Weekends . . . they just don't make them like they used to

Just a short update based on an observation I made at about 3:45 on Saturday morning. Don' t these kids know it's the weekend? Admittedly before this week, I had been on leave and every day was effectively a weekend. Time was very fluid. Days were when the sun was up and they existed without formal titles like Wednesday or Sunday. If you lost sleep on day X, you could surely make it up on day x+1. But it became clear to me this past week that doesn't really have a lot of interest in this peculiar infantile universe I formerly inhabited. Neither did my project team. It was Monday and it was time for work.

So I actually looked forward to my weekend again a little because it was the day I wasn't going to "work ". My, how I had forgotten what real work was. If anything, it' s a testament to the moms everywhere that taking care of children is really the hardest (but most rewarding) job around. That 's such a clichéd statement, but so accurate in my opinion. As one of my friends pointed out to me – as a parent whose job it is to take care of children, you can't put "the work" down and go out for lunch. You can't just throw up your hands and say - "I'm having a case of the Mondays, I'm going for a latte." No, as a stay-at-home parent your "work" is always with you. Sure you can go have a latte - but the kids are coming with. And they may be displeased with this jaunt. And they may let you know about it.

And so this brings us back to the weekend. It became clear to me at 3:47 and 6:55 and 10:00 that the concept of a weekend I had known once just 9 short weeks ago had mutated into something unrecognizable; something foreign. This was hardly the relaxing, sleep in, laze about the day experience I could once relish in. It was work. It was full-time, no benefits, paid in smiles and coos, have to be able to lift 25lbs without assistance, handling hazardous materials, your boss acts like a child (no, really), honest to goodness work from which you never clock out.

So just chalk Saturday and Sunday up on the list of those KIA in parenthood. Alas, poor Weekend! I knew him friends, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.

Field Notes

So I’ve sort of been stalling on writing a new post because quie honestly I think we’ve reached a plateau in the inadvertent baby humor. There is still plenty to be entertained by but perhaps we’re just getting used to it. You know, the bodily function noises, their vacant stares into space for minutes at a time, the fact that even while they are lying on their back, they still seem to be furiously trying to maintain their balance with their arms and legs. . . these things will *never* get old. But it’s hard to say that they are particularly noteworthy or respectable enough to warrant digression. So it’s been hard to come up with material that that’s truly amusing enough (even in retrospect) to comment on.

But my internal update clock has chimed at the two week mark and a new post needs to be made so here are some reflections on some of the less hilarious but equally enjoyable discoveries we’ve had:

Mary Poole’s Joy: The Smile That Might Launch a 1000 Ships
In Greek Mythology, Helen of Troy's beauty is credited as being the cause of the Trojan War - her face being so beautiful that it “launched a thousand ships.” Of course I'm partial, but I'd be willing to bet Mary Poole's smile could summon up at least a battalion. Her smile, which emerged spontaneously overnight and was on full display the next morning when I was changing her diaper, is truly one of the highlights of these 2 months (along with Perritt’s conversational nature – see below). Tonight we even caught her smiling at the little mobile on her swing - just utterly pleased with the little bears. Unfortunately just as quickly as it appears, it vanishes. Then she's locked in a mortal staredown with some lock of hair or the ceiling or the light. But for those couple of seconds, for my money, there's nothing finer.

Perritt’s Pidgin: Elel, Owow, Auooo
This may look reminiscent of the foreign language you took as an elective in college but as far as I can gather there is no linguistic link between Perritt's natural tongue and any known language. What we, the researchers, have gathered so far is this:

• El el - When Perritt has his pacifier in his mouth but isn't terribly pleased with the fact that his sucking isn’t producing the tasty liquid he’s expected - he lets us know about it by saying "el el ellllll ellelell ellllllll elell el el eeeeeel . . . " We now believe this roughly translates to "No. You're not doing it right."
• Ow Ow- Over time "el el" turns into what sounds like "ow, ow, ow, ellllll, ow, ow ow." While work is still underway, early translation on this advanced stage of frustration seems to indicate that he is saying "You must be kidding. No seriously, are you kidding because this isn’t funny. I am an infant. I am hungry. I don't spell relief p-a-c-i-f-i-e-r. I spell it m-i-l-k. M-I-L-K! for Pete’s sake.”
• Auooo - After we’ve filled his belly, we get an entirely different vocabulary from him – one seemingly devoid of any consonants. These utterances generally come as he’s gazing around the room and sound like "Auooo ahhhh eeeeeeeehhh auooooooo . . ." We're pretty sure this means something to the tune of "Wow that was good . . . now remind me the early bird special starts at 4:30 on weekdays, right. Ok cool - I'll start crying about 4:15 then. Be sure my table is open for me."

