and beautiful daughter to the sink to wash her hands.  My daughter has the soul of a cat which manifests itself in very bizarre ways.  She doesn't land on her feet when she falls, she doesn't lick herself to get clean and she doesn't poop in a litter box (although that might be an improvement.)

She does, however, love running water and will play in it for hours, provided she doesn't have to get in it.

I turned on the faucet and she shrieked and reached for it.  Since she is short with appropriately proportioned arms, she is unable to reach the water with both hands at once while being held at the sink.  I leaned her to the right and stretched her left hand into the water, rinsing off the congealing potato.  I had previously been unaware that unbuttered potatoes could congeal, but there you have it.

As I began to tilt her to the left to wash her other hand, said hand came into view from behind her body.

And by hand, I mean, of course, a 10 inch chef knife moving ever closer to the soft flesh of arm.



Through violence or sleep deprivation, my daughter is trying to kill me.

My Daughters, The Enemies of Morpheus

As I get older, there is an increasing number of things that I am learning to live without.  While my income has increased dramatically from when I was 9, my understanding of finance has also increased, leading a decrease in financial security (mostly perceived rather than actual.)  Similarly, my enjoyment of toys has changed.  I remember being able to spend hours playing outside with a GI Joe, a stick and hole in the ground.  Sara seems to still have to ability to imagine on the level of a small child as is evidenced from her playing interactions with Harper, but I, sadly, have moved into the realm of feeling silly with some of that, or simply being unable to muster the imagination to play those games.

More than any of these things, I've been living with less and less sleep.  In college, I was able to stay up until all hours of the night, but I was also able to sleep in when I wanted to.  Overall, I would say I survived college on 6-7 good hours of sleep a night, (45-50 a week) on average.

When I moved to New Jersey, I was still in stay-up-late mode, but I had something for which I needed to awake in the morning.  (5-6 hours of good sleep per night, 40-50 a week, on average)

Upon commencement of my teaching career in PA, I slept even less.  I was staying at work late and didn't wind down until late, but was still up early in the morning.  Through all of this, I wasn't sleeping well because I was worried about money and we were close to having a baby.  We'll say 30-40 hours a week of good sleep.

This school year, I was getting up at 4:30 to leave the house by 5:15 and be at work by 6:00.  Why do I do this?  There is a long answer for another post, but the short answer is that if I don't get my work done before the day starts, it won't get done.  I don't stay after (also for the other post) and I'm too distracted during the day, so I get to school when no one is there and do what I need to do before they arrive.

I was still going to bed between 9 and 10 and getting up once a night or so with Harper, or bad dreams, or just general bad sleep.

Once Brynn arrived, she was sleeping in our room so that she wouldn't disturb Harper and so that Sara could feed her in the middle of the night.  Brynn is many things, including cute, small and noisy.  She was very congested for the first few weeks and so she would squeak, snort and make all manner of loud auditory emanations throughout the night, further complicating my sleep patterns.

Recently, Harper has been waking up in the middle of the night wanting hugs.  This is my job and while I'm not happy to be doing so in the middle of the night, I will never complain about my daughter wanting to wrap her arms around my neck and lay her head on my shoulder.

Last night, I didn't get into bed until almost 1 and lay awake listening to the sounds of the house until almost 2:30.  Harper was up around 3 yelling for me.  At 7, I was UP with no hope of falling back to sleep.  I went in to get Harper around 8 so that Sara could sleep some more and found my lovely daughter, naked butt sticking up into the air, splashing in a puddle of her own urine, which, because the mattress is coated in plastic, had managed to pool in the middle of the bed and soak into the stuffed animals.


I'm at about 15-20 hours of good sleep each week.

My Daughters, On Welfare

Three weeks since an update?  Small wonder that no one comments on here.

This has been an insane couple of weeks.  If you have not been following the news, America's War on Teachers is in full swing.  As a result, it appears that the superintendent of my employing school district is looking to cut a quarter of the teaching staff and many of the secondary programs, such as home economics, technology education, business and French.

I will refrain from ranting about my feelings on this subject and leave it at the point where I am uncertain about my professional future.  If things continue in this trend, I may be leaving education in the next few years.  I will be unhappy about that, but I have babies to feed and every year that I stay in education will make it harder to do something else.

In an effort to save a little bit of money, we examined the day care situation.  I will be playing stay-at-home dad for the summer, sending Harper to day care once or twice a week so that I can get some things done.  In the fall, with Sara and I both working, we would have to send the girls to day care every day.  On top of this, I leave the house around 5:15 and Sara leaves around 6.  The day care, however, does not open until 7:30.  This means that in addition to the $1300 per month that we would be paying for both girls, we would need to find someone to take them over every morning.

So, we're exploring the idea of a nanny.  I've put an ad on Craig's List and we've started interviewing people.  I thought the first interview was promising, but Sara wasn't convinced.  She has concerns (rightly) about a stranger being in the house and taking care of the girls all day.

