Peaches

My family and I recently went on a family vacation down to Nags Head North Carolina, which will hopefully turn into a yearly tradition. My parents were generous enough to pay for an incredible house for the entire family, complete with its own pool and just steps from the beach.  An incredible time was had by all, especially my three year old daughter who decided flat out that the beach house should be our regular home that we live in all the time.  Which I have to say would be really sweet.  My brother's mother in law lives down there so while we were all there we got to spend some quality time with her and her husband Bill.  My three year old daughter especially took to Bill right off the bat, except his name just didn't cut it for her, I guess Bill is just too normal, so she immediately renamed him Peaches.  It was my first time meeting Bill as well and he is probably one of the nicest guys I have ever met, but Peaches.  First off Bill is about six foot four and a retired New Jersey State Trooper, so I just feel he is more of a Bill or a sir then a Peaches, but my daughter obviously felt otherwise.  And being the super sweet man that he is he just went right along with it, but my three year old couldn't just leave it at that.  Right after that lovely picture of the two of them was taken my daughter looks up at Peaches and informs him that he has a booger, and then goes on to tell him that her daddy will make the tunnel thing to get it out for him.  Now the tunnel thing is just a rolled up tissue that I used to use to get her boogers out before she learned how to blow her nose, but we decided together to let Peaches retrieve it himself.  

Life in the Big City

One of my daughter's favorite activities is heading over to the local dog park and playing with all the random doggies. She is absolutely dog crazy, and pretty much has been from day one, even though we do not own a dog. Her first word was actually dog which she uttered right around six months old, and she hasn't stopped talking about them since. And since we are already all stuffed into this little condo with the four of us, a dog is not in the cards for us right now. I pretty much keep telling her when she is bigger and our house is bigger then maybe we will get a dog. So the other night after dinner my daughter and I went for a little stroll over to the dog park and she proceeded to tire all the dogs out running around and jumping with them, throwing sticks and balls, all that good stuff. Meanwhile I'm just chatting with some of the dog owners when an unmarked police car screeches to a halt right at the gate of the park. This plain clothes cop jumps out and starts running across the park with his hand on his gun screaming at this young Mexican kid who was walking outside the fence on the other side of the park..."Stop right there motherf#*cker and get down or I'll blow your f#*cking head off...Get down right now motherf#*cker, don't make me shoot you!" I could tell the kid thought about making a run for it but he opted not to get his head blown off and laid down, at which point the cop hopped the fence and promptly squashed the kids face into the pavement while trying to push his knee through the kid's back. He then quickly cuffed him and walked him back to his car and tossed him in, cursing him out the whole time. In the meantime my three year old who was about ten feet away while all this was going on and completely oblivious to it all, which I am grateful for. I didn't really want to have that conversation with her about good versus evil so soon in her young life. But I couldn't help but wonder, if the kid did run for it would that cop have started blasting away with my daughter and all those doggies and people around? Just another night of living life in the big city.

Poopzilla

I know it may seem like all I blog about is poop, but let's face it, I am a SAHD (stay at home dad) for a three and a half year old and a seven month old so my life really does revolve around poop, pooping, wiping tooshies, poopie diapers, poops at inopportune moments, poop on my hands, poop on my clothes, poop on their clothes, poop on the floor, poop of all shapes, colors and sizes. However just the other day my sweet baby boy took a poop that put all other poops to shame. It was just one of those days where it seemed that all the poop cards were stacked against me. The first poop was an unprepared daddy poop, where he caught me at the pharmacy with no diapers in tow. I should have known better but I tried to squeeze in the stop at CVS on the way home from the gym because I had to pick up a prescription and a few other things, but as soon as I handed my scrip over to the pharmacist he dropped a bomb on me, so I had to abandon my mission and head for home. But that was just a tiny precursor of what was to come at the end of my day. I had just dropped Mommy off at her exercise class and got home with both kids, which sounds easy enough but as soon as mommy got out of the car my three year old daughter started balling saying "I miss my Momma!". We had just picked her up from school and we usually all head home together but traffic was crazy so we just dropped Mommy off...big mistake. So of course with sister crying brother decides to join in the fun and starts crying too. Anyway I managed to get home without crashing and calmed both of them down so I plopped them both downstairs and ran up to get dinner ready. And that is precisely when poopzilla decided to make his appearance. I was maybe upstairs for ten minutes tops, and I had left baby boy in his exersaucer. Well I hear him start to fuss a little bit so I finished up quickly and headed down to discover he had pooped through his diaper, through his clothes, and into the bottom part of the exersaucer. It was absolutely everywhere. I ended up getting him out of there and getting him cleaned up but it was no easy task...poop all over this kid, up to the top of his back and covering his little weiner and all over his belly, hands, legs, and feet. And he was just loving it, pretty much giggling and laughing through the entire cleaning process, and needless to say I wasn't. I wouldn't be surprised if his next word turned out to be motherf#*ker. Anyway he was clean and I cleaned myself up...I did have to change my poopstained shirt...and we rejoined sister in the family room. That's when I remembered he had pooped all over the exersaucer too so I took that apart and threw the washable part in the laundry, only to realize that the bottom of the exersaucer has holes in the bottom and the poop had also ended up in a nice little puddle on the floor. Like I said, it was just one of those days!