The 37-Minute Rule
One of the things LeeAnn and I most look forward to is an activity we call "Not being indoors." Perhaps something that should be added to the "Things to do before children" list is "Enjoy being outside any time you want to before it’s no longer your decision." We've found that in the summer in Atlanta, there just aren’t a lot of hours where it’s a good or enjoyable time to be outside with the children. So we are inside. A lot. But there are periods when we are able to get out in the morning and evening for walks with Perritt and Mary Poole which are truly enjoyable . . . for approximately 37 minutes.

In our time out and about, we happened upon a previously undiscovered egg-timer in Perritt's head. Apparently after precisely 37 minutes - the stroller becomes utterly unbearable and he must be removed from it ASAP. Doesn't matter if you're at the midpoint of your walk or at the end. When the timer goes off, he's coming out of that stroller and you're carrying him the rest of the way home. Think you can stroll him back to sleep by driving over some bumps – I don’t think so. It’s time to be out of that stroller and it’s time to be out now.

Since the initial discovery of the 37 Minute Rule for Strollers, we’ve seen a related 41 Minute Rule for Car Seats which is even more fun because it’s exponentially harder to calm him down when operating (or even just riding in) a 3000 lb vehicle. That was a fun discovery.

The Antibacterial Characteristics of Ordinary Shirts and Pants
This is something NASA should get on. LeeAnn and I are notorious clean freaks. It's no secret. We're not ashamed. And in that vein, we like to make sure our babies have nice, clean gear. At least we did. These may be the first chinks in the germophobe armor, Ted, or perhaps we've just been watching too much of Bear Grylls but for whatever reason - germs don't seem to bother us as much as they did when we were in the hospital. Case in point, on one of our outings, at about minute 36 when we were removing Perritt from the stroller, his pacifier fell out, did a lap on the ground and then came to a stop there by my feet. And somehow these words came out of our mouths:

LeeAnn: "It's probably ok, don't you think?"

Parker: "Yea *wipes pacifier on his magically antibacterial shirt and then his shorts for good measure* - I think so."

This is just the kind of idiot bravery that children drive parents to. Perhaps a result of apathy or sheer exhaustion but whatever it is, it's going to land us square in the pediatrician's office one day. That's just gross. But Perritt didn’t seem to mind.

Our Feline Babysitter
And one interesting side note about Rhett. He's really come to like our babies we think. Or else he's just waiting until they get good and fat. But either way, he seems protective of his new kin/prey and appears to enjoy just keeping a little bit of a watch on them when he’s inside. He'll sit in the room with them and occasionally, if they start to fuss and LeeAnn and I are in other rooms, he'll jump down from wherever he is napping in the nursery and come sit in the doorway of the room we're in as if to say - "Um - yea, those things are making that irritating noise again. You may want to go check that out. Oh, and the boy one smells - you may want to do something about that." Of course we're probably projecting human or dog-like attributes on Rhett - but it is cute and he's done it more than once.

I guess all of this is just to say that we’re getting used to having them around and are getting accustomed to the people they are becoming. Every day they become a little more human, a little bigger, and sadly more sufficient - although by nature’s standards they are still totally helpless.

The Baby Triangle

As a kid growing up, I was fascinated with all things paranormal - ghosts, Nessie, Bigfoot, yeti, UFOs, you know - typical nerd fare pursued by Napolean Dynamite types. I'm not sure why I had this fixation with these topics but they were always appealing to me. One of the more intriguing of these mysteries and one which still holds a special place in my heart is the infamous Bermuda Triangle - a region of the Atlantic in which a number of planes and boats have disappeared over the years in circumstances that have often been attributed to the supernatural. Wikipedia has, of course, a nice write up on the subject so I won't dwell on the matter any more than need be.

The point of this background is simply to preface the big news from the Smith House - it appears another such fantastic portal to the unknown has opened here. I'm calling it the Baby Triangle and it's no less bizarre than it's more well-known nautical sibling. Here are some of the phenomena we've witnessed:

• Complete lack of any semblance of time
  In addition to maintaining this blog for public consumption, I've been trying to keep an old-timey journal (yea, the paper kind) containing a record of the events of the Smiths. Until the children were born, I wrote an entry daily. I never skipped a day and I was so proud of this fact. Nine months and not a single missed day. So I sat down to write in it recently only to discover that I had missed not only 1 day of writing, not 2 . . . oh no, friends - I had missed 10 days. How did this happen? Where did these days go? What happened on those days? Did I sleep through them? Silly me . . . sleep. Psh. Right.
  