Due to my inherent "ivory tower" liberal snobbery, I didn't even write back to half a dozen women who sent me replies with horrendous spelling.  I was tempted to give an interview to one woman just because I was curious what she was like in person.  Her e-mail was:

"I seen your add on web. i'm gr8 with kids and they like me to. i have lots of free time and i will be a good baby sitting person."

You wanna do what now?

Sara's concerns are well founded.

So the process continues.  I need to write a grant to study the effects on homeschooling and get the gubment to pay me to stay home with them.

As the school year draws to a close, I can feel myself fraying at the edges.  I have several projects that I'm planning for the summer, including a few trips to the Philadelphia area.  I'm working my way through building a retaining wall in the back yard, which I'm enjoying immensely.  I've discovered a new love of physical labor that I've never really had before.  I was doing boxing almost every day, but the outside work is doing wonders for how I feel.  Also, you would be surprised what being sick to your stomach for a week will do for the waistline.

I've been discussing it with my coworkers during our "What are you planning to do when they close the school and send all of the kids to private schools?" talks.

I'm thinking more and more that if I can't find a job in education, I may turn towards being a laborer for a contractor.  In education, you almost never get to step back at the end of the day/year, point to something and say "I did that."

The summer that I worked on a carpentry crew, I went home tired, dirty, hungry and satisfied.

The problem is now that I' have kids and a mortgage, a laborer's salary will not sustain us.  Time to start doing Extreme Couponing!

I have a lot of thinking to do.

In any event, here are the pictures you came here to see (and a video!).  If there is something that you would like me to talk about, feel free to leave it in the comments.

My Daughter, The Discerning Foodie

My dad came for a long overdue visit this past weekend.  It was a nice relaxing time.  It was excellent to get some time with him and for him to get to spend time with the ladies.

Over the course of the long weekend, we went to the park and for several walks enjoying the beautiful weather.  Harper has started collecting rocks.  She sometimes brings them home, but mostly, she feels the need for geological companionship on our walks.  She will stop anywhere there is a large pile of rocks or stones and carefully sift through the choices before selecting a suitable partner who will accompany her along her stumbling journey through the neighborhood.

When given a wide variety of choices, she will almost always pick the smoothest, roundest rock she can find.  This warms my heart as I have several very smooth rocks sitting on the dashboard in my car.

Shut up!  It's a tactile thing!

When a smooth rock is not available, however, she will happily choose something jagged and dangerous to carry around in her wildly swinging arms.  If, during the course of the walk, she drops the rock or puts it down to examine something else, she is very likely to walk back half a block to get it again.

I do my best to make sure the rocks are not covered in bird poop because, inevitably, those rocks will go in her mouth.  If they are too big for her, she will find a corner that isn't and painstakingly examine the texture with her tongue.

In addition to rocks, she puts MANY things into her mouth.  So far, she has yet to eat things that are poisonous or even anything that makes me do more than cringe.  (No clods of dirt, dead birds, egg shells, etc.)  Mostly it's toys, remote controls, chapstick, coins, clothing, etc.

Also, entire apples.  (A-peez!)

When it comes time for meals, however, Harper takes (distressingly) after her mother.

Watching Sara eat is like watching Meg Ryan order a sandwich. (As Sally, of course.  I have no idea how Meg Ryan orders a sandwich in real life.  I assume it's something like "I'd like a tuna sandwich, please.  Thank you.")

Sara, my lovely, beautiful and amazing wife, eats her meals in a way that is vaguely reminiscent of mental patients.  First, she separates all of the different food products into piles, making sure that none of them touch.  Next, she picks one pile to start with, knowing that it must be dealt with before the next pile has its turn.

She then proceeds to cut her food into miniscule pieces, paring away imaginary fat and "icky parts" that would not be detectable with an electron microscope. Each piece is thoroughly examined for bad bits, including anything slightly overcooked, undercooked, discolored, wet, dry, greasy, salty, mushy, chewy, tough, tasty, etc.  The examined pieces are then sorted again, but not into piles of edible and otherwise.  It looks this way, but it is not actually the case.  I know this because after the sorting of all food, she will eat certain pieces from each pile with no apparent regard for why it was put there in the first place.

This is a bit of hyperbole, but there is more truth than I am comfortable with.

 

Jamie Lee Curtis says this yogurt will make them regular...

I mention Sara's habits because Harper, the precocious little girls who will try anything that is made of plastic, fabric, concrete, rubber, chalk, petroleum by-products, wood, etc. will spend nearly an hour picking through her dinner bowl to carefully separate the 6 kidney beans she wants from the 3 she doesn't, the 2 stalks of broccoli that she will eat now from the 4 that she will eat later.  I watched her break a snap pea in half, happily eat two bites of each half and throw the rest on the floor, yelling "NO!!"

Perhaps we should simply mix rock into her dinner and she'll eat it without hesitation or examination...

While all of this is going on, Brynn continues to sleep.

Here are some pictures.