Hoarder

My family and I are finally going to try and make the move out of our two bedroom condo and into a bigger place, hopefully a nice single family home somewhere on the edge of the city. Our condo is just getting smaller and smaller as these kids keep getting bigger and bigger, especially baby boy who just gets fatter everyday. And we are on the verge of moving baby boy out of our room and in with his sister, which I just don't think will work out very well. Although we have ferberized the little man he still likes to get up at the crack, and sometimes earlier, and I don't know how big sister will deal with that interruption of her beauty sleep. So we're hoping this move will happen sooner than later and we find a new home where each kiddo gets their own room, but it all depends on our ability to get this condo sold as soon as possible. My first order of business is to get this place ready to show, which is no easy task. We just have a lot of stuff, between all the things my wife and I have accumulated over the years and all the junk these two kids have amassed in their short lives, it is a ton of stuff. So first thing this morning after dropping my three year old off at school I came home and started tearing up the closet under the stairs, which is the most dreaded closet we have, just packed to the gills. Now I've had my suspicions in the past that my wife might be a hoarder, but this morning I think my suspicions turned right into reality. I don't think I need to call A&E Television because she has yet to bury us alive, but there are certain things which she just refuses to let go. It all started about five months ago when my brother and his family came up from St. Louis to meet the new addition, and my sister in law volunteered to help try and organize our home. We were in that very closet under the stairs when my brother discovered my daughter's first Easter basket, which he promptly put into the junk pile, and my wife threw a conniption fit. Neither my brother or I could understand why a two dollar basket from CVS could be so important, but she was not having any of it, and at one point I actually thought she was going to punch him in the nose. She first claimed it was an important part of our daughter's childhood that we had to keep, and when that argument didn't work she told my brother and I both that we just did not love Jesus. Being Jewish I told her flat out I love Jesus as much as the next Jew from Jersey who happened to be married to a beautiful shiksha, but she would not relent. That's when I knew my wife was a hoarder. We did end up using the basket again this past Easter for my daughter so her hoarding did end up saving us a few bucks, but this morning her need to hoard reared its ugly head again in full force. One of the first things I dragged out of that very same closet this morning was an old bag of baby toys. And these were the second string toys, if they were really cool at all they would have been put back into the rotation when baby boy came, but instead they have been just sitting in the closet collecting dust. But when I immediately put them in my Salvation Army pile, little wifey came sniffing around. "What do you think you're doing with those?" she said. I informed her that they were going to charity and the hoarding gene kicked right on. She actually pulled out an old maraca and started to tear up, "this is just really emotional for me, giving away all our baby stuff" she said. So I very calmly told her we actually have a real live baby sleeping upstairs and I'm not giving him away, but this junk has got to go! She actually thought that was kind of funny so we had a laugh and I told her we would get her all the help she needs for her hoarding tendencies. And she laughed and smiled and told me to f off!

No Mo

My wife and I decided that we are not going to have any more kids, two is enough. Actually my wife decided and since she is the one that has to carry them around for ten months and lose her incredible figure for that whole time, I really don't have much say in the matter. And we did get extremely lucky having a girl and a boy so we really couldn't ask for more. But our little guy is six months old now and already starting to hit all the usual milestones, he is sitting up, eating real food, rolling over, and talking. And much to my delight his first blatherings were "Dadadadadadadada", unlike my daughter whose first word was dog, and we don't even have a dog! But as he reaches all these momentous occasions in his young life I already find myself thinking, wow, this is it, no more baby stuff. And although it is an incredible amount of work the baby stuff is really fun, just being able to plop them down on the bed and squeeze them or stare at them or just watch them sleep. I remember when my daughter was born about three and a half years ago my parents and grandparents came in from Jersey and literally stared at her for four days straight, just being absolutely tickled when she would crack a little smile, burp or make that cute I'm pooping face. She was the first grandchild on my side of the family and the first girl born into my side of the family in quite a while, but four days of staring is a lot. Now when my son came along six months ago my parents came back into town and the staring began again, only this time with a crazy happy three year old big sister to contend with as well. But having a baby in the house is just really awesome, this little creature that just completely depends on you, it changes everything. I guess I'm getting a little sappy here but now I see what might really be happening...soon this little baby boy will be crawling and then walking and then running...and then I'll have two monsters to contend with!

Sausage

I've talked before about how wonderfully plump my baby boy is, but at six months old now we may have achieved peak fatness...so much so that the whole family has taken to calling him the sausage. My three year old daughter has particularly embraced the name and really will call him nothing else, except on occasion the little sausage, sausage man, or just fatty fatty. We just had his six month check up with our doctor and he weighed in at a whopping 20 pounds 7 ounces and measured 27 and a half inches long. He came into this world at 7 pounds 10 ounces so in six short months he's gained about thirteen pounds. Not too shabby. He's not obese or anything close to that, just very zoftic. So referring to him as the little sausage has just come naturally, and everyone seems to get a kick out of it. Now his clothes have even become his sausage casing and his car seat has become his bun! He is just so soft and squishy I love it, and he really loves to be naked in all his sausagey glory which is a fantastic sight. I'm sure as he starts to move around more and learns to crawl some of his glorious fatness might start to disappear, but for now he is our family's sausage man, and we wouldn't have him any other way.

Miss Independent

As of late my three year old daughter is really becoming quite the independent young lady...she just insists on doing everything by herself. It started off with the potty, where she no longer wanted daddy to help her up onto the bowl or wipe, which I must say is not half bad. But I still have to get in there after one of her ginormous poops or else she is walking around itching her bottom all day. At this point she doesn't even use her stool but likes to climb up all by herself just holding the toilet paper roll, which I'm sure one day will simply give way and she'll take a header right into the toilet... I should probably reinforce that thing. Her budding independence is not limited to potty time, she is also making her mark in the kitchen, helping out with baby brother, getting into and out of her carseat, taking off and putting on her own clothes and shoes, helping daddy with the laundry, climbing into and out of her stroller, and tackling all the big kid stuff at the park (no more baby swings for her). It is really awesome that she is learning to do all these things on her own and I am fully encouraging her independence, but on the same note it kind of makes me sad that my sweet little baby girl is already trying to grow up. It also makes me kind of sad that all the things I mentioned above went from taking five seconds to accomplish to taking forever!!