  As it turns out, the combination of scheduled feeding, burping, diaper changing, bottle washing, clothes changing, story reading, holding, bouncing, swaying, swinging, singing, admiring, pondering, catnapping, laughing and a pinch of honest to goodness sleep - is the exact recipe needed to open up a time portal in which minutes turn to seconds and days turn to hours. Time spent in such a portal can become "lost." I have a masters degree but go ahead and ask me what day it is. My answer: "I don't know - it could be Monday or Thursday." In fact if you ask me the time, I'm liable to respond with "T-minus 1 hour until feeding commences." or and even more terse Bauer-esque "Who cares, he's fussing. You are RUNNING OUT OF TIME!" These are real times for us. Much more real than say 3:15 which holds no meaning devoid of the context of the aforementioned activities.
  
  
• The emergence of the witching hours
  The hours between 8pm and 11pm have emerged as witching hours. Every day at about this time, Mary Poole and Perritt, who have been sweet and loving all day - become possessed by what can only be described as mischievous poltergeists. Perritt cries, politely requests his pacifier in his own way then spits it out and decides to launch into the playful game of "Guess which position I want to be held in to be calmed down." During other, normal hours of the day, this is at least a partially entertaining challenge for us as parents because there actually is one and exactly one solution to this game - you just have to find it. It's like baby position suduko - with the added feature of fussy sound effects. However, during the witching hour, there is no right answer in this game - sometimes you get tantalizingly close, but in the end you realize that you were sadly mistaken and you can guess at the consequence of that.
  
  Also during the Witching Hours, Mary Poole, the docile little angel that she is, will sit in her crib doe-eyed, wide awake and stubbornly refusing to do anything other than stare at the crib bumbers, the ceiling, the window, the crib slats, back to the bumper, back to the ceiling, etc. - eventually getting so restless she makes herself cry. When you pick her up - she slips into a peaceful slumber - but the second she is placed down, the lights come back on and she's ready to begin the stare down with the bunnies on the bumper. And of course you can't stare down a printed bunny pattern on a bumper - that's just crazy talk. Who are these children and where do our other kids go during these hours?
  
  
  
• Perritt and Mary Poole composed a symphony of modern crying with no formal training
  Three nights ago LeeAnn and I were witness to what can only be described as the Nutcracker Suite of nighttime fussiness. It's a well known fact that Russian ballerinas often train vigorously for years to perfect the level of synchronization and timing required to perform at the highest level in the vaunted Mariinsky company. This is the same rigor that must be undertaken for professional athletes, chess grand masters, poker players and Avon sales women. Great success is predicated on years of tireless training. So with this in mind, I challenge you to explain how, at only 6 weeks of age (4.2 of which surely having been spent asleep) and with no formal training or instruction, Mary Poole and Perritt could have composed their "Symphony #1 for Vocal Chords in All Keys".
  
  The premiere performance came on July 3 at 11pm (see Witching Hour above) and we were their only audience. As with most pieces of modern classical music - LeeAnn and I just didn't "get it." Seemingly full of emotion and bombast - it had the trappings of a Beethoven's 9th - but in the end, we just couldn't relate. In any case, it went a little something like this: one would fuss, then go down to sleep only to have the other tune up within seconds Then when the second one would calm after an hour or two, the other would launch right back into it. Back and forth in a flurry of vocal gymastics - the likes of which I've never seen. Like pro-wrestlers tapping each other into the ring for hours on end or a 500 mile relay race with two ultra-marathoners just handing the baton back and forth. Sometimes the two were in separate rooms, but the handoffs continued unabated and without a silent moment all night. Truly a monumental work that could only have been acheived if they were channeling the spirit of a more practiced veteran crying pair from years gone by.
  
  Looking back, we may regard this night as sportscasters recall Jordan's 63-point game or Tiger's improbable shredding of the field at the Masters in '97 - where each seemed to play like a possessed man. Elevating their play into another level that mere mortals cannot touch. Simply magical. We couldn't be more proud. Or tired.
  
  

In other news

• We went to the pediatrician for a follow-up checkup (yes, it was just as scary this time) and all is well with both of them. They are both pushing 10lbs now and Perritt has caught all the way up to Mary Poole and surpassed her.
• The 4th of July came around and we spent it eating barbecue and playing whiffle ball with good friends and their children but otherwise little fanfare as we missed the fireworks - it was just another day in the Baby Triangle.