Strike!

For reasons unknown, Perritt has apparently taken it upon himself to have meetings with legal counsel for the WMBU (Well-Mannered Babies Union). The result of these covert meetings appears to be a heretofore unknown change to our living arrangements contract with the babies. This change in contract terms became clear to us over the past few nights as Perritt has been holding a very vocal hunger strike in the nursery beginning at approximately 1:44 a.m. Now, unlike the hunger strikes we all know and love - such as the hunger strike last year involving a handful of our favorite celebuticians like Susan Sarandon - Perritt's version of the hunger strike actually works in reverse and, in my opinion, is much more potent. Allow me to explain. . . In the typical hunger strike, the celebutician's thinking goes something like this:

• The world revolves around me and my acting ability.
• If I, politically-motivated celebrity, make a public statement that I won't enjoy my grande non-caf non-fat soy mochaccino and watercress and cucumber sandwich at lunch today until issue X is resolved, the rest of the world will surely do anything possible to correct issue X to ensure that I, America's most precious export, gets the sustenance I need.
• I am a genius.
  

But here's the sad reality. If Susan Sarandon goes hungry for a day or more, I'm OK with that. There have been plenty of days at work where I've been so busy that I've looked up and whoops - it's 4 o'clock and I didn't get lunch. I lived. So Susan - go ahead and not eat - I'm sure you'll be fine. In fact, I'm encouraging you to go this route if you're so inclined. Let's see how many days you can actually string together. It will be fun.

However, Perritt's version of this strike is much more sinister because we actually love and care for him (unlike Sarandon). On top of that, he lives with us, so we can't just change the channel when he makes a ruckus and starts a-picketing. And boy does this boy know how to picket. If my head, this is how I imagine our late-night exchanges have been going:

1:44 am

• Perrit:
  Heck no, you won't sleep. Not until I get to eat. Heck no, you won't sleep. Not until I get to eat!
  
  
• Parker:
  *Walking in to the nursery groggy*
  Hey, hey, hey buddy. What's wrong here? Don't you know it's nighttime? We don't eat at night time. Let's just go on back to sleep ok?
  
  
• Perritt
  Talk to my attorneys, pops. We got a new deal. I'm eatin' or you ain't sleepin'.
  
  
• Parker:
  Huh? I'll review the contract in the morning. Let's just go to bed now, ok?
  *Wraps him up and puts pacifier in mouth and starts to walk out of the nursery.*
  
  
• Perritt:
  Sure thing tough guy. See you in 45. We'll see if you want to read the contract then.
  
  
• Parker
  What?
  
  
• Perritt:
  Nothing

2:32 a.m.

• Perrit:
  Heck no, you won't sleep, not until I get to eat. Heck no, you won't sleep. Not until I get to eat...
  
  
• Parker:
  *roused from sleep and checking out window for picket line/torches*
  What the devil? I thought we were done with this.
  
  
• Perritt:
  What do we want? Lots of food. When do we want it? NOW! What do we want? Lots of food. When do we want it? NOW!
  
  
• Parker:
  Man, hey kiddo, it's really late - let's just get on back to bed alright? I promise you'll make it through the night and won't starve. Then you can have a big old grand slam breakfast with the rest of us, OK.
  *Wraps him back up and puts pacifier in his mouth.*
  
  
• Perritt:
  What do we want? Lots of food. When do we want it? NOW! What do we want? Lots of food. When do we want it? NOW!
  
  
• Mary Poole:
  *Newly awakened by the chanting*
  Dude, just go to bed, please. You're killing my beauty sleep. And seriously, he's right, you won't starve.
  
  
• Perritt:
  Be quiet, scab.

And so on and so forth - until finally at 4:47 when we break down and he gets fed. I would almost call this a sleep strike, but that's not the case because he does sleep . . . in between the striking. It's as if he's saving his energy and biding his time coming up with new creative chants. In any case, we're working with the attorneys from the WMBU to see if we can improve eating conditions during the day in exchange for increased non-eating/sleeping hours at night. Our neighbor is a benefits and labor attorney so we're hoping he can help us reach an agreement to start the sleep production line back up and I can start enjoying more z's.

In other news:
Mary Poole has started to put her hands together. While this seemingly mundane little trick may be old hat to fully functioning adults, to her this is the coolest thing in the world. In fact, she's quite fascinated with it. Watching her, she appears to be molding an invisible ball of silly putty. Alternatively, she could be wringing her hands like all the villains do in the Scooby Doo cartoons when they are hatching an evil plot. So which is it, playful exploration or quietly plotting our demise? Only time will tell.

Perritt's favorite toy is not a Baby Einstein toy or anything from Fisher Price, but rather a silver rattle. Funny how the old toys are the best toys. In any case, watching him play with that rattle is another example of how the simple and mundane can be fascinating when the world is brand new to you. His favorite activities with the rattle seem to be 1)holding it over his head to marvel at it's shininess and then 2) proceeding to wave it all around his head and occasionally smashing it into his eye socket - presumably on accident.

Perritt is now over 13 lbs and Mary Poole is well into the 12s. They are getting so heavy and strong. Still no rolling over yet - but we'll get there in our own time.

Olympic Dreams

This is sort of a sidelight conversation I was mulling over this morning as I clocked in to work at the first shift at the baby bottle assembly line at the cleaning plant (read: dishwasher). When you train for a sport it takes practice. In tennis, you get the infamous bucket of balls, serve them all, walk to the other side of the court, collect the balls in the bucket. Repeat. In soccer, you do ball work to practice your touch and dexterity. In baseball you go to the cage. In football, you run plays. In golf you hit the range and the putting green. And so it is in all sporting endeavors. While some believe rare athletes like Jordan and Tiger were born with a natural talent, much of those thoughts have been debunked by research that shows that the most "naturally" gifted athletes also, not surprisingly, have some of the most profound and structured training regimens for their respective sports. It's like the adage – the harder you work, the luckier you get. Well that's true here too – the harder you work at something the more it looks like it comes naturally to you. Natural proficiency is born from supernatural practice.

This brings me to my point. At this point in our children's' lives, I get a distinct sense that I might have what it takes to be an Olympic-caliber baby bottle assembler.

While this is clearly my strongest sport, I do think I can hold my own in the competitive and equally rigorous fields of baby bottle disassembly, diaper changing, dirty diaper wrapping, bottle making, 5m retrieve the burp cloth before the spit up makes it to the outfit collar sprint, and track down the suddenly vanished pacifier decathlon. All of these events are repeated throughout the day enough times that there is some level of proficiency in all of these areas. In fact, if my math is correct, in the course of 3 months I have changed no fewer than 471,657 diapers. LeeAnn has changed 512,009. That kind of intense devotion to a single, repeated activity, is sure to result in skills heretofore unknown. We're like a two man NASCAR pit crew. And for some reason, at times, I wonder what things I could do to improve my technique. Maybe I should stack the bottles in rows of three? What if I take the tops off of all the dirty bottles first, THEN wash them, THEN push them in the washer – will that shave a second off my time? And if I can shave that second off, might Nike suddenly take note and sign me to a nice multi-year endorsement deal?

Bonus Sporting Fun with Twins
When they are both eating at the same time, it's sort of fun to see which one will finish first. In our house, the competitors are well matched (until recently as Mary Poole has seemingly lost the competitive edge and has taken to daydreaming during dinner time – see previous post). Some people go to the dog track, others to the horse track – the Smiths make do with the baby dinnertime track. For some reason Vegas hasn't posted their odds on this event.

Schrodinger's Babies

In physics there is a famous (and morbid) thought experiment that was proposed by the noted physicist Erwin Schrodinger called Schrodinger's cat. Without delving into the behavior in quantum physics that this story attempts to explain, the crux of the thought experiment is that there is a cat . . . locked in a box . . . with a canister of poison (Sorry PETA activists - it's not my story). Attached to the canister of poison is a triggering mechanism that has a 50% chance of releasing the poison within an hour. If the poison is released, kitty will be no more. If the poison is not released, no harm befalls kitty and he can go back to his existence lazing about the house. Sounds straightforward, but the point Erwin was attempting to make was that you can never know if kitty is alive or if kitty has expired until you open the box at the end of the hour and observe the state of the cat. Furthermore, and this is the cool part, he argued that until you do open the box both possibilities are actually true and coexisting - i.e. the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. It is only in the observing that you make reality one of the two cases.

This is sort of like how it is when you leave your children with a babysitter.

LeeAnn and I have only ventured out, sans children, into the world of other adults twice since they were born. Once was a 2 hour dinner at Houston's a couple of weeks back and the other was a four hour outing for our anniversary the other night. In both cases, LeeAnn's parents were kind enough to take care of Perritt and Mary Poole. And in both cases it's safe to say that a measurable amount of carefree joy was been missing from our dining experience. I think the reason for this missing joy is that in the back of our heads, we're wondering which two children we left with our unsuspecting babysitters.

• Option 1: We left them with the cute, smiling, loving children that we know so well and live with happily for the majority of the day. If this is the case, then all is well in the world and, if anything, we've probably encouraged future offers to babysit from LeeAnn's parents. This is a good thing.
  
  
• Option 2: The moment we left the house, a small portal to the netherworld opened up in our nursery and our children became possessed by their alter egos Mary Polly and Little Pierre - as is oft to happen round dusk each night. If this is the case, then our babysitters are paralyzed with confusion on how to handle two screaming children and we have possibly jeopardized a future outing for weeks, months or, if it's a really rare appearance by the alter egos - possibly years.
  

Which of these two options actually happened is unclear for the duration of your time away from the children until you break out the cell phone and make the call. The reason this uncertainty can taint an otherwise worry-free evening, is that just as with Schrodinger's cat, until you make that call - in your head - both cases are happening at the same time. You always feel like there's a better than 50% chance that you've left your kind and unsuspecting parents in the presence of possessed children. And while you can masquerade at dinner with a devil-may-care attitude, on the inside, you've got a pocket of your brain that is itching to pick up the phone and check on the mental health of your two sitters. And that's just enough distraction to eliminate the illusion that you are the people you once were before you had kids. But such is life with children.

In other news:

• I've selected a theme song for Perritt (now over 12lbs): Authority Song by John Cougar Mellencamp. Perritt/Little Pierre is still very much engaged in a daily, mortal struggle with giving up on a day and going to bed. But, like all other humans, Perritt always does finally succumb after an hour or so and yields to sleep every night. As a result, the lyrics - "I fight authority, authority always wins" seems particularly appropriate for the young man.
  
• I haven't figured out a theme song for Mary Poole (about 11lbs 12 ounces) but I'm still working on it. Given that she now has trouble eating her entire bottle before getting utterly distracted by exciting and fascinating things in the house such as: a blank painted wall, a ceiling fan, the blinds, a shoe, etc. it seemed that that Amy Winehouse song that goes "They tried to send me rehab and I said no, no, no" almost works if you substitute "make me eat my whole bottle" for "send me to rehab" but it's not a real solid fit. And plus, it's hard to equate a song about a deadbeat loser not going to rehab with a small child not finishing her bottle because she accidentally become so enthralled with a ceiling fan that she can't stop smiling as it goes round and round. These two things are not the same. So the search continues.
  
• This week the children got their shots. And let me tell you - you ain't never heard a child scream until you've held their arms while a medical professional sticks them with four needles full of lethal diseases. Awful, just awful. Luckily, they both only had manageable fevers and pretty much slept for a day and have since recovered quickly. While they are now no worse for the wear, we're already dreading the next batch. And from accounts from friends, it only gets worse as the children get older. Good times.